Hope

I hope my daughter never loses the nerve and desire to stand up on a bench in the playground and sing and dance her little guts out. At what point did we lose that?

My Buddy

The other day, i was listening to the radio on my television. One of those music channels options. I do that sometimes when i am washing dishes or cleaning the main floor of the house, because i get tired of the CDs in my kitchen. (You can only listen to my usuals: Blonde on Blonde, Pleased to Meet Me, and Picaresque so many times. It is funny how my recently played songs on Last.fm never actually take into account my time listening to cds in the kitchen the old-fashioned way.)

A song came on, and as so often happens in my distracted life, it was halfway over before I realized that I had known and sang along with every word, despite the fact that I don't think I had ever heard the song before. I stood at the sink, up to my elbows in dirty dishes (we are currently grieving for our deceased dishwasher), looking blankly out the window on my fall garden, and trying to pull a memory out of the ether. It came to me in a flash, a quick glimpse of my grandma's smiling face, with thick coke-bottle glasses, laughing at the piano in our old house.

My Buddy. It was My Buddy.

I used to love to watch my grandmother play the piano. She could still play, even into her 80s, and i think now that it is a lost art. Now, only the virtuosos play piano. But in her day, all young girls learned to play the piano, and standing around the piano playing songs and singing together was one of their favorite past-times. My grandmother would play songs out of the Cokesbury Hymnal. Her favorite was In the Garden. To this day, i get weepy every time I hear that beautiful hymn. I think that when I was little, I had no idea it was religious in nature, and the walking with, and talking with, and telling me that I am his own just made me feel so very loved. I never hear that song without thinking of Grandma Smith. But it was Grandma playing the songs My Buddy, and I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles that I really loved. She would sing as she played, and Lisa and I would sing along with her, following along in the songbook the words that she sang by heart, the songs she had listened to as a girl in Slidell, Louisiana and Chattanooga, Tennessee.

"Nights are long since you went away I think about you all thru the day My buddy, My buddy, No buddy quite so true

Miss your voice, The touch of your hand Just long to know that you understand My buddy, My buddy, Ooh your buddy misses you

Miss your voice, The touch of your hand Just long to know that you understand My buddy, My buddy, Your buddy misses you

Yes I do"

Grandma, you've been gone for 16 years now, and your buddy still misses you every day.

Voice of My Childhood

Summer evenings growing up, the Braves were always on TBS in the background. And in the Fall, Larry was on the radio. My first solid memory of him is listening to him call a Kevin Butler field goal kick, sitting in my Mom's red Caprice Classic station wagon, parked in the lots at the soccer fields across from the water tower, waiting for my soccer game in pouring, freezing rain.

UGA passed on. Larry's retiring. I'm thinking it just ain't right if we don't win a title after all of this. And I'm thinking I'm not the only lifelong Bulldog shedding a tear right now.

We Always Thought . . .

That Ev. would end up with Judd. . . but we are very happy that it will be Kim.


For information on this photo, and how it came about, please see the comments. Jason B. will have to explain the details of a wager that went horribly wrong for E. and J. All complaints about the posting of this photo should be filed with Jason, as he is the proper owner of said photo and released it to me for online publication.

This is just my very mischievous way of saying I will be off to the beach to see Evan get married this weekend. I am very glad to say that, because he is a gem of a guy, and I'm glad he finally found someone who appreciates his special brand of fun and games. Also, he was the last unmarried Creeker, and frankly, we were all getting a little jealous of his singledom.

If you are reading this and going to the wedding, wait till Jason and I have a few drinks and then come sit by us at the reception for some really good Evan stories. We have them in spades.

Evan, if you are reading this, this is kind of like when you left for college, and J. and I sat up all night, smoking and drinking, and writing the longest list ever of things that cracked us up about growing up with you. What I'm trying to say is that we love you, and are very happy for you and Kim.

It's Kind of Like the Secret of Oil of Olay

Basically, you hit 36 and sometimes you start feeling old, and other times, you can't believe you are 36, because, like yesterday? You were 16.

And then you get prank calls from your childhood friends, who have been prank-calling you since about. . . 1984 or so? (Yeah, that sounds about right Cue Van Halen.) And then you feel pretty young again. I mean, damn! I still got boys* calling me up at 11 o'clock at night, and no Cecil here to answer the phone and chew their asses out.

Life is good.

*30-something balding men.

Heartwarming Milestone: Rollie's First Bottle of Robo!

Like those other milestones, "First trip to the Emergency Room," or "First Projectile Vomiting Episode," they are so precious. This morning, it was "First Call to Poison Control."

