I was always a dog lover. Nowadays, I don't consider myself a true dog lover because I am allergic to pretty much anything with hair - even myself! I actually get a rash everywhere I have fur or hair, but that's just disgusting and I won't burden/disgust you with any further knowledge of that.
Back to my childhood traumas.
I had my first dog when I was too young to remember. I know I was supposedly a genius but I do forget things...or maybe I wasn't a genius. I don't recall.
So, I had this dog, Angus, which my dad murdered when I was about four. He didn't mean it, but it was a murder just the same, I say. Poor Angus. He was a nice dog. He's buried in my parents' backyard along with a bunch of other dead pets. After my dad backed his truck up (and over) Angus, we got these two crazy-ass poodles someone in my family decided to name Lola & Peaches. I think
the initial names were Salt & Pepper and then someone decided that we couldn't tell which one was Salt and which was Pepper so it would be easier to call them names that are less "connected". We couldn't tell Lola from Peaches either but at least it didn't feel like it mattered. Anyway both dogs were extemely stupid and had extreme intestinal issues which casued them to skate across the floors of our house, leaving very interesting (and smelly!) skid marks everywhere. After a couple of days of that fun, my dad locked L&P in the basement where they barked for about 48 hours before they were sold to a farmer in New Jersey. My father told the poor farmer that the dogs were very well "housebroken". What he meant by that was that they nearly broke up the house with their shitnanigans but the lie served it's real purpose and the guy took them. I heard he was quite upset later on but my dad never left a phone number so he was stuck with them until he decided to shoot them or give them away. I'm guessing L&P might have found doggy heaven shortly after they got to the farm though.
A few months after the last remnants of dog smell had evaporated, my brother Aldo brought home "Cheeks" from some frankenbreeders on his paper-route. They had decided to mix a Shih-Tzu and a Minature Pinscher to create a new "master breed" of toy dog. Instead they got these really weird-looking puppies that looked something like Salacious Crumb from 'The Return of the Jedi'. Cheeks, who turned out to be a kind of genius dog, was also quite the neighborhood slut. The name fit well. Despite this, my grandmother, who lived with us at the time and who was a very proper Irish/English woman, refused to accept that name. She just completely ignored it when we presented Cheeks to her and looked at the dog and said, "oh, how sweet. Her name is Princess! Princess Alice Victoria!"
Can you believe that sit?
She just up and renamed the dog!
Not only that but she renamed the dog the gayest, most retarded name anyone could ever think up. We ALL completely rejected the name and decided that it was best not to upset Granny by telling her this. So, we just let her call Cheeks that stupid name while we went on calling her Cheeks. I think it was confusing for the dog and it may have created a kind of "dual identity" that fostered this whole whore/madonna complex that she apparently had.
She played the role of the innocent pretty well until one day I came home from school and my mother started screaming at me for spilling milk all over the floor.
I had been yelled at the day before for the same thing and, since I have memmory issues, I took the heat for it thinking I was just going insane. (I had that feeling a lot as a child.)
But this time, I was not taking it. "I just walked in the door!" When did I have time to spill milk, Ma!"
Well, I had seen Cheeks getting busy with a local stray dog out by the johnny pump about three weeks before. That coupled with the fact that she's suddenly gained a belly that was nearly dragging on the floor let me to the conclusion that Cheeks was pregnant.
"I told you I saw her with that white dog a few weeks ago, Ma! She's a slut and she's pregnant with his bastard puppies!"
(Well, as you might have guessed, I couldn't have gotten away with the word bastard, so I think I said "bastage", which is from 'Johnny Dangerously', a film which facilitated my need to fake-curse for many a year.)
Mom refused to believe this up until the minute Cheeks gave birth. Cheeks had completely torn up the rug in the den building a "nest" for her birthing and Ma still didn't get it.
"That dog's gone nuts!", she said.
Like her owner.
Anyway, the dog popped three puppies - two live and one deadish on April 29th and one runt on April 30th. The runt was rejected by the bitch and so I had to buy doggy formula and feed him myself. We developed a bond and I kept him telling my parents that I would give up "Hogan" over my dead body and that if they wanted to be responsible for the death of their child they could get rid of the dog.
Cheeks was pissed. There was not room enough in our 15-room house for two dogs. She spent the next six months trying to abandon Hogan. She'd sneak out of the house with him and disappear to God-knows-where and then come back in the middle of the night with a gaggle of boy-mutts and no Hogan in sight. I usually went out to find him in some neighbors garden whining because he couldn't figure out how to get out from behind the fence.
Poor Hogan. He didn't have Cheeks' smarts.
While she was basically able to communicate with snarls, sneezes and looks, Hogan just romped around, getting hit by the occasional car, peeling dead pigeons off the street and hoarding cat poo. Oh, how he loved cat poo! When he found it he'd get so excited that he'd just roll around in it. He didn't seem to mind that it stuck to his fur and made him smell a little worse than usual. He just seemed so happy when he found some. It was like he was in love with cat shit.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could all be so happy with the simple things in life?
