U-Pick Personality Quiz

OK, you're about to be presented with a series of paired choices. You have to pick one.

1A: Pancakes and sausages
1B: Waffles and bacon

Well, that's really sort of lovely, isn't it.

2A: Blue jacket with broken zipper
2B: Blue pants with broken zipper

Hardly a choice. I mean, selecting 2B means you have some explaining to do, especially since the rest of us knew you had a choice, right?

3A: Flat tire, city bus, two transfers, rain
3B: Lying to the boss, Oprah

(I'm not suggesting Oprah as your boss, just to clarify.)

4A: Home burglarized while you're at work
4B: Home burglarized while you're on the couch

Rethinking the bus, aren't you. Hindsight is 50-50.

5A: Steak for lunch
5B: Steak for your black eye

B? Are you nuts? You know you don't have to pick this just because you decided to lie about being sick, right? The burglar isn't necessarily, say, also a podiatrist whose first afternoon appointment is with your boss who has a little hammertoe problem, and who will apologize for being a bit late to treat the hammertoe because of his other job as a burglar, and as it happened he was doing a home invasion at your house - don't you work for his company? - and incidentally you seemed fine, no sore throat at all, when he punched you in the eye and you yelled "oh please! no! don't hit me again!" Because that would be entirely too coincidental.

ANSWER KEY

1A, 1B, or 5A: Good choices
Any of the others: Bad choices

Go back to the instructions. Did I say you had to pick between each pair? No, I did not. All I said was that you had to pick one.

Surprise!

Two Birds, One Stone

When I was growing up we were 'poor' but we kids didn't know it. We just had no money.  Neither did anyone else in the neighborhood so it was just a fact of life that we didn't have a lot of stuff and had to share everything from crayons to popsicles and having three other siblings, you learn a lot about negotiation just to get a piece of the pie or cake or the icing rose on the cake because there were always less icing roses than kids and birthday parties could be a bloodbath if we didn't know anything about diplomacy or in all truthfulness, ruthless manipulation. 

We fought over things that while now seem stupid, at the time were crucial to our survival like would we watch Roadrunner cartoons (David) or the Patchwork Family (me) or Captain Kangaroo (Donny) except often by the time negotiations (dragging Donny around the room by the feet of his footie pajamas until we lost interest) were finally over, we'd realized that our parents had locked the door to the den yet again because I had a nasty habit as an insomniac of strolling in there around 2AM in my granny nightgown and sitting 8 inches from the screen to watch the test pattern until my dad would hear static in his dreams and come and carry me back to bed. He did this several times a night until he decided to install a chain lock. We used to have a small 12" black and white Sony that my mother used to watch soaps on during the day while gossiping with her girlfriends in the kitchen and in the evening we'd pick it up by its handle (it was portable!) and carry it into my brothers' room which had a balcony and mezzanine (read; bunk beds) and either watch to our hearts' content or our grandmother recruited us to weed, sweep or scrub something, until the evening my brothers were bored and poured a pitcher which we normally filled with watered down Shop-rite store brand Kool-aid, of water into the little hole where the antennae used to be before my brothers apprehended it for a sword fight during one of our pirate adventures. The little Sony exploded, we all got spankings, and the door to the den was locked for forever. (in kidspeak: a week) 

My maternal grandparents owned our house and at the time they lived upstairs and we lived downstairs and my paternal grandparents lived across the street. My aunt Christine's fiance's family lived next door to them, and my mother's best friend Lucille lived with her parents next door to them, and nearly each house on the street at a certain point were linked to us in one way or another via blood, marriage or scandal with the exception of our next door neighbors and the house on the other side of them.

In that other house lived a family with a horrid awful son named Garnet. His name was really Michael but no one called him that except his mother. (I should have known by his given name that he was trouble but that's another story for another day) He also had a sister who was bigger than me whose name I don't think I ever learned because I spent a good deal of time avoiding being anywhere near that house on the off-chance Garnet was fixing to torture me. Somehow he always figured out when I was alone and often inflicted bodily harm on me enough to cause pain but not to be seen as so unusual to capture parental interest. Because I lived with two brothers and an uncle who was only three years older than me, I learned very early to not only defend myself against boys but to make my own mark on their memories and limbs. Bones were broken. No regrets. No remorse. Kill or be killed.

