Friday, September 30, 2005

Don’t Wait Until You’re 40 To Have Kids.

Got a kid? Don’t got a kid? If you’re waiting to have kids later in life, take some advice from me. Don’t wait until you’re 40 to have them, otherwise they might just end up being kinda fucked in the head…like me.

Being 12 years old is an interesting time in life. Who you are as a person begins to develop. Prior to then, you’re just a little snot ankle biter. After that you learn about something you come to know as pussy.

For me being 12 years old was kinda like going to those Mexican donkey shows…as a performer. Everyone else I knew had parents who were ex-hippies with white collar jobs. As my friends discovered this wonderful thing called music, they could at least kinda relate to their parents, because all of their parents had cool stuff like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath in their record collection. Of course, that’s because their parents were ex-hippies. My parents, having been born back during the fucking GREAT DEPRESSION thought the musical stylings of Bing Crosby, George Jones, and Merle Haggard counted as “cutting edge.”

For me, being 12 years old is also a time when you start to figure out that you want to dress the way you want to, but your parents haven’t quite figured that part out yet. And if you think my parent’s musical tastes were grand, you haven’t seen nothing of their fashion sense.

Not that I give too much of a shit about clothes or fashion, I never did. But you know that Buy One Get One Free discount bin at Wal-Mart? Where they keep the clothes they sell that are too gross to put on hangers because it might scare some of Wal-Mart’s customers away? If you’d brought that stuff home to me when I was 12 years old, and if those discount Wal-Mart clothes had seen the miserable shit I had in my closet…the Buy One Get One Free clothes would have laughed themselves sick.

Ever seen those short-shorts that you might see some hot chick wear at the gym? The kind that are so short that if she bends over too far you can get a bird’s eye view of her fallopian tubes? Those were a staple in my horrific clothes collection. I could take a shit on the toilet without anything being around my ankles; all I had to do is wiggle a certain way. Of the many wonderful colors these gems came in, my mother in her infinite wisdom had thought daisy yellow and brand-new socks white were ideal for me. That’s the kinda hell I was in.

But if you think that was bad, then you didn’t know my grandparents. These people remembered what it was like before there were child-labor laws. My grandfather particularly was a special gem. He was…how should I put this…fucking creepy. This guy made Marilyn Manson look like the Easter Bunny…plus he was old. The guy would stare at you with this look of anger so deep that you thought demon possession was involved. I later learned that was his idea of smiling.

Every Sunday my parents would visit my wonderful grandparents, and I’d always be FUCKING TERRIFIED of somehow making one wrong move or saying one wrong thing that would trigger this guy and push him over the fucking edge. I often worried that he might cut my eyes out with fishing knives and mix them in with the lima beens….and then demand that everyone at the table eat all the lima beens because they cost 75 cents a pound.

I remember one Sunday, one of my nitwit cousins got the bright idea to throw a Nerf ball at me while in the house. It bounced off my head, knocked over a little statue, and cracked the glass of my grandfather’s fishing tank. I’m amazed I didn’t go into cardiac arrest. I expected my grandfather to come into the living room, cut a hole into my belly, and rape my stomach.

A few months later my grandfather was admitted to the hospital. I didn’t quite grasp what the hell was going on. My mom came home from the hospital late one night and sat me down and told me that my grandfather had died. She then hunched over and started weeping. It’s not like I had seen anything like this before. At first I thought she was giggling her ass off. Once I realized she was actually crying, I thought to myself, “Um, what the hell do I do now?” No one ever teaches you that shit. No one ever tells you that when woman cries you give her a hug. It’s just something you eventually learn…usually in hope that it’ll score you blowjob later. Well, this was my freaking mom. I didn’t know what the hell to do. Should I pat her on the back and say, “oh don’t worry, it’ll be alright. He’ll be just as creepy dead as he ever was alive.”

My mom got herself together, wiped the tears from her eyes and asked me, “I was wondering if you wanted any of your grandfather’s clothes?”

When was the last time you saw your granddad mowing the lawn in his knee-high socks and thought to yourself, “I gotta go to where THIS guy is shopping”? Despite that I knew that this was a weird as fuck thing to ask me, I knew my mom was upset, so I told her, “sure, bring some of them over and we’ll see if they….gulp….fit.”

Not that I was serious. I was just trying to placate my mom. I figured she’d bring over some of his dark blue gas-station-attendant-without-the-name-tag type clothing, and I’d hang it in my closet, trying not to get any of his creepy old dead guy essence on the rest of my fabulous wardrobe.

A week later my mother comes home and brings a heavy green suitcase in the door. She calls for me to come to the door as if she’s just brought home some birthday goodies that are so wonderful she just can’t wait to give them to me. I rush to the door to see what she wants, and on the floor is that big heavy green suitcase. “Oh Christ!” I thought. “She’s actually gone and brought this shit home.”

My mother waits until my eyes are deadly focused on this suitcase, and she pops the latches. I can see from the way she’s working the latches and opening the suitcase that it was overstuffed with whatever ungodly menace lay inside. Slowly she opens the lid and a massive pile of white clothes fall out and spills to the floor. I stare at the clothes, blinking my eyes, in complete shock and horror at what lay in front of me. All these clothes all piled into this suitcase, all of it exactly identical. The entire suitcase had been stuffed and filled with my creepy dead grandfather’s underwear.

My mom reaches down and picks one of the briefs up and stretches the elastic waistband in front of me in her hands. My mother then tilts her head to one side and says, “Wanna try one on?”

This is why I say don’t wait until you’re 40 to have kids.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The statue that got hit with the nerf ball, was it a Hummel? I know grandparents can get pretty touchy about Hummels.
So your parents are blue-collar?
There's nothing wrong with that Alva. The blue collar class has always taken abuse from those damn Rethuglikans. Maybe you should have some more sympathy for them, after all, they clothed, fed and put a roof over your head, right?
All by the sweat of their brow, not at some evil white collar corporation working for the man.
Be nice to your mom Alva, she means well, doesn't she?
Nice site!

3:52 PM  
Blogger Alva Goldbook said...

anonymous,
i don't think anyone in my family would know what a hummel is, including me. No, there's nothing wrong with being blue collar. That wasn't the point. I was talking about certain cultural differences between my parents and me because of our age differences. by the way...this was meant to be humorous, not an attack on my mom. just thought I should mention that.

5:07 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Alva, did you ever see this TV show from the 80's called "Family Ties"? It was about hippie parents and their conservative kids. Michael J. Fox played their oldest son. He had a life-size poster of Nixon on his bedroom wall. I'm not making this up. You tune in next time it shows up on TV Land channel or wherever.

I'd say you dodged a bullet, my boy--or should I say Nerf ball? (How can that break a fish tank, anyway?)

12:03 PM  

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