Too Much Information
All I wanted to do was buy two potholders and a box of soap dispensing scrub wand refills.
The big box store had them.
Willing buyer, willing seller.
I give you money, you give me the stuff.
In. Out.
I don’t blame the cashier. She just asks the questions.
But for the love of Sister Jean Clare, enough.
No, I don’t want to give you my telephone number.
No, this won’t be on my big box store account.
No, I don’t have an account.
No, thank you, I don’t want one.
No, I don’t want to donate $1 to Charity X so you, big box store, can donate a collective mega amount to write off as a corporate charitable deduction.
Oh for the good old Woolworth days.
The Rhymes-With-Witching Hour
When my kids reached their mid teens, I bade farewell to what I affectionately refer to as The Bitching Hour.
That special time between the kids blasting through the door and the four of us breaking bread. Those special bonding moments at the end of the day when hormones and attitude meet whoever-gets-it-first hunger.
I’m here to witness to the fact that The Bitching Hour lives.
To-wit:
The almost-seventeen year old drags herself through the front door with that perky shoot-to-kill look. She disappears into her room for a few minutes then emerges to bark that she’s going to the Y for a work out. Saints be praised.
She races back and forth, up to her room and down, backpack in tow, zipping and unzipping. I’ve been away from the law for a few years, but my reasoning skills are still keen.
“Can I help you find something?”
The sweet death-star look in her eyes dissuades me.
Seconds later, she calls to me from her room.
“Mmm-ommy?” she croons. “I can’t find my wallet.”
Now at this point, I think it’s reasonable to ask a series of logical wallet questions such as the last sighting, etc.
Wrong. Said questions are unnecessary, redundant and stupid.
Clamped by teeth, my tongue remains firmly in place as I turn and walk.
While she races back to school, I commence a drop and search of her bedroom floor.
Several minute later the phone rings. She’s located the wallet on the bottom of her school locker.
Everything’s there. Except the driver’s license.
The license, I am told, is on her bedroom floor, near the computer.
I return to the floor. Crawling. Swearing. Feeling special.
The phone rings again. It’s the eighteen-year-old.
His life is over. Bowling practice was crappy. Damn lanes. Damn ball. Damn freshman upstart. He’s convinced he won’t make varsity this year.
He needs a mom. I can only manage half a one.
I call the seventeen-year-old to inform her that my search and rescue has not recovered a driver’s license.
“Oh my gawd, Mom. It’s right there! By the computer!”
She returns home and walks upstairs.
“Oh my gawd, Mom. Here it is. I told you!”
“Hannah, I scoured that floor.”
“Oh my gawd, Mom. It was in my garbage can right there by the computer. It was in the trash I had to pick up after Gabbie (the mini Dachshund and boss of the world) dumped it over!”
I spent the rest of The Rhymes-With-Witching Hour with Jack Daniels.
Dear George & Donald
“The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
Oh, is that how they word it?
That makes 2,781 since March 19, 2003.
Sister Jean Clare
Some people and places just stick with you.
Sister Jean Clare is one of those people.
She was the principal and I a pupil at St. John’s Catholic School in Spring Green, Wisconsin, in the early 1960s.
Everybody called her Sister Jean Clare. Not Sister. Not Sister Jean.
Even in my first-graderness I knew that Sister Jean Clare was not like other nuns at St. John’s. Certainly not like spindly Sister Bernadine, whose skin always looked pasty and was the kind of nun whose habit you wanted to lift up or you wanted to aggravate just for the hell of it.
Sister Jean Clare could have been a soccer player or a CEO. A compact, olive-skinned beauty with fiery coffee bean eyes and hair, what we could see of it, the color of black licorice sticks. One look from her told you she knew exactly what you were up to and even what you were thinking about being up to.
And no habit lifting with Sister Jean Clare. I was afraid that she’d whoosh up her skirt in both hands and invite me to have a real look, saying something like, “Just like yours, only bigger!” Then I would have been stuck with not only having to go to confession for blasphemy against a nun, but the trauma of verbalizing the whole thing to Father Fellenz.
Sister Jean Clare also taught the eighth grade at St. John’s. She made the eighth graders buddy up with first graders for fire drills and to walk to morning Mass each school day. Something about modeling good behavior.
All that modeling would be lost on me until years later when Catholic school recall kicked in.
For the time being, I was too busy watching Sister Jean Clare’s coffee bean eyes.
Bun Warmers
Bun Warmer [bun-warmer] – noun.
ʃi, A beverage consisting of hot coffee, amaretto and Irish creme liqueurs; known to be basic to the survival of the parent of teenagers, particularly in colder climates.
Some things should be above and beyond the call of parental duty.
Sitting on aluminum bleachers in the dark in a thirty-five degree Nor’wester to watch a Homecoming week Powder Puff football game.
On a weeknight for god’s sake.
Sipping a jumbo coffee sans amaretto and Irish creme, tempered to lukewarm by the aforementioned Nor’wester.
Operating a 35mm camera while wearing an unmatched pair of leather gloves insulated with the two-for-a-dollar black knit Walgreens gloves.
Not being allowed to cover my eyes in order to avoid the sight of the it’s-not-that-cold-I’ll-be-fine sixteen-year-old playing front line on the frozen tundra.
Suiting up to do it all over again for tonight’s Homecoming football game.
Yee Bun Warmin’ ha.
Cold War Parenting, Part 2
ban‧shee [ban-shee, ban-shee] – noun.
(In Irish folklore) a spirit in the form of a wailing woman who appears to or is heard by members of a family as a sign that one of them [usually one of the adolescent species] is about to die. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1)
As in Screaming Banshee.
Fortunately, the creature’s survival is not dependent upon Irish genes alone.
The banshee has recently been spotted in northern Illinois among women of Polish and Hungarian descent as well.
Also known as the famed Screeching Pierogi.
Howling Kielbasa.
Trilling Torta.
And the ever popular Bellowing Kolbász.
Senior What Days?
The eighteen-year-old high school senior got his first college acceptance yesterday.
He immediately commenced the Senior Stress Days campaign.
Undeterred by the fact that we’ve yet to hit semester exams, His Senior-ness presses on.
Campaign groundrules have yet to be resolved. Suffice it to say that doo da and a fan are currently engaged in a close encounter.
Based upon preliminary discussions, I’ve deduced the following.
Senior Stress Day: a period of time within the parameters of a legally designated school day during which a student who has attained the level of Senior is AWOP. Away WithOut Parental knowledge and/or consent.
Saturdays, Sundays and legally designated school holidays excluded.
Said Days, taken at the sole discretion of the Senior, may follow a particularly taxing week of exams, a too-short weekend or an oh-shit-is-that-paper-due-today moment.
Alternatively, said Days may be granted by the mother of said Senior solely for silent retreats courtesy of the Jesuits upon information that a repeat visit to any and all strip clubs without prior notice to the mother of said Senior has occurred.
Compare and Contrast
Teenagers and a certain Speaker of the United States House of Representatives have a lot in common.
To-wit:
What?
What’d I do?
You never told me that!
I don’t remember you telling me that.
Do you realize how much I’ve got going on?! I can’t remember everything, you know!
I didn’t do anything!
It wasn’t me!
No way, dude. It didn’t happen that way.
And the always popular …
I was absent that day.
