My first trip to Europe happened when I was just a wee lad. I went to Sweden to visit my father's relatives and to witness the great spectacle that was Esto 80. I had been to Esto 76 but was too young to remember anything except that it was kind of boring. This Esto 80 thing was going to be a little different. This time I was going to Stockholm, Sweden instead of Baltimore, Maryland.
The travel bug had bitten me ever since our family took a trip to exotic Disney World when I was four years old. Those flying Dumbo elephants helped me to realize that the world was full of unexpected pleasures waiting to be discovered. I couldn't wait to get on a real plane and not just a flying elephant that went in circles.
So, I got on Northwest Orient flight somethingorother on a sunny Saturday morning in July of 1980 and was as excited as a tourist in Times Square. Here we were - me, my parents and my sister, Minerva - off to exotic Sweden! (I am not sure if I have used "Minerva" as my youngest sister's alias before, but anyway, it's the youngest one - still much older than me.) I had met several of my Swedish-Estonian relatives a couple of years before when they came to New York to discover my family. They were all a little nutty, so we all got along very excellently. I remember my cousin Lailai had a penny rocket shot up her dress on the fourth of July and she just seemed to enjoy the heck out of that. That was cool.
So, I was very excited about this trip, yada yada yada. I get on the plane and find that the seats are broken into groups of two or three. Two on the left, three in the middle and two on the right. So, naturally this was going to cause me some amount of stress because my mother would probably have to sit next to my father and I would be stuck with Minerva.
There was some discussion about me sitting with my father but I would hear none of it because my father was a chronic nose wiper/picker and I just couldn't sit through 8 hours of that. This was my first intercontinental flight for Christmas sake! It had to be at least somewhat pleasant! So, I sat next to Minerva who was expectedly quiet. Minerva had lived in France the year before. She was an exchange student and to me seemed very worldy so I spent most of the first two hours of the flight asking her questions about airplanes: the food, the takeoff, how such a heavy thing got off the ground, etc. She didn't know the answers, but that was fine. I just liked hearing myself ask the questions. The answers were (and usually still are) secondary.
So, the flight is going fine except for the excruciating pain I feel in my ears. I thought my head was going to explode for the first twenty minutes of the flight. Then that kind of went away and I yaked at Minerva for however long until dinner was served.
During our gourmet in-flight meal of crap-covered feaux chicken with grease-engorged rice substitute and "caviar", Minerva got some of the "caviar" stuff on her hands and had to use up the toilet-tissue style napkin to wipe it off. Then she had no napkin and she looked at me and asked, "E, do you have an extra napkin?".
I knew I didn't have one. But for some reason, I started feeling the sides of my legs and digging into the crevices of the seat to find one. I looked under the food tray, between the plastic dishes dividing the "caviar" and the chicken stuff from the chocolate-mangoesqu cake-like thing and still I found no "extra" napkin.
I felt awful. Minerva was very sweet and deserved an extra napkin but I couldn't provide it.
"No. I don't have one", I finally answered.
Poor Minerva looked so disappointed. I started to realize then that when she said "Do you have an extra" she really meant, "give me yours because you're a little boy and you don't really care if you have a napkin or not". I guess Minerva didn't understand exactly who I was and that this was my first real airplane ride and that that napkin was MY FIRST AIRPLANE NAPKIN and I had every intention of using it to wipe the grease from MY CHICKEN STUFF off my mouth.
I did feel for her though. I thought I might go to the loo and bring back Minerva some toilet paper. I didn't have to go, but it would be an adventure, I thought. I'd like to see how the bathroom works in a plane and see if the pee and poop really fly out of a trap door when you flush. (That's how I'd imagined it worked anyway.)
So, off I went to the bathroom. I didn't have to wait on line as it was still dinner time and most people were still eating. I entered the tiny restroom, closed the accordian door and studied the handle. The light was not on and I was apparently doing something wrong. After a few seconds, I had it figured out, the lights came on, I turned around, did my business and turned to the sink to wash my hands. My hands were wet and I needed a towel to dry them. Guess what? They had a whole paper towel dispenser right there in the loo! I was impressed. But I said to myself, "this paper towel is kind of dry and hard. It's not good for Minerva. She needs to wipe her mouth and this will be too rough." Just was I was thinking that my right eye caught sight of the most amazing thing I had ever seen. It was like God Himself had been listening to my thoughts and was answering my prayers tenfold!
"EJ. I knoweth that it is thy intention to bring forth to thine sister - fruit of thine mother's womb, flesh of your flesh - a napkin so that she may wipe the muck from her brow and feel the glory of a clean face!"
Yes, God, I thought. That's exactly what I want to do.
There in front of me, just above eye level, was a great dispenser with an embossed label which read, "SANITARY NAPKINS".
"Wow", I thought, "these aren't just regular napkins, they're extra clean! Minerva will love these!"
So, I yanked on the plastic covered napkins sticking out of the bottom of the dispenser and took a long, hard look at it.
"That's amazing! It's a whole package of napkins! Minerva can wipe her face till the cows come home!"
So, I took the napkins in hand and left the restroom. I was so proud of my discovery and so sure that Minerva was going to be completely exstatic when she saw this that I held the napkin package up high while walking down the aisle through the plane back to my seat.
I got back in my seat and looked over at Minerva who was still eating and seemed really out of sorts due to her lack of a napkin. I looked at her with a great expression of self-satisfaction and handed her the package and said, "I got you some napkins from the bathroom. They had whole packages in there!"
Minerva then turned a bright red, clenched her lips together and snatched the package of napkins out of my hand, opened her purse and stuffed them inside.
She then started stuffing her food into her mouth, emptied all the little plastic dividers and didn't speak to me for the rest of the ride.
I knew I had done something wrong. But I didn't know what it was until maybe eight years later when I was in Australia for another Esto festival and Minerva corrected my mistake when I asked the server in a Melbourne Pizza Hut for a "napkin" and she gave me the dirtiest look.
"Oh! I get it now."
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Monday, June 26, 2006
Drunk and Debauched
Most of my bloggings are written while drunk - not necessarily me, but the readers.
