My younger brother, Robert Joel Cox, worked in the oil fields for most of his professional life and, like so many others in his line of work, kept changing companies and moving on. That doesn’t sound too bad, just to say it, but Robert didn’t just move across the street or across town and go to work. He moved all over the country, places like: Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Kansas, New Mexico, and various towns and small towns in every state.
I didn’t think much of it at the time, but he moved in as often as my second wife, Sharon Kay Marshall. Sharon told me once that she moved twenty times and that was before we got married. While we were married, including all the times we moved in together and the times she left alone and since our divorce, I’d say she moved at least twenty other times.
Phew!
Robert was living in Wichita Falls, Texas, the winter of 1980 when Sharon and I drove from Prattville, Oklahoma to visit him, Rose, and their two daughters: Paula, 7, and Hallie, 4. Lisa, a third daughter, had yet to born was born.
Sharon and I had been married for about six months and although she had two children from a previous marriage: Shelly, 12, and Jimmie, 4, they were visiting their dad in Missouri and were not with us on that particular trip.
The first night, Rose accommodated us in an extra room with a bed made up of a steel frame, springs, and a cotton mattress, a bed similar to the one my mom and dad would have slept on the night I was conceived. Of course I don’t know, it’s just a thought. My parents could have been on the floor, on a couch, in the back seat of one of Dad’s old cars on the side of a hill. down on the stretch.
But regardless of where my parents performed the sexual act that resulted in my birth, Sharon later told me that she thought Christy had been conceived on that bed in my brother’s back room in Wichita Falls, Texas. And to make the point, nine months into the day, Christy was born and eventually grew into a beautiful girl, but not initially. Let’s say Christy had a hard time getting started.
The first thing we noticed was that his eyes tended to cross at irregular times, requiring thick and strong glasses, also his bent feet required special correctional shoes. And like most children, there were other things that required our attention, but none that couldn’t be handled, that is, all but one.
Christy was what I would describe as, oddly dumb. I mean, he had a slightly different way of life than most children.
I didn’t realize it for a long time and I still don’t consider it a big deal, but Christy always wanted to use the bathroom. In every place we went, her first request was, “I need to go to the bathroom!” And it didn’t matter that we were at someone else’s house, we had just hit the local McDonalds for a Happy little box Or you were on a road trip and stopped to get gas. Christy wanted to use the bathroom before the engine cranked enough. Happy little box I could wait.
Sharon and I never discussed Christy’s unusual behavior and even if we had, I don’t think Sharon would have thought about it and even though I was aware of Christy’s strange activity, I didn’t either. But then one day at home, a rather curious incident occurred that might shed some light on Christy’s strange attraction to the bathroom.
We lived on Peppermint Drive in Prattville at the time and our home had two bathrooms: one in the center of a long hallway next to the kitchen, and one in the master bedroom at the south end of the long hall.
The bathroom in the master bedroom was long with a two-bowl vanity on the left inside the entry and a stool and bathtub in a smaller room at the back with a door at the entrance and another separating the two rooms.
One day I went through the master bedroom to the bathroom and was standing by the toilet doing my usual things. emptying my radiatoras Daddy liked to say, when Christy came in. I hadn’t bothered to close either door, so it wasn’t the sound of a creaking door that caught my eye, but I knew she was there.
Now understand the picture. Christy was still three years old, but she was close to four. She had a round face, wore glasses as thick as the bottom of a soda bottle, short hair cut straight with bangs, a short blue dress with white trim, white tights, and a pair of black patent leather shoes. And here she comes, breaking into the bathroom just like she must have done all those other times at McDonald’s and other places.
And when she approached me from behind, I felt her presence and leaned closer to block her advance, trying to keep her behind me. But she was persistent and kept moving back and forth until finally, I thought, “what the heck! She’s not even four years old,” and let her advance to the point where she was standing next to the toilet on my right side.
There is not much I could have done. Any man or woman knows it, you don’t turn it off and keep it in your pants. The most likely result of that would be peeing all over the place. My other option would have been to close the door but it opened inward and to do that I would have had to hold everything in place and move to the right to close the door, exposing myself to Christy in the process.
I suppose I could have yelled at Sharon and asked her to come and get our daughter out of the room, but I didn’t and let her stay there, her eyes shifting from side to side from the slightly yellowish water splashing the toilet. your source and anything else that interests you. I didn’t look down to see what he was doing, but I assumed he was watching my actions with some interest.
A while passed without anything being said before he finally spoke. And I must admit I was a bit surprised by your comments and the questions that followed.
She said, “Stand up right, daddy?”
I said yes,”
“I don’t. I feel,” she replied, without hesitation.
I continued my usual ritual without commenting on her unusual comment and was finishing up as Christy continued her thoughtful observations and comments.
“… And you shake yours too, don’t you daddy?”
A little amused by his attention, but still not bothered by anything up to that point, I replied, “Yes.”
Christy continued, “I don’t know. I clean mine.” She said.
There was another moment of silence before he spoke again. Finally he said, “Jimmie can’t shake his, can he daddy?”
Before she said that, I didn’t think anything about what was going on. But from that moment on I realized that this was not new to her. Jimmie was about eight years old at the time and was analyzing the situation, not unlike many other times, at least that was my opinion on what was happening at the time.
It took me a moment to respond and I have to admit I was a bit surprised, but I continued our rather unusual conversation anyway.
“Oh? Why not?” I asked, exchanging glances with her as I buttoned my pants.
He did not hesitate, “because, it is very little, dad,” he said, keeping the same serious and serious face with which he entered.
Last August, Christy turned 25 and is in the middle of her nursing studies. She and her husband of seven years, Chris Johnson, have two wonderful children: Dylan, three, and Chloe, seven months. Chris is a wonderful husband and a great helper and I have all the confidence in the world that Christy will achieve her goal of becoming a registered nurse.
Still, I was a bit surprised when Christy told me she wanted to be a nurse. But thinking about it, I’m not sure why I would have done it. Christy must have been thinking about it for a long time because she mentioned it in a poem she wrote when she was eight years old. She called him: This is my life
When I was a baby
I had no teeth
I had no hair
I cried
I couldn’t walk
When I was a kid
I had teeth
I had hair
I played ball
When i was a teenager
I had a bag
I had a boyfriend
When i’m an adult
I’m going to be a nurse
I will go to university
I will clean the house