Halloween Candy Preference

 My custom fit Halloween mask made by my father using liquid latex, paint, T.P., and paper towels.  Circa 1990.

One year for Halloween my uncle bought really small sized treat bags, blew air into them, tied them with a twistie and passed them out to kids for Halloween.  It was really sad because the bags looked like they were full of candy and the kids thought they'd hit the jackpot.

I love my uncle.

When I was a kid, my parents would take my siblings and me to the ultra-rich neighborhood in Lake Oswego, Oregon to do our trick or treating.  One house used to had out cans of soda, and another had the full size candy-bars.  And those people had no yards to speak of, so the houses were really close together and we could tackle a hundred houses in about an hour.  Suh-weet.

The day after Halloween my sisters and I always used to bring TV trays into our bedroom and each of us would display our spoils like individual sweet shops.  Sometimes we had to double-deck the trays because we'd gotten so much loot the night before.  Once our candy was all displayed, we would take a few of our goods around to each other's stores and barter.  "I'll give you a Blo-Pop for that 3 Musketeers," and so forth.  I suspect our littlest sister got a raw deal being so young and gullible.  More often than not, we tricked her into trading us her Milky Way for three Smarties.  We just had to tell her that three was more than one, and she was getting a bargain.

Sometimes Dad got in on the trading.  None of us liked Mounds or Almond Joy, so if we had any of those we could take them to Dad in exchange for a Reses Peanut Butter Cup.  

This Halloween when deciding what kind of candy to hand out, I opted for things that I like rather than going for what's popular with the kids or what was cheapest.  Because we don't get many trick-or-treaters, and I'm going to have leftovers.  I want them to be good.  

(In case you were wondering, good = Baby Ruth, Butterfinger, and Wonka Fun Dip.  Yes, Fun Dip.  And those are all hidden at the bottom of the candy bowl to be used only if everything else is used up first.)

What goods are you passing out this year?

Summer Days Long Gone

Summer days were always scorching in Aurora, Colorado. We would ride our bikes through our desert-like neighborhood streets while the heat rose up from the black asphalt in waves that seemed to distort our vision. 

The end of our street gave home to enormous piles of dirt which marked the border of civilization.  We were sure we could see Kansas in the distance.  We explored those dirt mountains, designed trash museums in them, and escaped there whenever our imaginations called. 

Our backyard was a jungle of weeds, as grass had presumably never been planted. As those weeds grew up over our heads Dad mowed trails through them so that we could play an exciting, blind game of fox and goose, or hide-and-seek, or anything at all, really. The summer sun blazed down on us as a spectator to our many childhood adventures.

Riding a bicycle for the first time in the driveway of that Colorado home was like being given wings. I could fly through the air with speed and freedom; down the hills with wind rushing past my ears and stinging my eyes until tears leaked from them. It didn't matter that I fell from the seat of my bike daily by continually pushing it to it's limits. My bike was a good friend that always scooped me back up and took off again - ready for me to pedal too fast or corner too quickly, always ignoring the scars that I gave it.

Summer's highlight was playing outside and at the close of a long afternoon, hearing the soft, distant tinkling of the ice cream truck. Excitement doubled with each pound of our feet on the pavement as we raced into the house to collect money from Mom or Dad, and then scurried back outside to listen to the truck draw nearer. A snow cone with rainbow stripes of cherry, grape and lime. Cool and sweet on our tongues, and sometimes, when we ate with undue enthusiasm, a brain freeze to remind us to slow down and enjoy it. At the bottom of the paper cone, all covered in melted juices lay a gumball. A prize for each moment of blistering play outside.

The world was bigger in the days of my Colorado summers. Horizons were further in the distance and backyards were larger than life. Bicycles, mounds of dirt, and snow cones were all that I needed to feel excitement and joy. As two of my sons raced to catch the ice cream truck today with dollar bills clenched like treasure in their fists, I hoped that their worlds were filled with magic and endless possibility, as was mine in Colorado.

*Originally posted July 2009.

The Curse of the Puberty Fairy

I was looking down at my legs during my last class of the day. It was pre-algebra, and Mrs. WhateverHerNameWas was spieling about positive and negative numbers. We had been given an assignment of some sort and were sitting in groups on the floor.

That's why I was staring at my legs. First staring, and then trying to hide them somehow underneath my body. Hiding legs as long as mine wasn't easy, even back then, when I was twelve.

You see, that day was the first time that I had noticed that all the girls sitting in my group on the floor had already begun shaving their legs, and mine were still covered with that soft, barely noticeable hair that has never known the harshness of a razor.

On that day, when I came to the knowledge that I was lagging behind my friends in the matters of womanly hygiene, those little hairs were as obvious to me as flecks of pepper in a salt shaker. I was mortified to find that I was still a little kid when my peers had made the transformation into seeming womanhood. After all, one who could wield a razor was surely mastering other feats such as proclaiming their need for Midol or dying their hair!

Panic ensued, and I began to wonder if I was the only one in my 7th grade class who had not started her period and were there other shaving areas I had been innocently neglecting? How did one go about shaving legs, anyhow? Seemed like there was something about using soap or not using soap...

I determined that I would just have to figure it out myself; there was no way I was going to ask my mother or my sister, because surely they would laugh at my inexperience and wonder what had taken me so long to enter the world of puberty management. How could I be so stupid as to think that strapping on my first training bra was the only hurdle to be jumped in the road to maturity? (Which may as well have been yesterday, for all the progress I've made in that area.)

Growing up always came slowly for me. I got "the talk" when I was 8 because my older sister was concerned about contracting AIDS, and when one of us needed to be informed of something, the other had to be included or we would just get the news second-hand. I covered my mouth during the majority of the lecture to stifle my laughs and cover my unsquelchable grin. Still ranks as one of my parent's favorite parenting moments with me, I'm sure.

My period arrived when I was thirteen, and thankfully it came when no one was home, so I was able to deal with the transformation without any embarrassing interference; until my sister showed up with her friend, who somehow discovered my secret and proceeded to congratulate me as though I had accomplished something that I had actually striven to achieve.

Thankfully, there were a few areas where I managed quite well on my own: application of deodorant and knowing when to tell my mother that I could curl my own bangs and still obtain the same degree of mockery from pre-teen vixens at school. That was about it, but it was something.

Seventeen years later, I still find myself sometimes baffled by what mainstream society has deemed "normal" in the beauty department. I have never had a Brazilian Wax, a facial, or any kind of Botox or colon cleanse. Maybe I'm missing out, but I think that as long as I have mastered the basics that I was a little slow to pick up on all those years ago, I'll be fine without the rest.

I do have one regret though. Maybe if my mother had fed me more hormone injected beef, I would have graduated from that training bra by now.

*Originally posted July 2009.

Stirred Up By Crickets

In the quiet hours between chaos and slumber, I lay and listen to the sounds of night. The breeze stroking the leaves on the trees to sleep and crickets singing their lullabies. Summer nights are entrancing to anyone willing to fall prey to their spell.

Those crickets serenading me outside my window bring a rush of memories. I close my eyes as my mind staggers in attempt to keep up with the flashes and pictures running through my head. Campfires. Arriving home past curfew from a date. Listening to waves crash onto a dark shore. 

But one picture repeatedly pushes it's way to the back of my eyelids again and again, rudely forcing it's presence upon me.

The Toilet Paper Wars....

......Rural Battle Ground, Washington provided little in the way of entertainment in my day. My sister and friends and I would do anything during summer months to keep ourselves occupied with whatever didn't turn us into Country Bumpkins. That need to refrain from wearing giant belt buckles and listening to twangy music gave birth to the toilet paper wars. Dan and Scott, boys our age who lived about a half mile up the road, may have been the ones to spur the first attack, or it may have been us girls - I don't remember now, but there were many battles.

On one of those vengeful nights, Natalie and I had two friends over, Stephanie and Sandy. We erected a tent in the front yard of our house to deter any enemy activity. After all, who would dare toilet paper a house when the objects of your flirtatious offensive could be hiding just inside canvas walls that allowed in all kinds of suspicious noises? 

The four of us sat inside the tent and plotted our moves for the evening. The objective was simple; toilet paper Dan's house. But execution wouldn't be so easy - Dan and Scott might be expecting us. They could even be driving the road between our base and theirs, watching for our advance. We decided the best way to move would be to split in twos, walking up each side of the road towards our target, and dive into the ditch anytime a car approached from either direction to avoid being spotted by our foe. 

Gathering up our ammo, (copious ammounts of Charmin), we cautiously proceeded out of the tent and made our way towards the road.

The distance between Dan's house and ours never seemed so far as when we were desperate to avoid detection. The chirping of our allies, the crickets, cheered us on with each adrenaline filled step, and the moon was all that lit our way. It wasn't long at all before headlights appeared in the distance behind us and we all scrambled to lay as flat as possible in the deep trenches on either side of the pavement. Thoughts of roadkill and all varieties of insects and rodents plagued our minds as we waited for the car to pass. We could have been laying on anything in those ditches, but it was war. Sacrifice was necessity.

