Sheep and Kings

I've always loved cheese. Unfortunately, I'm allergic to most varieties of it, particularly those that are soft (I have a severe mold allergy in addition to a host of other allergic ailments). For that reason, for most of my life, I tended to stick to the harder, more mild cheeses, such as cheddar and jack. Then last year, while complaining about how I'm not supposed to eat feta but it's in basically every delicious-looking salad I've seen, my allergy nurse asked why I didn't just use goat cheese as a substitute. I'd always assumed I couldn't eat it, but apparently a lot of people who can't eat soft cheese can get away with mild goat cheese. After years of passing it by without a second thought, I realized exactly what I had been missing.

Goat cheese, to me, is like that boy you knew your entire life and always thought of as the kinda-cute-husky-kid in elementary school, who then blew your freakin’ mind by showing up on the first day of junior high looking like Adonis.

Which is, of course, how you proceeded to refer to him as you professed the pains of your unrequired love to all of your twittering girlfriends. You never know when Gretchen Wieners and that hair are lurking around the corner, just waiting to spread the news of your totally-out-of-league crush.

Did I mention I was really, really awkward in junior high school? Another story for another day (or forty). Lucky for me, most of my friends had the same taste in guys that I did. At fourteen, we were prototypical pubescent balls of hormones-run-amok. Although we all had secret little code names for our crushes, as I think most teenage girls do, my friend TBB#1 and I took the process of creating them to a completely other (borderline disturbing) level.

Now, we’re not talking about some cutesy little “omg! Teehee! I heart APM!” and “Caitlin + Crush = Lurve” doodled all over our notebooks. We are talking about a complicated system involving numerous names for the same person, deliberate red herrings created to throw inquiring minds off the scent, entire notebooks devoted to keeping track of the objects of our affection (complete with AOL profile details and photos of them taken over each other’s awkwardly-posed shoulders) and, of course, a ridiculously intricate method for developing descriptive, yet non-specific, codenames for our crushes.

There was The Joker, termed as such for his inordinately massive smile. There were The Butlers, whose parents had taken it upon themselves to spell “J” names with "G”s, forever relegating them, in our Fresh Prince-influenced minds, to the status of house servants. The Mustang, The Rainbow, Dodger, Therapist, FM Radio – all created to keep the identities of our crushes clandestine and, in part, to drive our male friends wild as they tried to figure out exactly to whom we were referring at any given time.

Of these dozens of carefully coined nom de plumes, the one of which we were most proud was The Sheep. Seems innocuous enough, right? What you don’t know is that to reach this pinnacle of our awkwardness, we first had to create three other coded names, put them together in a twisted equation that would have made even the algebra teacher that flunked me proud, then take the resulting letters (B.A.), pronounce them phonetically and, finally, use that sound to create our masterpiece. He had numerous other aliases, including, but not limited to, The Artist, The Royal Sheep and His Highness.

Despite all of the desperate measures we took to hide it, The Sheep et al. had to have been aware of our madness. My propensity for turning bright red in the presence of boys notwithstanding, the fact that TBB#1 and I appeared in their lives at "random" intervals almost every day was probably a bit alarming. So for that, I want to issue a public apology and thanks. Men of my high school from years 1999-2002, I am sorry that I was so awkward. Thank you for putting up with the shenanigans of two silly teenage girls and, more importantly, thanks for not calling us stalkers to our faces (or the police). Facebook tells me that you are all leading healthy, normal lives with beautiful people by your sides. I promise not to take unknowing photos of you for my scrapbook at the reunion next year.

And to my dear high school friend BowlCut, I'm really sorry that TBB#1 and I mistakenly took your lost fleece because we thought it belonged to The Sheep. May it provide you some comfort to know that though you probably froze that spring, it had a place of prominence in the center of our shrine.

For my parting words today: TBB#1, if you are reading this, I believe we both missed out on a very lucrative career in the CIA.

