The lovely & adorable Nandango at Bluesuit12 commented today regarding #15 on yesterday’s entry, which dealt with the first day my daughter rode a school bus.

Really, it was a Three Stooges scene & a Lucille Ball moment all rolled into one, crystallizing the realization that there are times when I’m truly unstable, not just funny unstable.

So I went back and searched and found the e-mail I sent out after my daughter’s first day of 3rd grade.  I have no idea where our birth certificates are, but I can find a random e-mail written two years ago.  My organizational abilities make it clear that primates hold some spot in my ancestral tree.  

The terror I felt that day was so out of proportion to reality that it amazes me I am able to leave the house so regularly & find my way back.

Here’s the e-mail:

Today was the first day of the new school.  I would score my daughter a ten and myself a one, if this were a competition.  Considering the looks on some of the other mother’s faces, it might very well be.

Joy was going to ride the bus, but my plan was to go to the school anyway and see her settled.  Was I doing this for her or for me? You decide. She was in a panic, telling me to hurry or she’d miss the bus.  We had already been up & preparing for two hours.  I was thinking, “Plenty of time.”

As it turned out, the bus came 7 minutes early.  It might as well have been 70 or 700.  Do they really expect us to stand on the side of the road for 15 minutes prior, just in case? 

I’ve never put a child on a bus before. I never rode one as a child. Her old school was not a busing district. It is/was a very big deal - to me. We might as well be living on Pluto out here in the vast wilderness of suburban NJ, waiting for the martian van to arrive.

How did any parent ever go along with this wacky idea of sending our children off with complete strangers? I’d be hard pressed to feel comfortable putting her in a car with a Supreme Court Justice or, God forbid, an extended family member; how do you trust a man with such an obvious lackluster drive to succeed, such poor career choices?

I really don’t trust anyone with my children. I compare them to “a million dollars.” If I wouldn’t entrust a stranger to hold my million, why would I trust them with my child, who’s obviously worth more? Our prior school superintendent, feeling utter frustration with my paranoia, once asked me if I’d have a problem with a police officer wanting to play catch with my kid after school. I said, “I’d want to know why he was so interested in my son.” Had he never heard of freaking N..A..M..B..L..A..?

Back to the story at hand . . .

The bus stop road is crazy busy, so I was trying to accommodate everyone else instead of paying attention to what I was supposed to be doing.  Traffic was backing up and we were running.  Minimally 14 cars were now stopped and waiting.  Some moms wave bye-bye from across the street; I barreled my way to the door of the bus.  My baby was loaded down with about 30 pounds of backpack.  Mind you, this is a child who barely lifts her own sandwich to her lips.

All I did was find out the driver’s name was Bob.  I did not read the side of the bus, I did not check the bus route number.  It never occurred to me.  I was busy doing the co-dependent shuffle, the smile & giggle.  I guess I thought we were at a cotillion and they were going to dance, proper manners, etc.  “Bob, this is Joy, Joy - Bob.  Oh, that’s her brother’s name!”  Duh.  Like that would help find her in an Amber Alert: “His name was Bob.  The bus was yellow.”

I jumped in my car to follow the bus.  I know this is weird, but I wanted to know her route of travel, where she was at all times, what roads she would traverse.  You just never know. 

I ended up in a trailer park following the bus I thought was mine, when suddenly I realized it had a female driver.  The woman was clearly not Bob.  Now I can’t find my Joy and there is a full half-hour before school starts, nearly enough to cross a state line.  Bob had Joy and I had no idea where they might be.  It never even occurred to me that I wouldn’t be able to follow the bus, I had no back-up plan.

Bob had given me the slip.

When the realization hit that I should have checked the bus name or route number but didn’t, my heart nearly exploded.  The guilt from my irresponsibility was overwhelming.  Even worse, there had only been one child sitting behind Bob when he picked up my daughter.  A prop, perhaps?

I became convinced that either 1.) I put her on the wrong bus, which could end up anywhere since there are 14+ schools in our town or 2.) I put her on a bus with a freak who knew it was the first day of school, who was driving around pretending to be a bus driver, a perverted freak.

Bob the Bus Driver or Bob The Kidnapper?  If you think I am joking, think again.

Immediately I was on the cell phone with the police (my husband).  He told me this had never happened, no molestors dressed as bus drivers, no reports of a stolen bus.  I was past the edge of hysteria, driving fast & reckless, trying to find the bus she was on.  All I could see were yellow buses everywhere, going in every direction, all sizes.  It was like a bad carnival ride.

With no other choice available, I drove to the school & parked.  In less than 10 minutes Bob pulled in.  I began to love Bob at that moment.  I could breathe again.  I began planning Bob’s Christmas gift.  I don’t know if she’ll ever get on the bus again, but for today he’s good.

The kids had to line up in the gym and find out who their teachers were — kind of cool.  Not cool was that she could tell I was losing it — big screw up.  So I left. I’d love to know how many women went home & told their husbands about the crazy looking chick with big wet bug eyes in the gymnasium.

It’s so completely weird being in a place where you know absolutely no one. I found it relatively terrifying.  They all had on big jewelry and heavy make-up.  Lots of women looking city, in the country, at New Elementary School.

I’m hoping that’s a good thing.  I’m thinking that women who can deal with the pain of high heels all day will have high expectations for their children’s education.

The girl was fine throughout.  I may never be the same.

Thank you for sharing my trauma with me.

The End

Today I got a comment from a young woman on 101 Things About Me.  She’s suffering through a break-up & thinking perhaps if she made a list of her own she’d start feeling more like a whole than a half.

