The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir (v5.0) Read Online Free PDF Page B

place where doting mothers took their daughters for a touch of elegance while shopping. Nothing about the Tea Room remotely interested me until I learned of a ritual that my sister mentioned in passing. It appeared that young visitors were invited to reach into a wooden box containing small gifts, each beautifully wrapped in white tissue and tied with ribbon, and select one to take away as a permanent memento of the occasion. Once my sister passed on to me a present she had acquired and didn’t much care for—a die-cast coach and horses. It was only two and a half inches long, but exquisite in its detailing. The doors opened. The wheels turned. A tiny driver held thin metal reins. The whole thing had obviously been hand-painted by some devoted, underpaid person from the defeated side of the Pacific Ocean. I had never seen, much less owned, such a fine thing before.
    From time to time after that for years I besought them to take me with them when they went to the Tea Room, but they always responded vaguely that they didn’t like the Tea Room so much anymore or that they had too much shopping to do to stop for lunch. (Only years later did I discover that in fact they went every week; it was one of those secret womanly things moms and daughters did together, like having periods and being fitted for bras.) But finally there came a day when I was perhaps eight or nine that I was shopping downtown with my mom, with my sister not there, and my mother said to me, “Shall we go to the Tea Room?”
    I don’t believe I have ever been so eager to accept an invitation. We ascended in an elevator to a floor I didn’t even know Younkers had. The Tea Room was the most elegant place I had ever been—like a stateroom from Buckingham Palace magically transported to the Middle West of America. Everything about it was starched and classy and calm. There was light music of a refined nature and the tink of cutlery on china and of ice water carefully poured. I cared nothing for the food, of course. I was waiting only for the moment when I was invited to step up to the toy box and make a selection.
    When that moment came, it took me forever to decide. Every little package looked so perfect and white, so ready to be enjoyed. Eventually, I chose an item of middling size and weight, which I dared to shake lightly. Something inside rattled and sounded as if it might be die cast. I took it to my seat and carefully unwrapped it. It was a miniature doll—an Indian baby in a papoose, beautifully made but patently for a girl. I returned with it and its disturbed packaging to the slightly backward-looking fellow who was in charge of the toy box.
    “I seem to have got a
doll
,” I said, with something approaching an ironic chuckle.
    He looked at it carefully. “That’s surely a shame because you only git one try at the gift box.”
    “Yes, but it’s a
doll
,” I said. “For a girl.”
    “Then you’ll just have to git you a little girlfriend to give it to, won’tcha?” he answered and gave me a toothy grin and an unfortunate wink.
    Sadly, those were the last words the poor man ever spoke. A moment later he was just a small muffled shriek and a smoldering spot on the carpet.
    Too late he had learned an important lesson. You really should never fuck with the Thunderbolt Kid.

Chapter 2
    WELCOME TO KID WORLD
    DETROIT, MICH. (AP) —Great news for boys! A prominent doctor has defended a boy’s right to be dirty. Dr. Harvey Flack, director of the magazine
Family Doctor,
said in the September issue: “Boys seem to know instinctively a profound dermatological truth—that an important element of skin health is the skin’s own protective layer of grease. This should not be disturbed too frequently by washing.”
    —
The Des Moines Register
, August 28, 1958

             
    SO THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT NOT VERY MUCH: about being small and getting larger slowly. One of the great myths of life is that childhood passes quickly. In fact, because time