(1.)
Tonight after ordering drinks, a lady at one of my tables looked up at me and smiled. "I have sort of a silly question for you," she said. "Can I ask it?"
"Sure," I said. I thought it would be a silly question about the food, and I was prepared for whatever she was about to throw at me.
"Well," she said, "we're traveling. We've got this cat, and it's in the car. A kitten, really. It's in a carrier and all, but we hate to leave it out there. Do you think we could just bring the cat in the restaurant while we eat?"
I blinked. Then I blinked again. I was thinking, Oh. My. God. And then I had to take a minute out of my life to explain to these people why they couldn't bring their cat into a restaurant. I will never get that minute or those words back.
(2.)
One of the waitresses at work--this would be the one who likes to walk around the kitchen with her white shirt hitched up so the boys can see her boobs, the one who finds any excuse to use the word bone as a verb, to use the phrase ho-bag as a term of endearment--was discussing her man problems. Everyone at this place has man problems (or, if they are a dishwasher or a cook, girl problems), but this waitress's boy problems are impressive in their problematic-ness.
"I'm becoming a lesbian," she announced last week. "Seriously. That's it. I'm through. I'm a full-on lesbian now."
But this week she seems mellowed. She seems almost ready for another boy. So I announced that my brother was single. Then I said something that I never expected to come out of my mouth.
"And he's not bad looking," I said. Admitting that was torture.
"He's pretty nice," I continued. "He's sort of a royal cranky bitch when he's hungry, but if you keep him fed, he's a pretty okay kid. Also, he's building a bar for our cabin. Not bad, huh?"
The waitress wanted to see a picture. I said okay. I texted my brother and told him to send a picture of himself immediately, which he did. The picture he chose to send was a picture where he is making a funny face, a surprised face. It was a goofy picture, but it showed him for who he is. I flipped the phone in the direction of the waitress.
"There," I said.
"OH MY GOD!" the waitress squealed.
"Oh no," I said.
"OH MY GOD!"
"Oh no."
The waitress started jumping up and down. "Oh my God," she said. "I think I just wet my pants! He's hot!"
"Okay, no. Stop. That's gross."
She ran out of the room, and we could hear her squealing in the other room.
"Listen," I said to the cooks and dishwashers, "I know he's not unfortunate looking, but that's a lot of fuss."
"He's cute," one of the cooks said.
"Blecch," I said.
The waitress launched back into the room. "Send him a picture of me!" she said. "Here, I'll send you one."
We sent it. We waited. I walked out to my tables, checked things over, came back behind the line. We looked at my inbox, and there was a message from my brother. Oh, it said, she is real cute.
There was more squealing then, but for some reason I found myself supporting it. I found myself even picking up the phone and calling my brother to see if he wanted to come out to the diner to meet this girl.
"He's nice," I said. "He's a good guy. He's a good friend." Each admission made me want to vomit a little more in my mouth, but I somehow refrained, and I somehow managed to work it so that sometime next week my brother will breeze into the diner for a milkshake and the waitress will appear from the back with her not-usually-done hair actually done (You'll have to tell me exactly which day he's coming in, she said. I'll need to actually do my hair. Unlike today. Here, I'll take it out of the ponytail. It won't move. Ready? Watch. See? Awesome, huh?) and she and her straight hair will woo my brother and bring him chicken wings or a beef on weck and they will live happily ever after.
Or until they get in each other's pants.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Lechery
At the restaurant, it's not just that one male cook who's foul-mouthed and sex-obsessed. It's also one of the waitresses (who routinely flashes the cooks and finds more reasons to use the word bone than you'd think were possible in a diner). It's also one of the ice cream boys (who likes to discuss porn and all the sex he will get--you know, eventually, after he finds a girl to take his virginity).
But it's also more than just the employees who engage in habitual sexual harassment. It's the customers, too. Well, some of them. Not so much the church-going ladies or the over-taxed mothers who look like they're two seconds from snapping the heads of their children clean off. Mostly, it's the old men. And, last night, for me, it was two old men, two regulars who tromp into the diner at least once a day for coffee, toast, a bowl of soup, or a grilled cheese sandwich.
These men love me. They are my at-work boyfriends. They call me by name, tell me jokes, press filmy dollars into my hands, call me over to their table just to talk. I fill their coffee, smile, laugh when it's appropriate. They say, "Will you be here later when we come back?" They say, "I'm so glad you're here." They say, "You're a such a pretty girl."
Last night they took their chatter to another level, though. The compliments took a turn after I delivered their coffee and cream.
"Have you gentlemen figured out what you want tonight?" I asked. I meant food. They, however, were not thinking about food.
"How about you?" one of them asked.
"Well now," I said, "that's definitely not on the menu."
"It should be," the other one echoed.
I knew I had to get ahold of the situation ASAP, or else this was going to turn into something vaguely gross.
"Let me rephrase," I said. I tapped my pen on my waitress pad. "What would you gentlemen like to eat tonight?"
As soon as the words left my mouth, I realized my mistake. Here I was dealing with two old men--who clearly still have the mind frame they had in high school--and I gave them that to work with.
"Well," the older-looking one said. He gestured toward my apron--slung low over my hips--and waggled his eyebrows. "You know," he said. He winked.
"FOOD," I said. "FOOD. Dinner? A sandwich? Some soup?"
They placed their orders then--and indeed it was a soup and sandwich kind of night--and I ran back to the kitchen to tell everyone what had happened.
"Well," one of the cooks said, "it looks like you're going to be getting a good tip tonight. And you won't even have to flash your customers like the other girls do."
But it's also more than just the employees who engage in habitual sexual harassment. It's the customers, too. Well, some of them. Not so much the church-going ladies or the over-taxed mothers who look like they're two seconds from snapping the heads of their children clean off. Mostly, it's the old men. And, last night, for me, it was two old men, two regulars who tromp into the diner at least once a day for coffee, toast, a bowl of soup, or a grilled cheese sandwich.
These men love me. They are my at-work boyfriends. They call me by name, tell me jokes, press filmy dollars into my hands, call me over to their table just to talk. I fill their coffee, smile, laugh when it's appropriate. They say, "Will you be here later when we come back?" They say, "I'm so glad you're here." They say, "You're a such a pretty girl."
Last night they took their chatter to another level, though. The compliments took a turn after I delivered their coffee and cream.
"Have you gentlemen figured out what you want tonight?" I asked. I meant food. They, however, were not thinking about food.
"How about you?" one of them asked.
"Well now," I said, "that's definitely not on the menu."
"It should be," the other one echoed.
I knew I had to get ahold of the situation ASAP, or else this was going to turn into something vaguely gross.
"Let me rephrase," I said. I tapped my pen on my waitress pad. "What would you gentlemen like to eat tonight?"
As soon as the words left my mouth, I realized my mistake. Here I was dealing with two old men--who clearly still have the mind frame they had in high school--and I gave them that to work with.
"Well," the older-looking one said. He gestured toward my apron--slung low over my hips--and waggled his eyebrows. "You know," he said. He winked.
"FOOD," I said. "FOOD. Dinner? A sandwich? Some soup?"
They placed their orders then--and indeed it was a soup and sandwich kind of night--and I ran back to the kitchen to tell everyone what had happened.
"Well," one of the cooks said, "it looks like you're going to be getting a good tip tonight. And you won't even have to flash your customers like the other girls do."
Saturday, June 23, 2007
The Two Words That Come to Mind are "Gulp" and "Vomit."
Last night the worst thing happened. It was bound to happen, I guess, so I shouldn't be so horrified, so surprised, so nauseous. But I am. Oh, am I ever.
Last night my father walked in on me as I was kissing a boy. I've never seen my father move so fast, especially at 3:30 AM, a time when sane 54 year-olds should be in bed, sleeping and dreaming dreams where their daughters are young and not yet kissing boys, or dreams where their daughters are living far away in other states, where the kissing and whatnot goes on in houses other than their own.
The fact that my father walked in on and then ran away from me kissing a boy makes me want to cut out my tongue and scoop out my eyes. I am mortified. If this were a perfect world, he and I would both stay out of each other's way for several days, weeks, months until I felt okay to face him again. But no. Tomorrow I have to attend a graduation party with him.
The boy I was kissing last night was a Boy From Work, and the kissing was just that: plain kissing, straight up kissing, kissing without other things going on. We were, however, under a blanket, which I am certain made the situation look a lot more scandalous than it actually was. All clothes were on and accounted for, except for my sweatshirt, which was pooled at the foot of the couch. I had another shirt on underneath, but I'm sure my father's worked what he saw over and over in his head until he's imagined something very R-rated.
My father isn't one who handles things like this very well. I am, after all, his little girl, and his little girl would never do such a thing with a boy. As he sees it, his little girl bakes cookies and teaches English and likes cats and is a virgin. And because he doesn't handle things like this very well, my father and I have had had our share of uncomfortable incidents. Once, my senior year of high school, after he found out that I'd been sneaking around with a boy he didn't very much care for, a boy I was definitely wasn't supposed to be sneaking around with, my father drove home from work early and sat at the kitchen table until I got home from school. When I walked in the door, my stomach almost fell out of my body. The look he was giving me was pure disaster. He made me sit down with him, made my brother leave the room, then made me answer a string of awful questions.
He said, Did you let this boy touch you, Jessica? and I had to say, Yes, Dad. He said, Did you let him touch you with his hands? and I had to say, Yes, Dad. He said, Did you let him touch you with his mouth? and I had to say, Yes, Dad. I wanted to disintegrate, to spontaneously combust, to melt like the witch in The Wizard of Oz so I would no longer have to be sitting there answering those horrible questions.
I was barely seventeen years old, and what I'd let the boy do with his hands and mouth (no big deal, really--nothing scandalous, nothing advanced) were things that most girls in my grade had been letting boys do since they'd started high school. I was getting a late start, but at that moment, when I had to confess things that were really none of my father's business, I thought there was a good chance I was going to be so scarred by my father's interrogation that I would never let a boy touch me anywhere ever again.
