Why I Just Sent My Parents a Card for Their Golden Anniversary

 Essays, Family, Humor, Memory Mondays, Parents, Relationships  No Responses »
May 202013
 

Golden Anniversary CakeI asked my mother what she wanted for her 50th anniver­sary on Sat­ur­day, and she said, “A divorce!” I was shocked only for a moment before I heard her famil­iar cackle.

““No, really, Mom. What do you and dad want to do?” I asked. My older sis­ter, Vicki, and I had dis­cussed ideas, pos­si­bly send­ing our par­ents on a cruise, but our mother is noto­ri­ous about tim­ing and destinations.

““Well, I don’t know when we’d go,” she said. “I’m not sure when my next belly danc­ing recital is, and I think your father has another colonoscopy com­ing up.”

““What about a cruise to Cancun?”

““Isn’t that where those col­lege kids got decap­i­tated by those devil worshipers?””

““Um, I don’t recall that.”

““Yeah, I think they scooped their brains out and ate Campbell’s Tomato Soup out of their skulls.”

““What about the Bahamas?”

““What if we dis­ap­pear into the Bermuda Tri­an­gle? Your father and I would have to have a yard sale first. I wouldn’t want to bur­den you with all this junk if we’re abducted by aliens from Atlantis.”

I asked Mom if, per­haps, she and Dad wanted a party.

““Who would we invite? Most of our fam­ily and friends are dead.”

““What about Dad’s friends from the gun club and your friends from Zumba?”

““Well, we’re friendly with them when we see them, but they’re not the kind of friends you invite to a golden anniver­sary party. You need to know them a while before you invite peo­ple to that kind of thing.”

““You still have a week,” I said.

““Look, I didn’t even tell the church our 50th anniver­sary was com­ing up. They make you stand up in front of the con­gre­ga­tion and one of the elders present you with an engraved platter.”

““You don’t want an engraved plat­ter to cel­e­brate your half-century of love with Dad?”

““Not if I have to dust it, let alone find a place for it. Where am I going to put it? Your father has ammo and his flash­light col­lec­tion in every room in this house!”

““What if I just send you card?” I asked.

““That would be lovely.”

““Have you asked Dad what he wants to do?”

““I did. He doesn’t really want to make a fuss, except go to Rosa’s Can­tina for din­ner,” Mom said. “It’s Taco Night and seniors receive free drinks. Noth­ing makes your father hap­pier than Diet Dr. Pep­per in a to-go cup.”

““Wow, y’all are grab­bing the bull by the horns, aren’t you?”

In the back­ground, I heard my father snor­ing, and I could pic­ture him, head thrown back against the sofa, mouth open, glasses askew on the bridge of his nose.

“Yessiree, every day with your father is an adven­ture,” Mom said. “What more could a girl ask for?”

Mother & Toddler Stunt Team Fall into Controversy

 Babies, Family, Humor, Kids, Movies, Parents, Parody, Tall Tale Tuesdays  No Responses »
Apr 092013
 

Mother and ToddlerWhen movie pro­duc­ers need a mother and child for a flee­ing vil­lian to knock out of the way, fall from a bal­cony, or mauled by a Rot­tweiler, they call Mandy Knox and her two-year-old daugh­ter, Gertie.

““I never con­sid­ered a career as a stunt mother until a friend make a joke about how clumsy I seemed to be, yet always man­aged to pro­tect Ger­tie,” said Mandy, 27. “I mean, I was con­stantly falling down the stairs with her or acci­den­tally rolling my shop­ping cart into a dis­play of patio stones at the hard­ware store that would then fall on my head.”

Notic­ing how baby Ger­tie seemed to delight in her mother’s clutzi­ness and how resilient Mandy seemed to be, a cast­ing direc­tor for Father’s Day 4: Daddy’s Home offered the mother and daugh­ter an oppor­tu­nity to appear in the movie if they would fall down a spi­ral staircase.