It made me think of the following post, which I wrote six months ago about fear & survival.  So I tweaked it & brought it back up front.  I have more than 250 entries on the blog now and some of my favorite stuff gets lost in the mix.

I hope you enjoy it:

Tough Chick(en)

As kids we rarely cried in front of my mother.  Purposely providing a wolf with the scent of a bloody, wounded animal is a bad idea.  Never show weakness.  I could not imagine allowing myself to be a sensitive sort of person; it just wasn’t in my personality.  I was not, nor would I ever be, a pussy girl.

Then I became a mother.  Suffice it to say, maternal hormones are wicked.  I developed fears & emotions that never previously existed within me.  The vagina is connected to the tear ducts by a tiny invisible cord.  Nothing is ever the same.  My husband & daughter sometimes turn away from a movie just to watch me sob, as if I am a science experiment gone wrong.

Motherhood made me a weenie.  (That’s a weiner that falls off the stick and lands in the fire, laying there like a big wuss.  WAAAAAH!)

My anxiety level can reach astronomical proportions with very little prompting.  When my fears are in overdrive I begin crossing myself with abandon.  It’s a sign that I’m losing it.  You could mistake me for a traffic cop or lazy aerobics instructor.

I can so easily ruin the present as I grieve the past & fear the future.  It’s utterly ridiculous.

So, in an effort to remind myself that I am woman, hear me roar, I made a list of things from my own life that prove shit happens but you usually don’t die. 

Recipe for a Tough Chick(en):

1.) Obviously #1 has to be spending eighteen years in the same house with my mother, Mary Lou.  A women’s prison could be more pleasant & welcoming.  Definitely more hugs.  Some of the big girls might even tell me I’m pretty.

2.) I’ve experienced the death of loved ones more than once.  I don’t appreciate it at all when people leave the party early.  Actually, it pisses me off.  Car accident, cancer or heart disease, strap your balls on and don’t pussy out.  I can’t abide such a lazy attitude toward roughing it with the rest of us.

3.) I was knocked unconscious in a car that broad-sided a pizza truck because the driver was pulling a sweater over her head on the way to school.  I have been an incredibly competent backseat driver since this event.

4.) My partner’s AIDS diagnosis when I was 3 months pregnant.  When I fell in love with the bastard I had no idea he was shooting heroin.  I mean, who does shit like that?  I had the baby in one hospital while he was across town in another.  On the plus side, I was able to eat the entire congratulatory chocolate cake provided by the hospital.  Did I mention he emptied my bank account while I was in the hospital?  Sold my guitar & camera without asking?  It was all very romantic.  Young love.  I like old love a lot better.

5.) Vaginal childbirth of a 9 lb. boy and a 10 lb., 11 oz. girl.  Just one epidural.  (Who would ever refuse one a second time?)  The first labor lasted 37-1/2 hours & I had to have a blood transfusion because of severe tearing.  (You’re cringing!)  It was 1985 & we lived in San Francisco.  Clearly, I am the luckiest woman in the world.

6.) A flat tire on an overpass while driving through northern New Mexico in the middle of the night.  I was traveling cross-country with a 3-month old infant & my bitchy sister.  My car was fully packed to move from CA to NC.  It was, of course, a hatchback with the spare tire underneath all my belongings. 

I accidentally broke all the dishes on the side of the road, as snow hit me in the face.  A tow-truck driver took us to a closed gas station, where we slept in the car because the lug nuts were on so tight that a special & unavailable tool was needed to get the tire off.

7.) Gall bladder attacks, hideous agonizing pain and eventual removal.  I was pregnant when the attacks began, so had to wait until the birth for surgery, then run home to breastfeed.

8.) Moved to NJ with a one-year old, no apartment & no job.  Some of the cash in my pocket was from a bad check I passed at a Food Lion on the way out of Winston-Salem, plus a returned package of disposable diapers.  Found a job in NYC on third-shift.  Proved I could do it.

9.) Lost my purse and all the money I had in the world, $1,000, when I drove away from a car wash with the bag on top of the car.  I had just moved to New Jersey.  Someone turned it into the police station, money included.  I should never gamble in casinos because I use all my luck in real life.

10.) Physical attack by big dude with bad intentions.  Still wish I would have scratched his face so he could have been identified.

11.) Son’s trip to ER after he ran head first into a steel truck bumper while diving for a football pass in the street.  I was convinced that, under the bloody towel my neighbor had covered his face with, there would be a dangling eyeball.

12.) Walked into a convenience mart & looked right into the eyes of a particularly scary man I had recommended for a prison sentence while working in probation.  I think he nearly giggled at the fear in my face.  This guy was smart enough to wear a t-shirt to his sentencing that said “Lethal Injection.”  Entertaining fellow.

13.) Daughter’s trip to the ER and five day hospital stay at three months of age.  Scary, scary, scary.

14.) Found lice in child’s hair — twice.  Hideous.

15.) Placing daughter on school bus for the first time, then losing the bus when I tried to follow it.  I totally forgot to get the number of the bus, which held only one other child.  Panic & hysteria ensued when I imagined my little girl had been kidnapped by a man named “Bob” driving a fake yellow bus.  I called my husband, who tried not to laugh since he soon realized I was sobbing irrationally as I drove our car down a major highway.

16.) Knee surgery.  Not a big deal at all, except I can no longer squat so I have to bend over & stick my ass up in the air, no matter how stupid I look.

