Silly Things Saturday: Shake, Rattle, and Run Like Hell

Time for some much needed comic relief after an emotionally grueling week.  In light of recent events, many childhood memories have been whirling around my head and this is one story Punky will surely hear.  It was one of my favorites to tell as a kid.  I hope I can remember all the details now; I haven't thought about it in years.

Many summers, my sister and I would go with my grandmother to stay at my aunt's house for a week or two.  Due to my asthma-inducing allergy to dogs, we would sleep out in a pop-up camper they had in their carport alongside the garage.  Overnight was too long a span for me to sleep in the house with the pet dander.

This particular summer I was nine.  My cousin closest in age was eleven.  One night we had the bright idea to watch a scary movie with her older teenage brother in the basement before bed.  The Thing.  I think it may be a classic now...you know, for people who like that horror movie crap.

Anyway, he warned us not to watch, he said it was too scary, we were too young, blah blah blah...  We watched it.  All of it.  And then out to the camper we went.

My aunt was already asleep in there with my little sister.  All was fine and we fell asleep right away without a problem.  See?  What did her brother know?

I'm not sure how long we were sleeping when my cousin woke me.  "Do you feel that?" she whispered.  She said the camper kept shaking, like someone was trying to get inside.  I felt nothing and told her to go back to sleep.

A few minutes later, she woke me again...and that time I felt it.  It was rocking.  The door latch was rattling.  We wanted out but were too scared to move.

We looked across the camper to my aunt's bunk.  She had the canvas closed on her window and the porch light from the house illuminated it.  We saw an arm go past the window.  Someone was out there.  The Thing.

Turning to our own window facing the woods, a scary shadow appeared.  Oddly shaped, with little limbs that seemed to be clinging to the screen.  We practically killed each other to get down to the bunk below.  We were going to die.  We just knew it.

My aunt and sister slept peacefully while the camper started shaking even more wildly.  How the hell didn't they feel it?  Maybe it already got them.  Maybe we were the only two left.

Prepared for the worst, my cousin made her way across the rocking camper to my aunt's bunk.  We were so relieved when she sat up...I mean, she was the adult and we needed her to get us out of there.  Immediately.

By this time my cousin and I were in hysterics.  She could barely understand us; we were talking a mile a minute.  She felt the violent rocking and agreed we needed to head for the house.  She devised a plan.

She was going to carry my sister rather than wake her.  She said we would all go out together and calmly walk towards the house.  We needed to stick together.  Don't get separated.  Crazy plan...

To me, this was a life or death moment.  Something was out there trying to eat me.  It would catch me quicker if I walked.  And I certainly didn't want to be the last in line, i.e. the first to get eaten.  I was fully prepared to sacrifice my sister.  She was asleep; she wouldn't even know what happened.

We lined up in front of the door and my cousin reached down to unlock it.  "Stay together," my aunt reminded us.  We barely heard the second word.

The second my cousin's foot hit the blacktop, she took off running.  Oh, no you don't...I'm not ending up as some Thing's dinner.  I was half a step behind her in a desperate sprint for the back door of the house.  My aunt and sister were on their own. 

My cousin reached the porch first and tripped and fell over the dog's chain on the second step.  I had no time to stop...nor did I even try, the thing was behind me eating my relatives...and I ended up on top of her.  We scrambled to get up and in the door.  Arms and legs flailing every which way to get on our feet.

We made it to the kitchen and kept on running...right down the basement to her brother's room.  My cousin thought it might have been him outside pulling a horrible practical joke on us.  We were mortified to see him sound asleep in bed.  I wish someone was able to capture our faces on film.

We headed back to the kitchen and heard my aunt outside screaming.  She was yelling our names.  Telling us to get out there right away.  Yeah, that just wasn't happening.  No way, no how.

We cowered under the kitchen window and listened.  We knew we had to look.  We had to know what was coming for us next.  Slowly we lifted our heads high enough to just peek over the window sill.  Gulp.  

