The thing about life is that one day we all will be dead. It is a humbling feeling to know that eventually at a time not usually of your own choosing your body will become mutinous and you will die. It is the most natural thing to do and aside from being born the only other certainty we all share. I have been accused of being morbid for much of my life and while I may have a morbid curiosity, my fascination with death and dying is more reverence of life than anything else.
The other day someone indirectly questioned my lack of faith by wondering how it could be that someone can get up every day and live thinking that there is nothing after life but nothingness. Had I been given the opportunity to answer, I likely would have turned the question on them and asked them what their motivation was for today knowing they have an eternity to live? Both questions imply a certain amount of external motivation I suppose, yet the urgency of death being ever present in my mind is a constant reminder to make every day count. Sadly, I still fall quite short of my goal to live each day as if it were my last, but to me that is quintessentially human.
It never ceases to amaze me how people can compartmentalize their thoughts so well that mortality rarely if ever crosses their minds. We are bombarded with images of death and dying all day and if these deaths don’t fit into our “Monkey Sphere” the most common response to death is indifference. In America especially we are shielded from the ramifications of death. Dying in the US is typically a sterile hospital experience much like our births. Perhaps there is some crying and pain at both, but more over after the shock wears off, we typically push these emotions to the back of our mind.
Some people go to church to be closer to God; I go to cemeteries to be closer to humanity. To me there is nothing more powerful than to walk amongst the dead in remembrance of people I did not know. Eternal life exists in our memories and imaginations. This type of immortality is so much more effervescent than the possibility of sitting on a cloud at the knees of an angry deity. Weaving through the memorials to lives ended and standing just feet above their once vital bodies is compelling to me in a way that a rousing sermon might be to others.
Admiring the graves of the dead has always been an activity for me. As a small child I would beg my parents to stop when we passed new and interesting grave yards so I could appreciate the tall spires, gothic crypts or small cold markers of our ancestors. My fondest memories of growing up were from when every weekend in the summer my family would spend in Sandusky on my father’s boat. While we could swim and go for boat rides or even head over to Cedar Point for the day, I would always plead with my father to take us to Johnson Island so I could view again the Confederate cemetery surrounded by cottages and the Sandusky Bay. The fact that so many of the graves were marked as unknown soldiers resonated with me even when I was as young as 7 or 8.
I have always held the modern memorial garden in a place of contempt within my heart for the pure convenience associated with the grounds-keeping being easier with flat markers. This is surely not very fair of me since all the people interred at these gardens had family that loved them and wanted to memorialize them in more modest ways than flow with my own dramatic tastes.
The art of burial markers has always fascinated me. Weeping angles and other symbols from the past have always held my attention at sites like Lakeview and Riverside cemeteries’. I could spend hours wandering through the myriad of monuments. The small gardens planted atop the modest stones always struck me as the most beautiful and heart felt remembrances. Not everyone could afford the marble and granite markers, but a few plants were with in most people’s reach and would always ignite my own imagination wondering who it was I was standing above and what they meant to the planter.
We all deal with our anxieties and fears in different ways. For me, I prefer to keep this right out in the open for all to see. This characteristic in me is quite off-putting for many since my conversations somehow always wind to my fascination with death and dying. I find this to be quite similar to many people’s frank discussions of their own faith. I get incredibly uncomfortable when one starts telling me about their relationship with their chosen deity much as if I were discussing with them the merits of an elaborate funeral pyre. In the end we all hold different aspects of life dear and close to our hearts. I choose to keep the fragility of life in the forefront of my mind and heed the advice of my favorite epitaph:
Remember friend as you walk by
As you are now so once was I
As I am now you will surely be
Prepare thyself to follow me.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Friday, December 5, 2008
I got a 30 year old husband today!
Picture this scene if you dare. After eating brunch at a diner, window shopping then driving around aimlessly we meet my father and step mother outside of a restaurant that opens at 5 for dinner at 4:30. After eating and discussing what my father believes is a depression at length, we drive home and curl up on the couch with blankets on our laps. I pick up my knitting and Rob flips on the TV. After viewing the station guide for what seems like hours, he finally settles on How it’s Made. The subject for the evening is canning sardines.
Yes, now you have it. This is what it will be like to turn 30.
Tomorrow’s agenda consists of shopping for Craft-matic adjustable beds, a riveting game of shuffle board and eating open faced turkey sandwiches.
Yes, now you have it. This is what it will be like to turn 30.
