Still Growing: An Autobiography Read Online Free Page A

knee and told stories. He had a big belly—possibly full of jelly—that made him perfect to dress as Santa at Christmas time.
Uncle Frankie
     
    Uncle Frankie was the best big brother I never had. He was my hero. My mom’s baby brother was only seven years older than me, so we got into a lot of trouble together and loved every minute of it.
    He didn’t mind hanging out with a little guy. He let me run as fast as I could through my grandparents’ hallways and slam into him, holding couch pillows to cushion the blows. We spent hours making 10-foot-long gum wrapper chains for no reason. For our Hot Wheels, we made our own tracks with paper, folding up the edges, creating curves and supports for bridges. One time we went on a hike in the woods, and when we were three hours late coming home, my parents panicked and called the cops to come find us.
    The thing we both liked to do best was to go lizard hunting. He’d take me to the dry creek bed in Fillmore where lizards basked in the sun on the small rocks. We snuck up on them, throwing our shirts on top of them. They responded by skittering under the rock. We’d wrap the shirt around both the lizard and rock and scoop them from their hiding place.
    Frankie had a shirt that had the image of a ruler on it, so we held the lizards up to see how long they were. Then we perched the lizardson our shoulders for a ride while we hiked. If they lasted long enough to make it home, we kept them and fed them tiny grub.
    Later, someone showed me how to make a lizard noose and it revolutionized lizard hunting. It was so easy, all the fun was zapped from it.
At Home
     
    My parents had a traditional marriage—almost. Until I got into the business, Mom took care of the home and Dad taught at a junior high school. Dad was always the leader of the family—there was never any doubt about that. He got home at 3:00 P.M . each day, which allowed him the freedom to help Mom clean, prepare dinner and do the dishes.
    Dad ran a tight ship with a firm hand. On weekdays, we had to be up at 6:15 in order to eat the healthy breakfast he had cooked for us. If you wanted to eat, you had to be done digesting your food by 6:40 or you missed your chance. Five minutes later, we took turns washing the dishes so we could be out the door at 7:05.
    On his way to work, Dad drove us to school in this really ugly red VW truck. In junior high, I asked him to drop me off at the corner so that I could walk the rest of the way. Dad was no dummy. He knew I was embarrassed, so he circled the block and came around just in time to yell: “Hey, son! Have a good day at school. Daddy loves ya!”
    Dad’s love extended to applying corporal punishment when we disobeyed. He took off his belt, folded it in half, snapped it together and said in a loud voice, “The long arm of the law reaches out!” I’d run to my bedroom and stuff books, shirts or underwear down my pants, hoping he wouldn’t notice that his son had developed extra junk in the trunk.
    The real maddening thing I learned later was that when Dad was supposedly punishing Candace, he’d go in there, snapping his belt. But when the door closed behind him, he’d slap the belt on the bed while Candace yelped like she’d gotten spanked. You never saw a performance like that from her on
Full House
.
    One day when I felt Dad was being a jerk, I got fed up and mad. I had no idea what made him so cranky this time. He was on us for nothing we could figure out. I gathered my sisters and the Rock boys and set them to work.
    A week or so before, we had all helped Dad picket a man’s business who had not done the work in our house as promised. I saw how well that worked, so I found some wood slats in the garage and stapled pieces of notebook paper to them. On the papers I wrote in bubble letters:
    DAD’S A LEAN, MEAN, SCREAMIN’ MACHINE.
DAD’S ON THE WARPATH AGAIN.
     
    And an acrostic of his name, Robert: Rat, Ostrich legs, Bird legs . . . (sadly, no one can remember