Relocation 1; Granger to Millcreek (from 6 Migrations; Relocations That Possibly Ruined My Life)

My parents moved my family from Granger to Millcreek when I was 4, and I don't think I've ever been the same. I lost everything and everyone, and thereafter, for the rest of my life in the cool, cruel world of Millcreek, I was always an outsider, always "The New Kid...not the cool new kid with the BB-gun, but the weird new kid who plays with his toy trucks."

In Granger I had a best friend, Lance Martin, (name changed) who once pushed me off a rock wall and made me scream with terror so loud that his mother dropped her cigarette and ran outside and dragged me into her kitchen and berated me for screaming like a girl. She made me sit at the table and think about it for a while, then she sent me home.

Another time, I pressed my face into the Martins' screen door and Lance smacked it with his open palm. I didn't scream this time, I ran to my own mother and told her about Lance hitting me and she dragged me into the kitchen and made me sit at the table and think about it, and then she sent me back out to play with Lance, who berated me for whining like a girl.

In Granger I also met the love of my life, June Sorensen (name changed, I think), who never berated me for behaving like a girl, as she was a girl herself and approved of such behavior. Once June, Lance and I were jumping around in the bed of a pickup and Lance belted me in the stomach and June, mortally offended, knocked Lance down and kicked him over the tailgate off the end of the truck and Lance's parents laughed so hard the tobacky leaked out of their nostrils.

I also had a dog in Granger, named Slick, an evil dachsund with a pointy face who bit me on numerous occasions but managed to fool the rest of the family with his pious front and silky bark. I avoided him whenever possible, but my brothers would drag me out to the backyard and make me throw a ball across the lawn and Slick would rush over and seize the ball and return it dutifully to my feet, then wait hovering over the ball with his filthy nose dripping all over it, gazing up at me with those dark, red-rimmed eyes, malevolently a-glow, communicating in the most visually eloquent terms his intention to sink his yellow fangs into the spongey flesh of my fat little hand at the moment I reached down to lay hold of that wet, slobbery tennis ball.

"Take the ball," my brothers would say. "He wants you to take the ball and throw it."
Slowly I would lean down, bringing my eyes, wide with fear, down closer and closer to his, until our noses were only centimeters apart. Slowly I would reach out with trembling hand, expecting with the faith of a missionary the treacherous snap of his jaws over my palm, and as I put my hand on the ball, the very faintest kind of growl would reach my ears, from deep in his throat, a growl so faint that only myself and only because my ears happened to be inches away from the source could hear it, and I would feel an icy chill along my spine as I took the ball and heaved it across the yard as quickly as is four-year-old humanly possible. And Slick's dark little eyes would twinkle at me, and he would race over and grab the ball with an extra relish in his bite.

And I would throw the ball a few more times for him, and then my brothers would throw the ball, and then Slick would seem to suddenly lose interest in the fetching, and my brothers would horse around, maybe play a little football, knock each other down while Slick barked joyfully, and then Mother would slide back the patio door and call out that it was dinner time, and we would go inside to eat, and then Father would say; "Somebody call in the dog," and one of my brothers would call to the dog and then tell me;
"Go out and call Slick," and I would go back out through the screen door and look around the yard for him, and call out;
"Slick!" and at that moment I would feel his little teeth sink into my calf as he sprang out from where he'd been hiding behind the barbecue by the patio door, and I would scream with terror and my family would drag me into the kitchen to berate me and make me sit at the table and think about it.

But lo! On the day we moved and were packing and putting boxes in a truck and I stood wandering around the yard with my Batman cape on, I heard my father call for Slick and say to my mother; "where's his collar?" and at that very moment I saw his collar on the cement step by the back door and I reached for it and thought to give it to my father and receive some kudos but also at that very instant for the first time in my life I had a vision of the planar pentoidals from beyond the stars who spoke to me and asked me how it was going and mentioned that it would be a shame if someone adjusted the collar so it was two holes bigger and loose enough that a dog might pull and twist it off and run away at the very time the family was about to permanently change address...

Much later my brothers and sister and my parents would often ask me if I remembered Slick, our old dog, and I would say I barely remembered him, and I would ask whatever happened to him and they would sigh and say that he got away and ran off just as we were getting in the truck to drive over to the new house, and we lost him on the very day we moved. And I would sigh, and say what a pity it was, as my eyes took on a faraway look...

And much much later I was visiting my parents and my mother asked me if I remembered Lance Martin, and I said barely, and she said she'd been talking to his mother and she asked about me. "He's getting married next month," she said.
"Oh really?" I said. "To who?"
"A girl in the ward...June Sorensen..." She took the wedding invitation off her desk and handed it to me. There on the invitation was a picture of the happy couple, neither of whom I recognized, but there on the lawn far behind them and barely visible, the unmistakeable form of a dachsund rampant on the field of green, eyes glowing red with hideous import...

I got lost on the day we moved into the new house, my parents found me one street down, disoriented and weeping, sitting in the gutter in front of the house that I thought was our new house. As I saw my mother and got up to walk over to her, a car pulled up to the driveway and stopped for me. The woman driving the car turned to her daughter; "Hold on a sec, Honey, we have to wait for this little girl."