Trouble ahead...

My sole purpose in life while I was at Geetam was to get kicked out so that I could go live with my dad at the Ranch. I went out of my way to get in trouble, piss people off, and torment others - well, torment adults - so that I would be forbidden to live at this so-called "center" in central California and sent off to live with Daddy in Oregon. Actually, now that I think about it, most sannyasins were probably trying to get accepted into the Ranch, but none of them in as clever of a fashion, I imagine. I turned 7 at Geetam, and for me that meant the age of hellion.

Mostly, as I said, I tried to annoy the adults. I'm not sure of all things I did exactly, but annoy the adults I did. The first time was with Suraj, the head of the kitchen. (that he was actually a certified teacher I didn't know that at the time, I grew to know him much later when he bacame the principal at the school in Antelope). One thing sannyasins were adept at was rules: creating them and following them. It's ironic, really, in a community founded on rebellion and outrageousness, that we were all living by so many rules... more and more as the years went by. Many years after the commune in Oregon was over and done with, a friend of my father's was asked what he learned from his experience. His reply: "we learned that we could live under fascism." Anyway, in Geetam, there were rules about when we were allowed into the kitchen for dinner. Not before five.

I was hungry. I snuck in past the vestibule with its water tap and lemons so that I could take some dinner rolls or something. Suraj caught me and kicked me out. I snuck back in. Was caught. Kicked out. Each time this happened, closer and closer to five o'clock, Suraj became more and more red in the face, more angry, louder and louder. Finally, right as everyone began to arrive for dinner and the kitchen was open for business, Suraj lost his mind and left to speak immediately to my mother. My mom wasn't really too worried about this little act of mischief and pretty much let me on my own.

Several incidents closely followed.... I tormented Rajan, another kitchen staff member. I tortured him to the point of hitting me on the bum with a broom. He got a stern talking to from my mom about that one. There was one man who hated me most. His name was Michael and I'm not sure what his job was, but wherever there was trouble, there was me. And Michael invited me... I couldn't NOT torment the poor guy for some reason. I think it's because his fuse was so short. I wanted to see how far I could drive him.

One day, he was working on a thatched roof that sloped to within 3 or 4 feet of the ground. I climbed up next to him and to be honest, I don't even remember what I did to provoke him, but I'm sure i did it over and over again. Finally, he grabbed me by the wrist and threw me off the roof. I plummetted that 4 feet to the earth and bounced back, though not without screaming bloody murder that i'd been thrown off a roof! Can you believe that asshole threw a little girl off the roof?!

That was not the worst I got from Michael. Geetam had both a swimming pool and a hot tub. I didn't know how to swim, so i spent most of my time floating around in the hot tub while the other kids played in the pool. I was there with my best friend, Yasha, and we enjoyed having the jacuzzi on. Michael decided it was time for him to have his relaxing tub while Yasha and I were fooling around with the bubble timer. Michael turned the bubbles off. I turned them on. He decided fine, he'll have bubbles. I turned them off. He turned them on. I turned them off. And so forth. Finally, he grew so incredibly angry, he grabbed me by the torso and dragged me out of the hot tub threatening to throw me in the pool. I hollered and hollered that I couldn't swim, he would drown me, I CAN'T SWIM YOU CAN'T TOSS ME IN THE POOL GODDAMNIT! But I'm pretty sure he didn't believe me.

Michael threw me in the pool and then walked away! I'm serious, I didn't know how to swim, I was thrashing around like a maniac in the deep end of a pretty big pool with no adults around. Thankfully, Yasha did know how to swim, so she jumped in and at 8 years old, dragged me to the shallow end of the pool where i climbed out, puking water. You might think I'd have learned a lesson of some kind about provoking people to the breaking point, but I'm sure I didn't. I just knew that Michael was an even more incredible asshole than I had previously thought and I told EVERYBODY what he'd done. I'm not sure if he left Geetam shortly after that, was told never to have contact wtih me again, or if he just decided that would be best for himself.