Well, I was scarred by that day, but not scarred enough to stay away from boys forever. A few months later I had met and somehow charmed Keith into liking me. A few months into our relationship, Keith and I were sitting in my bedroom, on my bed, watching TV. My door was half-open, because I knew if I tried to close my door my father would have a royal conniption.
Whatever we were watching went to commercial, so I leaned over to lightly kiss my boyfriend. It wasn't a kiss that involved even the slightest bit of tongue--there were parents around, after all--but I was unlucky in that my father happened to be coming down the hall and--in fine Dad-Fashion--my father overreacted. He told me to meet him in the kitchen right now. He said he had to talk to me about something very important.
When I got out there, my father told me that there was no way his daughter was going to be lazing around on a bed and tongue-ing her boyfriend under his roof. I tried to tell my father that there certainly wasn't any tongue-ing going on, but this only made him angrier. He went on to say that there would be no more half-shut, three quarter-shut, or any kind of shut doors in his house while Keith was there. In fact, there wasn't really a reason for Keith to be in my bedroom anyway, so we might as well go watch TV in the living room, where there were no beds, only couches that were in plain view. My father, who was worked into a real frenzy now, went on to say that he also wasn't a fan of the fact that Keith had come over a few minutes prior to my parents' arrival home that night. He said there was a new rule, and that rule was that Keith could never ever ever ever be in the house if there wasn't at least one parent present. If Keith came over and my parents were running late after work, we had to stay out in the driveway and wait until they got home. He thought all these rules would somehow keep us from being consumed in a fiery swarm of sin.
Of course, my father's discomfort with my relationships with boyfriends didn't completely erase after I grew up, moved out, went to college and grad school. In fact, after my thesis reading last May, the Wily Republican and I were in a corner of the bar, half-hugging and half-dancing, when my father came over and put his hands on my shoulders and took me away from the WR for no good reason. I didn't think anything of it at the time, until I got back over to the table where my friends were gathered for the celebration, and one of them said, What was that all about? And I thought to myself, Yeah. Wait a minute. What WAS that all about?
This winter, when Josh came home from Quebec, he and I went out to our former place of employment on a Saturday night, when it was teeming with the trashiest of the local trash and the skeeviest of the local skeeve, and Josh had an awful lot to drink. There was no way he was driving home, so I drove him back to my house and put him up on my couch with a glass of water and a couple Tylenols. I put on some late night TV and we watched it for a bit before falling asleep. The next morning I woke up at 7:30 AM, and there was my father standing in the archway to the living room, surveying the damage. I was on one couch and Josh was on a separate couch on the opposite side of the room. We couldn't touch each other if we wanted to. But a few days later, while lunching with my cousin, she told me that her mother had come home from a family function and told her that my father had been talking about the horrors of waking up one morning and having a boy in his living room, a boy who had spent the night right there, right next to his daughter, mere feet--oh, those dangerously few feet!--away from her. I was twenty-five years old and on a separate couch from a boy, and yet this was quite the event for my father.
So I think it's easy to understand why this last incident is one that has my skin crawling, that has me wanting to bury my head in the sand, that has me wanting to spend several nights far away from here. There's just something about fathers and daughters--especially this daughter and her father--that takes embarrassment to another level. And if it weren't for this weekend's graduation party, you can bet I'd be long gone, that I'd be somewhere else, some other place that would keep me from running into my father and pretending nothing ever happened, pretending that he didn't demonstrate impressive agility and speed as he ran away from the living room and back to his bedroom, where he probably lay awake for long, long minutes, thinking he liked it so much better when I played in the sandbox and wore pink corduroy pants and called him Daddy.
Last night my father walked in on me as I was kissing a boy. I've never seen my father move so fast, especially at 3:30 AM, a time when sane 54 year-olds should be in bed, sleeping and dreaming dreams where their daughters are young and not yet kissing boys, or dreams where their daughters are living far away in other states, where the kissing and whatnot goes on in houses other than their own.
The fact that my father walked in on and then ran away from me kissing a boy makes me want to cut out my tongue and scoop out my eyes. I am mortified. If this were a perfect world, he and I would both stay out of each other's way for several days, weeks, months until I felt okay to face him again. But no. Tomorrow I have to attend a graduation party with him.
The boy I was kissing last night was a Boy From Work, and the kissing was just that: plain kissing, straight up kissing, kissing without other things going on. We were, however, under a blanket, which I am certain made the situation look a lot more scandalous than it actually was. All clothes were on and accounted for, except for my sweatshirt, which was pooled at the foot of the couch. I had another shirt on underneath, but I'm sure my father's worked what he saw over and over in his head until he's imagined something very R-rated.
My father isn't one who handles things like this very well. I am, after all, his little girl, and his little girl would never do such a thing with a boy. As he sees it, his little girl bakes cookies and teaches English and likes cats and is a virgin. And because he doesn't handle things like this very well, my father and I have had had our share of uncomfortable incidents. Once, my senior year of high school, after he found out that I'd been sneaking around with a boy he didn't very much care for, a boy I was definitely wasn't supposed to be sneaking around with, my father drove home from work early and sat at the kitchen table until I got home from school. When I walked in the door, my stomach almost fell out of my body. The look he was giving me was pure disaster. He made me sit down with him, made my brother leave the room, then made me answer a string of awful questions.
He said, Did you let this boy touch you, Jessica? and I had to say, Yes, Dad. He said, Did you let him touch you with his hands? and I had to say, Yes, Dad. He said, Did you let him touch you with his mouth? and I had to say, Yes, Dad. I wanted to disintegrate, to spontaneously combust, to melt like the witch in The Wizard of Oz so I would no longer have to be sitting there answering those horrible questions.
I was barely seventeen years old, and what I'd let the boy do with his hands and mouth (no big deal, really--nothing scandalous, nothing advanced) were things that most girls in my grade had been letting boys do since they'd started high school. I was getting a late start, but at that moment, when I had to confess things that were really none of my father's business, I thought there was a good chance I was going to be so scarred by my father's interrogation that I would never let a boy touch me anywhere ever again.
Well, I was scarred by that day, but not scarred enough to stay away from boys forever. A few months later I had met and somehow charmed Keith into liking me. A few months into our relationship, Keith and I were sitting in my bedroom, on my bed, watching TV. My door was half-open, because I knew if I tried to close my door my father would have a royal conniption.
Whatever we were watching went to commercial, so I leaned over to lightly kiss my boyfriend. It wasn't a kiss that involved even the slightest bit of tongue--there were parents around, after all--but I was unlucky in that my father happened to be coming down the hall and--in fine Dad-Fashion--my father overreacted. He told me to meet him in the kitchen right now. He said he had to talk to me about something very important.
When I got out there, my father told me that there was no way his daughter was going to be lazing around on a bed and tongue-ing her boyfriend under his roof. I tried to tell my father that there certainly wasn't any tongue-ing going on, but this only made him angrier. He went on to say that there would be no more half-shut, three quarter-shut, or any kind of shut doors in his house while Keith was there. In fact, there wasn't really a reason for Keith to be in my bedroom anyway, so we might as well go watch TV in the living room, where there were no beds, only couches that were in plain view. My father, who was worked into a real frenzy now, went on to say that he also wasn't a fan of the fact that Keith had come over a few minutes prior to my parents' arrival home that night. He said there was a new rule, and that rule was that Keith could never ever ever ever be in the house if there wasn't at least one parent present. If Keith came over and my parents were running late after work, we had to stay out in the driveway and wait until they got home. He thought all these rules would somehow keep us from being consumed in a fiery swarm of sin.
Of course, my father's discomfort with my relationships with boyfriends didn't completely erase after I grew up, moved out, went to college and grad school. In fact, after my thesis reading last May, the Wily Republican and I were in a corner of the bar, half-hugging and half-dancing, when my father came over and put his hands on my shoulders and took me away from the WR for no good reason. I didn't think anything of it at the time, until I got back over to the table where my friends were gathered for the celebration, and one of them said, What was that all about? And I thought to myself, Yeah. Wait a minute. What WAS that all about?
This winter, when Josh came home from Quebec, he and I went out to our former place of employment on a Saturday night, when it was teeming with the trashiest of the local trash and the skeeviest of the local skeeve, and Josh had an awful lot to drink. There was no way he was driving home, so I drove him back to my house and put him up on my couch with a glass of water and a couple Tylenols. I put on some late night TV and we watched it for a bit before falling asleep. The next morning I woke up at 7:30 AM, and there was my father standing in the archway to the living room, surveying the damage. I was on one couch and Josh was on a separate couch on the opposite side of the room. We couldn't touch each other if we wanted to. But a few days later, while lunching with my cousin, she told me that her mother had come home from a family function and told her that my father had been talking about the horrors of waking up one morning and having a boy in his living room, a boy who had spent the night right there, right next to his daughter, mere feet--oh, those dangerously few feet!--away from her. I was twenty-five years old and on a separate couch from a boy, and yet this was quite the event for my father.
So I think it's easy to understand why this last incident is one that has my skin crawling, that has me wanting to bury my head in the sand, that has me wanting to spend several nights far away from here. There's just something about fathers and daughters--especially this daughter and her father--that takes embarrassment to another level. And if it weren't for this weekend's graduation party, you can bet I'd be long gone, that I'd be somewhere else, some other place that would keep me from running into my father and pretending nothing ever happened, pretending that he didn't demonstrate impressive agility and speed as he ran away from the living room and back to his bedroom, where he probably lay awake for long, long minutes, thinking he liked it so much better when I played in the sandbox and wore pink corduroy pants and called him Daddy.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Two Weeks
Today marks two weeks since I started waitressing again. In those two weeks, I've remembered one very important thing about working this kind of job: it's way easier to make friends with the boys than it is the girls.