Imagine you're feeling sad and lonely. You have your morning coffee which leads to your late-morning bowel movement and just before you're about to flush...bliss!
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Monday, May 15, 2006
Inadequacy
It seems that no matter what I have done or what I do, I feel inadequate at some point when reflecting on my accomplishments, or lack there of.
One of my mantras as a child was, "I don't know how". You've already read (well, maybe you didn't pay atteniton or skipped it) that Gerty didn't teach me how to swim. Well, nobody really seemed too interested in teaching me how to do anything after I was about one and a half. I think they tried so hard when I was in the initial stages of psychological and physical development and that I had made such nice progress that they assumed by the time I was one year old, I could pretty much figure out the rest on my own. The trouble is I never found out what "the rest" was. I am still not sure - over thirty years later. Nearly everything I do, no matter how many times I've done it or how many times I've watched other people do it, I feel like I'm doing it with my eyes closed and I have no idea how it's going to end.
Well. Now that I think about it, not nearly EVERYTHING. I suppose everyday things like picking your nose and finding just the right place to flick the booger, flipping open your cell phone, turning on the computer, flushing the toilet...those things come pretty naturally after a few tries. But maybe not. Take wiping your ass for example. It's not always easy. Sometimes it just goes quickly and boom, bam, you're done. Other times it takes FOREVER. Is it your lack of skill or coordination that makes it take so long or is it just that sometimes you've digested things a little too well? Perhaps this is only something that happens to me and you have no idea what I'm talking about. Oh, how embarassing, if that's the case. Perhaps you DO know what I'm talking about though. You'll have to admit that life throws you for a loop sometimes and it's very frustrating.
Wouldn't it have been great if we were instructed on just the right techniques for everything we have to do on a daily basis? Of course, most of us would have been mortified to take an ass-wiping class, as young children. But then again, it's better to get that kind of thing over with as younguns than to have to endure the humiliation as adults. Our collective solution has been to just ignore those details and continue making mistakes and living with the "skidmarks".
Speaking of skidmarks, my mother - we just celebrated Mother's Day yesterday - who is an angel and a beautiful person inside and out, was never much for housework. She hated it from the getgo and since I was the last born, I guess I saw her do the least of it. To show you the extent to which I believe I was deliberately not taught things as a child, I will tell you the story of the washing machine. It's not an interesting story, but it illustrates my point.
So, I'm eleven. The next youngest is Aldo, who is almost nineteen. My mother comes into the room we shared on a gloomy Saturday morning and announces this: "I'm not uh, doing your laundry any more." Then she leaves. That was it!
Can you believe that?
So, I look at my brother, who just shrugs his shoulders and puts his head back on the pillow.
I was horrified - dumbfoundedand for several seconds - and didn't know what to do. I looked over at Aldo who was already sound asleep and then I ran out of my bedroom and down the stairs after my mother who was eating an icepop. She was always eating icepops and in fact, she continues to eat them today. She eats them now the same way she did then - with the entire box wrapped under her left arm as she holds one icepop in her right hand and sucks the life out of it. She holds the box in case someome like Gertty comes along and tries to swipe the box.
It's not that she's greedy. Oh, she offers ices to others. She often insists that you "try one" because they're "delicious" but few take her up on her offers because she has a look on her face like those icepops are her most prized possessions and that they are literally giving her the breath of life. Who's going to take her breath of life??? Certainly not me. Anyway, I don't really like icepops too much.
So, back to the washing machine.
I chased down ma, pulled on her icepop box and looked her straight in the eye. She looked back at me and said, "Want an icepop? They're delicious." I ignored the offer. "Ma. how are my clothes gonna get washed?"
"With the machine", she almost innocently replied.
"But I have no idea how to use that machine, ma."
"Learn", is all she said back. Then she went in the back room to watch TV with her icepops.
Since then, I've been doing my own laundry. I've never really learned to do it well. My clothes never seem really clean and fresh.
I blame the system.
One of my mantras as a child was, "I don't know how". You've already read (well, maybe you didn't pay atteniton or skipped it) that Gerty didn't teach me how to swim. Well, nobody really seemed too interested in teaching me how to do anything after I was about one and a half. I think they tried so hard when I was in the initial stages of psychological and physical development and that I had made such nice progress that they assumed by the time I was one year old, I could pretty much figure out the rest on my own. The trouble is I never found out what "the rest" was. I am still not sure - over thirty years later. Nearly everything I do, no matter how many times I've done it or how many times I've watched other people do it, I feel like I'm doing it with my eyes closed and I have no idea how it's going to end.
