From Chapter 2, The Day the World Didn't End`;
“Go home immediately, children! Something terrible has happened!” Miss MaryAnn Canya speaks commandingly, but with a cracking voice, as if she is about to cry.
All twenty-seven of us children in the sixth-grade class dutifully file in one door of the long closet that spans the width of the back of the classroom and hurry out the other while tugging on our coats. Out in the hallway, we join the mob of other students; all of us are rushing down the third-floor corridor, down the stairs, and out the girls’ entrance of the ancient brick building and into a gray November day.
All of us children exit, that is, except me. Instead of following the others out the doors, I continue down the stairway into the basement and crouch on the cold concrete floor between two green barrels labeled Civil Defense in yellow letters. Miss Canya never said exactly what terrible thing had happened, and no one seemed to know what it was, so I just figured that the world was ending. There really was no point in running home; the atomic bomb that we had so often practiced for by falling on the floor and covering our heads was finally coming. Home would no longer be there.
After a while, the thunder of feet running back and forth on the floors above me slows and stops. The lights are dimmed in the school basement. Then there is silence, except for the hum of the furnace. The floor beneath me is cold and hard. Following what seemed like an hour or so of sitting and wondering what I should do next, I realize that I have not heard any bombs or seen any flashes of light, like we see in the civil defense movies. I cautiously make my way up the stairs. At the main entrance to the school, I have to stand on my tiptoes to look out the window because I am short for a sixth grader. Outside, everything looks the same: the house across the street with the absurdly high-pitched roof is still there as is the small factory down the street. But there is no one outside anywhere. The factory is not making its familiar humming noise. It is deathly quiet in North Arlington, and I am afraid.
From Chapter 4, The Late Bloomer;
I hate running into Sadie Vasto, our neighbor from the big white house across the street. Sadie is very Italian, very short, and very motherly. She always grabs me and bear-hugs me, forcing my head against hers and giving me a wet kiss on the face. Someday, I’ll appreciate the affection and encouragement. But not today...it is May… and today is my twelfth birthday.
Sadie is on the way to visit my grandmother, who is holding court in the Florida room at the front of our house. Sadie knocks on the storm door of the Florida room, a vigorous bang, bang, bang, which always annoys Nana, while I slink in through the back door.
I sit on the living room rug, playing with my new toys, unaware that some of them were intended for much younger children. It’s hard not to hear Sadie’s voice: she’s loud and assertive, but in a loveable and slightly goofy kind of way, and she often comes with containers full of lasagna or manicotti, strange Italian dishes that Pop will not touch, but the rest of us have learned to enjoy.
Sadie, however, does not sit down on the porch but comes into the living room, glances happily at the piles of toys, picks me up off the floor and kisses me, almost passionately. I like Sadie a lot, and I like the weeping willow trees in her yard across the street from us, but I feel like I’m getting a bit old for kisses, especially from middle-aged Italian women with red hair.
My grandmother follows Sadie, picking up piles of discarded birthday gift wrapping and continuing to look annoyed. “You’re getting so big!” Sadie says to me, but I suspect that she says that to every child that she runs into. She and Nana return to the Florida room, coffee and cigarette in hand, and partially closes the door.
“Gawd, is Dean doing all right?” Sadie asks in a subdued tone; it is impossible not to hear her from the next room.
“Why? What did he do?” Nana asks, still annoyed.
“Nothing, but I mean, he looks so young—younger than my sons looked at his age.”
The Vasto boys are adults now, out of high school and out of the house—tall, handsome young men with jet black hair. Sadie often laments that they rarely visited, but I suspect that every day would still be too rarely for her. My grandmother spends an unusual amount of time thinking about how to answer.
“Doctor says he is fine,” she finally says, and Nana’s tone makes it clear that Sadie would do best to drop the subject.
“Go home immediately, children! Something terrible has happened!” Miss MaryAnn Canya speaks commandingly, but with a cracking voice, as if she is about to cry.
All twenty-seven of us children in the sixth-grade class dutifully file in one door of the long closet that spans the width of the back of the classroom and hurry out the other while tugging on our coats. Out in the hallway, we join the mob of other students; all of us are rushing down the third-floor corridor, down the stairs, and out the girls’ entrance of the ancient brick building and into a gray November day.
All of us children exit, that is, except me. Instead of following the others out the doors, I continue down the stairway into the basement and crouch on the cold concrete floor between two green barrels labeled Civil Defense in yellow letters. Miss Canya never said exactly what terrible thing had happened, and no one seemed to know what it was, so I just figured that the world was ending. There really was no point in running home; the atomic bomb that we had so often practiced for by falling on the floor and covering our heads was finally coming. Home would no longer be there.
After a while, the thunder of feet running back and forth on the floors above me slows and stops. The lights are dimmed in the school basement. Then there is silence, except for the hum of the furnace. The floor beneath me is cold and hard. Following what seemed like an hour or so of sitting and wondering what I should do next, I realize that I have not heard any bombs or seen any flashes of light, like we see in the civil defense movies. I cautiously make my way up the stairs. At the main entrance to the school, I have to stand on my tiptoes to look out the window because I am short for a sixth grader. Outside, everything looks the same: the house across the street with the absurdly high-pitched roof is still there as is the small factory down the street. But there is no one outside anywhere. The factory is not making its familiar humming noise. It is deathly quiet in North Arlington, and I am afraid.
