Maybe I Should Stand Still

I may have mentioned that I am not a very coordinated fellow. I have a rich history of bumping into things, knocking shit over, and/or just wiping out for no discernible reason. I typically take what I call "my annual fall" in the winter months. I'll be shoveling the driveway or simply standing still when suddenly my feet will fly out from underneath me and I'll come crashing down on my butt (actually I've been pretty lucky this winter season. I haven't had a spill yet. "Yet" being the operative word here). The tumbles usually aren't of the breaking bones variety but more along the lines of "Oh shit, I hope no one saw that" genus. I'm probably going to wind up on YouTube against my will one of these days with the some unfortunate tag like: "Fat Dude Toppling into an Icy Puddle LOL!".

Recently I've been going through some old pics from when I was a kid and I found one that represents my gracelessness quite well. It's a picture of me holding a damp facecloth to my bicep while my sister Mary stands guard over me. Why was I holding the damp facecloth on my arm? Well, I'll tells ya.

It was Mary's birthday (and if I'm correct at guessing the ages here, it was her 4th birthday which would make me 7) and after the cake had been devoured and the presents had been opened, I went out bike riding with my friend Joey. Now Joey had a super fancy and lightweight BMX-style bike. I had an old Columbia with ape hanger handlebars and a banana seat. It weighed nearly as much as I did. Joey was a kid who was much smaller than I and he had seemingly boundless energy. It was always really hard to keep up with him. He'd be doing all these little jumps and hops up and over curbs and stuff while still maintaining a significant lead over me. He was fast, light, and he never ever tired. In other words, the opposite of me.

On this particular day Joey rode over to my house and we did what we usually did. We'd ride up and down my street and in and out of my driveway. The driveway was halfway down the street so we'd go as fast as we could down the hill and then turn into the driveway at the very last second. The goal was to hit the entrance at an angle where we could get some air. It all sounds harmless enough but there was the added danger of the giant tree.  The giant tree sat on our neighbor's property but its trunk stuck out juuuuuust enough onto our side that if you miscalculated your angle of approach, you could end up with a face full of bark. I saw that tree up close and personal more than once. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The two of us were riding around at the top of my street which kinda made me nervous because there were a couple of brothers who lived in a house right there who were notorious bullies. They had chased me and another kid away from their house when we were walking home from school. They had warned us not to let them catch us in their yard (But we weren't in their yard. We were on the sidewalk. Why would we go in their yard in the first place? Silly bullies, you make no sense). Now here I was riding around in front of their house in bold defiance of their territorial borders. It made my palms all sweaty. Joey was riding around like a lunatic hopping up onto the sidewalk and then using the sloped driveway entrances like mini ramps. He could not be stopped. I was trundling along behind him showcasing my limited catalog of tricks: The Poppa Wheelie (that's what I thought it was called. I realize now that I must have misheard someone say "pop a wheelie" and never thought to question the name), The Curb Jump (a.k.a. The Spoke Breaker), and of course the ever-popular Sliding Skid (my personal favorite...although it did tend to limit the life span of my tires by quite a lot).

Joey was doing these amazing jumps using the lip of the curb and the slope of the driveway as his ramp. I was impressed. I watched him over and over again until I knew just how he did it. On his next approach, I followed on my two-wheeled tank of a bike. He hit that curb and he FLEW across the sidewalk landing neatly and dare-I-say gingerly about 5 feet away. I hit the SAME curb at the SAME speed and my bike nearly came to a complete stop when the front tire hit. I managed somehow to stay upright and followed Joey around for another attempt. This time I watched as he lifted the front tire at the very last second before it hit the curb. OH! That's how he does it. I was so excited to try it out for myself.

I wheeled around and made a bee-line for that curb. A split second before hitting the curb I lifted that giant front wheel up and when the back tire hit, my bike and I were suddenly airborne. Holy shit! I had done it! Hey! Lookit me! I'm totally DOING A TRICK! I was so excited that I hadn't actually failed at the jump that I completely forgot one of the most important parts of this particular trick: Stopping. I looked up and right in front of me loomed a chain link fence that clearly wasn't going to swerve at the last second. I scrunched up my face and slammed full speed into the fence. My bike added insult to injury by clonking me on the head with its handlebars. Thanks for that, bike. I was leaning up against the fence doing an injury inventory when I noticed that my arm really hurt. Hmmm, I'm gonna have to go have Mom check on that for me when I get home. Let me just bend down and pick up my bike here. Huh, that's weird...I can't bend down. My arm seems to be caught on something. Lemme look and see...what...is that...why is the fence going INTO my arm like that? That's when I realized that I was impaled on the top of the chain link fence. The prongs were sticking right into my left bicep. Ow. Ow. Ow. [Note: I tried to find a picture of a chain link fence with those prongs but apparently now-a-days they make them all roundy and no longer have the super sharpened spikey bits anymore.]

I don't remember exactly how but somehow I managed to extricate my arm from the grasp of the fence. I looked around to see where Joey was and he was no where to be found. He had bailed. He did the typical kid thing of panicking about "Oh shit, we're gonna get in trouble for breaking that fence" and took off. Thanks Joey. No, don't worry about me. I'll be fine. I looked at the deep wound on my arm and I remember thinking, "Huh, that doesn't look so bad". And then it started bleeding. A lot.

