Category: Fambly

Wherein I tell stories about my clan.

A Cotton Swab Parable

It was the morning of the Watauga High School band’s trip to Carowinds, I want to say sophomore year. I showered as usual and headed to my parents’ bathroom to scout out a q-tip to dry my ears. And when I say “dry my ears”, you know it went a little farther than that.

It always started out as just drying my ears, and one of my mom’s sayings, along with “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”, was “Don’t put anything in your ear that’s smaller than your elbow”, but as I’ve mentioned, I have my dad’s ear wax genes, and I could never help but dig in there a little bit and pull out a satisfyingly disgusting wax-coated swab of cotton.

Maybe I was a little aurally fixated because I’d had a shit-ton of ear problems as a kid. Frequent, angry ear infections. Throbbing pain that I remember vividly thirty years later. Seriously, I recall looking up at my mom, who I know now must’ve been dying to see her five-year-old in such agony, and thinking, “How are you letting this happen?” Anyway, I had to have tubes put in my ears. Twice! To this day, when doctors look in my ears for the first time, they go, “Whoa!… Um, so you’ve got some scar tissue in there, huh?”

This particular morning in high school, after I’m certain I spent a half-hour picking out the perfect outfit to impress Robbie, probably involving matching shirt and scrunchy socks, I got really into the “ear drying”, and I just went a little too deep into my right ear canal. A little tap on something inside, and I found myself eye-level with the bolts that kept the toilet anchored to the floor. Totally horizontal, like that, in an instant. My ear felt a little tender but didn’t hurt. It was just weird, was all, that I could’ve been so undeniably standing in one moment, and in the next on the fucking ground.

I began to pick myself up, but even weirder, when I raised my head more than three inches, it was—no joke—like someone was holding me down. I could not make myself vertical.

Of course, I was not thinking that I may have done some major damage to myself. I was freaking out that I might miss the charter bus, and Robbie would never see that the coral and aqua in my earrings was exactly the same as the coral and aqua in my shirt, and uuugggghhhhh, why me?

But eventually, over the course of about 20 minutes, I raised myself up a few inches at a time until I was able to stand and stagger out of the bathroom. I went on the trip, and it’s unclear whether Robbie appreciated my fashion choices—he played cat and mouse with me for, oh, about three more years.

I have no recollection of where my family was during this incident. Maybe my parents had already left for work, but my brother must’ve been in the house because he was the captain of our ’83 Subaru GL (I was quartermaster, and by that I mean I managed the Led Zeppelin cassettes). Was I too embarrassed to call out for him? No idea.

Anyway, clearly the moral of this story is, do not match your accessories perfectly. It looks like you’re trying too hard on the band trip.

Not Actually Old

My 92-year-old great uncle just lost his license. Nothing had happened; there was no incident, thank god—it was just Time. Actually, it was Time a long time ago. Long about 2003, I rode shotgun on his grocery store run, and all I remember is feeling my heart beating in my neck and hanging onto the oh-shit handle so hard I gave myself calluses. Since then his cognitive abilities have deteriorated. Two days after he buried his dead cat in the back yard, he said, “Now where has that cat Oliver gotten to?” Moreover, he can’t hear or see a whole lot.

So my mom, who takes care of my uncle, consulted with his doctor and his lawyer, and they said, yep, get him evaluated. (By the way, did you know it costs over $300 to get an elderly person screened for driving? You’d think that society might want to bear that burden, seeing as not doing it could get somebody killed, but nope. Out of pocket.)

Of course the evaluation said to get him off the road.

Now he’s miserable and blaming my mom, which is totally unfair because she’s done nothing but cook him dinner, help him keep up the house and gardens, and play two games of cribbage with him every night for the last decade. Plus, she’s devastated for him too. She told me that, after she got the news, she cried straight through her voice lesson. And that’s normally the happiest hour of her week.