My uncle John was what was back then commonly referred to as a 'change of life baby' --an oopsy--after older children are grown and the folks think they're done raising kids, one more miraculously appears out of the ether (Make plans, God laughs) and my grandparents decided to pawn my uncle off on us so even though he was technically not the oldest, he lorded over us and if he didn't get his way, he feigned something creative like an attempted decapitation that brought my grandmother running and making threats and whatnot. If we 'made her' chase us around the dining room table, we were ordered to march outside and down the stoop and pull a switch off the boxwood hedge in front of the house. She'd beat us with it and if we pulled off the leaves by the time we got to her, she'd beat us and make us go back and get another one. My father was either in work or sleeping (he often did swing shifts) and my mother was either distracted with her friends or grocery shopping when these events occurred so none of the wise none the wiser. John was a tyrant and had to be dealt with.

I wanted a bike for my birthday because I was 7 and my uncool tricycle had long been pawned off to Donny and later Lisa and I saw the world passing me by on Schwinns and Huffys and I couldn't even rate a stinking Big Wheel. I wanted a fake wicker basket with fake plastic daisies and streamers on white handles and a pretty ding-ding bell. I wanted a pink bike with a banana seat and a sissy bar. The folks said no and for an entire month I pulled a series of impressive flounces usually resulting in spending the rest of the evening in my room plotting my family's agonizing demise. After a lengthy conference with my imaginary friend, the following day I went to my maternal grandfather, a man of very few words, but when he said them it was law, and pled my case. "I need a bike, Grandpa. John has a bike he isn't using. Can I use John's bike?" While it seemed pretty straightforward and simple to me, he really didn't appear moved by my case but I was shocked the next day when he announced to the family that John had to share his bike with me and to add insult to injury, the little bar that made it a 'boy' bike would be removed to make it a safer 'girl' bike. John was enraged, my grandmother was speechless and my parents were stunned that I had not only successfully broken the chain of command but also performed a small coup and they didn't even have to invest a penny into my new wheels. 

There is always a catch and there was no exception here. At one point earlier during the summer Donny and I had decided we didn't like our mother anymore and prepared to run away. We packed all our earthly belongings (admittedly mine was mostly stuffed animals and a Radio Shack lime-green transistor Flavoradio) into two Hefty bags. My mother asked us where we were going, we announced that we'd had it and were leaving and she graciously offered to help us pack. We disdainfully turned her down but allowed her to make us PB&J's for the road.  I honestly thought her snickers were tears.  My father, coming home from work, found us standing on the corner crying and asked us what we were doing. We told him we were running away. He asked us why were were there and we said we weren't allowed to cross the street. I knew his snickers were NOT tears and I spent that weekend in my room. I spent a lot of time in my room plotting my revenge.

No matter that I wasn't allowed to leave the street, not even go around the corner; I rode up and down the block thrilled with my new-found freedom, the breeze blowing my braids behind me. I had three glorious days of freewheeling until the afternoon I saw a flash running down a stoop two doors down and Garnet waving his arms and yelling at me demanding I let him ride 'my' bike. I drove past him and he slapped the back rim and I almost lost control. The bike was a bit too big for me and my feet couldn't exactly make direct contact with the foot brakes and my heart skipped until I regained control and flew past him but I knew I had to get back home without going around the corner or crossing the street so I had to make a choice upon turning around. I could hit the brakes and possibly injure myself and do permanent damage or hit the beast in my path and hope for the best. My survival instincts and adrenaline pumping, I said a little prayer to St. Jude, Patron Saint of Lost Causes, and turned the bike around. 

