Jabberwocky

I’ve made you into a fairy tale monster. Mythic, horrific, contained.

All these years you have existed separate from my reality. You became a bad dream, half forgotten in the morning light but still lingering behind, springing forth when I closed my eyes. You became the shadow in the bushes, the half glimpsed stranger, the eyes felt watching.

I reconciled myself to what was lost because I built so many beautiful walls to protect what was left.

Like a naughty Alice, I could not resist what is through the looking glass though; always searching for the monster I was afraid to find. Peering wide eyed through the mirror as though I believed that knowing where the monster was would keep him at bay. As though believing if I could not find the monster, he had ceased to exist.

Then, there you were at last. Again.

You have not evaporated into mist, after all. You have, in fact, married, fathered, befriended.

I have only one question for you now;

Have you truly changed or have you simply gotten better at hiding your fangs?

Borrowing

You've only just gone to the corner, a brief errand that takes you away from me only for a minute, or ten. I am putting laundry into the washing machine, wiping the counter of crumbs from your endless stream of peanut butter sandwiches and singing something stupid and tuneless.

Your key is in the door and we're sitting down to eat things that are not good for us and watching things that will rot our brains and talking about nothing.

And I am happy.

I want to tell you that I am happy. I want to tell you that for just a moment, everything is so heartbreakingly perfect that misery seems to exist only in theory.

But instead I cry.

Baby, you say, what's the matter?

I'm afraid, I tell you. Afraid that something will happen and you'll be lost to me. Afraid that what could be will be so bleak that my heart will at last break entirely.

You pull me close and my head nestles into the crook of your neck and I know that this is enough. One minute of you, is enough.

For now, what is, is perfect.

Here

Here is you and here am I. We are alone, for once. The afternoon is fading behind the drawn shades and I lay in the crook of your arm listening to your heart beat.

Here I am and there you are, sweat drying on our skin when the red glow of sunset turns to street light shine. The scent of you and I together hangs like perfume in the air and I am drunk with it.

There are my clothes and there are yours. Pulled on, they cover the marks that testify our need to consume one another whole. I would eat your heart and serve you my soul to have one more moment connected.

Here you are, at last. Here is my heart, yours. Here is my soul, yours. Here am I, yours; always yours.

Innocents

It's summertime and we have completed our chores. The sky is the sort of blue that breaks your heart and the neighborhood smells of fresh cut grass as lazy bumble bees buzz the tea roses that climb the trellis.

We are in the backyard, licking melted red rivers of Kool-aide Popsicles from the sides of our hands in the shade of the pear tree. Gram would say we've joined the Blackfoot tribe, with braided pig tails and freckled shoulders, the soles of our feet filthy from games of Freeze Tag and Statuary and Mother May I played barefoot across all the lawns on our side of the street.

There is Heather, sprawled out across the bench and there is Gennie perched on the railing, Stefanie beneath her feet in danger of getting kicked. And here are we; three peas of sisters, side by side on the steps. In the fall the Big Girls will go to Junior High and trade in Sardines and Red Rover for Maybelline and Loves me not. But today, we are children. Today we are innocents.

Okay

This is the morning that it could all come apart and I know it. I have a rope and it has an end and I am there. The buzz of the refrigerator competes with the hum of the light and the tick, tick, tick of the infernally loud clock to drive me mad and I tap, tap, tap the purple pen with the chewed up edge on the strip of wood at the edge of my desk to drown it out. To drown out the screaming.

In the background the phone rings over the blaring beat of a song that I hate as my email chirps and there is someone talking, but all I can hear is the tick, tick, tick of that damn clock. I know that if it ticks again I will smash it into a million little pieces and then pick them up and eat them so the jagged edge of broken time scratches it's way down my throat to settle in a brittle ball of desolation in the pit of my belly.

I have thrown the clock away in the big green dumpster so the tell tale heart will not cause my end. Instead I have decided that too many pills and a glass of whiskey will taste far better. I begin to clear things into the trash with grim glee.

