A few years ago my mom was dating the most gawd awful man.
He was socially awkward, but not in that endearing way some people are, when everyone around knows that they simply can’t help themselves. Those people are accepted into the fold and embraced for their awkwardness. “Oh, that’s just John! He’s a few cards short of a full deck, but very nice once you get to know him.” No, not like that at all. He was socially awkward in a Fatal Attraction meets Law and Order sort of way. “...and these are their stories! DUN DUN!”
They were introduced by my godmother and her (now) ex husband, going out on a few double dates with them and such. I wasn’t terribly concerned with their relationship; in fact I pretty much ignored it...until he started spending more time at our house.
In the beginning the only opinion I had about him was that he was ugly as homemade sin – short, oddly shaped, with coarse black hair in a V that stuck out over his forehead, and a pair of beautiful blue eyes ruined by the fact that they were covered with a thick black almost unibrow and so close together, you often had to look twice to make sure they weren’t crossed. And then there was the rather large tattoo of SpongeBob Square Pants on the side of one calf. I kid you not.
But eating dinner with him at the same table and sitting on the couch opposite his Hunchback of Notre Dame frame, I became uneasy. He never said much of anything and when he did, it was strange and had a tinge of faux cheerfulness. And the way he looked at and touched mom made my stomach turn.
I’ll admit I tested him – ignoring him, being rude - if looks could kill he’d be six feet under. I had suspicions. And when, after barely a few weeks of seeing each other, he was showering her with expensive gifts and sending flowers to work every day, I knew I was on the right track to psycho town.
I was sitting alone on the porch one evening reading when mom came out to ask my opinion on an outfit. I looked her up and down, nodded my approval, and went back to my book. Still she stood there until I looked again, a thoughtful expression on her face. “So”, she leaned across the back of the chair in front of me, “what do you think about SpongeBob?” (It’s what we called him behind his back. Still do, in fact.)
I looked at her with exasperation. She already knew what I thought of him as I’d said so loudly and more than once. I believe the most often used phrase was “fucking creepy”. But mom is one of those people that will continue to periodically ask the same question, always hoping for a different, more satisfying answer. I sighed, wondering just what I needed to say this time to prevent her from ever asking again.
“I don’t like him”, I said seriously. “Every time I look at him I think to myself ‘it puts the lotion on it’s skin, or else it gets the hose again!’”
She immediately burst out laughing. I’m admittedly an amusing impressionist, but I meant every word. And I couldn’t help chuckling a bit at her reaction, but I followed it with a sobering “just you wait” in case she doubted my sincerity.
I needn’t have bothered. Mom happens to think 95% of people are insincere, hence the repetitive question asking I suppose. My answer became a running joke, repeated often at the family gatherings that he didn’t manage to weasel his way into, and yet she still continued to date him.
The more time he spent around her friends and family, the more insistent the clamor became – “There’s something wrong with that guy. (Dun Dun!)” And though he was not an intelligent man, as evidenced from our previous stilted and juvenile conversations, he was street wise. He recognized the signs of unease and he made changes to his routine. Rather than sending her flowers every day, he took it down to once a week. Rather than just giving her an expensive present, he also gave them to my sister and me. Rather than just sitting on the couch and staring off into the distance at Sunday dinner, (I’m assuming it was the distance... Like I said, his eyes were almost crossed) he painted the outside of my grandmother’s house.
I wasn’t very happy about the situation, but I was also being bought. Which is nice, terrible as that may sound? (Especially when you’re a single parent whose baby’s daddy is a man whore that fathers more children than a Polygamist cult leader and your kid is last on the child support totem pole.) And as an added bonus, there was talk of them moving in together and mom giving me the lake house outright. Creepy fucker with a SpongeBob tattoo or not – a free house is nothing to sniff at.
But after they’d been dating for several months, mom had to have major surgery. I took the day off and planned to stay at the hospital with her overnight, but that morning he joined grandma and I in the waiting room and he never left. I couldn’t get rid of him to save my life and being close to him for that long was making my skin crawl. The minute they informed us she was out of surgery and in a room where we could go in, he was off like a shot. I was livid.
He sat beside her the entire afternoon and into the evening, leaning over the space between the couch and the bed, and rubbing her right hand raw while her left repeatedly jabbed the little red Morphine button. To make matters worse, when she had visitors he refused to move – just sat there with his ass crack hanging out of his stupid shorts, chafing her hand like a lunatic.
I left. I couldn’t help it. Grandma took one for the team and said she’d stay the night because if I had to sit in the same room with him for one second longer, they’d have had to do emergency surgery and remove my foot from his ass.
A few weeks went by, with mom laid up in the bed at home. He continued to drop by and call, but miraculously she seemed to be coming around. She started avoiding him and making excuses. I thought his behavior at the hospital had finally pushed her through the veil.
Then she showed me the ring.
Apparently he’d proposed to her some weeks before and she’d kept it to herself. She told me that she wouldn’t give him an answer, so he just gave her the ring and said to wear it and think about it, or something of the sort. I was horrified.
Lucky for me (and probably her skin), when she started to distance herself a little, he shot himself in the foot. Stepping up the psycho routine, he sent nutty text messages and had his mother call my grandmother and cuss her out for no apparent reason. Adios, SpongeBob. You don’t fuck with my grandma.
And though he was everything but a gracious ex, he did refuse to take the ring back.
