I am and always have been a city boy, which, if you're from outside the city, is a bit weird, to say it nicely. I didn't realize that when I was a child though. I lived in a residential, non-urban area of the city and thought I was a normal American kid. I didn't know that I was supposed to like digging up snakes from the garden and then feeding those snakes to bigger snakes that I kept in a glass cage in my house. I also didn't realize that, as an American boy, I was supposed to be proud of the sound and smell of my own farts and that I was supposed to use cuss words before and after every noun and verb in my sentence. Some kids I grew up with knew this, but I was blind to it, as were many of the kids I grew up around. (Remember, my area was so oddly placed in an urban-suburban climate.) In fact, as I've reached adulthood I've realized that I was not nearly as off as some of them. Or maybe I've just normalized somehow. I'm not sure.
One would think that growing up in The Bronx, I'd have been a regular potty mouth. But I had a very proper Irish grandmother, educated in England and a mother like no other - both of whom had me convinced that I would be struck by lightning and be sent straight to hell if I had even so much as said "hell". I don't think my father even knew most of the bad words in English at that time. Now, thanks to cable, he's learned them. Of course my brothers and sisters were prohibited from using such words as well. I heard my friends say four-letter words all the time, but I just figured they were low-minded, Godless and classless. (Yes, I thought like that as a child. Amazing, I know.)
I recall having a huge fight with my friend, Frankie, when I was about five. He insisted that the word "darn" was not a bad word and I was sure it was one of those words that would force God to kill you. Frankie told me that his mother told him it was okay to say it and I told Frankie that he was a liar and that his mother was a nice person and would never say that.
Later that week, Frankie and his family moved to Long Island. I'm pretty sure it was because his parents were worried that I was retarded and it would rub off on Frankie - in a bad way.
I never saw Frankie again. It was traumatic at the time because although he was technically my second best friend after John, who was my first best friend, I secretly respected Frankie more because his parents spoke with a more mild Bronx accent. AND, they had oscars. Oscars are these really cool fish that eat goldfish for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I loved going to Frankies house and watching the oscars eat the goldfish. Though I was basically a wus when it came to snakes, I was very much interested in seeing small animals like goldfish and grasshoppers eaten alive or tortured in some way. I felt sorry for them but at the same time I thought it was cool.
I had a friend - lets call him Pepe (as you might guess...his name would never have been Pepe, despite what your ideas about The Bronx might be) who was older than me and the brother of my future wife (or, more correctly, the girl I assumed would marry me when I was eighteen and old enough to support a family) loved to kill grasshoppers by filling pickle jars with water and leaving just enough air to form a one-inch bubble on the side and then to stick a grasshopper in the jar and close it. Then he (we) would watch the poor, desperate grasshopper swim to the air bubble and just at it reached it, Pepe would turn the bottle over and the hopper would have to swim across the bottle again! It was sad. It usually took the grasshopper about five minutes to die this way. Absolute torture. Pepe was a horrible boy. And I was worse for enjoying it and egging him on. I was the crowd for which he was playing and I wanted season tickets.
So, yeah. I was a snob, even at five. I didn't like the way my friend John's parents spoke. They sounded uneducated, even to my kindergarden ears. Doesn't that make me sound like a really obnoxious kid? Well, I wasn't. I was so nice to everyone. My mother had trained me to be really nice and to always say "no, thank you" even if I really wanted something. So, of course I would never say, "hey, Mrs. L. You talk like a moron". That just wasn't what I was about. Anyway, I liked Mr and Mrs L. I just didn't respect them.
I was supposed to talk about the snakes and my retarded cousins from Long Island who used to come to my house and dig them up. I'm too tired now, and a little drunk. (Hence, I feel free to call my friends and family such politically incorrect names as "retard".) I will write the Snake story tomorrow. Anyway, you're not missing much. It's not that interesting.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Click Click Click
I would tell you about my actual birth, but I really don't remember much. I guess there was a light and then it's pretty much all a blur. As a young'n I had always been shy about being nude in front of family members, so that was embarassing, I guess. Really, I can only guess about what was going through my young mind at that moment. I imagine that the doctor who circumcized me was the first person on my newly formed shitlist; but again, I'm just guessing.