Rollie has a cold and cough. He often wakes up earlier than Todd and me, goes to the bathroom, and then plays in his room until the sun comes up. This morning, I could tell he wasn't feeling good, and he was coughing like crazy, so I made the call to keep him home from school. He was laying on the couch, watching The Flintstones, and just feeling puny. Yes, Mom, his eyes were peaked, too.

It was my turn to get up with the kids, so Todd woke up later and i heard him jump in the shower. Then he came down with the news that someone had gotten into the cough medicine. Now, any parent knows that kids freakin' love taking medicine. It always tastes like Cherry, Grape, or Bubblegum! It's the best! Yes, i realize that kids are not supposed to take the cold and cough medicines anymore, but we never cleaned the old ones out of the medicine cabinet. I mean, who knows? Next month, they might come out with a study that shows children's cough medicine prevents cancer.

We interrogated him for a few minutes, trying to find out how much he took. We had no idea how much was in the bottle in the first place (or how he managed to open a "childproof" bottle.) He kept repeating that he took "four." Four sips? Four chugs? Four teaspoons? Four cupfuls? Sure, his liver might be experiencing irreparable damage, or his heart might be about to explode out of his chest, or he might be about to slip into a coma at any moment, but I still want to throttle him for not being able to express to me exactly how much he took. Mother of the Year!

I got on the phone with the pediatrician's office. When you tell the doctor that your kid ingested poison or got into cough medicine, all you can think is that the nurse on the other end is thinking "why the hell do you still have that medicine in the house, and why weren't you watching your kid? Just another dumbass, crappy parent." They forwarded me to Poison Control. While I waited for them to answer, I looked at the bottle. There was no Tylenol in it. Phew. For Rollie's size, he should have a teaspoon. A cup of it is four teaspoons. 98 pound kids are supposed to get four teaspoons. Rollie only weighs 40 pounds.

Fuck. What the hell is Dextromothorphan.

This is obviously some kind of karmic ass-biting the world is bringing upon me for all the times we shoplifted Robotussin in high school and then drank the whole bottle. I was a terrible kid and now I am the worst mother in the world. What the hell made me think i could be a parent? Just to get it out of the way, I should admit that there was also shoplifting and sniffing of Scotchguard and whipped cream. Maybe a confession here will be considered proactive good karma and the universe won't require Tiller and Rollie to fulfill the "I hope you have one just like you" curse to its full potential.

Poison control guy gets on and asks me questions and then tells me to hold on while they crunch numbers. Seems like forever, and it is not encouraging that Georgia Poison Control is somehow affiliated with Grady Health Systems. I start Googling directions to Children's from the new house.

Guy gets back on the line, and tells me Rollie will be fine. He should not have any other meds today. Drink plenty of fluids. He might be extremely excitable, or really drowsy. (Come on, drowsy!) He is definitely acting a little odd (he called me Tiller and keeps babbling nonsense) and his pupils look like saucers, but he seems okay.

I am so relieved. You forget how much you love the little shits, because you get so tired of the endless questions, and constant chatter, and neverending requests, and the fights, and crying, and messes they make. But when you have ten minutes wondering if you'll be sitting in a hospital that day and if your little man is going to be okay, it puts it all into perspective. You think that sitting on the couch watching cartoons and cuddling with a sick, doped-up kid is pure heaven.

We are sitting here on the couch now, and he is definitely acting squirrely; he keeps repeating "I'm sorry, mama." And I keep telling him that it is okay, that mama and Daddy got mad at him because it scared them, and he just can't ever take medicine without us ever again. Then he says, "I'm sorry I took the medicine, mama." We have been repeating this about every ten minutes for the last hour. I am reminded of the time Mike M. fell off the skateboard and got a concussion. He had no memory of the accident.

He kept asking: "What happened?"
Us: "You have a concussion."
Mike: "How did I get it?"
Us: "You fell off a skateboard."
Mike: "Who the hell let me on a skateboard!!??"

(For those that don't know Mike, he is about 6'8" and should never have been on a skateboard in the first place.) He would seem happy with our answers, and then five minutes later, forgot them and we went through the whole thing again. This happened so many times that da Crease finally wrote "Concussion" and "Skateboard" on his arm and just told Mike to look at his arm when he asked what happened. Still cracks me up to think about it.

The upside to this Robo episode? Rollie is so out of it that I am able to make him watch cartoons I like, rather than the Dora and Diego crap that we usually would have to watch. Right now we are watching The Perils of Penelope Pitstop. He keeps telling me he loves this show. It is his favorite.

Oh, and his cough is gone.

It is Nice

When those you love very much, whom you would do just about anything for, and whom you know would do the same for you, affirm their love for you.

