Kaplan - I Was a Child

I was a child, but I wasnt very good at it. Im not sure why. I think a lot of us are born waiting to be adults. I know I was. I just sat there, waiting. This is that story.

M Y MOTHER went into labor with me at the 1964 Worlds Fair, which was in Queens, New York. Every time I fly into JFK and take a cab to Manhattan, I look out the window at the old fairgrounds and I think, Thats where I began.

I WAS TAKEN home to 20 Sommer Avenue in Maplewood, New Jersey. On the front porch was a gray box meant for milk bottle delivery and pickup. When I was a baby, a milkman would come by once a week to pick up the old bottles and replace them with new ones. Then, of course, he stopped coming when all the milkmen stopped coming.

That box stayed on the front porch for the next four decades, empty. When something was put somewhere at my parents house, it stayed therelong after it broke, or no longer served a purpose, or just wasnt used anymore for whatever reason.

I HAVE two brothers, Michael and Andrew, seven and four years older. I have no idea how they felt about me showing up.

I do know that very early on, I had the sensation that everyone was a lot bigger and they could hurt me.

M Y MOTHER couldnt take having three boys. She was extremely jumpy, to say the least. Any noise startled her. The sound of a pot dropping on the ground could make her hit the ceiling.

Im getting discombobulated! she would scream, when we were too loud or would be too much for her in some way.

She spent a lot of time being discombobulated.

W E HAD a hamster whom we named Hampy. One day, she somehow gave birth to baby hamsters and we clamored around her tank, looking at them. Then we watched in horror as Hampy ate all her babies. My mother told us it was because we scared Hampy.

I felt we were too much for Hampy, just as, apparently, we were too much for my mother.

O NE NIGHT when I was very little, I had a dream in which I saw a bee who started crying. I woke up very upset about the sad bee. I wish I knew why that bee was crying and why I was so sad that he was so sad.

M Y FIRST best friend was Majorie OMalley, who lived next door. We got into a fight and she scratched my face. The scratch is still there.

The OMalleys house smelled different from our house. In fact, everyones house had its own distinct smell. I was confused because that meant our house had a smell but I couldnt smell it.

I N OUR LIVING ROOM , there was an enormous dark piece of furniture. It was a cabinet with a built-in record player on the right side and a place to store records on the left side. I remember listening to a recording of Its a Small World and studying the album case. Much later, I would learn that Its a Small World was written for the 1964 Worlds Fair, and made its debut as a ride there. Maybe thats where my parents got it, just before I showed up.

Albums were mysterious objects that you studied over and over again, memorizing every single corner of them while you listened to the record. My parents had a copy of My Fair Lady. On it, there was a drawing of Rex Harrison pulling strings attached to Julie Andrews as if she was his puppet.