If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor (5 page)

I wasn't so interested in killing mosquitoes as I was in inflicting cruel and unusual punishment. I didn't take out nearly as many as Don, but the ones that landed on me often regretted it. I found that you could trap an unsuspecting mosquito if you were willing to let it drill into your arm first. Then, as the little bugger sucks his heart out, you pinch the skin on either side of his stinger. Apply a little pressure, and he would be force-fed until his translucent belly filled up with blood and burst.

To keep our blessed woods free from development, Don and I would rip up any FOR SALE sign in the vicinity and toss it into a stream. It worked for a while, but we couldn't stop the real estate ads in the paper. One fateful day, the lot next to our house was sold.

The bad news was obvious, but the good news was that the Forbes family had two girls. Still, they were interlopers and had to be punished. As Mrs. Forbes was unloading groceries from her car one day, the youngest daughter was skipping about on their driveway. She looked so happy, playing in
my
woods. I looked at the Winchester BB gun in my hands and slowly cocked it. There were still trees between our houses, but if I timed my shot just right, I could nail her through a small opening. I also had to account for declining trajectory over such a distance, so I raised the barrel of my gun about ten feet above her head and squeezed off a shot.

"Owwww!"

Mrs. Forbes almost dropped her groceries as she whirled about. "What is it, honey?"

"Something came through the woods and bit my leg!" Mrs. Forbes looked up toward our house, but she saw nothing. I had long since retreated to our tunnel.

Even with the odd house being built here and there, our neighborhood was still pretty feral. Dogs were free to roam without leashes and, in many cases, without tags. Unfortunately, my rabbit George paid the price. He was usually good at holding his own outside his cage. Twice, he led Shadow, the Francises' German shepherd toward the deck in our backyard, only to slip underneath at the last minute. Each time, the unsuspecting dog would bash his head on the lip of the deck. Mike claims that Shadow was actually knocked unconscious one time and laid there, with its legs in the air, for about fifteen minutes.

George's end came when I forgot to close the garage door one night. His cage wasn't enough to protect him from Molly, the Feldmans' hunting dog. It didn't take a DNA test to match the dog's fur with the tufts caught around the hole in the chicken wire. Don was so enraged, he marched down the street and chucked stones at the evil dog.

To make up for the loss of George we got another rabbit, an albino named Weaser. After I got through with him, he
wished
a dog had eaten him. Unwittingly, during his otherwise happy years with us, I slammed his head in the garage door and ran over him with my bike.

The only downside to a neighborhood without many homes was that Halloween was too much work for not enough return. The big haul could be found across the paved road of Walnut Lake, in the nirvana known as Kirkwood -- a new subdivision where every third house was the same design. Hedgewood Street was long, straight, and always the best bet. Don and I would take pillowcases up and down each side and our bags would be half full in about twenty minutes.

For some reason I was fascinated by a wig my Mom had, so I went trick-or-treating as a girl two years in a row. This was fine until I cut between houses and got felt up by some guy with poor eyesight.

After stocking up in Kirkwood, we'd come back home for a local party. The Boraskis would open up their garage and neighbors would gorge themselves on fresh doughnuts and cider. A road island in front of their house made a great place for a bonfire and costume contest. Grant Brady always won because, like Mike, he had a flair for engineering. His "electric" turtle knocked them dead one year. Thankfully, the following year, some creative guy came as the Upside Down Man and snatched the title away.

THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT

I'm grateful for my old neighborhood's tolerant view of adolescence -- without it, I wouldn't have been able to engage in the tomfoolery I did.

There was something about those dark, warm summer nights that induced Don and I to roam the neighborhood like wild dogs. Many evenings, we'd pitch a tent in the backyard and be long gone by the time darkness fell.

What do adolescent boys do at night? Do they play hide-and-seek? Flashlight tag? Sometimes, sure, but that stuff gets boring after puberty kicks in. Don and I decided to cut to the chase and look into the windows of unsuspecting women -- at every possible opportunity.

"Copping a perv" was harder than you might think. Even though our neighborhood had no streetlights, and crickets provided a fantastic blanket of noise, it took great discipline to sneak up to a girl's open window and actually get close enough to see anything worth the effort. The sound of crunching leaves is unmistakable, and if a girl's window was right next to the woods, as was often the case, we'd be screwed. Second-story windows also sucked, but Don and I excelled at climbing trees.

If it's any consolation to the shocked reader, our success rate was very low. After countless outings, I can recall only one time when we hit the jackpot. It was an extended, topless view of Carla, more woman than girl, and I will state, for the record, that it was worth every other failed attempt.

