I usually turn on the tv first thing in the morning to check out the Weather Channel. But, since my lovely Comcast remote controller has issues right now, and needs to “warm up” or something before it allows me to change channels, I now just turn on the tv and walk away for a few minutes. I then sat down at my computer to check my emails…. And that’s when I heard it.
I heard whiney talking and when I looked up saw a few older teenagers with brightly colored faces as if they walked through a mist of chalky wonderment. They talked like they were pretending to be six or talking to an audience of deaf monkeys. (Sorry, can’t think of an animal right off the bat that “isn’t right in the head.”) I stood in front of the tv, holding the warmed up remote, ready to press the button to get the hell away from this madness, when I had a thought. All I could think of was if any one them had a college degree and if this is what they meant when they may have said, “One day I want to be on tv.” Well, pat yourself on the back; you have arrived….in lavender chalky body paint and a red Raggedy Andy moppy wig. Congrats!
Is this what Saturday morning programming has to offer the children of 2013? The Doodlebops? I remember enduring the pain of the purple dinosaur, Barney, and secretly hoped someone would push that annoying Baby Bop in front of a pretend bus. I know that is not nice, but seriously, where did Saturday morning cartoons go? Is it all because Mel Blanc is no longer around to voice these marvelous cartoon creations? Or does everything have to be “real?” Because, I’m telling you right now, these Doodlebops are goofy as hell.
When my kids were little, the cartoons I grew up with were replaced with Sesame Street, Shari Lewis and Lamb Chops Play Along, and my favorite of my children’s programming, Pee Wee’s Play House. Each one of these were geared to both the child and the parent who was held captive to watch them also. I did laugh at a lot of the things they were saying. But, then someone decided to add a purple dinosaur to the mix and everything went to hell in a handbasket.
Ok, now don’t get me wrong. There has been weird children’s programming all along….. H.R. Pufnstuf comes to mind. Anyone my age will remember Witchiepoo and “Oranges, Poranges, who said?” This demented children’s television show was the first ever live action tv show that debuted in 1969.
Of course, I was in 8th grade or so when this psychedelic show came out. I wasn’t an impressionable five year old. But, when I was impressionable, at least I had something that I took with me to adulthood. No, it wasn’t Wile E. Coyote or Bugs or even Elmer Fudd. It was Foghorn Leghorn.
Now this is what Saturday morning cartoons was all about. These cartoons were broadcast starting in 1945. Foghorn was a “good ole boy” with a southern accent and a penchant for one-upmanship. His target was usually the barnyard dog. I remember sitting in front of tv (despite warnings from my mom I was going to go cross-eyed if I continued to sit so close to the tv) and laughing at his antics. But, what I didn’t truly appreciate until I was older were his wonderfully wrong sayings. Here are a few of my favorites:
“This boy’s more mixed up than a feather in a whirlwind”
“Don’t, I say don’t bother me dog, can’t ya see I’m thinkin’
“That, I say that boy’s just like a tatoo, gets under your skin”
“Kid don’t quit talkin’ so much he’ll get his tongue sunburned”
“That’s a joke, I say that’s a joke son”
“Go, I say go away boy, you bother me”
“His muscles are as soggy as a used tea bag”
“That woman’s as cold as a nudist on an iceberg”
“That dog’s as subtle as a hand grenade in a barrrel of oat meal”
“Boy, you cover about as much as a flapper’s skirt in a high wind”
“Nice mannered kid, just a little on the dumb side”
“That kid’s about as sharp as a pound of wet liver”
“I made a funny son and you’re not laughin’
“That boy’s about as sharp as a bowling ball”
“Look sister is any of this filterin’ through that little blue bonnet of yours”
“I got, I say I got this boy as fidgety as a bubble dancer with a slow leak”
“Now who’s, I say who’s responsible for this unwarranted attack on my person!”
“This boy’s making more noise than a couple of skeletons throwin’ a fit on a tin roof”
“The snow, I say the snow’s so deep the farmers have to jack up the cows so they can milk’em”
“I keep pitchin’ ‘em and you keep missin’ ‘em”
“That boy’s as timid as a canary at a cat show”
“Nice girl, but about as sharp as a sack of wet mice”
“Nice boy but he’s got more nerve than a bum tooth”
“I say, boy, pay attention when I’m talkin’ to ya, boy”
“Pay attention, boy, I’m cuttin’ but you ain’t bleedin’!”
“Oh, that woman, got a mouth like an outboard motor”
“That boy’s as strong as an ox, and just about as smart”
“Stop, I say stop it boy, you’re doin’ alot of choppin’ but no chips are flyin’
“This is going to cause more confusion than a mouse in a burlesque show”
“You know there might, I say there just might be a market for bottled duck”
“Gal reminds me of a highway between Forth Worth and Dallas – no curves”
“Boy’s gotta mouth like a cannon, always shootin’ it off”
“Pay attention to me boy! I’m not just talkin’ to hear my head roar”
“That, I say that dog’s busier than a centipede at a toe countin’ contest”
“Now cut that out boy, or I’ll spank you where the feathers are thinnest”
The lessons I learned while watching Foghorn Leghorn was that there is a fine line between sarcasm, humor, and spite. Yes, I didn’t understand a lot of things he was saying when I was little, but I realized there is a way to say something when you don’t want to say it out right…like, “His elevator doesn’t go all the way up to the top floor.”
My whole point for this blog post is that Saturday morning cartoons are what got us up early in the morning. We never slept in. We didn’t have video games or an endless amount of channels to keep us occupied. We had the World Book Encyclopedia and three channels on our tv sets back then. Cartoons had an effect on us. We still remember Officer Dibble, Tooter the Turtle, Yogi and Boo Boo, Daffy, Sylvester, and the Tazmanian Devil. Perhaps today’s programmers don’t care because there are so many options for children besides television. I bet more kids sleep in on Saturdays in 2013 than they did in 1961 though.
In the end, our cartoon generation was much better than the Doodlebop generation.
Sure, the kids are learning letters, and songs, and how to be a good friend. But, we learned how to take Acme products and blow up a quick bird, how to insult other chickens in the hen house, and how to correctly make an introduction, “What’s up, doc?”
Map of West Virginia counties (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The governor of West Virginia, Earl Ray Tomlin, introduced Senate Bill 359, an educational reform bill, which will be voted on soon. Teachers have given the bill a big, fat F, which in my opinion has nothing to do with reform.
Reform- to amend or improve by change of form or removal of fault or abuses.
I’m not going to go into each point of the bill, only to say that it is a slap in the face to all educators in the state of West Virginia. You know, teachers in the Mountain state make one of the lowest salaries in the nation. Many teachers head east to work outside the state borders to garner higher wages. But, in the end, teachers are working the best they can, despite the obstacles that are coming directly from the higher ups.
Obstacles, you say? Absolutely. Someone a few years ago had decided teachers need to test more. I give a beginning Math and Reading test at the beginning of the year. I give Benchmark tests twice a year in four subjects and the students have two online writing tests to get ready for the big one in March. The Westest is held in May. Now, mind you, this is on top of the tests I give weekly in Social Studies, Reading, Spelling, and Science. I also have to give end of the year tests.
I would just rather teach.
I’m 56 years old and I think I received a pretty good education when I was young. We memorized our multiplication tables. We learned our state capitals, had spelling bees, and wrote and presented book reports. It was all about Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. We grew up fine. Some of my peers did better than fine.
Ok, this was before my time….but we had those desks.
But, something along the way changed. Someone has decided that to exist in the 21st century, we must bathe our children in technology or they will surely die. So, in the elementary setting we are testing, and we are teaching technology….on top of Handwriting, Math, Spelling, Grammar, Reading, Science, Social Studies, and Health. And we are doing this in crowded classrooms.
If you want to reform, let’s first take a look at teacher/student ratio.
The governor wants to require early childhood education programs to be made available five days a week for the full day; allowing program to be for fewer than five days per week and less than full day under certain circumstances.
I don’t understand this. This is not the reform that we need. Before adding new programs, we need to address the teacher/student ratio in k-2. Class size should be limited to no more than 16 students and the curriculum should be restricted. Let me explain:
Years ago, there were a lot of two-parent households. A lot of the moms did not work outside the home. Someone was there to make sure students did their homework, and were more hands-on. Now, I’m not saying that a lot of people don’t still do that. Of course they do. But, for the most part, it is fact that the divorce numbers are much higher than they were years ago. Even without divorce, economics force both parents to work. Some single parent households need help. Grandparents are raising many of the children. Many children come from homes where abuse is a way of life. Drug use is more prevalant than it was years ago. Some children go to bed hungry. Yes, I realize that has also happened in the past, but in the end, the classroom is now a home- away- from- home for a lot of children.
I have fifteen students this year in my fourth grade classroom. Last year I had twenty-one. Six less students makes a world of difference. And those teachers with twenty-five and twenty-six students are overwhelmed. I know my students. I can look at one and know she is not feeling well because I know her so well. I send her to the office to get her temperature taken…101.6. I smile and give her a hug as she leaves to go home. I know not to give much homework because it is an unfair advantage to the several who are lucky to have a piece of notebook paper or pencil at their homes. No one goes through their backpacks at night. No one helps them practice their multiplication table. My mom drilled me nightly when I was in third grade. I knew them when I went to fourth grade. Some students in general just have no clue. Some children have behavioral issues. Some are learning disabled. Some have attention deficit problems. This is not the same mix of students that I went to school with, but yet, nothing has changed in the way of class size.
So, I teach time management skills in the classroom and basically let them do some homework during class time. This only seems fair to those who aren’t lucky enough to have help at home. Sure, in the end, fourth graders can learn to do their homework on their own, but they need guidance and direction..but sadly, a few are not receiving it at home. They are allowed to sit and kill things while playing their video games. And I know a majority of the boys do this. I ask these things…. Technology at its finest. When I was young we had three channels on tv and the World Book Encyclopedia as our internet. We honestly didn’t have much to do but our homework on school nights.
When you shove many children into a classroom, something is lost. So, let’s begin our educational reform by taking a look at teacher/student ratio. I know you won’t, because that would mean hiring new teachers. It’s bad enough that the governor wants to hire anyone with a bachelor’s degree to enter the classroom. You are going to be opening a can of worms if this hiring practice is passed, however. It will change the scope of teacher education in this state forever.
I know some of you will not agree with me on this next point, but I think technology is making us stupider. (Yes, I realize that is not a word.)
“The fog of information can drive out knowledge.”
Don’t get me wrong. I think technology in the classroom is great. I use it in some form every day. If we are studying volcanoes, I have a volcano simulator waiting on one of the computers. I have a penguin cam up some days. There are many, many internet sites that are extremely beneficial. That’s not what I am talking about.
The state of West Virginia implemented a program called Tech Steps. All students from kindergarten on must complete about six assignments. In my opinion, this program should not be used in the elementary school setting. Why do elementary school children need a technology component when we should be concentrating on core subjects? If you want our test scores to rise, don’t inundate us with work that can wait until fifth or sixth grade. You are making us waste precious time. Do third graders really need to learn how to use a spreadsheet? Sure, we are in a different world now, where computers and technology are at our every turn. I get it. I think it has merit in junior high, but not in the early grades where everything depends on them learning the basics so they can go on to the next year and build on that.
In the end, it is not the same as it was. We are forced to test too much when we should be teaching. We are forced to teach more children in our classroom than is beneficial to their educational growth. We are forced to teach technology, when in fact, we should review our multiplication one more time instead of completing yet another techsteps assignment that will have no bearing on other important educational milestones, such as defining words, rounding numbers, and correcting a run-on sentence. K-2 teachers should be teaching a limited curriculum, plain and simple.
There are only so many minutes in a day for an elementary school teacher. We have to teach Spelling, Social Studies, Science, Math, Reading, Grammar, handwriting, and Health. We are also referees, bankers, counselors, and health inspectors.
So, Senate Education committee people, there you have it; the rambling of a fourth grade teacher. If you truly want an educational reform in West Virginia, start with kindergarten and give those teachers a small class size. We teach with kids squished into our classrooms because that’s the way you want it. We test and test and test to make sure we are testing because that’s what we have to do. We teach technology subjects that the wee ones should not have to be introduced to until an older age. We do all this because you told us to. If something is broken, it’s not with the teachers. It is with the system. Please be careful with every point of our governor’s education reform bill. It needs to be chewed up and digested to see if it sits well with teachers. Take us in consideration instead of pointing fingers at us. Because after all,
You can lead a student to the test, but you can’t make him pass it.
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I was sitting at our local lazer wash the other day thinking back to the first time I ever went to an automatic car wash. I grew up in Weirton, West Virginia, and the new “automatic” car wash had just opened “up on the hill” near our home. I can’t remember what kind of car we had back then, but the whole family jumped in when my dad told us a car wash opened where you sit in the car while it is being washed. What??? No taking a bucket of water, soap, and a garden hose out into the driveway anymore? Well, not that I really helped wash our cars in the first place. I was and still am, a “non-finisher.” I just really can’t finish anything all the way through. Same for washing the car. I would get one side done and then spray the other side with the hose to knock some dust off and call it a day. You could never see that side from our picture window, so it looked like I did a great job.
When we pulled up to the new car wash, we had to wait in a line because, as all things new, people wanted to experience this new-fangled way to wash a car. It was the 60′s, after all, and inventions were just waiting to be invented. When it was our turn, a guy motioned for us to move up a bit. We then had to put the car in neutral. They guy then took some gigantic hook and put it somewhere in the front of the car.
“Will that pull off the bumper?” I thought that was a pertinent question.
The guy told my dad to make sure all of the windows were rolled up. We were ready. There was a little jerk and our car was on some track through a little building with these scrubber things on the sides. The noise was loud and the water was really hitting the windshield and roof of the car. To be perfectly honest, it was a bit scary. Those brushes were right up against our windows and then one roll up over the car and down the windshield. Hey, this was fun….but not really.
After we were done, there were two teen-age boys who wiped our car with dry cloths. My mom had to interject her authority of being Queen of Weirton.
“Make sure you dry the car good….and there better not be any spots of dirt anywhere.”
Oh, but there was. When we pulled into the driveway, she had my dad not park the car in the garage. She wanted to inspect the job the new automatic car wash did on our family vehicle.
“Well, we won’t be going there again.” I remember there were seven places that were missed. I smile at this because I can’t remember what I did fifteen minutes ago, but I can remember my mom ranting about SEVEN missed places on the car after visiting the new automatic car wash “up on the hill.” She loved to find something to bitch about. My dad was probably relieved that he wasn’t at the end of this particular rant. I remember thinking he was going to like this new car wash. Anything she disagreed about, my dad was then quietly all about.
So, one day I was sitting, watching tv, with our dog Smokey, on our lap. It was a hot summer day and my dad must not have wanted to wash the car by hand. I mean, who would want to, now that we basically had a robot to do it for us? He asked me if I wanted to take a ride with him to the car wash.
Since Smokey was already sitting on my lap, I just picked her up and carried her a la Paris Hilton with her prized chihuahua to the car. Smokey often rode in the car. As all chihuahuas, Smokey was a yapper. Yap, yap, yap. But, who knew what was about to transpire.
Well, Smokey went ape shit. The noise first scared her and she buried herself beside my hip. We were yanked ahead on the conveyor belt. When the brushes hit against the car, that’s when Smokey defended her territory and her family. She ran over to the window and bared her teeth and growled and barked like she was ready to take on the brushes. She ran back and forth, over my dad and over me to each window. She was going to save us from this barrage of red and yellow bristles attacking us.
Rotating brushes inside a conveyor car-wash. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I should have counted how many times she ran back and forth. My dad also found it amusing. Smokey the chihuahua was fighting with the brushes at the automatic car wash.
When we got home, Smokey was exhausted and fell fast asleep on my dad’s lap.
The next few times we went to the car wash, we took Smokey along for our pleasure. It seems so cruel now to put the little yapper through this sort of animal abuse, but you have to understand I never once thought I was being abusive. I just thought it was really really funny.
And each time we got home, my mom would disappear downstairs for a few minutes. We knew she was heading for the garage.
When I was young, I was shocked when I first saw my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Garrity, at my church. The Mendenhall family went to Sunday school every Sunday, but went next door to Isaly’s afterwards instead of going to church. The Mendenhall kids were “too much to deal with.” And that would have been true. So, we would head upstairs for Easter and Christmas service only and call it a day.
Well, I never paid much attention to people who sat in the pews. I was a kid…with a pencil and small notepad. I wrote notes or doodled. I was mainly a doodler. My sister liked to take off her shoes and show me the hole in her socks. I think she wore the same damn pair of white anklets to church every Sunday. She never took her shoes off during Sunday school class, only when we had to sit during the long long service upstairs.
So, imagine my surprise when I saw Mrs. Garrity sitting one row ahead of me, diagonally across the pew. Damn, what the hell is she doing in my church? She’s a teacher. It was Easter Sunday, so I figured she was able to leave the school to attend church.
That same year I saw Mrs. Tucci, the sixth grade teacher, trying on shoes at Marlinn’s shoe store. I stared at her for the longest time when we came in to buy a brand new pair of penny loafers. I hid from her, which is hard to do in a small store. I was shocked. She never wore slacks, but there she sat, with her foot up in the air, letting some stranger put a shoe on her foot. How weird.
The reason I even remembered this is because I saw a third grader at Walmart the other day. She is in the classroom across the hall from me and I see her every day. But, she was with a sibling and they were at the top of the aisle staring at me. I heard, “There’s Miss Mendenhall.” I didn’t turn around immediately, but when I did, they took off. I had to laugh. It was the “Dear God, a teacher has been let out of the school” syndrome. Because, as everyone knows, teachers live at the school.
