F+ You!

You’ll always remember that one teacher who made you what you are today.

They took you on: an underprivileged inner city kid from an impoverished school district. And despite the hardships you faced within your broken home and with an ill-timed pregnancy, that very teacher encouraged you to sing and write and study and challenge the fate to which all believed you were condemned. Wait, no, that's the plot for Dangerous Minds and I distinctly remember Michelle Pfeiffer not being my Home Economics teacher. But Mr. Hirschbottom most certainly was! He taught me to braid my hair real good and make brownies and drive cars that hump the ground. Too bad he eventually ended up completely bald and on Celebrity Fit Club, ultimately retiring from life’s passions. I took ADVANCED CORNROWS 2 my junior year and even though I felt at the time like I deserved a better grade, I only managed to earn a B+. That was a particularly humbling moment, but he recognized the same fire within him, in me. From there on he rode me hard and never let me get away with a half-assed effort. I’ve since forgotten how to make even a simple friendship bracelet, but many a life lesson I learned in that semester long class.

Okay, maybe Mr. Hirschbottom was really Coolio. If you didn't get it, please, go to youtube and just watch videos of adorable kittens; this blog is clearly not intended for you. Your mom may stay. My mom: I know you didn't get any of that last paragraph so you will have to leave. You're pretty.

I’m not going to lie, I was a pretty smart kid. My parents had me tested a whole bunch when I was in elementary school in desperate hopes of finding out I was the next Jesus, or Bobby Fischer (I have no idea how to play chess and always liked to move the horsemen (they’re on horses so I think that’s what they’re supposed to be called…?) because they’re cool looking like those Pepperidge Farms cookies). I must have drowned my brain in Juicy Juice and Fruit Roll-Ups because my IQ exams clearly stated I would not turn out to have a strong foothold in the world of academics. You may refer to my 10^th grade report card for further evidence that my brain could not process fairly simple concepts such as - math. I do know that normal = plain. Actually, vanilla is so delicious. Um, duh, treats, duh. Let’s go to the mall! I did graduate from high school, nominated by my peers as ‘Future Picasso’. That’s taken me very far. I'm so glad I earned their encouragement and respect. Kill meeeee.

Even though I ended up being normal (curse you genetic smarts skipping my generation, coupled with an influx of very distracting video games and cartoons and pizza rolls), I had a great deal of support and encouragement by my similarly duped teachers during my formative years (thank you, Montessori school, for helping me build up my investigative skills – I’m what some call a ‘prober’).

From time to time, probably more often than I realize, I fondly look back at one teacher, one special fucking teacher who left on me an imprint the size of her colossal ass and encouraged me to be something no other teacher in my life had encouraged me to be up until that point: A huge asshole.

Thank you, my 6th grade teacher, Ms. Patti Cisewski (chih-SEWH-skeeeeeeeee / alternate pronounciation: KUH-uhnt) I hope my two followers find you on the internet and spam the fuck out of your school district inbox. We'll help you get a penile implant on your face.
I I I I I I I I I hate you.

Wildebeests, fortunately, cannot unite in 47 of the 50 United States, Minnesota included. So she was single at the time she taught my class. She had a hideous little wildebeest, troll child named Michaela Cisewski (amazing, my spell check recognizes ‘Michaela’ as a real word / name – if you are named Michaela, Monica or Desiree, your life is guaranteed to be total dogshit mostly due to the fact that the people who raised you gave you your crappy ass name. And you run around like a chicken with your head cut off, or a chickenhead (more likely), on the outskirts of an already miserable suburb (Cottage Grove, MN) whose major exports are meth, high school dropouts, and meth babies. I know what you’re thinking: rent must be cheap!

Ms. Cisewski was a notoriously evil, 4-legged teaching abomination. I was on vacation in Florida the summer before 6^th grade and during that time the class rosters were announced to students and their parents. My mom had to call me with the bad news. I freaked out at my Tia Angelita’s house on one of her plastic covered sofas. Tia doesn’t speak a drop of English so she couldn’t figure out what was going on nor console me. If I remember correctly, the best she could do was serve me some fried steak and whole avocadoes swimming in olive oil and salt...and the ensuing heart failure brought me a sense of calm. But THEN, my mom tried to make it better by telling me my best friend Darcy was in the class, too. No amount of Darcy or Mickey Mouse was going to make this better.

