Running with Scissors Read Online Free
back. “Now, it’s nearly one in the morning; way past your bedtime. You need to go to sleep so you can be ready for school in the morning.”
I walked off to my room, where I selected an outfit for school and carefully arranged it on hangers at the front of the closet. I would wear my favorite polyester tan pants and a blue shirt with the vest cleverly sewn on. If only I had a pair of platform shoes the outfit would be complete.
Still, knowing my clothes were ready gave me a sense of calm. I could control the sharpness of the crease in my doubleknit slacks, even if I couldn’t stop my mother from hurling the Christmas tree off the porch like she did one winter. I could polish my 14k gold-plated signet ring with a Q-tip until the gold plating wore off even if I couldn’t stop my parents from throwing John Updike novels at each other’s heads.
So I became consumed with making sure my jewelry was just as reflective as Donnie Osmond’s and my hair was perfectly smooth, like plastic.
Besides clothing and jewelry, there were two other things I valued in life: medical doctors and celebrities. I valued them for their white jackets and stretch limousines. I knew for sure that I wanted to be either a doctor or a celebrity when I grew up. The ideal would have been to play a doctor on a TV show.
And this is where the fact that we lived in the woods surrounded by pine trees came in handy. Because in desperation, pine trees can become Panavision cameras. Their broken branches, boom mics. This allowed me to walk through the woods or down the dirt road we lived on, imagining that there was always a camera trained on my every move, zooming in close to capture my facial expression.
When I looked up at a bird in the sky, I wondered how the light was falling on my face and if that branch was catching it just right.
Mine was a delusional world filled with tall trees that held long lenses and followed me on dollies. A fallen branch in the woods was not a fallen branch; it was “my mark.”
When I wasn’t “on the set” throwing branches around with my bionic arm or doing a toothpaste commercial in front of a boulder, I was trying to trick my mother into taking me to the doctor.
By the time I was ten, I was having weekly allergy shots—eleven in each arm. I had persistent warts on my fingers that needed to be burned off and my throat was constantly sore due to the dust that I cupped into my hands and inhaled.
A visit to the doctor meant exposure to those crisp, clean white jackets and the glint of a silver stethoscope around the neck. I was also aware that doctors got to park where they wanted and speed without getting tickets, both of which seemed the height of privilege when President Carter had made us all drive forty miles an hour and live in the dark.
I had two doctors that I saw regularly. Dr. Lotier, who had long hairs sprouting from his nose and the backs of his hands, and a dignified Indian allergist named Dr. Nupal. Dr. Nupal drove a white Mercedes (I asked him) and smelled like freshly washed hands with subtle undertones of Aqua Velva.
Just thinking of my doctors filled me with soothing images of overhead fluorescent lighting, shiny new needles and shoes so polished they inspired in me a sense of awe unequalled by anything except the dazzling sets of the Academy Award shows.
And then there was Dr. Finch.
As the mood in my home changed from one of mere hatred to one of potential double homicide, my parents sought help from a psychiatrist. Dr. Finch looked exactly like Santa Claus. He had a shock of thick white hair, a full white beard and eyebrows that resembled toothbrush bristles. Instead of wearing a red suit trimmed with white fur, he wore brown polyester slacks and a short-sleeved button-down white shirt. He did, however, sometimes wear a Santa hat.
The first time I ever saw him he appeared at our house in the middle of the night, following an especially bad fight between my parents. As my mother
I walked off to my room, where I selected an outfit for school and carefully arranged it on hangers at the front of the closet. I would wear my favorite polyester tan pants and a blue shirt with the vest cleverly sewn on. If only I had a pair of platform shoes the outfit would be complete.
Still, knowing my clothes were ready gave me a sense of calm. I could control the sharpness of the crease in my doubleknit slacks, even if I couldn’t stop my mother from hurling the Christmas tree off the porch like she did one winter. I could polish my 14k gold-plated signet ring with a Q-tip until the gold plating wore off even if I couldn’t stop my parents from throwing John Updike novels at each other’s heads.
So I became consumed with making sure my jewelry was just as reflective as Donnie Osmond’s and my hair was perfectly smooth, like plastic.
Besides clothing and jewelry, there were two other things I valued in life: medical doctors and celebrities. I valued them for their white jackets and stretch limousines. I knew for sure that I wanted to be either a doctor or a celebrity when I grew up. The ideal would have been to play a doctor on a TV show.
And this is where the fact that we lived in the woods surrounded by pine trees came in handy. Because in desperation, pine trees can become Panavision cameras. Their broken branches, boom mics. This allowed me to walk through the woods or down the dirt road we lived on, imagining that there was always a camera trained on my every move, zooming in close to capture my facial expression.
When I looked up at a bird in the sky, I wondered how the light was falling on my face and if that branch was catching it just right.
Mine was a delusional world filled with tall trees that held long lenses and followed me on dollies. A fallen branch in the woods was not a fallen branch; it was “my mark.”
When I wasn’t “on the set” throwing branches around with my bionic arm or doing a toothpaste commercial in front of a boulder, I was trying to trick my mother into taking me to the doctor.
By the time I was ten, I was having weekly allergy shots—eleven in each arm. I had persistent warts on my fingers that needed to be burned off and my throat was constantly sore due to the dust that I cupped into my hands and inhaled.
A visit to the doctor meant exposure to those crisp, clean white jackets and the glint of a silver stethoscope around the neck. I was also aware that doctors got to park where they wanted and speed without getting tickets, both of which seemed the height of privilege when President Carter had made us all drive forty miles an hour and live in the dark.
I had two doctors that I saw regularly. Dr. Lotier, who had long hairs sprouting from his nose and the backs of his hands, and a dignified Indian allergist named Dr. Nupal. Dr. Nupal drove a white Mercedes (I asked him) and smelled like freshly washed hands with subtle undertones of Aqua Velva.
Just thinking of my doctors filled me with soothing images of overhead fluorescent lighting, shiny new needles and shoes so polished they inspired in me a sense of awe unequalled by anything except the dazzling sets of the Academy Award shows.
And then there was Dr. Finch.
As the mood in my home changed from one of mere hatred to one of potential double homicide, my parents sought help from a psychiatrist. Dr. Finch looked exactly like Santa Claus. He had a shock of thick white hair, a full white beard and eyebrows that resembled toothbrush bristles. Instead of wearing a red suit trimmed with white fur, he wore brown polyester slacks and a short-sleeved button-down white shirt. He did, however, sometimes wear a Santa hat.
The first time I ever saw him he appeared at our house in the middle of the night, following an especially bad fight between my parents. As my mother
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