Vocabulary Lessons and Lack of Self-Control

In preparation for "back-to-school," I took the three boys to our family practitioner for full physical exams. We made it as far as the vital signs room before the giggling began.

Nurse:  Any surgeries?

     Me:  Testicular varicosele removed earlier this year.

Nurse:  Varico-who?

    Me:  Varicosele. V-a-r-i-c-o-s-e-l-e.

Nurse:  And that's like a varicose vein?

     Me:  Yes, in the testicle.

**Begin giggling behind me that builds to hog snorting and then blatant guffawing.**

To her credit, the nurse was Mexican-American with a very heavy accent and most of the practice services the Hispanic community here, so most of the time she speaks in Spanish.  But she seemed embarrassed enough and rushed through the rest of the height, weight, blood pressure and temperature readings to hurry the out-of-control pubescent lunatics into the exam room and out of her hair.

They were all just fine. The end.

Conversations with My Kids - Study!

"Mom! I want a turn on the computer."

     "You had a turn. Leave me alone."

"I want another turn."

     "Uhm, did that whole 'You're grounded from your second turn' thing slip your mind?"

"But I'm BORED!"

     "Do I LOOK like Julie from the Love Boat?"

"What's a love boat?"

     "Never mind."

"But I'm still BORED!"

     "You're still grounded from your second turn today. Go study."

"I don't want to study. Today is Friday. I don't study on Friday."
 
     "You don't really study any other day of the week either."

"Mommy!!!!! Come on. I want my turn back. I don't have anything else to do."

     "Read a book. Draw some pictures. Watch TV. Go to sleep."

"Boring, boring, boring. I'm going to get a job at the cyber cafe."

     "No, you're not."

"Why not?"

     "It smells like smoke in there because the owner is always smoking and won't even turn on the fan."

"So what? If I work there it will be on Friday and Saturday when I don't have school and I will work when he is upstairs eating dinner."

     "I'm considering banning you from going there again. Besides, you can't get a job a month before final
exams and we're moving next month. You need to focus on your studies."

"But I can't work in the States unless I'm 16 and that's another 4 years away! That's a third of my LIFE!"

     "See? You totally own fractions! Go work on geometry."

"You NEVER let me do anything fun."



     

Alphabet Soup

I've mentioned before that I'm a military BRAT. Growing up around the Army, acronyms were just the norm for us. While most kids on a playground can tell you about ABC-gum and understand what "You'd better XYZPDQ" means, BRATs are familiar with so much more, usually even before the third grade. Also, our  parents when saying things like 'As Soon As Possible' did not spell out A.S.A.P. but usually pronounced it ay-sap. By the time we were in high school, we knew that a letter from DODDS addressed to our fathers was probably CC'd to him and actually addressed to his C.O. and that we must be nailed for ditching school and life as we knew it was now FUBAR (that's Foo-Bar.)

What's that? OH...right. Translation:

DODDS:   Department of Defense Dependent Schools
CC:           Courtesy Copy (you should know this from email headers, come on!)
C.O.:         Commanding Officer
FUBAR:    F*#!ed Up Beyond All Recognition

So, when I got caught, along with 65 of my closest friends, drinking apple schnapps on the school bus and the driver, Frank (not really his name but since Frank and Stoeckl own the bus company we called ALL of our bus drivers Frank) drove us to the MP station and the DSCC held all of us there for over 4 hours without allowing us to contact our parents. I finally was the ballsiest and picked up a phone and called my dad, who came immediately with my friends parents in tow and OMG did the S.H.T.F!  My dad calmly went in and told the DSCC, "Colonel, I would like to press charges." The colonel was shocked thinking that my dad wanted to press charges against me for under-age drinking. He contended this was a matter best left for the  parents to handle since I was not military and they could not hold me in a military cell or discipline me in anyway. Dad clarified. "I want to press charges for kidnapping." That got the Colonel's attention.

DSCC:   "Against whom?"
D.A.D:   "You, Sir."
DSCC:   "Come again?"
D.A.D:   "Sir, you have held my daughter against her will, without her parents knowledge and refused to
               her any contact with her parents. According to any dictionary, that is the definition of kidnapping,
               Sir, and I'd like to press charges."
DSCC:   "But she and her friends were drinking on the bus!"
D.A.D:    "True, Sir. But as you've indicated, that would be a matter best left to her parents to handle since
                she is a dependent and not a military member and thus outside your jurisdiction. Isn't that correct,
                Sir?"
DSCC:    "Uh, well......uhm, see that she never does this again, Chief!"
D.A.D:     "I can guaran-damn-tee it, Sir."
DSCC:    "Then I'll just release her into your custody and we'll pretend this never happened?"
D.A.D:    "That's affirmative, Sir."

I thought my dad was the coolest thing ever. The DSCC released the rest of the students with a stern warning and only my two best friends got suspended from the bus and had to take the train for two weeks. (That's because they'd bought the booze in the first place.) And I was just the big hero. MY dad had pretty much gotten everyone off the hook and put the DSCC in his place, etc. Until we got in the car. And I was placed on restriction for the next 2 weeks and only allowed to leave my room for KP, laundry, meals and school. SNAFU. I was also warned that if I were to EVER embarrass my father via his chain of command again, that I would see the 4 walls of my room until we PCS'd. I was scared. That meant no more DYA sports, no more AFN, no more kissing boys behind the BOQ, no more watching movies at the AAFES theater and no more hanging out at the snack bar in the PX. So, I followed my father's advice and got my "head out of my ass" and walked the straight and narrow until he came home one day and said, 'FIGMO'.

