“Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.”
Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa Henry! You started me on many life-affirming paths. You inspired me with the presence of your Lord while sparing me the questionable religion. You got me started watching Days Of Our Lives in 1967. You always believed in me, no matter what. I still carry your love with me.
Memoir: Bruce Oliver Scott Paullin
Suicide is a deeply troubling issue, and recognizing the signs of suicidal ideation remains paramount in providing support. By promoting mental health resources and helplines, we can hope those in crisis access the help they need. Too often, stories of suffering remain buried under mountains of cultural denial and the unwillingness of sufferers to create narratives around their brokenness and seek necessary help. Sharing stories of survival and resilience instills hope and reminds us of the importance of compassion in helping someone through their darkest moments.
I present my story of survival, transformation, resilience, and a unique search for truth. Buckle your seat belts; the road will be bumpy for a while.
The Early Years
What is in a name, anyway?
My name links to family members through both lineages, thus the two middle names, Oliver and Scott. Bruce arrived in Scotland with the Normans, from Brix, Manche in Normandy, meaning “the willowlands” or “brushwood thicket.” Initially promulgated via descendants of King Robert the Bruce (1274−1329), it became a Scottish surname since medieval times. Oliver has English origins—the olive tree, symbolizing fruitfulness, beauty, and dignity. “Extending an olive branch” signifies an offer of peace. Scott refers to a person from Scotland or who speaks Scottish Gaelic. It also designates “one not from here,” or in earlier contexts, “Blue Men”—those who color the body blue with tattoos. Paullin in Latin means small, and also of the lineage of Paul from the New Testament.
“From out of the brushwood thicket, an offering of peace, from a man not from here, tattooed by life, with humble status, of the lineage of the mystic, Saint Paul.”
I was born at a northwest Portland hospital in November 1955. Nearly two feet of snow covered the ground. My mother took a taxi to the hospital because my father was at work. His employment characterized much of my early years and our relationship. My needs as a baby were often trumped by Dad’s compulsion to work constantly. He carried two jobs for many years, and home affairs were arranged to guarantee he could continue that endeavor. Since I was a crying baby keeping Dad awake, I was wrapped in a blanket and stored in the car in our garage at night until he left for work at 2:15 AM. Mom would retrieve me and try to make things okay until her work preparation began, then Pam and I would be passed to a babysitter for our first five years.
My sister preceded me by sixteen months. I’ll only briefly reference Pam—not from disrespect, but because she experienced much of the same dysfunctional energy I did. Yet my sister became my competitor for parental attention once my childhood sense figured out that only limited servings of family love and attention were available.
Before I learned to talk, my sister thought I was wonderful at about four years old. She enjoyed playing with me until I learned to speak, then her attachment lessened. I developed verbal abilities relatively late. Pam spoke for me until I developed the capacity—or inclination—to speak. My mother took me to several medical professionals to determine why I wasn’t talking, though I don’t know what the tests revealed. Once I started, I proved I had capacity for speech and A LOT OF IT. My father wondered if I would ever shut up.
One early memory from age four involves me playing with my favorite “doll,” Percy. Percy would talk to me sometimes, reminding me I was loved, much like other special children report hearing God’s voice affirming their spiritual significance. One day, I picked up the phone and started talking to Percy. I swore Percy talked back while Pam stood next to me. I had Pam believing me for a while. In retrospect, it may have been the operator or purely imagination.
Hopefully, God isn’t just projection from our imagination; each human being must determine the truth for themselves.
My Uncle Worth died in February 1955, nine months before my birth. He was married to wonderful Aunt Effie, who also died before I had awareness. My grandparents dearly loved Uncle Worth and Aunt Effie.
When I was four, my grandfather Henry showed me a chair I immediately recognized and claimed as my own. I remembered making every piece myself and assembling it together. In the “memory,” like a YouTube video, I had fashioned little wood dowel extensions to place into pre-drilled holes as nail equivalents.
How could I have possibly done that as a four-year-old?
My mother guffawed, stating it was a store-bought chair grandfather had owned since he was young. I “knew better,” and the memory still haunts and comforts me. As an adult, I learned Uncle Worth was the original owner and builder, passing it to Grandpa when he was little. I still sit in the chair occasionally, feeling mysterious, beautiful peace and completion. Either soul-sharing and reincarnation are real, or as a child, I possessed the occult gift of psychometry.