Her breath was a combination of cigarettes, black coffee, halitosis aaaaand spoiled milk. And I’m sure she kept her mouth closed all day so that shit would stew in there so that she could literally reek havoc (pun master moment, muthafucka) on the unlucky soul called to her desk for a session of downwind scolding. Oftentimes me! Lucky me! I wish – I WISH – I would have had the balls to offer her a cert or a stem of fresh basil.

When we continue F+ You! parte deux, I’ll explore the deeper reasons behind my hatred for Ms. Cisewski and how I got that bitch real good. But then she got me real good. But then life got her real good because it looks like someone dumped a vat of syphilis on her head.

But , sweetie, she smelled.

One very cool part about being a kid is that this is the only time in your life when you are allowed to have odd, small pets without being ostracized by your peers. But don’t feel special. Your parents only allow vermin into their home to deflect the possibility of getting a dog, which requires way more attention and money. And besides, rodents, birds and lizards are easy to replace when they inevitably croak. I am the pun wizard! Actually, I didn’t mention amphibians. Shit. Can you even remember how many times have you gone on a date and thought you were going to get all fucking sexy with some guy or girl, start making out on the couch and suddenly your olfactory is choked up by the stench of ferrets in the next room over? So then you go to his / her bedroom to getcha, getcha, getcha freak on and afterwards, when you turn on the lights, you realize a boa constrictor in a three-fold fused aquarium was watching you the whole time from 5 feet away? No, no you don’t. Because none of this shit would ever have gone down…because adults with animals like this in their homes don’t go on sexy dates. Back to the Renaissance Festival with you, you freaks! Keep inbreeding. So if you don’t get your chance to have a stupid, useless pet as a kid, remember your life is fucked if you want to make up for lost time as a 32 year old. Unless you live in your mom’s basement and play WOW all day long. ‘Mom, keep the mountain dews coming!’

And in elementary school, the teachers always dumped off their science creatures with some unsuspecting parents. I got 2 hermit crabs, which were actually pretty cool because you don’t really have to feed them or clean them or hang out with them. And when you’re sick of them, you can just throw them in the garbage because they have no souls. I remember my friend, Darcy, took care of a duckling after she raised it for a trimester in highschool. Seriously, a duck? What the hell are you going to do with a duck in the suburbs of Minnesota? They have souls, well, at least half a soul, so they’re really difficult to dispose of. And it stank. But you’re supposed to overlook that because it’s cute and fuzzy.

Well, my favorite useless creature – with a full soul - was a guinea pig, which I got when I was 7. She was really cute. If you have never had a guinea pig or the esteemed pleasure of eliciting heightened emotions from one, know that they sound amaaaazing. It’s is a quick high squeal, typically succeeded by a thousand more squeals, all..day..long! I attribute this to them extremely being happy / content or scared shitless. So given this one thing that they are able to do better than anything on earth, I named my piglet Beepers. Cause she beeps. Note: my friend, Maria, has drawn Beepers and has a sassy MS Paint portrait on her blog. I have two friends. If you can't find her, you are too stupid for this ride.

Beepers and me, man…we did all sorts of no shit together. I’d feel bad and take her out to play once in a while, but you really can’t handle a guinea pig all that well. And you definitely don’t want them running around because they’d leave little brown rice-like dumps everywhere. And they have super long Mandarin nails like the evil dude in Big Trouble In Little China (my boyfriend) and are constantly foraging with their Nosferatu teeth so eventually they would bite you prompting their immediate return to their eternal death chamber / aquarium, stocked full of toilet paper rolls, half eaten carrots and wood chips. What a good life. Really. Best $4.95 my family ever spent at Meijer’s.

