benjamindennis

[benjamindennis]

I've always loved Halloween. From as far back as I can remember, it's been my favorite holiday.

As a kid in the 80s, it just felt different. It was edgier, spookier, and in my case, less politically correct.

My mother seems to be a recurring theme, but it's for good reason.

Growing up, we were a little thing I like to call poor. And don't misconstrue what I mean. Poor, for some, means that they didn't have the best toys or the hottest sneakers. Poor for me meant that we would go weeks and months at a time without electricity. So... we were POOR.

As such, on many occasions, Halloween costumes were of the homemade variety. This is necessarily a bad thing as I believe that homemade costumes are much more sincere and true to the spirit of Halloween. However, that is provided that the costume question is not potentially intended to either scar your child for life or insult a certain demographic of people. Those things are pretty much bad.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

Halloween of 1987, my mother, using materials found in our home, created for me a memorable costume. I was clad in a tattered white shirt, tattered trousers, had my curly locks twisted into knots, a dog chain draped around my neck, and shoe polish smudged all over my face. Perplexed, in my 9 year old innocence, I asked what I was supposed to be. With certainty, my mother responded, "A jiggaboo."

I had no idea what that word meant, so I asked for further explanation. "Ummm... It's like a pirate," she stated. No, mom. It's not.

Halloween of 1988, in much the same fashion as before, my mother used what we had on hand. This time I was adorned with black tights, a kimono, my hair was pulled tightly into a bun with chopsticks placed in it, and my face was painted ghost white with my eyes lined in black to take on a distinctly Asian shape. Hoping for the best, I asked my mother again what I was supposed to be. "A samurai," she asserted.

I was, in fact, not a samurai. She had dressed me as a geisha. So, not only was I a walking billboard for cultural appropriation, but I was also a 10 year old boy in drag. Great. Thanks mom.

Please understand, not only was I made to wear these rather questionable costumes, but I was also sent out ALONE to trick-or-treat and explain to enquiring adults what the devil I was actually supposed to be.

I am all for uniqueness and individuality, but parents, while I do not endorse generic, store-bought costumes, please do not make your child both the cause and the victim of a hate crime. As much as I loathe the idea of seeing 62 Spider-Man, 14 Barbie, and 27 Five Nights At Freddy's costumes, it's better than insulting whole cultures.

That said, once I started making my own costumes, they were pretty rad. This year's will be of the rad persuasion as well.

Have a Happy Halloween and don't forget to embrace the scary!

[benjamindennis]

Parenting can be hard. Specifically, finding appropriate punishments for certain infractions. I haven't always gotten it right. However, I don't feel like I've ever been too over the top.

Whenever I was eight years old, we lived in a farmhouse in a small community known as Burnham. The house was a single story home with a full basement. I lived in the basement. Almost the entirety of it was mine and I liked that a lot. I had a bedroom. I had studio space for my art. I had a playroom. And then, of course, there was the creepy room with the hot water heater and spiders. We stayed out of that room.

The staircase was built in such a way that there was a partition that wrapped around it to keep people from walking straight to their plunging demise, which was handy. Most people don't like to fall. It was covered in trendy wood paneling from like, 1973 and was otherwise pretty nondescript.

On one particular evening I was sitting in the orange rocking chair situated a few feet in front of the aforementioned partition. My mother and I were constantly at odds over one thing or another and on this particular evening, according to her, I had "sassed" her... which is not all that unlikely. And I take to mean that I must have had an opinion on some relevant matter.

So, rather than grounding me or punishing me in some way remotely appropriate for the sin of sassing, my mother angrily stormed into her bedroom and returned a few seconds later with a braided belt that she would occasionally wear with ugly, pleated slacks.

Now, mind you, I'm not inherently opposed to corporal punishment if the situation calls for it. However, I do believe that there are typically better options. On this specific evening, my mother would disagree.

At eight years of age, I was essentially already bigger in stature than my mother. She was all about 5'1" and I've always been a sizeable young man. As such, I made the determination in that moment that my mother was not, in fact, going to strike me with the fashionable braided belt. This did not appeal to me in the least. Moreover, I felt that it was inappropriate for the situation and therefore, I informed her that she would not be lashing me with this staple of 1980s culture on this evening.

It seems that this did not sit well with her and her intended plans in that moment and therefore, since I had refused to stand, in order for her to lash me about my ample gluteal region, she swung the belt wildly, aiming in the approximate area of my cranium. I didn't like this.