Looking at my history, I remain firmly seated in Life’s Mystery.
Throughout the years, Pam appeared to channel some of Dad’s negative energy back to me, becoming another voice for my father, especially when angry or unhappy with me. The poor girl had to share a bedroom with me for my first two or three years, which didn’t bring her greatest joy.
As a child, I learned my world could be unsafe, especially while sleeping. I remember lying awake until at least midnight most nights, fearing sleep and dreams until exhaustion took over, even if bedtime was 8:00 PM. I used that extra time to rehash my entire day, seeing where I could have behaved better. I intuited that being a “better person” by day might make nightmares less severe. Yet my daily behavior rarely improved—I was spontaneous and impulsive.
I had terrifying nightmares almost every night until age eight. I would be so afraid I’d stay in bed and wet it quite frequently, presenting problems over those early years. Mother removed me from the top bunk because of a couple of yellow “waterfalls,” leading to separate bedrooms by age four. After I started sleeping alone, Mother allowed me into her bedroom at night after my typical nightmare terror sessions, as long as Dad had already left for work. I remember how protected I felt lying in bed with her. I unconsciously sought out women MUCH MORE THAN MEN to bond with, hoping relationships would bring safety and acknowledgment that seemed lacking in male-to-male connections. These forces formed an unconscious personality center that directly influenced most future perceptions.
Pam and I fought frequently through childhood—more than twenty wrestling matches and knock-out, drag-out fights. Our last memorable fight gathered neighbors’ attention when she was fourteen and I was twelve. Lots of screaming, yelling, cussing, with occasional body slams and slaps. No one was ever injured, other than onlookers’ sensibilities. We were brilliant youngsters, yet both pretty messed up in our heads.
I have memories of waking and walking with my sister to the garage window, crawling onto my rocking horse to see if our parents’ car was present. We were distressed by their absence if the vehicle was missing. We both agree this happened several times.
I started first grade at five, taking an advanced entry exam. Mother arranged this because I was so unhappy with babysitters. One sitter, Jo Stanley, was unloving with an abusive teenage son who terrorized me and threatened sexual assault once. I had several other decent babysitters, but the Stanleys were my living hell experience. Mother especially wanted to help, so she arranged advanced entry. This caused great stress to my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Tozier, who had difficulty accepting me and my “immature” behavior. To quote her report card: “Bruce’s main problem is talking to others and himself. Some behavior problems have disappeared, however, and he is working hard.”
One daily activity was “show and tell.” I would go up every day, whether or not I had anything new. I wanted to be recognized and get positive feedback. After a couple weeks of standing shell-shocked and silent, I was told to weigh and measure my words better—not part of my toolkit at that age.
The need for recognition, fear of public speaking, and appearance of suffering became one big family in my mind. In third grade, Mrs. Tozier had me again. Her final statement: “Bruce is a careful worker and wants very much to do his work correctly. It has been interesting and rewarding to watch him develop this year. His main problems are social ones.” I spent lots of time under the dunce’s cap. Mr. Hill, the principal, and Mrs. Tozier required I take medicine for hyperactivity to continue in her class. My mother and doctor conspired—the doctor prescribed sugar pills in a methedrine-labeled bottle. The “prescription” was given to Mrs. Tozier, who made sure I took the fake pills daily. I miraculously improved, though Mrs. Tozier’s perceptions were enhanced by the placebo!
I had fantasies about friends, of which I had so few. One fantasy with remarkable staying power was that people would become attracted to me if I miraculously saved them. Otherwise, people would be uninterested in befriending or loving me. We lived in an area devoid of children my age and sex before 1965. I grew up isolated from friendship until we moved to a more mature neighborhood with better childhood friendship options.
There were many moments when I loved my life. What I remember well: my love for my mother, Uncle Wayne, and maternal grandparents (who provided a safe, loving home at least one weekend monthly); my conflicted love for my father; my love for our pets; my passion for exploring Nature and the great outdoors; my passion for playing with and studying animals; my love for running through forests on trails or creating trails; my passion for building ground forts out of fallen branches; my love for climbing trees and making tree forts; my passion for exploring islands on the Willamette River; and my love for playing with friends, which were especially hard to find or make while young.
