Cracker Jacks

I’m sitting here this morning, at 5:00, because I can’t sleep. I’m sad and confused and it is making me shake with anger.

 I’m eating Cracker Jacks, because it’s the biggest act of defiance and rebellion and protest I can muster from behind a computer screen while using social media.  I’m not so much eating them, as chomping down on them with all the anger my 38 years can muster, with a very defiant attitude, one hand shoving them in my mouth, and the other clenched in a fist of rage while I stare at a cursor between typing and chomping so hard I might crack a tooth.

Most people wouldn’t associate my Cracker Jacks, the treat of our younger years with the hidden surprise, with an act of protest.  But to me, they have come to symbolize something VERY close to my heart.

This story starts at a car wash.  I was about three.  I know this because my brother was born when I was four and my mother wasn’t pregnant and she was vacuuming our Toyota Celica at a car wash in Idaho Falls.  Going to town was always a treat.  We always got Kentucky Fried Chicken and went to the zoo to see the monkeys.

It was a sunny day, and I vaguely remember the sun was pale yellow and streaming through the window in a bright ray that reflected dust.  I was crouched on the floor behind the front seat, scared, staring at the black vinyl pocket on the back of the seat.  My mom was looking for me, but I could not move or speak from fear.

She finally found me and asked what the hell I was doing, in that panic-stricken way that is tinged with ultimate relief.  I said, “That man got burned up.”

A black man had pulled up and started using the vacuum next to us.  I remember my mother telling him hello and asking how he was.  He’s also the one that told her I was hiding behind the seat when she panicked.  I had never seen a colored person.

My mother was embarrassed.  She pulled me out of the car and informed me he wasn’t, in fact, burnt up, and made me speak to him.

Fast forward a couple of years and I had a cousin who went through a phase of using the ‘N’ word.  I remember standing in front of the dryer and it came out of my mouth.  My mother grabbed me by the nape of my neck, marched me to the sink, and washed my mouth out with Lemon Joy dishsoap.

I wasn’t yet in kindergarten, and my mother wasn’t the type to ever say, “Wait until your dad gets home!”  No, she was the take charge type that flushed your shit the minute it happened.  But, not this day.  She let me know Dad was going to hear all about it, and she made me tell her where I heard that word.  And let me clarify, she had every right.  I heard every cuss word known to man with my mother’s family, but never in all of my days, even still, have I ever heard that word uttered by my parents.  I’ve witnessed my father tell people to leave his house for using it.

My father has never laid a hand on me.  I was in my room when he got home, and he called me down stairs.  He was sitting on the edge of the coffee table, by the heater, in front of the television we had that didn’t work.  A stack of vinyl records were under the table, and I stared at the cover of Linda Ronstadt in roller skates on the top, because I was scared to look him in the eye.  I was scared I was going to get my first Buddy spanking.

It never happened, but at 5 years old, instead of just telling me it was bad and handing out corporal punishment, my dad gave me a history lesson about the derogatory meaning of that word.  From slave ships to MLK, Jr., he covered it.  It ended with him telling me of a good friend he had in college who returned to Uganda and was killed by Idi Amin.  And, even at 5, the power of words used to oppress people was not lost on me.

And in the middle of all of these memories from my early childhood, sunny summer mornings helping my grandmother clean the bar stand out like lilacs in bloom after the rain.  Grandma would pick up the mail at 10:00 in the morning and deliver it to us before going to clean the bar.  We’d play the jukebox and pretend to mop the floor, probably making a bigger mess than we helped clean.  We’d fight over songs and space invaders and see how fast we could get the bar stools to spin.  When we had finally drove her good and crazy, she’d kick us outside. 

We’d do balancing tricks on the parking curbs in the parking lot, roll down the hill, then get bored and decide it was time to visit Joe.

I’ve written about Joe before, but he was the first gay person I ever knew, and I didn’t know he was gay until years later.  He was a part of our family.  At every Christmas, he had gifts for all of us.  Plus, he always had boxes of Cracker Jacks that he kept just for us when we’d visit.

Cracker Jacks. That red, white, and blue box. I always looked forward to the Cracker Jacks.

