Hey, look over there!

So, despite her docile surface, Mom was always the most crafty of us all. Her craftiness was primarily funneled into a single day, April Fool's Day. She seemed to slam us every year. One year she had us get up before the crack of dawn scanning the horizon on our rickety porch for a re-entering space shuttle. Dad put his foot down after eating a sandwich with a slice of cheese complete with wrapper (this only allowed her to exert further efforts toward duping her children). We occasionally retaliated, but after raising us all it was difficult to pull the wool over her eyes.

Once, after my mission, Mom invited me to share some experiences with her quilting group. The food was excellent, deviled eggs and the kind of spinach dip that everyone seems to think they're having for the first time every time they eat it. Looking for a quick exit, I divert the group's attention with a classic, "But have you seen that over there?" and made off with two handfuls of deviled eggs. Mom of course didn't buy it for a moment, never turned her eyes and just started laughing.

G-ma Oppelt and Color scheming

we all know about mom's mom's recent taking to knitting things for all of us. most of you get normal colors no matter how silly the item. not true for me. supposedly i told her when i was young that i liked bright colors and 15 years later, she still takes that to heart. however, my presents lead every Rugglet to the question, "how bright is too much?". i used to think that egg yolk yellow slippers or a destructicon themed hat were bad things. not today. you go outside wearing those to check your mail, every girl you see will talk to you. so i guess I'm trying to say, "thanks Grandma (even if you are trying to make me look silly on purpose) and does anyone have any good stories about her presents i don't know about?"

Lots of soccer

All of us have our own memories of playing soccer at various stages growing up. What impresses me is how vivid the memories can be. Especially with Dad - he can recount entire games from 1993. We can still talk about fallacious whistles and epic moments whose stories might lead the innocent into thinking they actually occurred in slow motion. It is funny how much fun I used to have with it being as pathetic as I was. I had some strengths, sure, but I was a rather incomplete player. I had some good times though - and it's still fun to commentate.

Anyone else remember how exciting it was to have World Cup 1994 in the US? We were so sure that was soccer's breakout year - America would be forced to realize its superlativeness. Didn't happen.

And then 1998 was better - we watched 2 games a day all summer until we moved. Of course they were on the Spanish channel Univision, so the commentary was sketchy. And there was that pundit who happened puppet with no eyes - just a massive, bushy unibrow. Any laughing I did had little do with what the comedy they were surely spewing. It was purely ridiculous. I remember the World Cup causing some rubs while we were in California that year - we really wanted to watch it, but things like Sundays and families kept interfering with the World Cup. How rude. I remember loving Holland and seeing Beckham botch it and Zidane be an amazing bald jerk. Great stuff.

Alternative Rock in the Trailer Park

Although some people think people like me are a myth, I'm not a music person. I don't often go out of my way to listen to music, and even less often pay for it (this is a trait inherited from Mom and Dad that it seems only me and Tracy got). What music I do like (and still listen to) I started liking when I was 6: early 90's alternative. I could sing the words (under great protest from musical geniuses like Craig and Brian who claimed I wasn't doing justice to the original masterpiece) to quite a few Offspring and Sublime songs. Cake, Nirvana, Beck, Everclear - these were my musical world. Needless to say, this wasn't the doing of my 6-year-old self, this was because I shared a room with Andy, Brian and Craig and that's what they listened to. Brian and I were talking last summer and we came to the conclusion that music peaked in 1994. Thus, the roots of my bizarre musical taste are exactly where the rest of my roots are, firmly embedded in thick, black, Texan gumbo.

Mom Memories

First memory of mom: Mom insisted that everyone earn their Eagle before they could drive. Where did that leave me? Mom decided I had to earn a "Cockatiel" award. The path to achieving the "Cockatiel" award was ill-defined. It consisted of Mom asking me to do spur-of-the-moment "feather" tasks, in which I could earn a "feather" and work my way up to the coveted "Cockatiel." "Feathers," I came to see, were chores Mom needed help with or homemaking tasks Mom wanted me to learn. Not surprisingly, due to the obscure nature of the "Cockatiel" requirements and my feminist sensibilities I never earned my "Cockatiel" and Mom will ever bear an empty place on her collar, where my own noble bird pin should have gone.

