Not A Dollarshort

Screw you, number 18.

No more than five minutes into my little brother-in-law's soccer game today, I spotted the kid who would most likely be a nine year-old male version of me or my probable offspring.

Number fifty-one on the opposing team, this kid -- Allan -- basically just stood on the field nervously shaking and wringing his hands. And, the one time that the ball actually made it to his part of the field, he kicked it in the wrong direction.

He was a bit pathetic.

Of course, I instantly liked him.

Conversely, there was a boy on Sean's team who scored two goals and wouldn't shut up about them. Not only arrogant, he was a bit of a jerk. And, who do you think what the butt of his mean little nine-year-old schtick? Yeah, you guessed it -- my boy Allan.

Me: Boy, that kid is really pissing me off.

Ben: I know, he's sooo arrogant.

Me: You know what I should do?

Ben: What?

Me: I'm going to go up to him and say something that'll cut him down to size -- for life.

Ben: Is it good to have so much hostility toward a kid?

Me: Well, you can tell he's on the path to being a jerk -- think about all the kids I'll be saving from locker room humiliation and schoolyard bullying.

Ben: You're quite the good Samaritan.

Me: I know.

And no, I didn't say anything.

I'm sorry Allan.

Identity crisis.

Shame on you if you ever confuse Harriet Carter with Lillian Vernon, another catalog fixture in any mother's home.

Where Harriet Carter caters to those dirty-minded geriatrics, Lillian Vernon takes a more suburb-friendly approach. The catalog drips with familial contentment and running a spectacularly functional household.

It's like the Martha-By-Mail for humans.

Lillian Vernon is Harriet Carter's respectable older sister, and she's all about personalization.

They'll personalize bath robes, pencils (which I just ordered), ballet bags and even coolers.

They'd personalize this baby if they had the means.

Personalization reminds me of my first and second grade knapsacks.

My mom bought me a un-personalized bag for the first grade. It was darling, with a little cartoon apple and worm on a pile of books. I believe my mom simply wrote "Mena G." on the canvas in her neat little script.

By the time I got to the second grade, I was ready for the big time. Specially ordered from Lillian Vernon was a blue canvas, old-fashioned knapsack, complete with the name "MENA" embossed in gold letters.

It was impressive -- there is something quite powerful about seeing your name in print.

Which probably explains why I just ordered personalized pencils.

I loved that bag. But, strangely, after I started bringing it to school, my mom suddenly realized that having my name prominently displayed on something I wore on my back was not such a good idea.

"A bad person," she told me, "who wanted to kidnap you would now know your name. And, all he would have to say was 'Mena, there's been an accident. Your mommy's in the hospital and she told me to get you.' He'd be lying and you would never come home again."

Instantly, I feared the bag -- the likely source of any possible abduction. I would walk with the bag clutched to my chest, covering my name -- the accomplice to a horrid kidnapping scheme.

The bag was evil. The bag had betrayed me.

Eventually, my mom rubbed the little letters into an unrecognizable blur of embossed gold. "MENA," the brand-name was no more but at least I had my peace of mind restored.

The fear of personalization haunts me to this day.

Like just the other day I saw a middle-aged man driving his mid-life crisis on 101 near Mill Valley. I can't recall the vanity plate's exact wording, but I remember it was something like an annoyingly-cutesy "ROYSTOY."

And the first thing that popped into my mind?

Enjoy that car while you can, Roy. It's only a matter of time before I see your face on a milk carton.

Tank O' Sorrow.

I'm not too keen on aquariums.

The nightmare I had last night reminded of this peculiar fact. In the dream, my family's pet Westie was trapped in an aquarium and, despite my best efforts to revive her, I could not get enough air into her little dog lungs.

And the aquarium that she was trapped in?

Here it is.

This aquarium was the source of way too much childhood anxiety. During the twelve years that I lived at my grandparents' house, a countless number of fish swam into my life. Most notable was Bobo, some sort of freshwater fish that my grandfather actually caught and kept in our tank.

