Today is Throwback Thursday and I was going to write about something that requires me to go to a dark recess of my mind, and not that I’m adverse to that, but…time and a place, am I right? And that time and place is late at night, at home, with wine. So instead, since I’m at work, I went for the most vapid topic that popped into my head.

A fight over a phone.

Henry moved in with me a little less than a year after we started dating. (Or, as Henry would say it: “GOYYYYYYNG together.”) Let me just say right there that aside from the occasional house guest overstays, I had always lived alone from the time I moved out of my parents’ house at 18. So here I was, almost 23 and theoretically ready to settle down. Except that I went out of my way to make Henry feel 100% unwelcome. I was so used to being independent, and I didn’t want to give that up. (No really, try to imagine me as an independent person, because that Erin briefly existed.)

For starters, I kicked him out so many times that he kept all of his clothes in garbage bags for at least the first year he “lived” with me. Look, when I was in my 20s, my chemicals were as imbalanced as a J-cup on a 90 pound broad. Like, one time Henry ordered pizza from a place I had never ordered from before (I’m a bitch about pizza) even though I told him, “Hey, here is my list of 2 places you’re allowed to order pizza from.” Anyway, he ordered a pierogi pizza and IT HAD ONIONS ON IT so I flipped over the dining room table.

This was only about 6 months into our relationship, but he stayed, you guys. He stayed. So don’t “Poor Henry” me!

Sometimes, we reminisce about the Early Years and act bewildered over the fact that we made it this long. Granted, we started getting along much better after a while (like, after 6 or 7 years, ha-ha), but it was sketchy there for a time. We both came into this relationship with tons of baggage (who doesn’t though) and I was still basically a kid. So there were a lot of “STOP ACTING LIKE MY DAD!”s being flung around.

Henry had been a resident of Casa d’Erin for a year when we found ourselves in the market for a new cordless phone. According to my 100% fact-based LiveJournal:

I can’t believe I forgot to mention this. When I came home Friday night, Henry was all, “Look at the new phone!” We’ve been in dire need of a new cordless, because the battery kept dying too quickly on the one we have now. I have this thing where I don’t like items being bought for the house until I’m present. I mean, technically, it’s still my house, and I’m really particular with the way things look around here.

The phone he bought was black and red and ugly all over.

I politely asked him to please return it, so that we could both pick out a phone together. (Don’t let him tell you otherwise, either. He likes to portray me as some bitchy domineer who has to have her way. Couldn’t be farther from the truth.)

Back in 2003, I was really into writing myself in the best possible light, so I left out a lot (all) of the *BANG*s *POW*s and *KABLAM*s that you guys totally know burst from my fists the moment Henry introduced some ill-advised purchase to me. I can promise you that the fight we had over a CORDLESS PHONE was explosive, like the phone was a metaphor for another woman. Because sure, I was really concerned about how a PHONE looked in my house. It clashed with my Rugrats clock and The Cure wall-hanging, obviously!

Remember how I told LiveJournal that I wanted Henry to return the phone so that “we could pick out a new one together?” BALD-FACED LIE. Friends, don’t get it twisted: I went ahead and bought a pink Disney princess phone on my own. Is this the one I wanted? NO. I hate Disney shit. But did I want the satisfaction of ridiculing Henry every time he held a pink phone up to his dumb cloth-chapeau’d head, and watched him cringe every time the phone played a different magical tone to announce an incoming call? Magical songs like Bibiddi Bobbidi Boo? FUCK YES.

And it was hilarious to hear Ariel’s sweet, Heavenly harmonies emanating from the pink penis-phone every time Henry’s ex-wife called to roar death threats at him. He was really getting it from all ends, you guys.

That phone was such a piece of shit. Obviously. But at least it was MY PHONE. Thank god I have grown up so much since then. Right, Henry?

This story was dumb. I will try to do better.

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It is mandatory for bloggers to commemorate birthdays of their offspring every year and pretend that the entire world has halted. You didn’t know? It’s written somewhere, I don’t know. I’m not a real blogger, so you’ll have to ask one of these ones.

But back to Chooch! Eight years ago today, I was having this 10lb 2oz sack of chunk extracted from a SCARY INCISION THAT STILL HURTS SOMETIMES, OK? It seems like an eternity ago, but I can still remember how excited/anxious/horrified I was like it was yesterday, and the nurse asking me if I had a Living Will, OMG just what I want to think about right before I go in for a stomach filleting. And I think here is where I’m supposed to insert some flowery prose about how hard parenting is, but so worth it. It’s true though. Once I quit wondering when things would get easier and accepted the fact that this parenting job will NEVER get easier, I think I became kind of better at it. (I still fuck up A LOT, though, don’t get it twisted.) Chooch himself has made me so much better in so many ways!

I was the first one out of all of my friends to get pregnant, and I heard a lot of predictions like, “You’re not going to be fun anymore.” And that makes me laugh because I have more fun now than I ever did back then, so thanks Chooch! (I am also not friends anymore with the people who said shit like that to me, because fuck them.)

 

Here’s Henry sleeping in the hospital room that day, which is probably one of the last times Chooch and I have let him take a nap.

LOLworthy:

1. Bandanna

2. Faygo sweatshirt

3. Mr. Mom jeans and shoes

4. Awkward holding of his own hand

And here’s the birthday boy himself, on our walk to school this morning! You guys, he was in the best mood and a total fucking joy to be around for once. I LOVE BIRTHDAY CHOOCH, OMG.

Anyway, I guess we’re going to dinner tomorrow at Olive Garden of all places, because this is what he has requested we do. He’s never been to Olive Garden before and he hates pasta, so…..

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Fifteen years ago today, the world lost one hell of a guy. This one’s for you, Aaron. I know how much you LOVED this song!

(Fun fact: he did not love this song. But I did and I would play the shit out of my cassette single every time we hung out because that’s the kind of endearing friend I am.

)

A person could go mad thinking about all the whys and hows and wondering what kind of guy he would have grown into. An awesome one, obviously.

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I was all set to write about Easter weekend, how Henry hates dyeing eggs and the amazing tofu I had (srsly, that’s a sentence that was just purposely typed), but then I realized what today’s date is. Just the other day, I was texting with Andrea and it dawned on me that the 10 year anniversary of they day I walked out of the most dysfunctional and damaging job I’ve ever had was coming up.

No wonder it has been popping up in my mind so much lately.

Well, that day is today. It’s funny how a simple date can give me such stomach aches. But it has also given me a lot to think about. If you were my friend during the 4 years I worked at this place, you know all about how it was the most depressed I’ve ever been in my life, and you know about how the experience took my big lionesque personality and suppressed it into that of a timid lamb.

