1985 – Summer Part IV: Banishment to North Dakota

My apologies if the last installment was rushed. I didn’t have enough written in advance and housesitting took up more free time than I expected. The silver lining was it forced me to break up the third section into two more. We can blame it on Neil Finn!

So, after we got back from Florida and Grandma Maggi passed away, Brian and I discovered this hidden world of coolness near ISU’s campus; these stores on North Avenue along with Adventureland would assuage me until I left for college in a real city like Chicago, LA or Houston. I had no idea where I really wanted to go then, I was more caught up in the immediate crisis of my pending senior year.

With University High being a bust, there were two other choices: Bloomington or Central Catholic. Ointment or suppositories in my opinion. Either place was going to be my sixth high school. How awesome that would look on a college application! I was a proponent of the public institution: no dress code, no religion courses, diversity and anonymity. Mom and Brian outvoted me with their push for Central or what I prefer to call Catholic Prison. Admittedly, it was down the street which made a short walk but I wouldn’t stand for it. After my great experiences at Clear Creek, I never wanted to attend a Catholic anything again. Lawrence Central and Beulah weren’t great but they beat the hell out of Bishop Chatard on what mattered to me. I’m confident Brian was fine with me going elsewhere, I had embarrassed him too many times at Chatard; he was a cool kid, I never was. Mom wouldn’t have it. She was adamant about us attending the same school together and/or had this crazy hope I could be converted into a “better” Catholic, aka thought like her. Talk about a Hail Mary attempt. Years ago, the Jesuits at Strake failed miserably and they’re considered the Church’s best educators, what chance did a Podunk school have?

The debate, more like a verbal fight, raged on through the end of August. Name calling, blaming, the whole bit. I didn’t pull any (vocal) punches, especially with my disappointment over the Florida debacle. I’m confident Mom brought up her usual litany of things she loved to blame: music/MTV, D&D, “hooligan” friends and “promiscuous” girls (really penpals, I didn’t have much luck on the girlfriend front nor  was sex discussed in correspondence). When you’re a boring teen without a drinking, drug or humping problem and has good grades, someone like my mother has to fall back on desperate accusations.

Sadly, her vivid imagination remained intact into my adulthood as our final conversation in 2003 proved. She thought that my household was Letters to Penthouse incarnate because Somara and I lived together for three years before we were married.

Things came to a head before Labor Day Weekend when I called her a bitch. Tame even by 1985 standards. It got the green light for Prime Time shows over the last 20 years. This didn’t matter. I gave her the excuse to get on the phone with my old man in North Dakota. She claimed I was out of control, blah blah blah; therefore, he had to come down to Bloomington and take me back to live with him. The clinching lie to get a rise was her claim of me hitting her, something I’ve never done. What I did was take the whiffle bat out of her hands after I tolerated enough hits in the forearms. My rebuttal to her exaggeration didn’t help my case. I said something to the effect of, “If I actually hit you, you wouldn’t be able to stand up for a while.” Never mind that in 1985 I weighed 140 pounds and was pushing six feet tall; in football terms, I was built like a wide receiver, not a bruising linesman who can hurt you.

I thought Dad would tell her to calm down, he had better things to do and figured she was lying over the fictional hit. Maybe he’d come visit over the long weekend, try to scare me into cooperating and/or physically assault me (his temper is legendary and why I find hitting children sick). No dice, he made the trip and I had to go back with him. But first, there was a tutorial on driving his truck with its manual transmission. This involved cursing in the parking lot of Bloomington HS…from both of us. (Contrary to what Dad said, my mechanic says there’s nothing wrong with riding the clutch on contemporary cars.)

Some suspected I accepted my “banishment” over a girl named Mary back in Beulah, namely my brother. Not really. I figured I would go on dates regardless of where I went to school or lived, plus college was going to be better. Truthfully, what I realized was I pushed my luck but I just couldn’t stand living under the same roof with my mother. She was nuts and was going to micromanage me to the point of suicide, hers or mine. Somebody had to go. It just ended up being me because I didn’t have any power or real say.

While the reality of it was sinking in, I embraced the silver linings I found. I had friends back at Beulah HS: Mike, Jason, Darren and Jon. Mary was a plus. No starting over with school for the fourth year in a row! I also knew Dad was unusually mellow and easier going when Mom wasn’t around. Besides, he wasn’t paranoid about me getting any girls pregnant unlike Mom. I think he feared me being gay more. This didn’t prevent a tense, uncomfortable drive through Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota and a constant smell of pig feces with the windows rolled down; this truck lacked AC.

The Summer of 1985 ended disastrously for me but in the long run, it worked out for the best. Graduating from a North Dakota high school probably gave me the opportunities to be accepted by more universities than if I were in Illinois or Florida. My relationship with Dad was much smoother because he preferred having the company and realized I was a low-maintenance teen compared to others he knew of. Thus, I had a relatively high amount of freedom to come and go as I wish. The cats came along too so I had the companionship of Mewsette and Teddy until Mom took them back at Christmas. Brian got his wish as well. He got to attend school without the baggage of a dorky older brother bringing down his coolness rating.

Would I do it differently had I known the outcome? I don’t honestly know. I’m leaning toward “probably not” due to the college acceptance factor and the remoteness molding me into a more relatively responsible teenager, thanks to my Dad’s trust.

Last week, my brother sent me a package which included my high school yearbook from Beulah. Talk about coincidence. Somara hasn’t seen it in great detail. I’m reviewing the thing because I haven’t read it in over 20 years. I want to make sure I’m over any jarring shocks first.