Aug 1 2010

#34: Alisha’s History Hour & Steel Magnolias

Category: blogathon 2010

I don’t know what started it. Maybe it was my fault, mentioning that some dude at The Law Firm just returned to work after serving his third tour of Duty in Iraq. But it made Alisha start talking about war. All the wars. Even wars that may or may not be happening  on Uranus right now.

She was asking questions out loud, to no one really in particular, while “Bewitched” droned on in the background. Then she started answering her own questions.

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And then she second-guessed her answers. At one point, this brought her to the question of “How old is America? Didn’t we just have a bicentennial?

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Wait…how many years is in a bicentennial?”

I was sitting on the chaise.

“Are you looking this up?” she asked me.

“Huh, me? No. I’m texting.”

She sank back down on the couch, defeated.

And then, “I love Shirley MacLane. She’s such a great actress.”

I agreed and followed with, “Every time I think of her, I think of her biography that my grandma kept on the coffee table for like, ten years.”

Alisha glared at me. My participation in the conversation wasn’t as film-snobby as she’d have liked. But then she distracted herself by talking about “Steel Magnolias” and the scene in the graveyard, and then I started remembering that scene too and the next thing I knew, I was crying.

“Laughter through tears is like, the greatest thing,” Alisha said with a far-off, half-deranged glint to her eyes.

I sighed. “It really is.”

*********

It was the only thing that got me through the exhausting, painful visitations at the funeral home after my pappap died. All the hand-shaking with strangers, all the pouting lips of distant relatives as they clasped my hands and tilted their head in that knowing fashion that read, “I know exactly how you feel.” My best friend Christy was there through it all with me, and we sat in two chairs tucked away in a corner, making fun of relatives I didn’t like, and asshole employees of my pappap’s drywall company who were chomping at the bit to take advantage of life at Expert Drywall without John Stonick.

We cringed as my cousin Zita flounced over to point out that she and I had chosen similar shoes to wear that night.

We cracked up as my step-dad’s friend Daryl arrived with his son Clayboy the Playboy, nee Clayton. “It’s the Claymation family,” I whispered, and we lost it some more.

I think that was the only time Christy and I ever really hugged, right there next to  my pappap’s open coffin. I wasn’t a very affectionate person back then. I guess I’m still not. Hugging is one of the many things I turn into an awkward display of misplaced hands and directionless chin-resting. She and I cried so hard standing there, reality sinking in that he was really gone. He was her family, too.

That night, we sat at the kitchen counter at my grandparent’s house, rummaging through the many fruit baskets sent out of sympathy from people we didn’t know.

“This is your boyfriend,” Christy said, turning over a small red disk of  cheese with a Dutch boy emblazoned onto the wax.

I grabbed a can of sardines. “This is your boyfriend,” I laughed, waving the cartoon depiction of a sardine in her face.

We sat there at the counter, laughing in that high-pitched way that sixteen-year-old girls are prone to, falling into each other as giggle fits overcame us.

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My grandma finally kicked us out.

7 comments

7 Comments so far

  1. dawny_darko and notbatman August 1st, 2010 12:53 am

    I love laughter like that! I have 2 friends who are the type who I can just sit in a room and laugh with them for an hour… It’s an awesome feeling.

    You are doing great.. but I am very tired and sunburned woman and you are a woman on a mission with a job to get done! Keep it up!

    thanks for doing this! Hope you have a good morning.

  2. Tuna Tar-Tart August 2nd, 2010 10:04 am

    Thanks for following along! It helped keep me going:)

  3. Alyson Hell August 10th, 2010 2:23 pm

    “All the hand-shaking with strangers, all the pouting lips of distant relatives as they clasped my hands and tilted their head in that knowing fashion that read, “I know exactly how you feel.” ”

    Yeah, that. Except how can they know how you feel? They didn’t have Pappaps.

  4. thehippieshaffer August 17th, 2010 4:49 pm

    I’ve never seen Steel Magnolias…

  5. Tuna Tar-Tart August 17th, 2010 5:45 pm

    Oh, you should check it out sometime! It’s a great movie, stellar cast!

  6. Christina April 21st, 2012 11:18 pm

    How could anyone call you fake, when you are this real? <3

  7. Tuna Tar-Tart April 23rd, 2012 6:59 am

    because everyone else is fake.

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