For those of you, not familiar with military life overseas, more translation:

MP:        Military Police
DSCC:   Deputy Sub-Community Commander (the MFWIC of the smaller of two American military
              communities that are closely situated.)
MFWIC: Mother F*#!er What's In Charge
OMG:     Really? You have to ask this in the age of Twitter?
S.H.T.F:  Sh** Hit the Fan
KP:         Kitchen Police
SNAFU:  Situation Normal-All F*#!ed Up
PCS'd:    Permanent Change of Station (to move)
DYA:      Dependent Youth Association
AFN:      Armed Forces Network (tv and radio station; aka AFRTS or Ay-Farts which is Armed Forces
                Radio and Television Service)
BOQ:     Billeting of Quarters (a military sort of hotel where members and families sometimes stay
               temporarily, after they've cleared quarters prior to PCSing and/or while on TDY - Temporary
               Duty)
AAFES:  Army Air Force Exchange Services (they ARE the dept store/fast food/bowling alley/theater/ on
               any Army or Air Force military compound.)
PX:         Post Exchange (you'll sometimes hear someone say BX and that is the same thing only they're
               usually Navy or Air Force because they have BASES instead of  POSTS so it would be Base
               Exchange....which I find really weird because Marines are assigned to CAMPS but they don't say
               CX for Camp Exchange....I think they also have BXes. Of course, no one credits the Marines for
               being big readers anyway so if you just say "the exchange" to them they'll know what you're talking
               about and reply in the affirmative, "Oo-rah."
FIGMO:  F*#! It. Got My Orders (means I don't care....I'm PCSing soon and already have orders to leave)

      

Homesick

My heart is heavy...like someone placed a wheelbarrow full of bricks on my chest after making me to lie down in the soil on my back. Unwanted tears are streaming down my face and my breath is shallow.  I don't have a real reason to cry.  Nobody died and I'm not physically hurt.  I feel like an idiot as the salty tracks reach my mouth and my nose clogs up and I realize we don't have any tissue in the house.  I called just to hear their voices; just to wish them a happy anniversary and to tell them I miss them; how much I wish I could be there.  He couldn't handle my teary voice and gave the phone back to her.  I hope I didn't make him melancholy, too.  I just need them both to know that this girl inside me, this girl of long roots, who has lived every place and who is still from no place in particular, that when she gets homesick--- it's their home she's missing.

My Baby Brother

Whenever I think of my sweet face baby brother, I see him as the little blonde-haired, blue-eyed cherub that he was when he was two. He was so ornery growing up but had a soft spot in his heart for his three "guhlies" (girlies) that were me and my two sisters. Mom once told me that when we had gone to spend the night at a friend's house that Lloyd wandered the house crying for his "guhlies" to come home. We dressed him up like a girl and painted his toenails and all sorts of other torturous big sister games that only a little brother would tolerate until his dad came home one day and threatened to beat all three of his daughters if they put one more dress, application of lipstick or hair barrette on HIS boy! Good thing we still have photos, huh?

My brother was always a charming, funny, and ass-kicking machine like I was. He was only eleven when I moved out and I always felt a little guilty leaving him behind. Not because the rest of my family was totally psycho or anything. (Maybe a smidgen of psycho.) But I missed all of his middle school and high school years because I was living and working on the East Coast and he was all the way out in El Paso. (Yeah, the tee-shirt is pretty accurate. El Paso actually IS 10 miles from water and 3 feet from HELL.) And while I got to see him when I went home to visit for holidays every year or two, I missed out on all of his shenanigans and first dates and swim meets and prom and graduation. I wish I could have been there for that....sort of. I wish I could have sheltered him from some of the crazy he had to endure during the years that led to my parents eventual divorce.
By that time, I was working in Greece.

Just before I shipped out to Athens, I drove out to El Paso to drop off a bunch of stuff that I didn't want to take with me for fear it would get lost or destroyed. So I drove for three days with my suitcase of dirty laundry (to keep my sisters from hijacking all my clothes because they CERTAINLY wouldn't wash them before swiping them), a box filled with my high school diploma, awards from work, yearbooks and my mom all packed into my car. (Yeah, Mom only has one leg and I had a 5-speed Ford Escort so she was sort of along for the ride....and to tell me to slow down a lot.) I spent about a week with them and then my brother offered to drive back to Baltimore with me. COOL.

It was a great trip. Except when he got a speeding ticket about 4 miles outside of El Paso city limits. And except for when we stopped to eat cat fish at a truck stop outside of Nashville and they towed my friggin' car basically because it had out of state tags and it cost me about $150.00 to get it back and delayed our arrival to Baltimore by about 6 hours. I still hate Nashville because of that. But my brother and I had the laughing-est, singing-est, fun time during those three days on the road. I haven't seen him but about 5 or 6 times since then. Damn. That was back in 1992.

I'm thankful that we both have Facebook and Skype and email. If it weren't for that, we'd never hear from each other. But thanks to the internets we have an awesome relationship. And the last time I saw him back in May 2010 at a mini-family reunion outside of Austin, I spent several hours just talking to him and it was like we hadn't been apart at all. I love my brother so much. I'm very proud of him. He's a Navy veteran. He's a fantastic chef and butcher and has a plethora of knowledge about cheese. In fact, during the Whole Foods market 2008 "Crack Heard Round the World" attempt to break the Guinness Record for cutting the most wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese open simultaneously, MY brother "cut his cheese" in 1 minute and 36 seconds....which is TOTALLY AWESOME! (Click here to watch Lloyd kick cheesy ass!) (He's the cute guy on the right!)

Lloyd is one of the coolest, smartest, and funniest people I ever had the pleasure to meet. I think he and I would be friends even if we weren't siblings. He's just that great a guy. And I miss him.