Second memory: I wasn't there for this but I heard it from Adam. And it's great. Mom couldn't figure out how to turn off the low battery alarm on the fire alarm. It was getting very annoying so she called the fire department to ask their advice. The fire dept. protocol was to send out the entire fleet any time anyone called about anything and that is exactly what they did, though Mom begged them not to come. What I don't know is whether all those firemen in all those fire trucks managed to fix the alarm?

Final memory: I wasn't there for this either but it is also great. Basically Craig went on like 10 different prom dates and all his dates were hussies and wore immodest dresses so Mom knitted a shawl for them to wear. Did she ever ask any of them to wear it Craig?

Any other memories of Mom?

Love you Mom! Thanks for the laughs!

ice is thrice as nice

I tell my friends now a days that our part of Texas doesn't have winter or summer. It has a dry season and a rainy season. The few examples of winter wonder stick out vividly for all of us. anyone remember freezing rain? everything and I mean everything froze. the wind would blow the long grass until the rain froze it in place. the road was covered in layers of ice. it was like someone stopped time and put distorted glass in front of your eyes. school was cancelled for days because nothing could stay on the road until the ice melted. every step you took in the front yard had a crunch noise to it. my favorite part was the the fields of frozen grass. the wind was gone but the grass was bent like it was still blowing and encased in ice. it was beautiful and deceptively strong. you could actually walk on the frozen grass 3 feet off the ground. i remember breaking off ice and sucking on it while sitting on the grass hoping it wouldn't shatter underneath me. who needs a white christmas when you get 3 days of vacation from school and your whole neighboorhood transforms. what do you guys remember about freezing rain?

Insane Lizard

So, this is a New Jersey story, so many previous readers and contributors will be unfamiliar with it, but those who were there and met the infamous black-with-yellow-spots Colombian Tegu will never forget him. Most of our other lizards were slow and lethargic; they rarely put on the kind of show you hope they will when you buy them. The hope with a Savannah monitor is that it will grow large enough to be put on a leash, taken for a walk, and eat annoying neighboring chihuahuas in one bite if they should venture too close.

Not the Tegu.

I remember the first time I saw it hunt. When food animals - generally crickets, I think, were let loose in the cage, the Tegu would dart all around its large mesh cage, killing anything that moved. But it didn't stop to eat before it darted on; it would kill and leave it for later. It had some major superiority complex where everything needed to either be dead, or . . . well, everything else needed to be dead.

Watching Craig hold that demon was a little disturbing. Onlookers would generally laugh nervously, silently hoping and praying Craig's grip didn't falter. It would open its mouth wide and flop its body as far as possible in fast spasm trying to bite him. He did not abide being held very well. He would flop side to side rapidly trying to find some flesh to remove as punishment for deigning to hold him still - I never held him.

One particular time, he got loose, and we couldn't find him. We figured that little "free spirit" found his way out somehow. I hoped I didn't find him in the tub one morning while groggily getting into the shower because that would freak me out pretty good.

A little background on our stairs: there was sort of a balcony that ran from Mom and Dad's room to the star of the stairs which went out between 3-5 steps, turned right, went down another 7 steps, turned right, and went down the final few steps. This will come in to play in a minute.

I don't remember if it was Mom or Dad who called us into their room, but they found him. We cornered him under the bed. Suddenly the Tegu - whose body was probably under 10 inches long not counting his tail, darted out from under the bed, and all of us chased after him. We got to the balcony, but didn't even slow. He jumped from under the iron railing across the void a solid ten feet up - it would have been like 10 stories for a human height-wise - onto the lower, longer level of the stairs where he continued down. We had to run all the way around, so by the time we got downstairs, he was gone. Eventually, we found him under the brown chest thing in the den, where we cornered him for good and captured him. It was very impressive.