I wonder why kids look at teachers with surprise if they see them out anywhere. And their behavior is peculiar. They can’t be themselves. It is always a strain to talk to kids that I see out and about. They stare at what I am wearing. You know they are going to go home and tell their friends that they saw me and I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and Dear God, my hair was back in a ponytail. I wish they would pay that much attention to detail in the classroom.
I had a cold last week and took a Kleenex out and blew my nose. Apparently, teachers don’t do that in front of the students. “Are you ok?’ one asked. Um, yes, I just have a cold, but thank you for asking. They continued to stare at me. One girl pointed at my Coke and asked, “Do you go through Hardees every morning?” Um, yes I do.
I remember being so nervous when I started fourth grade. I had spent my first three years of school at a private school in Wintersville, Ohio, that was run by a coven of sadistic nuns. (Notice that “coven” actually means “a group of witches.”) I did that on purpose. I hated going to that school. I begged my mom about every day to let me attend Edgewood, our local public school. I was so excited when I found out I was going to switch schools in the fall.
“ Vickie, we are going to let you go to school with your friends this year.”
I loved how she said, “we.” My dad had no say in the matter. My mom was a rolling pin wife and my dad was Wally Cox. He had no spine when it came to her. He hid behind his newspaper and made faces at her when she wasn’t looking. Oh, how I loved him. She would yell at him and he would just take it. Then, he would hop on his little red tractor to cut the grass, and run over her flower bed. And he would look over at me and smile. He knew he was going to get yelled at.
So, back to me. I couldn’t wait to attend school with my bff, Ramaine. We could ride the bus together and sit by each other in class and everything was peachy keen. Well, except that it wasn’t. I had Miss Emler.
Aunt Bee (Frances Bavier) in her kitchen and apron, from “The Mayberry Chef.” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Miss Melvina Emler. I honestly do not remember much about her. When I think of her, I picture Aunt Bee from The Andy Griffith Show, but she looked nothing like her. And she definitely didn’t act like her. I just spent three years at the Little Jesus Baby Immaculate Conception, a school with nuns. Oh, not just any common nuns, if there even is such a thing.I’m talking about the evil kind. I wanted to come to Edgewood and see balloons and unicorns and lollipop gardens. Instead, I saw the Dumb Row.
I’ve briefly mentioned Ms. Emler’s Dumb Row before, but it made me think of it yesterday when day-dreaming how wonderful it would be to have a marine standing beside one of my fourth graders to help them listen to my directions so they don’t repeatedly ask a hundred times a day “So, what are we supposed to do?” I frowned though, at remembering Ms. Emler’s Dumb Row. I really tried hard not to be placed in that row for stupid kids.
When I entered the classroom that first day of public school, I was a happy child. I was with my best friend and all the neighbor girls that I hung out with after school and throughout the summers. This was going to be great. But, also remember that I was as hyper as Speedy Gonzales on speed. My mom tried to minimize that by slipping me a mild tranquilizer every morning before school and disguised it as a “car sick pill.” Thanks, Mom. Did it help? I have no idea, but I think that it may. It didn’t help with my car sickness, however. I had no idea that I was being tranquilized every morning. Who does that to a child? My mom.
Anyway, I had my hyper moments, I am sure, but seemed to do well in fourth grade. I stared at that Dumb Row sign daily and never wanted to stit there.The row was never empty. It was one of those old row of oak desks that were connected to each other and bolted to the floor. There were three boys who sat in the Dumb Row almost every day: Nickey, Bert, and Joe. I changed their names so they won’t get pissed it they read their names here. The chances are slim.
These boys lived in the Dumb Row. Years ago, teachers got away with that crap. You could grab a kid by the arm, drag him to a Dumb Row, and then smack the shit out of him. I don’t remember any smacking, but I remember plenty of talking down to students because, well, I was one of those. Ms. Emler apparently thought I was a wise-guy one day and put my ass in the Dumb Row.
It’s amazing how you can remember something that happened when you were in fourth grade but can’t remember what you did fifteen minutes ago. I can vividly recall the first day Ms. Emler put me in the Dumb Row. We were going over our homework for Spelling. We had to write sentences, using each of our spelling words. We were studying compound words at the time. She would say each spelling word, and then pick a student to read the sentence we had for that word.
“Cardboard…..Vickie, read the sentence you have for cardboard.” She stood right in front of me, holding her teacher’s manual to her chest. I would gladly read my sentence, for I was quite creative in my sentence formations.
” I live in a cardboard box.”
I don’t know why she just stared at me. Didn’t she hear me? She must not have. I read it again, this time with feeling. “I live in a cardboard box.” I think I may have sounded like a flaming gay guy the second time. The students laughed. Ms. Emler did not.
“What kind of sentence is that?” Ms. Emler slammed her teacher’s manual on my desk. What the hell.
“Um…..it’s a ……………….declarative sentence?” I didn’t know what she expected from me. I had my homework. I wrote complete sentences. I answered her question correctly. What the hell.
“Vickie, you do not live in a cardboard box! I have been to your house. That sentence is absolutely ridiculous! Go sit in the Dumb Row!
Corrugated shipping container, one type of “cardboard box” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I had never seen Ms. Emler so mad. The only thing I could think of was that she must live in a cardboard box somewhere and the subject was a little touchy. But, that couldn’t be true. Oh, sure, she wore the same five dresses every week, but where would she hang them if she lived in a cardboard box? They don’t have closets. I didn’t get it.
I quietly stood up and glanced over at the empty seat waiting for me in the Dumb Row. I’ve always had this thing about inanimate objects, and I really think that row of seats was happy I was going to sit there for a while. I saw the sign on the first desk, announcing the row. The three goof ball boys looked shocked, which is better, I guess, than the blank look that sat on their face most days.
I burst into tears. I didn’t understand why I had to go sit in the Dumb Row. Dori and Kathleen smiled at each other. They thought it was highly amusing that I was going to sit in the Dumb Row. I stuck my tongue out at them and then continued on with the crying. Not good, Vickie.
Miss Emler thought I was sticking my tongue out at her, behind her back.
“Ok, you can just sit there all week, Vickie. You don’t live in a cardboard box and you should never disrespect a teacher.”
I didn’t understand that last part. How can you disrespect a teacher for crying and walking over to the Dumb Row? I wrote a goddamn complete sentence. I skipped a line. I used my best penmanship. I even underlined the spelling word like we were supposed to. Why can’t I live in a cardboard box? I didn’t understand.
So, I sat and cried all week in the Dumb Row. Every time I looked at Miss Emler I saw Sister Dominica from the Jesus Mary and Joey Immaculate Academy.
And so when I broke out of my daydream, I looked over at my fourth grader who asks for directions immediately after I give directions and write the directions on the board. It happens a zillion times a day. It’s tiring. But, I don’t want to be a Miss Emler. I don’t want to be a mean teacher. I am not allowed to have a Dumb Row.
So, I went over the directions yet another time. I will try not to lose my mind.
I’ve been to New York City to visit my daughter several times, and let me tell you, it is exhausting. Every time I come home I am pissed at myself for being out of shape. And people, if you plan to visit New York City, you will walk. Oh, sure, there will be some of you who taxi from one place to the next. That is thesmart thing to do. I am one of the stupid tourists.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I had a great time in New York. I love New York. But, my daughter walked me all over the damn place. And I will admit that I need to lose weight. I was able to lose 22 pounds last year and did pretty well hoofing it around NYC last summer when we went apartment hunting. Oh, hell, that’s a lie. I was ready to have a stroke. Like I said, I’m not very smart. I picked 90+ degree weather to walk around the city. I’m beyond stupid. This year was the same.
My journey to NYC is not quick. First I have to drive two hours to Pittsburgh International Airport. I have to park in the extended long term parking lot, which is not close to the terminal. By the time I make it to the building, I really want to just stand on that people mover thingy. When I hear someone coming up behind me, I will start walking, but I don’t wanna.
After my nice flight with Jet Blue, I arrived at JFK airport. I like airports. Just thought I would mention that. I don’t know why taxi cab men scare me, but I feel like I am imposing on them. So, I head outside to the ground transportation area and buy a $15.50 ticket to ride the NYC Airporter bus. It takes a while to exit the airport, as the bus driver stops at each terminal. I didn’t mind. As long as I didn’t have to drive through New York, I don’t care if I was on the back of a donkey. Again, quite a lie. I would care.
The bus dropped me off at Grand Central Station, where I have to find the 6 Local Uptown train. Again, it’s easy. Well, except that I found out while I was on the subway that the Local 6 was not working this particular day. What? I’m on the local 6. Well, apparently it is allowed to change to be called the Express 6 which bypasses my stop. Someone sitting next to me tells me that I can get off at 125 and then take the local 6 downtown to my stop. What?
So, I get off the stop and walk across to the train going in the other direction and hop on, hoping it is the right one. It was. I then walked a couple of blocks to where my daughter was meeting me for lunch. I could see her smiling at me. I know that smile. I am doing somethig stupid.
“Mom, you are such a tourist. You don’t need to look both ways when it is a one way street.”
We had a nice lunch and walked back to her apartment so I could drop off my carry-on. Our plan for the day was to head to the Brooklyn Bridge and then head over to High Line. We walked the several blocks up the hill to the subway. I had to stop several times on the way up. I am weak. We got off the subway on Chambers Street. I had never been this far south before. So, there was the Brooklyn Bridge. And it was all boarded up on the sides of the bridge for construction. I had no idea we were going to actually walk over to the other side. What?
My daughter on the Brooklyn Bridge
Well, we had to walk over to the other side. I don’t know why. Because everyone else was doing it? There was nothing to see for quite a while. We stopped and wrote our names on some plywood…because everyone else was doing it.
It took us forever to get to the other side. And it was 90 degrees and 2:00 in the afternoon. Where the hell are the clouds? I was complaining a lot. My daughter told me to stop. I stopped.
It’s a 1.3 mile walk, but it takes a long time to walk due to the amount of foot traffic….and baby strollers…..and people like me who take pictures along the way and complain about the heat and stop alot. But, I was glad I did it. Because when we got to the other side, there was a park. And that park had a water taxi. Oh, hell yeah, I was on that thing.
The water taxi cost $25 and takes people around the statue of Liberty, past Ellis Island and Battery Park and up the Hudson. It makes stops along the way for those who want to get off in a different stop. I sure as hell didn’t want to walk back over the Brooklyn Bridge.
It was pretty cool. The taxi was huge and besides those who just wanted to look from inside the air conditioned lounge area, there was an upper berth and lower outside viewing areas. It was nice. We opted to get off at one of the piers on the Hudson, Christopher St., Pier 45 on West 10th Street.
This is also Grenwich Village, which was pretty darn cool. We walked past a Bareburger, where we had an early dinner. After that, my daughter wanted to take me to High Line Park. We had to walk again. I thought she was taking me to a normal park. Boy, was I surprised when I saw High Line. High Line is a park built on an elevated freight line railway. The freight line wasn’t in use since the early 1980′s. It was slated for demolition as it became an eyesore for those who lived in the neighborhood. One man’s crusade led to the development by the city of New York to create this elevated park. It is magnificient. We walked along the park until a storm hit us. That’s not the best place to be when a thunderstorm approaches you. Luckily, there were places for all of us to hide. We then hailed a taxi and headed back to the apartment. We had great aspirations for the next day. We were going to wake up early and head to the local bagel shop for breakfast and then rent bikes in Central Park. However, we ate a huge breakfast and opted to go back to bed for a little bit. We then showered and headed via subway down to visit the Top of the Rock. I’ve always wanted to visit Rockefeller Center and see the ice skating rink and the NBC Studios. It didn’t disappoint. Several blocks are pedestrian only, and it is just a really neat area. We finally found the place where we were to buy tickets to the Top of the Rock. I wanted to see Central Park from the top of this building. It was great.
After we left Rockefeller Center, I looked at my watch. We were late. My daughter wanted to go to the Colbert Report Studios to see if we could get standby tickets to that night’s show. We were supposed to be there by 2:30. So, we started walking. We had to go to 54th Street. We were on 50th Street. The Colbert Report was filmed on 54th Street. We had to hurry. Oh, but wait. We got to 54th Street. Alex asked a doorman and he told her it was about four blocks to the west. What? Four long ass blocks. We walked some more. And walked some more. We passed by where The Letterman Show was filmed. Nope. We kept walking. I was ready to give up. We had to be there in ten minutes. Not going to happen. I really thought she got the address wrong. We were headed into a less commerical area, one that had auto repairs and……nothing else. My daughter was laughing at me. Finally, we found it.
It was 2:40. We didn’t make it. Alex walked up the steps and a guy stepped out of the office. He told her that we needed to go stand by that garbage can. He pointed to….a garbage can. Someone would be out at 4:00 and hand out stand- by tickets if there were any to give out. It was a slight chance that we would get tickets and we had to discuss this.
Well, right by the garbage can was a narrow covered alley and there was a guy sitting there eating lunch. He told us he was in line for tickets. Except he had tickets. Oh. So, we were screwed. We stood there talking to another couple who came to stand in line. They too had tickets, but came to stand in line, because if wasn’t a certainty even with tickets that you could get in. I was ready to give up when the couple told us they had 2 extra tickets that we could have. What? Omg.
So, we sat and stood in line from 2:40 until they came out at 4:00 and took our information from our driver’s license and then left. Now there were two lines…one for ticket holders and one who were stand-by’s.
We were now full fledged ticket holders. They let us go into the studio at 5:50. We had to go through a metal detector and hang out in the lobby for a long time. We took pictures.
So, we got to watch the Colbert Report being filmed. Since, we got there so early, and they took us in after the VIP people, Alex and I were #7 and 8 to be seated. It was great. By the time we got out, it was time to hail a taxi and head to a Thai restaurant in Upper East Side. We then walked to her apartment. I was one tired tourist/mom.
I left early the next morning. I hope to return in the fall sometime when the weather is a bit cooler. I’d like to see the 911 Memorial this time…and Central Park again. I missed it this visit.
My mom made it quite known to me after I had children that she didn’t believe in bragging about her children. Well, Mom, that was obvious. All I was doing was calling her to tell her both of the kids made it to the state social studies fair. I mean, that was an awesome feat that siblings could win the local and then county Social Studies fair. And since she lived two hours away, she would not have know about any of this.
Regardless, I had to hear her tear me down one more time. “Vickie, I think that’s great. You know, you three kids did a lot when you were little, but I never believed in bragging.” No, no you didn’t mom. Well, except when it came to my stomach.
Now, you have to understand that I really didn’t excel at much. I didn’t play a musical instrument. I did try out for our junior high band, if that is what you want to call it, but they just refused to hand me a clarinet or flute or whatever the hell I wanted to learn to play. We had to take a music test of some sort and I really couldn’t hear the difference in tone. I was a tone deaf clarinet challenged retard. It was just another test that I flunked. Like the early entrance test to start school early.
I did win a safety slogan contest when I was in fourth grade and even got a little trophy. That was a big deal. I think my mom came up with the slogan though. I’m not sure. I’m just saying that to continue on with my “I really didn’t excel at much” scenario.
I wasn’t much on selling stuff to win contests in our Bluebird and Campfire Girls troop. I absolutely hated going door-to-door and asking people if they wanted to buy goddamn light bulbs or magazines or even candles. I remember the candle drive. I think I went to five houses and each lady of the house bought something, but I just was tired of that bullshit and went home. I was actually doing pretty well, but I just wasn’t into it. Thank goodness I didn’t have to collect money during the sale, because then I would have had to follow through with it.
My best friend won a selling contest and got to wear a Clorox bottle crown, sit in the front row and hold flowers. I was happy for her because she sold a shit load of whatever we were selling. It wasn’t for me, so I just smiled for the picture as a loser in the back row. Not that the other girls were losers in the back row. Sorry, MaryLou. Talking about me, not you.
So, no, I didn’t excel at much and my mom didn’t brag about me too much….until summer time rolled around.
I don’t know what it was in my neighborhood, but for some reason we liked to lay out in the sun. Like all the time. If we weren’t at the pool, we were laying out. And I laid out on our back patio on a towel. On the concrete. You’d think that my parents would buy some porch furniture for the back, but they never did. That just dawned on me right now. I know my mom always said that the sun didn’t like her and she rarely sat outside, well, because there was no place to sit. We had one lawn chair on our front porch and that was it. So, I laid out on a towel.
The summer after I was a freshman in high school was the summer of my great tan. I was quite dark. I mean, like really dark. And my stomach for some reason was the darkest. I had a little egg timer and would roll over when it would ding. I was like frying my body. Would think that I would look like a piece of leather or a shriveled up raisin now that I am in my fifties. Oh contrare. I still look quite young. Well, that is what my fourth graders tell me. They think I am 30. …brown nosing little shits.
So, whenever my mom and dad would have company or one of her women friends stopped by for coffee, gossip, and cigarettes, my mom always called me into the kitchen.
“Vickie, show her your stomach.”
“What?”
“Lift up your shirt and show her your stomach.”
Um, ok. I would lift up my little summer shirt to reveal my stomach. And my mom would then laugh and say something different each time, depending on who was sitting there, sharing her coffee.
“Now is that a Florida tan or what?”……………..”Look how dark she is.”……………”Have you ever seen anyone so dark?”………………….”I know. She looks almost like a black person.”………….”And she puts baby oil on her stomach.”………………….”and it really doesn’t fade…………”
She didn’t care what I was doing. If we had company and it was summer time, I knew at some point I would be raising my shirt. “Vickie!…..Vickie!!…….Come up here!…..” I wished she didn’t have friends.
