the only thing worse
than bad memories
is no memories at all..
[dismemberment plan]
6.21.2004
Fond Childhood Memories Part II
Years ago, I decided that I needed something to fill the unexplainable void in my 10 year old heart, and that that something was going to be a pair of gerbils. In a barbie pink cage with a purple exercise wheel. We named them "Fluffy" and "Tiny." I was never very imaginative -- my two favorite stuffed animals as a child were named "Teddy" and "Kitty." But they were really cute. Two fluffy, tiny, cute gerbils.
... Two hairy, toothy, wild-eyed, terrifying gerbils.
Yeah, sure, they were cute at first. They always are. But my brother and I quickly stopped saying, "Awwww, look, it pooped!" pretty early on. Then they started chewing EVERYTHING. Their little plastic house had bite marks on the roof, then the roof gradually disappeared altogether. Their wheel was just a little wedge of plastic hanging off of a screw after a few days. Then the paint started chipping off the cage until the pink enamel was gone and there were only rusty bars left behind. Then they learned how to pop open the top of the cage and escape, running all over our house and pooping in the carpet, not to mention scaring the absolute SHIT out of me when I saw a flash of fur and claws unexpectedly run across the hall. I was so scared that they'd attack me that I insisted on wearing oven mitts whenever I had to pick them up after they escaped.
Once Fluffy and Tiny stopped being so cute and instead became scary, in typical irresponsible 10 year old fashion, I rescinded my obligations as a gerbil mommy and coldly washed my hands of them. My dad, who absolutely hates, hates, hates pets instead had to become the gerbil mommy. He moved them outside, covered three sides of the cage in left over linoleum from our kitchen flooring to keep out the elements, and set them on top of a tree stump in our backyard. Eventually, their fur grew to keep them warmer, and they looked like wild animals. My dad fed them everyday.
He also complained about having to feed them everyday, everyday.
One day, I noticed that my dad didn't go out to feed Fluffy and Tiny.
"What happened to Fluffy and Tiny!??!" I asked, already knowing the answer deep down inside.
"I set them free."
I cried and cried, the sad memory of my dad giving away our black cat (named "Blacky" -- again, we're just not creative with names) acting as salt rubbed into a fresh wound of losing two more pets. Not that I'd given a shit about those furry, terrifying, wild beasts (Sad but true, unfortunately. Give me a break. I was 10. All I cared about when I was 10 was " hunky boys" [quoted from my diary.. I actually said "hunky" in there. My god.] and what I was going to be for Halloween.), but I was still heartbroken that my dad would do such a thing. They were gone. Forever.
Until,
years later, I needed something to spray paint things on, and remembered some rolled up lineoleum sitting in the garage. I tried to not freak out at all the huge spider webs on everything and found the roll of flooring behind the ping pong table sitting on top of some boxes. There was all of this shit near it, like woodchips or something. I didn't think much of it, and lifted it out. It sounded like there was sand or dirt inside, so I tilted the end of the roll to the ground so all of the shit could slide out. And it did slide out, alright.
... And so did A SHRIVELED UP, ROTTING, RODENT SKELETO-CARCASS.
Hello, Fluffy. Or was it Tiny? I guess I'll never know for sure.
My mom used to take my brother and me out on "adventures," where she'd throw us into the trunk of the family Oldsmobile with the smelly old rolled up carpet that always seemed to be in there, and would find speed bumps and gravel roads to rip across. Or if we were lucky, she'd screech to a stop abruptly on some railroad tracks as an oncoming freight train rapidly approached and she would call back to us, "Take that, you little shits! HAHA! That's for writing 'Dad rulez #1, Mom is a stinkyface' in crayon on the living room wall!" (in Korean), and then race away with the tires squealing and seconds to spare before we were all plastered to the front of a train.
It was so much fun! We'd be clutching each other for dear life and screaming our heads off in sheer terror, trying to get as much air as we could through the little keyhole which also served as our only source of light. Sometimes we passed out from what I assume was a lack of oxygen, as well as the copious amounts of gasoline fumes pumping in from the gaping opening that remained when the muffler fell off somewhere on Route 1&9 in North Jersey.
I remember hearing muffled noises that must have been laughter coming from the driver's seat. I think the most distinct sound she must have heard coming from the trunk (besides our throaty, raw screaming) was the sound of our tiny, child-sized fingernails scrabbling at the trunk door and the THUMPTHUMPTHUMP of our little British Knights sneakers kicking. It must have been cute and heartwarming to listen to.
Okay, fine, so a few choice selections from the above paragraphs are probably not completely accurate, but the non-incriminating details of our "adventures" are completely true. It was a lot of fun, and my brother and I used to beg to be thrown into the trunk sometimes, kicking and screaming.
We are a simple people, after all. Our entertainment options were few back then, and we took whatever we got. If it meant we were going to be tossed around like so much mealy iceberg lettuce in a cheap salad in the trunk of our shitty car, we took it and asked for more.
Anyway, the "reader participation" was pretty nice in the last post. So, continue to obey my every word mindlessly and unquestioningly, and post a nice fluffy memory from your childhood, you stupid, ugly morons. Wait, did I say that out loud? I guess this uncomfortable silence is my cue to break out into maniacal laughter and disappear in a cloud of smoke.
I was just thinking... You know what I really hate?
When you're talking to someone and your words get all tangled up. But even worse than that, once you've spit out some unintelligible jumble out of your retarded mouth, you feel this innate need to tense up, make a goofy squinchy face, and shit out of your mouth an even more unintelligent sound: "?? BLURGHHHGLOBBLLLBLUR. A HURR HURRR. BLURB," and then start the sentence over again.
i.e.