The boys at work are very sweet to me. They leave flowers on my car, they buy me dinner, they bring bottles of my favorite pop to work, they ask for and then read my thesis and book about Russia. They want to discuss my stories and characters. They say, "I don't think the character in this story is as bad as he thinks he is." They ask, "What are you writing now?" And when I tell them I'm writing a story about a brother and sister, a story where the brother has always been so good and perfect and then something happens to change him, to make him an awful man, that's when the boys at work want to know if they can help, if they can illustrate the story for me:
Caption: You stupid bitch!
I tell them we're going to make a very good team.
The boys at work are very sweet to me. They leave flowers on my car, they buy me dinner, they bring bottles of my favorite pop to work, they ask for and then read my thesis and book about Russia. They want to discuss my stories and characters. They say, "I don't think the character in this story is as bad as he thinks he is." They ask, "What are you writing now?" And when I tell them I'm writing a story about a brother and sister, a story where the brother has always been so good and perfect and then something happens to change him, to make him an awful man, that's when the boys at work want to know if they can help, if they can illustrate the story for me:
Caption: You stupid bitch!
I tell them we're going to make a very good team.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
My Brother's Logic
At 11:03 AM this morning, I was still sleeping. Last night was another late night--I didn't go to bed until 4:00 AM--and I needed my rest. But at 11:03 I woke up to muffled voices and the sound of someone clomping around outside the house. The outside clomping turned into inside clomping. Then I heard the linen closet, which is right next to my room, creak open.
I got out of my bed and opened my door. I was expecting my brother--who else?--and there he was, his fuzzy head thrust inside the closet.
"What the hell are you doing?" I asked. I'd just spent the whole day with him on Sunday. Seeing him twice in one week seemed improbable. I figured it was possible I was still dreaming.
"Looking for a towel," he said. "Which of these are shitty towels?"
"I don't know," I said. "You better be careful about what you use, though. Dad won't be happy if you use one of his good towels."
"Yeah," he said. He dove further into the closet. Unsatisfied, he turned and headed for the laundry room. He grabbed a bucket and started filling it with hot water.
I was ready to go back to bed, but I realized I still had no idea what my brother was doing at the house. I also had no idea why he was filling a bucket with water like he was about to do some heavy cleaning. So I tried asking again. "Hey," I said. He didn't look up. I raised my voice so it could be heard over the fall of water. "HEY. WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?" I asked.
He spiked back the flow of the water and looked at me like I was stupid not to know. "Washing my car," he said. "Tim's here, too. We're both going to wash our cars."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "Wait a minute," I said. "You drove half an hour on your day off to wash your car?"
"Yes," he said. "And you brought your friend to wash his car, too?"
"Yes."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because," he said, "there's a hose here. And a bucket. And a lawn. And stuff." The tone of his voice had duh written all over it.
This definitely wasn't the first conversation I wanted to be having on my Tuesday. I blinked at him. "But why wouldn't you just do it at a car wash? You live around the corner from about twelve," I said.
Now it was his turn to narrow his eyes at me. "I don't have the money," he said.
"Not even for the dollar self-wash places?" I asked.
He sighed but didn't answer.
"Let me get this straight," I said. "Just hang on a second, okay? I want to understand. You don't have any money to wash your car, but you decide to drive half an hour each way to Dad's house so you can use his stuff? You got behind the wheel and burned up gas that costs $3.12 a gallon to do this?"
My brother glared at me. "YES," he said.
"Alright," I said, and I turned on my heel and walked back to my room, shut the door, and climbed back into bed. It shouldn't have surprised me, really. This was the boy who, after drinking himself stupid on Saturday night back at the cabin, woke up the next morning and drove all the way back out to my mother's so he could cut the grass before driving all the way back out here to spend the day with our father. Then, once he got here, he spent considerable time sitting at the kitchen table cutting out decals of naked lady silhouettes he wanted to hang inside his new car. Then, when he ran out of those, he decided to drive to buy more. Because nothing says Happy Father's Day! like a naked lady decal run.
No, I shouldn't have been surprised. After all, my brother was the one who, a month ago, after asking if I'd go with him to visit our grandfather in his rehab facility, told me that I was driving and the only way he was going to drive was if I gave him ten bucks for gas for the fifteen minute drive. The child is protective of his gas and money and driving only when it suits him. So I'm not sure why I even spent those few minutes this morning investigating why my brother found it appropriate to waste time and money driving all the way out here so he could park his car on my father's front lawn and use the hose. I should've just shrugged and gone back to bed when he first told me why he came. It's just more of my brother's busted logic. It's just more of him being strange, being silly, being him.
I got out of my bed and opened my door. I was expecting my brother--who else?--and there he was, his fuzzy head thrust inside the closet.
"What the hell are you doing?" I asked. I'd just spent the whole day with him on Sunday. Seeing him twice in one week seemed improbable. I figured it was possible I was still dreaming.
"Looking for a towel," he said. "Which of these are shitty towels?"
"I don't know," I said. "You better be careful about what you use, though. Dad won't be happy if you use one of his good towels."
"Yeah," he said. He dove further into the closet. Unsatisfied, he turned and headed for the laundry room. He grabbed a bucket and started filling it with hot water.
I was ready to go back to bed, but I realized I still had no idea what my brother was doing at the house. I also had no idea why he was filling a bucket with water like he was about to do some heavy cleaning. So I tried asking again. "Hey," I said. He didn't look up. I raised my voice so it could be heard over the fall of water. "HEY. WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?" I asked.
He spiked back the flow of the water and looked at me like I was stupid not to know. "Washing my car," he said. "Tim's here, too. We're both going to wash our cars."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "Wait a minute," I said. "You drove half an hour on your day off to wash your car?"
"Yes," he said. "And you brought your friend to wash his car, too?"
"Yes."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because," he said, "there's a hose here. And a bucket. And a lawn. And stuff." The tone of his voice had duh written all over it.
This definitely wasn't the first conversation I wanted to be having on my Tuesday. I blinked at him. "But why wouldn't you just do it at a car wash? You live around the corner from about twelve," I said.
Now it was his turn to narrow his eyes at me. "I don't have the money," he said.
"Not even for the dollar self-wash places?" I asked.
He sighed but didn't answer.
"Let me get this straight," I said. "Just hang on a second, okay? I want to understand. You don't have any money to wash your car, but you decide to drive half an hour each way to Dad's house so you can use his stuff? You got behind the wheel and burned up gas that costs $3.12 a gallon to do this?"
My brother glared at me. "YES," he said.
"Alright," I said, and I turned on my heel and walked back to my room, shut the door, and climbed back into bed. It shouldn't have surprised me, really. This was the boy who, after drinking himself stupid on Saturday night back at the cabin, woke up the next morning and drove all the way back out to my mother's so he could cut the grass before driving all the way back out here to spend the day with our father. Then, once he got here, he spent considerable time sitting at the kitchen table cutting out decals of naked lady silhouettes he wanted to hang inside his new car. Then, when he ran out of those, he decided to drive to buy more. Because nothing says Happy Father's Day! like a naked lady decal run.
No, I shouldn't have been surprised. After all, my brother was the one who, a month ago, after asking if I'd go with him to visit our grandfather in his rehab facility, told me that I was driving and the only way he was going to drive was if I gave him ten bucks for gas for the fifteen minute drive. The child is protective of his gas and money and driving only when it suits him. So I'm not sure why I even spent those few minutes this morning investigating why my brother found it appropriate to waste time and money driving all the way out here so he could park his car on my father's front lawn and use the hose. I should've just shrugged and gone back to bed when he first told me why he came. It's just more of my brother's busted logic. It's just more of him being strange, being silly, being him.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Headline: Girl Marries Seaman
On Saturday there was much liquor consumed by all at Pearl Street as many of the finest graduates from our high school gathered for Becky and Derek's wedding (and a mini-high school reunion). The bride was stunning. The groom was charming. The DJ played Def Leppard and Bon Jovi. The bartenders were cute and willing to hand out drink umbrellas. I would have taken a bath in the vat of mashed potatoes. In short:
Friday, June 15, 2007
This Is Why I Have Trouble Believing Boys When They Say I'm Cute
When I was in grad school, I was always telling people that I was hideous-looking as a child. I told them that's why I had trouble believing boys could ever find me attractive. And by the time the whole Wily Republican incident rolled around, I was very confused why he--with his eyes and jaw and voice and general tallness--was wasting time with me when he could be dating any of the lanky Swedish goddesses that roam Minnesota.
I talked about this a lot. I didn't get it, I told people. Why were boys all of a sudden paying attention to me? What was going on?
Finally, after hearing this conversation about eight thousand times, one of my best grad school boys said, "What is your problem? I don't understand why you don't think you're cute."
And that's when I passed him a picture of me at thirteen years old.
He looked at it, looked back up at me, and said, "Oh."
And last night when I was picking through old photos for a project I'm making for Father's Day, I found one of the legendary pictures I'd told people about. I told them it was a horrible picture, a picture that illustrated just how sucky my life was during middle school. The picture was taken at a Hooters after a NASCAR promotion my mother was doing with the restaurant. While she had been doing giveaways, my brother and I had sat in the corner mowing down on a pile of wings. After the race was over and we were ready to go, my parents suggested we do one more thing: have our picture taken with two of the Hooters waitresses. Why they thought this was a good idea is beyond me, but it happened, and here's the proof:
There are several things to note in that picture. First, let's consider my brother. This might very well be where his love for all things Hooters took its root. I mean, look at his face. He's psyched to be standing with his head right at Hooter height. But me? I'm not so psyched. I just look pudgy, sad, and a little bit greasy. I'm wearing a racing-themed jacket, a racing-themed shirt, and acid wash jeans. I am standing next to two toothpicks, two early 90's Hooters girl who have breasts that somehow manage to be larger than even my fat head. I have a giant zit on my chin. I am probably thinking something like, I love Ryan McLean or Why won't Ryan McLean love me? Although I think the answer is evident from that picture.