(Disclaimer: Though based on recollections of my very awkward high school years, this piece was written in jest. I am not, nor have I ever been, anything close to a stalker, and I don't find the subject of actual stalkers funny in any way. It goes without saying that if you or someone you know feels threatened, you should alert the authorities.)

The Yellow Line

Yesterday, as I sat at my decrepit old desktop contemplating such important matters as, "if I could have dated one star from the 80s, who would it have been?" and "don't people have anything better to do with their time than engage in frivolous legal matters?", I was sidetracked yet again by the folder of my old college papers. Clicking randomly at documents I don't even remember writing, I realized two things:

1) There is a direct correlation between the decline in the quality of my writing and the advent of my 21st birthday,

and

2) I really like writing about mice.

Odd, considering that when my first apartment had a vermin problem, I called every one of my scientist friends and offered them a free under-the-table supply of specimens if they could get the damn things out of my house. Sadly, there were no takers.

In addition to the Tale of the Chuck, I found two more stories prominently featuring animals of the rodent variety. Here's one of them.

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“Whatever you do, never stand on or over the yellow line. I mean it. Don’t do it, ever!"

As I stand on the platform at the Park Street T stop, waiting for the Red Line to come whisk me away to my aunt and uncle’s house, the words my mother uttered over 20 years ago echo around me as if they are embedded in the walls. There are hundreds of people milling around the underground terminal, but as those words echo in my head, it’s as if I am completely oblivious to their presence. This is, after all, where I first heard that singular golden rule of public transportation in Boston; it’s also where I first chose to ignore it.

I must have been around six years old when it happened, because I remember how happy I was to be back in the city after moving to New Hampshire a few month before. Due to the fact that we had been “such good helpers” during the move, Mom and Dad had surprised my brothers, sister and me by getting tickets to see Disney on Ice at the Boston Garden. We had enjoyed the parade of ice skating characters, shrieking and giggling each time the villain was beaten, and afterwards the four of us examined our souvenirs as we waited for the train to take us back to our car.

The infant twins looked adorable with tiny mouse ears perched on their heads, held in place by stretchy straps of elastic under their chins. My three-year-old sister, Kelly, had picked out a light-up snow globe on a stick from a traveling salesman at the train stop and was flinging it precariously close to other passengers’ heads as she tried to make it illuminate. I was sitting at my father’s feet, leafing carefully through the shiny program that he had finally bought for me after a lot of begging and pleading on my part. A budding figure skater myself, I was content to look at the pictures and dream of one day performing in the show. Content, that is, until I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye and decided to investigate.

Luckily, one of the twins woke up from his nap and started crying at that exact moment, so no one noticed as I tiptoed closer to the platform’s edge to see what was down there. I watched for a few seconds, patiently waiting for whatever it was to move again. I had often come to this station with my parents and grandparents when I lived in the city, and knew that in the dank depths below, there was a tiny creature who liked to scurry across the tracks. In my naivete, I didn’t realize that the little guy was actually one of many rodents in the station, and I held my breath until I saw something run out from under a rock.

There he was! The Park Street mouse!

Of course, as the platform started trembling at that instant, I looked to the end of the track to confirm my suspicion as to the cause. A pinprick of white light had appeared in the blackness of the tunnel, and the red caution light had switched on. The train barreled towards the station, and in my five-year-old brain I realized that if I didn’t do something, my furry little friend was going to be run over.

The warning my mother had given me as soon as I was old enough to understand it rang through my ears: never, ever step on or over the yellow line at a T stop; the train conductor probably won’t see you and, if he does, he won’t be able to stop in time. “Oh well, I’ll be really quick,” I thought and, never taking my eyes off the mouse, took a step off the platform.

