Chapter II

As for those stories my mom always told me, boy was I a brat. I guess all boys are, at that age.

My dad was always away, so most of the time it was just my mom and me. His job in the Navy was on a ship. I know there weren't any wars, but his ship was always somewhere, mostly for two or three months at a time. In fact, I hardly remember my dad being around at all.

There are certain memories that I have with him, but mostly it was just that he was away. I suppose that is what helped to prepare me for what was coming up in the future.

Dartmouth, Nova Scotia seemed like a nice enough place. We had moved there, two years earlier. The third house we lived in there was a duplex, on the top of a hill. Actually the street was called, Mountain Avenue. You could see my school, at the bottom of the hill, from our back porch.

Mary Lawson Public School was where I went to primary. Like most little kids on their first day, I cried. Mrs. Bowser, my first teacher, didn't help matters much. She was a wicked old thing. I have 3 memories really stand out from those days. One was the day we all had to go to the gym to get our shots, another was the sight of old Mrs. Bowser smacking my poor little hands with that enourmous slab of black leather. Both experiences made me cry. I learned to forgive the doctor.

The third was just weird for a 5 year old kid. I was walking through my school yard on my way home. There was a girl there, she must have been in her late teens, or early 20’s. Well, this girl had a knife, and she grabbed me. I can remember her holding the knife up to me, and saying, “If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you.” Tell anyone what? And why are you here? Why are you doing this? I never could figure that one out. Anyway, she let me go, and I continued on my way home. I never told my mom or dad.

I wish I could remember Jimmy's last name. He was my very first 'best friend'. We used to play Batman together. We looked kind of silly though, all our moms' could find to make capes, were these tartan patterns. We didn't care. We were 'Batman and Robin'... Or were we McBatman and McRobin?