At the Motel With The Mitchells

_{Chapter 3: Start At The Beginning}

Mom was always careful with money.

I tried to be a good kid, not make things any harder for her. But I was a kid. I guess now that I have kids of my own, I can see it from her side a little better.

School was OK. Actually, a little better than OK. Grades mostly B’s or B+’s. Sometimes A’s on the last report card, probably more due to teacher being generous than any additional hard work on my part. Loved sports, I played second base for a while and was pretty good, then broke my hand during a wild double play. Not anyone else’s fault.

Sometimes I’d see my cousin Marie driving around, at the park or the store. She acted like she didn’t see me. It hurt. I hadn’t done anything wrong. Neither did mom. Wasn’t fair.

I later heard she had a part time job babysitting one of the little kids in the neighborhood, Dennis Mitchell. Yeah, that kid!

Remember, this was a while ago…

There was the one thing my mom & I fought about all the time. A phone.

I was the only kid in school that didn’t have one. Well, I kinda’ did. Back then it was one of those flip phones that you paid for a monthly deposit card and every time you used the phone the cost was deducted. “But you couldn’t do anything with it!”

“Well, I mean you could make calls and get calls, but the phone couldn’t do anything else! Couple of dumb games! If you tried to access the internet it would run down your deposit really fast and usually you didn’t get online anyway.” Couldn’t even take half way decent pictures with it!

“I want a real cell phone like everybody else in school had.” She gave me a look. “Well, maybe not everybody, but still… it’s not fair!”

“You lost 3 phones so far,” Mom said for the fiftieth time when I tried to talk her into getting me one.

That really hurt! It was so untrue. The first phone I had definitely put in my school locker on a Friday. I forget it was there. It was missing on Monday when I went to get it. That isn’t lost, it wasn’t my fault. Someone must have taken it. I was like, 90% sure that’s what happened.

The second phone wasn’t even lost, I still had it. I had taken it to the beach and forgot it was in my back pocket. So, it’s not really lost. I think I got most of the sand out. The flip cover doesn’t open anymore.

The third phone was taken by my teacher, I wasn’t supposed to be using it in class. That’s not lost. She took it and hasn’t returned it yet.

Still, I guess I understood. Good phones were expensive then and the data plans cost a lot.

She told me not to nag here about it anymore. I kept asking, but I wasn’t nagging, just asking!