I don’t really talk about those days very much and I definitely don’t write about the worst of it because I was told not to. But I will tell you that the day I stood up to the owner of the company and walked out was the most empowered I have ever felt as a woman, and it was also one of the most reckless decisions I made.

It took me YEARS to be able to mentally and emotionally start working again, because, well, four years of emotional abuse, inappropriate touching, verbal bullying, and the aftermath of walking away from it resulted in some trauma. I would go to interviews and have to breathe in paper bags in my car because I would be so scared and panicked. I developed a stutter. I became shy and socially crippled. I let this happen and I fucking can’t stand it. But, I am a lot better now. I’m also a lot different now.

This place had it all: death, suicide, theft, affairs, racism, sexism, harrasment, drugs. It was like working in an office full of sleazy uncles. Let’s just say that the climax was an argument between me and my boss about someone who ended up dying tragically three days later.

Perhaps after ten years, I should be “over it,” and perhaps I need to go back to therapy, but it was something that defined me. Whether I like it or not. That place redirected the course of my life, and while I love where I am now, it was a long and rocky road full of unemployment, shut-off and eviction notices, panic attacks and extreme self-doubt.

 I hate that I let it happen. I hate that I thought it was “normal” to be treated like that. I hate that Human Resources didn’t exist there. So much of what is “wrong” with me today can be directly attributed to the years 2000-2004. (Everything else can be blamed on my family, haha.)

So today, I feel sick to my stomach and flooded with memories while nasty words ricochet in my mind. I am equal parts sad, angry, bitter, infuriated, guilty and FUCKED OVER. It’s your basic Sybil City over here. But, all of this reminds me that my current job is a fucking wet dream compared to that nightmare. So that is one silver lining.

The biggest silver lining is Henry (gross, but I had to be honest!). Everything happens for a reason, right? I’m not sure I would have met him anywhere else if we hadn’t both endured that hell together.

We’ll go back to having fun on here tomorrow, I promise.

P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ROBERT SMITH!!!

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Over the weekend, Janna and I were playing some stupid memory game with Chooch and I kept winning so Chooch threw a fit.

“YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO WIN!” he wailed. I tweeted “Chooch is crying again because I’m the best LOL” and my friend Bill replied with, “At least you didn’t smack his face off an awning.” Which is what he did to Chooch in Gatlinburg, TN. This inspired me to go back and revisit that vacation, and now you get to, too, OMG thank you Throwback Thursday! Don’t worry, I’m just reposting the first day, not the whole weeklong trip. I’ll spare you this time!
——————————————————————————–
Originally posted August 28, 2011

Henry: “The Smokies are pretty big, you know.”
Me: “Yeah, like your asshole.”
Henry: “I don’t even know why I talk to you.”
***********

We’re here! The trip down was not very eventful, except for THE MYSTERY HOLE which deserves its own post and I will do that when I’m home since I can’t get the pictures off the camera and am relying on my good ol’ iPhone to write this.

However, we did almost wreck minutes outside of our destination when some douchebag knocked over a traffic cone in front of us on the highway and Henry swerved into a barrel trying to avoid it.

I printed out two pictures of Jonny Craig to keep at my bedside while here. Henry was perturbed & disturbed by this, and threatened to stay home.

We did some grocery shopping in Pigeon Forge this morning and you know I hate that shit but no way was I passing up the chance to snicker openly at the Tennessee drawls dripping like honey over the Food City intercom system. However, Chooch and I were being a bit rowdy, maybe running around too much, because I began to notice that we were on the receiving end of some nasty glares from other patrons. So we left and went to some souvenir shop next door where I got a wonderous Jesus pen (he’s real Big In Tennessee):

Then Chooch got yelled at by a cashier because while I was trying to pay, he found an axe and was running around the store with it. True story.

Later, we followed Bill, Jessi and Tammy to downtown Gatlinburg which apparently is owned by Ripley’s. We had JUST gotten out of the car when Chooch bit down wrong on a candy bracelet and tears instantaneously sprung from his eyes. Then he was embarrassed because his idol Bill saw him crying so he started crying even harder.

I was able to calm him down and then Bill gave him a piggy back ride, which brings us to injury #2. Bill was bouncing Chooch up and down and didn’t realize that he had stepped underneath a store front roof and bashed Chooch’s face right off it.

BIG TEARS ensued. Because I’m such a great friend, I pointed out that this was the second time Bill had injured my kid via Piggy Back.

Bill bought him ice cream to make up for it and then took him to look at a mini golf course after he spontaneously started sobbing because he misses our cat Speck.

Later on, a cashier in another store asked, “Who knocked you upside the face, boy?” and we all joyfully got to point at Bill.

I guess I shouldn’t be so smug considering I turned out and smacked him in the OTHER EYE with my big fat camera. (Injury #3, if you’re using a scorecard.)

More BIG TEARS ensued, but at least there wasn’t an audience for that one compared to the veritable Dinner Theater that Bill had.

Chooch almost fell down a flight of steps too.

(Chooch, when you’re taken away from us & dumped in foster care, please try to remember the good times.)

In between all this, we went into some optical illusion exhibit where Bill slammed a door in Henry’s face, I bought some cheap but amazing rings and AMISH PEANUT BUTTER, Bill had his palate scorched by salsa and I had to try to be sympathetic but really I thought it was pretty funny, and Henry scanned the area desperately for a barber to shear his luscious Kristy McNichol locks.

Tennessee rules.

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“It’s going to be a roomful of girls!” Henry shuddered when I broached the subject of going to see Eisley. This made me roll my eyes. I mean, probably only 95% girls, Henry. Get a fucking grip. Plus, he’s totally annoyed by the fact that I follow every single member of the Eisley family on Instagram and am always trying to make him look at their babies. (THEY HAVE THE CUTEST BABIES.) I’m just obsessed all around. What’s the point in hiding it.

Besides, I knew after dragging Henry to three concerts in three days (one of which was 6 hours across the state), that he was definitely not going to want to accompany me to another show a few weeks later.

***

I have been a fan of Eisley since 2004, when reading a review of their EP prompted me to download (illegally, I’m sure, but I ended up buying the physical CD shortly after) some of their songs, which I put on a mix CD that would accompany me on a failed trip to Cincinnati. One of those songs was “I Wasn’t Prepared.” It was definitely love at first listen. Followed by 87 more listens.

I kind of stopped following them for awhile though after I got my then-friend Alisha into them and she totally played them out. After awhile, Eisley made me think of her and our failed friendship and that was just no good. But somehow a few years ago, Chooch heard some songs from their album “The Valley” and he became obsessed, to the point where he made me put their song “Sad” on his roller rink birthday party mix. And then I was reminded how much I once loved them and fell right back into the Eisley rabbit hole.