Click, click, click, Delete and then there you were. Not looking at the camera with your hand resting on my sleeping shoulder, caught quietly off guard in the light of a rain swept day. I put my head down on my desk and wept.

When there was nothing left to fill the cracked jar that holds my resolve, I went to you. You held me in the palm of your hand, eyes closed until wisps of okay swirled through me and I could breathe.

Report

Officer Mustache is tapping his pen on the edge of his notebook, already bored and thinking about breakfast, or doe season, or his truck payment. The red and blue lights flash disco ball glitter on my tears stained face. Officer Tightpants is writing down what I say, disinterested as her partner, but deceitfully engaged.

Dispatch crackles in the background confirming that I am in fact who I say, and for a moment I am taken with the urge to laugh. As though I would lie. As though I would claim this mess I call my life if I didn't have to. But instead I choke it back as a hiccoughed sob and Officer Mustache looks for a minute as though he is present.

Well, Tightpants says We have everything we need. She hands me the carboned report and the card for Domestic Disturbance at the Gallatin County Court House before they climb into the cruiser and leave me alone to watch the bushes for the eye shine that means you were serious when you said you would never leave me alone

Hope

We are in the bed room, long past when we should be. Half dressed in the half light, we are close enough to touch, but only our hands do. The air is heavy with thought of the future and effervescent with its promise.

A single finger traces the line of my cheek. You are so beautiful you say and I half laugh, derisive and unbelieving. No, you say, I mean it. You are so beautiful on the outside, but on the inside, you are so luminous it almost hurts to look at you.

I am quiet for a moment and then lean in to kiss you. I am luminous because you give me hope.

Mine

You are shouting in the next room. I can hear you rage, everything that comes from your mouth horrible and meant to hurt. I am beyond tears and still they flow, dropping furiously onto my shirt.

Handfuls at a time I stuff what I grab into a bag. This is mine, this is mine, this is mine. I stuff clothes that don't fit and single shoes on top of damp towels and lid-less hairspray. Bits of jewelry, hopelessly tangled, balled into socks and crammed into jacket pockets fight for space with the cord to the lap top and the birthday card my grandmother sent.

This is mine, this is mine, this is mine; I chant as I cram what is left of my life into a bag meant for trash.

The bedroom door doesn't sit right in the jam and I am lying on rumpled sheets, the scattered contents of my closet half unpacked and piled on the floor in haphazard ruins of a fight surrendered hours later as you sleep peacefully beside me.

Inside my heart the naked thing that guards my soul from you whispers this is still mine.

Away

We are lying on our backs. There are a million stars around us and the river whispers from just over the crest of the hill as it rushes away to join the Snake just beyond the mountains. Behind us, the car door is open and the scratchy radio buzzes country songs from the 50's.


You roll to your side, head propped on your hand and look at me as I look away. There's Orion, I say; but you don't look.

There is a bottle of cheap wine that will give me a headache tipped over and seeping it's last pink drops onto the corner of the moth eaten wool blanket.


A breeze ripples the edge of my skirt. I hear you sigh and I know you are sighing because I am already gone. Whipped away on the breeze like dandelion fluff, I spiral unable to control my rise, unable to prevent my fall.

Je Regrette Pas

Of the things I should not have done
Of the things I should not have said
Of the things I should not have felt

You are not one

If I could have been other than I am
If I could have known you other than you are
If I could have altered the path time took

What apology would have been needed?

There is no season for lament
There is no occasion for penitence
There is no latitude for despondence


Love does not regret the price it has paid
Love does not regret the tears it has shed
Love does not regret the hours it has waited

I do not regret you

(originally posted Tuesday, August 26, 2008)

Marco Polo

(Originally posted Wednesday, May 28, 2008)


We always danced around each other. I had a boyfriend and you liked me. You had a girlfriend and I lusted you from afar. You and she became "The Couple". He and I were "so cute". Finally, years go by and you are alone and so am I. The Boy plays in the next room singing a song about nothing while we get high in the living room and listen to Ella Fitzgerald.

