Kids Who Kvetch

From time to time, I spend a few days in Los Angeles with my daughter, son-in-law, and two grandsons. Every time I am with them, I feel a bit uncomfortable listening to the arguing and bickering between the kids and parents. I try to think back to what it was like raising our three daughters. Perhaps I have made an unrecognized trip at some time to the River Lethe, but I cannot remember any constant bickering and kvetching between child and parent. Maybe girls are different in that way. I don’t know. I’d bet not.

And then I try to remember if I behaved like that with my parents so long ago. I am certain that some sort of interchanges took place back then in Cincinnati. I try to remember, and I cannot really bring up a memory of arguing with my mother or father. But…

A few months ago, I was going through a cigar box of old papers. There are Boy Scout certificates for merit badges in Camping, Public Health, Forestry, Railroading, and others. I found report cards from elementary school, high school, and even Hebrew School. I came across letters of acceptance to colleges and medical schools as well as the Match Day form that indicated where I would do my medical internship. And there at the bottom of the box was this letter I had written to my mother when I was 12 years old. 

At the time (1955-56), my friends and I liked to go to the Cincinnati Gardens to watch the Cincinnati Mohawks play hockey. If Cincinnati got a goal, we would buy a Coke. We didn’t have to buy many. Sometimes one of us would catch a wild puck that flew off the ice. I still have one in my desk. There was a raffle at each game, and once my friend Frank won an electric razor. He actually held on to the razor for years until he had a beard to shave. 

After the game was over, usually about 10 o’clock, my 12-year-old friends and I would walk down Seymour Avenue to the edge of Swifton Center where we would have a pizza at Pasquale’s. Once that was consumed, we would walk the half-block to the bus stop on Reading Road and take the bus home.

That was the issue leading to the letter to my mother. She and my father felt that a 12-year-old boy should not be out at night taking a bus home from a hockey game. The other boys only had to take one bus home, but I had to transfer to a second one to get home. My mother insisted that someone pick us up after the hockey games. I could not understand what the problem was. After all, I was just going to a hockey game with friends. We argued the issue for a few weeks, and finally there was a settlement. At any future hockey games, my father or another parent would have to pick us up after having pizza. We were still allowed to walk the half-mile or so from the Cincinnati Gardens to Pasquale’s. This settlement did not please me, hence the above letter. 

Years later, my mother told me she took the letter to a dinner party. One of the attendees at the party was a friend who was a psychiatrist, and she showed him the letter asking whether she should be worried. From the way she told the story many years later, I think she was a little worried. The psychiatrist read the letter, laughed, and reassured her that Benjy (that’s me) was quite a normal kid. I don’t know to this day whether the psychiatrist was right or not, but that question is for another day.

So, I will surely be back in Los Angeles visiting my daughter and family many times in the future. I will witness those kid-parent interchanges again, but now I will probably relax and think, “Hey, that’s my grandson, Genstruck.”