My fresh start in Burlington was somewhat delayed. The builders that my parents hired to build our new house were incompetent. One builder trapped glass of ice water in between the two pieces of drywall that would separate what would become our kitchen from our family room. After running a forklift into the outside of the house, the glass apparently tipped over. This saturated the drywall. A week later, I fell and crashed into the wall when my family was touring the house. Instead of smashing into the wall and falling, I burst through the paper-thin spot of drywall that the water had soaked through and slammed my forehead directly into a load-bearing horizontal board. I knocked onto my back, completely unconscious.
The incompetence did not end there. Like with the water, someone left an open can of paint in between the wall separating my infant sister’s room and the hallway. This we were not able to discover in time and my sister died from inhalation of paint fumes within three weeks of moving into the house. To this day, her room is cordoned off; not because my parents are the sentimental types that would leave the room of their deceased child untouched, but because anyone who takes as much as a step into her room will almost instantly become dizzy. This has always greatly upset my parents. They could really use the closet space.
The problems with the builders kept mounting and mounting. They showed up to work drunk; they fell off the roof; they attached chandeliers to the floor; they stabbed each other and bled all over the newly-installed carpet. In the meantime, we had sold our house and my mother had given birth to twins. We were forced to rent houses across the state in Waterbury, Simsbury, Avon, and Hartford. This was the time I was supposed to start kindergarten. My parents, wishing to save me the trauma of changing schools every few weeks until we were finally able to settle in, told the state that we were actually living in Burlington. Every morning, they dropped me off in front of our shell of a house, watched me get on the bus, went back home, picked me up from the bus stop every afternoon, and drove me home.
The rentals took a toll on the family, particularly my father’s leg which was shot in Hartford. Finally, my parents had had enough. They moved the family us into our house in Burlington even though it wasn’t finished. We had to walk around on gravel downstairs. This was still preferable to the floor situation in my room upstairs. The floor was not finished and I had to tiptoe around a gaping hole overlooking our dining room to get to my bed. One of my bed’s legs dangled over the hole and I had to be careful not to put too much bodyweight on that side. To be safe, I slept in the fetal position on one of my pillows which did irrevocable damage to my back that I still am feeling the effects of today.
I didn’t pay much attention to any of this, though. I threw myself into becoming a popular kid, though I would have settled for simply not being pounded on a daily basis. I canvassed the class like a politician. I shook hands, made promises, and slung mud with the best of them. Soon, I had a complex network of friendships with just about every group in kindergarten and I had did everything in my power to ensure that no group ever found that I was close with another group. I was afraid that when one group found I was friendly with another, they would cast me out, and naturally tell their enemies who would do the same. In addition, because my friendships were so deeply dependant on making fun of other kids, if it was discovered that I hung out with the very people I made fun of, there would be no reason to keep me around, either for the kids who laughed with me or, obviously, the kid I was mocking.
Being liked was exhausting. At recess, I would be engaged in no fewer than three games of tag, push people on the swings and be pushed myself, and would often play on both teams in kickball. At snack time, I finally got tired of running around spreading my time equally while trying to hide from everyone else, I eventually retreated into the cubbies and ate by myself. I averaged 2.9 playdates and 1.2 birthday parties a weekend. I was finally popular and it was exhausting. I hated it.
Saturday, July 23, 2005
Friday, July 22, 2005
Thursday, July 21, 2005
The Chris Sartinsky Memoirs: Chapter Two: My Earliest Memories and Preschool
The first thing I remember is sitting in the high chair in my kitchen. My mother was scooping another awful jar of baby food into a bowl when I was suddenly struck with a remarkable sense of consciousness. I suddenly realized that I was a living thing with rationality, contemplation, and I finally had some kind of understanding, however dim, of my place in the universe. So I jumped out of the high chair, smacking my head hard on the linoleum.
I’m not exactly sure why I did it. I didn’t dislike baby food that much. I’ve had a few theories, but lately I’ve come around to thinking that there is something innate in me that leaves me predisposed to such behavior. My most lucid and clear-thinking moments are inexorably accompanied by strong suicidal inclinations. For my own safety, I watch as much television and get as much sleep as possible to try and keep my consciousness to a minimum.
As a result of my brain injury, it would be a number of years before I ever had any more feelings of consciousness. In fact, it would be weeks before I had any feelings at all below my neck and months before I was able lift my head under my own power. In the intervening period, my mother gave birth to my sister. Still struggling with my fall, I took my first steps and spoke my first words several weeks after my sister despite my having a three year head start.