We had a cat, too, Bonkers – because she was bonkers (I’m into obvious names for my four-legged companions). Bonkers was so into Beepers. I found her once sitting in the aquarium just chilling and with seemingly no intention of eating the piglet. In fact, Beepers was beeping a bunch. I’m sure she was so happy.

My family is originally from Minnesota. The first summer I had Beepers, my parents sent me back to stay with my grandma for a month. My grandma (Aba) is the shit. She kicks ass for days. So this was a welcome retreat, but I was kind of bummed that my stinkfriend couldn’t come with. My parents promised to keep her company, so it was all good. While I was in MN, I got Tetris, which changed my life forever and now I deal with severe OCD issues when placing groceries on the conveyor for check out.

It had been a month and I had a great time in MN, but it was time to get back to Michigan to my family and beloved animals. I get home and run to my room to check on Beepers and the tank is gone. My mom used to be like a meth head compulsive cleaner so she also painstakingly scrubbed the carpet where the tank had been to remove signs of something resting in that space. So I really couldn’t tell how long the tank had been gone. Then they came in…to have a talk with me. Apparently my mom and dad had a little meeting while I was away – like Day 1 of ‘Operation Get Maria Momez Out of the Fucking House so We Can Do it a Lot This Summer’ – and had decided that Beepers stunk. They thought it would be a fabulous idea to put Beepers in the dank, dark, old home basement for the month to contain her flavor. And then she died on Day 2 of Operation ‘GMMOOTFHSWCDIALTS’ of hypothermia. Poor Beepers.  I cried and cried and cried and cried aaaand cried. And then it was a half hour later and I drank some ecto cooler before carrying on with living.

Never after her untimely passing had I expressed the desire for another guinea pig. Not because Beepers was a singular entity in this world and she couldn’t be replaced. No, she was just a guinea pig. It sucked she died, but I wasn’t going to hold vigil and stop eating for 31 hours. When it comes to Somalia, that’s another story. Hot. It just so turns out that my mom carried guilt about this incident for a good long time.

I worked at a bank during college and lived at home…must have been 21 at the time. I was really adult and had a new boyfriend and just thought I was cool as hell. One day I get a call from my mom saying ‘I’ve got a surprise for you waiting at home…’ At this time in my life I didn’t really think I could be surprised with anything cool that I couldn’t buy for myself. WRONG. I get home, walk upstairs to my room and discover that she bought me another goddamned guinea pig. And it’s cage was monstrous and it was just chillaxin in my room beeping and going ape shit. ‘Surprise, I got you another guinea pig to make up for killing Beepers!’ (14 years ago – no, 2/3 of my life ago) Holy shit. Do you know how not excited I was? I was hoping to be all sexy with this new guy, but really couldn’t get it in with something scurrying at the end of your bed, clomping their teeth on a water bottle and beeping whenever your junk touched. I felt like I was failing at a game of Operation.

Thank you, Milton Bradley.

What's white and hops and is all over my crotch?

Fast forward to junior high. I mean middle school. I mean 8^th grade.

You already have an idea of how demented I am so this will be a good one. I’ve told this story so many times that I’m sure someone is going to tell me about this one girl…blah blah blah…and then realize ‘Hey, bitch – you’re talking about me!’ So sorry if this one is redundant, but I just had to immortalize it on the WWW. The WWF is no longer taking my calls.

In school I was never really ‘sexy’. Sure, I had little baby boyfriends here and there. To name a few:

Phillip Self – there, I put your last name in finally. Please google search yourself and find this. Love meeee.