Mostly the tank was occupied by goldfish and their hundreds of babies. I took such delight when I saw my first goldfish baby. I studied these fish intensely, and even learned how they mated. They do it quite swimmingly, by the way. This is the saga of life. And, conversely, there is death. A little too much for my own good, though. At an almost daily rate, some sort of fish would die and would be floating top-side while the other fished swam suspiciously around its corpse. Cannibalism and Scooby-Do.

Welcome to my world.

And then, there were the suicidal fish.

I'd be minding my own business -- watching television or playing with the toys that were kept in the cupboard below the tank -- when a fish would suddenly jump out of the tank. Keep in mind that this was a covered tank and there were only about two inches of open area from which a fish could escape. These fish were motivated. Horribly frightened that these poor fish would die a gruesome death, but grossed out enough to not want to pick them up, I would scream for grandfather's assistance.

But my worst memory revolves around a leak in the tank. One day I came home to see a completely empty aquarium. I panicked, knowing that there were hundreds of new babies in the tank in the morning, when I left for school. It turned out that the leak in the tank forced my grandfather to drain the aquarium and, "despite his best efforts," he could only save the big fish. From that moment on, I hated the aquarium and forced myself to ignore its underwater activities.

And, now, I still have nightmares about that blessed tank.

Westward Ho!

Sure, you've heard about Civil War reenactments, but did you know that there are groups that set out to follow the Oregon Trail each season?

It's true! And, the other night, after seeing an advertisement in Sunset magazine -- "I wore 5 calicos on the Oregon Trail" -- I decided that living history was the life for me.

Me: I'm so going on the Oregon Trail.

Kristin: What are you talking about?

Me: The Oregon Trail! Look, this woman made her own calico dresses and relived the trail. Oh, that looks so fun. I'm going to sign-up.

Kristin: That doesn't sound like much fun.

Ben: There is no way you could handle that. And I'm not going with you.

Me: I'm a total outdoorsman. You'll see. I'll send you a letter from The Trail.

Once I started to read the online information about the journey, I realized that Ben was probably right. For starters, I'm not even equipped with the right accessories:

Blackpowder muzzleloader: any make or model as long as the model was not originally manufactured after 1859.

You don't think they'll let me sneak by with my 1864 muzzleloader?

I loved studying about the Oregon Trail in elementary school. In fact, one of my favorite school-related projects was keeping a imaginary travelogue about life on the trail.

And then, there was Oregon Trail, the computer game.

Do you remember how you had to name your traveling companions?

At first I would name my crew after members of my family. But once I realized that nary a journey ended with a full body count, I soon took to traveling with a wagon full of strangers.

"Mommy dies from a snake bite!" was just something you didn't want to hear.

Purple Haze.

Since today is Bad Writing Day, I've been tearing through the house looking for the one diary I ever kept.

I began my green velvet journal on January 28, 1986. Coincidentally, it was the day of the Challenger explosion.

My profound thoughts on the tragedy:

"Today there was a bad space shuttle accident. It's sad."

Here's a more revealing glimpse into an eight year-old psyche:

"I saw Enemy Mine today. It was sad but good although I didn't want to admit it. They [my parents] forced me to see the movie and I didn't want to make them happy that they were right and it was a good movie."

So much anger at such an early age.

This is not bad writing, however. This is just a child's writing.

This is bad writing.

Something had gone wrong, and this upset little girl had cracked. It seemed to her that nothing had ever gone right, and this final blow had caused her to plunge deeper into a dark void.

Seriously, I dare you to write a worse anecdotal story.

Prismacolor Madness was written for my senior-year creative/expository writing class and it was actually published in the Amused, my high school's literary journal.

Oh, but it gets worse.

I did a reading of this "work" at the Amused publishing party at the local book store/coffee shop.

Do I win the embarrassment award?

I Scream, you scream.

Today's a good day for sugar lovers as we celebrate Charles E. Minches's invention of the ice cream cone ninety-seven years ago.

Cones are good.

My grandfather was the one who would pick me up from elementary school and as a treat, he would stop at Baskin Robbins so I could run in and buy myself a cone. Accustomed to paying with coins, I was faced with a major life choice the day he handed me a $10 bill.