Though obscured by the fog of time past and the burst capillaries in my brain, I do have dim memories of preschool. Determined to avoid the social difficulties I found in my neighborhood, I quickly formed a posse for social standing and personal protection. I rounded up the most muscular, the most athletic, and the best-looking children at the Rocky Hill Early Learning Center. The Dinosaurs (as we called ourselves--the name was my idea) were known to harass the teachers, rough up the other kids, and set up the social hierarchy. After a few weeks of ruling the schoolyard with an iron fist, my minions revolted and kicked me out of the posse. The other kids, refusing to forgive and forget, allowed me no protection either and I was once again a preschool social outcast. My shoes were filled with stones and mud, my snacks were laced with chalk dust and Play-Doh, and my days were filled from morning to afternoon with beatings, beatings, and more beatings. The outcasts set up elaborate traps and ruses, often involving Tinker-Toys, Lincoln Logs, and miniature plastic furniture. The Dinosaurs simply kicked the living crap out of me. The only way I was able to escape preschool alive was by perching myself atop the highest slide in the playground, rain or shine, and knock down anyone who tried to climb up to get me. In winter, I acted out, seeking the refuge of the Time-Out Zone. As soon as my mother dropped me off in the morning, I would rush towards the nearest administrator and try and bite their shin or punch their thigh before another student rushed me and knocked me flat with a football tackle or clothesline. Unfortunately, when my adversaries understood this tactic, they did the same thing. As I rushed for an administrator, I would look over and see three or four other kids rushing for the same teacher. We would dog pile on top of her, beating her mercilessly until someone else rushed over and pulled us off. The other kids then had fifteen unsupervised minutes with me in the Time-Out Zone to pound me until I couldn’t remember my name. I eventually had to hole up in a corner fort built with cardboard bricks and threw hard wooden blocks at anyone who tried to come close. I developed quite an aim.
In my hours in my fortified bunker, I had little to do but read the books on the bookshelves behind me. This helped me make up for time lost after my massive hemorrhage. I was soon teaching myself to read and, to my delight, my parents decided to pull me out of preschool for kindergarten a year early. On top of this unexpected good news, my parents decided to move to the small town of Burlington. I relished the opportunity to make a clean break and start anew.
I’m not exactly sure why I did it. I didn’t dislike baby food that much. I’ve had a few theories, but lately I’ve come around to thinking that there is something innate in me that leaves me predisposed to such behavior. My most lucid and clear-thinking moments are inexorably accompanied by strong suicidal inclinations. For my own safety, I watch as much television and get as much sleep as possible to try and keep my consciousness to a minimum.
As a result of my brain injury, it would be a number of years before I ever had any more feelings of consciousness. In fact, it would be weeks before I had any feelings at all below my neck and months before I was able lift my head under my own power. In the intervening period, my mother gave birth to my sister. Still struggling with my fall, I took my first steps and spoke my first words several weeks after my sister despite my having a three year head start.
Though obscured by the fog of time past and the burst capillaries in my brain, I do have dim memories of preschool. Determined to avoid the social difficulties I found in my neighborhood, I quickly formed a posse for social standing and personal protection. I rounded up the most muscular, the most athletic, and the best-looking children at the Rocky Hill Early Learning Center. The Dinosaurs (as we called ourselves--the name was my idea) were known to harass the teachers, rough up the other kids, and set up the social hierarchy. After a few weeks of ruling the schoolyard with an iron fist, my minions revolted and kicked me out of the posse. The other kids, refusing to forgive and forget, allowed me no protection either and I was once again a preschool social outcast. My shoes were filled with stones and mud, my snacks were laced with chalk dust and Play-Doh, and my days were filled from morning to afternoon with beatings, beatings, and more beatings. The outcasts set up elaborate traps and ruses, often involving Tinker-Toys, Lincoln Logs, and miniature plastic furniture. The Dinosaurs simply kicked the living crap out of me. The only way I was able to escape preschool alive was by perching myself atop the highest slide in the playground, rain or shine, and knock down anyone who tried to climb up to get me. In winter, I acted out, seeking the refuge of the Time-Out Zone. As soon as my mother dropped me off in the morning, I would rush towards the nearest administrator and try and bite their shin or punch their thigh before another student rushed me and knocked me flat with a football tackle or clothesline. Unfortunately, when my adversaries understood this tactic, they did the same thing. As I rushed for an administrator, I would look over and see three or four other kids rushing for the same teacher. We would dog pile on top of her, beating her mercilessly until someone else rushed over and pulled us off. The other kids then had fifteen unsupervised minutes with me in the Time-Out Zone to pound me until I couldn’t remember my name. I eventually had to hole up in a corner fort built with cardboard bricks and threw hard wooden blocks at anyone who tried to come close. I developed quite an aim.
In my hours in my fortified bunker, I had little to do but read the books on the bookshelves behind me. This helped me make up for time lost after my massive hemorrhage. I was soon teaching myself to read and, to my delight, my parents decided to pull me out of preschool for kindergarten a year early. On top of this unexpected good news, my parents decided to move to the small town of Burlington. I relished the opportunity to make a clean break and start anew.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
The Chris Sartinsky Memoirs: Chapter One: Anecdotes on Birth and Early Childhood
I was born on December 9th, 1985 in New Britain General Hospital at 7:23 p.m. They say that I had an awful cold from the moment I came out of the womb and there was an hour or two when they thought my tiny immune system wouldn’t be able to handle the virus and I would die. It was the first of many occasions where I would overcome adversity in my life and the first of an even larger number of occasions when I would almost be killed by the common cold.
