Throw me Thursday: Miscellaneous

The holidays are eating me up. The writing updraft of November has stilled into a deep, frozen hold and I feel I’ve nothing to say save for a few spare memories shaved off the sides. The following post is a combination of Throw me Thursday suggestions: Andy Grenia suggested The Velvet Underground, @MandeeSears said, “Missed opportunities”, and my husband said, “Porkchops” that for some reason ended up here. It doesn’t make sense, but it rarely does and I am just tired. Hear, hear for effort!

Bill used to want to pet my face. That’s what he called standing behind me and running his grubbed-up, giant-man hands down over my face and laughing. Real sophisticated-like.

Or like, what about having one brother hold your legs, and one hold your arms and the other one tickle-torture you till you almost pee your pants. That’s cool.

Then there’s always the last minute, thrown-together chicken barbecue in the backyard of the duplex that became the next home when everyone moved out and moved on. Brothers showed up that day laughing at dirty jokes. When Bill left, he drove his truck in reverse up the hill, around the block, back past the driveway. We laughed and waved and screamed.

My sisters went to the disco, The Gyro. The house spun with their energy and make-up and hair spray. Julie did The Robot. I hung outside the bathroom waiting to be them.

My grandfather died when I was a high school freshman. On the day of the visitation I drank a Slim Fast for breakfast and one for lunch. At the funeral parlor I fell to tears of hunger and angst. My sisters took me to stay with them at a hotel. We ate at Chi Chi’s and I gorged on a Mexican sampler platter. That night they went out. I slept on the hotel room floor. At bar time they came barreling in laughing their asses off. I didn’t cry at the funeral.

I spent a lot of time growing up waiting to be grown up with these people, but by that time all bets were off and they were no where to be seen, or done drinking it up, or safe and sound and married or bored with the scene. That’s what happens when you come nine years and oops at the end. Your stories belong to no one but yourself.