Now mom has a relatively normal boyfriend who we love and the ring is snug in her jewelry box. We even laugh about SpongeBob sometimes, even though he’s done and said disgusting things since their breakup, some of it pertaining to me (which I wrote about here).
Sadly, the ring is quite gorgeous. So much so that occasionally, when I rifle through mom’s jewelry box for something and see it sitting there, I can’t help but slip it on and wonder.
How many women have accepted a shiny, expensive rock from a broke down prince? How many are desperate enough for that fairytale that they’ll brush aside their real wants and needs? How can anyone ever be that lonely?
And you know what fucking sucks?
I think I might be on my way to figuring it out.
Showing posts with label taking one for the team. Show all posts
Showing posts with label taking one for the team. Show all posts
Friday, July 23, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
I'm never going to live this down, am I? Part one
I’m no stranger to memes as most of you know. I’m an attention whore and when any sort of award or recognition comes my way I take that shit and run like a convenience store thief. But just like stealing, recognition always comes with a price.
Mr. London Street has named me one of his Bloggers to watch for 2010 and I’m greatly pleased. The only downside is that I have to follow in his footsteps and write a post including 10 things you stalkers don’t already know about me. The man that doesn’t do memes has set the bar high. There’s also the little fact that I’ve already shared so much of myself with you, I’m not quite sure what’s left. But I’ll give it my most valiant effort.
Let’s do this.
1) I might be a lesbian.
When I was a kid I would stay home alone in the summer while my parents went to work. Being surrounded with family for neighbors it was hard to get in trouble, but somehow I always managed. My cousins lived next door and we were forever sneaking around the neighborhood causing mischief.
One afternoon my sidekick Ben came over. We were sitting in the living room watching TV when he noticed the big, white child lock on a low cabinet. “What’s in there”, he asked.
“I don’t know. Some breakable junk of Mom’s I think.”
“Let’s open it!”
If Ben suggested it, it was as good as done.
He opened the lock designed to keep my little sister’s grimy paws off things, set it aside, and threw the doors wide. Sitting Indian style in front of the cabinet, we started digging through odds and ends.
There were vases, candlesticks, pictures – all manner of uninteresting plunder. Then Ben stuck his hand into the dark recesses and hit pay dirt. A collector’s edition Playboy magazine…featuring none other than Ms. Marilyn Monroe.
Of course I knew shit about Marilyn Monroe back then. The only thing I knew was that I was holding something forbidden and if Ben’s attitude was any indication, something really cool.
Silently flipping pages, we stared in openmouthed fascination at naked skin. I was every bit as absorbed as he was.
“Let’s take it to the clubhouse”, he said.
“Why?”
“We can pull the pictures out and put them on the walls.”
And once again if Ben suggested it…
We had an old camper hatch that we called “The clubhouse”. There wasn’t enough room to stand up and you had to climb through the sliding glass window to get in. That afternoon we took the magazine, pulled out the pages, and taped them all around the metal walls.
It took my dad about two weeks to realize it was gone. I forget how he found out the magazine’s fate exactly, but find out he did. That might have been the worst ass whipping I’ve ever had in my entire life. Of course Ben walked away scot free. He was a boy, after all. He was just doing what came natural. I, on the other hand, not only stole something worth a great deal of money and bragging rights, but I ogled naked women’s bodies. My dad was a bit of a homophobe.
Looking back on it now, he should have beaten me harder. I probably would have inherited the magazine since I’m the closest thing to a pervert there is in our immediate family. As I vaguely recall those glossy pages full of delicious curves, I want to smack myself.
2) I was a very active kid…mostly by protest.
As most of you know, the only activities I find worthy of excess movement are swimming and sex. It’s not that I’m lazy per say, it’s more that I’m uninterested. Why should I chase after a ball or run around a track when I can watch someone else do it? Not only that, but I’m inherently clumsy. My mother just couldn’t grasp that concept. She wanted me involved in sports and groups, bodily harm to myself and others be damned.
I started with karate, which I actually enjoyed. But like most good things it came to a premature end. She didn’t like that I was the only girl in the class and that the fathers of the other students were picking fights with dad because I was kicking ass and taking names. Getting your ass handed to you by a girl is, I gather, a tough pill to swallow, but it sure made my dad proud.
Then there were dancing lessons. It started out with jazz hands, soft soled shoes, and spandex creations of horror and continued with cowboy hats and tassels right up until my senior year in high school. It was a closely guarded secret and for all my independence, I never could quit until after I graduated. My dance teacher and her family became close to me and mine. The ties that bind and embarrass are hard to break.
I also played soccer for several years. I was the kid no one wanted to pass to, the flower picker daydreaming down field. I didn’t set out to be bad at it, but I was all the same. My cousins were on the team too so I had plenty of ribbing at home as well as at practice. During that time, I started wearing glasses. Huge, round, red affairs that made me look like an even bigger nerd.
There was a guy named Geoff that I had the biggest crush on. He was gorgeous so of course I didn’t even come across his register. He only really noticed me twice. The first time was when my mom packed me a t-shirt with a pink cartoon elephant on the front for practice. Doing warm up laps around the field in that get up was probably one of the most brutally embarrassing moments of my life. She might as well have written “Point and Laugh” across my chest.
The second time was when the coach insisted I play goalie during practice because “sigh, it can’t hurt to try”. Translation: “You suck at every other position and this is the only one we haven’t tried.” I was absolutely terrified when everyone lined up to take a shot. I don’t remember how many I blocked/caught and how many got past me, but I’m sure the numbers weren’t in my favor. Then Geoff came up. He was one of the best players on the team and I knew he’d try to smoke me.
