Although I would like to take full credit for the man I am today, I can’t. I have the luxury and good fortune of being surrounded by a small army of strong, nurturing and occasionally very scary women, each of whom has played a vital role in shaping me into the demented, obscene, potty-mouthed n’er-do-well you see before you. In celebration of these women – and at the risk of forfeiting any spoils they have bestowed to me in their respective wills and trusts – here is a short story about each of them.

My Mother, Who Has Asked Me Not To Write About Her Because She “Still Has To Live In This Town,” But May Change Her Mind If I Tell A Story That Reflects Positively On Her Motherly Instincts.
When we were young, my sister and I used to sit on the cinder block wall that separated our yard from that of our next-door neighbors, the Zinks. We would play with my Hot Wheels cars and Star Wars figurines, pretending my little die-cast Datsun hatchback could hit R2-D2 so hard that it turned him into a hand mixer. From time to time, Mrs. Zink would come out and yell at us to get off of her wall.

One day my sister and I were on the wall again and Mrs. Zink snapped. She came out of her house, turned her garden hose on full blast and doused my sister and me, sending us inside in sopping wet hysterics. When my mother heard what Mrs. Zink had done, she bolted outside and confronted the hag. You should have seen it. These two women stood on opposite sides of a knee-high block wall, yelling at each other, pointing fingers at each other, accusing one another of dastardly, evil things. All of the neighborhood kids heard the ruckus and came running to root my mother on. “Go, Mrs. Evans! Kick her ass! We hate that skanky bitch!”

I don’t recall specifically what was said – perhaps something about my mother’s size seven Easy Sprit shoes and Mrs. Zink’s big, fat, haggard, cottage cheese ass – but whatever it was hit the mark. My parents still live in that house, but the Zinks, well, we’ve never heard from them again. In my twisted imagination, they moved to Idaho and joined up with a band of white supremacists who spread grammatically incorrect, hate-filled literature, rampant with dangling participles and misspelled words like this: “Jooz and Kweers Are Derty Sunza Biches.”

My Sister, Who Thinks She’s All Bad-Ass Because She Can Throw A Bagel Like 90 Miles An Hour, But Let’s See How Cool She Thinks She Is After I Tell The Whole Internet That Our Mom Puked In Her Face.
Prior to meeting my wife, the greatest day of my life was a hot summer day in the early 1980s. We were on our way to a nice family outing at a museum, cruising down the road with the windows on my dad’s Dodge Omni rolled down. My sister and I were playing some silly game in the back seat and, unbeknownst to us, my mother was in the midst of a rather severe case of food poisoning or rot gut or stomach flu up front.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, something beige and warm and steamy came flying into my sister’s window and splattered all over her face. She was stunned. Was it bird shit? Was it alfredo sauce? Was it spackle?

No. It was my mother’s breakfast.

She vomited out the window and, thanks to the laws of physics and aerodynamics, her scrambled eggs, toast, orange juice, coffee, two tablespoons of Metamucil and a multivitamin were pushed right back into the car and all over my big sister.

We never made it to the museum, but I didn’t care. I laughed all the way home.

My Mother-In-Law, Who Likes To Refer To My Children Using The Yiddish Words For Various Farm Animals And Once Tried To Poison My Baby Boy With A Steak Fry.
When my son was born, my mother-in-law referred to him once as “kotchke.” There was some debate at the time as to whether a kotchke is a duck or a goose, but I suppose that’s irrelevant now. At least she didn’t call him a mule or a pig or a jackass. And for some reason, we still refer to the kids as “The Goose.”

When Left-Handed, Power-Hitting Son was very young, we all went to dinner at Red Robin, a burger place. To my horror, my mother-in-law gave him a french fry --- and not just any little fry, but a STEAK FRY! I chastised her.

“What are you doing?! I don’t want him eating that!”

“Why not?” she asked, perplexed.

“Because he’s just a little kid! He doesn’t need to be eating fried foods. It might hurt his teeny little belly. Shit, why don’t you let him chew on some rusty nails, for Pete’s sake?”

She said nothing. She just pulled the fry away from my son and wore a look that seemed to say, “Whatever, dumbfuck.”

Now, four years later, the kid eats Snickers for breakfast and can polish off a large order of fries in one bite. My mother-in-law was right, as usual: I’m a dumbfuck.”

My Sister-In-Law, Diga, Who Once Got Really Mad At Me For Telling Her She Had Hair Like Lyle Lovett.
I was once on the phone with Diga and the subject of parents who curse came up. I bet her she couldn’t get her mother to say “fucking asshole,” and she took the bait. We called her with the three-way feature on my phone.