The car passed, and with racing hearts we climbed from our hiding places and resumed the forge up the road. We had made it almost to the bottom of a little hill near the end of the road. Dan lived at the top of the incline - not far to go. 

Without warning another car came rounding the corner right ahead of us! There was no time! We scattered in all directions. Headlights surrounded us in their revealing illumination. Each of us dove towards the ditch nearest us. Then a scream! The roar of a truck's engine passed us, we were safe. Then silence.

"Who screamed?" someone whispered in the welcomed darkness.

The reply came from Sandy. "This ditch is full of water! I'm soaking wet!"

Mouths covered to quiet our laughter, we watched Sandy crawl out of her ditch, dripping with filthy water. Poor Sandy had become the first casualty in The Toilet Paper Wars. She had selflessly helped us to avoid capture, and we were grateful.

At last, we made it to the enemy's camp. Cloaked in a hush, we unraveled the T.P. around bushes, lamp posts, fence railings and shrubs. We rolled it across the lawn in stripe and zig-zag patterns. Stealthily, we tossed the rolls into trees and the tissue cascaded back down to us like a glorious waterfall. We took just a moment to admire our work. The mission had been a success.

Back in the tent later that night, we excitedly munched on our rations of junk food and discussed when retaliation might be coming. No matter - we were the masters, and we were ready to escalate the campaign to complete annihilation if necessary. 

With giddy enthusiasm, we settled into our sleeping bags to listen to those crickets pass the news of our victory to all the nocturnal world. And then we slept, confident that, for that night, we were impervious to raids from our worthy opponents. 

*Originally posted September 2009.

Spring Break Quake

Once again, I am participating in Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop. This one might be interesting, because I didn't re-read it, and also, it's late and I am on my third night of only five hours of sleep. Maybe that works for you, but it ain't good for me. Anyway, if you'd like to play along, just click the button at the bottom of this post and you'll magically zoom over to Mama Kat's place! This week I chose prompt #5 - Earthquake! Where were you when it happened?

........................................

It didn't take long for the news anchors to start referring to it as the "Spring Break Quake".

I was sleeping soundly in my bed in Beaverton, Oregon on that March morning in 1993. I'm not sure if my mother's frantic yelling in the hallway woke me first, or if it was the foreign rocking, making my bed feel like a raft on a choppy sea.

Either way, I sat up, tried to blink away the disorientation.

What was happening?

"It's an earthquake!", my father hollered from his bedroom, scrambling to right his glasses on his nose.

"Get into the doorways!", commanded my mother, and we all jumped up and stumbled to our doorjambs. We stood there in the yellow light of the hallway lamp, everyone cautiously eying the ceiling, waiting for bits of plaster to crumble in our faces. We had never been in an earthquake before, and wondered how long it would take for the floor beneath our feet to become still. Or disappear.

Finally, the world seemed to calm and my parents, my siblings, and I all just stood there for a moment and stared at each other in shock. I think my mother asked my father several times what we should do next? But he was just as much a rookie as the rest of us.

Quickly, he made a decision. "Everyone get in the car."

Pounding down the stairs, we threw open the front door and padded across the driveway in our bare feet to the waiting Camry. My sisters and brother and I huddled in the backseat while Dad jammed the key in the ignition to turn on the radio.

"We'll be safe in here until we know what's going on," he said.

Then a voice spoke to us from the radio speakers.

"If you're just tuning in, we have experienced a 5.6 magnitude earthquake, and the safest thing you can do right now is stay in your homes. In case of aftershock it is extremely dangerous to be outdoors or in your car."

The heaviness in the air vanished as we grinned at Dad and began to giggle at his innocent mistake.

Sheepishly, we exited the car and made our way back into the house. The sun wasn't quite up, but it was light enough for me to see that Dad was a little embarrassed at being chastised by a radio DJ. But it was alright with me, because if we had humor, then everything was right with the world, and I knew we would be okay.

(Did you come up with a good name for the bug yet?)

Sven, Bertha, Dilbert, and Hilde

I wish to inspire everyone to live life to the fullest. To make each day memorable; come hell or high water, or threat of bodily injury. This is a true story. Names have been changed to protect identities.



Once upon a time there was a young woman, Bertha, who was very good friends with a woman named Hildegarde. They had gone to school and church together for several years and had many adventures. Eventually, Bertha fell in love with Hildegarde's brother, Sven, and they were married shortly after Hildegarde married her own love, Dilbert.

One summer, Hildegarde and Bertha, along with their husbands, spent a lovely weekend at the beach. They basked in the sun, visited quaint shops, and splashed in the salty sea water. At the conclusion of their memorable weekend they traveled back to the city, but on the way they decided to pay a visit to Sven and Hilde's mother on the family farm.

When they got to the farm, however, the mother was out. While they waited for her to return, Sven and Bertha decided to take a nap, while Hildegarde and Dilbert opted to go for a walk.

Sven and Bertha made their way back to the guest bedroom and laid down on the bed. As Bertha was lowering her tired head towards the pillow, she looked out the window and caught sight of Hilde's head popping up out of the tall grass in the field across from the house. "That's odd," she thought. "Where's Dilbert? I thought they were going for a walk? And what is Hilde doing kneeling in the grass?"

But then Bertha's jaw dropped as she saw Hilde peel her shirt off and disappear again into the very tall grass.

"Sven!", shouted Bertha. "Hilde and Dilbert are doing it in the field!"

"Where?", asked Sven and he hopped off the bed to peer out the window.

"Right there in the grass, out past the well," pointed Bertha.

Sven began to laugh as he watched the grass moving to and fro in the very still summer air.

"Let's get the hose!", snickered Bertha.

"No way," protested Sven, "Hilde will kill you. She's much stronger than you and you know she would take you down."

"Yes, but first she'd have to catch me, and would she really chase me through the field naked?"

"Well, it'd be that or hunker down in the grass getting soaked!"

"True," muttered Bertha, "but either way it would be hilarious to watch! And I might be able to outrun her. Let's go!" Bertha bounced off of the bed and darted for the door.

"No. You are not getting the hose," commanded Sven, grabbing hold of Bertha's wrist. "Just go to sleep - it's not worth the trip to the emergency room."

"You're no fun at all," came the pouting reply from Bertha, but she obediently lay down and closed her eyes, trying not to picture the scene outside the window.

Bertha never did fall asleep on that golden afternoon. She spent the nap hour picturing all the possible outcomes of having gone through with her wicked hose scheme. Some of her daydreams were frightening, but most made her smile. And to this day, whenever someone talks about regrets in life or changing the past, Bertha remembers that day and vows to never let an opportunity to use a hose go unused again.

Glad It Didn't Leave Scars

Before I was a mom, I was a babysitter. You'd think that years of babysitting would have taught me to avoid the children route, especially when you consider some of the experiences I had while tending to other people's offspring.

(And you know what? I'm actually glad that I wasn't permanently damaged by those babysitting experiences because I actually really like my kids. They're so much better than other people's.)

The following is a story of the worst babysitting job I ever had. It is a re-post of a story I told on my personal blog a year ago, with a few touch-ups. Feel free to skip it if you've read it already. If not, you are not allowed to skip, but must keep reading. Sorry.

(Here is where you should imagine fuzzy, wavy lines transporting you back in time to a period of my very enthralling history.)

I was about 13 years old when I would frequently babysit for some friends of my parents, Trent and Sheryl. They had two very well behaved children; Miles was around four or five years old, and I believe Amanda was two.

Trent was in dental school at the time, so to help out with finances his family lived above a mortuary. If a call came during the night to retrieve a body, he would go and collect it. I'm not sure if he got paid to do this, or if their rent was free as long as they performed their corpse taxi duties, but can you imagine a more exciting job? I can't.

Anyway, they lived there above the morgue as though it were a perfectly normal thing to do, and hosted some killer Halloween parties, because that would be the main perk of such accommodations, don't you think?

Sheryl did take me downstairs once to show me a body that was being kept in "the fridge". I have always had a kind of morbid fascination with cemeteries and morgues, and at the same time a paralyzing fear of dead people, so that was a bit of a wicked treat for me.

One afternoon I was babysitting Miles and Amanda, and I knew it would be quite late before Trent and Sheryl came home, so I had settled in to play games, watch movies and do whatever else the kiddos required for entertainment.

Around four-thirty in the afternoon I was playing Hi-Ho Cherry-O with my charges and was interrupted by the sound of a door opening at the bottom of the stairs that led to the morgue. I froze, stiff as one of the poor souls in the basement. My pulse was racing as I listened intently for the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs, or moaning escaping the lips of someone who was presumed dead but awoke, all the contrary, in cold storage and was seeking aid.

