Kissed by My Confidant: Chronicles of the Silhouette Bandit
128
Kissed by My Confidant: Chronicles of the Silhouette Bandit
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781490756233 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Trafford Publishing |
| Publication date: | 05/08/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 128 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Kissed by My Confidant
Chronicles of the Silhouette Bandit
By Lion Joseph P. Griggs, Isabelle M. Daoud
Trafford Publishing
Copyright © 2015 Lion Joseph P. GriggsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4907-5624-0
CHAPTER 1
Rosemary
Rosemary was born in Wyandotte Hospital May 4, 1951. Her family lived in Southgate. Born to mother and father, Margaret and Bartholomew; and had one older sister, Susan. They lived in the same red brick, bungalow house for most of their lives. Until ... she married me.
An ordinary happy family, they carried on as most do, until one day when Rosemary was nine years old. After school, Rosemary's bus dropped her off. While walking home, she collapsed in agonizing pain unable to walk another step.
After some time Rosemary's mother grew concerned of her daughter's lack of presence and went out in search for her only to find Rosemary sobbing on the sidewalk in gruesome pain – their first ever indication that something was wrong.
Her family spent the next year testing Rosemary trying to determine the cause of her affliction. Was it Lou Gehrig's disease, Leukemia, Polio, or was it Immune Deficiency Syndrome? Which one of a half dozen diseases had sank their teeth into their precious daughter? Rosemary was eventually diagnosed with Juvenile RA (Rheumatoid Arthritis) at age 10.
This began her life's journey as a Henry Ford Hospital patient in Midtown Detroit. Rosemary used varied types of aggressive medications including steroids, injections. Some of the drugs she had taken were experimental drugs used for testing. Rosemary was so desperate for a cure that she was willing to go through wit8h all the unknown dangers of using untested medications to help her stop the disease from destroying the cartilage in all her joints and hope for a remission or a partial recovery. Pretty much, desperate for anything to aid her from the unrelenting inescapable pain within her body.
Rosemary went to Catholic schools from kindergarten all the way through 12th grade, graduating from Saint Francis Xavier High School in 1969. She went on to graduate from Eastern Michigan University and every year she began the new school year with a procedure on her joints in either her hands, feet, etc. As time progressed, the disease relentlessly continued to deteriorate and destroy the cartilage in her body. The large quantity of medications she took partially damaged her hearing and eyesight. Rosemary would replace her hearing aids every three to four years. Fortunately, as her condition worsened, the technology to help her improved. The more equipment she used to compensate, the quality of her life would get better. As her case worsened, it seemed as if she could never catch a break. She would overcome one physical obstacle only to have something else go wrong with her. Although she did develop one skill through all of this – thanks to her loss of hearing she mastered the skill of lip reading. All the medications made her so EXTREMELY sensitive to the sun; if she sat outside long enough she would break out in enormous hives.
Eventually, Rosemary could not stand on her own. She had to depend on a wheelchair. Her fingers became so deformed that she could not hold a normal spoon and fork properly. Rosemary would type with a pencil in each hand; she would hit the keys with the eraser ends. She still wrote cursive beautifully and printed even better, despite having to write with the pencil in a fist. As a teacher, when Rosemary taught, she would put a piece of chalk in her fist and write on a blackboard. She loved to teach and to tutor.
Besides teaching, Rosemary loved sewing, singing, the theatre, and, oh yes, me.
CHAPTER 2My Childhood
My name is Joseph Paul. I go by Joseph, Lion Joseph Paul, or just JP. I was born in Wyandotte Hospital on February 5, 1953 - 12:30 A.M. on a Thursday, 7 pounds and 7 and a half ounces, 21 inches, and have not died yet – thankfully.
My mother and father were born and raised in Tennessee. My father's name was Pink Jr. (1926 – 1987) and my mother's name is Mary Elizabeth (1935 – still kicking). I have six siblings, four brothers, two sisters, and me. In order from oldest to youngest was Philip Lynn (1951 – 2009), Joseph Paul (me), John David, James Michael, Mary Sue, Edward Daniel (1957 – 2003), and Kathy Ann. My mother and father relocated to Michigan in 1952 where my father worked for several General Motors Plants. He retired from Fleetwood in 1982. My mother worked for Fisher's Women's Apparel for twenty five years, at a hotel in Massachusetts for three years, and worked for eighteen years as a home caregiver. She is now retired.