Tomorrow’s agenda consists of shopping for Craft-matic adjustable beds, a riveting game of shuffle board and eating open faced turkey sandwiches.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Memories... Sweet memories...
My top 10 most persistent memories in no particular order;
1) My brother Eric was maybe one of the most delightful children I have ever known. When he was really small he didn’t have much use for words (come to think of it, he doesn’t now either) but he always had this contagious smile on his face just beneath the most gorgeous head of curls I have ever laid my eyes on. I loved playing with him despite our 6-year age difference. He didn’t require very difficult games to be entertained; frankly tickling him usually was enough.
One day my Dad ordered me to clean his and Morgan’s room but instead we were playing. Eric came running out of his room to show me something and I remember a beaming smile on his face as he ran towards me but then he tripped over some poorly placed junk and fell. As he was falling he didn’t lose his smile right away, he just didn’t have the chance to realize what was happening and the transformation of his smile and squeaks of cheerfulness to shrieks of terror and tears as his head tore down the rusty door jam to our bathroom has always haunted me. He bled all over the place, and my Mom and Dad came to see what had happened and they just laid into me.
To this day seeing the scar on Eric’s forehead brings me back to that morning. All I have ever wanted to do since then is protect my brother from hurt.
2) I am an extremely sound sleeper. So sound in fact that people can carry on complete nonsense conversations with me with out my waking up. Sometimes I would walk in my sleep. When I was about 5 or 6 somehow I managed to get into a little round laundry basket and tumble down the stairs in it with out waking up. My father found me curled up sleeping on the landing.
Another time I was embarrassed by my sleeping antics the family was at my Grandmother’s home for thanksgiving. Everyone had to sleep in the basement together and even though my 4 out of the 5 of us were awake, I managed to continue to sleep. I was sleeping on the floor on top of an afghan next to a pile of the clothes I wore the night before. My dad had just gotten a video camera and was playing around with it when he decided to fuck with me while I was sleeping. He got me to pick up my socks and hold them to my head like they were droopy dog ears, and just as I was about to “woof like a dog” I woke up enough to prevent the situation from deteriorating any further.
More recently, Rob and I were in bed watching TV. Neither of us had spoken for several minutes and I began to doze. Rob asked me a question, and much to my horror, I began to mutter about the dream I was beginning to have that involved “cute bears”. Unfortunately, I told Rob to look at said bears, and my charade was up, he knew I was totally off my rocker nutzoid.
Yes, I dream of cute bears… what did ya think I dreamt about?
3) Since my Dad was the very important Vice President of a truck garage, him and my mother were not around much for my siblings and myself. Because of that, my grandmother and grandfather spent a great deal of time raising us. They did everything from helping us with our homework to driving us to the school. My Grampa loved to sing but couldn’t hold a tune to save his life. He always sang the loudest at church, so I did too. When we drove around, he would always sing these nonsense songs. He continued to sing these songs even when he drove me to school as an adolescent. My favorite one was the one about the 3 little fishies in an iddy biddy pool… I loved when Grampa got to the part that went “boomp bomp dittim dottum wadem choo!”
When I was about 13, about 3 friends and myself wanted to go see the James Bond movie that was out at the time Golden Eye. Grampa had us all pile into his rusty old Grand Marquis and off we went.
We were all goofing around in the back seat, but Grampa didn’t pay us much mind. He was pretty sick at the time with prostate cancer and had progressively gotten to be more grumpy and unpredictable. I don’t remember what got him going that time but he shouted at us to shut the hell up. Of course we were shocked into complete silence right away, and Grampa realized how he had over-reacted. He felt just awful and continued to blurt out that “I’m just so god-damned dickless anymore. I’m sorry kids…”
I very rarely saw the jovial Grampa I loved so dear after that day. He lost his temper more and more frequently from that day on until he just gave up and died 5 years later. He went into the hospital with heartburn and came out dead.
Which leads me to my next memory…
4) My grandparents loved our family more than life itself. They sold their cottage in northern Michigan and their own burial plots to help my father’s ailing business. When my grandfather died in April of 2001 it was completely unexpected. (Yes, I realize old people die, but he wasn’t THAT old or THAT sick) My father’s trucking company went under in 1998 and so did my parent’s marriage. My family became for all intent and purposes broke.
When Grampa passed away we had no money. My Dad and Gramma decided that Grampa should have a simple funeral and be cremated and that we would travel up to the inland lake my grandparent’s cottage was on and spread the ashes there.
