Goodbye Normal Jeans

A novel by Danny

Chapter 1

My name is Kristian Billiam Doctavio but everyone just calls me Nevada for short. My family and me live in a small Ohio town were just about everyone knows everyone and the joke is that you have to watch out who you are dating cause it just might be your cousin. I live with my Ma and Pa who both work. Pa works for the farmers feed store just outside of town at night and works our farm most days along with my brothers. My Ma works inside our home taking care of me and my six brothers and sisters plus the one that’s still in the oven. I am right in the middle with one older brother and two older sisters above me and one younger sisters and two younger brothers below me in age.

My oldest brother, Kevin, is 21 and still lives at home but he pretty much runs our farm now along with my pa. Ma and pa don’t know this but Kevin has been kind of dating Meggin Griffith from church for about a year now. Long time ago, pa and Mr. Griffith used to be good friends but something happened and now they hate each other. So Kevin is afraid if they knew he was seeing Meggin that pa would stop him. I am pretty sure I am the only one that knows about them dating but I promised Kevin that I would never tell. Plus, he said he would bury me head first in the manure pile behind the barn if I did.

My olderest sister, Karen is exactly two years and one day younger then my brother Kevin. She is more like a boy then a girl but don’t tell her I said that. I only once ever seen her wear a dress and that was when granny Doctavio said she wanted a picture of our whole family all dressed up. Karen hated it but she sure looked pretty. Pa gave up a log time ago trying to get her to wear dresses to church. Sometimes I can hear some of the others at church whispering about her wearing pants to church but they don’t dare say anything loud enough for her to hear.

My next older sister, Kathy, is closet to my age she turned thirteen last month and she is probably my bestest friend in the whole wide world except for maybe John-Jo but I only get to see John-Jo on Sundays at church cause his Pa makes him work on their farm whenever he is not at school. Kathy was born with bad lungs so she gets tired pretty darn fast. Whenever her and me are playing or doing stuff, I normally got her on my back so she don’t get all tuckered out. Yeah she is bigger then me but I am strong and I can carry her pretty far.

Then there is my younger sister Kristen who is ten and a half and if you are smart, you best not take your eyes off her or she will bite you for no reason whatsoever. One time Pa’s dog Whiskey had gone to sleep under the front porch and left her tail hanging out and Kristen snuck up behind her and chomped down on it. Boy, I never heard such a noise as I did that day when Whiskey started hollering and yelping. Kristen done went and bit the tip of Whiskeys tail right off! You had better believe Pa was mad about that cause Whiskey, she is Pa’s hunting dog and Pa paid a whole heap of money for Whiskey!

After Kirsten came my little brother Kyle-Lee and he is nine-years-old but he looks like he is already a teenager. He is also good at sports; he plays on the school wrestling team and last year he won a big shiny trophy that Pa put on the mantel over the fireplace.

Last, at least until sometime next month, is my baby brother Kane who isn’t really a baby anymore but everyone still calls him ‘Baby Brother’ instead of Kane. He is going to be eight-years-old soon and he has caused ma, pa, and everyone in my family a lot of worry. When he was younger and whenever he is outside, we had to keep him chained to a tree or the fence or something like that with a big long dog chain, otherwise he would just run off. He still sometimes got away; there was this one time he got out of the house, and no one notice for a long time and it took us all day to find him. Grandpa was the one to find him and he was about eight miles down the road just walking and picking wildflowers. Kane also liked to eat stuff when he was small, heck he still does that and he is nearly eight-years-old. I bet he has swallowed pretty near a hundred dollars worth of pa’s change since he was born. One time he swallowed the key to the tractor when he was only three and we had to wait five whole days before it came out the other end.

Now, I said that in about a month Kane ain’t going to be the baby of the family no more; well that is because ma is going to have another baby soon. Pa says that he don’t know how it happened but I sure do. I see lots of baby cows and sheep born and I seen how they was made, so I know! Pa also says that he thought him and ma was done making babies and was working on getting the ones they got now all grown up and out of the house.

Ma’s belly is about big enough that I think maybe she is not having just one baby but maybe a whole bunch of babies like Whiskey did last year after old man Chester’s dog, Rufus snuck over and got hold of Whiskey one day. I just hope my new brother or sister comes out looking prettier then them pups did! Whiskey, she is a pretty brown Labrador but Rufus he is probably every kind of dog in the world all mixed up and stuffed into one ugly dog! Pa tried to give them pups away for free and still no one wanted them. In the end, he had to bop them in the head with a shovel and buried them deep in the manure pile behind the barn.

