Field Trip Release: Fill & Download for Free

I have no idea why this memory popped in my head today, but it did, and it led to some other memories, and a realization that never occurred to me.I remembered during a bus ride for a field trip when I was in middle school that the teacher kept asking me questions. It was only me. It was like she was interrogating me, but she wasn’t really interested in my answers. They were the kinds of questions you ask a kid when you don’t know what to talk to them about, but you feel the need to talk to them: “How’s school going?” “What kind of music do you like?” Etc…When we got to the destination, she immediately put us into pairs, and didn’t let us pick our partners. She paired me with someone first.Then, when it came time to head back to school, she insisted that we sit with our partners for the ride back.Like I said, I don’t know why I remembered this so clearly today, but I finally realized what was happening. She must have seen me sitting alone on the bus with no one talking to me (a common thing when I was in middle school), felt bad for me, and took it upon herself to talk to me until she could pass that job off to a student.Then, the more I thought about it, the more I remembered other instances of other teachers doing similar things when I was in middle school: making conversation with me when no one else was, pairing me with a partner rather than letting everyone pick their own partners and me being left out again, seeming to go out of their way to make sure I was included in what was happening in class, etc…I’m not sure how I feel about that now. I’m sure they were just trying to do what they thought was right… to correct a social wrong… to look out for the outcast and such. Still, I know now, as a teacher, that a student’s classmates can see right through that and may bully them for it.“The only reason anyone ever works with you is because Mr. Bates forces them to…”So now I’m wondering if there are some other middle school memories stored away in my mind, just waiting for some random neuron to fire and release them. I’m excited to see what other “wow” realizations I have.

