Day 25 = Swamp Monster Soup (Part 2)

Every once in a while my mom would bring back a mysterious batch of highly sought after soup from my great grandparent's house. It arrived at our house still frozen, packed in a white cardboard container, the likes of which I had never seen anywhere else. Its proportions were similar to the average carton of milk, except this carton was unlabeled and it had clearly taken a few rounds of steroids.  After the giant blank box thawed, my mom dumped the contents into a pot where we finally got a glimpse of the mystery soup inside.  To the untrained eye, it appeared to be an ordinary looking variety of vegetable beef stew. The only major difference was that this particular version was chock full of bright yellow corn kernels. I was informed that it was also quite spicy. For some reason, my dad and his dad would get super excited to get their hands on a big old bowl of this brothy brown concoction. Personally, I never quite understood the appeal. In my opinion, a meal of basic beef stew where the chef had been a bit heavy handed with the corn niblets and old bay was not a reason to get all worked up.

After all, my mom knew her way around the kitchen pretty well. She was perfectly capable of turning out a rather respectable beef stew. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why the heck this soup sent from Great Grampa was so stinkin' special? Obviously, it must have included some super secret ingredient that was only accessible to my great grandparents. I guess in that case, I should probably give it a whirl. I didn't want to miss out on this rare opportunity, but for some strange reason, my mom was hesitant.  I assumed that she was afraid that I wouldn't like it and wasting food at our house was a major no-no. After promising to finish whatever tiny amount that I was served, I was finally given my own ladleful.  Dad and Grampa did not share the unspoken concerns of my mother.  They thought that I should definitely try the soup. 

Of course they did. They were the two masterminds behind the highly controversial "one spoonful" rule. In our household, we were not allowed to proclaim that we did not like something unless we had tried a small sample of the food in question.  Furthermore, if you already knew from past experience that you definitely hated said food, you were still strongly encouraged to try it again.  The philosophy was "You never know, your taste buds might have changed."  In some cases this theory did actually hold true.  I did eventually develop a taste for things like beer and coffee, but my taste buds are still holding strong when it comes to chowing down on coleslaw. Despite repeatedly coaxing a solitary spoonful of this vile substance past my lips, I still can't stand it. My sister has found the same to be true with frozen mixed vegetables and my brother's feelings about macaroni and cheese of any kind remain unchanged.  Therefore, I can only partially endorse the one spoonful rule.  It's mostly a bust related to revisiting dishes that I already find revolting.  That being said, I can't argue with its validity when applied to new and unfamiliar foods. How can anyone make an informed decision about food preferences if they won't slurp a single spoonful of the meal in question? 

On this particular occasion, the logic of Dad and Grampa's one spoonful rule seemed sound.  My mother's strangely vague apprehension surrounding the mystery soup was not enough to sway my decision one way or the other. Despite the fact that the adults were divided on the stew sampling issue, I still made up my mind to go for it. I was curious to find out what all the fuss was about. Noticeably, both of my older siblings chose to abstain from this adventurous taste trial, indulging in a far less intriguing bowl of chicken noodle instead. This alone should have clued me in to the fact that something strange was afoot. 

On any given night, if you did not care for whatever house specialties that my mother was fixing for dinner, you had two choices:  Option A...Keep your opinion to yourself and eat it anyway thus avoiding the "starving children somewhere/lucky to have a mother who prepares nutritious meals for you" lecture. Option B...Quietly take it upon yourself to prepare an acceptable alternative thus avoiding the "I am not a short order cook/if you don't like it, you'll have to settle for peanut butter and jelly" lecture. On this particular occasion, my mom had prepared both the special mystery soup and a bonus pot of chicken noodle. Having a substitute soup option specifically prepared in advance by my mom should have definitely tipped me off.  This mystery soup was no ordinary pot of stew.  That, and zero mention of the one spoonful rule should have been dead giveaways, but I was already committed to my decision.

While the first soup selection came from Great Grampa, the alternative choice was provided by some lady that I didn't know.  Although I never met her in person, I sure did enjoy her cooking style. Her name was Mrs. Grass and when it came to prepackaged soup, she was a brilliant innovator. When there was no time to whip up a steaming pot of homemade chicken noodle soup from scratch, you could turn to good old Mrs. G for a helping hand. Her special recipe was sold in a bright blue package and every single box contained an extremely special ingredient. This carefully hidden gem could be found in the bottom of each box, tucked among a tangle of tiny yellow sticks of starch. Her method deviated sharply from the other boring boxed competitors where you simply dumped a chunky waterfall of dry powder and noodles into a pan.  Even against those cats over at Lipton who patented the circular noodle, Mrs. Grass held her own.  

Her soup contained the most awesome soup making invention since the pot...the magic seasoning egg. The preparation steps for her soup were similar to most other store bought brands, with one tiny, awe-inspiring exception. When preparing a box of Mrs. Grass, one lucky duck was assigned an extremely important and dangerous mission. Typically, children were given the boot while mom was cooking unless good old Mrs. Grass was being featured on the menu.  She gave us kids a legitimate reason to remain within the risky perimeter of the normally forbidden food prep zone. Our special and super dangerous assignment was to drop the magic seasoning egg into the scalding hot cauldron of boiling water at precisely the right moment. Then, everyone would lean over the simmering soup to watch in awe as that egg shaped bit of wonder did its thing. It would float on the surface for just a second, like a chicken flavored fishing bobber, before magically disappearing among a turbulent tumble of fast dancing egg noodles.  Obviously, this Grass lady was a marketing genius.  Observing this soup making miracle never got old, not even for adults. A guaranteed bit of awesome in every tiny egg.

Unfortunately, like everything else that used to be cool, updated safety standards have completely ruined the magic that was once Mrs. Grass. Her soup still contains her amazing invention, the golden flavoring egg, but the point of insertion has now been reassigned. Although it's been quite a while since I dined in her company, I believe that the directions on the package now tell you to unceremoniously dump all the contents of the box into the pot at once. This prevents billions of tots from balancing precariously on kitchen chairs, standing eagerly over the hot stove, clutching little goo filled orbs in their tiny fists. And let's be honest, no kid ever just calmly stood there. They were always impatiently squirming around, whiling away the many minutes before the magic happened.  From personal experience, I can tell you that nothing made the time go faster than trying to aggressively crush that ridiculously resilient egg between your palms. After all, staring at a soup pot, searching for the first signs of a simmer gets pretty boring.  As a mother, I am all about safety measures that prevent little babes from getting burned, but as a kid surviving that element of danger was the best part.  The newly recommended preparation methods just don't pack the same punch. 

Despite my hearty appreciation for Mrs. Grass and her soup, this time I would go a different route, boldly taking on a new taste adventure. I remember the special stew sent to us from Great Grampa being pretty tasty. I still thought it was weird that someone had put loads of corn into a pot of beef stew.  Also, it certainly did have a quite a kick to it, but all in all, I liked it. The chunks of meat were tender and the broth was velvety and rich. The only thing I found strange was that despite its tenderness, the meat seemed to be unusually stringy.  Also, it had a faint unfamiliar aftertaste that I couldn't quite put my finger on.  Still, these two issues did little to affect my overall enjoyment of the meal. I hungrily gobbled up my first bowl of mystery soup and went on my merry way. From that point on, whenever Great Grandpa sent us a carton, I joined my dad and grampa in feasting on the special, spicy corn-strewn stew. 

I don't remember exactly how I found out what it was that I was actually eating. I'm willing to bet that it had something to do with my older brother and sister.  Being relentlessly taunted by my two elder siblings who were more than happy to give away the disturbing little secret ingredient sounds likely. I would eventually come to find out that the "beef stew" that I had been happily consuming was not in fact sourced from any local farm. In truth, it's main ingredient had strolled straight from a swamp. For some reason, this swamp to table movement is a regional delicacy that never caught on nationwide. The cow that I thought was in my soup turned out to be a turtle.

Whaaaaat? My parents let me regularly dine on chopped up chunks of cute little turtle without telling me? Isn't that a form of child abuse? I mean, we were not even allowed to think about owning pet turtles, but they let me eat one?  My parents weren't anti reptile but they felt the overwhelming risk of catching salmonella from turtle tanks was too great.  To be fair, their fears were not completely unwarranted.  In high school, my dad once accidentally poisoned himself by ingesting a bad baloney sandwich. It's no wonder as it had been languishing all morning in a lunch bag in his locker.  Ever since then, food borne illness was a bit of a touchy subject at our house. To add insult to injury, my mother had been reading a book to me called I Have a Turtle probably since the day I came home from the hospital. It was one of my favorite stories about this little boy that keeps a pet turtle under his mommy's bed in a hat box and nobody knows about it. Talk about sneaky secrets! Come to find out I had been regularly swallowing meaty spoonfuls of my cute little reptilian buddy. I was understandably freaked out about the whole affair.