There is something so powerful about old friendships, the ones where you have ridiculously funny memories of growing up together, of fucking up together, of grieving together and for each other, and of rejoicing in each other's meaningful life moments.

I love you too, Mealby. But then, I was forced to: Take a look at my choices.

P.s. I love you too, Jason B., even though you will probably call me tomorrow with the cackle laugh and make fun of me for my sappiness.

Things I Forgot About Snow

"Mama, when i was outside in the snow, I made a ball and I threw it on you and it was fun."

Yes, Rollie, it was. It was the most fun I've had in ages. I threw an icy, wet snowball today. But it was a snowball. And I showed you how to make a really sad snow angel. And I showed you how the best place to get a snowball from is a clean surface like the car and then we tried to throw snowballs at Daddy in the bedroom window above while he was on a conference call, while Quint did the low-butt run around the cul-de-sac, like he was a pup.

I had forgotten that snow had a sound and a smell, and that it made dogs frisky, and toes tingle and eyelashes frosted, and that it made little kids and big kids giggle like they were being tickled.

p.s. Mom, I'm real sorry about that mess me and Lisa and Matt and Karen and Sean made in the house, like, every day, throughout the winter in Rochester for two years in a row. We musta been about the biggest pains in the ass ever.

Off to Charleston

Tomorrow morning, I leave for Charleston. My childhood friend Marc is getting married. I cannot wait to meet the victim, er. . . bride. Marc and his brother, Pierce, and my sister and I go way back; Our moms were best friends growing up in Chattanooga. We vacationed in Destin with them for years, visited them at their home and on their Grandfather's ranch near Dallas, and when Pierce went to school in Chattanooga, I used to see him and his roommate when I was in town visiting my Grandma. We all exchanged emails recently, and Pierce's roommate was saying how nice it would be to see me again. The last time he remembers seeing me, I "drove a convertible and had bought the Drivin' and Cryin' album that day." We figured out that was about 1988. Yeah, nineteen years. Wow.

Marc is the last of us to get married. Pierce and I both have kids now, and Lisa is expecting. None of this adulthood crap matters much, because these are people who have known me long enough to remember me before I became the woman of grace and loveliness that I am today; They saw the gangly, pimpled girl with the sausage-rolled hair. They knew me when I had no boobs. They knew me when I liked Whitesnake.

It is going to be fun to have all four of us back together again this weekend, even though I won't have them to myself. There will be merciless ribbing, and much, much laughter. And a whole lotta drinking. Look out, Charleston.

"The Stadium is Worse Than Bonkers!"

This is kind of a sad day for me as a Bulldog fan. Tonight is the first game in my lifetime that won't be called by Larry Munson.

This article is a good overview of his career, and includes some of his greatest calls. My first recollection of Larry calling a game was about 1984. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was twelve years old and it was a cold and rainy day in Georgia. I played soccer on Saturdays at the Roswell soccer fields. By high school, we would call these fields and their parking, just off the high school campus, "The Water Tower." As in, "meet me at the Water Tower," or the more exciting, "Fight at the Water Tower after school today." Good times. I think we were waiting for my game to begin, sitting in the warmth and dryness of mom's red station wagon. I'm not sure if Lisa was there, and I have no idea where Dad was, but Mom and I listened intently to Larry's voice on the radio as the cold rain poured down.

"So we'll try to kick one a hundred thousand miles. We're holding it on our own 49-and-a-half ... gonna try to kick it sixty yards plus a foot-and-a-half ... and Butler kicked a long one ... a long one ... Oh my God! Oh my God! ... The stadium is worse than bonkers!" - calling Kevin Butler's field goal in the final seconds to win over Clemson in 1984"

You would have to know my mom to have any idea of the response this elicited from her; Words cannot do it justice.

I know a man needs to settle down, but Larry will be missed.

The N-Word: The Playground Argument

It took me a day to digest this incident. I think the N-word has so much power that it would be remiss of me to blog about my thoughts on it all willy nilly.

Yesterday, Todd and I took the kids to the Fellini's on LaVista for lunch. We Beat the Baptists, as my Dad always called it when I was growing up. As a kid, after Church on Sundays, we would be ushered quickly out of our Methodist (Baptist Lite) church, and herded to the cars, all of us except Dad just wishing we could go home and change out of the damn panty hose and do something fun with the rest of our Sunday, before the 60 Minutes clock started ticking. Not Dad, though. He had one goal in mind: Beat the Baptists to Morrison's. I may not attend church anymore, but Dad and I have more than a little in common with one another. I still like to Beat the Baptists if I am having lunch out on a Sunday.

