Thing-a-day.com

So I took one of these “from the hip” photos of my friend Beth with her camera last Friday at sunset when we were in Manuel Antonio.  The place, not the dude.  hehe.   I heard about doing these perspective photos on this website and can’t wait to get a for realsie fancy camera of my own and do a whole series of these.  She’s such a beauty queen she makes any picture look good.

So, I totally just got back from Costa Rica and funny thing about where we were, no phones, no computers.  It was glorious.  I didn’t write at all and I didn’t really think of too much to write about.  On the flight back I started thinking about all a screenplay idea maybe that is about a nurse and a state trooper.  Write about what you know right?  I don’t know how long this site lasts and how long we can work on it.  I guess I’ll have to sign up for one of those blogs as I want to continue to work on the stories about growing upstate and see what comes from them and I really want to flesh out the ideas for this story about this couple.  See if it’s something my friends and I can’t shoot when I move back upstate.  Speaking of flesh and shooting upstate, here’s a link to the zombie movie I made, feel free to vote on it if you have a myspace account.  If the link doesn’t work you can find it either at www.myspace.com/roymin under the video section or at the contest site www.myspace.com/diaryofthedead under our movie is called “Dead”

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.showvids&friendID=329228177&n=329228177&MyToken=1c22c22f-3dfc-413a-bfe8-3006c8642a6f

I’m gonna try and come back with a for realsie story later today.

I wrote this a while ago, but I was home this weekend and I started thinking about it so I took it out to edit it and have a look see at it.  I’ve read it out loud for some of my theatre company before.  LAByrinth has this thing called “Open Project” where you can present whatever you’re working on at our monthly company meetings.  I’ve done a lot of choreography and dance for it and this was the only time I wrote something for it.  It was actually in a sort of response to a bunch of pieces I had seen.  See, LAByrinth Theater Company, we’re known for our multi-cultural story telling and almost everyone in the company has this amazing story of where their people come from.  So, like I said, I dusted it off and since I’m still formulating the stories about snow forts and the first and only massage my gramma Mary ever got, this is what’s coming in.

My People
My whole life, when I fill out school, federal and state forms and I get to the question of race, I always do the same thing.  I shuffle my feet, look behind me and sheepishly check Caucasian.  My people are a mix match.  My people are a Heinz 57 clusterfuck.  If were dogs at the pound we’d be called mutts.  We’d be overlooked for the cuter, pure bread French Poodles, Irish Setters and German Shepherds.  The only thing I know of my heritage is there’s a little Irish, a little British, a little German and a little adopted.  All that gives me is a tendency towards alcoholism, pasty skin in the winter and a sense of not belonging.

My people?  My People do not come from a warm land filled with fragrant flowers, salty air and spicy food.  We come from 8 months of snow where the chill runs so deep that it starts in your spleen and works it’s way out your insides to the tips of your hair and then crawls back in through your ass.  Our noses are not filled with the smells of lush flowers inviting you with open petals to insert your nostrils deeply and inhale; but of spiky, hard and statuesque pines that are too sticky and tall to climb but sway in the violent winds with the elitist knowledge that they are rooted too deep to be blown over.

My people do not have their own music like so many of my friends.  While not my immediate nuclear family, most of my people don’t even know how to dance so we’ve adopted music that you cannot dance to.  We’ve taken 70’s rock and made it a way of life.  It’s the only music that is played in the land of my people.   When I drive home I know I’m close when I turn on the radio and hear Carry on My Wayward Son.  We know where we will all be every single night of our lives at 7pm.  We will pay homage to the Hammer of the Gods at the Houses of the Holy.  7@7.  Every single night of my life there has always been at least one but usually more radio stations that Get the Led Out.  7 Led Zeppelin songs at 7pm.  I don’t know why really.  I just know that’s the way it’s always been.

 My people do not have their own fancy drink.  We do not have Grappa or Ouzo, Fernet Branca, Mojitos, Leu de Vie, Margaritas, Averna or Port.  Shit, we don’t even have White Russians.  My grandfather Avery once kicked a guy out of his bar for asking for one though.  My gramp said he was looking for trouble with a drink like that.  He served hard drinks for hard men who want to get drunk fast and we don’t need any characters like you to give the joint atmosphere.  He advertised 2 kinds of beer; Bud and Bud Light.  At his funeral my brother Mark and I pulled pints behind the bar for all my people while they mourned and shared stories of his greatness.  That afternoon, we discovered that both the taps were hooked up to Budweiser kegs.  There was no Light beer for my people.  At least not at the Oak Hill Tavern.  Beer is probably the drink of my people.  Genny, Genny Creamy, Utica Club, Molson, Molson Canadian, Molson Ice, Molson Golden, Molson Imported, Coors, Schlitz, Schooner, Labatts Blue, Pabst Blue Ribbon and the king of beers Bud.  Then there’s Saranac, Guinness and maybe an IPA for the snobs who think they’re better than their people.  All of it is kept out on the porch in the snow next to the wine that comes in a box…and by the way my people prefer cans.  I don’t  know if it’s the aluminum taste that reminds us of blood in our mouths from the first time we ever got a solid body check in our first game of pick up hockey, or is it the fact that we’re ushering in Alzheimer’s by quaffing out of the can and consequently forgetting any lack of culture or heritage.

 My people have no set traditions.  At weddings we do not stop on a glass, throw a plate or jump over a broom.  There is no traditional dance unless you count the arm swaying and whooping that will eventually happen by the end of a reception.  At holidays there is no secret special recipe that only Aunt Nancy knows how to make just right.  Unless you count the instant pudding and Jell-O recipes of my deceased ancestors known as Better Than Sex Cake and Dead Helen’s Red Dessert.  The person who carves the turkey is whoever happens to have their husband’s hunting knife at the ready.  There is a rumor in my family due to my grandfather’s adoption, misplaced records, lack of agoraphobia, skill with a hammer, alcoholic tendencies and dark skin that he came from a reservation near the land of my people.  This would make us Native American.  Oooooooohhhhhhh.  This would give us a culture, a history and a heritage all in one man.  Some of my people have embraced it, most of us haven’t.  Most of my people didn’t see any advantage to curling up with a small pox blanket to listen to olde timey times stories of genocide, casino woes, government corruption, and a trail of tears that may or may not be our family’s history.  Desperate for a people I could call my own I clung to the possibility of being one of the invisible minority.  In all my research on the tribes of Upstate NY I found a trait that seemed to be intrinsic to all of them across the board.  Long distance running.  In an effort to create a cultural standpoint I taught myself to run great lengths at a time.  26.2 miles and 600 years is the farthest I’ve gone so far.  As I trained in Queens, I pictured myself with long black hair clad only in animal skins running through the Adirondack mountains.  As I ran through the streets of NYC I was Hawkeye!  I was the Last of the Mohicans! 

My people scream and cry and come to fisticuffs over the drop of a hat but we cannot blame our temper on a culture.  We know where it comes from.  It comes from eight fucking months of cold and dark and snow.  My brother Mark puts it like this:  “It just doesn’t stop snowing….It’s been snowing for 35 fucking days in a row Lex.  Every night when we go to bed, it’s fucking snowing, every morning when we wake up???  Yeah! You guessed it!  It’s snowing!  I feel like Jack in The Shining Lex, I keep seeing those creepy ass twins on tricycles.  I keep praying that Scatman Crothers is gonna show up in a Sno-Cat and drive us all to safety.  In the last 3 months there was 5 fucking minutes of recorded sunlight!!  5 FUCKING MINUTES LEX!!!  And we were all inside at work during those five god-forsaken moments.  Who the fuck decided to settle here anyway?  Who suffered through the first fucking winter and said….mehh….that wasn’t so bad really.”