Should I stick with the under $1.50 cone? Or, should I move onto something a bit more impressive?

Keep in mind that my grandfather, like many grandfathers who lived through the Great Depression, always counts his change and wants to see a receipt.

Counting change wasn't necessary when I came out of Baskin Robbins with a $7 banana split. The minute he saw me come out with a bag, he knew I spent more than the allotted buck and a half.

Note: Seven dollars has always been the amount I remember paying the for the banana split. Now, I think that is a bit pricey. That's more than I think they even charge now. I'm not sure if I created a higher price in my mind based on what my grandfather told my grandmother or if the staff at Baskin Robbins saw me coming and tricked me into adding all sort of extra toppings.

Regardless, I don't think I even wanted to eat my banana split after being reprimanded by my grandparents. My split -- the glorious three-scooped creation -- became tainted with guilt when my grandfather called me a little con artist and my grandmother just looked at me with grandmotherly disappointment.

Today, I can't eat a banana split without feeling a bit sick to my stomach. The banana/ice cream combination gives me the same queasy feeling that I felt on that trip home from Baskin Robbins so many years ago.

More ice cream:
Farm boys eating ice-cream cones. Washington, Indiana. From the Library of Congress.

Do you remember Farrell's? Or their Selective Service shannanigans?

"Was Rome where we saw the big yellow dog?"

This MetaFilter thread concerning "ugly Americans" traveling abroad got me thinking about my own European encounters.

Before I arrived in Paris, I was fearful of the French. I bought into all the exagerations.

Everyone: "They're rude!"

Everyone: "They'll hate you."

Everyone: "They hate all Americans, you know."

Me: But I hate Americans. Does that matter?

Everyone: Be prepared.

So, I prepared for the worse yet only encountered one rude Parisian. He worked at Gare De Lyon. But I guess I can't really blame him. How many outgoing and considerate Americans do you know working at public transportation stations? What about your local post office?

As it turned out, I became some American's image of a rude French person.

I was in the Louvre giftshop reading a book by the counter when an fanny-pack clad, ugly American actually grabbed the book I was reading in order to show it to someone else.

When I silently, but snappishly, grabbed it back, the man said something like "Excuuuse me. Or rather, pardon moi."

I could almost see him telling his story when he got back home:

"You should have seen this French bitch..."

But my favorite, oft-told ugly American story takes place in a French restaurant on Rue de la Harpe.

We're sitting at our table and enjoying our dinner when an American couple sits down at the table directly behind my seat. They were an older couple, perhaps in their late fifties, early sixties.

The moment we saw them, we knew they were trouble.

They're were exactly the sort of American that we all exaggerate about -- the kind that you picture when you utter the phrase ugly American.

They shouted. They only spoke in English. They actually said gar�on.

David Sedaris says it best as he writes about the relationship between Americans traveling in Paris:

People are often frightened of Parisians, but an American in Paris will find no harsher critic than another American. France isn't even my country, but there I was, deciding that these people needed to be sent back home, preferably in chains. In disliking them, I was forced to recognize my own pretension, and that made me hate them even more.

Yes, we too, can be place in that pretentious lot. We hated that couple and wanted them to leave our restaurant and patronize the nearest McDonald's. This impression of disgust was formed way before they actually started to get extremely rude.

Ugly American man: Garcon! Could you get us some butter to go with this bread?

Waiter: Butter? (He knew how to handle this sort)

U.A.M: Yeah, some butter for my bread.

Waiter: Sorry. No.

We were half-embarrassed, half-delighted by the conversation. But the ugly American man just became incensed by the waiter's "incompetence." Then, he became the ugly American man who takes out his anger on his wife.

"Is this what French onion soup is supposed to taste like?"

"They call this steak medium rare? I should go back to the kitchen and teach that French "chef" how to cook a steak."

I swear that those were his exact words.

We're not perfect travelers. I know. We're the type, accustomed to living in California, that look around to see who is smoking when we smell the slightest hint of smoke. We had a tendency to eat earlier than the rest of the Europeans. We couldn't help it. And, no matter how hard we tried, we couldn't completely avoid dressing like Americans.