Our biggest fan

One of my earliest memories is of me curled up under a blanket immediately in front of a gigantic metal fan. I actually remember doing this a lot. Part of the reason I could never sleep on a bed was because my body needed to b close to a fan for full resting action. This, mind you, was independent of the weather. Our hearty metal allies were originally recruited against the fierce Texas summers, but I slept right next to one even on cold nights, sometimes with several blankets to make up for the fact that all of my body heat was being sucked away. Crazy? Yes. Very.
We also used them to make wind tunnels by clothspinning blankets together. These things could take up a entire room and stayed up as long as we could convince Mom to let us have them.
Sometime someone discovered (and I think it was me) that if you attached a balloon to your favorite action figure, fired up the fan and tipped it vertical, lo and behold, the ting would hover! On medium you could usually fit a good four or five of these balloon warriors and they'd bounce around congenially, but when you shifted it to high, they'd start thrashing about wildly until only the victor remained. Marvels of engineering, those fans.

Ahhh....Toads.

There are few animals capable of bringing more joy than a toad. Toads had a variety of attributes that made them desirable for Rugglets. For one, they were durable. You could hold a toad all day and it would be fine thanks to its dry skin, unlike a frog. They were ready eaters in captivity, which means you could keep them. You could skip a toad across ditch water three or four times and the thing would swim off no problem. They could even survive Cherish, who would scream "fwog!" until Mom made us go out and catch one, no matter how much we protested on behalf of the toad's well-being (Dad still claims this as Cherish's first word). It also helped that they were easy to find and catch. We were constantly hunting them, partly because they were fun and partly because Dad offered an unbelievable monetary sum (100 dollars, if I remember) for the capture of a rare Houston toad. We never found one, always just the more common Gulf Coast toad. They didn't bite, didn't move too fast and were virtually ubiquitous. You could even catch them as tadpoles and let them grow up. There seemed to be swarms of them in the ditches after rain. My favorite time was a few weeks after a big summer storm when all the tadpoles had grown up into extremely tiny toads, which were (and no other word choice would be appropriate here) adorable. One night we foolishly decided to catch as many as we could and load them into one of our many terrariums. The haul was 34, plus a couple tree frogs. Unfortunately, this was the equivalent of starting a night club for toads and their flirtation consists of loud and incessant ribbiting which effectively prevented any sleep on our part. In the morning we just dumped them unceremoniously into the umbrella grass, glad to be rid of them. I don't think there is any Rugglet that can say he or she hasn't kissed a toad. They served as pets, toys, novelty prank items (Sorry, Mom!), pacifiers, friends (for those of us who had none else), and stuffed animals. To a poor family this plague of toads was manna from heaven.

You fill in the rest

"That guy has a death wish..."

How many times have you heard that about how many things?

FHE

Mom and Dad were always good about holding FHE every Monday night. Mom made a nifty little FHE "job" allocator: our names on flower popsicle sticks moved from paper flower pot to paper flower pot, labelled with the FHE "jobs." We sang songs (lots of 5 little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed), said prayers, conducted family business, had lessons about various gospel topics, and played a game. We usually played hide and seek (I don't care what any of you say I invented hiding up the hallway walls), I Spy, Whose got the Penny, Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar, Twister etc. But the best game of all was Buckin' Bronco. Dad was the bronco and we'd all take turns clinging onto his back while he'd try to buck us off. Everyone else would count and the person who could stay on the longest won the game. I loved this game. And I am in awe of Dad, to this day, as to how he bucked 6or so kids in a row. Anyway, after FHE we always had a treat which was great. I would always chose ice cream. Dad always made tapioca when it was his turn. I don't know what all of you liked to make but treat was, for me, the absolute best part of FHE.

Jacking Up the Floor

Speaking of repairs, ya'll remember our assignment to repair the holes in the trailer floor? We (Andy, Brian and me at least) had to lay underneath the trailer with a car jack and pieces of wood. We would push a new piece of wood over the hole and splintered particle board using the jack. Then we'd screw the new wood in place. There was a great deal of mud, cats, junk, laughing and bickering. Then there was the time Dad had me go under there and fix holes by myself as punishment for talking back to him. It wasn't nearly as fun . . . or easy.