My people mock me in the winter.  They say I live in the South.  I get daily reports on visibility, shoveling, plow-age, lake effect, squalls, flurries, ice and driving conditions.  And they are sooooo superior about it as if to say:  You know nothing of hell!  NOTHING!!  But speaking of hell let me just clear up the religion topic of my people.  Many of my people go to a Roman Catholic Church; even more of my people have adapted and adopted other major religious doctrines as well as philosophies.  And while we all agree that JC was a forward thinker for his time with some great ideas there is another man who holds our faith.  My people believe in Herb Brooks.  My people believe in the Miracle on Ice at the 1980 Winter Olympics.  We all sat glued to the TV as Hal Dryden, like a prophet, gave us the play by play.  My people sit enrapt listening to my father tell the story of how he was there.  He was in the State Police and was stationed at Lake Placid and saw the game in person.  Tears fill our eyes as we recount the last 45 seconds of the game.  My people believe in it so much we make a yearly pilgrimage to Lake Placid .  My people have played on the same ice as Jimmy Craig, Jack O’Callahan and Mike Eruzione.  Just names to some, but to my people, they were gods.

The work of my people is the only thing resembling a tradition.  We work with our hands, we are carpenters and construction workers, nurses and chiropractors, mechanics and potters.  We’ve built our own houses, we’ve put additions on yours, we’ve fixed your cars, we’re the only ones you’ll call when there’s a leak in the roof from the weight of the snow or you need a jump or you need to be plowed out of your driveway.  Another thing about my people; we drive pick up trucks and we carry guns.  We all have vegetable gardens.   We hunt in the Fall and we eat what we kill throughout the year.  The first round is on us, we get to 3rd base on the first date and we truly believe it all comes out in the wash.

I’ve pushed needles through my skin and permanently marked it trying to create a history on my physical being.  When I look at my people and people look at us we confuse the shit out of everyone.  In a town filled with mostly full blooded Irish, Polish, Italian, German and French Canadians we were pretty much mocked continually for looking less than white.  Our lips are full (I was called Fish Lips until 6th grade) all three of my brothers have tight, curly hair that grows out instead of down and if left in the sun for longer then 5 minutes our skin turns a dark mahogany.   Compared to Kate Nicholson, Jami Losurdo, and Gretchen Slosek whose butts were flat I was an alien, a freak, my ass is high and sticks out, just begging to be spanked in my plaid catholic school skirt.  Non of the Mitchell boys wanted to date me but all those Callahan sluts wanted a piece of my brothers.

 My people are easy.  Easy Peasy One Two Threesy.  Easy like Sunday Morning.  Easy like Summer reading.  Consider us a John Grisham novel.  A Michael Crichton page turner.  Fast and entertaining but we’re not gonna devastate your system of beliefs.  We’ll keep you in stitches quoting Monty Python, Eddie Izzard, Caddyshack and The Princess Bride.  In fact most of our conversations are filled with footnotes and annotations of movie quotes, song lyrics, lines from plays and references to books we’ve read.  We call it talking shit.  We are professionals at it and will embellish and steal to make the story more entertaining for you the listener and we will never admit what is true and what is just good old fashioned shit talk.

Ok, so, I’ve been Upstate all weekend long shooting a Zombie film which will be posted as soon as it gets done editing.  I had to run through three feet of snow in a tee shirt about 87 times.  Praise be to Bruce Bailey and his mittens and in between shots warming skills.  In the mean time, today, I made a really great cup of coffee and when I get to work later, I’m going to make a damn fine cappucinno.  I will write again for realsie, tomorrow.

The movie Jaws was released in 1975.  One year after my birth.  I never saw the movie until probably 1989 or 1990.  That didn’t matter, I saw the poster.  I heard John Williams’ minor chords, probably from the time I was about 5.  I think it was re-released around 1980 at the Oswego Cinema or maybe at the drive-in or maybe by then channel 11, the Canadian station was airing.  Like I said, I never saw it then.  And like I said, that didn’t matter. 

I grew up swimming in my Grandparents’ pool, until I was 5 and that’s about the time I saw the poster for Jaws and that’s when sharks became a real and imminent danger in my life.  I stopped getting into the water for fear the great white might just shimmy his way up the drain.  Lake Ontario became officially off limits to me as explaining to a 6 year old that sharks don’t live in fresh water is like a tourist understanding the subway announcements.  All I heard was blah blah blah Sharks will eat you blah blah blah.  It got so bad with me that baths and showers were to be feared.  This shark was wiley.  You don’t know what he could do.  Like I said, I hadn’t seen the movie, but whatever I had going on in my imagination was far, far worse than anything Peter Benchley could have come up with. 

This was problematic not to me, but to my mother really.  She couldn’t understand a child going to the pool, in a bathing suit and then spending the entire time doing laps around the pool.  Occasionally I might get close enough to dip a toe in the water and that’s when either my brother Eric or maybe my cousin Jim would scream out “SHARK!!!!!”  And that would start the cycle anew.   Usually after some tears and hiding in my mother’s lap until she did her best to convince me that no, there was no man eating fish in the deep end on 8th Street. 

My parents were also extremely courageous at this time because almost every week of every summer they would declare a “beach day.”  This would work us into such a fury of excitement that I’m sure it could be heard all the way out to Scriba.  They would pack us, towels, coolers and beach chairs into our car, sometimes with a few extra kids and drive us 30 miles out to Southwick Beach.  At that time 30 miles might as well have been 3000.  It was surely going to take us an entire week to get there.  We better pack a book or two and a snack and a game and stop touching me!  Stop Touching Me!  STOP………TOUCHING……….ME……….MOMMMMM!  There’s no not touching each other when you’ve got 5-7 kids in the back seat of a Bronco.  To this day I’m amazed my parents didn’t just pull over on Rte 104 East and leave us there.  We would get to Southwick about 45 minutes (what felt like 45 hours) later, after passing all the silos, which had to be pointed out to me because for some reason I was obsessed with them, the Llama farm and listening to one of my many past life stories.  From the time I could speak, which I’m told was pretty much as soon as I came out of the womb, I started telling anyone who would listen about my former lives.  My life as a cow was a favorite, but not to be overshadowed by the intense detail I would give to my brothers and my parents recollecting stories about when I was older than them and a boy. 

Ok, so we would get there, unpack the car and get to “our spot.”  It was way down away from everyone else, away from the lifeguards and the campers and pretty much everyone.  It was like our own private beach.  We Crouchers reigned supreme there.  We grilled Garafolo’s hot dogs and burgers and ate Charles’s Chips.  The food of Kings.  And from the time I was 5 until I was about 8  every time my mother sent me out into the water with my brothers as soon as I got to about knee level Eric started in.  “Hey, was that a shark?”  I spent most of my time in the water with my arms wrapped around Ed or Mark’s neck, clinging on for dear life because surely, the sharks would not attack Ed or Mark.  They were too strong for shark attacks.  Let the great whites feast on Eric I thought.  He’s over there battling waves, he might as well be a surfer or an injured seal flopping around like that. 

Eventually I got over this fear and came to understand the difference between fresh water, chlorinated water, bath water and salt water and the inhabitants of each.  Then the unthinkable happened.  Some time in the 1980’s some nitwit, some total jerk, some complete asshole decided to unleash a shark in Lake Ontario.  My father says Dave Eggleston who was a conservation officer caught it out in Fair Haven, probably within a week of it’s release.   I’m not so sure.  Even now, when I take my nieces and nephews out to flat rock to go swimming, my heart rate elevates just a little. 

Ok, so boys, trouble.  Sixteen year old girls in a small town.  Got it. Ok, so Rana and I had a lot in common, and one of the ways we were similar was that we both had an abundance of guy friends.  With me having all those boys in the house all the time growing up, it was inevitable that I would be comfortable with them in a platonic way.  The thing that was different was that I was actually friends with them all.  Just friends.  Like no hidden dating agenda.  If a guy was my bud, that’s it.  We didn’t fool around, ok that’s a lie, there was one that crossed that line, but just one.  And like I said, most of the dudes I was tight with had been in school with me for like a decade already at that point.  Now that is not to say that any new guy I met was not fair game.  A total possibility.  So, Rana being friends with like 45 guys was pretty exciting.  She also knew all these cool, tough guys.  The guys who had long hair, or shaved heads or were already dying their hair.  She knew every skateboarder in her school.   When I met her I didn’t know that a skateboard was going to be the heart I would wear on a locket around my neck for the rest of my life.  To be honest I still have no idea why that is.