I grew up around gay people.  There are too many to even count, and all of them, every single one, has done more good in this world just by being brave enough to come out of the closet, than all of the people combined whom I have heard utter “faggot” over the last two days and the course of my life.

My mother has always called me too sensitive and too idealistic.  I’d cry over books or get pissed at being told I couldn’t do something because I’m a girl. I’d get pissed at my grandparents’ racist comments.  I STILL get irate when people lecture me for giving money to panhandlers.  Mom would tell me, “They’re just uneducated.”  Her compassionate way of dealing with people.  And, my mother didn’t mean school educated.  She meant opening your eyes to new ways of thinking.

I don’t believe it’s a lack of education.  I believe it’s fear.  Just like me when I was three.  I had to get out of the backseat and shake the hand of the real world.  I had to realize it wasn’t what my few years in an isolated small town taught it me it was.  

It’s fear because it’s hard.  It’s hard, because, just like that first book you had to read for symbolism and metaphors and look between the lines, it takes putting aside what’s on the surface and digging deeper. Learning to think in ways you haven’t before.

It’s fear because we have a messed up notion that giving some “outcast” group of people a chair at the table means we have to give up our seat, when in reality, we just make room and pull up an extra chair.

Telling the oppressed to respect the oppressor is the trick used by partriarchy, colonial imperialists, and just about every class of people seeking to preserve a false sense of entitlement.  Call me crazy, but I have no desire to inflict myself with a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome.

I have come to the conclusion, that, no, they’re not uneducated.  Stupidity is not inherent and is not a justification for bigotry and being an ass.  Most people with serious learning disabilities still understand kindness.   It does not, and should not, ever, excuse behavior that is unjust and evil.  I’m not jumping on some “let’s just keep our mouths shut and let them be mean” bandwagon.  That’s how tyrants become tyrants…no one stand up to them.

Moreover, I have no desire to surround myself with assholes.  And, when you consciously make a decision to hate a group of people that you don’t even KNOW, and lump them all together as one type of person, you are missing stories and the deepest connections that make us human.  You are choosing to be a total douchebag, and as for me, I’m not going to stand in silence while you bellow through a megaphone how others are inferior.

I don’t stand for it in the walls of my home or from the mouths of my children.  

Anger is an underlying emotion.  I know.  I’m not angry.  In fact, I’m deeply sad and confused. 

This isn’t about you being able to say whatever you want.  It’s not about some pasty-white, straight, Christian, Daddy-rules type vision someone else has about what this country should be. 

It’s about standing up for justice and equality.  It’s about standing behind the things I teach my children.  It’s about taking up space, and refusing to accept a world and way I don’t want my children to grow up in.  It’s about people thinking it’s perfectly fine to be an asshole.  

I don’t care if you find justification for bigotry and hatred in the Bible, the Constitution, or whatever news outlets from which you choose to glean your information.  They are the same things that have been used throughout the ages to keep people on the fringe in a nice little box so they don’t get all uppity.

You’re right.  You ARE free to be an asshole.  You’re free to choose to be an asshole.  You’re free to sit in judgment, and say I have mine and all of that.

You’re not free from being called out on it.  So, when you decide to be that asshole, I’m going to crunch Cracker Jacks in your face and let you know…because, in the words of my mother throughout my entire life, “Don’t be a dick.” 

I'll chomp my Cracker Jacks with my mouth open, so you can see them being chewed up.  Because you're behaving like a Cracker and a Jackass.

Monday is a D%&*

 

Let’s just all admit, up front, Mondays are the shittiest day of the week.  No one wants to get out of bed.  The odds of being late to work increase by several orders of magnitude on Mondays.  The angelic children from Saturday become possessed demons by Monday that drag their feet and make you wonder how many episodes of CSI you would need to watch to pull off a homicide.

Mondays are where care-free, happy days go to die a slow miserable death.  

Monday is a dick.

I have a confession—which is mostly why I blog (I like letting people know how much of a disaster my life is, and how much I over-use parenthetical phrases).    I someday dream of being a strong, independent woman that takes no shit.  Most days, I just get pissed at myself for being kind of stupid.  I do, however, think of myself as having a little bit of constitution. I’m pretty sure I could be a bad-ass in a zombie apocalypse if I had to be one (humor me here).  But, there is one thing, that for as long as I can remember has terrified me.  Ok, two, if we count snakes, but they have already swarmed my office building on their way to hibernate for the winter, so I’m over that for a few months.

