Rosa Parks as a Troll

We were some of the only students from Neptune, an area that St. Regis' parents did not consider "nice." There were few black kids in our school and none of them graduated with me. It seemed like every time there was a black student, they were gone the next year. So basically, I was raised with a bunch of white-ass turkey eaters. I considered myself the minority at St. Regis. I was just a ginzo from "Neptune." Once I had a problem with the only black girl, who just so happened to be on my bus. She was bugging my best friend and called her white trash. I said, "well, if she is white trash, that must make you black trash."

The next day I was assigned to sit in the back of the bus with my sister. They could not put the black girl in the back of the bus. My sister seemed embarrassed and I believe this is the beginning of her period of mean to me, which lasted until I was 23. She let the big kids treat me however they wanted and they all made fun of me. I can imagine today that I was pretty annoying to my sister and she had a haircut like Bon Jovi so maybe she could have been feeling like a dork too and I just didn't realize it. My sister wasn't cool enough to protect me from the bigger punks. I wasn't old enough to be cool enough for the back of the bus. And my hair was equally queer, this crazy perm that my mom thought would be a good idea. I think only Italian moms get second graders perms.

Well one day on the back of the bus one of the older boys threw my troll out the window and I cried for days. I saw this now 'guy' a year ago at a bar in Hoboken and he was the door 'guy' and was all friendly and shit. And I was civil enough, but all I could say was, "you threw my troll out the window." I can still remember that troll. I can remember all of my trolls actually. I collected them and would hide in my dad's closet on Sunday and steal pieces of pasta from the spaghetti box from Sunday dinner and take dixie cups and fill them with hot water from the bathroom sink and pretend to boil the pasta. Then I would feed the trolls Sunday dinner.

My favorite and first troll was named Crotch Fizzy. My best friend Nicky and I bought him at a gift shop at a convention vacation for Prudential that our parents attended. We named him Crotch Fizzy because he had yellow frizzy hair and my dad used to laugh this expression "crotch pheasants" when he would see a fly buzz around at the dinner table. Us kids thought it was so funny, probably because of his usage of the word crotch. We also would play MadLibs around the pool and when asked 'name of a container that holds liquid' I would always say penis and smirk. That was my only exusable opportunity to use the word penis. Penis. Penis.

But back to trolls. I love them. I have them all in my attic right now. I bet they are all having a spagetti dinner up there in the attic. I saved all my toys from childhood. Toys of the 80's are the best toys in the world!