Surviving Mom & Dad: Tales of how my parents royally $%&#@! with me and I made it out OK!

So you know how your parents tortured you when you were a kid? Like made up elaborate stories just to mess with you? Or just did ridiculous things that embarrassed you? It wasn’t just my parents, right? You know, those stories that at the time you thought were totally going to ruin you but as you’ve gotten older, you realize that they are an integral part of growing up and part of who you are. And they help you realize how totally ridiculously awesome your family was.

I’d like to share with you three of those stories from my childhood. They are personal to me and I hope that you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy telling them. And yes, that is a picture of me and brother on the Great Salt Lake circa 1990. See Story 3 for why that picture is relevant...

Story 1: “Ummmm...she’s tone deaf.”

I’ll start with the story that came up today that prompted this post. I was talking to a friend and the topic of singing and just very naturally during the course of that discussion, I said “Oh you wouldn’t want to hear me sing. Tone deaf. Diagnosed. Like my mom actually took me to my pediatrician and made me sing to her.” My friend was like “HUH?” It was then that I realized that this story has just become such a part of who I am and my history that I don’t even think of it as odd anymore.

So here goes...Truthfully, I blame this mess on my grade school. You know how all kids sound cute when they’re singing when they’re 5, 6, 7 years old? Well at some point early on in grade school, someone made the mistake of letting me be the cantor at a mass because, well ya know, I was 7 and was willing to stand up there and sing. Right then and there, I believe unrealistic expectations were set up for my future in singing.

As I got older, my singing went from sounding cute to sounding more like a frog croaking in a blender. Absolutely horrendous. I should also explain that my mom had a beautiful singing voice. She was in the choir all through high school and sang at church and sang in the car and it was just beautiful. I resemble my mom in lots of ways but her singing was not a trait that I inherited. So as I got older and sounded worse and worse, she at first thought that I was just messing with her and was just making myself sound awful so I didn’t have to sing.

Eventually, she must have moved on from that theory because one day, maybe when I was 11 or 12, at my yearly pediatric appointment, I thought we were all done. Then right before my doctor left the exam room, my mom stopped her and said “Oh Doctor, I have one more question for you.” She proceeded to tell my doctor that there’s something wrong with my singing and told me to sing. Appalled, but not one to defy my mom, I sang something out loud to the doctor. My mom said, “See what I mean? There must be something wrong with her vocal cords or something.” The doctor laughed and said “Ummmm, no, there’s nothing wrong with her. She’s just tone deaf.” Huh? She’s what? Riddle that one, Mom. Tone deaf. The doctor explained that I just didn’t hear and perceive music the same way she did and that I was not really able to carry a tune the same way she could.

So that should have been the end of it, right? WRONG. Never one to be defeated by a simple conclusion, my mom figured that I could overcome the tone deafness. My family did a lot of traveling when I was growing up and cross country trips in a minivan were how we spent a huge portion of our time. We’d spend a lot of our time on those trips (much to the chagrin of my dad and brother) practicing my singing with little to no success or improvement. That is, until 1996 (yes, I was now 16...we’d been at this for a loooooooong time)! Yes, in 1996 in the midst of my complete and total obsession with everything Oasis, my mom found that there was something about the melodic tones of Liam and Noel Gallagher that I could somewhat mimic. Now keep in mind that I don’t actually hear the music quite properly, or at least can’t sing what I hear, so the best I was ever able to do was kind of memorize what noise/pitch/tone was supposed to come out of my mouth on any particular note. Well that summer, I did the unthinkable. I memorized how to almost properly sing the entire song “Champagne Supernova.” Out of all the things I accomplished in my life, I’m not sure my mom had ever been more proud of me because I’d truly accomplished something that we never thought I’d be able to do. SUCCESS!

