You're on your own Kid, Part One: Elementary School

One of the sad and frustrating aspects of growing up on Eagle Street was that we had a mother who did not value her children's educational opportunities.  On the surface it appeared that she did, because she put her children in Catholic Schools.  But the reason for her school choice was not to give us a better education.  The reason was selfish:  back in the 60s and 70s, there were no school counselors in Catholic school.  There was no one to keep an eye out for signs of abuse or despair.    Mom had learned early on in the 50s that public school teachers snooped in your business and made reports to child protective services if they thought something nefarious was going on at their student's home.  Those reports ended up with investigations and some of her older kids going to foster care. Mom wasn't going to repeat that mistake with us youngest three kids.

I was doomed to fail from the very beginning. 

I am a December baby, which means that I would either be one of the youngest or one of the oldest kids in my class.  Nowadays, I would not have been allowed to start first grade as a five year old.  But in 1966, things were a bit more lax.  I was tiny, skinny, and shy.  Not really emotionally ready to sit at a desk all day amongst kids who were bigger, older, and more secure in their social status.  But I had something none of my classmates had.  I could already read.  

Mom began teaching me how to sound out simple words using giant flashcards a couple of years earlier. She used an method kit entitled, "Teach Your Baby To Read," and it worked.  At age four, I could read these flashcard words easily.  I still remember some of the flashcards that Mom would hold up to form a sentence:

Everyone     knows      that      nose    is     not       toes

The page from a copy of the book "The New Our New Friends," that the priest had on his desk 

I could read Dr. Seuss books, and Little Golden Books,  and the only reason why Dad was still reading the Sunday Funnies to me was because I pretended I couldn't read the words. I was a one trick pony, and Mom thought that one trick meant I was ready for school.  She applied for me to start first grade at St Vincent's in September of 1966.  The school at first declined the application because they felt I was too young.  I remember Mom having me read a book into a microphone while a reel-to-reel tape machine was recording my tiny squeaky voice.  Then I remember Mom taking me to the priest rectory for an interview.  The kindly priest asked me if I could read, and I nodded my head.  Mom handed me one of my books, and I read it to him, making sure I read with expression, as Mom called it.  The priest smiled, but he obviously thought I was reciting by rote.  He handed me a reader from a stack of books on his desk, and asked me to read any page I wanted.  I opened it up to a page with a cute yellow kitten on it, and read the page of text to him.  The next thing I knew, Mom and I were at the uniform store shopping for a green plaid jumper and white blouse. My one trick got me in.

My reading was always advanced.  Arithmetic, however, was another thing altogether.  By 2nd grade, I was falling behind. I couldn't concentrate during math class.  Miss DeTellum might as well have been speaking Spanish.  I would stare out the open windows of my 2nd floor classroom and wish that I was like Sister Bertrille, the Flying Nun from TV. In my daydreams, the breeze coming in the window would lift me up and float me on out of there.

The basketball hoop marks the location of my 2nd grade room. I wanted to fly away from it

 I was having trouble with my math homework too, and started giving up on it.  Miss DeTellum was not happy with me, and threatened to wash my mouth out with soap the next time I failed to turn in my completed homework.   I went home with a stomachache and fretted all evening.  Mom did not seem to care much when I told her about it. 

                     First Grade. Big Sis Lynda is in the background, ready to drive me to school

The next morning, I was beside myself with fear.  I was holding my gut and crying when sister Lynda appeared like a fairy godmother and asked me why I was so upset.  I sobbed through the details.  She hugged me and said, "I'm coming to school with you today, and I am going to meet your teacher."  I felt so safe and secure in her protective arms.  My stomachache disappeared.  Lynda gave me a pep talk as we walked towards the building.  I stayed out on the playground while Lynda went inside to find Miss DeTellem.  I don't know what she said, but I was never threatened by that teacher again. 

                         There's Miss DeTellem Top Center.  I am in middle row to the left of the cross.

I scraped by in Math every year.  Voices from my teachers are still fresh in my memory. "She is so difficult to reach," said Mrs.Frawley, my 4th grade teacher.   In the Spring of 4th grade, I was ambushed at the church rummage sale by the Math and Science teacher for grades five through 8:  "You will be in my Math class next year.  I have heard how stupid you are.  Just you wait until 5th grade.  Just you wait,"  threatened the evil Mrs. Anderson.  I was sick and stressed all summer, waiting to see what Mrs. Andersen was going to do to me. Mom and Dad were very distant from my problems.  Dad was working night shifts, was tired, unhealthy, burned out on life,  and not very patient. The few times he tried to help me, he looked at my worksheet and grumbled, "I hate this New Math!"  Mom just seemed to think my problems were not her problems.  At this point in time, Lynda was married and had a toddler and another on the way.  I was on my own. 

