Parlez Vous Statesmahn?

A long time ago in a land faraway... Well, how about 1989 in Canada?  Way before cell phones.  Waaaayy before Hubby.   It was a great opportunity: a drum corps competition in Quebec City.  Before this, our jaunts into Canada had been limited to Ontario, which really isn't much different from New York.  Well, except for Niagara Falls... that place is just weird.  But I'm getting off topic.   So, the Empire Statesmen had our first competition in a French-speaking city.  The entire show was announced in French.  We actually won both the all-over competition and many of the caption awards (colorguard, horn line, drum line, etc.) but since none of us were fluent in French-Canadian, we didn't have a clue what we were winning.  All we heard was "Blahblahblahblahblah, zee Em-pahre StatesMAHN!"   And we'd accept the trophy.  Then a bunch more "blahblahblahblah" followed by "zee Em-pahre StatesMAHN!"  And another trophy.  It was pretty funny; we'd just keep saluting, then quietly asking each other, "what'd we win?"  Nobody knew. 

So after the show, we headed out to the parking lot to load the buses.  Another corps in the show was from our hometown, Erie.  I used to march with them, as did my at-the-time-boyfriend.  Let's call him Melvin, because the name Melvin makes me giggle and that way he can't get angry at me for blogging about him.   Because I'm not; I'm blogging about Melvin.   Well, Melvin apparently wanted to visit with all our old friends from the other drum corps so instead of heading to OUR buses, he went to theirs first.  As we all got settled into our seats (Melvin and I had been sitting in the very back of the bus), I realized he wasn't there, so I started yelling up to the front that Melvin wasn't on board.  But one of the horn players, John, assured me  that Melvin was in the very front, talking with the bus driver.  I believed him and took advantage of having the seat to myself while we pulled away from the stadium. 

Meanwhile, the Erie corps' buses were also getting ready to pull out, so Melvin (I'm still giggling every time I type that name) said his goodbyes and headed back to where our buses had been parked.  And found NO buses.  He did find some policemen and asked them to help him get to the school where we were staying the night on the gym floor.  (If you're not familiar with drum corps, having a gym floor to crash on is considered a luxury.  Normally, we'd be sleeping on the bus)  Unfortunately, Melvin couldn't remember the name of the school.  Even more unfortunately, the policemen didn't speak English anyway.  For a while, he thought they did understand, as they had him get in the backseat of their cruiser and they headed out.  But soon reality hit as he spent the entire night in that backseat, repeatedly trying to communicate with two French-Canadian policemen who kept wanting to take him to the Y. 

When our buses pulled up to the school and we unloaded, I quickly realized that John didn't know what he was talking about... Melvin wasn't anywhere to be found.  I pushed my way through the mass of zombie-like performers who just wanted to find their sleeping bag and crash and sought out anyone and everyone who might be able to help me.  But all the powers-that-be assured me that if Melvin had been with the Erie corps, he certainly must have hitched a ride with them.  They didn't seem to care that while this would get him safely out of Canada, it would put him in Pennsylvania, and we lived in New York.  Then again, those powers- that-be were probably just as tired as everyone else and figured, "Eh, he's a big boy.  He can take care of himself."  Of course, I was the doting girlfriend with no one who was willing or able to take me back to the stadium to find my poor, lost boyfriend.  So I collapsed onto my sleeping bag  and fell asleep.  What else could I do?

And Melvin spent the entire night riding around Quebec City in the backseat of a police cruiser.  At dawn, he finally spotted the restaurant we had eaten dinner at the night before and knew they were close to the school.   He got them to stop when he recognized one of our drummers' car.  As we were groggily waking up and packing up our stuff, Melvin came into the gym.  I was so confused; I seriously figured he was on his way to Pennsylvania!   He wasn't confused; he was furious with me.  Somehow, his getting left behind and having to spend the night in the back of a cop car was MY FAULT.  He didn't believe my story that John had said he was sitting up front.  He didn't believe that I tried to get someone to go back for him.   He believed that I knowingly allowed the bus driver to leave without him, I didn't care where he was, and I apparently only wanted to get his prime spot on the gym floor.   Or something like that. 

Now, twenty-one years later, I find it pretty darn amusing.  And if you ask Melvin, he still thinks I did it on purpose.

NOTE:  In the picture above, I'm the one on the ground.  If I tried to hit that pose now, it would be followed by "I'VE FALLEN AND I CAN'T GET UP!"

Come Any Closer and I'll Beat the DUST Outta You!