Now I realize that you might be reading this and thinking “oh my god I can’t believe her mom tortured her like that.” But seriously, as much as I may not have always been in the mood to sing and never cared about whether or not I could get a good tone to a song, I would never give back that good ole quality time that I had with my mom while we worked on song after song and laughed at how badly I sucked and then tried again. I also will never hear the song “Champagne Supernova” without it making me think of my mom and the look on her face when I mimicked the hell out of those Oasis boys. And I will also guarantee you will never quite hear that song the same way again. Maybe someday I’ll release a version of myself singing it. Nah. Probably not.

Story 2: The night they let my brother and me believe the world was ending…

I have done a little research based on the factors of this story and I am 99.9% certain that this happened on Saturday October 30, 1993. I would have been 13 at the time and my brother would have been 11. Thinking back, we both probably should have been old enough to know better, but no, we let our parents get us and they completely convinced us that the world was ending.

We had been down the shore in Atlantic City for the day and after a busy day of bowling and arcade games, we were driving back home to our house in Pennsylvania. It was night time. My dad was driving, my mom was in the passenger seat, and my brother and I were in the back of the car. We were on the AC Expressway. We were all tired and it was kind of quiet in the car, except for the radio playing.

I don’t remember if the program changed or my dad flipped radio stations. What I do remember was suddenly hearing this man’s very serious voice on the radio, reporting the story of a Martian invasion at the end of October in the state of New Jersey. OH MY GOD. We were in the state of New Jersey and it’s the end of October and what is this man talking about?!? My brother and I both tried asking our parents what was going on and they just kept hushing us, saying they didn’t know and telling us to listen.

I’m not sure if they realized immediately that we didn’t know it was a story or if they didn’t realize it until we both got more panicked in the back of the car. Bottom line is that they did absolutely nothing to calm us down. My brother and I sat in the back of that car holding hands, completely panic stricken thinking that the Martians were coming and we were going to die. Complicating the issue was that on October 30, 1993, there was a harvest moon in the sky. I can’t remember ever having seen a harvest moon in my life before that date. So adding to our panic was that the moon was huge and had this funny blood orange color. When we asked why the moon looked like that, my mom nonchalantly said “I guess the Martians have something to do with it.” When we asked my dad what we were going to do, he said “I’ll just drive us out of New Jersey as quickly as I can, I guess.” (As a side note, after about 20 miles on the AC Expressway, my parents would always take back roads back home so a good portion of our drive was always through wooded areas of narrower roads in New Jersey. I am completely convinced that on this particular night, my dad took an even longer way home and intentionally kept us in the car until the entire broadcast was done).

So yes, by now you have guessed it...we were listening to an annual broadcast of “War of the Worlds.” Of course my brother and I didn’t know that. Of course our asshole parents did absolutely nothing to dispel our worries that the world was ending. In fact, they did everything possible to make us think that we were doomed. We get to the end of the broadcast when Orson Welles steps out of character of the narrator/broadcaster and assures everyone that this was nothing more than a story that was intended in good humor in the spirit of the holiday or whatever the hell he says at the end of that absolutely terrifying hour of storytelling. Wait?!? What?!? “Mom? Dad? That was a story? That was just all made up? And you guys knew this all along?” Those assholes couldn’t even answer us because they were laughing so hysterically at us and at how funny they were and how they had completely played their kids into believing the world was going to end. Yep. So that was the night they convinced us that the world was going to end. Assholes. But again, I can’t even imagine my life without that being a part of my history with my family. It bonded my brother and me in complete terror and then absolutely anger and frustration with our parents. Thinking back, I also can appreciate how in sync my parents were as a couple. They didn’t plan this. They didn’t discuss the fact that they were going to allow their kids to pee themselves in the back of the car. They just did it as if they were of one mind, one asshole mind. I love those assholes with all my heart.

Story 3: What’s a Mormon?

