Why I’m Awesome

I was sort of asking for it.

One of the downsides of having your kids in activities is the people running those activities need funds to do the things you are asking them to do with your kids – make crafts, teach them a sport, just plain teach them.

These things cost money, so they ask the parents to sell wrapping paper and frozen pizzas to help them finance all the wonderful things they are doing with our children.

I sometimes wonder if my time would be better spent making crafts and playing soccer with my kids instead of selling stuff to people who don’t want it so my kids can do these things with other adults.

But, my youngest daughter loves her Camp Fire club. And we love it, too. It’s an awesome organization. So, every winter we lug home boxes of chocolate praying we can pawn them off on friends and family members who have abandoned their New Year’s resolutions to eat better. I feel really guilty selling them to my diabetic mother.

This year, my daughter came home with the goal of selling four cases. That didn’t seem too daunting until I realized they had changed the system and there were 30 chocolate bars in each case. How were we going to sell 120 chocolate bars? We don’t know that many people.

There were two options: one, hold each member of our four-person household responsible for eating an entire case of chocolate (which initially had its benefits but on further reflection seemed like it would put one of us in the hospital); or two, sell some at work.

I went with option number two. Like a good salesperson, I waited until my marks were primed for my product: 3 p.m. on a payday Friday. I sold a whole case in less than two hours. God bless the food-loving maniacs I work with!

My daughter was very appreciative and wanted to write me a “book” as a thank you. She asked what I wanted a book about and I said I wanted one about how awesome I am. So, in a way, I was begging to be complimented.

When I got home, there was a page and a half of hand-written reasons why I’m awesome. They fell into four categories.

What she thought she should say

These are the lines most mothers have seen written in a construction paper card at some point. I like to call them “Zoe’s Greatest Hits” because she brings them out on a pretty consistent basis.

“She is awesome because she cares for me.”

“She’s awesome because she provides food and shelter for me.”

“She’s awesome because she buys me clothes.”

“She’s awesome because she goes to my recitles.” (Her spelling, not mine)

“She’s awesome because she reads to me.”

 

Pure Flattery

“She’s awesome because she has a good sense of style.”

“She’s awesome because she has good taste in music.”

“She’s awesome because she is crafty.”

“She is awesome because she is very, very, very, very, very, very nice.” (The overuse of “very” is a dead give-away here. I’m nice, but not that nice.)

“She’s awesome because she is funny.”

“She’s awesome because she’s really good at coloring.”

 

Stuff that seems a bit more factual

“She’s awesome when she lets me use her library card to check out books when I leave my library card at home.”

“She’s awesome because she sometimes buys us pizza.”

“She’s awesome because she bought me my very own desk.”

“She’s awesome because she buys me treats.”

“She’s awesome because she is clean.” (Ummm…what?)

 

Then there were the things that made me cry. Legitimately sob. Hard.

“She’s awesome because she pays attention to me when I’m talking.”

“She’s awesome because she appreciates me for my drawings.”

“She’s awesome because she makes me feel important.”

 

I bring this up not to brag about how awesome I am, because honestly, I’m not. Most of this list was padding.

But as parents we do a lot of things for our kids that go unnoticed. And that’s fine. It’s part of what we sign up for.

When we get the rare opportunity to see ourselves through their eyes and that image is one that is attentive, funny and clean … well, it makes it all the more worthwhile.

And all I had to do was sell a case of chocolate to get it.

 

The Mother of All Mixtapes

Mariah Carey was proving to be a bigger problem than I had anticipated.

It was three days before my 40th birthday party and there I sat, vision blurry, mind numb, scrolling through Mariah’s Carey’s entire discography on Spotify with the sinking feeling I was in over my head.

Earlier that week I had come up with a brilliant plan. I was turning 40, there was a party planned, and we needed some music.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past couple of decades its that most of my friends don’t really care what music is playing at get-togethers, if any is playing at all. But I care. I always care.

So, who better to make the playlist for this party than myself? And it couldn’t be just any playlist. No, no, no. I didn’t want Spotify to spit out a generic “All Out 80s” playlist or “I Love My 90s Hip-Hop.” It had to be epic. I wanted a playlist that would make all other playlists tremble in shame – the golden offspring of all the mixtapes and playlists I had created before it.

I wanted Jermaine Stewart mixed with The Cure mixed with The Beastie Boys mixed with Amy Grant mixed with Fiona Apple mixed with the Talking Heads. All. Night. Long.

The task seemed easy, the requirements few – the songs had to be released between the years 1975 and 2015, there had to be at least one song from every year, and they could only be songs I truly loved.

I got out a notebook and started jotting down songs, figuring it would be a few hours of music tops.

That was the Monday before the party. By Tuesday afternoon, the process took on a life of its own, moving away from a simple playlist to something akin to compiling a Time Life Classics box set…the worst Time Life Classics box set that ever existed.

“Air Supply! Kenny Loggins! The Spice Girls! All the songs that have been played relentlessly on pop radio for the last 40 years gathered for the first time in one amazing collection! Call now to get over 22 hours of music specifically tailored for one generic middle-aged woman with the most questionable taste in music out there! Here’s how to order….”

The list got so long, I had to break it into multiple playlists. I was only up to 1985 and already had more than 6 hours of music. At that point in music history, I was only 10. I had 30 more years of music to go.

I had visions of my friends -hours into the party – on the floor, glassy-eyed and drooling, uttering things like, “Skyrockets in fight…bewww…afternoon delight” and “You can do me in the morning, you can do me in the night, you can do me when you want to do me.”

“Just pick one song from each decade,” my friend, Hillory, suggested.

I looked at her as if she suggested I perform each of these songs in front of everyone on a jawharp.

“There’s no way I can do that. I have, like, 10 songs from 1984 alone that I want to play! Do you know how magical 1984 was? That was the year both Purple Rain and Footloose came out!”

On Wednesday, I hit the 90s and that’s when the musical shit hit the fan. That shit’s name? Ms. Mariah Carey.

Did you know that Mariah Carey had six albums between 1990 and 1997? And that those six albums produced 12 number one singles? Twelve singles that all seemed essential to my life in some way? How was I supposed to choose between “Always Be My Baby” and “Fantasy?”

And what about Alanis Morrissette? Jagged Little Pill was my own personal soundtrack for three whole years. To this day I can’t listen to it without thinking of sitting on the floor with my best friends Amy and Chassidy painting my fingernails blue while drinking a god-awful mixture of Kool-Aid and vodka. I couldn’t just put “You Oughtta Know” on the list and be done with it.

I knew I had to be ruthless, but taking songs off the list was painful. Every single song on my playlist meant something to me, and not just because they reminded me of the big moments in my life. Most of them represented the smaller moments.