Anyway, the point to this story is that in ten years, I have not once had the opportunity to see them live, so I was going with or without Henry. And I was fully prepared to go solo, but then Janna said she would go even though she didn’t know anything about them.

***

Their show was last night at the Smiling Moose, which is kind of an awkward place to see a show since it’s relatively the size of a giant’s shoe box. But the bar itself is fantastic and has beer-like things that I am able to palate, plus really good vegetarian sandwich selections. For these reasons, Janna and I got down there a little early so we could chug beer-like things and stuff our faces with sliders while I tried to prime her on the members of Eisley, explaining that they’re a family and that Sherri is the one with pink hair and she’s my favorite so don’t you dare ever in a million years say anything even slightly disparaging about her because her entire being radiates joy and hope. JUST STFU JANNA.

(Honestly, Janna wasn’t even saying anything. How could she, with my incessant rambling? I never get to talk about music, so when someone gives me even the tiniest opening, I start talking like a 16-year-old auctioneer.)

Anyway, it’s a good thing I’m an old hag who the bartender didn’t card, because I realized when we got in line to go upstairs for the show that I only had my expired license. WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH ME AND LICENSES LATELY. Oh well, I wasn’t planning on drinking anymore during the show anyway, so I didn’t lose any sleep over it when the bouncer at the door barked, “THIS IS EXPIRED. NO” and shooed me away with nothing more than a scowl and implied, “No 21+ bracelet for you, skank.”

The Smiling Moose is set up where there is no other way to get on the stage if you’re the performer other than WALKING THROUGH THE CROWD. No backstage. No escape hatch in the floor. No fireman’s pole from the ceiling. Totally awkward for bands, I’d imagine. It wasn’t too crowded at this point though, so the opening band—Merriment—didn’t have too much trouble breaking through the complacent hipster girls on their way to the front of the room.

Merriment is a fine band. It’s made up of the two youngest “Eisley” siblings: Christie and Collin DuPree. Just very pretty, calm and quiet music. And thank god for that otherwise we might not have been able to hear the guy next to Janna when he sniffed his hands with zeal and shouted, “MY HANDS SMELL LIKE SHAWARMA!”

“What?” his girlfriend shouted back.

“MY HANDS SMELL LIKE BEEF!” he shouted back, louder this time and in layman’s terms, alerting the attention of the two girls on the other side of him, as well as me and Janna.

“That’s a really random thing to say!” the girl next to him laughed, and we all cracked up because he just kept inhaling his entire palms, like he was trying to relive his dinner.

Just then, the current song ended and Christie DuPree said, “Wow, it’s so quiet in here.”

“I agree!” Beef Hands said. “I totally agree.” And we all started cracking up again. He looked like John Mayer a little bit, but younger, and now I can’t stop picturing him taking deep drags of his fingertips like Mary Katherine Gallagher: Beefy Pits Edition.

Meanwhile, three girls had pushed their way through the crowd and stopped right in front of me. The one was pretty tall and, after she glanced over her shoulder at me, she yelled to one of her shorter friends, “Switch places with me so I don’t block this girl’s view!”

WHAT. This shit never happens to me at shows. I generally wind up with, standing in front of me, the most inconsiderate douchebag who seemingly has a tophat of hair on his douchehead, so close that his natural stench wisps its way into my nostrils.

Anyway, those girls wound up moving further up before the end of Merriment’s set and were replaced by a tall boy and his girlfriend. The boy was similarly very concerned about impairing my view. He turned around at least 3 times to make sure I was still able to see OK and I was like, “Am I at a fucking Gino Vanelli show or what? Why is everyone being so polite!?”

Too bad Janna didn’t have the same experiences from where she was standing, hahaha.

About 20 minutes after Merriment finished their set, the house music went off and the crowd parted for Eisley. You’re going to be so shocked about what I have to say next:

I started to cry.

Like, when have I ever cried at a show before, right?

Of course I fucking cried. That’s what I do.

I don’t even know that I have it in me to formulate cohesive thoughts about last night. They were spectacular. And they were all sick! EVERY LAST ONE THEM HAD COLDS and they still sounded like angels. How is this possible? And Sherri just smiled and smiled and you know how sometimes you go and watch a band and think to yourself, “Wow, they hate this. They’re so fucking bored up there right now” and it’s so disappointing because if you wanted a flat performance, you’d have just played their CD in your car while driving through a cornfield? Well, Sherri exuded enough joy and passion through her smiles alone that it’s so obvious she belongs on a stage. And she has the best personality. Someone in the front row asked her a bottle of water that was sitting on the stage, so she took one out of the case and handed the rest over to the person.

“Now don’t be greedy!” she said in a faux-stern drawl. “Make sure the people in the back get some too!”

Janna was all pissed off because the couple in front of her who she hated got the last bottle.

GOD JANNA, GO DRINK FROM THE BATHROOM FAUCET IF YOU’RE THAT PARCHED!

One of my favorites: Mr. Moon!

Meanwhile, Beef Hands was having conniption fits next to Janna. He was jumping and dancing and “Wooooo!!!!!!!”ing through the whole show and it was SO NICE to see because most of the crowd seemed to just be standing around like upright logs. I really wished Henry would have been there to witness Beef Hands, since he apparently thinks Eisley is not for men.

They played “I Wasn’t Prepared” and I honestly lost it. So many memories.

Someone on Instagram posted a picture from last night and the caption said, “Heaven is probably a lot like seeing Eisley” and I’m going to go ahead and back that sentiment. Their talent is boundless. Stacy sounds like a siren and when Chauntelle sang Millstone, I was like “YESSSS!” because she rarely sings and her voice is just as much of a treasure as Stacy’s and Sherri’s. I hope they never stop making music.

Oh, and Janna is totally a fan now, so THERE people who assume I like shitty music. Sometimes my friends actually like what I like. RED LETTER DAY!

 

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I miss my work anniversary every year. I knew it was coming up and thought it was April 8th for sure, but then April 8th came and went and I forgot all about it. Just now I was inspired to check my blog to see if I ever posted on my first day. Of course I did, because that’s the shit that I do. I also learned that my work anniversary was April 5th, not the 8th. I also found a blog post where I talked about how obsessed I was with the beautiful Law Firm restroom, because it was still brand new at that point (and not just in a “new-to-me” way; the Firm had just moved into that newly renovated building two weeks before I started working there so everything was sparkly and shiny and there were CANDY BOWLS ON THE TABLE BY THE KITCHEN which is how they lured me in). Don’t worry, that bathroom is disgusting as shit nowadays.

