I live in Brookfield, Wisconsin, which is already shitty. My dad is an anesthesiologist, so he kills people and makes a lot of money. And my mom doesn’t work, so that gives her plenty of time to get really anal about keeping our 8,000 square-foot brick house perfect. We used to live in Chicago, which was awesome. My best friend was Lindsay, and she introduced me to Def Leppard when their Pyromania album came out when we were 10. She had a cool older brother who taught us all about music and how to live the life of a rebel. Lindsay had holes in her jeans and a tee shirt with the union jack on it. And she bleached her hair to look like Joe Elliott, Def Leppard’s lead guitarist. My mom would never let me bleach my hair, even though it’s a hideous poop-color brown. But she had a job as a secretary back in Chicago and wasn’t as freakishly nosy and stalker-ish then. So, behind her back, I’d dye a streak of my hair white with hydrogen peroxide and use food coloring to make it blue. And I’d tuck the strand into a pony tail when I went to school so she wouldn’t see, but when I met up with Lindsay in first period Social Studies, I’d let it loose. She and I were so punk. But then at the end of sixth grade, my family had to move to Brookfield, Wisconsin, because my dad finally finished all his training and got his first job as an anesthesiologist in Milkwaukee. My parents were so amped.
“We’re going to move into a beautiful brand new house,” my mom would squeal. “It’s going to be much, much bigger than the one we have now, because Daddy’s going to be making a lot more money.” I swear she would drool as she described it to me. “So don’t be sad about leaving, sweetheart. This is going to be a very good thing. I won’t have to work all day anymore. And we’ll be able to buy you anything you could ever want. New clothes, pretty things for your room, anything.” I was pissed about having to leave my friends and my life in Chicago, because I had a cool thing going and because my parents were so busy that they pretty much left me alone all the time to do whatever I wanted. But a big house sounded cool. And money sounded cool too, because AC/DC was coming out with their Fly on the Wall album, and I figured if we had all this money, they would buy it for me.
Well, things weren’t that simple. We moved into this huge house in the Milwaukee suburbs that at first I thought could be totally radical if we put in a movie theatre or an indoor pool or something; but since my mom stopped working, she basically dedicated her whole life to turning the place into a Barbie mansion. And all the sudden, the stuff that had always been in my room, like my Joan Jett and Def Leppard posters, my collection of 8-tracks, my childhood Scooby-Doo sheets, all this stuff was now “inappropriate for the new house.” So, she made me get rid of my posters and sheets and put my 8-tracks in the closet; and then she decorated my bedroom in “the new house” with girly barf bag furniture from “Fairy Tale Furnishings” in Milwaukee. She bought me a queen size bed with a canopy that was basically the least punk rock thing you’ve ever seen. It was like, the minute my mom got to quit her job and move into the new house, she totally spazzed. The whole summer in Brookfield before I had to go to my new school, I had no friends; but I wanted desperately to get out of the house to avoid my crazy mother, who now spent every second either trying to makeover our new house or trying to makeover me.
Well, getting out of the house was easy enough; and if this whole new Monster Mom issue had come up in Chicago, it wouldn’t have been that big a deal, because I just would have hung out with Lindsay all the time. But Brookfield sucks. All the kids in the neighborhood are complete yuppies with their rich kid bikes and preppy clothes. You can’t really walk anywhere, because it’s the ’burbs and everything is so for away from everything else. So, it’s not like there was a record store or even a mall very close by. I either had to friendlessly trudge around the neighborhood, or lock myself in my gross room, praying my mother would not come in. And since it was so hot and hopeless outside, I typically opted for choice number 2.
Life was already boring as crap. But at least if I were truly alone in my room, I could read a book or look through Rolling Stone and listen to music. But my mother was always on my back, and this made me increasingly enraged. Moving was bad to begin with, and then my awful new room made it worse, and soon, for some reason, I was this little ball of fury and everything my mother did made me lash out.
