Once upon a time, I was in a video store with my then boyfriend trying to pick out a movie to watch. I picked up John Carpenter's Vampires, and proceeded to tell the boy about the coolest scene in the movie, where a guy uses his hot-from-being-fired gun to cauterize a wound he received. Said boyfriend looks at me, shakes his head, and says, "You're not like other girls, Betty."
Name::Braindead Betty From::Indy, Indiana, United States
I'll never forget the last time I saw you. You were working at McDonald's and it was busy, so I left without telling you good-bye. Little did I know the rain-slicked roads would keep you from making it to school the next day, or ever again.
I can't believe it's been 9 years. You weren't there for graduation, the fun college years (even though I didn't go, but I'm sure you would have), and now we're all settling down and having babies.
I actually named my daughter after you. As she grows, I'll tell her stories about you. About your determination, your (let's face it) bitchiness, your loyalty to your friends. Most of all what I want her to know about you is your strength of character. During those tumultous high school years, when everybody's more worried about fitting in, you were never afraid to be yourself. You argued with teachers and students with equal facility, were firm in your beliefs, and refused to be swayed.
I just remembered when we took debate class together. Undefeated, baby! I may not tell Bean about your famous freshman English exploit, when you wrote an outstanding opening and closing paragraph for a research paper, and filled the rest with gibberish. Yeah, you called the teacher out, but she doesn't need to know about that.
11/24/81 - 4/14/98. A life cut short. A star softball and basketball player never allowed to meet their full potential. I still miss you.
One of my coworkers and I were having a conversation about patchouli yesterday. Personally, I can't stand the stuff. It always makes me think of Skunkor, the pariah of the toybox.
Skunkor was one of the characters from He-Man and Masters of the Universe. As you could probably guess from his name, Skunkor's abilities were of the olfactory variety. Anyway, the action figure for Skunkor was marketed to include his stink ability. And it reeked of patchouli! The really horrible thing about it was that if you put him in your toybox, it made all your other toys smell, too. I'm sure my parents were really happy about having bought him.
We're enjoying a stretch of nice weather right now. It's so much fun taking Bean outside to play. She got her first taste of playing with sidewalk chalk yesterday. It brought back so many memories for me. I specifically remember one time my grandpa caught me and the little neighbor girl using sidewalk chalk to make a homemade ouija board. (Yeah, I was a weird little kid.) He got so mad at us for that one.
I made Bean a hopscotch board and taught her how to hop on it, which she loved. I realized, though, that I don't know the actual rules for hopscotch. When we were kids, we never bothered with playing it the way you're supposed to, we just jumped back & forth until we got bored with it. Did anybody mess with the real rules? If so, could you explain them? I'd hate to have my daughter be the only girl who doesn't know the rules when she gets to elementary school.
I became a homeowner at the ripe old age of 21. I knew that I was taking a huge step when I did this, and I'm glad I did. Unfortunately, being that young, I had very little idea of what being a homeowner implies. Visions of home-decorating and stripper poles danced in my head. (Thank God I never went through with that.)
I think my parents must've hated me for about the first 6 months after I moved in. They were inundated with phone calls ranging from, "Can I borrow your lawnmower?" to "I think squirrels are living in my attic!" to "What should I do if I smell gas?" Unfortunately, my friends weren't much help either, being as inexperienced in home-ownership as I was. Not that they didn't try. I remember one of my guy friends very sincerely offering to hold the ladder for me when I needed to get in the crawl space one time.
Luckily, I survived on my own long enough to learn the ropes. And let me tell ya', I can plunge a toilet with the best of 'em now.
I don't know if I was almost a witness to a crime last night or not. I keep trying to convince myself that there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for what happened...
Jay and I have some neighbors that we've long suspected of having a less-than-legitimate second income source. They've actually been pretty good neighbors. They don't cause trouble or disturbances. At least, they hadn't before last night. I had just fallen asleep when I was awoken with the unmistakable sound of gunfire. I heard 4 shots fired, and honestly, I kind of flipped out and froze. I didn't know what to think or do. It took about 5 minutes for the cops to show up, and at that point I knew that everybody in our house was fine, so I went back to sleep. There wasn't any crime scene tape up this morning, so things must've turned out okay. I'm guessing that someone got drunk and dumb is all.