““Ger­tie and I had such a blast, we opened our own stunt mother and child company—Hard Knox Stunts–and we’ve been going gang­busters ever since.”

Some crit­ics, how­ever, con­sider Hard Knox Stunts to be a form of child exploita­tion, if not not abuse. “What kind of mother tosses her child into an aquar­ium of Pirhanah?” asked Jane Moureau, 48, a child advo­cate. “What’s next? A sausage grinder?”

Mandy main­tains she is still a lov­ing, car­ing mother. “Ger­tie is always in bed in by seven o’clock every night, she eats well-balanced, nutri­tious meals, and spends qual­ity time every day with her father and me. I don’t under­stand what the big deal is about. Ger­tie and I always put safety first.”

A recent inves­ti­ga­tion by the Depart­ment of Fam­ily and Children’s Ser­vices (DFCS) after Mandy and Ger­tie were set on fire in Bad Nanny Returns revealed no signs of child abuse or neglect.

When asked how long the mother and daugh­ter stunt team will con­tinue to work, Mandy shrugs and said, “It’s up to Ger­tie. If it starts to feel too much like work and she gets bored, we’ll quit. I only want her to do this while it’s still fun.”

Next up for Mandy and Ger­tie, they will be torn apart in Zombie Poo­dles from Hell.

Circuit Party Created for Gays & Their Kids

 Babies, Family, Gay, Humor, Kids, Lesbians, LGBT, Parody  No Responses »
Apr 022013
 

Baby with Rainbow FlagA new White Party™ event will be intro­duced this fall–The Dia­per Party.

With the explo­sive growth of LGBT cou­ples who have adopted or con­ceived their own chil­dren, many pre­vi­ous patrons of White Party™ events no longer feel there is a place for them on the circuit.

Tak­ing dif­fer­ences of lifestyle into con­sid­er­a­tion, orga­niz­ers are plan­ning a party that will appeal to LGBT parents.

““It was really a no brainer,” said Dia­per Party mas­ter­mind Sky Tatum, 29.  “Since the White Party™ has always been about gay men wear­ing a tiny piece of white cloth, it seemed like one of the few places that LGBT par­ty­go­ers and their young chil­dren could dress alike.”

In addi­tion to the open bar for par­ents, the Dia­per Party will also offer a milk express sta­tion and pureed fruit and veg­etable buf­fet for the lit­tle party ani­mals.  Tatum promises that every child in atten­dane will receive a glow stick.

Musi­cal guests will include moth­ers Kris­tine W, Donna DeLory, and spe­cial guest Baby Psy per­form­ing his inter­na­tional smash “Goo Goo Style.”

Child­care will also be avail­able at a 15-minute rate for LGBT cou­ples who might care to spice their rela­tion­ship up with a three-way or an orgy in one of the pri­vate suites at the nearby hotels.

Some crit­ics have argues this type of behav­ior is exactly why LGBT peo­ple should not be allowed to have children.

““What’s the dif­fer­ence if you’re leav­ing your child with a babysit­ter to go see the new Julia Roberts flick or to get spit-roasted with two mus­cle boys while your part­ner watches?” Tatum said, “In the end, they’re still going to pick that kid up and take care of him and love him, although I’d rec­om­mend you brush your teeth before you start kiss­ing all over that baby.”

How to Find a Good Adoptive Family for Yourself Once You're an Adult

 Essays, Family, Holidays, Humor, Memory Mondays, Spirituality  No Responses »
Apr 012013
 

Easter DinnerGrow­ing up, I never expected to live over 800 miles away from my fam­ily, yet here I am in Atlanta and they remain in Texas. We talk on the tele­phone and I see them at Christ­mas, but there are so many other hol­i­days that are usu­ally spent with fam­ily, it’s easy to feel alone.

It didn’t take long for 2Fs fam­ily to adopt me after I moved to Atlanta in 1996. I really didn’t think there peo­ple still existed who would invite strangers over to fam­ily gath­er­ings, but that’s exactly what they do. And they keep invit­ing me back, even though they know how weird I am, to share their  hol­i­day meals with them.