You're leaned back against the mismatched pillows and I have my head in your lap, legs dangling over the arm rests. You pet my hair and pass me the joint. I miss the way she folded the towels you say at last. I tilt my head back, looking up to you. You blow smoke through your nose and stare at the ceiling. I have nothing to say to this but I know that you have told me something profoundly heart breaking. I should have had her show me how she got them all to be the same size; you say, I should have paid attention. You looked down at me then, eyes red and I understood what love was.

The Man

It's not that I believe in ghosts so much as that I don't disbelieve. There are things, I think, that are inexplicable. Unless they can be explained by the presence of an energy that feels the need to hang around.

The house that my parents live in was built in the mid 1920's and was purchased by my great grandparents for a shockingly expensive $20 a month. To make ends meet Grandma Fred (yes, Fred) sold eggs and chickens and kept a garden. Back then, the suburb was an apple orchard and the trains ran through the valley on coal fueled steam. Great Grandpa raised fighting chickens (I know. But it *was* the 20's and they had a very different view) in the back yard and Gram was charged with feeding them. To this day, she won't touch chicken skin.

Grandma Fred lived in that house for about 60 of her 86 years and so it's really no surprise that from time to time the attic that had been her bedroom and then was mine would grow cold. No surprise either that when you were sick, you'd feel her sit down beside you and lay a hand on your head. It wasn't scary, it was just Grandma. It was her house and that's all there was to it.

So, too, when Grandpa Jimmy (Grams husband) passed did it make sense that he would return to his home to pass the time knocking around in the basement workroom or sitting on the front porch watching the neighborhood go by.

It's just the way things were. Are.

When I was a very little girl, just slightly more than six, our little family took a road trip through the northwest in a red Volkswagon van. It had one of those pop-up roofs and a wee adorable kitchen. We camped in it at night, Mum and Dad on the folded down seat, myself tucked up underneath it and CK nestled in the stairwell (she was three).

Near the very end of our trip, as CK, Mum and I dozed, Dad drove us through a twisty mountain pass on a two lane road. Around a blind corner, a drunk driver crossed the center line and struck us head on, rolling the van into the side of the mountain. We were lucky, the other side was a cliff.

I remember nothing of this trip, save for the this.

When I woke up, dazed, the side of my face destroyed by gravel, my arm was trapped under the vehicle. I had no idea what had happened, just that I was stuck and I was scared. I recall pulling my arm from the window (I think I broke it myself doing that) and then looking around for someone; an adult, to tell me what to do.

The roof of the van had come off when we rolled and through where the top of the van should have been, I had a clear view of the side of the highway.

God, was I grateful to see The Man. The Man (because that's how I've always thought of him) was in his sixties, grey haired and bearded; dressed in Levi's, boots and a work shirt.

He called me by name and told me to take off my seat belt. I did and then I dropped to the ground. He didn't come any closer, but that he was there was enough. He told me to unbuckle CK and I did and together we crawled (her femur was broken, but crawl we did) out on to the gravel. The Man stood a bit aside and he told me we needed to get far away from the van, it was going to explode.

It's eerie how quiet chaos can be.

By now, though, I could hear the horn blaring, I could hear Dad shouting, his pants burnt off, his tennis shoes melted to his feet, he was screaming for us, for Mum. I shouted back, but I doubt he heard me.

In the most serendipitous stroke of fate, the next vehicle on the scene was a motor home driven by a retired EMT.

They bundled CK and I into the motor home, the wife of they EMT's friend rocking CK back and forth and plying me with juice. Neither of us cried, there would be time for that later. Who were we? Where were we going? How old was I; was CK; were our folks? Where were we from? Whom could they call? It was a pretty boring game. I watched through the window as they led my father away from the wreckage, watched him hit the pavement only after they pulled Mum out on a backboard made of the table and laid her away from the smoking van.