17.) Leech on my leg while swimming in Wisconsin when I was about 6 years old.  Grandpa burned it off.  I had lots of nightmares about leeches after that, along with the regular ones about serial killers.

18.) Visit to a proctologist, who slapped me on my ass as notification that it was time to stand up straight.  It was really a good experience.  Losing your last shred of dignity frees you to do anything at all.

19.) Thought I’d “air out” the guinea pig cage, then check e-mail.  The towel fell off the cage, the sun shifted & the pigs died of heat exhaustion.  Traumatic for all involved. 

20.) Chased a cat away from my car, it ran into the road & was promptly hit by a taxi.  When I called my girlfriend in a panic, after pulling down all the window shades in my home, she began to laugh & snort into the phone.

21.) Near drowning in riptide.  Ridiculously near.  No lifeguards.  Big pounding waves.  Really stupid.

22.) More than one loss in a board of education election.  I learned that public humiliation decreases with each ensuing incidence.  It actually becomes entertaining.  As a candidate your concerns suddenly carry weight.  I was glad to run when it kept the election from being uncontested.  Uncontested elections are anti-American.  Once, I actually said that I’d feel comfortable if I were elected because I came from a dysfunctional family, so I would fit in.  I did win once.  After two years I quit in utter frustration. 

23.) Airplane flight to Las Vegas with heavy turbulence & total humiliation of 12-year old son when his mother’s loud sobbing commenced.  His mother would be me.

24.) Accidentally hitting “Reply All” instead of “Forward” when I was a member of a homeowner’s association & wrote that one of the lead members was a “fucking asshole,” that the rest of the group were “stupid idiots.”  Getting thrown out of said association.

25.) Last but certainly not least, all of the situations where I nearly killed someone else’s child are recorded here: Unwarranted Trust.

So there you have it.  

Shit happens & then you have a story to tell. 

What’s yours?

After my husband read yesterday’s two-part blog entry he said, “I didn’t think we had such a bad weekend!”  (You can find those entries here: #1 and #2.)

So of course I said, “Did you really read it?  Cause that’s not even close to what I said!”

Then I showed him this picture as proof that the kid was looking pretty mean when we were on the beach yesterday, like she might kick my ass at any moment, perhaps after she finished her chocolate rice cake:

He said, “It looks like she’s giving you the thumbs up.”  And I said, “No, she’s thinking about gouging both my eyes out, the way they taught her in that karate class last year.”

He really wasn’t even interested in being helpful because he was way more concerned that we might be missing Password with Regis Philbin.

I have specific expecations when he reads this stuff: 1.) Laugh & 2.) Say you loved it.  How hard is that?

He was particularly happy that someone had suggested it might have been appropriate to leave me in the river on Saturday.  For some reason he finds all of your reader comments SO MUCH FUNNIER than the stuff I write.

In the mean time, our daughter had been downstairs for hours working on a craft project.  I had no idea what she was specifically creating. 

It’s impossible to spend as much time on the computer as I do & actually pay much attention to anything else that’s going on around me.

When she brought up the final result I was kind of dumb-founded.  I can read my husband’s mind, but I DEFINITELY cannot read hers.

Would you like to see it?

Go ahead.  Take a peek:

One of us may be officially diagnosed as schizophrenic before she’s a full-fledged teenager.

At this point I think it’s possible she’s purposely trying to confuse me, then record my reactions with a hidden camera & put it all on Youtube.

Before reading this entry, you may wish to check out the first of the series, “Making the Girl Happy - Part One.”

Quick synopsis: Yesterday we hoped to make our daughter happy with a little 11-hour excursion, a tubing trip down the Delaware River.  We ignored the fact that last summer she cried a lot while having SO MUCH FUN & insisted she never wanted to go again.  In my imagination, it continues to seem like such a great idea!  Tubing!  Yeah!  She’ll love it!

So my husband, in a mad moment, told her she could have a friend over to swim in the pool today, Sunday, a day wherein all other children in New Jersey have previously planned engagements or are otherwise occupied with “family time.” 

Women here plan their children’s schedules years in advance to prevent the possibility that a youngster might spend four hours sad & alone.  I know this; my husband does not.  He has never planned a social engagement in the 15 years I’ve had the joy of knowing his acquaintance.  It’s amazing he managed to call me for our first date.  I knew he’d never work up the nerve to do it twice, which is why I let him move in the same night.

Sunday Arrives:

Our daughter opened her pretty eyes & reached for the phone, quickly dialing.  Her hopeful anticipation broke my hardened & negative heart.  She called two friends, neither of whom were available.  One of them I heard act like a complete bitch over speakerphone.  There is no bigger snot than a 10-year old with a full dance card.  

I immediately became consumed by the knowledge that my poor planning skills & social retardation are ruining my child’s life.  She needs more friends, she needs a better mother.  

Forget about the 50 playdates she’s had where she’s sick of the other kid after five minutes.  Ignore that she didn’t like any of the children in her third grade class last year, except the boy with two mommies who she tried to protect from bullies.  Never mind that she NEVER plays with children her own age when we attend functions where there are a plethora of available pre-teen chicks.  My frantic mood sent me into genius mode & I left reality in the dust.  My daughter’s happiness was at stake!

I knew the first child she’d spoken with was going to the beach.  Yes, that would be the Atlantic Ocean, a beach other children would give their left pinky toe to visit any day of the week.  So I yelled, “You wanna go to the beach?”  She said “Yes.”  I checked the tidal chart & screeched, “We’re leaving in 5 minutes.”  I threw a bag together as if our lives depended on finding the perfect playmate.