I’m not sure if I wasn’t paying attention like I should or if the ball just came at me too fast, but it popped me directly in the face WHAM! and knocked me out cold. When I came to my face was stinging and throbbing. For a minute I thought it had affected my vision, but no, my glasses were knocked off. Everyone was crowded around me, a blurry Geoff the closest.
He was apologizing and the coach was trying to shoo him away. They decided I was fine, but should sit out the rest of practice. After the initial shock had worn off and everyone could tell I wasn’t brain dead or suffering any serious injury, Geoff wasn’t very contrite anymore. It became yet another team joke.
I then dabbled in a bit of softball, which I was pretty decent at and would have played it longer if it wasn’t for the whole running thing. It was the batting I liked. Aggression issues and all.
But yeah, sports and me...not so much.
3) I once shaved off my baby hair.
Everyone knows how irritating those pesky baby hairs across your forehead can be, right? They don’t lay the right way and they make you look like you decided to grow bangs and changed your mind.
I have no patience. If something isn’t going my way immediately, I sometimes act less than rational.
One day I was attempting to fix my hair and I couldn’t get those fucking things to cooperate. They were behaving way worse than usual, not even allowing themselves to be covered by a deep side part. (Which was attractive, let me tell you. Deep side parts are the coolest. Like tie dyed scrunchies and hot pink taffeta.) I used all the hair products I could find, but I just ended up looking like I had a horizontal forehead mohawk with a comb-over.
Frustrated, I looked around the counter for something else to use. That’s when the little trimmer my mom uses on her eyebrows caught my attention. Without even thinking I picked it up, held back the rest of my hair, and started shaving all the baby hair off at the hairline. And it worked. Once I was finished, I was completely satisfied with my appearance.
It wasn’t until a few days or so later when my mom said “What the hell is wrong with your head” that I realized what I’d done. It looked like one of those military buzz cuts across my forehead. It took months for my hair to look decent enough to wear pulled away from my face and YEARS for the baby hair to grow back out to a normal, non-freakish length.
4) I’m kind of a murderer.
Living in a house with only women for five years (with the exception of the past few months), you can imagine how silly it can get. There are times when one of us has to “man up” and take care of something that we feel just isn’t a woman’s job. (And I don’t want to hear any shit from you feminists. Why don’t you go out and split a few logs, Paula Bunyan, and quit bothering me.) I don’t consider myself a girly girl, but I cannot stand a bug, lizard, or small, hairy undomesticated creature of any kind. For some reason, I’m always the one elected to deal with any unwanted invasion.
“Al! There’s a bug in here!”
“Al! Get the vacuum and suck up this bug!”
“Al! Al! Al!”
Listen bitches, I’m not a dude, no matter how you say my name.
Inevitably there’s a lot of squealing, cursing, and the sound of someone’s feet dancing on a chair.
Years ago, I think I was about 16; we got mice. My dad was working out of town so mom put glue traps out until he came back and figured out how they were getting in. One night I was lying in bed and she started screaming for me. “Al! Al! Get the dust pan!”
I refused to get up, instead yelling back, “What do you want? Get the dust pan yourself!”
“I just saw it run through here! Quick! Get the dust pan and whack it on the head!”
“Are you serious?! You want me to chase down a mouse and whack it in the head with a dust pan?!”
“Yes!”
“Forget it.”
But she continued to harass me for the next 10 minutes. I knew she was never going to let me sleep, so I finally got up and went to my door. I peeked out across the dark kitchen, the only light coming from my mom’s room up the hall. I had to go to the laundry room at the half way point and get the damn dust pan.
I’d only taken two or three small, cautionary steps across the hardwood (twss) when I thought something ran over my foot. (I realized later it was just the tie from my bathrobe.) I jumped, screamed, and took off running through the kitchen. It was probably the shortest run in the history of runs, because I tripped almost immediately and went crashing to the floor. When I fell my right knee took most of the impact, but it wasn’t just with the floor.
There was a sickening CRUNCH and my knee was bathed in warm liquid. I knew what happened right away, but I kind of blacked out for a minute. My mom says that I was shrieking so horribly she thought I’d broken a leg.
She helped me to her bathroom where I took my first look at the carnage. Hair and blood and blech, gag, mouse guts were stuck to my knee. I wailed and cried while she cleaned it all off. I kept hearing that CRUNCH replayed in my head, over and over and over.
I’d barely calmed down before it turned into the new “guess what she’s done now” story. She immediately started calling people and relaying the brutal tale. It’s still, of course, a common joke among my family. “Did you hear about the time Alyson crushed that mouse with her knee?
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!”
Motherfuckers.
(In case you haven’t noticed the trend, there’s a long list of things I’ll never live down. The post didn’t start out to be that way, but whatever.)
5) I’m often tactless.
In the past several months we’ve been learning how to use a new database at work. This means we’ve been spending a lot of time with new consultants and calling them when questions crop up. We haven’t completely transitioned from the old to the new so everything has been a bit muddled lately.
About a month ago one of my bills was late, as usual. Of course they started calling my work phone every fucking hour. Of course I didn’t answer. Sometimes they get sneaky and call switchboard and it comes up without an actual phone number on the screen, but I’ve gotten wise to that. Ha!
That particular day I was feeling a bit paranoid, so when the phone rang with a number I didn’t know I debated on picking it up or not. I finally snatched it up at the last minute, deciding I just wouldn’t answer using my name and see who it was first.