No, really, I am actually a little drunk when I write these things. I find that a little buzz frees me from the constraints of propriety - not that I usually feel too constrained to begin with. Today, however, I am sober as a Muslim during Ramadan.
As a kid I was so incredibly repressed when it came to saying what I wanted to say. I was always dying to blurt out something really really inappropriate and on the few occasions when I did that, my mother was ready to swat me like a fly. If you've kept up with these blogs, you know some examples of my fitful malefactions (the underwear "gift", the Lacoste giveaway) which caused my mother so much grief.
Despite the all-encompassing nature of my mothers efforts to repress me, I have never, in my adult life, found it all that hard to avoid a full-on rebellion against her way of thinking. Instead, I have maintainted a mildly rebellious nature throughout most of my life, doing little things to annoy her conservative sensibilities.
I never became a drug addict or worse - goth, although I came close a few times. I have never solicited prostitutes or become an abusive alcoholic. I have never killed anyone, nor have I killed their pets. These are all things that would probably bother my mother a lot.
I know she really hates when people curse. My brother Aldo, who is an abusive alcoholic drug addict and I think he probably has killed some pets, can do all sorts of really bad things for which he should be (and has been) arrested, but my mother seems to get most upset when he uses dirty words.
"It's the drink that makes him talk like that!"
"Ma, he killed the neighbor's cat with a shovel!"
"I know! It's awful. But, you know, I think I heard him say 'F' when he was doing it! Why does he have to use that filthy language? I mean, does it make him feel better when he is killing the cat? Why is that necessary?"
I, myself, have never used the type of language Aldo uses in front of my mother. However, as I get older I have gradually come to the point where I will say the words: ''bitch'', ''bastard'' and ''hell'' in front of my mother. Every time I use them she makes a face.
The odd thing is that she has always just gotten the biggest thrill of her day when using almost any phrase with the word "ass" in it: STUPID ASS, DUMB ASS, PAIN IN THE ASS, ASS ACHE, KISS MY ASS, YOU'RE AN ASS. I think she tells herself it's OK because she's using the word "ass" as "donkey" which is the same thing. But we all know she's not thinking "donkey" when she says it.
To her credit, I suppose, she never uses the terms: ASSHOLE, ASSWIPE or FATASS.
I use those terms frequently. I like the way they sound.
My mother did actually use the word "Asshole" once - to my knowledge.
I was 13 and attending the 7th grade at St. Benedict's Academy and one day, during a family party, my mother repeated a joke she'd heard at work (where the other women used to "talk about diddle doos and use all kinds of filthy words") in which the word "asshole" was the punchline.
I was upstairs listening to the joke and thought it was a good one and wanted to tell my best friend, Denny. Denny had always thought I was a freak because I didn't curse, so now that I'd heard my mother curse, and since it was told in such an innocent and funny way, I figured God might not kill me for saying, asshole.
So, the next day after school, (I couldn't actually tell the joke IN school because one of the nuns might hear it and expel me) on the way to the Video Hut to play Donkey Kong with Denny, I told him I had heard a really funny joke and I started to tell him.
I still remember the way I felt when I told the joke. I had almost put myself out of my body in case God struck me dead and my soul would be able to escape my body and take over someone elses in an instant. Denny didn't flinch when I told the joke. I had been thinking, he's gonna notice that I am saying a dirty word and he's never heard me say one before. But the dirty word came at the end and, while I nearly had an aneurysm at the exact moment the word, "asshole" came out of my mouth, Denny barely seemed to notice! What's worse, his reaction to the joke was kind of tepid. He laughed but it wasn't so big. I was expecting roars. I mean, it was almost like giving up my virginity - saying this word! Up until then I had had a perfect record! My fan was nearly rusted solid from not turning for thirteen years! Now I had moved it. It turned once and was well on it's way to becoming an air conditioner for the angels.
Well, that was the beginning of my demise. Since then, things have just gone to hell and I no longer have a chance at not decomposing when I die.
So sad.
No, really, I am actually a little drunk when I write these things. I find that a little buzz frees me from the constraints of propriety - not that I usually feel too constrained to begin with. Today, however, I am sober as a Muslim during Ramadan.
As a kid I was so incredibly repressed when it came to saying what I wanted to say. I was always dying to blurt out something really really inappropriate and on the few occasions when I did that, my mother was ready to swat me like a fly. If you've kept up with these blogs, you know some examples of my fitful malefactions (the underwear "gift", the Lacoste giveaway) which caused my mother so much grief.
Despite the all-encompassing nature of my mothers efforts to repress me, I have never, in my adult life, found it all that hard to avoid a full-on rebellion against her way of thinking. Instead, I have maintainted a mildly rebellious nature throughout most of my life, doing little things to annoy her conservative sensibilities.
I never became a drug addict or worse - goth, although I came close a few times. I have never solicited prostitutes or become an abusive alcoholic. I have never killed anyone, nor have I killed their pets. These are all things that would probably bother my mother a lot.
I know she really hates when people curse. My brother Aldo, who is an abusive alcoholic drug addict and I think he probably has killed some pets, can do all sorts of really bad things for which he should be (and has been) arrested, but my mother seems to get most upset when he uses dirty words.
"It's the drink that makes him talk like that!"
"Ma, he killed the neighbor's cat with a shovel!"
"I know! It's awful. But, you know, I think I heard him say 'F' when he was doing it! Why does he have to use that filthy language? I mean, does it make him feel better when he is killing the cat? Why is that necessary?"
I, myself, have never used the type of language Aldo uses in front of my mother. However, as I get older I have gradually come to the point where I will say the words: ''bitch'', ''bastard'' and ''hell'' in front of my mother. Every time I use them she makes a face.
The odd thing is that she has always just gotten the biggest thrill of her day when using almost any phrase with the word "ass" in it: STUPID ASS, DUMB ASS, PAIN IN THE ASS, ASS ACHE, KISS MY ASS, YOU'RE AN ASS. I think she tells herself it's OK because she's using the word "ass" as "donkey" which is the same thing. But we all know she's not thinking "donkey" when she says it.
To her credit, I suppose, she never uses the terms: ASSHOLE, ASSWIPE or FATASS.