But at least we respect French cooking.

Hands off my quarters, brat!

I collect state quarters.

There, I've said it.

Geeky shame aside, it's quite thrilling to discover the latest quarter in a handful of change.

The only thing geekier than collecting state quarters is actually having a favorite one.

I'm partial to North Carolina and its scene from North by Northwest.

Or, you can view it as the Wright Brothers and Flyer in the "First Flight."

If it in any way redeems my cool factor, I should probably mention that I don't have the collector's map (as seen on TV).

I keep them in a commemorative book.

Big difference.

I'll have to wait until 2008 until my collection is complete. That's quite an investment of interest and dedication. Maybe by 2008, my kids will be able to put the last couple quarters in the slots.

Or maybe, I'll have a mean teenage daughter (parental payback) who will use my set of quarters to pay for a movie or lunch at the mall's food court. My biggest fear is having a daughter who puts me to shame in terms of teen angst and bitterness.

I wasn't a bad kid. I just put myself first in many a situation.

When I was a junior in high school, for example, I took some of my dad's books and sold them at a used bookstore for the cash. Not a complete monster, I picked books that were in my dad's "donate" area of the garage.

When stealing salt and pepper shakers from restaurants and selling your dad's books are the worse things you did as a teenager, I think there's a lot of room for redemption.

Rationalizations aside, I felt horrible when I was at the book store -- maybe because of the way I anthropomorphize books. But it's not like he was giving away the classics. I distinctly remember one of the books being The WASP Mystique. Now, who wants that lying around the house?

The weather's nice, isn't it?

We took the ferry today.

But first, it was one of those unfortunate days that begins with a marital spat -- a fight over a forgotten cell phone.

I was mad at Ben because he had taken the time to check that my phone was charged but then just left it in the purse I wasn't bringing. My fully irrational rationale for being angry was that if he's going to do something nice for me, he might as well do it all the way.

Of course, I was just mad at myself for being stupid and forgetting my own damn phone.

But, really, why beat yourself up if there is someone else to take the fall?

Ben, in turn, was mad at me for getting mad at him.

"I'm not your mother, Mena."

And then, everything escalates:

Me: We're not going to make the ferry.

Ben: Let's just see.

Me: If you speed and we die, we're certainly not going to make it.

Ben: Oh, be quiet. I'm only going 70.

Me: But this car can't handle 70!

Ben: Maybe if we took the new car like I wanted, we would be able to drive at a decent speed.

Me: Are you going to start that again?

Note: We have driven the new car to San Francisco. I was just uncomfortable leaving it in the ferry parking lot for an entire day.

Despite my Cassandra'ing, we did make the ferry. And as a result of Ben being right, I laid on a mighty dose of the silent treatment.

Sitting in my seat, staring out the window, I listened to a young woman trying to make small talk to the passenger to her right.

Small talk girl: I like your tennis shoes.

Other woman: Oh, thank you.

S.T.G: They look comfortable. More comfortable than mine.

O.W.: Yes, they are. Comfortable, I mean.

S.T.G: Mine aren't comfortable at all.

O.W: Oh, really?

A few minutes of silence pass.

S.T.G: I'm from New Mexico.

O.W: Where exactly?

S.T.G: Albuquerque. My cousin lives in the hottest part of the state. And, mark my words, it's hot there. And then I come here and it's totally foggy. I'm not quite sure how any one can live here. It's really quite strange, the weather, that is. My parents live in San Francisco. My friends and I are out here visiting them. You know the other day, my mom went shopping and didn't come home with anything for herself. In fact, and I don't think I should be saying this, but she spent all her money on me. She spent $177.00 on me. She bought me three sundresses and two pairs of shoes. But the sundresses are just daaaarrrling. And, I'll get tons of use out of them in New Mexico. You want to know something funny? A couple years ago -- in New Mexico -- all my hair just fell out. Isn't that odd? I had to wear a wig for I don't know how long. It was so strange. And, then, my friend's hair fell out. So odd. Mark my words, there are certainly a lot of sailboats out today. And there's a cruise ship. Have you ever been on a cruise ship? No? My grandparent's took a cruise. Oh, and my Aunt and Uncle, they have a yacht. I've been on it a few times. It's quite nice. Oh, and my older sister...