Well. Now that I think about it, not nearly EVERYTHING. I suppose everyday things like picking your nose and finding just the right place to flick the booger, flipping open your cell phone, turning on the computer, flushing the toilet...those things come pretty naturally after a few tries. But maybe not. Take wiping your ass for example. It's not always easy. Sometimes it just goes quickly and boom, bam, you're done. Other times it takes FOREVER. Is it your lack of skill or coordination that makes it take so long or is it just that sometimes you've digested things a little too well? Perhaps this is only something that happens to me and you have no idea what I'm talking about. Oh, how embarassing, if that's the case. Perhaps you DO know what I'm talking about though. You'll have to admit that life throws you for a loop sometimes and it's very frustrating.
Wouldn't it have been great if we were instructed on just the right techniques for everything we have to do on a daily basis? Of course, most of us would have been mortified to take an ass-wiping class, as young children. But then again, it's better to get that kind of thing over with as younguns than to have to endure the humiliation as adults. Our collective solution has been to just ignore those details and continue making mistakes and living with the "skidmarks".
Speaking of skidmarks, my mother - we just celebrated Mother's Day yesterday - who is an angel and a beautiful person inside and out, was never much for housework. She hated it from the getgo and since I was the last born, I guess I saw her do the least of it. To show you the extent to which I believe I was deliberately not taught things as a child, I will tell you the story of the washing machine. It's not an interesting story, but it illustrates my point.
So, I'm eleven. The next youngest is Aldo, who is almost nineteen. My mother comes into the room we shared on a gloomy Saturday morning and announces this: "I'm not uh, doing your laundry any more." Then she leaves. That was it!
Can you believe that?
So, I look at my brother, who just shrugs his shoulders and puts his head back on the pillow.
I was horrified - dumbfoundedand for several seconds - and didn't know what to do. I looked over at Aldo who was already sound asleep and then I ran out of my bedroom and down the stairs after my mother who was eating an icepop. She was always eating icepops and in fact, she continues to eat them today. She eats them now the same way she did then - with the entire box wrapped under her left arm as she holds one icepop in her right hand and sucks the life out of it. She holds the box in case someome like Gertty comes along and tries to swipe the box.
It's not that she's greedy. Oh, she offers ices to others. She often insists that you "try one" because they're "delicious" but few take her up on her offers because she has a look on her face like those icepops are her most prized possessions and that they are literally giving her the breath of life. Who's going to take her breath of life??? Certainly not me. Anyway, I don't really like icepops too much.
So, back to the washing machine.
I chased down ma, pulled on her icepop box and looked her straight in the eye. She looked back at me and said, "Want an icepop? They're delicious." I ignored the offer. "Ma. how are my clothes gonna get washed?"
"With the machine", she almost innocently replied.
"But I have no idea how to use that machine, ma."
"Learn", is all she said back. Then she went in the back room to watch TV with her icepops.
Since then, I've been doing my own laundry. I've never really learned to do it well. My clothes never seem really clean and fresh.
I blame the system.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
25 Million Dollars
Just to step away from my childhood for a moment. I want to take some time today to reflect on the fact that I need 25 million dollars.
Why, you ask?
Well, it's simple really. I don't want to work anymore. I feel that I've suffered under opressive bosses long enough. I have worked for at least a dozen companies under supervisors who have failed to appreciate my genius.
I don't think 25 bigones is too much to ask. I feel I deserve it. I've been good.
Despite this, the police are constantly giving me tickets even though I don't own a car. Yes. That is amazing. Yet it happens to me all the time. The IRS is auditing me and wants over 5 thousand dollars from me despite the fact that I have bearly earned a livable wage and have earned poverty-level wages for much of my life. In 1999 I earned an embarassingly low wage as a teacher - I can't even tell you how low because it's humiliating. Let's just say cracked-out welfare recipients have more money left over after they buy their fixes for the year. My highest annual income has been less than that of most recent college graduates and in 2004 - which was one of the years in question, I had spend more money than I made. I worked at four jobs that year and my freekin' income was still crap and the IRS wants more of it. I can't take it anymore! What the hell does the MAN want from me???
I'm poor and always have been. Now I want my damn 25 Mil.
I'd use it to start a company and I'd pay off all my family's debts and then I'd hire my friend....let's call him Oreo, from Argentina. Then I'd hire my other friend...let's call him Farter, from Turkey. Oreo has a wife and two kids and Farter is getting married soon, so they will need a good income. I can offer them a good income if I have 25 million, no?
Then I'll have to hire my family members because with riches comes nepotism, plus I think they deserve it. They're mostly poor too...except my one sister who's not so poor...I'll call her, "Jaqui".
I like the "qu" bit....it doesn't suit her at all.
So, if you're rich and reading this. I'd really like 25 million dollars. It would help me out tremendously. Just please don't ask me to do anything in exchange for the money unless it involves doing something I can do while in a reclined position.
OK, next time I'll go back to my childhood.