I realize now how lucky it was that my dad noticed I had left his feet. He caught me just in time, grabbing me by the arm and yelling at me to get the hell away from the edge just as the train roared into the station. I cried as he and my mom yelled at me for being stupid and not listening to their instructions not because I was embarrassed, but because I thought the mouse was dead. It was a really traumatic event for a child, to first be scared half to death by her father nearly dislocating her shoulder and then to realize that her furry ally had been squished into oblivion by a 30-ton train. Even though my parents later explained to me that the mouse was fine, and that he was used to the trains coming through his house and knew to get off the tracks when the vibrations started, I don’t think I ever fully recovered from what has become known in the family as “The Park Street Mouse Incident.”

The telltale vibration of the floor beneath my feet brings the station back into focus. I am abruptly shaken from my reverie, becoming aware of the other travelers in the station as the sound of my mother’s words sinks back into the walls once more. I look first toward the tunnel, and see the white light of the Red Line train hurtling towards the station. I then look down at my feet, and a slight smile plays across my lips as I observe the entire foot-and-a-half of space that I have placed between myself and the yellow line. A movement on the track catches the corner of my eye, and I imagine that the small mouse scurrying off of the track looks up and remembers me and my misguided attempt to save his life.

The train rolls in to the station, a long blur that stops with a screech in front of me. Laughing silently, I cross the yellow line and step into the car.
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Fun fact: I still look for a mouse on the tracks every time I go to Park Street.

Animal Instincts

Lest anyone worry that I'm lying dead in a ditch somewhere, since I haven't really been heard from in the blogiverse since last week's crazy Massachusetts tornado, rest assured -- I'm ok! A few readers actually emailed me to check, but have no fear! Boston, (and me!) is totally fine. My cousins, however, live in Wilbraham, and my sweet, sweet eighteen year old cousin was among those students whose PROM was actually happening in Springfield at the time of the tornado!

No, nothing to do with the weather; I've just somehow managed to be both boring AND insanely busy for the past week. Not that I expect anyone to care, since we all know that sometimes, life just happens and if we didn't live it, we'd have nothing to blog about!

As I was catching up on my freelance editing work doing some routine maintenance on my decrepit old desktop, I came across all of my old college papers/files, etc., and rather than doing what I was supposed to be doing, I started reading them. It sort of ties in, since I actually wrote this from a writing exercise I did with my friend C, and it was her novel I was supposed to be editing, but since I got a few laughs out of it, I thought I would share this fabulous little gem with you in my absence. Enjoy!

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Animal Instincts

When I was a young girl, there were few things I hated more in the world than Chuck E. Cheese. I don’t mean the restaurant – skeeball was and remains to this day a personal forte of mine – but that huge, ugly, Mickey Mouse wannabe that would roam around the party room harassing innocent children as they tried to enjoy their extra cheesy pizza and con their parents into giving them more precious tokens. I don’t know if it was the dumb animatronic microphone he held as he stilted awkwardly across the stage or the obnoxiously big, hairy feet, but goddammit, I hated that fucking mouse.

[Source]

It was my tenth birthday when my rage towards The Chuck, as I had come to think of him, finally reached its pinnacle. My mother, against my much more creative wish to celebrate the anniversary of my birth at a haunted house run in the old women’s state penitentiary, had booked my party in the same room where Chuck E. and his gang of over-sized stuffed animals rocked out with their insipid “country band.” To make matters worse, she had invited all of my friends, (including Chris, the fourth grade hottie to whom I was secretly engaged  but couldn’t tell anyone about, lest the news of my impending elopement reached my mother’s prying ears), and told them to wear costumes in honor of the fact that I was born a scant five days before Halloween. 

“Cool, a costume party!” Yeah, I know that’s what you’re thinking. And you would be right, if, by some intervention of satanic forces, your mother hadn’t ALSO decided that it would be the cutest thing in the world to dress you and your three brothers and sister up as the Power Rangers. THE POWER RANGERS. That’s right; my mother had spent four entire days painstakingly sewing patches of felt together so that I could be utterly humiliated in front of all my peers. Thanks, Mom. I still shudder every time I hear the phrase “go go Power Rangers.” Talk about scarred for life. But that’s another story for another day.