And while this isn't the photo I showed off in grad school when I was asked to produce evidence that supported my neuroses, I think it would've done a fine job, that it would've elicited the same response that the other picture did. I think sometimes I get confused and think that I'm still that girl in the photo: awkward, bumbling, silly, and years away from finding a boy to love her.
I talked about this a lot. I didn't get it, I told people. Why were boys all of a sudden paying attention to me? What was going on?
Finally, after hearing this conversation about eight thousand times, one of my best grad school boys said, "What is your problem? I don't understand why you don't think you're cute."
And that's when I passed him a picture of me at thirteen years old.
He looked at it, looked back up at me, and said, "Oh."
And last night when I was picking through old photos for a project I'm making for Father's Day, I found one of the legendary pictures I'd told people about. I told them it was a horrible picture, a picture that illustrated just how sucky my life was during middle school. The picture was taken at a Hooters after a NASCAR promotion my mother was doing with the restaurant. While she had been doing giveaways, my brother and I had sat in the corner mowing down on a pile of wings. After the race was over and we were ready to go, my parents suggested we do one more thing: have our picture taken with two of the Hooters waitresses. Why they thought this was a good idea is beyond me, but it happened, and here's the proof:
There are several things to note in that picture. First, let's consider my brother. This might very well be where his love for all things Hooters took its root. I mean, look at his face. He's psyched to be standing with his head right at Hooter height. But me? I'm not so psyched. I just look pudgy, sad, and a little bit greasy. I'm wearing a racing-themed jacket, a racing-themed shirt, and acid wash jeans. I am standing next to two toothpicks, two early 90's Hooters girl who have breasts that somehow manage to be larger than even my fat head. I have a giant zit on my chin. I am probably thinking something like, I love Ryan McLean or Why won't Ryan McLean love me? Although I think the answer is evident from that picture.
And while this isn't the photo I showed off in grad school when I was asked to produce evidence that supported my neuroses, I think it would've done a fine job, that it would've elicited the same response that the other picture did. I think sometimes I get confused and think that I'm still that girl in the photo: awkward, bumbling, silly, and years away from finding a boy to love her.
A Phone Conversation with My Father
Dad: What's this? You sent me an e-mail at 2:30 AM?
Me: It's about that toothpaste recall I was telling you about.
Dad: Oh, I see. Hmm, I also got an e-mail about expanding my penis size. Well, I've got to go. I think I'm going to read that.
Me: Oh my God, I am going to throw up.
Me: It's about that toothpaste recall I was telling you about.
Dad: Oh, I see. Hmm, I also got an e-mail about expanding my penis size. Well, I've got to go. I think I'm going to read that.
Me: Oh my God, I am going to throw up.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Don't Get The Ice
Tonight at work I watched one of the dishboys climb up on a stepladder to peer into the ice container at the top of the pop machine. I watched him and thought, Huh. That's weird. Why is he doing that? It's our job. He must really be bored.
That's when the dishboy looked at me. He smiled his best smile from underneath his low-slung hat. "Hey, Jess?" he said. "Would you run and get me some ice, please?"
He said it so sweetly that I couldn't say no. Sure I could go get him some ice. But I still wasn't convinced that what he was doing was virtuous, and I told him so. "I swear to God," I said, "if someone is hiding in that ice cooler, I am going to come back here and beat the crap out of you."
Last week when I started, one of the waitresses took me aside and warned me that if ever one of the cooks, dishboys, or ice cream boys asked me to go get them ice when it looked like they were perfectly capable of doing it themselves, then I should go with caution. The ice cooler, which is in one of the back rooms, is pretty big. When lowish on ice, you can fit a human body in there no problem. A few minutes of waiting in ice-cold is worth it to these boys just the second they see the look on the person's face, just as soon as they hear the person scream. "They do it all the time," the waitress told me. "Just watch out."
So I walked back to the ice cooler. I checked the other back rooms to make sure everyone was accounted for. I couldn't find one boy--the ice cream boy--so I headed over to the ice chest with tremendous care. I steeled myself for whatever was going to happen just as soon as I grabbed the handle and opened.
I put my hand on the handle. I thought, Don't be afraid if a teenage boy pops out and screams Boo! I thought, Also, try not to pee your pants if a teenage boy pops out and screams Boo! After all, I come from a long line of women who have trouble controlling their bladder in certain dramatic moments, and while I've never had a problem, I'm figuring it's only a matter of time until someone scares the hell out of me so bad that I have to start wearing Depends.
I eased the handle back and slowly opened the door. That's when a teenage boy pushed off a stack of bagged ice and said Boo!
"Bastards!" I hissed. I ran back to the kitchen. "Oh that's it," I said. "That's it! You're all dead!"
The dishboy shook his head. "No, no, no," he said. "Sssh. Don't say anything. Let's get some more people. Okay? Okay?"
I crossed my arms and glared at him, but I kept my mouth shut. In fact, I kept my mouth shut the entire time as the dishboy took his station again--climbing to the top of that step ladder--and called out to someone else. "Hey," he said. "Do you think you could run and get me some ice, please?"
And then he and I were both quiet, waiting for the eventual yelling and slamming to occur--this time the person being scared had the presence of mind to get back at the ice cream boy by locking him into the freezer for several minutes--and during that silence I tucked silverware into precise napkin triangles and thought, This isn't the worst way to spend an afternoon.
That's when the dishboy looked at me. He smiled his best smile from underneath his low-slung hat. "Hey, Jess?" he said. "Would you run and get me some ice, please?"
He said it so sweetly that I couldn't say no. Sure I could go get him some ice. But I still wasn't convinced that what he was doing was virtuous, and I told him so. "I swear to God," I said, "if someone is hiding in that ice cooler, I am going to come back here and beat the crap out of you."
Last week when I started, one of the waitresses took me aside and warned me that if ever one of the cooks, dishboys, or ice cream boys asked me to go get them ice when it looked like they were perfectly capable of doing it themselves, then I should go with caution. The ice cooler, which is in one of the back rooms, is pretty big. When lowish on ice, you can fit a human body in there no problem. A few minutes of waiting in ice-cold is worth it to these boys just the second they see the look on the person's face, just as soon as they hear the person scream. "They do it all the time," the waitress told me. "Just watch out."
So I walked back to the ice cooler. I checked the other back rooms to make sure everyone was accounted for. I couldn't find one boy--the ice cream boy--so I headed over to the ice chest with tremendous care. I steeled myself for whatever was going to happen just as soon as I grabbed the handle and opened.
I put my hand on the handle. I thought, Don't be afraid if a teenage boy pops out and screams Boo! I thought, Also, try not to pee your pants if a teenage boy pops out and screams Boo! After all, I come from a long line of women who have trouble controlling their bladder in certain dramatic moments, and while I've never had a problem, I'm figuring it's only a matter of time until someone scares the hell out of me so bad that I have to start wearing Depends.
I eased the handle back and slowly opened the door. That's when a teenage boy pushed off a stack of bagged ice and said Boo!
"Bastards!" I hissed. I ran back to the kitchen. "Oh that's it," I said. "That's it! You're all dead!"
The dishboy shook his head. "No, no, no," he said. "Sssh. Don't say anything. Let's get some more people. Okay? Okay?"
I crossed my arms and glared at him, but I kept my mouth shut. In fact, I kept my mouth shut the entire time as the dishboy took his station again--climbing to the top of that step ladder--and called out to someone else. "Hey," he said. "Do you think you could run and get me some ice, please?"
And then he and I were both quiet, waiting for the eventual yelling and slamming to occur--this time the person being scared had the presence of mind to get back at the ice cream boy by locking him into the freezer for several minutes--and during that silence I tucked silverware into precise napkin triangles and thought, This isn't the worst way to spend an afternoon.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
I'm Hoping "Where's My Coleslaw, Bitch?" Will Become a Top 40 Smash
Last night I dreamed I was playing Scrabble with the cast of Seinfeld, that I was shopping for Chinese dolls, that I was locked in a showroom with vacuum salesmen. Normally I would've woken up thinking What the hell? but this morning it seemed just right, exactly perfect, and not so strange at all.
The last week of my life has been bizarre. I have been asked to give lap dances. I have served heaps of fish frys. I have walked over the Rainbow Bridge into Canada. I have seen a stripper launch her naked body onto a pole and pretend-whisper to one of her stripper friends who is sitting in front of the stage, I am so wasted right now! I have seen a cat break its way out of a cat trap outside a bar at 1:00 AM. I have had flowers left on my car while I was at work.
There have been moments over the last few days where I've felt very much like this is a joke, that someone must be taping this, maybe making a Lifetime movie of my life, or at least scouting material for a campy new musical, something that will be all pink and glitzy, where Bebe Neuwirth plays a small-town girl turned college instructor turned summertime waitress who sings vibrant numbers like "Ain't This a Kick in the Pants?" and "Where's My Coleslaw, Bitch?: A Love Song from Customers" and "There's Something Sexy (About an Apron Full of Singles)."
It's hard to process everything--all the new people and things--and it's hard to get over the comparisons--between the old restaurant and the new; between my grad school life and post-grad school life--but I'm working on it. I'm trying to find my footing in my new routine. I'm trying to find words to write, trying to finish my book, and trying very hard not to panic because a lot of this feels familiar, like I've lived this summer before. It wouldn't be the worst thing, I suppose, to have a deja vu summer, but I just have to talk myself into it. Slowly, slowly, slowly. Slowly and surely, I can talk myself into it.
The last week of my life has been bizarre. I have been asked to give lap dances. I have served heaps of fish frys. I have walked over the Rainbow Bridge into Canada. I have seen a stripper launch her naked body onto a pole and pretend-whisper to one of her stripper friends who is sitting in front of the stage, I am so wasted right now! I have seen a cat break its way out of a cat trap outside a bar at 1:00 AM. I have had flowers left on my car while I was at work.