Like when I was little and my older brother Tony would babysit so my parents could go bowling. We would watch The Dukes of Hazaard and as soon as it was over, he would turn off the TV, put on The Cars and let us dance around to “My Best Friend’s Girl” before making us go to bed.

Or how my sister Christi would listen to Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam on the nights she let us sneak out of the house with her so she could drive around and smoke cigarettes.

They were the songs I stole lyrics from when writing love notes to my elementary school crushes and songs that pumped through the speakers at the pool all summer long. They were songs from tapes I wore out in high school and CDs that got me through college.

My parents, siblings, best friends, ex-boyfriends; my husband, my daughters – they were all represented on that list in some way.

Back when my husband and I were in college and still just friends, we used to play this game we creatively called “Playing DJ.”

This game essentially consisted of the two of us lying on his living room floor, drinking Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill and smoking cigarettes while looking through his CD collection.

“Oh, man, I know what I’m going to play next,” one of us would say, making a big show of hiding the CD from the other and then laughing uncontrollably when the first couple bars of “Jessie’s Girl” would play.

I don’t think we knew it at the time, but “Playing DJ” was actually us dating. It was how we got to know one another, how we heard each other’s stories.

I wanted something like that again. I wanted my friends to get a sense of who I was – how all the different people I used to be helped form the person I am now.

All of these songs pinned me to a certain point in my life. They were carefully curated, not just some random selection of songs from the last four decades.

How could I cut any of it out?

Eventually I decided to stop worrying about it and just make the playlist. The last decade or so was a lot easier – either because the music just didn’t seem as good or because music doesn’t carry the same weight any more.

The night of the party we made it through the early 90s, mostly because my friends are nice people who wanted to indulge me at a time when I was a little freaked out over turning 40. They only groaned a few times. They don’t appreciate Sheila E. as much as I do.

In the end, it wouldn’t have mattered if we’d only made it through two hours of my list. I realize now the fun part was not only making it, but living it.

Was It Good For You? My Love Affair with Romance Novels

What makes a book “good” or “bad?”

I was an English major in college, so technically I know the answer to that question, but when you really get right down to it, how does one determine whether a book is a worthy of someone’s time? Whether or not it is “good” for them to be reading it?

My 13-year-old daughter recently came home from school upset because her English teacher said she needed to bring a book with her to read during free reading time.

I was a perplexed by this. My daughter lives and breathes books. When she was in kindergarten her babysitter taught her how to hula hoop. Two days later, she figured out a way to hula hoop while holding a book. Reading has never been her problem. Reading too much? Maybe.

When I asked her why this upset her, she said she couldn’t read what she wanted to read.

“It has to be a ‘good’ book,” she said, eyes rolling.

I knew where her teacher was coming from. She wants to get her students out of their comfort zones and expose them to the vast possibilities that books hold.

But I also felt my daughter’s pain. In her mind, that meant no more books like Secrets of My Hollywood Life or Best Friends For Never. She felt like she had to toss all of those out in favor of Catcher in the Rye.

I knew all too well how it felt to want to read “bad” books. It started in junior high for me, too.

My mom had a shelf of books downstairs in our family room just to the left of our electric typewriter. Two rows of thin white spines with red-tipped pages….Harlequin Presents.

 The authors seemed to be the stars. Their names were bigger than the titles of the books, their glamour accentuated by an exotic font that brought to mind places like Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana.” That font promised things only known to mature, worldly women ‑ intrigue, opulence, sex ‑ things a 12-year-old girl growing up in the middle of a cornfield felt she would never fully understand. It was a powerful font.

Those books had been sitting on that shelf for years, mostly ignored by me. The covers had sketches of women with feathered hair and men with neckerchiefs and mustaches. I hated the mustaches. They made me think of Magnum P.I. and his hairy legs in those short shorts. I put the books back and returned to Little Women and Anne of Green Gables.

A few years later, my hormones arrived, and at just the right time in pop history, too. New Kids on the Block had just come on the scene. Kirk Cameron was gracing the covers of Teen Beat, and Patrick Swayze was making my little heart ga-gung all over the place. I was primed for romance.

Dog-eared copies of V.C. Andrews novels had been making the rounds in my junior high for a while. Some helpful eighth grader had even underlined the dirty passages for quick reference. I gave them a shot, but they weren’t for me. While the stories were definitely titillating, they were also completely terrifying. There was too much incest and rat poison.

My mom’s romance novels were just the right speed. They were a surefire way to get all the titillation I needed without any of the rat poison.

I don’t remember the first one I read. But it wasn’t long before I found myself going back to that bookshelf again and again.

Like any good aficionado, I developed a process. When selecting a book, I would methodically pull the books out one by one and study the covers to see if the main characters fit my stringent list of desirable physical characteristics (mainly no mustaches).

If those characteristics were met, I would flip them over and read the plot descriptions on the back like I was a connoisseur of fine wines. What was I in the mood for? A little light intrigue? A nurse in love with her doctor? A marriage of convenience? Oh, yes, that would do nicely.

Marriages of convenience were my favorites. The two main characters were bound to end up in bed together at some point. Even if it didn’t lead to sex, it might lead to a little French kissing (unless it was a red Silhouette Desire, then the couple would definitely be having sex, and in places that seemed unfathomable to my adolescent mind … like the shower).

The beauty of these books was that they were short. I could finish one in a day or two and move on to the next one. But soon my appetite had exceeded my supply. I had worked my way through all the facial-hair-free books in my mom’s collection. I needed to find a new source. But where?

Babysitting gigs usually turned out to be fruitful. Most of the moms had a stash somewhere, even if it was just one or two. The trick was to try and read them in one sitting. You didn’t know when you would be babysitting next and you definitely couldn’t ask the mom to borrow it. Then she would know you were rifling around her nightstand. So you put the kids to bed early and prayed the parents stayed out late.

Cutting short games of Candy Land so I could read erotic fiction didn’t go unnoticed by the kiddos. They ratted me out and my babysitting jobs dried up.

That left the library. Once I located the romance section, it was surprisingly easy. I would just slip one or two between a couple of Sweet Valley High or Babysitter’s Club books and then not make eye contact with the librarian while she was checking out my books.

For almost all of seventh grade, I spent every free moment wrapped up in a world where it was totally plausible for a man to fake a marriage with a woman he just met to prevent his dying mother from finding out his real marriage to a woman his mother never met didn’t work out.

I was having a love affair with reading, and it was exciting. It was the first time in my life I had stayed up until 2 a.m. to find out how a story ended, and it was the first time books made me cry. Beth dying in Little Women hadn’t even done that.

Things got a little sticky toward the end of the school year. Through an odd twist of fate, my oldest brother was my reading teacher, and one of the requirements for his class was to turn in book reports on any outside reading we had done. My plan had been to read one Babysitter’s Club or Sweet Valley High book for every romance novel I read and write reports on them.