Eventually I decided that I would not be able to breathe until I made sure that we were not about to be joined by a reanimated being. I approached the ominous door which separated the living and the dead, and reached out for the knob. I waited there for a while to make sure I really was prepared to die; I wasn't, but I was left with no choice but to turn the knob, because I was turning blue in the face from lack of oxygen. I opened the door a crack and peeked down to the bottom landing. There was no one there. There was, however, I neat stack of mail sitting on the third step.

Good grief, people! If ever you live upstairs from a pit-stop for the dead, you may want to warn your babysitter that the postman might open the door that serves as barrier between embalming fluid and peach scented potpourri. Otherwise, your sitter might have a heart attack and join the folks downstairs, and then who's looking after your kids, huh?

Quickly recovering from that episode, I then cooked and fed the kids Spaghettios for dinner, got them bathed, and read them a story before bed. Then it was lights out for them, and I did the dishes and then plopped on the couch to watch TV and fall asleep.

At one-thirty in the morning, I awoke to the sound of retching coming from the kids' bedroom. I was up and in there quicker than lightening, and poor Miles, who was notorious for his over-active gag reflex, was in the process of throwing up all those Spaghettios he had eaten for dinner.

Now here's another tip for all you parents and babysitters out there: If you have a child who is prone to throwing up, do not let him sleep on the top bunk. Miles had leaned over the edge of his bed before ejecting his dinner, and poor, sweet Amanda was crying on the bottom bunk, completely covered in circle-shaped pasta vomit. I have been a mother for nine years now, and I have yet to encounter a mess that rivals the middle of the night vomit-fest that Miles treated me to.

But what they say is true - it's easier to clean up all kinds of bodily fluids if they come from your own flesh and blood. Still - after that night I think it a wonder that I agreed to have children at all.


Inspired by:

DAD'S PHILOSOPHY: DON'T GET MAD, GET EVEN

My father has always been a vault of riotous entertainment. His forte is teasing and practical jokes. If ever you were to visit him at work, it would be wise to not eat anything out of the cookie or candy jar on his desk. Also, question everything he tells you.

Perhaps the worst of these practical jokes happened to me when I was 18 and working in a day care center...

(This is where those wavy, magical memory lines would normally appear on your TV screen, accompanied by tinkly music, and I can't help but imagine them here.)

I worked in a two-room day care center for about a year right after high school. The two rooms were divided by age; preschool in one room and school age kids in the other. Each room had a bathroom and a little kitchenette for breakfast and snack preparation.

When I was first hired, my position was that of a teacher's assistant, which meant that I did everything the preschool teacher did with the exception of planning activities to teach the kids about colors, numbers, how to wipe themselves, etc. About three months after I started work there, the preschool teacher quit for some unmemorable reason, and the center's director took a six month maternity leave at exactly the same time. The result was that I was the only adult left in the preschool room for a good portion of the day. Aside from being illegal, the situation was very stressful and overwhelming. Most days there were 20 kids between two and a half years and five years attacking me from every side. After the older kids went off to school, Brad, the school-age teacher would come and lend a hand, and that was a relief. Hooo! Just the thought of it is giving me panic attacks.

Well, one afternoon, things were particularly crazy. The older kids had returned to the center after school and I had lost my help. Running from the puzzle table to the sensory table to the blocks station while attempting to sanitize the nap mats and clean up the snack tables was making my head spin. The noise of those 20 toddlers was rising like the pressure inside a fat man's gastric abyss after an all-you-can-eat Mexican lunch. In the midst of all this chaos, Brad comes in from the other room, holding the hand of one seven-year-old named Josh. Poor Josh was learning to live with autism and would sometimes become agitated in the school-age room. Bringing him into the preschool room where he could be left alone to peruse the bookshelf usually calmed him down. So in he came and laid down on the floor in front of the books and began to devour them.

And then the phone rang.

I frantically answered it, hoping it would be a wrong number so I could get back to disaster management.

"Children Northwest, can I help you?"

"Where's my dad?", came the reply from a timid sounding little boy.

"Who is your dad, Honey?", I asked.

"Where's my dad?" and the little voice was beginning to whimper. But it wasn't just a timid voice, this was the voice of a mentally handicapped little boy looking for his Dad. Why would the mentally handicapped boy call the day care looking for his dad? And then I wondered if Brad had a child we didn't know about, because, you know - it wouldn't have been a stretch and it would have made a lot of things clear. Okay, so a handicapped boy needs help. The nap mats can wait.

"What is your dad's name?", I asked.

"Dad!" he cried.

And then I did a scan of the room to make sure nobody was taking advantage of my distraction. Wouldn't you know? Josh was still laying on his stomach perusing the pages of Clifford The Big Red Dog, but he had his hand down the back of his pants and he was picking something out and flicking it across the room.

Did you know that your brain can scream without any noise coming out of your mouth? It can.

Josh was flicking poop across the room and I was stuck on a corded phone, just out of reach of his small sneakers, talking to a mentally disabled boy who needed his father! I didn't know what to do! I could ask the disabled boy to hold on, but he was already so confused and upset, I didn't know if he would hang up and be in danger, or if he would start to cry and become unintelligible, or something worse. So I had to keep the boy talking. So what about Josh, who was still engrossed in his book and still digging for things to fling? I inched toward him as far as I could while still listening to my distraught caller.

"Do you know where your mom is?", I asked.

"Where's my Dad?" came the frightened reply. Shoot! What to do? Still more feces flying to who knows where? I was really, really hoping that none of the preschoolers in the dress up area were getting hit with the contents of Josh's pants.

I stuck out my foot, trying to tap Josh's shoe and alert him to what he was doing while lost in his book. No luck, couldn't reach him.

"Tell me your Dad's name, Honey," I said.

And then the breathless snickering from the other end of the phone line.

I froze and listened to the familiar chuckle of my father as he enjoyed the brilliance of his little joke.

I made the mistake of telling my father that I had an autistic boy here who was flinging poop across the room while I tried to help find the disabled boy's dad, thankyouverymuch, which then made the joke even more hysterical to my father, who I had to hang up on and call back later. There were lots of poo balls to find...

My dad is pretty funny, but his timing is atrocious.

The Nerd Herd

Moving was a normal thing for my family throughout my childhood. I only attended two high schools, but prior to that, I only spent two full grades at any school once. Fifth and Sixth grades at C. F. Tigard Elementary.

I don't remember many of my friends from grades prior to that. I can recall some names, and in some cases random features, nothing substantial. But my memories of my three friends from C.F. Tigard will always be vivid.

On the first day of fifth grade I walked out to morning recess in the grey mist of an early autumn rain, and I approached some girls from my class, just as I had been accustomed to doing at every new school. I was on the prowl for some friends, hoping that by week's end I wouldn't be eating lunch by myself.

I don't remember my opening remark, but I remember the awkward silence that reigned as the three girls glanced at each other in silent communication. Flustered and embarrassed, I desperately spouted out the first thing that came to mind, trying to stop the air from becoming steadily more uncomfortable.

"Look! There's a knot in my pants!"

Pausing for just a moment, let me describe my appearance on that day. I had a spiral perm, which my mother said I needed to give my frizzy hair some structured curl. My bangs were most likely curled into that early nineties tube shape; half curled down, the other half up and stiffened to death against the Pacific Northwest weather with Vidal Sassoon hairspray. I was wearing glasses that sat on my nose and covered half of my cheeks with their enormous, clear plastic frames. My coat was pink with lavender and blue geometric shapes, and my pants, which I was relying upon for my ice breaker, were Dodger Blue cotton, tapered at the ankle, and accented with a twist of fabric around the waist, which I had referred to as a knot. It was a floundering eleven-year-old's attempt at spontaneous humor, and I knew as soon as I had uttered that remark that I had won myself nothing but a label.

The girls that I was attempting to befriend were dressed in jeans with sweatshirts tied around their waists. They wore eyeliner and mascara, and had drawn on their hands little hearts and arrows. I was way out of my league.

The silence that overwhelmed me after my knotted pants comment was even more painful than the previous silence that I had tried to end. One of the girls put everyone out of their misery by saying, "Um, we'll be right back, okay?"

I nodded and smiled as I watched them walk away, trying to hide my shame. And then I stood there for the remainder of recess, just in case the girls really did intend to come back at some point.

They did not.

Gradually, I made some friends. Mara, Sarah and Renata. We were labeled "The Nerd Herd" by our classmates, but I didn't mind because I belonged somewhere. I had true friends to depend on and have fun with. I never had to eat lunch alone.

Mara had red hair and freckles. She was goofy and had doves in her apartment that would coo all morning whenever I spent the night at her apartment. Mara lived with just her mother, and while that was foreign to me, I felt comfortable at her house.