"My mom is dead" I told them in the implicit logic only a child can conjure and of course, they assured me she wasn't. "Yes, she is. She's allergic to bees. If she wasn't dead, she wouldn't want them near her." The ladies looked at one another and one left to shoo the bees away with a white paper plate.

The roadway was scattered with nickles and Choc-o-dials. I could see one of my shoes on the yellow line. The hillside was scattered with poppies. There was a skid of red paint on the black top. The doors of the cabinets on the wee kitchens facade hung open, the plastic contents tumbled into a heap in the gravel.

Several minutes later, though it's hard to say how long, the van did indeed explode and I turned to the woman that had stayed with us and told her The Man had said it would.

"What man, lamb?" she asked

"THE man," I looked around for him then, but he was gone.

Much later, when I was grown up, my Mum (who had indeed died) told me that she too had seen The Man, she had seen him in the Summerland before she decided to come back. The man told her that he would watch me. Watch us.

From time to time, as I grew up, The Man came back. Never to the degree he had that day, but back still. In the corner of my eye, I'll see him in the hallway. I'll catch his scent, a mix of pipe smoke and the ocean, in a breeze. I'll turn around and expect to find him.

Am I crazy? Yes. But that's not the point. The point is that some time, some where in my past, The Man has come to see me as his. In times of great stress, I feel him more.

The day that M had her accident, I was sure The Man was on the porch.

I'd say he's not a ghost. Not exactly an angel (I rather get the sense that he was a bit of a trouble maker. And he's definitely a jokster. I hope he reads the interwebz, and if so I NEED MY DAMN EARRINGS BACK and I better not find them in the kitchen cupboards again) but something close. Some sort of other. The sort of other that makes a bump in the night.

It's not so much that he portends disaster, but rather that he shows up to stand just behind and beside me to remind me that I am strong enough to sail a stormy sea. So too, does he show up when things are about to change. Just before a move. Right before I make a big decision. When I need a push because I refuse to just leap.

This morning, I thought I smelled the ocean.

Hell Bound

See that girl in the center? That's Mich. She was raised in a strict Mormon household in a mostly Mormon small town. Which is not a BAD thing. I was raised Mormon and *I* turned out mostly fine. Except for that lingering need to torment Missionaries. But I think they like it when you answer the door topless, it gives them something to pray about later.

Where was I going with this? Oh. I remember. Mich.

I have ALWAYS been an advocate of good underwear and even back in the day, I spent my allowance on it. One day, as we're standing around in the ladies blow drying our bangs so that they stood at least six inches high, I whipped off my shirt (for whatever reason. Who knows with me. I took my shirt off a lot back in the day. And by "back in the day" I mean "yesterday") and Mich let out a yelp of surprise.

I was wearing a RED LACE BRA! Oh my God! The scandal! The horror!

Mich, at 19, had never EVER in her ENTIRE LIFE worn colored underwear. Ever. EVER. White Hanes briefs, white cotton bras and white socks were all she'd ever known. Because colored underwear? WAS FOR WHORES.

I'm not kidding. That's exactly what her mother had told her. WORD. FOR. WORD.

See, this is the road to hell:

1) colored underwear

2) Holding hands with a boy

3) kissing a boy

4) letting him touch your boobs

5) sleeping with a boy before marriage.

6) hell

So I did the only thing I could do. I took her to the mall and bought her colored panties!

Then, about a month later, she was sleeping with three different boys, then engaged to another one, then dropped out of college, then broke her engagement because she met an all together different boy and then met another boy. I think she married that last one. But we lost touch for a while, so I'm not totally sure.

So maybe there was something to that theory.

I prefer to think of it as encouraging sexual liberation as a way to come to terms with a repressed upbringing.

I also believe all those boys owe me at LEAST a beer for explaining the finer points of giving oral pleasure. Which I learned from my friend Staceys drunk ass mom who used a banana as a cock and giggled as she told us that done right, a blow job will get a boy to do just about anything for you. That's the same night she taught us how to do tequila shots and the proper way to roll a joint. She was an excellent roll model. I miss her.

