My Story Part 4

Part 4 ~ Texas Still

I lived with my mom, dad and new baby brother in Texas until I was almost 5. My brother was 4 years younger than me so I was pretty much alone. There weren’t any neighbor kids so I had to amuse myself. I had a record player and I played the song candy girl over and over because I really thought it was my song. We used to have this crazy neighbor, Dennis, who was friends with my dad and the only was I can describe this man is remember Schneider from One Day at a Time? I don’t know why that’s who I see when I think of him, but I do. I remember this so clearly he came over one day, and he was a truck driver so he would be gone for a little while at a time, he said to my mom “Someone took a shit in my toilet while I was gone!” Dennis lived alone over there so there was no one to blame. He said he came home and that there was a little present left behind for him. I always thought they funniest part of the story was he wasn’t bothered that someone came in and used his toilet, he was just mad that they didn’t flush.
The last thing I remember before moving out of Houston was that a hurricane coming. We didn’t evacuate so I remember my dad boarding up the windows. I don’t remember anything about the actual storm but what I do know is that my brother Mike and I were put in a closet so protect us and we sat happily in there and played Strawberry Shortcake for what could have been days.
My dad decided we should all move to Ohio where he grew up. So we packed up our station wagon and headed north. The last thing I remember about leaving Texas was shouting at the top of my lungs, “Oh my God! It’s Michael Jackson!!” When I saw a skinny black guy walking down the road. I don’t know if he had on some crazy red jacket or one magic glove, but I truly believed I had seen the Wacko Jacko himself.