1977 – 1978 wherein things start to get strange

I’m eight! I remember when I was little and eight years old seemed so grown up. Now I’m grown up. For my birthday this year we had a party at Pizza Hut and I got to pick all the songs on the jukebox. Here’s a question, why do Pizza Hut Juke Boxes always sound so bass heavy? I got legos and roller skates. I can’t wait to use my skates when we move to Bogota. I wonder what it will be like. Susan and I are speaking to each other only in Spanish and it’s making our parents a little crazy. It’s like they haven’t even been trying to learn. My Grandmother is super upset we’re moving. She was on the phone with my mom scream-crying for an hour about how we were going to die down there in the jungle and they’d never find our bodies for a Christian burial. I guess she only thinks about death because she’s so old? Or maybe her life is so horrible she can’t wait for it to be over? It’s also possible she’s in a hurry to meet Jesus since he’s like her boyfriend or something. I’m glad I’m not crazy like her.

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It’s June and we’re getting ready to sell the house. First things first they’re repainting everything. I love the way it smells and looks. It’s so fresh and clean. You can’t smell cigarette smoke anymore. Mom says we’re getting new carpet, too but not until right before we move out because she thinks Susan and I will destroy it. It’s fair to accuse me of a lot of things but not being someone who abuses tapestries. I am a friend to carpets and lovingly apply vacuum cleaning to them whenever given the opportunity. My dream is to someday own a steam cleaner so that I may someday live in a world where the carpets are maintained with everlasting pristine newness.  This month has been all about getting my vaccinations before we move. I’ve been injected at least six times. One of the shots made me pretty sick but I’m fine now.

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I’m in Atlanta for the summer. I’m at Aunt Millie and Uncle Paul’s place. They have a very cool duplex that they own. It’s up against the woods and near the train tracks. Apparently there’s a murderer on the loose who only goes after children – that’s what Susan says. Nevertheless, we are allowed as much freedom as we want. We went to Underground Atlanta which I thought was going to be fully underground but it turns out it’s just a mall. We bought candy cigarettes with our allowance and have been smoking whenever our Aunt and Uncle light up. They are both excited for us to move to Bogota and say that they’ll come visit us down there. At night, after they pass out we stay up watching whatever we want on TV. I saw this new show called “Saturday Night Live.” I’m not sure what it is but I think maybe it’s some college students here in Atlanta doing a school play? It’s kind of funny but mostly it seems to be about sex.

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It’s August and what a wild month it’s been. We came back to Oklahoma and the house was sold. We had one last time playing with our neighbors. The left over packing boxes were used to build forts. Because they were so sturdy we were able to build two story forts that could actually hold us up. We then flew to Miami. As you know, you have to wear your nicest clothes when you fly. This was my first time on an airplane and I was disappointed that I did not see angels on top of the clouds as I’d expected to. So I guess all those pictures in the Bible are lies? What else is new? We flew from Miami to Bogota in a 747. Because we were being relocated by dad’s company they flew us first class. We got to go up the spiral stairs and sit in the top of the plane in these amazing white leather chairs. I got a leather pouch with wings, a model airplane and a tooth brush as a gift from the Stewardess. When we arrived in Bogota it was night and I slept through all that. But we’re on the 9th floor of the Hotel Tequendama and you would not believe who is here? All the contestants from the Miss Universe pageant. Susan got all their autographs. I read in the paper today that someone named Elvis died. Susan says he’s that guy who Barry Manilow makes fun of. I guess — I can’t really say I’ve heard of him before.

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So much is going on. I’m in a new school called Colegio Nuevo Granada. It’s HUGE. They have K-12 all on one campus. The classes are in English except, of course Spanish class. I like my teacher — she’s my new friend Adam’s mom. Adam has the kind of hair I wish I had. His hair is straight. Mine’s all curly and gets fuzzy whenever it’s hot. We’ve been looking for a new house and I have to say the houses here are amazing. They’re all super modern and have these huge bathtubs and gardens. Every house here feels like a James Bond house. At the same time there are a lot of poor people. There are these kids called “gamines” who sell cigarettes and gum and will just ask me for money. Kids younger than me dressed in rags. Also, my money is worth a lot more here. I came here with $40 but now I have 380 pesos. It makes no sense.

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October has arrived. “Tricky Tricky Halloween, dame dulce para mi” That’s what they say here instead of Trick or Treat. And you don’t go door to door. You go to Unicentro, the mall because if you go door to door you’ll be kidnapped and murdered. We have a new house. It is, get ready for this, five stories tall. The building is U shaped and has a giant indoor garden in the center with a waterfall that starts at the top of the skylight and flows down four stories into a pond with fish and turtles. There are also giant bamboo shoots growing up to the top. Each room of the house pretty much is on it’s own floor. We have six bedrooms and a live in maid named Rosa. This is the craziest place I’ve ever lived. Dad’s company rents the house for us and it’s in a neighborhood where you go through two security gates to get inside. Even still Rosa has to walk me and Susan to the bus stop for school each morning so we don’t get kidnapped.