And so, my parents had to sit me down and come clean. Yes, the "beef" in the special stew from Great Grandpa's house was actually turtle meat. Gasp! How could they? But it was NOT the friendly turtles that you might meet up with in the woods. It was actually snapping turtle meat. If you ever met one of those on a hike, you would run screaming in the opposite direction. Accckkk! Gross! Even worse! You voluntarily let me put bits of disgusting prehistoric swamp dwelling reptiles into my mouth? Ewwwww! Spit. Spit. Spit. I am never, ever forgiving you and now that definitely counts as child abuse!

Despite my obvious outrage, this helped sort out another unsolved mystery from childhood. Suddenly, it all began to make sense. At my great grandparent's house, there was a special galvanized metal tub covered with chicken wire. Inside lived the meanest gang of turtles that you ever came across in your life. Their razor sharp jaws could easily snap even the sturdiest of sticks in two. This left a meaningful and lasting impression. The fact that they could certainly consume any pint-sized pointer finger that came their way was taken seriously, even by kids who might normally be considered risk takers. Unruly youth who refused to wear bike helmets and played with matches knew better than to tango with those tough guy turtles. We were continuously warned not to play with them, although I think they handled their own avoidance PR better than any adults ever could. They used to hiss and flail around anytime you went within fifty feet of their enclosure. Of course, I knew that they weren't pets, but I didn't know that they were in a sort of holding pen, waiting to be carefully cleaned and stewed for dinner. The scary snappers were such a regular part of life at Great Gramma and Grampa's house that you would be hard pressed to find any visitors who hadn't had at least one quick gander at that terrifying tub of turtles.

Later in life, I would learn exactly how those cranky old snapping turtles ended up in the tub. The first method involved tying some hunks of rotting meat onto enormous hooks. They looked just a hair smaller than the size Captain Hook might need. You simply used some strong line to secure them to the handle of old empty milk or bleach containers.  Then, all you had to do was find some swampy looking bit of water, and float the plastic jugs on the surface.  Eventually, a hungry snapping turtle came along in search of a snack. Consider it a way to re-purpose waste materials before recycling was a regular thing. If you weren't that patient, there was still another option. To try it, you had to be fearless or dumb or possibly both. If you were neither, being able to locate a convenient source of liquid courage probably helped. 

This second method required much greater skill. You had to silently wade along the shoreline of streams, ponds, and swamps in search of turtle condominiums. Once you located a possible piece of turtle real estate, you would sneakily slide your hand under the surface of the water. Then, you had to carefully reach up into holes and stumps along the bank in search of your tasty turtle friends. Hopefully, you met up with snapper shells hiney end first. Also, you had to watch out for mistakenly invading the residence of a snake, a beaver, or a muskrat. It probably goes without saying that none of these creatures reacted in a very friendly manner to the surprise presence of an unwanted arm invading their living space.

The inherent danger of hand fishing for turtles was not taken lightly. My mother and my paternal grandfather both had a permanently parted finger nail. They would frequently commiserate about the grief it gave them, although the way they acquired their unique deformity couldn't be more different. The nails would grow normally until they reached a certain point where they would veer off into two separate forks like the tongue of a hissing snake. It wasn't unsightly and most people probably never even noticed it, however, it caused each of them trouble. It was extremely easy to catch on every little thing under the sun, like having a permanent hang nail to watch out for. No matter how many times they clipped it, filed it, or glued it, it would continue to split at the exact same point due to a healed scar that forever existed underneath the nail bed. Despite the similarity of their injury, its acquisition couldn't be more opposite. I assure you that my mother was not involved in tracking down any kind of wild reptile. She had accidentally wounded herself in a much more civilized pursuit, the victim of freak sewing machine accident.  Supposedly, my grandfather had acquired his injury at the hands mouth of a mean old muskrat. Legend has it that my grandpa got into an epic cussing match with this muskrat that bit him on the finger. Really, what did you expect when you stuffed your giant hand into his cozy little mud hut?

A case of mistaken identity, Grampa wasn't seeking muskrat, his goal was to snag a big old fat snapping turtle. Should you inadvertently meet up with a snapping turtle beak first, there was only one thing to do if he refused to let go. I know this because my great grandfather taught all of his offspring this top secret emergency removal technique just in case. Thankfully, I've never had to use it myself, but supposedly if a snapping turtle has clamped his beaky little bite onto someone or something and you want it to let go, you simply poke it in the posterior. Voila, it will instantly release its painful and powerful grip. I shared this morsel of knowledge at lunch with my suburban coworkers one day and I got the, "Oh my God, your childhood must have been absolutely awful" look. No matter, I was willing to put myself out there in order to share such an important public service announcement. Now, if they ever have to duke it out with a snapping turtle, they'll at least have a fighting chance. 

Disclaimer: To any animal rights folks who may be reading this, I am in no way advocating unwarranted animal abuse, not even towards mean, old ugly snappers. This technique is to be reserved for extreme emergencies where it is you or the turtle (more likely your finger or the turtle). Despite the fact that it sounds fairly plausible, I am certainly in no position to guarantee that it actually works. Not to mention, where I am from, things can be extreme. Poking a snapping turtle in the bum to remove it while keeping it alive beats the heck out of whacking it into submission with the business end of a shovel. I obviously don't condone that sort of thing either. I'm just saying stuff like that happens out in the country. How you choose to save yourself from a snapping turtle attack is your business. Back to the soup.

The idea of chowing down on the kind of cute little turtles that kids occasionally brought to show and tell was obviously upsetting. The fact that it was not this type of turtle was a kind of relief, but swallowing morsels of prehistoric swamp monster was equally disconcerting. I certainly had no fondness for them or where they lived, that's for sure. In my previous post, I mentioned that not too far behind my house was a fairly substantial swamp. I lived there for over twenty years, but I never personally saw it myself. I know it was there because whenever our dog Sandy decided to go on walkabout, she would return sporting scummy souvenirs from this putrid parcel of stinkwater. After what seemed like days of hollering from our back porch, she would eventually trot back home, slimed in a lovely shade of florescent green pond scum. Fortunately, these little unplanned excursions were fairly rare for her, unlike those of our more adventurous (read never owned a leash in his life) neighbor dog.

Our neighbors owned a collie. If you're thinking Lassie, stop right there. Unless your version of Lassie smelled and looked like he was recently buried up to the neck in a combination off peat moss and garbage. If so, toss in a little bit of rotting roadkill for good measure, then by all means continue. The parts of his fur that were supposed to be that lovely reddish brown collie color had morphed into a revolting shade of greenish yellow usually only found in dirty diapers. The neighbor lady called him Smokey but all of her children referred to him as Bear. As a kid, I could never figure out why the dog had two completely different names. In hindsight, his name must have obviously been Smokey the Bear. Unless he was going to lift his leg and whiz on your campfire, I couldn't possibly tell you what he and that giant hat wearing grizzly had in common. The neighbor girl used to constantly ask me if I wanted to pet her dog. I always politely declined, afraid I'd lose a hand. She would kindly explain that he was super gentle and didn't bite, but I steadfastly refused to oblige. While he really was uber friendly, I was terrified that if I touched his disgusting matted fur, my hand might fall clean off. God knows what alarming level of toxins he had absorbed into his body over the years.

At some point, poor old Smokey had his own unfortunate run in with a snapping turtle. His souvenir was a newly redesigned tongue. On hot summer days, Smokey would saunter across the field between our houses in search of his youngest owner. By the time he reached our yard, his long pink tongue was usually hanging out. Even from a considerable distance, you could clearly see the perfect triangle that had been stolen from the edge of his licker, snatched by the wicked pointy beak of a feisty snapping turtle. Having obviously not learned his lesson, it was good old Smokey who found the second biggest snapping turtle that I ever saw in my life. The biggest snappers I ever observed made their home in a reservoir on the border of New York and Pennsylvania. From an elevated observation area, you can peer down and see herds of giant snapping turtles cruising around just beneath the surface of the water. From three stories up, their shells look like giant underwater flying saucers. I assure you that I will not be swimming there anytime soon.