So, the bragging began. No, it wasn’t for being smart as there weren’t any A+ papers on the refrigerator. No, it wasn’t for winning a slogan contest or for even singing Are you Sleeping, Brother John in front a whole auditorium of Campfire Girls or memorizing everyone’s line during the church Christmas play. No, my mom bragged about my stomach tan.
Typical.
You’d think that with the invention of tanning beds that I would still be a fool for a tan. When I did have a pool,I had a tan, but it was a SUN tan. Those tanning beds are not the same thing. My sister has a sun tan business and about 12 beds in her place. I laid in it one time years ago, and felt like I was in a damn coffin. It just wasn’t for me. I am more of a plant me under the sun kind of gal, and haven’t done that for a few years. When I go to the beach, I head under an umbrella after a while as I guess “the sun doesn’t like me” anymore.
When I was young I am pretty sure that the tv commercials were directed right at me. Now, you have to understand that we only had three channels on our tv set. Thank god we didn’t have QVC or Home Shopping Network then because I would have been grounded for using my mom’s credit card every other day. Well, if we had credit cards back then too. Shit, we didn’t have much back then.
First of all, Saturday morning cartoons rocked back in the 60′s. I got up early and watched them all morning. Well, before my mom shooed us outside to play. I loved Foghorn Leghorn. He was my hero. I would sit glued to the tv set all freaking morning, because the commercials were just as exciting for me. And when I first saw a commercial for Soaky Bubble Bath Time, I was beyond excited. I mean, you could take a bubble bath AND have a prize. The bottle was a cartoon character. This was unbelievable to me. I’m sure I was sitting there with my mouth open. This was an exciting time for this little skinny little seven year old. The year was 1963……. and it was bath time.
Soaky Bubble Bath Time….Wow, what a great way to take a bath. I had to have this. My mom, however, was never on board with anything at first. She came up with an excuse that as a seven year old I could not possibly understand.
“Vickie, I am not buying bubble bath soap………….it will not make you any cleaner…………..no it won’t…………no it won’t……………Vickie, there is so a bar of soap in the bath tub………………………….yes there is………………well, I’ll tell you what, let’s go and take a look…………………………..Ok, where did you hide the soap?”
Ha! I knew she was going to cause me some problems, so I hid the soap before we had this conversation. I was soaky bubble bath time smart. But, then she confused the hell out of me.
“Vickie, I am NOT buying you this so-called Soaky Soapy Bubbles.” Ok, first of all, stupid mom, it was called Soaky Bubble Bath Time. But, I let her go this time, because she was not finished.
“The soap can give you an infection.” What? Sitting in a bath tub can give you bronchitis? My mom was a loon. Oh, but once again, she was not finished. She saw the expression on my face and decided she needed to be more precise with her statement. “It can make your deet itch, Vickie.”
Ok, I have to tell you that I thought everyone in the world called their female private part a “deet.” That’s what my mom called it. When I was young I always had to make sure that I washed “down there real good” when it was bathtime. And of course, I knew when I was quite young that that area was always last with the washcloth. And you know, well, that was always a great piece of advice. But, I didn’t want an itchy deet. But, was she lying? She lied to me a lot.
“Vickie, Dr. Parker said that bacteria in the water can make your deet itch…………………I realize that soap is not bacteria………When did Dr. Parker tell me this? A while ago………………yes, he did…………….yes, he did……….Vickie, I am not going to argue about this. I am not buying bubble bath. I can’t use bubble bath.
Why the hell would my mom use a Popeye Soaky Bubble bath bottle? She doesn’t even watch cartoons. She made no sense. And when she said “no,” that only meant one thing: ask Dad or Grandma.
So, the next time I stayed at my grandparent’s house was the first time I bathed with a Soaky Bubble Bath Time. I have no idea which cartoon character I took a bath with first, but I am thinking it was Elmer Fudd. But, I could be making that up. I can’t remember. Grandma Orpha always thought I was going to drown or she was cheap as shit because she only gave me about 1/2 inch of bath water. Well, it wasn’t up to my armpits like we had it at home every night. I poured in a cap of the bubble bath and played for a while. I loved going to my grandmother’s house. I asked her if I could take Elmer Fudd home to share with my brother and sister. Yeah, like I was really going to do that. Grandma said I could take it home with me. My mom was not amused.
“Vickie, it can’t make your deet itch right away.”
Ok, fruit loop, how long does it take? Well, it didn’t matter. It was already brought into the house and we used it that very same night. I still took a bath with my sister, so we had a good old time. We played “Ethel and Mabel” most nights during bath time anyway, so adding bubbles to the mix made bath time so much more fun. We used up all of the washcloths and put soap in the middle of the washcloths and then would fold the cloth over the soap and then punch it to make the soap spurt out. What fun we had. We stayed in there until our fingers looked pruney. My mom didn’t care. She was able to sit and smoke a few cigarettes in peace while we were in the bath tub.
“Bath time isn’t quite the same without your cartoon buddies!”
So began our soapy bubble bath time. We bought them left and right. We had Mr. Magoo and Popeye, and Sylvester kitty cat. My dad even had a use for Sylvester. He had a huge flagpole in the backyard and somehow the finial blew away or just fell off of the top of the flagpole. So, what did he put up at the top of the flagpole for all the neighbors to see every day? You got it. Sylvester the cat’s head.
Yes, we Mendenhalls were high class, that’s for sure. But, what is for sure is that reports came out years later that bubble baths weren’t so good for girls and women…..and their deets. But, it was already too late. We went through a lot of bottles of Soaky Bubble Bath time soap without any “girl” problems. My best friend, Ramaine, and I would even laugh and say, “deet de deet” and sing it to the Pink Panther theme song when we realized that no one else called it that. It was now our private little joke. Why the hell did my mom call it that?
Just a few minutes ago, here in 2012, I private messaged Ramaine on facebook and asked her if she called her deet anything else when she was little. It’s so funny that I can still ask her stuff out of the blue as bizarre as what we called our deets back in the 60′s and she immediately has an answer for me. I mean, when was the last time we talked about our deets? When we were 13? Her memory is so much better than mine. She reminded me about the “deet de deet” and that in her family they called it “cho cho.” I guess each family may call it different things, like how my mom called my little budding breasts, “mosquito bites.”
In the end, I am just glad I never went the bath salt route. Because, we all know what happens when people use bath salts. An itchy deet would be the least of their problems.
My literary debut, Jumping in Mud Puddles is free for download today, Thursday, July 12, through Amazon. If you don’t have a Kindle, don’t worry. It can be downloaded to your iPad, iPhone or even your computer. There is a quick and painless download from Amazon. I bought a Kindle last week before I knew you could even do this.
Jumping in Mud Puddles is a book of stories that I have taken from my blog of the same name. I have added and tweaked my posts into 44 chapters.
Here is the book description:
“Raise your hand if you-
1) Have ever been chased by a nun.
2) Have been stung by a bee because it was injured and you tried to hug it and then you went into anaphylactic shock because the damn thing stung you on the cheek and you had to be rushed to the hospital (The bee didn’t make it).
3) Have ever made a tent caterpillar/dandelion meal in your cabin in the woods and have fed it to unsuspecting neighbor children.
4) Were slipped a mild tranquilizer and was told it was a car sick pill……for years.
5) Have killed the Boogeyman after lying in wait for it/him under your bed.
6) Have peed your pants from laughing because a monkey has stepped onto your best friend’s head and the best friend doesn’t know what is on her head.
7) Have puked on the school bus and all the kids had to raise their feet while the bus was going up hills.
If you have not been able to raise your hand for any of these normal every day experiences, you are invited to join Vickie as she revisits her childhood during the fifties, sixties, and early seventies. Visit the private Catholic school where she was sent because she flunked an early entrance exam. Sister Potato Head is waiting to stick you into the low reading group, “The Slow Sloths.” Follow Vickie as she takes you for a walk around the best neighborhood in Weirton, West Virginia. Don’t eat anything she tries to feed you in her cabin in the woods, however, especially if she is giggling as she hands it to you, but yet promises it doesn’t contain “real” things.
Jumping in Mud Puddles is a witty self-deprecating memoir with stories that will either make you smile because it reminds you of your own childhood or it will make you laugh because you are glad you weren’t a picky, hyper, big fat liar like Vickie.
And for the record, the cursing throughout the book is a really bad habit that grown-up Vickie acquired while teaching fourth grade. I mean, she doesn’t curse in front of the class…..yet. She apologizes for her potty mouth and hopes that you will see that she is just a grown up version of that skinny child of the sixties. Well, you can leave out the skinny part.”
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Thanks! If you feel so inclined to give me a review after you finished reading my little book that would be great, or tag and like me. If not, again, the download is free just today.
I am beside myself. My book, Jumping in Mud Puddles, just went live on Amazon. This is my literary debut, so I really don’t know what the hell I am doing. I do want to mention to anyone who is thinking about going the ebook route that the formatting is very easy. I mean, I did it, and I can’t find my way out of a sack. I even made my own cover because I am too tight to pay someone else to do it.
So, I guess I should know what I am supposed to do now, but I don’t. My book is just sitting there among the thousands of other books. I just left it there and went for a chocolate ice cream cone. Oh, hell, that was a lie. There was no way I was going out of the house today. It is 102 here in West Virginia. Anyway, I feel like I did when I drove my kids to college for the first time. I dropped them off and left them. I’ve nurtured this book for a very long time now and now I’m done.
So, my blogging friends, if you get the chance, go take a look see at my literary debut. Wow, I’m a real bonafide author sort of maybe. And If you are feeling generous, leave me a thumbs up or a review. And then more people will say to themselves, “Hey, people are reading this little book. Maybe I should, too.” I’m sure that’s what they would say.
I guess I should mention what my books is about for all of you who may stumble upon this post. My book is a memoir about my childhood and how I was just a little bit off center. Most of my blog posts are in the book, changed or tweaked in one way or another. The book has 44 chapters and I curse a lot, which I really don’t mean to do, but those damn nuns that I write about are to blame. They really are.
Anyway, like I said, I don’t know what I am supposed to do right now. I guess I should walk around the place and see what other “authors” are doing to promote their book. I’d rather just sit and take a deep breath, and rest a while. It’s just too damn hot.
Update: It’s the morning after publishing, and I made a top 100 list already! Yehaw! #70 in Kindle Store-ebooks-Humor-Essays. And, the book is on the Humor-Essay page as a “Hot New Release.” I don’t know how long it will stay there, but I’m a happy camper.
English: Fireworks on the Fourth of July (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
My mother must have thought we were retarded (sorry, love that word) when we were young because she always announced when it was time for the 4th of July fireworks:
“Kids, let’s go outside. It’s almost time for the Boom Booms.” Well, first of all, I must be lying because the Mendenhall kids would have been outside anyway. My mom shoved us outside first thing in the morning and would only unlock the door when whe had to use the bathroom. Ok, lying again. But, we played outside all damn day.
Second of all, we understood the word, fireworks. We really did. It was like a firecracker, but much larger, and up in the sky. But for some strange reason, my mom always called fireworks, Boom Booms. Of course, this was the same woman who called my budding fourth grades breasts, mosquito bites, so she was just a loon on any given day.
Dogs don’t really care for fireworks, and our dog, Susie, was afraid of the damn Boom Booms. The sounds of firecrackers and people screaming from exploding firecrackers permeated throughout the neighborhood. Susie was a fox terrier, so she was small and first wanted to be held when the first of the noise-makers began, but then just couldn’t take it any longer and would bolt under my mom’s bed.
I loved growing up in Weirton, West Virginia. Fourth of July was a big deal in our city. Almost everyone in our neighborhood had their American flags out on their porches. We had a gigantic flagpole in our backyard. My dad used to march us up there like little memebers of the VFW and have a flag ceremony. My brother David would be saluting as he walked.
I was even in a few 4th of July parades when I belonged to a majorette group. I wore a red sequined outfit and threw my baton around like I knew what I was doing. I’m surprised I didn’t bop someone in the head with one of my missed baton throws.
So, yes, the 4th of July was a great time in Weirton. But, the people who lived in Woodland Estates were quite lucky because we lived near the Weirton Airport, and that’s where they had the fireworks. I mean Boom Booms.
So, after all the backyard picnics and the badminton games were over, people brought their chairs to their front yards for the big firework display that were put on at the airport. Most people drove to the airport and put blankets down like they were at the Bellaire Drive-In. But, we had thee perfect spot on our front porch or yard to view the fireworks. My mom would never have taken us to see the fireworks if we lived elsewhere unless we were on leashes. She would have lost us in thirty seconds.
So, you could hear everyone talking from their porches, waiting for the big fireworks to begin. My dad would be on the sidewalk, talking to our next door neighbors, Joe and Rosa. It was a great time. The fireworks would begin at exactly 10:00. When we were quite young, it would be way past our bedtime, so we would sit on the front porch in our pajamas. I remember being tired, although as a hyperactive worm, I couldn’t sit still in my chair. I was down in the front yard walking around in my pajamas until we could hear and see the first of the Boom Booms.
And that is when Susie the dog would usually disappear. You knew when the big Boom Booms were going to happen; there would just be a bright silvery blob in the sky and then Oh My God, what a noise! We would cover our ears and squeal in delight. Life was good.
So, on this 4th of July, I don’t think about the past and the people who fought for our freedom. I teach that every year and have a lot of fun with it, but it is not what I think of when that red, white, blue day comes every year. No, I think of my mom, sitting on the front porch, wearing those damn cat-eye glasses and smoking her Salem cigarettes, asking her children if they were excited about the Boom Booms that were about to start.
And you know, yes, we were. And it wouldn’t have been special if she hadn’t used that damn phrase.
And yes, I used that phrase one year when my children were quite young, and then I slapped myself.
Well, school is out and I have decided to work all summer on writing my first book, Jumping in Mud Puddles: A Memoir of a Picky, Hyper Big Fat Liar.
Something like this but not really
I have wanted to write a book ever since I first picked up a pen and wrote Ma and Pa Kettle stories a few weeks ago. Ok, kidding. I wrote all of the time when I was little. I’m pissed off at my mom that she didn’t realize that she was living with an Ernestine Hemingway at the time, as she never saved any of my creations.
I was forced to go to a private school when I was in first grade because I was stupid and didn’t pass the early entrance exam. I missed the November 1 cut off by several days. My mom wanted me to go to school, so I had to endure a few years of Sister Maria, that evil nun with sensible shoes. In third grade, I started writing stories about Sister Maria and wrote in a composition book. I don’t think it was a work of fiction. I think I may have been spying on her. I don’t remember specifics, but I have the book somewhere. I just don’t know where the somewhere is right now. But, she inspired the writer in me. I wrote about Ma and Pa after I was able to leave that horrid little convent school.
When I was in seventh grade, we had to bring in a simple fact every Friday in Science class: Facts on Friday. I think that’s what it is called. Miss Caldwell would go around the room and we had to read our fact. Most of the time we would just cut out the little filler facts from our hometown newspaper, the Weirton Daily Times. For example, one Friday I might bring in-
“Roger Smith, a carpenter from Dayton, Ohio, was struck by lightning three times at the same spot.”
Something like that. Ripley’s Believe It Or Not also had great facts that were slightly bizarre. So, after a few Fridays, my bestest friend Ramaine and I would sit down and make up our own facts. They were “retarded,” our favorite word in the late sixties/early seventies. We may have changed the above fact to read:
“Roger Smith, an electrician from Bombay, India, was struck by lightning at the same time he was turning on a light bulb three different times and lived to tell about it. The electricity was captured in his stomach and he now glows. He no long needs a light bulb.”
Our Friday facts became so popular that we became Friday fact writers. It was like our first writing job. Everyone wanted our facts or maybe we just passed them out on pieces of paper and the kids read them. We would crack up at some of them because they were just soo out there. I remember my weirdest one:
“In Bombay, India, two caterpillars. walking towards each other from opposite directions, met and crawled up each other and turned into a flower.”
I don’t know why we did this one, but there was a kid in our class named Joe, who we ended up writing about in most of our facts. He was a quiet kid who loved our facts, so we asked him if he would like to be in one of them, and it then sort of snowballed and turned into Facts on Friday with Joe or something like that:
“A woman in Bombay, India (we liked India and China facts for some reason) had twenty children in twenty years. Joe, the youngest, was retarded.”
Ok, remember it was around 1969 when I was in seventh grade. No one was politically correct back then. Anyway, we had a blast and continued to write strange facts. It just recently dawned on me that Miss Caldwell never called us out on those ridiculous facts because she wasn’t paying any attention. She was using that as a planning period, I just betcha.
I continued to write as I got older and was a feature writer for the Babbling Brooke, that riveting high school newspaper that grew in membership when both Ramaine and I jumped on board. Ok, maybe everyone in the school got the paper free, but you know, we made it worth reading.
I wrote an unflattering poem about Donny Osmond one time and we would make up horoscopes that were hysterical. Well, they were hysterical to us:
Scorpio- This will be the worst week of your life. Stay indoors and don’t drink the water.
Taurus- This will be the best week of your life. Go outdoors and drink lots of water.
Other times we would write a tv listing of the shows that were going to be on that week. The following is just something I made up right now, but similar to the “retarded” things we would write:
“The Brady Bunch Friday-8:00p.m.-Carole Brady decides to get her hair cut and lets her daughter, Cindy, cut it with pretend scissors. Carole is now wearing an ugly, shaggy hairstyle and Mr. Brady won’t sleep with her.”
One of the best times I had in high school was in typing class. Ramaine was in the class with me, so you know it can’t be just a normal typing class. We would arrive every morning, take the covers off of our typewriters, and start typing whatever assignment was on the board. Well, that is fine and dandy, but makes for a boring class. So, Ramaine and I began typing notes and would get to class early and put them under the covers of specific “victims.” One may have read, “Watch out. This typewriter is watching you.” Oh, the fun we would have. Sometimes we would put them under our covers so no one would suspect us. High school was just so awesome.