Renata was lively and always had ideas for fun. There were crucifixes at her house and statues of the Madonna. I went to church with her once, and that has been my only experience of Catholicism. Renata had dark hair and copper skin, a TV in her bedroom and a huge Barbie dollhouse. All four of us spent the night at her house once, determined to stay awake until dawn. I went home sick as a dog, and never stayed up all night again.

Sarah was our studious friend. Quiet and purposeful. She was intelligent, reserved, moved slowly, and was the listener. She wore a cardigan sweater nearly every day. I don't know if I ever saw her without one. Like me, she was automatically classified by her over-sized glasses. Unlike me, she never seemed to want to be the center of attention. Not even when we spent the night at her house and learned improvisation games from her older sisters. She would laugh with us and get involved, but never sought the spotlight.

The four of us spent those two years together, playing, crushing on boys, having sleepovers and even helping one of our number through a suicide in her family. They were my closest and dearest friends. The best I had ever had, and I loved them.

And then, after two years of fitting in, even if it was in "The Nerd Herd", my family moved again. And they were gone. Just like that.

Seventh grade found me in another new school, surrounded by kids who had been friends since kindergarten. I latched on to the first girl who spoke to me and later realized that she was not the kind of friend I wanted. I shifted to another group and did better there. But nothing was like it had been. There were no more sleepovers. I was never free to be exactly myself. When I was teased by the cool kids I no longer had the ability to let it roll off my back like I had before. I felt those pricks of insecurity chiseling away at my self esteem for the entire year.

Eighth grade was better, and ninth even more so. I was finally getting back to who I really was.

Those two years with Mara, Renata and Sarah taught me what friendship should be. It's frightening to know that my kids are approaching those same difficult years that I will always remember. My hope is that that same spirit of unconditional friendship will eventually find them, as it did me.

Lest we forget how blessed we have been...

I woke up this morning to last year's dishes. Not a good way to start out. The kids are very pleased with themselves for being grown up enough to have stayed up until midnight last night. What they don't know is that I changed the clocks to show midnight when it was really only ten. Score one for me.

2009 was good to us, and we can't say that about every year we've lived through. 2007, for example. That was a killer. But 2009 was not too bad at all.

Of course, there was the part where I had to bid farewell to my favorite restaurant. But that's a relatively small sorrow.

I watched Andrew suffer through pain worse than medicated childbirth times four.

We had a fantastic week with Susie and her family when Cameron was baptized, but I guess I never wrote about it. Such a shame! I won't correct that now, but I will share this photo with you:


I love Susie!

I shared with you all some of my most embarrassing moments, and completely neglected to include what I did when I accepted my high school diploma. That one was so bad that I have to say it deserved the #1 spot.

I was good enough to let Drew survive, even after this, and this, and this, and this, and oh, yeah, this.

We made new rules, thanks to Ethan and some other people.

We dealt with poop. On more than one occasion, actually.

We made memories, like this and this and this. Oh! And this!

We went on our annual fishing vacation. This is not about fishing.

Some of us got the swine flu.

We appreciated family. East Coast, no coast and West Coast.

We welcomed new family members. Not once, but twice.

And we were generally very happy.

We're hoping that 2010 will be another magnificent year for our family and yours. Happy New Year!

2009 (Press the play button on the playlist on the left)

Christmas Stockings

Growing up, my family had a tradition of filling Christmas boots instead of stockings. We each had a little plaster molded boot which looked much like the kind that you might see on Santa's foot, but ours were decorated with Christmas fabrics, coated in a shiny varnish and topped with a border of white, fluffy fur. In my youth, I had never seen a stocking filled on Christmas morning, nor had I ever been the one responsible for filling someone's stocking.

The first year that I had the privilege of filling anyone's Christmas stocking was the Christmas before Andrew and I were married. It was a new, but welcome chore. A few days before Christmas I pulled out the sacks of candies and goodies that I had purchased to fill Andrew's stocking with. There were mints and gum, an orange, some nuts, a bag of peanut butter cups and one of snickers bars, candy canes, peppermint taffy, Chapstick, and a small gift. I began to stuff the stocking with all the treats and surprises, but when I came to the end of my supplies, I found that the stocking still looked rather pathetically empty. It had stretched out a bit, but was nowhere near capacity and no treats could be seen poking out the top.

No problem, I thought, and I went back to the store, grateful that I had started this project early. I bought a few more bags of Christmas candies and took them home and put the new bags into the stocking with the others, but the stocking absorbed the new bags and still wasn't full! The thing just kept stretching! It seemed to have no limit! I think I actually cursed Andrew's grandmother for knitting the stocking in such a huge size!

Once more I went back to the store, determined to make that stocking bulge with Christmas prizes that overflowed the brim.

After that last trip to the store, the sock was still stretching to mock my ignorance, but at last, a few plastic wrappers could be seen peeking from the top, and I hung a few more candy canes from the knitted rim.

On Christmas morning, I carried that stocking downstairs and proudly laid it on the hearth, because I feared that hanging the poor thing would cause the ribbon to snap. When Andrew saw it, he enjoyed a merry laugh at my expense and asked me what on earth I had put in it? I replied that I had only filled his stocking with the traditional items, and that he ought to be grateful because it had cost me a fortune, and what was his grandmother thinking when she made it??
Andrew then informed me that those extra-large stockings were not meant to be "filled" in the way that I had thought, because they will, in fact, stretch enough to hold an elephant along with it's daily supply of food and a ball to play with.

Thanks for telling me that before I cleaned out the candy aisle at Albertson's, Andrew!
Since then, I have thought our Christmas stockings, lovingly knitted by Grandma Kestner, (and one by Aunt Heidi!), to be a priceless treasure, and not at all a dangling Yuletide money pit.




Below is the Christmas stocking poem that I always enjoyed as a child. Merry Christmas!

Christmas Stockings by Esther Kem Thomas

The funniest sight, I do believe,
Is a limpity sock on Christmas Eve--
Empty and flat and wrinkledy, too,
And maybe a mite too big for you,
Cause the bigger the stocking, the more goes in
And it's hung up tight with a safety pin,
And a note with suggestions for Santa Claus
As to whose lengthy stocking, this is, because
Old Santa might wonder if its size could be
A little too big for the size of me....
Oh, nothing looks stranger, I do believe,
Than a limpity stocking, on Christmas Eve!

The jolliest sight, I'd surely say,
Is a knobbledy sock on Christmas Day,
With an orange way down in its bulged out toe,
And some big walnuts where a heel should go,
And a horn, and a toy, and a lollipop,
And all sorts of things sticking out the top!
Why, the bigger its stuffed and away oversize
The better! Each bulge is a brand new surprise,
And the funniest thing, I can't believe
It's the limpity sock I hung up, Christmas Eve!

Christmas Eves Past

Today I found myself thinking back on all the Christmas Eve's I could remember. Some are just images, and others more substantial. I enjoyed recalling the feelings of anticipation, the cozy family gatherings, singing carols karaoke style, and all the good food that was special to that time of year - gooey caramel corn, raspberry slush, decadent homemade truffles, crab dip, soft, frosted sugar cookies adorned with glittering sprinkles and chocolate chips, a beautifully glazed ham, and my mom's homemade rolls.

Going through the years in my mind, I asked myself, were I given the chance, which Christmas would I like to go back in time to and re-live exactly as it was? It was a hard decision.

I contemplated the year that we lived in Battle Ground in the home that my parents had built. It was the year that the upstairs bathroom flooded on Christmas Eve while Mom, Kellie and Joel were outside having a snowball fight and Dad, Natalie and I had made a trip into town for last minute needs. It was a bit of a chaotic year, but we all pulled together to get things back in order, and I enjoyed being with my family, working together, and knowing that nothing could ruin our family Christmas.

Then I thought of the year that Andrew came home from his mission a few months before Christmas and he and I, along with my siblings and parents gathered in the soft lamp's light in the family room and listened to Dad read Jolly Old Santa Claus and a poem about Christmas stockings. He hated to read those things and protested by delivering them in odd accents, old lady voices, and mixing up the words in the sentences so that we had no clue what was being said. He did that every year, and I think that had he ever read them properly, it wouldn't have felt like Christmas.

But, in the end, I settled on the memory of a Christmas that we spent in our home in Aurora, Colorado when I was about six years old. I believe it was a white Christmas, and the house was alive with love and excitement. My parents, my sisters and I spent that Christmas Eve together, eating the special holiday goodies that Mom had spent days baking, and listening to carols. We were happy and content, and soon, it was time for bed. The lights that had been strung around the window of the bedroom that Natalie and I shared were blending together on the opposite side of the glass and illuminating the room with a warm, rosy glow. Natalie and I lay on our bed, snuggled under the covers in our flannel nightgowns, and we listened. I don't know if we knew what we were listening for, but eventually we heard it. There were reindeer hooves beating on our roof! We never heard any bells, but there was no doubt in our minds that the "clumpity-clump-clump" that we heard above us was the sound of Santa's arrival. We kept our squeals and giggles as quiet as we could, because we knew that if we were too loud, Santa would know we were awake and wouldn't leave anything. It was crucial that we let Santa do his job, because this was the year that I had wished with all my heart for a Cabbage Patch Playhouse. It was a tiny version of a real house with a door that worked and windows that opened. The windows were framed with pink plastic shutters, and above was a blue plastic shingled roof. I imagined taking my dolls inside the little white house and playing with them in my very own private space. Natalie and I eventually drifted off to sleep, each of us dreaming of what surprises might be waiting for us at first light.