That wasn't nearly as scary as the time I actually got shot at, though. Back when I was young and stupid, I was spending an evening with my best friend at the time and her boyfriend. We were driving back to their house from another friend's apartment when we all heard that loud POP that we've come to know and love. Then I felt something on my face. I looked over, and the car window was gone. I had glass all in my hair and all over my face. It turns out that I was pretty lucky, as the bullet apparently went just under my chin, and didn't hit me at all. It was one of those cases of just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and not one I'd ever like to experience again. It does, however, come in very handy during games of "I never."
Happy Valentine's Day. And if you'll allow me a bit of self-congratulations, happy blogiversary to me, too. It just so happened to be Valentine's Day last year when I started this little blog-thing.
I don't exactly care for doing the expected thing, so instead of going on a long tirade about how ridiculous Valentine's Day is, or getting all mushy about the people I love, I thought I'd tell about my best Valentine's Day ever. It's probably not what you expect.
My junior year in high school, the AIDS awareness group I was involved in was invited to attend the Ryan White National Youth Conference. I know Valentine's Day is supposed to be the holiday of love, but the outpouring of love I witnessed at that conference was amazing. It didn't matter if you were living with HIV/AIDS, if you were, like me, someone who had lost a family member to the disease, or if you were just someone who cared enough to help. Whatever motivation had brought you there, you were family. There were people from all walks of life and all backgrounds. I don't think I've ever seen such acceptance.
I met several people that week who I laughed with, cried with, and learned with. As usually happens (especially with busy high schoolers), when we went home and back to our regular lives we ended up losing contact, but for that one Valentines's Day, we were family.
RSM recently talked about her relationship with her mother and gave some examples of punishments she received growing up. It made me think of me and my mom, and some of the things we went through when I was growing up.
My parents were great at punishments. I'm sure I stretched their imagination a time or two, because I was always getting in trouble, but they sure never let me down in my belief that their sole purpose in life was to make me miserable. The simplest thing they did, and the one that caused me the most heartache, was that they would never ground me for a definite time frame. When my friends screwed up, they got grounded for two weeks, or a month, or whatever their parents deemed appropriate. When I screwed up, how long did I get grounded? "As long as I feel like it." was my dad's standard response. It made making plans a real pain in the butt.
Some of the better punishments my parents came up with involved touring a working convent, moving my bed into their room (when I got caught sneaking out at night), and threatening to throw all my clothes away and buy me nothing but Tommy Hilfiger instead. I know to some people that probably would've been a dream come true, but I hung out with the goths and the skaters and the punks. It would've been hell. Actually, this must've been the most effective threat that my mother ever came up with, because it never actually progressed past the threat stage.
I actually moved out of my parents house the first time because of a punishment that I felt was unfair. I had stayed out past curfew (my 11:00 curfew at 18 years old and already graduated from high school), and when I got home, my dad was waiting up for me. No big surprise there, but what he did next pissed me off to no end. He made me sit in the living room and stay awake ALL NIGHT LONG. Looking back, I see his point, that I made him miss sleep, so he would make me miss sleep, but at the time I was livid enough to pack up all my stuff the next day and move in with some friends. And I do still to this day think 11:00 is a ridiculous curfew for an 18 year old high school graduate.
Luckily, my parents and I both survived adolescence with very few psychological scars, and we're closer now than ever. It's amazing what grandkids will do to mellow a person out.
Have you ever looked back at the peers who’ve influenced the person you’ve become? Some good, some not so good. But all of them have stuck with you through the years. I’m not talking about the big stuff like who you lost your virginity to, I’m talking about the absolutely trivial, but you wouldn’t be you without it.
My best friend in 8th grade took me camping for the first time. I haven’t spoken to her in years, but I still camp just as often as I can. A guy in my study hall in high school introduced me to punk music. I have no idea whatever happened to that guy, but I met my husband at a punk show. My neighbor in 7th grade told me I looked like a two dollar whore with eye liner on. To this day, I almost never wear make-up. My boyfriend when Star Wars: Episode I came out convinced me to go stand in line with him; I now have dogs named Jedi & Sith (yes, I know exactly how geeky that is).
I am a huge klutz. There's no way around it. If there's a way to trip, stumble, drop, etc. I will find it.
It's the reason I've never been any good at sports. In junior high gym class, we were playing tennis. At the end of class, I was headed back inside and decided to jump over the tennis net. My foot caught the top of the net, and I ended up with a sprained wrist and a skinned hip from that one.
