"Bohemia?" Dr. Bliss replied. "Well, I envision-"
"Hippies, right?" Curly suddenly interjected as he turned toward her direction sharply. "Beatniks? Travelers? Eccentrics? Nomads? Vagabonds? Wanderers? New-Ager types? Any roving community made up of anyone all too happy to wave their freak flag in the face of what we call 'normality.'"
"Why…yes…anything unconventional or unorthodox."
"Alright. So, riddle me this; how can some sap had the huevos rancheros to build rows upon rows of tacky little cookie-cutter houses, and when pressed to name this an unassuming undistinguished, milquetoast, and pedestrian swath of land, stumble upon…Bohemia, Oregon?"
Dr. Bliss gave her charge a slow and comprehensive nod. But Curly's face darkened with deep betrayal as he returned to the windowsill to contemplatively glare at all he surveyed from the therapist's office.
Curly: [13 Futterman Ave. Bohemia, Oregon. This was the house that caught the eye of newlyweds Monica and Lawrence Gammelthorpe; and one $35,000 down payment later, the deed was theirs.]
(Flashback)
[With the 'For Sale' sign now pulled from the ground and a small hole in the otherwise tidy lawn left in its wake, the second house on the left hand side of the roadway looked indistinguishable from the others dotting the cul-de-sac. Paint jobs and lawn décor aside, the domiciles in question were, architecturally speaking, similarly constructed bungalows by and large. The only feature that gave the place any stark character was a cozy porch.]
[For the young married couple, it was perfect.]
["Oh yeah. A man can breath out here." Lawrence said beaming with pride before turning to Monica. "Did your man deliver or did he deliver?"
["My man delivered." She said with a wry smile.]
["And it wasn't so easy-"]
["Because a lot of other couples had their eyes on this place."]
["You better believe they did- every single one of them."]
"[Mm-hmm. You did good. And the neighborhood is awesome!"]
["Hey Mack!" One of the movers says after taking a hearty swig from his water jug. "Got time for a photo of you and the Missus?"]
["Sure." He says gently tossing a camera towards the hauler.]
["Alright then, say 'Cheese.'"]
Curly: [I've seen that photo framed with prominence on nightstand of their bedroom- forever capturing the two of them standing on the porch happily surveying the moving men hauling their earthly possessions into the house. They look like the little plastic couple on the proverbial wedding cake; so full of hopes, potential, dreams of the future.]
(Flashback)
["Lar! Where do we stand on the Nikolay's Markets smocks?"]
[Hopping from the back of the truck, Lawrence hustles to his boss (an imposing and sharp-dressed bald man holding a beeper) who stands with all the commanding swagger of a general on the loading dock.]
["Just put the last bundle in the van sir!"]
["That's what I love to hear." His manager says with a wry smile as he gently shakes the pager in his hand. "I got the manager right here on the line with me. He was starting to get a bit worried there-"]
["Those blood stains from the smocks in the butcher's department were pretty stubborn. But rest assured, we'll have them within the next half hour. Even less if traffic works in my favor."]
["Good man!" He replies putting the device away. "Another week like this and something tells me there's a chance you and the missus might be joining me and the other managers in the VIP box at the next Pickles game."]
Curly: [At the time dad worked as head of the delivery department for a commercial laundromat that mostly serviced a bunch of supermarkets, cleaning the aprons and uniforms of their department workers. But through sheer dumb luck they also became the official laundry service of the Portland Pickles, a minor league baseball team, and because of that kickbacks of all kinds were available to employees who went above and beyond; swag, seasons tickets, choice seating, meet and greets...every now and again, management would even pick one lucky worker to join him in the VIP suite. Still, none of this put a damper on dad's ambitions of being his own boss someday.]
(Flashback)
[Monica sat at her stenograph as the judge makes his ruling and announced the next case. With a level of speed and dexterity that would shame a neurosurgeon, she documents the interactions between the defendant and the DA as well as all appropriate parties therein.]
[Once the offender is sentenced to 120 hours of community service for graffitiing the overpass with obscene pictures, the judge calls recess. With a relieved sigh, Monica rises from her stenographer's chair and begins to flex her fingers counting in rapid ones and twos to herself as she makes her way to the little kitchenette and grabs her lunch.]
Curly: [Mom by contrast wasn't as career oriented; she saw motherhood as her ultimate goal and pathway to personal fulfillment. That said, she wasn't the dependent damsel type either. Before pregnancy, she bounced around the county court system's stenographer circuit and primarily documented litigations involving the pettier side of the criminal justice system: little nothing cases involving violations of county ordinances/minor municipal criminal cases. Less 'Jack the Ripper' and more 'Jimmy the Jaywalker'.]
Curly paused for a moment to catch Dr. Bliss' translucent reflection from the window. To his shock, she continued to sit upright and jot down Curly's comments onto her notepad.
"Something the matter?"
