My family was average, not really filthy rich, but not poor. My father had three wives. My mother was the first wife, and the other two had more children than my mother. My mother had me, and then said, ‘Enough!’
It’s hard to know what’s unusual when you can do things that no one talks about or seems to be able to do. One of my very early tricks had to do with pee. Little boys are very aware of their penis, but we called it a Whang-whang, and boys are curious about other boys and their like devices. Well I was enrolled in kindergarten for three hours each day, no church days, and Dog our driver took me and picked me up.
Well in K.G. boys went in the bathroom and took out their Whangs, pointed them at the wall toilets and squirted away until the liquid was all out. We all enjoyed our squirts, except for a few fools who still messed their pants. We all laughed at them.
My mother told me, “The color of urine Max is because of the color of food you eat.”
“I didn’t eat real yellow food. Pee is yellow and food is brown, red, green and lots of things.”
“It’s not nice to discuss urine with girls.” She said.
“Your not a girl, you’re a mother, but why isn’t piss the same color as shit? It all comes from food we eat doesn’t it?”
“Food influences the color of defecation, it is your body giving up parts of the food that aren’t useful anymore. Also Max mothers are underneath girls.”
“I know,” I said, “boys have a dick and girls have a pussy”.
“Your father should be having this talk with you ten years from now.” She said, so that was the authority behind my knowledge of urine color.
I was a big boy for my age, and in K.G. I didn’t like thinking about letters and numbers all day. I also got very tired of playing with blocks, but there was this girl Maggie. No one liked her because she was mean. At first she was not mean to me. She hit mostly girls and took pills for her behavior. Well one day we were doing modeling clay when Maggie grabbed my hair, and pulled like a machine. I have beautiful red hair, everyone says it’s ‘Great’. So she pulled a clump of my hair out. I screamed and the teachers aide, a big boy came and pulled her away from me. She was clutching a bunch of my hair as she was pulled away. She was put in the ‘time out’ box, she was locked in kicking and screaming. They let her out when she was quieter and would take her pill. She smiled a ‘See I got away with it’ sly smile when she emerged.
Nobody picked up my hair from the floor, so the evidence of her crime was right in front of me. My head felt funny. So I sat and watched the witch girl and hoped she would get very sick, so sick her parents would have to come and get her, or better still the ambulance. I had some toy ambulances and liked to hear real ones speed thru the streets at night. Well especially at night.
I would have gone over and hit her, except I had smacked one of my half sisters and my mother said, “Boys never hit girls. It is rude and not what a gentleman would do Max.”
So I sat and wished hard on Maggie. I even wished she would shit her pants, and it happened. She was on the other side of the room, and the room was about twice as big as our garage, and we have three cars there. She pooped her pants, it happened. Oh that is an aroma that carries, and then she fell to the floor. The ambulance came and the white coats came in and carried her away, messed panties and all. She spread a shit trail all the way out the door.
Somehow I knew I did it, but it was scary that I could do it. And if I could kill Maggie with my thoughts, people said she died, well I wondered who else could do such things? I didn’t wish anyone else sick, but no one else pulled my hair. Kids talked about how dangerous it was to pull Max’s hair.
So my 2nd experiment was on purpose and had to do with shit. I decided I would make my urine green. I did that in private and sure enough it was like pea soup, and I didn’t eat any soup. I made my shit coal black, and I could spit orange colored stuff out of my mouth. I only did these things in private, and I didn’t ask questions.
As school went on and on for years of boredom I found my mind worked well on tests, that became my ‘Max test two’. It was a test on tests, school tests. I scored perfect on several nationwide tests and elementary teachers said I was a genius. The real crazy thing was I didn’t know all the things on the tests, but like changing the colors of urine and spit, and killing Maggie, I concentrated on having a perfect score and being right. I don’t know if I actually marked the right answers, or I made those grading the papers mark it right. Somehow I did it! I really know nothing about algebra, or physics, but it had to be a,b,c,d or e.
My father says, “Math beyond counting credit notes is a waste of time.” Well I believe my father, and I’m probably as smart as he is, and neither of us knows physics or the ‘best theory of the center of the Earth’. That was one of the questions, a,b,c,d, or e. Who cares?
So anyway I went to the biggest building in town one day with my mother, instead of school. The name on the front said, Anderson Board of Education. We went in an elevator and to the 3rd floor, and then in a meeting room where twelve men and three women sat in comfortable chairs, all looking at newspapers. Mother and I sat in regular hard chairs. The man in the center of the group had a name tag that said, ‘Elvis Mcclornie Chairman’
He looked up from his papers and said, “Maxwell Oldsmar we don’t have so many pleasant meetings like this with students. You took your 6th grade tests and scored perfectly on all of them.
From all reports this has never been done before in the United States. There were 6 tests, intelligence and subject matter tests and you scored error free, without missing one. The only errors you made were, we found, were errors in the tests themselves. So there you were right and the tests were wrong.
Now next year you could go the traditional route and go to the 7th grade. Then you would study things that you already know. Actually you would be misplaced in most colleges. We have a community college in one system — Star College, and you could go there, or you could go to high school for a year or two and then to college when your age 13. What do you and your mother want?”
I never thought about it.” Mother said, “really I knew Max was smart, but like the smartest in the country, I never dreamed.”
“Well a year in high school as a senior would be best. I read that senior high school was fun. I could use some fun.” I told the school people.
“The boy is smart,” the chairman said, “so are we all agreed? The best, most challenging thing is high school senior for Max. We will grant him all the school credit except his last year.” All the people nodded except one old dried up woman who waved her hands as she talked, and she said, “I disagree because he hasn’t earned credit in high school, and credits shouldn’t be given away.”
“You disagree with everything.” Elvis the chairman said, “the majority has it. You go to the senior high Max as a senior.”
“I’m going to stop this!” the gray haired, crabby old woman said. Her name plate said, ‘Pauline Vander’.
I thought with unusual concentration, ‘Your going to be too sick Pauline to complain to the papers.’ I had to really think about nothing else to make it work, but my mother was shaking my shoulder, not too gently as two of the board members carried Pauline somewhere. She looked very bad. I figured the ambulance would come for her.
Mrs Vander was listed in the Obit of the Star . She had two children and six grandchildren. All of those were listed by name. She had been on the school board for 15 years. The obit didn’t say what she died from. Like a good scientist I wanted to know what she died of?
Contact the author at: rcates2@cox.net or fax to: 1-352-629-1573
Written by Ray Cates all comments are good, you can comment here, or contact me at:
121 NE 13th Ave. Ocala, Florida 34470
Fax: 1-352-629-1573