Anyway, please enjoy my first blog post from The Law Firm. And my finger was “broken” due to a Jillian Michaels injury that morning. That was one of the first conversations I had with Barb, explaining to her why I kept wincing every time she handed me papers. So…not much has changed. (And I did become friends with those two girls, but BARB ended up being my first friend. Of all the people! Anyway, the reason I even excitedly mentioned that in a blog post from 2010 was because I wasn’t used to working at a place with normal people that I could actually imagine hanging out with. People who work late shift doing data entry are a….how do you say….special breed. And that was what I had been doing for awhile before getting this job. So no, I wasn’t interested in becoming friends with middle aged women with mullets who wore Crocs and Country Jamboree t-shirts to work.)

****

I’m at my new job! With a broken finger! Henry will have you believe it’s just bruised but what does he know? He thought Maunday was a misspelling for Monday ( SO DID ALISHA) until I opened my big bag of Biblical knowledge on his ass. (I’m still galloping around town on my high horse about that.)

Anyway. My desk area is bare. Stark. Inadequate. But at least I didn’t set off any alarms today.

Already there are two girls who I can imagine being friends with, which is pretty much where friendships start and end with me oh ho ho ho.

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Ugh, look at my dopey face.

I got my first tattoo in 1997. I was 18 and obviously put zero thought into it, but, you know, OMG I’m 18 and can get a tattoo now! I was still in a relationship with Psycho Mike at the time and we decided that we would get our first tattoos together so that we could have yet another terrible memory to put in our stupid scrapbook.

(YES WE KEPT A SCRAPBOOK TOGETHER. It was awful. One page was an actual list of all the times we were approached by cops while banging in the park at night. Keeping it classy, always.)

In 1997, tattoos were entirely too affordable for asshole teenagers. And even if I didn’t have an American Express card that my mommy paid the bill on, I made enough at my crappy telemarketing job at Olan Mills to be able to waltz into some tattoo shop and pick the dumbest piece of flash out of the binder and think to myself, “Yes, this is what I want to carry around with me, deep within my flesh, everyday for the rest of my life.” Some stupid heart getting shot in the asshole with an arrow, it can be yours for $65.

I was drunk in this picture, but I sadly can’t use ‘inebriation’ as the reason I got such a dumb tattoo. And then once I got older and it started to blur, that’s when it really looked fantastic. Most people thought it was a farting heart. Because that’s what shitty tattoos turn into you guys. Farts.

But even worse for me, it wasn’t what it looked like, but what it represented. Anytime I would catch a glimpse of it in the mirror, especially these last few years, I would be reminded of a shitty relationship. It just made me so sad, but the idea of trying to get it covered up seemed so daunting. After 15 years, it was basically just this oblong red blob on my arm and I couldn’t imagine someone trying to cover it up.

During the summer of 2012, Andrea was here visiting and she decided she wanted to get a tattoo. She has like a million of them and I was so worried about taking her to a crappy place, but I knew that my friend Stacey’s brother was really good, so we went to his place. Of course he wasn’t there (turns out, he had left that place), but Andrea was like, “Fuck it I want teeth on my wrists” and asked one of the available artists—Josh—if he had time to bow to her whims. He did, and he turned out to be really awesome, so thank you for not giving my friend a shitty Pittsburgh souvenir.

I showed him my dumb heart and he said he could cover it up easily, but of course I had zero dollars and told him I would get back to him once I found a lucrative corner to stand at.

A year passed by and I randomly found Josh on Instagram and totally fell in love with his style. Finally saved up some money and made a consultation appointment in January. Basically, I was like, “I’m obsessed apples, and the quote ‘the sweeter the apple, the blacker the core’ applies to me.” Two sittings later, and now I have apples on my arm and there’s no trace of a farting heart! (Alhough, Josh saved that for the very last part, so every time I looked over, I could still see those stupid cartoon eyes staring up at me. But man, when he was done, I had to fight back tears because I was so happy it was gone.)

Sorry this is such a shitty picture (blame Henry), but this was taken right after and now it’s in the lepresy-stage, so I won’t be taking a new picture for awhile.

And that’s the relatively uninteresting story of how I literally let someone color over a shitty memory. Thank you Josh from Artisan! I usually have a black cloud over my head when it comes to tattoos, but this was a really good experience.

 

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I know, a thousand trillion pictures of Marcy, nothing new. But she’s my babe and I wanted to share.

****

I’m listening to Black Lab on Spotify and suddenly it’s 1998, Marcy is a kitten and I’m sun-tanning on my porch with Crisco because I can’t find my tanning oil. But the important question here is: why did I even have Crisco in my apartment to begin with? I only used the stove once and it was to make Spaghetti-O’s with Janna and then we left my apartment for an hour while it was cooking because it’s easy to forget you’re cooking food in a pot in a townhouse with literally one giant open room.

Oh, to be 18 again, not caring about skin cancer or turning townhomes into tinder.

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July 2008

July 2013

I pretty much spent the whole day sitting: Sitting at Chooch’s piano lesson. Sitting at my friend Patty’s birthday dinner. Sitting for nearly 3 hours getting my tattoo finished. Sitting at the computer editing photos. I think that tomorrow will be a day full of moving.

I hate sitting!!

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It was all because Tonic’s one wonderful hit “If You Could Only See” came on the radio last night as Henry and I were getting ready for bed.

“This song reminds me of when I went to get my GED,” I sighed nostalgically. (Which I originally spelled “nostalgicly.” Surprisingly, “Is ‘nostalgicly’ a word?” was not one of the questions on the test.) And even though Henry has heard my stories ten-fold by this point, he laid there silently while I told him about the boy I met at the McKeesport YWCA, and how we spent our GED testing breaks together in an alcove. (TALKING! We were just talking.) His name was Adam, this beautiful Mulatto boy who enjoyed building computers, which my 18-year-old self thought was pretty nerdy but his face made up for it.

The GED testing was split up into two sessions, so I got to see Adam once more, and this time, as we sat in the alcove after we finished the test (first ones to finish, whaddup), he asked me for my phone number. Right after I gave it to him, Psycho Mike arrived to pick me up.

“Is that your boyfriend?” Adam asked, as we watched from above as Mike entered the building.

“Yes,” I sighed sadly. (Mike and I had a really awful relationship that thankfully would expire a few months later.)

“Damn,” Adam said. “I was hoping you were going to say he was your brother.”

***

“And then he never called me!” I cried to Henry. “He could have been The One!”

“Maybe he didn’t call because you had A BOYFRIEND,” Henry spat.

Yeah, let’s go with that. But I seriously think about him every time I hear that fucking Tonic song. Even though I don’t remember his last name. (And I honestly only remembered his first name this morning.)