I use those terms frequently. I like the way they sound.
My mother did actually use the word "Asshole" once - to my knowledge.
I was 13 and attending the 7th grade at St. Benedict's Academy and one day, during a family party, my mother repeated a joke she'd heard at work (where the other women used to "talk about diddle doos and use all kinds of filthy words") in which the word "asshole" was the punchline.
I was upstairs listening to the joke and thought it was a good one and wanted to tell my best friend, Denny. Denny had always thought I was a freak because I didn't curse, so now that I'd heard my mother curse, and since it was told in such an innocent and funny way, I figured God might not kill me for saying, asshole.
So, the next day after school, (I couldn't actually tell the joke IN school because one of the nuns might hear it and expel me) on the way to the Video Hut to play Donkey Kong with Denny, I told him I had heard a really funny joke and I started to tell him.
I still remember the way I felt when I told the joke. I had almost put myself out of my body in case God struck me dead and my soul would be able to escape my body and take over someone elses in an instant. Denny didn't flinch when I told the joke. I had been thinking, he's gonna notice that I am saying a dirty word and he's never heard me say one before. But the dirty word came at the end and, while I nearly had an aneurysm at the exact moment the word, "asshole" came out of my mouth, Denny barely seemed to notice! What's worse, his reaction to the joke was kind of tepid. He laughed but it wasn't so big. I was expecting roars. I mean, it was almost like giving up my virginity - saying this word! Up until then I had had a perfect record! My fan was nearly rusted solid from not turning for thirteen years! Now I had moved it. It turned once and was well on it's way to becoming an air conditioner for the angels.
Well, that was the beginning of my demise. Since then, things have just gone to hell and I no longer have a chance at not decomposing when I die.
So sad.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Narcolepsy
Okay, so I have never been diagnosed with narcolepsy but it IS one of the many many diseases that I wish I had so that I can divert the blame for my laziness away from my self and toward a tragic birth defect.
But then again, who knows. I, like most people, LOVE to sleep. Maybe the fact that I love to sleep is what keeps me from hearing alarms, explosions, earthquakes, etc. - while sleeping. OR, maybe I suffer from some form of narcolepsy that puts me into a deep, hypnotic sleep and which makes it nearly impossible for me to wake up in the morning.
As an adult, I have managed this problem by simply having a radio go off at 6, a CD-clock go off at 6:30, a traditional beep alarm go off at 7 and a wake-up call at 7:15 to help me get going. That still doesn't work, but sometimes.
Now that I'm analyzing myself here, I do think it's possible that one of the reasons I have trouble waking up is that I associate waking up with trauma. My body and mind know that waking up is a horrific experience and so, they choose to shut down. But more on that later.
I hope I never go into a coma. I'd be totally healthy and not want to wake up out of a combination of fear and laziness.
Almost as soon as I started to HAVE to get up for school, I had trouble doing it. My mother had always encouraged me to stay up as long as I wanted. She liked to force-feed me ice pops and keep me next to her while she watched horror movies. We had to keep the sound down to an almost inaudible murmur so that "daddy won't wake up". Of course "daddy" did wake up every hour or so to go pee and complain in a much more audible tone while heading for the loo.
"Gosh damn TV going all night. No wonder nobody wakes up in this house."
He'd say that same thing every night that Mom was home.
(Some days she worked through the night and I would have to lay in bed alone, trying not to imagine that demons were in the attic above my bed trying to dig through the ceiling so they could eat me alive.)
So, when the horror films from "Chiller Theater" were over, I would finally go to bed. On Sunday nights, when Mom was always home, I would usually go to bed well past midnight and have to wake up at 6:30 to get ready for school and be there by 7:30.
I pretty much never woke up before 7 though.
Most Monday mornings were the same in my early school years. Aldo's alarm would begin to ring at 6:30. He didn't have to be up until 7 but since he had pretty much the same problems I had with sleep, he didn't hear it either.
I vaguely recall hearing my father washing his face in the morning. It was always a rather noisy affair - much louder than the alarms - even my Raggedy Ann N' Andy Alarm, which was hands-down the most annoying alarm ever. I had a girl cousin who loved Raggedy Ann and so, naturally, she and her mother thought it would be appropriate to buy an alarm clock for me featuring Raggedy Ann and her equally unattractive and retarded brother, Andy. (Andy was basically Raggedy Ann's producers trying to open the boy market for their extremely-annoying-doll business.) So, my cousin bought me this clock, which I think was actually supposed to be annoying because by the time I was 4 years old, it was pretty clear that I liked sleep a little too much and my extended family had heard about this - including my cousin. The clock used the voices of two really annoying kids to SHOUT every morning, something like this: "Andy Andy, Please get up. You must be on your way! So, brush your teeth and comb your hair and start your happy day!" Then it would repeat until you started your happy friggin' day. I guess that alarm actually didn't last so long. I think about one month after I got it, I found it in my backyard smashed to bits. I heard Aldo later brag to his friends that he'd, "helped Raggedy Ann and her stupid brother die". I guess it was kind of harsh, but I apparently didn't hear the damn thing anyway so it was no loss to me at all.
So, back to my father and his morning routine.
For some reason, even though I had this love for sleep, my father NEEDED to come into my room before the alarm clock rang and say, "KIDS! UP! SCHOOL!" and then go to the bathroom to do whatever he did in there. I am still not sure what it was, but it apparently involved a lot of water because the bathroom was always very wet when I had to use it, and it smelled like Aquavelva had been splashed into every corner of the room.
Needless to say, I never got up when my father preceeded the alarms. All those pre-show warnings just put a deeper, sleep-inducing fear into me so that by the time I felt my father's rough hand yanking my ankle I only had about a milisecond to drop my hands to the floor to avoid getting a cuncussion. I remember feeling the seams in the hardwood floor scratching against the skin of my back as my pajamas rode up during the dragging process. But this wasn't the worst part. I was always basically still partially asleep when the dragging happened. It wasn't until we got to the bathroom across the hall that things got really scary.