My parents were reformed cultists. They owned and operated the Dairyview Commune deep in the country in Andover for five and a half years before inexplicably shutting down and forcing the members of the commune off their land. They then sold it to a realtor looking to build a strip mall and used the money to buy a house in Middletown. They never spoke of their time in the cult, but they never lost their propensity for flowing white robes, rarely ate anything but kidney beans or tomato paste, and never trusted the other to pour them a glass of Kool-Aid.
From all accounts, I was a relatively happy child. I enjoyed riding my big wheel down the street in front of our house. But my happy little life was shattered when I started socializing with other kids. A girl named Sally lived in the house across the street. She was a typical bully. She ripped the Ghostbusters stickers off of my big wheel. This was especially traumatic as the stickers had been in place for a long time and they did not just rip off; they had to be peeled off. This left sticker scars on my big wheel that I imagine remain today, wherever it is. The gunk where the stickers had been were not just unsightly. They were a constant reminder of the ordeal. If you believe in the Freudian idea of childhood traumas lodging themselves deep into your subconscious and shaping you for the rest of your life, I believe this may have something to do with my deep distrust of women.
There was a little Hispanic boy who lived across the boy named Marc Padilla. I called him Marc Pancake. This nickname was not given out of malice--pancakes were my favorite food at the time, after all--but simple ignorance. Marc took exception and tried to drown me in his kiddie pool. When that failed, he tried throwing me into traffic. The car swerved to avoid me, didn’t see Marc standing on the sidewalk, and swerved right into him. Marc was instantly killed. Though I was too young for the incident to ever register in my memory, simply hearing the story sends chills up my spine to this day. I believe I’ve carried around a deep sense of guilt and fear ever since.
Other than these two events, my early childhood was mostly uneventful. I learned simple mathematics at an astoundingly young age, but I hid this from the rest of the world. I could add and subtract any two numbers from one to ninety-nine instantly in my head. I used this knowledge to my advantage. I also had an astute grasp of distance and time which, like my skill with numbers, I only used when I absolutely had to. When my mother tried to convince me that it was too far to go to the science museum because it would take all day to get there and by the time we got there it would be closed, I told her that the science museum was only fifteen minutes away and, if we took the highway, we could get there before lunch and spend the entire day at the museum. I wielded this power with such precision that my bimonthly trips to the science museum soon became weekly trips until I dragged the woman to the museum twice daily on weekdays and three times on Saturday. My parents finally put a stop to this by buying an apartment two blocks away from the science museum, though they told me we had moved hours away. I believed them. My sense of direction remained unrefined.
My parents were reformed cultists. They owned and operated the Dairyview Commune deep in the country in Andover for five and a half years before inexplicably shutting down and forcing the members of the commune off their land. They then sold it to a realtor looking to build a strip mall and used the money to buy a house in Middletown. They never spoke of their time in the cult, but they never lost their propensity for flowing white robes, rarely ate anything but kidney beans or tomato paste, and never trusted the other to pour them a glass of Kool-Aid.
From all accounts, I was a relatively happy child. I enjoyed riding my big wheel down the street in front of our house. But my happy little life was shattered when I started socializing with other kids. A girl named Sally lived in the house across the street. She was a typical bully. She ripped the Ghostbusters stickers off of my big wheel. This was especially traumatic as the stickers had been in place for a long time and they did not just rip off; they had to be peeled off. This left sticker scars on my big wheel that I imagine remain today, wherever it is. The gunk where the stickers had been were not just unsightly. They were a constant reminder of the ordeal. If you believe in the Freudian idea of childhood traumas lodging themselves deep into your subconscious and shaping you for the rest of your life, I believe this may have something to do with my deep distrust of women.
There was a little Hispanic boy who lived across the boy named Marc Padilla. I called him Marc Pancake. This nickname was not given out of malice--pancakes were my favorite food at the time, after all--but simple ignorance. Marc took exception and tried to drown me in his kiddie pool. When that failed, he tried throwing me into traffic. The car swerved to avoid me, didn’t see Marc standing on the sidewalk, and swerved right into him. Marc was instantly killed. Though I was too young for the incident to ever register in my memory, simply hearing the story sends chills up my spine to this day. I believe I’ve carried around a deep sense of guilt and fear ever since.
Other than these two events, my early childhood was mostly uneventful. I learned simple mathematics at an astoundingly young age, but I hid this from the rest of the world. I could add and subtract any two numbers from one to ninety-nine instantly in my head. I used this knowledge to my advantage. I also had an astute grasp of distance and time which, like my skill with numbers, I only used when I absolutely had to. When my mother tried to convince me that it was too far to go to the science museum because it would take all day to get there and by the time we got there it would be closed, I told her that the science museum was only fifteen minutes away and, if we took the highway, we could get there before lunch and spend the entire day at the museum. I wielded this power with such precision that my bimonthly trips to the science museum soon became weekly trips until I dragged the woman to the museum twice daily on weekdays and three times on Saturday. My parents finally put a stop to this by buying an apartment two blocks away from the science museum, though they told me we had moved hours away. I believed them. My sense of direction remained unrefined.
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