This is probably my favorite of the stories I am sharing even though it probably makes me look the dumbest. But first a couple things: 1) Disclaimer: The story I am about to tell is in no way intended to be disrespectful to the Mormon community; it is only intended to be a funny anecdote of how my parents once again tricked me and made me look like a dumbass; 2) Some background on me: I grew up going to a catholic school and my knowledge of different religions as a child basically amounted to—-we are catholic and we follow the old testament and the new testament and then there’s those other people who only follow the old testament and don’t believe in Jesus and then there were some other groups that broke off from the catholics but I didn’t pay much attention to them. So that is just some rudimentary information about me leading into this story.

As I mentioned before, my family did a lot of traveling. On one of our cross country trips (I believe this particular trip was in either 1990 or 1991), we were going to Utah for the first time. Being the good little seasoned traveler that I was, I was reading the AAA Guide Book like I always did to learn about new places we were going. We were driving south in Idaho and heading to Utah so it was time to start checking out this new place. As I started reading about Utah and Salt Lake City, one word that I didn’t know kept recurring. Mormon. Had no clue what that was.

“Hey guys, what’s a Mormon?” And so it begins. My mom and dad looked at each other and my mom says “Oh we didn’t tell you? I thought we’d talked to you about them before we left for the trip.” Ummm, no. So tell me now. “Oh wow, we really should have warned you. This is kind of awkward. We really should have given you more time to prepare yourselves.” Huh? What? What on earth is a Mormon?!? By now my brother is also paying attention as he’s realized this is information he probably needs too.

“Ummmm. Yea. So a Mormon. Well they are all over Utah so you’re going to see lots of them.” Ok. So what? What is one? “Well ummmmm. Do you have your sneakers handy?” Yes, why? “We really should have talked to you about this sooner. You should have been prepared that you were going to need to run.” Huh? What are you talking about? “Well you see, Mormons are all over the state of Utah. And if you stand still, they’re going to get you.” WHAT??? “So Mormons, well, they are these little animals that run up and pee on your leg. So any time you are in the state of Utah, if you’re going to be outside, you can’t stand still or else a Mormon might come pee on you. You have to run to get back indoors so that you don’t get peed on.” WHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT???????????? My brother and I were immediately terrified of the little animals that were going to pee on us if we weren’t fast enough.

Worse yet, state welcome centers were staple stops on our trips for bathroom breaks and we’d both been waiting to get to the Utah Welcome Center to go to the bathroom. We both tried to tell our parents that we were good and we’d just hold our pee but holding our pee through an entire state for like 2 days was not a plausible solution to our problem. Plus there was no way our parents weren’t going to stop and make us play this scenario out.

So we pull into the Utah Welcome Center. We had a minivan where only one side opened. I sat at the door side and my brother sat in the inner seat. I waited for him and we lined up side by side so we could jump out of the van together. Our parents suddenly decided that neither of them needed to go to the bathroom but insisted that Ray and I both go. So there we went...we jumped out of the minivan together as far as we possibly could. We ran as fast as our legs could take us. I swear I’ve never run faster in my entire life. We got inside the building and turned to look for mormons chasing us, but didn’t see anything and felt pretty pleased that we were fast enough to avoid them. Ray and I agreed to go to the bathroom and then meet right at the door and we’d run back to the car together to protect each other. And that’s exactly what we did. We rushed our asses back to that minivan so fast and I don’t even know how we did it but we basically jumped back into the minivan at the same time. We were so excited and shouting because neither of us got caught by a mormon and got peed on. We were screaming at our parents and telling them about our race when we both realized that those assholes were sitting in the front seat laughing their asses off at us. Ray and I were like “What? Why are you laughing?” Those two assholes could barely get the words out in between laughs and chuckles and hysterics. “Mormons…(laugh)...aren’t…(snort)...animals…(hahahahahahahaha)...Mormons…(chuckle)...are…(hiccup and tears running down faces)...people.” Effin assholes. Seriously??? You lied to your kids, made up this ridiculous story, and then sat there and laughed your asses off at us while we ran like idiots trying to avoid imaginary animals that were going to pee on us???

Yep, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, my parents. What a couple of shitheads. And they were pretty fucking awesome. And totally helped shape me into the person I am today...and I wouldn’t have it any other way.