While avoiding murky green waters was a relatively safe bet, it didn't guarantee a snapper free existence. I will never forget the day good ole Smokey tracked down this behemoth of a reptile inching her way across my very own backyard. She must have made a wrong turn on her way back to the swamp and found herself unexpectedly along the edge of our woods. Seeing a prehistoric creature amble about your lawn may be fascinating to some but I was downright petrified. In fact, I was so scared that upon seeing it, I developed a spontaneous nosebleed right there on the spot. At first, I thought that the snapping turtle had made a lightning fast strike. For a brief moment, I was actually afraid that I had lost the tip of my nose. Then I remembered that this was a species of turtle and not a cheetah. 

With hand clutched to face, I frantically sprinted to the house in search of tissues. I'm sure that little scene temporarily freaked my mom out. Once I was safely inside, it was clear to all parties involved that I had not been attacked by the turtle. It was at that point that my very own mother had the audacity to inquire if I had been picking my nose. I don't know which offended me more...the accusation that I had been digging for treasure in my right nostril or the idea that I had exposed any of my digits in the presence of a snapping turtle. Did she not realize that this extremely hostile amphibian had the ability to rip body parts clean off? I mean she was obviously not paying attention during the broom handle safety demonstration at Great Grampa's house! I most certainly did not place a single finger in my snoot out there. Both of my hands had been securely jammed in my pockets the entire time, safely tucked away from the danger of those digit destroying prehistoric jaws.

I will be the first to admit that my fear of swamps and snapping turtles may not be very realistic, but I'm still not going to get over it any time soon. I blame my parents of course for choosing to raise me in a snapping turtle ridden, swamp covered area of the state.  To that end, I do not recommend their realtor.  Luckily, there aren't many swamps to contend with here in the suburbs of Long Island. The neighborhood turtles are a cute, friendly bunch that mostly keep to themselves, unlike those bloodthirsty swamp beasts back home. The local variety of turtles are also rare and protected and it is illegal to eat them. This makes sharing my childhood tales of turtle tasting seem even crazier than normal, which is fine with me. I am perfectly okay admitting that I have happily consumed my fair share of snapping turtle soup and I don't feel one bit bad about it. 

In fact, I'd try it all over again if I had the chance but these days, that's unlikely.  I certainly am not going to be the one who volunteers to stuff my arm into a muddy hole on the side of a river bank to retrieve dinner. I also have no interest in taking on the arduous and nasty task of cleaning them to prepare the special stew. With my regular turtle suppliers only accessible via seance, it's safe to say that without divine intervention, I won't be featuring snapping turtle soup on the evening menu anytime soon. That's a shame, I would love to see the look of horror on the faces of the parents at the local park when my kids tell their kids, "My mom is from Pennsylvania, and we just had a big old pot of snapping turtle soup for supper." That little gem is guaranteed to either start a lively conversation or end it immediately as people quickly move their children to the other side of the playground, "Kids, slowly back away from the turtle eating weirdos." Either way, it sure beats giving yet another impromptu dissertation on the ins and outs of Amish daily life for the seven hundredth time. 

Posted with Blogsy

Day 24 = Swamp Monster Soup (Part 1)

The things that you see and hear as a small child seem to leave indelible marks on the interior surfaces of your tiny but rapidly developing brain. There are certain images from my early years on the planet that are forever seared into my psyche. They include a somewhat random collection of mostly fond, often hilarious memories, that I am still carrying around.  Fortunately, as a child I did not bear witness to anything truly terrible, just the normal day to day life of growing up in the rural parts of Pennsylvania.

Of course the term "normal" is a relative concept heavily influenced by where you live and with whom you share an abode. If you wander beyond the comfortable familiarity of your home turf, you will discover that this is true. Things that once seemed 100% normal can quickly turn into anything but before a live audience. Unfortunately, you probably won't discover this phenomenon until you happen to nonchalantly mention "normal" stuff to other people who hail from other places. At some point while you are explaining something which you feel is wholly unremarkable, you will notice something odd.  The polite listening faces of your acquaintances will unexpectedly morph into "oh my god, how horrifying" faces right before your eyes. In that moment, you will abruptly come to the realization that your normal is absolutely NOT the same as theirs. In fact, sometimes the only way you could feel more different would be if you were an alien being from another planet.

Unfortunately, the only way to discover that your normal might be atypical is by recounting stories from your past until you hit on one that completely weirds people out. There is no avoiding these situations as you probably won't even realize that your tale is on a one way track to wackytown until it is far too late. Accounts of your prior life won't seem at all strange to you, but the instant feedback from your conversational partners will quickly inform you otherwise. If you are extremely in tune to the facial expressions of your listeners, you might be able to swiftly take corrective action. I won't say that this is totally impossible, but it's highly unlikely. In most cases, the startling awareness that you are starting to appear abnormal has an extremely rapid and irreversible onset. Awkward...sometimes cool...but mostly awkward.

There was a time when I might have hesitated to share certain things with others for fear of being perceived as a strange ranger. These days, I feel much more comfortable sharing my unique version of weird with the world. Obviously, since not only am I sharing these stories with my nearest and dearest, I am proudly broadcasting my wackiness out into the Interwebs. If we were all alike, life would certainly be a tremendous bore.  Besides, connecting with people who love you in spite of or even because of your unique perception of reality is truly the bees knees. Not to mention, trying to constantly conceal anything that the rest of the world might find a bit strange is exhausting and stressful and not at all recommended. Unless your goal is to try to fit in at a middle school lunch table, it's best to come clean with your own brand of crazy. Sure, it might raise a few eyebrows, but in the end, people usually feel compelled to share their own shocking excerpts of weirdness. Trust me, there will always be someone in the room whose upbringing was way more bizarre than yours. Finding out these juicy tidbits is usually worth the risk of putting yourself out there in the first place. So, without further ado, here is the latest installment of totally normal for me but probably bizarre to you. Feel free to one up me your own historically accurate but totally weird tale from the past.

I grew up a hop, skip, and a jump down the road from one of the largest swamps in the entire state of Pennsylvania. Now, I'll be the first to admit that when you compare this particular bit of bog to other swampy areas of the globe, it's probably pretty puny. In fact, I'm not exactly sure how the highest point on the map between Pittsburgh and Erie can have so many stinking swamps, but the place is absolutely riddled with them. They range in size from small stink puddles to miles and miles of marshy misery. There even happened to be a fairly sizeable swamp directly behind my house on the property of my neighbor. I had no idea how large that swamp actually was until decades later when the magic of Google maps brought this fact to my attention. I mean it was no secret that it existed, I was simply unaware of its exact scale.

This is probably for the best as I am to this day fairly terrified of swamps. If I had grasped how large the local marsh scene actually was, I may have never left the house again. In fact, if I ever found myself on one of those survival shows where the participants have to traverse a swamp in order to be rescued, it would probably be the lowest rated episode ever made. I would just lay myself down on the last remaining patch of dry ground and patiently wait there to die. To me, this would be better than having to dip even my smallest pinkie toe into a quarter inch of swamp water. No drama. No crying. No wrestling wild alligators. No being bitten by venomous lizards. For me, calmly waiting to expire while lounging on the comfortable safety of dry land would be the most reasonable strategy. A much more preferable end than the possibility of smothering in inescapable quicksand, drowning in vile green swill or being shredded to bits by a bunch of ornery swamp monsters.

Even as a child, I felt this way. I would sometimes find myself on an exciting woodland adventure with the neighbor kids, who unlike me had no fear of swamps or swampy things. Perhaps, my hesitation was simply a genetic holdover from my mom's exclusively urban upbringing. Despite being born and raised on the rural parts of the map, I just wasn't THAT country. In fact, there was nothing that ground my good times in the wilderness to a screeching halt faster than catching the slightest whiff of putrid swamp stink. Anytime the normally solid forest floor started to feel a little squishy under my feet, I immediately hightailed it to higher ground. Ciao, you kids go on ahead, I'm full up on exploring for the day! So what, if it was just a giant smelly mud puddle chock full of polliwogs, I wasn't willing to take any unnecessary chances.

Despite my avoidance of all marshy matters, I still had occasional brushes with scenes from the swamp. Every once in a while, my dad would get tangled up in the storied swamp on the neighbor's back forty. It usually involved trying to track down one of those elusive monster bucks during deer season. Truth be told, my pop wasn't all that jazzed about wading through swamp water either. Those savvy deer must have known his weakness, as anytime he caught a glimpse of a buck that deserved his own magazine cover shoot, the first thing it did was make a beeline for the swamp.