“Name of company and department." Pause. "How may I help you?”
“Yes, I’m calling for Alyson.”
“Erm, she’s not here...can I take a message?”
“Yes, tell her this is So-in-So the consultant returning her call about the questions she had on blahbity blahbity blah.”
I REALLY needed to talk to him so I had a quick internal debate: I couldn’t call him right back because I wasn’t supposed to be there. I couldn’t pretend to be someone else and say “Oh! Here she is!” because he’d recognize my voice and have to pretend he didn’t which would make things really awkward. Or I could tell him it was me and I was sorry for misleading him.
“Um, ha, So-in-So? This is kind of embarrassing, but this is Alyson...me. Your number looked like someone’s that I’ve been avoiding so I...wait, I mean...”
He immediately burst out laughing.
“I’m so sorry...wow...um”
Still laughing, “That’s ok. Ha!” Then he started answering the questions that I’d left him a message about.
I’ve spoken to him twice since then, answering the phone correctly both times. The last one being this past Thursday:
“Thank you for calling Name of Company and Department. This is Alyson. How may I help you?”
“Oh, so it’s you today? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
“Yep, it’s me. Heh, heh. Funny.”
More laughing.
“I’m never going to live this one down, am I?”
“Probably not.”
“I’m so professional.”
More laughing.
Did I mention he’s cute and single? No? Well he is, damn it. We have a meeting at his office across town coming up soon. I’m hoping he doesn’t embarrass me in front of everyone, including my boss who I never told about my lapse in professional demeanor. She’d be shocked, I’m sure.
Obviously I’m going to have to split this into two separate posts to keep you from restless eyeball syndrome.
To be continued with five more things you don't know about moi and my top seven bloggers to watch for 2010.
Mr. London Street has named me one of his Bloggers to watch for 2010 and I’m greatly pleased. The only downside is that I have to follow in his footsteps and write a post including 10 things you stalkers don’t already know about me. The man that doesn’t do memes has set the bar high. There’s also the little fact that I’ve already shared so much of myself with you, I’m not quite sure what’s left. But I’ll give it my most valiant effort.
Let’s do this.
1) I might be a lesbian.
When I was a kid I would stay home alone in the summer while my parents went to work. Being surrounded with family for neighbors it was hard to get in trouble, but somehow I always managed. My cousins lived next door and we were forever sneaking around the neighborhood causing mischief.
One afternoon my sidekick Ben came over. We were sitting in the living room watching TV when he noticed the big, white child lock on a low cabinet. “What’s in there”, he asked.
“I don’t know. Some breakable junk of Mom’s I think.”
“Let’s open it!”
If Ben suggested it, it was as good as done.
He opened the lock designed to keep my little sister’s grimy paws off things, set it aside, and threw the doors wide. Sitting Indian style in front of the cabinet, we started digging through odds and ends.
There were vases, candlesticks, pictures – all manner of uninteresting plunder. Then Ben stuck his hand into the dark recesses and hit pay dirt. A collector’s edition Playboy magazine…featuring none other than Ms. Marilyn Monroe.
Of course I knew shit about Marilyn Monroe back then. The only thing I knew was that I was holding something forbidden and if Ben’s attitude was any indication, something really cool.
Silently flipping pages, we stared in openmouthed fascination at naked skin. I was every bit as absorbed as he was.
“Let’s take it to the clubhouse”, he said.
“Why?”
“We can pull the pictures out and put them on the walls.”
And once again if Ben suggested it…
We had an old camper hatch that we called “The clubhouse”. There wasn’t enough room to stand up and you had to climb through the sliding glass window to get in. That afternoon we took the magazine, pulled out the pages, and taped them all around the metal walls.
It took my dad about two weeks to realize it was gone. I forget how he found out the magazine’s fate exactly, but find out he did. That might have been the worst ass whipping I’ve ever had in my entire life. Of course Ben walked away scot free. He was a boy, after all. He was just doing what came natural. I, on the other hand, not only stole something worth a great deal of money and bragging rights, but I ogled naked women’s bodies. My dad was a bit of a homophobe.
Looking back on it now, he should have beaten me harder. I probably would have inherited the magazine since I’m the closest thing to a pervert there is in our immediate family. As I vaguely recall those glossy pages full of delicious curves, I want to smack myself.
2) I was a very active kid…mostly by protest.
As most of you know, the only activities I find worthy of excess movement are swimming and sex. It’s not that I’m lazy per say, it’s more that I’m uninterested. Why should I chase after a ball or run around a track when I can watch someone else do it? Not only that, but I’m inherently clumsy. My mother just couldn’t grasp that concept. She wanted me involved in sports and groups, bodily harm to myself and others be damned.
I started with karate, which I actually enjoyed. But like most good things it came to a premature end. She didn’t like that I was the only girl in the class and that the fathers of the other students were picking fights with dad because I was kicking ass and taking names. Getting your ass handed to you by a girl is, I gather, a tough pill to swallow, but it sure made my dad proud.
Then there were dancing lessons. It started out with jazz hands, soft soled shoes, and spandex creations of horror and continued with cowboy hats and tassels right up until my senior year in high school. It was a closely guarded secret and for all my independence, I never could quit until after I graduated. My dance teacher and her family became close to me and mine. The ties that bind and embarrass are hard to break.