Did I mention that I hadn’t even read the Sunday paper yet?!  Heresy!

My husband, the hero, drove us to the beach & promised to return in a scant two hours.  My gift to him was not even asking that he spend time on a crowded beach with thousands of other people grasping for the perfect Sunday activity, fighting for towel space & parking.  Two hours would be perfection.

I hefted a chair & 20-pound bag out of the trunk, pointed the child in the direction of the sand with her boogie board, and we trekked onto the shore.  As usual, I felt the weight of a hippo the moment my feet sunk in the sand.  It didn’t matter.  Who could be unhappy at seaside?

We were on the beach less than five minutes when I spotted her little girlfriend, whose mother is one of my favorite people.  It was a joy to behold.  We again traveled through the sand like camels, relieved to sit with friends amidst the crowded chaos.  The girls headed for the water.  I sighed with relief, assured of success, humbly putting the “Mother of the Year” sash across my shoulder. 

After 5 minutes they got out of the water.  My daughter attempted goggles.  She took off goggles.  She attempted her boogie board in the relatively large waves; she brought her boogie board back.  She tried both boogie board AND goggles, then boogie board, goggles AND hat.  She stood in the water, she returned.

The other girl said, “Can we go home now?” to her mother.  I could hear seagulls overhead, fishermen at sea & mermaids all laughing in unison, pointing at me & my silly quashed dream. 

My daughter had a look on her face only appropriate for a hot day of shoveling horse manure in a warm barn.  If I read her mind accurately she was thinking, “I hate girls.  I hate this girl in particular.  Why don’t I know anyone who likes to have fun?  Can I go push her head under the waves & hold it until bubbles stop rising to the surface?”

I said, “How about if I go out with you?”  God only knows what had gotten into me.

Understand, most mothers I know don’t ever go in the water.  I was about to break an unspoken union rule.  Offering to actually play with children in either the ocean or a pool is the equivalent of asking a husband, “Can I get you a beer & blow you?”  

I just didn’t care.  I would face the big, cold waves with determination.  Both girls looked at me and said, “No.  The waves are too big.” 

I went in the water anyway, as my daughter begged me to return to shore.  My tendency to find rip tides & float away has given her a small case of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).  I believe her quote was, “I don’t trust teen-aged lifeguards.”   One single incident of watching your mommy helplessly float out to sea can evidently leave a black mark on your soul.

I went back & sat in my chair.  I was really quite happy to be at the beach even though the girl didn’t seem to be.  I got that impression when she kept saying, “Will you call Daddy to come and get us?”  Instead I decided I would be a role model & set an example of happiness.  Surely it would all work out. 

When it began to sprinkle I sat & thought “A little rain isn’t a big deal!  We’re here to get wet, anyway!”  I was really enjoying the sound of the waves, the crazy summer people in a variety of bathing gear: fat people in bikinis, a skinny old man with a beard only meant for a shack in the Ozarks, skimboarders trying to break their necks by doing full flips near the shore.

I convinced the girls to walk to the rocks.  We looked at the rocks.  We walked back.  I said, “Sometimes you have to make your own fun!”

I’d just settled back into my chair when we heard the loud crash of thunder . . .

And finally she smiled, as we got in her father’s car & left the beach.

Perhaps I should have just beaten my head with a hammer this weekend, stepped on a nail or tried using a power saw while sitting on a tree limb.  My daughter would have definitely enjoyed a dramatic call to EMS.  Anything but normal kid stuff, even great kid stuff. 

As I think about it, I do remember she loved watching me have blood drawn at my last physical, sticking her nose in the midst of it all.  She giggled & got closer, then looked hopeful when I suggested the nurse let her stick me.  Her eyes got big from the thrill of the idea.  No question, she’d have done it & been happy.

In normal daily life, “happy” is not something I can just make happen.  I know that after this weekend.  It’s a black and white fact.

Saturday we went tubing down the Delaware River.  I doubt that my husband & I would do this on our own, with no child, although maybe we should.  Yes, definitely we should.  We do very little without child & that’s probably stupid.  Yes, it’s definitely stupid.

We’d originally planned the trip with our bowling partners, four other adults total.  Our daughter would have been the only kid.  However, as a parent, the pressure is intense to provide playmates for every single event in their young lives.  I have no idea why, that’s just the way it is.  When parents don’t follow the rules they are deemed “bad,” which makes them feel “guilty.” 

So I begged, pleaded & coerced my fantastic friend Aimee to bring her husband and four children along, ranging in age from 4 to 14.  She gave in at the very last minute to this questionable plan.  “Let’s see, drive an hour & a half both ways, take my beloved children out onto a river & see how it goes?  Sure!”

God, I love that about her.  I can only pray for more crazy friends, now that Aimee is getting to know me better.  She will not fall for this Lucy & Ethel shit forever.

So in the end we had 8 adults and 5 children, 10 tubes & a single yellow inflatable boat, floating along when the rain began, followed by thunder & occasional lightning strikes.

It wasn’t really as bad as it sounds.  But then I wasn’t floating near the 4-year old who, I was told, cried for the last 35 minutes of the trip.  The four-hour tour took more like six hours due to the strong head winds going in the opposite direction of the current.  Who knew the tiny little Haitian boy, used to 120 degree summer days, would get cold when the sun went behind the clouds, the wind picked up & rain soaked his adorably fat-free body?  The freaking weather forecast called for a 100 degree day.