Ok, back to Rana, OK, so after our first outing together we were inseparable, even though we went to different schools.  It was the beginning of the summer when we met.  She didn’t work and my job at the Ren Faire was only on the weekends and during the week I just washed and waxed all the doctors’ cars at the hospital.  We both had a ton of free time.  We immediately filled all of it the way only two sixteen year old girls can.  We talked on the phone for hours in the morning and then met up later to spend the rest of the day together.   I remember we would walk.  Like forever.  I would walk from the East side to the West Side, we’d meet up, walk out to the Lake, walk back to downtown and then hang out in front of the pizzeria for about 867 hours.  It was in front of this pizzeria that I met them all.  Benji Werth, Jason Chatterton, Chris Roy, Chris Legg, Dave James, Bing, Chris Nelson, Aaron Johnson, Scott Schwalm, John Manwaring, Christian Clock, Kevin Narolis, Bruce Bailey, Justin Crosby, Eric Rapp, and about 30 others whose names escape me at this minute.  Basically they all wore Oswego State baseball hats, except Benji wore a Michigan Hat, jeans that were about 35 sizes too big for them, massively huge tee shirts, walked with a slump and never left the house without their skateboards.   And they all were mystified by the Sbaih sisters and in turn the Sbaih sisters thought me the second coming of Muhammed this meant I was instantly and fully accepted.

Here’s the rub, Rana instilled the ”chicks over dicks” system of belief in me.  Prior to her I knew it was right, no one had ever said it out loud to me but I knew if a girl I was friends with tagged a guy he was just that.  Tagged and therefore off limits.  Like even though Brian Canale was so delicious, when Kate Nicholson said “I want him as my boyfriend” I knew I had to step back from my previous flirtations with him because I had said nothing aloud.  Rana said this rule early on to me too.  Like she was telling me about how she couldn’t be friends with this chick Brandy Something because she crossed that line and went after a guy who Rana was into.  And that was just unacceptable.   I really liked Rana and wanted to be friends with her and all these guys thought the sun rose and set on her ass so by default I too was instantly cool because Rana introduced me as such.  I was the coolest girl she had ever met she told them, and I saw them all cast their gaze at me and believe it to be true and then that was it.   That was it because as soon as I was like, so what’s the deal with so and so she would explain that she used to like him or he used to like her or she thought she might like him someday or her sister Rula was into him or her friend so and so was into him.  It didn’t matter, there was always a reason.  And I was going to respect that reasoning.  I was not going to be like Brandy Something who was instantly known to all as a dirty slut skank who could not be trusted.  It was social suicide to cross a Sbaih.  I recognized that pretty quickly.  I could never date any guy I met through Rana Sbaih.  And every guy I met through Rana Sbaih became that much more attractive to me because of that.  And they all rode skateboards.  Ok, so that’s why.  Forbidden fruit installed from teenage years.  Wow, I’m glad I figured that out.

OK, so because I couldn’t date any of those guys and I was 16 and a walking hormone, like all teenagers, I wanted to date someone.  At the Ren Faire as I said, I had this guy Jordan who was way into me.  He gave me lots of love poems and hippy jewelry and flowers and little gifts every weekend.  But I couldn’t have him as a boyfriend or my father would have grounded me indefinitely.  Cue Pete Walker, he and I were buds since grade school and he worked out at the Faire too, he introduced me one day to this guy he was friends with.  A guy who Rana and no one else I knew had ever heard of ever, at all.  Rod Rasbeck.  Yup, that’s his name, he wore a mullet, played football and he drove an El Camino with tinted windows which may explain why no one I knew, knew him.  But I didn’t care.  I wanted to make out with someone.  I wanted to explore my sexuality.  It was summer!  Lord love a duck I just wanted a guy to feel me up.   And he had washboard abs and the biggest blue eyes I had ever seen.  Fine, you’ll do. 

Rod and I started hanging out which meant he’d pick me up and we’d maybe see a movie or something but basically we just spent hours making out and fooling around in his car.  He pretty quickly grew out the mullet and that helped and he was actually really nice to me.  He was after me is what it was.  He wanted to bed me as they say.  I had an idea of this and I had no idea of this power.  I didn’t know that a 16 year old boy would go to such lengths to get a girl to say yes.   And he did, he made me his girlfriend, bought me jewelry, said I love you all that shit.  Rana liked him well enough but had a hard time with his full on jock status.  He wasn’t like us, he didn’t really cross all the lines.  Like Rana and I, we were both into sports but I also studied dance intensively six days a week and we both dressed pretty freaky and had lots of friends in every clique in both high schools.  Rod was, well, he drove an El Camino with tinted windows and played football, that’s who he was.   But he was sweet to me.  Until I finally said yes. 

 It was cold out I remember that, I’m not sure how long we’d been dating but it was into the school year and there was snow on the ground. We were at his friend Eddie’s house.  Eddie’s dad was at work so a bunch of us were there, Pete and his girlfriend and a few other couples.  We totally did it on Eddie’s bed.  I bled and felt pretty weird afterwards, all of this is pretty par for the course from what most of my girlfriends tell me.  That’s when it gets different, Rod dropped me off that night and didn’t call me for 2 days after.  He broke up with me the next weekend.  He started dating Christy Roman like five minutes later.  The funny thing about this, if I had gone with that Ren Faire hippy Jordan, I bet he would have been way nicer to me after.  But how did I think a guy who wore a mullet and drove an El Camino was going to act? 

Rana was great, we instantly ousted Christy Roman from our group of friends and put her into the Skanky Whore Club with Brandy Something.  Rana was a great friend to me in that moment.  She talked and listened and fed me and went to the gym with me and took a ban off a couple of guys.  I remember we went on a double date with her and Scott Scwalm and me and John Manwaring.  Nothing came of it but I appreciated her efforts.  It was the first time I ever felt that sting.  I got over it pretty quickly I think but I hated that asshole.  I got him back the next summer.  He came after me again, hard.  Rana and I came up with an elaborate plan to leave him with his pants down, literally.  We were at an after work party at the Ren Faire, he asked me to go for a walk.  I made out with him for a bit against a tree, got him all worked up and then just walked away.  Never looked back.  I remember hearing him call after me and how could I just walk away from him right now and all that.  I just laughed, Rana was waiting for me and you know, Chicks over Dicks.

You can’t write a book about growing up in Oswego without at least one chapter devoted to the Sbaih sisters.  When I was a freshman in high school, that was the first time I’d ever heard of them.  Specifically Rana.  Kristen Shanley, Rachel Johnson and Elizabeth Vona kept telling me about this girl they knew, Rana Sbaih.  I had never met anyone that wasn’t named some sort of Irish/Italian Catholic name before so immediately I was intrigued.  I fancied myself a very open minded person, totally tolerant to all races, creeds and persuasions even though I’d never met anyone who wasn’t white or catholic.  No wait, I’m lying, Bharat Guthikonda was in my class but he went to a catholic school and knew the “Our Father” in Latin like the rest of us.  The same goes for Marvin Pierre and his brother Andy from Haiti so I guess I just never met an exotic and ethnic girl before.   Besides, Rana went to Pub High and that to me was exotic.  I had gone to catholic school my entire life and wanted nothing more than to go to a public school where everyone could where jeans and shorts and whatever they wanted frankly.  There were more than 15 people in your class and computers and theatre classes and a pool and gymnastics and skateboarders and lots and lots of hot guys.  All the guys in my class had gone to school with me since kindergarten so dating them felt far too incestuous. 

