I did a bad bad thing.

Well my first year of school was okay for the most part.  I was going to a school for kids with mental problems, something as far as I knew I didn’t have.  Well at least not the kind of mental problems the other kids had.   I only went to this school for a month, I don’t even remember the name of it.

In 1986 grandma moved into a house, and mom and I moved into the house next door.  This gave us a great connection that allowed us all to be together but not too together to drive each other crazy.  I started attending another school that I don’t remember too much about.  My sister had a couple of kids by this time, and her oldest and I were really close. Because my siblings were so much older than me I was treated more like an only child then anything.  Then Jacobb came along.

Not the same car, but it works for the story.

Jacobb and I were very close as I said.  We were like brothers. Mom was raising Jacobb off and on while my sister matured.  We all face these types of challenges and the fact that my sister recognized the benefit of mom’s help is a testament to her intelligence even at such a young age.

As a kid we all make stupid mistakes, some worse than others.  One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was during this time period.  I was in the backyard of my grandmother’s house playing in an old car.  Unfortunately I was playing with matches as well.  I burned my hand and dropped the match book. The car lit up like a Satanic Christmas tree (is there such a thing?).  I got scared, and ran for the hills, literally, it was Sacramento after all.  The car was next to a fence that attached to the house.  I didn’t think at the time about how this might not be such a great situation.  Anyway someone called the fire department and they put the flames out before any damage was done to the house.

The thing that made this worse was the fact that a year earlier Jacobb had set fire to the apartment they lived in.  I was told that in my brain I saw that Jacobb and his sisters got a bunch of new toys after the fire, and I thought if I did the same thing I would get the same treatment.  Unfortunately all I got was a sore backside and grounded for two months.