4th Grade.  Mrs Frawley gave me my first Detention slip. I am under the books on the right

                                      5th Grade, I am bottom left, next to our scary Principal 

Mrs Anderson. She wasn't mean to only me.  I could write an entire article on the mean-spirited, cruel and humiliating ways she treated certain students.

Dad suddenly died the week before I started 6th grade.  Horrifyingly, I was to be in Mrs. Anderson's homeroom.  On my first day of class, I told her about my Dad, and she didn't even look up from her paperwork when she casually remarked she would have the priest say a Mass for him.  Then Mom tried to kill us all, changed her mind and called the fire department to rescue us, then pulled me out of school  to go to her sister's in Washington state.  She didn't bother to ask for any school work, so I missed some of September, all of October and some of November. And then in the Spring, I caught a bad case of chicken pox and was out for another 2 weeks.  Again, mom didn't think to ask Mrs. Anderson for any worksheets. I never caught up with Math again. Mrs. Anderson threatened to flunk me that year.  I didn't know if I had been promoted until the final day of school, when Monsigner Mimnagh came to our class to hand out report cards. I guess I was smarter than I thought.  I was promoted, but two of my classmates flunked.

                     So thankful to be promoted from 6th grade.  I am on right, 4 rows down.

                8th Grade, Top Left.  So glad I made it out of there.  It was not fun if you're dumb

During 8th grade, my final year in elementary school, Mom decided that I was to attend The Academy of Our Lady Of Peace High School for my freshman year.  One Saturday in March, she woke me up early and told me I was going to have to take several hours of entrance exams.  The testing went on from 8 AM until noon, if I remember correctly.  I was really hungry, and didn't have any idea what the testing would be like.  I just remember the big classroom, the tall ceiling, the smell of hundred-year-old wood, and the sputtering of the radiator as a bunch of strange girls and a few familiar faces took one test after another. And after spending 8 years wearing a uniform, I felt uncomfortable wearing junk store clothes at school.  

After the test day, I didn't think any more about it.  All I knew about the school was that they only admitted smart girls,  the classes were hard, and I wouldn't have to worry anymore about creepy St Vincent's boys pulling up my skirt and trying to pinch my butt. 

Graduation from 8th grade was held in the church, where we walked up to get our diplomas.  It was a big deal.  The awards ceremony was held downstairs in the hall.  That was the time for teachers to bestow special certificates to some of the favorite students.  Of course, favorite students were always the smart kids.  Their parents were active in the church and school, and the teachers liked them.  In my case, I was not a favorite for many reasons.  I was not Catholic. I was not an academic standout.  Mom did not participate in school activities, except for the annual rummage sale. The only time she attended Parent-Teacher night was when I was in 3rd grade.  And if they had kept their records, they knew I had an older brother who did some time at St Vincent's and had not been a favorite either. 

          There I am on the left, coming back from the procession to the altar

            Graduation day with Sister Machtilde, I am right, My friend Mary MacPherson is left.

In the noisy basement hall, I sat in the front row with my classmates, looking at the stage, ready to get out of St Vincent's and leave behind all my negative baggage. The Principal, Sister Ursula, a aptly-named terrifying little bear of an Irish nun, appeared on stage issuing various accolades to the usual good kids.  Sister Ursula was my 8th grade Homeroom teacher.  She did not like me at all and didn't attempt to hide her feelings.  Mrs. Anderson was sitting with the other teachers on stage and I could swear she was smirking at me. I didn't care.  I was done with her and all the humiliation that comes with being the smallest, youngest and dumbest kid in class. 

I was feeling very comfortable sitting in my seat on the floor knowing that I would never have to get up on that stage and sing or perform in a play against my wishes ever again. Surprisingly,  Mom was in the audience.  She was feeling better about herself since falling in love with a convicted robber and losing a lot of weight. She was always self conscious about being so fat.  I was glad that she had actually put on a nice dress and attended my rites of passage.