Anthony Bloch – please don’t google search yourself. Anthony was a redhead *drool* complete with freckles and an asshole personality, but he was really smart. He asked me to be his girlfriend in 6^th grade to which I reluctantly accepted. Seriously, what are 6^th graders going to do? I didn’t even know what a blow job was until I was faced with one like a million years later. Dad, please don’t ever read this. Remain in denial. I still think it’s a brand of candy. So we ‘dated’ for 2 weeks, which qualified as nothing more than a reason to sit next to each other at lunch and smile awkwardly during class, but not beyond the extent of ‘I just think I sharted in my cross color jean shorts’, but at least my leak can be concealed well past my knee. I had green ones. Anthony had a full orange shirt / short combo. It made my Hypercolor t-shirt blotchy from getting all hot and bothered up in this beeeeatch. I eventually broke up with him for two, no, three, major reasons: 1. dating? In 6^th grade? No. 2. He called me at home. What was I supposed to talk about? 3. We ‘dated’ around Christmas time and he bought me a box of beech-nuts (not even real lifesavers…so cheap) and then flanked it with a balloon that said ‘Merry Xmas’, but confessed to me that he would have preferred to have put a balloon that said ‘I love you’ on it, but his mom wouldn’t let him. Grounds for dumpage.

Carson Dibble – He was apparently all gaga for me, according to my 15 minute girlfriends, so I succumbed at the possibility I may become popular. He also called me at home. Dumped. I would love to find you, Carson. You were super nice throughout high school and were one person I would have liked to have kept in touch with. You taught me what a bong was because I didn’t understand your joke about ‘Billabong’ being a bong created by a guy named Bill. Very clever. Wise beyond your years you were.

Kenny Coleman – My first ‘real’ boyfriend in 10^th grade. He lived in a trailer park, just like Kenny from South Park, which he thought was awesome. Need I say more? And you wore Fila. No one wears Fila anymore / ever. Bless your little heart.

I’m sure there are a couple more boys recessed in my heaping mass of way cooler memories, but I haven’t paid for the last couple therapy sessions. We’ll explore my feelings when I get paid.

Carson-era was 8^th grade. I moved a lot and was always the new, cool girl. Until people got to know me and realized I didn’t quite fit in.  I had braces and a unibrow and a laugh like Eddie Murphy (if you do the right joke it still comes out despite years of learning to suppress my asthmatic displays of joy). Don’t I sound sexy? To be extra cool I would let girls borrow my clothes. One in particular, because she was forward about borrowing / lending. We’ll change her name to preserve her innocence, Shmelsea Shmagen. Shmelsea (rhymes with Shtelsee if you need a context for pronunciation) got around from my limited understanding. But she did, for real. She was the new girl the previous year. I’d lent her my Adidas Sambas – which are still one of the best shoes around, some shirts and, most notably, a pair of cargo jeans that I wore the shit out of if they weren’t in the wash or on Shmelsea’s dirty, dirty ass.

8^th grade is also sex education time. Up to this point in life the only kiss I’d had was during a 31-hour fast in support of some African country while playing truth or dare under the stairs at church. Grody. Grottie. Grotty. Apparently this isn’t really a word. Sound it out – you’ll get it. Grodie. Nope. Still not right. All sex-ed movies are intended to scare the shit out of kids so they don’t bump shit and end up with their genitals looking like the elephant man. It worked on me. I’m the most tentative sexer ever and need a thin layer of plastic between my entire body and partner. Because I don’t want a spray of urine to suddenly hit my face. Or a baby. The particular video we ended up watching was about pubic lice. And your mom.

I got home that afternoon and was convinced I had it. I had been lending out my clothes to a known ho and was wearing the very jeans I mentioned while we viewed my fate. I knew in my tiny little brain that there was an insatiable itch on the brown triangular, unused patch known as ‘my crotch’, so I kept running my fingers through the deepest, darkest jungles of Maria Momez and found it was abound with white, hopping entities. Shit was getting real. All I knew was I had to get rid of them and it had to be kept on the fucking DL. I locked myself in my bathroom and madly scavenged my cupboard looking for something, anything, but nothing seemed abrasive enough to kill vagina fleas so I started thinking what would make me feel sick or ill and ultimately settled on spray deodorant because I thought ‘if it’s bad for the ozone, it’s bad for pubic lice’. So I spray my whole lower half with Right Guard and to my horror, the fleas had exponentially reproduced; the whole thing was white and itchy.