Tonight, it was a smaller gath­er­ing, just 2Fs, his par­ents, his older sis­ter, his brother-in-law, and Rose, a fel­low trans­plant, like myself, who has unof­fi­cially been made part of the clan. The grand­kids have mar­ried and started their own fam­i­lies and are in Cal­i­for­nia and North Car­olina. Being the youngest at the table, a mere 45, I was con­cerned I would be forced to hunt Easter eggs, but they let me off the hook. Instead, we just chat­ted about what to do when a monk wan­ders into your office after cut­ting his fin­ger off with a cir­cu­lar saw, how to respond when the vet informs you your Cocker Spaniel has torn her ACL and her foot­ball career is over, and how one should react when enter­ing the train sta­tion and an elderly lady in Sun­day best sud­denly points at you and screams, “Fornicator!”

In addi­tion, we tried to remem­ber who was friends with whom on Face­book and how to find one another on the Face­book app on our iPhones to send friend requests. Evi­dently, I’ll friend any­body! They also got a kick out of my vir­tual bub­ble wrap app.

The evening ended with 2Fs’ mom hand­ing out our Easter bas­kets. That’s what makes it real, isn’t it? When a woman who didn’t give birth to you hands you a bas­ket filled with plas­tic grass, jelly­beans and milk choco­late eggs.

After going to church with 2Fs this morn­ing and hear­ing every­one talk about how Christ has risen, it’s inspir­ing to be reminded that there are still peo­ple who act like Jesus is watch­ing with­out try­ing to impress Him.

Have you been adopted by another family?

Top Ten Ways to Prove to Your Kids the Easter Bunny Has Been at Your House

 Animals, Family, Holidays, Humor, Kids, Parody, Top Ten Thursdays  2 Responses »
Mar 282013
 

Bunny PrintsThough he might not be as famous or as eagerly antic­i­pated as Santa Claus, chil­dren will be expect­ing the Easter Bunny to visit while their sleep­ing Sat­ur­day night in order to fill their bas­kets with candy and small toys.  Unfor­tu­nately, with the wealth of infor­ma­tion avail­able on the Inter­net, chil­dren are becom­ing more skep­ti­cal.  Fear not, how­ever, as here are ten ways to prove to your kids that the Easter Bunny has been at your house:

01. Half-eaten car­rot in the ash tray

02. Unfin­ished car­rot juice in a mar­tini glass

03. Take a close-up pic­ture with your smart­phone of a rabbit’s face you pull up on the Inter­net, so your kids will think the Easter Bunny photo bombed your iPhone

o4. Slip your Jef­fer­son Air­plane Great­est Hits CD into your stereo and pause it on “White Rabbit.”

05. Stamp bunny foot­prints on a copy of the New Tes­ta­ment to show the Easter Bunny is truly a “bible thumper”

06. Turn on the tele­vi­sion and leave it tuned to Bugs Bunny cartoons–or the Play­boy Channel.

07. Leave a post-it note with scratchy hand­writ­ing that reads: IF YOU SEE ALICE, TELL HER TO TELL HER MAMA I SAID, “HELLO.”

08. Pho­to­shop a pic­ture of a rab­bit in your hot tub with his arms around a cou­ple of top­less supermodels.

09. Drop a hand­ful of milk choco­late eggs in the lit­ter box.  

10. Toss a bloody rabbit’s foot into the cen­ter of the table while the kids are argu­ing over break­fast.  (Who said you’d never find a use for that key­chain and fake blood?)

The Synchronicity of 1943

 Essays, Family, Humor, Memory Mondays, News of the Weird, Parents  1 Response »
Mar 112013
 

1943 NickelAccord­ing to psy­chol­o­gist Carl Jung, syn­chronic­ity is when two or more casu­ally unre­lated events that are unlikely to occur together and that have mean­ing happen.

Last Wednes­day 2Fs came home from the book­store and told me he found a nickel from 1943 in the cash till.  It’s not unheard of to find old coins in the cash reg­is­ter, but it’s rare.

