Aunt Elizabeth

So, in the summer of 1964, my Aunt Elizabeth offers to take my brother Ron and me to the NY World's Fair. Whether the offer was gracious or begrudged remains a point of contention in family lore, but that’s off the point…

Ron was 13 at the time and I was 8. How exciting! My mother, who was likely chain smoking in bed, perpetually unable to interact with most of the real world and fresh from winning the Zelda Fitzgerald Emotional Stability Award for the 9th consecutive year, somehow mustered up the wherewithal to connect us with Elizabeth and we spend Friday night in her big, very cool house in Brooklyn. Elizabeth was 61 years old at that time, long divorced and estranged almost as long from her adult son, an economics professor at Columbia University.

We wolfed down a rushed breakfast overshadowed by the anticipation of the day that lay ahead. We packed our stuff into the car and Elizabeth carefully backed her car out of the garage. On command, I wildly leapt from the back seat to close the garage door, and with energy apparently summoned forth by the copious preoccupation-driven adrenalin, I yanked the rope so hard that it snapped, causing the pulley mechanism to come crashing to the ground.

The garage door slammed down as well.

Aunt Elizabeth is very pissed off. Undeniably, with good reason because I wasn't even the slightest bit careful and in one careless moment, busted her garage door.

Gigantic home repair hassle.

Silence for the better part of the ride to Queens.

We arrive and of course, the World’s Fair is packed to the gills. The iconic unisphere rose tall, glistening in the warm summer sun and we saw signs pointing the way to “Futurama”.

Ronnie, likely unbeknownst to Elizabeth, had this major pathological, completely intense and thoroughly overwhelming fear of flashbulbs, to the point where he’d freak out and run away in hysterics at even the slightest hint of a popping flashbulb.

His phobia was traced back to his infancy, when my mother had to be hospitalized with post-partum depression, and the nurse who’d been hired to attend to my newborn brother apparently had a habit of checking in on him during the night wielding a bright flashlight. Pop psychology? Who knows. The alternate theory (my people are really into “analysis”) is that his weirdness with the flashbulbs somehow connects to the hernia surgery he underwent at less than a year-old, you know, bright operating room lights and all.

Needless to say, we’re barely out of the car and the flashbulbs are popping like fireworks on the 4th of July and Ron just takes off in mortal terror…just like that! And of course, he runs into a virtual sea of humanity.

To sum up: Her garage door mechanism is busted and one of the two kids in her charge has fled in the midst of a gigantic panic attack at the age of 13. And there are a zillion people packed in like sardines.

And, in all likelihood, I was pestering the crap out of her, making sure she knew that I was hungry again.

I’m surprised, in retrospect, that she didn’t just cave and give us the big F.U. right then and there.

I recall ending up at the security station, finally locating Ronnie hours later, probably just before Elizabeth called my Mother with the regrettable news that she’d lost her firstborn son at the 1964 World’s Fair.