IT'S JUST ABOUT ME

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Whose idea it was at the time slips my mind and would be of no consequence either. However, one day as we were playing cards...probably euchre...(a game I was not very good at, and don’t care for to this day), it was suggested that we should play strip poker. The guys were cool and assured the girls that we knew the game of poker...what wins and what doesn’t, and that they should trust us to play fair. Boy, what’s wrong with this picture! I had, just a few months earlier, played a part in putting Teddy and his sisters in harm’s way, almost losing Betty Anne. Now I was agreeing to play a game that would challenge the morals of two good Catholic girls and bring their brother along for the ride. All Catholic girls were good, I was told. At least, that is what Protestant boys were led to believe.

Well, it was agreed that we would play strip poker, and if you were to lose a hand, you couldn’t claim “funzees” and back out of taking off an item of clothing, even if it was just a sock. You couldn’t put on extra items of clothing either to prolong the inevitable if you played poorly or just had bad luck. It had to be fair. Okay. The game’s afoot!

As far as I knew, an ace was high and a winning hand moved from there to a pair, three of a kind, to four of a kind. Paul talked about a full house, but that made little sense to me. No more sense than a straight or a flush. To me, the more of the same thing you had, the more it was worth. I’m not sure those hands make any more sense today. However, we shuffled, we dealt, we won and lost hands...and eventually, we were all naked. What a picture. We were all 12 and 13 years of age. Some had little to no hair on certain undeveloped parts of our bodies, and certain other parts were undeveloped...but all virtues were intact. Now what?

We were all naked, all five of us sitting as best we could in Paul’s only bedroom on Paul’s mother’s double bed, trying not to reveal what we did or didn’t have. The idea of playing doctor came up. However, none of us really knew what that actually meant in terms of activity, and weren’t prepared to offer a potentially embarrassing demonstration, so we passed on that suggestion.

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Once the four of us were clearly under the bridge, near the north shore, Teddy and I turned and headed toward it. Betty Anne and Helen were a few feet behind us when we heard and felt a powerful “crack.” My God! It was the end, I thought. It reverberated along and across the surface of the river, off the bridge structure itself, and right up my legs, sending cold shivers along my spine. The hair on my arms and on the back of my neck stood straight up. If none of us wet our pants at that moment, surely our hearts stopped. And if any of us had ever had thoughts of taking our last breath, waiting for the angels to descend--we did at that moment. Teddy and I had looked back just in time to see Betty Anne fall through the ice. Helen was smaller and lighter and a couple of feet closer to the shore. She, like Teddy and I, was safe.

Betty Anne was in motion toward the shore when the ice gave away. This was likely her salvation. She continued to move forward as she slowly slipped to her waist into the chilling waters of the Thames. It wasn’t deep there and she may have touched the bottom. At this point, it really didn’t matter. Her face was frozen in fear as the terror set in. I stood breathless, transfixed on Betty Anne’s face, and in shock. Helen screamed loud enough to be heard back home. Teddy’s eyes bulged out so far he looked like Franky. His jaw dropped, it seemed to his waist, but he never uttered a word. He, too, was held motionless by fear. I was so scared, the only thing I could think of was what would we--or rather I--tell her parents.

At times it seemed that everything was my fault. I had visions buzzing around in my head of the tongue lashings I used to get from Franky’s mom when she blamed me for all the trouble I got him into over the years. None of which was true. Now I was about to be sentenced to life without parole as I envisioned standing beside Betty Anne’s parents, pointing to the icy waters and the spot where Betty Anne fell through the ice, never to be seen again.