Why Pizza Makes Me Think of New Families

When I was about 6 I was a very shy, quiet kid, who never made much of a fuss about anything. I had a babysitter who would watch me after school most days, and I rode the bus home with her kids, who were just a little older than me. I didn't know it at the time, but I often fell asleep on the bus, always waking up in time to get off at the right stop, so my babysitter's kids never thought much about it.



Riding the school bus to my babysitter's home one day, I suddenly realized that I didn't recognize any of the bus stops, my babysitter's kids were nowhere to be seen, and I didn't recognize any of the kids that were on the bus.



Maybe I'd seen too many old Twilight Zone shows, or heard too many creepy old-time radio plays, but at no point did it occur to me that I might have missed my stop, and instead I immediately jumped to the conclusion that my soul had somehow switched places with another child's.

Along with this conclusion came the horrible realization that I had no idea where the new me lived, or the name of my family, or even my own name.

The bus driver didn't seem to think it was odd that I was still on the bus as it became emptier, and emptier, so I just assumed that I should keep riding until he knew where to drop me off.

After what seemed like hundreds of stops, where I kept looking outside for anything familiar, and hoping that a sibling, or someone who knew me, was riding the bus and told me I needed to get off with them, I was one of only 2 other kids still on board when the bus came to its final stop.

I hesitated while getting off the bus, because I had no idea where I was, and the other two kids quickly disappeared, but instead of finding out what was wrong, the driver just said,



Any other kid would probably have said, or done, something... anything... to let the driver know that she didn't belong there, but I just smiled, nodded, and climbed down on to the dirt road, at the top of a dead end, on the edge of a hill, in the middle of who-knows-where, and started walking.



Once the bus left, I just stopped, sat on a big rock, and peed right through my clothes. I probably cried too, but I don't remember that part.



You'd think that a child with soggy pants wandering aimlessly on a dirt road, in front of a bunch of houses, would attract attention, but you would be wrong. It was the 80's, man.

When it had been long enough for my clothes to become cold and kind of crinkly, but not quite drying, a boy and girl wandered out of their house and saw me standing at the end of their driveway just staring, scared, and speechless.



After trying to get me to answer their questions, or even say a word, but getting nowhere, the older daughter ran inside and got her mom, who brought me inside, and got me to talk some. I was at her house a long time. We watched TV, I played with the kids, they gave me drinks and snacks, the daughter and I played a board game, and we were having a ton of fun. I thought I'd found a new home.

As night fell outside, the mom ordered pizza, and I was THRILLED. I loved pizza, this new family was awesome, and I was hoping beyond hope that I would get to stay forever.

Right before the pizza was supposed to get there, my mom showed up with one of her friends and took me home.

For months I was sure that if I'd been there when the pizza arrived I could have stayed and been part of their family, then I went to hoping I would run into the kids somewhere, because they had been so much fun. Unfortunately, I never saw anyone from that family again.

I need soap!

My 13 yr old is a bright girl, but she tends to panic easily, and loses the ability to think rationally. She's a bit like a person who has played Hangman, and only hangman, for their entire lives, and then gets on Wheel of Fortune and forgets what letters are.




I heard a worried, "AAH!" come from the living room...



Maybe it's because she's THIRTEEN YEARS OLD, but for her to yell for help like that made me think she'd done something extremely stupid and was either hurt, or about to be hurt, and whatever it was that she had stuck her thumb into was probably extremely large and/or heavy. Why would she call me unless her thumb was really and truly stuck tight?



What I saw was even more mind blowing than finding out we owned the Lincoln Memorial would have been. Her hand was stuck in the handle of a pair of scissors. Little kids safety scissors.



It took me two minutes to get her to calm down enough to walk herself into the kitchen to soap them off her hand by herself.

Why 7 yr olds don't make good babysitters.

My little brother, Alex, is almost seven years younger than me, and, for better, or, most likely, worse, I was put in charge of him for many hours at a time starting right after my seventh birthday.

Aside from resenting Alex for having to hide in the house, pretending not to be home if anyone knocked at the door, and having to change his stupid diapers all the time, it wasn't so bad... except when I tried to eat his limbs.

Actually, I wanted to kill him, but thought that might make our mom a bit upset, so instead I would wrap my teeth around his foot/ankle or hand/wrist and bite just hard enough that I could feel his skin, then tense up my jaw so it shook, and imagine tearing his extremities off with my teeth, and the warm feeling of blood running down my teeth and out the corners of my mouth.

I had enough foresight/restraint to never actually leave teeth marks on him, but the thought was there.

Unfortunately, since it didn't hurt my brother, as he got a bit older, and mobile, he ended up thinking it was a comforting thing, and would run over to shove his fist into my mouth when he got upset with our mom.

This was probably karmic payback, because, like most toddlers, his hands weren't the cleanest things in existence.

Our mom was always confused by Alex's method of being calmed, but made me let him do it, since it was one of the quickest ways to quiet him.

Silent-but-Deadly Three-Way

One of the most awkward situations to be in is the silent-but-deadly fart three-way, when you aren't among friends. There is no way to get out of the situation easily.

A maintenance worker was doing minor construction about 8 feet to my left, stretching up to the ceiling, and making frustrated person noises, as whatever he was doing wasn't going right. I was at the computer, and my dog was to my right. Together we formed a triangle.

I had turned on some music, so I didn't have to listen to the maintenance guy talking to himself, and was surfing websites as the smell hit me.

Someone close by had released an SBD, but who? I didn't want to automatically blame the dog, but I couldn't really ask the guy if he'd just made a fluffy.

The smell was impossible to ignore, so I got up and took the dog outside. As we came back inside, the maintenance guy was leaving to get something from his truck. Instead of his normal chatty ways, he looked kind of embarrassed and talked to the dog.

