I needed to go home. Something was wrong with me. But, I was stuck for at Julie's Aunt's for the duration of a week.
That night after dinner, the family sat in the living room to watch an episode of Medic, a hit series, narrated by Richard Boone, which featured a different star every week . . . a star with a disease. Each episode, revolved around the main character contracting of a serious ailment and the subsequent traumas that transpired in their lives. The episode that we happen to watch, was about a beautiful model who caught, none other than, the disease of Multiple Sclerosis. She was deteriorating slowly into a cripple with thick black shoes. Just like the church lady's!Lord! Heaven, spare me!
Already a wreck, from the voices coming out of the roller coaster. I was nearly comatose after Medic was over with. I had sat, memorized during the entire show. I couldn't sleep from fright, for I was, then, convinced that the church lady's germs, at some point, had flown onto my body. Obviously! I thought to myself, It was bound to happen. Sure, enough, I had caught that dreaded disease. God was punishing me for my evil thoughts toward the church lady. Simple as that. He was going to teach me, just how it was to be in her thick, black shoes.
It was just too much. I began to scream until Julies Aunt and Uncle became terrified for my welfare. They called my mother and told her that she had to come and pick me up. . . that, I was inconsolable and they didn't know why. One could just imagine how happy my mother was with that three o’clock in the morning phone call. So, I lied to her and everyone else. "I, uh, I was dreaming that . . . a, a huge gorilla with bloody teeth was trying to kill me!" I just couldn't bring myself to tell them about my condition.
The T.V. program was not a good thing, for, not only had it taught me the symptoms of M.S., it also showed the subsequent stages of degeneration. In a world already full of pins and needles, there I was, screaming into the nights, over the voices and my imagined disease. Some days I would wake, feeling numb all over, unable to move, for I was crippled. Other days, would find me normal, giving my family hope that this, thing, had passed. But then, suddenly in the night, I would cry out that I was blind, and start running into furniture and such. Or, I would believe myself to be deaf. No one ever knew from one moment to the next, what symptom I would come up with next. I was a mess.
After this went on a good while, at least a few months, my mother, unsure, and unnerved, and not knowing just what to make of it; finally and reluctantly, took me to be checked out by a doctor. "There is nothing wrong with this little lady. She is the picture of health." The doctor proudly announced. This was the verdict of approximately five different physicians, until one doctor stuck a pin deep into my leg and I didn't even react.
Geeze! Maybe better make something up!!!! Like . . .it wasn't M.S. It was that, the monster in my dream was real and had put a spell on me, and it affected my all my senses, and then, he took me away to a dark cave! (And, then he joined a rock group!) Hummm not bad.
EASY TO BE HARD
Often, there was the question of how, when or where. What matters most is why...
They say there is but five degrees of separation between all of us.
This is my story and observations about growing up under the infamous Hollywood Sign, in the 50's 60' and 70's. This is also a story of my entering the fast lane, and finding that if I wanted to survive, I had to get off it, but... it wasn't that easy.
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