We all drove up to Michigan and met my Uncle Bill. He had a small boat for us to go on for the drop. We all piled on for the somber deed. We got to the middle of the lake and Dad decided that we needed to hurry up. It looked like it was about to rain, and he was all worried about getting caught dumping cremains in the lake. So he opened up the stark white box and tore open the bag Grampa’s mortal remains had been left in. He leaned over the side of the boat as I peered over to watch. Just then a good gust of wind blew just ahead of us and next thing we know, Grampa is all over us. My Dad is really agitated now and proceeds to take off his Grampa covered glasses to wipe off on his shirt. At the ridiculousness of what I was witnessing I begin laughing out loud. I turn to my right though and see Gramma sitting there with teary Grampa batter running down her cheek. Dad, still agitated barked at Bill to hurry up and get us out of the water before the rain came and off we went. That was it.
5) So maybe now you are getting the idea that my Dad was a giant prick. He surely could be sometimes but not always. My Dad did some really nice things for us from time to time.
Where we lived in Lakewood was exactly in the middle of 2 of the 3 middle schools in town. We were about 1 mile away from each, which was just a little too far for me to walk in my prosthetics. For my 11th birthday just a week before 6th grade started my Dad made me the most wonderful bike ever.
It was a 10-speed bike with the curly handlebars that he probably picked up from a garage sale for cheap. He spray painted the bike a glossy black and got neon pink and green wraps for the handle bars. He had a neon pink bike lock wrapped around the pink seat. On the frame he had mounted a neon pink portable bicycle pump for me and on the back he had attached a generator to power a headlight and taillight so I could ride at night to and from babysitting gigs I got. On the handles he put a little bell alert for me as well. It was the best bike I had ever seen. I was so surprised and excited and proud I couldn’t wait to ride my bike to Horace Mann for my first day of school. A week later I did.
My first day of 6th grade went by as a blur. I don’t even remember the teachers or the kids or the smells. All I remember is how I felt as I cam out at 3:05 to unlock my bike and ride home. The kids had stolen everything. All the equipment my Dad had painstakingly found then put on my bike to make it a special one of a kind for me was gone. They even unraveled the pink and green wrap on the handlebars. I cried the whole way home and left the bike in the backyard.
When my Dad saw the bike he yelled at me. I guess I was supposed to know that I should have taken better care of my bike or whatever… I am pretty sure I never rode it again. The neighbors had an old blue 10 speed for sale that looked pretty nondescript for 15 bucks. I paid them out of my babysitting money. That bike was cool until my freshman year of high school when fucking Ryan Nagy got pissed at me and stole my bike and threw it off the rocky river train bridge.
6) Rob’s loves this memory of mine, but I don’t remember it as clearly as I would have liked. The summer I turned 5 I had a sesame street pool with Burt and Ernie and Cookie Monster all over it and the little built in slide. My Dad had just built a small deck and put the plastic pool on it for me in June. I had a little white one-piece bathing suit with barnyard animals (think cows and chickens and barns on it) on it. Almost every morning that summer I woke up in my bathing suit. Gramma would fix my hair into ponytails, and off I went into the pool to begin the very tedious work of pretending I was a mermaid. Since I was a mermaid and all, I couldn’t very well get out of the pool, so Gramma made me cheese sandwiches at lunch and I ate them in the pool. When it began to get dark, Gramma would bring me a towel, and I would curl up in the living room and watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy with Gramma and Grampa. Then I would go to sleep in my bathing suit ready to start the cycle again the next day.
7) In 7th grade me and my friend David came up with a hair-brained scheme. We decided to steal vodka out of my mother’s liquor cabinet and put it into these little “turn-pike man” sippy bottles from the Pennsylvania turn-pike and stuff them in my pack pack. We had a field trip with science class to the zoo the next day and David and I were going to get drunk.
Off we went to the zoo. When we got there I gave David his bottle and I took mine. I took one sip and decided Vodka wasn’t for me (at least not with out a mixer!!!) and gave my bottle to David too. Every one thought it was water until David went missing. He literally climbed over the wooden rail that separated visitors from the Elephant moat. David proceeded to try to cross the moat. Luckily, our home–ec teacher Miss Belini (I don’t know why she was there, but follow me) got David and immediately realized he was 3 sheets to the wind.