Why, you ask?
Well, it's simple really. I don't want to work anymore. I feel that I've suffered under opressive bosses long enough. I have worked for at least a dozen companies under supervisors who have failed to appreciate my genius.
I don't think 25 bigones is too much to ask. I feel I deserve it. I've been good.
Despite this, the police are constantly giving me tickets even though I don't own a car. Yes. That is amazing. Yet it happens to me all the time. The IRS is auditing me and wants over 5 thousand dollars from me despite the fact that I have bearly earned a livable wage and have earned poverty-level wages for much of my life. In 1999 I earned an embarassingly low wage as a teacher - I can't even tell you how low because it's humiliating. Let's just say cracked-out welfare recipients have more money left over after they buy their fixes for the year. My highest annual income has been less than that of most recent college graduates and in 2004 - which was one of the years in question, I had spend more money than I made. I worked at four jobs that year and my freekin' income was still crap and the IRS wants more of it. I can't take it anymore! What the hell does the MAN want from me???
I'm poor and always have been. Now I want my damn 25 Mil.
I'd use it to start a company and I'd pay off all my family's debts and then I'd hire my friend....let's call him Oreo, from Argentina. Then I'd hire my other friend...let's call him Farter, from Turkey. Oreo has a wife and two kids and Farter is getting married soon, so they will need a good income. I can offer them a good income if I have 25 million, no?
Then I'll have to hire my family members because with riches comes nepotism, plus I think they deserve it. They're mostly poor too...except my one sister who's not so poor...I'll call her, "Jaqui".
I like the "qu" bit....it doesn't suit her at all.
So, if you're rich and reading this. I'd really like 25 million dollars. It would help me out tremendously. Just please don't ask me to do anything in exchange for the money unless it involves doing something I can do while in a reclined position.
OK, next time I'll go back to my childhood.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Recurring Nightmares on Ampere Ave.
As a small child, I had a tendency to have the same dreams over and over and over and over. I don't know if that is/was attributable to my inherent simplicity, if it confirms my as-of-yet undiagnosed ADD (now I suppose it's ADHD), an obsessive-compulsive nature or if God was trying to tell me something.
Being raised by a semi-religious fanatic mother, I usually tend to lend the last option the most value.
I have and always will believe that in these dreams, God was speaking to me.
In the first two, and perhaps oddest of these dreams, I still do not know the messages God was trying to convey. What do you think? (Sorry, I didn't really mean to ask for your opinion. I was just doing it to feign a sense of reaching out to my non-existent audience.)
DREAM #1: THE MISSING THING I WASN'T MISSING
I wake up from my upper bunk bed, climb down the ladder to the cold and unwelcoming morning floor, run down the hall to the stairs, scurry down the stairs and directly to the kitchen. Once in the kitchen, I bolt for the junk drawer where I sift through the heap of mass bulletins, stained fridge magnets and dried up novelty pens to find my missing belt.
I would describe the belt except for the fact that I've totally forgotten what it looked like. I'm not sure it matters anyway. I was about 4 or 5 and really didn't need to wear belts. In reality, I'm not even sure I really had a belt to be missing. I think I did, but it's too long ago to know for sure. I remember the dream well though. I should - I had it about fifty times.
DREAM #2: POLKAZILLA
This one I must have had a hundred times. It was really interesting in that there was no sound in it except for a deep thump when Polkazilla bounces the ball. Okay, I know you're dying to know what it was. I come down the stairs again and all sound is muffled. My sisters and mother are in the kitchen but they don't seem to see me. I go in the garage to find my baby ball so I can bounce it around the sidewalk and pretend it's a basketball. But it's not there! The ball is missing! (In the real world, this ball had been missing since my toddlerhood and I was about 4 or 5 when I had this dream.) Suddenly , the whole house begins to shake as if there's an earthquake right here in New York City! Oh wow! What the H E C K am I gonna do! I'd better go outside and see what's up? I open the garage door and look out over my across-the-street neighbor's house (let's call him Mr. Bozo) and see, above the huge treetops lining the park one block away, the head of something gigantic bobbing up and down. It's Godzilla, I tell myself! Oh no! Godzilla's in the fargin' Bronx! What am I gonna do! I run into the house to tell my sisters and my mother to run for the sewers and they act like I'm not there. I can't speak anyway, there's no sound coming out of my, or anyone's, mouth. In frustration, I run outside again and I see the giant Godzilla figure coming down the block. He's turned the corner and the only thing I can hear/feel is the gargantuan thump of his feet as they hit the ground and make all of Ampere Avenue shake. I run to the backyard and my brother Aldo is there sitting in a circle with his moron friends playing a card game - I think it's go-fish but I'm too stressed to really pay attention to that detail - and I scream to them that Godzilla is coming but they can't hear me or are just ignoring me completely because I'm a pesky kid.
