Once upon a time, my grandparent's had a dog. He was a Shar-Pei (those wrinkly dogs you remember from the Snuggle commercials). His name, classily enough, was Bubba Chang. He arrived one Christmas and was dead by the next. His grave is outside my grandmother's bedroom. So, to commemorate the death of this dog, they bought another dog and commissioned him Bubba.
In the subsequent years, they didn't know quite where to stop. From the woman that they bought Bubba from, they received a dog named Rosco. He was a rescue dog: blind, almost deaf, poor center of balance, and emotionally scarred, this dog had come from a home that should appear only on MSNBC specials on animal abuse...they shouldn't actually exist. And these animals shouldn't actually have to go through these things. Thus, Rosco hates being left alone and must sleep with someone every night. When my grandparents go away, I tend to house sit, because Rosco cries so much at night when he's by himself, the kennel will not take him any longer.
Then they bought Baby Girl and Pretty Girl. Then came Buffy (who died because of an undiagnosed bone marrow cancer at Auburn). Then came Opie. Then came Buddha and Giggles. Then came Izzy. They are black, brown, white, multi-colored, big, small, wire hair, short hair, long hair...a veritable panoply of all aspects of Shar-Peidom. My grandparents breed them, so that's why they have so many. They have such dumb names because that's what happens when you let a seven-year-old (my cousin, Baylee) name all of the animals.
Today, they brought home an all-white puppy. Her name is Gennarosa (sp?). That's what the breeder called her and they didn't change it. And she's really cute. She's 8 weeks old, and I can barely stand it. So, even though two of the other dogs are pregnant already, they continue to accrue dogs.
My mother hates the dogs, I think they're cute, and they have become part of the essential mix of the compound. I'm sure that I'll tell more stories about them someday, but here's the philosophy that this house has towards animals.
A few years ago, my grandfather had a violent infection that ultimately proved fatal. During this time, my grandparents bought him a puppy. My mother thought that he didn't care, but it seemed to bring some light into his life. So, my Aunt Lani said "If it'll make him smile, I'll buy him a dozen damn dogs."
So, we add family members. Because they make us smile in the face of all that isn't happy.
Falling Into the New Year
On New Year's, my brother hosted a party. About twenty people showed up to drink a little bit, dance a little bit, play cards, watch TV, and just generally hang out. As 2008 drew to a close, our friend Martin punched himself. In the face. Which is ridiculous, but people do stuff like that all the time. But no, Martin hit himself in the face hard enough to knock himself through a window.
As the glass shattered, my brother and his roommate hauled him back in through the window and extracted the glass shard about the size of a deck of cards from his ass. There was a little blood, but nothing to infect anybody or make anyone pass out. The room went quiet. The music was turned off. And my brother made an announcement:
"Everyone leave. Grab a DD and get out." And they did. Within fifteen minutes, his apartment went from a party house to empty. Mason walked around and turned the lights out and called my father.
"I'm afraid my neighbors are going to call the cops."
"When did this happen?"
"Like fifteen minutes ago."
"Well, if the cops aren't there yet, they aren't coming. They're out in force, especially tonight." This comforted my brother somewhat. My dad offered to send me to go pick him up so that the apartment would be abandoned in case anyone showed up. My brother declined...they would be able to figure out whose apartment it was with the most minute of efforts.
"I'm just going to go to bed."
"Where is Martin?"
"Sean drove him down the street."
"Sean's been drinking!"
"And it's just down the street." With that, my brother hung up the phone and maneuvered into his bedroom in his pitch-black apartment. And he went to sleep.
The next morning, waking up to see the hole in his wall, he duct-taped a sheet over it, and called a glazier.
Now, this story is funny to me because someone punched themselves hard enough to fall through a window. I don't masochists with that sort of willpower. It just goes to show you the evil of drink. I feel likke after one of these stories, I should now tell awful prom night stories and tell you how many empty calories are in beer. But I don't really believe that. I like wine a lot. And sometimes, I like being tipsy.
But, just because you're in college doesn't mean that when you drink too much consistently, you don't have a drinking problem. Just because it's cool to drink every weekend and practically expected doesn't make that not borderline compulsive. Alcoholism is one of the unspoken diseases of the young.