In college, I started writing ala Sylvia Plath- just- kill- me- now- poetry after my boyfriend, Rick, and I broke up. I still have those poems and they are actually quite good. I mean, if you want to die because life just sucks.
I was a Speech and Drama major and English minor, so I was still writing and acting and pretending to act throughout college. After I married and had children, I continued to write. I mostly researched a lot for a book of names I wanted to write. Not just any baby name book, but I would scour newspaper obituaries for old names, like Zella, or Bathsheba, or Candy and started collecting first names. I had more than 40,000 names. This is about the time I started drinking. Ok, kidding, not a drinker. But, I still have that mound of names somewhere. I know where that somewhere is. Maybe someday…
So, here I am, in my mid-fifties and I’m going to write a book. I’m not going to hunt for a literary agent and publisher. No, I’m going to take the short route and write an ebook and put it on Amazon for Kindle. I hope all of you will want to download it when it is finished. I really don’t care if I make money. I just want to one-up my ex husband. He just married a really pretty younger woman and all I have is a bad hair style and a 16 year old cat. So, I’m going for a best-seller and fame since I would rather put a needle in my eye before getting married again. Well, I would change my mind if Tim Matheson, my all time dream man would buy my book and then ask me to marry him. You all remember Tim from Animal House and the West Wing, right? Well, I love him. I really do.
The writing is shaky because he signed his picture for me on a subway in NYC. Or I am lying.
I have given myself until August 1 to finish the book and hope to have it on Amazon by September 1….of this year. I will do it. I will.
My dad was a remarkable man. At least I think so. He died in 1989 when his heart basically blew up. He was in his truck and managed to pull over where paramedics were called. And so was I. I rushed to his bedside, but I was two hours away and two hours late. No one met me at the hospital. But, that’s not the part I want to remember. I want to pay homage to a guy who adopted me when I was born, who taught me how to frame a great shot, who taught me how to fish, reluctantly.
He was also the guy who would quietly mow down my mom’s flowers after she bitched at him for something that really didn’t matter. She was a rolling pin woman. He was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. He would also smile at her when he would go to leave the house. “Where are you going?” my mother would demand. “Up Mike’s ass to get a milkshake,” he would always reply. I just loved that guy.
Elwood Arthur Mendenhall was his name. It was a pretty goofy name, I thought. It was a bit weird that his first cousin was also named Elwood. I mean, what were those women thinking? Most of his close pals called him Mendy or Gomez, or Omar. But, for the most part, people called him Elwood. I just called him Dad.
The following is a reblog of one of my first blog posts that was originally published August, 2010. I thought that I would share it again since it is Father’s Day.
Miss you, Dad.
Love, Your Favorite Daughter, Vickie
~***~
What can you say about a guy who walks into the kitchen wearing a plaid shirt with striped shorts and socks with his sandals? “Well, (sounding just like Ronald Reagan), there is blue in the shirt and in the pants.” I would roll my eyes. “Dad, it doesn’t match. You can’t wear stripes with plaid. It is against the law in West Virginia. You have to wear a plain top with striped shorts.” He would smile and go back into his bedroom and come back out with a yellow shirt on, never mind that there was not a speck of yellow in the shorts. “Good job, Dad.”
Dad parading around
My dad was a realtor and wore suits every day. He usually kept his suit on in the evening. He was always dressed up when we were young. He had places to go and people to see. He belonged to every club you can imagine. I have all of his membership cards. He belonged to the American Legion, the Masons (shhhhh, double double secret club), The Elks, The Moose, the Photography Club, The Shriners, and many others. I think a couple of the clubs were suspect, like the Skunk Club. (I can’t even print what was on that card.) So, Dad was rarely home through the week. In the summer he was in a lot of parades because he was a clown with the Shriners. He even had a motorcycle with a sidecar for a while. We used to go to the Shrine Circus in Wheeling often. I loved to watch the Flying Wallenda’s. They were and are a family of famous circus performers who do daredevil, death-defying stunts high up in the air without a safety net. Even when I was young, I thought how foolish they were to not use a net. And I was not a bright child. They must be a family of nit-wits. Anyway, my dad wanted a make-up mirror for Christmas one year so he could put on his clown makeup. How many dads ask for a make-up mirror? Life was never boring with my dad.
When we were small, we weren’t supposed to answer the phone in the early evening because my dad received a lot of client calls. People were always wanting to see houses for sale in the evening. Dad had a cut-off for client calls. After 8:00pm, Dad would answer the phone, “Duffy’s Bar, Daffy Speaking”, all the time. We knew then, work was over for Dad.
I loved listening to my dad talk to people on the phone. He had no idea he was doing it, but he would talk exactly how the people on the line talked. We knew when he was talking to his Irish friend, because Dad had an Irish accent. We knew when he was talking to his friend, Jimmy, because he would curse. His Italian accent was so funny. So were the conversations when he would use poor English. “We was gonna go, but it started rainin….I ain’t goin. I’m too tard (tired).” He really had no idea he was doing this. I think that is a reason I love dialects so much and had a blast when I took a dialects class as part of my Speech degree in college.
Of course, when you are a teen-age girl, you are embarrassed to be seen with your parents. That’s a given. I don’t know why, but those couple of years before you are allowed to drive are miserable. So, my dad understood this, and took every opportunity to drive me crazy. One example, a Brooke High dance when I was a freshman. I think Ramaine’s mom took us and my dad was going to pick us up AFTER the dance. Not before it was over, Dad, but right when it is over. I wish I would have specified that, or lied about the time it was over. I am pretty sure I did. He always had an ornery, “Ok, Vickie” smile. Wild Cherry played at our school dance. Yeah, the famous Wild Cherry pre-Play that Funky Music group. They used to play at pool dances and school dances often. Anywho, about 20 minutes before the dance was over, a member of the band spoke over the microphone and said, “Vickie Mendenhall, your Daddddddy is here to take you home” and then they put a damn spotlight over by the door and my dad was standing there, waving like Forrest Gump. That one ranked.
A favorite thing that my dad loved to do was call me back when I was walking down the street to Ramaine’s house. I’m not sure, but I think there were like 9 houses that separated our homes. “Vickie, come here,” he would wave me back. I’d get right in front of him and he would simply say, “See how far you would have been if I hadn’t called you back?” After many times, (he was always so believable that maybe this time he really needed me..) of falling for his little prank, I just kept walking back just so he could get one over on me. I knew as I got older, that he was not happy with my mom. How could you be? He got yelled at for just looking at her wrong.
When I was a freshman in college, my dad had a bad heart attack. I guess any heart attack is bad. He had to have a triple heart by-pass. Freshman weren’t allowed to have cars at my college, unless there was a pretty good reason. I got to keep my car because of all of the traveling home. So, I thought I was pretty special. My dad was in a hospital in Pittsburgh. The doctor’s said it was such a success because the veins in his legs were very strong. He played tennis in high school and was pretty athletic, so that was good. They hadn’t done very many triple heart bypasses at that time, but they thought he would make it through. It also helped that an elderly Italian looking lady dressed in black walked up to my mother and said that she prayed for those who entered into surgery that day and that “your husband will be the only one that will survive.” And then, she turned around and walked back to where she was sitting. Well, hell, that meant that the person she was waiting for was going to die? Good grief, rosary-clutched woman. What are you??? But, she was right. Or so my mom said. I had to go back and forth to college. My mom got to know the people who were on the same floor with my dad.
Well, the “Let’s embarrass Vickie” era continued. I briefly dated a guy in college named Tommy, and we had planned to drive to Pittsburgh to watch Pitt and Notre Dame play football. My parents invited us to stop by and eat before the game. So, of course, while we were sitting at the table, my dad, blurted out, “So, Tommy, I had open heart surgery,” and proceeded to unbutton his shirt, pulled up his t-shirt, and exposed his heavily bubbled scar. ”See.” Yeah, we see it, Dad. I was ready to slide under the table, with the dog. He really was proud of that scar. At least the day wasn’t a total wash. We saw Joe DiMaggio in a crowd outside the stadium and I stepped on his foot by mistake when I went to stand beside him for a picture. “Um….sorry, Joe….. 1…2….3…. Say Cheese.” Well, not many people can say they stepped on Joe DiMaggio’s foot. I can. I’m quite special. Come to think of it, I don’t think either one of us had a camera. I really think we both just went and stood on either side of him, smiling, like someone was going to take our picture.
After open heart surgery, Dad had a pace maker and had to make a phone call weekly and put the phone to his chest. Gotta love the technology of the 70′s. Well, the years flew by. I got married, and was lucky to have my dad walk me down the aisle. I stayed in Fairmont and had 2 children he got to meet and hang out with for a short while.
My wedding, October 1983
My dad had a boat load of pills he had to take. He had one of those pill compartment thingys (that I now have), but he still forgot to take some of his medication. My mom said he was getting mean, and with one swoop kicked my brother and my dad out of the house. Or, maybe my brother left on his own before that. So, my dad, ill as he was, packed up some stuff in his truck and left the house and stayed with David. My mom and sister were alone at the house.
On November 5, 1989, I was called to come home as soon as I could. My dad had a massive heart attack while driving his truck and was in the hospital. I hurried and packed, kissed 4-year old Adam and 2 year old Alex and drove like an idiot on the 2 hour journey home. (I didn’t leave them alone, just in case you were wondering.) Three weird things happened to me on my way home. It was an overcast day, and I was amazed how the clouds opened up and the light shined through like a flashlight beam. It was beautiful. For some reason it made me cry. The second thing was when a red-tailed hawk flew right in front of my car like it was crossing the interstate, and then went up in the air into a tree. I had never seen one so close. The third was eerie. I passed a hearse that was driving slow and I looked over, and the guy gave me a sad, sad, smile. It was like he knew I was on a sad trip.
When I reached the hospital, noone was there. I mean, no one. A nurse had to take me aside and tell me that my father had passed away. I asked what time he died, so she went to his chart and when she told me, I burst into tears. It was the same time that the hawk had flown by my car. I had noted the time of each of the three weird incidents in my mind, because I believe in that shit.
I was soo upset that no one stayed at the hospital to wait for me to arrive. It would be just like my mom to just drive home and forget about me. When I first entered the driveway and got out of the car, my brother was there. We hugged, crying, and I said into his ear, “She killed him.” And that is how I have felt to this very day.
We buried my dad on my birthday. That sucked. It was a cold November day and he had Masonic last rites or whatever they call it at the grave site. I felt like I was watching an episode of the Flintstones and a meeting of the Water Buffaloes. And dad was the Grand Poobah. They did this hand shake stuff that made me giggle, and then the next thing you know, I was silent laugh shaking. My dad would have expected me to laugh, so I did.
My mom informed me that she had no intention of visiting my dad’s grave. “I believe that if people aren’t nice while they are living, why visit them when they are dead.” I think that she may have been talking about my grandfather, because he didn’t like my mom. I also think she is confused. Dad was a great person. Sure he gagged when he saw a hair in the bathroom sink all the time. Sure, he put on a yellow raincoat when he gave the dog a bath. Sure he always offered us a quarter if we could eat a sour pickle without making a face. And wearing those socks with his sandals was unbearable to look at as a teen age girl. But, he is now in peace. Only his name is on the headstone. Good job, Dad! He is next to my grandpa and Grandma, and no room for my mother. Maybe he knew that witches don’t die. Karma, Momma, Karma.
We built our house on 13 acres and my husband cut the grass with an old 1949 Farm All Cub that my dad gave him. I am telling you the truth when I say that the first time Jay cut the grass on that tractor (it had a stupid smiley face on the front that my dad put on years before), I had gone down to take him a drink of water, and I heard this “Caw” and looked up and there was a red-tailed hawk flying in a circle above us. I smiled for hours afterwards.
I sure loved my dad. When I see an old hoot wearing socks with his sandals, I realize that teenage girls waste an awful lot of time being embarrassed by their fathers.
I really loved being in high school during the 1970′s. It was a great time. I went to Brooke High School in Wellsburg, West Virginia. The school had a large population for our area, so the school was divided into four smaller schools under one roof. They were called centers. I was in center 4.
There were many clubs and activities one could join at Brooke High School. Some of them included Future Teachers of America, Student Council, Ski Club, Chemistry Club and Spanish Club just to name a few. I tried to be active and joined a lot of clubs, but none were as fun as the Drama Club. And it was when I was in the Drama Club that I decided to try out for a play.
To tell you the truth, I can’t remember what the hell part I tried out for. The play, Up the Down Staircase, was made from a best-selling book about an inner city high school English teacher.
I just remember that it was a large cast. I did play one of the high school students, but that is all I can remember about the part. And I don’t remember the cast party that was held after the play ran its course, because, um, someone spiked the punch.
I was a sophmore in high school at the time of my very first night of punch drinking. The cast party was held at the home of one of the girls who was in the play. Glenda also happened to be a relative of some sort. She was a senior at Brooke High and was two years older than me. When doing some genealogy work this past year, I was finally able to see how one of the branches in our family tree swung over to her family. I guess we were cousins, after all. I don’t remember ever talking to her.
Since I was only fifteen at the time, I wasn’t a driver. And to tell you the truth, I have no idea who dropped me off at the party or if our parents did the drop off and pick up routine. All I know for sure is that I don’t know much about that evening. I got there, I drank a bunch of glasses of the best punch in the whole world, and the next thing you know I’m at home, unloading the dishwasher while my head is pounding.
I guess I was having so much fun that I told my friend I came with that I had another ride home and that I was going to stay a bit later. That part was true, I guess. I was having fun. I have no idea if I had another ride home or not.
The only visual that I can remember is a large punch bowl sitting on what appeared to be a pool table that was covered with a huge table cloth or sheet. The punch had floating ice in it and it was a pinkish color. There was food on plates on the pool table, and that’s where we all hung out. The food was delicious, and director of the play was happy because everyone who attended the play was giving great compliments. Well, they had to, most of the people who attended the play were our parents and grandparents. Bravo.
Well, I was eating and drinking and having a good old time. I didn’t know that someone had spiked the punch. I was lucky if I only weighed 90 pounds at the time, so I didn’t have much meat on my bones. So, I imagine just one glass of the stuff would have knocked me down. I was told that I had at least three, because I kept telling people how great it tasted. Oh, there had to be a sinsiter high school boy who was snickering right about now.
Now, I have to admit that it is a bit strange to write about something that you don’t remember. That would make for a very short story. But, my mom was able to fill in most of the hazy memories of that night. And she reminded me of it for days, weeks, and months after wards. I guess I was the life of the party.
I still don’t remember who drove me home that night, but my mom was standing at the door with her hands on her hips. I vaguely remember that, but I have no idea who drove me home, other than it was a car load full of people. A guy and his girlfriend were in the front seat, and I am pretty sure I kissed a guy that I was sitting in the backseat with right before I got out of the car. I don’t know for sure. I was a tramp. Or I was going to be a tramp. My mom used that word a lot after that night.
I have to depend on my mom about the rest of the night. I guess I gave her a big hug when I finally made it to the top of the outside steps that led to the front door. The kids in the car couldn’t get away fast enough. I guess my mom was furious, but I was too happy to notice that. My mom said that I kept hugging her and telling her what a great time I had and how they had the BEST dog in the world. My mom said it was useless to reprimand me that night because I was, as she repeated over and over and over again, “Two sheets to the wind.” I had no idea what the hell she was talking about. I had a feeling that my mom was drunk that night, because what the hell did a couple of sheets in the wind have anything to do with the fabulous cast party?
Ok, so no, she wasn’t drinking. I guess I was the one who had been drinking. I wish someone would have told me that. My mom said that I could not quit laughing and I was talking a mile a minute, ALL about what a great job I did in the play, sitting there in the “classroom,” remembering my lines and delivering them loud and clear. I was a great actress. She said that I was messing with my little sister, who I shared a room with. My parents were in the process of remodeling the basement and adding a bedroom down there for me. I guess this was one of the last nights that I would be spending with her and I just had to tell her what a fantastic sister she has been to me.
I guess my mom was so pissed at me that she just guided me to my room and that was about all. She said that I took down the covers on my bed, and plopped myself in my bed to go to sleep. I guess I then remembered that I was still wearing my clothes. I guess one shouldn’t go to sleep in their jeans and flip flops. I was still talking and laughing when the first flip flop came flying at my mom. I was still having so much fun. The other flip flop hit her in the leg. I guess I thought that was the funniest thing in the world. The last thing my mom saw before she said, “Good-night, Vickie,” and turned off my lights, was me taking off my jeans and swinging them in the air. When she checked on me ten minutes later, she said I had one foot on the floor and was out cold.
I DO remember my mom coming into my room the next morning at 7:30.
“Vickie, get up. I need you to take the dishes out of the dishwasher.” I opened my eyes, but that’s all I could do. My head was pounding. Wow, I must have the flu or something. I sat up slowly, and my mom was just standing at the doorway, staring at me. What? Why was she staring at me? I was getting up. I looked down and there was a pair of jeans lying on my chest. I was wearing a top and not pajamas.
“Vickie, did you have any idea that the punch you were drinking was spiked with booze last night?” My mom looked at me and told me that if I did that again I would end up being a ”lady of ill repute.” What? First of all, mom, I have a freaking headache the size of a….large guinea pig. That’s what I told her. A guinea pig. Ok. Second of all, I had no idea what she was talking about. She told me to get up and unload the newly fixed dishwasher.
I got up and tried to put the jeans on that were lying on my bed. “Don’t put those back on Vickie. I think you vomited on them.” What? I didn’t vomit. I went to a cast party and came home and went to bed. And all of a sudden I was being called a lady of ill repute and a vomiter. The rest of the weekend was just going to suck.