We went into Fellini's and ordered. As we waited for our order, we watched Chelsea and Liverpool play soccer on the large TV. Business was slow, as we had beat the Baptists soundly, and the cooks were standing around watching the match, too. Rollie will usually narrate any sport that we watch on TV, even if he doesn't even know what sport it is. I would be lying if I said I didn't filter out about half of everything he says in a day, but Todd and I both were interested when he said the following:

"What is that black man. . . blue shirt doing?"

Todd and I looked at each other questioningly, as if to say, "have you heard him say anything about a person's color before?" We live in a pretty diverse neighborhood. On any given day, there are a pretty equal number of White and African American kids on the playgrounds nearest our house. Same breakdown at the kids' center at the YMCA. Not once has he ever asked me why some people are one color and others are another. It just hasn't happened. It is not for his lack of curiosity, because he has been curious about people in wheelchairs, and he has (quite loudly) asked why the people at the next table in a restaurant are "so big." (As I have said before, parenting is not for the faint-hearted.)

I whispered to Todd, "Maybe he just got confused about the color of the jersey."

Todd replied: "We're lucky he didn't use another word."

"What? What do you mean?"

"He heard a new word at the playground a lot yesterday."

Todd proceeded to tell me about their trip to Kirkwood playground yesterday. They had gone over there, because Brownwood Park was being used for a family reunion. This is a common occurrence, but it is kind of difficult to keep up with two kids by yourself in a mass of people, so he thought he'd be able to better keep up with them at Kirkwood. Turns out there was a family reunion at the Kirkwood park, too. The family reunion was for an African-American family.

Todd said that there were kids of all ages there, and that the boys on the playground were liberally using the N-word.

"You mean there were teens using it?"

Nope, kids. Kids under 8, under six even. He nodded seriously to affirm that yes, there were children using the N-word to each other on the playground.

I looked at Todd aghast.

Todd said that Rollie didn't seem to notice the word at all, but anyone who has a young one learning to talk knows that just because they haven't said something doesn't mean it hasn't been soaked up by their little sponge brains. Exhibit A: Car runs a red light last year and narrowly misses my van as I am taking Rollie to school. I slam on brakes and mutter "Asshole." I look in the rear view mirror and Rollie seems oblivious to the word. Thank God. I get to school and get out to take Rollie in. As I open the van door, I say hello to the woman who works in the church preschool office, who is parked next to us. The door slides open to the sound of Rollie singing, "Asshole, asshole, asshole." Kids have perfect comedic timing. Impeccable. It has been 48 hours since Rollie heard the N-word on the playground, and it has not surfaced, so I am thinking we dodged a bullet with this one. At least, he dodged a bullet.

Me? I feel like I was hit with a silver bullet right through the heart. I have such strongly held emotions about the n-word as it is, but to have my child enmeshed in the discussion makes my blood boil. Three-year-olds should not be presented with the n-word. I am sure there are PhD students writing their dissertations on the origins and power of this word; how on earth is my child prepared to digest the meaning of the word?

I am well-educated. I understand that many African Americans feel that they have taken this word back. I think it is a stupid argument and that people who use the word are ignorant and that the word itself is so fraught with pain that I cannot fathom why someone would want to use it, rather than let it be buried by the sands of time. But I do not think that I can remotely understand what it is like to be African American, and so I tend to just think that it is a word that I myself will never utter, and that my children will never use.

But when I imagine people using the word with one another, taking the word back, so to speak, I imagine that it is teenagers and adults who wield the word; Never in a million years did I imagine that children, some my own son's age, would be using the word on the playground. I shudder to think what would have happened if my son the sponge, with a love for the sound of new words on his tongue and for the plays on words that he so adores, had heard those boys calling one another the N-word, and in his childlike naivete and playfulness, had called one of them by the same word they were calling one another.

What, pray tell, would have been the reaction? I know what my husband would have done. He would have gotten down on his knees and firmly told Rollie, looking him in the eye all the while, that this is not a word that we EVER use. But how do you explain the pain and history of such a word to a three-year-old? How do you explain to a child, one that does not even seem to see the color of skin, that it is alright for one color of people to use the word, to throw it around like a ball at play, but for others to even utter the word is unacceptable?

What would be the reaction from the other children if Rollie had uttered that word? What would have been the reaction of their parents? I would like to think that the parents' reactions would be one of understanding. But in this racially-charged city (and to say that Atlanta is not preoccupied with race is naivete incarnate), I fear that the parents might assume that this is a word that my son learned from us. I am glad that it didn't come up. At times, I prefer being an ostrich, head in the sand. There are some questions to which I don't want to know the answer.

All I know is that I have never liked the word, and I have never used it. I was raised that it was ignorant to use the word. I have never understood why people would want to use it, most especially those for whom the word has such a terrible past. The thing about the word, though, is that it has a terrible past for us all, doesn't it?