In this type of scenario, Dad had learned to hold his fire the hard way. After all, in the hunting world, there wasn't a much more unpleasant task than hacking through putrid pools of semi-frozen stinkwater in order to retrieve wounded wildlife. (Truth in disclosure: There are actually way more disgusting things to deal with as a sportsman. However, this is not that kind of blog, so I am going to gloss right over them. The numerous variety of stomach turning possibilities that someone who regularly pursues wild game might encounter can easily be googled.). It was practically a guarantee that any trophy buck who had taken fire would drag himself deep into the bowels of the swamp. No one could deny that this was a valiant attempt to avoid becoming venison. In swampland, pursuing the biggest buck on the planet requires you to keep one eye on the target while simultaneously concentrating on where to place your pigs. If focus is lost, even for a second, you risk losing sight of the prize buck altogether or getting soundly whacked in the mug with frozen brambles. A nasty face scrape comes in second to the unpleasant encore of snow and ice slithering down the inside of your blaze orange coat collar. Equally treacherous, if you actively try to avoid taking an ice coated limb to the snoot, you are definitely going to end up waist deep in a subzero section of swamp swill.

A hardcore hunter, my father was not. He was more than happy to hunker down in a snow bank, snacking on an assortment of beef jerkey bits and high calorie candy. His snack supply was securely stashed in a paper poke in the pocket of his Woolrich. Rather than swashbuckle through swamps, he preferred to stay warm and dry, patiently waiting for trophy bucks to come to him. Great in theory but not so productive in practice. I can count on one hand the number of dead deer bodies my dad dragged home after a successful hunt. It's not that he wasn't a great hunter, I personally believe that he just didn't always choose to look very hard. Of course, being hardcore Bambi boosters from way back, none of us back at the ranch were exactly disappointed to see him stroll out of the woods empty handed. Chalk one up for the deer, one for the swamp, zero for poor dad. Oh well, there was always next year. If nothing else, my father was persistent.

Besides my dad and me, the rest of the family also made every effort to avoid unnecessary contact with the local swamp. Despite our best efforts, occasionally, the swamp came to us. Every once in a while, a slimy creature from those deep dark waters would make a wrong turn and end up in our backyard. More often than not, that mysterious green creature actually belonged to us. She also held on very tightly to the slim hope of being welcomed back into our residence, knowing full well that she was in deep trouble. The trusty family dog happened to be completely untrustworthy when left to her own devices. Despite being a gunshot wound survivor, she could not turn away from the lure of a quick stroll in the forest. Her strong resemblance to a fox made it all the more risky. Unfortunately, her primal need to scour the wild in search of something rotten to roll in outweighed her fear of being accidentally aimed at with live ammo. If she couldn't find a carcass to throw herself on top of, she would settle for second best...a romp through the swamp. She occasionally slinked back home sporting a fancy new perfume. A bit of rancid cologne discretely dabbed behind her two fuzzy ears, and by dabbed I mean swabbed in stinky chartreuse swamp water from the top of her head to the tip of her tail.  Despite having obviously been recently engulfed in mire, she wholeheartedly maintained her innocence. The reeking remnants of her little outdoor adventure, steadfastly streaked through her formerly fluffy fur, were a fairly obvious tell.

On this sort of occasion, my older brother and I would always try to trick each other into taking on the foul task of hosing off the hound in our laundry tub. For some unknown reason, my sister was perpetually excused from this unpleasant chore. While it's true that she washed an awful lot of dishes back in the day, there is no amount of slime coated cookware that equals one muck covered swamp mutt. The remaining two siblings in the gross out grooming pool resorted to a variety of tactics to determine which lucky winner would get to clean off our crusty canine. Our elimination techniques included rock, paper, scissors, leg wrestling, and drawing straws. Desperate times sometimes called for straight up bribery. Finally, unable to tolerate the rotten stench for even one second longer, we would give up trying to pawn the disgusting task off on the other. In hindsight, I'm not sure why we wasted time engaged in such fruitless pursuits in the first place. Our efforts to win the day were hindered by the fact that we were competing with each other while simultaneously jumping up and down, holding our noses and gagging. Since we always ended up working as a team anyway, we should have stopped torturing ourselves much sooner and gotten down to business. Scrubbing stinky swamp water off the disgusting dog was preferable to washing off remnants of fresh roadkill, but only by the slightest of margins. No matter how many bottles of sweet smelling fruit flavored shampoo we doused that dog in, the faint smell of swamp swill still lingered on her furry flanks for weeks.

Although the nearby swamp that our dog frequented was by no means tiny, it was a mere speck on the map compared to the massive swath of marshland that could be found a few miles to the north. My dad worked in a town that happened to be located just on the other side of this gargantuan parcel of gelatinous green goo. In order to get to and from his place of business, dear old dad was required to cross "The Swamp" twice a day. Despite being the most enormous tract of swampland in the state, it had no other name. (This just in...in reality, it has two different names, Geneva Swamp or Conneaut Marsh, but I never personally heard either of them actually used by anyone I knew. In fact, I only recently discovered these unfamiliar titles when doing a bit of research for this story.  I guarantee that many of my local readers are currently saying to themselves, "Who new it had a name?") The fact remains that if you live in this particular region and you say THE swamp, there will never be any question as to which particular one you might be referring.

There were two bridges that traversed this mysterious marsh. One was the interstate which was built on special pilons driven 200 feet down into the bedrock. Rumor has it that they are special floating piles because they could not find any firm ground at the bottom of the swamp. This is only partially true. The true bottom of the swamp covered in peat and quicksand was unable to support the weight of the bridge so they just had to dig down deeper into the Earth to get the job done. During the process, the sneaky swamp swallowed numerous pieces of colossal construction equipment, including an entire train and the tracks that it was resting on. It also coughed up a few mastodon bones that had been hiding out in pockets of peat for a few billion years.

The second of the two bridges was built approximately three inches above the surface of the swamp. I have never before or since crossed any bridge that was so close to the body of water it straddled. Any lower and it could be classified a tunnel. Since we lived on the same stretch of road as the low bridge, it was the usual route that my dad took to work. It didn't happen very often, but this beast of a swamp would occasionally flood. The lower road would be closed, rendered completely invisible by neon green water. Not surprising given its meager elevation.  In fact, I would not be shocked to learn that this swamp covering span of highway was actually constructed below sea level. In case of unexpected deluge, my dad would simply hop on the nearby ramp to the interstate and safely cross the swamp via the much higher flood resistant "floating" bridge instead.

Sadly, every single time that this bit of roadway was underwater, tragedy ensued.  Before the road could be officially shut down, some yahoo in a motorized vehicle that was not seaworthy would attempt to ford the flooded bridge. He or she would meet an unpleasant demise in one of two ways. The first awful scenario involved driving headlong into the swamp since in these conditions the water covered roadway beneath the floodwaters frequently went AWOL. The second tragic tale left a stranded motorist in a rapidly flooding vehicle. Attempting an escape on foot, the driver would be tragically swept away into the deep dark swamp usually never to be seen or heard from again. These cheerful little tales of caution occasionally reached our dinner table and thus my young impressionable ears. Their purpose was not to terrify us, although admittedly they did a pretty good job of that. Instead, these tales of woe were meant to drive home the potentially life saving lesson to never, ever drive into standing water. Unfortunately, this well meaning admonition was served up with a heaping side dish of fodder good for years of professional therapy and a few recurring nightmares.  Don't worry though, if the route to my therapist's office happens to be washed out in a freak rainstorm, I promise to always find a safe and sensible detour. 

Now you know how this particular bit of marsh gave birth to my lifelong fear of swamps.  It doesn't help that it stretches across the landscape as far as the eye can see, twelve miles long and a mile across. Every single time that I have to cross it, I kind of hold my breath. I say kind of as both bridges are super long and if I actually tried to hold my breath for that long, I would certainly pass out.  Increasing the risk of accidentally slingshotting my unconscious self into the swamp in the process would be the exact opposite of my intention.  Fortunately, living 500 miles away from THE swamp prevents me from having to do this with any kind of regularity.  Still, flying off the road into this king sized, lily pad coated killer remains at the tippy top of my worst way to leave the planet list.

Despite my overwhelming worries, if for some reason I needed to travel north, there was no avoiding crossing at least one of the two swamp bridges.  Taking a lengthy detour around the marsh was not a viable option as it would be far too time consuming to accomplish in less than three days.  Complicating matters, for a decade or so of my life, my brother also happened to live on the other side. A lesser woman might have simply waited for him to relocate, but not me. Despite my deep-seated fear of being unceremoniously swallowed up by the swamp, I still managed to will myself to visit him on a fairly regular basis. To be clear, it isn't merely the concern of being drowned or more likely suffocated by pond scum that bothers me.  I am more afraid of the creepy band of critters that call the swamp their home. In fact, I would not be at all surprised to learn that real, live dinosaurs still currently roam the interior portions of this swamp. How exactly did I learn about the scary creatures that silently lurk below the olive colored surface of slime streaked swamp water? Well, it all began with a small bowl of mysterious soup.  Tune in tomorrow to find out more...

