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Now that summer has finally come to Illinois, I’m ready for a campfire. After digging up some trash trees and pruning others, you’d think we would have plenty to burn, but in the erratic and nonsensical civil codes of our suburb, it is illegal to burn your own yard waste. Basically, you can burn imported lumber but you can’t burn your homegrown lumber. Village officials apparently can tell the difference based on the kind of smoke it produces.
So the process is that we cut our trees and bundle the sticks and put them in yardwaste bags at the curb and pay someone to take them away, then they make them into Matchlight logs which we buy and are then legally authorized to burn.
Which reminds me.
It has taken me most of my life to learn that what was normal in my family was not necessarily normal for the rest of the world, and vice versa. Every once in a while a completely new revelation changes my definition of normal. Like last time I went to visit my sister and my nephew wanted to light the dinner candles. She said, “Oh, he’s such a pyro. Just like you!”
Blink blink.
I had forgotten that when I was a child my family called me, among many other names, a pyromaniac. I think this was because I liked to take a long stick and position logs in the campfire, and poke around in it all night, hold my stick in the air, make smoke rings, etc. After many teen beach parties and adult camping trips, I have found an equal number of other people who enjoy such things, and have realized that this is a completely normal human reaction to fire, probably since the first humans made a campfire.
Not in my family. The word “pyro” was not an affectionate term.
Okay, there was that one time when I accidentally set a chair on fire when I lit a piece of paper and then my mom walked into the room. I did what any normal seven year old would do – hide the evidence. Under a fluffy armchair with a fringe around the seat that burst dramatically into flames just as she got close to me.
The chair was fine, even with the fringe gone. We used it for years afterward. But “pyro” is still among my collection of personality disorders, according to my family.
“Mamma?” says Jenn. “Can I write song lyrics on my bedroom walls?”
“Uhhh, with what?” I ask.
“Marker.”
“Nooooo. Oh no. Nope.”
I say this so forcefully that Jenn and Joe both look surprised. After all, I’d already let her paint the room Rock star Red, and only vetoed a black ceiling because I was sure we’d never be able to cover it up. This is exactly the reason why she isn’t writing on her walls.
When I was in junior high, my family moved into a house that was simply a frame, unfinished on the inside. All the rooms were either bare drywall or wood studs. Since we’d be painting someday, my mom let me and my friends cover my walls with graffiti – about 3 years’ worth.
There were hearts all over room announcing our crushes-of-the-month and angry comments about our current frenemies. I wrote scraps of lyrics from bands like the Commodores, Pat Benatar, Abba, and Styx (“Pieces of Eight” was the first album I ever bought). I tested my nail polish colors on the walls and later made drawings in oil pastel that were REALLY hard to cover with primer. I used to produce a little graphic novel series for my friends, called “The Adventures of Regna”; and some of the characters ended up doing silly things on the walls, like acting out scenes from the movie Jaws and learning how to do gymnastics in a dress. Sadly, I’m not aware of any scrap of Regna that has survived.
When family life got really ugly, I’d hide in my door-less closet behind my clothes and write poetry in tiny letters in the corners.
My little sister was born when I was 14, soon after the bedroom was painted light blue. Bethie took my bedroom and I moved into a corner of the basement. A few years later my parents were divorcing; within two weeks I was packed and living in a new state. It was ten years before I came back to my hometown, and I convinced my boyfriend to drive up the dirt road to see my old home.
A teenage guy came out, and I told him I used to live there. I showed him the corner of the garage where Sheryl and I scratched our names in the concrete right after it was poured. It was the bicentennial year, and I had made a little star-comet flying off the ’76.
“So which one are you?”
“I’m Angie.”
“Angie? Wow, my sister had your room. We read all about you when we were remodeling.” He shook his head. “Man, you liked a lot of boys.”
JUST what you want the new boyfriend to hear.
“Jenn,” I say,”You can write your lyrics in chalk.”
When I was a teenager, I waited breathlessly for the new Van Halen album, 1984. Though I didn’t know it, it would be the last true Van Halen album, because I don’t care what you say, VH was never the same with Sammy Hagar (pause for a moment of silence).
I digress.
I’ve already told you a bit about my first car, a Plymouth Volare station wagon. This was a banged-up beauty with bench seats, and enough room for seven of my closest friends. And a boom box, since my car radio rarely worked.
I do believe I was the first person to buy my 1984 cassette, and then I took it everywhere with me. Which is why I was traveling to an Illinois beach with my seven friends (three in front, three in the middle, and two crouched in the cargo bay), pounding out the song “Panama” with all the bandwidth and vocal power we could supply.
“SH! SH! SH!,” I hollered. “This is my part!”
I sang:
“Yeah, we’re runnin’ a little bit hot tonight
I can barely see the road from the heat comin’ off
I reach down…between my legs…”I reached down between my legs.
“And…ease the seat back…”
I eased up the seat lever.
