soap operas: the NIck and Lovely Saga…silly, sappy, and, yeah, soapy

AS kids, you play out all sorts of secret little games you don’t want your parents to know about. NOt really dirty games or something, games like playing grownup and, well, soap operas are the worst things you want your parents to know about. NOw, we had a friend who was into all this soap opera junk. My mom watched them a lot back then, too, like Days of our Lives, and Another World. How she got the characters straight I have no clue. I hated them. WEll, this friend and my sistesr wanted to play a soap opera. Of course, no one wanted to play the boyfriend. So I did. Why not. IT could be fun. And, scary to say, it was. I admit playing NIck Windchester was fun. My friend, or in the game, my girlfriend, played the stereotypical girl, Lovely. Lovely? I teased her about that so bad. Us sister still do today in our trips down Memory Lane. Alright, so the storylines were simple enough. My sisters, who were still at the pre-boob age, maybe ten or younger, stuffed their shirts with balled up socks for breasts. I thought that was helarious. ON the other hand, I had really long hair back then, to to the middle of my back. I cut it since. Well, NIck was a hippy kind of guy then. WE’d have little scenes of me and Lovely pretending to make romance together, which actually involved us just laying on the bed together side by side, fully clothed and on top of the covers. “NIck,” Lovely would say in her whiny tone, “quit touchigntouching my boob,” when I accidentally brushed her “sock boob”. REally lame. I just laughed about that, and say in my most macho voiice, “I didn’t.” NOw, we got really into these games, and always hhhad to act cool whenever we left the bedroom where the main game was to talk to the parents. Since I wasn’t stuffing my shirt with socks, being NIck, I was the one to go out and anser the call to the parents. I looked normal enough. IT was stupid of us to think they didni’t know we were up to something silly in that tiny room. but hey. So my sister played the jealous girlfriend, always plotting against me to get me to date her over Lovely. WEll, one day, my sister as the jealous girlfriend got too jealous and weird on me. She dressed up in a horrible outfit, hardly wearing any clothes at all–(she was only about seven at the time remember)–and pretending to be in love with NIck, rubbed her hands up and down my arms in her version of sex. We had no clue what it was then, but knew it involved lots of squirming on top of someone. Or that’s what we thought. Well, I was on my back, fully dressed oon my bed, when I got really scared.The NIck part of me, my character, freaked out. My sister was going way too crazy. “nick! OH, NIck!” she said in phony passion. My teeth sank into her arm and her scream went up, tearing fantasy away into reality once again. OH, no. What did I just do? she went running to MOm with a purple mark wher where I’d bitten her. WE didn’t tell her the NIck and Lovely game, too embarrassed to.”What are you, an animal?” MOm yelled at me, my sister sitting like a normal little kid again, crying for all she was worth in the rocking chair. I felt like a criminal. I was really embarrassed. “You have rabies or something?” MOM went on. “I didn’t know I had to give you a rabies shot…” she said bunches of other things, but I don’t remember them. That didn’t stop us from continuing the NIck and Lovely saga a year later, and we went so far as to make fake cigarrettes by roling up paper and coloring them red with crayon. Our last enthusiasm for Nick and Lovely was between the friend who played Lovely and NIck on a vacation on the beach, a CD of an ocean surf and us together eating peaches on my bed. “This is wonderful, NIck,” Lovely said in that phony dreamy way. “yeah,” I agreed, peach juice dribbling all down my chin. Good thing MOm wan’twasn’t there.”Eat like a lady,” she’d say, accept I wasn’t any lady then. I was NIck Windchester, Lovely’s boyfriend. Years later when I mentioned the NIck and Lovely episodes to the teenage friend, she’d say in disgust, “Eeww, oh, please. NO,” as if I’d told her a rat gave me the world’s greatest winning recipe for making vbrusselsprouts taste good. Yuck, is right.