I get it, though—he’s pissed and scared. Pissed because even though his daily rounds included only the post office, the dump, and Stop & Shop, it was his routine. His life. And scared because when the DMV revokes your license, well, that’s sort of the beginning of the end, innit? What’s the timeframe between losing the right to drive and having to have somebody wipe your ass for you? Probably not that long.

Ugh. Old age, man. I have to remember that even though I’m feeling old, I’m not. I can drive to Kroger, and I remember putting Boonie in the ground, and I can wipe my own ass. Thank god for that.

 

You Say ‘Moleskin’, I Say ‘Moleskeen’

I, like many people who write, carry a small notebook to jot down ideas when they come to me. Two reasons, really: (1) An idea for a post will not stay with me for more than 30 seconds, even if it’s the most exciting thought I ever thunk, and (2) during Those Dry Times, I can sometimes flip through the pages and find something to blather on about.

If I don’t have my Moleskine® with me, I just scribble on a sticky note, a receipt, a gum wrapper… and my desk is littered with these little pieces of paper all the time. Here are some in front of me right now:

  • hands smelling like lavender after washing Baby E’s head
  • past tense of breathe should be broathe
  • Things I Don’t Like: (1) when people pronounce amphitheatre as if it has no h after the p
  • I worry that Boonie didn’t know how much I loved him.
  • “I don’t eat when I’m not hungry.” –Kate K. Jealous.
  • Horrifying thought of the day: A hundred years ago, I would’ve been considered a spinster. A SPINSTER. People get into relationships ALL THE TIME. What the hell is wrong with me?
  • Liane Hansen pronouncing “Ghostface Killah” in Mark Ronson interview—hahahaha

Most of these scribbles will never get written about. There’s just not enough there. But I really want there to be. I practically sprain my brain trying to weave these threads into something meaningful. One I keep looking longingly at is:

  • B: “Fly, you fools” (LOTR)

This is a reference to Christmas 2001 when my family saw The Lord of the Rings in a tiny theatre in Stowe, Vermont. At the moment when Gandalf was hanging from the precipice—the hobbits staring, petrified, powerless to stop his fall—my brother leaned over to my ear and said, “Fly, you fools!” one second before those words came out of the Grey Wizard’s mouth. And it was one of the most thrilling moments I’ve ever experienced. The combination of the emotional intensity of the scene and my brother’s precognition was too much.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, of course. My brother had read all the books a brazilian times; he knew every slash of a sword and every breath of a Ringwraith. (Now Dan Miller or somebody’s going to comment that Ringwraiths don’t breathe or something. Shut it, I don’t know anything about them because I didn’t read anything but Nancy Drew when I was little.) But it was so awesome. Just an awesome moment in my life.

So I’ve wanted to write about that moment for a long time; I just didn’t know what else to say about it.

And I still don’t, but there it is.

On the internet.

So. Yeah.

This is one of Those Dry Times.

The Formula

Thrice in my life, I have fainted. Long about the third time, the cause/effect relationship was easy to identify. Here it is.

If I am:

  1. standing
  2. on a moving train
  3. in the morning
  4. without having eaten breakfast

I will faint.

Weirdest thing. I get all woozy. My vision narrows to nothing. And then I find myself supine on the train floor with a bunch of startled passengers wondering if I’m preggers or ODing. Or my sister does her best to carry me off the T, but I manage to get my shoe caught between the train and the platform and fall onto the marble floor.

Anyway, point is, it’s a formula; these circumstances lead to my faintage. Now I can avoid the situation by, say, eating breakfast or taking a cab. (Or moving somewhere with a really poor public transportation system therefore having to drive to work. Ah, done.)

I just wish it were easier for me to delineate other cause/effect relationships.

Like, for example, the one that led to my epic fucking temper tantrum at the gym tonight.