Now I run to my mom’s bathroom freaking out and looking for more shit to douse on my vagina, which is starting to look like a grandfather beard from the Ozarks got trapped in a snow storm. I wet it down, but the deodorant has made the thing completely impermeable. I had been fussing with this shit for over an hour and only got backwards results. After a hissy fit, some crying and contemplating a future in the convent, I start screaming at the top of my lungs for my mom to come upstairs. I have my pants up without a single idea of how to break the news to my mom that her only daughter has the worst case of pubic lice ever contracted and fully realized within a single day. She gets in the bathroom with a look on her face of disappointment and exasperation when she realizes no real shit is going down. My face is paralyzed with sheer terror. I turn my head away in shame and drop my pants to reveal my now gray equilateral patch of sadness. Expecting the worst from her, I find myself completely relieved when all she says is ‘what the fuck is all over your crotch and why does it smell so good?’ A nursing first. She sifted through the tropical equator to find that I had no signs of infestation. I was just mildly moronic.

Well in 9^th I was back to being noticeably awkward and nerdy. BUT I hadn’t contracted any STDs; if I did, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to spread them for a good long time. Go me!

No, not ‘Bald Eagle’

Oh man! Royal Oak is the best so we’re going to keep plowing through memories from ‘88 – ’90.

Every group of kids has the one that’s the equivalent to Pig Pen from Peanuts; the kid you don’t want to touch for fear of contracting ringworm. My mom prided herself on my being super put together and clean. She would curl my puffball bang every morning and put hairspray in for optimal hold – future ho, anyone? – put lots of makeup on me for picture day, with rouge, NOT BLUSH (I don’t think it became blush until the 90’s) and lipstick, and I was forced to be smart and polite. Except to racists. RACISTS. What I’m really trying to say was that I was the ‘clean, cute kid’. Or I thought I was…

A block from our house was a park with an epic playground and swing set and it almost took up an entire block except for two houses. Some Native American Indian whatever it’s called now girls lived at the very edge on the corner of the block with their mom. Their house was haunted – because they probably smoked too much peyote and awakened some evil fucking spirits – and they had a tree swing. So you always wanted to check out the swing when it wasn’t occupied, which was almost always since the house was 2” from deserted, but were then worried about becoming possessed. It was a confusing place. Very Boo Radleyesque. So you’d drink a shit ton of ecto cooler juice boxes and run to the park with all your friends and play and then have to tinkle. And you’d always wait until your bladder was at maximum capacity before acknowledging that you’d have a leak if you jumped off the swings just right. So I’m doing the pee dance (we all know this dance - don’t pretend, pretender!) and suddenly realize that the most beautiful Barbie doll girl, Erin, lives across from the park. I’ll just go over there and let loose, right? So I knock on the front door and her mom answers saying that someone is in the bathroom. Okay…that’s cool. I can hold out. I wait 10 minutes or so, because who knows what they’re doing, and then knock again. This time Erin’s mom says someone is showering. Was I not good enough for their bathroom?

I figured that I must not be, or that I have lice, or that I smell like a combination of spit / sweat / ecto cooler sticky, sweet smell and that Erin’s bitch mom is definitely not letting me use their bathroom under any circumstances. So I have to run to Phillip’s house since his mom was babysitting me that day after school. Running when you have to pee is the worst feeling. Especially when the reactor is about to blow. I get all the way there and, shit, someone is in the bathroom. But like for real unlike at Erin’s. I’m sure their bathroom hadn’t been occupied all afternoon. They’re probably fasting, too, or have a hole dug in the dirt out back because they’re preserving the majesty which is their sole bathroom. Back to reality: I’m hopping around and trying not to give in to the relief I know I’d have by emptying my bladder in Phillip’s foyer when finally Drew gets out of there. Thank God.

You know when you’re so excited to pee that you can’t get the buttons or zipper loose because your hands have gone retarded with the overwhelming urgency you’re feeling, but you’ve anticipated already sitting on the toilet by that time and then fuck you’ve pissed all over your jeans? Yeah? That happened to me. Awesome.

Phillip’s mom ‘washed’ my jeans that day, though my mom realized later on that she had only put my jeans in the dryer and sent me back home with a set of piss dried pants. Seriously. Seriously amazing. And salty.

So maybe I was the dirty kid.