Lying on the carpeted hallway floor, I was fairly comfortable and could just start to feel the sleep seeping back into my body when Dad would lift me up by the pajama collar, or the seat of my pants (which always gave me an annoying wedgie), pull me into the bathroom, turn on the cold water in the sink full-blast and dip my head over the vanity. He didn't really put my head all the way into the sink. It was too awkward as the sink wasn't that big and even as a child I had a huge head. Anyway, his method was more jarring than mere water-pressure-to-the-face stuff. He took his sand-paper-feeling hands full of freezing cold water and smooshed them into my face so hard, over and over and over until I begged him to stop.
"Okay, okay, Dad!" I'm up, I swear! Stop it. I'll be ready in five minutes." I would always say that and it was never true. The fact is, I would always go back to bed and lie down, thinking to myself that I just needed to rest for ten seconds to recover from the recent trauma and get up and put my uniform on and go to school.
The reality was that I almost always fell asleep for about ten to thirty minutes when my mother would come in the room whispering something about how my father was going to kill me or leave without driving me to school or something. The leaving without driving me was what usually got me going. I didn't want to have to take the bus. I mean, I could sleep on the bus, but I usually overslept on the bus and missed my stop, so it was generally a bad option.
So, I usually opted for suiting up, going outside to my father's truck, in which an enraged Dad had been sitting - engine idling for half-an-hour. I guiltily crawled into the passenger seat, often next to some Irish carpetbagger-construction laborer who smelled like beer farts and said, "quick dad, I'm late!"
"Late because you can't get out of the bed", he'd reply. "In Estonia, we woke up at five o'clock in the morning! We fed the chickens and miked the cows; had breakfast, run around playing with the pigs - like that!"
I just stayed silent as he repeated the same things over again about how in Estonia kids were not so lazy like these Americans here, as if I were some "American" he didn't know and as if I had a house full of farm animals to care for. It was sooooo anoying, but the guilt I felt about being lazy coupled with my tender age, kept me quiet through all those rides to school until I was old enough to drive my self.
When you do things for yourself, you have no one to blame but yourself. It's better that way - at least it is for me.
But then again, who knows. I, like most people, LOVE to sleep. Maybe the fact that I love to sleep is what keeps me from hearing alarms, explosions, earthquakes, etc. - while sleeping. OR, maybe I suffer from some form of narcolepsy that puts me into a deep, hypnotic sleep and which makes it nearly impossible for me to wake up in the morning.
As an adult, I have managed this problem by simply having a radio go off at 6, a CD-clock go off at 6:30, a traditional beep alarm go off at 7 and a wake-up call at 7:15 to help me get going. That still doesn't work, but sometimes.
Now that I'm analyzing myself here, I do think it's possible that one of the reasons I have trouble waking up is that I associate waking up with trauma. My body and mind know that waking up is a horrific experience and so, they choose to shut down. But more on that later.
I hope I never go into a coma. I'd be totally healthy and not want to wake up out of a combination of fear and laziness.
Almost as soon as I started to HAVE to get up for school, I had trouble doing it. My mother had always encouraged me to stay up as long as I wanted. She liked to force-feed me ice pops and keep me next to her while she watched horror movies. We had to keep the sound down to an almost inaudible murmur so that "daddy won't wake up". Of course "daddy" did wake up every hour or so to go pee and complain in a much more audible tone while heading for the loo.
"Gosh damn TV going all night. No wonder nobody wakes up in this house."
He'd say that same thing every night that Mom was home.
(Some days she worked through the night and I would have to lay in bed alone, trying not to imagine that demons were in the attic above my bed trying to dig through the ceiling so they could eat me alive.)
So, when the horror films from "Chiller Theater" were over, I would finally go to bed. On Sunday nights, when Mom was always home, I would usually go to bed well past midnight and have to wake up at 6:30 to get ready for school and be there by 7:30.
I pretty much never woke up before 7 though.
Most Monday mornings were the same in my early school years. Aldo's alarm would begin to ring at 6:30. He didn't have to be up until 7 but since he had pretty much the same problems I had with sleep, he didn't hear it either.
I vaguely recall hearing my father washing his face in the morning. It was always a rather noisy affair - much louder than the alarms - even my Raggedy Ann N' Andy Alarm, which was hands-down the most annoying alarm ever. I had a girl cousin who loved Raggedy Ann and so, naturally, she and her mother thought it would be appropriate to buy an alarm clock for me featuring Raggedy Ann and her equally unattractive and retarded brother, Andy. (Andy was basically Raggedy Ann's producers trying to open the boy market for their extremely-annoying-doll business.) So, my cousin bought me this clock, which I think was actually supposed to be annoying because by the time I was 4 years old, it was pretty clear that I liked sleep a little too much and my extended family had heard about this - including my cousin. The clock used the voices of two really annoying kids to SHOUT every morning, something like this: "Andy Andy, Please get up. You must be on your way! So, brush your teeth and comb your hair and start your happy day!" Then it would repeat until you started your happy friggin' day. I guess that alarm actually didn't last so long. I think about one month after I got it, I found it in my backyard smashed to bits. I heard Aldo later brag to his friends that he'd, "helped Raggedy Ann and her stupid brother die". I guess it was kind of harsh, but I apparently didn't hear the damn thing anyway so it was no loss to me at all.
So, back to my father and his morning routine.
For some reason, even though I had this love for sleep, my father NEEDED to come into my room before the alarm clock rang and say, "KIDS! UP! SCHOOL!" and then go to the bathroom to do whatever he did in there. I am still not sure what it was, but it apparently involved a lot of water because the bathroom was always very wet when I had to use it, and it smelled like Aquavelva had been splashed into every corner of the room.
Needless to say, I never got up when my father preceeded the alarms. All those pre-show warnings just put a deeper, sleep-inducing fear into me so that by the time I felt my father's rough hand yanking my ankle I only had about a milisecond to drop my hands to the floor to avoid getting a cuncussion. I remember feeling the seams in the hardwood floor scratching against the skin of my back as my pajamas rode up during the dragging process. But this wasn't the worst part. I was always basically still partially asleep when the dragging happened. It wasn't until we got to the bathroom across the hall that things got really scary.