Is it that if I:

  1. spend two days untagging myself from Fight Gone Bad photos on Facebook because I am just goddamn enormous,
  2. eat two pieces of sheet cake at my principal’s goodbye luncheon,
  3. take a two-hour nap,
  4. watch all the other females in class do some semblance of handstand push-ups while I still struggle with the hands-on-floor/knees-on-box/ass-in-the-air variety,
  5. and finally, not be able to do any double-unders during the WOD (seriously, after getting 32 in a row last week, tonight I was getting two or one or none),

then I will have a big ol’ crying fit and storm out of the gym without saying goodbye to anyone?

Is that the formula?

Did I figure it out?

‘Cause if that’s it, maybe I can circumvent the Grand Tanty by drinking a cup of coffee or not eating Harris Teeter bakery products.

Or maybe I’ll just send out an invitation next time: Come to Amy’s Low Self-Esteem Day at CrossFit Durham!!

It was probably pretty entertaining to watch.

Hail to the Brightest Star of All

I made my entrance to this bright world in a little hospital in Blowing Rock and grew up listening to Cove Creek gurgle by.

I rode Old Highway 421 to Boone to take ballet, tap, and jazz weekly at the Dancer’s Corner and made out with Robbie in his Volvo in Foscoe every chance I could get.

I attended the University of National Champions in Chapel Hill, camping out on the hard sidewalk outside the Dean Dome for basketball tickets, ordering Greek grilled cheese at Hector’s at 2:00am, and sweating my way through eight shows in the Lab! Theatre.

I flew away to Italy, Mexico, and New York Fuckin City, but I kept finding my way back to the Tar Heel State.

For five years, I taught fourth graders how to lose at tetherball on Seawell School Road, then wended my way out to my little mill house in Hillsborough and ran my dogs all over Occoneechee Mountain.

These days, I work out, go out, and tell stories in Bull City. I drive up Roxboro, down Mangum, and across Club Boulevard.

I’ve been to Asheville and Kure Beach and a lot of places in between, and I love. This. State.

I love North Carolina.

But today my state government voted to put hate on the ballot and bigotry on the map on May 8, 2012, and I just couldn’t be more ashamed.

Worry

Some people are champion worriers. My dad and my sister are two that spring to mind, but I’m no slouch. My sister and I like to talk about how, if we worry enough about a thing, it can’t possibly happen. And so to control our destiny, we worry enough about many things. The only problem is that other things happen, of course, things that we can’t fathom. When Boonie died, she said, “I never thought to worry about your dog getting shot.” I hadn’t either.

Naturally, when an unexpected event occurs, that realm of possibility opens itself up, and like a cold sore, it’ll subside, but it can and will erupt in your face at inopportune times. Like your wedding day. Or a Thursday.

A couple months ago, my friend told me that one of her neighbor’s two dogs was strangled to death accidentally while they were wrestling with each other. Somehow their collars got caught, and when the woman realized what was happening, she tried to cut the collar off, but she couldn’t. And the dog died.

So for two months, my dogs accidentally strangling each other has been another worry-cold-sore for me. It couldn’t possibly happen though because I worried about it.

Except it did.

On Friday night, Redford and Violet were wrestling on the living room floor, when I noticed that the noises they were making sounded different from their usual grunts and sung notes. They sounded desperate.

I turned around and found them locked together at the muzzle, bucking and pulling against each other. It was pretty dark in the room. I sprinted over and knelt down, trying to get a read on what was happening. Of course, both dogs were panicked, so this was a flurry of teeth, ears, hands, paws.

My blood pressure shot through the roof, and I realized only later that I was shouting, “Wait! Wait! Wait!” I don’t know why that’s the word I chose; I just kept saying, “Wait!”

When I got in there with my hands, I realized that Redford’s bottom canine teeth had hooked on Violet’s collar, and then his whole chin must’ve gotten shoved under it. Violet had probably been lying on the floor at the start, and when she stood up, her collar had flipped, or doubled over, and was now strangling her.

I searched for the release, but the nylon was pulled so tight, I couldn’t even push in on the plastic clasp. Redford was yanking violently, emitting confused snorts. Violet was pulling too, but I could see that she was getting weaker, and the only noises she was getting out through her nearly-closed airway were terrified whines.