So with quick thinking I jumped the tram up to the Ape building at the top of the hill. I went into the bathroom and disposed of the evidence and rejoined my class. Everyone was asking me if I heard about what happened to David! He got driven back to school because he was drunk. Somehow I managed to avoid that fate, and with all the evidence disposed of I knew I was in the clear.
NOT
When we got back to school my Mom and Dad were already there. I got suspended for a week… Damn garbage picking Assistant Principal had the turn pike man sippy bottles and there was no way my parents were believing they belonged to someone else… I was hosed.
8) I got suspended out of school for a week due to the Vodka/Zoo incident and my Dad sentenced me to hard labor at the truck garage. I spent every day cleaning up filthy mechanic urinals and grease pits. Needless to say, I learned my lesson. On the 5th day, my Dad wasn’t so mad at me anymore. In fact, everyone had come around to the point where the stunt we pulled was actually pretty fucking hilarious. So my Dad gave me a buck so I could get a bag of my favorite candy out of the vending machine.
The delicious Nibs were full; the vending guy had just been there. I deposited my dollar for the yummy candy and hit the correct digits. The coil holding the candy rolled, but not quite enough to release the tasty treat. Well fuck that I said. I jumped up and grabbed the top of the machine and tipped it towards me and tried to release the Nibs. They just wouldn’t fucking come out! I shook a little harder and then it happened. The damned machine almost crushed me to death. I quick got out of the way as it toppled over with a deafening glassy crash. All the mechanics came running and the foreman ran to get my Dad. The mechanics were trying to stifle their laughter as my Dad came into the garage from the office to see the awful expensive ridiculous mess his 12-year-old daughter had just created while on a 5-day suspension from school. He went to scream at me, but he just couldn’t. I went into the office and tried to hide.
Since the vending guy had just been there, it only took him a few minutes to come back and see the damage I had done. The vending guy was blaming it on my Dad since once my Dad took a sledgehammer to one of his machines to stiffing him, but then I came out with my face stained with tears to apologize. The vending guy couldn’t believe I did it, but after all the mechanics confirmed the freakish strength I had he doubled over laughing.
After the machine got picked up and carted off to be replaced the vending guy came into the office to give me a little present… ALL THE REST OF THE NIBS IN THE MACHINE! Jackpot! Those were probably the most expensive Nibs I ever had… No wonder they give me a bellyache now!
9) Rob killed my bunny. He didn’t mean to, it was like ripped out of the pages from Of Mice and Men. We had the bunny for one day and it still wasn’t very comfortable with us. Rob wanted to hold it like a kitty, but Bunny was having none of that.
Rob picked up Bunny from his cage, but the lil guy was very squirmy and wiggled his way out of Rob’s grip and tumbled to the floor and landed on his side. He then hopped up to where I was sitting and lay very still right next to me. He was breathing at about a mile a minute, but I just figured he was agitated after the fall. I was happy he came up to me though because he didn’t seem to like me any better than Rob up until then…
Little did I know, he was begging for me to save him. I put him in his cage shortly later and went to bed. I must have been sleeping for a couple hours when Rob came to wake me up. “Erin, you need to look at the bunny.”
I get up and stumble into the living room. There was a towel over the Bunny cage. I knew he was dead.
What the fuck are we supposed to do with the dead rabbit we only had for a day?!? We lived in a city apartment with no yard to bury him in and he was too big to just throw away… I figured we could take him to the vet and pretend we didn’t know he was dead. So off we went to the 24-hour pet clinic.
We get there and the receptionist can tell he is dead right away. She told us it would be 15 bucks to dispose of the body. She took the poor lil guy out of the cage to weigh him and looked back at me and with a very matter-of-a-fact tone proceeded to tell me since the bunny weighed 3.5 pounds it would be 75 dollars.
“Uhm why did you just tell me 15 then?”
“Oh well I thought the decadent was under 3 pounds and therefore a $15 cremation fee applied. We operate on a sliding scale, and since your pet is over 3 pounds the $75 fee applies.”
“Oh…” I walked out of there with out another word and dumped the poor rabbit cage and all into their dumpster… We drove home and I cried the whole way… Poor lil guy.
10) Rob proposed to me in a laundry mat. We had been talking about getting married for some time, but hadn’t really crystallized the plans yet. It was July and hotter than hell. I was in a bitchy crappy mood and pissed off cause Rob was letting me fold all the laundry. I made a snarky comment about how I wasn’t even his dog-damned wife and yet I was folding his underpants. So he asked me to marry him.