I guess that is everyone except for me; I done told you my name is Kristian Billiam Doctavio and that everyone just calls me Nevada for short. My middle name is Billiam because when I was born ma was super tired and when she wrote my name for the nurse to put down in the record her handwriting weren’t too good and the W ended up looking like a B. Now them nurses they were on top of it cause when they seen that my ma had spelt Christian with a K they asked her about that cause it seemed pretty weird to them. But ma, she told them that she wanted my name to be spelt with a K and not a C. So them nurses just assumed then that my middle name was supposed to be spelt funny like my first name and didn’t ask ma about that. My Grandpapa, I mean my ma’s pa was named William and she had wanted me to have his name but it didn’t work out like that.

You might have also noticed that all us kids first names start with the letter-K. Well, that is because my ma wanted it that way. Some people say it is dumb but ma says that it takes brains to come up with so many different names that all start with the same letter. She still ain’t said what she is going to name the new baby when it comes.

I am sure you are also wondering why they call me Nevada instead of calling me Kris or Kristian or maybe even Bill from my middle name. You see every one of my brothers and sisters were born right here in this house, but I wasn’t. I was not born in this house or even in this town; heck, I was not even born in this state! When my ma was pregnant with me, my aunt Milly, that’s my pa’s sister, she was getting married again for the fifth time. She has the worst luck with men she marries cause they all end up dead after a year or two except for that one guy that she married first. He run off with some lady in a big fancy car and about a month later the police came and told Aunt Milly that her husband done shot himself in the foot and died. I always thought it kind of weird that someone could die from getting shot in he foot but I guess you can.

Then there was the other three men Aunt Milly married; they all died of what ma said was natural causes but I think Aunt Milly was getting tired of them and killing them off so she could get a new one! But I ain’t supposed to say stuff like that cause it makes ma super mad but pa, he says it is probably more true then not.

Anyway, ma she and pa packed everyone up into the truck and drove all the way to Nevada for Aunt Milly’s wedding with me still in my ma’s belly! You can guess what happened then. Right in the middle of the church, when the preacher was about to say, “Man and Wife” ma, she let out a scream and a couple minutes later, I popped right out on the church bench. Everyone says it was riding in the truck for all those miles that done it and they figured I wanted out so bad after that and wasn’t going to wait ‘til ma got back home.

Pa was the one that started calling me Nevada and even though Ma kept telling him to stop, he didn’t. It kind of stuck and everyone calls me Nevada now. Even my teachers at school, they only call me Nevada

I’m 12-years-old now . . . well I will be in five months, fifteen days, fourteen hours and twenty-seven minutes. That there is Ohio time; I don’t know what it would be in Nevada time. Everybody in my family has black hair and brown eyes except for ma and me cause we both got reddish-brown hair and green eyes. Pa says I am a whopping three-foot and nine inches and I weigh just a hairsbreadth shy of 68 pounds.

None of my brothers and sisters ever miss a chance to remind me that I am so short and skinny! They like to tease me and call me stuff like ‘Small Fry’, ‘Tiny-Tim’, ‘Short-Stuff’, ‘Half-Pint’ and a dozen other names like that but their all time favorite is ‘Little Pants’ cause I wear pants one size smaller than my youngest brother Kane. I don’t mind it too much cause I know that if anyone that is not family ever calls me a name or teases me that my brothers and sisters will pounded them into the ground like a fence pole and they have sure done it lots of times too.

I might be small but I am strong and I do everything on the farm accept stack the hay but I can sure toss it down from the hayloft and drag them over for the cows.

When I was a baby, the doctors in Nevada all thought I might have some problems since I was born two months early. Them doctors said that I would probably be a sickly boy and a burden to my family and maybe ma and pa should think about putting me into a special hospital so they would not have to take care of me the rest of my life. But pa, he got fire mad at them Nevada doctors and he punched one of them right in the nose and pa got himself arrested for that but Aunt Milly’s new husband, he got pa out of jail and had a talk with them doctors so pa wouldn’t get into any trouble. But pa, he didn’t let no doctors tell him what to do with me and he didn’t believe them none either! When I was only nine-days-old he packed everyone up in the truck again and put ma and me in the back with a bunch of blankets and pillows and drove us all the way back home to Ohio. Of course, I was way to little to remember any of that stuff but I heard the story so many times it is like I sort of remember it happening.