I was still yelling, “Wait!” I thought about running to the kitchen for some scissors, but I was afraid I wouldn’t find them in time. In what was a moment of unadulterated fight-or-flight, I made a move that I knew would either save her life or break her neck. Gambling on which way the collar was flipped, I reached underneath Violet, grabbed the legs on the right side of her body, and pulled them toward myself, flipping her onto her side, like I’ve seen people do after they lasso livestock but before binding the animal’s hooves.

The collar slackened. Redford slid his jaw out from underneath. Violet stood up and shook herself off. I stayed on my knees on the floor, chest heaving, “Wait. Wait. Wait.”

I had recently gotten the dogs new collars, and before they’re all stiffened up with dirt and dander, they lose their shape easily—Violet’s must’ve gotten too loose without my realizing it. I tightened it and put it back on her neck.

Of course, now I can’t stop worrying it’s too tight and might hurt her.

But because I’m worrying about it, it means it can’t happen, right?

Goddammit.

Here’s Your “Father’s Day”, Dad*

My dad had a concern, after the recent posts of his outbursts and witticisms, that readers might get the impression that he was a…what did he call it?…“a doddering old fool”.

Why would anyone think that?

My dad's idea of a clothesline.

Smurf-blue deck paint, also his idea.

Yep, that's his underpants. And a sock.

And yes, he is half-deaf and has only nine toes, so his balance is a little off and he falls down a lot, but my dad is also a genius. I just didn’t include the stuff he said about the devaluation of the American dollar or his comparison between Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War and our country’s current presence in the Middle East because DIURETIC DAY is so much more entertaining.

In addition to being a genius, my dad’s a badass. For posterity’s sake, I will catalog a few of the ways he has filled up this arbitrary existence we call life:

  • attended race-driving school, twice (once in the 1960s, and again about ten years ago)
  • took at least one bounty hunter workshop
  • got kicked out of both Phillips Exeter Academy and Columbia Law School
  • earned a PhD from Cambridge University in England
  • has written my mom a sonnet every Valentine’s Day since, like, 1973 or something
  • tromped all over Europe, including places like Bosnia and Croatia, with a backpack slung over his shoulder into his sixties
  • got his brown belt in karate before he got colon cancer in ’86
  • (speaking of which) beat cancer, two different kinds

Some of his occupations:

  • carny (no shit—he ran the scrambler for Reithoffer)
  • published author of several pieces of short fiction and a history book
  • tree nurseryman (to this day, more than 35 years later, we’re not allowed to cut a Christmas tree; we have to decorate a dug-and-balled Fraser fir, which we later un-decorate and plant in the yard)
  • ambulance driver
  • reporter, or as he would say “newspaper man”
  • college professor
  • and most importantly, dad…a doddering, meddling, hilarious, generous-to-a-fault, worry-wort of a dad to three kids and two kids-in-law

I love ya, Dad!

*My dad wrote a journal entry of sorts last week entitled “Father’s Day”. He showed it to me. It was just about his day, an everyday day, and about my heading up the mountain to see him. It was simple and beautiful.

 

Brush Up Your Rich Wilkes*

Between his sciatic nerve radiating pain from his lower back to his feet (“It feels like an iguana has latched itself onto my toe”) and the arthritis in his left knee, Dad was less than sanguine on the trip back down south. But I still managed to jot down a few nuggets.

Dad: (pointing to a sign in Pennsylvania) Lebanon! Let’s hear some AK-47s!

…

Dad: (lecturing me about his ancestral home in PA) The Polish, Irish, and Italian groups hated each other, and it was only with much thought and constipation that you would bring home a girl from a different tribe.

…

Dad: What do you know about Vin Diesel?

Me: He’s an action movie actor.

Dad: He certainly is.

…

Dad: Here are some quarters for the meter.

