On Single Wide Trailers and Ted E. Bear

My favorite childhood memories come from a home that no one loved but an eight year old boy and his little sister. It was a rinky dinky single wide trailer house. The steps were concrete blocks and the driveway was dirt. The trailer hitch was where we kept our dogs tied up. It was redneck central. And I loved it. We had a pond in our backyard. To the left of us was an old worn down pigless pig pen. At least that's what our parents called it. To the imaginative children who lived in the home, it was a fort. A marvelous fort with chambers where all sorts of adventures were had.

 It was just outside of that home that I got shot in the head with a BB gun. At least that's how I tell the story. My brother has always claimed the BB ricocheted off the mountain dew glass and the trajectory was a 90 degree angle upward to my forehead. In all fairness, it was the little snot of a girl who dared him to shoot with her in directly behind the bull's eye.

 It was right outside that home that I learned to ride my first bike. I learned how to do a back flip on my parents bed. I got my first black eye from a swing set, another injury in which I hold my brother to blame. It was where my brother and I held a cooking show where we demonstrated how to make sandwiches and hot dogs wrapped in cheese. When I wanted to go fishing, I dug for worms in the dirt that was my parents driveway. And it was the house that I felt my first earthquake. Granted, living in Oklahoma in that decrepit trailer, it was probably just the wind.

 Furthermore, it was in this house that I imagined Jesus' coming back to be him knocking on our front door, inviting him in our trailer and watching E.T. with my family until he had to leave to go visit the rest of the families in our church.

 It was also in this house that I hid several weeks worth of first grade homework crumbled in my closet. I played with Barbies and got my first kitchen set. My brother taught me to sing the T.G.I.F. song and yelled at me when I didn't get the words or rhythm right. My brother tried to teach me the identity property of multiplication and was upset when his kindergarten sister was too stupid to understand. It was where my brother and I worked together to make my mother's birthday special by cleaning and making a beautiful happy birthday sign. To me it was like just like the surprise parties from television, when in reality it was nothing more than a picked up living room and a piece of paper with the words "Happy Birthday" misspelled.

Nevertheless, that meager single wide trailer has all my most adored memories.

 My favorite memory of that home involves a special stuffed animal named Ted E. Bear. This was my brother's bear. My brother received this bear from our mother while still in the womb. It was my brothers sidekick on all of his cop and robber adventures. Yet at some point along the way, I decided I deserved ownership of that bear. It may have been simply because it was my brother's and I knew I couldn't have it. Or maybe I envied the affection my brother showed the stuffed animal. Either way, I wanted the bear. We fought and fought over Ted.

 Our mom had just gotten a job at the courthouse. She decided that the only proper way to settle this was to sit us down at the kitchen table one Saturday morning. Each of us were at our spots. I knew exactly which spot was which, because I carved our names into the wood on the back of the chairs. My mom took the end closest to the living room. I took one the side closest to the window, and my brother sat across from me. Our mom had her big early 90's glasses on and a notebook and pen in front of her. The bear was in the center of the table, as it was the reason she brought us there that day.

 We each had a chance to plead our case. We both wanted the bear. I don't know what sort of argument I could have made, considering the bear was not even close to mine. But my mom decided to be fair and gave us joint custody. We both signed the papers and walked away.

 The bear was never really an issue again. In fact, I'm fairly certain I was done with the bear in a week's time. Years later, my brother and I felt we were far removed from our childhood shenanigans. We shared a room at an incredible, huge, brand new home in town. (In all reality, this was a home built seventy years prior, the bathroom didn't work, we shared a room, and the floor plan resembled the trailer home. It was a modest home, but it was the nicest house in which we ever lived.) We sat on our opposite sides of the room, with blue tape that drew a boundary dividing our space equally.

Mr. Ted E. Bear ended up getting thrown back and forth across the enemy line several times. Here I am now, nearly twenty years removed from those treasured family law documents citing joint custody. On that day, it was plain to everyone but me all I wanted was what I knew didn't belong to me.

All I wanted was control. For the past several years I have wanted control of my life. I wanted a degree so that I could have options before me. I wanted to be an adult.

I have options now, and I just want to go back to a life of riding a bike, digging for worms and having adventures in a desolate pig pen. I don't want to make decisions about the trajectory of my life. That's for adults.

But I got my W-4 today and I'm here to tell you, I grew up entirely too fast.