Posted with Blogsy

Day 23 = Gramma and the Baton Twirling Cult

My paternal grandparents retired to a sleepy vacation community in the mountains of western Pennsylvania. Outdoor recreation was typically the only form of entertainment to be had, however, there was one annual exception. At the end of every summer, the nearest local hamlet threw a whopper of a celebration. It was an over-the-top, week long festival to honor Native American heritage. Historically, several indigenous tribes had once resided nearby. While setting up makeshift tipis on every single lawn and crowning "Indian" princesses may have been a bit lacking in cultural sensitivity, it was meant to be a sincere homage to the forefathers of the region. A titch misguided perhaps...but the intentions were undoubtedly noble.

Unintentional cultural missteps aside, the festival of fun kicked off every year with a sensational parade. A sucker for this sort of celebration, I was always extremely eager to attend. What kid doesn't jump at the chance to have candy pelted at her from fifty different firetrucks with screaming sirens? Nothing beats listening to local marching bands tootle past the town square with a belly full of bon bons. Except perhaps witnessing the death defying performances of battalions of young girls wielding flaming batons in each fist. (In reality, the art of fire baton is typically reserved for only the most elite twirlers in the bunch, skill being paramount and all, but the previous statement created a much more impressive visual.)

This bit of inside knowledge should tell you that I'm not just your average parade spectator. To be honest, being retired from the sport for several decades, I am not entirely certain that baton twirling groups even exist as a thing anymore. I should probably google that lest I receive angry backlash from current gurus of all things baton. I admit I've allowed myself to get a bit rusty. For all you modern baton twirling enthusiasts out there, I apologize in advance for my outdated knowledge of the twirling world. I promise that I wasn't always so complacent.  As a little girl, I distinctly remember being mesmerized by all those flashy sequined costumes and amazing baton skills. My father's mother was a great fan of baton twirling, ice skating, and gymnastics and it was she who actually planted the seed in my heart to go after the baton for myself. Not having a lot of local opportunities to partake in either ice skating or gymnastics at the competitive level, she chose to encourage the most readily accessible of the three.

One year, as the parade performers streamed by us, I was cheering them on while simultaneously attempting to chomp a rock hard chunk of chewing gum into submission. It was that cheap kind of bubble gum that typically gets flung from firetrucks and floats. After popping it into my mouth, I was certain that given its density, it must have been a leftover from the previous year. Never one to back down from a challenge, I patiently persevered until that petrified piece of pink putty became pliable once again. As I was in the process of silently admiring my awesome gum chewing accomplishment, my grandmother leaned over and whispered in my ear, "Wouldn't you like to do that some day?" I must have looked puzzled, so she clarified her original question. "Wouldn't you like to wear a pretty costume and learn to twirl a baton like that?"

To be honest, prior to that moment, I had never considered this as a possibility for myself. How exactly did one break into the baton twirling scene? I had no idea. Sure, it seemed glamorous and fun but not very attainable right that second. Maybe someday. I'd have to find a way to work out the logistics. My older sister and I always had a few cheapie drugstore batons lying around the house, but we didn't know anyone who twirled professionally. Long before the Internet could reach every corner of the universe, we relied on ancient things like informational posters and word of mouth. Unfortunately, I didn't have any connections in the baton world and neither did anyone I knew at the time.

As a brief aside, do they even still sell batons at drugstores? I can't recall seeing any the last time I replenished my vitamin stash. Probably a discontinued item due to increased liability. I know I certainly had my own fair share of nearly tragic mishaps with such batons. Due to an obvious design flaw in the bargain baton market, the metal tube would almost always get bent or kinked (like within thirty seconds of ownership). Obviously, a clever marketing ploy as it forced every baton loving little girl in America to pony up for a new model every few months. Far worse than a slightly bent baton was the problem with the durability of the rubber protectors that covered each end. After practicing numerous twirling stunts and dropping the baton no less than one billion times, that hollow metal tube that made up the body of the baton would inevitably work its way through one or both of the rubber end caps. Not only unsightly, it was fraught with danger.

In fact, this little manufacturing design glitch was nearly the end of all things baton for me. In an effort to create the ultimate circus trick, I once attempted to go down our sliding board while twirling a baton. My trusty baton just happened to have an unsafe end cap issue. The metal part had completely busted through the rubber tip. Since the baton budget for that month had already been exhausted, there was zero possibility of procuring an intact replacement. Despite the inherent danger in going forward with the act, I had no choice but to make do with what I had on hand. After all, the show must go on. Needless to say, shortly after my wild descent, that old busted baton ended up in the trash can. I ended up nursing a considerable wound to the face. Blunt force trauma to the chin and bottom lip at the hands of my own bargain basement baton. Fortunately, I didn't need stitches and it didn't scar too much, so all I can do is pass on the following important public service message. Unless you are a bona fide circus performer or a stunt person, baton twirling and sliding boards never mix. Please talk to your children about this today. Don't wait until it's too late. Someday, their beautiful little unscarred faces will thank you.

After this terrifying incident, I decided that maybe baton twirling wasn't for me after all. I temporarily shelved my baton twirling dreams while my face and I recovered. In fact, I almost forgot about my destiny altogether, until one day in the middle of third grade. At the end of the day, the teacher casually passed out a little flyer. A local baton twirling group was seeking new members. I clutched the paper flyer tightly in my hand, eager to get home to ask my mom if I could join. The hour long bus ride through rolling farm country that I was forced to endure every single day seemed extra tedious. Once back home, I bolted off the bus and down our driveway until I finally reached my front door, flung it open, and breathlessly demanded to know if I could sign up for twirling lessons. Oddly enough, my older sister had received the exact same flyer and she too was interested in getting into the baton scene. Who knew? Had my grandmother spoken to her as well?

In our haste to become sequin slathered baton beauties, we both forgot the cardinal household rule. Asking only one parent for permission to do something got you nowhere. I always referred to my parents as The United Front. Prior to age eighteen, it was impossible to do anything in our house unless both parental units signed off on it. They operated together seamlessly and remained an undefeated team. Even if one of them agreed to allow something, the other one still had the power to immediately veto the previous decision without further discussion. To prevent this problem from happening, we were usually required to wait patiently until a mutual agreement between the two of them could be reached. My teenage self is rolling her eyes. My parent self totally gets it, but that does little to placate my teenage self.

Quickly remembering the house rules, my sister and I carefully prepared our individual proposals, submitted them before The United Front, and waited for them to carry out their deliberations behind closed doors. When the committee came to our room, we waited silently, dying to hear the word yes. We were devastated to learn that the final decision would be postponed until the following day. We wanted to yell, kick, scream, pout, and rail about the unfairness of it all, but we knew if we ever wanted the chance to become true twirlers, we would have to stifle ourselves. In an act of solidarity, we both pretended like we were totally okay with waiting until the next morning to find out the answer we desperately wanted. Would we be swathed from head to toe in shiny sequins by summer or would all of our sparkly dreams be dashed?

After a lengthy discussion of the pros and cons of allowing us to become baton twirlers, my sister and I were permitted to attend an informational meeting. This meeting kicked off both of our illustrious baton twirling careers. Once we crossed the threshold of the local fire hall, paid our two dollars, and held our first real baton, all bets were off. We had achieved official twirler status. If we had to drain every last cent from our piggy banks, and walk the five miles from our house to practice each week, we were going to make this thing happen.

Despite such an exciting entrance into the world of baton, I almost ended my career before it ever truly got off the ground. The lady who ran the baton group also owned a dance studio and what I really wanted to do more than anything was to become a ballerina. Unfortunately, dance lessons were more expensive and much farther away so my proposal to switch from baton to ballet was quickly defeated. It was probably for the best. After all, I look terrible in a severely tight bun, and when I finally took a ballet class in college, I found out that I wasn't such a big fan after all. I mean what sounds more fun? Option A: Tiptoeing around in circles to little snippets of classical music while your hair is pulled back so tightly that even blinking requires tremendous effort....orrrrrrrr....Option B: Waving a flaming stick of metal in the air to blaring monster ballads from the eighties with hair so huge it blocks out the sun. C'mon, there is no real choice here.

When I finally got my mitts on a professional grade baton, I was shocked at how weighty the thing actually was in real life. You thought getting poked in the mouth with the pointy end of a worn out, imported, knock off baton hurt? Try getting walloped smack on top of the noggin with a solid rod of stainless steel while attempting to practice advanced baton moves. That's no mere goose egg my friends, that's an extremely painful lump the size of an egg an ostrich would lay. No matter, the inherent danger of inadvertently wounding yourself or others made it all the more compelling.