Jeff went on to say that the cash deposit for that day turned out to be $19.43.

“Ooh, that’s weird,” I said.

“I know,” Jeff said.  “It got me think­ing that when that nickel was minted, my father was in the South Seas fight­ing in  World War II.  And then I won­dered what your dad was doing at that time, and it occurred to me that he might not have even been born yet.”

This com­ment gave me pause and my skin tin­gled.  “That’s even weirder than the nickel and the cash deposit.”

““Why’s that?” 2Fs asked.

““Today is my dad’s birth­day,” I said.  “Guess what year he was born?”

Jeff laughed.  “Don’t tell me … 1943.”

Happy 70th birth­day, Dad!

What  have been your expe­ri­ences with synchronicity?

Untruths My Father Told Me

 Animals, Essays, Family, Humor, Memory Mondays, Parents  1 Response »
Mar 042013
 

White FeatherMy father has told me three things that are not true:

1. Giant squids do not exist, which was soon dis­missed after watch­ing a Jacques Cousteau doc­u­men­tary. Daddy con­tin­ued to deny it.

2. It never snows in Waco, Texas. We bought this until we sent him out to pick up din­ner at Pizza Inn one Sat­ur­day night and he came back cov­ered in snowflakes. Busted!

3. You can never hit bird in the road, because they’ll always fly away before your car can hit them. I still remem­ber my mother dri­ving onto the entrance ramp to Inter­state 20 with con­fi­dence when she saw that dove in the road. My older sis­ter, Vicki, and I men­tioned that she might want to slow down, but Mama reminded us of what Daddy had said, just before a loud thump hit the car. We turned around and stared out the rearview mir­ror. A cloud of white feath­ers blew away, like a snow­storm.  Oops!

What untruths have your par­ents shared with you?

How to Successfully Call Friends and Never Speak with Them

 Communication, Essays, Family, Friends, Humor, Memory Mondays, Technology  3 Responses »
Feb 042013
 

Man Listening to Voicemail MessageIt’s not easy to talk to me, even though my iPhone is with me 24/7. It’s because I split my time between my day job and the book­store. When I’m not either of those places, I’m usu­ally run­ning errands, clean­ing the house, washing/drying clothes, or iron­ing. Some­where in the midst of all that activ­ity, I blog and write three pages per day on a com­ing of age novel that never seems to end. (Set in the ‘80s, the only thing keep­ing this story from being a mini series is Jane Sey­mour in a pair of should pads!)

Often when friends call me, I’m unable to speak with them, so I let them go to voice mail, with the inten­tion of return­ing the call as soon as pos­si­ble. Fre­quently, I’m unable to find the time or for­get until it’s after mid­night and I’m wind­ing down for the night, so I put it off until the next day … and then the next … and they told two friends, and so on, and so on.

Today, while I was iron­ing, the stars aligned and I real­ized I could call all the peo­ple I like and love (some­times they are exclu­sive) and have not spo­ken with in ages. I man­aged to speak with two of them, but left mes­sages for the rest, receiv­ing a text back from one before she went on stage for a mati­nee in Indi­anapo­lis. (You never know where in the world Cherry is! Iron­i­cally, she used to just live one street over from my house.) The rest, I didn’t hear back from, which makes me wonder.

I pic­ture them doing some­thing inter­est­ing, and their phone rings. They take a peek and see my name appear on the dis­play and think, Damn! I’d really love to take this call from Jef, because he’s such a witty and fas­ci­nat­ing fel­low, but it’s prob­a­bly not a good idea to do so while I’m assist­ing in the deliv­ery of a calf or under­cover as a teenage pros­ti­tute to stop the head of an inter­na­tional human traf­fick­ing ring in Walla Walla, Wash­ing­ton. Regret­fully, they let my call roll over into voice­mail and the cycle continues.

