“Are those my pants?” Fred was pulling on my trouser leg as he turned to Buster for verification, “Hey Buster, ain’t these my pants?”. We were standing in the cloak room of the one-room Piney Ridge schoolhouse and as happened on many a day, Freddie had cornered me to taunt me in some form or another. Only this day it was he who was in for a shock. “Yeah, I guess they are”, Buster said it nonchalantly. He didn’t care one way or the other, but Freddie did. Fred opened the door of the boy’s room, grabbed me by my belt and hoisted me up on my tip toes so everyone could get a good look at me and yelled, “Hey y’all, Fatman is wearing my old pants! Take ‘em off!”. This was the exact same way he grabbed me up to show me off to the school when he found out I was wearing long-Johns under my pants one winter day. I stood there in shock and dismay as everybody began laughing at me. I couldn’t take off my pants in front of the whole school, I looked over at Buster for help.
“Naw man don’t make him take ‘em off”. Fred let me go and Buster saved me from any more humiliation, this time. Buster and Freddie were at least three years ahead of me in school and I learned early on to respect the older boys or be prepared to get a sharp punch in the chest or stomach for not showing the proper respect. Getting punched in the chest was a rite of passage that all kids had to endure from the older boys in school. There was a leadership hierarchy in place even in those young years and respecting the older kids was mandatory at school and therefore it was automatic that you respected the even older adults. I’m not sure that kids in these times are being given the opportunity to learn these valuable lessons.

OK, now you can ask… why was I wearing Freddie Banyon’s pants. Well, it seems that the women in our neighborhood had an unspoken pact within the community which required that, as soon as an older kid outgrew his or her clothes; those “still good” old clothes were ceremoniously “handed down” to a younger child in the neighborhood. At the time, it seemed I was the only child benefiting from this agreement. I not only got my older brother’s hand-me-downs, but also was given the old clothes of all of my friends, when they outgrew them.

I had clothes coming in from almost every household in the neighborhood. “Mama, these pants are way too long for me!”, I surely didn’t want to be caught dead wearing somebody else’s clothes out in public, so I’d come up with any excuse I could not to wear them.
“Just roll up the hems”, my mother would say, “You’ll grow into them”. That was that; off I’d go to school to be embarrassed once again by the finger pointing and the giggles. But the real humiliation came when I was called into the house to thank the lady who was nice enough to bring my friends’ hand-me-downs over for me to hold up against myself to see if they’d fit. “Oh yes, they’ll fit him in a couple of years. Say thank you to Mrs. M, Stanley”, my mother would smile. “Thank you, Mrs. M”, I’d say, but “Let me out of here!!!” was what I was really thinking.

Let’s go back for a moment; did you hear what Freddie called me when he was tugging at my pants? He called me “Fatman”, I’d been given that nickname back in the second grade and it stuck like glue. But it was a lot better than my original nickname, “Crisco”. You can guess why they called me that, although I was always told, “…well you’re not really fat, you’re just big for your age”. I wore boy’s stout clothes up until my late teens when I finally formed some muscle, but the name “Fatman” stuck and sometimes, I will still be called that today by someone I grew up with. I had gotten used to being called that after a while, which later transformed into “Fats” for short. I thought it was kind of cool to have a nickname. I never considered it to be derogatory until I got to college and was told I should be insulted by it.

And now for the sad, heart-rending story, that has traumatized me for decades and has led me to this place, seeking solace here with you… It was late one Friday afternoon back in 1961 and most of my school mates and I would be staying after school to wait for our parents to get out of a PTA meeting (mothers, fathers rarely attended PTA meetings back then). So, as soon as school let out, we all hit the playground. The boys got a softball game going and the girls did whatever girls do at recess, play hopscotch, jump rope or the ultimate in female pleasures of the day: they played “House”. Unfortunately for me, any boy not picked for the softball game was involuntarily drafted by the girls to participate in their game as the husband or the child. I hated having to sit on that hard rock (their pretend kitchen chair) waiting to be served an imaginary meal. I was never cast as the father coming home from a hard day’s work, no, I always had to play the child, who was perpetually being punished for one thing or another. Luckily, on this day, I had been picked for the ball game, some other poor sap was dragged, kicking and screaming to play “house” with the girls. I had just hit a double when Fred got a hit that sent me over to third base. As I stood there waiting to be knocked home, my cousin Asterika, came from around behind the school and beckoned me to come back there with her. Asterika was my fourth cousin, usually 4th cousins wouldn’t have even claimed kin, but we were next door neighbors, we were the same age, in the same grade together and were running between each other’s houses almost every day. We claimed kinship. So, when she called me over, I obediently walked off third base without even giving a thought to the fact that I was in the middle of a pivotal point in the game. I dropped everything and followed her behind the school as she led the way. When we got back there, Aster turned to me and started kissing me square on the lips. Oh, I remember this, I thought to myself… we’d played this game once before behind my house, next to the chimney. We stood there kissing for a good two or three minutes. And when we finally came up for air, I looked directly in her eyes and said, “Your breath smells like tuna fish”. She shook her head and said, “Yeah, that’s what I had for lunch”.
“Oh”.

We went back to smooching again and after a few minutes it crept to my attention that I could hear a faint sound like giggling coming from somewhere. I looked up quickly, but there was no one there. it happened again and I looked up more quickly this time and that’s when I saw Aster’s big brother standing at the corner of the school building snickering and pointing at us, “I’m gon’na t-e-l-l-l-l-l !!!”, he ran off to the other side of the school, I pushed Aster Ruth away from me (“How could she have done this to me?!”) and I ran around the school and tried to look like “What’s everybody laughing at?”, but it was too late. By then everyone knew what we’d been doing behind the school. Of course, we were immediate celebrities, but not in a good way. We were teased beyond recognition and by the time I got home I was sobbing and crying, and it didn’t stop there. I was tormented even further when my father found out that night at the dinner table. I was expecting him to be mad and yell at me about it, but instead out came, “Stanley’s got a girlfriend, Stanley’s got a girlfriend!”. I ran from the room and into the living room crying my eyes out. I swore off girls from that moment on, I didn’t speak to Aster for a week; We also never tried that kissing cousins thing again. And to the best of my recollection, I didn’t speak to or kiss another female again until my wedding day, and only then because the preacher told me to.