Well, I finally got to my bedroom door, tripped over some flip flops that my sister was stupid enough to leave in the hallway, and made it to the kitchen. My dad was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of coffee, wearing a huge smile. ” Good morning, Drunky.” He burst out laughing. What?
I guess my mom didn’t really want me to get up that early to unload the dishwasher. She wanted to put me under the light and question me like the police do on those police shows. I was so confused. My brain was not wanting to work. She hounded me and asked me a million questions:
”Who brought the booze for the punch?” What booze?
”Who drove you home and who did you kiss in the backseat?” What? I kissed someone?
“What are their phone numbers?” Who? I don’t know who drove me home. Wait. I kissed someone?
The questions did not stop. My mom had called my cousin’s mother who hosted the cast party and she repeatedly told my mother that she and her husband and a few other adults chaperoned the cast party and she had no idea that the punch was spiked. She said no one was drunk. No one. My mom didn’t believe her.
“….and she said no one was drunk or acting drunk. But when you got home, Vickie, you kissed whoever you were sitting with in the back seat as you got out of the car and you were swinging your jeans. You were as drunk as a skunk.” God, settle down, Mom. Besides, when have you EVER seen a skunk that was drunk. I mean, really. Who is the drunk one here?
Well, my mom finally was able to recreate the whole evening because I think she talked to everyone who was there. Everyone. I was grounded until I was thirty. Or until I went to her the next night.
“Mom, I didn’t get drunk on purpose. Someone spiked the punch and I found out from Cindy that I was with her most of the night and I only had two glasses of punch.” My mom ungrounded me.
I can’t look at a punch bowl without thinking it should only be for a spiked beverage. That cast party was a great time.
These must be those ladies of ill repute my mom was talking about.
I couldn’t leave things alone when I was little. I couldn’t sit still and I couldn’t quit thinking and asking questions. So, yeah, ok, maybe I was a bit hyper. I guess the Cricket moniker was appropriate. I am so not like that anymore. I would be a female Richard Simmons (???) if I had continued on with my hyperness. And yes, “hyperness” is a word because I just made it up.
During the warm to hot summer months, the Mendenhall kids played outside about 98% of the time. It didn’t lightning and thunder in Woodland Estates because my mom forbade it. She also had power over the ice cream truck that drove into our neighborhood every afternoon during our nap time. The nerve. Mom somehow stopped that too. He came later, after we were refreshed after our nap or pretend nap. She pushed us out the door, back outside, money in hand for an ice cream cone.
So, I had plenty of time to take in the sights and the sounds of every neighbor and every child on a three block radius. We lived on the corner of Crystal Lane. My bestest friend, Ramaine, lived on Crystal also, at the end of the street. LeeAnn lived next door to Ramaine. So, since I walked down the street all of the time, I knew everything about the neighbors. One lady scrubbed the street in front of her house almost every day. We called her Bungy. Maybe that was her name. I don’t think a woman would be called Bungy, but who am I to judge. I lived in a family with crazy names, such as Orpha, Elwood, Wilma, and Zella. Bungy was normal.
LeeAnn’s brother, Ralph, was in a league all by himself. Can’t explain him, but I did get a chuckle with the things he did on a daily basis. One day, for no particular reason, he put rocks in everyone’s mailbox. And then put up the flag. That was brilliant.
Fernwood Drive was a long road that ran right the other side of my house. There was an empty lot across the street that my dad once had a big black barn on, but that was later torn down. I think we still owned that property and the creek and woods that ran down the street across from the houses on Crystal Lane, so the world was our playground. And believe me, we went on adventures daily.
We decided to make a cabin in the woods one summer. Oh, it wasn’t really built with wood. Girls don’t need a real live cabin. We just pulled weeds around the little locust trees and made “rooms.” The trees were the walls that separated the rooms. Girls have such a great imagination. So, we would then give ourselves new names, like Mabel and Ethel, and begin living in our cabin. Until some little shit neighbors came upon us.
I don’t even know who these little rugrats were. They had to be visiting grandparents who wouldn’t play with them or something. OR, they were not from the two block radius. Which would be unacceptable. And these strangers wanted to play with us. It was like the story, The Little Red Hen, all over again.
Who will help me gather the wheat? Not I, said the pig. Not I, said the duck….etc. etc.
Who will help me play in the cabin? Oh, we will, said the little urchins from outside the neighborhood perimeter.
Yeah, I may have only been about eight or nine, but I knew a sham when I saw one. They waited until all of the work was done, and then strolled on in to play. Not going to happen.
Now, you have to understand that in order to build a cabin, you needed to cut stuff and dig. So, most of my mom’s butter knives and spoons were at the cabin. I did try to remember to sneak them back into the house right before dinner, but my mom somehow noticed the utensils in the sink. And believe me, there were always dishes and stuff in the sink to be washed.
“Vickie, why is there dirt on these spoons?” Damn. I only had half of a brain.
“I dropped them on the floor.”
“Vickie, my floors are not dirty. You took my good silverware outside to dig with again, didn’t you? I know you did it, so don’t lie.”
I don’t know why I was always the one that got in trouble.
But, let’s get back to the strangers. We were getting ready to play restaurant when they came upon us.
“Can we play?” they asked. We all looked at them. And then we looked at each other. It’s like they read my mind.
“Sure!” we all exclaimed.
I explained to them that they would be the customers. They sat on tree roots that came out of the ground and gave a great seating area in the cabin. I can’t remember who was going to be the waitress this particular day, so I will just say it was my sister, Cheryl. Ramaine, LeeAnn and I would be the cooks. Yes. The cooks.
Here, eat this tent caterpillar.
Since I can’t keep my hands off of anything, I was always smooshing or taking apart plants and weeds when I was playing outside. I’m still pissed that I can not whistle through a blade of grass. Damn thing gave me a paper cut on my lip one time, however. Never did that again. I knew where the berries were and wild pears, if there is such a thing. And I knew where the pepper was.
But, the dandelions were my favorite. Dandelions morphed, and I liked that about these flowery weeds.
Now, there are parts of a dandelion that can be picked apart and they look like great pretend food. So, a dandelion would be great for our cabin in the woods restaurant. Of course, how would we know that most of the dandelion can be eaten nowadays.
Ok, so, the menu was limited at our restaurant. We had creek water, pears with pepper sprinkled on top, dandelion and several types of berries and mushrooms. Thank God we really didn’t feed them the mushrooms as I would probably be behind bars today. Hell, we didn’t know some mushrooms were poisonous.
Everyone should have this book if you plan to have a restaurant in the woods.
So, in the end, the kids ordered dandelions and pears with pepper sprinkled lightly on them. And this is the part I really remember, because Ramaine and I were laughing so hard when we watched that one little girl bite into a wild pear with pepper. Now, you have to understand that in the past we ate everything we played with. I tried a wild pear. I tasted the white milky crap that came out of a dandelion, and although I cursed the briar bushes as they raked the shit out of my legs as we macheted our way through them, I tasted the berries too. And we still lived.
So, what the hell is the problem with having a kid eat a wild pear with some dirt sprinkled on it?
I mean pepper.
I never got in trouble for that one because I told the kids my name was Ethel. And I was Ethel when we were in the cabin. Or Mabel. Can’t remember. They didn’t ask where we lived because we told them we just moved into the cabin.
The moral of the story is to never leave your two block radius unless you are prepared to eat dandelions and pears with pepper lightly sprinkled on top.
It’s just our way to welcome you to the neighborhood.
When I was little, my dad used to take me fishing at the Paris Sportsmen Club. I actually hated the whole process of fishing, but felt I should be there to talk my dad and brother into releasing the poor little fish after catching them. It was bad enough they had a hook in their mouth. I just didn’t get it. I guess if you liked the taste of fish and your mom fried them up upon arrival, that is one thing. But, to catch fish for sport? I thought that was stupid.
I worried about the hooked fish. It had to hurt them. If I was hooked in the mouth, I would be screaming. I would still be screaming about it, forty some years later. I just knew that fish had feelings and shouldn’t be hooked in the mouth, dragged to shore, and then shoved into a bag like thingy until they died from being out of the water too long. Where is PETA when you need them?
But, after I realized that my dad was a real fisherman, there was no talking to him. He went fishing all the way up to Canada. North Bay, and more specifically, Lake Nipissing. That name cracked me up when I was little. I still laugh at how I laughed. But, if there was a place to throw a pole in the water, he was there. He went fishing under the Freedom Way bridge that led from our Weirton to Steubenville, Ohio, home of Dean Martin. I would go fishing there with him a lot. He caught a lot of fish there and would put them on a chain like thingy and let them flop around in the water while he caught more. One time I pulled the rod out of the muck and they all floated down the river. Oops. Fish on a chain.
Now, the Paris Sportsmen Club was just a little bit creepy for me. Creepy in that there were high weeds here and there surrounding the pond. Someone needed to pull on some rubbery wading pants and go pull some weeds. Cattails were immense. But, among the weeds and cattails were unseen creatures, I feared. Bullfrogs used to scare me to death. And I saw a snake swim by one time. Of course, I told my mom he crawled beside me while I sat on the bank. I was such a little story teller.
But, above every thing else, I was the most wary of the flying machines. You know, dragonflies.
Dragonflies at the Paris Sportsmen Club were evil. I swear one chased me on purpose. I would run one way and it would fly across the pond and head me off at the path. Ok, well, maybe there were more than one and they were just flitting around, but I didn’t see it that way. Their intent was to sting the shit out of me. They approached me like helicopters hovering over the Viet Cong and the rice paddies. Ok, I’m using my imagination. Also, the club was on Devil’s Den Road. What’s that tell ya?
I never really understood their purpose, but I watched them enough to know that they seemed to rule the roost. Birds eat worms. Snakes went after baby frogs. Who the hell wants to mess with a dragonfly? Dragon fly. I liked the name, but it evoked fear. Could it spit fire at me while it chased across the moors? Yes, I’m in Great Expectations and I’m Pip. Run, Pip, Run. I realize I had not heard of Great Expectations when I was little, but you get my point. I would make scenarios up in my head as we traveled to the Paris Sportsmen Club each time we went.
I would stand by my dad for a while, because the dragonflies didn’t come near my dad. He had a hat full of fishing crap on his head. I always wondered why he put lures and hooks and little bobbers on his hat. Who knew that fisherman were stylish? But, anywho, the head dragonfly this particular day, aka winged monkey dragonfly was going to leave the great Oz with the fishing lure hat alone because he was oh so great and powerful. No, they were coming for me, aka Dorothy, from West Virginia. My house landed on my mom and I had to put on red tennis shoes and find Oz. Red pom poms on my shoes would have to do. So, I couldn’t be standing near Oz to begin with if I was going to play Wizard of Paris Sportsmen Club, now could I? I would have to head down the side of the pond and see what I could find to represent the scarecrow. My mom headed us off that morning before we left.
“Vickie, you can’t take Susie with you out there!” She grabbed my little terrier from my arms.
Damn, caught. I tried to take Susie the dog, aka Toto, to the Paris Sportsmen Club with me that morning. How the hell can you play Wizard of Oz without a damn dog? She just pissed me off. That’s why the house landed on her that day.
Just great. We were only there for about thirty minutes when it began to rain. I was just starting to make a scarecrow out of sticks and cattails when I heard Oz (I mean Dad) call for me. We ran to the car and drove home. Those damned winged monkey dragonflies would have to wait another day.
I did find out something interesting that day. My dad told me while we were driving home that dragonflies can’t bite or sting.
I just stared at him. The hell you say.
I had been going out to the Paris Sportsmen Club with him for as long as I could remember, and he just got around telling me this crucial piece of information when I was like eleven. Thanks, Dad. Although actually, I think he kept that to himself. He had to watch me talking to myself, making up role-playing games while he fished. The dreaded dragonfly would have become just a bug, and perhaps I would have become bored while waiting for him to hook yet another poor little fish. That was an interesting ride home in the rain.
So, when it would rain and we would be stuck in the house, I would sometimes draw pictures of dragonflies. I couldn’t draw worth a shit, but they were dragonflies nontheless. I admired them but feared them. I just knew that the next time we went to the Paris Sportsmen Club, a huge, dragonfly monster was going to rise up out of the cattails in the creepy part of the pond and pick me up with their wicked fly claws and carry me away. Or drop me over the middle of the pond, where another water creature would be waiting for me. Like the gigantic fish with the whiskers. Don’t let the name “catfish” fool you. Catfish were evil too.
The Paris Sportsman Club 2012..The damn cattails are still there.
Well, I guess I got a little older and I was just too cool to go with my dad to the Paris Sportsmen Club anymore. I never went fishing after sixth grade or so. But, the dragonflies weren’t done with me yet.
Several years ago, we had just finished dinner, when my son called me out onto our patio.
“Oh my God!” I could not believe my eyes.
Now, you have to understand that we had an in-ground pool and a pond. Several neighbors had ponds. We were used to an errant dragonfly or two, hanging around. By this time, they were beautiful to me and my favorite insect. Everyone has a favorite insect, right? I had a dragonfly shower curtain in our pool house and dragonfly hooks for the towels. I was all about dragonflies.
But, what I saw made me smile, nervously. There were thousands and thousands of dragonflies heading toward us. And they didn’t stay high up in the sky, like the Canadian geese do when they migrate. Was this a migration or was this a swarm? Like a swarm of Paris Sportsmen Club descendants finally coming for me.
I mean, that’s what had to be going on, right?
Ok, kidding. But, what a sight!
We stood on the patio and watched them fly through. It was remarkable, but eery at the same time. Was it the end of the earth? Would some of those flying beasts have the face of a lion? Revelations and all that scary stuff. A dragonfly apocalyse.
Some of them hung around for a day or two. Stragglers came for a few days afterwards. So, of course, I went right to the internet and found out that green darners, among other species of dragonflies, migrate in swarms through our area toward North and South Carolina. I had lived on that hilltop for sixteen years and never saw such a sight. I am thinking maybe they were a bit west of their normal path perhaps.
photo princeton.edu
Perhaps.
So, that brings me why I am writing this today. I am wondering again about dragonflies. It seems that there are dragonflies in the parking lot of our local Walmart. I’ve noticed them for a few years now, and they are back again today. Why a Walmart parking lot? Maybe there was a pond at one time where this stupid Walmart was built a while back and by instinct they come back here. Nothing else makes sense. A parking lot is a stupid place for dragonflies to hang out.
As I unlocked my door to put my groceries in the back of my car, a dragonfly flew right in front of my face.
My crazy grandma Orpha used to have the best saying when I was little. “I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.” I had no idea what it meant at the time, but I liked the way she said it. Crazy people don’t know they are crazy. Or, in this case with a turnip truck, naive. So, when she said something like that, with such conviction, well, it always made me smile.
My grandfather was not allowed to drink coffee in “her” living room. I don’t think he ever spilled coffee to be banned from bringing it in her perfectly coiffed room. It is what he did to her that banned the dark wonder in a cup. Her living room was spotless. She had a light pinkish carpeting that we would draw circles in to use while we were playing marbles. Nothing was ever out of alignment.
But, when Grandpa would be allowed to have his after dinner coffee, he would mess with her. He would pretend to spill it.
Much worse.
And that’s when she would yell it from the kitchen. “I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, Arthur!”
One time, though, when she let me bring him an after dinner coffee to his chair in the living room, he smiled and winked and then whispered to me, “Run in the kitchen and tell Grandma I spilled the coffee.”
Not giving me a chance to say anything, Grandpa yelled out, “Oh, no, Vickie!!! Hurry, go get a wet towel!”
And I ran.
I ran right into Grandma Orpha, coming around the corner. Damn, she had the best hearing of any old lady anywhere.
“Um, Grandpa spilled the coffee.”
At hearing this, Grandma Orpha sort of brushed me aside and entered the living room, horror on her 1960′s OCD face. And that’s when Grandpa said it.
“Looks like Grandma finally fell off the turnip truck.”
Oops, we lost Grandma a mile back.
Well, Grandma didn’t get mad at Grandpa. She got mad at me. Crazy people don’t like when there is a conspiracy. She called my mom and I didn’t get to stay at their house that weekend. Grandpa went back to reading his paper and drinking the “spilled” coffee. He did wink at me as I left. I wondered who the crazy one really was.
Naive. That’s what it means, you know, falling off the turnip truck. And naive means, “gullible,” which my mother called me every chance she got.
“Oh, Vickie, you are sooo gullible.”
“Eat shit, Mom.”…………….. Ok, I didn’t say that. Oh, how I wanted to say something.
Ok, so, perhaps I was a bit naive about things…. A space cadet…… An airhead…… A blonde.
Yeah, maybe just a little.
That means I must have fallen off the turnip truck at some point.
So, years later when I decided that I wanted to be a writer, I joined wordpress to start the ball rolling. I was going to be a blogger. I wrote and read other people’s blogs, and wrote and read comments. It’s been wonderful.
But, I didn’t expect this spam nonsense.
I had thirty five spam messages just this morning, waiting for me.I rarely read them. Such a pain in the butt. I have just one question for spammers?
“Do you think I fell off the turnip truck?”
When I first joined wordpress, I began reading some messages that were in my spam filter. And I realized that they wanted me to think that they actually read my blog post. You little shits.
I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.
Here are some of the spam messages that I received in the past day. They are so well written that it is easy to be fooled. Really.
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6:26a.m. “That is really fascinating, You’re an overly professional blogger. I’ve joined your rss feed and look ahead to in search of extra of your wonderful post. Also, I’ve shared your web site in my social networks.”