"I'm sorry. It's just that I always imagined that were I to tell this story out loud, the sheer, mind-numbing boredom of it all would cause that poor person's head to violently implode into a bloody and unidentifiable mess.
"Goodness That's…quite the image." Dr. Bliss replied with a chuckle.
"But that's who mom and dad are; two boring people who by some cosmic roll of the dice wound up deciding to spend eternity together. Oh, they had it all figured out back in the day, didn't they; a humble lovers' nest out in the sticks, him chartering his own little laundromat in a nearby city while she held down the Ol' home front. He'd come home from a long day's work to the pitter-patter of happy feet and an ecstatic squeal of 'Daddy!' as she pecked his cheek and escorted him to his evening meal. A picture out of Better Homes and Garbage magazine. Far from Hillwood, life being as it should, somewhere that's green.
A beat of silence passes before Curly starts to laugh uncontrollably, very much like he did in the Principal's Office not too long ago. He throws himself to the floor, his body convulsing with each forced and phony guffaw as Dr. Bliss taps her pen on the arm of her chair; clearly grasping the point of how foolish he believed his parents to be for thinking their life would be a smooth one.
"No." He finally wheezed. "The sweet little boy they got wasn't meant for the straight and narrow… …"
(Flashback)
["FREE THE ANIMALS!"]
[Evergreen Daycare Center, Four-year-old Thaddeus Gammelthorpe boisterously bounces about on a hop-along ball during snack time. As his right hand grips the handle, his left twirls around a stuffed cat by the tail like some sort of impromptu lasso. In his pathway is a fellow student making a castle with the building blocks. With a violent swing, Curly swings the lasso-cat into his classmate's creation sending it tumbling into an incomprehensible mess. Curly gets in two more bounces before the classroom staff get involved; yanking him off the hop-along and putting him in the corner for fifteen minutes.]
Curly: [I guess one could say I was what you would call a boisterous child; fussy, colicky, rambunctious, you name it. But it wasn't as if I was 'bad'. I was like any child; a lump of clay ready to be molded by the behavioral morays of whatever given social situation I found myself in. If anything, when I look back, an argument can be made that even with my eccentricities, I was as normal as normal could get…an opinion that clearly wasn't shared by the Evergreen Daycare Staff!]
["…Well, he's quite impulsive and hyperactive." Said the head teacher Nanette. "Perhaps one of the most hyperactive kids I've seen since teaching here."]
["So he's kinda squirmy." Lawrence said. "He's like this at home too. Besides, aren't most kids active anyway? I'd be more concerned if he was staring off at a ceiling fan all day 'til his eyes run out of his head or something.]
["Yeah. But…Mrs. Gammelthorpe-"]
["Oh, call me Monica. Mrs. Gammelthorpe is my mother-in-law."]
["Right. Monica. Lawrence has said Thaddeus is like this at home too. Care to elaborate?"]
["Well, from the minute Thaddeus learned to crawl he was always on the go. Oddly enough he hit his walking milestone pretty quickly and since then, we've just been trying to stay one step ahead of him…to mixed results. He's far from sluggish, which makes getting him to wake up easy, but it's not like he uses that for anything constructive. He seems smart, and loves the zoo, yet for some reason seems to wish for their freedom. It's all about finding the positive in what you're dealt with. Besides, my sister was quite the pistol when we were kids."]
["And your sis-"]
["Moved away before he was born." Lawrence said abruptly.]
["Okaaayyy." Nanette replied. "You mentioned that your son loves the zoo. It's interesting because today during snack time he knocked over Chryselle's blocks with a cat while shouting something about freeing the animals…"]
["On our first trip to the zoo we saw some idealistic hippie type wringing his hands about zoos being prisons and how all animals deserve their freedom." Lawrence replied. "We tried to get away, but I guess the damage has been done."]
["Our son's impressionable like that." Monica added. "Stitching together vocal tidbits and passing them off as his own. Once when he was fussy about me changing his diaper, he shouted some quote from a movie about opening a space officer's helmet and how his skin could have melted from his face."]
[Nanette quizzically looked at Curly as he continued to run around the classroom. Her lips pursing in deep thought as she felt the words forming on the tip of her tongue.]
["Well?" Lawrence began with a slight uptick of fury in his voice.]
["Echolalia. Hyperactivity. Social disconnect. Slight lack of concern…"]
"What happened then?" Dr. Bliss asked.
"Dad blew a gasket as the teacher read from the buffet of potential neurological maladies associated with my behavior; Autism, Bipolar, ADD, ADHD, OCD, PMS, HBO, CNN, TCM, EIEIO, and all that jazz…(chuckle)… So that was it, no more preschool for me, or Kindergarten for that matter. But they couldn't keep me homeschooled forever, and despite their protests I was to begin my academic pursuits surrounded by my peers with first grade upon the start of that school year."
"And how did that go over?"
"I wouldn't know." Curly said calmly. "Half a month before classes began, we left Oregon and moved to Hillwood after Grandpa Thaddeus' stroke."