After weeks of practice, the big day came when we would finally be issued our shiny sequined uniforms. This started out as probably the very best day of my entire life thus far. After a hard day of third grade, and months of practicing, I was about to receive my very own shiny-sequined-bathing-suit-like-leotard thingy. Unfortunately, this incredible vision of loveliness was about to come crashing down around my ears, like scattering a great big bowl of shimmering sequins right into the middle of a giant mud puddle.  Unbeknownst to me, the baton twirling group that I had chosen adhered to a very strict "ladylike" dress code. To make matters worse, the outfits also happened to be cowgirl themed. This should not have surprised me. The walls of the local fire hall, where our practices were held, were plastered with glossy group photos of past twirlers. They too were dressed in an odd, feminized form of western wear. I hadn't paid much attention to the dates below each photo. I thought that they were obviously older photos with dowdy retired uniforms from several decades past. How very wrong I was.

Instead of being adorned from shoulder to hip with kilos upon kilos of beautiful shiny sequins, we would end up being dressed up like some kind of cheesy cowpokes. The base of the uniform was a long sleeve red and white polyester smock that fell just above the knee. May I be so bold as to inquire who exactly thought that wearing a long sleeve polyester dress in the heat of July was a grand idea? I'm lucky I was not suddenly overcome by heatstroke halfway through a sweltering summer parade. The dress was further accessorized with a red polyester bandana worn around the neck, red polyester tights for modesty, a giant star-shaped white leather belt, and white leather boots that ended midway up the calf. The whole affair was gloriously topped off with a white plastic cowboy hat. The only available sequins on the entire outfit appeared in the subtle outline of a minuscule red star centered on the belt. The only other cool part of the outfit were the enormous handmade red and white yarn tassels that clipped onto the front of our classy leather booties. Seeing the uniform for the first time was a devastating blow to my original enthusiasm for the sport, especially since the local competition was completely bedazzled in modern outfits with big hair and big make up to match.

Our biggest competitor was an enormous baton twirling outfit from a neighboring town who heartily embraced the height of eighties fashion. Most of us were envious not only of their flashy outfits but also of their extremely attractive drum line. They were at least thirty strong, decked out in awesome fedoras, white pants with matching suspenders, popped collars, duster coats, and white Capezio dance shoes. In contrast, our four drummers were sporting sneakers that may have been white at one time, white dungarees, and red golf shirts with the corps logo embroidered on the chest. Also, they were required to don the exact same white plastic cowboy hats that the girls wore. Any nuance of cool that these cats might have possessed was instantly negated by their wacky get-ups. It didn't help that most of them were prisoners of the sport. Usually, they were siblings of one of the twirlers whose parents were forcing them to participate against their will.

As an adult, I can clearly understand the more modest, universally flattering uniform choices made by our group instructors. Admittedly, it is much more difficult to flatter every body type under skin tight, stretchy sequined fabric. While our outfits may have been able to carefully camouflage some of the tubbier twirlers in the group, it did little to make us feel any better. It was true that the thicker twirlers in the opposing group did look like lil smokies, stuffed into a minuscule swatch of sparkly purple spandex. You could bet that no one in our group could have doubled for a cocktail snack. Still, despite the occasional Twinkie loving twirler among their ranks, next to them, we looked like a big bunch of hillbillies. The fact that we were each generously coated in bright red lipstick with round circles of rouge on our cheeks did not help. Finally, did I mention that it is physically impossible to successfully pull off big hair and mall bangs with a plastic cowboy hat plopped on your melon?

Our campaign to revamp the current uniform was knocked down by both the instructors and the parents. While we girls were learning the tricky art of baton twirling, the mothers and a few fathers camped out in the back of the fire hall on wooden folding chairs while we rehearsed our routines. Truth be told it was a bit like a baton parent cult. I think the moms and dads who had gotten sucked in simply wanted other people to share in their misery. It was commonplace to encourage others to join the group: friends, family members, coworkers, acquaintances, even complete and total strangers. Once you were in, it was very hard to leave even though the time commitment was fairly overwhelming. During the school year, practices were held once a week until the season finally began gearing up sometime in late winter or early spring. It's hard for me to discern which as I grew up just south of the Great Lakes. Lake effect weather turned winter and spring into a muddy, slushy sort of blur with summer arriving sometime in mid July.

Summer was the height of the baton circuit. There were a handful of parades in May and June but it wasn't until July that things really got serious. That meant that within a fifty mile radius, there was at least one, possibly two parades held every single weekend. We had formerly spent every weekend at camp with our grandparents. Suddenly, we found ourselves crisscrossing the western half of the state in search of trophies and baton twirling glory. My mom was a trooper. She dutifully prepared us for each and every appearance and drove my sister and I to the starting point of every parade. She watched and waved from the sidelines, snapped photos, and even filmed videos which was not the easy phone wielding task it is today. She had to walk backwards while toting one of those honking huge video recorders on her shoulder. Trying to hold it steady so that future viewers could watch without succumbing to motion sickness was a chore.

Speaking of chores, I will readily admit there were days when I wasn't all that jazzed about going to practices and parades. There were lots of summery things I missed, like sleepovers, weenie roasts, family gatherings, and camping trips. All sacrifices I happily made in honor of my chosen sport. Truth in disclosure...I should edit that to say my mother forced me to make. It was not her idea to join the baton cult, but she had very strong feelings about what it meant to be a reliable member of the group. She was no stage mother that's for sure, but in her book, if you made a commitment, you stuck to it no matter what. Unless you were barfing in a bathroom somewhere, you better grab your shiny baton and your little synthetic cowgirl uniform and saddle up. Supposedly, if you missed a practice or a parade or forgot part of your polyester outfit, you received something called a demerit as punishment. To my knowledge this was an empty threat that never actually happened...to anyone...ever. Lots of other girls skipped practice or missed parades. Despite the obvious lack of consequences, my sister and I were NOT among them. We were dependable folks and come hell or high water, my mother made sure that unless genuinely ill, we made it to each and every practice and participated in every single parade on the schedule.

She didn't stop there. You could always depend on my mom to be punctual and prepared.  Even if she had just been yelling in the car because my sister and I were arguing for the fifteen millionth time that morning, she would still arrive poised and calm. My sister and I followed suit as we knew the car ride home would be anything but pleasant if we weren't well behaved in public. The fact that any post parade treats would be immediately nixed if either of us were out of line also helped the cause. This didn't stop my sister and I from giving each other the stink eye from time to time, but being in different age groups kept us from continuing a previous argument. Not only was my mom helpful with her two daughters' parade preparation and participation, you could also count on her to help out with fundraisers. She happily raised her hand whenever parent volunteers were requested. A true team player.

This is how she ended up turning the entire second floor of our house into a makeshift hoagie making factory. My siblings and I had been part of a club at school that raised money by selling hoagies. (For those of you who may not already know, a "hoagie" is a regional term referring to the submarine sandwich.) Food sales were not an unusual type of fundraiser but the teacher in charge of this particular club had discovered a surefire way to greatly increase the profit margin. If students were responsible for making the sub sandwiches themselves, instead of contracting the orders out to a local deli, the money savings was huge. Here's how it worked: If you were a member of the club, you took requests on an order form, collected the cash, and handed it in. The orders were then tallied and the necessary sandwich supplies were procured. The following Saturday, all club members were required to show up at the school cafeteria at the crack of dawn. You would pull on plastic gloves, and spend the next six hours standing over a huge hoagie making assembly line. It was a long day of slapping cheese, cold cuts, and condiments on hoagie roll after hoagie roll before finally stuffing the sandwiches into plastic bags and stacking them onto towering palates. When every last sandwich was stuffed, your order would be filled and you would race to deliver the subs before food borne illness could take hold.

My mom brought this fundraising idea to the gals and guys that made up the dedicated group of baton twirling cult members parents. The advantages were in the fact that there were no up front costs as the sub orders were prepaid and the profits were considerable. The only thing necessary was a labor force. Since most of the twirlers were younger than high school age, they could not be counted on to consistently produce a quality sandwich. For some reason, the ranks always petered out a bit as twirlers got older. Probably the choice between boyfriends and baton twirling was to blame. Despite the lack of helpers from within the group, the parents felt that they could handle the sub slinging duties themselves. The only problem was where they would work. I am not sure why they did not take advantage of the spacious fire hall where we held our weekly practices. I am assuming it was unavailable on that particular day. No matter, my mother happily volunteered the interior of our home.