As the other woman looked for a reason to leave the cabin, the small talk girl continued at a frenetic pace. And as I subtly banged my head on my seat's headrest, I continued to listen to the girl, who, in turn, reminded me of how much I can't stand making my own small talk.

I'm horribly inept.

But, Ben's even worse. It's a fact more than an insult.

And that is why, during the entire length of the angry ferry ride, I was secretly wishing that small talk girl would move onto Ben.

One of these days, I've got to get that black heart of mine fixed.

I remember Papa.

Imagine our horror when we stumbled onto this movie yesterday.

Al Pacino? Scottish fur trader? Colonial New York?

Luckily, The Godfather was playing on AMC and all was forgiven.

This past week we've had mobsters coming out the culo.

Watching the first season of The Sopranos over three days led me down that familiar path of wishing that I was part of the romanticized Italian underworld. Well, perhaps not the underworld -- just part of an extreme Italian-American family.

I am one quarter Italian -- from my grandmother. Her parents came from Calabria and Naples and settled in Cleveland in the early 1900s. They were the usual hard-working no-nonsense sort of immigrants, the kind of people who put responsibility over recreation.

My great-grandfather ran a bar where my grandmother worked and where she met my grandfather. She married my grandfather because she was tired of all those "loud-mouth Italians." Unfortunately for her, some Poles are just a loud.

Perhaps if my grandmother married another Italian, I would have had an even stronger Italian upbringing. Of course, I also wouldn't exist if my grandmother married someone other than my grandfather. But even with the mixed marriage and the fact that I was born seventy years after my great-grandparents came to this country, I still felt the influence of the Old Country.

Living with my parents, grandparents and great-grandfather afforded me a chance to live in a four-generation household, a household familiar with customs and odd superstitions.

I grew up quite aware of and fearing the malocchio and even my grandmother's attempts to ward off the "evil eye."

And the fear of the old and foreign also caused me to be frightened of my great-grandfather, Papa. He was quite the fire-cracker, dating until he was in his mid 90s. My grandfather and him often clashed and it was many an occasion that I saw Papa raise his cane to hit my grandfather (in a loving, old Italian sort of way).

Papa didn't like living with us and often tried to escape from our house. Unlike Livia on the Sopranos, Papa loved living in a retirement home. When he came to stay with us because of the trouble he was causing at the home, he was a bit resentful. He even went so far as hitchhiking down Topanga Canyon back to his old retirement home.

He was a headache for my grandmother who was constantly trying to please him and keep him happy. But Papa was rarely happy and often complained of the "woo woo woo" noise I made.

What's a "woo woo woo" noise? I honestly can't say. I believe that is was simply an
onomatopoeic amalgam of the noises I made as a child at play.

My relationship with Papa was the closest thing to sibling rivalry. We both competed for my grandmother's (who he called Manie) attention and affection and were both tattletales.

Me: Papa is mushing his food together again.

Papa: Manieeee. Manieeee. She's a makin' the noise again. Woooo woooo.

Me: Papa didn't flush!!

Papa: She's a stolen the remote.

I'll never forget the day he left, though.

We were both upstairs in our different bedrooms and my grandparents were downstairs entertaining my great-aunt and great-uncle. I was watching television when I heard Papa making his usual screaming sounds (He'd scream to get my grandmother's attention). I got up and closed my door because I didn't want to hear his noises for once.

About an hour later my grandmother came upstairs and found Papa lying on the ground. It turned out that he had fallen out of his chair. They had to take him to the hospital and, eventually, a convalescent home.

I felt so guilty for ignoring Papa but he was like the boy who cried wolf -- we were all accustomed to his antics and had difficulty taking him seriously. He held on for a few years after that but died in 1990 at the age of ninety-nine.

I'm sure that if I had been older and more mature, I would have better stories about Papa.

But in truth, he was a hard-ass.

That's okay, though. Every Italian family needs a real figlio de cagna.

And we had our Papa.