Sometimes I felt uncomfortable around people my age, especially boys. I didn’t always enjoy playing with boys, who could be too aggressive. In first through fourth grades, I usually hung out with girls and played kickball and other non-contact games. I would become quite attached to one or two girls, already trying to figure out how to incorporate a girl into my life prematurely. I preferred girls to boys, becoming overly attached when as young as eight. The girls largely lost interest by fifth grade, so I had to stick solely with guys for most of childhood from that point until fifteen.
I usually liked my father, but was often angry with him. Dad was often my only friend, and I felt betrayed whenever he over-enthusiastically punished me for doing something wrong. Whether I admitted it or not, I was always guilty of something. If I didn’t admit it, I was lying, which could lead to another swat. As A Course in Miracles states, these were unrecognized calls for love by both of us. The day after the Columbus Day storm of 1962, when tree branches and fallen trees were everywhere, Dad was so controlling about how I was supposed to pick up branches that I got angry, abandoned him, and walked a mile to help Steve Roth and his family clear wreckage around their home. I liked Steve’s mom anyway—she was always so friendly. They were comparatively wealthy, and I remember being told by Steve’s mother that my father wasn’t wealthy like they were. For the first time, I became aware that families existed who were better off than we were.
I sometimes stole from Dad’s wallet to buy candy. I did all sorts of things I knew were wrong, yet took some delight in going against authority—and boy, did I pay the price! There were too many beatings with the belt. I committed most of the behavior Dad accused me of, so I deserved what I got, though mercy sure would have been a nice charitable gesture. Looking back, I was confused about the best way to attract attention—it may have been a subconscious desire for recognition that motivated me to “go against the grain.”
I was taken to Sunday school at six. I didn’t like it much and couldn’t believe Jesus Christ “died for our sins.” I knew I wasn’t a “sinner,” at least not the way they tried explaining it, and their language was very harsh and confusing. When they told me my only hope was believing all their vague, boring stories, I balked and ignored what they tried to teach. These experiences showed me the church was promoting many confusing stories with little relevance to my experience. I tried bible study only two more times in our new Milwaukie neighborhood but stopped when a girl I was interested in stopped attending. Women were the best reason for going to church—that would prove accurate at least two more times, beginning when I was twenty-eight.
My father loved dogs and always tried to have one available for friendship. He instilled in me great love and appreciation for the canine species, which I still hold tightly. I loved my first dog, Nina, who died while running with me on my bicycle along a busy road at seven, hit by a car (my fault for riding too far from home). I was devastated, and my parents knew better than to make me wrong for her death, but I knew it was my fault anyway. Our “replacement” dog was promptly run over by our next-door neighbor backing up his truck over our sleeping dog. Heidi was our third dog, a beautiful Samoyed. She became, without doubt, the most wonderful creature I had ever met. I began recognizing the miraculous power that love for another being has on me. She became the ultimate canine companion for our entire family.
My father started disliking cats, even though he’d grown up with a house full of them. He even shot at occasional stray cats to protect his “wildlife.” I remember capturing a cat and placing it in a burlap sack to terrorize it. For a brief moment, I felt strange excitement at the potential for abusing this innocent creature. After leaving it hanging on a tree limb for an hour, I felt horrible and released it. I wondered WHY WOULD I EVER WANT TO HURT ANY CREATURE? My experience with a BB gun reaffirmed that understanding when somehow a shot hit and mortally wounded a bird. I was horrified by the creature’s suffering and suffered with it as I tried putting it out of misery. Dad liked telling the story of refusing to hunt with his father because he deplored killing, yet here he was, killing “innocent” creatures—indeed a mixed message. I was starting to question my behavior and its source, yet was too ignorant to proceed thoroughly with that reasoning.
In the early 1960s my father felt uncomfortable with how the black race had integrated into local culture. He would comment on co-workers who exhibited less conscientiousness than he did while at work, referring to at least one black person disparagingly. He offered pretty judgmental comments against the black race generally, especially during the LA Watts riots of 1964. I couldn’t share his racism, not knowing any black people or understanding the basis for Dad’s prejudice.
