A Life Wasted

Slippery Slope

- 1971 Another new start.
It didn't take my mom long to realize I was in a very bad school, but we were stuck with the house and there were no options. She wasn't even upset when I failed seventh grade. You have to attend class to pass and I had missed most due to cut classes and suspensions. I believe this was on her mind when she decided to remarry. Out of the blue she told me she was getting married to a man I had never heard of and that we were immediately moving to Florida.

I had never lived anywhere other than Georgia and South Carolina, so Orlando was a shock to me. My new step-dad was upper middle class on a fast track to being wealthy. Wealthy enough for Bob to rob, though I lost contact with Bob during these years. Ken Stapp was a good guy. A rather smart man, driven by ambition. He was also a good parent. I hated him. I had been the man of the house for too long to accept another. I hated him before I met him and I continued to hate him until I left home at seventeen. After I no longer lived with him I began to appreciate him. But while I lived in his home I would never see anything other than the man who had taken over my job. My job to protect my mom and brothers.

During the two years I lived in Orlando as a member of the Stapp household there are only a few events worth mentioning. Ken had two children, Liz and Ricky. Liz was two years my junior and Ricky one year younger than I. So I remained the oldest. In Orlando we road a bus to school, but unlike South Carolina our Orlando schools were all white. Union Park Junior High was so calm and peaceful that it made me uncomfortable. There were plenty of teenage politics involved, but after the war zone I just left, I didn't care who was friends with who. There were bullies at the school, but even though I was just a seventh grader, I was a big seventh grader. Plus I am sure my confidence and experience telegraphed itself. So the bullies wisely left me alone.

There was however a fight, and it was a big one. It started over my brother Curtis. Curtis went to a different school, but rode the same bus home as Ricky, Liz and I. A group of kids were picking on Curtis so I told them to leave him alone. Words were exchanged so they said they'd see me when we got off the bus. There were a lot of them. Can't remember the number today, but I'd say around ten. All my age or a year younger. They got off at a stop before mine and dared me to follow. I told my siblings to ride to the next stop and go home, then got off. It wasn't until after the bus pulled off that I realized Ricky, Liz and even Curtis had got off the bus too. A new friend I had made, Tony, had got off too. The gang of kids starting talking. Drawing on Bob's lessons I didn't say a word, just attacked. To my complete surprise, all my siblings followed me into battle.

It was a big fight. I saw my new friend Tony get hit in the face immediately. He raised his hands and said he'd had enough. Kid's heart was in the right place, but he wasn't a fighter. Curtis had never been in a fight and was the youngest there by at least three years, but he fought like a tiger. He put one kid out of the fight with a leg bite. Neither Liz nor Ricky had ever fought, nor did they know how to fight, but they did all they could. Ricky got beat up pretty bad, but none of the guys was willing to hit a pretty girl, so Liz attacked them with out getting hit. Neither did much damage, but they did keep enough occupied that I didn't get overwhelmed. When it was over one of our attackers ran off, but the rest were hurt and out of the fight. My siblings weren't bothered again.

After this famous fight I developed a little gang of my own. We experimented with pot, which none of us cared for, did some light weight theft to build our club house, which was in a high tree in the woods. I know a fourteen year old today wouldn't be caught dead in a tree house, but back then it was pretty cool. At fifteen my parents went to Mexico for a week vacation so I skipped school that week and stole my step dad's car. It was a week of being a big shot, taking friends and even girls to the beach every day. It was amazing I never got caught. I would have gotten away with it had I not wrecked the car. Ken Stapp was not happy. Later that year my mom dropped me off where I worked (a restaurant) on her way to the airport, where I learned that I didn't work that day. No cell phones back then, so I had to walk home, which was about twenty miles in the Florida heat. I made it about five miles before I gave up and stole a car. That too would have worked out had I not kept the car for a week, then abandoned it in the woods near our neighborhood. It took the cops two weeks to figure out I was the car thief and arrest me. As a juvenile I didn't go to jail and all I got was a warning and a sealed record. My parents were another matter.