Intended sentence:
"I'll have a small iced coffee with milk and two equals."
The diarrhea that actually spills out of your mouth:
"I'll have a smiced moff-- AAHAHA (inappropriately hysterical laughter) I mean, (weird face with tongue sticking out [optional]) BLURGGLEBLUBBLB. ABURRB. (clears throat) Iced coffee with milk and two equals."
What's even worse is when it just keeps happening over and over in the same sentence no matter how hard you struggle to get the words out. So you just end up saying something like "ABLUH. BLURRGH. AAHAHAHA I MEAN BLARBURLBLRLB. OH JESUS I BLRRUGHGH."
That's when you give up, take a deep breath, swallow, wipe away the sweat that has collected on your brow, and say "YOU KNOW WHAT? FUCK THE ICED COFFEE, FUCK THE MILK, FUCK THE TWO EQUALS, AND FUCK YOU, YOU STUPID DUNKIN' DONUTS HAT WEARING HOMOSEXUAL," punch the guy in the nose, knock a few racks of jelly donuts over (just to show him who's boss, despite your apparent speech impediment, you stupid pussy), then storm hell out of there.
I hate it when that happens.
I hate it almost but not quite as much as hearing a group of ugly white girls singing the theme song of "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" in public. That shit makes me want to push someone into oncoming traffic every time.
I watercolored (the lazy way to paint shit fast when you have only 47 minutes until your dad gets home) three little birthday cards for him and wrote little cutsey daughterly messages on the back ("I LOVE YOU, DAD!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!") and gave them to him at dinner with a few predictable polo shirts my mom and I bought for him that he will most likely either return or never wear. I think all of us were just relieved that we didn't have to resort to buying him clothing in the children's clothing section like we did for Father's Day last year. I felt bad for the poor old man -- It definitely must have hurt his albeit modest ego when he found out that he was wearing an XL "husky" boy's t-shirt. Clothing options are limited when you are built like a 12 year old refugee, I guess.
Out of fatherly duty, maybe, he exclaimed -- through a mouth full of Korean seaweed soup -- loudly how much more thoughtful and meaningful handmade cards are than storebought cards -- which slapped a bitter scowl across my mom's face... for at that very moment, she happened to be hunched over a now-underappreciated Hallmark storebought card, scribbling a line or two under the awkwardly rhymed, flowery preprinted birthday message. I WIN. IN YOUR FACE, MOM.
My dad's one birthday request was that I "finally (for the love of god) choose a (double) major (that will look good for graduate school applications [with an applicable minor])."
He apparently thinks I have some sort of death grip on my currently undeclared status, and have my heart set on being in college for the rest of my life which would in effect, throw his hard-earned money into innumerable years and years of tuition and board, eliminating his retirement plans of buying a farm and raising vegetables like his own flesh and blood and consuming aforementioned flesh and blood vegetable children -- ... but anyway, yeah that's just not the case. In fact, it's very obvious to me that he has selective cognitive processes and has been deaf to the suggestions I've made since high school that I want to continue studying Psychology. NOT political science. Not economics. Not Chemistry. Not BiologSHUTUPSHUTUPSTOPTRYINGTOCONTROLMYLIF--
I mean, I believe it's high time that my parents come to grips with the fact that I'm not totally crazy about the idea of going to law school. Sure, my mom and I have yukked it up to Judge Judy acting like a huge cranky colostomy bag, but that doesn't mean I want to submit myself to a life of being a desk jockey with an ever-growing ass-to-cankles ratio, not to mention being in an unavoidable shitload of debt from furthering my edumacation for god knows how many more years.
Ideally, I'd instead be some kind of brainy psychologist/psychiatrist (I'm not even sure what the difference is.. Which one needs a PhD? Shit. Obviously, I haven't thought my career plans through as well as I should have. Maybe my parents are right..) to the stars, telling famous people to stop acting fucked up all the time (i.e. J.Lo married Marc Anthony? What the fuck is wrong with you people? That man has the face of a dirty donkey's ass. And conversely, J.Lo's ass has been ridden like a dirty donkey.). Or whatever, I want to tell not-famous, unimportant people that they're fucked up, too, and to stop being so fucking fucked up all the time. Like you. STOP IT!!!!
I'd even be content to just briskly pace around a research laboratory in a pair of padded Hush Puppies (unrealistic, as Science of all subject fields confuses and mildly to moderately angers me) with an oversized labcoat flapping behind me as I scribble a bunch of important illegible notes down and spend days and days making lab monkeys do adorably scientifically significant actions, such as:
running in a monkey-sized hamster wheel (which would have a banana dangling tantalizingly by a string in front of it, just out of reach),
going through a 5 level obstacle course (ideally, a to-scale replica of the "American Gladiators" course) constructed of popsicle sticks, dry ziti, and cardboard boxes
racing on unicycles (winner receives a bunch of bananas and gets to screech insults and fling feces into the loser's face), and
hula hooping.
All in the name of Science. Which I hate. I hate Science.
Come to think of it, fuck all this bullshit. I don't want to be a lawyer flipping through paperwork all day and falling asleep on piles of law texts. I don't want to train monkeys to learn how to hula hoop in the name of Science, which I hate. I just want to be rich, emaciated, and surrounded by shiny, pretty things. And I don't want to work a damn day for any of it. I'm so unmotivated and disinterested in forming some kind of career plan with a liveable income, it makes me goddamn sick.
[Peek-a-Foo]