Fortunately, I have five older siblings to remind me of a great many details relating to my early days on this earth. As the youngest and, given the advanced ages of my parents, presumably the last chance for my family to attain some level of infant greatness, I had quite a load to carry - and not just in my diapers. The baby born before me - let's call him "Aldo", though no one in my family would ever be called "Aldo" because we're just not that ethnic - had been trained by our four older siblings to walk and talk by the age of seven months. That could be argued to be some kind of great accomplishment for a baby, but then he got older and quickly fizzled everyone's expectations by becoming what I refer to as a "naco". So, I was the one on whom their hopes rested. Sadly.
Again, I don't remember this so well, but I am pretty sure that I was feeling quite a bit of babystress as I was taken through my daily infantolympic workouts. Five crazy siblings and two nutball parents were yaking at me in all directions, all day, day and night to get me to talk. Though I suspect that Aldo didn't want his eight-year record broken by some new punk-ass baby. It was enough that I was cuter than him, I don't think he could stand for me walking and talking faster than he did. Anyway, I had inadvertantly given my brothers and sisters a hugely false sense of my genius by uttering the word "click" several times after just one week at home. That's right. I said "click" when I was just one week old. Not the Swahili kind of click, the actual word "click". C - L - I - C - K, though I'm pretty sure I didn't know how to spell it.
I know. You don't believe it. I don't care. I was the baby genius making a voiceless velar plosive followed by an alveolar lateral approximant - which is quite a tricky feat for an infink - and you're just too amazed to accept it.
So, of course Aldo didn't hear it and to this day doesn't accept it. He says I said some crap like "Da Da" when I was - conveniently - eight months old.
MESSAGE TO ALDO: I know I said it. Everyone else knows I said it. You know I said it. I know you know you know.
Fortunately, I have five older siblings to remind me of a great many details relating to my early days on this earth. As the youngest and, given the advanced ages of my parents, presumably the last chance for my family to attain some level of infant greatness, I had quite a load to carry - and not just in my diapers. The baby born before me - let's call him "Aldo", though no one in my family would ever be called "Aldo" because we're just not that ethnic - had been trained by our four older siblings to walk and talk by the age of seven months. That could be argued to be some kind of great accomplishment for a baby, but then he got older and quickly fizzled everyone's expectations by becoming what I refer to as a "naco". So, I was the one on whom their hopes rested. Sadly.
Again, I don't remember this so well, but I am pretty sure that I was feeling quite a bit of babystress as I was taken through my daily infantolympic workouts. Five crazy siblings and two nutball parents were yaking at me in all directions, all day, day and night to get me to talk. Though I suspect that Aldo didn't want his eight-year record broken by some new punk-ass baby. It was enough that I was cuter than him, I don't think he could stand for me walking and talking faster than he did. Anyway, I had inadvertantly given my brothers and sisters a hugely false sense of my genius by uttering the word "click" several times after just one week at home. That's right. I said "click" when I was just one week old. Not the Swahili kind of click, the actual word "click". C - L - I - C - K, though I'm pretty sure I didn't know how to spell it.
I know. You don't believe it. I don't care. I was the baby genius making a voiceless velar plosive followed by an alveolar lateral approximant - which is quite a tricky feat for an infink - and you're just too amazed to accept it.
So, of course Aldo didn't hear it and to this day doesn't accept it. He says I said some crap like "Da Da" when I was - conveniently - eight months old.
MESSAGE TO ALDO: I know I said it. Everyone else knows I said it. You know I said it. I know you know you know.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Lets start before the beginning
So, this thing is about my life, but not really. I think my life is just an example - something you can use to relate to your own life experiences. Anyhow, I was going to start with more recent things but then I thought I should start from the beginning and THEN I thought - what the hell! Let's start before the beginning - of me, that is.
Some time in the winter of 1970, my mother was pitching a fit because my father would't drive her to church. Never mind the fact that there was a blizzard outside with three-foot snow drifts covering grand sheets of ice and that my mother was 8 months pregnant and wearing four-inch high heels. Of course, if she were a normal 8-month-pregnant mother-to-be, she would at least be wearing boots but MY mother didn't own any boots. Today, she has one pair of boots which I think she has worn maybe three or four times since she bought them about five years ago at the tender age of 70.