There have been moments over the last few days where I've felt very much like this is a joke, that someone must be taping this, maybe making a Lifetime movie of my life, or at least scouting material for a campy new musical, something that will be all pink and glitzy, where Bebe Neuwirth plays a small-town girl turned college instructor turned summertime waitress who sings vibrant numbers like "Ain't This a Kick in the Pants?" and "Where's My Coleslaw, Bitch?: A Love Song from Customers" and "There's Something Sexy (About an Apron Full of Singles)."
It's hard to process everything--all the new people and things--and it's hard to get over the comparisons--between the old restaurant and the new; between my grad school life and post-grad school life--but I'm working on it. I'm trying to find my footing in my new routine. I'm trying to find words to write, trying to finish my book, and trying very hard not to panic because a lot of this feels familiar, like I've lived this summer before. It wouldn't be the worst thing, I suppose, to have a deja vu summer, but I just have to talk myself into it. Slowly, slowly, slowly. Slowly and surely, I can talk myself into it.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
First Day
The following things happened to me during my first five hours at this new restaurant:
(1.)
Ten minutes after I arrived and was introduced to the boy who would train me in, watch me wait tables, and examine my general skill level, another new waitress who was just finishing up her lunch shift said, "So, do you have a boyfriend?"
I said no, I definitely did not.
She turned to the boy who was training me in. "And do you have a girlfriend?" she asked.
He said no, he did not.
The new waitress nodded sagely. "You two should date," she announced. "You'd be good together. I can tell just from watching you."
"It's been ten minutes," I said.
"I can tell," she said.
"I'll keep that in mind," I said.
(2.)
During a slow period where I was washing down the front doors that were smeared with grubby hand prints belonging to zealous children who couldn't wait to get inside and have a sundae, one of the cooks--big, sweaty--ambled out from behind the line, leaned on the counter, and whistled at me.
"That," he said, "is a fine ass."
(3.)
When I went back into the kitchen, the cook gave me a big grin. "Sorry about before," he said. "Your butt just looked really nice."
(4.)
An hour later the cook came out of the kitchen again, this time with a twist-tie he'd fashioned into a ring. There was a hunk of broccoli in the spot where a diamond would normally go. "Will you marry me?" he asked.
"Don't worry," one of the waitresses said. "He does this to everyone."
(5.)
Two of the guys asked if I wanted to go have a drink with them after our shifts were over.
"Sure," I said.
(6.)
Somewhere before close, the cook came out and looked at me very seriously. "Do you want to go to a strip club with us? We're going to throw this kid--" here he throws an arm around one of the other boys--"a going-away party before he goes to Iraq. We're taking him to Canada for the strippers."
"Uhm," I said.
"Are you the type of girl who participates at strip clubs?" he asked.
"She's a professor!" one of the other boys said. "What if one of her students saw?"
"So what?" the cook asked. He leaned against the pop machine and waggled his eyebrows. "Hey," he said to me. "If I gave you twenty bucks, would you give me a lap dance?"
~~~
I think, I think, I think I'm going to have a lot to write about this summer.
(1.)
Ten minutes after I arrived and was introduced to the boy who would train me in, watch me wait tables, and examine my general skill level, another new waitress who was just finishing up her lunch shift said, "So, do you have a boyfriend?"
I said no, I definitely did not.
She turned to the boy who was training me in. "And do you have a girlfriend?" she asked.
He said no, he did not.
The new waitress nodded sagely. "You two should date," she announced. "You'd be good together. I can tell just from watching you."
"It's been ten minutes," I said.
"I can tell," she said.
"I'll keep that in mind," I said.
(2.)
During a slow period where I was washing down the front doors that were smeared with grubby hand prints belonging to zealous children who couldn't wait to get inside and have a sundae, one of the cooks--big, sweaty--ambled out from behind the line, leaned on the counter, and whistled at me.
"That," he said, "is a fine ass."
(3.)
When I went back into the kitchen, the cook gave me a big grin. "Sorry about before," he said. "Your butt just looked really nice."
(4.)
An hour later the cook came out of the kitchen again, this time with a twist-tie he'd fashioned into a ring. There was a hunk of broccoli in the spot where a diamond would normally go. "Will you marry me?" he asked.
"Don't worry," one of the waitresses said. "He does this to everyone."
(5.)
Two of the guys asked if I wanted to go have a drink with them after our shifts were over.
"Sure," I said.
(6.)
Somewhere before close, the cook came out and looked at me very seriously. "Do you want to go to a strip club with us? We're going to throw this kid--" here he throws an arm around one of the other boys--"a going-away party before he goes to Iraq. We're taking him to Canada for the strippers."
"Uhm," I said.
"Are you the type of girl who participates at strip clubs?" he asked.
"She's a professor!" one of the other boys said. "What if one of her students saw?"
"So what?" the cook asked. He leaned against the pop machine and waggled his eyebrows. "Hey," he said to me. "If I gave you twenty bucks, would you give me a lap dance?"
~~~
I think, I think, I think I'm going to have a lot to write about this summer.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
The Horrors of Waitressing
Tomorrow I start my new waitressing job. I don't dread the actual work of it, just the social aspect. It's hard to be the new girl. It's hard to break in, to become one of the crowd, the group. It'll take me time to suss everyone out, to understand who is good, who is bad, who is beloved, who is hated.
Being the new girl sucks.
But there's a part of me that's mildly looking forward to getting back into it all. I always loved waitressing--probably because I think good waitressing has a lot to do with good flirting. It's about knowing your stuff and being prompt and courteous, too, but it's also a lot about being a charmer, a witty little thing, a girl who smiles and laughs at all the right times. And because I'm the type of girl who is consumed with making people like her--a girl who gets really upset when people don't like her for whatever reason--waitressing is a really good job for me. It, like teaching, has roots in performance. It's a job where the people doing it are on display, are showing off. Deep down, those people are cold and clammy and thinking, Like me, like me, oh, please, just like me!
But as much as a person can want and try for that, sometimes it just doesn't work. Sometimes there are people who will be hateful, rude, and downright mean. And I'm trying to remember that, trying to get myself back into the proper state of mind before I drive to the new restaurant tomorrow. I'm cataloguing my best and worst times, weighing them, reminding myself that the scales tip more toward the good, and that's what I have to keep in the front of my thoughts at all times.
Still, it's not easy to forget some of the worst memories.
The first (and only) time I was yelled at by a customer came during my second summer at the restaurant. I'd had fine luck up until that point, but I'd seen some other waitresses--seasoned girls who'd been at it longer than I had--reduced to sobbing by cruel customers. The worst was on a busy Friday night, and the incident almost ground the whole place to a halt. The waitress--who was just an eensy thing, pleasant, irritatingly sweet with her customers--had a table of ten. It was a busy night, and fish frys were churning out of the kitchen at a head-spinning rate. Still, people had to wait. The place was packed. There was a two-page waiting list just to get seated. So it was only natural that everything was moving just a bit slower. But one of the men at this table of ten wasn't a fan of waiting. He wasn't a fan of the waitress's brightness when he was so hungry, when he had already waited so long. At first, after they'd gotten seated, he'd been pleasant enough. He listened with mild interest when his wife talked with the waitress about her "real" job--she was a social worker--and he ordered drinks for his entire party.
As far as everyone could tell, things were going fine, things were under control. But then all of a sudden, there was commotion. You could sense it even on the other end of the restaurant, where I was standing. When I got back to the waitress station, which was in a dark alcove in front of the kitchen, the waitress was heaving with sobs. The other waitresses were trying to put their arms around her, but she kept shaking them off.
"No!" she said. "No, no, no!" She shook her head so emphatically that some of her hair fell out of her slicked-back ponytail. She stormed into the kitchen doors, almost plowing into a dishboy. We watched as she kept walking straight past the line, past the cooks and salad preps, and out the back door. When we went out to find her, we saw her sitting on an overturned fruit salad bucket, furiously smoking a cigarette. Her hair was completely down now, and her face was bright red from the crying.
It turned out that the man who'd at first been so friendly was not so friendly at all. In fact, when he got impatient for his food, when he got angry about how much time he'd already had to wait just to get a table, he called the waitress over. He asked her what was taking so long, and when she gave him the honest answer (it was busy, the kitchen was backed up, there was only so much they could do) and asked if she could get him another drink while he was waiting, the man erupted in a spout of hate. He told her she was a horrible waitress, that she didn't know anything, that she was foolish and silly. Then he struck his final blow. "I can't believe you're a social worker," he spat out. "It's so obvious you'd be horrible at that job."
I give the waitress credit, though. She cried for a good five minutes, then dried her face, smoked one last cigarette, and went back in there like nothing ever happened. You could tell how badly she'd been crying, but she delivered their food, refilled their drinks, brought them more bread, and spoke only to the man's wife, who, she could tell, was hugely embarrassed about what happened.
Later that night, after the rest of the party had exited the restaurant for the car, the wife came back to the alcove and touched the waitress's shoulder. She told her everything her husband had said was untrue. She said the waitress was an extraordinary girl. She pressed an awful lot of money into her palm.
My incident with a yeller wasn't nearly as bad as that one, which threw the whole restaurant into a tizzy, the cooks and waitresses and busboys and dishboys and even the owner trying to calm the waitress, trying to figure out exactly what to do with a customer who belittled a girl in front of a full restaurant. But still, my incident was bad enough to etch it forever into my mind, so I will never forget exactly where these people were sitting, what they ate, and what they said to me.
It was a table of two. A husband and a wife. They were treating themselves. They'd come in for steak dinners.
It started on a sour note after I filled their drink orders and came back to see what they wanted to eat.
"I'll have the prime rib," the husband said.
I told him we didn't do prime ribs on Tuesday nights. It was a weekend thing, and I pointed to the note that explained that, which was written in bold print right above the menu's entries for the different prime rib cuts.
The man was not happy. "That's ridiculous," he said. "You should have it every night." He paused, sighed dramatically. "We'll need more time to think about it, then."