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It’s Thanksgiving and we’re celebrating with mom and dad’s new friends the Litchenbergs. Mr. Litchenberg is really handsome. He has black hair and blue eyes and he looks like a movie star. Mrs. Litchenberg is an actual movie star. Well TV star I should say. She’s super tall, has blonde hair and as mom says, “giant bosoms.” Her Spanish is terrible but she is a star on a local soap opera here. Whenever we go out in public with them she gets mobbed by Colombian housewives who love her. They all want to touch her hair. I heard the four of them talking in the living room (My bedroom is one floor above and over from them and can hear them from across the courtyard) Anyhow they were talking about President Nixon and my dad was saying that he should have just destroyed the tapes and not cooperated with the impeachment investigation. It’s so weird to me that my dad wants a president who breaks the laws and gets away with it. Why would he want that? Why would he think that’s good for the country?

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So in Bogota they really know how to celebrate Christmas. First of all there are the Christmas markets. I don’t even know how to describe this but they have amazing glass ornaments and all these crafts made by the Inca people who live in the mountains. My mom bought this nativity scene that’s all Inca figures except for the baby Jesus who looks like he does in the book of lies or bible as most people call it. We have a HUGE Christmas tree. We went to Unicentro and bought these pink glass devils. Right? Devils, no joke, as ornaments. I’m glad my mom bought them — it’s really unlike her. They’re so cool. We have ten of them on our tree. They also have these hot air balloons called “globos” that are made of balsa wood and tissue paper. You light a sterno can under them and they float away. They’re shaped like all kinds of things and at night you see dozens of them floating around in the sky. But best of all they have fireworks for Christmas. My dad bought a bunch of “bottle rockets” but they’re each a meter long and have a huge bamboo stem and shoot sparks as they fly of into the air. You could send cats into outer space on these things.

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Happy 1978! When I got back to school I found out I’d be joining the Cub Scouts here. Susan’s doing Girl Scouts. I like that I get to wear a uniform to school on scout day. The other guys in my troop are pretty good. We’re all really international. There are these two Dutch brothers who go to my school and their language sounds crazy. Gschültage. I’m friends now with this Colombian kid named Andres — he lives nearby and so sometimes we’ll get pizza at Unicentro and then go bowling afterward. I’m only eight but everyone thinks I’m older because Americans tend to be tall. It turns out that the movies here don’t have the same ratings. It’s “todos” which would be a “G” rating and then “12 y mayores” or 12 and older. They think I’m twelve. They think my sister is 15. Long story short, we’ve been able to see any movie we want. It takes longer for American movies to get here. So last week Susan and I went to see “The Exorcist” and “A Star Is Born.” I thought they were both pretty good.

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For Valentines Day my dad took us all to go see a bullfight! It was in a big stadium on the edge of town. We had to be really careful and not get far away from mom and dad because of the kidnapping situation. Anyhow, we had good seats and were eating roasted corn on the cob and these meat pies called empenadas. So good. Then the bullfighter came out and they taunted the bull and stabbed him a bunch of times. Slowly he bleed to death in front of us and a truck came out and pulled his carcass out of the stadium. After that everyone threw carnations at the bullfighter. We got these banderillas as souvenirs — they’re these frilly sticks, covered in plastic that have metal hooks on the end of them. These things get stabbed into the bull to slow him down. So this is a memory I’ll have forever.

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It’s March and I am in the land of chocolate. Colombia produces a lot of chocolate, coffee and cocaine. We went to a chocolate factory for a school field trip and saw how they roast the beans and turn it into chocolate. At the end of it we were each given a kilo of chocolate to take home. I’ve been eating it ever since. I feel weird. Anyhow, mom got me this beautiful Easter egg made of sugar. Inside are these pink bunnies. The whole thing is decorated in sugar frosting — it’s so beautiful! My teeth really hurt. Also, Susan and I both got some kind of infection and our thumbnails turned orange and fell off. My mom took us to the pharmacia and bought this antibiotic ointment for us and some Valium for herself. Mrs. Litchenberg explained that in Bogota you don’t have to go see a doctor to get medication. You can just go buy whatever you want when you need it.

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Our whole house is surrounded by a four meter high wall topped with broken glass. This is because of the kidnapping thing. Sometimes when I’m up in my room I look out over the wall (I’m on the fourth floor of the house.) My windows open inward but they’re still covered with bars. Mostly my view is of our small back yard that leads to the maid’s house. Rosa was away visiting her family and she asked my mom to take care of her chicken. My mom grew up on a farm so this should not have been a problem. Anyhow, they should have just let the chicken stay out in the back yard but my mom let it in the house for some reason and it jumped in the toilet and drowned. Mrs. Litchenberg was over when all this happened and she fished the chicken out of the toilet and gave it mouth to beak resuscitation. When I got home from school they were drying the chicken with the hairdryer and feeding it millet. The chicken was fine — which is good because Rosa has a really hard life and I’d hate for my mom to have killed her pet.