Anyway, freshman year, Kristen, Elizabeth and Rachel, telling me all the time that I have to meet Rana because we are like sisters separated at birth.  I hear this for an entire year and it seems that every girl on my travel team knows Rana but no one ever brings her around.  So I never meet her.  That summer, I’m at a party at The Road.  See in Oswego we had parties at The Road, which was an abandonded road, Flat Rock, which was a big flat rock out on the lake, The Resevoir…you get the idea.  So I’m sitting on this log and I can’t remember who I’m talking to, Sean Randall or Jen Snyder.  It was a mix of Cat high and Pub hig kids.  And wait, no it was Megan Morely.  She and I went to St. Paul’s together and then she switched to public schools for junior high and high school.  Ok, so we’re sitting on this log talking.  Probably drinking some fine fermented beverage made by Bartles and James and I hear this girl say “Really?  She’s here?  Where?”  And she comes and sits next to me and says “Hey I’m Rana, everyone says we’re like, supposed to be friends.”  And I say, “Holy Shit!  We’re like sisters separated at birth or something right?”  And that’s it.  We take off.  Neither one of us can believe how cool the other one is.  We talk all night long, we make lots of fun of Scott Schwalm who she’s totally into and I’ve never met before but he plays drums in the band Dead Image with Chris hot as hell Turco!

We are instantly two peas in one pod and we know it and so does everyone else.  I’m sure everyone else there was starting to rue the day they suggested we meet because we thought we were both fascinating.  We even handled crisis the same way.  In the middle of a story I am looking at Rana and just past her I see a flashlight coming towards us.  Well none of us were smart enough to bring a flashlight into the woods so I know it’s a cop.  I also know we’re all underage and most of us have something alcoholic in our hands, even if it was lowgrade koolaid alcohol.   I interrupt Rana and say “cop.”  We both toss our bottles behind our backs, and sort of roll down the hill and out of sight without saying a word.  Within like 5 minutes we’re walking through a small patch of woods and down and out by Hillside Drive and she’s telling me about how she kind of has to decide between like 4 guys who all like her and she’s not sure which one to go with.   She’s my hero.  She knows how cool she is.  She’s tall, like 5′6″ with long black hair and these striking Middle Eastern features.  Her mother Azziza is from Jordan and her father Yousef is from Palestine.  She’s Muslim, she speaks Arabic, she has an older sister Reem, a younger sister Rula and a younger brother Haithm.  Everyone knows her and thinks she’s the greatest thing since Jesus Christ turned some water into wine and for some reason she thinks I’m Allah’s gift to the promised people. 

We walk all the way to the NY Pizzeria and gab the entire way, get a slice, trade phone numbers and head home.  She calls me the next day and asks me to go see The Jungle Book in it’s re-release at the Oswego Cinema with her.  We do and then we hang out in West Side park and shoot the shit some more.  We never lacked for something to talk about that’s for sure.  While were sitting in the park this guy I know, Jordan, he comes up to us.  Jordan is this gorgeous half Sioux half Mexican guy I work with at the Renaissance Faire.  Yeah, you read that right.  I worked at the Renaissance Faire in Sterling, NY.  For most of my high school summers.  I was that girl.  But I NEVER wore patchouli, let’s just clear that up right now.  I also NEVER listened to The Grateful Dead.  So this guy is smoking hot (long black hair, dark skin, tall sinewy muscles) and he is totally into me and my father has completely forbidden me to see this guy.  Which makes him that much hotter.  He saw him hugging me one day when he picked me up from work and said, ”I don’t ever want you to talk to that hair bag again.”  It was not an unusual request.  Jordan was from a family of Ren Faire folk.  His brother Jesse and sister Sunshine had all been raised on the road by their hippy parents, travelling from Faire to Faire.  My dad was just looking out for his little girl. 

Anyway, this is the kind of thing that happened when Rana and I were around each other.  Boys.  Trouble.  Boy Trouble.  Her parents blamed me, my parents blamed her.     This is going to have to be continued tomorrow……

This last summer on our annual family vacation the Crouchers went to the Adirondacks.  This is not the first time we’ve gone to the Great Range, more like the 45th.  But we were in a different area than we usually go to and no sooner had my boyfriend at the time and I put our bags down on our bunk beds (yeah, theirs 16 of us, we were lucky we got a room - one time on a fam vacay a boyfriend and i slept on couches next to each other) then everyone was putting on bathing suits.  Julie our Cruise Director a.k.a my sister -in - law Elaine had found on some Sports Illustrated website guide to the Adirondacks “One of the top ten natural water slides in the country!!!!”  Awesome!  We get our suits, towels and flip flops and pack into as few trucks as we can and head down the road to “One of the TOP TEN natural water slides in the country!!!”

We get there, all sixteen of us (no wait, I’m lying, all 15 of us, my Dad didn’t come, which is good in the end, you’ll see) very excited to be all together for the first time probably since last fall and so there’s a lot of gabbing and chatting and the kids are about to explode.  We go through a small trail and come out onto the most pastoral view I’ve had in a year.  Trees, sun, more trees, big rocks to sun on and this lovely, placid, shallow river.  To the right, about 100 yards down, we see “one of the top ten natural water slides in the country!!!”  Basically, its where all the big boulders have created well, a water slide, a few of them actually.  It looks fairly harmless and just past that is a covered bridge.  We’re totally in a Norman Rockwell painting.  We’re in a post card you find in one of the Lake Placid gift stores.  We’re all beaming. 

Blankets get laid out, water shoes stay on and we most of us start getting into the VERY ICEY water.  Wow that is cold!  Oh, it’s just me who’s being a wimp.  Just the city girl.  All my upstate family members are just walking in like it’s some sort of 75 degree bath.  Ok, fine, so I toughen up and start wading in and most of the kids are getting in too so I’m helping them navigate the slippery rocks and telling them where they can start swimming and look out there, Ed and his 16 year old son Ted found a big flat rock to stand on!  And there is this lovely gentle current, you can barely feel it.  After wading around for a bit, I see that my mom has started to let the current carry her.  She’s languidly and beautifully flowing down the river face first.  That’s when I see Avery and Alison following suit.  Well ,they are 9 at this point and there are rocks and it ISa water slide (one of the top ten in the country) so I go into full protective Aunt mode and catch up to them to make sure no one, you know gets hurt.  Cue the music Dum DUM DUMMMMM!!!!

 As I swim up to the adorable kissing cousins who are laughing and saying things like “whooaaaa the water is carrying me away Aunt Lexi! Hahahahah!” That’s when I notice the current is a bit stronger here and wow it’s getting a lot stronger and I’m not really sure where my mom is anymore, in fact I don’t see her at all!  I see my brother Ed standing on a big boulder off to the right scanning the water and he’s in full State Trooper mode.  Hands on hips, standing at full attention.  I know this look.  This means something is wrong.  He’s calling out and pointing to someone.  The current is really starting to pick up and is pushing me and I am in front of Avery and Alison and I think if it’s pushing me and I’m 34 what is it doing to these 9 year olds.  I turn around and face them to try and swim against the current and push them back.  Nope.  Not gonna happen, water is way too strong at this point.  We get shuttled into a narrow passageway that is at the top of a, well, it’s not a cliff but it’s a drop.  Their are rocks on either side and as quick as I can, I grab Alison and shove her up on one of them.  Avery almost slides past me and I grab him but I’m not strong enough to get him up on the rock from the position I’m in.  I can only grab him and pull him to me.  Alison is looking at me and she looks terrified and I say “Get your Dad Ali!!”  But she can’t.  She can barely stand on the slippery boulder, so she starts yelling for her Dad!  I’ve got one foot lodged on a boulder on each side of this passageway, Avery is in my lap and I’m holding on to him and telling him we’ll be fine but to keep holding on to me.  The water is foaming white all around us, pushing hard against my back and just past where Avery is sitting is this drop.  And now I see it is about a 10 foot drop!  Below is a lot of white water.  I know this means rocks, lots of rocks.  It’s amazing what you can see and take in during total moments of sheer life threatening panic.   