I will teach my children that the word is unacceptable and that its users are ignorant. I am sure there are African Americans who would find fault with me calling them ignorant for using the word. I don't know what to say to them; I just know that my heart hurts for those children who know not what they utter on that playground. My heart hurts for my own son, who came so close to having his first introduction to the word, an introduction that I wish would never happen, much less when he is three. I only know that I would be much happier if we all let the word go.

I am one of a multitude of people who have thought about the word, or written about it. My treatment of it here is superficial and barely skims the surface of the myriad ways this word works and thrives and undermines and causes harm in our society. But in everything I have read and watched and heard about this word, I have never found a single argument against any of us using the N-word that is quite as compelling as the playground argument:

Is this a word that we want uttered on our playgrounds? Is this a word that we want little African American boys teaching to their white playmates?

The Dogwood Shuffle

I've seen this around the web a few times before. You open ITunes, put every bit of music you own on Shuffle, and then you have to post the first five songs that play for everyone to see. No matter how embarrassing. Here goes:

1. The Smiths - This Charming Man. So far, so good.
   
2. Aimee Mann - Invisible Ink. Another good one. Great song, actually.
3. Depeche Mode - Somebody. Okay, still retaining credibility here as a music lover. The embarrassing part about this song is the number of times that I sat in my room and played it on my cassette player, then rewound it again and again, all the while bawling my eyes out over some stupid boy. Ah, to be a middle-school-aged, angst-ridden Depeche Mode fan.
4. Moby - Porcelain. Makes me want to buy diamonds. The first four here have pretty much set up a nice slit-your-wrists soundtrack.
5. OutKast - Interlude. Okay, that ruined the mood, but i still got my rep protected.

The true test, folks, is to see what shows up if I do the same with my IPod:

1. Archers of Loaf - Web in Front. One of my running songs.
2. Sufjan Stevens - Chicago. One of Rollie's all-time faves.
3. Reindeer Section - You are My Joy.
4. Don Henley - Boys of Summer. Shit. Not so cool, but I can't help it. I have always loved the moody sound of this one. And I loved the black and white video.
5. The World Has Turned and Left me Here - Weezer.
   

Phew! This could have been way worse. WAY worse. Thank God. Spank Rock's "Bump" didn't show up. Oops.

Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe

This is another post about the games and toys and things that I did as a kid that were seemingly forever lost to memory once I grew up.

It started yesterday a few weeks ago, when Rollie and I were getting mail. We live on a cul-de-sac, so there is not a lot of traffic and he was in the street with me at the mailbox when a car rounded the corner, and almost involuntarily, I yelled out, "CARRRRR!!!!!!" just as if I was back in front of Owen Kinney's parents' house playing ball. I had totally forgotten about the unspoken knowledge of "CARRRRR!!!" and it came back completely unbidden.

Then yesterday, we were picking up a new chair at Pier One, and the guys working the store gave each of the kids a Chinese Yo-Yo. Todd brought them out and I looked at them, and they looked familiar, but it was just one of the those items completely lost to memory. Then Rollie, with a flick of his wrist, brought it all back to me. It was a spiraling, papery, magic on a stick. I laughed out loud, right there in the car.

Then today, another one popped up: The kids are learning about sharing, but Rollie thinks that sharing is only something that Tiller has to do with him, and does not really get that the reverse is true also. So, after about five minutes of tears, throwing of cars, biting, and me refereeing, I decided it was time for learning about equal division of property. I pried them apart from one another, their chests heaving with the exertion of having tried to kill one another over a pile of one dollar Matchbox cars, then I took the cars, and i put them into the plastic bin they are stored in, and placed the bin between the two kid. Both reached immediately for a car.

"Uh-unh-unh," I said. "Not so fast."
They put their cars back in the bin and looked at me.

"Now, each of you put out a fist."

Rollie got this, but Tiller put out two fists, grinning at me for praise. I put one of her fists back in her lap.

"Mama, what about the cars?" Rollie said.

I said, "Well, we're going to divide them up evenly."

Rollie looked at me like I was crazy.

"Ready?" I said.

"Eenie meenie, meiny mo," I said, alternately bopping my fist on each of their fists, one after the other, in time to each syllable, "Catch a tiger by his toe, if he hollers, let'im go. Eenie meenie, meiny, mo."

At that point, it was like I was in a trance, as the following poured forth: "My. Mother. Told. Me. To. Pick. The. Very. Best. One. And. You. Are. Not. It!"

The kids loved it.

Talk about magic. And it was like one of those magical parenting moments, too, because now all they want to do is figure out whose turn it is to pick first as they divide stuff up.

