My life is kind of like a three-day-old banana. It has some dark spots, but it’s still good. As I reflect back upon the soft, bruised areas of my past, I laugh hysterically. But, I will try to control my emotions as I fill you in.

I was unusual from the day of my birth. The doctor slapped my wrinkly tush the day I was born, but I didn’t cry; I laughed. Everyone in the room was stunned. Newborns
can’t laugh, so with Momma’s permission I went through all sorts of tests. The test
results found me to be perfectly healthy. The doctors decided I was a baby with an abnormal cry, and I would grow out of it as my tiny lungs matured.

Momma took me home and soon discovered the doctors were wrong. I laughed at a full diaper and bawled while playing peek-a-boo.

Every doctor I was taken to as a child was baffled. “It is something that will straighten itself out as he heads into adulthood,” the doctors told us.

Momma finally gave up on the doctors and accepted me “as is”. She gave birth to me in her late forties. I was probably the first and last child she’d ever have, so she loved me even though I was a freak.

Momma learned to deal with my abnormality, laughing along with me as I sobbed watching cartoons, and kissing my bumps and bruises as I guffawed.

We had a great life, until I started school. I got in trouble every day through no fault of my own. It was after disrupting the class with my laughter while watching the end of Old Yeller that I was sent to the principal, Mr.Pickett. He said he needed to speak with my father. It was then I realized, I didn’t have a father.

“It’s just me and Momma,” I told Mister Pickett.

“Sorry son, I’ll give your mother a call.”

He called. They sat in that office with the door closed for an hour before calling me back in. Momma took my hands. Her hands were always soothing and warm. She only held them firmly when what she had to tell me something upsetting. “Charles, I told Mr. Pickett about your unusual condition, and we’ve decided to put in a special class. How does that sound?”

I nodded in agreement, but all I could think about was my father. Who was he? Is he like me? Was he put in the special class, too? I wanted to ask Momma, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. What if he was mean to her or ran out on her?

Mr. Pickett told me to go back to my classroom and gather my things from my desk.

I shuffled into the classroom, and Mrs. Levy looked up at me.

“I’m going to the special class on Monday.” I snickered as I cleared out my desk.

Everyone sat quietly as I gathered my things.

“See ya around,” one boy yelled.

“Bye, Charles.” Mrs. Levy smiled. She was probably glad to see me go.

I slung my backpack over my shoulder and walked out to the car. I didn’t say a word during the drive. I went straight to my room when I arrived home.

I was quiet, until dinner. We sat at the table eating, and I had to ask, “Where’s my father?”

Momma almost choked on her soda. “Charles, I–“

“Please Momma, tell me. I can take it, whatever the story.”

She cleared her throat. “Well, he was a fireman. We were engaged, but he was killed saving a family from a burning home.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“I didn’t want to upset you, and I thought when you were old enough you’d ask. You did and now you know.”

I believed her, or at least I pretended I did. My childhood years were lonely. I didn’t care for my new class. I had a few friends, but they only liked me because they could tell me the most horrible, gruesome stories and I laughed every time.

It was at around age seventeen that I realized I had musical talent and took up the playing the guitar and singing. I wonder if my father had musical talent?

Then after graduation, I began making extra money writing and selling jingles.

I was never comfortable hanging around people my age, so I began going to movies in the evenings. It was at the theater that I fell in love with Selena. That’s the name I gave her because I didn’t have the nerve to walk up and introduce myself. She was beautiful. Her long, dark hair appeared silky and glimmered as the light from the movie screen flashed. I wanted to touch it. I thought about accidentally brushing up against her, so I could feel it, and maybe capture some of her scent. I got my chance one Friday evening. Some creep kept coming onto her.

I heard her protests all the way in the back. “I said no, go away!” She tried to ignore him, but it wasn’t working.

My heart raced as I marched down the aisle to save her. “Is this punk bothering you?” I got that line from the movies.

“Buzz off, jerk.” The creep stood two inches from my face. His breath smelled of cigarettes.

“Not until you leave the young lady alone.” I turned to look at her. She was smiling.

When I turned back, his knuckles made contact with my nose. I fell to the floor. I jumped back up and laughed in his face while blood poured from my nose and onto my shirt.

“What’s wrong with you, man?” The creep ran.

That night I learned Selena’s name was Patricia. Her hair did feel like silk, and she smelled of vanilla. I was her hero just like in the movies. We were inseparable from that night on.

I worked hard to control my emotions. I didn’t want to ruin our relationship, but the day came when it all fell apart. I was going to propose to Patricia and explain my abnormality to her, and if she loved me, she’d say yes. But, while sitting in the dimly lit restaurant with candles lighting our table, just like the romantic moments in the movies, my cell phone rang.

“Excuse me.” I answered it. “Hello!”