Craig, The Window & Me

The summer after my freshman year of college I came home for a couple months before flying out to Taiwan. I was working the 6-6 night shift at Dennys so I slept a lot during the day. I had no bed or room--I slept on the couch. But I was frequently in my old room on the computer chatting with Morgan.

One day, just before I had to leave for work, I wanted to get on the computer to see if Morgan had written. Craig was on it, playing some computer game. I pestered him to get off so I could check. He wouldn't. I pestered some more. Craig yelled at me to go away. I pestered some more. Craig lost it. He stood up (way bigger than me, as all ya'll were) and shoved me into the window. My bum went right through it, shattering the glass.

I have no recollection of what happened next, our reactions, my injuries etc. But I do remember that Mom put an old neighborhood watch sign in place of the broken window. The funniest part of the whole story, I think, is when I was talking about this with mom a few years back and she completely denied putting the neighborhood watch sign in place of the glass. She said she was sure she'd had a new pane of glass installed. I mean, was anything in our house repaired, let alone professionally? Awesome. The best part of the window incident is the semi-yearly conversations I have about it with Craig, who just won't forgive himself. I love you Craigy!

Bread

When I was younger and would walk home from the bus stop on those blustery winter days - you know the ones where it got down to the 50's or even lower - I would always hope Mom had thought to put some water on the stove for hot chocolate. She never did, but she would offer that we could make our own. That, of course, was pointless because I would be warm by the time it was ready.

That being said, sometimes I would walk in the door - on a cold day or otherwise, and that wonderful aroma of Mom's bread would fill me up. Those were great days to come home. Mom's bread, I have later determined, has always been the cornerstone of her cooking reputation. It was so good to come home to.

I used to love grabbing a loaf so hot that it hurt to hold on to and using our Amway knife to cut a fat slice. When it was hot, it was extra soft, so thick slices were required to keep it from squishing permanently. Then I would slather on butter - well, margarine - and just take it all in. I loved the smell and texture and taste. MMmmmmmmmmmm breeaaaddd.

How have we not talked about this before?

Ditch Surfing

When our subdivision was originally created, there wasn't sufficient draining. Often the rain waters would stay in the ditches for weeks. I recall one time when our entire neighborhood looked like a big lake as it was completely under water. If the trailers weren't four feet off the ground, we would have been flooded for sure!

As we waited for the bus to arrive in the morning, we found various things to do for entertainment. My most favorite had to be Ditch Surfing. The rain had washed a piece of plywood to the main ditch on Powerline Road that we used to "surf" across the ditch.

We would place the board partially on the ground but mostly on the water and run as fast as we could toward the board to then jump on it sliding across the ditch. The ditches on Powerline were deeper and wider providing an impressive challenge to cross the ditch successfully without stepping into the ditch or falling in completely. My worst cross involved only one leg submerged to only my knee. I do recall Rupert completely falling into the chocolate water and then having to walk back home and miss the bus. I would practice on the weekends to be prepared for the weekly competitions during rain season.

When I go back now the water drains very quickly. The surrounding modern master plan communities have created excellent draining. The ghetto may have fewer mosquitoes but the children will definitely have no chance for water sport as before.

Do you guys remember when we would spend hours playing with the water draining from our land into the ditch in front of our house? I remember building the coolest "gumbo clay" aqua duct systems that would have put the Romans to shame. I learned a lot during those days. Everything was so "hands" on. Additionally, the mud was great for my skin. I receive compliments to this day.

Making Money

Ya'll remember selling snowcones to the neighbor kids out of the wagon? I would also ride down to the Handy Stop, buy candy, sort it out in an egg carton, and sell it to you boys at a premium. I loved that. And then there were the months (years?) I babysat for Steve and Janet on a weekly basis. 2 whopping dollars an hour. Endless hours of Barney. Weird smelling house. Naked people. Hated it. Other than a few other babysitting gigs the only other job I had while under the age of 18 was hostessing at Steak and Ale. Very fun, lots of cat fights, sexual harassment and drama. And you all? How did you scrounge money as a child? Stay tuned, my next post will be the famous Craig pushing me through the window story.