I think I can remember back as far as when I was only four and Doc Wilson would come to the farm every week to check on me and make sure I was growing good. Ma and Pa say he did that every week since I was born and he never charged ma and pa a single penny either. But every year when pa has one of the cows slaughtered he gives half to Doc Wilson and his family for free.

Now he don’t need to come see me no more. When I get sick or hurt or something we got to go into town to see him except for that one time when I was ten and was fooling around on the fence in the back pasture. I tried to jump over it and cut my leg open real bad. Kathy had been with me and Kevin had been close by so she yelled for him and he ran me all the way up to the house. Boy Doc Wilson got to our house so fast and he gave me twenty-seven stitches in my leg right on our kitchen table but first he gave me a shot in my backside which hurt almost as much as my leg. That is something I don’t like about Doc Wilson, he always give me shots in my backside!

I never been super sick like the doctors back in Nevada said I would be. Oh sure I been sick but only things like colds and I got the Chicken Pox when I was eight. Boy, I hated those; they itched so bad and I wasn’t allowed to scratch. Ma said that every time I was caught scratching my Pox it meant I would get a whack with the belt when I was better. I ended up getting eight whacks a couple weeks later and all those I earned the first day. On the second day, Pa made me wear my winter snow gloves and tied them on so that I could not take them off just so that I could not scratch my Chicken Pox. I itched so bad that I thought I was going to die.

Aside from the fact that I have always been smaller then the other kids in my classes at school, I do have one problem that Doc Wilson says is because I was born too soon. Sometimes when I got to go number one or number two, I can’t hold it and it comes out into my pants. If I am outside and I got to go number one I just run behind a tree or something. But if I can’t wait even that long I will just pull down my pants and go number one right where I am. It is not such a big deal cause the only ones that ever see is my family and they all see me naked all the time so I don’t much care. Pa says that if going outside is good enough for the cows then it is good enough for me too.

But if I am not outside, like if I am in the barn or the house or when I am at school and I got to go number one or worse still, if I got to go number two, then I got to run for the bathroom or I will have a big, big problem in my pants.

When I first when to school, I got teased and picked on a lot when I would have accidents but then I would just tell my older brother and sisters and they would beat them up. After a while, everyone learned not to pick on me unless they wanted a black eye or worse.

There was this one time when I was in third grade and Mrs. Pennyworth was sick one day and we had to have a substitute teach for that day. The substitute was a very mean man and he yelled at us all day long. Well after a while I felt like I needed to go and I got up to go like normal cause I always had permission to just get up and go whenever I needed to go. He seen me and was yelling even louder and even some of my friends tried to tell him that I had to go but he didn’t listen and I ended up messing in my undershorts. If that was not bad enough, he made me go back to my desk and sit for the rest of the day like that.

Now everyday after school, my sister Kathy would meet me by the flagpole and would walk me home; so on this day when school let out, I went straight to the flagpole and told her what happened and when we got home she told our pa about it.

I never seen pa so mad in all my life and I never want too again. He had ma take me into the house and get me cleaned up while he finished waterin’ the cows. I came back out of the house washed and in clean pants about the time pa was finishing. We got in the truck and drove all the way to the school. I guess pa had called the school while ma had been cleaning me up cause when we got there the police was there and so was a bunch of other teachers and that substitute teacher guy was standing outside too. I don’t know if the school called the police to keep my pa from killing that man or if pa called them but when we got there pa jumped out of the truck and did not say anything. He just walked right up to the man and punched him three times so fast. The only thing I remember my pa saying was, “If I ever see or hear of you near another child again, I am not going to be responsible for what I do to you.” Then he got back in the truck with me and we went home. As far as I know, that was the last anyone ever seen of that substitute teacher.

I had other substitutes since that guy but I never had any of them every say anything if I got up to use the bathroom or to go to the nurses office to get a pair of dry pants even if it was in the middle of class. I think every one of them was told not to say nothin’.