We awoke the next morning to a wondrous arrangement of gifts wrapped in beautiful Christmas paper under the tree. Kellie had a Rainbow Brite refrigerator and stove set, Natalie had a boy cabbage patch doll with curly, blond yarn hair, (his name was Nathan), and I had unwrapped an Operation game, with the fantastic buzzing red nose. When all the gifts were opened, I remember walking to the back door and peering out into the snow covered backyard. There was no Cabbage Patch Playhouse waiting for me there in the yard. I felt a little pang of disappointment, but there was too much joy in the house to linger for long over unfulfilled wishes. I had a pile of beautiful gifts that delighted me plenty. Dad and I then sat at the kitchen table and punched out the little plastic parts to my Operation game and took turns trying to extract the pieces from our patient without setting his nose buzzing and flashing red. Natalie cradled her doll and inspected his glasses and clothing. Kellie was busily preparing an imaginary breakfast on her yellow stove printed with rainbows all over. Mom was at work in the kitchen, cooking our real breakfast of crepes and orange juice. Our little family spent the morning putting together games and toys, admiring each other's treasures, and just being together in the bright light of that happy Christmas morning. It didn't matter that I didn't get the thing that I thought I wanted so badly, because the best gift of all was feeling safe and happy in my home with the people who loved me.

So what's your favorite Christmas memory?

Pride Goeth Before The Fall...(or before the punch in the face, in my case.)

This is long, and it might be one of those stories that makes sense to the teller, but is jibberish to everyone else. Also, makes me seem narcissistic. Don't feel obligated to read it.


When I was 18 and just shy of my high school graduation, I was in a La Center High School production of Tony and Tina's Wedding. It was very close to the most fun thing I have ever done.

We spent weeks in class practicing our Brooklyn accents, building up our improv skills, and studying character bios, because Tony and Tina's Wedding, in case you are not aware, is an interactive play. The audience participates as the wedding guests, and we, as the cast, were the wedding party and family of the bride and groom.

I was awarded the part of Connie Mocogni, the pregnant matron of honor. She was just edgy enough to cause some scandal. I gelled my hair into a faux-hawk before it was the trendy thing to do, I made myself up with heavy eyeliner and black lipstick, and even sported a nose ring. From the neck up, I looked like the kind of girl you wouldn't want to bring home to mother. Underneath my bridesmaid dress, I wore a foam pregnant stomach. It made me sweat a lot.

In the non-high school version of the play Connie is the pregnant, unwed maid of honor, but because Mr. McCullough had to be careful to avoid any perceived indecency that might upset parents or the school board, my stage husband, "Barry", and I were instructed to wear a ring on our left hands and refer to each other as husband and wife. Mr. McCullough also had to remind us before every performance not to drink the sparkling cider directly from the bottle, thus making us look like a bunch of drunks. But we never listened. Poor man probably stressed a few years off of his life from all the unsavory things that we pretended to be involved in - and he only knew the half of it. That's what happens when you give creative freedom to a bunch of invincible, arrogant teenagers.

My role in the play was to be the edgy and socially inappropriate best friend of the bride, "Tina", and through the course of the night I was to become more and more hostile in my relationship with "Tina" before making up with her just before the end of the play - like all self-respecting, overly-emotional Italians do. "Tina" was played by a friend of mine from church, and I mean we were friends at church and friendly at school, but didn't hang in the same crowds outside of church. Her name was Rachel.

The cast rehearsed for this play for several weeks, had a dress rehearsal, and found ourselves ready for opening night. The place was booked for all four performances, and the ability to slip into a different persona for an evening gave me a kind of reckless abandon that robbed me of my better judgment. As in, perhaps I took things too far.

At one point in the play, I got to give a toast to honor the newlyweds. At this point though, I was to act mildly intoxicated, and considering that I've never actually been drunk in real life, I have no clue whether my performance was believable.

I stood in the middle of the room with a microphone and began my toast innocently enough, but slowly slipped into a fit of inebriated insults which I hurled at "Tina" relentlessly. I told her she looked like a cow in her wedding dress and asked her why she was wearing white, anyway? Keeping in mind that I was supposed to say these kinds of things, "Tina" was then meant to leave her spot on the raised bridal party table and come at me to start a cat fight. Two guys in the wedding party were then to break us up just before she got close enough to actually engage me in a Bridezilla-type brawl. Then the guys were to cart us off to different parts of the room to "cool off". The whole scene went like clockwork. It was unbelievable fun to behave in such a way in so public a setting. It wasn't in my nature at all to be that way, so this interaction was a great chance to feel so brash and daring.

The day after opening night, I was swarmed with people telling me that I had given an amazing performance, that I had "stolen the show", and everyone was so impressed! Even Mr. McCullough praised me for my quick wit and comical additions to what we had planned in rehearsal. When I stopped at my usual coffee kiosk in Battle Ground to pick up my daily hot chocolate, the proprietor exclaimed, "I saw you in the play last night! You were great!..." And her compliments, as well as others, went on until my head and ego were inflated to unhealthy proportions. That night, I stepped things up a little further, threw in a bit more attitude, and went for the kill. We were all a hit for the second time, and the high I experienced must have been better than something drug induced. But I wouldn't know for sure.

On the third night of our play, I detected a little bit of jealousy coming from Rachel as she did a fantastic job of playing the lead in the play. When "Tina", the other bridesmaids and I did our lip-sync number to "Like a Virgin", I failed to take the hint and did not back off in the least, but kept right on stealing Rachel's thunder and pointing at her butt before making gestures indicating that it was huge. I feel a bit bad about it now, but would not change anything, because, like I said - most fun thing I've ever done.

On the closing night of our play, I found myself in that same spot on the middle of the floor, toasting and then insulting "Tina" until she had had enough and came for me. As she strode across the floor with daggers in her eyes, I saw something flash behind her acting face that told me I might have sounded a little too sincere when I threw in that last comment about her dress size or her purity - whatever it might have been. It was like one of those bad dreams where you know something terrible is about to happen, but any attempt to thwart the impending horror leaves you paralyzed and vulnerable.

Before anyone could surmise what Rachel was about to do, she sped up her stride and punched me right in the mouth. And then, because we were still performing, (or so I would like to believe), she knocked me down and straddled me so that she could finish the job. I was in such a daze that I wasn't even fighting back. I just lay there, bleeding from the lip and wondering what was going on? Someone pulled her off of me, and another someone lifted me off the ground. I noticed that tears were leaking from my eyes and smearing all that eyeliner down my cheeks, and that infuriated me more than the punch, because no way would "Connie" cry. At the time, I couldn't help but think that the entire escapade had been premeditated as revenge for three nights worth of getting to play the villain, and perhaps playing my part too well. I think it safe to say that Rachel stole her show back from me that night, and put me in my place for sure.

There was no apology from Rachel for ducking the well-planned and practiced stage moves that would have kept her from reaching me before the wedding bouncers did, but nor was there an apology from me for basking in the limelight while she settled for runner-up. I'd like to say that I became a better person after the cheap shot, but in truthfulness, when, six months and a year later, people were still stopping me from time to time to tell me how well I had done in that play, I couldn't help but lick the inside of my lower lip, taste the memory of blood, and think, "Take that, Rachel!"

But now, in case Rachel should ever happen upon this story, (although I hope she doesn't because it still sounds horribly arrogant), I would like to say to her that I am sorry for stealing the spotlight. The play was titled, after all, "Tony and Tina's Wedding", not "Connie, the Brazen Matron of Honor". And I am also sorry for any hurt feelings that might have come from my portrayal of Connie. None of my remarks came from me, they were acting, and I did not then, nor do I now, believe any of them to be true. And the last time I saw you, Rachel, you looked super hot. I also need to compliment you on your fighting skills, because there was a lump inside my lip where you hit me for two solid years. And every time I felt it, I thought, "Dang...she's good."

Oh, How We Praise Him!

This morning, likely because the weather is much the same as it was back then, I was remembering a day many, many Christmases ago. The ground was covered in snow, the sun was shining brightly through the windows, and the house smelled of pine boughs. My mother's winter geese decorations were scattered across the house, and her Madame Alexander dolls were displayed on a desk in their delicate, antique glory. My siblings and I were enjoying Christmas vacation with our mother by dancing around the house and listening to The Oakridge Boys sing "Jesus is Born Today" while the old Christmas record spun around and around on the turntable. The day was filled with the simple joy of anticipating Santa's visit, nibbling sugar cookies decorated with chocolate chips and red and green sprinkles, and being with family. Nothing happened that day - it was just a day. But whenever I hear that song, I will remember the happiness of my youth, and I will be grateful to have grown up in a home where an ordinary day would stay in my memory as such a gift.