This plan would have worked if I had actually read any Babysitters Club or Sweet Valley High books. I didn’t turn in a single book report for almost a whole year.

When my mom found out, she made me write book reports on every romance novel I had read. My cheeks burned with embarrassment as I wrote out character descriptions and plot points. It was like turning in a report on something you had read in Playgirl.

To my brother’s credit, he didn’t bat an eye. He gave me half credit for the reports since they were late and never said a word about it.

Looking back, I have to wonder, was it a “bad” thing for me to read these books? Maybe. Once, I was in a car with a boy I had a crush on. It was snowing and the car went into a shallow ditch. I thought “Ok, this is it. He will offer me his coat, he will take me into his arms…” That didn’t happen. He didn’t even ask if I was ok. He jumped out into the snow bank and started stomping around and getting really angry. Then he asked me to get out and help him push the car out of the ditch.

So, they might have set me up for some unrealistic expectations when it came to boys.

But the books weren’t altogether bad. For instance, I learned there are a variety of ways to describe the different stages of arousal, such as “heaving pillows of downy, white flesh” and “throbbing manhood.”  They also taught me new things about the world, like a man with a mustache is capable of love.

More importantly, I was reading something every day, and this is a habit that has stuck with me. Romance novels gave me a genuine love for reading. They paved the way for me to read books by Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen. Later it was other strong female voices like Shirley Jackson, Flannery O’Connor, Margaret Atwood, and Toni Morrison. Yet, even amidst all this “good” writing, I still snuck in a romance novel every once in a while. Because I think there is room for both.

Do I think kids should be challenged? Absolutely. But should we make reading feel like work? Should we shame kids for wanting to read something other than a Newbery Award winner? No. I think we forget that books can be fun. They don’t have to be serious, or even all that well written. If they entertain you, then they are doing their job.

Cherry Bombed: My Misadventures in Karaoke

As with all things good and holy, it started with Madonna.

The first time I did karaoke I sang “Papa Don’t Preach” with a German exchange student I knew in college named Claudia. Claudia was very tall. She looked like Uma Thurman and wore orange pants. I coveted her height, her good looks, and most of all those pants. If Claudia told me to dance , I danced. And if she told me to sing Madonna, I sang Madonna. It is possible I did these things because she ordered me to do them in a thick, authoratitive German accent, but I trusted her. She had the courage to wear orange pants. How could she lead me astray?

We did not sing the song very well, but we gave it all we had. It was the German way. And the crowd seemed to love it. Maybe because they thought Uma Thurman had made a stop at the Cedar Falls Diamond Dave’s. I don’t know. But I thought the cheers were for me. And I ate it up.

That was nearly 15 years ago. Since that time, I have devoted many a weekend to practicing the ancient art of karaoke. It is a delicate balance between talent and showmanship. I have made many missteps along the way.

To help guide me in my pursuit of bringing quality entertainment to the 20 or so people gathered in a particular bar on a particular evening, I have developed a list of rules. Hopefully you can glean something from them and find yourself on the road to becoming a karaoke star in your own right.

The first rule is “Punch your weight.” This rule is also known as “Never, ever under any circumstances attempt Mariah Carey unless you are actually Mariah Carey. It doesn’t matter how many drinks you’ve had or how much you ” luuuv” the song. Just don’t. I mean it. Don’t.”

A lot of singers who do karaoke are there to showcase their vocal acrobatics. They’ve taken years of vocal lessons, or maybe they’ve spent years singing in front of their bedroom mirrors with a hairbrush for a microphone. Whatever their background, they pick songs that highlight their talents.

I have no vocal talents. My skills wouldn’t pass tumbling. I can only stay in tune if I am whisper-singing.

Yet, for some mind-boggling reason, I once thought it would be a good idea to sing Mariah Carey’s “Always Be My Baby.” You read that right. I tried to take on the great human butterfly Mariah Carey and lost. Miserably. Because I’m not Mariah friggin’ Carey. I had no business being up there trying to do that song. Ever.

A couple of sorority girls in the corner were kind enough to cheer me on, but they knew and I knew that I wasn’t pulling it off. I just stopped singing, handed the DJ the microphone and walked off the stage.

You have to punch your weight. Know your vocal range. For me, that range is no range. Which is why I primarily stick to rap.

If you are going to rap, know the words.

I once boasted to a karaoke DJ that I could do “Regulate” by Warren G. He was excited and said he would do it with me since it’s a two-part song. I only knew 20 percent of the lyrics. Not even 20 percent. Mainly just the “Regulators….mount up!” part, which is at the very beginning. That DJ will no longer look me in the eye.

The song has to make my husband laugh.

My husband hates going to karaoke. He doesn’t sing, and honestly, karaoke is pretty boring to people who don’t really like to get up there and show off. Or who don’t like showtunes.

Fortunately for me, my husband loves ironically-sung power ballads like “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and hip-hop songs done by dorky white ladies. I feel like it’s my duty to accommodate that. If I throw in a couple of kicky dance moves or some side banter I am his karaoke hero.

I got a little carried away with this notion, and recently chose the song “Copacabana” because I think the lyrics are hilarious. My husband does not. He actually yelled, “Come on! Really?” when I got up on stage. I forgot he does not share my affection for Barry Manilow.

I also forgot about the 72-measure musical interlude in the middle. That’s like a whole other song. There were a couple of drunk people who got up to do a little disco while I was “singing” it, but even they got bored and gave up on me in the middle.

Which leads me to my next rule…

Entertain the crowd

Since I cannot sing, the only thing I can really bring to the table (besides mid-level rap skills) is my stage presence (i.e. kicky dance moves and side banter).

I have narrowed my repetoire down to two, maybe three songs I can do solo with a fair amount of confidence: “You Oughtta Know,” “Ice, Ice Baby,” and (if I’ve had enough to drink) a mash-up of George Michael and Limp Bizkit’s versions of “Faith.”

I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of those songs over the years. But every once in a while, I long for something different. It’s like asking Prince to only perform “Purple Rain” and “When Doves Cry.” (Yes, I just compared myself to Prince.) I need to find my “Raspberry Beret.” But not actually “Raspberry Beret.” I can’t sing it.

From time to time, I indulge in little karaoke fantasies, like “What would it be like if each song I chose was a selection from the ‘Footloose’ soundtrack?” or “Maybe I should do Taco’s ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’ and bring a top hat and cane.”

I seriously considered learning all the dance moves to Salt-n-Pepa’s “Push It” but had to abandon the plan when I learned it involved the Roger Rabbit, a dance move I have never been able to master.

I needed something that would leave the crowd whispering, “Who’s that girl?” But what?

I’m not entirely sure how “Cherry Bomb” floated into my head, but once it was there, it felt like the karaoke gods had delivered it to me like a gift on a little golden pillow.