From Chapter 4, The Late Bloomer;
I hate running into Sadie Vasto, our neighbor from the big white house across the street. Sadie is very Italian, very short, and very motherly. She always grabs me and bear-hugs me, forcing my head against hers and giving me a wet kiss on the face. Someday, I’ll appreciate the affection and encouragement. But not today...it is May… and today is my twelfth birthday.
Sadie is on the way to visit my grandmother, who is holding court in the Florida room at the front of our house. Sadie knocks on the storm door of the Florida room, a vigorous bang, bang, bang, which always annoys Nana, while I slink in through the back door.
I sit on the living room rug, playing with my new toys, unaware that some of them were intended for much younger children. It’s hard not to hear Sadie’s voice: she’s loud and assertive, but in a loveable and slightly goofy kind of way, and she often comes with containers full of lasagna or manicotti, strange Italian dishes that Pop will not touch, but the rest of us have learned to enjoy.
Sadie, however, does not sit down on the porch but comes into the living room, glances happily at the piles of toys, picks me up off the floor and kisses me, almost passionately. I like Sadie a lot, and I like the weeping willow trees in her yard across the street from us, but I feel like I’m getting a bit old for kisses, especially from middle-aged Italian women with red hair.
My grandmother follows Sadie, picking up piles of discarded birthday gift wrapping and continuing to look annoyed. “You’re getting so big!” Sadie says to me, but I suspect that she says that to every child that she runs into. She and Nana return to the Florida room, coffee and cigarette in hand, and partially closes the door.
“Gawd, is Dean doing all right?” Sadie asks in a subdued tone; it is impossible not to hear her from the next room.
“Why? What did he do?” Nana asks, still annoyed.
“Nothing, but I mean, he looks so young—younger than my sons looked at his age.”
The Vasto boys are adults now, out of high school and out of the house—tall, handsome young men with jet black hair. Sadie often laments that they rarely visited, but I suspect that every day would still be too rarely for her. My grandmother spends an unusual amount of time thinking about how to answer.
“Doctor says he is fine,” she finally says, and Nana’s tone makes it clear that Sadie would do best to drop the subject.
Sadie Vasto's house (on left) across the street from my house
growing up...the brick house to the right is built on the
site of the Vasto's side yard which once displayed a grand
"weeping willow" tree.
growing up...the brick house to the right is built on the
site of the Vasto's side yard which once displayed a grand
"weeping willow" tree.
From Chapter 11, I Become a Man;
I found myself kneeling down, in my pajamas, in front of the toilet, for the third time that day. I have come down with the flu. It is one of only three times in my life that I remember being really sick to my stomach and throwing up. It isn’t an unusual occurrence in January; the flu goes around, vaccinations notwithstanding. That’s what people say. There’s a doctor around the corner and down the main street. He’s pretty elderly and has been in practice for many years. The waiting room is crowded, but he sees me quickly, and I am taken to an exam room and told to strip down to my briefs. I am sitting there, on a paper sheet over the cushioned exam table, in my skivvies, looking at the walls, covered with the doctor’s degrees and awards. I feel like a total failure.
He steps in after a few minutes and says, “The flu is going around, not unusual for January” and gives me a shot. Then he abruptly changes the subject. “You have hypogonadism.”
“I have what?”
“Hypogonadism, an endocrinological condition in which you do not have enough testosterone, the male sexual hormone.” He has diagnosed in five minutes what other doctors had not been able to do in ten years. The doctor pulls a book off the shelf and turns to a photo of men with this disorder. The eyes are blocked out of the pictures, but otherwise, they all look like me.
I found myself kneeling down, in my pajamas, in front of the toilet, for the third time that day. I have come down with the flu. It is one of only three times in my life that I remember being really sick to my stomach and throwing up. It isn’t an unusual occurrence in January; the flu goes around, vaccinations notwithstanding. That’s what people say. There’s a doctor around the corner and down the main street. He’s pretty elderly and has been in practice for many years. The waiting room is crowded, but he sees me quickly, and I am taken to an exam room and told to strip down to my briefs. I am sitting there, on a paper sheet over the cushioned exam table, in my skivvies, looking at the walls, covered with the doctor’s degrees and awards. I feel like a total failure.
He steps in after a few minutes and says, “The flu is going around, not unusual for January” and gives me a shot. Then he abruptly changes the subject. “You have hypogonadism.”
“I have what?”
“Hypogonadism, an endocrinological condition in which you do not have enough testosterone, the male sexual hormone.” He has diagnosed in five minutes what other doctors had not been able to do in ten years. The doctor pulls a book off the shelf and turns to a photo of men with this disorder. The eyes are blocked out of the pictures, but otherwise, they all look like me.
The Author at age eighteen, before treatment
and about age thirty-two, during treatment for
Delayed Puberty.
and about age thirty-two, during treatment for
Delayed Puberty.