He stood there in the middle of the sidewalk, a big rock in his hand, the sneer on his lip daring me try to get past him but in my mind that was not an option. There was only one way I was going to get rid of this little shit who wouldn't leave me alone or keep his hands off of  me and that stone was meant to spill MY blood so I did what any self-respecting little girl in a hopeless situation would do. I ran him over. And backed up and ran him over again. And backed up again and ran him over again. When he looked like he was still twitching, I did it twice more for good measure.

Unbeknownst to me, Garnet's sister was standing in the dark doorway of her vestibule watching everything. He was down and I was standing still next to my bent bike wondering what the hell I was gonna do now. I heard a noise and looked up and my heart filled with terror as she walked down the steps toward me. She was twice my size and I thought for sure I was dead. She looked at her brother and sucked her teeth and said, 'He had it coming' and then said we had to make it look like an accident. He was moaning and moving around and she kicked him in the ribs and we picked up the bike and she held my hand as we crossed the street to the concrete carport on the other side. "Get on the bike and smash it into the wall" she commanded and I did and totaled it beyond repair. I suffered a chipped tooth and a scraped chin and lost a lot of the skin off my knuckles. We carried the bike back across the street to the front of my house and she just walked away. I ran up the stoop, shrieking that I fell off the bike and it broke and everyone came running to sooth me and tend to my wounds and John ran to see the damage to his bike, his hatred for me burning a hole through me while I held a bag of frozen peas to my knee, snot running down my dirty face for full effect. I smiled at him with my chipped tooth. His reign was finished (so was his bike) and so was Garnet's.

A few days later my grandfather came home with a girl bike for me. A red three-speed Colombia with a ding-ding bell and hand brakes. John deemed it too girly to have anything to do with it and found other victims to torture. Garnet's family decided to send him down south to spend the summer with relatives. I don't recall ever seeing his sister again.

It's Our One Week Anniversary and TODAY'S 10 MINUTE TOPIC!

And they said it wouldn't last...

This little experiment in writing exercises has been going for a week and I would call it a great launch! My thanks to those who have been contributing regularly

Now all we need is you. Yeah, you Mister/Miss stuck writer type! You Mrs./Mr "I always meant to write a blog, but don't know if I could", You Mr. Lazybones writer who can't write more than a sentence without getting tired...No wait...That's me.

C'mon. It's easy.

So as a way of Celebrating our 7 Day Anniversary is Today's 10 Minute Topic: SURPRISE!

No...really, that's the topic. You got 10...

Driving Lessons

With one notable exception, I have the unenviable talent of locating, obtaining the interest of and being employed, managed or supervised by colossal assholes. Because I'm not counting the Great Baloney and Scrambled Egg Babysitting Accident of '78 because taxes and FICA weren't being withheld so technically it wasn't a real job, Al Tipton seems to have been the model, the 'type' you know, the way we all have a specific sort of 'type' of people we're attracted to? Well he was the mold for all schmucks to follow, every last successor including the joker who wanted to sign me and himself up for classes for a specific sex act (which last I checked was still illegal in several states) at Babeland in Soho. I didn't know one needed classes for that as part of that particular job description so after a nice conversation with an attorney who specialized in sexual harassment and then taking everything in a large file cabinet that contained very important 'stuff' and running it through an industrial shredder and then showing his wife a photograph of his stripper girlfriend Tasha giving him a lap dance, her crystal clit ring glittering prettily in the camera flash, I removed myself from that situation and found a less demanding position for actually the only boss I genuinely liked. But I digress.

Al was one of those people who are unfortunately called 'gingers' but that was long before my time. As it happens with many gingers, for some reason his hair turned snow white prematurely and it, with a visage that made the banjo boy from Deliverance look like Brad Pitt. (Short pause here. Am I the only one who now thinks there is SOME resemblance between Brad and Banjo Boy or is that just the remarkable power of my own suggestion and wild imagination? Does anyone know if Brad can play banjo? <note to self: Google- Brad, banjo>)  Anyhoo, Al looked like a really sneaky big white rabbit and he had a perpetual sniff. Not a 'I have a million allergies' sniff or a 'you people are all peons' sniff  but a really irritating tic and no one would say shit to him about this and myriad other strange things because he was the Operations Manager AND a dick and was also banging the third generation co-owner of the company who was hell bent and determined with her brother Barry (who we affectionately called Kid Limo) to run the company into the ground as soon as they forced their dad into retirement and shipped him off to Boca. For the record,  I really couldn't pity him because he used to steal all my pens and strangely a tiny flocked teddy bear desk toy (I saw him take it) and they were just like him so it was sorta kinda a 'you had it coming' thing.