[Source]

So, there I was, wrapped in white and yellow felt, sweating balls and surrounded by chattering ten-year-olds, when I caught him lurking around the perimeter of the table. He was hard to miss, with that gargantuan crusty head and moronic beanie with the propeller on top. My spine stiffened as soon as I saw him; I knew we were in deep shit as soon as he started loping across the room, his band of merry moppets straggling along behind him. As the lights dimmed and that horrible music started to play, The Chuck gunned straight for me, the wire mesh cages where his eyes were supposed to be glinting where the paint had worn off.  But don’t worry. I was ready.

As his arms lifted and his body began to turn into a cartwheel, I swooped to my left, grabbing a pinwheel out of the centerpiece and preparing to do battle. The sudden movement threw him off; his huge furry bodysuit started tiling towards the right. “Oh fuck,” his look would have said had his stupid face not been painted into that insipid grin.  “Oh fuck,” I thought, watching him careen dangerously off course, right towards the blue felt child sitting immobilized in a high chair, his tiny features distorted into a soundless scream.

Nappy fur connected with smooth skin, the crash echoing throughout the cavernous “party room.” Parents rushed from all sides to make sure that the ignoramus in grey wasn’t hurt in his plunge into the table. My mom swooped in and grabbed the tiny blue blob, simultaneously apologizing to The Chuck for my “insane behavior” and “rash movements.” I pretended not to hear her as she yelled at me to say I was sorry to it, because I still had a score to settle. And so did the Red, Black and Pink Rangers.

                That fucking bastard had kicked our baby brother!

[Source]

With all of the chaos surrounding us, no one noticed the Red and Black ones stealthily gathering every straw off of the table, slyly inching closer to the epicenter of the commotion while trying not to spill the glasses of soda ensconced in their pudgy little hands. Likewise, the Pink one had managed to crawl virtually undetected beneath the table with a full armload of plastic orbs from that cesspool of bacteria, the Ball Pit.  And I was still brandishing my pinwheel in one hand, preparing to give the signal as soon as the time was right. The other hand, of course, was creeping further back onto the table behind me, reaching for the ultimate revenge.

And then, the time was right. My father had just extended a hand to The Chuck, though I prefer not to think about the fact that the flesh that tucked me in at night actually touched that rancid mess. The massive mouse had just righted himself, waving off any assistance while steeling me with that blank stare. I just couldn’t take it anymore – so I flung the pinwheel straight at his ridiculously pointed nose, thereby triggering an event that will be forever immortalized on film, thanks to the cinematic genius of Uncle Ed.

He didn’t even have time to react to the projectile pinwheel before the Red and Black rangers began spewing soda out of their straws, a virtual fountain of diet cola raining down upon the villain and anyone unfortunate enough to be standing in close proximity to his person.  Red, blue and yellow balls soared through the air, the arm of the Pink ranger working furiously to pelt him with every last ounce of force it could muster. My friends were loving this, joining ranks in any way that they could, hurling whatever lame party favors they could get their hands on and adding to the chaos with their screeches of delight.

[Source]

And then, as my parents and other assorted grown-ups attempted to quell the storm,  I stepped up with the piece de resistance.

It is my guess that even now, 14 years later, The Chuck is still picking pieces of chocolate Carvel crunchies out of his decrepit old costume. Sure, my brothers and sister were grounded for two weeks, and I for six, but I can probably guarantee you He hasn’t taken it upon himself to harass any more innocent children with his wily, child-molester type ways.  And as I said, the video makes for some serious entertainment at the annual family Christmas party, though my youngest brother still can’t understand why we think it’s so funny, most likely due to the undiagnosed mild brain damage I suspect he suffered at the hands (feet?) of The Chuck… though that can’t be nearly as damaging as the emotional scars inflicted upon that ugly rat bastard by our small clan of felt-clad fictional ninjas. 

Go, go Power Rangers.