As mentioned in an earlier post, my parents lived in an extremely small house for many years. The payoff was that suffering such cramped quarters for so long allowed them to sock away cash to build their dream home. My dad designed it and by his own admission, he may have gotten a bit carried away after sharing such a tiny home with four other people. This was way before tiny homes were a thing and my mom could have made millions with her super savvy storage solutions if only the Internet had existed. Anyway, it was true that we had plenty of space in our new house, so for an entire day, the main floor of our home was transformed into a giant hoagie making plant. When I came home from school, carts of hoagies were parked up and down the hallway leading to our bedrooms. The entire living room was filled with subs from one end to the other and the work on the assembly line that stretched from our laundry room, through our kitchen, and practically into our garage was just wrapping up. By the time my dad got home from work, all of the subs had found new homes. The only evidence of the sub making extravaganza was that the house smelled like the back room of a deli. It took weeks for that smell to entirely dissipate from the house. A small price to pay for fundraising success. Now maybe we could talk the head of the group into springing for some sparkly new uniforms.

We were finally able to convince our fearless leaders to modernize the uniforms at least for the oldest twirlers. We still wore the signature red polyester frocks, but they were sleeveless which made them much more humane on sizzling summer parade routes. They were accessorized with sequined collars and matching sparkly arm bling that we proudly sported on each forearm. We also ditched the cowboy hat in favor of fluffier more trendy hairdos. Unfortunately, the younger twirlers still looked like a bunch of extras who had escaped from a dude ranch on Broadway.  As long as I didn't have to wear those kooky clothes anymore, I was happy.

My baton twirling career came to an end just before I started high school. We did not have majorettes in our marching band and for their own sanity, my parent's placed limits on the number of after school activities we could participate in. I had a few too many, so baton twirling ended up on the chopping block. It was without much fanfare or hoopla as my baton twirling days had just about run their course. I doubt that my mom was sad to get Wednesday nights and summer weekends to herself again. Our home would never again be overrun by hundreds of hoagies waiting for a home. It was a good run despite its overall lack of sequins.

So where did all this baton twirling get me? I missed out on tons of fun in the name of my chosen commitment. I didn't earn a twirling scholarship in college. My mother ran herself ragged supporting us. I made some good friends but most of us have since gone our separate ways.  To this day, my non-twirling friends and family routinely mock my baton sporting past. But...there is one singular moment that has made all of those sacrifices and enduring regular harassment completely worthwhile. It happened during one of my very first parades in a tiny town not far from my grandparent's little home in the woods. Oddly enough, it was not the same parade that I usually attended with them. For some reason, we never actually marched in that one. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that traditionally Cowboys and Indians Cowgirls and Native Americans didn't mix.

Anyway, on that beautiful summer day, I clearly remember anxiously scanning each and every face along the parade route hoping to single out my grandparents. I knew they would be in attendance and I couldn't wait to catch a glimpse of them. It ended up being the one and only parade that my grandmother ever got to see me march in. Of course, at the time, no one knew that our remaining time together would be so short. Finally, I caught their eye. It was early in my career and I probably wasn't very good, but to my grandmother, it didn't matter. From the look on her face at that moment, I might as well have just become a Rockette. She was over the moon to see us living the dream. I can still picture her beautiful smiling face cheering us on. I'm certain that just like me she was expecting the uniforms to have a few more sparkles and sequins, however, she successfully camouflaged any disappointment she was feeling. Oblivious to the overall lack of wardrobe bling, my grandfather proudly stood beside his wife with his arm wrapped casually around her waist. They were perched on the edge of the curb, side by side, smiling at us and waving. Even now, despite the fact that my baton twirling days are long gone, the way they looked on that particular day is one of my favorite ways to picture the two of them in my mind. Also, despite the fact that it deviates from reality, in my own imagination, I throw in wayyyyy more sequins!

Posted with Blogsy

Day 22 = Hula Dancing Heros

Sometimes when I sit down to write, the process of sorting out my earliest childhood memories makes my head hurt. If I had known that these things would become important later in life, I would have taken better notes. Nevermind that, in most of these circumstances, I was too young to hold a pencil properly let alone jot down an accurate record of the events unfolding around me. Despite the fact that some of my stories might sound like tall tales, I frequently consult with family members to fact check my writing so that I don't inadvertently fabricate an event that never happened. With that being said, the following family recollections happened around the time of my grandfather's retirement. In my childhood memory bank, they happened on the exact same weekend, but in reality that is probably not true. I'm sure that some of my faithful readers will be able to help sort out those details but when I conferred with my own parents, they were equally foggy on the sequence of events. We did share a few laughs over the whole thing despite being unable to come up with any kind of factual timeline.

When I was small, my father's side of the family always gathered at my grandparent's house in Cleveland to celebrate major holidays. However, for those holiday weekends that fell during the summer months, the entire clan escaped the concrete confines of the sticky city to our much cooler cabin in the wilderness. As previously mentioned in numerous posts, my grandparents maintained a vacation getaway/retirement property in the mountains of western Pennsylvania. My husband always laughs at the tiny tree covered lumps of earth that we call "mountains". While it's true that his homeland in the middle of the Pocono Mountains towers over our much less lofty Alleghenies, the people who live in the Rockies probably scoff at the puny Poconos, so it's all relative. Growing up in a part of the state that was largely flat farmland made the mountains immediately to the east seem fairly large to us even though other people might consider them to be foothills at best.

Regardless of your opinion of the local terrain, there was no arguing that cramming five families and my grandparents into a three bedroom house was no easy feat especially when one of the bedrooms belonged exclusively to my grandparents. The rest of the family was dispersed between four double beds, one single, and a pull out couch in the living room. For all the leftover bodies that didn't have enough clout to successfully procure a slice of mattress for themselves, we had an abundance of snuggly sleeping bags lying around camp. Truth be told, the joke was on those poor unfortunate suckers who snagged the trusty pull out sofa bed. It was guaranteed that they would woefully regret their choice in the morning. When they woke up the following day, their spine would have a considerable kink in it from sleeping with an unforgiving metal bar across their lumbar region all night. No worries, by noon they would probably be able to stand up straight again.

For the record, if everyone was in town for the weekend, the total number of adults and children came in at a whopping twenty eight souls. Twelve adults and sixteen grandchildren. It is also worthy to note that the grandchildren varied in age from infants to twentysomethings. To say it was a wee bit crowded was a serious understatement. We were jammed in there at night like a bunch of kippered herring. Personally, I never worried about my own sleeping quarters because I had a special spot reserved exclusively for me. Being one of the younger grandchildren, I could be easily squeezed into a smaller space for sleeping. Each night, I was crammed into a crib that was tightly tucked inside my grandparent's closet. Before you consider calling child protective services over that one, I should tell you that this particular closet did not have doors on it until years later, and I slept there quite comfortably until I was about five. The crib was one of those old hazardous drop side jobbies, so when I woke up in the morning I could easily free myself. I would simply sling my little jammied leg over the treacherous half-raised side rail and scamper off down the hallway to see who else was awake.

My older brother could always be found sacked out in one of the many khaki colored Coleman sleeping bags scattered across the living room. I would run down the hall at the crack of dawn and jump on him a few times in an attempt to unsuccessfully rouse him from sleep. My other cousins were tucked into similar matching sleeping bags, so I apologize for accidentally jumping on any unsuspecting sleepers who were not in fact my brother. The guys all looked the same wrapped up like a bunch of giant green burritos on the floor. In a sea of lumpy humans who were tightly swaddled in green cloth, a case of mistaken identity was bound to happen. The fact that everyone was related and their faces were usually covered in a futile attempt to block out the blinding sunlight streaming in through the picture window didn't make it any easier to identify who was who.

As for that sunny window, our cozy little camp may not have been fancy, but it did contain curtains. Unfortunately, for those asleep in the living room, my grandfather would open those particular drapes at first light in an effort to wake everyone as early as possible. If this technique was not successful, he had numerous other options in his arsenal of wake up tools. Grandpa was almost always awake before everyone else and since we didn't own a family bugle, he would rally the sweetly slumbering troops by hollering down the hallway like Tarzan. The Tarzan yell was followed by the important informational announcement that those who were still snoozing were in fact wasting the day away. His second favorite technique was to spin his favorite vinyl on the stereo turntable at volume level 10 until all his lovely guests finally stumbled their way to the breakfast table, rumpled yet rested.