My dad worked for the company as a truck jockey which meant he would take all the trucks to Hertz-Penske in Kearny or wherever the hell it was with another yard monkey and trade them for trucks that were running only slightly better sometimes only barely making it to the warehouse before it would break down and they'd have to take it right back. Sometimes this went on all night long. He also fueled them up and checked the odometers to make sure the cross-country drivers weren't keeping double logs (they were) and every thing was legal (it wasn't) but that had nothing to do with him. Much of his time was actually spent turning the diesel hose on wild packs of vicious dogs that used to be pets but were thrown out of their owners cars on nearby highways when they lost their puppy-ish charms, so it was not unusual to see bands of standard poodles, English bulldogs and even chihuahuas and Scotties running through the Meadowlands at night in the glow of the arc lights. I once saw a breathtaking Afghan Hound chasing rabbits around Barry's limo which my dad was taking his sweet time fueling up by forgetting it was there and disappearing for two hours. We all have our passive-aggressive pecadillos.

Dad and Al hated each other with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns. My father did not bow down to anyone even if he was a lowly errand boy. It wasn't noble but it was honest work and he was an honest man and it put food on our table so he was one of the few people Al couldn't intimidate. For some reason, this did not stop Al from hiring me to work as a shipping office clerk on the skeleton crew while my dad did his thing. We drove in together and ate lunch together and because it was the late crew, we were pretty much left to our own devices until someone in the office on the day shift went on maternity leave and I was told I had to work days for about six weeks. I didn't drive at the time but no matter; the office manager, a close personal friend of Al's (well, her husband owned a liquor store and Al liked liquor) would have me drive in with her. I proved to be such an asset to the day crew that they had me train new workers and extended my stay to six months until I was needed on the night shift again.

For some reason, the night shift (as evidenced by an awesome movie) attracts a lot of strange people and I get along with most everyone and have a million stories to prove it but the day shift was infinitely better (like night and...never mind) and I met some great people there, the most notable of which was my friend May. 

 

She was a woman in her 50's, dark, bespectacled, short and very plump, a heavy smoker with the voice (and cough) to match and the proverbial heart of gold. She also had a taste for very small Latino men and they liked her a lot too and there were a lot of them working there so in exchange for a couple of Marlboro 100's, I'd man the will-call desk so she and Julio could express their daily devotions in private. May worked under the table because she won a wrongful death lawsuit over her late husband but it was held in trust and doled out monthly with the stipulation she could not earn any money or the trust would be void or some shit like that which meant she was pretty much stuck working there and if Al fired her it would be a bitch to find a job that payed that well off the books and Al knew he had her in a pickle so he made her do a lot of extra work. 

 

Sometimes after work she'd take me home with her and we'd hang out. We never talked about work; we had much better things to discuss like when she asked me why I was 20 and still didn't drive.  I told her I was kind of afraid and also my folks wouldn't let me get a license until I could afford insurance because New Jersey auto insurance laws sucked ass. She said bullshit on that and took me and her giant Chevy Caprice to an industrial park on a Sunday when the lots were empty and made me get behind the wheel. I asked what if I hit something and she said the car was a piece of shit anyway and reasoned if I totaled it she'd win enough money at bingo to replace it at some point. She figured she was due for a win soon anyway. So I hit the gas and promptly backed into a telephone pole. I hit that fucker four times.