My mother tells me stories about my childhood ... unbelievable ones.
Once, when I was around a year old and she, still a young mother didn't have much experience with fevers. I had an extremely high fever and was experiencing a seizure. She was panicking and couldn't get my fever down, she rushed to the neighbor who lived upstairs in her duplex and the lady grabbed me, and threw me in a snow bank. It brought my temperature right down. It was the beginning of a life destined for trouble.
At around seven years old I went back to Tennessee for the summer to help my grandfather on his farm. At lunchtime, having been in the fields all morning, I decided before we went back to work I would sit down on the veranda and take a break. I rested my legs underneath the porch and fell asleep against the pillar. I woke up in pain and saw a huge spider on me. I screamed a little and brushed the spider away then got up and went back to thinking everything was okay. In a short amount of time my leg began to swell. Grandma used some old Indian remedies thinking it was just a normal old bite; a few hours passed and Grandpa saw that my leg just kept swelling bigger and bigger. When it started turning different colors, he took me into town. It turned out to be some kind of poison from the spider bite. They had to cut open my leg to drain the poison out. Every time they squeezed I would scream and cry; and every time Grandpa would put a quarter in my hand and I would shut up. I loved my Grandfather.
Around eight years old, Grandpa Pinky took me to a stockyard to sell a couple of his calves and pigs. As a farmer he made money this way. I loved to hear the auctioneer and how fast the whole thing went. I was walking around while Grandpa was doing his business, and noticed in one of the pens was a group of goats. One started licking my hand and followed me. It would watch where I went and call to me. Grandpa thought it was funny and cute. He asked me if I would like to have him and I said yes and he said I could take care of him for Singing Sunday. Singing Sunday was a yearly event when once a year about 50-75 people from the church would come to his house on the farm and have a potluck picnic and sing church songs the whole time. I thought the goat was being invited. I had no idea what was really to come. Grandpa Pinky asked if I had a name for it, I decided to name him Billy – Billy Goat. Every day I would take Billy the leftovers from supper. I would read books to him and talk to him all about what was going on. Billy became my best friend. Everybody would laugh, and always thinking it was adorable. You have to realize that I was a city boy and only went down to the country during the summer so I had no idea what was really going on. After three months, everything was going great. Then, just a few days before Singing Sunday came around Grandma looked at Grandpa and told him it was time. Grandpa grabbed his shotgun put his arm around me and walked me out to the pen. He said,
"Well, this is the part of life you need to know about." He put me up on a post with Billy on the other side of the yard. Grandpa took one shot and Billy hit the ground. I screamed mortified,
"GRANDPA!!!!!! What are you doing!??!?!?" Grandpa replied,
"You were raising Billy for Singing Sunday, right?"
"But Grandpa! I never knew we were gonna eat him!" I ran to my Aunt Dimple and told her what happened. She told me,
"Well, Grandpa told you it was for Singing Sunday." I got mad at myself for not understanding because I thought the goat was my pet. I stayed up in the attic all day looking out the window while everybody ate my goat ... they said it was good. I do miss that goat.
I remember when Grandma used to kill chickens for dinner. She would take it by the throat and swing it around until SNAP, its neck broke and it'd be dead. I was scared of Grandma, beside the chickens, she swung a mean switch. I loved her cooking though because Grandma made the best biscuits in this world! Yummy!
Around nine years old, I would play army with the boys in the woods at the end of the block. One time I went charging into the woods I fell and hit my head on a log. I hit it so hard it cracked open to reveal a bee hive. I was face first in a bee hive. Face first! The kids got me home and my mother first gave me a whipping for sneaking off to the woods then got me medical attention.