Everything was great until last school year when I had to start riding the bus to a new school that none of my brothers or sisters had ever went to. I guess I have always been smart; pa even says that he never known someone as smart as me and that I will probably grow up to be the President of America. I always get super good grades and my last teacher at my old school; she made me stay in from recess one day and had me take this special test. I was powerful mad about that too cause none of the other kids had to take the test.

Well, then a few weeks later this funny looking man who was dressed like he was going to church, showed up at our house on a Wednesday and told ma and pa that I won some kind of contest or something like that. He said that I am so smart that I get to go to this big fancy school and it wont cost ma and pa nothing at all. That man even gave them a check to buy me some fancy clothes to wear to that school.

I was pretty excited until that first day when all the teasing started all over again. I had not even made it off the bus that first morning and my pants were wet. Normally if that stuff happened at my old school, I had a change of clothes in my backpack plus ma had given the school nurse at my old school a bunch of undershorts and long pants for emergencies. Since it was my first day at a new school and I didn’t want anyone knowing about my problem I decided not to put any dry pants or undershorts in my backpack and ma had not gone to my new school yet to see the nurse there and give her some clothes for emergencies.

Well, that first day was real bad, after lunch, a bunch of kids cornered me on the playground and started teasing me about wetting my pants on the bus. They kept calling me a baby and telling me to suck on my thumb like a little baby. One of the boys who I heard everyone calling Lumpy, he punched me in the stomach and when he did, I accidentally messed the back of my undershorts. What was worse was that it was loud enough that everyone knew it happened and started laughing and telling everyone on the playground what I did.

My dad had to drive all the way to my new school just to bring me clean undershorts and pants. I wanted to just go home so bad but he would not let me. He made me stay for the rest of the day and everyone then got to keep teasing me until the end of the day.

The ride home on the bus was the worse. No one would let me sit down anywhere and I ended up having to sit all the way in the back by myself. When the bus finally got to where I was supposed to get off to walk the rest of the way, I got up and started walking to the front but someone tripped me and I fell and hit my mouth on the edge of one of them seats. When I got up I seen that the front of my pants was wet so I ran off the bus and kept running all the way home and went right to my room, which I share with my other brothers.

I stayed in my room crying until my sister Karen came looking for me cause I had not done any of my chores after school. At first, she was mad at me for not taking care of the chickens or seeing that the cows were watered but then she seen my busted lip and all the blood on my pillow and boy did she explode.

I told her what happened and how Lumpy had punched me in the stomach and made me mess my undershorts. I also told her how pa had to bring me some clean undershorts and pants and about what happened on the bus. She got my lip all cleaned up, helped me change into my pajamas and said she would do my chores for me and to just lay up in my bed and rest. I ended up sleeping all the way through supper and did not even know it until ma was waking me up for school the next morning. I found out that Karen told ma and pa and everyone else what happened and I guess ma decided to let me go on sleeping.

In the morning, I didn’t want to get up and go to school again but ma said if I didn’t get out of bed and into the bathtub, she was going to tan my backside. While I was in the tube washing cause I had wet while I was sleeping, which I do every night, Kevin came into the bathroom with Kathy, Kyle-Lee and Kane and said that today I didn’t have to take the bus and that they were going to take me to school.

I still did not want to go but I did anyway. I got my nice school uniform on, Kevin helped me tie the tie cause I kept getting it all wrong and then we all piled into Kevin’s truck which is really just the old field truck that he drives around the farm. I sat up front with Kevin while the rest got in the back.

I already knew what was going to happen before we got to my new school and I was a little scared that Kevin would get in trouble with the police since he is not a kid no more but he told me not to worry about nothing.

We got to school long before the buses got there and so Kevin lead us all into the school and right into the office where he started yelling at that same funny looking man that had come to our house that one day. Kevin never touched the man but he didn’t have too. Kevin was shouting and cussing and told him that if I come home one more time crying or bleeding that Kevin was going to come back and . . . well I am not allowed to use the words that Kevin said to that man but by the time Kevin was done yelling, that man looked like he was about to cry. I found out later that, that man is in charge of the whole school and his name is Mr. Glick. He is actually a pretty nice man but he is still kind of weird and always smells like he was rolling around in flowers.