I also played soccer for several years. I was the kid no one wanted to pass to, the flower picker daydreaming down field. I didn’t set out to be bad at it, but I was all the same. My cousins were on the team too so I had plenty of ribbing at home as well as at practice. During that time, I started wearing glasses. Huge, round, red affairs that made me look like an even bigger nerd.
There was a guy named Geoff that I had the biggest crush on. He was gorgeous so of course I didn’t even come across his register. He only really noticed me twice. The first time was when my mom packed me a t-shirt with a pink cartoon elephant on the front for practice. Doing warm up laps around the field in that get up was probably one of the most brutally embarrassing moments of my life. She might as well have written “Point and Laugh” across my chest.
The second time was when the coach insisted I play goalie during practice because “sigh, it can’t hurt to try”. Translation: “You suck at every other position and this is the only one we haven’t tried.” I was absolutely terrified when everyone lined up to take a shot. I don’t remember how many I blocked/caught and how many got past me, but I’m sure the numbers weren’t in my favor. Then Geoff came up. He was one of the best players on the team and I knew he’d try to smoke me.
I’m not sure if I wasn’t paying attention like I should or if the ball just came at me too fast, but it popped me directly in the face WHAM! and knocked me out cold. When I came to my face was stinging and throbbing. For a minute I thought it had affected my vision, but no, my glasses were knocked off. Everyone was crowded around me, a blurry Geoff the closest.
He was apologizing and the coach was trying to shoo him away. They decided I was fine, but should sit out the rest of practice. After the initial shock had worn off and everyone could tell I wasn’t brain dead or suffering any serious injury, Geoff wasn’t very contrite anymore. It became yet another team joke.
I then dabbled in a bit of softball, which I was pretty decent at and would have played it longer if it wasn’t for the whole running thing. It was the batting I liked. Aggression issues and all.
But yeah, sports and me...not so much.
3) I once shaved off my baby hair.
Everyone knows how irritating those pesky baby hairs across your forehead can be, right? They don’t lay the right way and they make you look like you decided to grow bangs and changed your mind.
I have no patience. If something isn’t going my way immediately, I sometimes act less than rational.
One day I was attempting to fix my hair and I couldn’t get those fucking things to cooperate. They were behaving way worse than usual, not even allowing themselves to be covered by a deep side part. (Which was attractive, let me tell you. Deep side parts are the coolest. Like tie dyed scrunchies and hot pink taffeta.) I used all the hair products I could find, but I just ended up looking like I had a horizontal forehead mohawk with a comb-over.
Frustrated, I looked around the counter for something else to use. That’s when the little trimmer my mom uses on her eyebrows caught my attention. Without even thinking I picked it up, held back the rest of my hair, and started shaving all the baby hair off at the hairline. And it worked. Once I was finished, I was completely satisfied with my appearance.
It wasn’t until a few days or so later when my mom said “What the hell is wrong with your head” that I realized what I’d done. It looked like one of those military buzz cuts across my forehead. It took months for my hair to look decent enough to wear pulled away from my face and YEARS for the baby hair to grow back out to a normal, non-freakish length.
4) I’m kind of a murderer.
Living in a house with only women for five years (with the exception of the past few months), you can imagine how silly it can get. There are times when one of us has to “man up” and take care of something that we feel just isn’t a woman’s job. (And I don’t want to hear any shit from you feminists. Why don’t you go out and split a few logs, Paula Bunyan, and quit bothering me.) I don’t consider myself a girly girl, but I cannot stand a bug, lizard, or small, hairy undomesticated creature of any kind. For some reason, I’m always the one elected to deal with any unwanted invasion.
“Al! There’s a bug in here!”
“Al! Get the vacuum and suck up this bug!”
“Al! Al! Al!”
Listen bitches, I’m not a dude, no matter how you say my name.
Inevitably there’s a lot of squealing, cursing, and the sound of someone’s feet dancing on a chair.
Years ago, I think I was about 16; we got mice. My dad was working out of town so mom put glue traps out until he came back and figured out how they were getting in. One night I was lying in bed and she started screaming for me. “Al! Al! Get the dust pan!”
I refused to get up, instead yelling back, “What do you want? Get the dust pan yourself!”
“I just saw it run through here! Quick! Get the dust pan and whack it on the head!”
“Are you serious?! You want me to chase down a mouse and whack it in the head with a dust pan?!”
“Yes!”
“Forget it.”
But she continued to harass me for the next 10 minutes. I knew she was never going to let me sleep, so I finally got up and went to my door. I peeked out across the dark kitchen, the only light coming from my mom’s room up the hall. I had to go to the laundry room at the half way point and get the damn dust pan.
I’d only taken two or three small, cautionary steps across the hardwood (twss) when I thought something ran over my foot. (I realized later it was just the tie from my bathrobe.) I jumped, screamed, and took off running through the kitchen. It was probably the shortest run in the history of runs, because I tripped almost immediately and went crashing to the floor. When I fell my right knee took most of the impact, but it wasn’t just with the floor.
There was a sickening CRUNCH and my knee was bathed in warm liquid. I knew what happened right away, but I kind of blacked out for a minute. My mom says that I was shrieking so horribly she thought I’d broken a leg.
She helped me to her bathroom where I took my first look at the carnage. Hair and blood and blech, gag, mouse guts were stuck to my knee. I wailed and cried while she cleaned it all off. I kept hearing that CRUNCH replayed in my head, over and over and over.
