APRIL
I'm scheduled to compete in the King's County Music Festival [playing the piano and singing, two separate programs]. However, on the morning of the competitions, I'm so nervous about performing that I get a migraine headache and start throwing up. I don't go.
I also recall it was raining that day, which probably didn’t help with staving off the migraine.
After taking medication for the headache, I sit by the window and stare at the falling rain, watching the drops bounce off the ground and the windowsill.
I think, in some ways, I was glad I didn’t have to go to the competition. My shyness and insecurity about being in front of a crowd of people also kept me from going. There were many times as a child that I hoped it would rain so that we didn’t have to go somewhere that I didn’t want to go because the event would be ‘rained out’.
6 JUNE
Friday
At dad's insistence, I join the Boy Scouts.
Since he was now the Scoutmaster, I guess he figured he could keep a close eye on his ‘wayward’ son.
In a house down the street, my friend, Gwendolyn, offers to pull down her panties so I can see what she looks like without a penis—if I pull down my shorts and show her what I look like with one. I’m sorely tempted to do so. But, this time, I'm scared dad will found out again and give me another beating, so I run away. For a long time afterwards, my imagination fills itself with fantasies about what I might have seen.
And many years later, before he died, dad told me he had heard about this incident but, for some reason, my name never came up. Apparently, Gwendolyn wanted to show other boys, too.
JUNE
I pass Grade 5 at Kingston Bible College Academy.
SUMMER
With a small group of my friends from the neighbourhood, I string up a couple of blankets as a makeshift curtain between two trees. We charge five cents admission. Once we have a small audience, I appear and read a scripture from the Bible. Then we perform a skit I’ve put together called Ghost Story.
The scripture was probably John 3:16 which I’d heard so many times at K.B.C.A. I don’t remember what the skit was about.
One summer day, I burn the back of my legs so badly from being out in the sun too long that dad puts salve on them and bandages them up. It’s hard for me to walk properly for several days afterwards.
Even as a teen and adult, I found my skin either burned quite easily, or I succumbed to heatstroke. That happened on many occasions.
SEPTEMBER
I enter Grade 6 at Kingston Bible College Academy.
I join the Greenwood Protestant youth choir
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