No I wasn’t. Chester Baldiga was.

Chester had an amazing lisp. His name should be pronounce CHESS-tuhr Ball-DEE-gah. He pronounced it: CHEH-tah Baw-DEE-guh, and he said it twice as fast as someone should say their name.

His whole family was jacked up; total juvies. It’s like his parents didn’t realize with each new child that they were drowning the human species with their more than inadequate spawn. They all smelled like fruit snacks and mustard.

The following can be attributed to them:

During a funeral hosted in our fair city, one of the kids stole the presiding pastor’s wife’s purse and went on a spending spree with her credit card.

The kids were all left home one weekend and set their entire backyard on fire using aquanet and a lighter

I take it all back - they had a PowerPad and we would play Summer Olympics on the Nintendo and it was fucking sweet. We’d cram like 20 kids in their living room and all open-mouth breathe until it was our turn to run in place representing the digital USA.

Chester was like never at school. My mom worked a lot of evenings and would be at home during the day studying or working out to Jane Fonda while drinking Tab and smoking Merit 100s. Chester came to our door one morning to see if ‘Ma-WEE-uh’ could play. My mom responded with ‘No, Chet (He went by Chet, probably easier on his underdeveloped palette) – Maria is at school. Do you think you should be at school?’

He’d pick lilacs off our bushes and bring them to me. Great. Thanks for leaving a hole in our bush, Chet.

My dad and I would rent and play videogames on the weekend with the sole intention of beating them. Because it was like 3 bucks to rent Mega Man 2 for two days. Damn, Gina!

Chester came over to play. Joy. I told him that I didn’t want to go out because I was helping my dad play MM2 (son) and wanted to be there for the win. He was pumped and came and sat by my dad while he was playing in his gaming pose: On his left side, pillow under head, so he didn’t get Nintendo Neck, of course, and zoned the fuck out. My hero.

If you know anything about Mega Man you know that very often the screen would become overwhelmed by too many pixels on the screen at once causing it to freeze up, blink out, and then whammo blammo, you were dead or seriously fucked with a high chance of dying despite maddened button jamming. It’s very frustrating when it’s later in the game because you probably have less lives and your password resets the game super far back so you have to put in a ton of time to get back to the same level you bombed. So my dad had that happen and he died. Cheh-tah was like ‘Mr. Momez, Mr. Momez, I know this game, I can help you, I can help you’ and my dad’s all like ‘It’s okay, Chet, I’ve got it’. So Chet is watching and impatiently waiting for his opportunity to strike and lead my dad to the promised land. Boogers streaming across his upper lip with a nice smear of dirt in there for texture. A constant in his life, probably still today.

Dad dies again. ‘Mr. Momez, really, I can help you get through this level!’. Dad is sort of silent so Chet pushes again.  Then my dad freaked the fuck out: ‘Chester, shut the hell up. Get the fuck out of here’. And then quietly resumed his futile game play.

I don’t think we beat Mega Man 2 that weekend. And I felt kind of bad for Chet, but I think he was used to it. I did a google search for Chet because I intended to locate him, trap him, apologize and then set him free back into the wild, but didn’t find anything (in prison). Find him, or one of his mutant kin, for me and I will love you fo-EH-vaaaah.

Cobra Going Commando

Hey! This is very therapeutic writing all this stuff so I’m going to go two consecutive days with submissions. Let’s see what tomorrow brings and quite possibly break another record. Yesss.

So in the entry ‘Cuban B’, I mentioned that I have a good going to school story. I’m not a liar. Here it is.

My parents felt in the first and second grade that I was not mature / safe enough to make the 5 block trek to school each morning. And that’s why they forced a neighbor with also an only child to be my walking companion every day. We were like hobbits. Except no one went crazy and we wore shoes. But we were probably the same size. Right. Jeremy would usually get to our house and watch television in the living room while my mom curled my bangs into a puff ball and I ate mickey’s mini donuts for bfast. My mom wasn’t in to cooking. Especially egg rolls.