I’d barely calmed down before it turned into the new “guess what she’s done now” story. She immediately started calling people and relaying the brutal tale. It’s still, of course, a common joke among my family. “Did you hear about the time Alyson crushed that mouse with her knee?
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!”
Motherfuckers.
(In case you haven’t noticed the trend, there’s a long list of things I’ll never live down. The post didn’t start out to be that way, but whatever.)
5) I’m often tactless.
In the past several months we’ve been learning how to use a new database at work. This means we’ve been spending a lot of time with new consultants and calling them when questions crop up. We haven’t completely transitioned from the old to the new so everything has been a bit muddled lately.
About a month ago one of my bills was late, as usual. Of course they started calling my work phone every fucking hour. Of course I didn’t answer. Sometimes they get sneaky and call switchboard and it comes up without an actual phone number on the screen, but I’ve gotten wise to that. Ha!
That particular day I was feeling a bit paranoid, so when the phone rang with a number I didn’t know I debated on picking it up or not. I finally snatched it up at the last minute, deciding I just wouldn’t answer using my name and see who it was first.
“Name of company and department." Pause. "How may I help you?”
“Yes, I’m calling for Alyson.”
“Erm, she’s not here...can I take a message?”
“Yes, tell her this is So-in-So the consultant returning her call about the questions she had on blahbity blahbity blah.”
I REALLY needed to talk to him so I had a quick internal debate: I couldn’t call him right back because I wasn’t supposed to be there. I couldn’t pretend to be someone else and say “Oh! Here she is!” because he’d recognize my voice and have to pretend he didn’t which would make things really awkward. Or I could tell him it was me and I was sorry for misleading him.
“Um, ha, So-in-So? This is kind of embarrassing, but this is Alyson...me. Your number looked like someone’s that I’ve been avoiding so I...wait, I mean...”
He immediately burst out laughing.
“I’m so sorry...wow...um”
Still laughing, “That’s ok. Ha!” Then he started answering the questions that I’d left him a message about.
I’ve spoken to him twice since then, answering the phone correctly both times. The last one being this past Thursday:
“Thank you for calling Name of Company and Department. This is Alyson. How may I help you?”
“Oh, so it’s you today? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
“Yep, it’s me. Heh, heh. Funny.”
More laughing.
“I’m never going to live this one down, am I?”
“Probably not.”
“I’m so professional.”
More laughing.
Did I mention he’s cute and single? No? Well he is, damn it. We have a meeting at his office across town coming up soon. I’m hoping he doesn’t embarrass me in front of everyone, including my boss who I never told about my lapse in professional demeanor. She’d be shocked, I’m sure.
Obviously I’m going to have to split this into two separate posts to keep you from restless eyeball syndrome.
To be continued with five more things you don't know about moi and my top seven bloggers to watch for 2010.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
I must, I must, I must increase my bust!
I was going to write a short post thanking all the guys that participated in Penis Week, but I’d rather do a video. So I’m thinking I might enlist the services of my best friend and make it a little extra special. (And that is not a girl-on-girl reference.) It’s in the heterosexual works.
I’ve always said that I’m glad my kid is a girl. I just didn’t think I could raise a boy. If I’m being completely honest, I didn’t think I could raise anything other than a penis or my hand...but here I am, doing it.
I took her shopping for fall clothes recently and was delighted to find that she and I have more in common than our freakishly long toes. We shop alike: Grab, try on, put back or keep, and get the fuck out. Fast, efficient, and leaving extra time for lunch.
There was only one exception: underwear.
My four year old decided she wanted a bra. Not a training bra, mind you, a REAL bra...with cups and adjustable straps. It took me about 15 minutes to get her away from those racks, sans bra and inappropriate panties, and hustle her, whining and pleading to the check out counter.
I told my mother about it when we got home.
“She wants a bra. Not a training bra with rainbows and butterflies all over it...a real one, with a matching set of bikini panties.”
"Are they made for her size?"
"Yes, the cups (air quotes) are flat, but"
She laughed. “Then why didn’t you get her one?”
“She’s four. Bras and bikini panties? Seriously?”
“Eh”, she said shrugging.
“I could be setting her up to be a....a....”
“A what? It’s no worse than the shit you used to wear.”
“Yeah, well you didn’t help me buy any of it!”
“Nope! And I’m not helping you with this one either!”
I got my first bra when I was six.
It was Fourth of July weekend and I was standing on my grandparent’s porch with my nine year old cousin, waving sparklers. She was making fun of me for not wearing a bra, pointing and laughing at my flat chest. This was the same she-devil that taught me about sex with a Barbie and Ken doll and how to steal the candy from our uncle’s army food packs.
The more she taunted me the angrier I got, until finally I took my sparkler and stabbed her in the hand with it. She ran off screaming and crying, eighties hair still visible over the bushes as she cut through the yard.
My Nana came out the side door, cigarette in one hand and the obligatory gin and tonic in the other. I didn’t know she'd been watching.
“What did ya do that for, dawlin?”
“She was making fun of me.”
She stood staring at me for a moment, blowing smoke out of her nose, before finally saying, "You come on with me.”
I was sure she was going to take the yard stick to my ass. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
She went into the spare bedroom, opened up the closet and started digging through a drawer. I stared at the lengthening ashes of the cigarette clamped between her bright pink lips. I remember thinking that if she dropped it, I had to step on it quick and make sure it was out. Because Papa always said, “Jackass, you make sure your Nana don’t burn this house down, ya hear?”