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10:45p.m. “I relish, result in I found exactly what I used to be looking for. You’ve ended my four day lengthy hunt! God Bless you man. Have a nice day. Bye”
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6:05p.m. “You made some first rate factors there. I looked on the web for the difficulty and located most people will associate with along with your website”
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3:04p.m. “Nice for being visiting your website again, it really has been weeks for myself. Well, this is the comment that I’ve been waited for so long.”
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And finally
8:04p.m. “Fantastic points altogether, you just received a new reader. What would you suggest about your submit that you made some days in the past? Any sure?”
Not realizing that they fell out of the turnip truck.
In the end, riding in the turnip truck at fifty-five is a great accomplishment. Oh, sure, I occasionally fall off.
But, for the most part, I am driving the damn truck.
I was an avid reader when I was younger. I always knew what that crazy Nancy Drew was up to. I knew the Ringmaster’s Secret. I knew where the Hidden Staircase was hiding. I knew that showboat was haunted. Yep, I read all of the books. I was a huge fan.
And sure, I read Dr. Seuss, but I was years beyond his silliness. Ok, I did fall for One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish and I stared a little bit too much at the dog party in the tree in my favorite, Go, Dog, Go, but I really felt a bond with Nancy. In fact, I felt like I could be Nancy. Except that I would have never worn a skirt while solving a mystery. I would have been all about pedal pushers and sneakers.
Fast forward many years and I was still able to keep up with my reading, even after I had my two children. Of course, then I was a huge Dean Koontz fan. His early book, Whispers, will always be my favorite Dean Koontz book. I also read a lot by John Saul. But, my reading time was diminishing. It was no one’s fault but my own. Al Gore had just invented the internet, you know, and I had surfing to do. I surfed the world wide web. And down went the book.
Bad Vickie. I never did sit and read Great Expectations again. Oh, how I love Miss Havisham. I purchased The American Tragedy last summer because I loved the movie version, A Place in the Sun, with Montgomery Cliff and Elizabeth Taylor. East of Eden and Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother are still staring at me from my nightstand. They realize it is never going to happen. Afterall, I then discovered Facebook and Farmtown. Farmville. Something on a farm.
And it was never going to happen once I discovered blogging. WordPress is really to blame for my inexcusable lack of reading. If I wasn’t writing, I was reading other blogger’s blogs. I was then commenting on them. Soon I decided, “Hell, I want to write my own book.” I was a frenzied writer. I found that I love to write. I don’t know if I am a good writer. I cringe when I notice that I have left out commas or spelled “threw” for “through.” Not professional, Vickster. But, just put me in a cabin in the woods with a typewriter and some paper laptop and my username and password, and I could just write all damn day long. But, I guess I have to earn a living, so a fourth grade teacher I shall be.
But, something got me back to take another look at books.
No, it wasn’t the new-fangled Kindle Fire. That may get to me to read again. It didn’t.
No, I didn’t fall for the Harry Potter or Twilight books. I hated Eat, Breathe, and Die or whatever it was called. The movie version starred Julia Roberts. I saw the movie and hated it. You know that woman got an advance to write the book before she even took the journey to find herself, right? She surely laughed all the way to the bank.
No, it was Hunger Games.
I don’t know why it was Hunger Games that made me head to the couch, curl up with a lightweight throw on my lap, and settle in for the evening. Ahhhhhh, a good book. I felt like I was home. Oh, sure I was home, but I felt so satisfied, so complete, so intelligent. I was reading again. Yeehaw!
But, wait. I am torn. My lost love of reading has been reborn. But, alas, what the hell is to become of my blogging? I plan on reading all three of the Hunger Game books in the next week. I can’t put the first one down. Well, I did, just to write to all of you a farewell of sorts, until this reading foolishness subsides.
Yes, blog buddies, I am not going to blog again for a week or so. I want to read. And read I must. And I can’t do both. That would feel like cheating.
So, I bid adieu to all my old and new blogging friends as I need but a brief respite….so I can read. After all, I want to go see the Hunger Games movie this weekend, so I must get a move on. All of my teacher friends at school have already read all three books and are getting tired of not being able to talk about it. I need to catch up before they bust at the seams.
I bought the book yesterday and am on Chapter 11 right now. I am hooked.
Well, time is up. I gave myself fifteen minutes to write this. Times a tickin. My book is calling out to me.
My best to you and I will see you in a week’s time.
Technology has come a long way since the sixties. We now have personal computers, cell phones, and video games. Our cell phones are also personal computers and video games. Our personal computers are also movie theaters and music venues. We have many choices. Back in the sixties, we had a tape recorder.
Oh, my, what a newly purchased tape recorder can do for a kid. A tape recorder, also known as a cassette tape, or compact cassette, was originally designed for dictation. Secretaries all over the world were now able to just push a button instead of sitting across from their boss, steno book and pencil in hand, furiously writing in shorthand. Life was good.
photos via wikipedia
Philips invented the compact audio cassette in 1962, and the first compact cassette, creatively called Compact Cassette, was available for purchase. By 1966, over 250,000 recorders had been sold in the U.S. alone. And guess who had one of them? That’s right, the Mendenhall family.
Now, you have to understand why I was salivating. We really didn’t have much in the way of new fangled technology of any kind. Pong wasn’t even invented yet for use on our television sets. I don’t know if we even shortened the word television to T.V. yet. Our telephones had cords on them, attached to the wall. Oh, yes, I was salivating.
I quickly learned how to use our new Compact Cassette. I believe I was about ten years old at the time. Fourth grade was a memorable time, and now, Dear God, I had a tape recorder.
The excitement was just too much. My mom told me that I could play with it the next day, so I don’t think she was too happy that I woke her up so early.
“Mom, can I use the cassette recorder?”
“Vickie, it’s 6:00 in the morning. Go back to bed.”
Shit.
“Mom, can I use the cassette recorder now?”
“Vickie, stop it. It’s only 6:30.”
Stupid mom. Birds were up. I heard them chirping. Mom’s were supposed to be up early.
“Hey, Dad, can I use the cassette recorder? It’s 7:00.”
“Sure.”
Good Dad. Bad Mom.I was already dressed and ready. I don’t know why I had shoes on, but maybe I would run outside and let the world know that I recorded a message. I ran into the kitchen.There was a little plastic tri-pod that the microphone would sit on. I positioned it close to me. I remember that I was a nervous wreck I put the cassette in the player, and hit the record button. My first recording was thought provoking and highly imaginative.
“Testing. Testing, 1-2-3″…..giggle giggle giggle. Voila!! History was made.
I couldn’t wait to replay it and listen to my voice. I had never heard myself talk before. I looked at my mom, who was fumbling with the coffee pot and mumbling something about killing me.
“That doesn’t sound like me.” I sounded like a little girl. I mean, I was a little girl. I guess I wanted to sound, well, like a newscaster.
“That sounds exactly like you.” my mom replied. She lit her first of 88 cigarettes for the day. She sat in her housecoat at the table, waiting for her coffee to percolate. She wanted to try recording her voice. That pissed me off. I mean, shouldn’t she be in bed?
So, the rest of the Mendenhall family had to go and use MY cassette tape recorder for most of the morning. I went into the living room and watched Casper the Friendly Ghost on the television set. Actually, I have no idea what the hell I watched, but I did watch a cartoon, because our cartoons rocked back then.
Well, the unimaginative family members had their morning of fun with the newly purchased Cassette Recorder and went about their Saturday morning.business. I sat quietly, like a buzzard waiting for a groundhog to get hit by a car. I had plans for this tape recorder.
Oh, the fun I had. My first item on my tape recording agenda was to tape record sounds. I turned on the recorder and rang the doorbell. I slammed a door. I followed the dog around, trying to get him to bark. He wanted no part of me. I called my bff Ramaine and asked her to call me back so I could tape the telephone ringing. I taped anything and everything that I could make a sound out of . What a great weekend.
I had my bff, Ramaine, walk up later in the day. She was even more creative than I was. She would think of something we can use with the newly purchased Cassette Recorder. I do not remember how this was decided, but the next thing you know, we were singing the definition of ‘lima bean” into the tape recorder. I am sure no one else has ever done that before. Ever. We were highly imaginative. We then opened the dictionary again, pointing to a word and singing that definition, too. We laughed and laughed at our choice of leisure activity. She could sing. I, on the other hand, sounded like a drugged up back-up singer for Janis Joplin. Fun time with my bff.
Saturday evening was spy time. I put the recorder beside the couch. I realized that one side of the tape was only 30 minutes long, so I had to think of a way to push the button so my parents wouldn’t see me doing it. I was going to tape record things my parents talk about after we went to bed. What fun!
I waited until my mom went into the kitchen and talked loudly while playing with my dog so my dad wouldn’t hear me press the button. Success! I went to bed and could hardly sleep. I was so excited to spy on my parents. I began thinking bigger, like taping my teacher while we were at lunch. That may have been tricky, as we didn’t have back packs back then.
I woke up on Sunday morning, and ran to the living room. It was 6:00, so I was sure that the fam was still asleep. I re-wound the tape and waited, impatiently. This was going to be so much fun. I loved spying. I hit the play button. It was my mom’s voice. This was fantastic!!
“Vickie, the next time you try to tape record someone without letting them know about it, it would be a good idea to sneak back in the room and turn it off before it makes a loud noise turning itself off……You will have plenty of time trying to figure out how to do this while you are in your room. You are grounded.”
Shit.
Well, all in all, I had a blast with our newly purchased Cassette Recorder. I interviewed neighbors and friends, taped the sounds of grass cutting, and the Mr. Softie truck making his rounds through the neighborhood. I taped my sister having a temper tantrum. Life was good.
It’s the little things in life that make such a big memory.
And that’s one for the record books…or in this case, tape recorder.
When I was little, I had to look up words to see what they meant in a gigantic red dictionary my mom kept alongside our World Book Encyclopedias. I was never able to look up phrases like we can today on the internet. I was so curious about everything. But, you know, I used to have to be nibby and ask people about things I was curious about. I would have never met most of our neighbors if I had the internet and all the answers to my childish questions. “Mrs. Jones, why does that man drive into your garage in the middle of the night almost every night and then leave right before I get on the bus? Is that your brother?” Ok, just kidding, but I could have just looked up “What is an affair” into the google search engine that would have answered all of my questions. But, how lonely that would have been for me. I would have salivated over the opportunity to travel all over the freaking world without leaving my chair………. Um, like I am doing now at age 55…….. Shit. I am a loser.
I have to admit that I really enjoy reading all of the search terms that pop up every day on my Word Press dashboard. For those of you who don’t blog here, we bloggers are able to see what search engine terms brought people to our site. For example, I wrote a blog about a monkey, and tagged the post with words such as, “monkey,” “fun,” laugh,” and ”pet store.” Meanwhile, some stranger in Internet Land typed in the Google search bar, “monkey poop,” and it showed up as a search engine term. That internet person would be able to read my blog post if he wanted to, or just say to himself, “Well, hell, this is about a monkey on someone’s head. Monkeyshines Where’s the monkey poop?
Of course, I didn’t know the monkey poop question poser was from. But, since I have started blogging, I have seen bizarre search engine terms pop up. I’d like to share some of them with you. And my blog posts that brought them here.
1. Was Helen Keller black slave- This poor person has no idea what is going on in life. I wrote One Tough Cookie about several strong personalities. Helen Keller was one of them. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t a black slave. I also wrote Play Time, where I discussed how my bff, Ramaine, and I used to play Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan. I always got to be Helen. Bad Karma. My hearing is shot nowadays.
2. How old is a 1 year old pig- I got this one yesterday. I just don’t know where to start with this one. I guess a one year old pig is different ages. Maybe the searcher wants to know how old a one year old pig is in human years. I have no idea, but here, pig googler, read one of my pig blog posts. And This Little Piggy…., Guinea Pig Children and an early post, Feeling Like an Oinker-Pig
3. Billy Joel fat ugly- Aw, that is just so not nice. Where you looking for a picture of Billy Joel? Because what you got was this. Lies That Bite Back
4. Fish guts stains your teeth- Um, okay…I wonder what this guy has been eating. Evidently his teeth are now black. Or some color. I just shuddered…again. My story is about fish guts, but someone was wearing them, not eating them. The Fish Head Story. It is also the second hardest I have ever laughed in my life. That’s right. I have them numbered.
5. Can nuns carry guns- Uh, oh, someone is in trouble or planning to make a hit on Bingo night at the church. I have a lot of posts about nuns. I am afraid of nuns. I do think they carry guns. They keep it in a thigh holster. I’m pretty sure. But, while you are contemplating robbing Sister Betrille, sit awhile and read about my nun stories. Snakes, Gasoline, and a Nun, Vickie With an E, Edgewood, and one of my favorites, Bring Back the Nuns Arrrgh!
6. I have mosquito bite boobs 15- Oh, honey, I can relate. This blog post will not help whatsoever. But, I once was a mosquito bite boober. Sigh. Mosquito Bites
7. dirty potato- What was this person thinking when he searched for this? Maybe he forgot to wash potatoes before cooking and now thinks maybe bugs were all over them? I’m sure he is going to die. If you take your lap top to the Emergency room, you can read these posts while they take an x-ray of those dirty veggies in your stomach. Rats! is about how we fed a rat in our apartment to keep him from coming upstairs and eating our faces while we slept. Or try, Old Wive’s Tales, where you need to know the importance of washing behind your ears.
8. boogey man just called me- Ok, let me get this right. The boogey man just called you, and you get off the phone and google, “Boogey man just called me.” Wow, you are a brave soul. I would have run upstairs and hid under my bed. Which would probably not be a good idea, because that’s where the boogey man is. Dear God, I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight. I Killed the Boogey Man
9. Wont be fooled April 1- I used to be the Queen of April Fool’s jokes. But, someone finally got me. Got me good. So, April Fool’s Day google searcher, read this post and feel for me. D-I-V-O-R-C-E
10. catsup is catsnip- Ew, and my God you are stupid. The whole Ketchup/catsup scenario is mind boggling I know. I wrote a post on ketchp sandwiches, which is not the same as catsup sandwiches, which is somehow cat related, I was told. I should google it. Ketchup Sandwiches
So, those are just a random sampling of some of the search terms I receive each day. I really like the idea of how tagging can bring more traffic to my blog. It’s a great idea. But, the next time you want to search for something and you don’t want anyone to know about it, just know that we know.
Here are some more search terms that are just weird as hell:
*What is it when I have white stuff on my gums near my molars.
*pee in my snowsuit
*video girls in mud
*vomiting hid in nightstand
*the longest poop in the world
*ant bit lips
*detergent poison how to poison
*green snot infection
*stuck his tongue down my throat
*is eating paint chips still bad
*Hitler had son Jimmy Hitler
*armpit smells like garlic
*pet dead dog infreezer til ground thaws out bury
Yes, search terms are interesting, that’s for sure.
I remember the very first thing I did a search on when I got the internet……Wooly worms. Do you remember what you searched for?
We have become a society of abbreviators. Our words are abbreviated. Our actions are abbreviated. I’m sure everyone has heard the phrase,”as a crow flies.” That means a shortcut or diagnonally in some crow talking circles. And that’s what we have all become. We are crows. Well, that’s not all that bad. Sure, maybe crows enjoy pecking dead things on the side of the road. I know some people who are peckers. (She laughed writing that) But, all in all, crows are intelligent birds, and if they have found a shortcut home, more power to the them. God bless us, for being stupid. Crows don’t follow a road, Goofball Head. They don’t think in those terms. We do.
“Well, if I was a crow, I guess I would live diagonally about, um, 6 blocks over. Yeah, so I live 6 blocks from here……..as a crow flies.”
I was a smart ass when I was in college and replied to someone who said that with a “How close for a blue jay?” He just looked at me like I was stupid. I’m not stupid….. I’m a crow.
But, we have become a nation of shortcutters. But, it didn’t start with our generation. People abbreviated long before we knew what the hell “LOL” meant.
It all started with contractions. They are similar to an abbreviation, but not really. “Hey, Bob, You know, I’m getting tired of talking and writing. I think I am going to shorten my words. Do ya see how I already did it? I shortened ” I am” to “I’m.” It’s amazing how he took a very long word and shortened it. And that’s how it started. A very lazy man came up with a way for all of us to be lazy. We have a whole list of ass-long words that we have shortened into contractions:
it’s - it is
don’t - do not
you’re – you are
isn’t - is not
we’ve-we have
Who would not want to shorten their words? Who wouldn’t want to shorten their words? See how easy that was? I will get done with this post so much faster now.
Since I am a school teacher, I have noticed that buses are now shorter. Well, some of them are.There are short buses because, well, they are special. I will leave it at that.
Yes ,we have become oh so lazy. We can blame our great grandparents…………..and poets. Poets used “Tis” a lot. Like that wild party girl, Emily Jane Bronte:
‘Tis moonlight, summer moonlight, All soft and still and fair; The solemn hour of midnight Breathes sweet thoughts everywhere…”
And Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven (Which is like a crow, but maybe even smarter.)
’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door; Only this, and nothing more.”
Tis means “it is”. Wait…. So does it’s. No wonder foreign people who want to learn English hate us. We have a screwed up language.
And we all know the famous, “Twas the Night Before Christmas.” Abbreviated.
Let’s take a look at some abbreviations that people used long ago and then some that we use now. Back then, people didn’t have the luxury to burst into laughter on paper like we can now. LOL
P.S.- This means post script, which I didn’t know for longest time. The term comes from the Latin post scriptum, meaning “written after.” When I was in elementary school and we first used P.S., I thought it meant like “Pssssssst, hey listen to this, there’s more.” My teacher never told us what it meant. It’s her fault that I got laughed at when I was in high school when I raised my hand to answer, “What does P.S. mean?” with a “Pssssssst.” I think I was called a space cadet….. No, I was a crow.
