Youth Gone Wild. Robert "Bob" Sorensen
The way the house was set up, there were two bedrooms on the main floor, one being the master bedroom (for my parents) and the other bedroom right down the hall, separated by a bathroom. The other two bedrooms were upstairs, separated by a small hallway. Common sense would tell you to put the youngest child (me) in the bedroom closest to my parents, putting Karen in one of the bedrooms upstairs. Unfortunately, common sense did not prevail in this case (as we get further into this book, you will see that it never did prevail). Once again, the pink paint and wallpaper came out, and Karen’s room was decorated to perfection. What more could a little girl ask for?
As for me, I was located in the bigger of the two bedrooms upstairs. Mind you, the bedrooms upstairs were semifinished (loft in nature)—tiled floors, bare wood ceilings (slanting down from the center, following the pitch of the roof). There was a lone window at the far end of the room. Very dark. Very cold. Very barren. Just the place for a young boy to begin the next phase of his life. Where were my blue walls? Where was my teddy bear border? For the life of me, I could never figure out what was going through my parents’ minds at the time of this decision. I missed out bonding with my mom when I was first born. Having me close to them at this point might have made up for some of this lost time. The best I could figure was, they wanted the “devil child” as far away from them as possible. Much harder to hear me screaming/crying upstairs than it would be right down the hall from their bedroom. Could sleep be more important than bonding with your son? I guess I got my answer. Again, I was too young at the time to know what was happening. Looking back, I can now see the wheels were put in motion at an early age, resulting in some of the stories I will be sharing with you later on in this book. A note to any and all parents reading this book. It’s true. Those early years with your children are so important to their future growth and development. The seeds are planted early. Make sure you continue to sow them over the years.
*****
So it goes. As my sister Karen continued to bond with my parents in her gender-appropriate room, I continued to languish in my cold, dark cell. A few more tidbits on my surroundings before I move on. Seeing my father was the sole provider (as was typical of the time, my mother did not work for many years) and having just moved into a new home, my parents did not have a lot of expendable income. What little they had was spent on things they deemed necessary—a new bed for Karen’s room, a new television set (my dad was addicted to TV), a new dining room table and chairs. Anything and everything that was needed to keep up the facade to all who entered the Sorensen home, that we were this happy, loving family, that we really had our shit together. Seeing my father was an architect, everything at the time had to be based on design rather than comfort or functionality. In his mind, he was going to be the next Frank Lloyd Wright.
With money being spent on the main floor of the house, unfortunately, my bedroom upstairs was an afterthought. It would be best described as an army barracks. In two of the four corners of the room lie twin beds left over from the previous owners. Being so young, I had no idea of the age of these beds. Based on the fact they would almost touch the ground when you lay on them, I’m guessing they were pretty damn old. As I described earlier, the ceilings were slanted based on the pitch of the roof. That said, you had approximately eighteen inches from the top of the mattress to the ceiling. Have a bad dream in the middle of the night, crack your skull. Wake up in the morning disoriented, crack your skull. Mom screams up the stairs that it’s time for breakfast, crack your skull. You get the gist of it. No curtains on the windows. No pictures or artwork of any kind on the walls. There was a dim, broken-down light on the far end of the room attached to a light switch at the entryway. The only time this switch was used was when my mother left the room in the evening, thrusting me into total darkness. Underneath the curtainless windows, my father placed a homemade table—a flat piece of plywood with four metal legs, unfinished, unpainted. Certainly fit in quite well in its surroundings. This was my room. This was where I’d spend my childhood. This was where I’d spend my teenage years.
It became quite apparent, at an early age, that my mother was not programmed to raise a baby boy. Karen was such a well-behaved child. Karen looked beautiful in her little dresses and pantsuits. Here was this hyperactive, goofy-looking Tasmanian devil of a child. I’m sure my mother was asking herself, What can I do with this child? The answer was quite simple. Raise him like you did Karen. If she came out so good, applying the same logic to me would reap the same benefits. Almost immediately, my mom started using my sister’s hand-me-down clothes to dress me in. Certainly not dresses, but anything else was fair game. There were many a childhood picture of me—red-faced, tears rolling down my cheeks, me screaming like a banshee in a flowered onesie. The balance of my clothes, bought at our local department stores (JCPenney, Sears, Goldblatt’s, etc.), were not much better—little sailor suits, goofy-looking puffy pirate shirts. I was in big trouble.
I should mention something at this point. Because my father was a twin, my Grandma Sorensen really doted on him and his brother. They were what one might call Momma’s boys. Unfortunately, his mother subjected him to the same type of “abuse” as my mother was putting me through—little Emil and Donnie in their matching sailor suits. Bottom line, I could never count on my father (or my grandmother for that matter) to step in and provide my mother with proper guidance to raise a baby boy. They considered this “normal” behavior. The only person I could count on at this time in my life was my Grandpa Sorensen. He was a big, burly, speaks-his-mind kind of guy. He saw what was happening. He tried to step in and put a stop to this madness. Unfortunately, he was married to a hot-headed Italian woman who would shut him down in a heartbeat. I will say this. The only normal clothes from my childhood came from him. A little Chicago Cubs uniform, along with a matching hat. A cowboy outfit consisting of a tinted flannel shirt and blue jeans (including a cap gun and holster). He must have figured he missed out on his sons, so he was going to try to save me. Thank you, Grandpa! I will never forget you for that.
*****
As I grew older, my parents hoped and prayed I would grow out of my “naughty” behavior. What they didn’t realize back then that is so prevalent now was the fact that I was suffering from a severe case of ADHD. Very few people, including my parents, had any idea how to deal with this type of behavior back in the ’60s. The only way they knew back then was to scream, yell, and punish. Whenever I had one of my tantrums, my mother would grab me by my shoulders, scream in my face, spank my bottom, and banish me to my room. Of course, that would incense me even more. I would scream, yell, and cry for hours (until, in most cases, I would lose my voice). When that didn’t have any impact, I would sit in the corner of my room and bang my head against the wall. Over and over. Harder and harder. My mom would rush up the stairs, yell at me to stop, and then head back down. As soon as she was gone, I would start all over again. It is amazing I didn’t damage my vocal cords or suffer any permanent brain damage (some may argue that I have!).
Along with these consistent outbursts came destruction. I would destroy anything in my wake. As I sat at my lone window, looking at the kids playing in the park, I would punch holes in my window screen. When my dad would eventually get around to fixing it, I would do the exact same thing again and again and again. Any toy left in my room was fair game. I’d pull the eyes and the arms off my teddy bears. I’d tear the pages out of my books. I’d pull off every wheel from my Matchbox cars, Tonka trucks, etc. I had so much pent-up energy this was the only way I knew how to get it out. One story in particular that stood out was almost surreal. For God knows what reason, my parents decided to buy me a dart board and hang it in my room. We are not talking about the metal kind with magnets. We are talking about a corkboard with real darts (the sharp, pointed metal kind). Again, what were they thinking? Throwing the darts at the board was fun for the first five to ten minutes. Once I realized these darts would stick in the surrounding wood walls, the game was on! Getting banished to my room on a daily basis was no longer an issue. I would spend hours upon hours randomly firing those darts into the surrounding walls. What fun! Once I bored of this activity, my overactive mind came up with another idea.
Growing up in the city (especially living across the street from a public park), we were subjected to all types of graffiti. The kind that intrigued me the most at this very young age were the messages scrawled into the park benches. “Johnny loves Mary.” “Steve’s a pothead.” They were there for everyone to see, there for eternity. I said to myself, “How cool will it be for me to leave my