So back to the "pitching a fit" part. Yes. She was having a scream at dad who barked back at her in his bad English, telling her that even the busses and subways weren't running so why the hell should he risk his life to take her to church when he wasn't even Catholic! It's a kind of logic that my father has. It is not so clear, but somehow you can get the idea.
That was the end of the discussion.
Whenever my father said something like that it was like a direct blow the the Pope's kisser - a smack right in the face of everything my mother believes in. My father is Estonian, and an iffy Lutheran at best. (Actually, he became Catholic years and years later, but that's a whole other story - so I won't get into it now.) When my mother's need to go to church - be it for Sunday Mass, a wedding ceremony, a funeral, random events that church-going women in the neighborhood might have casually mentioned making my mother feel hellbound if she didn't at least try to attend, whatever - wasn't met and it was humanly possible to get there, then my father sure as heck better have gotten her there or there was going to be H-E-double hockey sticks to pay. Well this particular time, it didn't work. Mom kicked up a stink bigger than a Shaquille fart but Dad just went to bed anyway.
The only logical thing for my mother to do was to put on her high-heels and plow her giant pregnant belly half a mile to Our Lady of the Assumption Church. The kids didn't have to go. They were excused because it could be dangerous for teenagers to go out in the snow, but pregnant women know no fear in my mother's house. Anyway, she was on a mission for God and so He would surely protect her from the Abominable Snowman or whatever else might be in store for her.
The best thing is she made it all the way to the top of the church steps where she was greeted with a locked door. She was only slightly annoyed until she started down the stairs and slipped on a cake of ice hidden beneath the sails of snow lining the steps. When she found herself in the emergency room with a broken elbow and a bruised backside, she started to think that maybe God would have forgiven her for not going to Mass that particular Sunday. She never got that God might have been telling her not to be so stubborn. She still hasn't gotten that part. She's probably one of the most stubborn people I have ever known, next to me. I'm not sure what her excuse is for being that way, but I always blame my problem(s) on the fact that I was dropped on my head before I was even born.
Some time in the winter of 1970, my mother was pitching a fit because my father would't drive her to church. Never mind the fact that there was a blizzard outside with three-foot snow drifts covering grand sheets of ice and that my mother was 8 months pregnant and wearing four-inch high heels. Of course, if she were a normal 8-month-pregnant mother-to-be, she would at least be wearing boots but MY mother didn't own any boots. Today, she has one pair of boots which I think she has worn maybe three or four times since she bought them about five years ago at the tender age of 70.
So back to the "pitching a fit" part. Yes. She was having a scream at dad who barked back at her in his bad English, telling her that even the busses and subways weren't running so why the hell should he risk his life to take her to church when he wasn't even Catholic! It's a kind of logic that my father has. It is not so clear, but somehow you can get the idea.
That was the end of the discussion.
Whenever my father said something like that it was like a direct blow the the Pope's kisser - a smack right in the face of everything my mother believes in. My father is Estonian, and an iffy Lutheran at best. (Actually, he became Catholic years and years later, but that's a whole other story - so I won't get into it now.) When my mother's need to go to church - be it for Sunday Mass, a wedding ceremony, a funeral, random events that church-going women in the neighborhood might have casually mentioned making my mother feel hellbound if she didn't at least try to attend, whatever - wasn't met and it was humanly possible to get there, then my father sure as heck better have gotten her there or there was going to be H-E-double hockey sticks to pay. Well this particular time, it didn't work. Mom kicked up a stink bigger than a Shaquille fart but Dad just went to bed anyway.
The only logical thing for my mother to do was to put on her high-heels and plow her giant pregnant belly half a mile to Our Lady of the Assumption Church. The kids didn't have to go. They were excused because it could be dangerous for teenagers to go out in the snow, but pregnant women know no fear in my mother's house. Anyway, she was on a mission for God and so He would surely protect her from the Abominable Snowman or whatever else might be in store for her.