That’s when in one single second everything changed.  Avery says in a voice I’ve never heard before because it was full of fear and Avery is known for being truly and completely fearless “I don’t want to stay on this ride anymore!!!!!”  And my feet are slipping.  I can’t get any grip!  I don’t have water shoes.  I’m barefoot.  And that’s when it happened.  That’s when biology took over.  Well Nature took over first.  The water won and I screamed “HOLD ON TO ME AVERY!”  We went over the drop and the only thing I knew was that no matter what Avery had to live.  It didn’t matter what happened to me, as long as he was ok.  As we went over I turned Avery so that my back went in first.  That was the first 3 rocks I hit.  We dunked pretty deep too and somehow I was fortunate enough to not let go of him and I pushed him up.  I got his head above water and turned as again as we headed towards a series of rocks.  I am turning us like I’m the tea cup and he’s Alice.  Whatever I can do to make sure he doesn’t get hurt.  I swallow about a gallon of water and he keeps pushing me under to stay above water.  I don’t care, as long as he lives.  We slam into, wait, I slam my back into a pretty big one and Avery almost slips by me, I grab him again and pull him into me and that’s when I see it.  A hand.  Some kid is standing 4 feet from us and he’s got his hand out to us.  I put my hands under Avery’s armpits and hoist him as much as I can and the kid catches him enough to get him out.  He puts Avery down and then he puts his hand back out for me.  Four feet is a distance I have no idea how to breach at that moment.  He sees me thinking this I guess and he starts inching down towards me.  I’ve got my hand out to him and eventually like Michelangelo’s Creation we touch fingers.  And then we grasp and he pulls me out and down goes my bikini top. 

This 17 year old kid is a future fireman I think because he reaches over and somehow gets my top up without it being weird and asks if I’m ok.  I’m shaking and hyperventilating and I’ve got my eye on Avery who is doing the same.  His lips are blue and his arms are just sort of hanging by his side.  The future fireman is asking us questions I think and across the water on the other side is the future fireman’s father.  The man Ed was calling to, he’s pointing at something down the river.  That’s when over to the left I see her.  Climbing over a tree stump on a boulder.  My mother.  Totally drenched, arms just sort of hanging by her sides, lips blue but her glasses are still on.  I take Avery’s hand and we walk over to her.  We’re met by Eric and Ed.  Apparently where we got picked out of the water by the future fireman she slipped past and went down the next drop which was even steeper and banged up against even more rocks and then somehow navigated her way to a huge fallen tree stump and clung on for dear life until she managed enough strength to pull herself out of the water. 

Ted comes up to us at that point and says “Ewwwww!  What’s that?”  And he’s picking something off of ME!  My mom, Avery and I look down and realize we are pretty much covered in little tiny leeches!  Ed, Eric, Ted, Avery, my Mom and I, we all scrub off as many leaches as we can and get over the gross out factor as fast as possible.  The leaches brought the laughter though.  So in a way, thank God for the leeches.   Not for nothing though, Sports Illustrated never said anything about the leeches!  Bastards!  Sports Illustrated never said anything about don’t go over the first big drop.  They never said only go over the rock slide on the right.  The moderate one.  Sports Illustrated can kiss my leech covered ass.

The rest of the trip had me keeping one eye on Avery every step of the way.  Including our freezing rain hike up Mt. Whiteface, but that’s another story.  I dreamt about him every night that week.  Every night I had to somehow save him in my dreams.  I still have those dreams a lot.  Like once a week.  I told this scientist guy I know about our experience when I got back and he told me that my reaction as we started to go over the edge was totally biological.  He told me it was my DNA acting out.  He said in that instant, my DNA recognized that Avery was younger, so more capable of producing offspring and was therefore the fittest to survive in that instant.  We had a Darwin moment.   I remember once we got back to safe ground and I kind of processed just how close to death I had come, I made the decision in my head once and for all to finally break up with that boyfriend.  I remember thinking, wow, so yeah, life is, um totally fucking short and there’s no way I’m wasting a single fucking second longer of it in this totally unsatisfying relationship.  I broke up with him on the car ride back to NYC at the end of the week.   I bought a Darwin fish bumper sticker for my car later that month.   

Up the street from my house on the corner of 8th Street and Albany lives my Gram.  When we were growing up she and my Gramp had a pool in the backyard.  For 3 months a year, June, July and August we opted between my Gram’s pool, the lake and the Nicholson’s pool at their farm house out on West Lake Road.  Now Chad Roy lived a few houses down from my Gram but he went to the public schools so we only spent summers together when all school tie bets were off.  We were total summer buds.  We rode bikes to the lake, he came over and swam and pretty much hung out most days.  There was a lot of marco polo, diving for rings, dunking each other, calling out what jump to do off the diving board.  You know, the usual.  Chad Roy was a great friend and that total boy next door.  When we were 11 he may have been riding a skateboard by then (which I will later discuss as becoming my ultimate soft spot sucker punch in high-school vis a vis Chad Roy’s cousin Chris Roy) but since we’d known each other growing up, and like ran the tic tac toe game at the St. Peter’s Bazaar together every year, he was, you know, safe. 

This is true even though he was totally the first guy to ever see my boobs.  Accidentally.  We were rough housing in the pool and I had a two piece on.  I’m pretty sure it was my first bikini and being such a tomboy I didn’t know you might not want to wrestle in one.  Well, we were playing “I’m going to drown you” in the shallow end and the next thing I know his hand accidentally(?) slipped inside my top and pulled it down.  I say it was accidental because his face was as shocked and surprised as mine (but then again, maybe I just have really impressive boobs).   I was completely mortified at, in my mind being totally called out as a girl, and sank into the deep end to try to pull up my top, gather my dignity and somehow make my face stop burning a bright red.  At first he laughed good naturedly which is totally understandable, he saw boobies after all.  After a minute or two he swam up to me and apologized, I accepted by dunking his head under water.  See?  He was nice.  A total good guy. 

Later that summer I remember Chad Roy and I had just gotten to my gram’s pool.  I’m pretty sure we had ridden our bikes out to the loop to get ice cream at Bev’s.  After getting a chocolate vanilla twist with that hard chocolate coating and skipping stones we rode back through the Oswego State campus and back to the East side to go swimming.  We got in, got cooled off and were playing some quality marco polo when my Uncle Bob showed up with his current girlfriend Mary Turco.  My Uncle Bob was one of my mother’s 8 younger siblings.  As solid and grounded as my mom is, is as wild and intoxicated as some of her younger brothers were.   So needless to say Bob and Mary were most likely pretty loosey goosey when they showed up.  They were loud and rambunctious and I thought they were fascinating to watch.  Adult interaction.  They kissed a lot and played grab ass.  They were completely intimate in a public place.  Chad and I stopped playing and stood still in the shallow end because we knew my Uncle Bob, if you showed any fear or were too loud, would target you.  He would somehow find a way to violently throw you in the pool.  Even if you were already in it. 

We were just kind of standing there trying to be invisible but it didn’t matter, Bob was focused on Mary and why wouldn’t he be.  She had really long wavy brown hair and big boobs and was funny and loud and totally self confident.  And when she took off her short cut off jean shorts to get into the pool she revealed on either sides of her bathing suit the biggest bush I had ever seen in my entire life!  To be honest her’s is still is the biggest bush I have ever seen in my 34 years of living.  Like, even bigger than the1900’s silent movie porn bush Bruce Bailey and I saw at the Museum of Sex and that was something to behold.   

So this was sort of becoming the summer I was recognizing the female body as being powerful enough to establish awe, wonder and silence in men.  Shit, in men, in women, in the room, in the neighborhood pool….I was starting to realize just how powerful the female form was.  Of course I had no idea what that meant or what could be done with that power or how to wield it yet but, anyshoe.  So there they were frolicking in the deep end.  Pretty much doing the same stuff that Chad Roy and I had always done but it seemed so much cooler and grown up. 