It started with stuff that was actually out of line. For example, at 8am on one Saturday, my mom flung the door open to my room and cried, “April! I’ve set you up on a play date. You’re being intensely anti-social with the neighborhood kids, and I’m worried about you. Your new friend is downstairs and her name is Lillian. Get dressed!”
Worst possible way to wake up any 12-year-old girl. Espcially this one.
As she scuttled back down the stairs, I whipped the floral-patterned comforter off my head so my voice wouldn’t be muffled; and still lying there, I screamed, “MOTHER!!! Tell that rich bitch GO HOME. And don’t you EVER come in my room without knocking EVER again. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME!??!” It was actually pretty punk rock, how loud I screamed. A few minutes passed, during which I’m assuming my mother apologized to Lillian and told her to go home, before that crazy woman re-entered my room and instigated a huge screaming match with me about how I was an ingrate and blah blah blah. The whole time, I gripped my comforter and did not move a muscle from my sleeping position. Like those tree-hugging hippies who used to camp out on protest for days without moving, just to prove a point.
The fights with my mom then escalated to even the simplest situations. My mother came home from food shopping one day and called me down to help her put away the groceries. I can’t explain it, but this rage at being told to help her overcame me, and I sped down the stairs only to pick up a gallon of milk and hurl it with all my might at the ground, where it exploded all over both of us.
I guess my behavior was bad. I know it was bad. But I was having a difficult transition to Wisconsin. I needed space.
Well, my mom didn’t think I needed space. She thought I needed an intervention. I came down to the dinner table one night at the beginning of July and found my parents standing next to one another looking weirdly calm and serious.
“Sweetheart,” my mother began. “Your father and I have made an appointment for you to see a child therapist in Milwaukee. His name is Ken. He has a PhD from Harvard. Amazing credentials in psychiatry. He’s supposed to be really smart, a genius with kids. We see you’ve been having a hard time here, and we think therapy will help us all get along better. The appointment is tomorrow at 11:00am. Dad will drive you, okay?”
Although the idea of me going to a therapist like some whack job made me want to barf, my parents had these pleading looks in their eyes, so I kind of just said, “Yeah whatever, what’s for dinner?” They took that as a yes, and we sat down to this nasty French anchovy thing my mom made. I wanted deep-dish pizza.
Downtown Milwaukee is only a twenty-minute drive from Brookfield. Ken’s office was in a small-ish, random building down there. The downtown area of Milwaukee actually looked decently fun, I noticed. It was big enough. I wondered what the concert venues were like and how easily I could sneak into rock shows if I ever made friends as cool as Lindsay to come with me. My dad and I entered the office building and passed the front desk. We walked down a fairly long hallway, where there was a not-so-official looking waiting area with only one chair. Neither of us sat.
We were kept waiting for a few minutes, which made me want to be there even less. Although, I was curious to see what it’d be like to interact with someone who’d been deemed a genius at analyzing the minds of kids. My dad finally decided to knock on the door that had Ken’s name printed on it. A few seconds later, a dude I immediately classified as Major Creeper opened the door to reveal his yuppie business suit, Rolex watch, and disturbingly happy sneer.
“Hi, Mr. Fowler, I’m Ken Connelly,” he said to my dad, clearly trying to make his voice sound deeper than it is. It seemed weird to me that someone who was supposed to be really smart would care so much about how deep his voice sounded. They shook hands. “And you must be April.” Ken directed his focus towards me. “Step into my office,” he said, attempting to make a joke and sound like someone who’d say that line in a movie. He certainly was cheesy like someone of normal intelligence. I rolled my eyes and walked in.