Lying on the carpeted hallway floor, I was fairly comfortable and could just start to feel the sleep seeping back into my body when Dad would lift me up by the pajama collar, or the seat of my pants (which always gave me an annoying wedgie), pull me into the bathroom, turn on the cold water in the sink full-blast and dip my head over the vanity. He didn't really put my head all the way into the sink. It was too awkward as the sink wasn't that big and even as a child I had a huge head. Anyway, his method was more jarring than mere water-pressure-to-the-face stuff. He took his sand-paper-feeling hands full of freezing cold water and smooshed them into my face so hard, over and over and over until I begged him to stop.
"Okay, okay, Dad!" I'm up, I swear! Stop it. I'll be ready in five minutes." I would always say that and it was never true. The fact is, I would always go back to bed and lie down, thinking to myself that I just needed to rest for ten seconds to recover from the recent trauma and get up and put my uniform on and go to school.
The reality was that I almost always fell asleep for about ten to thirty minutes when my mother would come in the room whispering something about how my father was going to kill me or leave without driving me to school or something. The leaving without driving me was what usually got me going. I didn't want to have to take the bus. I mean, I could sleep on the bus, but I usually overslept on the bus and missed my stop, so it was generally a bad option.
So, I usually opted for suiting up, going outside to my father's truck, in which an enraged Dad had been sitting - engine idling for half-an-hour. I guiltily crawled into the passenger seat, often next to some Irish carpetbagger-construction laborer who smelled like beer farts and said, "quick dad, I'm late!"
"Late because you can't get out of the bed", he'd reply. "In Estonia, we woke up at five o'clock in the morning! We fed the chickens and miked the cows; had breakfast, run around playing with the pigs - like that!"
I just stayed silent as he repeated the same things over again about how in Estonia kids were not so lazy like these Americans here, as if I were some "American" he didn't know and as if I had a house full of farm animals to care for. It was sooooo anoying, but the guilt I felt about being lazy coupled with my tender age, kept me quiet through all those rides to school until I was old enough to drive my self.
When you do things for yourself, you have no one to blame but yourself. It's better that way - at least it is for me.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
A Boy in a Bubble
About a year ago, I met this manic-looking reject-woman through a friend. She was one of those people that you just look at and immediatly hate. She wasn't attractive in any way, though not homely. She dressed exceptionally poorly though it wasn't like she looked homeless. She also had a way about her that made me want to punch her in the face. And I rarely ever puch strange women in the face.
Anyway, I recall having the misfortune to be invited to lunch with this particularly strange woman. She basically dominated the entire lunch conversation, boring us with the story of her life in what she constantly referred to as "a bubble".
I live in a slightly iffy part of town which hugs East Harlem and so, this woman, who appeared to be about thirty, was apparently just in her early twenties and "scared" to go out at night because Latin men find her "irresistible" and "cat call" her constantly. She was worried that one of these sweaty, hot-blooded "mens" would one day grab her by the neck and force her to do the merengue. I was slightly unsympathetic to this woman, not just because I wanted her to die as soon as possible, but also because she seemed geniunely uncomfortable living in my hood. She lived around the corner and was basically telling me I lived in a shithole neighborhood which didn't sit well with me. I mean, I pay good money to live here and I like it. So, innocently, I asked her why she was so unprepared for life in the big city among various people of color.
Here started the "bubble" references.
"I'm unprepared to live like this because I grew up in a bubble, okay! I had a maid, okay. I had nothing but rich Jewish white people around me all the time. I had friends who played tennis and went to parties at the yacht club on the weekends, okay? I was in this...this...this BUBBLE! Okay!"
So the feeling of common hatred that I felt the second my eyes had met hers was growing into a black rancor that I could amost feel oozing out of my skin. I literally wanted her to have an accident right there in the restaurant. But I remained calm and the venom in my veins slowly cooled to a soft pity. I sensed that she invisioned her life in a bubble as something to be proud of, despite her pretense of shame at living a life of privilege - a life which I still suspect she may or may not have lived. Though the black sheet she was wearing might have come from a very nice store on 34th Street, I didn't notice anyting about her that said, "I'm refined and well-educated. I am too genteel to live in el barrio con los nacos." So, I took her paranoia to be the result of some kind of pseudo-sophisticated delusion.
I know, this is supposed to be all about me and my life, starting from zygotedom, but I have a point.
Her bubble talk made me realize that we are all raised in bubbles of some kind. Even if some of those bubbles are a little cracked and broken, they are still bubbles. No matter how diverse we may think our environment is, our home is always our biggest influence. In most cases, our home revolves around our parents and no matter how different their individual cultures or even races might be, they were attracted to each other and in some way think alike. They have some things in common that are sure to influence their children, ie - us.
There are bubbles everywhere. A house is a bubble, a block is a bubble, a street, a neighborhood, a school, a city, a country, a continent. We all develop instincts, prejudices, fears - based on the environments in the various bubbles we grew up in.
My parents, for example, were by no means snobs. Nor were they rich or even slightly fancy people - but my father grew up on a farm in Estonia and my mother grew up in a notoriously picky Irish family. As a result of this, there were no Chef-Boy-R-Dee cans in my home growing up. I used to look at my classmates lunches and talk to them about what they ate for dinner and I'd hear things like "rice and beans" and "Spaghetti-O's" and make the gross-face and ask innocent questions like, "where's the meat?". I was labeled a snob by many of my classmates. Don't you see how unfair that was? It's the damn bubbles fault.
In my adult life, I have found myself held back in so many ways. I spent many of my formative years cooped up in my room watching TV or playing video games. Now I find in my adult life that I really enjoy sitting in my apartment typing on my computer, sending e-mails.
The bubbles again!
Next time you find fault with yourself or another person, just think about this bubble idea and instead of stressing yourself out and/or getting angry or depressed, just shout out, "I hate you fargin bubbles! Bubbles suck! Break! Break, you damn bubbles!"
OK, maybe that's too long, but you can figure out how you want to say it. It doesn't matter as long as you just blame the bubbles.
Anyway, I recall having the misfortune to be invited to lunch with this particularly strange woman. She basically dominated the entire lunch conversation, boring us with the story of her life in what she constantly referred to as "a bubble".