I shake my hands in frustration and run to the front of the house again and I see that the monster is in front of my house! He's not Godzilla though! He's big like Godzilla but he's yellow with a blue stripe down the middle and pink polka dots all over his scaly body. He is the same color as my baby ball!!! Oy vey! What the H E double hockey sticks does this mean? It can only mean one thing. He's after my ball! I sprint for the garage, which has its door wide open, to find my ball. I know this thing is after it and he's not going to get it. Just as I run in, the monster bends over, looks into the garage with one big eye and sticks his claw in the garage. His claw seems magically attracted to the exact location of the ball, which is under a pile of my father's construction crap. He takes the ball and stands up in the middle of Ampere Avenue and seems to smile! Can you believe it? This scaly, pink and yellow Godzilla-creature is taking my darn ball! He starts bouncing the thing, which somehow grows in his hand and proceeds to bounce it all the way back to the park. Boom! Boom! Boom! The earth shakes as he bounces and walks and disappears into Pelham Bay Park. The end.
So what the hell does that mean? I'd love for Freud to interpret that one.
DREAM #3: TUMBLING IN MID AIR DOWN THE STAIRS
This one really requires little explanation. I am about three. I look down the staircase, which has about sixteen steps. I start to step down and then I do this slow-mo tumble in mid air, down the stairway and that's it. Poof! I'm awake. I had that dream about twenty times as a kid.
DREAM #4: MY SISTER'S LEG IS A SALAMI
My youngest sister, who is still 12 years older than I am, has always been a delicate flower of a thing. She's very sensitive, loyal, sweet and I worry about her. Apparently, I worried about her when I was four as well. Let's call this sister, Moniqua. Once again, that couldn't be her name in a million years, but I like the name Moniqua. Actually, I like Sheniqua better, but I think Moniqua somehow suits her better. Anyway, Moniqua was a high school twirler. That means she twirled a baton around and did big leg kicks and such.
In my recurring dream, she was in the kitchen and doing twirls where she kicks high and brings the baton under her leg as she kicks and then above her head again. I think she may have actually done this trick, but again, I'm not sure as I was five and it was a long time ago and I have a lot of memory issues. So, in my dream, when she does the big kick up in the air, her leg comes off at mid thigh and the insides of her leg look just like the salami's hanging from the ceiling at the corner deli run by Mr. LoPadrino!!! She lets out a slow-motion scream and drops her baton, naturally. Then it's over. The dream is over and I wake up worried sick about Moniqua doing those kicks in twirler practice.
That's it. I probably had other more interesting dreams, but those were the most frequent. I had some weird sexual dream also, but I'm not going to say anything other than that for many years I thought it was an actual commercial for Wise potato chips that featured a topless woman saying "Get Wise" while reveling her left breast and holding a bag of chips. Well, I guess that's pretty much telling you the dream. I can't control myself.
Being raised by a semi-religious fanatic mother, I usually tend to lend the last option the most value.
I have and always will believe that in these dreams, God was speaking to me.
In the first two, and perhaps oddest of these dreams, I still do not know the messages God was trying to convey. What do you think? (Sorry, I didn't really mean to ask for your opinion. I was just doing it to feign a sense of reaching out to my non-existent audience.)
DREAM #1: THE MISSING THING I WASN'T MISSING
I wake up from my upper bunk bed, climb down the ladder to the cold and unwelcoming morning floor, run down the hall to the stairs, scurry down the stairs and directly to the kitchen. Once in the kitchen, I bolt for the junk drawer where I sift through the heap of mass bulletins, stained fridge magnets and dried up novelty pens to find my missing belt.
I would describe the belt except for the fact that I've totally forgotten what it looked like. I'm not sure it matters anyway. I was about 4 or 5 and really didn't need to wear belts. In reality, I'm not even sure I really had a belt to be missing. I think I did, but it's too long ago to know for sure. I remember the dream well though. I should - I had it about fifty times.
DREAM #2: POLKAZILLA
This one I must have had a hundred times. It was really interesting in that there was no sound in it except for a deep thump when Polkazilla bounces the ball. Okay, I know you're dying to know what it was. I come down the stairs again and all sound is muffled. My sisters and mother are in the kitchen but they don't seem to see me. I go in the garage to find my baby ball so I can bounce it around the sidewalk and pretend it's a basketball. But it's not there! The ball is missing! (In the real world, this ball had been missing since my toddlerhood and I was about 4 or 5 when I had this dream.) Suddenly , the whole house begins to shake as if there's an earthquake right here in New York City! Oh wow! What the H E C K am I gonna do! I'd better go outside and see what's up? I open the garage door and look out over my across-the-street neighbor's house (let's call him Mr. Bozo) and see, above the huge treetops lining the park one block away, the head of something gigantic bobbing up and down. It's Godzilla, I tell myself! Oh no! Godzilla's in the fargin' Bronx! What am I gonna do! I run into the house to tell my sisters and my mother to run for the sewers and they act like I'm not there. I can't speak anyway, there's no sound coming out of my, or anyone's, mouth. In frustration, I run outside again and I see the giant Godzilla figure coming down the block. He's turned the corner and the only thing I can hear/feel is the gargantuan thump of his feet as they hit the ground and make all of Ampere Avenue shake. I run to the backyard and my brother Aldo is there sitting in a circle with his moron friends playing a card game - I think it's go-fish but I'm too stressed to really pay attention to that detail - and I scream to them that Godzilla is coming but they can't hear me or are just ignoring me completely because I'm a pesky kid.