Here’s the dis­turb­ing part, though. The longer I go with­out return­ing a phone call to a friend, the more sub­con­scious pres­sure I feel to rem­edy the sit­u­a­tion, even though I might not have time to talk until sev­eral days from that moment. There­fore, I have pur­posely begun call­ing some friends when I know they can­not pos­si­bly take my call, because then I can say I have called and not have to talk to any­one when I don’t have time to talk. But I’ve returned the call and now the ball is in their court, which prob­a­bly explains why they usu­ally call me when it seems they should know I’m not afraid to talk. Will we ever connect?

Do you find it dif­fi­cult to con­nect with friends nowa­days? Do you ever pur­posely call a loved one when she’s not avail­able, just to trans­fer the respon­si­bil­ity of the phone call fall on her instead of you?

What I Learned from My Father After I Locked Him in His Car

 Communication, Essays, Family, Humor, Memory Mondays, Parents, Relationships, Self-Help  1 Response »
Jan 072013
 

Angry Older ManThe first thing you should know is that I didn’t intend to lock my dad in his car.  In fact, it never would have hap­pened in the first place if my par­ents didn’t insist that I drive when I visit them.  We were just run­ning up to Bed Bath and Beyond so mom could buy a Yonanas, and I asked my dad if he was com­ing inside the store with us.  He said no so I closed the door and fol­lowed my mom inside.

The sec­ond thing you should know is that my father receives a new com­pany car for his job every 6–12 months.  Every time I fly home to visit my fam­ily, I’m dri­ving a new car.  If you haven’t dri­ven a new car lately, let me tell you that they’re becom­ing very tech­no­log­i­cally advanced.  As a mat­ter of fact, my dad’s cur­rent car has a large black fob with a but­ton that flips the key out like a switch­blade.  (When I was car­ry­ing it, I had to resist the urge to hum the music from the fight scene in West Side Story.)

When Mom and I returned to the car, the door was locked.  After I opened it, my father cussed me out for lock­ing him in the car–and on top of it all, he had to go to the restroom.

Mom asked why he didn’t just open the door, and dad demon­strated that when one doesn’t have the key to the car and tries to open a locked door, the car goes on lock down with an alarm and flash­ing lights.  It would prob­a­bly be eas­ier to escape from a max­i­mum secu­rity prison.

Once my father had calmed down, I apol­o­gized.  I fig­ured I must have acci­den­tally locked the car when I was try­ing to shove the large black fob into the pocket of my jeans.  “Dad, if you couldn’t get out of the car, why didn’t you call Mom or me on our cell phones?”

My father blinked at me.  “Oh, yeah.”

For­tu­nately, we were just around the cor­ner from Whataburger where we had planned to go for lunch and my father was able to seek relief in the facil­i­ties.  What I took away from the expe­ri­ence, how­ever, is the fact that when we allow our­selves to get upset, we often can’t see the sim­plest deci­sion.  I plan to remem­ber this the next time I feel myself on the verge of fly­ing off the handle.

How have you allowed your­self to get upset and over­look the obvi­ous in the past?

Top Ten Most Unusual Things My Parents Said

 Family, Holidays, Humor, Parody, Top Ten Thursdays  No Responses »
Dec 272012
 

June and Ward CleaverWhen­ever I come home to visit my fam­ily, I’m always sur­prised by what new things I learn about my par­ents and the enter­tain­ing way they phrase their thoughts:

01. I’ll never for­get when we lived on the pig farm.

02. The A.A.R.P. just wants to take our guns away.

03. When­ever we got bored, we’d just wan­der down to Uncle Floyd’s dump and see what we could find.

04. You left me locked in this car and I about busted a gut I had to pee so bad.

05. Your father hasn’t been right since he hit his head.

06. Even though we never let you have a dog, I think you turned out all right.

07. You may count this cup­cake as five points, but I choose to count it as two.

08. Your mother is cov­et­ing my flan­nel shirt.  I think it’s the elbow patches.

09. Be hon­est.  Do you think this t-shirt has too much bling for me?

10. How can I ignore you if I can’t hear you?

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