How do you deal with something like this? As much as I love a bulleted list, I don't know what to say. You can talk to the person, but they won't be receptive. Due to the cultural factors and the normalcy of the problem, few people would actually seek help. And it's not every one looking for a good time, but there are enough people with problems to make this story an uncomfortable chuckle on the iceberg of larger problems.
So, I'll continue to see people show up drunk to shows. I'll continue to watch people drink fifths of vodka by themselves. I'll watch an Oprah special unfold right before my eyes.
And I don't know how to stop it.
But this is making me sad. I'm going to go have a margarita and feel better.
As the glass shattered, my brother and his roommate hauled him back in through the window and extracted the glass shard about the size of a deck of cards from his ass. There was a little blood, but nothing to infect anybody or make anyone pass out. The room went quiet. The music was turned off. And my brother made an announcement:
"Everyone leave. Grab a DD and get out." And they did. Within fifteen minutes, his apartment went from a party house to empty. Mason walked around and turned the lights out and called my father.
"I'm afraid my neighbors are going to call the cops."
"When did this happen?"
"Like fifteen minutes ago."
"Well, if the cops aren't there yet, they aren't coming. They're out in force, especially tonight." This comforted my brother somewhat. My dad offered to send me to go pick him up so that the apartment would be abandoned in case anyone showed up. My brother declined...they would be able to figure out whose apartment it was with the most minute of efforts.
"I'm just going to go to bed."
"Where is Martin?"
"Sean drove him down the street."
"Sean's been drinking!"
"And it's just down the street." With that, my brother hung up the phone and maneuvered into his bedroom in his pitch-black apartment. And he went to sleep.
The next morning, waking up to see the hole in his wall, he duct-taped a sheet over it, and called a glazier.
Now, this story is funny to me because someone punched themselves hard enough to fall through a window. I don't masochists with that sort of willpower. It just goes to show you the evil of drink. I feel likke after one of these stories, I should now tell awful prom night stories and tell you how many empty calories are in beer. But I don't really believe that. I like wine a lot. And sometimes, I like being tipsy.
But, just because you're in college doesn't mean that when you drink too much consistently, you don't have a drinking problem. Just because it's cool to drink every weekend and practically expected doesn't make that not borderline compulsive. Alcoholism is one of the unspoken diseases of the young.
How do you deal with something like this? As much as I love a bulleted list, I don't know what to say. You can talk to the person, but they won't be receptive. Due to the cultural factors and the normalcy of the problem, few people would actually seek help. And it's not every one looking for a good time, but there are enough people with problems to make this story an uncomfortable chuckle on the iceberg of larger problems.
So, I'll continue to see people show up drunk to shows. I'll continue to watch people drink fifths of vodka by themselves. I'll watch an Oprah special unfold right before my eyes.
And I don't know how to stop it.
But this is making me sad. I'm going to go have a margarita and feel better.
Woman of AIDS, Mother of Panic
Submitted for the approval of the Memoir Society, I call this story "Woman of AIDS, Mother of Panic"
My mother thought she had AIDS in the early 1990's.
You have to know my mother for that to sound like the insanity that it truly is. My mother, while never dull, has never risen to the level that AE felt like they needed to have an intervention. Plus, she's only been with a few people. We've never had that particular talk, but I think a few glasses of wine and I could get the number out of her. Suffice it to say, she didn't share heroin needles or have unprotected anal sex for kicks.
But, it was a scary time. And she was a new mom. She had gone from the summer of 1988 when she didn't have a care in the world but her husband and her career. She could take off at a moment's notice to go away for the weekend, hit the beach, run the side bets at a fishing tournament, politically campaign for someone, join a charismatic church, bless out a liar, and still be at home in time to catch the evening news with my father. This changed, though, and in the summer of 1990, she had two very large, very heavy, very demanding children. My brother and I required a special amount of looking after.
It got to the point that we were living on a farm out in the middle of nowhere, sticksville, USA in south Georgia. The nearest grocery store was thirty miles away. Our farmhouse would be dusted by crop dusters (post DDT, but not by too much) everyday. And that freaked my mother out. As did having these two little aliens all to herself all day long everyday. As did being removed by a few hundred miles from all of her friends and her life in Panama City, Florida. As did the animosity between my brother and I. Even at eighteen months, I didn't appreciate the new alien (my little brother, Mason) that had imposed himself in my family situation, and I was not above shoving him out of the way to get what I wanted.