Taking the GED test was really an experience. And by “experience,” I mean CULTURE SHOCK. Before testing started on the first night, people were bitching to each other about how they needed to get home to feed their kids and take care of other Real Life things, when my only priority was going to the Plaza Café for grilled blueberry muffins and coleslaw with Psycho Mike and then renting an Argento movie next door at Firehouse Videos. And I remember slowly slouching down in my seat at the realization that these people likely dropped out of high school for actual, uncontrollable circumstances (I didn’t have to be a seasoned stereotyper to deduce that I was basically the only spoiled suburban bitch in that joint) while my reason was “because I felt like it and I wanted to see if my family would give a shit.”

Spoiler alert: They did not.

“Yeah, but would it have really changed anything if you had graduated high school?” Henry asked. And that was a good point, because graduating high school wouldn’t change the fact that my grandfather died when I was 16, and believe me, things would have been a lot different if he had still been alive. For instance, I definitely would have finished school and I 100% would have gone off to college right away, got swept up in the wrong crowd and likely wound up becoming a raging fan of Dave Matthews and OAR. (This is what I associate with college, apparently.)

And that’s something I think about a lot, not how dull my music preferences might be, but would I have still met Henry? If I had gone to college, I probably wouldn’t have been an office manager for a meat company when I was 20, so where would I have met him? The Army Navy Store? And then what about Chooch?!

This was all too much to think about before bed, so I changed the subject to having another baby, because THAT’S not a heavy conversation or anything. But before Henry could answer, I said, “But what if it wasn’t yours? Would you still stay with me and raise it as your own?”

Henry made a YOU’RE FUCKING JOKING scowl, but I elaborated. “No! I was beaten and raped by a ghost, and that’s how I got pregnant!” Henry started to roll over, a sign that he was peacing out of the conversation, but I kept pressing the issue, until he finally said, “THAT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN!”

“TELL THAT TO THE WOMAN BARBARA HERSHEY PORTRAYED IN THE ENTITY!” I yelled back, nearly in tears from laughing. Then, trying to reel him back in with affection, I put my hands on his chest and screamed, “OMG IS THAT YOUR REAL NIPPLE?”

“No, it’s my fake one,” Henry said dourly. It felt like it was in the middle of his chest! It was dark and I couldn’t see! I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t growing things I was unaware of.

We were quiet for a few minutes. Henry was actually probably already asleep, because he’s like a magician when it comes to sleep. I tried to stop it, but I could feel the giggles convalescing inside me, deep within the pit of my belly, so I silently shook for awhile, taking the entire bed along for the ride to Giddyville. Henry’s one eye opened slowly. “What?” he sighed.

“Nothing,” I squealed as a mouthful of laughs tried to launch themselves out of my face-cannon. And then it was all over. I sprayed Henry in the face with my uncorked vim & vigor, my stomach aching from the exertion. And I laughed and laughed and laughed, tears streaming down my face, while Henry just stared at me and asked me again, in his Papa H tone, what was so funny. (He gets paranoid.)

“I’m just thinking about getting impregnated by a ghost!” I cried, curling up into a fetal position to keep from peeing my pants.

This inspired Henry to expound once more on the physical improbabilities of this situation ever occurring, because he’s a mirth-murderer.

I forget what I said, but he thought I said something about “boozing,” so then I started scream-laughing all over again.

“It wasn’t that funny,” Henry mumbled.

“Yeah, but now I’m picturing myself at the bar with your fake nipple!” I wheezed.

If everything happens for a reason, then dropping out of high school was the smartest thing I’ve ever done.

And after all that, I still dreamt of Jonny Craig.

)

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Sometimes, Chooch and I give Henry a break and venture off on our own, except that by “on our own,” I mean “definitely with a chaperone.” Originally, Chooch and I (+ our chaperone Janna) were going to go to see The Secret of NIMH at the Hollywood Theater, because that was one of my favorite childhood movies of all time but no way does it still make me cry, OK? But then I saw that the sun was going to be out all day and I didn’t want to be in a dark theater during that, and it’s all about me anyway so I didn’t really ask Chooch and Janna if that was OK.

Instead, we went to Oakland because I thought it would be fun to show Chooch the Nationality Rooms at the Cathedral of Learning, which is part of the University of Pittsburgh. (Maybe some people reading this aren’t from here, I don’t know! God.) I’d call it my alma mater, but I didn’t actually graduate and I’m not a liar.

On the drive there, I jokingly said I had to quit college because I became a mom*.

“To who?” Chooch asked, and then within a minute of me posting that exchange on Facebook, someone corrected Chooch’s grammar. Thank god for the Internet. But you know, I guess that’s my fault for typing my conversations verbatim, instead of editing to make my 7-year-old sound like a pretentious grammar douche and not, you know, a 7-year-old. He’s got the rest of his life to learn how to talk like Mr. Belvedere.

*(Anyway, this isn’t true. I quit because I was bored, frustrated and realized that college definitely wasn’t for me. I mean, it didn’t do much to help me, because luk att how turrible i still write-z0rz.)

As soon as I parked the car, I realized that I didn’t have my wallet which was devastating because the plan was to eat lunch there afterward and I’m not going to lie, I was already starving.

When you walk into the Cathedral, it’s like being swallowed by a gothic cavern. There’s this amazing Great Hall that would make Hogwarts’s figurative weener shrink; you set foot in it and it’s like being transported back in time. The Cathedral of Learning was my favorite thing about Pitt. It had been about 6 years since I had gone back, so the novelty of it was definitely there.

You know what else was there? Chooch’s Grand Canyon-esque echo. Just what everyone there wanted: my kid’s ever-running mouth in primitive surround sound.

The audio tour for the Nationality Rooms isn’t free, but the rooms are open to the public regardless so we just took our own tour, renegade-style. Whatever that means. I’m on my fifth cup of coffee. This was just as well, because Chooch’s attention span did not allow us to stay in any one room for more than 3 minutes. (Except once, and it wasn’t even a nationality room; just a regular classroom as non-descript as Henry’s wardrobe.)

Chooch’s attempt at college math. In his head, this made sense.

A ceiling in one of the rooms, the nationality of which I do not recall because I quit caring after the fourth room when I noticed that Chooch was no longer carrying his phone and Bunny (I didn’t even notice that he brought that damn thing!) so we had to backtrack and if there’s one thing I hate, it’s backtracking.

(I just imagined myself having to backtrack in Alaska and I think I’m done with this day now.)

Chooch made a beeline for the blackboard in every room and immediately left his mark. In a lot of the rooms, there was the same writing in Chinese characters, so Janna and I started saying, “Looks like Chinese Chooch was here” and of course Chooch didn’t get it which made it even more fun to say.