My house was weird, too. My family was not ‘typical’ growing up. A few things worth mentioning:

I showered with my dad until I was like 5. Weird.

My dad and I wrote light-hearted, fun songs about killing our family. Weird.

Both my parents and I gave each other three-way kisses while crescendoing the word ‘mucho’. I love you muuuuuuuUUUUCHO! Kind of fucking weird.

So anyway, anyone coming in to our odd home (I’m wearing my maniac mansion shirt today. Fuck you, world – I’m awesome!) would be typically put off by our antics, but somehow, by miracle most likely, Jeremy was not fazed. Probably because he was so fixated on watching morning cartoons. Almost always his arrival synched up with G.I. Joe. We’d all ignore him pretty much and do our routine and then when it was time to go, I’d let him know and we’d shove off. I don’t even think Jeremy and I were really friends. He told me once that his mom was having a baby girl and that they were going to give her the middle name ‘Rainbow’. I thought that was cool, but also mondo weird that he would have chosen such an effeminate name and not something amazing like ‘Nitro’ or ‘Lazer’ or something on American Gladiators (did that even exist in 1988?) when given the opportunity to weigh in on his soon-to-be punching bag sister. ‘Diamond’. Coolness.

One particular morning it was pretty awkward. My family also had a tendency to be half / fully naked at times and it was like whatever between us. Did I mention I showered with my dad up to the point that I was at eye level with his crotch?

We lived in a bungalow and my parents bedroom was the whole upstairs. There was a door on the entrance and it spilled out in to the dining room, hallway that connected my bedroom and bathroom and the living room, where Jeremy was WAITING. I was just coming out of the hallway and announcing to Jeremy that I was ready to go and, surprisingly, got his attention on the first try. Snake Eyes must have been away at a commercial. At the exact same time, the door to my parents’ stairs burst open and my dad is standing there with the biggest smile on his face and exclaims ‘Hey, I’m ready to go to work!’.

This is what my dad was wearing:

No shirt.

A tie.

White BVDs.

Black dress socks and shoes .

Carrying his briefcase. (he’s a professional…of course)

Oh my god. It was so embarrassing. If no one had been there, but my mom, I would have rolled on the ground dying of laughter. But instead I wanted to be put in the ground and roll over and die. My dad quickly realized that Jeremy was standing there and addressed him and quietly snuck back upstairs to look like a decent fucking human being. And I waited for Jeremy to freak out or give me the ‘wtf look’, but nothing. Was he in zombie mode? I don’t really remember how much longer after that, but Jeremy stopped picking me up in the morning. I’m sure he probably got a tv at home or moved to a distant planet or told his mom that my dad was a complete pervert. My dad’s awesome.

Meijers!

Who doesn't love going to the supermarket? Really?

My parents had me when they were super young. Being the selfish bastards they were, my parents still pursued their dreams and went to college despite my needy presence in their barely formed adult lives. My dad pumped through college quickly, then my mom took her turn. Our family schedule absolutely suffered because I could effectively only spend time with one or the other while they took turns handing me off.

I spent ages 4 through 8 living on the outskirts of Detroit (I even lived near 8 mile road - not that white trash gangsta...really). During this time, my dad had finished school and was the one that I spent most my time with. My mom spent time wiping old men's asses and smelling dirty mash potatoes at nursing homes while going to school part time.

My dad and I did a ton of stuff on the weekends together, but one of the best and most memorable things we did was go to Meijer's, a predecessor to Super Target, but way, way more awesome.

seriously. fuck you blog. you deleted all the coolness that came after the last paragraph. I have to finish this so like 2 people can read it.

Pitbull and Me: We’re Cubans, B!

Have you ever had the distinct pleasure of being called a terrible name or called out on something that was super untrue and then could say ‘No way, you’re wrong. Fuck you for wasting your mean efforts!’ I have one special moment which didn’t quite work out that way, but it's still amazing. Cozy around the Maria is going to talk about more of her awesome childhood exploits fire. Brrr, bitches, brrr.