To give you an idea of how isolated my mother was, she was thirty miles from the nearest grocery store. Imagine having to haul two babies into a van for a trip to the grocery store, pushing them around, getting food for a family of four in a buggy that has a car seat in it to hold the infants, and all of the work that that implies. Now, my mother wasn't one of those women living on the Great Plains in a house mad of sod that occasionally had a snake fall out of the roof, but it was an ordeal.
Anyway, back in the early 1990's, they didn't know what this little thing called "Anxiety Disorder" was. My mother, however, had it. In spades. She had her first panic attack in a Hardee's drive-through on the way back from the grocery store with my brother and me. All she could think was "I can't breathe, and I'm going to die in this damn drive-through in front of my babies." She calmed down, finally got her breath back, got a Diet Coke in the drive through, and went home, hunched over the wheel. When she turned on to the dirt road where our farm house was, she was white knuckling it. She just wanted to get the groceries inside, put the kids down for a nap, and figure out what was wrong with her.
Well, at this same time, my father's parents had a condo in Panama City, and my family would go visit them a few times a month. One day, one of my grandfather's friends was this GP named Harry. Harry would come down to Panama City, stay with my grandparents, and go fishing on some of Granddaddy Mack's boats. Back in this age before HIPAA, healthcare reform, malpractice, and all that jazz, my mother got all of her medical check-ups pro bono from granddaddy's friends. So, Harry was looking over my mom.
He looked at my mom, glancing her over, ran a normal blood test, and sat her down. My mother had lost about two stone (somewhere near thirty pounds) in the previous two years, which is abnormal, considering all she did was look after children. She should have, in theory, gained weight...it isn't a reigstered diet secret that you lose weight by watching Santa Barbara. However, she looked like she was wasting away, her vitality and color draining fromher face. So, he told her that she probably had AIDS and she should prepare herself and her family for the inevitable test results.
My mother freaked out. This was during an era when AIDS testing took two weeks. When it had only recently been reclassified from GRID. When the disease was less than ten years old. When it wasn't an international health concern. When you thought you could get it from anywhere, and that was partly true. Now, my mother is a smart woman, but when he told her that she might be full-blown AIDS, she thought "Possible."
She had only been married to my father for a few years, so it might have come through her previous sexual partners. Or, she might have received it in a transfusion (my mother had cancer twice and broke her neck within a two year span at this same time, but those are other stories for other days). It was a scary time, and she couldn't say for sure that she was clean. Which made the next two weeks terrifying.
Over the next two weeks, my mother had at least one panic attack a day. Her throat would swell, she'd hyperventilate, and she would be constantly on edge, her nerves shot by the end of the evening. She was sure that she was going to die and abandon her family that she had worked so hard to gain.
They called her back two weeks later: negative. But the damage was done. My mother had developed an anxiety syndrome that was so bad, she couldn't make regular doctor's appointments. And because it went undiagnosed, it kept getting worse. And my mother kept losing weight.
In this pre-internet age, her godsend appeared in the form of Sixty Minutes. They ran a special on this new, very real disorder called "Anxiety Syndrome." And my mother had all the symptoms. She turned to my father and said, "That's what I have. That's what's wrong with me." She misted up a little. She wasn't having a panic attack then, but she was experiencing a common catharsis seen in hospitals everyday: even though the prognosis isn't good, it's comforting to be able to put a name to your enemy.
She went later that week and interviewed with a neurologist and got a positive diagnosis and some pills (Cerzone, my mother says, is the best drug ever produced. A pinch under the tongue could quell a hurricane). She started to gain the weight back, nearly as inexplicably as she lost it. But, thinking back, she figured it out.
Left alone with two children and this medical condition she didn't understand that made her choke, she wouldn't eat when she was alone because she was afraid of choking, falling over, passing out, dying, and my dad walking into my cries and my brother's empty stare as we huddled near our mother's cooling corpse. I might have inherited my hint of the macabre from her. So, she only ate dinner with my father every night. She was trying to keep up with two infants on roughly 600 calories a day. Some anorexics do better than that. No wonder she looked like she was falling apart.