We kept trying to get him to look at the shit in each room, but he was under the chalk’s spell. So basically it was for the best that I left my wallet at home and couldn’t pay for the audio tour.

 “Guys, come on.” Sometimes I really have no idea where he gets his independence, but that kid walked around like he owned the place.

Don’t worry, Chalkboard NARCS & Religious Zealots, I erased it.

Sadly, being a non-traditional student (and part-time to boot) didn’t leave me with too many fond memories, though a painting of Copernicus in the Polish room recalled a time when I made Janna enroll in the same Magic, Medicine and Science class, because see above where: I really have no idea where my kid gets his independence. This was back in 2004, Jesus Christ—TEN YEARS AGO. (See? I don’t need no college degree.) Anyway, that class was a piece of shit and our instructor was some young broad named Holly who hated us because we sat in the back of the class with some lady we befriended and we would literally sit there and write shit to each other in our notebooks while Holly and her class pets would go off on tangents about Plato’s Cave.

Anyway, one of the things Holly would make us do was read a million pages of super-dry Galileo bullshit from our overpriced text book and then write an outline, except that she called it some fancy word steeped in academia because “outline” was too pedestrian. Turns out I was a natural at these bullshit papers, and you know who wasn’t? Janna. On the first one we got back, Holly had scribbled angrily in red marker about how Janna had PLAGIARIZED and to this day, this is the best thing that ever happened to me in college. Not making the Dean’s List. Not having my Creative Non-Writing instructor tell me I was her favorite student (hahaha). Not watching my College Algebra teacher repeatedly Windex herself in the face instead of the overhead projector.

No, it was Janna being accused of plagiarizing her HOMEWORK. That was the best fucking day.

Having to PeeSoBad in the Italian room.

 Seriously, this kid. I tell him, “Go stand there so I can take your picture” and he does something Chooch-y every time.

Ladies Room Selfie. Yeah, that’s right. When Henry’s not around, Chooch loafs in the ladies room.

Haha. “Loafs.”

We walked past the room where I had an English Comp class and that made me think about the time Christina was visiting from Cincinnati during the spring of ’05 and she decided to come with me and hang out on campus while I had class. I specifically told her what time class was over and I made sure she had the room number memorized so I EXPECTED her to be waiting outside the door like a good fucking puppy at exactly 3:30.

Of course, she was nowhere to be found, and this was before either of us had a cell phone (I was notoriously anti-cell phone; she was just notoriously poor) so I marched all over the fucking Cathedral, breaking out into a sweat and eventually having to stop into the bathroom to pee because hide and seek has historically always revved up my bladder. Finally, I ran into her as she meandered out of a stairwell, no big deal.

“Oh, was class over early?” she asked casually, BECAUSE THAT BITCH THOUGHT SHE WAS EARLY. Do you know why she thought she was early? Because she never set her watch ahead for daylight savings time and she was actually an hour late because she was too busy lounging outside in the grass, watching people JOUST.

I was only That Mad because everything Christina did made me That Mad.

Thoroughly interested in reading about this giant tome of sheet music. Thank god.

I’d love to see how he sits in his actual 2nd grade class.

I found the aforementioned College Algebra classroom from 2006. “This is where I used to sit while you were in my belly, I mean, sitting next to me in your unhatched pod,” I sighed with maternal warmth to Chooch, who was 100% not interested.

Like so many dummies, I was forced to take remedial college math courses because my cumulative high school math average was not cutting it. (Somehow in high school, they kept putting me in advanced math classes even though I kept telling my guidance counselor that I was bad, just plain no good at math.) But I didn’t hate college math because I had the best instructor ever. Joanne was the fucking shit and quite literally gave me so many “a-ha!” moments from which I definitely would have benefited in high school. Her classes were the only ones I enjoyed going to and actually spoke to the other students. (I’m still friends with one of them IRL, actually. You know, as opposed to just in Toon Town.)

On the first day of that class, we had to go around the room and introduce ourselves. When it was my turn, I blurted out, “AND I JUST FOUND OUT I’M PREGNANT!” Totally taboo to make such a public declaration so soon into the pregnancy but I was so excited. This class was full of older, non-traditional students, so no one really shirked away from me like the younger students did in my geology class, but that might have been because my pregnant, bloated belly got stuck behind a desk one day, and that was when the professor had to go and get me a desk that had a detachable chair. That was a really awesome memory.

Anyway, this particular math class was split in two, but most of us ended up together during the spring semester too, and those sneaky brats, along with Joanne, had a fucking baby shower for me during class one day! (Much to  the chagrin of the men in that class.)

I still get all teared up when I think about it. OK, sorry Janna the Plagiarist, but maybe that’s my favorite college memory.

Report if you see bullying to the chancellor’s office, is what that is supposed to say, but Chooch kept saying “chandelier.” This was after he tried to force his way into said “chandelier’s” office. Thank god it was Sunday.

And locked.

Like real life college students, we were starving and thirsty, so Janna suggested that we go to the basement and see if the vending machines took credit cards but they only took Panther Cards, which are the dumb college card things and Chooch was like, “YOU WENT HERE SO WHERE IS YOUR PANTHER CARD? USE YOUR DAMN PANTHER CARD!” But Mean Henry would never let me put money on my Panther Card because what…I’d use it to buy Adderall? Who knows. And even if I did have one back then, hello, I haven’t been a student since 2008; go get your own Panther Card, Doogie.

Look at me, giving my kid a taste of true college life! Spread your wings, Chooch!

Even though we were ready to collapse with hunger and thirst, we’d have been remiss to leave without taking Chooch to the 36th floor to take in the nauseating view.

Man. What a great afternoon.

****

When we went home to retrieve my wallet, Henry was lounging about like the goddamn Sultan of Brookline.

“I can’t believe you didn’t check in on us, not even once!” I cried.

“I knew where you were,” he said casually, so now I’m convinced he’s having me tailed.

 

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This song recalls a time when my closet may have contained quite a bit of crushed velvet. I still love it so much.

The song. And crushed velvet.

Thinking about calling off work and finding a foggy forest to run in.

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Every now and again, Henry will mention this one broad from the corporate office of his dumb juice job. She’s an admin assistant, I guess, so sometimes Henry will have to talk to her about invoices or other office-y bullshit (and probably things of a SEXUAL NATURE as well, knowing Henry). And he’ll off-handedly say something like, “I had to talk to Shanice today—-” and then I stop listening to the rest because all I hear in my head is “Do doo do do doo doodle doo” and I start laughing so hard because SHANICE. And then Henry is like WHAT.

This has been going on for years. Literally—years.