RSVP- Hey, we need to hear back from you. Respond soon veryplease. Or something like that. That’s what I said it was. Again, not my fault. Sucky teacher. RSVP comes from the French phrase, répondez s’il vous plaît. I know French very well and translated, it really means,” respond with your plate.”
TNT- Pulled this one out of my hat, didn’t I? Well, I thought of TNT only because I grew up with it. Wile E. Coyote lived at my house and was always trying to kill the Road Runner. He had a bunch of Acme products to use on the little speedy bird. “TNT” was written on the box.
I had no idea what TNT really meant. It was dynamite, but not really. You light the string and things blow up. TNT actually stands for trinitroluene. Nobody cares about that.
lb- pounds. This abbreviation just pissed me off. It makes no sense whatsoever. It should be pd. Everyone knows that. I remember getting this marked wrong when we had a measurement test in fourth grade. I remember it because stupid Miss Emler wrote on the board, “John weighs 200 lbs.” She wanted to show how pounds is abbreviated in a sentence. Well, I missed that part because I was thinking about this imaginary John fellow, and was hoping he was not in fourth grade somewhere. Totally missed the point and missed it on the test. Fat John kept me from having a perfect paper, dammit.
Boo- Right now I am teaching my fourth graders about the events leading up to the Revolutionary War. We read about how people gathered in the streets of Boston, yelling, “No taxation without representation.” The British to tend to make a few words into pages of long words, and it spilled over to their descendants. So, I had my class chant that phrase three times. You could not tell what the hell they were saying. It sounded like mumbled gibberish and they knew it. That’s when my lies kicked in and I told them how that phrase evolved over years to be. “Boooo” when we aren’t happy with something. Makes sense. We Americans shortened, “We are mad as hell, and we don’t like this one iota” to “Boooo!” Means the same damn thing, only shortened. Boo isan expression of disgust, dissatisfaction, or disapproval.
XL- Sigh. Extra Large. You know, this sucks. Why doesn’t it just say on the label, ”Bigger than Large.” It would make us previous size 0′s feel better about gaining 5 pounds every freaking year to the point where you have to wear an XL and draw pictures of pigs to put on your refrigerator in an effort to keep you from eating. One last sigh.
tv- Easy one. Short for television. I don’t think anyone ever says television anymore. “I think I will watch television right now.” Nope. Doesn’t work anymore. “We are heading to Walmart to buy a new television set.” (Thought I would try it one more time. Still doesn’t work.)
IQ- “He has the IQ of a worm.” “He has an intelligence quotient of a worm.” Well, I did feel smarter writing the second one. The only time I use the word quotient is when I am teaching division and I don’t use it that much becauss they have a hard enough time dividing.
St.- I don’t know about this one. Why would anyone abbreviate a saint? It’s like taking away their sainthood. Right, Saint Christopher? Saint Christopher was the patron saint of many many things, such as athletes, mariners, and travelers. He was against lightning, pestilence, bookbinders, epilepsy, floods, and um, fruit dealers. I’m really not making this stuff up. I wonder if a fruit dealer didn’t give him the correct change or his watermelon had too many seeds. You just can’t trust fruit dealers.
I.O.U.- No brainer. I owe you some money.
Yes, we are a society of abbreviators. And we are also shorter than usual. Our height is indeed, abbreviated. Studies show that we are getting shorter than our hunter-gatherer ancestors. So, everything is shorter. Except for maybe skirts. They were at their shortest in 1974. I know, because I wore one of them. You could not bend over.
So, go ahead and head home as a crow flies. RSVP to a friend’s wedding. Wear high heels to make you taller. Sit in front of the tv and watch your favorite show. Write a poem that starts with Tis. Call a married woman, Ms. or an unmarried woman Mrs. and see if they correct you. You can get short changed at the fruit dealer like our friend, St. Christopher. Abbreviations are all around us.
Maybe it’s just me, but isn’t the card game, Old Maid, just a little politically incorrect these days? I mean, I couldn’t care less, but aren’t we making fun of an older lady who has never married or had children? The shame. Another name for an old maid is a spinster.
The card game has been around for many, many years. The origins of Old Maid trace back to the 17th century. It started off as a gambling game, where the loser had to buy drinks, because it got stuck holding the last card. The old maid. The woman who was depicted as a frumpy, bird or cat owner, who wore glasses and a very ugly hat.
The game begins with players trying to form pairs out of all of their cards until someone—the loser—is left with the lonely, spinster old maid.
I remember playing Old Maid. I played it often, along with Go Fish and War. But, Old Maid, sort of made me sad, because of what my mom told me one time when we were playing.
“Did you know that your Aunt Elizabeth was an Old Maid?” I just looked at her. I really didn’t understand what was going on. I mean, I was playing a freaking card game. I was a kid. I never gave it a thought back in circa 1964 that the card with a sweet old lady was my Aunt Elizabeth.
I honestly thought that an old maid was a woman who was like a nanny. She cleaned and took care of people’s homes, like a maid. But, she was more than a house cleaner. She was like a grandma. And that’s what an old maid was. But, my mom was obviously going to explain to me something completely different, I feared. And I really didn’t want to hear it.
“Aunt Elizabeth was supposed to marry someone when she was younger. He was a soldier and he never came home from the war.”
I just looked at her.
“Was she mad at him?”
My mom was confused. “No. Why would she be mad at him?”
“Because he never came home. Where did he go to live then?” Legitimate question coming from the skinny girl on the other side of the table.
Well, my mom explained it to me, and I just really didn’t want to finish the game after I heard the whole story. I made an excuse, and went into my room and cried. Poor Aunt Elizabeth. She lived all the way out in Spokane Washington, and I had only met her a few times, but the story was so sad. She used to send letters to my mom and would always include a clipping of the comic strip, “Family Circus.”
So, I haven’t been happy with the whole “Old Maid” game after that. The next time someone wanted to play, I took a deck of my dad’s regular cards and took the jokers out and left one in so it didn’t have a match. There. That was our new Old Maid.
Over the years, I always came in contact with an old maid or two. The character of Miss Havisham, in Charles Dicken’s, “Great Expectations.” was an old maid. She hung out in the reception hall, clad in her wedding dress, sitting at the table with the ever so old cake, still on the table. That freaked me out. Especially when rats were involved.
The song, Delta Dawn, by Helen Reddy, was about a woman who was walking around with a suitcase, waiting for the guy who dumped her. She was an old maid, but she was also crazy as a loon, just like Miss Havisham. She walked around Brownsville with a faded rose from days gone by.
And Wikipedia mentions “famous spinsters.” Can you believe it? Some mentioned are are Susan B. Anthony, Ann Coulter, (which cracked me up for some odd reason), Condalezza Rice, Emily Dickinson, Florence Nightingale, Greta Garbo, Louisa May Alcott, Emily Bronte, and Jane Austen. Sound like all strong, independent women to me.
My favorite “spinster” is Miss Prissy Hen, from the Foghorn Leghorn cartoon, although there is some mention of her maybe being a widow. Nevertheless, they dress her in an ugly hat and put glasses on her, just like the Old Maid picture on the playing card. Well, except that she is a bird.
When George Bailey, in It’s a Wonderful Life, sees his life like he wasn’t born, he runs into Mary, the librarian, who is an old maid.
Bette Davis, played an old maid in the movie, The Old Maid.
So, I was thinking, why not change the whole “Old Maid” scenario to “Old Geezer?” There are a lot of men who never get married or have children. I think it is time to make fun of them for a change. This Old Maid crap has been going on too long. So, let’s get a picture of a guy who will fit the part. How about…..Mr. Burns?
You know, I don’t know the answer. When my kids were little, we played Old Maid. It was just a game. My kids never wondered about the name or what the hell it meant.
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When my daughter was quite young, she was often scared of her bedroom. She told me that there were monsters that lived under her bed. I think she just wanted an excuse to sleep in my room. I know that she slept a couple of times in her brother’s closet so she wouldn’t be alone. So, when she came in my room, one late night, and said she was scared, I lied to her. I told her a “Once upon a time” story. I explained, that at one time there were monsters in West Virginia, but they were all chased out of the state and were now all living in California. I told her that if they try to come back into the state, that they would disappear forever. It was a pretty good story. I mean, why wouldn’t she believe that it was illegal to be a monster in West Virginia? Is that wrong?
I always wondered why parents scared their children by telling them the boogey man was going to get them if they didn’t behave. I had a lot of questions for my mom when she told me that if I hit my sister again, the boogey man was going to get me. I used to hit my sister when no one was looking and then played the “Eddie Haskell” card. I was just too damn sweet and cute to hit someone just for the hell of it. But, I did. So, when my mom said the words, “Boogey Man” for the first time, I needed more information.
“Vickie…I know we lock our doors at night. He can walk through walls………He hides in closets or under beds…….Vickie, I don’t know whose house he was at last night………..I don’t think he drives a car, Vickie…………….I don’t know what he looks like, Vickie. The Boogey Man never had to come hide under my bed………….Vickie, Susie (our dog) can’t see the Boogey Man, so she won’t bite him…………Well, because Susie is a good dog…………Vickie, you can’t leave cookies out for him. He isn’t Santa Claus……….You can’t switch beds with your sister, Vickie……………..He carries children away in a sack………I don’t know if he puts holes in the sack so you can breathe…………Vickie, the Boogey Man doesn’t have a phone number……Well, he just knows when to come…….No, you are not hiding…..”
Oh, but I did hide. I slept under my sister’s bed that night. Well, I didn’t sleep much. I was thinking. I first wondered why my sister had a plate and a fork under her bed. I could use that as a weapon. I had to have a plan. I thought it was a smart idea to hide under my sister’s bed because the Boogey Man would never go under her bed. He was after me. So, he could crawl under my bed and wait for me. I remember someone mentioning the Boogey Man one other time. Who was it? hmmmmm….Oh, it was Grandma Williams, my mom’s mom.
Grandma Williams had long hair that she parted and braided each side and wrapped around her ears. My Grandma was Welsh and lived in Spokane, Washington. She always grabbed our cheeks and pinched them a little too hard. I mean, what the hell did that mean anywho? I’m going to pinch the shit out of your cheeks cuz I love you sooo much? I mean, please. Anyways, Grandma Williams was the one who told my sister that the Boogey Man was going to come and carry her off in a sack if she didn’t quit having those temper tantrums. hmmmmm…I wondered if Grandma made up the whole Boogey Man scenario to scare MY mom? Well, I didn’t use the word, “scenario” then. But, I was thinking the Boogey Man was not real.
Well, I laid there for awhile. Thinking. I did get scared thinking how awful it would be if I looked over at my bed and saw the Boogey Man lying under my bed looking over at me.
But, then, I had company. My dog, Susie, found me. She crawled under the bed and hung out with me while I figured the Boogey Man out. I decided that I needed more information. I think my mom was lying to me. It was time to find
out.
“Vickie, what are you doing up? It’s 3:00 in the morning. Go back to bed…………Vickie, the Boogey Man is not under your bed……No he isn’t…………That’s quite a description………….He was not putting a pillow over your face…………Vickie, go back to bed……..No, I am not getting up………..Vickie, he is not sitting on your bed holding Susie……He is not…….Why would he be holding a fork?……Vickie, the Boogey Man does not exist, ok? I made that up so you would behave……Go back to bed……..”
Satisfaction. I smiled on my way back to bed. I killed the Boogey Man.
Fast forward back to my daughter. I opened the door one night to check on her before I went to bed and she wasn’t in there. She wasn’t in my bed, so I opened my son’s door. She wasn’t in his closet. I was standing near his bed, trying to figure out where she would go if she were scared, and I happened to see her lying under her brother’s bed, just looking at me. Oh, my God, my daughter is a mini-me from long ago.
I smiled back at her……after, that is, I screamed at the top of my lungs.
Fear is defined as an emotional response to a perceived threat. It is also related to the specific behavior of escape and avoidance. People are afraid of many things. My daughter just informed me that she has a fear of living in the suburbs, driving a mini-van. Ok, sweetie, go away. Not what I was looking for.. But, anywho, some people have intense fear of many different things. Clowns, for example…. Heights…Water…. Speaking in public….Spiders….Or in my case, three things…snakes, gasoline and a nun. (Although Judge Judy scares the hell out of me, too.)
Already blogged about snakes and gasoline. Part 3..a nun
3. a nun
Years ago, in West Virginia, children had to be six years old by November 1 in order to attend school. That was the rule. My birthday was November 9. I was 9 days late from attending school. Well, my mom decided that I was ready for school, damnit, and nothing was going to stop her from pushing me out into the big, bad world.
Except for the fact that you had to take a test. If you passed the test, you could start school early. I remember my mom telling me that I had to pass the test or I wouldn’t be able to be in the same class as Ramaine or LeeAnn….or Lori…or Janice….or Tammy….or Kacey…and every other girl in the neighborhood that was around my age. Lee Ann was younger than me. Her birthday was December 4. Our mothers decided that we would take the test together.
Well, I was quite stupid and flunked the test. LeeAnn passed because she was brilliant. It was a quiet ride home. She made me eat everything on my plate that night. Luckily, my dog liked what we were having that night. I heard my mom tell my dad that I couldn’t sit still long enough and was squirming all over the place. First of all, I didn’t squirm unless my underwear was fitting weird. Ok, maybe I was a little hyper, but I do remember my mom telling my dad I was like a little Mexican jumping bean. What the hell was that?
I could hear my dad say,”Well, she is just not ready, Georgie.” And my mom muttering something (It was sometimes hard to hear when you are spying) and then she said, ” Oh, you don’t understand. She WILL attend school this year.” Uh Oh
The very next day, my mom got up and went somewhere very early and came home and informed me that I would be attending the Immaculate Heart of Mary Academy or Sacred Heart of Mary Academy or Sacred Heart of Mary Immaculate Conception Academy. Hell, I can’t remember what it was called, but I remember crying.
The Sacred Heart of Mary and Jesus Conception Academy (or whatever) was a Catholic private school and we had to wear a uniform. Well, this just sucks. My mom went on to inform me that she would drive me downtown each morning and a van would pick me up to take me to school in Wintersville, Ohio. That was about a 1/2 hour drive to the Heart of Mary Sacred Conception Academy.
I was a nervous wreck on the first day of school. I was waiting by our car when a van pulled up and a nun jumped out and came around to introduce herself. Her name was Sister Maria, she said, and she was the bus driver and a teacher at the Blessed Baby Jesus and Mary Conception Academy. I reluctantly got into the van and we were on our way. We made stops and picked up about 6 other kids, all different ages and then made our way to the little school.
I remember very little about the Mary Mary Sacred Mary Academy. I hated that place. Sister Maria was not the Flying Nun. I wouldn’t have said that back then, because the show didn’t premier until 1967. But, you know, whatever. All I know is that Sister Maria was evil in black and white. She lived at the school in a convent. She had a huge dog named Luger. I found out later that Luger was an English mastiff. She kept Luger tied up and he barked all freaking day. There was a large dirt spot and we dared not go into the dirt area, or we surely die. I can’t watch the Sandlot without thinking of that stupid dog. Luger got loose a couple of times, and we ran like the school children ran down the road in the movie, The Birds.
I should mention that the Sacred Mother Mary of God Catholic Academy had only four teachers and they took turns driving the bus, cooking, cleaning and whatever. I don’t think that the school had more than 25 students. Sister Maria was always the bus driver because she liked to torment the kids before, during , and after school. We were even in a bus wreck on the way to school one morning. Sister Maria ran a stop light. And I tore a hole in my leotard and got yelled at for not wearing proper clothing.. Stupid nun.I fell one time playing on the playground, which was a gravel area, and she scrubbed the gravel out of my knee. I screamed and screamed and told her my mom would clean it out when I got home, but Sister Maria wouldn’t hear of it. I think she enjoyed hearing little children screaming.
The one cool thing about attending Jesus Loves the Little Children Academy was Spanish class. How cool was that. I learned spanish when I was in 1-3rd grades. But, shit, Sister Maria was the teacher. I wrote in the back of my spanish book, “El Teacher es un animal” and had that book for years. She was an animal. She yelled at me for not eating my lunch when it was her turn to cook. It was like she was an oompah loompah. She was everywhere. She was the teacher, the bus driver, the cook, the dog feeder, the gravel scrubber..she was terror in comfortable shoes.
I finally begged my mom to let me transfer to a public school when I was in fourth grade. I don’t know why she didn’t let me go when I was in second grade. The object was to get me to start school early and then transfer. My mom later told me that the nuns were strict and I was able to sit still and get some work done. Uh, yeah. If you moved, you got a ruler across your knuckles.
I still cringe when I see a nun. I rarely see one in the full flying nun habit anymore. But, when I do, I run.
Fear is defined as an emotional response to a perceived threat. It is also related to the specific behavior of escape and avoidance.
People are afraid of many things. My daughter years ago informed me that she has a fear of living in the suburbs, driving a mini-van. Ok, sweetie, not what I was looking for.. But, anywho, some people have intense fear of many different things. Clowns, for example…. Heights…Water…. Speaking in public….Spiders….Or in my case, three things…snakes, gasoline and a nun. (Although Judge Judy scares the hell out of me, too.)
So far I talked about 1. Snakes. Now on to Part 2-
2. Gasoline
People are quite lucky if they pass through their life with only having a fender bender at the most. For some of us, being in a car accident is something you don’t forget too soon.
The summer before I was a freshman in high school was a great summer. We went to the pool almost every day. I really didn’t want to go to the pool on one particular day. It was a cloudy, August day and not particularly warm. But, my mom wanted us out of her hair, I think, so off to the pool we went. I’m not really sure what kind of car we had. I know it was gold and I think it was a Bonneville. I do remember it was a 2 door car.