The other thing is puke. As a small child, I was absolutely positive, I mean as certain as 2+2=4, that puking meant I was dying.  As in one heave away from The Light.  I always pictured the little lady from Poltergeist, as my gagging echoed in the toilet bowl, saying in her little voice “Stay away from the light, Jeni B.  Stay away from the light!”

And, being certain that the Reaper was standing over the shoulder my mother wasn’t hovering over, I would start to cry and plead with my mother, “Help me!  Please, help me!”  And I was dead certain I was asking her to walk me through to the valley of the shadow of death.

She would rub my back and finally, firmly tell me to get it together.  “I can’t puke for you!” she would say.

Then, when I was a freshman in college, I had the most traumatic visit to the emergency room ever *cue overdramatic font, here*.  On Christmas Eve, a bunch of friends that were home for the holidays decided to go tubing.  We build a huge jump over a massive drop off at a local gravel pit (that part is not over exaggerated).  A friend and I jumped on a tube and hit it square.

She ended up with cracked ribs, and I ended up going to the ER across the desert at the “real” hospital with what they thought was a bleeding spleen. 

This was the first time I realized emergency rooms operate on triage.  It was Christmas Eve and it was PACKED.  Three old guys came in back to back to back with chest pains.  Some lady got wheeled in in a wheelchair, so far into labor she couldn’t walk.  So, they put me away with the fevers and other not so urgent cases and told me and my mother to hold tight.

Then THEY came in.  And the other THEY put THEM right next to me and handed the guy a bed pan.  After 15 minutes of him heaving and upchucking, they brought him a huge trash can.  I listened to this for a good hour and a half before I was taken for an MRI…convinced my spleen was not in fact bleeding or I’d be dead. In fact, listening to the guy puke for that long, actually had me wondering if death was something I shouldn’t fear after all. I’d heard in A&P bleeding to death wasn’t so bad, and they’d given me some kind of opioid thing in a shot in the ass before the ride across the desert, so I didn’t much care.

My mother became convinced Puker Man had overdosed on something because she was actually able to discern a conversation over his loud heaving that included the woman with him saying “What did they tell you when you called the poison center?” And Puker Man replied “Get to the hospital.”

Probably needless to point out, but before I got back to the MRI machine, I too, was puking into a garbage can, because there was nowhere else for Puker Man to go.   

TO THIS VERY DAY, ALL ANYONE HAS TO DO IS MAKE A GAGGING SOUND AND I’M VOMITING.  My brother does it to make himself laugh.

It ended up my spleen was not bleeding profusely, but did have a nice fat contusion that meant I missed part of the basketball season.  The psychological trauma inflicted on me by Puker Man, though….I have never recovered. 

I remain truly and ever grateful that The Sha never puked anywhere but the toilet.  I never had to clean up vomit (baby vomit doesn’t count). 

That is, I never had to clean up vomit until this morning.  

At 1:53 Schmoo tiptoed to my side of the bed.  I smelled it before she spoke.  I got her in the bathroom, and then I completely lost my cookies.

I was trying.  Really.  Trying hard.  I got her shirt off, and then had to hug the porcelain again. She just watched me like I was from another planet and she couldn’t decide if she needed to get her leader or not.

All this time, the dad is snoring loudly…oblivious to me on yet another verge of violent death.

I got the mess in her hair cleaned up (after sharing much love with the toilet) and new pajamas on her  before the man of the house stirred and hunkered in the door of the lavatory, rubbing his eyes and scratching, and mumbling “What’s going on?”

He got blankets and pillows changed, while I continued my death dance with the porcelain god.  We managed to trudge back to bed (while he laughed his ass off at my queasiness), but at 5:30, I realized the true extent of the damage…right before walking into the laundry room to start washing bedding only to discover the dog, too, had gotten sick.  

I don’t think, in all of my years as a mother, that I have ever just shrugged my shoulders and admitted defeat like I did this morning.  Normally, I would have called the boss, gave him the low-down, and actually TRIED to make it to work.