Well, I got out of the pool at that point because suddenly I didn’t know what to do with my hands.  I was heading over to the basement where my Gram and Gramp had a big freezer with popsicles in it, and that ’s when I saw him.  Sitting on the bench in the shade, wearing black Chuck Taylor’s, faded jeans cut off at the knee and an Iron Maiden tee shirt.  His hair was long and kind of ratty and big.  Total metal hair.  His name was Chris Turco and he was Mary’s younger brother.  He was a year older than me and he was pissed off.  He was pissed that he had to be at some stupid pool with his stupid sister and her stupid boyfriend.  He was pissed that he wasn’t playing his guitar.  He was pissed that he couldn’t bring his friend Chris Legg with him.  He was pissed.  Man Alive was he pissed.  He was the first angry teen I ever met.  And I was instantly IN LOVE.  And I was wearing a bikini and no longer knew how to walk or stand.  So after I scurried to get an orange Popsicle I went back up the cement stairs and in my most mature and with it manner asked him if he wanted one.  He mumbled something like “nah, I’m cool” and in my head I screamed “OH MY GOD YOU ARE SO COOL OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD YOU ARE THE COOLEST GUY IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE!!!!”  What I said was “OK, yeah, cool, heheheeheheheheheheheh.”  I’ve always been very suave. 

And that’s when I saw Chad Roy.  He was sitting on the edge of the pool his shoulders totally slumped and he was just looking at us.  I didn’t get it.  I had no idea what was going on.  I did not realize I had made a choice in that moment that would follow me for the rest of my life.  Mostly because I couldn’t take my eyes off angry Chris Turco slumped on the bench.  Well, that and Mary’s bush. 

My oldest brother Ed is a pillar of patience.  He never complains.  He could manage an entire room of drunk and dis-orderlies without ever raising his voice and maintain his sense of humor.  If he was bleeding out his eyes while his hair was on fire, he’d say oh, I’m fine, did you want a cup of coffee or a beer or something?  This being totally true does not mean that me and my other 2 brothers did not try and test his patience every chance we got.  Whether on purpose or not.  A good image of my brother is that scene in The Departed when Alec Baldwin has to break up the fight between Matt Damon and Mark Wahlburg.  My brother Ed is Baldwin in that.  He kind of enjoyed it I think.  I hope.  And Eric and Mark, well, they were brothers that had just about 2 years between them.  That kind of relationship can usually only be expressed in punches and choke holds until you hit your late teens. 

One of my favorite movies is Junebug, and there’s a scene between the two brothers in the garage, not a lot of words get said, but suddenly one of them throws a wrench at the other’s head.  The first time I saw this I laughed right out loud.  It was completely normal to me.  It wasn’t until I reviewed the movie with my friend Christopher (an only child raised in NYC) who found that moment just completely violent and out of control.  I was thinking, huh that’s like a Tuesday.  This does not mean that we did not love each other, it’s just true what they say, boys will be boys.  And boys like to watch wrestling and then they like to re-inact moves and beat the living crap out of each other for eating the last of the Life cereal or ordering their younger sister around, or breathing that way!!!  All the time!!!!

 So sometime during Ed’s high-school years, this would have put me in grade school like somewhere around 2nd or 3rd grade, both my parents were going to have to work a 3pm -11pm type shift.  My father was a State Trooper and it could have been that he was teaching at the Academy or stationed outside of a driving home range at this time which meant he was gone from Monday - Friday and my mom was working the afternoon-night shifts at the hospital.  Now it is important to know that we were all extra curricular activity kids.  We all played sports and I had dance class year round on top of sports.  Ed’s sport was hockey.  Wait, scratch that, Ed’s life was hockey.   Like he breathed it.  He still does.  It’s in his blood.  I mean yeah, we’re from the great white north where you kind of have to play hockey but for Ed, well it was what he did, who he was.  So when it came to pass that he was going to have sit out one year because my parents were going to be at work at night and we younger kids still needed a babysitter and we couldn’t really afford to pay a babysitter every night.  The latter can be blamed on my brothers eating my parents out of house and home.  My mother had to buy 4 gallons of milk every other day!  For real.  They just didn’t stop eating.  My parents could have been stockbrokers and we wouldn’t have had enough to feed them.

 This was not good news.  Ed was going to have to miss a season of hockey.  He was voted Top Iceman and stuff.  He was totally not going to get to play this year.  And it was our fault.  Me, Eric and Mark.  His major function was feeding us.  We were pretty self sufficient, got to and fro practices and lessons on our own or had rides already set up by our Mom, did our homework on our own and what not.  But he did have to feed us.  And as I’ve stated before we always had extras at dinner.  Extra kids.  And since we were kids we were kind of oblivious that we had already pushed Ed to his limit just by existing and therefore taking away hockey from him that season, so we continued to see just how many of the Nicholson kids we could fit at our dinner table. 

Now, my grandfather had built our kitchen table and made benches so it was more space efficient and because my Mom knew there would rarely just be the 6 of us at the table.  Benches made sense.  You could totally scrunch in like 5 kids on each side.  Ok, so, dinner.  Dinner would be served at the exact same time that “Get the Led Out” was on 104.7 the classic rock station growing up.  In accordance with the Law of Ed there was to be no speaking during dinner or when Led Zeppelin played.  So even if you ate your dinner wicked fast and were licking your plate by the time Good Times, Bad Times was over you had to be completely silent for all 7 Led Zeppelin songs at 7pm to be played.

This was just the rule.  And rules are obviously….made to be broken….and also made to be enforced.  Let me be the first to say; I am not a quiet girl.  I am not known for my silence.  I am known for not ever shutting up.  Like ever.  Like way passed the point, I’m still going.  Still yammering on.  So telling me to be quiet is like caffeinating a chihuahua and telling it to sit.  Ain’t gonna happen.  I remember it pretty clearly.  The dinner table, spaghetti (which was pretty much 5 nights a week in our house), Ed at the head of the table, I think Eric was at the other end.  I was next to Eric, Kate Nicholson was next to me, Kevin Broderick was accross from me, Mike Cahill was next to him, and Mark was next to Kate.  We were having a really hard time keeping it down.  Dinner was exciting and I’m pretty sure I had a crush on Kevin and Mike so I’m sure I was trying to impress them with my girlish charm at age 7.  Well, we got a warning, then we got another, and as The Ocean played on the radio and I kept jabbering on about something totally relevant and witty I’m sure, my brother Ed reached over and flipped the entire bench sending me, Mark, Kate and a whole lotta spaghetti across the kitchen.  Before I could say D’yer Maker my brother Ed was standing over me with his hand over my mouth saying PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! JUST SHUT YOUR MOUTH!!!!!

I think we were all so shocked at his loss of patience that we actually listened to him.  Well, they did, I’m pretty sure I started crying which was my deus rigeur and went into the bathroom to get it together.  After that, it was pretty easy to be quiet at dinner.  I think, either way I am pretty sure Ed went back to being this insanely chill Buddhist who could always smile through any amount of irritation.  That and we got Debbie down the street to babysit so he could play hockey again.   And Led Zeppelin, is still totally one of my favorite bands…..Ever!

I was in 4th grade and it was after school.  Jami Losurdo, Elizabeth Vona, at least 2 of the Nicholson’s (there were 11 so there was always at least 2 around - same thing for the Galvins and the Nelsons and they all lived within a three block radius of each other.  They were a definite army) and I had stayed after school to go sledding.  St. Paul’s had a decent hill and pretty much almost any day of the week about 10-20 kids would stay after.  Most of us lived close enough to drag a sled with you to school and if you didn’t bring a sled, you could go over to the Nicholson’s, Galvins or Nelson’s to borrow one.  Elizabeth Vona was a year younger then me but we were totally friends.  Elizabeth lived on 7th and Utica, I lived on 7th and Hamilton, so her mom asked me if I could walk Elizabeth, and later Jessica, home from school.  No problem, it was on my way and we were on the cheerleading team together that her older sister Brandy coached.  Elizabeth was the first person I knew with a big screen television and had one of the first copies of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video AT HER HOUSE!!!!  To me, she was rich and privileged, but generous and definitely one of the coolest girls I’d ever met.  She also had sisters which I knew nothing of and she hated them which was fascinating to me.  They called each other bitch a lot.  I was in awe of the Vona girls.  Elizabeth and I maintained a friendship even after she went to the public school for junior high and high school.  We played on the same indoor soccer team in the winter and the same travel team during spring and summer.  In the fall, before the season started, our high schools would scrimmage each other at the public high school on their fancy field under the lights.  My senior year I was playing center half, I was taking a shot and Elizabeth came in for a block.  I broke her femur.  She was out for her entire junior year.  We were still friends even though I broke her leg.  I’m pretty sure this story may have something to do with it.

