And I figure I got one shot here, so I make like I’m stealing second base, stretching my leg out and under it, and—I shit you not—that vase hit my thigh, lengthwise, and started to roll, straight down, over my knee, down my shin, all the way to my toes and right onto the floor, without as much as a chip. Scooter, it was a miracle if I ever saw one!”
As my parents tell it, the vase incident was a poor primer for the havoc-wreaking tear I would go on in the final months of their relationship. There was the time, just after my second birthday, when I crept up to the cooler my dad kept next to his recliner on game days, stole one of his Budweiser nips, and ran off to hide. Some thirty minutes of fruitless searching had passed before my poor mother collapsed in the bathroom, sitting on top of the toilet, sobbing into her hands as she contemplated calling the cops about her missing daughter. Only then did she hear the giggling and found me, a few feet away, hiding in the shower stall with a bit of a buzz on, holding a half-drunk Bud.
Next up was the time my father decided to relax by sprawling out on the hardwood floor of our living room with a pillow under his head, and I ran up behind him and purposefully snatched it away:
whack!
“Man, much as that hurt, I popped right up, ’cause I wanted to kill ya, but, soon as I turned to look, you were already halfway up the stairs. I yelled bloody blue murder at you, but when I was done, I thought, little shit is fast, though!” Thereafter, whether calling me home for dinner from the lot in Broad Channel or toasting me at my wedding, my father never referred to me as “Tara” again. “Yup, Scooter, that’s how you got your nickname.”
And my pièce de résistance, the third installment in this trilogy of two-year-old terror: the infamous shower debacle of 1982. Whenever my mother needed a shower but was taking care of me on her own, her routine was to plunk me into a playpen she wedged in the doorway of our bathroom. Then she’d hop into the tub and spend a minute trying to find that perfect point where the curtain was closed enough to keep the water from getting out but open enough that she could still see me. One particular day it looked something like this: she gave herself a quick rinse, then checked that I was there. She put shampoo in her hair, then checked that I was there. She rinsed out the shampoo, baby’s still there. She put conditioner in her hair, baby’s there. She rinsed it out, no baby. She ripped open the curtain. No baby! She leaped out of the shower. NO BABY!
In a panic, she snatched a towel from the rack and ran into the living room, where she still didn’t see me, but instead saw that way down at the other end of our house a small stool had been pulled up near the back door, which was swinging open in the breeze. With the shower still running and her soaking wet, wearing nothing but a towel, she darted out that door and into our backyard, only to find that the fence gate was also wide open. Now frenzied, Mom ran out into the street, where finally she spotted me, halfway down the block, running full steam toward the intersection.
Living up to my nickname, I was pretty fast even at two, and, given my good head start, my mother struggled to catch up, especially since she couldn’t get to full speed while still using one hand to hold up her towel. So, in what may be the world’s only example of maternal-instinct-driven streaking, she dropped the towel and sprinted, buck naked, in full view of our Queens street.
Mom caught me just before I stepped off the curb. Not that there was any real danger anymore—by then the street was a parking lot of stopped cars, guys honking, whistling, and cheering like Christmas had come early. She did the only thing she could think of at the time, which was to use my body to hide hers, like a toddler turned fig leaf. And then she walked backward, carrying me in her arms, until we made it to the discarded
As my parents tell it, the vase incident was a poor primer for the havoc-wreaking tear I would go on in the final months of their relationship. There was the time, just after my second birthday, when I crept up to the cooler my dad kept next to his recliner on game days, stole one of his Budweiser nips, and ran off to hide. Some thirty minutes of fruitless searching had passed before my poor mother collapsed in the bathroom, sitting on top of the toilet, sobbing into her hands as she contemplated calling the cops about her missing daughter. Only then did she hear the giggling and found me, a few feet away, hiding in the shower stall with a bit of a buzz on, holding a half-drunk Bud.
Next up was the time my father decided to relax by sprawling out on the hardwood floor of our living room with a pillow under his head, and I ran up behind him and purposefully snatched it away:
whack!
“Man, much as that hurt, I popped right up, ’cause I wanted to kill ya, but, soon as I turned to look, you were already halfway up the stairs. I yelled bloody blue murder at you, but when I was done, I thought, little shit is fast, though!” Thereafter, whether calling me home for dinner from the lot in Broad Channel or toasting me at my wedding, my father never referred to me as “Tara” again. “Yup, Scooter, that’s how you got your nickname.”
And my pièce de résistance, the third installment in this trilogy of two-year-old terror: the infamous shower debacle of 1982. Whenever my mother needed a shower but was taking care of me on her own, her routine was to plunk me into a playpen she wedged in the doorway of our bathroom. Then she’d hop into the tub and spend a minute trying to find that perfect point where the curtain was closed enough to keep the water from getting out but open enough that she could still see me. One particular day it looked something like this: she gave herself a quick rinse, then checked that I was there. She put shampoo in her hair, then checked that I was there. She rinsed out the shampoo, baby’s still there. She put conditioner in her hair, baby’s there. She rinsed it out, no baby. She ripped open the curtain. No baby! She leaped out of the shower. NO BABY!
In a panic, she snatched a towel from the rack and ran into the living room, where she still didn’t see me, but instead saw that way down at the other end of our house a small stool had been pulled up near the back door, which was swinging open in the breeze. With the shower still running and her soaking wet, wearing nothing but a towel, she darted out that door and into our backyard, only to find that the fence gate was also wide open. Now frenzied, Mom ran out into the street, where finally she spotted me, halfway down the block, running full steam toward the intersection.
Living up to my nickname, I was pretty fast even at two, and, given my good head start, my mother struggled to catch up, especially since she couldn’t get to full speed while still using one hand to hold up her towel. So, in what may be the world’s only example of maternal-instinct-driven streaking, she dropped the towel and sprinted, buck naked, in full view of our Queens street.
Mom caught me just before I stepped off the curb. Not that there was any real danger anymore—by then the street was a parking lot of stopped cars, guys honking, whistling, and cheering like Christmas had come early. She did the only thing she could think of at the time, which was to use my body to hide hers, like a toddler turned fig leaf. And then she walked backward, carrying me in her arms, until we made it to the discarded
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