We were all wearing our bathing suits and a shirt over the top. We had our towel in one hand and a dollar to get into the pool in the other. My mom was driving and my brother, David ,was sitting in the front seat. I was sitting in the middle in the back, with my best friend, Ramaine, on one side, and my sister, Cheryl on the other. We were on our way. Cheryl had been injured the day before on her bicycle, and was bruised all over. She was quite sore and Mom thought the water would do her good. I’m thinking that Mom wanted some alone time. So, we piled into the car, neglecting to wear out seat belts because no one wore them back then. Mom’s arm across the chest was our only seat belt. You were on your own if you sat in the back though.
The pool was only about 5 minutes away from our house. We got in the turning lane and had to stop, waiting for cars going in the opposite direction to pass, so we could turn. The only way that I can explain what happened next is in slow motion. That’s how I remember it. I remember my head hitting the seat in front of me and when my head whipped back, I saw us going at the oncoming car. My head hit the seat again and when it whipped back once again, I just remember a head coming through a shattered windshield in front of us. Then I remember the screaming.
We had been hit from behind by a long Mack truck that hadn’t slowed down when it came around the corner and went into the turning lane and hit us. We flew head-0n into a car traveling in the other direction. We later heard that the stupid truck driver was drunk, but no one told us for sure. At first things were very quiet. Cheryl was now in the front seat. David was then screaming. My mom wasn’t saying anything. And Ramaine still was clutching onto her dollar and towel. I had blood streaming down my face and felt an open place on my forehead, but it didn’t hurt. I was still intrigued that Ramaine was still holding her dollar and her towel like it was time to get out of the car. Except, we were trapped.
I saw a guy with his hands cupped by his face, looking through the window into the back seat. That sort of scared me. He was like a peeping Tom. We were only 14, you pervert. Why didn’t he just look through the windshield. Or lack of windshield. He then yelled, “We need to get these people out of here. It’s going to blow.” Oh, yes he did. What???? The car is going to blow up? Gee, that’s a nice thing to say to people who are trapped in a car. And we were trapped. Our car looked squeezed like an accordion. Ramaine and I looked at each other, and that’s about all we did. I think I may have been in shock, because I am never at a loss for words. We were in there for a very long time. The stupid, stupid man kept telling people, “There are 5 people in this car. We need to get them out NOW! There is gasoline all over the place. “ Maybe someone should pour some gasoline on Tactful Guy. I heard that this guy was the guy in the truck, but again, I never knew for sure. I just remember he had coal black wavy hair.
The fire truck finally came and sprayed a bunch of white foam all around our car and the Mack truck. I don’t know if they had the Jaws of Life contraption back then, I was too interested in the thought that I was going to blow up. They took my sister out of the car first and sat her along side the road. Then they hurried to get David out. He had bones coming out of his leg. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. He was in so much pain. Ramaine and I got out next. It seemed like my mom was hurt very badly. Later we found out that she had a broken back.
We were all stuffed into one of those old ambulances. The Ghostbuster car reminded me of what we rode in that day. I rode in the front with the ambulance driver. As we pulled out for the race to the hospital, Ramaine quietly said, “There’s my mom.” And we waved at her. Can you imagine? She pulls up and sees our accordion car and a Mack truck and another car with a lady stuck in the windshield, and we are waving at her like, “Hi, Ramaine’s mom. Look, we are in an ambulance.We’ll talk later.” I will never forget the look on Ramaine’s mom’s face. She was so upset, I guess she backed her station wagon into a pole as she was turning around to follow us to the hospital. I remember David screaming every time we would hit a bump. I felt so badly for him. I mean, he had bones coming out of his leg. Unbelievable.
On the way to the hospital, I started asking stupid questions. I had a cut on my forehead and I believe that I may have had a concussion or something. I asked the driver if my name was going to be in the paper and then told him how to spell my name correctly. V-i-c-k-i-e I spelled for him. I had been in a car accident when I was in third grade and it reported that Mickie Mendenhall was in the car. Mickie? That mad me so mad. So, I guess I wanted to make sure they got it right this time. Not a vain bone in my body.
When we got to the hospital, everyone was whisked in a different direction. I remember seeing Ramaine still clutching on to her dollar bill and towel. She had a stoved finger. She got a wheelchair. I didn’t get a wheelchair. I don’t know what I got. I remember waking up, lying flat on my back and a Chinese doctor was sewing up my forehead. “Hello.” Wow, that scared me to death. I froze and just watched him stitching up my head and my ankle. I don’t remember any pain at all. I didn’t say a word. He used a really long piece of thread. I swear he was humming a song. Maybe one from his homeland. I never saw a chinese person before. Hell, maybe I was in China. I was a little bit loopy right around then. Surprised I didn’t see a clown sitting in the corner, waving at me.
My dad was in the waiting room with Cheryl, who wasn’t hurt in the accident. Although she was thrown into the front seat, she didn’t hit her head or anything. That was good, because she was already quite mental. Ramaine was fine also. She had a stoved finger. David and my mom spent a long time in the hospital. The ride home was scary. I kept thinking people were going to hit us. Dad had the radio on and they reported a car accident and listed all of our names and our conditions. I was in fair condition..hmmmm. I felt fair. How did they know how I was feeling. They had David and my mom in critical condition.
That night , my dad made me go to a party I had been invited to. He took Ramaine and I to a house party. I limped and had a huge bandage on my head.” I just remember being very quiet and then my head started pounding, because the kid started playing the drum solo for Inagodadavida. Really? You have to play a long drum solo tonight? I usually enjoy being the center of attention, but I just wanted to go home.
Fast forward to about 2000. My husband, Jay, was cutting the grass on my dad’s 1949 Farm-All Cub and stopped and asked me to take the red plastic gas container to the gas station to fill up with gasoline for the push mower. Ok, no problem. I grabbed my purse and stepped into the garage to get the gas can, when all of a sudden, I felt flushed.
It felt like my head was being blown up like a balloon. I broke out into a sweat, and noticed that the palms of my hands were sweating also. My heart was pounding. I walked outside and stopped Jay on the tractor. I broke out sobbing, “I can’t go get the gaaaassss.” I felt like Laura Petrie on the Dick Van Dyke Show when she sobbed, “Oh Robbb”. I was beside myself. I had shortness of breath and when I tried to talk, talked in short, choppy words. I swear I even had a twitch. I was a mess on a stick.
Jay turned off his tractor, and said, “Ok, take it easy…I will go get the gas later…” He gave me a “Yeah, she’s insane” look and started up his tractor and took off, leaving me in turmoil over whatever the hell was wrong with me. I walked in and I was feeling better. My heart didn’t explode. I thought to myself, “What the hell was that all about?”
It only took me about 10 minutes to realize that Wow, I have a problem with gasoline. Then it all made sense. I had made excuses all my life to not pump my own gas. I had kids in the car….It was dark and I was scared….I didn’t want to have static electricity and touch something and then blow up. You know, the usual reasons…Then I thought deeper. I didn’t want Jay to put in a propane tank for heating when we built the house. We went total electric. I wasn’t a fan of the grill. I would stand far away from it. Duh. I had an intense fear of gasoline.
I have only pumped my gas maybe twice in my life. I wait to go to the local Sunoco station and a guy pumps it for me. I have to go between 8am and 4pm daily or on Saturday mornings. So, the next time someone on the Lifetime channel has suppressed memories that pop up after 25 years, you can say, “This really does happen. I read a blog by some nut case that suppressed her fear of gasoline because some guy looked in the window and said the car was going to blow up.”
It really does happen. I fear gasoline. Panic attack time.
Ever wake up and see a clown sitting on the edge of your bed? Pretty scary, right? Well, that’s how I felt when someone mentioned playing Red Rover. I hated when we played that game when I was little. I mean, who invented this horrible little game? I’m thinking some German woman weightlifter named Olga. It was bad enough that I had to sing about the plague with “Ring a round the Rosie”, now I had to get a knot in my stomach every time Red Rover was mentioned.
“Oh, Dear God, Bozo, they want to play Red Rover today. What would you do?”
Future Bully Loser
First of all, no one wanted me on their team. Remember, I was anorexic skinny. The other team loved not having me on their team, because they knew I was the weakest link. They didn’t even need to whisper, “Run through Vickie”…..or… “See that girl, the one with the shaking knees and…wait, ok, she was standing sideways,..anyway, see that girl with just a little bit of skin on her bones?… Yeah, the one who is crying…. She will let go of Lee Ann’s hand every time. Run at her!”
Now,you have to understand, I wasn’t bad at outdoor games. I was awesome at kickball. I didn’t have much power in the kick, mind you, but I could run. I ran like a deer. A graceful anorexic deer. We played kickball in my neighborhood all of the time. In the street beside my house. I played Duck Duck Goose. (I’m laughing out loud at that one right now)… Mother May-I?…Freeze Tag….Red Light, Green Light….Hopscotch…Colored Eggs…..Do I need to go on? Ok, I will. Drop the Hankerchief….Hot Potato…Button, Button, Who’s Got the Button?….Chinese Jump Rope (made mine with a bunch of rubber bands)…Ok, done..Wait..I really liked singing The Farmer in the Dell, but damnit, never got to be the cheese, standing alone….I remember one time when it was getting late, we started playing Hide and Go Seek, and had Monica be it. We told her to count to 100 so we could find a great place to hide, and then we all went home..Yeah, that was my idea.
We would play outside all day long. We had to. Our moms kicked us out of the house. If we stayed in the house, we had to fold towels and do chores. We had freedom outside. The only times we ran in the house was to pee and to get money for the ice cream man. When we were very little, the whole neighborhood was pissed off at my mom because she called the ice cream trucks company and told them that the truck came when “her children” were taking a nap. How dare that ice cream truck. So, they came after dinner until we got older and didn’t take naps. What kind of pull did that woman have to get them to adjust their arrival times..Wow, what a witch…Anyway, the ice cream man came later…sigh…not when you were playing and it was hot, but after dinner, which was not as gratifying. Thank goodness I was fairly liked by my friends, or they would be doing much worse things to me than trying to break my arm with Red Rover.
For any of you who have been living in a bubble and have never experienced the painful game of Red Rover, let me tell you the rules. You get two lines of kids that don’t have anything else to do but inflict pain on each other, make them hold hands and then you take turns calling someone over. “Red Rover, Red Rover, send Vickie over” That person runs like hell and tries to break all the bones in your arm as the person you are holding hands with has a death grip on your hand and won’t let go. And you know damn well they will try to run off-center and concentrate on Brittle Girl. Every time.
In the end, all games foster cooperation and teamwork, teach social skills and help develop coordination for those who walk funny.
But, call me crazy, but I think Red Rover was a game for losers…..Yeah, that’s right….. Future loser bullies. Because it was those loser bullies who were the first to also want to play Dodge Ball.
Don’t even get me started on that brain-damage-inducing game.
My dad was a realtor and was always off showing a house. I remember one time he put a picture of one of his houses for sale in the paper and received numerous calls, mainly because it was a photo of the house next door to the one he was supposed to sell. He just chuckled, but when the rightful owners called him and demanded an apology and another apology printed in the newspaper, my dad blamed it on his assistant and promised that he would promptly fire him right away because of his ineptness. Poor assistant. Poor, Poor INVISIBLE assistant. And that’s where I learned how to lie. I learned by example.
I told several pretty big lies over the course of my lifetime. The first one had to do with a visit to one of my dad’s client’s home. They were living in Florida over the winter, and my dad was checking on the home to make sure the pipes hadn’t burst. Mom and the three of us were sitting in the car with the car running, and Cheryl was getting fussy and I was getting fidgety. I’m not sure, but I think I was about 7 when this happened. So, anyway, I opened the door and said, “Oh, look, a fish pond.” So, without permission, the three of us got out of the car, and ran over the frozen ground to the fish pond. My mom didn’t care. She was smoking a cigarette and looking straight ahead, exhaling those rings of second hand smoke and wishing her last film wasn’t such a flop. (Oh wait, sorry. That was the real Joan Crawford..my bad.)
It was very, very cold outside, and some of us were bundled up pretty good. When we got to the fish pond, we could see that it was just a small brick-like pond, frozen over, and you could see the fish underneath. They looked like huge goldfish. Oh my God, how can they breathe? I must save them! I took the heal of my foot and tried to break the ice so they could come up for air. The ice was hard (duh) and seemed pretty thick. Hmmmm….must be thick enough to walk on. For a second I forgot about saving fish and entered “Adventure mode” and stepped on the ice. How cool is this. Took another step, standing there with my hands on my hips like I just discovered The South Pole…and the ice broke. And down through the ice I fell. Uh Oh…
The only thing I really remember is that it was so very cold. My coat was floating on top of the water all around me, because I was the only one who really wasn’t buttoned up. The water was child hip high. Well, at least I saved the fish from not being able to breathe. I may have been standing on one, but at that point in time, I only cared about myself. “MOM!!!” “David, get Mom.” My dad heard me screaming and got to me before my nicotine-stained mother. “Oh my God! Vickie! What happened?” And my reply shocked one family member. “David pushed me!”
Poor David. My dad scooped me up and ran with me to the car. They took off my wet clothes and it seemed like everyone gave me a piece of their clothing to put on for the drive home. (We were about an hour away from home.) I couldn’t look at David, but I he was crying before we even got back to the car. “Mom, I did NOT push her. She stepped on the ice.” Attila the Liar-”Mommmm, I did not. I was standing there and asked how the fish could live under ice, and David just pushed me!!” David cried all the way home. Mom smacked him several times on the butt as soon as we got out of the car and told him to go to his room. Cheryl didn’t say a word. She could have saved him, but she didn’t. David was a gentle, kind, kid. She had to share a room with me. I knew she wouldn’t squeal.
I knew I was going to get a whipping for stepping on the ice, so I lied. Anytime I thought that creepy hand was coming for me, I lied. I was a liar. My lies got grander as I got older. I told many lies in college, mainly to excuse my abscences. Like the one where I fell out of a second story window into the bushes. Or the one (I’m going to hell for this one) where my sister was hit by a school bus and I had to run home every time her conditioned changed. But there was one in particular, that stands out among the others.
I majored in Speech Communication and Drama. If you weren’t in a play, you had to help behind the scenes. The play we were putting on was called, “Our Town.” I was on the costumes crew and the old suits they used smelled like mothballs, and old man. I didn’t know what an old man was supposed to smell like, but this was not a good smell. I had to sew buttons on some of the old suits. That was my job for then. I didn’t like that job, but feared what they had in store for me next. So, I sewed buttons on the suits, cut them off, and re-sewed them. There were so many people doing soo many different things, they had no clue that I was just sitting on my butt, sewing over and over again.
In the middle of preparing for the next play, I was asked to go see Billy Joel in concert. The guy who asked me went to a neighboring college and was hot. Gus was his name. (Gus was later on named the Happiest Guy in the whole United States and was a guest on the Daily Show a couple of years ago. Happy guy that Gus.) Anyway, I told him I would go, despite the fact that the play’s opening night was the same night, and it was mandatory attendance.
So, I began my big lie. I was also in a class that the director taught, so I was around her a lot. She was an older woman, and all business. She lived, ate and breathed theater. The first day of my big lie, I was very quiet. (That in of itself, is weird.) She asked if I was ok. Yes, I was fine, just a little tired. Acted the same way at play practice that night. The next day at play practice I mentioned to a cast mate that I didn’t really feel like talking, because I was getting a nasty sore throat. (Made sure I made the comment close to the director.) By the end of the 2nd week, I was tired, my neck was on fire, I had a excruciating sore throat, but would never go home from class or play practice. “I’ll be ok. I need to keep sewing.” Said with a minor laugh. What a trooper, I was. I even had blisters in the back of my throat and swollen glands all around my neck. She was quite impressed with me. The night before the mandatory opening night, I told the director I was going to go home that weekend to get tested for mono. She sent me home that night. Boy, was I a great little actress. The worst part was that she felt my forehead, told me I was burning up and to go home. A fever? Wow, I was good!
Well, things do come back around to bite you in the butt. Gus took me to the Billy Joel Concert. On the way home, we stopped at the Holiday Inn for a drink. The place was packed and the disco music was blaring. Gus was gone for a while and when he came back with drinks, guess who was with him? No, silly, not the director.
It was Billy Joel.
He sat with Gus and I for almost an hour. At the Holiday Inn. In little Fairmont, West Virginia. It was great. He was talking about other singers he liked and disliked and it was amazing. And no one bothered him or asked for his autograph. I don’t think that anyone else in that bar went to the concert, because he was incognito and having a great time talking to Gus and I. What a night!
I went home and realized I couldn’t tell anyone. Not a soul. I mean, I did, but swore my roommates to secret. But, I realized that my lie kept me from telling my peers about my amazing experience. If the director found out, I would have been on her shit-list. I had 2 more years to go and she really liked me because of my strong work ethic. I couldn’t let her down!
But then again, if it weren’t for the lie, how would I have gotten to have drinks with Billy Joel? I would have been sitting behind the curtain, handing out smelly old man suits.
My lie was my first acting gig. I really did have a severe case of mono in high school and knew how to build on it. I did good. When I took Acting 101 the next semester, I received so-so remarks on my one-act performance. Our peers always commented on each other’s performance. One peer said to me, “I don’t feel that you put much into developing your character for this role.” The hell you say.
Actually, I thought, I research my roles in quite detail. It’s called method acting, weird-O. If they only knew that I pulled the wool over the whole cast and director, they would be asking me for acting advice. Well, I liked to think that. I was polite, but gave her one of my ornery, liar smiles.
My literary debut….. Amazon.com for $3.99. It’s sort of funny.
following me home
