Warning: Grandma Will Get You What You Ask For

When we were young, my brother Eric was our family's Eeyore -- pessimistic, rather gloomy.  Experience taught him early on that if something bad was going to happen, it was going to happen to him.  Most of the time it wasn't even his fault, he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, fall victim to a misunderstanding, or suffer some other stroke of random misfortune like putting his arm through a window or sliding down a wooden bench and getting a foot long splinter embedded in his thigh. 

One Saturday afternoon when I was thirteen and Eric was nine, our dad came home with two bikes that were given to him by a friend whose kids had outgrown them.  One was a sleek metallic blue five-speed with a banana seat and hand brakes, the other was a small turtle-shit green K-mart model with coaster brakes and a basket on the handlebars.  In retrospect, Dad should've decided beforehand which of us was going to get which bike.  Maybe he was hoping it would work out naturally, but whatever the case, Dad committed one of the Cardinal Sins of Fatherhood -- he asked both of us which bike we wanted.  The result was not a surprise.

"I want the blue one," I said.

"No, I want the blue one," said Eric.

After several minutes of arguing back and forth, firing phrases like "I'm older, I should get it," and "No fair, you always get your way," at each other, Dad decided to flip a coin.

"Chris, you call it," he said.

"Why doe HE get to call it?" asked Eric.

"Fine, you call it then," I said.

"Heads," said Eric.

Dad tossed the coin, caught it, and flipped it over on the back of his hand.

"It's tails.  Chris, you get to pick your bike."

I'd like to say that I took this golden opportunity to be the bigger person, to set aside my own selfish desires and accept the turtle-shit green K-Mart clunker so my little brother could have the bike of his dreams, to be a thoughtful and caring big brother who Eric would look up to for the rest of his life.

But I think we all know what really happened.

"I'll take the blue one."

Eric, predictably, pitched a hissy fit and ran upstairs to our bedroom.  I felt guilty for about eight seconds, then I hopped on my bike and rode to my friend Paul's house, shifting gears the whole way.

A similar incident had occurred a few years prior only instead of bicycles, the subject was Halloween costumes.  Most years, our Aunt Patti took me, Eric, and our youngest brother Bobby to FAO Schwarz in New York to pick out really cool outfits to wear for Trick or Treat.  One year I was an astronaut, another time Eric was a snazzy-looking Canadian Mountie, and Bobby spent Halloween 1975 gathering Tootsie Pops and Milky Ways decked out as a four-foot tall Spiderman.

One year, though, all we had to choose from was the family's Costumes of Halloweens Past, those that were recycled year to year and passed along as hand-me-downs.  Bobby was a tiger, I was Batman, and Eric was a clown.

Eric, however, had absolutely no interest in being a clown.  He griped, he grumbled, he pouted.  To this day, no one is sure why he was so against the idea, but it may have had something to do with the time we were all kidnapped by Giggles McYukyuk at one of our mom's Cub Scout leaders' meetings.

It gets worse.

Not only did Eric have to don the clown suit, Mom insisted on stuffing the front of the costume with balloons so he resembled one of those inflatable punching bags.  As a result, Eric is the only child in Halloween history to sulk his way through Trick or Treating.

It also led to the most hilarious picture in our family's scrapbook:

So yeah, Eric always seemed to be the one getting the bum deal, which makes what happened on Christmas 1979 all the more pitiful.

Every Christmas, we'd wake up at the crack of dawn, roust our parents out of bed and storm downstairs to unwrap our presents.  Once the gifts were opened, Mom would whip up a batch of Pillsbury orange danish and we'd spend the rest of the morning playing with our new toys.  In the early afternoon, we'd drive across town to our grandmother's house for round two.

Traditionally, Grandma would give us each a stocking full of candy and small toys, a couple mid-level gifts (clothes were the most common in this category), and finally, our one "big" present.  Grandma had a fairly close relationship with Santa Claus, so we always knew that the main gift was going to be something really cool.  One year I got a complete set of barbells, another time it was a guitar, and when I got a bit older, I received a top-of-the-line Texas Instruments digital watch.

