The Truth is Bad Enough: What Became of the Happy Hustler? Read Online Free PDF Page B

monkey bars. I’d do something either extremely silly or extremely dangerous in order to attract a crowd.
    In daredevil mode, I would swing across the monkey bars like a dervish, skipping one bar. Then I’d skip two. Then, stretching my long arms to the max, three.
    I fell. Hard. My audience began running for help in all directions. I looked at my arm and saw a bone poking through the skin, which was turning all shades of blue. No blood.
    A teacher arrived. The school nurse followed. Then the principal. This must be serious, I thought. Everybody is paying attention to me. Before too long, even my mom showed up.
    It turned out to be a nasty fracture, requiring several days’ hospitalization.
    What I remember the most about the hospital stay were my mom’s daily visits. They may not have lasted long, but she was available. She wasn’t fighting with my father or getting drunk or gussying up to go out for a night of carousing.
    I returned to school, playing up the fallen-hero scenario. You’d have to really be heartless to make fun of a kid with a big white plaster cast on his arm.
    I was grateful to be excused from the humiliations of gym class but distressed that the jolt of the accident didn’t appear to improve my brain waves. I didn’t feel very smart, which was another contributing factor to my outsider status. Ugly and dumb.
    Shortly after my arm was pronounced “as good as new,” I had another mishap.
    Until their relationship completely disintegrated, my parents repeatedly made futile attempts to glue our broken family back together again. On a snowy Sunday afternoon, we ventured out for an excursion to Forest Park, the location of the World’s Fair in 1904. The massive park, carpeted with snow, contains several lakes that freeze over when the temperature is below thirty-two degrees for several days, creating natural ice-skating opportunities.
    I loved it, largely because it gave me a chance to perform in public. Even though I was wearing pedestrian shoes, I felt like I was a diva in the Ice Capades, turning and spinning, imagining the applause and going faster and faster.
    I was also going farther and farther away from the curb where my mom and dad were parked—sitting in silence, I guessed—watching me.
    Faster and faster, farther and farther. I was reaching new dramatic heights when, in a split second, I plunged under the freezing water. Gasping for breath, to keep from going under the ice, I attempted to hold on to the edge of the ice that remained intact.
    My hands kept slipping, making it impossible for me to pull myself out of the water. My teeth were chattering uncontrollably. The weight of my wet clothes made the situation even more treacherous. Did I try to scream for help?
    A crowd was beginning to form. “He’s going to drown,” someone said. “Oh, my God,” said another. “What happened?”
    My mother would later tell me that she saw it coming. From her vantage point of about fifty yards away, she could clearly see where the ice was unfrozen, maybe better than I could. Even though she knew I couldn’t hear her, considering the distance, she screamed my name anyway as the ice cracked and I submerged.
    “Where are his parents?” I heard someone say.
    Then, out of nowhere, a man was at the edge of the ice, reaching out to me. “Grab my arm and I’ll pull,” he said. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my mom and dad on the sidelines, frozen in shock.
    He was risking the possibility of falling in himself, something the rapt spectators surely must have known.
    “Easy, kid,” he said. “Let me do the work.”
    I grasped his muscular forearms and with a steadiness that seemed impossible considering the immediate danger of the situation, he pulled me from the deadly waters.
    He saved me. The crowd cheered like they were at a sports event as he scooped me into his arms.
    He had a big yellow mustache and perfect white teeth, reminding me of the psychiatrist. The more I shivered, the