Yes, I am God's gift to parenting.

On another note, as the words "Catch a tiger by his toe" came out of my mouth, I thought to my self, how would you do that? Why a Tiger?

Oh.

Doesn't take a Southern girl long to figure out what her grandparents, and probably even her parents, said instead of "tiger" on their playground. And then I realized that this little ditty was probably a good deal older than me and my friends playing Hide and Seek in the front yard, so I Googled it.

If you want to know the history of the whole Eeny, meeny, miny, moe rhyme, you can find info here. Equally as creepy as kids singing the Ring Around the Rosy rhyme if it were actually a plague rhyme, which evidently is not the case.

About an Old Friend

There's a pretty cool article in today's New York Times, written by Aimee Mann, about "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." This weekend is the 40th anniversary of the release of the album; It came out about five years before I was released.

The interesting thing about the article is that she reminded me of what I thought of the album as a kid. At 35, I have lots of other ideas about the album that I've picked up here and there throughout the years, but she reminded me of the sheer curiosity with which a child picked that album up out of all of her parents' other albums.

I am a lucky girl - My parents listened to some pretty cool stuff. Mom liked folk and rock and roll: She was a card-carrying member of the Elvis Presley Fan Club, but also listened to The Everly Brothers, Ricky Nelson, The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, Jan and Dean, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and Peter, Paul, and Mary. I still remember wondering what "Virgin" meant - One of her friends had written it on her Bob Dylan album cover. (Her name is Virginia.)

Dad listened to rock and roll, too, but his tastes leaned more towards Jerry Lee Lewis and lots of 60's soul. I still to this day think Otis Redding is the best "cleaning up the house on Saturday" music ever. I wore out all of the Otis discs and that Stax/Volt Review album he had. My sister and I put on clown makeup and danced around the playroom to the Everly Bros.' "Kathy's Clown." To be fair to my parents, they also listened to some great classic country and 70's honky-tonk Country and Western, too. People, we had a dog named "Waylon." I shit you not.

Nothing, however, could compare to the magic a kid felt looking at that Sgt. Pepper's album, and then finding that what was on the inside was just as other-worldly. In later years, Sgt. Pepper's was the album I listened to (on endless repeat, all night long) the first time I did LSD. In fact, that experience made me not want to listen to if for years and years after.

But after reading Aimee Mann's article this morning, I decided it was time to pull it out and listen to it again. Okay, i don't have the album anymore, but Todd has a Beatles problem, and we own 22 Beatles albums; We could listen to The Beatles for 17 hours straight, according to ITunes. So, here I am, listening to "Good Morning, Good Morning" and thinking that it has been too long since I listened to this old friend.

Gotta go. The dog is barking. Oh wait. That's just Sgt. Pepper's.

Soundtrack: Fairport 1979-1980

I skim the New York Times online just about every day, and the last thing I look at is the "On This Day" feature. From the New York Times today:

"On Feb. 22, 1980, in a stunning upset, the United States Olympic hockey team defeated the Soviets at Lake Placid, N.Y., 4-to-3. (The U.S. team went on to win the gold medal.)

You can see the a picture of the actual front page that day here.

This event, along with the Georgia Bulldogs winning the national championship earlier that year, is one of my earliest sports memories. It also elicits thoughts of the two years I spent living in Fairport, New York, near Rochester. I watched this hockey game at my friend Karen Rapp's house. All of her brothers and sisters and their friends were there and it was the second time I ever heard the F-word. When the U.S. won, all the crazy hockey fans all over the neighborhood ran outside and honked car horns and I just thought it was the best thing ever.

I was in 2nd or 3rd grade at that time and Karen was in Kindergarten or First grade. She was the youngest of one of about 10 kids, and I loved to hang out at their house, because it was kind of like being in an episode of The Brady Bunch or Eight is Enough. She shared a room with two of her sisters and I still remember sitting on her sister's bed while falling asleep, gazing at their Pink Floyd The Wall poster. It creeped me out. In their den in the afternoons, all of the kids and their friends would huddle around a little television and watch M.A.S.H. I hated MASH at the time, but grew to love it later. The other reason that I loved to hang out there was that Mrs. Rapp made homemade pizza for all of the kids on Friday nights. She would slave away making pizzas for the kids and their friends, serve it to us all, and then retire to the living room couch, lay down, put a pair of huge headphones on her head (plugged into the humongous stereo receiver) and listen to Neil Diamond. Mrs. Rapp loved Neil Diamond. She would have left Mr. Rapp, despite his kickass homemade maple syrup, for Neil Diamond.