My aunt was standing in the driveway with my sister beside her now fully awake after all the yelling.  My aunt was holding a flashlight and shining it toward the top of the camper.  It wasn't one Thing; there were several.  About eight or nine in fact.

Cats.  The neighbor had a ton of them, and they apparently decided it would be fun to play on top of the camper in the middle of the night.  They were wrestling around, shaking the hell out of the camper as they romped on the top.  The crazy shadows we saw were the cats climbing up the canvas sides of the camper.

Nobody got eaten, but my cousin and I refused to go back out there and spent the rest of the night on a pull-out sofa in the living room.  My breathing sucked come morning, but it was a risk I was willing to take.

We got picked on for years about the night we were terrified of ordinary housecats, but it made an everlasting impression on me.  I have no desire to see any horror movies of any kind.  Never.  Ever.  And my fear that night was so real that simply retelling this story now, close to midnight with him at work and me home alone with the baby, means I'm not getting much sleep tonight at all.

Silly Things Saturday: The Gum in the Bush

It's Easter weekend and we are home visiting, so this will be a quick one.

Punky's aunt P was great at playing the annoying little sister role when we were kids.  Okay, she still has her moments...  Anyway, one story that has been retold over and over through the years involves bubble gum and a bush along the driveway.

When we were in elementary school, mom usually had supper ready as soon as we got off the school bus.  My sister was always starving and could eat grown men under the table.  Once when we had a snow day off of school, she decided to write down everything she ate that day and it filled two and a half pages in a spiral notebook.  Oddly enough, she was a tiny, little stick straight up until she had her son in her late twenties.  Prior to that, she had no butt, no boobs, no belly...just a bean pole with feet.

At any rate, the minute the bus driver opened the door in front of our house, she was salivating and ready to eat.  The walk across the driveway to the door took a whole five seconds.  For whatever reason, she couldn't wait to make it in the house before ditching her gum in preparation for supper.  The bushes along the driveway became her dumping ground, though I never saw her do it.  She was a quick little shit...

After a few weeks of her habit building up, my dad noticed the multicolored speckles that adorned the row of bushes.  He quickly determined it was chewing gum...and promptly sent my sister and I out to pick it all off the branches.

I knew I didn't do it and thought he was being totally unfair.  At the same time though, she swore she didn't do it, and since I never saw her do it I was gullible enough to believe my sweet, little sister.  At that age, I'm not sure exactly where I thought it was coming from...passing cars perhaps?  Boys in the neighborhood being jerks?  Adults said no, but maybe gum could actually grow on trees...

We were out there picking chewed gum out of the bushes more often than I care to remember.  Dad said that until one of us confessed, we both had to do it.  I felt so strongly that we were suffering a great injustice at the time.  One day the gum stopped appearing in the bush.  No more speckles.  No more gross gum picking.  All was forgotten for years.

We were in our twenties and out on our own when the 'gum in the bush' days came up in conversation.  My sister blatantly gloated about how it was her all along and I had to help her clean it up every time.  Little witch.  And to think I believed her back then.  I defended her and said it couldn't have have been her because I would've seen her do it.  Cleaning up gooey, chewed gum was disgusting.  She still owes me big time for that.  Brat.

I did cut all her barbies' hair though, so I guess maybe we're even.

Silly Things Saturday: My Vertical Challenge

Well, Friday at ten came and went.  I was too tired to write anything by that point.  It was a long week with a sick baby, but I'll write more on that tomorrow.

So, after kicking things around in my head all week, I've decided to make this the next theme for a few weeks.  Every family has those stories that are told repeatedly at gatherings.  When you stop and think about it, very rarely are those stories of serious or crowning moments in someone's life; nine out of ten times it's the silly stuff that gets re-told whenever the opportunity presents itself.  People connect through humor and bond through laughter.  And my family has its share of the giggles when we get together.