Rest in Pieces

I have not always been the sweet, kind girl that y'all have come to know and love.

When I was in college, my roommate Nadira (in the center) was an exchange student from Turkey. English was her third, or possibly fourth language. She was completely fluent, but the nuances of American slang were lost on her.

Like many colleges ours had legends that passed from year to year. One of which being that if your roommate died, you automatically got straight A's for that semester. It was called the "Grief Rule".

Some one told Nadira this and she asked me if it was true. Of course I said that it was.

Then, I turned evil.

Every night before she went to sleep I'd tell her to "rest in peace". For months, she thought that this meant simply "sleep well" and so she began saying it to other people. Who looked at her oddly, but no one said anything, figuring, I suppose that it was some idiom that failed to translate correctly from Turkish to English.

We had one class together, Abnormal Psychology. On Halloween, the class loaded into a yellow school bus and took a two hour trip to Well Springs. The local asylum for the mentally ill. While there we toured the grave yard. As the professor lectured about how the insane are often abandoned by family members Nadira spotted a head stone. That said "rest in peace".

It took me three weeks to convince her that I wasn't ACTUALLY trying to kill her, I was just teasing her.

(semi-relatedly: Those hula hoops? OMG did we have fun with those. Looking back, it's a wonder we weren't repeatedly sent to the RA's office for screeching as we tossed bottle caps tiddlywinks style down the hallway and into the hoops as a drinking game. Or hula hooping in the elevator (harder than you'd think), or rolling them with chop sticks while someone pushed us in rolling office chairs in a race to the end of the hallway (also a drnking game). Mostly at about 2 in the morning.)

Cosmo Girl

When I was 13 I begged my mother for a subscription to Cosmo magazine. The campaign lasted days. Even though it's all ads for liquor and reproductions of 1960's Playboy layouts my Mormon mother caved provided I paid half.

I was a prodigious babysitter back in the day, so I readily handed over the $16 (four hours worth of snot-wiping, I'll have you know!) and filled out the little fall away card with my information.

It took FOREVER before the first magazine arrived and I eagerly devoured every page. Was I a Bad Girl? how well did I know him (him who? are you kidding me? Boys = cooties) should I buy the Calvin Klein or the Ann Taylor? Which better suited my lifestyle a chic urban condo or a sweet little cottage? Suddenly the world was more than ZumZum dresses and Brass Plum shoes. I cut up the pages and made huge collages of things that I would have in the great someday of the future. A vacation house! A BMW! A walk in closet full of shoes! An array of men with delicious accents!

Yeah. So. I live in a cookie cutter house in the suburbs, drive a 15 year old Ford Bronco (the OJ Simpson model) and have been married since I was 21.

But.

Some things have stuck with me in the intervening twenty years. Things that I didn't realize until just the other night as I stood in front of my (non-walk-in, overly crowded, messy) closet deciding what to wear. My choices include a collection of jeans and black shirts. Literally dozens of each.

Then, it hit me.

Cosmo.

In 1992 numerology was the Big. Thing. and Cosmo did a whole ten page spread about it. My number is a seven. Which is kind of awesome since my birthday is also the seventh (probably the only reason I remember it) and I've always considered that a profound number in my life. Not a lucky number, exactly, but certainly a portent of good luck. My happiest years have been lived in homes with a seven in the address. Some of my best years have had a seven in them. It's silly, but whatever. Anyway, this numerology article had things like "your best color" (navy), your best career (something creative (I'm an accountant...HAHA)), your best mate (bookworm), and so on. At some point the article said "people remember you for your unfailing ability to dress in a black teeshirt and perfectly fitted jeans every day and still look smashing" or something along that line.

I remember pawing through my drawers, tossing pastel after pastel into the pile for Goodwill that afternoon. Trying on all my jeans, pinning and hemming until they looked custom made (hello, we was poo' folks.) and counting out my wads of one dollar bills. From that day on I've always chosen black when faced with which shirt to buy. I've gone through dozens of cuts and brands of jeans.