With my cat-like, adolescent reflexes, I caught the belt and pulled it from her hand. In the same motion, I tossed it backwards, over the partition and down the stairs, far from my tender buttocks.

I had, for all the world, anticipated that she would retrieve the belt and resume her mission to accost me with it. But, to my surprise, I was wrong. Rather than retrieving the belt, she simply turned, walked into her bedroom, and shut the door.

Now, it may sound like I had struck of victory of sorts. That was not the case. Not at all.

For the next three days, the woman never spoke to me, made eye contact with me, or acknowledged me. The closest I came to acknowledgement was at dinner-time, because my dad insisted that she still feed me. So, while she did prepare me a plate and set a spot for me at the table each night, she would walk by me with my plate in her hand and drop it from a height of 10"-12", ensuring that the food scattered and I had to gather it back up before I could eat.

Perhaps this would have been an effective form of discipline if I had understood why she was doing it, but to this day I really don't. I mean, I get it. Trauma is cool. But that may have been just a bit much.

But hey, I didn't die, I guess. So, I have that going for me.

[benjamindennis]

When I was 6 years old, I lived by what I can only describe as a "haunted house".

To be clear, I don't think I believe in hauntings and ghosts in the traditionally accepted sense. I'm not sure where I land on the topic, but I'm pretty sure that I don't believe that Aunt Mildred (I didn't have an Aunt Mildred) lingers around after her untimely demise, but then again, what do I know?

So, the house in question was, at this time, occupied by an LDS family. I'm not sure that their religious affiliation is relevant, but up to that point, I'd never met a Mormon, so... do with that information what you will.

This family had a son around my own age, named David. David had his bedroom on the third story of the house, which was probably really the attic. As such, in order to get up to it, I had to climb a flight of stairs which had a landing and then, I had to climb another flight of stairs up to his room. In my mind, having a bedroom that far away from the rest of the family was pretty much the coolest thing that any kid could have. Also, one time David got to be on the afternoon kids show (hosted by what I perceived to be a vagrant clown) that I watched, so that made me super jealous.

Back to the point though. This house was fairly nice. It was older and required some renovation, but all things considered, it was nicer than my house. That wasn't really all that challenging, but stick with me here. Anyway, even at 6 years old I was keenly aware of the fact that something wasn't normal about it. Specifically, every time I would climb the staircase to David's room, I would get both dizzy and nauseous on the exact same step, both going up and coming down. It was always, without fail, the ninth step from the bottom.

I told David about this on more than one occasion but he was fairly dismissive of it because he didn't feel it and also because he was a dumb kid that just really didn't give a crap.

Fast-forward a few months and David's family began the necessary renovations on the house, part of which included taking up the carpet from the staircase as it had been fraying and just looked fairly terrible. That's when we saw it. There, on the ninth step from the bottom, and having spread just a bit to the eighth step, was a rich, brown stain. It was unmistakably different from every other section of wood on the staircase. And that was, in fact, the very step that I always felt sick and disoriented on.

The family became curious and probably suspicious about the stain, and did a little research on the matter. It turned out that several years before there had been another family living in the home, with one member being an aged grandfather who was dying of terminal cancer. I believe that it was stomach cancer, but whatever the case, it was alleged to be a very painful experience.

As such, on at least one prior occasion, the old man had tried to kill himself in order to end the pain. According to the story my parents were told, he had locked himself in the bathroom and eaten an entire cereal bowl full of prescription medication. Obviously, this somehow didn't get the job done.

So, one evening around dinner time, the old man made his way down the stairs, called his entire family to him, including the children and grandchildren, pulled a pistol from behind his back, put it in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. The ninth step bottom is where his head was resting as he bled out.

Why did this make me feel all funky, having no idea it was there? I don't know. I just know that after the family discovered this, they soon moved back to Springfield. So... yeah.

I have a second, unrelated story about that house, but you'll have to wait for that one. It's pretty good too.

I will say though, that I was once exploring across the road from the house with my mother and to her horror, picked-up a human femur which had been unearthed. That's probably not relevant, but it's kinda cool.