[Ring. Ring.]

“Hello.”

“Hi, mom.”

“Hi, darling.”

“Danny’s here, too.”

“Oh. Hi, Danny.”

“Hi.”

“Mom?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Will you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Will you say ‘fucking asshole?’”

“What?”

“Say ‘fucking asshole.’”

“You want me to say ‘fucking asshole?’”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Just because.”

“OK. Fucking asshole.”

[Laughter ensues.]

My Other Sister-In-Law, Karona, Who Believes Contorting Her Body Like A Pretzel On Acid Will Make The Ball Go Into The Hole
I love to laugh, and I can count on one hand and two webbed toes the number of times I have laughed so hard that I had to sit down and squeeze my crotch so as not to urinate on myself. One of them was the first time I played miniature golf with Karona.

She put the little pink ball on the rubber mat, lined up her putt and whacked it super hard with the short rubber putter. The ball bounced off of the concrete barrier and began to roll toward the cup. The closer the ball came to the hole, the more Karona screamed. The more she screamed, the more she contorted her body. The more she contorted her body, the scarier it got.

For the next two hours, Karona cavorted through the miniature golf course, inventing on the fly a game that combines golf, yoga, pilates, opera and re-enactments of some of the more gory and unwatchable scenes from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. She would arch her back, twist her torso, bend her left leg like a flamingo, jut out her bottom jaw and scream like a five-year-old who sees the ice cream man coming around the corner --- all, presumably, in hopes of making the little ball go into the hole.

Golf is supposed to be a serene game. Golfers need silence and concentration. But with Karona around, the only thing people can concentrate on is the funny lady who looks like she’s having a grand mal on the eighth hole.

My Daughter, Who Eats Chepup
My baby girl is learning new words every day. This week, she has learned the word for that the red stuff you put on hot dogs and french fries. She calls it “chepup.”

My Wife, Who Has The Funniest Throw-Up Sound Ever (Sorry, Honey, But You Do. You Know You Do.).
When Hot Wife was pregnant with each of our children, she fought the evils of morning sickness rather frequently. While it was distressing to see her in such misery, I will admit to you candidly that hearing her puke sometimes made me laugh hysterically.

See, Hot Wife was blessed with some proprietary combination of vocal chord alignment that causes her to make the world’s perfect vomit sound. It sounds a little bit like she screaming at an imaginary hose-wielding neighbor who is sequestered in the bottom of the toilet bowl. Wehhhhhhhhk! Wehhhhhhhhhkk!

For yours truly, someone who has repeatedly confessed to being what I call a piggy-back puker --- someone so repulsed by other peoples’ vomit that it causes me to vomit shortly thereafter --- my wife’s “gift” creates the ultimate conflict. Do I laugh? Do I puke? And is it biologically feasible to do both at once? Sadly, my fight-or-flight response kicked in when she started to heave and “flight” won that battle by a landslide. I was never around to attempt the laugh/puke combination. But I have a sense that after Hot Wife reads this, an opportunity to attempt the dreaded laugh/get kicked in the nuts maneuver will present itself.

Comments

Damn it all, I was in the middle of a yawn when I read the sentence about Karen having a grand mal. Stopping to laugh broke off my yawn and that, if you consult the rule book I haven't written yet, is officially a bad thing. But I forgive you. I suppose. :)

Your mom and my mom sound quite a bit alike. We had a set of Zings ourselves, only their last name was Vickers and they were very old and very superstitious. Mrs. V was always yelling at us kids out her window to stop stepping on clover in OUR yard, among other things. Mrs. Vicker was also picky and would use a ruler and scissors to trim her lawn -- I kid you not. She obsessed over lawns and things that grown in them.

Our black cat used to climb up the brick of the Vicker's house and sit on her roof in the sunshine, but I don't know if the Vickers ever knew that... until. One day Mrs. Vickers was out yelling at us kids for stepping on clover or making hex signs or killing faeries or something, when I got a bright idea. I looked up at her ridgepole and pointed, and screamed like I'd seen the devil. Mrs. V wheeled around, took one look at Blackie with his bright gold eyes, and yelped and scampered back into her house.

She never bothered us kids much after that, unless we stepped on HER clover.

"Was it spackle?"

Snort! Excellent story telling technique. Why can't I come up wtih metaphors like that? You have a gift, DGM. A gift, I say.