She finally found what she was looking for and turning around, held it up for me to see. It was a pale blue training bra with one of those sticky appliqués on the front of Strawberry Shortcake.
“This was ya cousin’s first training bra and now it’s yours.”
I didn’t want a hand-me-down training bra, but I knew better than to say that to Nana. She handed it over and told me to go to the bathroom and put it on.
The rest of the day she made sure to tell everyone that I was wearing that fucking bra. I was mortified. The only consolation was my cousin had a nice, red welt across her palm and was getting no sympathy. Training bra trumps sparkler burn.
My mom didn’t deal well with “girl issues”. It made her uncomfortable to talk about anything relating to underwear, boys, and especially periods. Nana used to say, “That woman just needs to touch herself, that’s all there is to it! Pain and simple.”
So Nana continued to buy my bras, panties, and other girl products as I grew up.When she passed away I was 12 and I started buying my own things.
My she-devil cousin was old enough to drive then and we would go to the mall with Papa’s credit card, buying whatever we wanted. My first run-in with Victoria’s Secret was on one such trip.
It was around my 13th birthday and I wanted something new and special to mark the occasion, but I wasn't sure what that was yet. She-devil marched into VS like she owned the place and started digging through the racks and bins. I was too busy gawking at all the leopard print and lace. Obviously this place had never heard of white cotton.
I finally started looking around, trying to draw as little attention as possible. I had a strong dislike for women that measure you for bras (still do actually) and I didn’t want one of them feeling me up in the VS dressing room in front of the she-devil.
I was rummaging through a bin when I saw a sign I couldn’t ignore. Glancing furtively around, I made my way toward every teenage girl’s destiny: the padded bra.
I found love with an emerald green, satin Wonderbra that day. The padding in that sucker was un-fucking-believable.
I took it to the counter, paid, and immediately went to the dressing room to switch it out with my plain white “Virgin” screamer.
BAM! Insta-titties!
I was so fucking proud of those things. Until I got home.
I stowed my bags in my room, made myself something to drink, and settled on the couch with a book. A short time later, my dad and mom came home from wherever the hell they’d been. It couldn’t have been 60 seconds before....
“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON WITH YOUR CHEST?” My dad was gawking at me.
“What? What’s going on?” My mom peered around him and her mouth promptly fell open.
“Let me see what you bought today”, she said reluctantly.
“Papa said I could get whatever I wanted!”
She started to my room. “Just show me.”
My dad was still yapping to himself, trying to wrap his pea brain around what was going on. “Don’t know what’s wrong with...is that green....I don’t think....”
A bright, emerald green strap was poking out from underneath my tank top and I shoved it back.
My mom started digging through my things and pulled out the Victoria’s Secret bag, empty except for tissue paper and a receipt. She read it and looked up at my dad standing in the doorway.
“It’s a MIRACLEbra”, she said with tears in her eyes, horrified. My dad looked at her, and then looked at my chest. Back and forth he went before finally bursting into laughter.
“MIRACLE! IT’S A MIRACLE”, he howled.
My face was bright red. I snatched the bag from her hand and stomped out.
“Call him”, I heard my dad say.
“I WILL not”, my mom replied.
Then I heard the unmistakable sound of the speaker phone. Ring. Ring. Ring. I stood in the hall, horror struck.
“HELLO”, my Papa shouted into the phone. He always shouts.
“DAD! THERE’S BEEN A MIRACLE!”
“WHAT?”
“WE’VE HAD A MIRACLE AT 154 blank ROAD!”
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKIN BOUT, JIM?”
“YOUR GRANDAUGHTER BOUGHT A MIRACLE BRA WITH YOUR CREDIT CARD! SHE’S GOT 'ER BOOBIES PUSHED UP TO 'ER CHIN!”
Loud, obnoxious, old man laughter.
“AND IT’S BRIGHT GREEN!”
More laughter.
For the next several years I became known as “The Miracle at 154 blank Road”...all because my mother was too embarrassed to help me shop for underwear.
Now it’s mine and my daughter’s turn to go through these rituals. I guess I'm about to buy her first training bra. Weird. Hopefully I'll do alright with this girly, parenting stuff and not embarrass her too much. It's definitely not all sugar, spice and everything nice.
But it will probably be fine.
After all...I have no problem touching myself.
**********
I’ve always said that I’m glad my kid is a girl. I just didn’t think I could raise a boy. If I’m being completely honest, I didn’t think I could raise anything other than a penis or my hand...but here I am, doing it.
I took her shopping for fall clothes recently and was delighted to find that she and I have more in common than our freakishly long toes. We shop alike: Grab, try on, put back or keep, and get the fuck out. Fast, efficient, and leaving extra time for lunch.
There was only one exception: underwear.
My four year old decided she wanted a bra. Not a training bra, mind you, a REAL bra...with cups and adjustable straps. It took me about 15 minutes to get her away from those racks, sans bra and inappropriate panties, and hustle her, whining and pleading to the check out counter.
I told my mother about it when we got home.
“She wants a bra. Not a training bra with rainbows and butterflies all over it...a real one, with a matching set of bikini panties.”
"Are they made for her size?"
"Yes, the cups (air quotes) are flat, but"
She laughed. “Then why didn’t you get her one?”
“She’s four. Bras and bikini panties? Seriously?”
“Eh”, she said shrugging.
“I could be setting her up to be a....a....”
“A what? It’s no worse than the shit you used to wear.”
“Yeah, well you didn’t help me buy any of it!”
“Nope! And I’m not helping you with this one either!”
