One more day left of school! I’m totally not ready for summer break. At all.
Graduation: May Your Unemployment Be Pleasant!
13 MayWhen I graduated from high school, I did something that would’ve put me in prison in this day and age. I handed out pull-string firecrackers to all my classmates and while innocently sitting on stage, we had a telepathic countdown and pulled our strings in unison. This coordinated stunt sounded like a storm of assault rifles. No one got punished because we all feigned ignorance. Ah. Youth. Most days I miss thee.
So to all those future grads out there, crack a smile yo!
Abercrombie Hates Fat People
11 May
A couple of years ago I wrote an article blasting Abercrombie & Hooch Fitch for designing a skimpy bikini for anorexic 8 year olds. Now I’m back blasting them again. I was sitting here this fine Saturday morning, enjoying my coffee…when Spouse says, “Hey. Did you hear about that Abercrombie jerk saying he hated fat chicks and he had army militants guarding their stores to keep them out?”
Spouse likes to exaggerate news headlines to ensure I’ll go look the stuff up…which will propel me into a frenzy. And this frenzy will lead to me yelling, “Oh no he didn’t!” , which is usually followed by furious writing. This frees up his morning to watch ESPN without interruption. I act like I’m ignorant to his Master Plan but I’m totally on to him.
Back to the news. Abercrombie’s CEO, Mike Jeffries, hates fat chicks. And by fat I mean anyone who can’t fit into a size 10 that runs 2 sizes too small. Seriously. And I quote:
“We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends,” Jeffries said. “A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”
You know what this makes me want to do, right? Oh c’mon. You know….put on my sundress from Walgreens, my Crocs and my fabulous fanny-pack and trot my fine hiney all UP into Abercrombie and immediately accost the first embryo size chick I find and start snapping my hands all in her face like, “Oh what. You think I’m fat? Huh? You been walking around with your bow legged little self talking about how I’m FAT? Oh, I got your fat right here (patting my fanny-pack). You don’t know me! So you BEST keep my name out yo mouf or I’ll be all back up in this place next week and I might just buy something and make you watch the horrific trainwreck that will be me in a size 10 pair of low-to-the-flo risers. Also, this will something that will burn your retinas and make you twitch slightly for the rest of the your natural born life.”
On a side note, is it me or does Mike Jeffries look like that chick who got maimed in some back alley doctor’s office?
My Mama the Magnificent
10 May
On the eve of Mama’s Day weekend, my daughter (Not on purpose. I think.) made my day this morning by hurting my feelings. And I cried. And I’m a little ashamed to even admit that. But I did.
She said, “I wish I had a regular mom whose back didn’t hurt all the time.”
Now. I’m sure she wasn’t being malicious. It’s hard to tell with her sometimes. But my mama’s words came back to me. You know the ones of which I speak. Every bad kid out there had a mom who wisely informed them, “One day you’re going to have a child just like you. Then you’ll understand this pain I’ve had to endure for 18 years before suggesting you get your own place. And a job.”
The good lord above felt it necessary to bequeath to me a child that is me ten times over. And I’ve become my mother. Quite frankly, it’s a blooming miracle that my mama didn’t kick me out by the time I was 8 years old. Most mamas welcome their child with Oooh and Awwws, binkies and bottles. I think my mama’s subconscious must’ve muttered, “Oh god. Here it comes” when I came along.
I was a bit long in the tooth when the stork dropped me off. I’m adopted. And there are often times when I reflect upon my childhood and shudder. Not because it was bad. But because of everything I put my mama through. Upon arrival, I liked to spit, hit, kick and bite like a rabid camelcoon (that’s the hybrid breed of camel and raccoon). Now if that would’ve been me on the receiving end, I would have sent the kid back. But my mama was under the impression that God had something big planned for me. I think the plan involved me staying out of prison. Sometimes I feel like I’m still waiting for the Master Plan to arrive in my mailbox.
All that aside, I love my mama for her endurance and tenacity. I respect my mama for her discipline (not the spanking kind) and strength. So. I hereby thank you publicly mama, 22 times over. Even though humor is littering the list, the authenticity is right under it. I love you very much and am proud to be your legal offspring.
1. Thank you for keeping me.
2. Thank you for not laughing too hard when I declared I wanted to be a jockey when I grew up, knowing good and well I was too tall.
3. Thank you for rocking me and singing Dottie Rambo’s song, “Tiny” to me…even though it was a song about a 3 year old girl who died of unknown causes. That made me brave.
4. Thank you for making sure my little dresses were ironed and my hair was in perfect curls because you made me sleep on those skinny brown rubber hair curlers that permanently put dents in my head. Like all over it.
5. Thank you for for sewing Henry’s nose back on more than a few times. You did that didn’t you? I’m pretty sure you did.
6. Thank you for understanding that I thoroughly enjoyed sitting for long spells under the kitchen table with my suitcase of books, pencils and a pencil sharpener that was round and half of it was white, the other half red.
7. Thank you for not leaving me on that ferry boat to Kelley’s island. I really appreciated that.
8. Thank you for taking me fishing.
9. Thank you for letting me know that it was okay to be barefoot most of the time.
10. Thanks for not turning me into the authorities when I beat up Bradley repeatedly.
11. I also thank you for threatening to throw spiders in my bed due to my sibling naughtiness. That also made me brave.
12. Thank you for giving me countless home perms without permanent scarring.
13. Thank you for forgiving me.
14. Thank you for sending Daddy in to punish me because you knew that once you started whipping me you wouldn’t be able to stop and you didn’t want your children seeing their mother handcuffed and shoved in that back of the po-po’s car.