“Go forth,” they trumpeted from behind that gigantic karaoke system in the sky, “And bequeath unto our flock the blessed word of our sisters Cherie Currie, Joan Jett, Lita Ford and the other two girls no one remembers. Praise be unto The Runaways!”

This was a song I could do! It met all my criteria! Cherie Currie didn’t so much sing “Hello, Daddy! Hello Mom!” as sneer it. I could sneer. My husband was a fan of the song, and it offered ample opportunity to ham it up on stage.

We were set to go to karaoke for a friend’s birthday, so I got to work practicing it. That’s right, I practiced it. I actually sat on my bed and sang my way through it like it was a totally serious thing. When my husband caught me, he said, “You’re thinking about this too hard.”

I wasn’t deterred because, in my head, I was already a legend. I was doing leg kicks, grinding my hips and spitting into the crowd. I was sassy and bold. I was a rock star.

Maybe it was all the practicing, but by the time it was my turn to get up and sing, the sass just leaked out of me.

I stood there gripping the microphone and staring at the teleprompter like an eighth-grader giving a speech for student council.

It was better than looking into the disinterested faces of my audience. They were either staring at me like I was a crazy person, staring down into the bottom of an empty beer glass, or ignoring me altogether. Not good.

I thought about throwing in a leg kick to grab their attention, but all I could will my body to do was a half-hearted pogo. I was bobbing up and down like I was singing “I’m a Little Teapot.”

I don’t think it would have mattered if I had set myself on fire while singing it. You see, the one big difference between me singing “Cherry Bomb” and Cherie Currie singing “Cherry Bomb” is that people wanted to hear her sing it. They paid to hear her sing it.

No one cared that I was singing it. They didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I don’t think anyone in that bar knew or cared who The Runaways were and I certainly wasn’t turning anyone on to their music.

When I sat down, one of my tablemates, who was clearly drunk, said, “That sounded like shit.”

Agreed.

So, there you have it… my iron-clad rules for karaoke success.

As you can see, I don’t always follow them. In fact, the whole story was about how I pretty much break them all. But that’s ok, right? It’s what rock stars are born to do.

This Summer Hurt

This again?

School lunches, permission slips, the right calculator (the on that you can use on both the ACT and the SAT), teachers’ email addresses.

Ugh. It’s too much. I’m not ready. And I’m not the one actually going back to school. I’m just the lady who buys the new underpants and packs the lunches.

The date August 26th had been circled on my calendar in red for months. “SCHOOL STARTS!” All summer long that damn little exclamation point had been pulling on my sleeve like a 5-year-old at a birthday party forcing me to do the “Hokey Pokey.”

Normally I would have been putting my right foot in and shaking it all about with gusto. Because back-to-school time is when I get to prove that I am a creative and capable mother. How else do you show the world how much you love your children other than cutting up cucumber sandwiches to look like Yoda? Or sewing your own pencil pouches out of the adorable vintage fabric you salvaged from the curtains your friend was about to throw out?

To add to the pressure, I mean love, I typically have treated each fall like a New Year’s do-over. Every new school year brings a new batch of mini-resolutions, like “This year I will portion out the baby carrots so they don’t get slimy in the bag and my kids have to take canned tomatoes as their veggie” or “This year I will proudly display every piece of art my 8-year-old brings home instead of shoving them to the bottom of the recycling bin once she’s gone to bed.”

But this year, it was just too much to think about. And I wasn’t the only one feeling it. None of us were ready. Example? Here’s the photo I took on the first day of school:

The expression on their faces says it all. “Can we just get this over with please?”

We weren’t ready for school because we barely had a summer. You know that Maroon 5 song, “This Summer’s Gonna Hurt Like a Mother?” Maybe you don’t. You probably have better taste in music than me. But that song’s title pretty much sums up our summer.

This summer did hurt like a mother. It hurt, and hurt, and hurt and just kept on hurting.

********************

I used to think my family was lucky.

I come from a family of seven kids. My youngest brother is still single, but the other six of us were all happily married, not a divorce among us.

Those six blessed unions of souls produced 14 grandchildren and then 4 great-grandchildren. All of us happy and healthy, hardly even a broken bone. Those are some amazing statistics, aren’t they?

Even more amazing, we’re a close family. Not the Brady-Bunch-potato-sack racing kind, maybe, but we all get along and enjoy each other’s company.

Happy and healthy. How lucky are we?

When you feel lucky like that, I think you’re always waiting for something bad to happen. Maybe it’s my Catholic guilt telling me not to be so smug, but I’ve seen “Beaches” enough times to know that just when everything seems to be moving along perfectly, you get that phone call that obliterates your world and you’re sobbing your way through “Wind Beneath My Wings.”

And so it was. At the beginning of June, my younger brother, Rick, died suddenly. He was only 35. He left behind a wife and two children. It was – and still is – horrible.

Two days before Rick died, I had reread an essay by David Sedaris called “Now We are Five.” Sedaris comes from a big family (six kids), and the essay was about his sister, who committed suicide at the age of 49.

As I was reading it, I was thinking about some of the similarities between the Sedaris family and my own, and how lucky my own family was. Never count your blessings, I guess. You’ll tempt fate.

One of the things that struck me when I read it was what Sedaris said about identity.

“The following morning [after his sister’s death], I boarded another plane, this one to Atlanta, and the day after that I flew to Nashville, thinking all the while about my ever-shrinking family. A person expects his parents to die. But a sibling? I felt I’d lost the identity I’d enjoyed since 1968, when my younger brother was born.”

My big-family status has always been a badge of honor. It’s a little thing I pull out at parties or when meeting someone for the first time, as if it’s something I had any hand in and therefore people should be impressed. “Oh, wow! Seven kids! Your poor mother!”

So, I knew first-hand what he meant about the identity a big family provides you. I just didn’t know how soon or how precisely I would know it.

Two weeks after the funeral, my oldest brother, Tony, received an award for Iowa Reading Teaching of the Year. My whole family was there to celebrate Tony’s achievement. Later they wanted to gather us up to take some photos, and at one point, they wanted a photo of just the siblings. It was the first photo we had taken without Rick, and even though he was just one person, his absence in that photo felt enormous. Suddenly, my pack of siblings felt as if it had shrunk 10 sizes. And then this line floated into my mind: “Now we are six.”

Rick left this gaping hole in our lives and there is no way we are ever going to fully get over it.

I remember one day, about a week after he died, I had a really good day and was in a great mood. I was a little relieved to feel something other than oppressive sadness. Once I became aware of how great I was feeling I felt awful. I went home and bawled. I wasn’t supposed to feel happiness. I was only supposed to feel sadness. Forever. Ok, maybe not forever, but I felt I should have given it more than a week. What kind of horrible, unfeeling monster was I?