I was still remarkably calm as I got back on my bike and started down the hill to my house with my left arm out of commission. I zipped down the hill, made the right-hand turn into our driveway too quickly, lost control of the bike and went full-on Superman-style into the not-so-welcoming arms of that goddamn giant tree. It made a huge racket and all the kids in our yard came running over to see what had happened. And that's when I started crying. I had crashed so hard that my handlebars where all crooked and the chain had fallen off (I remember that because it had scratched the hell out of my ankle and gave me a grease tattoo on my calf). I hobbled into the kitchen and there my Mom had to figure out what had happened from my open sobs and snot bubbles. I was a mess. Somehow she determined that I wasn't dying and got me cleaned up and calm enough to take this photo. But don't worry, I survived. Check it:

No need to go to the hospital for stitches or perhaps a tetanus shot...just put some Mercurochrome on that fucker and walk it off kid.

Care for Some More Meat Gum?

I was IM'ing with my sister Mary and the subject of our mother's cooking came up (no pun intended). Our mom had a busy household what with four kids (all fussy eaters), my dad and her mother (good ol' Nana. My first roommate) all living in what was technically a 2-bedroom apartment. We had converted the dining room into another bedroom to give the illusion of having 3 bedrooms. In the 16 years that I lived in that apartment my bedroom was at one point or another located in every room except the bathroom and the kitchen. The bedrooms and the living room, which we called "the parlor" (although that summons an image of a pristine place that is only for "company" and off-limits to kids. This was not the case in our house), swapped locations several times during the time we rented the place. Often she would change the rooms while everyone else was at work and school. Mom would just decide that the front room was now a bedroom and the living room would now be located where the bedroom used to be.


This is ye olde homestead as it looks today. Our apartment
was on the first floor. Back then the house was green and
somewhat less dilapidated. There used to be a half-dead
tree in the little yard on the right too. Check out all the satellite dishes!

She tried her very best to make meals that were, at least in theory, edible. We were poor but, as evidenced by any pictures of us kids from back then, we didn't go hungry. The main obstacle in her way was the fact that no one had ever taught her how to cook properly so she made shit up with limited success. That sounds fairly harsh but honestly I didn't know any better until much later in life that the food I grew up on was ... let's just say "limiting". The first inkling that perhaps there was at the very least better tasting food out there was when I stayed over my Aunt Janie's place and she made lunch for me and my cousin David. She made macaroni and cheese and it was so goddamn CREAMY that I thought that there must be something terribly wrong. Mac and cheese at our house was usually clumped together and relatively dry. Y'see, my mom would take a gallon of milk (which she would send me to the corner store to buy every few days on my bike) and strrreeeeetch it out into 2.5 – 3 gallons of milk by using powdered milk. I thought that milk was supposed to be thin, semi-lumpy and sort of grayish. We had milk at every meal too. It didn't matter what the meal was, milk was going to be the beverage of choice. It seemed perfectly normal back then but now it seems bizarre to me. I haven't had a glass of milk in years. It doesn't appeal to me in the slightest.

There were other clues that maybe the culinary arts was not my mom's medium. Pork chops come to mind. In my mind to this very day pork chops are associated with sawdust-dry withered things that would wick all the moisture out of your mouth the instant you popped a piece in. Whenever The Wiff says that she is going to make pork chops she has to remind me that they will be delicious. I guess I make a face or something every single time. All vegetables were to be boiled until opaque. I remember the first time seeing what broccoli was supposed to look like and being totally shocked. Hey! This broccoli snapped when I bit it! How come it didn't just go away in my mouth like it's supposed to? And why is it so green? Fresh vegetables back then usually meant the can was opened that day. There are lots of square, canned veggies in my past. And wax beans. Jiminy Christmas the wax bean is not only a horrible name but it is the most revolting vegetable known to mankind. Or perhaps the lima bean is the most revolting? I'm guessing that it'll be a legume of some ilk.

But the worst offender in my mom's arsenal was her steak. She would pop it in the broiler (yes, the broiler) sans any seasoning and leave it in there for hours. What would come out was a gray, shoe-leathery facsimile of a steak. To call it "well done" is an understatement. It was certainly "done". So tough was this meat that no amount of chewing could break it down. It would become what I called "Meat Gum". You could chew that fucking thing until your jaw hurt but it wasn't going anywhere. I've gagged on a number of pieces of rubbery steak in my time simply because I was tired of chewing it and I knew that trying to spit it out was forbidden. It was so bad that I was convinced that I hated steak. Back when The Wiff and I were dating, she invited me to her mom's place for dinner. When I asked her what they were going to serve she said "Steak". My heart sank. Oh god, not another fucking meat gum horror show!

But imagine my surprise when what was served to me was NOT an old piece of a shredded tire found on a highway somewhere but a juicy, beautiful, succulent cut of perfectly prepared meat. It blew my mind. I literally had no idea food could be this good. Plus, there were fresh vegetables that had flavor and color. Amazing. I have to say though that I still have to re-learn that steak can be great almost every time someone brings up the idea of having one. I have to think to myself "oh right...this will not be like gnawing on a demon's scrotum" and then I can order the steak.

I do have to give Mom her props though. She was a decent baker and could whip up a batch of french toast (using the whitest of white breads of course) like no one's business. Her soda bread ruled. She baked us a cake for every birthday too. Plus, I can't cook to save my life so I really shouldn't be mocking anyone's attempts let alone the woman who raised me. But all that stuff just makes me think about how much I miss her. I would gladly eat a plateful of her horrible cooking, meat gum and all, just to have a chance to talk to her again. And maybe even get in a game or two of Boggle or Yahtzee.