I live in a slightly iffy part of town which hugs East Harlem and so, this woman, who appeared to be about thirty, was apparently just in her early twenties and "scared" to go out at night because Latin men find her "irresistible" and "cat call" her constantly. She was worried that one of these sweaty, hot-blooded "mens" would one day grab her by the neck and force her to do the merengue. I was slightly unsympathetic to this woman, not just because I wanted her to die as soon as possible, but also because she seemed geniunely uncomfortable living in my hood. She lived around the corner and was basically telling me I lived in a shithole neighborhood which didn't sit well with me. I mean, I pay good money to live here and I like it. So, innocently, I asked her why she was so unprepared for life in the big city among various people of color.
Here started the "bubble" references.
"I'm unprepared to live like this because I grew up in a bubble, okay! I had a maid, okay. I had nothing but rich Jewish white people around me all the time. I had friends who played tennis and went to parties at the yacht club on the weekends, okay? I was in this...this...this BUBBLE! Okay!"
So the feeling of common hatred that I felt the second my eyes had met hers was growing into a black rancor that I could amost feel oozing out of my skin. I literally wanted her to have an accident right there in the restaurant. But I remained calm and the venom in my veins slowly cooled to a soft pity. I sensed that she invisioned her life in a bubble as something to be proud of, despite her pretense of shame at living a life of privilege - a life which I still suspect she may or may not have lived. Though the black sheet she was wearing might have come from a very nice store on 34th Street, I didn't notice anyting about her that said, "I'm refined and well-educated. I am too genteel to live in el barrio con los nacos." So, I took her paranoia to be the result of some kind of pseudo-sophisticated delusion.
I know, this is supposed to be all about me and my life, starting from zygotedom, but I have a point.
Her bubble talk made me realize that we are all raised in bubbles of some kind. Even if some of those bubbles are a little cracked and broken, they are still bubbles. No matter how diverse we may think our environment is, our home is always our biggest influence. In most cases, our home revolves around our parents and no matter how different their individual cultures or even races might be, they were attracted to each other and in some way think alike. They have some things in common that are sure to influence their children, ie - us.
There are bubbles everywhere. A house is a bubble, a block is a bubble, a street, a neighborhood, a school, a city, a country, a continent. We all develop instincts, prejudices, fears - based on the environments in the various bubbles we grew up in.
My parents, for example, were by no means snobs. Nor were they rich or even slightly fancy people - but my father grew up on a farm in Estonia and my mother grew up in a notoriously picky Irish family. As a result of this, there were no Chef-Boy-R-Dee cans in my home growing up. I used to look at my classmates lunches and talk to them about what they ate for dinner and I'd hear things like "rice and beans" and "Spaghetti-O's" and make the gross-face and ask innocent questions like, "where's the meat?". I was labeled a snob by many of my classmates. Don't you see how unfair that was? It's the damn bubbles fault.
In my adult life, I have found myself held back in so many ways. I spent many of my formative years cooped up in my room watching TV or playing video games. Now I find in my adult life that I really enjoy sitting in my apartment typing on my computer, sending e-mails.
The bubbles again!
Next time you find fault with yourself or another person, just think about this bubble idea and instead of stressing yourself out and/or getting angry or depressed, just shout out, "I hate you fargin bubbles! Bubbles suck! Break! Break, you damn bubbles!"
OK, maybe that's too long, but you can figure out how you want to say it. It doesn't matter as long as you just blame the bubbles.
Friday, June 09, 2006
Critical of the Masses
I remember being a small child and listening to my sisters and Aldo (my oder brother was nicer and didn't do this) constantly criticize people - even themselves. I assume that this behavior, which might have been normal for teenagers and those in their early twenties like my siblings were, was what led to to a life of cynicism.
I was in Sweden with my parents when I was about ten and I remember my mother being ebarassed by me cutting up virtually every famous American brought up by my relatives there. I couldn't understand why my relatives seemed to think that every famous person was either beautiful or handsome. To me, almost everyone was ugly and stupid. I was critical of every aspect of faces, bodies, cothes, hair, personality, acting ability, athletic skill, intelligence, morality, personality disorders - you name it. And who was I to criticize? I still don't know.
My cousin was a fan of Marylou Retton who had just gotten 10's at the Olympics. I recall saying she was ugly and a little fat. My mother nudged me in the side. One of my cousins complimented her on her incredible athletic ability. I suggested the judging was fixed. My mother nudged me harder. My cousin reminded us how proud we must be as Americans, to have this great athletic hero and I responded with a "not really" and a "who cares about stupid girl's gymastics". My mother wanted to pound me into the floor at that point.
I also had a big mouth and annoyed her in other ways on that trip.
My sister Jaqui, who had always kept company with the fancier set, had gone to a fundraising sale at a public school in Bronxville. (Bronxville is one of the richest towns in America, for those not in the know.) At this particular sale, there were unused-used children's clothes being sold and Jaqui picked up about five Lacoste aligator golf shirts in various colors for her favorite little brother. (That'd be me.)
Guess what they cost?
One freekin' dollar! Amazing. OK, this was more than 20 years ago, but it was still amazing.
Anyway, I had no idea what these things cost in retail, but I knew that Jaqui had picked them up for a buck a piece because she quickly got reimbursed by my mother - Jaqui was no fool when it came to money.
So, in Sweden, my cousins commented on my "rich" wardrobe as Lacoste must have been hot there at the time. I remember my mother's face as I said this. She looked so irritated - like she wanted to kill me. I asked with surprise, "This thing? You know what this cost? A dollar. It's no big whoop."
My mother almost knocked me off the table when she pinched my leg under the table.
My cousins, noting her embarrassment lauhed it off. "You're so funny. The United States is not that cheap!"
When I was just five, I remember having a birthday party with my relatives in New York and my mother's sister, Pasquelina, gave me a bag of colored briefs. I remember opening it and not even waiting a second before I said, "Underwear? This is not a birthday present."
