My Second Birthday

I’d be willing to bet that you’ve never met anyone with two birthdays.  Well… TADA!  Now you have.  I have the distinguished honor of having not one, but two birthdays each year.  One on November 16th, 19…blah, blah, blah, and the other, today—December 17th. 

How, you may ask, could I possibly have two birthdays?  Today is the day I was adopted… forty years ago, today, as a matter of fact.  Now, let’s see… what was going on in the world and in the good old USA forty years ago today?  Well, the Vietnam War was raging out of control with no end in sight.  So much so that my mom thought I might actually grow up and end up being drafted into the war.  But the other thing that was going on at that same time was… the Women’s Lib Movement. 

Now, the only reason I even bring this up is because my mom and I were bordering on celebrity status, due to the fact that she adopted me as a single parent.  And in 1970, that simply did not happen.  We were hounded by the press and media for interviews, including the New York Times and even the Today Show.  Actually, my mom was the one being hounded, I just sat there trying to be a cute little toddler.  She finally had to take the phone off the hook so we could have some semblance of a Christmas together.  

There you have it… the story (in a nutshell) of how I came to have two birthdays.  I consider myself among a very elite group of people.  So, if you ever run across someone whom you find has been adopted, wish them a second happy birthday!

Sing a Little Ditty

When asked if they sing, people often quip, “Only in the bathroom.”  They usually don’t intend the remark to be taken literally, but when I was a child, it was my favorite performance venue.  I suppose the tiled floor and walls, allowing my voice to echo wildly through the air was simply too much to resist.  Oh, yes… I forgot to mention, the bathroom of which I speak was not the one in my home.  These were public restrooms, usually in restaurants. 

After enjoying a peaceful and delicious meal with my mom, and sometimes other family members, I would always find an excuse to make my way into the restroom before we left. 

 Curtain up!

Out would pour songs from 1970s top forty radio, country western, and even a little pop and rock.  But my favorite song, by far, was “Tomorrow” from the Broadway musical, Annie.  It didn’t seem to matter to me that there were people constantly invading my concert hall to pee.  I joyously continued my one-man concert, despite odd stares or rude comments.  On occasion, I would even receive a bit of applause for my effort. 

The only problem with my artistic endeavor was that the entire restaurant could hear me, including my mortified mother.  As my performance continued to rock the house, my mother would have to slink back to the men’s restroom, amid stares and uncomfortable smiles and try to figure out how to get me to shut-up without invading the porcelain palace.  Occasionally, she would have to ask a gentleman leaving the restroom to go back inside and tell me, “Your mother would really like for you to stop singing.”  Then, I would hear my mother’s voice call from outside the restroom door, “And wash your hands!”  

On one particular restaurant outing, my mother was making her way back to our booth after another impromptu concert, when the lady in the next booth chimed up, attempting to lessen the sting of humiliation by saying, “He has a lovely voice.” 

Imagine, I now sing for a living.  But then again, I had lots of practice.

Way Ouside the Box

Albert Einstein once said, “If, at first, an idea is not absurd, there is no hope for it.”  If that’s true, then I must be one of the most absurd people on the planet.  My entire life has been filled with ideas and experiments that would make even Willy Wonka grab for his security blanket… or perhaps his 401k.  For me, however, this has just been my normal, day-to-day existence. 

 I’ve never been the type to think, “I’m going to go to college, get my degree, and get a job in… (insert your favorite industry here).  That’s not to say I haven’t tried college – I have, and I found it so stifling that I almost pulled my eyeballs out… all four times!  I have always been a critical thinker, a busy-body who continually questions the status quo, and most college people don’t like that.  “Fitting in” has never been my style, nor my desire, for that matter.  

Now, please don’t misunderstand me.  I’m not saying that I purposely rail against the establishment just for the sake of being different.  I’m saying that I am physically, mentally, and emotionally unable to align myself with what everyone else is doing, simply because it’s what everyone else is doing.  It’s like asking a cat to bark… it can’t happen. 

I have traveled some fairly bumpy roads as a result of my thinking way outside the box.  I have lost jobs, burned bridges, and even lost a dear friend in the process.  But somewhere deep inside, I have to believe that God put this quality in me for a reason.  Thinking and dreaming in starkly unique ways is just what I do.  It’s who I am… and I’m okay with that.

A Friend and a Half

A couple of years after we moved into the new house in Temple City, a boy who was a year older than me moved in across the street, right next door to the Jelly Belly man. I can’t quite remember, anymore, how we met, but when we did, we became fast friends.