The 70's were a much simpler time.

So anyway, on the Christmas That Will Live in Infamy, we'd plowed through the preliminary presents and were ready for the main event.  Family policy required us to open our presents one at a time, so we all got to see what the others had received.  Also, it made the process last longer than twelve seconds.

"Okay, who wants to open their big gift first?" asked Dad, clearly forgetting about the bicycle incident of a year earlier.

"I do!" said Bobby.

"Me!" I shouted.

"Here we go again," muttered Eric.

Since there were three of us involved in this decision coin-flipping wasn't an option, so Dad wrote down the numbers 1, 2, and 3 on slips of paper and put them into a bowl.  Eric drew first and pulled out the number 3.

"What a surprise, I'm last," he said.

Bobby had drawn the number 1, so he retrieved his gift from under the tree and ripped off the red and gold wrapping paper.

"Cool!  A Johnny Lightning racing set!  Thanks, Grandma!"  He reluctantly set the box aside so he could watch me unwrap my present.

Mine was wrapped in green paper with snowmen all over it.  I tore it open, to reveal the gift I'd been asking for since August.

"An Atari video game set with five game cartridges!" I said.  "Pacman, Adventure, Kaboom, bowling, and Tank Battle!  This is great, thanks, Grandma!"

By this point, Eric was practically bursting with anticipation.  Seeing Bobby and I hit the jackpot with Johnny Lightning and Atari, he just knew his present was going to be something spectacular.  Taking his time, he removed the silver paper from the box, revealing his special gift.  It was exactly what he'd asked for . . .

A few months earlier, Eric and Mom were watching television when a commercial came on advertising an innovative new product.  It was an item that Eric did indeed have a particular need for, even if it wasn't something most ten year olds would have any interest in.  As kind of a joke, he said to Mom, "Hey, look at that, maybe Santa can bring me one of those for Christmas."  Mom, however, didn't realize he was kidding, so she passed this information along to Grandma who went out and bought Eric the gift he was now looking at with a puzzled and somewhat somber expression on his face.

The Foot Fixer, by Clairol.

Think about this for a minute.  Here's a ten-year-old kid who's just seen his brothers open a brand-new video game system and a racing set where you can actually juice up the cars and they rip around the track on their own.  It's Christmas, the highlight of every kid's year, and what does he have to show for it?

A flippin' Foot Fixer.

All things considered, the kid handled it pretty damn well.  He didn't burst into tears, he didn't throw the thing across the living room, he didn't look at Grandma and ask, "What the hell is THIS?"  He just let out a pathetic sigh and said, "A Foot Fixer.  Thanks, Grandma."

He wanted to cry, though, you could tell.

Here's the rest of the story.

Eric had flat feet.  He was always quick to point this out, and he often used it as an excuse to get out of doing household chores, kind of like a ten-year-old on disability.

"Eric, it's your turn to bring in the trash cans."

"I can't, my feet hurt.  I have flat feet, you know."

"Eric, it's time to set the dinner table."

"My feet hurt, I'll do it later.  I have flat feet, you know."

Truthfully, he did suffer through bouts with foot pain from time to time, especially at night while trying to get to sleep.  So when he and Mom saw the Foot Fixer commercial on TV, he thought it might be something that would help.

But not as his Christmas present.

The real victim here, though, is our grandmother.  She genuinely believed that Eric wanted The Foot Fixer, and once she realized how disappointed the poor kid was, that it was all a big mistake, she felt terrible.  I don't recall what happened in the aftermath, but I'm sure it involved taking Eric to Toys R Us and letting him pick out whatever he wanted.

But to be honest about it, The Foot Fixer wasn't a total loss.  If you filled it up with water and plugged it in, the resulting vibrations caused a tsunami that was great for capsizing our toy battleships.