I shouldn’t have worried. It was just a trick. The next day, I heard the song “O.P.P.” on the radio. It made me think of my brother and how much he loved hip-hop when he was a kid, and then I was crying so hard I had to pull my car over. And underneath all the sadness I was mad, too, because what a stupid song to remind me of my brother. Damn you, Naughty By Nature.

It was like that all summer long. I couldn’t listen to the radio. I tried to avoid Facebook so that if I came across a photo of my brother I wouldn’t have to hide out in the ladies’ room while I sobbed. It seemed like the most unexpected things could become minefieds of sadness. I had to hold myself very carefully to keep them from going off.

A month or so later, a classmate of mine died unexpectedly. She wasn’t someone I was necessarily close to, but she was a good person who was brimming with personality and humor. She, too, left behind a child, a family and friends who all cared about her very deeply. My heart broke all over again – this time for that family – and the world just felt unbearable.

And then there were the little things. We went to Chicago for a week and it was either 105 degrees or 65 degrees and raining. The kids didn’t want to go sightseeing. They just wanted to swim in the hotel pool and eat complimentary snacks during happy hour.

There were a couple of beautiful Sundays where I pretty much stayed in bed all day, reading and crying because that was all could work up the energy to do. We ate ramen noodles or popcorn for dinner more times than I would like to admit. We took our girls swimming only once. I got a yeast infection the next day. I know the yeast infection isn’t related to my depression, but it is definitely a symbol of just how rotten a summer I was having.

So, when that August 26th date drew closer and closer, I was filled with dread. I wanted our summer back. I didn’t feel refreshed or rejuvenated. I wanted a do-over for those Sundays so we could go to the pool and eat Sno-Cones. I felt sad for my kids that we had such an awful summer. And, mostly, I just wanted my brother back.

But the day arrived, and things were fine. My kids didn’t care that their sandwiches didn’t look like Star Wars characters. They may have been dragging their feet at the begining of the day, but by the end they were smiling and talking about reconnecting with their friends and funny things the teachers said. I felt that deserved some ice cream. For all three of us.

And I’m starting to learn that it’s okay if we’ve moved into an era of lowered expectations right now. If we need to sit down and laugh through an episode of “Bob’s Burgers” instead of carrying out whatever task is on our colored-coded chore wheel, then that’s what we’re going to do. Because, damn, Tina is funny.

And, I think Rick would think so, too.

Is This Blog My Mid-Life Crisis?

I heard some information on the radio a while back that said you are most likely to encounter a mid-life crisis around the age of 42. It will last roughly 5-6 years, during which time your tastes in music will get significantly younger. Once those 5-6 years are over, they will change back.

This information worries me. I’ve always liked music that 12-year-olds like, so how will I know if I’m having a mid-life crisis? Am I having one right now? What are the other signs?

I am depressed about getting older. That’s a pretty big one, isn’t it?

I somehow thought I was immune to this phenomenon of getting old, so it caught me off guard once it started happening. Not that I didn’t think I would get older. I just didn’t think I would actually age.

I told myself a daily regimen of Jergen’s lotion and Oil of Olay was all I needed to stay forever young. My skin is laughing at what an idiot I was.

Now I look down and see balls of dough instead of kneecaps.

In an act of pure defiance, my cheeks have decided to gradually slide off my face and melt into my neck like frosting on a cake that’s been in the sun too long. This gravitational pull has left lines on either side of my mouth, starting at the corners and working their way down to my chin, leaving me looking like a ventriloquist dummy. I’m terrified of ventriloquist dummies. Is that why I’m afraid to look in the mirror?

It doesn’t take Nancy Drew to figure out what’s going on here. I’m not really afraid of the wrinkles and the dough balls. I’m afraid of the ticking clock. The high school guidance counselor is tapping his pencil on his desk, saying, “Ok, missy, graduation is almost here. What do you want to do with your life?” and suddenly there are so many answers to that question that I’m scared I won’t have time to check them all off the list.

Fear of not accomplishing life-long goals

Right around the time the wrinkles showed up, I started this blog. Coincidence?

Writing was the first and only thing I ever really wanted to do with my life. My childhood best friend, Jenny, had a mom who was a writer. She wrote fiction for young adults before it was popular to do so. She would come to our school and tell us how she started out writing in a closet and how she got her ideas from clippings she saw in newspapers and people from her own life. She made me feel like I could do it, too.

Since I was Jenny’s friend, I got to see her actual office. It wasn’t in a closet anymore. It was a huge, brightly lit room with a big desk and an enormous “Gone With the Wind” poster. The covers from all her books were framed on the wall. I wanted to spend my life in an office exactly like that.

I made a few attempts at a writing career, but a box full of articles on school board meetings and a handful of chapters of a book that will never get finished doesn’t necessarily make you a writer. Not the kind I wanted to be anyway. I had to push myself to do something more.

So, I started a blog to fulfill that lifelong dream of being a writer.

What about wanting to recapture my youth? That’s another sign of a mid-life crisis, right?

I’m pretty sure I’ve got that box checked off, too. See “The Summer I Went To Kellerman’s”  and “When Loving the Backstreet Boys Hurts” for evidence.

In her essay “On Keeping a Notebook,” Joan Didion wrote, “I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be.” I’m not sure I’ve lost touch with those people, yet. They are still here. They are these little girls walking around in big lady high heels saying, “How did we end up here? Weren’t we supposed to be something by now? And why do we look like that?”

But I can feel them slipping away just a bit.

So, I started a blog to recapture my youth.

What about wanting to do something new with your life?

My friend recently bought a house, and before she bought it, she took me to see it.

It was a time capsule. I don’t think anything had changed in that house since about 1968. There were framed needlepoint pictures on the walls. There were collections of souvenir thimbles, bells and spoons. There was a typewriter. Not a computer. Just a typewriter.

In the basement was a phone hanging on the wall with a cord so long you could jump rope with it. It stretched all the way across the room to a gold velour arm-chair. I imagined someone sitting there, legs crossed, one foot bobbing, twisting that cord round and round a finger distractedly while talking on the phone.

And on the kitchen table was a bowl of wax fruit.

This “fruit” got me thinking – at what point does your life become fixed? When do you decide, “Ok, this is it. My life is exactly the way I want it?”

When do you start preserving your life with wax facsimiles?

I wonder what my house will look like when I’m old. Will I be eating off the same set of dishes and sitting on the same couch? Will that box of old Pixies cassettes and John Cusack VHS tapes still be molding in the basement?

Will I still have Converses in my closet? Or will I be wearing new-aged space boots like everyone else? Which is scarier? Can I have both?

I don’t want to quit evolving.

So, I started a blog to keep moving forward.

Is this blog my mid-life crisis?

Probably. Do I care? Nah.

Because this blog has finally helped me get that high school counselor off my back. It helped me say to those younger versions of me, “Hey, look what we’re doing!” And it helped me figure out a way to move forward and go back at the same time.

