Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Five Years In Five Months
    Five Years In Five Months
    Five Years In Five Months
    Ebook100 pages1 hour

    Five Years In Five Months

    By Noah Brand

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A touching, detailed memoir of a time and place in American culture, and two brothers who learn what they can from each other. Five Years In Five Months is told from the perspective of Chuck Blitz, about his youngest brother, Nicky. In the early 1970s, Chuck was deeply into Transcendental Meditation, and believed his newfound wisdom would help him solve a longtime family problem. Namely, what's to be done about Nicky? The school system had labeled him retarded, his social skills were all over the map, and he'd been kicked out of the Transcendental Meditation training for inappropriate behavior. Chuck believed he could be taught, with the right approach, and naturally assumed his approach was the right one. The two of them take a beach house in Southern California for the summer, and begin months of intense study, meditation, and discipline. Nothing goes like Chuck expected, but everything changes for both of them.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNoah Brand
    Release dateDec 31, 2016
    ISBN9781370068449
    Five Years In Five Months
    Author

    Noah Brand

    Author, editor, raconteur, and man-about-town Noah Brand lives in Portland, Oregon, and is likely up to no good.

    Related to Five Years In Five Months

    Related ebooks

    Biography & Memoir For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Cool Dads: Tough Times Edition

      Jul 3, 2022

      Cool Dads: Tough Times Edition
      7 min read

    • Article

      I’m Mum To 60 Children

      Mar 22, 2022

      I’m Mum To 60 Children
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Flynns’ Effect

      Aug 11, 2019

      The Flynns’ Effect
      7 min read

    • Article

      I’m So Glad You LEFT ME

      Dec 2, 2021

      I’m So Glad You LEFT ME
      4 min read

    • Article

      Sam Delaney Is At Home

      Oct 16, 2023

      Both my kids started new chapters in their education last month. I was, as always, more nervous than they were when they set off on the first day. But it all went well, they came back with plenty of tales to tell and big smiles on their faces. ‘What

      3 min read

    • Article

      Why I adopted 6 KIDS WITH DISABILITIES

      Jan 26, 2021

      From the outside, we don’t look like the typical family. For starters, I’m a single gay man who has adopted six children – Jack, 13, Ruby, 10, Lily, eight, Joseph, five, Noah, and Louis, two. And with no mum around, it’s not exactly a traditional set

      4 min read

    • Article

      Family Ties

      May 2, 2021

      Family Ties
      4 min read

    • Article

      We Asked, You Answered: Have You Taught Your Children To Run Errands On Their Own?

      Apr 30, 2022

      Nearly 100 NPR readers gave their views on encouraging kids to do tasks on their own at home and in the community. Some are opposed to the practice for safety reasons. Others shared personal stories.

      6 min read

    • Article

      An Epilogue to Homeschooling: A Mother Hangs Up Her Homeschooling Hat…Now What?

      Oct 3, 2022

      Estimated reading time: 11 minutes — My chest feels achy. It’s felt like this for weeks now. I keep catching myself holding my breath, losing focus, reaching for something to soothe me, staring into space. This isn’t me — who is this person, I wonde

      7 min read

    • Article

      Forever Family

      Aug 12, 2021

      Forever Family
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Unlikely Minimalist

      Jun 3, 2020

      The Unlikely Minimalist
      8 min read

    • Article

      Minimalist

      Jun 3, 2020

      Minimalist
      8 min read

    • Article

      Mum’s Secret Life

      Aug 9, 2023

      Mum’s Secret Life
      5 min read

    • Article

      After Prison, I Became a Better Dad

      Jun 14, 2019

      “Even when a parent has been part of a child’s pain, that parent’s love can still be the antidote.”

      6 min read

    • Article

      A granny OLD TIME

      Jan 17, 2021

      Schools and early childhood centres are so close to re-opening, you can probably smell the freedom from here. This is not because we don’t love our kids or don’t love having them around, it’s just… ooh, a bit of quiet between breakfast and dinner wou

      3 min read

    • Article

      Lady Latonya

      Dec 4, 2019

      Lady Latonya
      6 min read

    • Article

      Mum’s Secret Life

      Aug 9, 2023

      Mum’s Secret Life
      5 min read

    • Article

      Mum’s Secret Life

      Aug 9, 2023

      Mum’s Secret Life
      5 min read

    • Article

      Is Being An Only Child REALLY THAT BAD?

      Aug 19, 2019

      Watching my sons Harley, four, and Grayson, two, happily sharing their building blocks, I feel so lucky. Yes, I know that there will be times that aren’t so harmonious. Friends tell me that there will be arguments about everything – from what to watc

      2 min read

    • Article

      Don’t Blame the Kids

      May 15, 2020

      Don’t Blame the Kids
      6 min read

    • Article

      Queen Of Common Sense.

      Dec 10, 2020

      Queen Of Common Sense.
      9 min read

    • Article

      Playing Favourites

      Feb 17, 2020

      Playing Favourites
      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Five Years In Five Months

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Five Years In Five Months - Noah Brand

      Five Years In Five Months

      By Chuck Blitz and Noah Brand

      Published by Noah Brand at Smashwords

      Copyright 2016 Noah Brand

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      CHAPTER 1

      When we were young, the only time our entire family ate together was on Jewish holidays. Fortunately, that included the Sabbath every week; Dad’s father had been a rabbi and while Dad’s own beliefs had liberalized over the years, there was still some weight to five thousand years of tradition. So every Friday night, we had out the good tablecloths and the good china and the plain Sabbath candles, and we arranged our family around the table.