While the sun was still shining we stopped at the famous yet over-priced refreshment shack that rests in the middle of the river.  We paid four dollars each for hot dogs & watched the 5-year old quickly drop his into the water.  I think it made it worse that he could still see it down there in the rocks, covered with ketchup, yummy & watery all at the same time.  He’d become so engrossed in fighting for his exact share of Skittles that he could not possibly focus on hot dog safety.  

I think it was at that very moment that Aimee said, “Yep, it doesn’t get any better than this.  These are the good times!”  And we laughed hysterically.

I decided to be awkwardly adventurous and lay on top of my inner tube for the second half of the trip, then couldn’t get back in when we reached the small rapids section of the river, the current rushing from behind & rocks up ahead.  I got separated from everyone.  My daughter was composing a eulogy, convinced her fears had finally come to fruition.  I was a little concerned myself, a middle-aged woman without enough muscle tone left to heft her fat ass back into the tube.  What an f’ing tragedy!  I obviously survived.

You might ask, why was our daughter not occupied with fun & pranks, playing with the other children, spraying one another with cloudy river water?  She was free to worry about me because she ignored the other children completely.  She attached her tube to her father’s & never ventured a foot from his side.  It would have been impossible for her to successfully torture him AND spend time with anyone else. 

She so completely prefers the drama queen role to that of a carefree young girl.  Who would control our lives if she were not here to do it for us?  Who would yell “Get a room” every time my husband kisses me, if she were otherwise occupied?

It wasn’t enough that we devoted 11 hours (9 a.m. to 8 p.m.) to ramming “fun” down her throat.  We pulled in the driveway and, miraculously revived, she wanted to go in the pool as darkness fell.  We were not inclined to supervise the pool, so much as collapse into recliners inside the air-conditioned house.  So in a fit of insanity my husband told her, “You can invite someone over tomorrow for swimming.” 

How he thought I could pull a friendly & available child out of my ass on a summer Sunday, I have no idea.  Obviously that would be my problem, not his, since I am this family’s social director.

Would Sunday bring about happiness?  Find the answer in “Making the Girl Happy - Part Two.”

We went to Atlantic City this week for some kind of convention or another.  I had no idea there were hot bosomy chicks dressed in skimpy clothing on the product display floor, obviously lying in wait for my honey.  You can certainly bet he wasn’t the one who told me about them.  Nope, it was my partner in crime, the 10-year old.  She had gone along to scope out any wayward 3-year old fossilized Tootsie Rolls that managed to escape her rigid grip during last year’s session.

I was completely comfortable with the situation.  If any of those harlots had come near my sweetie she would have beaten them with a Blow Pop & tied their thongs in a twist.  Although Daddy wears the holster, she’s more aggressive & protective of him than a pit bull posse.  You do not want to find yourself facing down that icy stare or she may immediately insist you drive her to the nearest Taco Bell.

She’s also a super sleuth, just like I was at this age.  Harriet the Spy was my mentor as I slunk through the grocery store writing down what various people put in their carts:  “1.) Woman with hairy mole on left cheek – Two Gallons Butter Pecan Ice Cream.  2.) Old man in black jacket shedding dandruff – Banquet Salisbury Steak TV Dinners.” 

But times have changed.  My little girl’s surreptitiously written list is more likely to say things like, “Cute ashe blonde dye job in beautiful red slingback shoes, left breast so-o-o-o-o much bigger than her right.  Obvious plastic surgery victim, possibly the nose, too.  I want those high heels!!!”

It’s a strange stage she’s in, alternating between running for candy jars like a 6-year old boy and standing sedate & still where she’s likely mistaken for 16.  She’s already 5′5″.

They give away other free stuff at the convention, too: squeeze toys, rulers, pens & oddities, anything to fill a bag.  Just the day before my husband had come back to the hotel room and told us he had a special bed bug light that could check the sheets & confirm their cleanliness.  I ignored him as he looked around the bedding, shining the light in corners and under sheets, shamelessly mocking my fears.  The girl child seemed impressed & looked like she was believing his line of nonsense.  I refused to give him the reaction he was looking for.

24 hours later we met back for dinner, after spending the day apart.  My focus was on other diners at the buffet, many driving scooters.  People were clawing their way to the crumb-filled pan labeled “Fried Chicken.”  I was only barely paying attention to the conversation at our table.  Suddenly my daughter pulled an item out of her bag and said, ”Look, Mom, I got a bed bug light, too!”  With no hesitation whatsoever, my ears perked up & I fell for it: 

“(Gasp) You mean it’s really . . .”

They both began to laugh like jackals.  She’d set me up perfectly for the fall.  My mouth was hanging open like a Shih-Tzu expecting an atomic dog biscuit, so hopeful was my dream of total & complete bed bug eradication.  It was all I could do to fork down a piece of sugar-free cheesecake just to shore up my dashed serotonin level. 

It’s not only bed bugs I’m a freak over. 

Coughing sends shivers down my spine.  I swear I walked around a children’s clothing store yesterday as a man followed me while leaving a lung in the aisle; he was insistent that his germs cover me in a full-fledged scatter pattern.  If one of the babies there had been mine you’d have believed it was O.J. Simpson running through an airport, dressed as a white woman clutching an infant to his chest, clearing clothing racks in a single leap.  Incredibly, the idiotic mothers continued to shop as they offered their children to the gods of tuberculosis & meningitis.