 Ok, back to after school sledding.  Jami, Elizabeth, Anne and Kate Nicholson and I are sledding.  All our guy friends are across the street at St. Paul’s Church for altarboy classes.  Even though it’s a perfect day for sledding, sunny but not too bright, tightly packed snow, over the weekend someone had built a ramp, it’s pretty empty.  Then these two boys show up.  They don’t go to St. Paul’s, they go to one of the near by public schools.  Most likely Kingsford or maybe Reiley.  They are known bullies.  I’ve seen Kevin Costello get into fights with them before.  Or rather, I’ve seen Kevin Costello get picked on by them before.  We’re having so much fun we just ignore them and keep going down the hill.  Well the older one (and I kind of can’t believe I can’t remember his name so we’ll call him Derrick Thompson) Derrick, he decides he really likes Elizabeth’s sled.  I’m pretty sure it was a new one, she probably got it for Christmas.  He keeps grabbing her sled and taking it down the hill.  Elizabeth was always kind of tiny.  She’s just a little thing.  Even now, as a 33 year old woman I think she only stands 5′2″, so at age 6, you can imagine how itty bitty she was.  A total bully target.  

At first, I just told Elizabeth to ride with me on my red plastic toboggan.  It was cool at first, but Elizabeth wanted her sled back of course, and she told Derrick so.  For a small thing, she was full of piss and vinegar and had no problem getting in some-one’s face if need be.  She marched up to the dickhead and told him ”Give me back my sled you Queerbait!”  (Queerbait was total fighting words in Oswego in the 80’s).  Derrick laughed in her face and pushed her down.  I was standing about 3 feet away.  Not only was Elizabeth sort of my charge, but she was my friend and I knew it was not fair to pick on someone so small.  I also knew this made him a total jerk because he was a boy!  Older than her and bigger than her!  In all my anger and determined to defend Elizabeth’s honor I marched up to Derrick grabbed her sled out of his hands pushed him back and said “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size!” 

I picked Elizabeth up, put her on the sled, pushed her down the hill, jumped in my toboggan and rode victoriously down the hill and over the ramp.  Sailing through the air I felt righteous!  I landed with the usual thump and my hat fell over my eyes.  I remember this because suddenly I was being picked up by my left arm and I couldn’t see who was grabbing me.  I pushed my hat out of my eyes just in time to see Derrick pulling his right fist back and then WHAM!  POW!  Right in the kisser!  Smack dap in my already too big for my face lips!  Everything went black and I went down.  A couple seconds later I opened my eyes and saw lots of red.  Red blood all over the white snow.  I looked to the right and there was Elizabeth and Jami, both with their jaws dropped and both of them had tears running down their cheeks.  Where was the blood coming from and why did my mouth hurt like that?  I looked up at Derrick and he snickered at me and walked back up the hill. 

 Instantly I started crying.  I didn’t know what else to do.  Jami and Anne Nicholson took off down the street.  Alter boy classes were getting out.  Within 10 seconds, Adam Metcalf, John Whitehead, Jason Walbourn, Jason Cunningham, Adam Batemen, Scott Sugar and Kevin Costello were running down the street screaming and yelling about how they were going to kick that bully’s ass!!!!!  Derrick held his ground for about five of those ten seconds and then turned tail and ran down Mohawk Street.  The boys caught him before he got to O’Brian’s and gave him a proper pummelling.  Elizabeth came up to me, handed me my sled and at that moment Mrs. Losurdo showed up in her yellow chevy and we all piled in.  Jami explained what happened and I sat angrily in the back wishing I hadn’t cried but had known how to fight back.  We got to 7th and Hamilton and I got out of the car, listlessly dragging my sled behind me, the front of my snow suit (all hand made by my mother) covered in blood.  My brother Eric must have seen me from the kitchen, he came out to get me and as soon as I saw him I started sobbing and trying to tell him how I got punched in the face.  How he split my bottom lip….SEE????Well did you hit him back?  N-N-N-NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! 

Ok, come with me, he got me inside, got me out of my snow suit, wiped up the blood, gave me a bag of frozen peas for my lip and took me down to the basement where we had a heavy bag set up with the weight bench.  He showed me how to make a fist and how to punch and said “Next time Lex, Next time….”

Buffets.  Who can say when and where it started.  We were brown baggers growing up.  No, wait, that’s not entirely true.  We were walker homers for lunch for grade school.  Wait, that’s a lie too.  Most of the time we walked home from school for lunch.  If we knew the weather was going to be OK.  But in Oswego it snows for about 6-9 months so you can count on bad weather, but my mom was tough, like superwoman linda/nell carter tough.  Like oldest of 9 kids tough.  Like raised 3 boys tough.  Because she was a tough mama and because she wanted to see us and we wanted to see her when she could (she worked 3p.m-11p.m at the hospital) we mostly walked home for lunch.  Occasionally however, we stayed at school.  This meant a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on “bug bread” brought in a brown paper bag.  We had to bring the paper bag home with us to re-use.   Before it was hip to recycle my mom was washing out Ziploc bags because she believed in wasting not.  I’m pretty sure that during my K-6 years at St. Paul’s Academy I never went through the buffet/lunch line at school for hot lunch.  Not even on pizza day.  Why spend the money?  My mom made bread, every 3-4 weeks she made something like 24 loaves of the heaviest, heartiest wheat bread that man ever came in contact with.  She poured cups of sunflower seeds, poppy seeds, sesame seeds you name it, it was in the bread.   The seeds looked like bugs…you get the picture.

 Anyshoe, by the time I got to Bishop Cunningham for 7-12 I had never walked through a buffet/lunch-line.   And bringing your lunch in junior high or high school was absolute social suicide.  My brother Mark was a senior when I started 7th grade, so while this bought me a certain amount of cool by relation I wasn’t going to muck it up bringing in a crumply re-issued brown paper bag w/ a thick and meaty PBnJ.  There I was 13 and completely uncomfortable in my skin and had to make my maiden voyage walking through a line where Mrs. Kells was offering me food out of some large trough.   Everyone else seemed OK with this.  I on the other hand was starting to sweat and get blotchy.  There were hair nets, plastic gloves, big trays of mushy food that had been sitting for who knows how long resting over steaming dirty water. 

Immediately I figured out ways to get around this.   I was a dancer and all the girls in class were already talking about being fat and having to lose weight.  After class they traded diet tips like, just drink milk at lunch, or what became my lunchtime meal for 6 years a yogurt and rice cake.  This of course was null and void on grilled cheese and tater tot day.  Nothing could ever be wrong with grilled cheese and tater tots.  It didn’t matter if they were served on a buffet or on Fr. Chester’s bare stomach.  So every day of school I bypassed the buffet and Mrs Kells passed me my yogurt and rice cake and I sat with my friends and munched happily.  No one could say anything to me, I would just say my dance teachers told me to lose some weight.  Blame it on them.  And it’s not like I was one of the girls who were putting Ipecac in their Pepsi at lunch so they could puke up the 4 french fries they ate.  I wasn’t that whacked out.  And this was before anyone was using words like eating disorder and if you said that to me anyway I most likely would have replied with “why don’t you step the fuck off! ” and bitch slapped you!  I was a fairly angry teen.  Probably because I was so hungry.