Note: In no way is Grandma at fault for this.  She was absolutely the kindest, most thoughtful, and most wonderful human being to ever grace the planet.  Her role in the Foot Fixer Incident of 1979 was simply to provide her grandsons with whatever they asked for.  The misunderstanding was absolutely not on her.  No, the blame lies somewhere else entirely.

I'm looking at YOU, Mom. 


d

Revenge of the Babysat

"This is stupid, it isn't even dark outside yet," my brother Eric said as he caught the tennis ball that I'd tossed to him from my bed. He was on the top bunk, with our brother Bobby pouting down below.

I caught the return throw. "I know. Can she really send us to bed this early?"

We were being baby-sat by our 16 year-old neighbor, Nancy. In a fit of irrational, most likely hormonal rage, she'd banished us to our room without probable cause. We hadn't been fighting, weren't making excessive noise, nothing. Yet at the ridiculous hour of 8:00 pm, here we were. Our friends were still playing touch football in the street, for Chrissakes.

I tossed the ball back to Eric.The doorbell rang downstairs, and Nancy answered it. We heard unfamiliar voices, so we assumed that she had invited a couple of her friends over to our house. Bottles clanking, music playing, it sounded like they were getting a party started! Nancy was the Cat in the Hat, and Thing One and Thing Two had just showed up. Mom and Dad could not possibly have approved this. Teenage subterfuge, right here in our own living room. We had to do something.

If we'd been a few years older, we probably would've come up with a more diabolical plan. But at the ages of 11, 8, and 7, this is the best we could do:

I got my basketball from the closet and gave it to Eric, still on the top bunk. As I held the door to our room slightly ajar, he balanced the basketball top, resting it between the door and the frame.

The old "Booby Trap the Door" trick.

"How do we get her to come up here?" Bobby asked.

"Simple," I said. "You guys pretend you're fighting about something."

They played it to perfection.

"Get off me, you jerk!"

"That's mine! Give it back or I'll punch you again!"

"STOP IT, ERIC! YOU'RE HURTING ME!"

"Quit crying, ya little baby!"

Jeez, isn't she coming yet?

"Quit it, you guys!" I yelled. "We're gonna get in trouble!"

"He's choking me, get him off!"

Finally, Nancy couldn't ignore us any longer. She stomped up the stairs. We heard her coming down the hall.

She was right outside the door.

"What the hell are you guys do-"

KA-BONK!

Holy crap, it worked to perfection. The ball conked her on top of her dome, knocking her glasses askew. Her face contorted in pissed off, Kathy-Bates-as-Annie-Wilkes-like rage.

And then Bobby doused her with the glass of water.

Nancy was ill-prepared for our pre-pubescent wiles. The combination of mild pain, crooked glasses, and freshly-soaked zitface left her momentarily speechless. Without comment, she stormed out of our room and went back downstairs.

That's what you get, you skanky wench! Send us to bed early? Have a party in our house? We think NOT. Victory was ours.

Temporarily. For two hours, to be precise.

At around ten o'clock, after Nancy had sent Thing One and Thing Two home, our parents returned. We heard angry-sounding murmurs from downstairs. The snitch was ratting us out. A whuppin' was coming our way, no doubt about it.

Bobby scurried over to the toy box and found my kneepads. He slipped them into the butt of his pajama pants, makeshift protection against the spanking-yet-to-come.

Let's pause here for a second so I can clarify something. Our parents never "beat" us, per se. We did, however, earn the occasional smack, thump, swat, spank, or backhand across the ass. Every once in a while, our mom would even find one of our Hot Wheels tracks to do the deed. Let me tell you, there's nothing worse than getting walloped with your own toys.

So anyway, we braced for the incoming wrath o' Dad. He pushed the door open.

"Nancy told us what you guys did. That is not acceptable." He didn't raise his voice at all. Somehow, that made it worse.

"But Dad! She was-"

"I don't want to hear it. She was very upset, and you broke her glasses. And who hit her with the water?"

Bobby giggled from under his blankets.

"Well, let's get this over with," said Dad. I was first up on Your Hit Parade.

