ID Theft in the Fifth Grade

👻Ghostwritten by Megy Davis, published with written permission from the author.

Mom was pregnant. Again. I was eleven when their second bombshell dropped — we were moving to a new house. This was to be our new family ‘Palace.’ That next Sunday, my parents piled my older brother Chris, my younger brother Harry, and me into our maroon Chevy Impala convertible to go see it. In my mind, I pictured the Disney Palace, complete with shooting stars. 🌠🌠🌠

Dad turned onto a bumpy dirt road, and every so often, we passed an enormous hole in the ground surrounded by tall mounds of brown dirt. I rubbed my nose as the earthy smell of wet dirt hit my nostrils. He pulled up to one of those gaping holes, turned to us, and proudly announced, “This is our new house!” When I finally got out of the car, I stared into the depths of the murky pit, stunned. There was a pool of water down at the bottom! Were we supposed to live in this hole like prairie dogs, groundhogs, or a family of raccoons? Where was my bedroom? I began to cry.

Dad explained we were going to watch ‘the men’ build our house. That the big hole I was looking into was our basement. Even though I’d never been in a basement, I felt much better. The hole was a muddy mess, and Mom was afraid we’d fall in. When we left, I had unvoiced concerns. Where were our neighbors? Who would be my friends? What would our house look like when ‘the men’ finished it? They didn’t have a picture to show us.

Our New Elementary School was BIG

We drove around the block and up the next street, and Dad pointed out Beaver Elementary School. Our new school. Beaver? Did beavers live in our new neighborhood? Ugh. Out of the dirt piles of our neighborhood rose a brand-new one-story brick building with a playground. Dad pulled in. Chris, Harry, and I ran  over to play on our new school playground. Mom and Dad stayed in the car, kissing. No one else was in sight; it was just our family, and it felt perfectly fine. At least we had a place to play.

The following Sunday, and most Sundays after, we’d take a family drive to our new ‘Palace.’ Soon the wood frame was up, but with no walls. After they laid the plywood subfloor, we played ‘inside’. It was fun to jump on the wood and make loud noises. I learned that our neighbors from where we now lived had also bought a big hole on this street, one hole away from ours. Things were looking up.

They Named Our Street … Shaw Drive?

That summer, Mom’s belly got bigger, and they paved the street. It finally had a name: Shaw Drive. It was a really long street, and our ‘Palace’ was almost to the bend at the end.

Dad would walk around our ‘castle’ pointing out the various rooms: the living room, dining room (his study), and kitchen. Mom was so happy! She and her belly stood amidst a bunch of plumbing pipes as she pretended she was stirring spaghetti sauce and noodles and baking chocolate cakes in her new oven. I couldn’t see it. Only tall pipes and pieces of wood … what was I missing? But Mom was smiling and happy. Things felt safe.

Two things happened the next time we visited. The Friday before, Dad had stopped in on his way home from work and arrived home super eager. The builders had erected the stairs. Sunday, we would each visit our new bedrooms. I thought ‘the men’ had finished the house, and it was time to move in. On the long ride there, Chris, Harry, and I jumped around in the back seat. We had no seatbelts back then.

Dad pulled into our freshly paved double driveway and parked the Impala. I looked up at the second story. Where were the walls? The house still didn’t have inside or outside walls; you could see right through it to the house being built behind ours.

Meeting My New Bedroom

That did not deter Dad. As the Crowned King of his new Castle, he marched the five of us up the rickety, temporary staircase. We crowded into my bedroom. He made a big show of declaring, “This room is all yours.” I liked it. I had a window opening to the front yard, and it was big! Dad said it was the biggest of the four bedrooms upstairs.

Chris frowned, not yet knowing his room was the smallest one across the hall from mine. Shouldn’t the oldest get the biggest? That didn’t make sense to me, and I felt vaguely guilty. But Chris picked on me a lot, so I didn’t care that much.

The third bedroom was for Harry and the new baby, and the master bedroom was for Mom and Dad. We played in our ‘rooms’ for a while and then went outside to run around the wood paths the builders had laid across the mud for access. I stepped on a nail. We couldn’t go to the school playground because I had to go get a tetanus shot in the bottom of my foot. That was the first of four nails I stepped on that year. I learned to hate tetanus shots. They hurt.

That October, Melissa was born and was the cutest little sister I could’ve dreamed of. I helped take care of her, pretending I was her mommy. I wanted to have a dozen kids when I grew up. Friends had surprised Mom with a new thing called a diaper delivery service. Every Wednesday, a truck came and took away the dirty cloth diapers, then left us with clean ones. It was heaven; Mom was so happy, and so was I. I hated washing fresh, stinky poop down the toilet and then taking the dirty, wet diaper to the ‘diaper pail’ awaiting the diaper load in the washing machine. The invention of Pampers was still far off in the future. Three months later, Mom was expecting. Again!

Relegated to the ‘Slow Table’ in Fifth Grade

Moving day finally came right in the middle of my fifth-grade year. It was spring, and I was excited and scared at the same time. The Beaver office lady led me through the empty halls to my new classroom mid-morning. The kids looked up from their work and stared at me as I stood at the classroom door. I was mortified. Oddly, my new teacher was a man. Mr. Toenjes, or Mr. Twinkletoes, as Dad liked to call him behind his back.

Mr. Twinkletoes didn’t like two-syllable names, so he immediately shortened my name from Kathy to Kat! Kat didn’t even sound like my name. I had my identity stolen away, then given a new one by this tall, red-haired authority figure.

He’d call on me. ‘Huh?’ Cause I didn’t remember Kat was my name! Is that why he moved me to the ‘slow kids’ table? Everybody had desks except for us five kids in the back. I had always thought I was smart. I’d gotten good grades until then. I did not like this teacher. But… we had way too much fun at the ‘slow kids’ table, and soon I stopped caring so much.

Chris was in the sixth grade, one classroom over. If I leaned over and peeked outside my classroom door, I sometimes saw him standing in the hallway outside his classroom. His teacher was Mr. Clayton. Didn’t they have any lady teachers at Beaver? They were so much nicer. And they didn’t change your name to that of an animal with fleas. The school year finally ended, and I graduated to sixth grade. Chris would go on to middle school and I’d be alone at Beaver the next year.

Summer, Finally!

That summer was great! Houses were rising up all along Shaw Drive. Susie from our old neighborhood moved in, and we had tons of new friends. It was 1962, and Beatlemania was a real thing! I bought the LP ‘Meet The Beatles’. Three new friends and I hung out in my living room, pretending we were the Beatles. We memorized all twelve tracks, singing and ‘air guitaring’ to every song. I was John Lennon. We would take turns being Ringo because he wasn’t so cute back then.

My new neighborhood was the best. There were kids our age up and down Shaw Drive. Mom’s belly was getting big again. This time, I knew what was coming. I’d be lugging babies, laundry, and linens up and down two flights of stairs. Forever. Why did we need a basement?