I feel bad for my Schmoo.  Mostly because her mother was completely incapacitated, and she ended up hovering over my shoulder asking if HER MOTHER was alright, rather than the other way around.

Today, I decided that if they gave out unwanted trophies for shittiest (pun TOTALLY intended) Monday, today was my turn to carry it proudly. So, I just sent the boss a text.  I should have asked him to send a hazmat suit and a respirator…because I puked at least 3 more times cleaning the carpet today…despite wrapping a dish towel doused in peppermint oil around my face.

But, he’d never believe me, anyway…that I was so close to dying…again.

The Awakening

There’s a certain amount of shame involved in every confession.  A certain amount of admitting you pretended something was different than it was gets added.  Stir in a shit-pile of denial. Gently fold in  shame and add a pinch of it-wasn’t-supposed-to-be-like-this.  

In a separate bowl, you have to add a heaping helping of bravery.  Bravery is the leavening for rising up to bare your confession

Then you pull back the curtains, and you realize you’ve been closing layers of drapes for years, and you have to peel them back, like the cliche layers of an onion, to get to the blinds that finally let the light shine in. The light that heals and finishes the confession for you to consume for sustenance to endure better things.  

See, I first closed those blinds over ten years ago, after making a New Year’s Eve dinner and ending up with a black eye and a hole in the wall. I patched the hole when I moved away, but I’ve been wandering this existence with unseen black eyes since then. 

I pulled the blinds. I pulled the blinds to keep the outside world from looking in. Pretty soon, I was pulling the shades to hide the blinds.

Then I hung up drapes to hide the shades. Then I bought a pretty valance, to make the drapes look good.  

Pretty soon, you realize you can’t hide inside, behind all the curtains.  The play goes on and scenes change, and you have to step into the spotlight and play the part.  There are no strings, but you want there to be.  You feel them…as you trudge.  Someone else, pulling here, releasing there.  Screaming you’re unworthy.

 So, you buy a cloak, and wrap yourself in it.  You learn, the hard way, not to let anyone into that cloak.  Mouths leak like ships hitting icebergs, and you sink.  So, you draw it tighter, sealing those leaks and closing yourself off.  

You learn to run.  Not fast.  No, there can be no quick movements.  But it’s running nonetheless.  It’s an exercise in quickness…walking on egg shells without making a sound.  Because when the sound is heard, it strikes fear deep within your bones, and you’ve become accustomed to not knowing the response.  The not knowing.  Not knowing if you’ll end in a pile of tears or brokeness, buying more curtains, covering in more cloaks.  Burying yourself and then forgetting where you left the bones.

I wrote myself a letter.  I earned my bones.  I decided to find my bones.

Before you can find them, you have to wake up.  The awakening is hard.  It’s a god aweful journey through pain and realization…realizing you gave up your spine and quit on yourself.  Learning to love yourself again is, perhaps, the hardest journey.  Because, you’ve been made to feel you don’t deserve it. 

When you wake up, and peel back the layers to let the light in, they up the ante.  They like the shades and the dark you wander so aimlessly in…questioning your very existence. They buy you prettier drapes…to hide the ever more ugly.

But you cannot stop an awakening.  The eyes just open, and they can’t be closed.

The eyes open, then they seek the light.  They take down the valance, and the drapes, then the curtains, and then you open the blinds.  The light shines in, and you see, for the first time in a long time, the light.

It’s warm when everything seemed so cold.  So, like a cat, you just sit there for a while.  In the light.  Take a nap.  Relax.

You smile and look at the ground and go looking for the bones.  It’s a digging exercise into everything you denied.  Rediscovering the light, the warmth, the smells and you welcome the journey.

And you dig.  And dig.  Deep.  Deep, deep, down until you find the you. So many piles where you buried so many parts of your soul.

Eventually, you find the pieces to put back together.  And as you glue the pieces, and it becomes whole again, you discover how truly awake you are.

You fill the cracks with the gold of lessons learned. More precious than it was before.

Then you hold the whole, and you tell her its ok.  And you lead her away from the holes…step by little, tiny, baby step.  Away.  

Back to self.  Back to whole.  Awake.  No shade.  Into the light.