Aunt Amy made my graduation dress.  Mom felt confident enough to dress up for the event

The Principal started giving out awards for the kids who scored the highest on their high school entrance exams.  "Honors at Entrance Award for the Academy of Our Lady of Peace goes to: Tammy Warriner?" She phrased it as a question.  My classmates looked at me and said, "Whaaaaa?" My friend Mary gently shoved me and said, "Get up there, you are getting an award!"  I was mortified, but hightailed it up on stage, accepted the Certa-FICK IT, as the Irish nuns pronounced it, and hurried back to my seat. Somehow, without any help or support, I not only got through the first 8 years of school, but I also aced OLP's entrance exam.  Honestly,  I couldn't believe it either.

Pandemic Dreams

 I haven't been inside my Eagle Street home since the house was sold in 1987.  But the memories of that place and the ghosts that still live within its walls continue to call out to me.  For nearly 25 years, I would have occasional dreams about the house. Those dreams always involved a large cat.  Sometimes it was a Lion, sometimes a Tiger or Bobcat but mostly it was a Mountain Lion. In every dream,  I would walk into the house to visit Mom, but instead find myself being chased down the hallway, through the den, and out to the pool deck, where the wild cat would lunge at me, grabbing my neck in its jaws.  I would always awaken as it sunk its fangs in and started to shake me.  Mom was never in those dreams. It was always just the wild beast that always caught up with me and killed me.  A few years went by before I realized that I hadn't had an Eagle Street nightmare in a long while. The Covid era seemed to affect dreams, and I had an interesting Eagle Street dream during the pandemic.  This one, thankfully did not include a killer cat:

I am at the Eagle St house.  I don't live there, but it must still be in the family because I go up to the front porch and go inside. Mom may or may not live there anymore but she is still around.  I know she will be coming over to the house too. Now suddenly she is in the living room with me.  She is in the shape she was in during her romance with Paris Young in 1975. She is a youthful middle-aged woman with long curly golden-colored hair and a curvy cute figure. She is energetic and agile. Her back is no longer damaged. She can walk normally.  She is not deathly pale and wheezing from congestive heart failure. She is not old, sick and dying. 

She has a life of her own now and does not need my undivided attention.  I feel that she is leaving soon and I want her to know that even after everything we experienced and endured with each other, I still love her.

She gets up to leave, as she is scheduled to go meet up with someone. I give her a big hug. During the hug, I was silently sending her four thoughts. The feelings I was conveying to her were love, regret for our past problems, hope that she feels the same, and especially,  hope that today is the beginning of a new, healthy and happy relationship.  

These hopes were successfully conveyed to her. I did not, however receive reciprocating feelings back from her.  Although I could feel fondness coming from her, there was also a distracted feeling. She was done here, and was ready to move on with a new life.  Clearly, she no longer had a desperate attachment that required her to control me and make me feel guilty all the time.  She was free of the need to suffocate her loved ones.  I was happy to feel that, but at the same time I wished that she had the same regret that I felt for our wasted, troubled years, but she didn't.

The embrace ended, and she hurried out the front door to her life that did not include her children.  I turned back into the house, feeling a bit sad because it seemed our relationship was still unresolved.  

I walk into the kitchen where I found a skillet with hash browns on the stove, frying unattended.  My younger sister walked in, saw me, and said, " Yeah, Mom still walks away from what she started and doesn't worry about seeing it through."

This dream, which occurred November 21, 2021, seemed sad in some respects, but it also gave me a great deal of closure.  The Catholic part of me interpreted it as Mom's time in Purgatory coming to grips with her Earthly issues had reached its completion. Any regrets and penitence were between her and God, not me.  She must have served her penance and vowed to not continue her manipulative controlling behaviors, and could now live in a different way. A freer way. 

Interpreting the dream in this way has given me freedom as well.  Did Mom come to me in a dream to tell me that the demons in her that caused her to hurt so many people in her life had been rendered impotent?  That her spirit was cleansed, and that I can now be free of the residue of her destructive entanglements? I am going to go with that interpretation.

The Purgatory concept is strong in a second Pandemic dream that I had several months before the dream of Mom.  This dream did not include Eagle Street, but it included brother Skippy.  I wrote about Skippy in my July 20, 2018 post.  Skippy was a drug addict and a career criminal. Any goodness and love he may have had as a small child was completely replaced with lawlessness, evil, and addiction in the early 60's. He died of a heroin overdose in 1986, and I was not sad to learn of his passing.  I never dreamed of him when he was living, or after he died.  He just did not matter to me at all.  So when I woke up from this dream, I was quite surprised:

In the living room of my house, there is a mail slot in the wall near my desk.  I keep a wicker basket on the desk to catch the mail as the letter carrier pushes it through the slot.  I am sitting on the couch, when I hear the sound of the mail slot opening.  Thinking that the letter carrier has brought the mail, I look up to see what is going to fall into the basket.  There are no mail pieces.  Instead, a flat Stanley version of Skippy slides through the mail slot head first, floats over the mail basket and rights himself in front of me.  He is now a standing up, regular human form Skippy, not a cardboard cutout Skippy.