When I was 10, my mother caught myself and 14 other neighborhood boys in the yard eating her green plums. She got us all out of the tree and told us kids if we'd stop eating the green plums she would make each of us a pie when they ripened. We promised. When the plums were ripe enough, my mother had 15 boys meowing at her door for her pies. She had hoped we had all forgotten by then, but when it comes to pie and boys that would NEVER happen. So, knowing there was no way to get out of it, she got to work. She had A LOT of pies to make. The next day she had my father turn on the TV (TV was new back then) and we got to watch TV as we ate our plum pie reward.
At 11, I started washing dishes for the local diner, did paper routes, and other odd jobs. I fell in love with money – good to have. My father wouldn't buy us clothes that we liked so we earned money and bought them ourselves. I began getting into art and trying to make my own artwork around this time. My father thought my art supplies was a waste of money so I had to buy them myself too. I really started getting into being an artist. I wanted to be one – bad.
From 12 to about 14, I was the smallest kid in the class, skinny – very skinny. I thought my brother Phil was super cool because he was a foot taller than me. When he became a greaser I became one too. The only thing was he didn't like having me around and so I got beat up all the time.
By the time I was 13 and came back home from spending the summer in Tennessee, everything had changed. Everybody had become hippies. The greasers always wore black or white with their wallets on their chains, the new style was wearing bellbottom pants, looking grungy and being a flower child. So all my greaser friends suddenly were hippies after only one summer! Everyone had something to say about the Vietnam War. I was ten minutes away from going to Woodstock with some friends but my brother Phil convinced me that I would only get into trouble. That was the sixties. It was a very great time for artists of all kinds, and I had really gotten into psychedelic paintings. After this period of time, I stopped really worrying about my appearance other than when I went dancing.
During my teenage years, my father and I didn't get along as easily as it once had been. My mother said she had married so young that she had never gotten the chance to have fun. I would always tell her when there would be a school dance and when there were dances at the band shelters, blocks from my house. She'd tell my dad that I had gone to bed early and once he was settled into bed watching black and white TV, she would come to the basement (my room) and help me climb out the window and make sure to leave it open so I could sneak back in. My father hated anyone associating with women unless one was going to get married because he thought it was the devil's work. When I came home, my mother would always ask me if I met somebody that I liked or had I learned any new dances? Sometimes she would even ask me to teach her a few moves. I sometimes think that my mother would have liked to have gone dancing with my dad. My favorite thing about dancing was that it was a perfect way to meet girls who wouldn't normally talk to you. Back then, they would dance just to dance. The hardest thing about dancing as a teen was we went from the fox trot to disco dancing. By the end of disco, dancing was only for weddings and certain parties or the theatre. That's why I started working in the theatre in ninth grade. The three things in my life that interested me as a teenager were art, cooking, and dancing.
Going on 14, I had my very first kiss. She was a girl from school and we were working on math together. She lived about eight blocks down from me. Her mother invited me over to do some homework with her, and also gave us permission to play pool afterwards in the basement. The girl's nickname was Pumpkin. After finishing our homework she invited me downstairs where her mother gave us sandwiches and pop. When we were alone for a bit she asked me,
"Have you ever?"
"Have I ever what?"
"Ya know, ever kissed a girl?"
"Not really. Wait, you mean like a girlfriend."
"Yes ... would you like to?"
"Yes," so she leaned over and kissed me on the lips. We started making out. Her mother startled us when she yelled down,
"It's too quiet down there!" Pumpkin told me to grab a ball and roll them down the table so the balls would hit each other as we were making out so her mother would hear the noise. Eventually, her mother got wise, and came downstairs snagged my ear.
"Young man, it's time for you to go." Pumpkin wasn't allowed to see me anymore but what a way to start.