The best thing is she made it all the way to the top of the church steps where she was greeted with a locked door. She was only slightly annoyed until she started down the stairs and slipped on a cake of ice hidden beneath the sails of snow lining the steps. When she found herself in the emergency room with a broken elbow and a bruised backside, she started to think that maybe God would have forgiven her for not going to Mass that particular Sunday. She never got that God might have been telling her not to be so stubborn. She still hasn't gotten that part. She's probably one of the most stubborn people I have ever known, next to me. I'm not sure what her excuse is for being that way, but I always blame my problem(s) on the fact that I was dropped on my head before I was even born.
Wasted Life of A Genius
I thought about calling my blog "thewastedlifeofagenius" but thought it would work against me. I've always said that people who call themselves geniuses or smart are mostly idiots. I don't want to be seen as an idiot, even if I am one. Therefore, I use humility (and at times even self deprication) to make people think I'm smarter than I actually am. And when I say, "smarter" I don't mean that I think I'm smart. Remember, I am just actually very very dumb. I don't even know why you're wasting your time reading this, though that's not as bad as me wasting time writing it, no?
Whatever.
I guess it's pointless to go on like this so I'll get to the nitty gritty. I want to express to you that I have wasted my life. I'm getting old by the moronic standards of the artistic community. I've always considered myself to be a terrible writer (remember that that means I really think I'm a genius) and so I decided at a very young age to persue that as my one and only career goal. Now more than 20 years have passed and I'm a semi-unemployed accounting clerk/videogame rater/ESL teacher/half-assed filmmaker. Still, I chase this goal and that's the purpose of this blog. If I can't have a real career I can at least blog and pretend that someone is reading it and enjoying my musings.
I have been wasting most of my sucky skills writing crap on various Orkut pages and sending e-mails to friends around the world. Oh, how some of them make me laugh and laugh and laugh! I'm pretty sure they don't make anyone else laugh, but I am not really concerned about others. I'm selfish. (Notice the frequent use of the word "I" on display here.)
Well, this is just an intro. It's boring, I know. I realize I'm incredibly uninteresting and so I promise the rest of my entires will be more exciting. I will lie if I have to but I plan on telling true stories about people I know so you can laugh or cry at their expense. I will be nice and change their names, unless they piss me off.
I will start with my next entry which will be a story about a certain insane family memeber I have who is possibly the most interesting character any writer could ever hope to have to write about.
Sounds exciting, no?! Don't get too excited. I'm not that good.
Oh! I almost forgot! I should mention the title of my blog. It is "Naco In Denial". If you're Mexican you'll get it. If you're not Mexican, you might have no fargin' clue what I'm talking about. That's OK. I like a little mystery in my blog titles, don't you?
Goodbye for now!
Whatever.
I guess it's pointless to go on like this so I'll get to the nitty gritty. I want to express to you that I have wasted my life. I'm getting old by the moronic standards of the artistic community. I've always considered myself to be a terrible writer (remember that that means I really think I'm a genius) and so I decided at a very young age to persue that as my one and only career goal. Now more than 20 years have passed and I'm a semi-unemployed accounting clerk/videogame rater/ESL teacher/half-assed filmmaker. Still, I chase this goal and that's the purpose of this blog. If I can't have a real career I can at least blog and pretend that someone is reading it and enjoying my musings.
I have been wasting most of my sucky skills writing crap on various Orkut pages and sending e-mails to friends around the world. Oh, how some of them make me laugh and laugh and laugh! I'm pretty sure they don't make anyone else laugh, but I am not really concerned about others. I'm selfish. (Notice the frequent use of the word "I" on display here.)
Well, this is just an intro. It's boring, I know. I realize I'm incredibly uninteresting and so I promise the rest of my entires will be more exciting. I will lie if I have to but I plan on telling true stories about people I know so you can laugh or cry at their expense. I will be nice and change their names, unless they piss me off.
I will start with my next entry which will be a story about a certain insane family memeber I have who is possibly the most interesting character any writer could ever hope to have to write about.
Sounds exciting, no?! Don't get too excited. I'm not that good.
Oh! I almost forgot! I should mention the title of my blog. It is "Naco In Denial". If you're Mexican you'll get it. If you're not Mexican, you might have no fargin' clue what I'm talking about. That's OK. I like a little mystery in my blog titles, don't you?
Goodbye for now!
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