So happy it’s Thursday. Usual thing. Brother Frank is now in a rehabilitation unit in Saddle Brook NJ, across the street from where Frank, Brian and I once worked as well as our mother for the book publishing company. The rehabilitation unit used to be Saddle Brook Hospital where I had some stitches put into my skull after I fell out of bed and hit my head on my sister’s night table. Annemarie was traveling somewhere so I was sleeping in her bed. It was also the place where I was taken one night after shoving a clothing snap into my nostril.

I remember it was the night before my family were headed down to Wildwood Crest. I was laying in bed rather anxious about going away for four or five days to the Jersey shore. There was a loose snap on my pajamas and as I fiddled around with it it came off. So me, being me, I decided to see if it would fit in my nose and sure enough it did. And sure enough I could not get it out on my own. After a few minutes of panic and seeing my young life flash before my eyes, actually it was my life being taken from me by my parents for doing something stupid like that.

The only ones home were Frank, Annemarie and Brian. Brian and Annemarie didn’t have any idea what to do. Frank had the idea that I should inhale it so that they could catch it as it passed to my lungs by somehow reaching into the back of my throat. My parents were more than likely at the VFW getting their drink on. Annemarie probably had the sense to call up the Post 3484 and tell my mother what was going on. They soon came home finding me lying on the dining room table surrounded by my brothers and sister.

My parents got me in the car and drove me to Saddle Brook hospital where we went to the emergency room and saw a doctor. My parents told me what I had done and the doctor, quite ably got a pair of tweezers and used them to reach in and pull out the snot encrusted snap. That’ll be Fifty dollars. After that it was back to bed for me and then down the shore the next day where I more than likely got sun poisoning.

Wildwood Crest was a wonderland for me. For one, it wasn’t Lodi. There was a beach and lot’s of drunk adults behaving badly. I would hang out with other children of alcoholic parents, sponging quarters off adults to play pinball or to buy comic books somewhere. I almost wrote saving up for night time trips to the Boardwalk, but that would never happen. Money didn’t last long in my sun poisoned hands. Neither did skin.

I was friends with Joey Schaeffer who’s belly button exploded when he did a belly flop incorrectly. He spent the week with his belly button covered by surgical tape. That’s basically all I remember about Joey Schaeffer, that and when he was visiting me in Lodi, telling him that he wouldn’t be able to sing Indian Reservation by Paul Revere and the Raiders out loud since there were Native Americans around and they’d get upset and start killing people.