Suddenly it then dawned on me that he was looking at me like he thought I'd made the terrible stink. Now I felt awkward, and it was way too late to blame the dog. Even if I had blamed the dog I probably would have looked guilty, because doesn't everyone always accuse their pet?

It MOVED!

My oldest daughter, V, has always been a bit of a conspiracy nut, and, from the time she could talk, she was obsessed with aliens, vampires, ghosts, and an assortment of other paranormal topics.

My youngest daughter, O, is three years younger than her and has always been the voice of reason and logic.

Their different ways of viewing the world have never been as apparent, or insane, as when V was seven, and O was four, and V found a butterfly for her bug collection.

V had been collecting and pinning bugs for about a week, mostly finding them already dead in our yard, or during walks. Occasionally we would catch something alive and euthanize it with rubbing alcohol fumes.



On this morning, we were walking home from the library when V found a dying Painted Lady butterfly, and decided to bring it home to wait until it naturally "passed on" before making it her newest trophy.



The butterfly had stopped twitching by the time we got home, so V decided to put it in the bug box with the rest of her collection. My attempts to tell V that the butterfly might not be completely dead yet were met with looks of pity, as if I had no idea what I was talking about.

A few hours later, the girls decided they wanted to look at the bugs we already had, so V carefully got the collection down from her shelf, and slowly opened the lid, to avoid damaging anything, which startled the still nearly-dead butterfly and caused it to move some.

At this point O, being a child of reason, and knowing V's tendency to be a bit over-excitable decided to take the situation into her own hands.

This did not go over well with V, who was now more freaked out than ever.

It was about two days before V would get rid of the now definitely-dead vampire butterfly, and only after pestering O into apologizing to the butterfly's spirit, so it wouldn't haunt our house.

Lessons from The Manitou

Recently I watched "The Manitou" with my family. I'd seen it once, on late-night tv, when I was about nine, so I remembered bits about what happened, but never realized what great life lessons it teaches. In case you don't want to suffer through... um... don't have the time to see this movie, I've compiled some of the more important things it teaches including an entire section on "Indians."

I'll start with the Native American facts first:

a) "Indians" will fight to the death over anything trivial, but have no need for money.

b) While they don't need money, they sure do need tobacco!

c) They are a soft place to land if something explodes nearby.

d) Medicine men can't work while wearing a thin hospital gown over street clothes.

e) "Full-sized" evil medicine men are dwarfs with amazingly chiseled muscles, yet are blind and can only walk on their knees.

f) Medicine men have trouble finding jogging partners.




And now for the rest of the lessons:

1) DON'T BE AN ADMINISTRATOR!

2a)Delay surgery on a large neck growth, because having the growth isn't possible.
2b)Especially if the impossible growth appears to be an extremely fast-growing fetus.
2c)Don't give the patient any information, and send her home.




3)If you are working in an operating room and the patient wakes up from heavy sedation, starts chanting in a foreign language, and the surgeon is psychically forced to cut his own wrist, calmly sit at a nearby computer and type.

4)If a person starts chanting in a foreign language, floats along a hallway, with her feet about six inches off the floor, and is thrown down the stairs by an invisible force, don't worry. She did it to herself.

5)If you don't know what a foreign phrase means, and you are not an expert in languages, do not let that stop you from accurately translating an obscure saying from a culture that died out centuries ago.




6)If an optical laser becomes possessed and starts blasting holes in the walls of the operating room, medical staff will rush to the scene, yet do nothing but crowd the doorway to stop anyone inside the room from escaping.

7)If a possessed patient tells you exactly how to get rid of the thing possessing her, pretend you don't understand and do the exact opposite.




8)You can't stop manitou! Okay, you can, but it's really hard. Well, if you try, it can probably be done.

9)The sacred circle will be destroyed if it is broken... unless it is broken, then it will still work.

10)Don't attack while the enemy is weak, wait for him to gain strength!

11)When running for a flashlight during random power outages, take the elevator.

12)IBM Typewriters explode.

13)"Complicated computer stuff" has its own soul, which can be focused by a "person-to-person call" to make a possessed woman shoot electricity at her demon.




14)Scary music quickly turns to Star Trek music when a dark room fills with stars.

15)Doctors explode when exposed to the reality of the paranormal, and cheesy lightning effects.

16)A demon determined to kill people is easily confused by boobies and loses his ability to aim at still targets.

Geez, bitch, just because I don't want to make out doesn't mean I want to fight!

Our dog, Opposite of Einstein (aka Oppstein), is a small dachshund-ish mutt, with a curly tail. Oppstein loves to cuddle, but sometimes too much. Tonight she was trying her hardest to sit on my shoulder and lick my neck, and I wouldn't let her. After a few minutes of pushing her off my shoulder, just to have her run back and try to lick me again, I finally shoved Oppstein harder, to the other side of the couch, and told her, "I like you, but I don't want to make out."

This set off a frenzy of growling and attempts to get me to wrestle with her.

I wouldn't have anything to do with it, and ignored her, so she instead switched over to my husband, Jeff, who was sitting on the floor nearby. He's always game for riling up Oppstein, and likes to make her as hyper as possible, so within a few minutes the dog went from trying to play tug-o-war with her chew toy to full on snarling and running around the room, barely missing children and fragile items, and looking like she was having the time of her life.

After about 10 minutes of hard playing, Oppstein was running full-speed, doing circles around the living room, faster, and faster and faster! Soon she was going so fast that she was about to melt, like the tigers in "Little Black Sambo."

Suddenly a look of utter shock crossed her face, and in mid-stride she slid to a stop...

... and started pooping.

I jumped up to open the door, and she ran outside to finish, but the damage to her ego was done. For the rest of the evening she hid behind me on the couch and seemed embarrassed to even look at Jeff.