SWAT! SWAT!

Dad had a rule. We got spanked until we cried. Two swats, and I was blubbering like a colicky infant.

He walked across the room. Eric fired off a pre-emptive cry of anticipation, but it didn't help. Dad had apparently decided upon a two-swat minimum.

SWAT! SWAT!

And then came Bobby's turn.

THUD! THUD!

Bobby tried to stifle a chuckle.

THUD! THUD! THUD! THUD!

"What's in your pants?" Dad asked.

Bobby was laughing uncontrollably now. Clearly, he lacked foresight.

Dad grabbed the back of Bobby's pajama bottoms, giving him a sort of "mini-wedgie". He reached in, grabbed the kneepads, and flung them into the corner.

SWAT! SWAT! SWAT! SWAT!

Bobby cried.

Dad walked out, turned off our light as he went, and left us alone with our diminishing sobs and whimpers. Eventually, all was quiet on the bedroom front.

"You guys okay?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"Uh huh."

"That was kinda worth it, though, right?"

"Did you see how her glasses were all crooked after she got hit with the ball?"

We laughed till we fell asleep.

d

The Art of Camping in the Rain

I was hanging out with my father not too long ago, reminiscing about some of the vacations we took when I was a kid, and I happened to mention a couple of our camping trips.  "You know, Dad," I said, "those trips to Bryce Canyon and Mesa Verde were great.  I remember them as being a lot of fun."

"What are you talking about?" he asked.  "You hated camping, always griping about the weather, the bugs, setting up the tent . . . "

I'm sure he's right, but now that I'm older, I've really come to appreciate the chilly nights in the wilderness, eating cold Dinty Moore beef stew, burning marshmallows on an open fire, and spraying each other with industrial-strength OFF! to keep the mosquitoes at bay.

Ah, memories.

We did a lot of camping at local state parks in Jersey, Voorhees and Hacklebarney in particular, but it was our two-week summer trips that provided the memories that have lasted a lifetime.  Here are a few of my favorites.

ZION NATIONAL PARK, UTAH
SUMMER 1976

As the sun broke through the clouds that fine Utah morning, my eight year-old brother Eric and I were sitting at the picnic table doing Mad Libs.

"Okay, I need an adjective," I said.

"Horse."

"That's a noun.  An adjective's a describing word, like 'big' or 'little'."

"Little."

"Well, that's just an example, you can pick a funnier one if you want."

"Disgusting."

"Okay, good."  I wrote it down in the Mad Libs book.  As I was writing, Eric reached into the Dunkin' Donuts box that had been left on the table overnight.  He grabbed a jelly-filled (his favorite), and took a bite.  As he chewed, I noticed a strange expression creep across his face, a combination of confusion and panic.  He looked at me, then down at the donut he was holding.

That's when it hit him.

Crawling out of the jelly hole came a swarm of tiny red fire ants.  In the meantime, their semi-chewed comrades scurried around inside my brother's mouth looking for an escape route, which Eric provided for them in the form of horrified gagging, spitting, and puking.

"Okay," I said, "Now I need a plural noun."

MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK, COLORADO
SUMMER 1977

As you may remember from a story of mine involving the game Simon, my father is not a bluffer.  He did not make idle threats.  When he said, "If I have to come up there one more time, someone's not going to be sitting down for a week," we knew he meant business and we shut the hell up and went to sleep.  So anyway, one summer we were camping at Mesa Verde National Park, and Mom and Dad decided to take us across the campground to listen to an Indian guide tell stories by the fire.  Eric, however, wasn't all that excited about going so he basically whined the whole way.  Before long, Dad said, "Eric, if you don't quit complaining I'm going to pull the van over and you can walk back to the campsite."

Well, Eric didn't quit complaining.

As advertised, Dad pulled the van over to the side of the road and waited, presumably for Eric to say something like, "I'm sorry, dear father, I will never again express my reluctance to join the family for a fun-filled evening of Indian stories."