Me: I have change.

Dad: Well, these tend to pull my pants down. You’ll be doing humanity a favor if you take them.

(This is absolutely true. The guy who invented suspenders had my dad’s shape in mind. And you’re welcome, humanity.)

…

Dad: (waiting for a light to turn so he could get to a bathroom) Come on, baby…let’s do the twist…he said, farting.

To clarify, that speech tag was not added by me. That’s what he actually said, “…let’s do the twist…he said, farting.”

*Rich Wilkes is the author of such oeuvres as xXx, starring Vin Diesel, and The Jerky Boys.

They’ll All Cowtow

I just finished a two-day road trip with my dad, my dogs, and a 14′ canoe. (Just delivering the water vessel to my mom, not actually canoeing with a half-deaf 72-year-old and two pit bulls.)

Why would I subject myself to such torture, you ask?

Well, because of these conversational gems, of course:

Dad: (pointing at a sign) Ah, ‘Welcome Center, 1 1/2 miles’, where I have changed my pants in the parking lot.

…

Dad: (to a car which was clearly pulled over for speeding) That’ll teach you to smoke dope!

…

Dad: That road is configured just the way I’d nightmared it.

…

Dad: What time do you want to get up?

Me: Eight.

Dad: Ha.

Me: I know you’re gonna wake up at 4:30, but I’m telling you that if you move around, my dogs’ll think it’s time to get up and I’ll be pissed. You better lie there and practice some meditation.

Dad: Medication?

Me: Meditation.

Dad: Medication?

Me: You better lie there and do nothing, old man. Don’t move. Meditate.

Dad: I always medicate.

…

Dad: If anything’s consistent about Shakespeare, it’s silly fucking plots.

…

As we ate breakfast in a diner:

Dad: (looking through his eyebrows at me) We may have to make several stops after this.

Me: I don’t wanna talk about it.

Dad: OK, I’ll give you the short version. (ad alta voce) IT’S DIURETIC DAY. That’s all I’ll say.

Remember When I Said I Was Handy?

Previously, on the Avid Bruxist blog, our heroine had bought a new gas-powered motor because she had allegedly killed two electric mowers in five years (we’ll get back to that part). She had hesitated at buying a machine with a pull-cord because pull-cords that, when pulled, don’t result in engines starting make her throw a goddamn rod.

Her brand new mower had revved up like a dream the first time, and she mowed to her heart’s content….

Then came the second time.

Goats and monkeys! Fuck if that thing wouldn’t start.

Now it’s possible that my shed is a little cluttered. And, when putting away the mower, I may or may not have struggled to find room. So it could be that I sort of picked up the back wheels and set them on top of the broken electric mower. And if I did all that, perhaps I left it like that—slanty—for a week or more.

When I took it out to start it, not only would the motor not crank but some semi-viscous liquid began dripping out of a part that didn’t look like it should have any semi-viscous liquid dripping out of it.

I called my brother-in-law, who swooped in with a screwdriver and can of

Magic Lawn Mower Sauce.

What had happened was, when I supposedly left the mower tipped up like that, oil spilled into…I don’t know. Whatever. He got it started.

AND he picked up the carcasses of my electric mowers to see if he might tinker ’em back into shape. Turns out, the more recent one just had a whosie-whatsit popped off its anchor, making the ass end drag on the ground. No wonder it was so hard to push. E re-attached it, and it was good to go. The older mower, well, he took off the blade and it looked like

Jafar's teeth when he's disguised as the old guy in the dungeon.

Yeah, I may have hit a tree root. Once or twice. And a rock. Perhaps a coral reef.

And I guess I had taken the blade off at some point? Because it was installed upside-down. That’d make it run a little rough, I suppose.

One time I was visiting my dad at his office, and a colleague of his said, “When it comes to technology, your father has the opposite of the Midas touch. Everything he comes in contact with turns to shit.”

I’m feeling remarkably like the Scott paterfamilias right now.