So I left the store alone.  I held my breath until I was completely out the door.  Before breathing again I followed my usual pattern: snort harshly & blow air out as forcefully as possible, making sure I’ve knocked away any potentially deadly spittle that might be sitting near my mouth or nose, fluttering my lips in the defensive motorboat position.

I also make every effort possible to avoid touching door knobs. 

I’ve come to hate the handles on grocery carts. 

Movie theater seats hardly allow me to relax to watch a film, they’re usually so riddled with stains.  You’d think it was a vasectomy re-attachment clinic.

It’s gotten to the point where my daughter and I will argue over who must sit in a restaurant booth with her back to other diners; neither of us wants our hair near that of a stranger.

My little girl is growing up, learning to dance to the refrain of the OCD shuffle.

I’ve spoken with my brother twice in the last month & each time he had an angry story to tell about our mother.  I feel such joy when he is annoyed with her, like a kid at the circus watching the high trapeze act.  Yes!  Yes!  She’s pissed off someone other than me!

He has always been her favorite, and I understand it.  He would have been my favorite, too.  The mother/son thing is not describable in words.  Plus, he was just so entertaining as a kid.  Whether it was throwing kittens out the door, after finding them newly born in the washing machine, or flushing Avon perfume containers down the toilet, he was a fun brother.

His crowning achievement was climbing onto a chair to get to the top of the refrigerator, where Mom had hidden her most prized possession, a ceramic chicken.  Why she loved this thing, I have no idea.  But I know she really did because she cried so loud, for so long, when he threw it to the floor, breaking it into 100 pieces.  He couldn’t have been older than two at the time.

I also think he was incredibly cute.  I’ll never understand when people say their kids are chunky or hefty, because I compare them to my own family & it’s humorous.  I remember traveling with my mother & grandmother to numerous endocrinologists, looking for an explanation for my brother’s size.  I have such a soft spot for beefy guys because they remind me of Jim.

When I see hefty baby boys in the grocery store it seriously crosses my mind to grab them and run.  I actually asked my brother’s girlfriend just to have one single child with him, so I could have it.  She has three children & doesn’t want any more.  I seriously hate the fact that he’s clearly never going to repeat his individual genetic masterpiece.  Sigh.  He’s one of a kind.

I’m not saying he’s not annoying, because he can totally suck.  Like the fact that he convinced me to give him my share of our family home, a check for $10,000 that I signed over 20 years ago, with a promise to pay me back when my son began college.  He has no intention of paying me even a dime.  Do I choose the money over my brother?  No. 

My hero complex kicked in, causing that situation to occur in the first place.  I went home for his wedding & my mom was being a ridiculous bitch at the time.  She taught this kid that the only things that matter are money & material possessions, then arrived at his wedding with no gift.  She actually said, “I’m making tuna salad, so that’s my contribution,” after saying something about things being tight financially that month.  He was mortified in front of his bride-to-be.  So, although I was living hand to mouth as a single parent, I gave him $10,000 to make up for the tuna.

My family is such a pack of wolves that, rather than support me in ever receiving financial reimbursement, the train of thought runs more to: “Well, what’d you give it to him for?”  Love & kindness are not valued highly on our family crest.

So my brother still works for my mother, he’s a truck driver & she owns the company plus dispatches the trucks.  In other words, she is the puppet master.  He told her he wanted to be home for Father’s Day.  My mother said, “Well, I don’t celebrate Father’s Day any more, not since Dad died.”

According to my brother, it’s a good thing he wasn’t in the office with her when she said this because he believes he would have finally done it, he would have put his hands around her throat and killed her.  I believe him.  I would have been so annoyed if I missed that scene! 

See, our father died when he was six years old, at the ripe old age of 33, 38 years ago.  My mother’s father died at age 87, three years ago, when she was 64.  Rarely did my mother ever speak of my father again; however, she laments the death of her own father & her second husband every chance she gets.  She wears so many memorial diamonds on her fingers that I once told her that her hands remind me of a cemetery.

Even though I’ve known she’s nuts since I was about 7 years old, it’s still incredible to me that she is so self-obsessed, so self-centered, that she does not even have a thimble full of empathy for her favorite person in the world, her son, my brother.  Clearly, she’s certifiable.  We just don’t have a diagnosis.

The second story makes me laugh.  As background, you should know that although I love my brother, he is one of the laziest people ever created by God.  If you catch him doing hard work, the conversation will not be enjoyable.  If you catch him without a beer in his hand, the conversation will be short.

Mom called Jim & asked him what he was doing.  He said, “I’m mowing the lawn.”  Her reply, in a tone similar to someone who’s lost their best friend in the world, was: “You’re lucky you’ve got a lawnmower.  Mine is broken.”  This is my mother, condensed. 

She may have recently built herself a $30,000 glass room to use as office space, she might be driving a Chrysler 300, running a million dollar business, but she’s found a way to believe she is the most down-trodden individual on the face of the earth.  Mind you, she is not the one that would be pushing the lawnmower, even if it weren’t broken.

Jim hung up on her.

When I am able to distance myself I find my family so incredibly entertaining.

Matt from Licensed to Blog tagged me in this very funny entry. 

It’s amazing how his sense of humor has maintained throughout the whole bloated leg situation and the fact that his company forgot to tell him he was fired until he showed up at the drug store & his insurance had been canceled.  You can read about that here.

I am honored & touched that Matt thought of me because, really, the only thing I’ve ever wanted out of life is popularity.  There is very little depth to my personality.  I also like making people laugh, no matter what degree of personal degradation necessary.  It’s a separate issue, yet forever linked.