But that's not what happened.  What happened was, Eric decided to call Dad's bluff.  When the van came to a stop, Eric simply opened the sliding door, hopped out, and headed back to the campsite.  Actually, he was going the wrong way, but that became a moot point almost immediately.

I don't know how he did it, but in one fluid motion, Dad shut off the engine, climbed out of the driver's seat, circled the van, removed his belt, and served Eric a healthy portion of attitude adjustment.

We then proceeded to the campfire and listened to the Indians' fascinating legends.  Most of us sat on wooden benches, but Eric decided he'd rather stand.

BRYCE CANYON, UTAH
SUMMER 1974

This was the year my youngest brother Bobby had really long, curly blond hair.  My Dad got so tired of people saying, "What a cute little girl you have," that he actually spelled out the words I AM A BOY in black electrical tape on the back of Bobby's jacket.  A haircut might've been more practical, but I wasn't going to tell my Dad that.


HIGH POINT STATE PARK, NEW JERSEY
SUMMER, 1978

Our campsite that year was beautiful, lots of trees and it was set right on a lake.  We spent a lot of time fishing, mostly catching and releasing the same five sunfish.  One of those stupid bastards had about thirty-five holes in his upper lip.  But there was one fish, who we dubbed "Tuffy", that wouldn't go for the bait.  We tried everything; worms, bread, Kraft American Cheese.  Eventually, Eric was able to catch him by snagging the hook in his gills.

VARIOUS POINTS IN NEW ENGLAND AND EASTERN CANADA
SUMMER, 1975

The trip up to Nova Scotia was by far the most memorable of our family camping expeditions, and by "memorable" I of course mean "left deep scars that will probably never heal."  To begin with, it rained every day.  Now, most of the time when someone makes a statement like that, what they really mean is "it rained an awful lot."  It's an exaggeration, like when you say, "Diane is such a slut she nailed every guy in Kappa Gamma Phi," you just mean she's a whore who slept with a lot of guys, not literally everyone.  But rest assured, when I say "it rained every day," I mean that it rained every single fucking day.  For two weeks.

Rainy weather and camping don't really mix well.  You can't build a fire, and the muddy terrain leaves the tent stakes clinging desperately for some sort of stability.  It's too wet to do anything fun other than sit around in the tent playing checkers and doing more Mad Libs which gets really damn old after, oh, three hours.

There were other problems.  Somewhere in a town called (and I'm not making this up) Pugwash, we had car problems.  So Dad took me on a "side excursion" to the Pugwash Pep Boys  to pick up a couple air shocks.  We watched in amusement as Dad installed the new shocks in the pouring rain.  I think that was also the night my parents finally said "the hell with it" and booked us a room at a motel, which was really a series of cabins.  Here's some irony for you -- the cabins did not have running water.

Finally, around Day 12, the rain stopped for a couple hours and the sun peeked out from behind the clouds.  Naturally, my brothers and I begged our parents to let us go swimming in the lake.  My mom started to talk us out of it (the temperature was in the low 50's), but after we bitched and whined for fifteen minutes, my dad said something like, "ah, the hell with it, let 'em go in."

So we put on our swim trunks and waded in.  It was when I got in up to my knees that I realized that the water was about 33 degrees.  I immediately walked back to the gravelly beach, and it felt like my ankles were broken.  My brothers didn't last any longer.  My dad, however, was convinced that his sons were just a bunch of wimps, so he said something like, "you guys are just a bunch of wimps" and ran into the water.

Here's the beauty of the situation.  Since Dad had just called us wimps, he couldn't just dart back out of the water, although the look on his face indicated that he wanted to do just that.  He declared, "It's r-r-r-r-realy not s-s-s-s-so bad once y-y-you get used t-t-t-to it."

I've never seen my mom look so smug.

So Dad toughed it out for a couple minutes, and just before hypothermia set in he came ashore, having acquired a bright pink hue.  He quickly toweled off and wrapped himself in a warm blanket.

It immediately started raining again.


h