It won’t solve is my dough-ball kneecaps. But hopefully, when I’m really old and doughy, I will have a box full of something in the basement that says, “You are a writer.”

The Summer I Went to Kellerman’s

I took my girls to the park the other day. It was a little cold – barely 70 degrees. Two teenage girls walked by me in bikinis, headed down to the nearby beach, not a goosebump on their tanned, toned flesh. I looked down at myself. I was wearing a cardigan and orthopedic flip flops. How are they not freezing their unwrinkled asses off? I thought. Silly kids.

I shook my head and turned back to my book. Not more than a minute later, a handful of shirtless teenage boys walked by. Huh, that’s weird. Why are all these kids half-naked?

Then, liked greased lightning, it struck me….the shirtless boys were following the bikini-clad girls. Duh, Nancy Drew. It’s summertime, and that means summer romances are in full bloom. Everybody, I mean, everybody’s in love.

I remember my first taste of summer love. It happened when I was 13 years old. His name was Johnny. He was a dancer at a resort in the Catskills, and he was AMAZING! It all started because he had this friend, Penny, who got knocked up by Robbie the creep and she needed an abortion….wait, wait, wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. I should back up a bit, put things in context for you….

It was the summer of 1988, when nobody called me “baby” and it definitely occurred to me to mind.

I hadn’t had a real boyfriend yet. Just a long list of celebrity crushes which included the likes of Bo Duke, Gopher from “The Love Boat,” Gilbert Blythe from PBS’s “Anne of Green Gables” (god rest his hunky soul) and Joey McIntyre. The list was about to get obliterated, though, because 1988 was the summer I saw “Dirty Dancing” for the first time, and it blew my Gilbert-Blythe-lovin’ mind.

Thirteen is a bad age for a lot of people, but especially for me. I was dorky in the most tragic way possible. I still played with Barbies. I read a lot of books. I once used a beige eyeshadow in place of foundation because I thought they were the same thing and then went to a babysitting gig that way. I carried a watermelon through my adolescence.

All I wanted was for a boy to like me. I thought if that happened, then that would mean I was normal and everything would be fine. I just didn’t have a clue how to make it happen. Then I saw Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey dancing on a log together and somehow felt they could help me.

I’m not even sure why exactly. On the surface, there wasn’t a lot I could relate to. I had never been to a resort. I had never asked my dad for money to help a dancer I just met get an abortion. I couldn’t even stay out past 9 p.m.

But Baby and I did have a few things in common – the awkward hair; the awkward conversations with guys; the pretty, popular older sister. I was tired of being me, just like Baby was. I wanted something exciting to happen. I wanted to feel like an adult. (I also wanted to know about sex, and this movie was the closest I was going to get to figuring that out short of watching porn. “Basic Instinct” hadn’t come out yet.)

Baby gave me hope. And if she could bag a hunk like Johnny, then I was her disciple. I got a copy of the movie for Christmas and watched it every day like it was an afternoon special. I lived and breathed the gospel according to Frances Houseman.

I figured the first step was to improve my look. Somehow I got it in my head that if I looked more like Baby, all my boy problems would be solved. (It didn’t occur to me that the whole still-playing-with-Barbies thing might have had something to do with it.) So I cut my jeans into shorts, bought knock-off Keds, and begged for a perm. My mom would only let me get one if it was an Ogilvy home perm, just like the ones she had been giving to my grandmother in our kitchen every six to eight months. What teen girl wouldn’t love to have her not-fully-grown-out mullet permed to look just like her grandmother? The effect was less Jennifer Grey and more Rosie O’Donnell.

Needless to say, it didn’t work. I had no choice but to spend my summer nights watching Baby and Johnny dry hump all over the Catskills. When I got a little tired of that, I would act out alternative Baby/Johnny story lines with my Barbies. Sometimes Johnny would go to the Peace Corps with Baby. Other times she would stay at Kellerman’s with him and they would teach dancing lessons together. Either way, it didn’t matter, because they had sex and therefore were in love, and they would stay that way for the rest of their lives. Amen.

That’s what’s weird about this now. As an adult, I feel like I totally missed the whole point of the movie. I didn’t get that it was just a summer fling. I honestly thought Baby and Johnny ended up together, raising a bunch of curly-haired, spaghetti-armed children.

I didn’t realize until recently that Baby and Johnny never even said “I love you” to each other. I had to go back and think through the dialogue in my head (which wasn’t hard since I spent nearly three years committing the film to memory), but it’s not there. How and why did I miss it?

Because all I knew about sex at that age was that you only do it with someone you are in love with and are preferably engaged/married to. That’s it. Ever. It didn’t occur to me that people might have sex for other reasons. That’s because 13-year-olds don’t know shit about adult relationships.

Here’s another example of my naivete. Around this same time I saw the movie “Great Balls of Fire” and thought it was totally reasonable for Jerry Lee Lewis to want to marry his 13-year-old cousin. Thank god the internet hadn’t been invented yet, or I might have wound up with one of those “Dateline” predators.

My own daughter will turn 13 next month. I considered watching “Dirty Dancing’ with her. I haven’t seen the movie in almost two decades. But I don’t think I will. Not because I have a problem with the whole coming-of-age-burgeoning-sexuality thing. I just don’t think she will be interested. Unlike me at that age, she’s happy with who she is and isn’t in a hurry to grow up. And I’m not in any rush to change that.

Also, if I watch the movie now, I won’t be able to watch it the same way. Part of me still wants to believe Baby and Johnny made it after all. I like that ending better.

The Nuts on Those Guys

I may have a new reason to quit smoking: squirrels. Stupid beady-eyed, bushy-tailed, acorn-pilfering squirrels. Not what you were expecting? Me either.

It all started with a bad blog post. I was trying to make an ill-conceived idea work and was stuck. I figured a break would do me good. I would sit outside on my back deck, soak up some sunshine and nicotine, and head back inside reinvigorated, if not a bit buzzy.

I knew I shouldn’t have been out there. I’ve been trying to quit smoking for awhile. It’s a stupid, disgusting and expensive habit, but I justify it because I don’t smoke a lot – less than a pack a week. It’s just something I like to indulge in from time to time because it makes me feel young for five minutes. Then I spend the rest of the day feeling asthmatic and sick.

It doesn’t help that our deck is the perfect place to smoke. It’s flanked by two huge oak trees, providing plenty of shade and the opportunity to watch the birds and squirrels carry on the way birds and squirrels do from a comfortable distance. Usually. Nature was about to get uncomfortably close.

I heard the chirping first. It sounded friendly and cute so I looked over and saw three squirrels chasing each other around the trunk of the left tree. At first it seemed like they were just having a good time, like a rough and tumble gang of young neighborhood boys looking to mix it up a bit. Aww, how adorable, I thought. I love being so close to nature.