-JUST SAY IT-The first memory that I have of my father was him knocking over a Lego castle that I had built in the living room. He laughed while I was crying. I was three years old when that happened.My pregnant mother asked my father to quit getting high or to leave the following week. He walked out of our lives without so much as a phone call.The next few years were pretty rough for our family. My mother would have a string of abusive boyfriends that were every bit as addicted to drugs as my father was. The only difference in those men from my father were their names.When I was in eighth grade my teacher organized a field trip to Washington, D.C. My mom saved a few dollars out of each welfare check for three months and gave it to me the morning of the trip. I felt like such a big baller with $25 in my pocket. With that money, I had hoped to have an intimate candlelight dinner in D.C., with Jenny Pellegrino, the Italian Goddess of Love.Just before our bus landed in D.C., a boy reached over his seat and grabbed my hair with both hands. He pulled back as tight as he could to hold me in place. Jimmy sat down beside me and ordered me to give him the wad of crinkled ones and fives that I had been carelessly flashing for the past three hours. I was hoping to be thought of as cool by showing the money off. All I did was draw the attention of a bully. Tears were already streaming down my face when he slapped me for not complying. He told me that he would kill me if I didn't give it up. As kids often do, I had over shared about not having a father with some classmates during the weeks leading up to the field trip. Jimmy told me that my father left because he was ashamed of having a little girl for a kid. When I handed over my field trip money, Jimmy said three words.“Thought so, pussy”Jimmy spit on my face as his partner rammed my head forward releasing his tight grip on my hair. I was so embarrassed I could hardly cry. Jenny just looked at me as I wiped the spit and tears from my face, cowering in the seat just behind and across from hers. There would be no candlelight dinner, or snacks, or D.C. trinkets to remember that trip by, only the newly acquired knowledge that my father left because I was pussy.When I got home I asked my mom to tell me about my biological father. Who was he? Who was the man I hated for leaving me? For leaving me because I was a little girl, a pussy? She gave me these two pictures and told me that he left without a trace because he had a drug problem.But I knew that he left because he hated me. I could tell by that smug ass look on his face. I could see that half smirk that screamed, Leon’s a little girl.A few weeks later, everyone at school started calling me, Advo. I've had a lot of nicknames over the years but this one was special. They coaxed me into referring to myself as Advo. When I sat down at my desk after lunch I found this picture, which to this day, I have no idea how Jimmy got it.They taped my picture to a lost child's profile and told everyone that I wasn't missing, that I was just unwanted. I saved that little reminder because the reality was, they were right, I was unwanted.When I was just about fifteen years old, my brother, myself and my mom, lived in a little apartment in Ephrata, Pennsylvania. One day after school the phone rang. It was my father. Three weeks later he moved us out to Orcas Island, WA. How the hell did this happen? I had no clue how he could disappear for more than a decade and with two phone calls to my mom, uplift our family of three and move us across the country. I fucking hated my life.A few days after we got there, the four of us went grocery shopping. There were a few kids that I recognized in the grocery store from school. I was goofing around with my brother, which must have irritated my father. My father turned around and hit my face so hard that I saw stars and heard whistling in my left ear. I can remember being dazed. I was looking down at the white grocery store linoleum that was now changing to red from the blood that was pouring out of my nose and mouth. What really hurt was looking up and seeing my new classmates getting a front row seat to the pussy that they were about to share their school with. I was devastated inside. I knew I was going to kill myself. I mean how else could I escape being a little girl?When I was sixteen, I got a job at a sandwich shop. I was already smoking weed and had become the kind of outcast that was safer for other kids to ignore. One night, a 46-year-old male coworker asked me if I wanted to get high after work. He told me that we'd smoke at his place and he'd take me home afterward. He only lived two miles away from my parent's house, so I figured if he was too high to drive, I could just walk home.After work, we both jumped in his car and headed over to his place. When he pulled into his garage he put the car in park and punched me until I blacked out. He dragged me through the house and up the steps into his room. He bound my hands above my head. Five hours later, while he was sleeping, I managed to free my hands. Cell phones weren't a thing in the mid-nineties, so I snuck out and walked home at two in the morning. I had to pound on my parent's door because my keys and my wallet weren't in the pants that I had tearfully pulled on some twenty minutes before. When my father answered I could see the anger and shame on his face. I told him that everyone was right about me, that I was a little girl and a pussy. I was crying so hard he didn't know what to do. When he walked into his bedroom to get dressed, I walked into the kitchen and grabbed a steak knife. I turned my wrist up and drove that knife right into it.As I was pulling it towards my heart, my father tackled me onto the floor. As I laid there crying I told him that I knew why he had left for all those years. I knew he hated me and wished I was dead. I told him how ashamed of myself that I was and that I knew he was ashamed of me as well. What I said next haunts me to this day. I knew how hard he was going beat me, but I couldn't hold it in.“The only reason you left was because I was an accident that you wish never happened”My father squeezed my shoulders and aggressively lifted my head up off of his lap. I almost looked forward to him punching me to death so that I could escape living the life I hated so much. When he looked into my crying eyes his lower jaw trembled. I could see the kitchen light sparkling in the tears that were forming in his eyes. Twenty-four years later, I still hear his words as if they were spoken yesterday.“I don't care if you wanna be with a guy or a girl. I don't care if you're gay or straight or a crossdresser. I love you with all my heart no matter who you are or what you do. I was never ashamed of you. I left because I was ashamed of myself. I came back because I want to be your dad. You're my son and I love you no matter what.”My father called the school the next day and had me taken out of class for a while. He took off work and helped me to recover. He told me in graphic detail what happened to him when he was six years old. Our stories were not that different. Someone understood my shame. That someone was my father. My father never raised his voice again. He never hit me again either. He took my brother and I everywhere he went and spent every minute he could with us.He never raised his voice or a hand to my mother again either. In fact, he married her.He gave me a home when I got out of jail. He talked to me every day while I was struggling with heroin addiction. He was there for me when I got married and held me while I cried through a divorce.Dad came over the other day to tell me a fish story.No, Dad. A fish story!My father lets me hug him.My father even smiles when I kiss him. He makes me feel really special every single day.When I think about what a drug addicted, absentee parent should have to do to be in their child's life, I think about what my dad did. He came back, he quit getting high, he made me feel special every single day for the last twenty-five years without exception and loved me unconditionally.What should every parent have to do to be in their child’s life? Show their love and not just say it.Leon

As a student in 1973 I lived in shared accommodation where I got to know Sue. Because our timetables were similar meant I could give her a lift regularly. One Sunday afternoon Sue knocked at my door (I suppose, I really don't remember that detail) and was looking very anxious when I answered. She told me she had borrowed her boyfriend's car for a few days because he was on a field trip and it wasn't running right; she was very concerned that she might have broken it.We walked down to the car — an Austin A40 as it happens — and she told me what happened. It was running fine when she set off from Birmingham she'd stopped for fuel and afterwards it was lumpy and sluggish. I had some theories as to the cause ranging from very expensive to affordable and asked whether she had done anything else “yes topped the oil up” because her boyfriend told her to keep an eye on it. This introduced a new theory which was the simplest car repair I've ever made. I asked her to start the car and release the bonnet. As I lifted it I saw what I expected: a spark going from one of the plug caps to the dipstick. I got her to stop the car, rotated the dipstick, which had an offset in it, by 180 degrees and got her to start it again. Problem solved.It's the only time in my life I've been looked at with what can only be described as hero worship.