After she regained her strength, Dottie made an appointment to see Dr. Harry. When he walked into his office and found her, she cussed him out for fifteen solid minutes at the top of her lungs. His exam rooms were full. Nurses scurried into other rooms. People peered out of rooms. When she finally stormed out, she went to my grandmother and told her what she had done.
"Good for you," was all Grandma Helen said. And strangely, Dr. Harry never went fishing with my grandparents ever again.
My mother thought she had AIDS in the early 1990's.
You have to know my mother for that to sound like the insanity that it truly is. My mother, while never dull, has never risen to the level that AE felt like they needed to have an intervention. Plus, she's only been with a few people. We've never had that particular talk, but I think a few glasses of wine and I could get the number out of her. Suffice it to say, she didn't share heroin needles or have unprotected anal sex for kicks.
But, it was a scary time. And she was a new mom. She had gone from the summer of 1988 when she didn't have a care in the world but her husband and her career. She could take off at a moment's notice to go away for the weekend, hit the beach, run the side bets at a fishing tournament, politically campaign for someone, join a charismatic church, bless out a liar, and still be at home in time to catch the evening news with my father. This changed, though, and in the summer of 1990, she had two very large, very heavy, very demanding children. My brother and I required a special amount of looking after.
It got to the point that we were living on a farm out in the middle of nowhere, sticksville, USA in south Georgia. The nearest grocery store was thirty miles away. Our farmhouse would be dusted by crop dusters (post DDT, but not by too much) everyday. And that freaked my mother out. As did having these two little aliens all to herself all day long everyday. As did being removed by a few hundred miles from all of her friends and her life in Panama City, Florida. As did the animosity between my brother and I. Even at eighteen months, I didn't appreciate the new alien (my little brother, Mason) that had imposed himself in my family situation, and I was not above shoving him out of the way to get what I wanted.
To give you an idea of how isolated my mother was, she was thirty miles from the nearest grocery store. Imagine having to haul two babies into a van for a trip to the grocery store, pushing them around, getting food for a family of four in a buggy that has a car seat in it to hold the infants, and all of the work that that implies. Now, my mother wasn't one of those women living on the Great Plains in a house mad of sod that occasionally had a snake fall out of the roof, but it was an ordeal.
Anyway, back in the early 1990's, they didn't know what this little thing called "Anxiety Disorder" was. My mother, however, had it. In spades. She had her first panic attack in a Hardee's drive-through on the way back from the grocery store with my brother and me. All she could think was "I can't breathe, and I'm going to die in this damn drive-through in front of my babies." She calmed down, finally got her breath back, got a Diet Coke in the drive through, and went home, hunched over the wheel. When she turned on to the dirt road where our farm house was, she was white knuckling it. She just wanted to get the groceries inside, put the kids down for a nap, and figure out what was wrong with her.
Well, at this same time, my father's parents had a condo in Panama City, and my family would go visit them a few times a month. One day, one of my grandfather's friends was this GP named Harry. Harry would come down to Panama City, stay with my grandparents, and go fishing on some of Granddaddy Mack's boats. Back in this age before HIPAA, healthcare reform, malpractice, and all that jazz, my mother got all of her medical check-ups pro bono from granddaddy's friends. So, Harry was looking over my mom.
He looked at my mom, glancing her over, ran a normal blood test, and sat her down. My mother had lost about two stone (somewhere near thirty pounds) in the previous two years, which is abnormal, considering all she did was look after children. She should have, in theory, gained weight...it isn't a reigstered diet secret that you lose weight by watching Santa Barbara. However, she looked like she was wasting away, her vitality and color draining fromher face. So, he told her that she probably had AIDS and she should prepare herself and her family for the inevitable test results.
My mother freaked out. This was during an era when AIDS testing took two weeks. When it had only recently been reclassified from GRID. When the disease was less than ten years old. When it wasn't an international health concern. When you thought you could get it from anywhere, and that was partly true. Now, my mother is a smart woman, but when he told her that she might be full-blown AIDS, she thought "Possible."
