Comic books and candy, or plane tickets (April 1994)

When my family arrived in America quite a lot changed. Language, customs, scenery, they were all different. Unfortunately, they were not all that changed. My Mother changed quite a bit too.

In Japan I had been virtually without parental restriction. My Mother barely registered that existed, and cared even less, so I could basically come and go as I pleased, and I often did. However, as soon as we arrived in America, my Mother suddenly became a lot more concerned about where I was and what I was doing there. My near total freedom vanished in a heartbeat, only to be replaced by a life of near total control. My Mother became the arbitrator of just about my entire life, and it wasn't a temporary situation either. It went on and on and on, right up until I left for college.

With this said, my situation was eased at times, when others intervened on my behalf to give me some small escape from the life that my Mother was busy organizing for me. These interventions were varied, and occurred throughout my time in the Midwest, but the first really important one happened early in April of 1994.

The Trip

When I was in school I had a close friend, named William by his Mother, but known as Bill by everybody else. His family owned the local hardware store, and he helped them out at weekends and after school on a daily basis. This was until he attempted to parry a fast moving soccer ball with the tip of his boot, sending him spinning and resulting in his ankle being twisted in a way that ankles shouldn't be twisted, and in him doing something nasty to his wrist as well.

On the face of it, this might sound like temporary inconvenience but not much more, but it was a little bit more serious than that as far as the family business was concerned. You see, while Bill was busy having his brush with a soccer ball, his Mother was busy being heavily pregnant and his father was busy being confined to a wheelchair (My town attracted a lot of injured servicemen, and was one of the few places in America where you could get a replacement part for a prosthetic faster than for an auto), thus leaving the store with plenty of people to work the register, but nobody who was able to fetch, carry, or even to reach the higher shelves.

This was where I came in.

A Job

Being the mother of a close friend of mine, Bill's mother was well aware of my family situation (that my Mother was crazy) and that I needed a break from my Mother. She also knew that my Mother couldn't refuse any request for my help without said refusal hitting the gossip round running.

Officially - the version that was told to my Mother - I was helping Bill to keep up with his school work and doing the chores that he couldn't do, so I wasn't being paid much more than a basic allowance. Unofficially though - the version that wasn't told to my Mother - I was working part time in the store and so was being paid a healthy sum for doing so. A sum that I kept secret from my Mother on the grounds that she was already taking a cut from the small sum that she was being told about, and would certainly have taken a lot more had she know exactly what I was making (My Mother earned six figures and so didn't need the money herself. She didn't like the idea that having money of my own made me less dependent on her).

The Plan

I ended up spending a lot of my new found income on simple things like comic books and candy, but, from that point onwards, that set it in my mind that I would put aside a bit of what I earned, form whatever task I was doing at the time, so that I could buy a plane ticket back to Japan.

My Mother might have taken my papers from me (in the end, I had to break into her study in order to get what I needed to apply for a passport out of America), and I might not even have known where the nearest airport was let alone how I was going to get there, but I had a plan. I'd save my money and get a ticket as far away from the Midwest as I could.