We went and got a ring the next week and made it official… We are really romantic like that.
1) My brother Eric was maybe one of the most delightful children I have ever known. When he was really small he didn’t have much use for words (come to think of it, he doesn’t now either) but he always had this contagious smile on his face just beneath the most gorgeous head of curls I have ever laid my eyes on. I loved playing with him despite our 6-year age difference. He didn’t require very difficult games to be entertained; frankly tickling him usually was enough.
One day my Dad ordered me to clean his and Morgan’s room but instead we were playing. Eric came running out of his room to show me something and I remember a beaming smile on his face as he ran towards me but then he tripped over some poorly placed junk and fell. As he was falling he didn’t lose his smile right away, he just didn’t have the chance to realize what was happening and the transformation of his smile and squeaks of cheerfulness to shrieks of terror and tears as his head tore down the rusty door jam to our bathroom has always haunted me. He bled all over the place, and my Mom and Dad came to see what had happened and they just laid into me.
To this day seeing the scar on Eric’s forehead brings me back to that morning. All I have ever wanted to do since then is protect my brother from hurt.
2) I am an extremely sound sleeper. So sound in fact that people can carry on complete nonsense conversations with me with out my waking up. Sometimes I would walk in my sleep. When I was about 5 or 6 somehow I managed to get into a little round laundry basket and tumble down the stairs in it with out waking up. My father found me curled up sleeping on the landing.
Another time I was embarrassed by my sleeping antics the family was at my Grandmother’s home for thanksgiving. Everyone had to sleep in the basement together and even though my 4 out of the 5 of us were awake, I managed to continue to sleep. I was sleeping on the floor on top of an afghan next to a pile of the clothes I wore the night before. My dad had just gotten a video camera and was playing around with it when he decided to fuck with me while I was sleeping. He got me to pick up my socks and hold them to my head like they were droopy dog ears, and just as I was about to “woof like a dog” I woke up enough to prevent the situation from deteriorating any further.
More recently, Rob and I were in bed watching TV. Neither of us had spoken for several minutes and I began to doze. Rob asked me a question, and much to my horror, I began to mutter about the dream I was beginning to have that involved “cute bears”. Unfortunately, I told Rob to look at said bears, and my charade was up, he knew I was totally off my rocker nutzoid.
Yes, I dream of cute bears… what did ya think I dreamt about?
3) Since my Dad was the very important Vice President of a truck garage, him and my mother were not around much for my siblings and myself. Because of that, my grandmother and grandfather spent a great deal of time raising us. They did everything from helping us with our homework to driving us to the school. My Grampa loved to sing but couldn’t hold a tune to save his life. He always sang the loudest at church, so I did too. When we drove around, he would always sing these nonsense songs. He continued to sing these songs even when he drove me to school as an adolescent. My favorite one was the one about the 3 little fishies in an iddy biddy pool… I loved when Grampa got to the part that went “boomp bomp dittim dottum wadem choo!”
When I was about 13, about 3 friends and myself wanted to go see the James Bond movie that was out at the time Golden Eye. Grampa had us all pile into his rusty old Grand Marquis and off we went.
We were all goofing around in the back seat, but Grampa didn’t pay us much mind. He was pretty sick at the time with prostate cancer and had progressively gotten to be more grumpy and unpredictable. I don’t remember what got him going that time but he shouted at us to shut the hell up. Of course we were shocked into complete silence right away, and Grampa realized how he had over-reacted. He felt just awful and continued to blurt out that “I’m just so god-damned dickless anymore. I’m sorry kids…”
I very rarely saw the jovial Grampa I loved so dear after that day. He lost his temper more and more frequently from that day on until he just gave up and died 5 years later. He went into the hospital with heartburn and came out dead.
Which leads me to my next memory…
4) My grandparents loved our family more than life itself. They sold their cottage in northern Michigan and their own burial plots to help my father’s ailing business. When my grandfather died in April of 2001 it was completely unexpected. (Yes, I realize old people die, but he wasn’t THAT old or THAT sick) My father’s trucking company went under in 1998 and so did my parent’s marriage. My family became for all intent and purposes broke.
When Grampa passed away we had no money. My Dad and Gramma decided that Grampa should have a simple funeral and be cremated and that we would travel up to the inland lake my grandparent’s cottage was on and spread the ashes there.