I apologized and gave them another few minutes before returning to see what they'd chosen.
The man wanted one of the 12 ounce steaks we featured, so I recorded how he wanted it done (medium-rare), what kind of potato he wanted (baked), and what kind of dressing he wanted on his salad (ranch, and no garbanzo beans or onions were to touch his salad).
When the wife ordered, she said she wanted the 10 ounce steak. There were two different 10 ounce steaks, so I asked if she meant the 10 ounce strip steak. "Yes," she said. I wrote it and her particulars (well-done, baked, Italian dressing) down on my pad and went on my way.
Later, when I delivered their dinners, the husband glared at me. "What," he asked, "is that?" He pointed to the steak on his wife's plate.
"A 10 ounce strip steak," I said. I thought maybe he was going to complain about its size, say that it couldn't possibly be 10 ounces.
"That's not what she ordered," he said.
"Yes, it is," I said. "She wanted a 10 ounce strip steak, well-done."
He looked at me like I was crazy, like I was a fool. "That," he repeated, "is not what she ordered."
The wife had developed a sudden interest in her flatware. She kept rearranging them in front of her.
"But it is," I said. "I even repeated it out loud, asked if it was correct, and she said yes." I looked at the woman, thinking she'd correct her husband because she knew what I was saying was right.
The man's face turned red. "This steak is not the steak my wife ordered!" he said, his voice now booming. Other tables stopped chewing and slanted their eyes in our direction so they could see how this would all shake out.
The wife finally spoke. "Actually, dear, it is what I ordered," she said.
"No, it's not!" he screamed, and her eyes immediately snapped back down to her plate. She held her breath, blinked her eyes rapidly.
I didn't know what to do. How do you handle a situation like that? I knew I was right, the person who ordered the dinner knew I was right, and yet I was being yelled at for it. So I did the only thing left to really do: I pandered.
"I'm sorry, sir," I said. "I just delivered what your wife ordered. If for some reason you are unhappy with it, I can take it back and get the cooks to make her another steak."
That's when he snapped. He told me he didn't come to a restaurant to have such awful service. He said when he dined out he expected to get what he ordered the first time he ordered it. He didn't want to have to wait around for another steak to be made. He wanted to know if I could understand that. "Or are you stupid?" he asked.
As much as I wanted to crack that man across the face for talking to me, not to mention his own wife, like that, I didn't. After all, his wife was staring down at her plate and looking like she was ready to cry. It was clear this wasn't a new thing. It was clear this was a trend, that he spoke for her, decided things for her, and ignored her on a daily basis. At that moment, I didn't want to make things worse for her.
I breathed. "I'm sorry, sir," I said. "I'll bring a new steak--whatever she wants--and get you some free drinks. What would you care for?"
"Oh, she'll eat the one she has," the husband snapped. "But bring her a chardonnay and bring me a whiskey."
I nodded. When I took a step back from the table, I realized the entire restaurant was staring at me. Everyone was wearing the exact same expression. The I'm So Sorry, But I'm Glad I'm Not You Right Now expression. The only person not wearing that expression was the bartender. She was a tough old broad, a woman who looked like she'd been around the block a few times, a woman who looked like she'd seen all the world's bullshit and tolerated absolutely none of it. Her expression was filled with rage. She was bristling, ready to launch from behind the bar and take the man up by his ear and throw him out the front door.
I retreated to the waitress station to punch in the drink order. The bartender came and stood next to me. "That's just bullshit," she said. "Absolute bullshit. Who does he think he is?"
I was concentrating on the computer. I was also trying not to cry. I'm not one to take getting yelled at lightly, and I've been known to turn on the tears for something as simple as a Campbell's soup commercial, so it was work to get those tears--which I could feel backloading behind my eyes--to stay put. I wasn't about to give that man the satisfaction. I wasn't about to let him see me cry.
"Want me to say something?" the bartender asked, which I loved her for. I loved the thought of her marching over to that table and giving the man a piece of her mind. I pictured her saying, You, sir, must have a very small penis. She'd been known to do things like that to mouthy bar customers. She was possibly the most badass woman I knew. She was the type of woman who not only would wear leather chaps, but look completely appropriate in them too.
"No," I said. "I've got it." I knew it was my turn to be badass, too, just in a more subtle way. I was going to go back to that table and pretend that I got treated that way every single day, that I was used to it, that it was no big thing, and he'd have to do something way worse to break me. It was clear, after all, that this man's hobby was breaking women. I could imagine he'd been breaking his wife down for years now, until she knew better than to talk or disagree or voice an opinion.
"Alright," she said, "but he says one more thing like that, and I'm bouncing his ass out on the pavement." She said it loudly, and I'm fairly certain he heard it.
But I gathered the drinks the bartender made, brought them over, and, later, even brought them a free piece of pie to split.
The man didn't say another cross word to me. He didn't look at me and only spoke if absolutely necessary, but he didn't raise his voice again. The wife did most of the communication from that point on, in a chirppy little voice that sounded like it was an effort just to get out.
I felt so sorry for her. I wanted for her to make a scene or something, to get up and leave the restaurant, leave him with those dinners and the bill. I wanted her to take the car and leave him stranded. I wanted her to go home, get the locks changed, and make him beg to be let back in. And then I wanted her to tell him he was never, ever, ever going to be let back in.
I knew that wasn't going to happen. I knew they would go home and it would be more of the same for that woman, for the rest of their lives.
But, luckily, you don't run into those people every day. Mostly it's people who are pleasant enough, polite, normal, nice. Some days you are even blessed with extravagantly nice people, like the group whose baby shower banquet I once worked. I was the only waitress on the party, and it was a lot of clearing and running around for one girl to do, and they knew it. At the end of the day, as I was breaking down their buffet and they were gathering up all the onesies and rattles and picture books the mother-to-be had accumulated, the two who had thrown the party came over and handed me a slim bank envelope filled with money. "You're a doll," they said. Inside the envelope was two hundred dollars.
There was also the lady who came into the restaurant once a week and tipped forty dollars, no matter what she had. It could've been a steak or a toasted cheese sandwich, but the tip was always forty dollars. "I remember," she said once, "what this is all like."
My favorite of the favorites, though, was a table who came in for a long lunch one Saturday afternoon. I'd had them before and loved them. There were two couples, friends who got together once a week to share a meal and gossip. They were crazy about this cheesy seafood pasta thing that got rolled out on the weekends, if ever there was seafood bisque leftover from the night before. The first time I served it to them, they gushed to me as if I'd been the one to make it. "Brilliant!" they said. "You're a brilliant girl!" They fussed over me as if I was just the best thing ever.
The next time I had them, they proclaimed I was their favorite waitress in the entire world, the nicest girl they'd ever had bring them food. As their meal came to a close that time, one of the men, who, earlier, had been grilling me about my course of study in college and my ultimate dream job (which I told him was to be a successful author), pushed his empty plate aside and flipped over his placemat. He drew a pen out of his shirt pocket and handed it to me. "I'd like your autograph," he said. "We all know you're going to be very famous someday."
I thought that was lovely. I took his pen and scrawled my name across the back of the place mat. "There," I said. "Maybe that will make you a little money in twenty years." I laughed, but he seemed very serious about it all. He folded the autograph into a precise square and slipped it into his pocket.
"We'll never forget you," he said.
Of course they threw that place mat away as soon as they got home, and of course they have since forgotten me, but it is nice to know there are people out there who are willing to behave that way--so sweetly, so kindly. It's nice to know there are people out there who can very well make your day in the moment you least expect it to be made.
Being the new girl sucks.
But there's a part of me that's mildly looking forward to getting back into it all. I always loved waitressing--probably because I think good waitressing has a lot to do with good flirting. It's about knowing your stuff and being prompt and courteous, too, but it's also a lot about being a charmer, a witty little thing, a girl who smiles and laughs at all the right times. And because I'm the type of girl who is consumed with making people like her--a girl who gets really upset when people don't like her for whatever reason--waitressing is a really good job for me. It, like teaching, has roots in performance. It's a job where the people doing it are on display, are showing off. Deep down, those people are cold and clammy and thinking, Like me, like me, oh, please, just like me!
But as much as a person can want and try for that, sometimes it just doesn't work. Sometimes there are people who will be hateful, rude, and downright mean. And I'm trying to remember that, trying to get myself back into the proper state of mind before I drive to the new restaurant tomorrow. I'm cataloguing my best and worst times, weighing them, reminding myself that the scales tip more toward the good, and that's what I have to keep in the front of my thoughts at all times.
Still, it's not easy to forget some of the worst memories.
The first (and only) time I was yelled at by a customer came during my second summer at the restaurant. I'd had fine luck up until that point, but I'd seen some other waitresses--seasoned girls who'd been at it longer than I had--reduced to sobbing by cruel customers. The worst was on a busy Friday night, and the incident almost ground the whole place to a halt. The waitress--who was just an eensy thing, pleasant, irritatingly sweet with her customers--had a table of ten. It was a busy night, and fish frys were churning out of the kitchen at a head-spinning rate. Still, people had to wait. The place was packed. There was a two-page waiting list just to get seated. So it was only natural that everything was moving just a bit slower. But one of the men at this table of ten wasn't a fan of waiting. He wasn't a fan of the waitress's brightness when he was so hungry, when he had already waited so long. At first, after they'd gotten seated, he'd been pleasant enough. He listened with mild interest when his wife talked with the waitress about her "real" job--she was a social worker--and he ordered drinks for his entire party.
As far as everyone could tell, things were going fine, things were under control. But then all of a sudden, there was commotion. You could sense it even on the other end of the restaurant, where I was standing. When I got back to the waitress station, which was in a dark alcove in front of the kitchen, the waitress was heaving with sobs. The other waitresses were trying to put their arms around her, but she kept shaking them off.