It's also the reason I've never even attempted getting a job as a waitress. I remember one of the few times I was able to get into a bar before I was 21, I was with a large group of friends, and I spilled my drink reaching across the table. In the rush to try and catch my drink, I wound up spilling the person next to me's drink. All over my favorite white sundress. Oh, and both the glasses broke. Way to not call any attention to my underage self, huh?
Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because I've been at it again. This past weekend Jay and I went camping and kayaking with a few friends. Saturday night, I went to turn the lantern down and accidentally grabbed the wrong spot and burnt my finger and thumb horribly. They blistered with 5 seconds. Nasty. Then Sunday when we went kayaking, we took a break to swim and relax at about the halfway point of our 8 mile journey. (Which was a blast by the way) Anyway, as I was getting back into my kayak, I slipped and fell. Busted my knee, and let me just say, I'm very happy I'm not a man.
Which of course, is all the reason in the world for my "friends" to bring up other stories about my clumsiness and camping. Their favorite happened about 4 years ago, but apparently never gets old. We were camping on some private property that included an old rock quarry. There was much swimming, much imbibing of alcohol and much revelry. My friend Bear, whose property it was, has been going on and on about how much fun the cliff diving is at the quarry. So in the midst of our late night inebriated skinny dipping, I decide I would like to try the cliff jumping. I work my way up, 6 foot, 10 foot, etc. all the way to the highest jump, which is somewhere between 25-30 feet. I jump down, carefully keeping my feet crossed, waiting until just before I hit to take the deep breath that will have to last me until I can swim back to the top. When I hit the water, according to my friends, a resounding *SMACK* could be heard throughout the entire quarry. They immediately rushed towards where they saw me hit the water, because sometimes *SMACK* equals faint. I swam towards the surface and as I breached, the first words out of my mouth were, "Holy Hell, that hurt!" Apparently I had somehow leaned back during my descent and was unable to correct by the time I hit the water. I ended up hitting at about a 30 degree angle. The next day I discovered a bruise that started at the back of my left knee, went up the back of my thigh, across both ass cheeks, and down my right leg almost to the knee. Which is what makes this one of my friends favorite stories.
Boy, nothing quite like sharing your most embarrasing moments with all the internet!
Well, Fat Tuesday is upon us again. If I were to actually give something up for Lent, or had enough money to go back to New Orleans, I might care. This day always does make me think of my one trip down to New Orleans, even though it wasn't during Mardi Gras.
It was the middle of the summer. The hottest, most humid time of year. Five minutes after getting out of the shower you were so glistening with the moisture in the air and your own sweat that you might as well have not taken a shower at all. Every day it rained, and for the hour after the rainstorm, people would go outside in swarms to enjoy the relative respite from the heat.
I remember one day we were on our way to the mall when the rainstorm happened. We looked like a couple of drowned rats as we made our way inside. And what makes more sense at that point then to go try on $300-$500 dresses that there's no way you'll buy? So of course we head to the Betsey Johnson store. Somewhere I have a picture of us in a couple of B.J. originals, complete with stringy, dripping hair. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that taking pictures in the store was against the rules, too.
One of the other highlights of the trip was when Red took me swing dancing. I had taken lessons before, and it was apparently a weekly thing for her. We went to this place called Rock 'N Bowl, which had a handful of bowling lanes, a full bar, and a live band. I remember it was a rockabilly band that night. We danced and danced until they kicked us out. And then we went to a diner to hang out with some of the other "regulars." I got to meet and dance with one of the guys that was in the Gap swing-dancing commercial. He and I continued the night privately after the diner. I'd give more details of that, but a lady doesn't kiss and tell. ;)
I also remember the night my cousin took me out to spend some one-on-one time together. We both ate a couple hits of acid, and took off for the French quarter. I don't remember a whole lot of particulars about that night, but I do remember lots of dancing and laughing. At one point we forgot where we had parked the car, and were just wandering around waiting for our next adventure to pop up. Earlier in the week, we had stopped at a gas station, and my cousin had told me that it was a place you didn't want to go after dark. So we're wandering around the Quarter at about 3 in the morning, drugged out of our minds, and I look up and we're at that exact gas station! Not the most pleasant feeling in the world for an overprotected suburbanite like myself. Later in the evening/morning, we wound up in the park, watching the sun rise over the Mississippi River. It was beautiful, in spite of the smell, and it's one of my favorite memories of my life. Everything was so tranquil, the partying was over, there was just such a sense of peace. It was a wonderful way to end my week in New Orleans.