The wheels on the car go round and round, forever and ever, Amen…

IT’s a weird thing, but it seems when you’re a kid your parents have really crappy cars. I mean, a moldy green Ford station wagon. Used, from our grouchy neighbor who moved out of the same house we lived in. NOw, that car lasted way too long in my oppinion. Maybe it was the fact Mom insisted on calling it Bertha when it couldn’t get up the hill for home one afternoon. “Come on, Bertha. You’re almost home,” she’d said, and truthfully, it made me nervous as a spider on rollerskates. NOw that’s nerve-wracking. would–ugh–Bertha make it up the hill for home? Yeah, she idid. If Bertha were a person, she’d be one ugly hag with a pig nose and…well, back to my story. This car was so used, the old metal cigarrette trays on the door were black and filthy, and I found them mysterious. Me and my sister shoved candy wrappers under the backseats and thought it wasthe funniest thing. Even the spilled jar of roasted peanuts were still under there years later, to my disgust when I had to reach under there to find a missing toy. The muffler was probably the worst thing about the darn car. IT rumbled and had this rhythm, like a putta-putta-putta as puffs of exhaust pipe smoke shot out the tailpipe. IT was so loud none of us kids really talked much in the car, and everyone had to shout to be heard. By the time I was eleven, I was embarrassed by Bertha. Why couldn’t we have a quiet, nicer, and cleaner car like everyone else? Was it so bad one of the kids we picked up to drive home from a Sunday School class have to call it a piece of…well, crap? Mom scolded him so bad about that. She almost made him walk home for that. He shut after that when Bertha got him home safely five minutes later up the street. Us kids used to like sitting in the wide trunk of the car and once a monarch butterfly even emerged mysteriously like some sign of God from a wide crack in the plastic around the window. “Wow! A butterfly!” our cousin cried, but the parents and grownups in the front didn’t care. WE cared. IT was freaky. Yep, definitely a sign from God to get a new car. ONe really embarrassing situation I had with that car was when one night MOM went into one of the drugstore, leaving me and my sister, and MOm’s very old lady friend, in the car in the parking lot. I had to go to the bathrom really badly but my sister kept making stupid jokes that made me laugh. So, to my horror, I wet myself there in the back trunk of the wagon. The old lady friend didn’t seem to care. Didn’t even say a word when I thought we could get Mommy to come out and save me from staring at my lemonade mess reflecting too clearly in the bleak parking lot lighting. IF it weren’t for that wide trunk, the experience probably wouldn’t have seemed so disastrous. Bertha had her first flat tire and at first I thought a helicopter was flying over our heads. “They’re after us, Mom!” I yelled, wondering wen the darn helicopter would land and why was it hovering on my side of the car. Then MOm slowed the car, searingswearing about the flat tire. OF course it was in the country when it happened. WE weren’t far from some lady’s house, either. Fraeky how that happens, huh? Well, one glorious day, when I was twelve, Bertha puffed out her last, long polluting breath and we got another used, but quieter and much cooler car. NO one named this one.

Trick-Or-Treat, smell my feet, give me something fun to read: a Halloween Story

MOm used to dictate what me and my sister would be for Halloween every year. WE hated it. For at least three years in a row she dressed us up in these twin bright orange pumpkin costumes, complete with a pumpkin cap with a green stem on top, and black leggings and arm sleeves. WE looked fat and hated those things, standing there in the video camera lens MOm aimed at us one Halloween evening before trick-or-treating.Then, when I was about seven, and was old enough to know what I wanted to be for Halloween, and when the stupid pumpkin costumes finally got too small on us, and were handed down to our little sister, to her horror and me and my sister’s utter delight, MOm became the costume police. “NO, be something nice,” she’d say when I wanted to be a werewolf one year. so I ended up as a pretty little princess, with one of those dollar store wands with the cheap sparkly golden star on a stick and a matching tiara. My other sister, the one who shared the pumpkin trauma days with me, also was a princess. I actually had this thing for immmitating my sister, despite the fact she was one year younger than me and I was the oldest. Well, the next year I was a princess again, since MOm pretty much killed my enthusiasm for coming up with anything creative for Halloween. Finally, when I turned twelve that year, and MOm thought we were all too old for trick-or-treating, DAd let us go. WE were so happy. And, I got to be a werewolf, waring the silly cheap rubber werewolf mask, (AKA Weedy Dog–see post “Beware the Weedy Dog!). WEll, we wouldn’t shut up about trick-or-treting, my sister and me, so Mom reluctantly drove us into town that night. IT was great. IT was my last year of trick-or-treating, too, and costuming for a long time. NOw, I know I didn’t put much effort into my costume, since it was a ten minute last decision, saved by Dad deal. Now, I’m legally blind, and I thought nothing of this as I was going house to house in my jacket, jeans and shoes, and that darn mask on my face as MOm led me around. I also carried my white cane, and didn’t think anything of it till this idiot kid in a gorilla suit muttered, “A blind werewolf?” as I past him by up a porch. Now, if I’d been smart and more bold then, I would have growled at him, and maybe said a few little “blind werewolfy” words to him. But I just bubbled with rage. Reminded me of a story a friend told me how he, also legally blind, went one year for Halloween as a TV made from a cardboard box with the weather logo on the front, and some snot-nosed kid said, “Look, a blind TV.” Then my friend, also twelve at the time and not knowing what else to say, said in his squeakiest and nmost annoying voice how the wetaher was going to be crappy, stormy and rainy all week long. Then, another embarrassment as MOm yacked up a storm to one of our friends’ mom, dressed up as some whacky vampire with hairsprayed hair sticking up all over and in a rediculous long cape, the mom asked what I was supposed to be. Before I could proudly answer, Mom said loudly, “She’s a wee-wee dog.” Instatnly I felt my face redden behind the rubber cheeks melting under their heat. “NO, MOm, I”m a werewolf !” I cried. I never forgot that night. I remember vaguely complaining to Mom after we left how she embarrassed me, and making this huge deal about it. REally dumb, but whatever, I was a twirpy twelve-year-old not even able to addd fractions up yet, like I should have known by then. So, that wsa the final end of my trick-or-treating days. And you know what, twelve years later I’m back in the Halloween spirit again, and am going to dress up as a werewolf. Yep! But much more cleverly, and this time, with a tail. And yes, I’ll still be a blind werewolf, but one who will growl.