Making a case for the end of physical education in schools.

I can't do it. I've put too much pressure on myself for my 200th post. I thought about writing about the epiphany I had when I burned the mac and cheese today, but it wasn't all that profound. I thought about writing about last night when I accidentally used the "bad soap" on one of my body parts, and while I tried to un-do the damage by immediately following it with the "good soap", I am now suffering the consequences of not paying attention when I shower. But that's just too much personal information. I thought about writing about all the things that no one tells you when you become a mother - like how hard it is to breast feed when you actually have no breasts; but as I wrote that one in my head, it sounded like I was ungrateful to be a mother, and I don't feel that way at all. At least not most days. I'll save that one for later.

It's a serious case of writer's block.

So, I'm going to write about my fourth grade teacher, and we'll see where it goes. I can't say that it won't be a ten on that lame scale that I mentioned previously, but here we go anyway.

At ten years old, I was living in Layton, Utah. We moved a lot as kids, so we went to more schools than I can remember... nine or ten, maybe. I spent fourth grade at Sarah Jane Adams Elementary with the world's oldest teacher. From my youthful perspective, she was on the verge of death and I couldn't understand why she was still working and not drooling in a nursing home somewhere. Her name was Mrs. Anderson. She wore a muu muu every day, she had short, gray, curly hair, and a raspy voice. And though she looked the part of a grandmother, I don't recall ever seeing a cookie in our classroom.

Utah education was different back then. When we moved from Utah to another state, we were always a tad below their grade level, but when we returned to Utah, we were way beyond what the other kids our age were doing. Make of that what you will, but I'm going to go ahead and assume that there were budget issues. Is that a decent excuse? Anyway, at Sarah Jane Adams Elementary, there were no music or physical education teachers, so those subjects were left to be taught by our regular teachers. Mrs. Anderson would pass out the recorders once a week and we would all practice playing Pop Goes The Weasel into the mouthpiece of an instrument that had been used by a different kid the week before. It wasn't my favorite subject.

Worse than music class was P.E. You might think that a nearly-dead fourth grade teacher wearing a muu muu would glaze over the teaching of sports and health, but you'd be wrong. Every day that there was no snow on the ground, Mrs. Anderson would don her whistle on a rope, grab a playground ball and herd her class out to the baseball field where we played kickball, like it or not. Always kickball.

I have never been the athletic type. I don't know the rules of most sports, and I don't want to. P.E. class was the bane of my existence from third grade until I could finally opt for other courses my junior year in high school. The best I could do was to try to avoid participation and therein not cause injury to myself or others. I used every excuse in the book to get out of class, including menstruation, my bunions, and a wart on my big toe that had recently suffered freezing via liquid nitrogen or some other painful chemical. On the days that I could not avoid "dressing down" and playing their ridiculous games, I inevitably made a fool of myself by attempting to keep my gangley limbs from spazzing out and killing anyone.

Back to Mrs. Anderson's fourth grade kickball sessions. So every day we'd line up and be counted off into teams. One, two, one, two, one, two... We had all figured out that we needed to stand one person away from our friends in order to be on the same team. (Utah education couldn't have been that bad if we were smart enough to figure out those important things.)

Once we got separated, Mrs. Anderson would blow her whistle and yell, "Play ball!" with the energetic voice of a woman a third her age. And play ball we did. When my team was in the outfield, I knew well enough to get out of the way when the ball was headed for me and let the boys catch it and throw it to whatever base they felt was best. And when my team was doing the kicking, I knew to quickly get to the end of the line as soon as I had flung my leg out and missed the ball entirely, so as to not waste valuable playing time, or prolong my own embarrassment. Whenever someone did kick the ball into play, Mrs. Anderson would croak out, "Run like mad!!! RUN LIKE MAD!!!" It was a little bit scary, to be honest. She was an entirely different woman when ruling the kickball field. She moved more sharply, growled a bit more and surely would have bitten anyone who interrupted the game to ask her how long until the bell rang, or why she never brought cookies to class. "Run like MAD!" I was confused as to what she meant by that. Run like you're angry? Run like a crazy person escaping from the loony bin? Run really fast? I was glad I never had to worry about how to run like mad properly, because my foot never made contact with the ball.

There was one afternoon in spring, when we had again spent part of our afternoon on the baseball field with our classroom kickball. My friends and I were headed back to the school building with our classmates, and we were celebrating our victory as members of the winning team. Yes, we had contributed by successfully staying out of the way. My friend, Ashley, tossed her arms out to the side, yelled, "We won!", and spun in a circle. One of her outstretched arms hit me across the face, and thanks to the dry Utah climate, my nose sprayed blood so far that the bricks on one whole side of the school had to be pressure washed. I lost so much blood that I was sure I was going to die, or at least get to go home early. I clamped my nose shut as best I could and hurried back into the classroom with crazy Mrs. Anderson. She instantly became more maternal when we were indoors. She helped me to clean up my hands, face, arms and legs, all of which were streaked with my life's essence. My new, neon birthday dress was a total loss though. One less piece of neon to brighten the world.

Apparently there was cause for concern beyond my ruined birthday dress, because my mother was called, and when she arrived, Mrs. Anderson took me out into the hallway where she and my mother studied my nose for what felt like hours. They were trying to determine whether the bump in the bridge of my nose had always been there, or if Ashley had broken my nose with her arm swinging and caused this bump.

Wouldn't you think that my mother would quickly be able to tell Mrs. Anderson which was the case? I stood there, feeling unloved and unnoticed because there was so much discussion and debate involved in trying to decide if my nose was hideous due to genetics or physical assault. "I think it's always been like that," were my mothers kind words.

I would like to take this opportunity to say that I believe the opposite. I believe that my nose was not disfigured prior to the kickball celebration incident. I will stand by that unless someone can prove to me that I'm wrong. I blame kickball for the below picture.

The bump. Go ahead and click on this picture to see a close up of my greasy pores. Unless you're eating, and then I wouldn't recommend it.

Pre-kickball photo, with cute, straight nose.

Glasses worn during fourth grade, which sit right at the spot where I now display my bump. I suppose the glasses could be as much to blame as kickball. By the way, you can't tell me that those aren't some stylin' frames.

Naked People Falling On Me

I never would have remembered these suppressed memories had my Aunt not dredged them up by mentioning volunteering in her last blog post. (Give her some ideas people, before she turns into the lady on the news who is the owner of 112 cats that she brought home with her from the animal shelter and quickly became overwhelmed and is found by animal control living in poop and kitty litter 6 inches deep and carting around a bird on her shoulder.)

So after thinking about the only time that I have formally volunteered, ( I spend time in my kids' classrooms at school and do church stuff, but no longer anything with a name tag), I remembered how much I dreaded putting on that red and white striped apron and going to the hospital. I'm getting ahead of myself here, let me start from the beginning.

I was fourteen, and I have no clue who's idea it was for my sister, Natalie, and I to become Candy Stripers at the local hospital. It must have been Southwest Washington Medical Center, but I'm not entirely sure, having worked so hard to forget the entire experience. At any rate, some well-intentioned person signed Natalie and I up for orientation, where we spent an entire day being instructed on the rules and regulations of volunteering in a hospital and also being shown the correct way to make a bed using "hospital corners". Valuable piece of information there, people. So following all of the regulation mumbo-jumbo, we were given a tour of the hospital and shown all the areas where we might be assigned to volunteer. Of course, everyone's favorite was the pediatric wing where you could play with the cute little sick kids in rooms surrounded with rainbow paintings and tiny-sized armchairs. And nothing remotely disturbing or grotesque could ever happen in a pediatric ward, right? (Wrong.) So when it came time to fill out our preferences of where we'd like to work, all 50 of us surely put down the same departments: Pediatric, gift shop, (with it's cheery sounding cash register), and lobby, where we could smile and direct people to their loved ones' rooms without having to actually come in contact with the unfortunate sick and dismembered. (Feel free to call me 'insensitive' in any forthcoming hate mail.)

So a week later, all of us Candy Stripers anxiously arrived at the hospital to learn our fates. Apparently, all of the happy places were assigned to the blond haired, blue eyed beauties, for I was assigned to the surgery wing.

Did you get that? Surgery wing. Not a happy place at all.