Car Line

This blog is brought to you by the week from Fuckedupville.  First, I was an hour late for work on Monday, had court on Tuesday, the kid was sick on Wednesday. I got some extra time at the office Thursday, and was going to go in today.  Honestly.  I was.  

Then I woke up this morning, made myself a pumpkin spice latte, and decided I was in a really good mood and wasn’t going to ruin it by going to work. Plus, Fridays are my day to get the Schmoo to school, which is normally a total disaster.

I should probably tell you that Schmoo is kind of like Rain Man.  She has her routine, and God help anyone who deviates from it.

“I don’t have my toothpicks.  The maple syrup has to come before the pancakes.  If the maple syrup comes after the pancakes, it’ll definitely be too late…I don’t have my toothpicks….I get my boxer shorts at Kmart in Cincinatti.” 

Anyway, THIS is how school mornings go, because this is what the Dad does: wake up to Phineas and Ferb.  Give her five minutes to stretch.  Get her a bowl of Marshmallow Matey’s, or toast with jelly.  Put the day’s clothes in the dryer so she has “hot clothes” to put on.  Ask if she is done with breakfast and ready for “hot clothes.” Let her get dressed.  Do hair.  We are now ready to brush teeth and go to school.

But I always mess this up.  1. I almost always sleep too late on Fridays, and we run late.  2. When running late I like to say, "Fuck this routine bullshit, HURRY!”

I made the mistake last week of trying to do Schmoo’s hair BEFORE she put on “hot clothes.” The only thing missing from the ensuing tirade was that it didn’t involve an airline named Quantus, and she didn’t start hitting herself in the head.

Before I go any further, I would like to stress how imperfect of a mother I am.  I am only responsible for getting my child to school one single day a week, and if she is ever tardy, it’s always on my day (and I thought today was going to be that day).  Plus, I NEVER get the routine just right. 

I don’t do homework.  I don’t have the patience for homework, and we both end up in tears, so this falls to someone else as well.  Other mom’s think this is unacceptable.  Trust me on this.  Homework isn’t my thing…unless it involves making volcanoes, 3-D cell models, the implications of imperial colonialism on traditional cultures (or something else that allows me to wax philosophical), or blowing shit up. Then I rock; otherwise, get your dad.

I buy cheap cupcakes on treat day, and I loathe holiday parties at school.  I go, but I’m never particularly thrilled about going. And, we all know how I feel about picture day.

BUT, there is one thing that makes me feel like a totally superior mother.  As in, all you room moms with your scrapbooks and food storage and healthy snacks can kiss my ass.  I’m totally judging you for it every Friday, too.  This is it.  Ready?

You fucking SUCK at car line!!  As in, EVERY Friday, I want to go crazy like Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day” when he steals Phil and keeps saying, "Don't drive angry."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBpw1sdFu2w

I actually KNOW how to do car line in the mornings and afternoon. I know how to use my blinker when turning off of Lee Street.  I know how to NOT block all three lanes.  I know to WAIT until the parking attendant tells me to pull forward, without cutting anyone else off and running over 13 small children. I know that drop off is not the place to have a 30-minute conversation with my child.  

There’s an unspoken rule here for those of us in the know, and we know this is like being in the pit in NASCAR.  Get in, get out, you’re being timed.  Anything more than a 5 second stop is unprofessional.  Honestly, if you’ve trained your crew, it’s more of a rolling stop. Jumping off of a spinning merry-go-round is the perfect training equipment.

Quick.  Like a bunny. I've got hours to myself, and you're treading on it.

And, here’s the one that makes the rest of the parents and grandparents in the parking lot want to pull you out of your car and beat you with your cell phone: despite what your busy-body mother taught you about being a good mother, they do not give out prizes for being the first in line at pick up after school. No ma’am. Especially if your kid is HABITUALLY the one exiting the building 20 minutes after the bell rang. That means you green Subaru, gray Tahoe, and little man with the jacked-up white pickup.

You pull over on Lee Street and let the kids that actually have their shit together get in the car.  You don’t get first in all three lines. Or even one for that matter, and shoot the shit with each other while the line is backed up around the block to South Boulevard.

This is NOT tea at the PTA.  This is serious business. Get it together already.