Well, I can tell you right now, I called bullshit on Ken within five minutes. I sat down on the couch and immediately scanned the framed photos on his desk, all of which were corny professional portraits of him in a turtle neck, posing uncomfortably with this fat lady I assumed was his wife. After he shut the door, I thought he’d start asking me about my relationship with my mom; but instead, Ken instantly started trying to make me his friend, saying that he “could tell I was cool,” and talking about his awesome cars that “I could see sometime if I wanted.” I was like, hello, it doesn’t take anything close to a genius to realize that kids can’t drive, so why would any of us, especially a girl, give a damn about his expensive cars? I was pretty unresponsive to Ken.
Recognizing that I wasn’t quick to warm up to his Major Creeper social tactics, he said, “Alright, what we’re going to do now is a simple drawing exercise.” He took out some markers and construction paper on a clipboard from his desk drawer. “I want you to take these markers and draw yourself in your dream house, the most perfect house you could imagine. Anything in the world could be in it. Can you do that?” Easy enough, I thought. So, I drew myself wearing a Van Halen tee shirt and holding a Fender guitar, standing in a radical tree house filled with amps and big screen TVs and an endless wardrobe of rocker outfits. There were binoculars to spy intruders and a Jacuzzi on the deck. It was in a massive oak tree with purple leaves, had an escalator leading up to the front door, and a mote surrounding the trunk. Let’s see what Ken had to say about this masterpiece. I handed it to him.
“Hmmm,” he said, squinting his puny eyes at my masterwork. “I notice that you didn’t draw your family with you in the house. Do you have any idea why that is, April?”
Uhhhhh, because he didn’t tell me to?
“I thought you said only to draw me and the house,” I responded, flatly. Ken just clicked his pen and started taking notes.
The rest of the “exercises” that day were equally stupid. We did that inkblot test, where you’re supposed to look at a big black blotch on a card and say what you think it looks like. I thought everything looked like a rhinoceros, so I’m sure Ken had a field day with that. And then we did a similar test, where Ken showed me a series of pictures of people doing stuff and I had to come up with a story about them. None of it seemed genius. None of it seemed like it had anything to do with me or with why my parents had put me there. In fact, as I was sitting there, across from this phony, pretentious dude with his fancy watch and creepy fat wife photos, all I could think was that he was just a regular guy. Yeah, he went to school for a long time and had a million degrees, but there was no hiding that he was just probably as screwed up with just as many issues as me, and definitely wasn’t some genius who could analyze me or help me stop fighting with my mom.
The second therapy session, a week later, involved my parents. Ken invited my mom and dad to join us so he could get “both sides of the story,” even though he didn’t ask me a single question about my problems the week before.
“So, Mr. and Mrs. Fowler—”
“Oh please, call me Jim,”
“And I’m Margret.”
“Great.”
The pleasantries alone were making me nauseous.
“Now, I’ve been noticing already some underlying aggression and hostility in your daughter based on a few of the simple diagnostic exercises we did last week, so I’m wondering if you both could please tell me in what ways she’s been acting out.”
I couldn’t believe this. He noticed “aggression and hostility” from the tests? Oh please, this dickhead was just bitter that I didn’t jump for joy at the offer of taking a drive in his mid-life crisis Corvette. I was sitting there, without being able to get in a word to defend myself, about to witness an ambush, an attack, of three adults against one kid.
“Well, she’s become physically violent,” my mom began. “She throws household objects and it’s terrifying!”
“And she’s got a terrible mouth on her,” my dad chimed in.
One after another, the grievances were listed; and instead of trying to get “both sides of the story” and create some sort of dialogue or whatever those shrinks call it, Ken just agreed with every complaint my parents had! It was so unfair. I had to completely shut down just so I wouldn’t burst into tears. And I never cry. But this was just insane. From then on, Ken wasn’t just some clown to me; he was my enemy. And I was not going to let him win.
