Still just playing around here.

Once upon a time, there was a television show called the Brady Bunch. A photogenic widower with photogenic sons meets and marries a photogenic widow with photogenic daughters. Hilarity ensues.

This was not going to be like that. But yeah, the widower in our story had three sons remaining at home. The widow, three daughters. They got that much right.

The widower was not especially photogenic. He was a tradesman, worn by years of grief and worry. His ability to hold a job – maybe his interest in holding a job – had suffered. Much later, his Middle Son speculated that perhaps his judgment had done the same.

The widow? Who knows what she was about? Middle Son never learned her story, nor did he ever think to ask. It was a done deal. He never actually spoke to her during the Introduction phase of the courtship, and she didn’t speak to him.

The daughters? One of them – the middle one, too, which Middle Son found somewhat ominous even at the time – was loudly enthusiastic. It was all so perfect. Middle Son was six years old, and not a model of observation and analysis. But even he noticed that only she said she thought this was a good idea. None of the other five kids, including Middle Son, voiced any opinion at all.

I’d describe them, but what the hell? Descriptions are irrelevant. These kids weren’t TV characters. They weren’t “the smart one,” or “the funny one,” or “the mischievous one.” They were just kids. Pick any six kids: They were like that.

The wedding immediately followed the introductions. Trouble followed the wedding within subjective microseconds, and in later years Middle Son found he had blotted most of it from his memory. It wasn’t deliberate. He just naturally formed a habit of erasing unpleasant memories. Large chunks of his childhood remained blank to him for the rest of his life, including virtually everything having to do with his stepmother. Her indifference toward her new children grew, in the fullness of time, to active dislike. She was never coy about it, give her that. She had very direct ways of dealing with things she didn’t like.

The widower seemed to have a lot of trouble holding jobs. This formed a pattern in Middle Son’s life which he later fought: When you’ve expended the opportunities in a particular area, move to another and start over. The widower moved a lot. So did his … well, for lack of a better word let’s call it a “family.”

Hilarity did not noticeably ensue. What the adults discussed behind closed doors, Middle Son never knew or cared. At least they didn’t yell. He was very familiar with yelling, and hated it – even when it wasn’t directed at him. If at any point in their marriage they were affectionate with one another he missed it, but mutual bitterness was not in short supply. And the kids? Armed camps. But since the widower was gone a lot – after a while, he was gone a lot – it would have served the boys better to have studied Sun Tzu and Ho Chi Minh. They needed guerrilla tactics if they were going to compete, because the girls had all the weapons in that protracted war. Mostly they just took their dad’s example and stayed away as much as possible. It was easier for the older son, who soon got a driver’s license and basically disappeared from his siblings’ lives. The younger boys? Cannon fodder.

Those two boys formed certain, er, personality quirks. Middle Son developed a strong distaste for cities. Since they invariably lived in or around cities, this was a problem. But it was the early sixties, and there were always places that hadn’t been bulldozed under and paved over, or places that had been abandoned for a time and went back to trees. He was drawn to those places, places where he could build “forts” and retreat to his books and his fantasies. As long as he showed up on demand for school and meals, nobody cared where he went or what he did. He often went very far afield indeed. It wasn’t enough, but it would have to do.

Under the circumstances I suppose it was inevitable that those two boys would form attitudes toward authority that were not precisely constructive. The youngest one eventually became something of a monster. Someday, if he’d lived, he’d have moved next door to you and your lawn would die. Your daughter would experience virgin birth, your pets would disappear and you’d get hepatitis from stepping on that abandoned syringe needle. The youngest one never did learn the uses of nuance, and he didn’t live long. Maybe that’s for the best.

But nuance was possible. Middle Son developed certain traits that, from a distance, appeared socially responsible indeed. He became extremely punctual, for example. It was practically a mania with him. When you show up where you’re supposed to be, when you’re supposed to be there, people don’t yell at you. They don’t ask where you’ve been or what you’ve been doing. This reduces the need for lies, and simplifies the lies you tell anyway. Middle Son learned from experience that simple lies were the best ones. It was much easier to keep them internally consistent that way.

His other trait, sometimes taken by others as a sign of social compliance, was a terrible dislike for theft. He did not steal, and he did not tolerate the company of people who did. What was his was his, if he could possibly defend it. You must understand that at this point in his life there was very little he could call “his” and effectively defend the claim. But that little was sacred to him. He truly hated a thief. This should not be taken as meaning that he himself was especially honest. Nuance – but he didn’t steal.

To call him socially maladroit would be accurate, if understated. You can call a thermonuclear bomb rather loud, too. Accurate. Understated to the point of falsity. I mentioned that they moved a lot. Social adroitness is formed in childhood by long-standing relationships, and the conflicts and amities that develop therein. Middle Son never grasped the concept of “long-standing relationship,” so he just skipped all those other steps. He graduated, after a fashion, from the twelfth public school he ever attended. After a while he welcomed every move the “family” made as an escape from the social chaos he left in his wake. Hatreds, feuds, vendettas, frequent beatings – he never got big enough to deal physically and effectively with his social problems, and perhaps that’s for the best – occasional death threats. There was always a next move. In the fullness of time he learned this really didn’t bring advantage. But it was usually welcome anyway.

As he grew older, he grew more angry. At first he didn’t even know what he was so angry about. He had no basis for comparison, and assumed everybody lived like this. When he thought about other people at all, that is, which was seldom. In the glorious clarity of hindsight, he later realized that everywhere he went during this period there were people who found him rather frightening.

Maybe they were right to do so. It’s safest to assume that if he had gone the way his younger brother did, he’d have been more competent at it. After all, he is the one who survived.

By the time Middle Son was no longer a child his worldview was largely fixed, and consisted primarily of scar tissue. It was not a recipe for a well-adjusted or successful adulthood. He had a strong sense of right and wrong, which probably prevented him from becoming a conventional criminal. But all paths to solid citizenship were closed to him. His distrust of any authority figure or symbol was profound. His social isolation – near total.

And he never did call her “Mother.”