15. Thank you for not being too mad when you found that massive stash of Shaklee Vita-Lea that I’d been spitting out of my mouth for several months behind your back.
16. Thank you for not berating me and calling me a filthy slob when I came home from summer camp with my towels in the exact same place they were when I arrived at camp.
17. Thank you for that baby grand piano for my 16th birthday. That rocked hardcore.
18. Thank you for teaching me how to sew.
19. That you for being more patient than a sheet of paper. (I can’t really explain the thing about the paper because I don’t really understand it myself. I just read it somewhere and I know that a sheet of paper has a whole lotta patience.)
20. Thank you for instilling the love of libraries and paper books within my soul.
21. Thank you for always making sure my shoes had good tread because if I fell down in public it was a direct result of sketchy parenting, specifically the mother.
22. Thank you for teaching me to keep to keep my knees together when wearing a dress instead of a linebacker on the bench.
Countdown to Summer
10 MayWe’ve got five more days of school before the debauchery begins. I pretty much let my kid run amok in her underpants all summer. Don’t judge me. So throughout the year I’ve been drawing stupid stuff on her lunch bag. I’m not sure how it started but I began drawing pictures with the number of days left of school. You’ll note that I began with 28. The unofficial number of days spent in your average rehab facility. Totally unintentional. Anyway, here they are. I’ve decided that next year? I’m doing one everyday. Countdown from the very first day of school. You know, to give her hope and whatnot.
(These aren’t in order. So don’t bother mentioning it.”
Bathroom Graffiti
9 May
So I dated this guy once whose life dream was to be a professional tagger. At the time I thought this was cool because half my head was shaved and I chewed bubblegum. Turns out the only tagging he did was leaving his phone number on every potty stall within a 4 block radius of Ohio State University. There’s a fairly good chance that at least five of the following are his handiwork.
WWCD? What Would Chuck Do?
8 MayI read an article yesterday (written by a Cleveland native who doesn’t smile) that condemned all writers, bloggers and television outlets for “exploiting” and getting all hyped up over the hilarity of Chuck Ramsey. If you have no idea who Chuck Ramsey is…it’s this guy:
Chuck Ramsey is an unconventional American hero whose heroism is probably grossly underrated. Especially now that some stories are coming out from neighbors who saw some hinky stuff going on and didn’t do anything about it. On Monday night, Charles Ramsey said he was sitting eating himself a McDonald’s Big Mac when he heard a girl screaming “like a car had hit a kid.” He said he ran outside and saw that the screams were coming from his neighbor’s house. The girl (now identified as Amanda Berry) screamed at him “I’ve been trapped in here. He won’t let me out. It’s me and my baby.”
So what did Chuck do? Why, he ran and kicked the door down, doncha know! Little did he know that this one act would bust open the chains that had been holding three women captive for nearly a decade. His 9-1-1 call was classic:
“Hey bro, check this out. I just came from McDonald’s right? So I’m on my porch eating my little food, right? This broad is trying to break out the f—–g house next door to me, so there’s a bunch of people on the street right now and s–t. So we’re like, ‘What’s wrong, what’s the problem?’ She’s like, ‘This m——–r done kidnapped me and my daughter … She said her name is Linda Berry or some s–t. I don’t know who the f–k that is, I just moved over here, bro. You know what I mean?”
That was his 9-1-1 call, okay? He wasn’t standing in front of a camera, he wasn’t hamming it up for a sea of news reporters. He was just being Chuck. So when I start reading these articles slamming him for “trying to get rich with his ghetto self”, I get more than pissed off. Because truth be told, would WE have done the same thing? Seriously. If you heard some crazy girl screaming, would you go and just kick the door in? I think we’d all like to think we would. But in all actuality we’d probably go make sure our doors were locked before we looked around the house for the cellphone so we could call 9-1-1.
The question is being asked, “How could this go unnoticed in such a densely populated area for this long?” I’ll tell you how. We’ve been desensitized to humanity. We don’t see the child next door who has bruises and isn’t allowed to play with the other kids. We don’t see the elderly couple drive away and only one of them come back. We don’t go welcome newcomers to the neighborhood unless we already know them. We don’t go check on our neighbor when we see their yard begin to grow up with weeds. We simply complain about the eyesore and curse the homeowner for being inconsiderate of our home value needs. What if someone had lost a spouse and become so overwhelmed with grief that their lawn became pointless? Or worse yet, what if our neighbor had passed away?
We only seem to notice things when they begin to negatively impact our personal lives. Chuck didn’t HAVE to go outside and see what the screaming was all about. Chuck didn’t HAVE to throw down his Big Mac and run up onto his neighbor’s porch to engage the screamer in conversation. Chuck didn’t HAVE to kick in a door or make that call to 9-1-1. But he did. I’d rather see THIS kind of American hero rather than one who plays professional sports and makes a billion dollars a year. It would behoove us all to be a little bit more like Chuck.
If you missed his initial interview, take the time to check it out.