He is clean, with tidy hair and clothing.  He no longer stinks of Camel cigarettes, Thunderbird wine, injection site abscesses and rotten teeth. His tattoos are gone, his eyes are sparkling, and I realize that the last time he looked like that was in 1965. 

He smiled and excitedly said to me, "I got out!" And just as soon as he said that, he morphed back into Flat Skippy, and was quickly sucked out of the mail slot and disappeared. 

I vividly remember these odd dreams because of the strong negative impact these two people made on the family and community.  Both Mom and Skippy took advantage of kind people and stole at every opportunity from strangers and loved ones alike, with no remorse. Both worked together to commit their crimes. Both caused so much damage and disruption over so many decades. Neither one could ever be trusted. And both died within four months of each other in 1986.  When I had the Flat Skippy dream, I woke up and immediately said, " Wow, Skippy just got out of Purgatory!" Then a few months later, I had the Mom dream, woke up and immediately thought the same thing.  Seems like they served about the same length of sentence. And now their souls are both out there somewhere, experiencing the next chapter. They were a powerful wrecking crew here on Earth. I hope that wherever they are now, they using their powers for good instead.

Bob's Donuts

 In my November 1, 2019 post, I introduced everyone to a strange character named Bob who came over one day in 1976 to buy a dog for his roommate and then kept coming over for a decade. Bob was clearly a lonely man.  Mom was lonely too.  She was still being buffeted by waves of distressing memories and regret in the aftermath of her stormy marriage and costly break-up with career criminal Paris Young. She never admitted the truth of that relationship to her few friends.  It was just too embarrassing to admit to being so naive.  Instead, she bolstered her self esteem by inviting some of the quirkiest oddballs on the planet into our home.  Her expert interrogation techniques drew out their stories, which in many instances were even odder than our own family secrets. Bob was, by far, the weirdest and most disturbed visitor. His story was revealed gradually, over hours spent in our living room, week after week, year after year.

                               Fall of 1976- Bob brought these puppies over to Eagle Street for grooming

At first, the only things we knew was that Bob was Chicago Polish and that he was a Navy veteran who worked as a welder for NASSCO, San Diego's biggest shipyard. He was in his 40's, never married, no kids, and lived platonically with a female roommate in a tiny old house on San Diego Ave in Old Town.  But every time Bob dropped by for a visit, we learned that there were many layers to his story.  He evidently had a very sad childhood. His father never connected with him.  That could have been because his dad was serving during World War II and just wasn't around much. Bob believed that his dad didn't like him because his mother dressed him up like a girl. Whatever the reason, the family did not stay together.  Bob said his mother died and his father remarried to a woman who didn't like him either. Bob enlisted as soon as he was old enough, to get away from the stressful family house.

Apparently Navy life was not the escape he was hoping for. He served during the Korean War Era.  Although he never shared anything about his actual service, one day he revealed the fact that he was forced to leave the service due to his temper.  It took weeks to get the story out of him, but eventually he told us that he would have fits of rage whenever anyone teased him.  He told us that one day he picked up a hammer and threw it at one of the guys who was making fun of him, causing a very serious head injury.  As time went on, we would see firsthand what Bob was like when he was triggered.  

Bob enjoyed the newest electronic gadgets that were coming out in the late 70's.  He would take his paycheck and go buy a tv, a pong video game, and BetaMax videotape players.  He liked to  bring his newest toys over to show them off.  He and Mom got into sharing and trading BetaMax and VHS movies.  He never seemed to spend his paycheck on anything other than electronic things. His clothes were filthy and ragged. He had one pair of work boots. His little Datsun pickup truck was old and dirty. None of those things mattered. But his interest in the newest and best electronics was never ending. 