Music wars: a family rant

Alright, so everyone in the family has different music tastes. TAste that nobody agrees on. That everybody groans on and complains about til you turn it off. Typical. Which proves my family’s typical and normal–as normal as normal gets, whatever normal consists of. IN my family, MOm plays her old Jesus people tapes from the sixties and seventies. Newre religious music is all worship with her, though, like MIchael W. Smith and John MIchael Talbet. A MIchael conspiracy? Hmm. WEll, MOM had these tapes for’e'e’e'e’e'ver. Since she was a teenager. She plays the Jesus peo;people tape, as I like to call it, in the car. So far she’s played it for about four months straight. I kept record. IT’s such anold tape the sound on it is fading. Mom pulls up to the curb to pick me up from the bus stop today, beeping her horn. As I get into the car, it’s, “Jesus will set you free…” accompanied with a ddude playing the triangle offbeat. Okay, fine. I tune it out. I like my jazz. Everybody in my family hates jazz. How I ever developed a taste in jazz is a mystery. DAd calls jazz raunchy Chicago music. I’m serious. Raunchy? Excuse me? Half the singers he likes are all dead! Well, Frank Sonatra is. I’m not saying half the oldies are bad. I would sit listening to the oldies show on a Saturday night in my room, when I was twelve and thought it was the coolest thing. Did I need a life or what? When were they going to play that Hair song by the Calsols? HOw do you spell their name anywya? Or Born to be Wild? They were my faves back then. Still are, actually. Oh, and don’t get Dad going on country music. AS kids, I was afraid to keep DAd’s radio on the country station by accident. He was detested country so much I thought he’d butcher me if he turned on his beloved radio and heard HOnky-tonk USA, and “My horse got drunk today so I drove the one-wheeled truck far, far away…no way hosae, whoever that is…man, I got to take a whizz…” –ahem!–NOw, DAd loved his moldy oldies. SCary to say, I actually like KNights in White Satain! And that Hair song, which DAd doesn’t own. HE went on this crazy Time LIfe splurge one year and ordered a thousand seventies CD’s. Let me tell you, they bore everyone in the house, and after he got bored with them, shoved them all in the back of a drawer and didn’t play them for a year or more. Now, my youngest sis likes the same stuff pretty much as MOm. Worship music. But she also likes this Christian rapper, a priest actually, Fr. STan Fortuna, and, well, Dad and me hate rap. Worse yet, my sis plays the CD and then runs off to another room and leaves us to be tortured by Jesus Talks song. “Yeah, Jesus talks, Jesus Walks…” and, “JP2, we love you…” (about Pope JOhn Paul II, this rapper’s biggest fan). My other sister was more into getting music from her boyfriend, music downloaded, so she got the latest in mixed rap, rock and, yeah, country. ARg. Very strange mix. So, in my family we have raunchy Chicago music, Jesus people music, moldy oldies, Christian rap, and mixed up downloaded music. NOone can make any real compormises. WE just tolerate with a little groanand say, “What, is, that?” as the soundwaves cringe and cower inside our eardrums.