We took every advantage the cover of darkness provided. On our way to toss water balloons at cars, Steve Davis, Scott Tyler and I would make a swing past old man Morris's rhubarb patch to load up on the sour stuff. It wasn't that we really liked raw rhubarb, because it was too sour to eat, but it became a good dare. Mr. Morris by no means deserved to be a victim of such theft, but his property was our access to Maple Road -- the water balloon staging area.

There was an art to knowing when to release your water balloon at a passing car. Early on, we discovered that no matter how good your timing was, most balloons bounced off their intended targets. In order to get the full effect, you had to bite a microscopic hole near the knot of the balloon. This tiny weakness caused the balloon to unzip instantly upon impact.

One night, my plan worked a little too well. As a truck passed, I let my bloated balloon go, but saw no effect whatsoever. Then, down the street, we heard the unmistakable sound of air brakes. We ran for cover and witnessed the angry trucker walking up the road, soaked from head to toe. Apparently, the water balloon had gone through an open window of his truck and hit him point-blank.

FEMALES OF THE OPPOSITE SEX

My family used to vacation on Lake Michigan several weeks out of every summer and walks along the beach were not uncommon. One day, while rooting through the water for a decent Petoskey stone, I caught the silhouette of a girl at the top of the sand dunes above the beach. As I squinted into the July sun, I saw an image that remains indelible today -- a girl with dark hair, wearing a dress that flowed seductively in the warm breeze.

Although I couldn't see her face, I sensed that she was looking directly at me. Entranced, I held her gaze for an indefinite length of time, until her parents met her at the edge of the dune and led her out of my sight. As she walked away, in slow-motion, the girl watched me the entire time. Whether this was true or not, my memory has logged it as indisputable fact.

When I was ten, I attended Camp Leelanau in the same part of Northern Michigan. It was an all-boy camp, but near the end of my three-week stay, we were bussed to the sister, "girl" camp for a day of "integration." I can only recall the terror of exiting the bus and seeing a line of cute girls across the road to greet us. My impressionable mind simply shut down and I don't remember any further events of the day.

Women had that effect on me.

The same applied to Joanna Spain. During third-grade Field Day, I admired how fast she could run. I was not "excited" in the typical sense -- I didn't know enough about sexuality. Rather, I was just impressed in a
different
way than how, say, Mike Ditz won the Hop, Skip and Jump contest. I didn't win anything, but it didn't matter -- I got to watch Joanna run.

I don't know what it is about the primal need for boys to impress girls, but every time I tried it, something disastrous happened.

Trying to impress the Brady twins, in particular, was a challenge. They weren't identical, but each had an irresistible quality. Karen, a redhead, was quiet, polite and a 9+ by any standard. Her blonde sister, Ann, was outgoing and flirtatious, but she was pushing a 10, so she was also harder prey. The only consolation was that Ann tortured my brother Don exponentially. To this day (are you reading Don?) the mere mention of her name sends this Desert Storm veteran into a foxhole, trembling in fear.

To me, it really didn't matter which one I dazzled first.

The Brady yard had several huge weeping willow trees. With long, droopy branches, they were a joy to climb. My plan, while Karen watched from below, was to leap from one branch to another, not unlike that guy in a loincloth. I may have even yodeled as I reached out for the targeted branch, but it was all over before it began. The branch I grabbed had been dead for years and broke off clean. The momentum swung my legs in front of me and I ended up in a muddy bog, flat on my back -- branch still in hand. The air had been completely knocked from my lungs and all I could do was lay there and gasp.

"Oh, my God, Bruce -- are you all right?" Karen asked, with genuine concern.

"Oh yeah,
=cough= it was all =cough= part of my =cough=
plan..."

Overwhelmed with humility, I jumped on my Huffy bike, and sped away as fast as I could.

One fall day, my mother brought my brothers and me to visit her friend. It seemed only natural that her three boys would enjoy interacting with the woman's three daughters.

Things started innocently enough -- the kids all huddled in their basement while the moms drank tea and chatted in the kitchen. Music was playing, so we all proceeded to dance, or whatever it was young kids do when they heard music. I wound up running in circles around one of the cute daughters. Soon, we were heading in opposite directions and a collision seemed preordained. Seconds later, we bashed heads and dropped to the floor. The girl screamed and ran off to tell her mom while I hid behind the couch. Their mother didn't seem overly concerned, but the other, older daughters had blood in their eyes.