Neil Diamond, in turn, reminds me of New York. Except for "Cracklin' Rosie," which reminds me of drinking with Dan and Evan, or "Sweet Caroline," which reminds me of that crappy Jimmy Fallon baseball movie, Fever Pitch, based on the book by Nick Hornby, whose writing I really like, even though he seems to keep writing the same book over and over and just changing the characters' names. Okay, I admit it. I even kind of like the movie, because I could drink with Drew Barrymore, and I would be lying if I said Jimmy Fallon isn't rotated in and out of my top ten every once in a while, and because I would fall in love with a Sox-lovin' Jimmy Fallon type if I was ten years younger and a workaholic Drew Barrymore lookalike.

Which brings me in a very convoluted manner to the rest of the post. A while ago, an acquaintance posted this video from YouTube on his blog. It is Christopher Cross' "Ride Like the Wind," live. Boy did it bring back the memories of living in New York, at about 7 or 8 years old. I thought about my Fisher Price doll house, and turning the lights off for bed, then reading horse books or playing dolls by flashlight till late at night, the radio on so low that only I could hear it.

That was back when you mostly listened to the radio or your parents' albums. (I could and might dedicate a complete series of posts to those.) You had no idea what the musicians looked like, or what an album was. You just liked a song or you didn't, and you'd better hope you liked it, because either way, you would hear it run into the ground for the next year, blaring out of the hard plastic speaker in the side of the faux-wood-sided station wagon as you rattled around to the grocery store in the way back (there were three sections to our station wagon: "Front," "Back," and "Way Back.")

Seat belts? What are seat belts?

Soundtrack: Fairport 1979-1981

"Ride Like the Wind" - Christopher Cross
"Sailing" - Christopher Cross
These two are kind of interchangeable, but i associate both of them inextricably with New York and listening to the radio undercover at night in my room

"Band on the Run" - Paul McCartney and Wings
This came out in like '73, but I distinctly remember it playing on the radio while my sister and I took a bath in our bathroom in New York. The bathroom was brown, and had this weird wallpaper that had a Sherlock Holmes-like character with a brown bloodhound. The toilet seats were plastic and cushioned. Fancy.

"Keep on Loving You" - REO speedwagon
The ultimate Fairport song. Lisa, Karen Rapp, Matt Recht from next door and Jennifer Lofberg from across the street would all hang out in our garage. We were in an airband. We did this song.

"Another One Bites the Dust" - Queen
I remember this song coming out and everyone went crazy for it. I remember Karen's brother, David, talking about it with my babysitter, Sarah. They were in high school. David was holding a Simon. Simon is this weird toy where it plays a noise, and you have to hit the colored bar corresponding to the sound you heard, and it starts playing more and more intricate patterns of sound. The person who can play what Simon plays the longest without fucking up wins. David, nerd that he was, pretended that he was some scientist who could control animals with sound, and the Simon was the sound machine he used to control us. Yes, the rest of the younger kids were animals.

"Another Brick in the Wall" - Pink Floyd
See above mention of the poster.

"Suicide is Painless" - MASH theme song - Mike Altman and Johnny Mandel
Yes, I had to look up the artists' names. Reminds me of the dread i would feel every time I heard it ("Ugh, 30 minutes of complete boredom coming up"), much like the feeling I still get upon hearing the infernal ticking of the 60 Minutes clock.

"Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" - Rod Stewart
Another of the my babysitters, a next door neighbor, was a total stoner, I am pretty sure. She invited her boyfriend over while she was supposed to be watching us, and she let us watch Solid Gold and Rod Stewart did this song live, wearing these tight black pants, shaking his ass and she said she thought he had a cute butt. I thought she was a bad, bad girl for saying that, and I also wondered what could possibly be cute about someone's butt?

"The Devil Went Down to Georgia" - The Charlie Daniels Band
I still love this song. It's like a folk song, but it has that shock factor that you love as a kid ("I done tole you once, you son of a bitch, I'm the best that's ever been.") My parents had the album, and we played it on the record player in the office and totally spazzed out dancing to the electric fiddle bridge in the middle of it.

"Lost in Love" - Air Supply
I am not sure that this is not the same song as the Christopher Cross songs. Same feel. Bedroom at night, radio down low.

"Upside Down" - Diana Ross
Leftover disco 45 in my parents record collection. We wore this baby out. Dance Fever!

"Y.M.C.A." - Village People
I cringe when i hear this now, but god almighty did I like it back in the day. At that time, I thought they just liked to dress as what they wanted to be when they grew up.

"The Winner Takes It All" - ABBA
Off of the album Super Trouper. Thank God I was not a boy, or i would be completely gay now. Village People? Diana Ross? ABBA? Dear God. We sang our guts out on this one. I wanted flowing dresses like the ones they had on the cover. I thought they looked like sexy Greek goddesses.