My mother turned the color of my crimson Crayola. Secretly, I felt her pain, but I didn't care too much. I genuinely couldn't fathom, in my five-year-old brain, why aunt Pasqui would give me underwear for a huge event like my fifth birthday. I started forming ideas in my head about how she must have thought my parent's weren't doing well and that they couldn't afford to buy me underwear, which I would get on any old day without having to reach some milestone, lose a tooth or achieve some level of pre-school success. (Imagine if the tooth fairy left you briefs instead of money!)
What was wrong with Aunt Pasquelina? Why would she think that was appropriate? OK, I embarrassed my mom by negating the value of Pasqui's gift, but Pasquelina embarrassed me in front of my friends and family by giving me, not only intimate apparrel, but COLORED BRIEFS, for God's sake! I mean, what did I look like? A friggin' Turkish sailor? Julio Iglesias? A forty-year-old guy who hangs out it single's bars and brings whores back to his disco-balled bedroom to make whoopie on his vibrating heart-shaped bed?
No, I was not the type to wear such things, even at five.
I remember Underoos were a fashion trend and I wanted nothing to do with. Wearing spider-man shooting his web over my wee wee wasn't for me. What kind of message does that imply? Think about it, America!
To add insult to injury, my mother forced me to use the colored undies and I recall getting a humiliating infection in my pee-hole from the yellow ones.
(Secretly - and ironically, I liked the convenience of those yellow ones as they didn't show the pee stains at all.)
You see, my rudeness and prejudice is often just God looking out for me. He knew those underwear were bad news and he sent me that message when I opened them up.
That's why, I have decided, it's OK to be critical sometimes.
I was in Sweden with my parents when I was about ten and I remember my mother being ebarassed by me cutting up virtually every famous American brought up by my relatives there. I couldn't understand why my relatives seemed to think that every famous person was either beautiful or handsome. To me, almost everyone was ugly and stupid. I was critical of every aspect of faces, bodies, cothes, hair, personality, acting ability, athletic skill, intelligence, morality, personality disorders - you name it. And who was I to criticize? I still don't know.
My cousin was a fan of Marylou Retton who had just gotten 10's at the Olympics. I recall saying she was ugly and a little fat. My mother nudged me in the side. One of my cousins complimented her on her incredible athletic ability. I suggested the judging was fixed. My mother nudged me harder. My cousin reminded us how proud we must be as Americans, to have this great athletic hero and I responded with a "not really" and a "who cares about stupid girl's gymastics". My mother wanted to pound me into the floor at that point.
I also had a big mouth and annoyed her in other ways on that trip.
My sister Jaqui, who had always kept company with the fancier set, had gone to a fundraising sale at a public school in Bronxville. (Bronxville is one of the richest towns in America, for those not in the know.) At this particular sale, there were unused-used children's clothes being sold and Jaqui picked up about five Lacoste aligator golf shirts in various colors for her favorite little brother. (That'd be me.)
Guess what they cost?
One freekin' dollar! Amazing. OK, this was more than 20 years ago, but it was still amazing.
Anyway, I had no idea what these things cost in retail, but I knew that Jaqui had picked them up for a buck a piece because she quickly got reimbursed by my mother - Jaqui was no fool when it came to money.
So, in Sweden, my cousins commented on my "rich" wardrobe as Lacoste must have been hot there at the time. I remember my mother's face as I said this. She looked so irritated - like she wanted to kill me. I asked with surprise, "This thing? You know what this cost? A dollar. It's no big whoop."
My mother almost knocked me off the table when she pinched my leg under the table.
My cousins, noting her embarrassment lauhed it off. "You're so funny. The United States is not that cheap!"
When I was just five, I remember having a birthday party with my relatives in New York and my mother's sister, Pasquelina, gave me a bag of colored briefs. I remember opening it and not even waiting a second before I said, "Underwear? This is not a birthday present."
My mother turned the color of my crimson Crayola. Secretly, I felt her pain, but I didn't care too much. I genuinely couldn't fathom, in my five-year-old brain, why aunt Pasqui would give me underwear for a huge event like my fifth birthday. I started forming ideas in my head about how she must have thought my parent's weren't doing well and that they couldn't afford to buy me underwear, which I would get on any old day without having to reach some milestone, lose a tooth or achieve some level of pre-school success. (Imagine if the tooth fairy left you briefs instead of money!)
What was wrong with Aunt Pasquelina? Why would she think that was appropriate? OK, I embarrassed my mom by negating the value of Pasqui's gift, but Pasquelina embarrassed me in front of my friends and family by giving me, not only intimate apparrel, but COLORED BRIEFS, for God's sake! I mean, what did I look like? A friggin' Turkish sailor? Julio Iglesias? A forty-year-old guy who hangs out it single's bars and brings whores back to his disco-balled bedroom to make whoopie on his vibrating heart-shaped bed?
No, I was not the type to wear such things, even at five.
I remember Underoos were a fashion trend and I wanted nothing to do with. Wearing spider-man shooting his web over my wee wee wasn't for me. What kind of message does that imply? Think about it, America!
To add insult to injury, my mother forced me to use the colored undies and I recall getting a humiliating infection in my pee-hole from the yellow ones.
(Secretly - and ironically, I liked the convenience of those yellow ones as they didn't show the pee stains at all.)
You see, my rudeness and prejudice is often just God looking out for me. He knew those underwear were bad news and he sent me that message when I opened them up.
That's why, I have decided, it's OK to be critical sometimes.
Monday, June 05, 2006
ADHD
So, I volunteered for an ADHD study recently and am pretty psyched about it.
I've always thought that I was a victim of some kind of pshychological defect and after my initial interview with one of the shrinks at a major medical center I feel almost justified in wasting countless years worrying about what was wrong with me. Apparently I answered all the questions right. Even the ones that weren't asked!
As a young boy, I remember seeing the film "The Omen" which actually has a remake coming out this week. In fact today is 6/6/06, so there's a method to my madness after all.
Anyway, I remember thinking that there was something wrong with my mind and after I saw that movie. I worried that I might one day not be able to enter a church or that holy water would burn my skin. Of course, after I saw "Jesus of Nazareth" I also considered the possiblity that I could be the third coming - which of course also meant that I was here to get the Book of Revelations on a roll. Either way, I was bad news for the not-so-good people of Mother Earth.