We broke into groups and were escorted to our designated areas. I said good-bye to Natalie, and if you'd like to know where she went, you'll have to ask her because it's one of those details too painful to dredge up, but let's remember that she has blonde hair and blue eyes, was approached by "model scouts" more times than I can remember, and was given a job at Musicland before she'd even finished asking for an application by the man who later became her lucky husband. The elevator doors opened up on the surgical floor and all of my awkward adolescent comrades and I emerged into the very hallways of Hell where, I kid you not, you could hear people moaning in every other room and one woman was actually screaming and everyone was ignoring her.

Every Thursday I went to that wing and did my best to disappear into the background as nurses bustled to and fro, taking calls and answering pages. I know they weren't doing anything to help their patients, because if they had been, then the moaning surely would have stopped. Some days I avoided having to go into anyone's room and got away with delivering samples to the lab or picking up more kidney shaped vomit catchers from the supply warden.

Some days I was not so lucky.

One day I was given the assignment of making sure that all the patients had adequately stocked bedside drawers. I was checking for bedpans, the stinking vomit catchers, little plastic cups and tissue boxes, among other things. Once in a while I had to converse with women who were still coming off the morphine high and smile and talk nicely while I backed out of the room with promises to send a nurse. And then I came upon the room. The room that was blessedly void of any living soul. I checked the drawer, found it satisfactory and headed back out. But as I passed the bathroom, a large, lumbering person stumbled toward me, and with a little groan, fell completely naked into my arms. Too shocked to know what else to do, I tried my best to keep the slippery person from falling all the way to the floor. My arms were underneath their arms, but I was unsure of whether I was dealing with a man or a woman, so I couldn't make myself use my hands to grab them around the middle for fear of latching on to two naked breasts. And why was this person wet?? Please let them have just taken a shower, please don't let this slippery being be covered in sweat! Just as my knees were about to buckle, a nurse came into the room and helped me drag the person upright. Then I bolted. I didn't even stay to help the nurse get the patient to his or her bed. I needed to wash both my arms from the shoulders down, pronto.

And that is the last memory I have of volunteering in a hospital. It is not, however, the last memory I have of someone naked falling on me.

The next story is not so awful. It takes place in a daycare. I must have figured out how to do my hair and make-up in a way that would validate me to be in the presence of darling children. Or maybe the staff was desperate. However it happened, at 18 I found myself the sole caretaker for more than the legal number of pre-schoolers for several hours a day. Once the school-age children were off to their classrooms I had some help, but until then, I spent the morning hours on my own. Thankfully, we only took kids who were potty trained. That does not mean that they were all capable of the entire spectrum of toilet duties on their own, however.

One day, little Dylan yelled from the bathroom, the door to which he had left open, "Teacher Beth, can you come wipe me?" He was an intoxicating and adorable 3 year old, and of course I could wipe him. I went into the bathroom and Dylan promptly bent over and rested the top of his head on the floor so that I had an unencumbered view of his wiping needs. I gathered the toilet paper and went to work. And then he lost his balance and his tiny butt landed on my arm, one cheek on either side of my radius bone. Laughing hysterically, he regained his upright position and said through his giggles, "Sorry, Teacher Beth", and then went on with his chuckling. I was desperately trying to control my urge to lunge my forearm into boiling water, because I had a skid mark where there never ought to be a skid mark. I toughed it out and finished wiping his behind before I scoured my arm under the sink with our month's supply of liquid soap.

Moral of the story, you never know when a naked person might fall on you, and there's nothing you can do to stop them. That's about it.

But I can do a summersault!

Grace and coordination are not qualities that I am blessed with. Since childhood, I have been prone to accidents anytime I try to do something physically challenging or anything with lightening speed. I never outgrew that tendency toward catastrophe, as you might remember from reading about my ice-blocking adventure. A great number of my young years were spent limping and waiting for scabs to mature on my very disfigured knees. Regrettably, most of the injuries I sustained spawned from a complete lack of fear and poor judgment. But at least once, I had some company in the poor judgment club.

I was eight years old and living in Beaverton, Oregon. My parents were comfortable leaving us four kids alone during the day while they were out, but anything in the evening hours required a babysitter. On one particular evening, Mom and Dad had gone out on a date and we kids were left with a teenage girl to care for us. We adored having babysitters because therein lay a perfect audience for our imagined games and budding talents. Showing off was the perfect way to spend an evening.

My siblings and I were running around like a bunch of wild hyenas, giggling and tumbling and screeching with delight. Things began to escalate as we each tried to out-do one another in hopes of winning the prize of being the babysitter's favorite. Someone was doing cartwheels. In the living room. Absolutely one of the five cardinal sins of living in our house. (#1 - don't talk back to your mother, #2 - no food in the living room, #3 - do what you are asked the first time that you are asked, or prepare for death, #4 - do not stomp or slam doors, and #5 - do not attempt acrobatics indoors.) Well, if cartwheels were being done in the house, then I would take it one step, (or maybe it was one giant leap), further. I pulled all the seat cushions off of the couch and piled them into a fine replica of The Leaning Tower of Pisa, and then I climbed on top of it.

I stood there at the top of my tower and waited until I had the full attention of the babysitter. She sat there on the floor, grinning, and knowing full well what I was about to do. Her expectant smile was all the encouragement I needed - I cartwheeled off of that tower.

In my entire life, I had never been able to do a cartwheel, and so why I thought that it would be a good idea to try one from a starting point 3 or 4 feet off the ground is a mystery to me. A bigger mystery, however, is why the babysitter thought it was a good idea. She had plenty of time to stop me while I stacked the cushions, and more time to see the red flags while I carefully scaled the cushion tower, and one more chance to prevent catastrophe while I stood there with a ridiculous grin, ready to perform my stunt and emerge as the victorious champion of our living room circus performance.

But she just sat there and smiled at me! And I was either too stupid to realize that I was about to regret ever wishing for the sitter's favoritism, or too embarrassed to chicken out.

The next thing I knew, my hand was hitting the floor with tremendous force behind it, and something was very, very wrong. I was writhing on the floor, screaming and clutching my arm, and that babysitter, that stinking babysitter - it was all her fault, was hovered over me with panic oozing from her mouth and her hands as she tried to calm me, or at least quiet me.

Pain. That's all I could think about. Pain, pain, pain.

When I was finally able to stop howling and crying, fear overcame me. "Oh, no. When Mom and Dad come home and find out that I was doing cartwheels in the house, and off of the couch cushions too, I am dead. They are going to kill me." I think I cried some more after I realized that my life was about to end.

I went to bed shortly thereafter, and the baby sitter came into my room and said that she thought we should say a prayer. I wanted to tell her that she was an idiot, that some kind of horrific damage had already been done to my arm, (which I was still cradling, don't anybody touch me), and that it was pointless to pray over it because not only would it not be miraculously okay, but I was facing punishment to end all punishment for the way in which this crippling pain had come about. But I couldn't very well say that to her, and besides, I could tell that she was equally concerned for her own fate as she was for mine. I didn't know at the time that my elbow was fractured, but I knew enough to be sure that something was very wrong with my arm, as I couldn't move it. Surely if anyone found out that she had allowed me to pile all those stupid cushions and then cartwheel off of them, she would be in as much trouble as I. Feeling a little sorry for her, I told her to go ahead with her prayer. She then left me to my attempts at sleep.

The next morning, Mom woke me and told me to hurry and get ready for a wedding that we had to go to.

What? That's it? No, "How's your arm?" No, "What have I told you about cartwheels in the house?" No spanking? No lecture? I couldn't believe my luck! The babysitter hadn't told! I was going to live! Never mind that I still couldn't move my arm - who cares? I happily, though carefully and slowly, dressed myself for the wedding and presented myself in the kitchen. Still, no one said anything. Hurray!

A few hours later, we were sitting on the world's hardest benches in a Catholic church. I have only been to that one Catholic wedding, so I don't know if it's normal for them to last an eternity, but this one did. About five minutes into it, I could hardly stand the pain in my arm. I had had no Tylenol or Advil, no ice pack or even any pity, because to get any of that, I would have to fess up to what I had done. So I sat there on that bench, waiting for the end of the ceremony and trying to not to fidget. Sitting still while in such pain is a very difficult thing to do. I was still holding my arm at a perfectly still right angle, and cradling it with my right hand, but my legs were screaming to run from there. "Just get up and run!" they shouted.

About six days later the vows had been given, and the kiss and the music...and FINALLY, we got to get up and go. To the reception. Someone help me! However, the ability to move at will and consume food seemed to diminish the pain somewhat, and as I had gotten used to holding my left arm immobile with my right hand, I could run around and play with the other kids. I was nearly able to forget the pain. Mom asked me at some point why I was holding my arm. I told her that it hurt, but I must have just slept on it funny. Simple as that, or so I thought.

At home later that evening, I was trying to get out of my dress so I could take a bath, but my arm was stuck. I contorted myself into all sorts of positions in my efforts to peel the dress off of myself, but to no avail. I stood there, wondering what to do, and came up with no other option than to ask for help. I knew that I was as good as handing myself over to the enemy. I would certainly be getting my comeuppance.