My father had a fixation on people’s appearance. He was SO JUDGMENTAL of overweight women and hard on my mother for any weight gains, almost from the beginning of my awareness of them as parents. I was confused by this too. I didn’t understand why Dad harassed Mom for her weight. To this day, I retain some measure of extra self-consciousness about my weight and general appearance. Whenever I stray too far from my “ideal” weight, I begin the process to reestablish what’s acceptable for me.
I remember Mom and Dad engaging in “Punch and Judy” behavior, trading insults and barbs. They never hit each other in anger. I never saw them hug once and learned later that neither had ever learned how to embrace until I showed them what a hug was and felt like, first in 1988.
I loved listening to music with my father and sister. He played songs by Roger Miller, Burl Ives, and Johnny Cash quite frequently, so I grew up loving those performers. My parents were members of the Oakey Doaks, a square-dancing group of at least 18 married couples, many with young children. This active social group became the source of many of my parents’ best friends from 1958 to 1973. It was an activity that took my parents away from home, and we were left alone several times when they couldn’t arrange last-minute babysitting. I loved the people they knew and formed many short-term friendships with the children while attending out-of-town weekend events—few friendships carried into adulthood.
I loved playing board games with my family and roughhouse playing with Dad. Pam and I would crawl all over Dad while he was on the floor and wrestle with him. Dad did love his children and really spent lots of his “free” time with us. His problem was integrating children into his busy agenda. He would take us to several local creeks so we could collect rocks for his landscaping projects. Pam and I earned 25 cents for each filled bucket of smooth stones from creek bottoms. I became addicted to fictionalized history books, science fiction books and movies, and loved the idea of becoming an astronaut to get off this fucking rock and explore the “real” universe. In 1969, my father and I attended 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick, and after watching that groundbreaking movie, I became convinced space traveling was in my future. When I scored ultra high on grade school achievement tests and then virtually aced my PSATs and SATs in high school, my father finally started believing with me that I had an excellent chance at achieving that goal. He had never entirely caught fire with my potential before that point. He had been “saving” money for college for Pam and me, yet in 1969, he lost it all in a stock market gamble with his friend, Roland Mill. If we were to make it to college, we would have to do that with our assets.
I loved climbing trees—the taller they were, the more excited and fulfilled I became. I fell from trees twice. The first time was from a tree leaning over a gravel road near our first home on Steamboat Way. I was eight, and when I fell, I landed flat on my back after about twenty feet. I got up with all the wind knocked out of me. I feared for my life because I couldn’t draw my first breath. In panic, I ran for our house several hundred feet before my lungs refilled. Another time, in our new Hampshire Lane neighborhood, I climbed to the top of a big fir tree and pretended I was on the mast of a great sailing ship. A big wind came up, I lost footing on narrow top branches and fell almost eighty feet to the ground. When I awoke, I had a ten-foot length of the tree top firmly in my hands. I was bruised all over and sore beyond anything I’d experienced before, but had no broken bones. The examining physician couldn’t believe me when I said I’d tripped while running in the woods—the story I needed to tell to avoid getting banned from tree climbing.
To steer in a different direction, let’s talk about alcohol. I remember loving beer perhaps a little too much. When I was five, my father watched TV with me and drank beer. He left the room, I grabbed the beer and drank the whole thing. When Dad returned, he wondered where the beer had gone. Twenty minutes later I fell off the couch because I’d passed out—then he knew. Dad kept a close eye on his beers after that, and so did I! For the rest of my childhood, Dad had to be careful to keep me from drinking his beer, of which he usually had six or seven cases stored in the basement. By age thirteen, I’d probably already stolen several cases, but never drank more than one beer at a time until fifteen. I never once saw Dad drunk, at least at home, so he really had it under control by the time I started paying attention. My paternal grandfather’s alcoholism seemed to have impacted the way Dad drank as a young man. My father enjoyed drinking and was quite social. But his memory of his father’s behavior probably served as an excellent deterrent to abusive drinking, though my father certainly drank heavily after work during his earliest work years.