I shake my hands in frustration and run to the front of the house again and I see that the monster is in front of my house! He's not Godzilla though! He's big like Godzilla but he's yellow with a blue stripe down the middle and pink polka dots all over his scaly body. He is the same color as my baby ball!!! Oy vey! What the H E double hockey sticks does this mean? It can only mean one thing. He's after my ball! I sprint for the garage, which has its door wide open, to find my ball. I know this thing is after it and he's not going to get it. Just as I run in, the monster bends over, looks into the garage with one big eye and sticks his claw in the garage. His claw seems magically attracted to the exact location of the ball, which is under a pile of my father's construction crap. He takes the ball and stands up in the middle of Ampere Avenue and seems to smile! Can you believe it? This scaly, pink and yellow Godzilla-creature is taking my darn ball! He starts bouncing the thing, which somehow grows in his hand and proceeds to bounce it all the way back to the park. Boom! Boom! Boom! The earth shakes as he bounces and walks and disappears into Pelham Bay Park. The end.
So what the hell does that mean? I'd love for Freud to interpret that one.
DREAM #3: TUMBLING IN MID AIR DOWN THE STAIRS
This one really requires little explanation. I am about three. I look down the staircase, which has about sixteen steps. I start to step down and then I do this slow-mo tumble in mid air, down the stairway and that's it. Poof! I'm awake. I had that dream about twenty times as a kid.
DREAM #4: MY SISTER'S LEG IS A SALAMI
My youngest sister, who is still 12 years older than I am, has always been a delicate flower of a thing. She's very sensitive, loyal, sweet and I worry about her. Apparently, I worried about her when I was four as well. Let's call this sister, Moniqua. Once again, that couldn't be her name in a million years, but I like the name Moniqua. Actually, I like Sheniqua better, but I think Moniqua somehow suits her better. Anyway, Moniqua was a high school twirler. That means she twirled a baton around and did big leg kicks and such.
In my recurring dream, she was in the kitchen and doing twirls where she kicks high and brings the baton under her leg as she kicks and then above her head again. I think she may have actually done this trick, but again, I'm not sure as I was five and it was a long time ago and I have a lot of memory issues. So, in my dream, when she does the big kick up in the air, her leg comes off at mid thigh and the insides of her leg look just like the salami's hanging from the ceiling at the corner deli run by Mr. LoPadrino!!! She lets out a slow-motion scream and drops her baton, naturally. Then it's over. The dream is over and I wake up worried sick about Moniqua doing those kicks in twirler practice.
That's it. I probably had other more interesting dreams, but those were the most frequent. I had some weird sexual dream also, but I'm not going to say anything other than that for many years I thought it was an actual commercial for Wise potato chips that featured a topless woman saying "Get Wise" while reveling her left breast and holding a bag of chips. Well, I guess that's pretty much telling you the dream. I can't control myself.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Sibling Rivals
I wish I could say that all my brothers and sisters got along just fine, but that's not the case. It rarely is, I guess. In my family there are six kids spread apart 18 years from oldest to best...I mean, youngest (that would be me). As the best or youngest or whatever you might want to label me, I have the fewest problems because everyone looks to me as too young to be responsible for anything. Of course, others who are the youngest know that this has its drawbacks. Like, we're never really trusted by the older ones and our opinions don't have any force - or at least the force that the oldest usually has.
I say "usually" because my oldest sister - let's call her Gertrude or Gerty for short - is one of those classic mental-case older sisters who is bitterly frustrated by her lack of influence on the family. The reasons why she lacks influence (read: trust) will become painfully but humorously clear in my coming posts.
Let's start with the origins of why Gerty was not too big an influence on my life or my way of thinking. (I must mention, however, that her utterly insane persona has made an indelible mark on my psyche just based on it's entertainment value. She's almost created a need in me to know about her nutty meanderings.)
