GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #166: OF LATE I THINK OF MY CHILDHOOD

I don't know why I've been thinking of my childhood of late, but here are two episodes from my youth. I must have been the same age I was when I first saw The Empire Strikes Back, as described last time.


My grandparents on my step-father's side got me a piggy bank when I was a kid. They said that whenever I find loose change, I should put it in the bank until it's full. I asked them what I should do when the piggy bank (which was transparent) got full of coins. They told me that I should break it open with a hammer and get the coins exchanged for paper money.


The very idea that I had to smash this wonderful gift with a hammer drove me crazy. There was no fucking way that I was going to break this glass pig. It broke my heart, thinking I would have to do this eventually.


I never did break that piggy bank. I held it upside-down and jerked it back and forth until all the coins had slipped out of it. I still have that piggy bank to this day. Whenever I find coins in my basement, I toss 'em in there. And when it looks full, I'll get each coin out the hard way.


Another time: my step-father (in one of his rare moments of giving; usually he was only giving when it came to negative comments and physical abuse) gave me a pinata for my birthday. I loved that pinata. I had no idea that I was supposed to break it open and get the goodies inside. When he told me that was what I was supposed to do, I absolutely refused to do it. As I recall, I got a beating out of it, but I held onto that pinata for a long time. I wonder whatever happened to it.


I'm a fucking weirdo. I obsess over things like that. I really want that pinata, even though I'm 37 fucking years old. I lost a baseball when I was a kid, and I still have horrible dreams about it. I still wonder if maybe it's still in the bushes across the street, and it takes all of my self control to not go and look for it. I lost it 25 years ago. It can't possibly still be there, but I still think about it in my OCD kind of way.


I gotta learn how to let things go.