Mom did her best with the dress, and after working at it for a good, long while, she was able to extricate me from the garment. Upon seeing my swollen arm, she knew that it was not a matter of having "slept on it funny", and asked me what had happened. I willingly outed myself at that point, because the pain had finally won me over. I told the story as succinctly as possible, and then put on a t-shirt and jeans and went off to the emergency room with my dad, almost a full 24 hours after the incident. Impressive that I lasted so long, don't you think?

I had a small fracture in my elbow, and for that received a cast to hold my arm in that tiresome right angle position for a few weeks. It felt better to be helped, and slightly medicated, and to have finally told my parents the truth. Dad figured that I had suffered enough and no punishment was given. After the hospital, he took me to Burgerville, where I remember sitting next to him in the car, sheepishly eating french fries as he asked me if I was ever going to do something like that again. Nope. Not me. Dad told me that I was never to attempt a cartwheel again, indoors or out. I agreed, and wondered while we drove home if the babysitter would be told to never again attempt to supervise children. I bet she got off scott free.

No Other Artificial Cherry Tastes Quite Like It

Two of my dad's favorite sayings when I was young were; "Don't touch that", (but he said it in French, so it sounded like "Na touche pa!"), and "I didn't raise a bunch of dogs to do my own barking". So we kept our hands off of anything that looked expensive, and we babysat.

My sister, Natalie and I were, if I remember correctly, 8 and 9 years old when my parents first began to leave our younger siblings in our care on Saturdays while they ran errands and ate fast food without us. You may think that we were too young for such a responsibility, but rest assured that my parents are very smart people who would not have left their two favorite children with Natalie and I unless they were absolutely sure that they would be safe. We fed Kellie and Joel Ramen Noodles for lunch nearly every Saturday, we taught them how to eat without the use of silverware, we showed them how fun it can be to pretend that the carpet was hot lava and jump from couch cushion to coffee table to couch, and all kinds of other intelligent and healthy activities. We had many adventures.

One Saturday, about a year after Natalie and I officially became the Saturday babysitters, we were doing our chores after Mom and Dad had left, and Kellie got to feeling like Natalie and I were unfairly making her do all the work. I don't remember whether that was the case or not, but Kellie was convinced that we were mean and rotten - so she packed a suitcase that was almost the same size as her six-year-old body, and declared that she was going to stay with Grandma, who lived about 4 blocks away. Natalie and I decided that the best thing to do would be to let her get on with it and hope that she chickened out so that we wouldn't get in trouble for losing her. Kellie started down the sidewalk with that suitcase full of frilly dresses and shiny black shoes, and with tears in her eyes she stomped towards the corner. Natalie and I watched from the front door, giggling and wondering how far she would get before she came running back. She was halfway past the neighbor's house when Kellie got scared and came back, sobbing and feeling worse than ever. I don't know about Natalie, but I felt very grown-up for having handled the situation in such an adult way.

About a year after that, I was eleven and we had begun to babysit for our siblings after dark. Mom and Dad were out late one evening picking up all the things we needed to go on a road trip the next morning, and we kids had settled in to watch a movie until they returned. At some point towards the middle of the movie something moved in my peripheral vision, and I looked over to the living room window which was covered only by a sheer curtain. There was a man standing there, just outside the glow of the porch light. His silhouette was still as he peered into our front room, and I became as motionless as he. He was just standing there, watching us. I was completely paralyzed with fear, and wondering all the while how to alert the rest of my siblings without provoking the man to get a closer look. I'm not sure if Natalie eventually noticed the man as well or if I was able to finally whisper some kind of alarm, but we all eventually stood up very quickly and rushed into the hallway where there were no windows for him to peep through. We stayed there, pulses racing, breaths shallow, waiting for the man to leave. Once or twice we peeked around the corner back into the living room, but the fear of that experience has wiped my memory of whether or not we ever left the hallway until Mom and Dad got home. The man eventually moved off into the shadows, where he bode his time until he could break into our neighbor's house, which he did. See what smart sitters Natalie and I were? The man left on his own - there was no need to call 911, or our parents. The neighbor took care of that when he gave her cause to do so. Who was I to make trouble for a man who had, at the time, done nothing wrong?

As scary as that episode was, our scariest experiences in babysitting happened in broad daylight and were self-inflicted. On Saturday afternoons, our parents would head out to do whatever it was they did every week when they left us, and Natalie and I would wait a good fifteen minutes to make sure that they weren't coming back for some forgotten item, and then we began to argue in urgent whispers.

"It's your turn!"

"No, I did it last week. Remember? I barely made it back before they came home!"

"Oh, right. But you're so much faster than I am - you go!"

"No! I'm scared. You go."

"Fine. I'll go. But I'm taking your bike."

So much anxiety! You see, we usually had a dollar or two to our names, and we craved Jolly Rancher Sticks like heroine addicts who were desperate for a fix. Cherry and Watermelon and Fire flavors were our true vices. Not so much the Grape or Sour Apple, but in a pinch they would do. In order to feed our addictions, either Natalie or I would need to stay with Kellie and Joel while the other went after the candy on our bike. It had to have been at least a mile, but my eleven-year-old grasp of distance was probably a little off. It was, regardless of actual distance, quite a journey.

When it fell upon my shoulders to secure the booty, I would start off by letting my adrenaline force my feet to pedal past the park that lay behind our house. I tried not to think of the boys who walked through the park wearing dark trench coats and chains, or the marijuana smoke that sometimes wafted through the trees, across the creek and into our backyard. I even tried not to think about the crawdads that sat upon the rocks under the bridge with all their millions of babies clinging to their underbellies and crawling all over the rotting leaves and mud.

Pedal faster, faster, faster.

After a few turns there was a straightaway that climbed a very slight hill. The sun was sometimes beginning it's decent by this time, and that added to my sense of urgency. I would pedal past a house where, oftentimes, two black girls would be standing in their front yard with a boom box blasting Salt n' Peppa's "Let's Talk About Sex". They were dressed in their scandalously tight jeans and midriff shirts, hips swinging in suggestive circles, and they were making up their own dance moves to the song. I was sure that I would be in deep trouble just for unintentionally listening to the lyrics of that song, so I tried to avert my eyes and shut off my ears. But I couldn't help oogling at their lurid moves and natural rhythm. I pedaled faster and faster, trying to escape the music.

"Let's talk about sex, baby,
Let's talk about you and me,"

(No! Must go faster!)

"Let's talk about all the good things and the bad things
That may be. Let's talk about sex..."

Where was those girls' mother? Why did they have to make this even worse for me?

Pedal, pedal, pedal. Hurry! Before they catch sight of you and try to give you a make-over and a dancing lesson!

Next came the most frightening and dangerous part of the trip: crossing Murray Boulevard. Murray was a very busy road with cars whizzing along at about 200 miles an hour, one lane, I believe, in each direction, maybe two, with a turning lane in the middle. I knew at this point that it was time to take a deep breath and wait. This part of the journey could not be rushed. You don't take your time and you could be squashed flat before you even reached the middle of the first lane. Look both ways...car coming...look again...might be enough time, but don't risk it....look both ways...this could be it...yeah, that truck is a good ways off...look once more, just to be sure...GO! I don't recall ever coming close to being hit, nor was I ever honked at, to the best of my recollection. Once across, it was just a few yards to the parking lot of the Circle K Mini-Mart.

Inside the Mini-Mart was row after row of dazzling candy displays. I passed the Mambas and the Bonkers and the Whatchamacallits, the SweeTarts, the Nerds and even the Bubblicious. On the very bottom shelf were the boxes of Jolly Rancher Sticks, all for fifteen cents each. On a good day we had enough money to get eight or ten of them, and then it was up to the check-out counter, where I held my breath hoping that the clerk wouldn't ask me where my parents were, or if I had come alone. I was too naive to know that Mini-Mart clerks rarely care about that type of thing.

The trip home was all about speed. Clutching a little paper sack filled with our spoils, eyes focused on the road ahead. If Mom and Dad had gotten home before the Candy Runner, there would surely be blistered butts and groundings and extra chores and all kinds of unpleasantry. There was absolutely more concern about getting home before Mom and Dad than there was about getting to the Mini-Mart without being abducted by a freak in the park or squished by a car. In fact, had one of us ever ridden up to the house to find the family minivan already parked in the driveway, I would hope that we would have been smart enough to just keep riding and never look back.

As it was, we never did get caught making one of our Jolly Rancher runs. The runner would arrive home, the three lucky ones who had stayed behind would finally stop praying for the runner's safe and undetected return, and we would all greedily choose a stick and then stash the rest in our bedroom closets, hidden in their paper sack until the next time Mom and Dad went out.

Those were the good ol' days when I was ignorant to the dangers of the world and completely hooked on those cinnamon flavored Jolly Ranchers.

I really hope my kids aren't as dumb as I was.