BIG CASH MONEY MAKERS
My dad decreed we should sell the farmhouse and move to Florida, where his parents had already moved years prior, and my mom went along with it even though she would be leaving her entire extended family. They were still recovering from leaving the religious cult, and it was difficult when all of their old friends and enemies from the cult were all around town, and the cult continued to exist and get weirder and more problematic. The cult leader's son was thrown in jail for molesting cult boys after my parents left. If we had stayed it could have been me, but I was oblivious to all this and was nine years old.
The cult leader had prophesied that the world would end in 1980, causing my dad to buy hundreds of large cans of bomb-shelter survival food out of a catalog. A lot of it was oats and dried banana chips, stuff that would last in a basement for years. When the world didn’t end in 1980, Brother Julius pushed back the date of the apocalypse and a lot of people left the cult. The ones who stayed doubled-down on their commitment to the fraud cult leader, who started calling himself “the sinful messiah” and saying he was above mortal law. Then it started to seem like the world would actually end, with Reagan on TV in 1983 talking about “star wars” and nuclear annihilation by the Russians. I’ve talked to other 80s kids about lying awake at night wondering if the world would blow up during the night.
All this was the backdrop of my folks selling the house and moving us to Florida. They put the house on the market and were surprised to get an offer right away, which freaked out my dad completely. Now he had to live up to his insistence about making the move. I remember my mom saying “I’m sure the new owner would let us stay here for a few months while we made arrangements in Florida” and my dad saying “But I can’t live in this house when it belongs to someone else!” as if that was total nightmare. So we moved into a shitty apartment complex across town and kept all of our stuff packed.
I don’t know how many buildings were in the complex, but there were dozens. All three stories tall, dark brown, with three or four apartments squished together side-by-side. It was summer, and the apartment complex kids would ride cardboard sheets down a grassy unmowed hill behind the buildings. As the long grass would break down we’d go faster. One time we were out there grass-sledding, and this kid Anthony got in my face and started chewing me out for no reason. I just stood there stunned and said “I didn’t do anything,” and he punched me right in the eye. I froze, totally stunned, and started whimpering while he mocked me.
These apartment kids would play a super fun game where you would try to knock yourself out by hyperventilating. It was like hard drugs for nine-year-olds; it made you dizzy, was fuled by dares, and killed brain cells.
Breakdancing was becoming a thing in the Connecticut suburbs, and my mom got me a tape by the “New York City Breakers,” which came with a poster showing you how to do the moves. I hung this poster on the back of my bedroom door and studied it, attempting the moves as I listened to the tape. Eventually I tried to do them in public out on the green in front of the apartments, and basically outed myself as a spaz. Also around this time I started putting fake cuts on my face with halloween blood and then going to hang out in the neighborhood, which freaked out everybody, especially parents. I guess I was mistaking bad attention for good attention and decided to go with it.
The doorbell rang, I answered it, and it was Anthony, the kid who punched me. He faked a punch at me and I flinched. “Hey do you still have your gay Boy Scout uniform? Put in on and help me sell these candy bars.” He had a big box full. I hesitated because I didn’t want to disrespect the Scouts, but I also wanted this kid on my side. So I went and put on my Boy Scout shirt and kerchief, and we went and sold every one of those candy bars. I couldn’t believe it went so well. When we got back to my apartment, he opened the box, now full of money instead of chocolate, and he said “Hey, thanks a lot, that was really great!” I grinned from ear to ear because we were definitely pals now. “Just one more thing” he said, and punched me hard in the face and went home laughing.