The Unlikely Quarterback Ch. 01

When I was young, I used to share my knowledge with the girls, mainly to impress them or gross them out. But I think later I became someone that they looked up to, since I was a font of knowledge and they came to trust what I said even over their teachers. After a while, Delilah became more like another sister than a friend.

Not long after my older sister moved away to Washington to live with my grandma, my mom revealed that she met someone at church and that she was getting married. That's when I met Bob for the first time. Technically I knew of him already but never talked to him before that. I didn't know what to make of him. He was a strange man we knew from church and I remember laughing at the dramatic way he prayed. He would waggle his head back and forth like Stevie Wonder and chant and make weird sounds that reminded me of an infant babbling. The kids at church thought him weird and kept their distance, me included. I didn't know what my mother saw in him. He was nice enough but honestly, he seemed like he was "in the closet" and overly interested in me more than he was my mom.

Regardless of how I felt, my mother married Bob. Bob gave her comfort and security, and for the first time in a long time, she didn't have to stress about money. They bought a house across town in East Long Beach, close to the university. My mother even convinced Cindy to let Delilah live with us and Cindy readily agreed.

Bob, it turned out, went through medical school and was a Medical Lab Technician. Like a doctor he was on call and was often beeped and called-in late at night to do blood work for emergency cases. Bob, decided that I needed more structure in my life. He was a paranoid type; he didn't trust the government and he especially didn't trust banks.

I learned a lot from Bob, whether I liked it or not. He taught me how to invest money in the markets. How to appraise a rising company, how to gauge the mood of the market and to never put my money in a bank. A lot of what he taught me was against basic economic principles that I learned, so in those instances I just nodded my head in agreement (or rather appeasement).

He wanted me to get fit and learn discipline, so he put me in all kinds of martial arts classes. I started Judo when I was eleven, Taekwondo when I was twelve, and by the time I was thirteen I asked to be put in a Krav Maga class and he readily agreed after I explained to him that it is the martial arts taught to the Israeli military. He was Jewish but renounced his faith to become a Christian years before, so, although it wasn't his idea, I think he liked that I was connecting to his past in some way. Every day after school and early mornings on Saturday, I was in one type of martial art class or another. To this day I am grateful that Bob did that for me.

Like everything in my life there was always a Yang for every Yin. The cult church I belonged to, helped us when we became homeless despite trying to control and manipulate our lives. The first home I lived in had some of my best memories growing up despite also having the darkest secrets. And, Bob's abusive nature had a benefit in that I DID learn discipline, become physically fit and learn to defend myself, which I never would have done on my own, since I was such a loner and bookworm.

Besides martial arts, Bob would also take me to various gun ranges. I learned to shoot handguns and rifles; I even got to shoot a mounted 50 caliber at one point. I never understood why Bob would have me learn about guns because as far as I knew he didn't own any guns and he didn't even seem to know much about guns himself. Maybe it made him feel manlier, or more likely gave him opportunity to touch me. Don't get me wrong, he never touched me inappropriately. However, when at the gun range he had the chance to show me how to hold the gun etc., and it required getting close. I was too young to think much about it but when I think of it now I see all of the signs of his inappropriate affection. I think the only thing that stopped him from out and out molesting me was the church he went to believed homosexuality was an abomination and sodomy was unforgivable. He must have fought his feelings the whole time I knew him. I give him credit though he tried his best to be straight and be a good man, but his demons still reared their ugly heads.

Moving to our new neighborhood allowed us to finally have some stability. We were able to make permanent friends, we got to know the neighbors, and went to the same school year after year. I should say my sister was able to take advantage of that, but for me, Bob kept me so busy that I didn't have time for friends. So my anti-social behavior just worsened. Like all humans, I needed someone to socialize with, so that pushed me to be even closer to Delilah and Stephanie since they were they only real friends I was allowed to spend any time with.

I graduated junior high in 9^th grade and started high school as a sophomore at the ripe age of fourteen. (High schools in Long Beach only had three grade levels back then so there were no Freshman at that time).

When Bob first married my mother, I was eleven and he decided to buy "the family" our first PC (386 running off DOS). And although it was for the family, I was the only one that ever really used it. I self-taught myself how to program in C, COBOL and FORTRAN and learned the basics of networking. By the time I entered high school, I got a modem and got my first taste of the internet with America Online. The internet wasn't fancy back then, most users had to use special software to browse online. I'd like to say that I was a great hacker and I was able to hack my grades like in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" but the schools in Long Beach weren't even online back then. Besides, I was getting straight A's in all my classes, so what would have been the point, anyway.

I was born on July first and for my 16^th birthday Bob decided to put me in a survivalist training camp for the summer. I think this was the first time my mother protested any decision he made and although she ultimately acquiesced, their relationship got rocky after this. Even though I was reluctant to go, I ended up enjoying camp and learned a lot. It was like a concentrated no-nonsense version of the Boy Scouts where they did a crash course on everything to do with survival except you didn't earn merit badges. Even though I already read the Army Survival Handbook, getting real world experience was eye opening. It made me realize that I needed to live life, not just read about it. I was taught first aid, I even got certified in CPR. I was taught to swim and even thought of becoming a lifeguard after the camp.

Despite my new-found enlightenment, when I got back two months later, I saw evidence of my mother being abused by Bob. Even Delilah and Stephanie seemed to be afraid of him. When I pressed them, they told me Bob was going crazy and was accusing my mom of all kinds of things that were obviously not true and he started hitting her.