"No!" she said. "No, no, no!" She shook her head so emphatically that some of her hair fell out of her slicked-back ponytail. She stormed into the kitchen doors, almost plowing into a dishboy. We watched as she kept walking straight past the line, past the cooks and salad preps, and out the back door. When we went out to find her, we saw her sitting on an overturned fruit salad bucket, furiously smoking a cigarette. Her hair was completely down now, and her face was bright red from the crying.
It turned out that the man who'd at first been so friendly was not so friendly at all. In fact, when he got impatient for his food, when he got angry about how much time he'd already had to wait just to get a table, he called the waitress over. He asked her what was taking so long, and when she gave him the honest answer (it was busy, the kitchen was backed up, there was only so much they could do) and asked if she could get him another drink while he was waiting, the man erupted in a spout of hate. He told her she was a horrible waitress, that she didn't know anything, that she was foolish and silly. Then he struck his final blow. "I can't believe you're a social worker," he spat out. "It's so obvious you'd be horrible at that job."
I give the waitress credit, though. She cried for a good five minutes, then dried her face, smoked one last cigarette, and went back in there like nothing ever happened. You could tell how badly she'd been crying, but she delivered their food, refilled their drinks, brought them more bread, and spoke only to the man's wife, who, she could tell, was hugely embarrassed about what happened.
Later that night, after the rest of the party had exited the restaurant for the car, the wife came back to the alcove and touched the waitress's shoulder. She told her everything her husband had said was untrue. She said the waitress was an extraordinary girl. She pressed an awful lot of money into her palm.
My incident with a yeller wasn't nearly as bad as that one, which threw the whole restaurant into a tizzy, the cooks and waitresses and busboys and dishboys and even the owner trying to calm the waitress, trying to figure out exactly what to do with a customer who belittled a girl in front of a full restaurant. But still, my incident was bad enough to etch it forever into my mind, so I will never forget exactly where these people were sitting, what they ate, and what they said to me.
It was a table of two. A husband and a wife. They were treating themselves. They'd come in for steak dinners.
It started on a sour note after I filled their drink orders and came back to see what they wanted to eat.
"I'll have the prime rib," the husband said.
I told him we didn't do prime ribs on Tuesday nights. It was a weekend thing, and I pointed to the note that explained that, which was written in bold print right above the menu's entries for the different prime rib cuts.
The man was not happy. "That's ridiculous," he said. "You should have it every night." He paused, sighed dramatically. "We'll need more time to think about it, then."
I apologized and gave them another few minutes before returning to see what they'd chosen.
The man wanted one of the 12 ounce steaks we featured, so I recorded how he wanted it done (medium-rare), what kind of potato he wanted (baked), and what kind of dressing he wanted on his salad (ranch, and no garbanzo beans or onions were to touch his salad).
When the wife ordered, she said she wanted the 10 ounce steak. There were two different 10 ounce steaks, so I asked if she meant the 10 ounce strip steak. "Yes," she said. I wrote it and her particulars (well-done, baked, Italian dressing) down on my pad and went on my way.
Later, when I delivered their dinners, the husband glared at me. "What," he asked, "is that?" He pointed to the steak on his wife's plate.
"A 10 ounce strip steak," I said. I thought maybe he was going to complain about its size, say that it couldn't possibly be 10 ounces.
"That's not what she ordered," he said.
"Yes, it is," I said. "She wanted a 10 ounce strip steak, well-done."
He looked at me like I was crazy, like I was a fool. "That," he repeated, "is not what she ordered."
The wife had developed a sudden interest in her flatware. She kept rearranging them in front of her.
"But it is," I said. "I even repeated it out loud, asked if it was correct, and she said yes." I looked at the woman, thinking she'd correct her husband because she knew what I was saying was right.
The man's face turned red. "This steak is not the steak my wife ordered!" he said, his voice now booming. Other tables stopped chewing and slanted their eyes in our direction so they could see how this would all shake out.
The wife finally spoke. "Actually, dear, it is what I ordered," she said.
"No, it's not!" he screamed, and her eyes immediately snapped back down to her plate. She held her breath, blinked her eyes rapidly.
I didn't know what to do. How do you handle a situation like that? I knew I was right, the person who ordered the dinner knew I was right, and yet I was being yelled at for it. So I did the only thing left to really do: I pandered.
"I'm sorry, sir," I said. "I just delivered what your wife ordered. If for some reason you are unhappy with it, I can take it back and get the cooks to make her another steak."
That's when he snapped. He told me he didn't come to a restaurant to have such awful service. He said when he dined out he expected to get what he ordered the first time he ordered it. He didn't want to have to wait around for another steak to be made. He wanted to know if I could understand that. "Or are you stupid?" he asked.
As much as I wanted to crack that man across the face for talking to me, not to mention his own wife, like that, I didn't. After all, his wife was staring down at her plate and looking like she was ready to cry. It was clear this wasn't a new thing. It was clear this was a trend, that he spoke for her, decided things for her, and ignored her on a daily basis. At that moment, I didn't want to make things worse for her.
I breathed. "I'm sorry, sir," I said. "I'll bring a new steak--whatever she wants--and get you some free drinks. What would you care for?"
"Oh, she'll eat the one she has," the husband snapped. "But bring her a chardonnay and bring me a whiskey."
I nodded. When I took a step back from the table, I realized the entire restaurant was staring at me. Everyone was wearing the exact same expression. The I'm So Sorry, But I'm Glad I'm Not You Right Now expression. The only person not wearing that expression was the bartender. She was a tough old broad, a woman who looked like she'd been around the block a few times, a woman who looked like she'd seen all the world's bullshit and tolerated absolutely none of it. Her expression was filled with rage. She was bristling, ready to launch from behind the bar and take the man up by his ear and throw him out the front door.
I retreated to the waitress station to punch in the drink order. The bartender came and stood next to me. "That's just bullshit," she said. "Absolute bullshit. Who does he think he is?"
I was concentrating on the computer. I was also trying not to cry. I'm not one to take getting yelled at lightly, and I've been known to turn on the tears for something as simple as a Campbell's soup commercial, so it was work to get those tears--which I could feel backloading behind my eyes--to stay put. I wasn't about to give that man the satisfaction. I wasn't about to let him see me cry.
"Want me to say something?" the bartender asked, which I loved her for. I loved the thought of her marching over to that table and giving the man a piece of her mind. I pictured her saying, You, sir, must have a very small penis. She'd been known to do things like that to mouthy bar customers. She was possibly the most badass woman I knew. She was the type of woman who not only would wear leather chaps, but look completely appropriate in them too.
"No," I said. "I've got it." I knew it was my turn to be badass, too, just in a more subtle way. I was going to go back to that table and pretend that I got treated that way every single day, that I was used to it, that it was no big thing, and he'd have to do something way worse to break me. It was clear, after all, that this man's hobby was breaking women. I could imagine he'd been breaking his wife down for years now, until she knew better than to talk or disagree or voice an opinion.
"Alright," she said, "but he says one more thing like that, and I'm bouncing his ass out on the pavement." She said it loudly, and I'm fairly certain he heard it.
But I gathered the drinks the bartender made, brought them over, and, later, even brought them a free piece of pie to split.
The man didn't say another cross word to me. He didn't look at me and only spoke if absolutely necessary, but he didn't raise his voice again. The wife did most of the communication from that point on, in a chirppy little voice that sounded like it was an effort just to get out.
I felt so sorry for her. I wanted for her to make a scene or something, to get up and leave the restaurant, leave him with those dinners and the bill. I wanted her to take the car and leave him stranded. I wanted her to go home, get the locks changed, and make him beg to be let back in. And then I wanted her to tell him he was never, ever, ever going to be let back in.
I knew that wasn't going to happen. I knew they would go home and it would be more of the same for that woman, for the rest of their lives.
But, luckily, you don't run into those people every day. Mostly it's people who are pleasant enough, polite, normal, nice. Some days you are even blessed with extravagantly nice people, like the group whose baby shower banquet I once worked. I was the only waitress on the party, and it was a lot of clearing and running around for one girl to do, and they knew it. At the end of the day, as I was breaking down their buffet and they were gathering up all the onesies and rattles and picture books the mother-to-be had accumulated, the two who had thrown the party came over and handed me a slim bank envelope filled with money. "You're a doll," they said. Inside the envelope was two hundred dollars.
There was also the lady who came into the restaurant once a week and tipped forty dollars, no matter what she had. It could've been a steak or a toasted cheese sandwich, but the tip was always forty dollars. "I remember," she said once, "what this is all like."
My favorite of the favorites, though, was a table who came in for a long lunch one Saturday afternoon. I'd had them before and loved them. There were two couples, friends who got together once a week to share a meal and gossip. They were crazy about this cheesy seafood pasta thing that got rolled out on the weekends, if ever there was seafood bisque leftover from the night before. The first time I served it to them, they gushed to me as if I'd been the one to make it. "Brilliant!" they said. "You're a brilliant girl!" They fussed over me as if I was just the best thing ever.
The next time I had them, they proclaimed I was their favorite waitress in the entire world, the nicest girl they'd ever had bring them food. As their meal came to a close that time, one of the men, who, earlier, had been grilling me about my course of study in college and my ultimate dream job (which I told him was to be a successful author), pushed his empty plate aside and flipped over his placemat. He drew a pen out of his shirt pocket and handed it to me. "I'd like your autograph," he said. "We all know you're going to be very famous someday."
I thought that was lovely. I took his pen and scrawled my name across the back of the place mat. "There," I said. "Maybe that will make you a little money in twenty years." I laughed, but he seemed very serious about it all. He folded the autograph into a precise square and slipped it into his pocket.
"We'll never forget you," he said.
Of course they threw that place mat away as soon as they got home, and of course they have since forgotten me, but it is nice to know there are people out there who are willing to behave that way--so sweetly, so kindly. It's nice to know there are people out there who can very well make your day in the moment you least expect it to be made.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Evidence of Our Cuteness
After his stroke, my grandfather had an extended stay at a rehab facility whose temperature was consistently set to BOILING. He wasn't its biggest fan, especially considering he couldn't sleep for the heat, hated the hours of rehab (pinning clothespins to a clothesline, setting a table, matching cut-out shapes to their corresponding openings in a box), or his roommate, who had, what my grandfather assumed from the smell, gangrene.
