I can't remember what I did, but it got my mother mad to the point I ran and hid under my bed. She was house cleaning it seems (now that I look back). It was on the weekend, and it was not the very cold part of the year, for there was a fire in the space heater in the living room, and it was on. I was perhaps seven-years old at this moment. We lived with Grandpa in those days, on Arch Street, in St. Paul, Minnesota. I ran, and remained quietly under the bed, it was unpleasant to say the least, but I felt safe for the moment. I squirmed to the far side of the wall, so my mother could not drag me out from under it"?yet I found out she had no intentions to put that much work into this episode of my life young life.

She came into the living room where the television was, it was new, our first black and white T.V., and we all marveled at it. It looked as big as a doghouse, a bloodhound's doghouse. The bedroom was next to the living room.

"You better come out from under there unless..."? she hesitated, gave me a beam of a smile, and she then walked away, just like that, it made me think,

"Unless what?"? For a time she sat in that big sofa type armchair, in the living room, in silence doing something. She was always doing something: sewing or mending, washing or cooking, or going to work at the stockyards; always keeping herself occupied with things and thoughts. I was being filled with her face and figure in the chair to the exclusion of all else.

Occasionally she'd look down towards me, as I hid in the dark corner under the bed.

"I'm going to be waiting right here, don't worry, I'm not going anyplace"? she said, promisingly, "you will be hungry, perhaps tired, and all that dust there"?you will have to come out sometime, and I will simply be waiting."?

And then I started coughing"?as if she had ordered the dust to be activated to annoy me"?(I always did tell her in later years, she should have been given a PHD in psychology); I learned that day, the power of suggestion is nothing to fool around with, if someone knows how to use it.

"What are you going to do, just lay there all day?"? Mother told me after about forty-five minutes under the bed.

In a pouting manner, I said, "I don't know...!"? I halfway cried, I didn't blame my mother for her actions, and she never once did over punish me (or so I feel), but I was molding and my new found formal reason was working overtime, and she knew I suppose, she knew she had to take time off to teach, punish, or discipline, lest I end up in life having no limits.

And so I thought under that bed, on that dusty old hard floor: she could wait forever, she's comfortable, I'm not, and what the heck is a thrashing or licking, compared to this, I mean, it would be over in a minute, and here I am 45-minutes later, torturing myself. Bingo, a light came on. And like a little soldier I came out"?defeated but no more dust in my face.

I marched up to her and lay over her knees and got what I expected, and it was over. So what did I learn? Perhaps not to compete, if you can't.

Written at the Restaurant "Angello,"? 5/16/2006