      There was never a formal seating arrangement; nobody was told where their place was. But the arrangement was there all the same, and it never varied. We all knew instinctively where we belonged, Nicky most of all.

      Dad was at the head of the table. He was bright, hardworking, self-doubting, and always tired. He’d built his own business from scratch, and that took all his energy and patience, leaving little of either for us.

      To Dad’s left was Michael, all good looks and machismo and physical strength. He was the one who’d challenge Dad’s authority at the table, as though he wanted to take over as the father figure.

      I was on Michael’s left, and always getting pulled into his clashes with Dad. As a teenager, it was often Michael’s approval I wanted as much as my father’s. I was still chasing school athletics at that time, track and basketball and trying to be cool and successful.

      On my left was Melody, who had played with Nicky when they were both little, until she started school and someone gave her an IQ test. After that, it wasn’t appropriate for the newly-crowned smartest kid in the family to play with him.

      The seat to Dad’s right was Mom’s, but it was usually empty during dinner because she was always on her feet serving the rest of us. Looking back, I’m not certain when she got anything to eat herself.

      To Mom’s right was Judy, the oldest. She was the responsible, socially involved one. She cared about everyone, to a fault sometimes.

      On Judy’s right was Linda, the prettiest, the one who not only entered beauty contests but won them. She often set the pace for the conversation, her incisive mind always up for a good argument. Or, failing that, any argument.

      And all the way down at the other end of the table, furthest from our father, was Nicky. The baby of the family. The problem.

      Our family prized education and intellectual achievement. We didn’t know what to do with a kid who couldn’t manage school, who was always in trouble and lagging behind his class. We relied a lot on humor and wit to communicate. We didn’t know what to make of Nicky’s repetitive, obnoxious attempts to get laughs. We were smart kids with smart parents and we knew it. We didn’t have a place for a kid the school told us was mentally retarded. So Nicky wound up at the far end of the table.

      Lots of youngest children try to get attention, but most of them learn from their attempts. They figure out what works and what doesn’t, what gets them laughed with and what gets them laughed at, what gets them rewarded and what gets them punished. Nicky never figured it out, never filtered his attempts. He just kept trying everything-all-the-time, and it never got less uncomfortable for all of us.

      Sometimes he’d hit on something that worked and refuse to let go of it. At Michael’s bar mitzvah, Nicky was only five, but he saw all the attention lavished on his big brother and decided he wanted that too. He told all the relatives and family friends that it was his bar mitzvah, and sang some nonsense words he thought sounded like the Hebrew chants of the ceremony. Everyone laughed like crazy, and when Nicky baldly demanded that he get presents like Michael did, the guests cheerfully gave him some money. That meant that for a solid year, every single time the extended family got together, we were treated to another rendition of Nicky’s bar mitzvah act, with accompanying request for payment.

      As you’d expect, Nicky was picked on by other children, all of us included. I’d hit Michael or he’d hit me, and whoever lost would go beat up on Nicky. He was constantly being tricked and teased, always the butt of jokes he couldn’t understand. When he was six or seven, some of the kids in the neighborhood told him they’d give him a million trillion dollars if he took off his pants every time a car drove by. He was skeptical at first, but hey, a million trillion dollars is good money, so he went for it. He dutifully dropped his pants for every car, while the other kids laughed and laughed. His lack of impulse control led him to bad places, too: after that incident he hit one of those kids in the head with a baseball bat, threatening to kill him and his whole family. Not for laughing at him—for not paying him the million trillion he’d been promised.

      He was so easy to pick on that it was hard to resist, and his gullibility and obnoxiousness made it easy to rationalize. Hey, we’d tell ourselves, he’s such a little jerk anyway, let’s dare him to do something really gross this time. He’d take every dare, of course. Attention was attention, after all, and he’d learned the same dangerous equation as a million children just like him: it’s better to be laughed at than ignored.

      The first official warning we got about Nicky’s capabilities came when he was in kindergarten and the school principal said mom should lower her expectations when it came to her youngest son. The official report was more blunt: [Nicky had] displayed a very short attention span, had difficulty following directions, and seemed unable to do simple tasks. He should be enrolled in first grade, even though he will probably have to repeat it.

      They were right: Nicky did fail first grade. What the schools were telling us was that Nicky wasn’t just an awkward kid, there was something wrong with him.

      Academic success was how you got praise in our family, and as Nicky realized that avenue was closed to him, his demands for attention became more strident. He’d bull into a conversation or whatever was going on and tell us we had to play with him. We’d indulge him sometimes; Mom had told us that complimenting him would bolster his self-confidence. But we were kids ourselves, and we thought he was a pain. I fear that all our inconsistent and sporadic reinforcement did was teach him that understanding other people’s motives wasn’t just hard, it was impossible.

      Sure enough, when Nicky did make it all the way to second grade, he failed to improve. He simply couldn’t keep up with the other children. At the suggestion of the school, we had him evaluated for a separate program for hyperactive kids. The Special School District’s assessment was cruelly accurate:

      He dislikes sitting down and once sitting is distracted by everything in sight. He does a good deal of bragging and tells bizarre tales, and is quite manipulative. … This is a nervous, talkative, easily distracted boy. … Nicky could benefit from the structured situation of a special placement. This mother seems to be a warm, interested, intelligent person who somehow seems remote in her relationship with this child.

      Ouch.

      The program for hyperactive kids helped some; it had a better student-teacher ratio and some awareness of how to handle a kid like him. The assessments we

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1