I have to add that I am so impressed with my new ability to write links.  It only took 17 months . . .

Anyway, this is the deal with the meme, or at least this is what I think I read:

“Blah, blah, blah . . . blah, blah, blah . . . blah, blah, blah . . . Write your own six-word memoir.”

So I came up with something.  After hours of deepest thought, personal insight, and intense psychoanalyzation into the dank yet sunny core of my soul, I came up with something profound.  Rather incredibly, just as I was putting it on the page, the electricity blew.  I think that means I really hit it on the head.

Here it is:

“I touch myself . . . my finger stinks.”

This could be my favorite six word combination ever.  It’s raw, brutally honest & heart felt.

Rather than pick & choose, I’m tossing it out there to every single person on the blog roll. 

What will you come up with?

Thanks, Matt!

Several years ago I picked up the newspaper and discovered that a couple I knew were killed on impact in a car accident.  Their daughter was the mother of a child in my son’s class, the boys even had the same name.  We had some of the same friends, had attended some of the same parties.  These were exceptional grandparents, like movie characters.  They had moved out of their large home, given it to their daughter, and lived in a smaller back house on the same property.  The scene went from technicolor love story to black & white horror flick in an instant.

The man driving the car, the grandfather, was a retired police officer.  Nothing about this guy would indicate he could ever do anything that would cause his car to plow off the road, hit a tree, and kill himself & two passengers.  To the contrary, you’d actually consider paying him to drive your family after a wild night out, insuring everyone would get home safely.  He reminded me of my own husband in that way, which is probably why the incident blared so loudly in my brain.  Like, isn’t there something solid you can trust completely?  Evidently not. 

It made me a little crazier than usual, for a while.  I had just had a baby, I was hormonal, and I began feeling a sense of panic in the car, especially on long trips.  As we flew down a highway I would be consumed with the belief we were all going to die, especially fearful for my infant daughter.  I’m better now, ten years later, although my husband still would occasionally like to muzzle me in the trunk.

A headline this past Saturday took longer to register as a familiar name.  At first I didn’t realize what I was looking at or who it involved.  As my confusion cleared the story just got worse:

Years ago I became great friends with a woman who had a handicapped daughter.  She was incredibly frustrated with the school system until her child was assigned a wonderful teacher who made everything better than okay.  Jackie was an answer to her prayers.

Not only was she a great teacher, she was young, pretty & well liked by everyone.  She had a little boy & was pregnant a second time.  Parents felt fortunate their children were in her class, numerous students wished they could go home with her at the end of the day.  It’s not easy to please everyone, but she did.

Fifteen years later I asked her to be our realtor.  She was the first person I thought of, professional & energetic enough to do not one but two jobs incredibly well.  I had complete faith in her, which says more than I can explain in words.  

Saturday morning the headline was about an 18-year old boy; it took a few minutes to realize that the person I was reading about was her oldest son.  He was hit by a passenger train.  It occurred only two months after another boy purposely did the same thing at the same intersection.  The difference for me, of course, is I didn’t know the other boy’s mother.  I guess we must subconsciously imagine some kind of errant parenting, a fatal flaw, allows such a thing to happen.  It helps us believe it could never happen to us.

In this instance it’s impossible to come up with a defense.  I trust very few people with my children, but this woman I would, in some ways more than I do myself.  If the world were progressing in its’ proper course, this particular incident could not have happened, not to her, not ever. 

How can anything matter when this is what’s potentially hiding behind tomorrow’s promise, even for those who behave & act & live with perfect grace?

I begin thinking crazy thoughts that make it even more difficult to accomplish normal daily tasks:

How can we force our children, let alone ourselves, to take out the garbage or even go to bed at night?  Why do we care if they wear the same stained shirt 300 days in a row, refuse to wash their hair for a month or eat fudge sauce & Dorito’s for breakfast? 

It makes me think it makes more sense to: A) buy my son a red Ferrari on a credit card or B) surprise him at midnight with a cute little hooker or C) buy him a new computer when he suggests a career at on-line poker.

Perhaps I should give my daughter a $1,000 gift card to Build-A-Bear even though her birthday is three months away and I don’t have a job.  Why not take her to the grocery store & let her fill the cart with cookies & chips & ice cream & comics, maybe even let her drive home?

I must occasionally bite my tongue so I don’t begin to cry.  This is not my tragedy, but it doesn’t seem to matter.  I can’t seem to get it out of my head.  I imagine the permanent impact upon their lives, one son missing from the party at every single future event.  I obsess.  And then I obsess that it’s wrong to obsess because this isn’t about me.  I know one day I will forget to think about it, but her son will still be gone.  She won’t forget.

My husband tells me that our old neighbors are building a house on a mountain, the complications involved; I wonder how anyone could be motivated enough to do such a thing.  I begin thinking perhaps I should be on anti-depressants. 

I then argue with myself, saying anyone with decent intelligence & knowledge is depressed for good reason.

I win the argument, but it doesn’t make me feel any better.

I consider giving up my newspaper subscription.  Bad news interferes with my ability to blog. 

And once again I am amazed at how I am able to eventually make everything all about me.  It’s so much easier than focusing on tragedy on the front page.

At age 19 I moved to the University of Oregon during my sophomore year of college.  When I began school I had no intention of ever leaving the state of Illinois, but things changed. 

My high school boyfriend, a year younger than me, decided he wanted to experience other chicks.  I was relatively devastated.  He was a good guy, I had finally decided to be a good girl, but suddenly my future dreams of serving Jeff mashed potatoes for the rest of my life were over.