 Flash forward to 1 year ago.  Beth, Megan, Carlo and I take a day trip to Atlantic City.  Awesome.  We eat fluffenutters on the way and listen to the Gnarles Barkley Album.  When we get there, it’s everything we want.  Kind of sad and dirty and creepy and filled with the best people watching we’ve ever encountered.  And there’s the ocean and the boardwalk.  After we get in the water and walk in the sand and walk up and down said boardwalk.  We take pictures in front of the Hooters and we ride the Ferris Wheel and Roller Coaster on the Pier.  Then it’s time for lunch.  I think we’ll go to one of the crummy old man bars and eat something fried.  Or maybe a pizza joint or hot dogs.  All of these are fine options.  But no, Megan and Beth desperately want to go to one of the casinos for prime freak show watching and the buffet!  They love the all you can eat idea.  Ahem, ahem.  Oh boy.  I can’t really breath.  So I just come clean and tell them.  Buffets give me panic attacks.  I don’t know why but there it is.  They laugh and whether they take me seriously or not I don’t know but the next thing I know we’re on the escalator heading towards the dining area at the casino.  This part is blurry, we pay, we go through a turnstile we get hot plates in our hands.  Megan, Carlo and Beth are filling their plates with fried chicken, mashed potatoes, pasta salads, potato salads, Caesar salads, carved meats, Stromboli and shrimp.   A lot of shrimp.  I walk at a safe 1.5 feet from the table and survey the contents.  I feel the sweat dripping down my back, between my breasts.  I pick up a roll and a pad of butter and the tears are stinging my eyes.  I go back to the table and the waitress would love to know if I would like a drink.  I order an ice tea in a cracked voice, put down my plate and sprint to the bathroom.  I hyperventilate and mini pace in the stall making the automatic flusher go off every 30 seconds.  After my usual pep talk of “You can do this Lex!  You ran a marathon!  You hiked Mt. Washington!  You can eat food from a buffet!  You survived giardia!  You can eat some fucking Stromboli!”  I head back to our table, defiantly pick up my plate, march up to the buffet, take a piece of pizza, triumphantly return and eat the motherfucker while tears stream down my cheeks and my friends cackle and laugh at me.  And I laugh too because I know I’m ridiculous.

Fast forward now to two weeks ago.  The hospital threw my mother a big dinner and dancing bash for her retirement.  She worked as an R.N in the Labor and Delivery unit for forty years.  I’ll get to the glorious and emotional speeches that were given in my mother’s honor at another time.  For now we have to talk about how I was thwarted by the American Foundry of Oswego, NY.   We were told salads would be served at 7p.m.  This to me means sit down dinner.  So I am breezy at this party.  I’ve got a million greetings to make as there are dozens of nurses and doctors I haven’t seen in years who were very influential during my formative years.  At 7p.m exactly a nice woman walks up to Bruce and I at the bar and says, you can take your seat now, we’ll be serving the salads soon.  We do as we’re told.  We’re sitting at the head table with my mother, father, two of my brothers and their wives.  All my nieces and nephews are at the table next to us and the other 75+ guests are in surrounding 8 top and 4 top tables.  We eat our salads and chat and are having a lovely time when that very same woman comes up to Bruce and I again.  I’m not sure why she keeps coming to us until this moment.  She is the messenger of death.   She puts a hand on each of our shoulders and says “The buffet is ready and your table is first.”  I inhale sharply, turn to Bruce and say “BUFFET????”  He has a similar issue with buffet and asked me about what type of dinner it was going to be no less than 3 times prior to the event.  In the car I reassured him that salads being served at 7pm which meant to me, sit down dinner, he agreed, we were calm.  I know, I know, we’re a match made in a Lysol disinfected heaven.  So,  “BUFFET?????” He is a quick thinker, Bruce, he grabs my hand and says “It’s OK, It’s totally OK Lex, you know why?  It’s OK because we are the FIRST TABLE, we are the first table and you know all the people at this table!” 

This is total bullshit and he and I both know it.  But it’s my mom’s night and I am not going to go hide in the bathroom tonight.  Bruce and I start walking up to the beastly table with the rest of my family and he is again trying to keep me calm by talking about something.  Again, a blur, something about skate-park design and the Cayman Islands.  He keeps trying to put his hand on my back and let me go first because there are less germs that way I think.  I keep trying to step behind him, subconsciously so I can dart out the door.  I breath deep, swallow my fear and take the hot plate from his hand.   “It’s bigger than you Lex ” I think, eat the food at your mother’s retirement dinner.  I take 3 pieces of soft broccoli, a chicken breast and a roll with butter.   I watch Bruce hem and haw at the various trays of food and choose some rice and chicken.   It’s true, there’s strength in solidarity.  If he’s gonna do this then so am I.  It was a great party.

So I have this huge fear of buffets. And Chinese food. And often times they are served together. In general, I steer clear of both. Which is odd, because when I was a kid Chinese food was my favorite. About once a month my parents would put on the nice nice outfits and get my three brothers and I scrubbed and dressed in our Friday night fancy clothes and take us out to the Hunan Empire out on 104 East for strange and fantastic delicacies of the orient. Also known as Chicken With Cashews, Sweet and Sour Chicken, Won Ton Soup and Egg Rolls. This mystical place was generally empty (in a small upstate town in the 80s Chinese food was considered adventurous cuisine, most Oswegonians stuck to eggplant parmesan for exotic culinary delights), so we always got amazing service. And always got to sit at the big round table in the center with the magical apparatus known as a “lazy susan.” Most of the first fifteen minutes there were spent with my mother and father trying to keep my brothers from spinning the lazy susan at 35 miles an hour. Everything they brought us was warm and delicious. I got to drink as much tea as I wanted and sweet and sour sauce opened up an entire new part of my brain that until that moment had lay dormant. We begged and received a set of the soup bowls with those crazy wacky spoons for home use. What could be more worldly and cosmopolitan than eating granola with that spoon that was made for slurping?

last night, there was some romanian bday party…one of the chicks is a “friend” of the owner at the cafe bar I work at.
so this romanian guy w/ a thick accent and a tongue ring and a bad hair cut keeps asking ivona for a glass of wodka (that’s my written portrayal of the accent), on the rocks, without ice.  so she tries to figure out what he means and he gets all sweetheart sweetheart sweetheart, let me explain wodkas to you.
and he comes up to the service bar and is trying to put his arm around her and he’s pissing her off so much she looks at natasha and says in their language “you deal w/ him”
and walks away cuz she’s so mad she’s shaking.
 
so what he wants, is a triple shot of stoli in a glass. not chilled.  no ice.  neat.
 
fine.
 
so later he comes up to the bar and he asks me for a wodka, on the rocks, no ice.  and i hadn’t heard the whole story about this yet so i don’t know what the fuck is wrong w/ this guy so i kinda tilt my head like a dog and say sorry?  and he says wodka, on the rocks, no ice.  and i say, do you want it chilled?  no, i want wodka, on the rocks, no ice.  and i think stop saying that!  so i say dude, that doesn’t make sense and he gives me sweetheart sweetheart, i want stolichnaya wodka, in a glass, on the rocks, no ice.  and i think i’m gonna go fucking crazy at this point and i start laughing and i say. ok do you or do you not want ice in the glass and he says no ice.  and i say ok, so here’s your lesson, on the rocks means ice in the glass.  so stop saying on the rocks. 
and i go and get the bottle of stoli and i pour it into the glass and after 4 counts the bottle empties and i put the glass down w/ my back to the guy and am bent over looking for another bottle and he starts in again, sweet heart sweetheart, sweetheart, that’s not enough.  (this is his 4th round by the way) and i say, dude, the bottle ran out, i was getting more, why don’t you just stand there and wait for your drink.  ok ok ok sweetheart.  no problem.
 
are you fucking kidding me?
on the rocks, no ice?

I grew up in a house of men.  I am the youngest of four children and the only girl.  My three older brothers always had at least two friends each at the house.  For dinner, for lunch, for street hockey, for basketball, for sleepovers, for baseball in the park across the street, for kickball, for camping in the yard and in general coming up with new ways to torture and use me.  The thing is, being of use to your brothers and their really cool friends was like, my life dream.  So when I was five and they were playing street hockey and the puck would go into the street gutter it wasn’t hard for them to convince me to let them hang me down the drain by my feet and retrieve said puck.  This was usually done while wearing my favorite “sky blue” dress.  That was thing, I loved me a pretty dress but I also loved me some muddy hands.  While they were playing cool boy games, I was generally underneath my swingset elbow deep in a mud puddle……this is going to have to be continued but i guess thats the point