One night, out of the blue, Bob called Mom on the phone.  He was screaming and crying and yelling.  Mom held the receiver away from her ear, and we could both hear the sound of things being smashed.  Mom asked him what was going on, and Bob answered, sobbing, stuttering, and crying, "Th-th-th-they were m-m-making fun of m-m-me again! Then we heard a Smash!, Smash, Smash! Mom yelled into the phone, "Bob, what are you doing?" He came back to the phone and yelled, "Smashing m-m-my B-B-Beta, and TV with a h-h-h-hammer!" Mom tried to calm him down and talk him out of destroying his things, but it didn't stopped him.  He screamed and smashed until everything was ruined. Then he hung up the phone. The day after his next payday, Bob showed up to our house, opened up the hatch of his camper shell, and brought out all the brand new replacements. He proudly carried each thing into the house, opened the cartons, and showed us his new TV, VCR, and games.  This scenario played out at least a dozen times.  Each time we heard him in the midst of his violent outbursts, I wondered about the servicemember that he injured. I bet that guy, if he survived the hammer to the head, never teased him again.

One seriously gross thing about Bob was the fact that he rarely cleaned himself up.  He smelled terrible.  Not a sweaty kind of terrible.  This man honestly smelled like crap.  Sometimes when he came over and planted himself in one of Mom's recliners, I could swear I saw pieces of dog poop on his shoes, his pants, and sometimes even his shirt.  One time when he came over, he had an actual piece of poop stuck to his hair.  Little sister shouted out, "Hey Bob, is that poop in your hair?" He kind of grunted and reached up to pull it off, and he dropped it into the little trash can that mom kept by her chair for used kleenex. It didn't even seem to surprise him. As a teenager, it made me almost barf. The Poodles that he lived with were similarly covered in their own feces.  I groomed them every few months and it really made me sad to see their paws were encrusted with crap, just like Bob's shoes. We wondered what it was like to be inside Bob's house. One day we found out. 

As time went on, Bob felt comfortable enough to share that he wanted a sex change. He said that ever since he was a small boy, his mom dressed him in girls clothing because she had hoped for a daughter. I guess this somehow imprinted on him. Mom asked him if he was attracted to men or to women.  He said he wasn't interested in either sex at all. After leaving the Navy, he tried to get Johns Hopkins Hospital to give him a sex change so he could be like Christine Jorgensen, but they would not approve it because of his severe anger issues. He said that he tried several times, but could not pass the mental health interview. When he started renting a room in Old Town in the 70's,  he shared his desire with his roommate, a woman who worked as a nurse at a nearby hospital. She started smuggling injectable female hormones out of her workplace and gave him shots.  These shots, for a while, gave him some semblance of female breasts, but after several months, the hospital realized they were missing their drugs and started to investigate.  His roommate decided that giving breasts to Bob wasn't worth losing her job, and the shots abruptly stopped.  Bob never dressed like a woman in public.  He always wore his pee stained, crap-covered blue jeans and ripped, dirty shirts. He was stout, and extremely hirsute.  We could actually watch his beard grow as he sat for hours stuttering out his life story. There were so many layers to this person that we were discovering, bit by bit. Our first impression was that he was a shy, stuttering, smelly, hairy little fat man.  Then we learned that he was extremely angry and prone to violent temper tantrums. And now we knew that he had what they now call gender dysphoria.  

One hot summer Sunday afternoon, Bob called Mom and asked if she could drop off some of the movies she had borrowed.  Old Town was just a couple of miles away, on the way to the FedMart where Mom liked to shop, down on Sports Arena Blvd, so Mom collected the tapes, and us three kids, and headed down Ft Stockton to Juan Street to Old Town.  We had never been to Bob's house before, and I couldn't wait to see it.  San Diego Avenue is the main business street in Old Town.  Bob's place was an old ramshackle house that sat next to the historic graveyard.  Mom parked in the alley behind the house.  The backyard was enclosed with a short sagging chain link fence. Chickens pecked around in the dusty, grassless yard.  Mom told us kids to get out of the car and drop off the tapes.  I grabbed the tapes and the three of us approached the gate.  

As we entered the yard, a giant aggressive rooster ran over to defend the territory.  Little brother quickly retreated back to the car. As the rooster focused on him,  Little sister and I proceeded to the rotting wooden back porch and knocked on the door.  We heard the yipping of a dozen little poodles from inside.  We knocked again, and soon we heard a shuffling from behind the door.  The door opened just a bit, and we were hit with a horrible wave of stench.  Like Bob's smell, only magnified.  The Poodles were trying to get out the door, and I looked  down at them, only to notice the floor, which was a compressed mixture of newspapers and dog poop. Then my sister screamed and I looked up to see why.