And then yesterday, Henry was taking me to work when one of his little work palsies called him and Henry was all, “I don’t know, you’ll have to call Shanice—” in his Official Work Tone and my cheeks were near-bursting as I tried to swallow back the laugh lava, but finally I erupted in a hysterical wheeze, “DOES SHE LOVE YOUR SMILE?!” He was still talking on the phone, so I just kept repeating it and laughing even harder.

Henry did that thing he does where he curls up one side of his lip and silently shoots me judgmental daggers from behind his serial killer eyeglasses. When he ended his phone call, I was still giggling like a 12-year-old.

“Please make that her ring tone,” I cried.

“Make WHAT WHOSE ring tone?” he asked, mostly in disgust, but I also detected the tiniest slice of curiosity.

“‘I Love Your Smile’! Make it Shanice’s ring tone!” I yelled incredulously. I mean, duh.

And here is where I learned that after 8 years of my “Does she love your smile!?” jokes, Henry had no idea that Shanice was a singer in the 90s who enjoyed relative success with her R&B jam “I Love Your Smile.”

“Who WOULD know that?!” he cried in defense after I explained it to him. So then of course I had to find the song and play it for him on my phone. It triggered approximately zero memory for him, probably because that was back when he was too busy being the Every Parent while his Ginger Nightmare stepped out with all of the men (and sometimes women) and sorry, but he didn’t have time to know what songs the urban radio station was spinning back then. And then I played one of her slow jams (TURN OFF THE LIGHTS, duh) and he told me, and I quote, “Get away from me.” So, what, I guess we’re not shadow-dancing to Shanice at our Never Happenin’ Wedding?

And then somehow I started playing songs from the Boomerang soundtrack (the Toni Braxton/Babyface duet “Give You My Heart” amirite?!)  and Henry was about ready to roll me out of the passenger door by the time we got to The Law Firm, probably because I was getting a little out of control (my version of car dancing involves miming the act of face-punching the driver).

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Chooch’s godfather Brian and I have been out of touch for awhile, but we were messaging each other on Facebook the other night; I got all nostalgic (who, me?) and started reading old LiveJournal bullshit. I found this post from when Brian, Henry and I took Chooch to Kennywood for the first time and wanted to share because it was clearly an awful time for Henry. And those are my FAVORITE times!

****

Originally posted August 2006

All summer long, I have been itching to go to Kennywood, Pittsburgh’s amusement park. I kept begging Henry, telling him that it would be the long overdue present for bearing his son. My loins have burned so bright for thrill rides that I would have been happy even going to a county fair and scraping myself on the rusty bolts holding together the death traps.

Two weeks ago, I made Henry drive past Kennywood at night. There’s not much to be seen from the road, but the few glimpses of blinking lights I caught peeking from the tree tops was enough to make tears stream down my face. Henry didn’t even care.

Finally, after trying numerous times to plan the trip, only to have my mom (who proposed back in May that we should all go to Kennywood and she’ll push the baby around in his stroller while we ride) bail on us every time, Henry decided that if I could find someone stupid enough to go with us, he’d be the designated Chooch Pusher. I asked Brian, who in turn canceled a meeting and un-RSVP’d to a fiftieth birthday party.

I asked him if he would ride everything, because that was my greatest concern. Evidently, once my friends entered their twenties, they all became spinny ride-impaired. Janna once nearly puked on me at a carnival and the ride wasn’t even that thrilling.

“Oh yeah, I ride everything!” Brian insisted.

So we picked him up at his apartment at 4:30, after nearly getting creamed by a large thug in a car fleeing a fleet of cops in a high speed chase. It was so scary that it made my scalp twinge. And then Henry, a.k.a. Professional Driver, took a “short cut” through various city ‘hoods to avoid rush hour traffic. What should have been a twenty minute drive at best turned into an hour stuffed into a sedan with a crying baby in a car seat, Brian bitching, me whining from the back seat, and Henry massaging his temples.

But we finally got there around 5:30 and parked in the upper lot because we like doing things for free. The only problem with this is that there is a steep escalator that transports people to the bottom lot and I was worried about the stroller. I begged Henry to take the path that wraps around down to the bottom of the hill, but he jabbed a fat finger at the escalator sign and said, “It doesn’t say that strollers are prohibited. I’m going down!” And he did, with the back wheels of the stroller perched on a step and the front end of it teetering precariously into the air. I rested my hand on my heart and chanted, “Oh God. Oh God. Be careful! Oh God. Oh God.” I mean, I wanted Chooch’s first trip to be thrilling, but not as thrilling as fucking free falling from an escalator. I panicked with even more intensity when the man in front of Henry and Chooch reached the bottom and walked off.

“There goes our buffer!” I sighed. I figured if Henry’s stupidity sent the stroller plummeting, hitting the back of that man would soften the blow. We made it to the bottom and my blood pressure started to go down.

Most people, upon crossing the threshold of an amusement park, find themselves smiling like mainliners. I fall into that category. My chest was positively surging with excitement. I was giddy and making fun of people and bouncing on my toes. Henry and Brian looked grim.

Henry paid for all three of us to speed things along. Brian seemed touched and said, “You didn’t have to do that! I have money.” Henry gruffly answered, “I know. You can pay me back when you get change.” But you know Henry, always speaking so gruffly.

Brian noticed a sign for the Fall Fantasy Parade. Kennywood does this at the end of each season. Basically, they find the high schools with the worst bands and portliest majorettes with the eye-hand coordination of a 6-month-old and blend them all together into a giant pelvic-thrusting caboodled clusterfuck, making it nearly impossible to get anywhere in the park while it’s undulating along with the speed of a caterpillar. Brian was not happy about this. I laughed.

Chooch will be able to look back on the day when he’s older since I brought the camcorder along. He will surely hug his sides and smile at the memory of Henry barking at me to watch where I’m walking, me retorting with my signature hateful sass, and Brian oozing sarcasm from every orifice of his business casual-dressed body. Seriously, who wears a long sleeved button down shirt, slacks, and Italian leather sandals to an amusement park? BRIAN, that’s who.

As we entered the tunnel that spills you out into the park, “Straight Up” was playing over the sound system. “Oh goodie, you mean I get the Fall Fantasy Parade, Henry’s asshole haircut, and Paula Abdul all for only $9?” Brian enthused.

It was at this point that Brian decided to point out all the rides he would not be partaking in. “I won’t ride that. Or that. Oh hell nah, I’m not riding that!”

The first ride we rode was a Garfield-themed shit fest. There was a camera set up at the end, and I threw my arms up to illustrate properly my jubilation for being at Kennywood. Brian’s face sagged into a bored scowl. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get close enough to the kiosk which was showing all the pictures on monitors, because a bunch of assholes in wheelchairs had thrown their chairs into park and were just idling there, blocking the counter like a gimp armada.