One revealing memory is from fourth-grade science class, where the teacher placed a metal object on a burner, heated it, then placed it in water, where uneven cooling distorted it. We were to describe in written form what we witnessed, and I had no clue how to describe it. I had to look at another person’s paper to see what they saw because I didn’t have language to communicate what I’d witnessed. This aspect of me can also be translated into how I experienced my upbringing while still being raised. I didn’t have language to communicate what was wrong. However, I knew I was witnessing something that wasn’t right (I believe this phenomenon is directly related to the inability of many abused children to articulate their experiences to others). I asked to see what a fellow student had written so I could write my version of what he observed. What I did in this situation is a microcosm of the process most of humanity engages itself within the creation of our shared or Collective Consciousness. If we don’t directly experience something, we rely on others’ interpretations and, after a while, mistake their assumptions and judgments for “truth.”
My ability to bring personal experience and insight into language would prove the most significant challenge in high school and years to follow, all the way to the present. The childhood feelings of loneliness and abandonment, frequent whippings with a belt by my father, coupled with whatever fundamental damage may have been done to my soul through unintentional negligence by my parents during earliest years, may well have led to the creation (or revelation) of a dramatic story on the dream screen of my mind, which I will now recount.
1964 Dream
At eight, I had a most unique, realistic dream. The dream appeared when I slept very little, as I usually got to sleep no earlier than midnight, no matter how early I went to bed. I lay in bed and reviewed the day every night before sleep, seeing where I could have done things better or said something differently. My dreams finally evolved beyond the continuous nightmare phase before age eight.
Here is the dream:
Having received his directive from “on high,” the priest returned to his village along the lake in the high mountain region. He gathered all villagers together and informed them they were to take every golden figurine, every sacred symbol they owned, and throw them all into the lake, never to think about them again. Then, he told each villager they must go into their own home and face the “evil one” without any protection or care from their gods or sacred symbols. The priest then returned to his own home, having tossed all his own idols and treasures into the deep blue lake. He stripped himself bare of all clothing and began summoning the dark forces. He became surrounded by fog, and as he lifted his hands, sparks started flying out of his fingertips at the unknown force of darkness that lay just beyond his visual field, still hidden beyond the fog’s boundaries. The priest refocused his energy into his arms and hands, and sparks grew into a steady energy field, extending from his body, heart, and spirit towards his unknown adversary. He was determined to overcome this force, this dark energy, and redoubled his efforts. The priest’s heart began racing out of control, sweating profusely, and a growing sense of fear and dread began taking hold of his entire being as he finally understood his energy couldn’t last forever. To continue this battle, he must sacrifice all his life force. Yet, he felt he had no choice but to keep engaging the enemy, to finally see the face of the force that had terrorized his village since time began. He desperately strained and stretched to see the object of his fear and disdain, even as the ebbing energy field flowing from his fingertips continued cutting through the fog. Suddenly, a face began materializing before his faltering gaze. As he collapsed to the floor, almost drained of all life, he could no longer fight an undeniable truth—the face of the evil one might be his own!
This dream of the mountain lake community, with the priest fighting the force of darkness, is still quite alive in my mind and remains significant teaching for me as both child and adult. Idolatry and psychological projection are modern names for phenomena shown to me in the dream world. Being so immature and not too worldly in my knowledge, I didn’t have necessary background to know what to think about the dream then. I discussed it with my older sister, who seemed to have some partial answers to its mysteries (based on her understanding of reincarnation), but many mysteries remained. I waited, watched for further answers, and went on with the important business of being a carefree boy, though at times, I fleetingly experienced “self-awareness.”
I was required to take World Geography in seventh grade; Mr. Vaught was the teacher and a Milwaukie Elks lodge member, as was my father. Mr. Vaught would report to my father during Elks club meetings about my wayward behavior, attitudes, and insufficiency, probably attempting to goad my father. Mr. Vaught was rude and considered me obnoxious and dull, as my father reported. It was through Mr. Vaught’s class that I was introduced to Incan civilization and Lake Titicaca, on the border between Peru and Bolivia. This lake was, and still is, very sacred, and according to Incan lore, it was where human race origins began. I had eerie familiarity with the lake and the area’s people. Lake Titicaca was the lake in my dream from three years earlier. I proceeded to consume every book on Incan civilization I could find. I became hooked on the idea of traveling to Peru someday to seek answers and experience its culture, perhaps for a second time. I eventually traveled to Peru in 2014, having a remarkable experience.