His name… was Joey. Joey was unique in that he seemed to defy normal behavior standards and could be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to reason with; at least this was my eight year-old impression of Joey. It would many years before l learned that Joey had severe ADHD. But despite the fact that Joey and I could have some real knock-down drag-out fights, he was still my friend for whom I would do almost anything.

 When Joey was told not to do something, especially by his mother, it seemed as though it were a challenge that had to be accepted. I remember one day, in particular, when his mother was baby sitting a friend’s toddler, whom she had just put down for a nap. Joey and I were playing cards in his living room when his mother came to us and said, “I need you to be very quiet, I just put the baby down for a nap.” You can probably guess what happened next… yep, the gauntlet had been thrown down; the die had been cast. Incidentally, Joey’s last words before any punishment from his mother were almost always, “Hey, watch this!”

As his mother left for the back yard, Joey stealthily crept into the baby’s room and began dangling things above his crib while I watched in horror, not knowing what to do. If I sat by and did nothing, Joey would wake the baby, guaranteed. If I called to him to stop, I would be the one to wake the baby and incur his mother’s wrath. As Joey dangled his yo-yo over the baby’s head, pretending to hypnotize the child, while looking at me and laughing, the unthinkable happened. At least it was unthinkable to Joey. To me, it was just the next logical event. The string came loose and the yo-yo smacked the baby square in the forehead, waking him up and sending him into a loud, and very attention-grabbing, crying fit.

In his attempt to cover up his crime, Joey snatched the yo-yo from the crib, threw it into his bedroom, came running out to the living room, and sat down next to me as if nothing had happened. His mother, however, wasn’t buying any of it. Flying in from the back yard, she passed through the living room, grabbed Joey by the arm without even slowing down, and dragged him into his room as he begged for mercy. She turned and looked at me just long enough to say, “Joey can’t play anymore,” before slamming his bedroom door shut.

There would be many more days like this.

Babyhood with Grandma and Grandpa

I’d like to take this opportunity, early on here, and tell you a little about my babyhood… is that a word? Oh well, it is now. My mother, a single parent, adopted me at the age of 13-months; now keep in mind that this was in 1970, a time when single-parent adoptions were simply not done. When the adoption was finalized just before Christmas a year later, it caused such a stir that media outlets from coast to coast were banging down our door to try to get an interview with my mother. Even the Today Show on NBC was relentless in their efforts. She did grant a few interviews for the Los Angeles Times and other local papers around the country, but it quickly began to wear on her, especially since it was the height of the Christmas season. She finally had to stop answering the phone in order to have any peace in the house (these were the days when newspapers published your home address and phone number).

My mother is a special education teacher, and at the time, worked for a private school in Pasadena, California. While she was at work, I was cared for by my great-grandparents, Grace and Jack. Grandma Grace was a no-nonsense lady; born in Missouri in 1890, she was raised on a farm, attended school only to the third grade, and lived by the rules of common sense. Grandpa Jack was a Hungarian immigrant, born in December, 1900, who came to America with his family in 1903 and passed through Ellis Island on the way to settling in the Bowery of New York City’s lower east side.

Grandma and Grandpa were both very understanding and permissive when it came to my imaginative play habits, although Grandma Grace was more of a pragmatist who saw no value in pursuing goals or dreams she viewed as impractical, such as show business or entertainment. During the Depression, she worked in Los Angeles, running the households of the likes of Lionel Barrymore and Oscar Hammerstein, and she saw more than her share of wild drunken parties that ended with her having to drive movie stars home while they vomited in the back seat.

Grandpa Jack, on the other hand, loved show business and longed to perform in theatre and film. While still a teenager in New York City, he was approached by famed movie director, Adolph Zukor, who invited him to Los Angeles to pursue a film career. Unfortunately, his family would not hear of it and nearly threw Zukor out of the house, telling him to go get a real job. Grandpa Jack tried to look up Mr. Zukor years later, but all attempts were in vain.

While my mother was at work, my great-grandparents encouraged me to play and explore, although I did incur the occasional threat of a switch from Grandma Grace. Grandpa Jack carried me around the living room to look at all the pictures on the wall, describing each one in glorious detail as we went, as well as stopping at the mirror to make goofy faces. He would also take me in my stroller for my daily train experience, as we lived very close to the tracks.

When I was five years-old, Grandma Grace had a massive stroke and died shortly thereafter. Grandpa Jack was never his same jovial self again and died two years later. I believe that I have the creative spirit I do because my great-grandparents, along with my mother, who played with me and talked to me for hours after work every day, took the necessary time to make sure that I had the knowledge and the courage to take advantage of every opportunity in life.