[benjamindennis]

It's been stated that I've led a pretty interesting life and with that comes the propensity to be a relatively engaging storyteller. Admittedly, many of these experiences seem somewhat unlikely, if not outright preposterous. But, I assure you, everything that I will share in this blog is absolutely true. Or, at the very least, it is the truth as I remember it. So, let's just go with it.

When discussing some of these memories, it will be necessary to indicate certain details about those who were there with me. However, rather than stating their identities outright, I will use initials. Although, if the details are overly sensitive or embarrassing, I may simply redact the names altogether. Also, I assure you, many of the stories that I tell will indeed be embarrassing or, very likely, inappropriate. If that's not your thing... sorry.

So, with all of that having been said, let's begin at the beginning.

...

My name is Benjamin Scott Dennis from West Plains, Missouri. That was not my intended name, by the way. I'm not even sure what my intended name was. It probably should have been something amazing, like Stud, or Buzz, or maybe even Brute McManly. But, whatever.

You see, when I was born, my mother was what some might generously refer to as a "free spirit". Though, as an educated adult, I may be kind enough to chalk-up some of her lesser qualities to the experience of having lost her firstborn child, at five years of age. I have no doubt that there was a significant amount of trauma stemming from that event.

All that to say, she still made some seriously questionable decisions. Not the least of which was to abandon me in the hospital on the day of my birth, without having so much as named me.

Fortunately, it was 1978 and a very different time than that in which we currently live. The hospital willingly released me into the care of my aunt and uncle after a mad scramble to attempt to locate my wayward mother, who was long gone. They had transported my mother to the hospital to give birth, but had no idea that she had split shortly following this not insignificant event. The only requirement of my release was that I had to be named for the purpose of documentation or some such thing. So, my aunt, who was a delightful combination of sweet and insane, christened me Benjamin Scott Morris. The surname being that of my mother's estranged husband. My aunt knew that I did not belong to him, but in fairness, no one but my mother rightly knew whose progeny I actually was. So, it was basically a roll of the dice.

As the story goes, it would be some two weeks before my mother would once again make an appearance. At this time, my grandparents sat her down and firmly asserted that she needed to start acting like a mother and not like a floozy. I assume that this was not well-received, as I would be raised almost exclusively by my grandparents and my aunt and uncle (who lived just down the road) for the next three years. During this time, my aforementioned sweet and insane aunt asserted that my mother spent time with a "warlock". But that's a story for another time.

It was around this period that my mother seemed to slow-down, at least slightly. I have a smattering of memories from this time in my life, but none of them seem to be terribly appropriate. For instance, even though my mother had returned home and made some minimal effort to begin to parent her son, I clearly remember waking up in the homes of strange men on a somewhat regular basis. In fact, there were times I would never even see the face of the man who owned the house that I was sleeping in. He would be up and gone, presumably to work, before we would ever leave. I'm not sure when or how I got there to begin with.

I also remember helping my mother heft beer into a house full of loud, raucous men and being made to stand against the wall with a full beer can on my head. Why? I have no idea. I guess a fat kid with a beer can on his head is funny... and maybe it is.

It was during this timeframe that the seeds were planted for my love affair with attending concerts, as I was presumably in the role of awkward baggage for one of my mother's many dates with seemingly nameless individuals, which happened to involve attending an Ozark Mountain Daredevils show. I'm led to believe that my mother was heavily influenced by the mantra of, "If you want to get to Heaven, you've got to raise a little Hell." Or, so it would seem. I wonder how that panned-out for her.

By way of additional concert-related debauchery... my mother swore that I was conceived in the parking lot, following an Alice Cooper concert. Interesting, but not necessarily information that an adolescent child should have about their mother.

Shortly after this, somewhere around early 1983, my mother introduced me to the man that I would eventually come to consider my father on a rather dark, if not ominous, dirt road, in Pomona, Missouri. They would marry rather quickly, or at least, so it seemed. Within the next couple of years I would start using the name Dennis as my surname, as that was his.

It never occurred to me that I couldn't just assume a name and make it my own legally. So many years later, as I was preparing to marry my now ex-wife, my dad would pay to have my last name legally changed to Dennis as a wedding gift. Additionally, he purchased matching burial plots. Because, what says "wedding day bliss" like a discussion about dying and being tossed into a previously purchased hole in the ground? For the record, I intend to be cremated. But, I digress.

And so, there you have it. That's how it all began and how I became who I am, figuratively. Although there is so much more!

Come back soon for more real-life nonsense.