Kathy gave the school nurse a big paper bag full of clean undershorts and pants for me and when Kevin, Kathy and me turned to leave, Kyle-Lee and Kane were not there. A couple seconds later, some kids came running in and said there was a big fight out in front of the school. All of us ran out of the big wooden front doors and I seen Kyle-Lee and Kane pounding the feathers out of Lumpy and five other boys. Yeah that’s right, my two little brothers had taken on six older boys and creamed every last one of them.

There was a couple teachers trying to get through the crowd of shouting kids but they could not seem to do anything. All Kevin had to do to break up the fight was whistle once and Kyle-Lee and Kane jumped up and walked over to the truck, leaving all six boys lying on the grass crying and bleeding. I didn’t hear what Kevin said to Mr. Glick but I seen Mr. Glick shaking his head and waiving his hands and I knew Kyle-Lee and Kane weren’t going to get into any trouble for beating up Lumpy and those other boys.

After that second morning, I didn’t have too much trouble at my new school for the rest of that year. Well, once in a while someone would see I had wet my pants in class or on the bus and they would laugh but all I had to do was whisper back that the next day they better be ready for a beating cause I was bringing my brothers to school and that would shut them up. I really only had to have Kevin drive Kyle-Lee and Kane to school one other morning and they didn’t even have to do nothing. Soon as Mr. Glick seen my brothers getting out of the truck with me, he came running over looking all worried and scared. Kevin told the man the names of the three boys that had been picking on me the day before and as soon as the buses started pulling up in front of the school, Mr. Glick ran over and snatched all three boys the second they stepped off their buses. I found out later that same day that all three boys had their parents called in and got whacks right there in the school office.

This year things kind of got worse for me. I started having more and more accidents in my pants both number one and number two. Doc Wilson checked me over and explained to my ma using some fancy doctor words that I didn’t understand at first but then he explained it to me so that I could understand. He said that he thought it was because I was starting to grow faster and for a while I might have a harder time controlling when I needed to go but that I should not let it bother me cause he was sure it was only a temporary thing that I would eventually out grow.

It wasn’t really a problem to deal with during last summer while I was still at home and could get cleaned up whenever I would wet my pants or mess the back of my undershorts but things got a lot harder when school started again.

Pretty much all my classmates and teachers were aware of my wetting problem and if I did wet my pants my teachers would give me a hall pass without saying anything and I went to the nurse to get some dry undershorts and pants. I had a few friends at school from last year and they didn’t much care that I wet my pants and they would even stick up for me if they heard somebody whispering behind my back.

However, about three weeks into the new school year, I was sitting in class while we were learning about compound fractions when the worst thing happened. Up until then, I had managed not to have any more messy accidents at my new school since that first and only time on my first day. I did have a few messy accidents right after I got off the bus at the end of the day but by then no one was around from my school to know about it. But then on that one day, for some reason and without any notice at all, I felt the seat of my undershorts fill up. Seconds later everyone could smell it and knew what had happened.

My teacher, who I had never had a problem with before, yelled at me in front of my whole class and said that I was a nasty boy; then she walked me all the way to the office herself. She told Mr. Glick that she would not allow me back in her classroom if I was going to be soiling myself.

Mr. Glick then called my ma and pa who both had to come to the school and talk with Mr. Glick while I waiting in the nurse’s office. The nurse had always been nice whenever I had come in with wet pants and would let me change on my own without saying anything but this time she didn’t leave me to change on my own because I obviously could not clean myself without a bathtub.

So, she took me by the hand and made me lay on one of the beds where we have to lay if we come in feeling sick. I don’t know why I got so upset and was crying but I was and I could not stop either. I guess I was crying because now everyone at school would know I messed my undershorts and this time I can’t blame it on Lumpy punching me in the belly.

She was still very nice and helped me clean up and when she helped me put on clean undershorts and pants she then said that I had to lay back down with a cool rag on my forehead and wait until ma and pa showed up. I was sure Pa was going to be mad but when the nurse came back and took me into Mr. Glick’s office, I noticed right away that pa looked more worried then mad and ma, she was crying, which made me start crying again too.

I didn’t have to stay at school that time. Instead, I got to ride all the way back to the farm in the back of pa’s pickup truck, which don’t have no cover like Kevin’s truck does. That was the first time ever that I road in the back all by myself and it was the best.

Continue on to Chapter 2