Shortly after graduating from high school, I moved to Rochester, New York and rented a room from a woman with two kids who marched in the drum corps with me. Ann-Marie and Jimmy were still in high school, about 16 and 17 years old I think. I was working second shift so I was still at home when Ann-Marie and her friend Jennifer would get out of school. Her brother worked right after school, so it would just be the girls until the mom came home from work a few hours later, which was about the time I left for my job.

So here’s the scene: Ann-Marie and Jennifer are sitting at the dining room table doing their homework. I’m just puttering around the house until it’s time to go to work. Suddenly there’s a huge CRASH in the basement. We all stop what we’re doing and stare at each other until someone suggests it must have been the cat. This sounds plausible, so we all go back to what we were doing until Jennifer says, “Umm, the cat’s sleeping on the chair next to me.” In case you’ve never been a teenage girl or spent any time with a teenage girl, let me tell you that we can go from zero to PANIC in about point four-two seconds. It’s called Drama, and nobody does it better than three teenage girls home alone!

Of course, Drama dictates that the only other plausible cause for the noise in the basement was a serial killer/rapist or Freddy Krueger. We need to get out of the house now! But wait, that’s not good enough for Drama; instead, we need to INVESTIGATE first. We tiptoe towards the basement door, single file so that Freddy the serial killer/rapist doesn’t have to tackle us all at once but can take us down one at a time in a nice orderly fashion. Since it was Ann-Marie’s house, we were fine with letting her go first. Yeah, I know I was a couple years older and should have taken charge but c’mon, we’re talking about a serial killer/rapist and/or undead child murderer! Wait, we need weapons to defend ourselves, so as we creep through the kitchen, still in single file, Ann-Marie starts grabbing potential weapons and handing them back to Jennifer, who hands them to me. Let me tell you, by the time six weapons had been acquired, Ann-Marie had two big kitchen knives, Jennifer had two smaller-but-still-potentially-lethal knives, and I had a wooden spoon and a rug beater. I am NOT making this up. Maybe I should have taken the lead. At least then I would have had first pick of weapons and been able to do more than just give the guy a headache.

Well, the decision to check out the basement flew right out the front door when there was another CRASH. Actually, it was three screaming girls that flew right out the front door, but same thing. We tore out of that house like Freddy was right on our heels! At this point in the story, I should mention that our house was next door to an elementary school. And the little kids were just being let out for the day. And standing on the sidewalk in plain view are three teenage girls holding knives and freaking out. Correction: two teenage girls holding knives and one holding a rug beater. In front of an elementary school. Yeah, we got some looks. Oddly enough, now that I think about it, no one said anything to us. Then again, maybe that’s not odd; I don’t know that I’d walk up to a panicking stranger holding kitchen knives and ask them what was going on.

Over the next half-hour or so, two things became abundantly clear. One, we needed to call for help (this was in the 80s, before cell phones) so we needed to get the phone. And two, we were FREEZING and wanted our jackets. So we developed a fool-proof plan for entering the house, retrieving the phone AND our jackets, and getting out in one piece. Ann-Marie would find the phone, Jennifer would collect our coats, and I would stand halfway between the front door and the basement door holding two of the knives. I don’t remember if we actually decided what I was supposed to do if someone actually came out of the basement, we might have overlooked that variable.

I'm in the sunglasses, Jennifer is the redhead on the right and Ann Marie is directly in front of my in the first row.  Me and my girls... I miss you ladies!

It took another fifteen minutes to get up the nerve to carry out this plan. We were in and out in about ten seconds, just as my boyfriend pulled up to take me to work. He thought we were being ridiculous and went in to investigate. There was nothing awry in the basement. No signs anywhere in the house of an intruder. Although I imagine that any respectable serial killer/rapist/movie villain would never leave behind any evidence of his presence. Well, except for all the blood and carnage. And probably something cryptic written on the wall in blood. But nothing identifiable. But, we were assured that it was probably a stray cat or raccoon or other harmless rabid creature. So I wished the girls good luck not getting killed and then I headed off to work. I'd like to think the past twenty-some years have matured me to the point that noises in the basement wouldn't automatically bring to mind images from every scary movie I've ever seen. I have a feeling that's not the case.

NOTE: this photo was actually taken in Quebec City, which you can read about here.

Well, let's just say there are about sixty-eleven things you could've said besides that!

Sometimes I think my parents should have named me Pollyanna.  I know that being optimistic about other people’s intentions can blow up in your face.  But I really believe that there is no reason to think that other people are any different than me.  We make the same mistakes, want the same basic things out of life, and hold the same expectations of everyone else.  This is why I have trouble understanding the whole mother-in-law stereotype.  Who decided that most mothers-in-law are meddling, judgmental and nasty?  That hasn’t been my experience, and I’ve had TWO of them!  While my first mother-in-law is an amazing person and worthy of a blog post of her own, I’d like to share with you a little about the woman who made Hubby who he is. 