We all drove up to Michigan and met my Uncle Bill. He had a small boat for us to go on for the drop. We all piled on for the somber deed. We got to the middle of the lake and Dad decided that we needed to hurry up. It looked like it was about to rain, and he was all worried about getting caught dumping cremains in the lake. So he opened up the stark white box and tore open the bag Grampa’s mortal remains had been left in. He leaned over the side of the boat as I peered over to watch. Just then a good gust of wind blew just ahead of us and next thing we know, Grampa is all over us. My Dad is really agitated now and proceeds to take off his Grampa covered glasses to wipe off on his shirt. At the ridiculousness of what I was witnessing I begin laughing out loud. I turn to my right though and see Gramma sitting there with teary Grampa batter running down her cheek. Dad, still agitated barked at Bill to hurry up and get us out of the water before the rain came and off we went. That was it.
5) So maybe now you are getting the idea that my Dad was a giant prick. He surely could be sometimes but not always. My Dad did some really nice things for us from time to time.
Where we lived in Lakewood was exactly in the middle of 2 of the 3 middle schools in town. We were about 1 mile away from each, which was just a little too far for me to walk in my prosthetics. For my 11th birthday just a week before 6th grade started my Dad made me the most wonderful bike ever.
It was a 10-speed bike with the curly handlebars that he probably picked up from a garage sale for cheap. He spray painted the bike a glossy black and got neon pink and green wraps for the handle bars. He had a neon pink bike lock wrapped around the pink seat. On the frame he had mounted a neon pink portable bicycle pump for me and on the back he had attached a generator to power a headlight and taillight so I could ride at night to and from babysitting gigs I got. On the handles he put a little bell alert for me as well. It was the best bike I had ever seen. I was so surprised and excited and proud I couldn’t wait to ride my bike to Horace Mann for my first day of school. A week later I did.
My first day of 6th grade went by as a blur. I don’t even remember the teachers or the kids or the smells. All I remember is how I felt as I cam out at 3:05 to unlock my bike and ride home. The kids had stolen everything. All the equipment my Dad had painstakingly found then put on my bike to make it a special one of a kind for me was gone. They even unraveled the pink and green wrap on the handlebars. I cried the whole way home and left the bike in the backyard.
When my Dad saw the bike he yelled at me. I guess I was supposed to know that I should have taken better care of my bike or whatever… I am pretty sure I never rode it again. The neighbors had an old blue 10 speed for sale that looked pretty nondescript for 15 bucks. I paid them out of my babysitting money. That bike was cool until my freshman year of high school when fucking Ryan Nagy got pissed at me and stole my bike and threw it off the rocky river train bridge.
6) Rob’s loves this memory of mine, but I don’t remember it as clearly as I would have liked. The summer I turned 5 I had a sesame street pool with Burt and Ernie and Cookie Monster all over it and the little built in slide. My Dad had just built a small deck and put the plastic pool on it for me in June. I had a little white one-piece bathing suit with barnyard animals (think cows and chickens and barns on it) on it. Almost every morning that summer I woke up in my bathing suit. Gramma would fix my hair into ponytails, and off I went into the pool to begin the very tedious work of pretending I was a mermaid. Since I was a mermaid and all, I couldn’t very well get out of the pool, so Gramma made me cheese sandwiches at lunch and I ate them in the pool. When it began to get dark, Gramma would bring me a towel, and I would curl up in the living room and watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy with Gramma and Grampa. Then I would go to sleep in my bathing suit ready to start the cycle again the next day.
7) In 7th grade me and my friend David came up with a hair-brained scheme. We decided to steal vodka out of my mother’s liquor cabinet and put it into these little “turn-pike man” sippy bottles from the Pennsylvania turn-pike and stuff them in my pack pack. We had a field trip with science class to the zoo the next day and David and I were going to get drunk.
Off we went to the zoo. When we got there I gave David his bottle and I took mine. I took one sip and decided Vodka wasn’t for me (at least not with out a mixer!!!) and gave my bottle to David too. Every one thought it was water until David went missing. He literally climbed over the wooden rail that separated visitors from the Elephant moat. David proceeded to try to cross the moat. Luckily, our home–ec teacher Miss Belini (I don’t know why she was there, but follow me) got David and immediately realized he was 3 sheets to the wind.
So with quick thinking I jumped the tram up to the Ape building at the top of the hill. I went into the bathroom and disposed of the evidence and rejoined my class. Everyone was asking me if I heard about what happened to David! He got driven back to school because he was drunk. Somehow I managed to avoid that fate, and with all the evidence disposed of I knew I was in the clear.