There stood round, hairy Bob, with his signature five o'clock shadow, wearing a flowery pink and orange MuuMuu.  His dirty fat feet were crammed in heels. He was wearing a filthy tousled blonde wig, and lipstick and eye shadow that looked like a toddler applied it. It was not a good look for him. When my sister screamed, Bob screamed. P-p-p-put the tapes on the s-s-steps'" he urgently ordered.  Then he slammed the door. We dropped the tapes and ran through the dusty yard, past the scratching hens and the menacing rooster, shimmied out the bent gate, and jumped into the car.  "What the hell happened," asked Mom.  "We'll tell you later, just get us out of here," I answered, out of breath and thinking about all the things I wish I could un-see. 

Bob usually worked the all-night shift at NASCCO.  He got off work after 7 AM.  Sometimes on the weekends he would come straight to our house from work.  Once a week or so, he would stop at the Winchell's Donuts up on West Washington St and buy a dozen donuts .  It was always the same scene.  Bob would let himself in the house and with a big grin, present the big box of donuts.  He would walk over to Mom's desk, put the box down, open the lid, and stand back silently, arms folded across his chest, looking at whoever was in the living room. We kids loved donuts.  Mom rarely bought them for us, unless she was using them to entice us to go to church or to go to the Doctor for a shot. As much as we loved donuts, we knew that if we didn't act fast, the donuts would be inedible.  Because after opening the box and looking at us, Bob would reach in with his greasy unwashed hands and pick up each donut, turn it over and around, and then put it back in the box, before taking a couple for himself.  So we learned that if we wanted an unblemished clean donut, we had to immediately praise and thank him for the treats, and then get on in there and get the ones we wanted. There could be no second helpings, because as soon as we picked out a donut, he would start in with the contamination process. 

One summer morning in 1979, Bob came over bright and early. Mom was busy in the kitchen, but the front door was open, so Bob let himself inside. He had a big cardboard Winchell's Donuts box, and as usual, he proudly pranced through the door, set it on the desk, opened the box, and took a couple steps back. Little brother, sister, and I came over to see what we could choose from, and to our great surprise, the  entire box was filled with luscious glazed round jelly donuts.  A whole dozen! The most coveted donut, yet the rarest, because they were more expensive. We didn't know what the special occasion was, but we were thrilled!  "Ooh, jelly Donuts!  Thank you Bob," I laid the praise on thick.  The three of us moved in and each of us grabbed a donut.  

Suddenly, Bob's smile turned into a frown.  He moved towards the desk, pushed the cover down, and grabbed the box with nine remaining jelly donuts. "M-m-m-my donuts! Th-Th-they are m-m-mine," he screamed.  Little brother ran out the front door and took off.  Little sister and I stood in shock as he clutched the box to his chest, squishing it, screaming over and over, "M-m-m-mine! Th-th-they are m-m-my donuts!" Jelly started to squirt out of the crumpled box onto his clothes and his hairy chin, and red gooey globs started dropping to the floor.  Mom came running out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a dish towel. Little sister and I quickly retreated down the hallway. Mom took one look at Bob, with his smashed Winchells box and donut jelly dripping all over the place and calmly asked, "Oh Bob, what happened to your donuts?" 

"Th-th-they took them! Th-th-they took my donuts. M-m-my donuts," Bob exclaimed.  He was furious and broke into tears.  My sister and I were ready to lock ourselves in the bathroom at the end of the hall if necessary, so we stayed just outside the bathroom door watching what was happening in the living room.  Before Mom could calm him down, Bob, still clutching the ruined box of donuts to his chest, ran out of the house.  He jumped into his truck and sped off. 

"Well, I guess we won't see him for awhile," surmised Mom and I took a paper towel and started wiping up the mess he left for us.  His instant rage was unexplainable, and really frightening.  I looked at the jelly donut that was still in my hand and thought to myself, "jelly donuts are good, but not good enough to put up with crazy temper tantrums from the nut who brought them over." And then I ate it. 

Less than an hour later, Bob's pickup truck pulled up in front of the house.  We were all in the living room as he headed up to the porch, holding a new Winchell's Donut box.  He let himself in, pranced over to the desk, opened the box, and stood back, his arms folded across his chest,  just like he always did.  Inside the box were a dozen shiny new jelly donuts.  He looked at us.  We looked at him and didn't move a muscle or say a word. After at least a couple silent minutes had passed, he moved towards his box, closed the cover, looked at us, and said, "M-M-MY D-Donuts!  We learned our lesson, and never took any of Bob's donuts again. And to this day, any time I see a jelly donut, I think of Bob and his donut meltdown on Eagle Street.