I didn't have to wait long to experience his abuse first hand. One afternoon, I caught him slapping my mother. I tried to come to her defense, but Bob was not only heavier but a hell of a lot more muscular. Bob wasn't super athletic, but he did bike regularly and play a lot of tennis. He was on the wrestling team in high school and college and he still had huge forearms, (he reminded me of Popeye the Sailor Man). I really couldn't do much except dodge, duck and block him. He knew how to grapple and with his weight and strength could easily overpower me. My intentions weren't to beat him up anyway, I just wanted to lure him away from my mom so I had him follow me throughout the house as I taunted him. He became frustrated chasing me through the house. He finally cornered me after I tripped over a chair and wrestled me to the ground. He pinned me down and choked me out.

I awoke in the trunk of his car with my ankles tied together and my wrists tied behind my back. I had a rag stuffed in my mouth and my mouth was duct taped shut. He didn't bother blind folding me since there wasn't much to see in his trunk.

The first thing I saw once he got me out of the trunk was a copse of Joshua trees, so I suspected we were in the middle of the Mojave. He had a knife and he cut my bindings and he kicked me to the ground.

"Stay!" he sneered.

He threw me a canteen and a pocket knife and laughed.

"Good Luck! I hope you learned something this summer," he sarcastically droned, while he got in his car and took off down the road.

I shook the canteen. It was empty.

I don't know what was going through Bob's head. He totally lost it. None of what he did made any sense. He must have thought he had my mother under his thumb and that she wouldn't call the cops. Amber Alerts didn't exist back then, Cops had to be informed by radio. But, my mother did call the cops and Bob wasn't smart enough to change cars or even his license plate number. Bob didn't even leave the state! He got about halfway home when he got pulled over by a CHP (California Highway Patrol) patrol. The cop had his gun pointed at Bob's head and demanded to know where I was. Bob tried to tell him a bull-shit story about dropping me off at my grandma's, but he didn't buy it.

Bob ended up being taken in for questioning. After a rough interrogation, he finally admitted that he dropped me off in the middle of the desert to teach me a lesson. The cops immediately formed a search party and began looking for me where Bob said he dropped me off. After two days of searching they disbanded the main search party and had a smaller party stay behind to look for my body.

As for me, I was on a bus headed home. You see, I had run into some hikers and they gave me some water and escorted me to a trail on their map that led to a small town. They even gave me some bus money to which I promised to pay them back, but they brushed it off and wished me luck. I made it to town and tried to call home, but the line always seemed busy. So, I hopped on five different buses and it took me a couple of days, but I finally made it home.

Hindsight is 20/20 so they say, and I should have been smart enough to wake someone up or leave a note or something, but I was exhausted and all I could think about was going to sleep. So, when I got home late at night, I stumbled into my room to get some sleep. I was surprised to find Stephanie and Delilah asleep in my bed. Since my bed was too small for three people and I was too tired I crept into Stephanie's room and crashed.

I woke suddenly to the sound of screaming.

"Oh my god!" Stephanie cried. "Mom! Di! Get in here, quick!"

Something slammed into me and with blurry eyes I looked around confused and disoriented. This wasn't my room. I realized that Stephanie had jumped onto me and was hugging me tightly. She was crying, sobbing and soaking my shirt with her tears. A minute went by before, I heard a chorus of screeching as Mom and Delilah dogpiled on top of me. I honestly never felt more loved than at that point right then.

Bob made bail eventually, his parents put their house up for collateral. The judge put a restraining order on him and he wasn't allowed to come home to get his stuff. I didn't even need to testify in court since he never went to trial; he pled out on lesser charges and was sent to a psychiatric hospital to get treatment before he went to serve his time. We boxed up his things and his parents came to get them and that is the last I ever heard of him.

My mother divorced Bob and got the house and most of his savings, so I guess there was a silver lining in all of this. I was just worried that my mother would lose Bob's money the way she lost my dad's money and we would become destitute again.

After the incident with Bob, I was put into counseling and my psychologist suggested that since I was already two years ahead of everyone in school that it wouldn't hurt to take me out of school for a couple of years to help me deal with my trauma. The funny thing was, I didn't feel traumatized. My mother needed it more than I did. But I didn't have any choice in the matter, so, for two years I took a vacation from school.

I never stopped learning however and I continued to teach myself. I continued studying martial arts even though it was Bob that originally put me in the classes. Martial arts gave me a sense of peace that I just didn't get at home. As a matter of fact, I had so much time on my hands I added Jiu Jitsu to my roster. And toward the end of my exile I had earned a black belt in Judo, Krav Maga and Taekwondo and was working on a fourth in Jiu Jitsu.

During my "years of freedom" as I like to call them, I hired myself out as a freelance programmer. I got jobs online from programming job boards where companies would post difficult problems their programmers couldn't solve and offer compensation to anyone who could come up with a solution. After a few gigs, I had quickly shown my prowess and by the end of the year I was secretly making more than 50 thousand dollars a year (which was a lot back in 1989). Even after I went back to school to start my senior year, I continued programming. I even filed and paid taxes. I realized that I was probably violating some child labor laws, but no one ever stopped me or audited me, so I just kept on pushing my luck.

I only ever had one embarrassing incident happened during my year off. One day Delilah wasn't feeling very good, so the nurse sent her home early. She must have heard my moans and groans because she caught me in the act (playing with Rosey Palm and her five sisters). Her eyes grew big as saucers and I turned red as a beet before I yelled at her to get out of my room. She busted my balls about it for a year afterward, and I became a lot more careful about locking my door, after that. Needless to say, puberty was pretty typical, in that it was frustrating and sucked.