Beware the Weedy Dog!

AS kids, DAd would put on this cheesy rubber werewolf mask with the crape hair and his work gloves and chase us around the yard. Being half blind in the mask, since eyeholes just aren’t important to manufacturers, Dad would make phony growling noises and wave his arms around like a crazy hungry beastman as we ran up our wooden tree fort ladder for refuge. I don’t know why, but DAd called this wolf monster the Weedy Dog. He’d’ make up stories how the Weedy Dog would carry a machete with him at night and, well, you can guess the rest. Kill victims with it. Blood and gore. There. I said it! Happy? NOw, one night, me and my sisters with a friend were camping out in a tent in our yard. I must have been eleven by that time and thought the Weedy Dog a stupid game after a while. DAd had teased us, yelling out his bedroom window to beware of the WEedy Dog. WE were like, “Yeah, hahaha.” Preteens. DAd was a corny joker. So we went on telling ghost stoeis and things, whhen against the light of the full moon–yes, it was summer and the moon was full that night by chance–a shadow black as blakc appeared outside thetent. ON all fours and with a tail! WE all screamed, not knowing what it was. WE thought it was DAd at first. The WEedy Dog. WE were like, “Come on, Dad. Way too realistic.” Bbut after a few minutes realized it was our small bull that had escaped from the barn. Dad heard the scream and came outside where he rangled up the bull with some grain to lure it back to the barn. It was quite a night and one I never forgot. Just don’t dress up as one for Halloween like I did when I was twelve, okay? You might have your ferocious title slaughtered into the “Wee-Wee Dog.” My mom messed that up so bad! IN front of our neigghbor! “NO,” I protested with embarrassment under the sweaty mask. “I’m a werewolf!” Sure about that, kid?

Tongue-tied (joke)

A man walks into a shoe store and tries on a pair of shoes.
“How do they feel?” asks the sales clerk.
“Well .they feel a bit tight,” replies the man.
The assistant promptly bends down and has a look at the shoes and the mans
feet. “Try pulling the tongue out,” offers the clerk.
Theyth sthill feelth a bith tighth,” he replied   

What is this Place?

Alright, a friend sent me this crazy email message. I can’t figure out what in the world the onnonymous author was thinking when they wrote this. Check it out for yourself and let me know what you think they were thinking of when they wrote this:        A Few Ways To Know You’re In The Wrong Church:
1. The Bible they use is the “Dr. Seuss Version.”
2 There’s an ATM in the lobby.
3.  Worship services are B.Y.O.S. — Bring Your Own Snake.
4.  No cover charge, but communion is a two-drink minimum.
5.  Karaoke Worship Time.
6.  Ushers ask, “Smoking or Non-smoking?”
7.  The only song the organist knows is “Marcarena.”
8.  Oreos and Kool-Aid are used for communion.
9.  The Sisterhood grows their own ‘pot luck.’
10. The church is closed on Christmas., and the sign outside reads, “Closed
for the Holidays.”  –0—Okay, so maybe it’s a casino? A really weird hotel? A kiddy function? I don’t know. I”m curious to what you all think this is, and how it ever was circulated around the internet dumpster.

The (embarrassing, funny and weird) things you wished you’d never said

1. “IT’s stripping time!” as I stripped newspaper into…strips, while working one summer at the SPCA. 2. “My son is ten o’clock…” (should have been: “ten-years-old” ) from my coworker, focused on the time. 3. “Fr. Shitsal…” (should have been: Fr. Shatsal, priest of local parish), from my mother who can’t hear syllables well. 4. “….And that’s why we shouldn’t use contraception.” (should have been: “And that’s why we should use contraception.” from a speech given on pro-life).5.”Alright! WE’ll go see the pee-pee,” my mother, exasperated when we as kids wanted to go into the tepee at Vacation Bible SChool(should have been: “Alright! We’ll go see the tepee!”). 6.”….fashionism, sexualism, and…” me giving out three systems in history class to my teacher(should have been: “fashionism, sectionalism, and…”). And remember, don’t ever say these things again!