It's funny what sticks with you. The little one-off things that wiggle into your life and shape you.

I bet my mom is glad I chose that one and not the Why It's Okay To Be a Slut! article instead.

(ps. here's a link to a "100 things to do before you die" list similar to the one I tore out of Cosmo and carried around until that one time when I got really drunk, spilled Wild Turkey on myself, stripped to my skivvies in the communal laundry room and threw everything else including my wallet, keys (the washer locked during the cycle so I spent 30 minutes hiding behind a door while everyone else went to class), and six Jolly Rancher "fire" candies into the washing machine. The list never recovered, but I still ate the candy.

Klassy Khristmas

When my sisters and I were young, our mother worked for the Seattle Indian Center (now renamed something less offensive like Northwest Center for Native American Heritage). It was, as indicated in the name, primarily dedicated to social services for disenfranchised Natives. They had day cares, work centers, etc.

They also frequently hosted pow wows, pot latches and other cultural events.

At the dedication of their new building, the room was packed with elders and members of all the local tribes. We were, I'm sure, the only pale faces in the crowd. Our blond or red hair shown like beacons and KL, who was three and both very loud and very precocious was holding court amid a group of grandmothers resplendent in their very nicest clothing and beaded jewelry.



As the ceremony is ready to begin a hush fell over the room and a dancer dressed in full regalia entered the room.

And then my loud ass sister shouts out "OH MY! Mommy! Look! It's a REAL INDIAN!"

Now, if you've ever taken a toddler to church you know that anything they say that is inappropriate is going to be crystal clear and loud enough to embarrass you.

Every pair of brown eyes in the room turns to look at us. CK and I begin surveying escape routes, but my mom says to KL

"You know Axl (my mothers Aleutian drunk bush pilot work boyfriend)?" and KL agrees she does know him. "And you know Rosemary? (the stunningly beautiful receptionist)" and KL agrees that she does "Well, what do you think they are?"

KL, little fists on her hips doesn't miss a beat and in the tone that children reserve for their parents when they're being especially retarded says;

"They're your FRIENDS"

Later, when Robin the transgendered ex-con got drunk and tried to sell Mum her shoes, she slurrily told her how glad she was that my mother had raised such lovely, classy children.

Which is why today my sisters and I will be posing like this for our holiday cards.

Because NOTHING says Klassy like posing in lingere with your sisters, am I right?

Holy Roller

I used to work in a large call center where dozens of people sat around me. So of course I spent most days eavesdropping on other peoples conversations.

The lady that sat behind me we nicknamed "The Churchlady" not because she was at all like the SNL character, but rather because almost every story she told managed to wind it's way to either a sermon she'd heard or something someone at church had experienced. This, despite the fact that she had two children, one of whom was the result of an affair and the other was the child of a man in prison for running a drug ring out of a day care.

One day, her neighbor BigHair loudly lamented her three year olds habit of PEEING ON THE WALL and so the Churchlady began to advise her on ways to discipline.



"You see" The Churchlady explained "The more you punish them, the more they act out. You have to guide your children with love"

This seemed like some pretty namby pamby advice, but whatever, so BigHair agreed that maybe she'd try praising the Sprinkler for what he did well in hopes that he'd stop being naughty.

Of course, several days later Sprinkler hosed not just the wall but also the TV. BigHair, though admitting it wasn't the best course of action admitted that she lost her temper and smacked his little pecker. Churchlady was aghast!

"Oh! You should NEVER smack your children! Hands are for loving! A child should remember that their mothers hands always reached out with a gentle touch. They should only think of their parents hands as having wiped away tears and embracing them in hugs. You should never, ever, slap a child! Think of the message that sends them! No, there is no excuse for you raising a hand to a child. That's why when my kids act out I understand that they need comfort! They need to understand what they've done wrong, so I take them aside and then I WHOOP THEM WITH A WOODEN SPOON".




Makes sense to me.