My friend Frank, who I met at the sub shoppe where I was employed, convinced me there was a big wide world out there and I ought to check it out.  So that’s how I ended up in the student exchange office.

During the interview process they showed me all the different places I could go.  I had only one question, “Where are there the most hippies?”  I think I’d always been disappointed that I was born in 1960 instead of a decade earlier.  Peace rallies, pot, free love & hippie chicks seemed too cool for words.  It didn’t matter that the war was over.  Actually, I think we did invade Grenada for 24 hours that year.

Strangely enough, I had narrowed my choices down to Oregon and New Jersey; they told me Oregon was definitely the hippie spot.  I find it fascinating that the other place I considered going all those years ago is the same place my son eventually graduated from.  Kismet. 

So my mother drove me to Oregon.  All I remember about that trip is she drove so fast on the perilous mountain roads that I sat in the passenger seat with tears rolling down my cheeks from time to time, fearing for my life.  She laughed uproariously.  Obviously, I was not a thrill-seeker.

I remember dropping her off at the airport and driving back to the dorms, pulling over every few blocks to check the street names, confirming them on the map.  I really couldn’t believe I had done this to myself, gone somewhere I knew no one.  I am not outgoing with strangers.  What was I thinking?

The other students were not hippies, they were kids my age.  They weren’t particularly friendly.  Neither was I.

The best part of my year there was volunteering in a juvenile detention center for course credit.  I began a relationship with another staff member, Mark, 20 years older than me, and a resident, also Mark, 2 years younger.  I smoked a lot of pot in the dorm bathroom.  And I dropped or failed most of my classes, except one.

The two-credit course I passed was “Intro to Skydiving.”  I took the class in the hope that I would meet boys.  The instructor informed us on the very first day that jumping was not required; I had no intention of doing so.  Practicing “drop & roll” was plenty exciting from a 3-foot platform. 

Nothing worked out as planned.  

I went out to the airfield one Saturday to watch other students jump.  It seemed like the perfect way to spend an afternoon.  I still hadn’t met any normal college guys.  It seemed like a great opportunity to watch some pretty parachutes fall from the sky and proactively get to know other students in the class.

The instant I stepped into that airplane hangar the instructor set his sights on me and said, “Great!  We’ll get you a jumpsuit!”  I stuttered, muttered and declined.  He apparently didn’t hear me.  He didn’t care what my intentions were.  He never considered the possibility that I wouldn’t jump; I was such a mush ball that I couldn’t even stand up for myself when it came to falling from the sky.

He asked me, “How much do you weigh?” and then said ”And don’t lie to me because it really matters in this situation.”  How did he know me so well? 

Amidst a quick flurry of activity, I suddenly found myself with six other people in a tiny plane, sitting on one another’s legs with parachutes strapped to our backs.  I kept saying no, probably with my usual nervous laughter, and they just ignored me.  

Once inside the plane, we were told that if we refused to jump it would screw everyone else up, no one would be allowed to jump out of order.  In other words, if I didn’t go then the guys behind me couldn’t go either. 

Even today, I don’t like to make people mad at me.  Twenty-nine years ago I was willing to jump out of a plane, rather than annoy complete & total strangers.  I consider it my penultimate moment of people-pleasing, codependent insanity.

The analytical & reasonable part of my brain still wasn’t planning on jumping.  I hadn’t even really been paying attention in class when they gave out instructions. 

The guy I was sitting on, his legs were trembling so much I could feel it over the engine’s vibrations.  The plane was climbing higher and higher, buildings looked like Lego’s.

The pilot threw some kind of wind indicator out the open door of the plane and told us it was “time.”  The first student had to go stand outside, while hanging onto the frame of the plane.  The instructor said, “Jump when I hit the back of your legs!”  And he did it.

Then it was my turn.  I was holding the frame of an airplane in my hands, standing outside of the plane, thousands of feet above the ground with the wind rushing past my face.  My brain had completely stopped functioning.  It was freaking insane.  I jumped.

We were attached to automatic rip cords, so there was no concern about remembering to pull anything.  What I was desperately trying to do was “fall like a leaf.”  If you tuck into a ball or do anything else wrong, you can start falling like a rock, which is bad.  The idea is to extend your arms and legs as wide as possible, making your body as big as possible, creating resistance against gravity, falling with your face looking directly at the ground.  You don’t want to get tangled in the parachute when it deploys.

I guess I did okay.  At least I didn’t pee or anything.  It was a bit of a rush and terrifying.

When the chute opened I was suddenly whipped upward at a fast rate of speed and everything changed.  Instead of falling, I was floating.  No more fear.  Floating was great, it just didn’t last long enough. 

The only problem was I didn’t know how to steer the parachute.  I never learned that technical detail.  So instead of falling on my mark, I fell into a mud field.  I got stuck in a mud field.  People had to come and pull me out, I was so stuck.  My feet were so deep in the mud that the borrowed boots I was wearing were ruined, filled to the brim.

In other words, even though I jumped from a plane just so no one would be annoyed with me, I still managed to piss off my girlfriend Joyce whose boots were now unwearable.  It’s completely impossible to please everyone.

The whole event was quite a memorable experience, falling from the sky with the mountains of Oregon in the background.  I received a “Pass” for the class, since it was a “Pass/Fail” kind of deal, no grades.  I never did meet any guys.

I only learned to assert myself & speak up after I had children, several years later.  Some lessons take longer than others.

I don’t anticipate jumping from any more airplanes during this lifetime.