So I went to school in the most idyllic suburb in Michigan – Royal Oak. ICP 4 LYFE! JUGGALO! You know this. Maybe you skipped my one other entry. Maybe you’re not reading it because only my one friend / namesake reads this to my limited knowledge.  I was a total tomboy – still am – and would try and bro down with all the boys at school. I played soccer at recess with them even though they made me a perma-goalie (thanks, fuckers. I got real good, didn't I?!), would kick them in the nuts to let them know I had crushes on them and made fun of all the girls, too, probably because I’m also a perma-asshole. Soooo, yeah. I was pretty dudely. Exciting.

I would walk to and from elementary school every day with some other kids in tow. I have a good going to school story, but this isn’t the time. It will someday be the place. My best friend / boyfriend / I love you long time pal, Phillip, and I would usually walk home from school together in both 1^st and 2^nd grade. (I found out he married his junior high sweetheart – I moved in 3^rd back to MN - that could have been me. Dammit. He’s a total dreamboat and could beat up 5^th graders no problem. drool drool drool) His mom babysat me and it worked out nicely because he had a huge library of Nintendo games and we only had to fend off his little brother every afternoon to have the whole set up to ourselves. He could obviously beat up his brother, too. What a righteous badass.

So one day we’re walking home and we’re about a block and some change from Phillip’s house on Lockwood (Phillip, if you ever read this – fat chance – know that I totally love you and will drop more stories about you on here. So come back often. Cyber call me? You’ll never read this. :{ ) when all of a sudden we hear some kids calling us names from a couple houses down. They were actually yelling at just me. And they were calling me a chink.

Okay, rewind. My name starts with Maria and ends with something that rhymes with Momez. Hard, right? I am not fucking Asian. I could be Filipino I guess, but I’m fucking not. What I love about kids is that they’re fucking stupid AND impressionable. So since I looked real different in a real white town, I must be that thing that their daddy calls the baseball / basketball / football / ping pong? players. So I was a chink for a day.

The two kids were Andy and Chris. Andy had red hair, which under any other circumstances would be grounds for me to horizontally maul his boyhood, and Chris was a blonde dude. So they get all close to Phillip and I and look to have a fight. Kids don’t fight anymore – WHY!?!?! It’s awesome!!!!! So Phillip turns to me and is like ‘Run home and tell my mom I’m in a fight. She’ll drive over here and break it up and that’ll give you time to get away’. This isn’t verbatim…obviously I can’t quite remember it, but it was damn close. Do you now see why I want on this guy 20 years later!?

So I ran, the whole block or so, sprinting. And I’m not a runner, but hauled ass to get there. I get to his house and his mom is in the bathroom. Like maybe showering or something. She’s taking a while. And I’m trying to be polite so I don’t knock on the door despite the urgent matter happening minutes away at the neighborhood park. All of a sudden I get really distracted and realize I have beaten both Phillip and his brother, Drew, home and the Nintendo is free. It’s calling me: ‘Hey, chink! Yeah, you, Maria Momez. Come hit ‘power’ and I’ma take you on a journey, girl.’ So I sit down thinking that I have to wait for Phillip’s mom anyway and start chilling out, playing Excitebike (I do a great Excitebike impersonation, really!). I must have played it through once or twice. Maybe even customized a level and played it. I was like in an 8-bit time suck vortex. I remember like it was yesterday: I’m sitting Indian style (yes) on the ground and then slowly look to my right since something ominous and pissed off seems to be laboriously breathing from that direction. Shit, it was Phillip.

He’s got a black eye forming real nicely around one eye and his nose has been bleeding long enough that it’s started to crust over.

All he said – and I DO remember this word for word (because it's shorter) – was ‘Where were you?’

Holy shit. Totally epic. So my parents obviously caught wind of this and demanded that Andy and Chris come over and apologize to me for harassing me and calling me the wrong fucking racial slur. They came over one evening with each of their dads and were forced to say they were sorry in my living room while my dad definitely wasn’t making stir fry or egg rolls. My mom then prompted me to accept, which I declined and ran off into my room leaving my mom to explain why her daughter was such an ungrateful dick. Moral of the story: Duuuude fuck those two!