But then their chittering got more aggressive. I realized the squirrel being chased had maybe gotten himself into a spot of trouble with the other two, and shit was starting to get real.

The squirrel was partway down the tree, right where the trunk lines up with the deck railing. He looked at me. I looked at him. We both knew he had one of three options – under, around or through the deck. The deck I was sitting in the middle of. I paused, cigarette halfway to my mouth. Please, lord, not through me.

He chose under and I let out a wheezy sigh of relief.

Relief was fleeting, though. The other two squirrels followed him and now all three were in the right tree directly behind me. I could hear their chirps and their little squirrel claws scraping the bark, but I couldn’t see them. It was terrifying. They sounded like they were level with my exposed neck. Then the chirps and scraping stopped. I slowly turned my head and once again I was eye-to-eye with one of the little thugs. He stared at me, sniffing the smoke in the air (somewhat judgmentally, if you ask me). I got the distinct impression that if he moved, it was going to be through rather than under.

I stood up quickly, practically knocking over my chair, but not dropping my cigarette. The clatter scared him, and he scurried off into the yard, the other two tailing him.

Feeling like they were at a safe distance, I sat down to finish my cigarette, keeping a close eye on the yard.

Then I heard more chittering and scraping from the left tree again. Four more squirrels were scurrying around the trunk chasing each other. Jesus. I now had seven squirrels darting around the yard, scaling the trees, and running under the deck in a dizzying circle of aggression. It was like a squirrel fight club out there.

One of the little jagweeds put a tentative paw on the railing and took a few steps, preparing to scamper across it like Mary Lou Retton. Another one was brazen enough to take the steps up and onto the deck, within inches of my chair. They were closing in on me.

Illustration by Timothy J. Pieper

Sadly, this wasn’t the first time a squirrel had tried to intimidate a member of my family in our own yard.

A couple of summers ago, my husband was outside playing with our two daughters when a squirrel ran out of a tree and started racing toward them. He stopped inches from where they were playing, hunkered down and lunged at them, doing that maniacal chittering thing the whole time. He chased my family all the way around the yard to the front of the house, where my husband shepherded my two crying children onto the deck. They were cornered there while my husband frantically fished around in his pocket for the house keys.

Even after they were inside, the squirrel stood out there on the steps, going apeshit at them like a crazed maniac. My husband called animal control, thinking maybe the squirrel had rabies. The lady said squirrels don’t get rabies. Apparently our squirrel was just an asshole.

So there I was, on our deck, the insane squirrel posse surrounding me. Did I put my cigarette out? No. I jumped up, finished smoking it and then rushed back inside. Who’s the crazy one?

Now I’m running out of places to smoke. My deck – once a sanctuary where I could sit with my nicotine-filled smoky treats and try to connect with nature – is now a place of dread and fear. Nature has spoken. In less than five minutes, those squirrels might have accomplished what no black-lung ad campaign or the cries of my children has. Or maybe I could just smoke in the garage.

Words and Guitar

“Live music is pointless.”

This is what my husband’s co-worker said when my husband told him we were going to Columbia, Missouri, to see the band Sleater-Kinney.

My husband was dumbfounded. He is a man who had his glasses smashed in the mosh pit at a Nirvana concert and wears that fact like a badge of honor, so this statement just didn’t compute.

“What? Why?”

His co-worker shrugged. “I have the recording. Why do I need to see them perform it live?”

On one age-spotted hand, I could kind of see his point. For some people, there comes a time when it’s not cool to have your glasses smashed, even if a living, breathing Kurt Cobain is providing the soundtrack. Your home is comfortable and glasses are expensive.

I also might have been more receptive to this guy’s agrument because, honestly, I didn’t really want to go. In fact, I actively avoided planning the trip, which is weird for me because I love to control – I mean, um, plan things. My apathy led me to do things like encourage my husband to book us a room at a bed and breakfast and stop at a winery along the way. Woo. Rock and roll.

I didn’t want to go because I wasn’t a fan of the band, and I felt bad about it. I wanted to like them. I tried to like them. I felt like I should like them. I just didn’t.

Sleater-Kinney was one of the original “riot grrrl” bands back in the 90s. They were fierce and smart and punk. Being a young woman in the 90s, they were exactly the type of band I should have been into. Unfortunately, the closest I got to being a “riot grrrl” was an Alanis Morrissette CD, a pack of Marlboro Lights, and a tattoo…of a butterfly…on my ankle. At that point in my life, I didn’t really know where I fit in. I was stuck in this weird space where I admired both Mariah Carey and Courtney Love.

There were certain aspects of the band I was into – mostly the girly stuff like how they dressed – but sonically I just wasn’t there. Deep down I thought their music was noisy and abrasive and felt some of their lyrics were just flat-out stupid.

But my husband loves Sleater-Kinney and I love my husband, so I agreed to drive four and a half hours, pay $56 for tickets and stay in a bed and breakfast in a college town I didn’t want to be in to see a band I didn’t really like.

As we hurtled over the Iowa border and through Missouri toward Columbia – anti-abortion billboards, fireworks emporiums, and businesses with names like Curly Judd’s Motors flashing by – we put in a Sleater-Kinney album and I tried to work up some enthusiasm.

When we got to the venue, I realized it was a general admission show, and it made me feel about a hundred years old. No seats! How was I going to make it through the entire show? The opening act wasn’t due to come on stage for another half an hour and my feet and back were already aching. I found myself wondering if I should have grabbed the free earplugs off the nightstand at the bed and breakfast. Once I started thinking about our room, I started thinking about bed and how tired I was, and I just wanted to leave.

As soon as Sleater-Kinney took the stage, though, it was like I snapped back into place. Corrin Tucker’s vocals weren’t abrasive. They were powerful. Carrie Browstein filled up that stage in a way that would put Mick Jagger to shame. And the drummer – Janet Weiss – oh my god. I couldn’t stop watching her. This is embarrassing to be saying in 2015, but I have never seen a woman play drums live outside of marching band. And she was beating the shit out them.

I was into this band in a way I hadn’t been into a band in a long time. I was surprised to feel music so intensely. When I was younger, I could lay on my bedroom floor and listen to music for hours. At that age, you feel everything so deeply – maybe because you’re falling in love and getting your heart broken on a seemingly endless loop so all those sappy love songs and rage-filled anthems just make sense to you.

But, you get a little older, and you get a little more comfortable in your life, and music can become like wallpaper. It’s nice to have it there, but you don’t need it to be there.

As I watched those three women kick ass on stage, I felt that old rush. It was like I was hearing the songs for the first time. The whole thing was mind-blowing. And I wasn’t drunk. No way was I going to pay $7 for a beer.