When Adam and I went to visit him shortly before he was sprung from the facility, we found him in the common room, dozing in front of a television that was blaring soaps. "This is no way to live," he told us. "No way at all."
Right after my grandfather entered rehab, I was put in charge of looking after his cat. Each time I opened the door to walk into the house, that cat jingled down the hallway, but as soon as she saw it was me she skidded to a stop and--I swear--looked disappointed. My grandfather might have a cruel streak, and many of my memories of him interacting with my grandmother might include him screaming at her, but he sure is good and nice and sweet to that cat.
He got the cat after my grandmother died almost four years ago. He needed something to fill the space, the quiet. And he became obsessed with the cat. He let it have the run of the house. Simultaneously, he let the house go to shit. It is entirely possible my grandfather hasn't cleaned since my grandmother's death, and I figured that out the first day I went over to take care of the cat.
I hadn't been to the house in a long time. I'd avoided like the plague, actually. Being in there made me sad and quiet and a little sick to my stomach. After my grandmother's funeral, my grandfather took to talking to the urn of my grandmother's ashes. I sure you miss you, old girl, he would say, nodding in the direction of the curio cabinet where grandma was now stored.
I hated when he did that. I hated it so much. I wanted to tell him it must be nice to get all sappy and sentimental now, now that grandma was dead and no longer around to clean the bathroom and make him sandwiches. I wanted to tell him he should have been nicer to her when she was alive, that he should have spent less time telling her she was being ridiculous and stupid. And then, when he built an enclosed mudroom at the front of the house--something my grandmother had wanted for years, something my grandfather grumbled about and put off--and told everyone he did it for grandma, that was the last straw. I wanted to hit the old man. I wanted to ask him what good it did now. I wanted to ask him why he couldn't given her one little thing she'd wanted for years when she was actually around to use it.
It made me sick to think about it. It made me sick to be there. So I generally avoided visiting the house until I had to, which happened when I needed to take care of the cat. When I walked in that first day, I waded through years' worth of filth: a scattering of old pill bottles thrown casually on the floor, paperwork that had been read and abandoned in the middle of the carpet, piles of age-old cat puke, stacks of magazines my grandfather had clearly gotten scammed into buying: Latino!, Cat Fancy, US Weekly, Star, OK!, Wired, Blender.
It was clear that there was going to have to be some intensive intervention before he was able to come home and live on his own again. There was going to be a day where we all went over and cleaned out the house and garage. Thankfully, my uncle's wife did most of the house cleaning--she turned a miracle, actually--and my uncle and mother plodded through the garage, which was still full of a lot of my grandmother's things. After her death, my mother had gone over and sorted through closets and the attic, but she has yet to make a serious dent in grandma's things. It's overwhelming what a pack-rat that woman was, really. During the cleaning session, we found giant boxes stuffed with old pantyhose, damaged Tupperware, and headless figurines. Not to mention moldy books, recipes, and pictures.
Those pictures, though, were really something else. My grandmother kept large envelopes for each of her children and grandchildren, and she sorted each season's pictures into the envelopes accordingly. My grandfather had shoved those pictures onto a low shelf, one that was attacked and flooded for years. But we were able to pull out some really precious photos--hundreds and hundreds that are worth saving, that make me excited because I'm about to make the world's cutest collage of pictures that will hang in my room. Here are some that are likely to be featured:
Here is my mother. Tell me she is not the fattest, cutest baby girl you have ever seen in your life. Grandma should've entered her in contests because she would've won, no problem. Not convinced?
How about now? I'm not sure whose back that is--it doesn't look like my grandfather; it could be one of my grandmother's brothers--but it's possibly the best photo in the history of photos.
My grandmother loved to cut my mother's bangs really, really short, so in any picture you see of her before she was a teenager, my mother is showing an awful lot of forehead.
Here's where I admit something strange. My brother was a much cuter baby than I was. For one thing, he was chubbier, and chubby babies equal cute babies. Second, he looked sort of angelic. Which didn't last long.
Doesn't he look serious and earnest? Doesn't he look like a future pilot, and not someone who will fail out of college so badly in his first semester that he won't even be afforded a second chance on academic probation?
I blame this photograph of me on my grandfather. Who else would've made me pose with a bottle of Jack? It should also be noted that this was during what I refer to as my Vaguely Chinese Period. Between birth and the age of four, I went through a phase where there's something a bit different about my face and eyes, where I look very much like I don't belong to my mother and father.
I was groomed from an early age to be a domestic goddess. Thank you, Fisher Price.
Here I am being photographed with my favorite toy, a pink and white Fisher Price bunny (are we sensing a trend? Can you tell my father worked for FP for twenty years?). I called him Merlin, and he never left my side.
My mother was sort of a badass maker of Halloween costumes. I won an award at the town Halloween party this year because I was the best Indian princess they had ever seen. And how cute is my brother? My goodness, this collage is going to be brilliant.
When Adam and I went to visit him shortly before he was sprung from the facility, we found him in the common room, dozing in front of a television that was blaring soaps. "This is no way to live," he told us. "No way at all."
Right after my grandfather entered rehab, I was put in charge of looking after his cat. Each time I opened the door to walk into the house, that cat jingled down the hallway, but as soon as she saw it was me she skidded to a stop and--I swear--looked disappointed. My grandfather might have a cruel streak, and many of my memories of him interacting with my grandmother might include him screaming at her, but he sure is good and nice and sweet to that cat.
He got the cat after my grandmother died almost four years ago. He needed something to fill the space, the quiet. And he became obsessed with the cat. He let it have the run of the house. Simultaneously, he let the house go to shit. It is entirely possible my grandfather hasn't cleaned since my grandmother's death, and I figured that out the first day I went over to take care of the cat.
I hadn't been to the house in a long time. I'd avoided like the plague, actually. Being in there made me sad and quiet and a little sick to my stomach. After my grandmother's funeral, my grandfather took to talking to the urn of my grandmother's ashes. I sure you miss you, old girl, he would say, nodding in the direction of the curio cabinet where grandma was now stored.
I hated when he did that. I hated it so much. I wanted to tell him it must be nice to get all sappy and sentimental now, now that grandma was dead and no longer around to clean the bathroom and make him sandwiches. I wanted to tell him he should have been nicer to her when she was alive, that he should have spent less time telling her she was being ridiculous and stupid. And then, when he built an enclosed mudroom at the front of the house--something my grandmother had wanted for years, something my grandfather grumbled about and put off--and told everyone he did it for grandma, that was the last straw. I wanted to hit the old man. I wanted to ask him what good it did now. I wanted to ask him why he couldn't given her one little thing she'd wanted for years when she was actually around to use it.
It made me sick to think about it. It made me sick to be there. So I generally avoided visiting the house until I had to, which happened when I needed to take care of the cat. When I walked in that first day, I waded through years' worth of filth: a scattering of old pill bottles thrown casually on the floor, paperwork that had been read and abandoned in the middle of the carpet, piles of age-old cat puke, stacks of magazines my grandfather had clearly gotten scammed into buying: Latino!, Cat Fancy, US Weekly, Star, OK!, Wired, Blender.
It was clear that there was going to have to be some intensive intervention before he was able to come home and live on his own again. There was going to be a day where we all went over and cleaned out the house and garage. Thankfully, my uncle's wife did most of the house cleaning--she turned a miracle, actually--and my uncle and mother plodded through the garage, which was still full of a lot of my grandmother's things. After her death, my mother had gone over and sorted through closets and the attic, but she has yet to make a serious dent in grandma's things. It's overwhelming what a pack-rat that woman was, really. During the cleaning session, we found giant boxes stuffed with old pantyhose, damaged Tupperware, and headless figurines. Not to mention moldy books, recipes, and pictures.
Those pictures, though, were really something else. My grandmother kept large envelopes for each of her children and grandchildren, and she sorted each season's pictures into the envelopes accordingly. My grandfather had shoved those pictures onto a low shelf, one that was attacked and flooded for years. But we were able to pull out some really precious photos--hundreds and hundreds that are worth saving, that make me excited because I'm about to make the world's cutest collage of pictures that will hang in my room. Here are some that are likely to be featured:
Here is my mother. Tell me she is not the fattest, cutest baby girl you have ever seen in your life. Grandma should've entered her in contests because she would've won, no problem. Not convinced?
How about now? I'm not sure whose back that is--it doesn't look like my grandfather; it could be one of my grandmother's brothers--but it's possibly the best photo in the history of photos.
My grandmother loved to cut my mother's bangs really, really short, so in any picture you see of her before she was a teenager, my mother is showing an awful lot of forehead.
Here's where I admit something strange. My brother was a much cuter baby than I was. For one thing, he was chubbier, and chubby babies equal cute babies. Second, he looked sort of angelic. Which didn't last long.
Doesn't he look serious and earnest? Doesn't he look like a future pilot, and not someone who will fail out of college so badly in his first semester that he won't even be afforded a second chance on academic probation?
I blame this photograph of me on my grandfather. Who else would've made me pose with a bottle of Jack? It should also be noted that this was during what I refer to as my Vaguely Chinese Period. Between birth and the age of four, I went through a phase where there's something a bit different about my face and eyes, where I look very much like I don't belong to my mother and father.
I was groomed from an early age to be a domestic goddess. Thank you, Fisher Price.
Here I am being photographed with my favorite toy, a pink and white Fisher Price bunny (are we sensing a trend? Can you tell my father worked for FP for twenty years?). I called him Merlin, and he never left my side.
My mother was sort of a badass maker of Halloween costumes. I won an award at the town Halloween party this year because I was the best Indian princess they had ever seen. And how cute is my brother? My goodness, this collage is going to be brilliant.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