Paid for crossing the Street: charity at its weirdest

Some people are really, really weird. Their ideas of charity and all are really out there. Now, charity’s cool. But when it came to what happened to me about three years ago, it wasn’t that cool. A little freaky. NOw, I had to practice crossing streets for a mobility lesson, since I’m visually impaired. I hated this. Crossing a traffic-light intersection in town on a beautiful summer’s day. Who wants to do that for an hour straight? NOone. WEll, then came Mr. Charity. This old dude. I crossed my last, and hardest main street for the afternoon with my mobility teacher following from behind. When I steppd onto the sidewalk on the other side, the old guy pressed wads of money into my palm. “Take you and your associate out to dinner,” he said. Dinner? Associate? What?! I was so confused. I got paid to cross the street? Since when? Mr. Charity continued. “I like to help people in need. See, I can’t see well myself.” OH. What should I say to that? So I said thank you. “WEll, bye,” Mr. Charity said, and quickly went away and hopped into his van. Zoomed down the street. Wait. He can’t see well? Uh, shouldn’t we be worried for Mr. Charity speeding down the main street like that? As for the money, all sorts of immature thoughts ran through my head. What I could do with it. Buy another Cd. Hmm. But was that right? guilt. NO, it wasn’t. I had no clue what to do with this money. IT didn’t belong to me. My teacher said to give the money to charity. So I did. All $15 wworth.

The Kushball INcident

I don’t know what it is when parents tell you to be good and things, and trust you to not break that precious lamp of theirs just before they go off to the store, and you ernestly agree not to, and it happens…well, what can I say? IT’s just another evil mystery in life. And that’s just what I’m going to talk about. I call it, “just the opposite” mystery. I know, very lame. IT happened when I was about thirteen and my sisters were playing camping in their room. They’d set up a blanket and draped it tent-like over a tall, office chair and over the posts of one of the beds–(they both shared a room at that time). I had this silly kushball I had a weird obsession with at the time. I loved squishy things. Anyway, I came into the girls’ room while they were playing camping when my dadannounced–more like yelled–upstairs that he and Mom were going to the store. “Be careful with that lamp of mine! Don’t break it!” he reminded us, knowing my sisters had put the precious, antique lamp inside their makeshift tent as a sort of lantern, I guess. I have no clue. “We won’t!” we all said, and really meant that. WE knew how much DAd loved that lamp. OUr parents left, and we were hoping they’d bring back some good snacks. I think they said they would, too, now that i think of it. NOw, I decided to annoy my sisters in the meantime. WE were having a great time…well, not really me. So I felt like being an idiot and tossed the kushball in the air. I was kneeling on the office chair as I did this. The girls were giggling like dorks about something they were imagining as characters on their camping trip, when my ball went plop on their blanket tent roof. My one sister, who was always bossy and in charge of half the rules of the pretend world, whined to get the ball off the “tent”. OH, please, I thought. It’s not going to ruin the dumb tent. IT’s a silly few ounces worth of rubber kush. Fine. She wants it that way, she’ll get it. I leaned forward over the top of the office chair, extending my arm to the center of the tent roof where I could reach the ball. NO such luck. Just as my hand grasped it, my weight brought the chair tipping forward. Right on the tent. And…on my father’s precious lamp. SCreams! OH, no! I was pretty much helpless with this now tilted office chair about to crush the lamp and maybe some of my sisters with it. My knees were bent too tightly under me for me to move quick enough. Too late. The girls got out, screaming at me, and all of us horrified at the crushed lampshade. Well, actually, the actual lamp had been bent a little, too. “Look what you did!” cried my bossy sister, and we all stared with horror at the messed up lamp. “And you almost squashed Rachael!” my bossy sistter pointed out. Rachael pretended to be all wounded. She was fine. Great. It was all my fault. “And our tent. HOurs of work,” my bossy sister continued. That just made me smile. Then I just made my bossy sister more upset. Five minutes later DAd came home…with snacks. Snacks he wasn’t going to give us. “HOw’s that lamp?” he asked from the stairs. “Good,” we lied. He found out. WE had to tell him. I think we were even grounded for a day. NOthing big, but sure nothing to forget. And, yes, I got my kushball back.