I also had fun watching my husband enjoy the show. He nervously bought a t-shirt and pulled it on over his button-up. He didn’t want to go the bathroom for fear of missing a single song. He bobbed his head to the beat. He jumped. He hollered. It reminded me of one of the reasons I fell in love with him in the first place. He got music the same way I did.

So here’s where my husband’s co-worker’s logic is flawed – I was not a fan of Sleater-Kinney before this weekend. If my husband put on one of their albums, I would generally leave the room. But about two songs into the show, I was in love with them.

Going to this show made me experience things I never would have if I had just stayed home and listened to their albums in my living room. It blew my mind. It made me crush on my husband again. It made me love a band I previously hated.

Live music did that to me.

Dial “D” For Dummy

We have a madman living in our basement.

As far as blood-thirsty lunatics go, he isn’t so bad. He mostly keeps to himself. If any dastardly deeds are going on, we don’t know about it. In fact, we have never even see the guy – I mean NEVER. Maybe because he is purely a figment of our 8-year-old’s imagination.

It started about six months ago. Zoe was down in the basement looking for popsicle sticks and glue to make a table for her dollhouse, just as sweet and innocent as can be. As she turned off the lights, she looked back and that’s when she saw it – or thought she saw it. It was the hand of a shadowy figure curling its long fingers around the doorframe of the laundry room.

Her 12-year-old sister was upstairs at the time, so Zoe bolted up the stairs to tell her what she saw. Instead of putting her fears to rest, Amelia egged her on, convincing her that what she saw was real.

And that one little lie has led to this imaginary deranged psycho taking up permanent residence in our home. We should start charging rent.

My husband and I have tried to tell her it’s all in her head. We’ve pointed out numerous times that if there was a madman who lived in our basement, wouldn’t he have gotten to one of us first? We go down there almost every day to do laundry. Does he have something against middle-aged people? Is our flesh too tough or too flabby?

But like a science-denier in a climate change discussion, Zoe refuses to accept logic in the face of zero proof.

If she needs to go down there she will whine, beg and plead for one of us to go down there with her. If she is forced to go alone, she will stand timidly at the top of the stairs, staring down into the darkness, dramatically biting her nails and knocking her knees together like a cartoon character until one of us finally mutters, “Oh, come on already.”

She will then take a deep breath and hurry down as fast as she can. Once she’s finished her business, she hurries back up the steps two at a time, as if a madman is chasing her, which, of course, she thinks there is.

Because her sister made her think there was one. That’s what big sisters do. They are evil. I should know. I have two of them.

Debbie and I are closer in age – we’re only 15 months apart – so it goes without saying that I suffered the most at her hands. She was mean. I need to reiterate the WAS part here, because Debbie is a truly great sister…now. But, growing up, she was my own personal nightmare. You know that bully from “A Christmas Story?” Scott Farkus? Well, imagine you shared a room with pre-menstrual Scott Farkus and you get a rough idea of what it was like to have Debbie as an older sister. I feared her wrath on a daily basis.

But Debbie’s tricks, while cruel and oftentimes inventive – there was one infamous incident where she poured bacon grease over my head – were nothing compared to the psychological damage inflicted upon me by my oldest sister, Christi.

Chrisit is 10 years older than me, and, in general, is one of the sweetest people you’ll ever meet. She was a great big sister to me and Debbie. She would do things like curl our hair, let us play with her makeup, and take us for rides around town at night so she could smoke cigarettes.

The problem with Christi was you would never see the torture coming until you were “stranded” on the side of a gravel road next to a darkened cornfield on one of those cigarette runs and being told the only way you could get home was to go through the cornfield – on foot – after just being told the terrifying true story of a girl who was raped and murdered in a cornfield in your hometown.

Probably the worst thing Christi ever did was make me believe a ventroliquist dummy was trying to kill me.

I was 6 or 7. Christi was home babysitting us. We had just finished “The Love Boat” and I thought were were going to watch “Fantasy Island” next like we always did. Instead, Christi turned off the TV. There was a scary movie on that she and our older brothers wanted to watch and she wanted us to go to bed.

We wanted to watch the movie, too, but Christi wouldn’t budge. We stormed off to bed truly pissed. We weren’t going to go to sleep. Skip that! So, Debbie and I laid there laughing and giggling, hitting each other with pillows, being as totally annoying as we could.

That was when we got our first warning. Christi opened the door. “Knock it off!”

Of course, we didn’t. In fact, we probably ramped it up just a bit.

A little while later, the door creaked open again, but this time it wasn’t my sister. It was my brother’s ventriloquist dummy.

“If you girls don’t settle down, I’m going to get you!”

Now, I was already a little jeebed out by the thing. He lived in a black suitcase at the back of my brother’s closet, and the suitcase was lined with red velvet, just like Dracula’s coffin. When my brother would get him out of his “casket,” his arms and legs would just hang there lifelessly. The only thing that would move was his head. It was quite an off-putting effect.

But I knew the thing was just a puppet. And I knew it was really just Christi in the doorway trying to scare us into going to bed. I’m pretty sure you won’t find this strategy mentioned in any babysitter’s handbook, but I guess you could give her points for ingenuity. Unfortunately for her, it was pretty ineffective. We didn’t quiet down.

A little while later the door creaked open again and the dummy’s head reappeared.

“I TOLD YOU TO QUIET DOWN! NOW YOU’RE GOING TO GET IT!!!!”

What happened next is a little confusing. Again, up until this point in the story, I knew that it was just a puppet and my sister was controlling it. But after screaming at us from the doorway, the thing took flight – its skinny appendages flapping behind it – and the lines of reality began to blur. How could the thing fly across the room like that if it wasn’t possessed? It had to be an instrument of the devil! And then it landed on top of me! I started to scream and flail around, which made it seem like it was flopping around on top of me. I thought it was actually moving of its own free will! And not just moving, but trying to murder me!

I don’t remember what happened next. Maybe I blacked out from terror.

But every night after that was a nightmare. I would wake up in the middle of the night, convinced I could hear the dummy’s wood feet slowly making its way down the hallway from my brother’s room to ours. I could imagine its arms and legs moving in the jerky, unnatural way that puppets move, one hand clutching a kitchen kife, its head moving from side to side to make sure no one was around to witness his diabolic act. I swore I could see its unblinking blue eye staring at me through the peephole. I would lie there frozen. He would reach his hand up to turn the knob and….

I can’t even finish. I’m starting to give myself the heebie-jeebies.

To this day, I hate ventriloquist dummies with their stupid plastic hair and their idiotic bow ties. I’m not supposed to be terrified of them! I’m supposed to find them amusing and whimsical like everyone else. Thanks, Christi!

You know, the more I think about this, the more I think that instead of being afraid of boogeymen, ghosts or ventriloquist dummies, what we really need to fear is our own flesh and blood. They are the real monsters.