Fly Like A Bumblebee
CHAPTER 1: HELLO, FLIGHT CONTROL! HELLO! HELLO!
Scientific evidence says that it is impossible for the bumblebee to fly, but he doesn't know that, so he goes ahead and flies anyway. Until I was eight years old, no one knew that I was nearly blind. My parents did not know, friends and relatives did not know. Even I did not know. There was no way for me to understand that the confused, distorted, unstable shadow-world I saw was not the same that others saw. I just kept bumbling along trying to sort out fantasy from reality.
This was only a part of a strange, unreal foreboding I felt in those early years. On one hand there was an idyllic world around me. It was almost like a fantasyland. Then there was a dark, unspoken undertow, a pull to be something other than myself.
I often was scolded and punished for not paying attention to where I was going, or what I was doing. Try as I might to do otherwise, I was just plain clumsy. Even I knew that.
Peers did not know I could not see very well. They kept running off and leaving me behind, not realizing I could not see to follow. In play, fear was a constant companion. I was afraid of becoming lost. I was afraid of being left out and left behind. I was afraid of ridicule. Everyone else could walk across the creek on the log without slipping off. I could not. Not aware of what I could not see, failure was almost certain. If I tried and failed, I would risk ridicule as well as injury. I shouldered the tag of "sissy."
Fear of the dark was intense. The usual childhood fears were intensified by the very real fears of falling into a hole, slamming into a tree, or being hit in the face with a branch. I tagged myself as a scaredy cat.
Even during the daytime I might carefully walk around a hole, fearful that I might fall in. Only afterward would I learn with embarrassment, as a result of ridicule from peers, that it was just a shadow of a stop sign. Alternatively and all too often, I would stumble over obvious but unseen hazards.
My teachers did not know either, but that was easy. In order not to make mistakes, I would pick the front seat, often as near to the teacher's desk as possible. The pitfall here was that, at least among peers, I tagged myself as the class "brown-nose."
Vision is strange. So much depends on lighting, angles and contrast. Under certain conditions, things can seem to appear and disappear right before your very eyes. Such is the very essence of the art of magic.
As I began to more fully understand these principles used by magicians, it helped me sort out the differences between fantasy and reality in my personal life. Only then could I begin to develop my full power and potential. Years later as a magician, I would utilize these principles to my advantage as a performer. You may get a better sense of this by comparing The Magic Washer trick in Chapter 16 with the glass of milk story below:
At four years old, I was so unaware of my surroundings. It is so easy to reach out and knock over a glass of milk, which is nearly invisible against a white tablecloth. We all do it occasionally, but not often.
Often is even okay when you are two or three, but you should know better when you are four or five. At seven it becomes thoughtless habit, in need of firm correction.
My father never hit me for such clumsiness, but he was quick to anger, and shouted a lot when he got excited. I was always afraid he would hit me in the back of the head for such infractions, and could never predict when I might cause them.
Clumsy became my middle name.
There were also other struggles I had with names. When I was four years old, my younger sister was born. Mother was still in the hospital with the newborn. Daddy and I were sitting with Grandma Klamm, along with sisters Alma and Edna, on the front veranda of the Klamm homestead. I was asked what name would I give the new little girl. I studied awhile and then came up with my choice. It was promptly rejected.
I was asked, "How about Doris? Doris June would be a pretty name, wouldn't it?"
I flatly stated that I did not like that name, but it did not matter. Clearly, they had already decided. I wondered why they asked me in the first place.
Looking back I think it was a very good choice. Four years before I was born there was another child, a stillborn girl named Dorothy June. The new little sister was named to take the place of the first, stillborn child. Until then, without any of us knowing, I had been exclusively tagged with that responsibility.
I am sure that my parents never consciously thought of it in those terms. Neither did I at the time, but the unspoken plea and unconscious behavior was there, to encourage me to become the little girl that was lost. From time to time, mother would open the dresser drawer and take out the picture of the dead child, lying in the little casket. She would show it to me, and encourage me to feel the clipping of hair, which was also there. Inwardly cringing against touching part of a dead thing, I felt that I was expected to do or say something special, but did not know what. It was a very unsettling experience, and one that I am sure was played out in other ways, so subtle that they rarely reached the level of awareness. Thus, they also did not prompt challenge or contradiction.
It was on March 11, 1930, that I was born to Clarence and Beulah Klamm. I was christened Robert William, but from the start was called Bobby Bill. Occasionally a teacher or doctor would call me "Robert", but that was not much better. There was even a time when my classmates teased by calling me Roberta Wilhelmina. I don't know how that got started.
I hated my name. What kind of real name was "Bobby Bill?" Who would want a dumb name like "Robert?" I yearned for a real name. Our school reading book was the Bob's Merrill Primer. Bob! Now there was a real name. Why didn't my parents name me Bob?