Brian quickly set the mood for the evening after that ride by briskly informing me that “While your asshole boyfriend is pissing, I’m going to get food.” I stood alone, with Chooch and his stroller, looking like a lost lamb until Henry returned from the bathroom.

“Where’s Brian?” he asked. This was going to become the question of the night. “Getting food,” I gave him what was going to become the answer of the night.

.

Literally, Brian and I rode about five rides, maybe six, and spent most of the night standing around like assholes, getting in everyone’s way. Every time I turned around, Brian was in line to get a cheese steak or a corn dog or soft serve, and when he wasn’t in line, he was sitting at a table eating Henry’s and my cheese fries. Henry spent our rent money losing at games all night while Chooch stared at passers-by with a pissed off look.

 

Not amused on his first Kennywood train ride.

I was the only one in a good mood for once.

At some point, when I took over pushing the stroller, Brian joked that people likely thought he and I were the parents and Henry was the grandfather. We laughed about this sporadically through the day, and Henry would respond with a derelict “Oh, ho ho ho.” But then I also suggested that some people might have thought that Brian was our manny.

 

On every ride, even the train, I hugged my abdomen and wailed, “My incision! Oh holy shit, my incision!” Yes, it’s true that my C-section was four months ago, but I’ve experienced phantom incision pains ever since I healed (or have I?). It feels like tiny bees are stinging me along my battle wound. Those tiny sweat bees.

Actually, my incision neuroses run so deep that I would have to make a separate entry just for that topic alone, so let’s move on.

Things took a turn for the worse in line for the Racer when I mistakenly told Brian that Henry had said we were fucked up. See, Brian and I are weight-obsessed and we bought into the whole ephedra revolution with our entire bodies and souls. You can’t put Brian and I together without one of us eventually lamenting the ban on ephedra. “All because one asshole baseball player had to go and die because of it!” we’ll scoff in disgust. So Brian came up with a solution: We will live in Japan for six months and lose weight on their legal ephedra and then come back home and point and laugh at all the people who buy ephedra-free diet pills. Seriously, you don’t hear about the Japanese OD’ing on ephedra, do you?

Naturally, Henry’s response to this plan was, “No wonder why you and Brian are friends–you’re both fucked up.”

When I told this to Brian, he became really bothered. “Oh, I’m fucked up, am I?” I couldn’t tell if his surly disposition was in jest or if he was really hating on Henry, because we were in line for a roller coaster and he suddenly blurted out, “Where’d that motherfucker go?”

“Who?” I asked, confused.

“Your asshole boyfriend. You know, someone ought to tell him to shave that beard. He looks like shit. That motherfucker.” And so for the next three hours, every time Henry would suggest something, like walking to another part of the park, Brian would retort with, “Why, I don’t know Henry. I might be too fucked up to walk over there.”

Brian eludes Kennywood’s spell of enchantment and slouches in misery. Also, I think he burned through all his cash on food by this point..After exiting the Thunderbolt later that evening, I saw the buffer guy from the escalator standing there. I excitedly tugged on Brian’s arm and whispered, “Look! It’s Buffer!”

“Who?!” Brian asked, looking around wildly. I tried to suppress giggles as I reminded him who Buffer was. “Oh. That guy. I wasn’t aware that we had labeled him.” I ran over to where Henry and Chooch were waiting and pointed out Buffer to Henry, too.

“Who? Oh.”

And then I saw him later when we were seated at a picnic table and I had the perfect opportunity to stalk him through my camera.

I wanted to go on the new ride (the SwingShot), but Henry and Brian laughed when they saw it. “That’s obnoxious. You can go on that while I go on the swings,” and with that, Brian left me standing there dumbly. I was so mad because I didn’t want to ride alone, but it was too late for me to ride the asshole swings with Brian. I stood there with my lip out and became even more outraged every time Brian swung past us. “He’s not even smiling or laughing! Look at him, he’s expressionless!” He just sat there in his swing, staring vacantly. “He probably just went on it because of the bar that goes between your legs,” Henry laughed, continuing on the path of unfunny.

After sulking over missing out on the new ride, getting Indian brush burn on both arms on another ride, and riding the Pirate Ship with a hard core man seated behind me who was reduced to screaming like a girl once the ride started, I duped Brian into riding the Wipe Out with me.

“What does it do?” he asked. The ride wasn’t in motion when we approached it; only one kid was seated on it and the operator was waiting for more riders to come before starting it.

“It’s kind of like the Music Express,” Henry lied.

“Yeah, except it doesn’t spin as fast,” I added.

Brian shrugged and we got on board. He knew as soon as it started accelerating that he was in for it.

“You fucking bitch!” he yelled from the seat across from me. “‘Oh, it just spins around in a circle.’ Then what the fuck is this shit?!” he shouted as the entire circle of seats rose from the platform and began tilting as it spun simultaneously. We could see Henry standing near the gate, laughing and pointing. “And fuck your boyfriend, too!” Brian screamed.

When we got off the ride, I wiped away tears of laughter and said, “I forgot it did all that other stuff!”

“You forgot nine tenths of what it did, you bitch.”

The park was about to close within thirty minutes, and I had yet to ride the Jack Rabbit, which is a wooden coaster boasting a double dip. Brian tiredly raised his hands in surrender. “I don’t give a shit about the Jack Rabbit. You and Henry can go on it and I’ll stay with the kid.” Of course Brian waits until Chooch is practically in a sleep coma before offering to relieve Henry.

So I basically exchanged Brian’s Henry-bashing-in-line antics for Henry’s grumbling of how badly he had to go the “bathroom.” By bathroom, he meant that he had to poop. I learned of his anguish after I punched him in the stomach and he acted like his ass was going to start grinding out poop logs like a sausage machine. I didn’t care of his misfortune, as long as he didn’t crap his pants on the ride (those seats are tight quarters!) and as long as I didn’t catch any whiffs of a rotten bouquet.

Also in line, I informed Henry why Brian kept calling himself fucked up, and Henry was all, “Oh. It’s true You both are and I’m not retracting it. You’re also both juvenile.”

We left after that. My whole body was arrested with giddiness and at one point I came down on one knee in the middle of the parking lot because I was laughing so hard. Henry walked far ahead of us with Chooch and the stroller, while Brian ranted about being fucked up and juvenile.

Brian called me the next morning and said, “God, my feet are killing me today! Maybe if I wasn’t such a fucked up juvenile, I would have worn more sensible shoes last night.”

He never did pay Henry back, either.

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