Noms

The other day I tweeted? Twittered? Tweetered? whatever, that I was eating crackers with peanut butter and dill pickles.

The ever hilarious Crabgrass commented back asking if I was knocked up.

The answer to which, is THANK GOD, No. Hell no. HELL TO THE HELL NO.

I just like weird food.

I blame my dad. When I was ten my mother went back to graduate school and that left my father in charge. It also left us pretty broke. Anyone who's been broke knows that you eat whatever is on sale and sometimes? That means that what you eat is kind of odd. Also, my dad is kind of odd, so that could have something to do with it.

Among the food combinations that I recall from my childhood are;

* chicken "lunch meat" with peanut butter

* tuna salad with peas/lima beans/corn mixed in

* peanut butter & dill pickle sandwiches

* breakfast sausage and white rice casserole (a favorite)

* corn on the cob with mayo

* pizza dipped in mayo (hmmm and I wonder why I have a big ass!)

* "Hobo casserole" (whatever noodles, meat and sauce you can find - usually hamburger, elbow noodles and spaghetti sauce)

* Spaghetti sauce omelette's

I could go on and on, but those are the ones that I can think of that I liked. I'm sure there were others that I hated and have thusly blocked from my memory. Like Meatloaf. ENDLESS DAYS AND NIGHTS OF MEATLOAF. With ketchup on top, which I hate. Although, that said, I do enjoy a meatloaf sandwich. Mmmmm meatloaf on white bread with mayo, glorious mayo.

So tell me, what was is something odd that you used to eat that just says home to you?

Rum Pa Pum Pum

I have noticed an interesting trend. When I talk about sin I get FAR more traffic then when I entreat you to help an adorable little moppet raise money for charity. Have you people no souls?

I thought not.

Let's talk about sin again then.

Hop back into the Way Back Machine to a time in the mid eighties, when cool girls did their hair like this

(that's me on the left)

It was a time, when I lived in the Wild, Wild West and my most dreaded chore was having to Walk the Dinosaur. It was a time when I had yet to experience Losing My Religion.

Each summer, I would load up with my church youth group and travel to the wilds of Camp Lyle McLeod to experience the (trauma) of Girls Camp. There is a song that goes in parts 'Girls camp, is the very worst place in the world! The worst place for every living girl! The best place for losing all your curl'. Actually, I'm pretty sure that's NOT how it goes, but that's how we sang it because Girls Camp was a desolate waste land free of curling irons and Aqua Net where you had to wear a ONE PIECE bathing suit! even though you were like, TOTALLY working on your tan.

But it was a right of passage that simply couldn't be avoided. You went and you liked it, or, if you were like me, you packed your sleeping bags stuff stack with things like plastic wrap, icy hot and rubber snakes so that those around you were exactly, perfectly aware of your standing on being drug off to the middle of nowhere where you were subjected to things like DIRT and BUGS and NO BOYS and WASHING YOUR HAIR IN THE LAKE. It was hell, I tell you.

Now, don't get the impression that I didn't like "camp". I loved camp. I loved the part of camp that was being away from your mother and staying up late and walking to the mess hall and canoeing, all the things I knew from the summer camp that was my reward for not actually killing my sisters during the school year. Girls Camp on the other hand meant having my mother mere feet away, going to bed at dark, cooking our own food and having to walk three miles around the lake to the swimming dock. Not so delightful. Especially the year that Rachel first came to camp.

Rachel was a very, very sheltered child. She'd literally never spent a single night away from home. And because my mother was assistant camp director that year it was decided that I should be "buddied" with Rachel to "show her the ropes". So Rachel was assigned to my cabin, to my bunk bed, to my KP rotation, to my "duties" rotation, to my rec rotation. Basically she was up my ass and seriously cramping my sneaking-off-to-meet-the-boy scouts-from-the-next-camp action. And that was totally unacceptable. Rachel, clearly, needed to be punished.