We did not ease that seat back. We ZOOMED that seat back into the legs of the second row of teenagers. I was amazed and horrified that the weight of three average teens could propel a bench seat back so forcefully. Eight people began screaming as I fought to reach the brakes and the steering wheel, both of which were a good six inches away from my arms and legs.
Here’s where I learned important laws of practical physics:
- Three people in a moving car can slam a seat backwards at the speed of a Van Halen song.
- It takes the combined, concerted effort of six screaming teens in a moving car to push a bench seat forward: three in the second row to push it forward, and three in the front row to lurch forward all at the same time, while one of them is trying to drive without being able to reach any of the car’s controls.
- Teenagers, Van Halen, and Volares may not be a smart combination.
I was in my old neighborhood the other day, a place I rarely have business and never visit for old time’s sake. It was the neighborhood where I lived with my grandparents, right after high school. Something about the bright fall leaves and the pleasure of driving on a sunny day made me think about two quirky characters from that year.
The first character was my Grandpa, a hilariously eccentric gentleman who was dying inch by inch from emphysema. He had lost a finger while helping us build our house, and used to terrify all the little kids by tickling them with the stump and making a creepy cackling laugh. He also liked to smack people on the butt with his cane when they walked away from him. When Grandma wasn’t looking, he’d turn to me and flip his false teeth in and out of his mouth.
My grandparents had been locked into a cold war for decades, and Grandpa would do anything he could to piss her off. Which is why, when he drove us somewhere, he’d rush right up to the stoplight and then SLAM on the brakes.
“Oh, JIMMMM!” Grandma would snarl, clutching the dashboard.
VOOOH-lar-rayyyy!
He’d look innocent. “People use their brakes too much. You just need to stop all at once, or you’re wearing down the brake pads.”
The other character was my first car, a beat-up ’78 Plymouth Volare station wagon I bought from my mom. I guess the worst thing about it was that everyone who entered the car felt the urge to belt out, “VOOOH-lar-rayyyy! VOH-OH!”. And that NEVER got old.
The car had bench seats and could comfortably fit eight of my friends (this was before manadory seatbelt laws). It was a total wreck. The passenger side of the car was one long rusty skidmark from the time my sister ran into the side of a car wash. The radio had a short somewhere, so the music would drift on and off, and eventually I started bringing a boom box with me. The driver’s door stopped closing in the middle of winter, so I took my unused seat belt and tied the door shut while I was driving. The car was also sprinkled with coconut from the time a friend took a WHOLE CASE of shredded coconut to the beach, and people started flinging it at each other inside the car. I never got rid of all the coconut.
These two characters intersected when my Volare had a flat tire. My mom wasn’t one to fling money at preventive maintenance, so the tires had never been rotated, and the bolts were heavily rusted onto the rims. I was never getting that tire off on my own.
So I called a mechanic. The guy said they could tow it there for ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS and then use their welding torch (or something else mechanical) to cut them off which would cost FIFTY BUCKS and then I could find a tire at a junkyard for an additional THIRTY DOLLARS. And then I promptly passed out. When I awoke and realized that was about a month of tips at Denny’s, and I still had to come up with $200 in rent, I started crying.
The mechanic was kind and said, “I have another idea. But I wouldn’t do it, myself.”
“I’ll do it! I’ll do it!”
“Take your car to an empty parking lot. Take off the nuts. Then–you know how to do a donut, right?”
“Oh yeah.” Because there was that time on the hill with the ice…never mind, that’s another story.
“Well do a donut. The force should pop the tire loose. But you have to STOP IMMEDIATELY when you feel the tire fall off the bolts. Otherwise…” Then he said something vile and terrifying but I didn’t understand other than I MUST NOT under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES go another inch once the tire came loose.
My Grandpa said he’d go with me. And I thought that he was going to actually do the driving, but when we got to the vacant lot, he said, “Just drop me off by the sidewalk.”
“Aren’t you going to help me?”
“Nooooooo. I’m not staying in the car while you’re doing that.”
This did not add to my confidence about this endeavor. But on my first try, I managed to feel the tire pop off and stopped the car. Grandpa walked over slowly, puffing and wheezing, and helped me put the spare tire on the car. It was a sparkling-bright fall day.
The Volare lasted six more months before it went to the Great Junkyard in the Sky. My Grandpa lasted about seven more years. When I passed by that parking lot this week, it was still vacant, as it has been for twenty-five years.
Jenn called her Dad today to tell him her surgery is scheduled for Friday.
ex-Ray: “Is this operation really necessary? How do I know you really need it?”
Jenn: “The doctors told me I need it. Soon.”
ex-Ray: “You need to get a second opinion. You can’t listen to just one doctor.”
Because the opinion of the emergency room doctor, her primary care doctor, and a gallbladder specialist can not be trusted. Know why? Because they are related to me through the tenuous connection of my husband’s medical insurance. Which makes them all liars who are just trying to get Jenn to have unnecessary operations to remove useless organs. In fact, I might have just paid them off to get a diagnosis that would help me have my daughter’s stomach cut open and parts of her removed, just so that I can remove money from ex-Ray’s pocket. That’s just like me.