I don’t think I necessarily premeditated an escape before the next session. A week later, my dad dropped me off in front of Ken’s building, and I begrudgingly walked through the front door. I slugged down the hallway to the one-chair waiting room. I think I was sitting in that chair, waiting for Ken to come out and get me, for no more than a minute before I casually stood up. I sauntered right back up the hallway where I came from and exited the front doors. I backtracked the route my dad had taken for the past three weeks until I got to Wisconsin Avenue, a major street. I followed Wisconsin Ave right back towards Brookfield. I walked over the river and passed the Grande Avenue mall, passed the Milwaukee Public Library, and over the freeway. I walked my way all the way up to 29th Street (I guess it had been about an hour since I left), when I saw my dad’s white Mazda pull up beside me.
“Come on, April, get in the car,” he said, as he drove at exactly my pace alongside me. Cars all around us honked for him to move it. I simply didn’t respond. “April, honey, please,” he begged. Nope. I said nothing. I didn’t even look at him; I just kept on walking. He continued to drive for a few more blocks. Finally he raised his voice. “April, I’m not kidding. Get in this car right now!”
I came to a sudden halt and so did he. I slowly turned my head to the left, and with a cold stare in my eyes, looked at my dad and said very calmly, “No. Now, leave. Me. Alone.” I immediately snapped my head forward again, but in the corner of my eye, I caught my dad heave a heavy sigh, before he regretfully stepped on the gas and drove home.
I couldn’t believe I had actually succeeded in making him give up. But in all honesty, I didn’t want to have to walk eight more miles back to Brookfield, even though that would have proven a righteous point. So, I found a bus stop for the 10 Route a little further up Wisconsin Ave, and when the next bus showed up, I boarded. Almost an hour later, I got off at the Brookfield Square shopping center, and after forty-five more minutes of walking, I was home.
I went straight up to my room, but left the door open wide enough to hear my parents discussing how they had just gotten off the phone with Ken, who said that based on my behavior, he thought I was going to grow up to be a good-for-nothing indigent with nothing to offer but pain and anger to this world.
Yet despite all that, my parents didn’t get mad at me at all after the escape. In fact, they started being really nice. I guess they realized I meant business. My mom stopped harping on me so much, and didn’t try to control what I did or wore or put in my room. We actually started getting along. And my parents didn’t even try to send me back to Ken. I guess they figured he must not be such a genius after all.
Two months later, I started Junior High at my new school, and it’s actually not that bad. I met a cool girl named Paula, who wears weird makeup and says David Bowie is her hero. I decided I could get down with Bowie. So, Paula and I became friends.
The other day, she came over to my house. We were sitting at the kitchen counter, while my mom was making us grilled cheese sandwiches, when the phone rang. My mom picked up and then handed the phone to me.
“April, it’s Ken,” she half-whispered. At first, I didn’t know who the heck she meant, because I had already erased that dipstick out of my brain. But, just as I opened my mouth to say hello, I remembered.
“Hello?” I answered, making sure he could tell by my tone that I was giving him about two minutes before hanging up.
“April! How are you?” his Major Creep voice cooed, faking more friendliness than ever.
“Why are you calling me?” I asked, getting straight to the point.
“Well, April. I was thinking about ya, and I decided I really had to call, because I don’t think our time together is finished. I really believe it would be helpful for you to come back to therapy with me.”
“Uh, why on earth would I do that?” I said. “I hate you.”
“You what?” he gasped.
“I hate you,” I stated again, slowly.
“Oh, oh my gosh.” I could tell he wasn’t expecting that, and it was pretty funny. “I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone hate me before.” I scoffed, and hoped he heard it loud and clear over the phone.
“Well, Ken, I guess I must be the very first one.” And with that, I just handed the phone right back to my mom.
“Yeah, I don’t think she’s going to be coming back,” I heard my mom say to Ken, right before hanging up.
Paula and I grabbed our grilled cheeses and headed up to my room, as I started telling her the story of Ken, the Major Creeper/“genius” kid shrink. Now whenever we think someone in school is being a real dickhead, we call him a “Ken.” It’s like a code word.
We think it’s pretty hilarious.
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