Rachel, it was learned the first night, was terrified of the dark. I, on the other hand, am a ninja-like nymph of the night. At about 1am, Rachel began to whimper. Tell me a story or something she begged and so I complied.

"Well, you know how we like, totally passed the prison?" I began (we had) "Like, ten years ago, a guy like escaped from the prison and he was supposed to like, meet his ride on the highway and stuff? And their signal was he was going to croak like a frog, only he got lost and wound up down by the lake"

Our lake? She whispered

"Yeah, so anyway, these girls were here for Camp? I think they were from 9th ward? And they snuck out to like go to the boys side? Only, when they were walking along the lake they came across the escaped murder? And he like, TOTALLY freaked and killed them? And then threw their bodies into the lake?"

Then what happened? she moaned

"Well, the counselors heard the girls screaming? And one of them caught the guy, only as he tried to run away he like tripped? And broke his neck. And they say that his spirit still haunts these woods and croaks like a frog looking for his ride."

It does? she was totally buying all of this

"Yeah, and on the anniversary of the girls death, you can see their flash lights shining up from the lake looking for revenge"

At this point, she starts to wail and the counselor comes running to see whats the matter. All Rachel could sniffle out was that she was scared of the frogs, so Tina brought over her stereo but OF COURSE Rachel couldn't listen to "secular" music and the only other music to be found was a recording of the "Little Drummer Boy" back to back on both sides of the tape. Which played ALL DAMN NIGHT.

That, of course, made me even MORE annoyed. So the next night I snuck around until I'd stolen 3 flashlights, then crept into the mess tent and lifted a box of Ziploc bags. Quietly, I slipped into the lake and one by one splashed the flashlights into the lake where the frogs where the loudest.

When all of the adults were asleep and the little drummer boy was on his 8th march through the night, I whispered for Rachel to follow me. Quietly we crept down the path, Rachel trailing, whimpering behind me.

The closer we got to the lake the louder the frogs got until we pressed through the last of the bushes and there, floating just below the surface were the ghost lights.

Naturally Rachel started screaming her head off, took of running and whacked her head onto a low hanging tree branch. Counselors descended on us from all directions, hushing and soothing Rachel as I snuck off into the shrubs and crept back to my bunk. Where I "sleepily" awoke as Rachel was ushered back to bed, moaning about the frogs. The rest of camp, she never left the counselors side and the next year she opted not to return.

I was free to once again sneak off to steal Hershey bars and make out with pimply boys.

The only reason I'm not already in hell is because I'm helping Emma. You should be too!

Mmmm Sin

Let's hop into the way back machine as we delve into yet another reason why I am going to hell.

Back in the day, my parents used to take my sisters and I to church every Sunday, where we would wear our fancy dresses and sing pious songs about how we are sunbeams and things of that like. Every Sunday, they taught us a wee little lesson so that we could grow up to be good little boys and girls.

One Sunday when I was about, oh, perhaps seven, the lesson was on "sin". The Sunday School teacher, who was young and pretty and probably the mother of about 19 children had brought in a naked hard plastic baby doll and a can of chocolate fudge frosting. The lesson was that each child would tell a sin that they had committed (I tattled! I stole gum! I feel asleep in school!) and then with their finger dab a bit of frosting on the wee baby to symbolize the black mark on their soul. One by one the wee little darlings confessed to sins of great magnitude (I ate my sisters candy! I hid my brothers GI Joe!) until the sticky baby and it's bucket of sin came to the last row, my row. I confessed to who-knows-what, probably being bossy or maybe talking in class, and then I set the vat of chocolate evil beneath my seat and took the evil-incarnate baby to the teacher were it was "baptized" and all of it's sins washed away.

Then I convinced my fellow back row degenerates that we should eat all that tasty chocolate sin. Which we did. When it was gone, I hid the frosting can in the parka hood of the kid in the row in front of us and acted like nothing had happened. Because it's only a black mark on your immortal soul if you get caught, tattle or confess. And I never will! Oh, wait. Shit.

(pretty accurate respresentation of my sin level)