As mentioned, I was an isolated boy before 1965 and never clicked well with people outside my family. I was small for my age, plus I had advanced placement early in school, which resulted in inserting a relatively immature boy into challenging peer situations. I had limited friends and seemed to draw the “outcasts”—be they eggheads, wimps, crazies, or quiet ones—to my circle. One can see the kind of person I was by the people drawn to me. I would become intensely loyal to whoever committed to friendship with me, no matter their limitations or faults. Usually, it was girls my age that I more readily befriended, until age nine when we moved from West Linn to Milwaukie.
Boys were in limited supply in our first neighborhood, and many were prone to be antagonistic towards me. When I moved to Milwaukie, Oregon, in 1965, I immediately met three boys: Craig, Tony, and Randy. My next-door neighbor was Craig Salter, a quiet, introspective, slightly built boy who loved technical books and fantasy novels. Tony Mecklem was slight build, private sort of young lad who lived down the road in a reasonably primitive home built by his father out of masonry blocks. But the main friend was Randy Olson, whom I’ll speak extensively about later.
Here’s a telling memory about how some family members saw me in public, as represented by my older sister in the public school system. I remember being in third grade, and my sister already having a boyfriend from her fourth-grade class. That “boyfriend” had a younger brother in first grade who accompanied him. The older boy was a bully, but instead of pushing me around, he ordered his younger brother to attack me. I’d never been in a fight before and was overwhelmed by the bellicose energy shown to me. The boy threw my unsuspecting body onto the ground and proceeded to punch me, bite me, pull my ears and hair, and yell little kid obscenities at me. Not knowing what to do (of course, Dad never taught me to defend myself), but finally angry enough to do something, I began imitating the lad, overturned him and pulled his ears, punched at him, and everything else he did to me, all while being ridiculed and humiliated by my sister and the older boyfriend. This kind of bullying was to happen in several different forms again over the next several years, as my sister seemed to draw young men into her experience who thought picking on me was the way to her attention and affection.
Another aspect of family shaming was evident whenever my father came to sports events I was involved with from sixth through eighth grade. He never took time or effort to teach me or coach me on sports, but was overly critical of me and my level of play on athletic teams. One of his famous public humiliations was when I was pitching on the mound one day, and Dad yelled out “You couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn!” That’s just an extension of the same “blanket party” behavior he adhered to whenever he felt the need to discipline my baby body.
School wasn’t a problem in the new neighborhood, as the quality of North Clackamas School District, at least in grade school, was substantially lower than West Linn area from which we’d moved, so I was already ahead of my peers, at least in math and English. And, if truth be known, I was starting to really get a handle on how to succeed in school by watching others who were doing well. I noted at the time that I despised, at times, the competition to get good grades. Teachers graded on the curve, meaning a small percentage of students got A’s, as well as the same percentage got F’s. Part of me had associated getting good grades with getting love and acknowledgment from my parents, and I hated the idea of having to compete with others to get love at home. It was this experience that led me to sometimes feel good about other students’ failures at school, since it might mean I would have a better opportunity to score attention points. Collaboration was definitely out of the question while living in this scarcity consciousness.
A little secret I carried is that many times, I could access certain information I’d never officially learned before and use it to succeed scholastically. What does this mean? Well, in addition to a nearly photographic memory I had when young (which I lost shortly after starting smoking pot), especially during testing stress, information would just start appearing in my mind and I’d fly through whatever academic challenge was presented. It felt like cheating at times, and I didn’t understand or question it too much. I was probably recalling information I’d already stored, albeit unconsciously, but when I re-read more of my story, I have to wonder if consciousness can be much more shared than we normally experience, at levels both above and below verbal levels. After examining my awakening to the reality created by words, I could see that embedded into each word we’re able to understand is the whole of human verbal experience. Each word is a hologram of the wholeness of our verbal reality. If we truly understand ONE word in its wholeness, we can perceive other aspects of the whole as well. I was to later see that this insight also applies to the human being. If I can truly see the one, I can see the All. I’m sure this will open up or continue some discussion somewhere, if somebody ever reads this obscure document.