"Rumours" - Fleetwood Mac
I am not sure where Mom got this from, but i LOVED it. Probably the first album I ever really loved. I have to say, best album on this list. (Todd will probably argue that based on Wings being on here, but he is the only one who really listens to Wings.) I was forever staring at the cover and wondering why that guy's belt looks like testicles hanging between his legs.

Trip down memory lane completed. Please exit the bus in an orderly manner. Maybe tomorrow you will get a recap of my parents' albums' influence on my musical tastes. Or, maybe you will get more ridicule of my sister and husband. Maybe you will be on the hotseat. You just never know with me.

We Are All Some Sexy Motherfuckers

Todd made a little fun of me for tearing up while Prince did his Super Bowl half-time show finale. But seriously, like, have you never seen Purple Rain?

That performance brings back all the pain and the Mom and Dad stuff, and feelings about Apollonia, and always being second best to Morris Day and The Time, and taking it out on Wendy and Lisa, and on the song they wrote, and on the rest of The Revolution, like Dr. Guy, and you could just let it destroy you, how angry your are, wearing your purple and being short and driving a motorcycle to compensate for it.

But when Prince performs that on stage, it is total catharsis. For all of us. We are all forgiven and cleansed and now we're hanging out in Miami with the NFL, and a marching band, and wearing some Aunt Jemima thing on our head, and a suit bordering frighteningly on Florida Gator colors, and you know what? We can pull it off, cause we're Sexy Motherfuckers.

Love me some Prince.

The Lionhead Files

Lisa's Birthday, 1977
Originally uploaded by AnnieATL.

My sister, like me, had really curly hair as a kid. My cousins and I made merciless fun of her. She cried. Lots. Those were good times.

I have created a Flickr set of pictures of her as a kid when she was rocking the lion's mane. I call it The Lionhead Files.

The identity of the Lionhead has been revealed.

Dance Recital, 1978

Tomboy in red dotted tulle, lipstick, Dorothy Hammill hair. Alpharetta, Georgia.

My Boys

You know that show, "My Boys?" No, I didn't either, until my outing with the Creekers, wherein almost every person there told me I would love the show. These days I actually have girlfriends (see Girls Gone Mild, for example), but growing up, with the exception of a few solid girlfriends like Karen and Camille and little Lisa, I hung out pretty much exclusively with the boys.
I'm happy to say that we still hang out, even if it is just a couple times of year. Most of us have families and responsibilities now, but put us in a basement together and give us a few cases of beer and we will quickly regress to our sixteen-year-old selves. With maybe a little more clothing kept on and a little less smoking and puking. Exact same amount of laughter. I love my boys. (From left: Owen, Dan, Me, Jason, Ev, John, and C.J.)

More pics from the Creeker get-together here on Flickr.

*Apologies for it taking so long to get this post up. I have had nothing but trouble with my internet connection this month. Oh, the troubles I've seen. Woe is me. Hope to start blogging regularly again come the new year.

I can't remember the last time I was so excited

Tonight, I am attending a going-away party for an old friend of mine. He and his family are moving Chicago. One of our group of childhood friends had the amazing idea of having a party in this friend's parents' basement. Brilliant. Who wouldn't want to go back to the scene of the crime for one last blast?

We all grew up together, lived in the same neighborhood, attended the same schools, and played tennis and were on swim team together. These people know things about me that no one else knows. I have spent hours upon hours hanging out with them. We all have adult jobs and some of us have families, and we are ditching all of those this evening. These days, when we get together one or two times a year, we bring the spouses and the kids, and sometimes our parents are there. Not tonight! No spouses. No kids. Just the group of us, a fuckload of beer, and an old-school location. Todd has graciously agreed to take care of the kids tonight and get up with them tomorrow. I am spending the night out. Did I mention how great my husband is, that he will watch the kids while I go have a slumber party with seven grown men? He is awesome beyond belief, trusting and non-jealous. I adore him.

Hopefully, no one will get arrested, steal a mustang convertible and take it for a drunken joyride, go skinny-dipping, drive a grey caddy backwards across a busy highway, pass out in the bushes, have to run back to the house with only half their clothing, swallow a quarter, get to the chopper in the junipers, or put on a vomiting performance from the screen porch balcony with a cheering audience. No way anyone will be in the blue room. Hopefully, we will limit our alcohol intake to beer and liquor, while forgoing Boone's Farm and Mad Dog 20/20.

Yes, there will be cameras, and I am just glad that there weren't cameras back in the day. This will undoubtedly be much tamer. We are mature now. Really. I mean it.