The Sunday Memory Drawer - When Nobody Else is Your Age

There are Sundays in this memory drawer where the contents make me smile and laugh and feel warm all over.
And there are times where a picture like this rears its ugly Technicolor head. I start to wonder about deep seeded issues and resentments.
This is one of those times. A black day in my life. Folks, we're serving up big bowls of bitterness today. Bring your biggest spoon.
I was the odd kid out back when. Still in the single digits of my life, I was surrounded by a couple of cousins who were a bit older. Teenagers with brand new hormones that were getting plenty of mileage. So, at family gatherings, I had nobody to play with. While the folks and the aunts and uncles smoked and drank and smoked a little more, my semi-contemporaries did what they liked to do. And I had no other resource than to try and fit in.
I was barely tolerated. I became nothing more than a prop. Or a dress-up doll as you can see above. I was suddenly that weird character in our family sitcom. The one you ignore until it's time for a cheap laugh and you dress him up in some bizarre get-up. Enter. Big laugh. Exit.
Now, the two cousins who read this blog regularly are not the culprits here. One was even younger than me and I probably can feel a little of her pain. Nope, it was the other two who treated me like I was barely there. Or mistreated me the times I was there. Whenever they wanted to have some fun at my expense.
When they got a little older, the teenagers were free to take over the second floor of any house that was having a party. Adults, downstairs. Gidget and Moondoggie, upstairs. And, for lack of any other place, I was sent upstairs. Much to their dismay and anger.
Once, I wandered upstairs to find more groping than in a Buick back seat at the Elmsford Drive-In. Hands and mouths flying every which way. This is nothing I learned from watching Popeye cartoons on WPIX. When my presence was noted, I was summarily dismissed. With a TV Guide thrown at my head.
I landed in party purgatory. Usually on the staircase between the two floors. Reading a comic book and trying to understand what all that groaning was about.
These two cousins (male and female) were around a little more than usual because their dad (my father's brother) had died at a very young age and my father became sort of a surrogate. He took the boy out for driving lessons and dinner and even bailed the kid out of jail. I watched from the sidelines.
The girl cousin was no better. Frequently, she signed on to "babysit" me. Usually bringing along some boyfriend of hers, which meant I might as well have been on the southern coast of Australia. And often resulted in her usual command to me.
"Go over there and watch television."
As we all got older, there was less and less of a need for socialization. They headed off to marriages and divorces. I did my thing. And literally went almost twenty years without seeing either one of them. Until my dad passed away.
Per his wishes, the goal was to keep everything small. A single graveside service. By invitation only. And, family wise, the list was even smaller. But, somehow, these two found out.
The day before the service, they both called me at separate times. Both sobbed uncontrollably. They didn't know my father was even sick.
"Well, he was the past two years. The other eighteen years you didn't bother to call him, he was fine."
I couldn't think quick enough when they asked what time the service was. I turned into Ralph Kramden trying to explain to Alice why he was bowling until one in the morning. Somehow, I ended both conversations by extending an invitation to them.
Both showed up like professional mourners. The right inflections of sympathy, sadness, and tears. I showed some class. I invited them along to the luncheon we were hosting at a nearby restaurant. My steely resolve was melting onto all the bronze plaques that adorn the graves at Ferncliff Cemetery.
At the lunch, the aforementioned girl cousin couldn't be nicer to me. She insisted on sitting next to me. A model relative.
She ordered her entree and then promptly excused herself for an eye doctor appointment.
Huh???
In a flash, I was five all over again and she was laughing her ass off at the petticoat she had just slipped around my waist. Fooled once and now fooled twice. But a third time?
I haven't seen either one of them since.
And I have survived.
Dinner last night: Hollywood Bowl hot dog.