I'm sure that by the time Punky is old enough to read this, she will have heard these stories a million times.  But since my main goal in writing is to provide her with something to look back on years down the road, such stories can hardly be ignored.  Some will be long, some short...some about me, some about others in her family...and eventually, if I keep writing, some are bound to be about her.

Before poking fun at anyone else's embarrassments, it's only fair to start with myself.  I've had some doozies, but a large majority of my shining moments tend to revolve around my inability to remain upright...

I guess you could say I am vertically challenged.  For whatever reason, the simple act of standing seems to elude me often.  I lost count of the number of falls in the last thirty-seven years, but my family could easily spew off the highlights.

The amazing thing is that I was such an athletic kid.  A gymnast nonetheless.  I was strong, flexible, and able to stay on a four inch beam.  I could walk the entire way to my grandmother's house on a train track rail without stepping off once.  I could do flips on roller skates.  I could climb almost anything.  And none of these activities ever caused me injury.

Walking, on the other hand...

My sister will surely tell Punky all about the time I went running after a boyfriend who left something in our house.  It was dark, it was snowy, and I wanted to catch him before he pulled out...  She stood in the window and watched as I made it about half way across the yard...then fell flat on my ass and slid the rest of the way.  The bottom half of my body came to rest under his truck.  Thankfully he heard my arms crash into the driver's door as I tried to stop myself...  My sister laughed for days and still cracks up every time she has the chance to tell that story.

My mom will probably tell Punky about the time I fell in front of the church at midnight mass one Christmas Eve.  I was probably around ten.  Again in my defense, it was a bit icy...but I seemed to be the only one affected by it.  Toddlers, senior citizens, a guy on crutches all made it in just fine.  I went down so fast my family didn't even know what happened at first.  Flat on my back.  Ouch.

An entire bus of school students could tell the tale of the day I struggled to board.  My first fall was directly in front of the bus while trying to cross the road.  I think I fell three more times before I managed to get up the freakin' steps and sit down.  Damn snow.  The entire bus was hysterical.  I wanted to die.

Her uncle will tell her all about the time I left for work in the morning and did a fantastic upside down turtle impression on the sidewalk.  Again flat on my back.  Legs straight up in the air.  Arms straight up in the air.  And I couldn't move.  This was my most impressive fall though.  I was carrying a cup of coffee and an open purse.  I landed without spilling a drop of either. 

No one witnessed my fall one summer morning as I walked to my car.  A narrow, sloping sidewalk led to the stone parking lot at my apartment.  Till this day I haven't a clue exactly what happened.  I landed on the sidewalk face first, rolled down the slope, and ended up on my back on the rocks between two parked cars.  I waited a few minutes before trying to move.  Everything hurt and I thought for sure I had a broken bone.  But no, I just tore my pants, busted both knees, scraped up my face and arms on the rocks, and was a half hour late for work because I had to change my clothes and tend to my wounds.

It pains me to say this is really just the tip of the iceberg.  I could go on and on with similar tales, but suffice it to say that I've fallen up stairs, down stairs, and over dog leashes.  I've tripped over my own two feet, other people's feet, and on any crack in the sidewalk larger than the width of a dime.  Add snow or ice to the picture and it's a recipe for disaster.  And people wonder why I grew up at the base of the Pocono Mountains and have never attempted to ski.  I'd end up in traction for sure.

Oh, and then there's the time I fell at fifteen weeks pregnant.  Technically I passed out and then fell...  When I came to about ten minutes later, I was flat on my stomach on the dining room floor in a puddle of blood gushing from under my chin.  I was then transported by ambulance to the hospital to be stitched and checked for pregnancy loss.  I knew my baby would be a tough cookie the minute they told me everything was fine.

But that story will be told to her by me.  It's a rite of passage in motherhood to tell your kids what you endured while pregnant.  And since I had no morning sickness, no indigestion, no hemorrhoids, no trouble sleeping, no crazy cravings, and only minimal aches and pains, this story and my C-section scar are all I've got in my arsenal.