american dream to american nightmare - two

chapter two- childhood event on strange street

i believe i have mentioned the street that we lived at,and where i spent childhood, and had thought instead of Ferry Street, it should have been named pyscho street. aand why? the characters there were as disturbed as any of the characters one sees in the great movie, One Flew Over the Cuckoos nest! kids that were 4 to 6 eyars old were cursing and swearing at adults, a lot of boozing on street,and many rock fights i witnessed, and think to this day, holy crap! i am lucky i was never hit and killed by flying rocks. there was, in particular, one family that lived right next door to us,and had a big family ,and all had some form of mental illness that today we call bipolar disorder.one kid especially, would go into rages for no reason and call everyone else's mother a whore,and would say to his own brother: i'm going to kill! your whore wife and her kid! he had gottten hit in head with rock,and had brain bleed, causing his mood swings. i was always wary of him,and once he took a baseball to attcak me with,and i ran around a car, and when a man in neighborhood got his bat, i kicked his butt, for calling my mother a whore. that was typical of behaviors where i lived,and this contributed to my anxiety as a child. most of time, though, the kids to along and we would play softball and baseball games in parking lot of a grocery store, name A&P. all of the people on street where i lived were on some type of welfare, and poor. There were also some hilarious moments i recall there, like once a woman on our street who has obese, got stuck in a bathtub,and fire department was called in to rescue her!my older brother at time took over our pizza parlor,and he would stage boxing matches in the backroom with me, my brother, and other kids,and one kid i knocked out in 3 seconds! proud moment, but we had rematch that was tougher. i think my older brother was trying to put some self-esteem in me,and got me interestd in running, and i recall a friend of my brother's, who had the mile record ar rensselaer high school, took me out to train me in running, because i needed an outlet for my anxieties i had as a kid, watching my mom and dad have arguements a lot, after he got home late from the horse races. my mom was heavy drinker,and would go on binges, and get violent moods swings that me and my other siblings were very wary of. i also used to go to the boy's club a lot,and went to summer camp there, and learned to swim,and we had many activites meant to help us in growth as human beings. once, i had to take a test to go in deep w ater for first time,amd when i started, was ok, but quickly panicked,and almost drowned, and had to have counselor pull me out of the water. this instilled a fear of deep water that took years for me to overcome, with help from my older brother, who was in the navy. i can go on and on, however, the point i will make here is this: i had the traits in my personality , with anxiety and stress, that would shape me as person,and eventually lead to me seeking seelf-esteem from king alcohol.