I was mortified, she was laughing her head off and neither of us were injured. She said to do it again and again and again and by dusk, I was doing donuts and getting seasick. We stopped for KFC and her perpetual two litre bottle of Pepsi and I spent the night at her house and the next morning she drove me home. A week later my father quit because Al accused him of something he didn't do, I quit out of loyalty to my dad and May quit out of loyalty to me and the shipping office was effectively fucked while they scrambled for replacements. The company went under and the co-owner's divorce attorney husband found out about Al and his wife and threw both of them out on their asses. I heard a rumor he was dating Al's long-suffering wife but I think that's just wishful thinking.

Over time, I lost touch with May. It happens. But one day out of the blue around a year later, she called me and during the conversation she mentioned offhandedly that she was in the hospital and I asked her where and the next day I surprised her and showed up. She was so excited she was laughing and crying and called the nurse in to see her prodigal daughter returned. She told me she always thought of me as her kid and I was too good for that shit company anyway and she never once regretted quitting. She told me found another job and still played bingo and was dating another guy, also named Julio. I think she called them all Julio out of convenience but they were cool with it so who am I to judge. A week later she died of congestive heart failure.

 

She was an awesome humble gutsy woman who made the best of her situations. When I went to her wake, I met her son for the first time and he handed me something before I left. He said he found it in her wallet. It was a picture of me, that I must have left behind in my desk when I quit that shitty job. In it, I'm about three years old and standing in my grandmother's rose garden, squinting in the sunlight with a loopy grin. On the back in my mother's writing is written, 'Elaine, May 1, 1970.' below it in May's writing is, 'my little girl.'

May Day, or, The Lord Helps Him Who Helps Himself

This is one of my favorite stories. An agnostic, taking a cruise in the South Pacific, is the only survivor of a massive shipwreck. Splashing desperately in the briny, about to go down for the third time, he sees a floating crate and crawls on top, exhausted.

"God," he croaks, "Lord, if you exist, reveal yourself and save me, oh please, save me!"

Day turns into night. Night turns into dawn. The straight, flat horizon turns into a straight, flat horizon broken by the silhouette of a nearby cruise ship.

The castaway whispers as he lies atop the crate, "Oh Lord, please show yourself in all your awesome power and save me." The ship slowly steams westward. What little faith the man had is ebbing away.

A hour passes. The silence of the sea is broken by the faint sound of a helicopter, high above.

The man doesn't hear the rotors. He's deep in thought, adrift on his crate. "When will He appear and save me? Can the atheists be right? Is there no God after all?"

A Voice: "I sent you a crate, a cruise ship, and a helicopter. What's it gonna take, pal?"

It's NOT always about me. And Today's Ten Minute TOPIC!

The Carol picked today's task...Which is cool, we can take turns
So Apparently the Ten Minute Topic for the Day is: MAY DAY
(Emergency, Help Wanted, The Holiday, Marching...LIKE THAT)
Have Fun!

It's Sunday: M'Aidez

I'm losing the hearing in my left ear. This is not necessarily a tragedy, certainly not at this point in the process, but it's still worrisome. I started noticing it a few years ago when I realized I was being a pain in my husband's patootie about the television volume. He had it too loud, I couldn't concentrate; he had it too soft, I couldn't hear. In point of fact, the decibel level wasn't changing on the TV, just in my ears. Unfortunately this had gone on too long by the time I realized it for me to apologize properly, and it was just one more nail in the coffin. Just (another) one of those things leading to the disintegration of our bond.

To point out the obvious, lots of things disintegrate with age, and sometimes, when you're not watching, they do this in a big way. My left ear, for example, is not just losing its volume control. It's also losing its clarity filter (a body part I am making up, or possibly not, to illustrate a point). I can see the people on the TV talking. If I amp up the volume I can hear them OK, but after a while I realize that there's a strong possibility they are speaking a dialect of English which can only be described as "let's confuse the old lady with words fairly similar to the ones she's used to, then soften their corners so they make no sense at all."

Either this is natural and normal and other people experience it as well, or Hollywood has it in for me. Since I'm not yet a candidate for assisted living, I'm going with the former. But I have my eye on you, Hollywood, and it's not the right one with the short focus, so don't try anything funny.

And stay off my lawn.