I started becoming a bully to some girls around age ten. If they weren’t attractive to me, they were susceptible to gentle, and not so gentle, ribbing and ridicule. I found behavior where I could get support from other boys, but it was damaging on my part and was to bring shame when confronted later by victims of my abhorrent communication style. One time when I was fifteen and waiting for a bus in downtown Portland, a young woman walked up to me, asked my name, and asked if I knew who she was. I had no idea. She then told me how I victimized her with my poor humor and made her pee her pants once. I told her I was sorry, that wasn’t who I was now, but I felt ashamed. I met another victim, Jan J., when I was close to forty in an Oak Grove Fred Meyers store. I sought her out, introduced myself, and apologized for what I’d wrought upon her. She had long ago forgiven and forgotten, but I hadn’t. It felt good seeing her living a successful life in adulthood, complete with a happy family. Yes, I was part of the oppression of the feminine spirit, until I became conscious.
A real marker memory was in sixth grade, playing outdoors during recess. I noticed a group surrounding two fifth-grade boys. In curiosity to see what was going on, I walked over to observe the crowd. The boys were in the midst of a fist fight, with lots of yelling and screaming. I watched and moved with the crowd as needed to avoid the fighting boys. I’d never witnessed such activity before, and it was mesmerizing. Suddenly, one of the fighting boys, Corey Sears, came over to me, punched me in the face, and went back to his fight with the other boy. Not knowing what to do, I went to the Principal’s office and complained about the fighting boys and the punch thrown at me. The Principal then scolded me for not intervening in the fight and trying to break it up. These boys, though in the grade below, were actually as big or bigger than I was, since I was their age, not the ages of kids in my grade. I certainly felt no physical superiority or skill, or moral authority, to step in and mediate such a dispute. Yet, it left me wondering how I was supposed to behave in relation to others’ poor behavior.
One childhood friend, Craig Salter, was my next-door neighbor in our new Milwaukie neighborhood. He was slight build and a slow talker. He may well have been a creative genius, but his “dreamy” state of existence was indicative of some fundamental issues going on inside him. I suspected from the beginning that his mother was mentally ill, as she was quite peculiar and apparently quite a hypochondriac. What concerned me was Craig’s similarity to his mother in mannerisms. And I also suspected Craig was bonkers too, but hey, he was my neighbor, and as far as friends go, I couldn’t be too choosy. I still wondered why I deserved to have such strange friends. He was smarter than most people, yet didn’t consistently apply his smarts to school, which was too restrictive for him. On his own, before age fifteen, he’d already designed a sophisticated internal combustion engine totally unlike what we use in today’s world. He also designed and built his own models FROM SCRATCH of supersonic jet airplanes, complete with spiral staircases made of pins and tiny pieces of paper glued in spiral fashion. He was also already designing transistor circuits by age fourteen, which just blew me away at the time. HE WAS AMAZING! I wanted his creativity so bad, as I felt I had none. My abilities appeared quite mechanical, which left me sensing I was just another boring automaton, parroting/repeating others’ thoughts and behaviors. I enjoyed building model airplanes and ships from WWI and WWII eras, and building sailing ships from kits based on sailing ships of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. I enjoyed building them, but then would be so critical of my efforts, usually by comparing them to the “perfect” models Craig could produce. I would become so unhappy with my projects, and an unusual perfectionist phenomenon would occur where I’d feel pleasure at destroying my great works because they didn’t measure up to some (presently) unattainable standard I’d set for myself. This is huge, as it reflects something “fundamental” about an aspect of darkness of my human soul.
There were many nights when I slept outside and gazed into the night sky with either binoculars or one of many telescopes that I, or my friend Craig, owned over the years, searching for flying saucers or other interesting otherworldly objects. I needed to know there were other options for life, life away from the trauma of this planet. Craig and I became obsessed with building rocket ships and developing our own rocket fuel. We were both quite impacted when between eighth grade and freshman year, a friend of ours (Charley Davalos) died when his fuel cell exploded, sending shrapnel to cut his jugular vein. Undeterred, I still became an avid rocketeer, building rocket ships and installing manufactured solid fuel booster cells into them, then launching them thousands of feet into the sky. Craig was to stay in my life until 1987, though I only infrequently saw him after my first college years of 1973-1976. Craig called me for the last time in 1993, complaining of bizarre symptoms. I asked about his drinking behavior, and his reply indicated he’d been drinking alcoholically for several years. Craig was having delirium tremens, a potentially fatal response to alcohol drinking. I told him he was an alcoholic, he disagreed with me, hung up the phone, and I never heard from him again. Twenty-five years later I heard from a high school classmate that Craig was institutionalized with dementia.
