They always come in threes...
Issue #478 Keith’s SciFi Musings Sunday, January 28, 2024
When I was a kid, I felt like I hardly ever saw the outside world because my parents kept me in church. Morning, noon, and night. Always church. If I wasn’t in school - an institution they grudgingly accepted because they weren’t rebel enough like some of their friends to demand home-schooling rather than subject their young children to the teachings of the devil - then I was either at Holy Savior True Gospel Center or on the way there in the back of our tan station wagon. My parents liked to say it was because we lived in a bad neighborhood and they needed to keep us shielded from all those bad influences out there in those streets, but I never believed that. They were scared of reality. They were scared of a world where things just happen because. And not for any other reason.
You could say those were the days, but I prefer to say those are the days I’m glad as hell are behind me. Still love my folks and twin sisters, but from a distance. Because there does come a time when you just can’t quite take it anymore. And because some families are a better family apart than together.
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Like that girl Carrie, in the movie and book by the same name, and that twisted relationship she had with her moms. I wasn’t allowed to read anything by Stephen King as a youngster, so King didn’t become my favorite author until I was practically grown, several years after I had moved out of the house and was still catching up on real life. It was Carrie that made me such a fan because I felt like I could relate to all that hyper-religious stuff she had to go through with that batshit crazy (two words I never could have even let inside my brain back then) mother of hers. And also how she got to that point where she was pushed too far by those annoying classmates of hers and she just…damn. Carrie my love. If you were for real I’d marry you.
But getting back to not being able to take it anymore, because looking back on those days as an adult I have some perspectives I hadn’t grown into yet when I walked out that door at the age of 15. I had heard about something called emancipated minor where you could basically claim you were mature enough to take care of yourself as a kid and you needed to get the hell out of your home situation before it was too late. Something like that.
But turned out I didn’t need to claim that or anything like it because all my parents did as I walked away from the house with nothing but my backpack was to smile and wave. They didn’t get angry, or cry, or yell anything like “you’ll be back.” All Mom said, just as I walked past her out the door, was, “They always come in threes.” And then she made some type of symbol in the air that looked kinda like it may have been the sign of the cross but with something else added.
She made that gesture three times. She was smiling warmly as she did it, and so was Dad. But my two sisters looked scared, and one of them mouthed come back as she stood behind the rest, just out of sight. I didn’t want to give her away so I just waved and went on my way.
That was on the 2nd of July, 1975. The next day, on the 3rd, was when I was hitchhiking near the entrance to the I-75 freeway headed south when a large green van came screeching around a corner and then barreled toward me as if it had me in its sights. I saw it just in time so that I didn’t get killed, but not in enough time not to get sideswiped and my leg broken. There was an elderly man standing on the other side of the street across from the entry ramp giving me a strange look.
“Did you see that?” I asked, my voice twisted up in pain. “Hey, did you see that? Fucking van tried to run me down! Could you call an ambulance?”
The man just stood there for a while like he wasn’t sure what to do. Then he said, “Son, I’d be glad to call you an ambulance. I live right over there. But I didn’t see no van. Just saw those other two cars came by since you been standing there. Ain’t never seen nothing like it. Looks like one minute you was standing there with your thumb out, and then the next…”
“What time is it?” I asked for no particular reason, except that I felt like it mattered.
“‘Bout 3,” he said. “Lemme go call that ambulance for you. But I should probably call your folks too ‘cause….”
“No.”
The ambulance eventually came, and my leg eventually healed although I still don’t walk quite right. Lost three of my fingers about three years back in this freak accident. Then there was that night around 3 a.m. when those three guys jumped me. And then there was that other time…
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