Our bittersweet last visit with Mom 2006

The late Natalie Young was a million times more of a Pollyanna than I am.  She always chose to see the good in people.  I say “chose to” because she wasn’t naïve; she knew a bad egg when she met one, but she was not a judgmental person and her upbeat mood was contagious.  I remember the first time I met her; she and her husband had just gotten back from a Mediterranean cruise and I was nervous about meeting them both.  I should point out that Hubby is such an amazing man that I have always struggled with feeling unworthy of sharing my life with him.  (I know, it’s stupid… he tells me so)  But especially when we were dating, I had a bit of an inferiority complex and felt sure that his mother would agree with me that her son was too good for the likes of me! 

Instead, I walked into a home where these two happy, laughing retired people hugged me like I was a long-lost loved one.  She gave me a scarf that she had bought in Greece.  I don’t wear scarves, but that particular scarf has hung in a prominent place in our bedroom for eight and a half years.  Especially now that she’s gone, it reminds me every day of how blessed I was to have such a great lady in my life. 

Hubby and I were both married before but I was welcomed into the family so quickly, it almost felt like they had always been my family.  Even more important, Mom opened her arms and her heart to my eleven-year-old daughter.  Shortly after we were married, my daughter even asked to change her last name to Hubby’s, because she was so loved by the family that she wanted to share their name, too.  I remember Mom introducing her to people as her “newest granddaughter”, which always got funny looks since a new grandchild is typically a baby. 

Shortly after we got married, I lost my job.  Mom said, “Great, now we can have some girl-time, to get to know each other better.”  And we did.  The woman had a way of making you feel like you were pretty darn awesome yourself!  She always laughed at my jokes and smart remarks like I was the funniest person she had ever met.  And I bet if you ask others who knew her, she probably made them feel the same way. 

When we learned that Mom had terminal cancer, it was like being smacked in the face with a brick and then immediately hit by a speeding bus.  They had moved to Florida a few years earlier and we went to spend some time with them.  Even miserably sick and with the knowledge that she was dying, her mood didn’t drop.  She joked, laughed, and lifted everyone else’s spirits just like she always had.  We shared some amazing conversation that I won’t go into, because it was between her and me, but once again she had made me feel like maybe if I was just a fraction of the person she saw me as, then I was pretty okay. 

The day we had to leave for home was one of the hardest, most painful days in my life.  We knew we wouldn’t be seeing her again and that hurt more than I could have imagined.  Hubby stayed pretty calm; especially considering the fact that the man knows he has the most amazing mother ever.  The kids tried to just get through the good-byes.  I was a blubbering idiot who Hubby had to practically push out the door.  She was gone a couple weeks later. 

I had an amazing mother-in-law who taught her sons to be good men, good husbands, and good fathers.  I missed out on being able to know Hubby’s dad, he passed away before we’d ever met, but another good man came along and treated that woman like the precious gift she was.  We all miss that gift terribly but are grateful for having been blessed with her in our lives!

But Zombie Squirrels Don't Wear Lipstick... Do They?

One of the worst feelings is that moment when you realize that you are not wearing what you thought you were wearing. And there's nothing you can do about it. It usually stems from getting dressed in the dark. Or in a hurry. Or hiding from the zombie squirrels. OK, I've never actually experienced that last one, but it would have be hard to coordinate your outfit in such a situation.

Like the one night when I was getting ready for bed... I took out my earrings and discovered that they were not a matching pair. They weren't even CLOSE. And I had been wearing them all day. At work. In front of everyone. And no one told me. Sometimes I find myself in awe at what a loser I can be.

But way worse than that was the time I was sitting in my kids' Sunday school class and I glanced down to see brown shoes sticking out from under the cuffs of my black pants. I could have SWORN I'd put on black shoes that morning! Of course, I didn't actually swear, because I was in church, but I could have! But what I did do was quietly get up and leave. I raced home, changed my shoes and made it back before the worship service started. It's very likely that nobody would have noticed anyway, but I was mortified! I imagined that I must look like somebody's senile grandma; all I needed was some red-orange lipstick drawn about half an inch outside of my actual lips and I'd be all set to scare small children. Maybe some of that rose-scented perfume that always made me gag as a child. Who decided that roses smelled good, anyway? I was CERTAINLY not consulted on that issue. Logic would tell me that we all have different tastes in what does and doesn't smell good. Logic would tell me that, but I wouldn't listen to Logic, because Logic probably thinks that roses smell good. Or that brown shoes go with black pants. Stupid Logic.