So, basically, Gerty was busy when I was a kid. When I was first born, she was 18 and just about to break out of prison/Catholic high school. She has never been one to change diapers or feed the babies in the family and back then she was no different, I assume. So basically, I don't remember her even existing before I was about five when I accidentally ran into her jungle-themed bedroom to see if I could hug the giant Lion doll that she kept. I'm not sure where she got that thing, but I remember really wanting to hug it all the time. Now a sweet 23-year-old sister would probably have given the thing to her five-year-old brother, but Gerty wasn't sweet. At least not then. Oh, I didn't really want it anyway. Who am I kidding. I was afraid of the damn thing. It was bigger than me and it had black beady eyes. Anyway, I still hold it against her. That and the fact that she was, at that time, a very active swimmer, coach and lifeguard and she never took the time to teach me how to swim. Now I'm a grown man with swim-related issues - but that's a book I might write when I'm older and more bitter. Right now I just want to remember the funny stuff.
Okay, so she was living in that jungle room and almost never home and I barely knew her, but then she came home one day with bleached hair and a huge L'eggs truck. This would mean nothing except that this was the 70's and Charlies Angels was the number one show on TV and Farah Fawcett was THE shit. Gerty just happened to be a near-ringer for Farah with the bleached hair. So, naturally, all my friends were in awe of her. "You're sister looks just like Farah", they used to tell me. I was still annoyed that she wasn't teaching me to swim, so I was always kind of brushing off their comments and saying, "my other two sisters are even better". I still wasn't a Gerty fan. But the L'eggs truck was something to see. This - OK, I will admit Gerty was kind of hot - blond girly-girl driving a huge delivery truck was very interesting to most of the people who saw it. I thought it was moderatly cool until Gerty picked me up at school one day. I suddenly became the most popular kid in my 2nd-grade class at St. Mary's. It wasn't enough to make me most popular in the whole school, but it was a step in the right direction.
Suddenly, everyone was asking me if Farah was going to come pick me up again. I never knew if or when she was coming. It was pot luck with my family. One day I had a ride from who-know's who and the next day I was wating by the bus stop and then walking my eight-year-old ass home from the subway station.
The school was a pain in the ass to get to because it was on City Island - a godforsaken lump of land about three miles from my house on the main land of the Boogey-Down Bronx. (Of course, it wasn't AKA the Boogey Down then, but I had a feeling it was coming, so I'm using it here.) There was no subway there; just a bus. One bus. One slow-ass bus with the same sex-deprived driver day in and day out. In that move, "A Bronx Tale", Robert DeNiro's character is a busdriver to City Island and he's so warm and fuzzy. I guess that guy was dead by the time I was going to school there. My bus driver used to kick me off the bus when I forgot my school bus pass after waiting for an hour for him to come. I mean, I knew it was my fault for forgetting things, but that's who I am. I always forget things. I have always forgotten things and I always will forget things. That's just who the hell I am! He wasn't teaching me a lesson, he was harassing me, as I saw it. I still hold ill will toward that sonofbeach! Yes! I fargin do! I mean, I was wearing a friggin' Catholic school uniform, I was eight, I was waiting in the freezing cold - obviously I was supposed to have a bus pass! But that asshole thought he was teaching me not to forget things by abandoning me and torturing me. OH! Why did I start thinking about that jerk! I'm so mad now.
Let me go back to Gerty! She ended up moving to City Island when I was nine and that's when we had a relationship. Since she worked funny hours as a L'eggs delivery girl, I could go to her house after school, whenever I'd forgotten my bus pass and couldn't get home for free, and she would drive me home. But the best part was that before driving me home, I got to raid her fridge. Since I ate almost nothing at school because I was convinced the lunch ladies were a bunch of macbethian witches trying to poison us kids with hardboiled eggs and chocolate pudding (the smell was hideous in combination), I was always starving when I got to Gerty's place. The best part is she had NOTHING but junk food in her fridge. She had Duncan-Heins yellow cake with chocolate icing, strawberry-banana Jello, Pillsbury Ready-to-Bake chocolate chip cookies and for dessert: Hershey's chocolate kisses! I never got sick from eating all the crap in her house. I was just in heaven and whenever I went to her place and she wasn't home it was so disappointing. The fact that she lived on top of a cemetary didn't bother me at all. I thought it was cool and now looking back I guess she needed all that sugar to get happy, so it was good luck for me.
Basically, I had no time for chit-chat with Gerty. I was too busy stuffing my face with perservative-laden crapfood. But eventually, I started observing Gerty and I realized she wasn't so bad. She was just not interested in being a motherly type like my other two sisters were or in being an entertainer like my brothers. She was having her own fun extending her childhood into adulthood the way I do now. I guess she was more of an influence on me than I thought.
I say "usually" because my oldest sister - let's call her Gertrude or Gerty for short - is one of those classic mental-case older sisters who is bitterly frustrated by her lack of influence on the family. The reasons why she lacks influence (read: trust) will become painfully but humorously clear in my coming posts.
Let's start with the origins of why Gerty was not too big an influence on my life or my way of thinking. (I must mention, however, that her utterly insane persona has made an indelible mark on my psyche just based on it's entertainment value. She's almost created a need in me to know about her nutty meanderings.)