I got my first bra when I was six.
It was Fourth of July weekend and I was standing on my grandparent’s porch with my nine year old cousin, waving sparklers. She was making fun of me for not wearing a bra, pointing and laughing at my flat chest. This was the same she-devil that taught me about sex with a Barbie and Ken doll and how to steal the candy from our uncle’s army food packs.
The more she taunted me the angrier I got, until finally I took my sparkler and stabbed her in the hand with it. She ran off screaming and crying, eighties hair still visible over the bushes as she cut through the yard.
My Nana came out the side door, cigarette in one hand and the obligatory gin and tonic in the other. I didn’t know she'd been watching.
“What did ya do that for, dawlin?”
“She was making fun of me.”
She stood staring at me for a moment, blowing smoke out of her nose, before finally saying, "You come on with me.”
I was sure she was going to take the yard stick to my ass. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
She went into the spare bedroom, opened up the closet and started digging through a drawer. I stared at the lengthening ashes of the cigarette clamped between her bright pink lips. I remember thinking that if she dropped it, I had to step on it quick and make sure it was out. Because Papa always said, “Jackass, you make sure your Nana don’t burn this house down, ya hear?”
She finally found what she was looking for and turning around, held it up for me to see. It was a pale blue training bra with one of those sticky appliqués on the front of Strawberry Shortcake.
“This was ya cousin’s first training bra and now it’s yours.”
I didn’t want a hand-me-down training bra, but I knew better than to say that to Nana. She handed it over and told me to go to the bathroom and put it on.
The rest of the day she made sure to tell everyone that I was wearing that fucking bra. I was mortified. The only consolation was my cousin had a nice, red welt across her palm and was getting no sympathy. Training bra trumps sparkler burn.
My mom didn’t deal well with “girl issues”. It made her uncomfortable to talk about anything relating to underwear, boys, and especially periods. Nana used to say, “That woman just needs to touch herself, that’s all there is to it! Pain and simple.”
So Nana continued to buy my bras, panties, and other girl products as I grew up.When she passed away I was 12 and I started buying my own things.
My she-devil cousin was old enough to drive then and we would go to the mall with Papa’s credit card, buying whatever we wanted. My first run-in with Victoria’s Secret was on one such trip.
It was around my 13th birthday and I wanted something new and special to mark the occasion, but I wasn't sure what that was yet. She-devil marched into VS like she owned the place and started digging through the racks and bins. I was too busy gawking at all the leopard print and lace. Obviously this place had never heard of white cotton.
I finally started looking around, trying to draw as little attention as possible. I had a strong dislike for women that measure you for bras (still do actually) and I didn’t want one of them feeling me up in the VS dressing room in front of the she-devil.
I was rummaging through a bin when I saw a sign I couldn’t ignore. Glancing furtively around, I made my way toward every teenage girl’s destiny: the padded bra.
I found love with an emerald green, satin Wonderbra that day. The padding in that sucker was un-fucking-believable.
I took it to the counter, paid, and immediately went to the dressing room to switch it out with my plain white “Virgin” screamer.
BAM! Insta-titties!
I was so fucking proud of those things. Until I got home.
I stowed my bags in my room, made myself something to drink, and settled on the couch with a book. A short time later, my dad and mom came home from wherever the hell they’d been. It couldn’t have been 60 seconds before....
“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON WITH YOUR CHEST?” My dad was gawking at me.
“What? What’s going on?” My mom peered around him and her mouth promptly fell open.
“Let me see what you bought today”, she said reluctantly.
“Papa said I could get whatever I wanted!”
She started to my room. “Just show me.”
My dad was still yapping to himself, trying to wrap his pea brain around what was going on. “Don’t know what’s wrong with...is that green....I don’t think....”
A bright, emerald green strap was poking out from underneath my tank top and I shoved it back.
My mom started digging through my things and pulled out the Victoria’s Secret bag, empty except for tissue paper and a receipt. She read it and looked up at my dad standing in the doorway.
“It’s a MIRACLEbra”, she said with tears in her eyes, horrified. My dad looked at her, and then looked at my chest. Back and forth he went before finally bursting into laughter.
“MIRACLE! IT’S A MIRACLE”, he howled.
My face was bright red. I snatched the bag from her hand and stomped out.
“Call him”, I heard my dad say.
“I WILL not”, my mom replied.
Then I heard the unmistakable sound of the speaker phone. Ring. Ring. Ring. I stood in the hall, horror struck.
“HELLO”, my Papa shouted into the phone. He always shouts.
“DAD! THERE’S BEEN A MIRACLE!”
“WHAT?”
“WE’VE HAD A MIRACLE AT 154 blank ROAD!”
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKIN BOUT, JIM?”
“YOUR GRANDAUGHTER BOUGHT A MIRACLE BRA WITH YOUR CREDIT CARD! SHE’S GOT 'ER BOOBIES PUSHED UP TO 'ER CHIN!”
Loud, obnoxious, old man laughter.
“AND IT’S BRIGHT GREEN!”
More laughter.
For the next several years I became known as “The Miracle at 154 blank Road”...all because my mother was too embarrassed to help me shop for underwear.
Now it’s mine and my daughter’s turn to go through these rituals. I guess I'm about to buy her first training bra. Weird. Hopefully I'll do alright with this girly, parenting stuff and not embarrass her too much. It's definitely not all sugar, spice and everything nice.
But it will probably be fine.
After all...I have no problem touching myself.
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