The woman on the other end was my neighbor, Mildred Price, I snickered as she spoke, “Charles honey, I found your mother lying on the kitchen floor. I think she had a stroke or something. You best get to the hospital.”

I snapped my phone shut.

Patricia was smiling. “What’s so funny, dear?”

Oh no, this was it! “My mother’s been taken to the hospital, I gotta go.” I grabbed my jacket and ran out laughing hysterically. I didn’t look back. I couldn’t bear to see the look of disgust that I knew would be on Patricia’s face.

By the time I got to the hospital it was too late. She was dead. The only person in this whole big world that understood me was gone. I fell to the floor in boisterous laughter. Everyone stared at me as if I were was mad. I got up and ran home. I needed to be in my home where abnormal was my normalcy. I burst through the front door, darted up the stairs, and pounced on Momma’s soft bed. I lay there and laughed until my stomach hurt.

I rolled off the bed, and that‘s when I saw it. A box tied shut with a purple ribbon. It lay under the bed. I pulled it toward me, brushed off the dust, and sat up. Inside were pictures of a man. I held his picture up to my face and looked in the mirror. This man had a wide nose, close-set eyes, and a space between his front teeth. This man looked just like me.

I turned the photo over. On the back was the name Charlie Lipkin and an address. What else was in this box of secrets? There were a stack of letters all stamped in red, Return To Sender. My father wasn’t dead. Some of these letters were written after I was born.

I sat there all night reading letter after letter that Momma sent to my father. Letters that had been returned unopened. She loved him, and he broke her heart. She wrote asking why he had left so abruptly. I made up my mind at that moment to find him.

I jumped in my car and drove the hundred miles to the address on the photo. When I got there, I was lost, so I stopped in at a little diner to ask directions.

A bell rang as I opened the door.

“Hello, what can I do for ya?” A man stood behind the counter drying a glass.

“I’m looking for this address.” I showed the back of the photograph.

He read it and turned it over. “Why, that’s Crazy Charlie. He don’t live at that address no more, son.”

“Crazy Charlie?”

He nodded his head. “Yeah, he used to make money bettin’ that there wasn’t a man in the place that could hit him hard enough to hurt him. A man could break his nose, and he’d roll on the floor laughing, sounded like one of those crazy hyenas.”

“That’s my dad.”

“I don’t know ‘bout that, he's a recluse. See that dirt road out yonder?” He pointed out the window.

“He lives at the end of it.”

“Thanks.”

The man grabbed my arm. “Be careful, he has a shotgun, and he don't take kindly to strangers.”

I nodded and went out the door. I got the box from the car, so I could give him Momma’s letters. I started down the long dirt road. I imaged what he would say. Would he laugh or cry? Would he be happy to see me or turn me away, leaving my questions unanswered?

I trudged along about a half mile before I saw a small cabin. I walked up and peeked in the window. An elderly man sat in a recliner and bawled while watching television. I knocked on the door.

He opened it and pointed a shotgun in my face."What do ya want stranger?"

“I think you’re my dad.”

We stared at each one another for a few minutes. I offered him the box with the purple ribbon.

He lowered the gun and set it inside by the door. “Come on in. Let’s take a look at what you got.” He opened it. “Sara, she...we had a son?” He looked up at me and snickered.

I giggled. “I’m just like you, Dad, aren’t I?”

"I'm so sorry, son. I never knew. I--."

"Why didn't you answer her letters? She loved you." I went from a giggle to full blown laughter.

"I loved her, but I didn't think she'd understand my abnormality. I went my whole life being called a freak, so I dealt with it by trying to be tough, but with your mother, I, I
couldn't tell her. I didn't want to ruin her life, so I disappeared."

"I completely understand your feelings, but if you had only given Momma a chance, she was a wonderful lady. Well, you wouldn't have had to be lonely all these years."


That’s when I thought about Patricia, and how I ran out on her. I jumped up.

“Dad, I gotta go. I think I might be making the same mistake.”

“If you got a girl who loves you, boy, go to her.”

We hugged. “I hate to rush off, but I'll be back, I promise.”


I didn’t walk that half mile this time; I ran. I raced back down that dirt road to my car, found my cell phone, and called Patricia.

She answered. “Charles, where have you been?”

“You’re not disgusted with me?”

“Charles, I know. Mildred told me everything. I love you.”

“You know about me? You still love me?" I began to giggle again.

"Yes Charles, please come back. You don't want to miss your mother's funeral."

"I'm on my way, Patricia, I love you."

My life? It turned out good. Patricia adjusted to me being different just as Momma had done. We did get married, and she became pregnant. The day my son was born, the doctor slapped his behind. He laughed. The doctor turned and looked at me, and I was so overcome with emotion, I laughed like a baby.

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