At 16, the high school drama teacher, Mr. Lee, taught me how to do prep work and paint sets for the plays. He eventually gave me a part in the show, the "Sandbox". It was a comedy about people that would take their family members to the sandbox when they were dying. The part called for me to stand on a perch about three feet up in a pair of swimming trunks. I was so skinny that they painted muscles on me. In the show, they would bring a people to die and my job as the angel of death was to kiss the boys on the forehead and the ladies on the lips. I would come down for some lines and then I would go back onto my perch and everybody would laugh. When I had to kiss this one girl that I happened to like, I got down to kiss her but I would turn red and couldn't do it. Everybody laughed but Mr. Lee said I was going to have to practice. Up on the stage hung a white curtain, he said to go back there and practice. Everybody started laughing again. The girl I liked was getting ready to start college the next year and I was much younger. Anyway, we went behind the curtain but as she was teaching me how to kiss her, everybody could see our silhouettes it earned me the nickname 'The Silhouette Bandit.' The next day in class everyone had heard about the silhouette bandit. When I went for rehearsal the next night, four girls came with her to show me how to do the part 'right.' It was a loooong time before I lived that down – thank God for summer vacation.
When I was seventeen I became a cook for the Wishing Well Restaurant and the House of Barbecue. Then I was the prep cook for a small restaurant called Biffs. I also would work as a caterer for weddings. None of the jobs were full time and I wasn't very good at school. I decided I'd have to start working more hours to make money to buy a car if I ever expected to make anything of myself.
CHAPTER 3My First Marriage
Due to my illness, I struggle to remember my first two marriages. What I do somewhat remember, best I can, is what follows. One of the waitresses I worked with at Biffs wanted to set me up on a blind date with a friend of hers. We were to go on a double date with her and another cook from a donut place nearby. Our plan was to take the girls out for dinner and afterwards go to the Shrine Circus. We had plenty of laughs and had a great time. The next day was slow at work so my waitress friend called my date from the night before to ask her how she liked me and our night out and then surprised me by handing me the phone. We talked about how much fun we had and wanted to make plans to go out again. The only problem was I didn't have a car so we couldn't go anyplace. Luckily, she had a car and offered to come and pick me up instead. We hit it right off, but she admitted to me that she had someone she cared dearly about in the service. I told her it was okay and that we could stay friends and just hang out. We ended up getting closer than expected and spent a lot of time together. Without meaning to we fell in love. After about 18 months we ended up getting married. But we started out too young.
At this time, I had started going to school at Wayne County Community College and started taking all the art classes I could get while doing odd jobs.
Then almost immediately we had my only child, Buffy. Buffy was the apple of my eye. We did everything together. My fondest memory is from when Buffy and I raised rabbits as a hobby. It was my job to feed and care for them and it was her job to hug, love, and play with them. In fact, the only pictures I have left from that era are of Buffy and the rabbits.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Kissed by My Confidant by Lion Joseph P. Griggs, Isabelle M. Daoud. Copyright © 2015 Lion Joseph P. Griggs. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Dedication, vii,Kissed by My Confidant, ix,
Prologue, xi,
Chapter 1 Rosemary, 1,
Chapter 2 My Childhood, 3,
Chapter 3 My First Marriage, 9,
Chapter 4 My Second Wife, 11,
Chapter 5 Love At First Site, 12,
Chapter 6 The Project Begins, 16,
Chapter 7 Final Details, 24,
Chapter 8 Opening Night, 26,
Chapter 9 A New Start, 30,
Chapter 10 Rosemary, My Almost-Love, 32,
Chapter 11 My New Home, 36,
Chapter 12 Rosemary Becomes My Confidant, 42,
Chapter 13 The One-Sided Courtship, 44,
Chapter 14 The Proposal, 49,
Chapter 15 The Rumor Mill, 52,
Chapter 16 One Year Countdown, 57,
Chapter 17 Final Wedding Preparations, 59,
Chapter 18 Third Times A Charm (Wedding Day), 66,
Chapter 19 Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock As Time Goes By, 74,
Chapter 20 Learning My Craft, 77,
Chapter 21 My Education, 80,
Chapter 22 Lions, 82,
Chapter 23 Rosemary's Power, 89,
Chapter 24 Fading Health, 93,
Chapter 25 Our Pets (Rosemary's babies), 95,
Chapter 26 Her Time, 98,
Chapter 27 The Love I Have Lost, 101,
Chapter 28 The Ten Promises, 103,
Chapter 29 Epilogue, 107,