So, basically, Gerty was busy when I was a kid. When I was first born, she was 18 and just about to break out of prison/Catholic high school. She has never been one to change diapers or feed the babies in the family and back then she was no different, I assume. So basically, I don't remember her even existing before I was about five when I accidentally ran into her jungle-themed bedroom to see if I could hug the giant Lion doll that she kept. I'm not sure where she got that thing, but I remember really wanting to hug it all the time. Now a sweet 23-year-old sister would probably have given the thing to her five-year-old brother, but Gerty wasn't sweet. At least not then. Oh, I didn't really want it anyway. Who am I kidding. I was afraid of the damn thing. It was bigger than me and it had black beady eyes. Anyway, I still hold it against her. That and the fact that she was, at that time, a very active swimmer, coach and lifeguard and she never took the time to teach me how to swim. Now I'm a grown man with swim-related issues - but that's a book I might write when I'm older and more bitter. Right now I just want to remember the funny stuff.
Okay, so she was living in that jungle room and almost never home and I barely knew her, but then she came home one day with bleached hair and a huge L'eggs truck. This would mean nothing except that this was the 70's and Charlies Angels was the number one show on TV and Farah Fawcett was THE shit. Gerty just happened to be a near-ringer for Farah with the bleached hair. So, naturally, all my friends were in awe of her. "You're sister looks just like Farah", they used to tell me. I was still annoyed that she wasn't teaching me to swim, so I was always kind of brushing off their comments and saying, "my other two sisters are even better". I still wasn't a Gerty fan. But the L'eggs truck was something to see. This - OK, I will admit Gerty was kind of hot - blond girly-girl driving a huge delivery truck was very interesting to most of the people who saw it. I thought it was moderatly cool until Gerty picked me up at school one day. I suddenly became the most popular kid in my 2nd-grade class at St. Mary's. It wasn't enough to make me most popular in the whole school, but it was a step in the right direction.
Suddenly, everyone was asking me if Farah was going to come pick me up again. I never knew if or when she was coming. It was pot luck with my family. One day I had a ride from who-know's who and the next day I was wating by the bus stop and then walking my eight-year-old ass home from the subway station.
The school was a pain in the ass to get to because it was on City Island - a godforsaken lump of land about three miles from my house on the main land of the Boogey-Down Bronx. (Of course, it wasn't AKA the Boogey Down then, but I had a feeling it was coming, so I'm using it here.) There was no subway there; just a bus. One bus. One slow-ass bus with the same sex-deprived driver day in and day out. In that move, "A Bronx Tale", Robert DeNiro's character is a busdriver to City Island and he's so warm and fuzzy. I guess that guy was dead by the time I was going to school there. My bus driver used to kick me off the bus when I forgot my school bus pass after waiting for an hour for him to come. I mean, I knew it was my fault for forgetting things, but that's who I am. I always forget things. I have always forgotten things and I always will forget things. That's just who the hell I am! He wasn't teaching me a lesson, he was harassing me, as I saw it. I still hold ill will toward that sonofbeach! Yes! I fargin do! I mean, I was wearing a friggin' Catholic school uniform, I was eight, I was waiting in the freezing cold - obviously I was supposed to have a bus pass! But that asshole thought he was teaching me not to forget things by abandoning me and torturing me. OH! Why did I start thinking about that jerk! I'm so mad now.
Let me go back to Gerty! She ended up moving to City Island when I was nine and that's when we had a relationship. Since she worked funny hours as a L'eggs delivery girl, I could go to her house after school, whenever I'd forgotten my bus pass and couldn't get home for free, and she would drive me home. But the best part was that before driving me home, I got to raid her fridge. Since I ate almost nothing at school because I was convinced the lunch ladies were a bunch of macbethian witches trying to poison us kids with hardboiled eggs and chocolate pudding (the smell was hideous in combination), I was always starving when I got to Gerty's place. The best part is she had NOTHING but junk food in her fridge. She had Duncan-Heins yellow cake with chocolate icing, strawberry-banana Jello, Pillsbury Ready-to-Bake chocolate chip cookies and for dessert: Hershey's chocolate kisses! I never got sick from eating all the crap in her house. I was just in heaven and whenever I went to her place and she wasn't home it was so disappointing. The fact that she lived on top of a cemetary didn't bother me at all. I thought it was cool and now looking back I guess she needed all that sugar to get happy, so it was good luck for me.
Basically, I had no time for chit-chat with Gerty. I was too busy stuffing my face with perservative-laden crapfood. But eventually, I started observing Gerty and I realized she wasn't so bad. She was just not interested in being a motherly type like my other two sisters were or in being an entertainer like my brothers. She was having her own fun extending her childhood into adulthood the way I do now. I guess she was more of an influence on me than I thought.
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