Danny Beauvais was my neighbor from just down the street, who moved there during my seventh grade. I didn’t hang around him much because he was quite aggressive and had a “hair trigger” when it came to emotions. His behavior frequently got him into trouble. His father was a paratrooper in the war and had lost a testicle for his efforts during a mishap. He had a very attractive mother who garnered more attention from other men than his father cared to experience. I’ll share one story about Danny, which involved a private conversation my father had with Danny’s father. In that conversation, Danny’s father noted his marriage was failing and his wife wasn’t faithful. One day, in casual conversation, I noted Danny’s mother had more interests than just his father, and Danny proceeded to get me into a body lock with his legs and tried to squeeze me to death until I took back what I said. I kept asking him, in between painful grunts, why he wanted me to take the truth back. It didn’t matter to Danny, he just didn’t want to hear “the truth” from anybody but himself. I wouldn’t take back what I said either and paid a very painful price for that “stubbornness,” so what played out here is classic male communication around “painful truths” (I might be interpreted as still practicing that behavior). We didn’t associate with each other after that. He ended up in prison a few short years later for assault and committed many other crimes during the intervening period.
Jeff Tobin was a boy I’d met in fifth grade. We weren’t neighbors, but were friends at school, and we were both quite energetic lads. Both of us had excessive energy, and this did lead to both of us getting into trouble both alone and together once or twice. I was elected class president in sixth grade, which wasn’t to last long. I walked into the boys’ restroom, and Jeff and several other boys were flooding the urinals. I didn’t have common sense to leave immediately, and in a need to “fit in” I continued to flush one of flooding urinals, just as the principal walked in. Well, I was immediately removed from my symbolic position, and I felt considerable shame.
One time I was beat with a tennis shoe by health teacher John Pavlichek, after being accused of making farting noises in class. It was actually Jeff who made the noises. Jeff wasn’t so significant to me at this level of relationship, where his significance increased was eleven years later when I resumed my friendship with him and worked with him in the PAMS (Portland Area Mailing System—an experimental locally developed electronic mailing system implemented in the Portland Main Post Office). I worked with Jeff in the PAMS unit for about one year. He resigned after his first suicide attempt. I was to meet with Jeff one year prior to his death, when Sharon and I crossed paths with him on the Oaks Bottom hiking trails. He was to take his own life when he turned fifty-five, and the trust fund his deceased father had set up for him ran out of money.
A most telling acknowledgment of my social maladjustment and mental state as a youth is when the church that our Boy Scout Troop had its meetings at needed landscaping work. I needed to perform several community service activities to earn a badge to become a “Star Scout.” My attitude was that I wanted to give NOTHING back to the community or to the church that supported our Scout troop. My father actually understood that attitude and supported me in my antagonism towards service work for the community. Of course, I never earned the community service merit badge, which meant I could never earn my Star scout level or move upward to Eagle Scout. My antagonism against community support and participation became quite an ingrained part of my personality structure and was to be the precursor to all future problems.
As a freshman in high school I tried out for the cross country team, because I was in great running shape from training throughout my eighth grade with Craig’s older brother Mark (who ended up designing sophisticated software for the US Defense Department to use in computers of their top secret spy planes). Mark was three years older than Craig, but much more athletic and incredibly involved in the community. He was an inspiration to me, and I trained with him because he was so smart and motivated, and I wanted to hang with him. I ended up running three miles a day for a whole year while in eighth grade, so I thought I might be a good runner in high school. Craig and I attempted to run cross country, but I quickly became discouraged by the “faster” runners who were already on the team, so I dropped out. My father certainly wasn’t involved in encouraging me to be a runner, though he did come to one of my freshman football games, which was to be my last game when I finally figured out I was much too small to endure the pounding from young men almost twice as big as me. I joined the chess club and golf team my freshman and sophomore years, then dropped both when I started using pot.
I first met Dan Dietz in 1969, when I saw him as a freshman in high school. He came from Oak Grove grade school, and I came from Concord grade school, to join the freshman class. We didn’t associate with each other, at least initially, and rarely acknowledged each other until sophomore year. An associate of his, Mark Anderson, was in my PE class, so that’s where I first made contact with the “greaser” group they all belonged to.