She had only been married to my father for a few years, so it might have come through her previous sexual partners. Or, she might have received it in a transfusion (my mother had cancer twice and broke her neck within a two year span at this same time, but those are other stories for other days). It was a scary time, and she couldn't say for sure that she was clean. Which made the next two weeks terrifying.
Over the next two weeks, my mother had at least one panic attack a day. Her throat would swell, she'd hyperventilate, and she would be constantly on edge, her nerves shot by the end of the evening. She was sure that she was going to die and abandon her family that she had worked so hard to gain.
They called her back two weeks later: negative. But the damage was done. My mother had developed an anxiety syndrome that was so bad, she couldn't make regular doctor's appointments. And because it went undiagnosed, it kept getting worse. And my mother kept losing weight.
In this pre-internet age, her godsend appeared in the form of Sixty Minutes. They ran a special on this new, very real disorder called "Anxiety Syndrome." And my mother had all the symptoms. She turned to my father and said, "That's what I have. That's what's wrong with me." She misted up a little. She wasn't having a panic attack then, but she was experiencing a common catharsis seen in hospitals everyday: even though the prognosis isn't good, it's comforting to be able to put a name to your enemy.
She went later that week and interviewed with a neurologist and got a positive diagnosis and some pills (Cerzone, my mother says, is the best drug ever produced. A pinch under the tongue could quell a hurricane). She started to gain the weight back, nearly as inexplicably as she lost it. But, thinking back, she figured it out.
Left alone with two children and this medical condition she didn't understand that made her choke, she wouldn't eat when she was alone because she was afraid of choking, falling over, passing out, dying, and my dad walking into my cries and my brother's empty stare as we huddled near our mother's cooling corpse. I might have inherited my hint of the macabre from her. So, she only ate dinner with my father every night. She was trying to keep up with two infants on roughly 600 calories a day. Some anorexics do better than that. No wonder she looked like she was falling apart.
After she regained her strength, Dottie made an appointment to see Dr. Harry. When he walked into his office and found her, she cussed him out for fifteen solid minutes at the top of her lungs. His exam rooms were full. Nurses scurried into other rooms. People peered out of rooms. When she finally stormed out, she went to my grandmother and told her what she had done.
"Good for you," was all Grandma Helen said. And strangely, Dr. Harry never went fishing with my grandparents ever again.
Weird Dreams
"Last night, I had the strangest dreams..."
--The Postal Service, "Sleeping In"
I have the strangest dreams when I'm at home. I don't know what it is about the Tifton environment. The only thing I can surmise is that I sleep more at home than I do at Shorter. So, anyway, already this season I have already dreamed that I have stabbed my father, skipped all of my exams, and gone surfing.
Last night, I wrecked my car.
I was driving down Broad Street in Rome, GA in my car. I was conscious that it was in its current condition. It was night time. When I hit the city limit, though, I couldn't see anything. My eyes watered up and my car started going incredibly fast. Eventually, so that I wouldn't hurt anyone else, I veered my car into a ditch. When I woke up, it was daylight. My car was up an embankment, and Pearson, the Physics professor at Shorter, and the couch squatter were helping me out of my car. It was odd to see them there, because I consciously knew that they didn't belong to a rescue effort.
Odd. I have this sort of dream all of the time.
--The Postal Service, "Sleeping In"
I have the strangest dreams when I'm at home. I don't know what it is about the Tifton environment. The only thing I can surmise is that I sleep more at home than I do at Shorter. So, anyway, already this season I have already dreamed that I have stabbed my father, skipped all of my exams, and gone surfing.
Last night, I wrecked my car.
I was driving down Broad Street in Rome, GA in my car. I was conscious that it was in its current condition. It was night time. When I hit the city limit, though, I couldn't see anything. My eyes watered up and my car started going incredibly fast. Eventually, so that I wouldn't hurt anyone else, I veered my car into a ditch. When I woke up, it was daylight. My car was up an embankment, and Pearson, the Physics professor at Shorter, and the couch squatter were helping me out of my car. It was odd to see them there, because I consciously knew that they didn't belong to a rescue effort.
Odd. I have this sort of dream all of the time.
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