As time passed and I realized that I didn't have telekinetic powers and that I couldn't make my enemies commit suicide or have untimely "accidents" no matter how hard I willed it to happen, I started to realize that I might be retarded. This idea was reinforced in fifth grade, when my mother and father forced me to change schools and attend St. Bernard's Academy where I proceeded to have problems with math. Up to then, school had not been much of a challenge but then this math thing happened. I couldn't get it. I was completely lost in class and had almost no idea what my torturer, I mean, my teacher, Mrs. Calcification, had in mind when she was talking about fractions and decimals. It was like she was speaking Chinese sometimes, but she was Italian-American and I'm pretty sure she didn't know any Asian languages.
So as the years passed, my math problems continued and by the time I was in high school they spread to the sciences and philology as well. Well, I pretty much knew there was a problem as soon as it started in fifth grade. I immediately began to seek help within myself. I had always found myself to be my best counselor because whenever I asked anyone else for advice all I heard was "wah wah wah wha..." and that didn't usually help much.
So my inner voice told me several times - from the age of ten to the much-more-recent past - that I was retarded. I was doing well in other areas though. I was also keenly aware that most of the people I dealt with on a daily basis, including many of my teachers, were vastly inferior to me both intellectually and physically. I therefore concluded that I was a "special" retard. I was kind of a lucky retarded person because I was able to fool everyone around me into thinking I was normal because I didn't have the physical characteristics of a retarded person, nor was I so spastic. I was also able to get through school as a farily above-average student despite having no idea what anyone was talking about most of the time.
I avoided intellectual and sporting activities that required a lot attention to detail. If I had too much to think about I was sure to get confused and either made fun of by a teacher or hit in the head by a ball and laughed at by my peers. School became a very stressful environment for me and by the time I was eleven I couldn't wait for it to end. "Only eleven more years of this", I told myself daily. By the time I was in college, though, things got easier. There was less pressure to perform in front of others and I could take my time writing and thinking. I found myself to be much less inclined to want my enemies to die by being hit by speeding 18-wheel trucks or to be eaten by cockroaches. I started to think that maybe my mother might have been unwittingly abusing some kind of narcotic disgused as a diet pill while pregnant with me. That could be the reason for the challenges that I faced. At any rate, I was still getting by and at times was praised by my teachers - though never to my satisfaction.
I have a friend who has hinted that I might have ADD or ADHD but I never took it too seriously since I think it's something most people have to some degree. Only now, I have come to a point in my life where I feel that something is amiss to the degree that it's preventing me from growing. I guess only time will tell. I just hope it's not too much time before I know more about who I can be and if I like him and want to stay him or go back to the me I am now.
I've always thought that I was a victim of some kind of pshychological defect and after my initial interview with one of the shrinks at a major medical center I feel almost justified in wasting countless years worrying about what was wrong with me. Apparently I answered all the questions right. Even the ones that weren't asked!
As a young boy, I remember seeing the film "The Omen" which actually has a remake coming out this week. In fact today is 6/6/06, so there's a method to my madness after all.
Anyway, I remember thinking that there was something wrong with my mind and after I saw that movie. I worried that I might one day not be able to enter a church or that holy water would burn my skin. Of course, after I saw "Jesus of Nazareth" I also considered the possiblity that I could be the third coming - which of course also meant that I was here to get the Book of Revelations on a roll. Either way, I was bad news for the not-so-good people of Mother Earth.
As time passed and I realized that I didn't have telekinetic powers and that I couldn't make my enemies commit suicide or have untimely "accidents" no matter how hard I willed it to happen, I started to realize that I might be retarded. This idea was reinforced in fifth grade, when my mother and father forced me to change schools and attend St. Bernard's Academy where I proceeded to have problems with math. Up to then, school had not been much of a challenge but then this math thing happened. I couldn't get it. I was completely lost in class and had almost no idea what my torturer, I mean, my teacher, Mrs. Calcification, had in mind when she was talking about fractions and decimals. It was like she was speaking Chinese sometimes, but she was Italian-American and I'm pretty sure she didn't know any Asian languages.
So as the years passed, my math problems continued and by the time I was in high school they spread to the sciences and philology as well. Well, I pretty much knew there was a problem as soon as it started in fifth grade. I immediately began to seek help within myself. I had always found myself to be my best counselor because whenever I asked anyone else for advice all I heard was "wah wah wah wha..." and that didn't usually help much.
So my inner voice told me several times - from the age of ten to the much-more-recent past - that I was retarded. I was doing well in other areas though. I was also keenly aware that most of the people I dealt with on a daily basis, including many of my teachers, were vastly inferior to me both intellectually and physically. I therefore concluded that I was a "special" retard. I was kind of a lucky retarded person because I was able to fool everyone around me into thinking I was normal because I didn't have the physical characteristics of a retarded person, nor was I so spastic. I was also able to get through school as a farily above-average student despite having no idea what anyone was talking about most of the time.
I avoided intellectual and sporting activities that required a lot attention to detail. If I had too much to think about I was sure to get confused and either made fun of by a teacher or hit in the head by a ball and laughed at by my peers. School became a very stressful environment for me and by the time I was eleven I couldn't wait for it to end. "Only eleven more years of this", I told myself daily. By the time I was in college, though, things got easier. There was less pressure to perform in front of others and I could take my time writing and thinking. I found myself to be much less inclined to want my enemies to die by being hit by speeding 18-wheel trucks or to be eaten by cockroaches. I started to think that maybe my mother might have been unwittingly abusing some kind of narcotic disgused as a diet pill while pregnant with me. That could be the reason for the challenges that I faced. At any rate, I was still getting by and at times was praised by my teachers - though never to my satisfaction.
I have a friend who has hinted that I might have ADD or ADHD but I never took it too seriously since I think it's something most people have to some degree. Only now, I have come to a point in my life where I feel that something is amiss to the degree that it's preventing me from growing. I guess only time will tell. I just hope it's not too much time before I know more about who I can be and if I like him and want to stay him or go back to the me I am now.
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