NOT
When we got back to school my Mom and Dad were already there. I got suspended for a week… Damn garbage picking Assistant Principal had the turn pike man sippy bottles and there was no way my parents were believing they belonged to someone else… I was hosed.
8) I got suspended out of school for a week due to the Vodka/Zoo incident and my Dad sentenced me to hard labor at the truck garage. I spent every day cleaning up filthy mechanic urinals and grease pits. Needless to say, I learned my lesson. On the 5th day, my Dad wasn’t so mad at me anymore. In fact, everyone had come around to the point where the stunt we pulled was actually pretty fucking hilarious. So my Dad gave me a buck so I could get a bag of my favorite candy out of the vending machine.
The delicious Nibs were full; the vending guy had just been there. I deposited my dollar for the yummy candy and hit the correct digits. The coil holding the candy rolled, but not quite enough to release the tasty treat. Well fuck that I said. I jumped up and grabbed the top of the machine and tipped it towards me and tried to release the Nibs. They just wouldn’t fucking come out! I shook a little harder and then it happened. The damned machine almost crushed me to death. I quick got out of the way as it toppled over with a deafening glassy crash. All the mechanics came running and the foreman ran to get my Dad. The mechanics were trying to stifle their laughter as my Dad came into the garage from the office to see the awful expensive ridiculous mess his 12-year-old daughter had just created while on a 5-day suspension from school. He went to scream at me, but he just couldn’t. I went into the office and tried to hide.
Since the vending guy had just been there, it only took him a few minutes to come back and see the damage I had done. The vending guy was blaming it on my Dad since once my Dad took a sledgehammer to one of his machines to stiffing him, but then I came out with my face stained with tears to apologize. The vending guy couldn’t believe I did it, but after all the mechanics confirmed the freakish strength I had he doubled over laughing.
After the machine got picked up and carted off to be replaced the vending guy came into the office to give me a little present… ALL THE REST OF THE NIBS IN THE MACHINE! Jackpot! Those were probably the most expensive Nibs I ever had… No wonder they give me a bellyache now!
9) Rob killed my bunny. He didn’t mean to, it was like ripped out of the pages from Of Mice and Men. We had the bunny for one day and it still wasn’t very comfortable with us. Rob wanted to hold it like a kitty, but Bunny was having none of that.
Rob picked up Bunny from his cage, but the lil guy was very squirmy and wiggled his way out of Rob’s grip and tumbled to the floor and landed on his side. He then hopped up to where I was sitting and lay very still right next to me. He was breathing at about a mile a minute, but I just figured he was agitated after the fall. I was happy he came up to me though because he didn’t seem to like me any better than Rob up until then…
Little did I know, he was begging for me to save him. I put him in his cage shortly later and went to bed. I must have been sleeping for a couple hours when Rob came to wake me up. “Erin, you need to look at the bunny.”
I get up and stumble into the living room. There was a towel over the Bunny cage. I knew he was dead.
What the fuck are we supposed to do with the dead rabbit we only had for a day?!? We lived in a city apartment with no yard to bury him in and he was too big to just throw away… I figured we could take him to the vet and pretend we didn’t know he was dead. So off we went to the 24-hour pet clinic.
We get there and the receptionist can tell he is dead right away. She told us it would be 15 bucks to dispose of the body. She took the poor lil guy out of the cage to weigh him and looked back at me and with a very matter-of-a-fact tone proceeded to tell me since the bunny weighed 3.5 pounds it would be 75 dollars.
“Uhm why did you just tell me 15 then?”
“Oh well I thought the decadent was under 3 pounds and therefore a $15 cremation fee applied. We operate on a sliding scale, and since your pet is over 3 pounds the $75 fee applies.”
“Oh…” I walked out of there with out another word and dumped the poor rabbit cage and all into their dumpster… We drove home and I cried the whole way… Poor lil guy.
10) Rob proposed to me in a laundry mat. We had been talking about getting married for some time, but hadn’t really crystallized the plans yet. It was July and hotter than hell. I was in a bitchy crappy mood and pissed off cause Rob was letting me fold all the laundry. I made a snarky comment about how I wasn’t even his dog-damned wife and yet I was folding his underpants. So he asked me to marry him.
We went and got a ring the next week and made it official… We are really romantic like that.
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