When I analyze the situation as an adult, I have no idea how we fit everyone into this small space but we made it work. The point is that my entire extended family was quite used to spending time together in close quarters and for the most part everyone managed to get along quite well. We shared loads of laughter and good memories together. Unfortunately, the rest of the world wasn't always prepared to handle our antics, especially when we arrived at a venue en masse. If left to our own devices, we had a tendency to get a teensy weensy bit rowdy. Maybe that's why my grandfather built our cabin practically off the grid in the first place. That way we had a secluded retreat where we could cut loose without having to contain ourselves because other people were staring at us and saying things like, "Can you believe those people?" That wasn't a problem for us as we never cared much about what our critics had to say. Inevitably, someone from our group would provide a sassy retort along the lines of, "If you people would loosen up a bit, you could be having a good time too instead of sitting there looking like you just sucked on an old lemon." That usually didn't go over very well but it certainly never seemed to put a damper on our ability to have a good time wherever we happened to be.

There are two distinct occasions when I remember our entire clan getting together at places outside of our camp in the woods, not including obligatory family celebrations or yearly reunions. This is where the timeline gets a bit fuzzy, but both events happened around the time of my grandfather's retirement. To celebrate the end of his contributions to the working world, our entire family minus one little cherub got together to share a special meal at a restaurant. This was something we rarely did as procuring a table for twenty-eight at most dining establishments wasn't always easy. On this particular occasion, we were probably only twenty-seven. The youngest of the clan was missing because either she hadn't been born yet or she was still in the process of incubating in the womb. Nevertheless, the majority of our brood made our way to some sort of steakhouse to fete the newly retired patriarch of the family. I was fairly excited about this outing because not only did I get to spend time with all my cousins, I also knew that this meant that I could order a Shirley Temple for myself at the bar. At the time, it was my drink of choice and ordering one from the bartender always made me feel like quite the little sophisticate.  After all, nothing says grown-up like having a maraschino cherry stabbed on a little plastic sword that is casually floating in your kiddie mocktail. 

I'm not sure why but this particular restaurant featured a Polynesian/Hawaiian themed floor show during dinner. The restaurant was located somewhere in the greater Cleveland metro area and when I recently asked my parents where it was or why we went there, they weren't much help. All they could come up with was that they thought it was in one of the suburbs that ended in -ville (of which there are several) and that they had absolutely no recollection of who picked it or why. Perhaps it was because my grandmother had always hoped to visit Hawaii some day or the fact that my grandfather enjoyed listening to musicians strum away on the Hawaiian guitar. How we ended up there in the first place may be a mystery but the events that unfolded during the course of the evening were unforgettable. Even if certain individuals would prefer to forget the evening altogether, the rest of the family is more than happy to jog everyone's memory. Decades have passed and the story still never gets old.

The evening's entertainment began with the arrival of a bevy of lovely hula dancers decked out in traditional hula garb. Everyone probably expected these gently swaying ladies to appear. They were crowned with pretty palm leaf garlands and they wore flowing grass skirts. It seemed like a nice relaxing backdrop to our family dinner. Our ginormous table was located amongst other unrelated diners and the whole crowd seemed to be enjoying both the cuisine and the tropical ambiance. Halfway through the meal, the mood of the evening took an unexpected twist and I'm not sure if anyone realized that the second half of the show was going to be quite so intense. Seemingly out of nowhere, the gentle hula was abruptly interrupted by frenzied drumming that was quickly ramping up to an ear splitting crescendo. It was obvious that the show was building up to something but no one had any idea what was about to come next.

We certainly did not expect a bunch of shirtless men waving flaming batons of bamboo to explode onto the stage. This type of establishment should warn their unsuspecting diners that something of this nature is about to happen. It seemed like an awfully good way to cause choking as you gasp in surprise and accidentally suck a chunk of steak and pineapple down your windpipe. Nothing a few whacks on the back by a sibling can't remedy, but for goodness sakes, a little warning might have been nice, no? What kind of performance was this? Isn't this supposed to be a family friendly show? Why are all the dancers half naked? And isn't there some kind of public safety rule concerning throwing a bunch of searing hot torches around inside a crowded restaurant? While some diners actually enjoyed the show, my mother was not among them. She was silently cringing and seeking out the nearest exit and the exact location of her husband and three children. Should the whole place accidentally go up in flames after an errant piece of smoldering torch flew into the crowd, she wanted to be personally prepared to get her own family to safety as quickly as possible. Of course, she would drag out as many nieces, nephews, and in-laws as she could manage but this was certainly not her idea of a relaxing meal.

As the initial shock of the second half of the show was wearing off, the staff began looking for a bit of crowd participation. Surely, some eager diner was willing to go up on stage and learn to dance the hula or perhaps give one of those flaming batons a few whirls. No takers? No problem. In the hubbub of the wild performance, we barely realized that one of our own had been kidnapped and drug onto the main stage. Out of everyone in the crowded restaurant that evening, my grandfather's eldest son found himself on stage as part of the entertainment crew. No one knew exactly what was in store for him, but it was too late for anyone in our party to execute some kind of rescue mission. He was already front and center on stage and committed to participate. If he refused he would surely be heckled by the other tables for temporarily bringing the whole show to a halt while the dancers rustled up a willing replacement. It should be noted that the crowd wasn't exactly filled with eager volunteers who were disappointed that they hadn't been chosen to go up on stage. A bit of a mob mentality ensued. If my uncle had attempted to cordially decline and return to our table, he might have been met at the stairs by a bunch of angry audience members with pointy tiki torches forcing him back up on stage. It was one of those "better that poor guy than me" situations.

I am sure that once my uncle realized that his fate was sealed, he thought he would simply join the dancers, politely learn a few hula moves and quietly make his way back to his seat after a brief round of applause from the audience. Instead, he ended up dancing around the stage in his bare feet, wearing a crown of palm leaves, and being harassed by a bunch of female hula dancers. They insisted that he remove both his socks and shoes and roll his pant legs up to his knees in order to participate in the show. I am fairly certain that he drew the line at removing his shirt but it all gets a bit hazy from this point forward. I don't know what was more entertaining the actual floor show or the fact that my uncle was forced to become a part of it against his will. This single event provided his younger brothers with years of comedic material. Finally, after his participation was deemed sufficiently embarrassing by both the audience and the staff of dancers, they allowed him to return to our table, blushing a bit, but essentially unharmed.

Having not learned our lesson at the tiki lounge, we decided to attempt yet another family outing with the entire brood. Around the same time as the retirement party hula incident, we arranged to take a private tour of a local historic mansion. That's right all twenty seven and a half or possibly eight of us. Now truth be told, if I were a tour guide and I saw this motley crew coming my way, I would simply resign and find a new career path. He or she was bound to repeatedly experience one or more of the following:

1. Overall rowdiness 
2. Inattentive children who could care less that all of the woodwork in the joint was hand carved by a bunch of blind monks who lived as recluses deep in the Italian Alps.
3. Skeptics who would demand to know exactly how blind monks could successfully carve all those tiny identical wooden rosettes if in fact they had zero eyesight. Could they see a little bit? Did they have some kind of help? Did they use some kind of special tools? Where did they harvest the wood? How was the final product shipped to the states? What if a piece of woodwork gets accidentally damaged? How will an exact replacement be obtained? I mean all those monks are probably pushing up daisies by now and it's not like you can just pick up something like that at Lowe's, right? The questioning would be well-meaning but endless. 
4. Ongoing impromptu jokes about blind woodcarving monks. 
5. Increasing levels of rowdiness as the tour wore on. 
6. More jokes as the brothers three were able to gather more hilarious material since those monk jokes could only go on for so long before they lost their zip. 
7. More intense questioning concerning supposedly factual information presented during the tour. Even with extremely tactful wives who have learned how to successfully intervene on behalf of their husbands over the years, it would still require a highly skilled tour guide to wrangle this boisterous clan of jokesters who also happen to be extremely inquisitive by nature.
8. Did I mention rowdiness?

Although we were probably given loads of information about the history and the decor of the house, I personally don't remember much about the place except that the exterior was in the Tudor style. The interior seemed a bit dark for my taste and it had lots of leather, lots of hand carved woodwork (not actually done by blind Italian monks, that was just a hypothetical example), lots of stuffed dead animals hanging from the walls, and an Olympic size swimming pool. Perhaps this was because the most memorable part of my experience happened beyond the stuffy confines of the old mansion. Surrounding the whole place were massive botanical gardens that would have taken an entire week to explore. My parents usually kept a fairly tight rein on my sister and I, but on this particular occasion they had relaxed their normal rules and allowed us to saunter off ahead of them with the rest of our cousins. You know, safety in numbers and all as there were sixteen of us. I was thrilled to have a tiny bit of freedom and I felt totally grown up, until I unexpectedly found myself wishing that I had been forced to hold my mom's hand as usual.

One minute I remember happily making my way across the grass to join the other kids and seconds later I found myself fearing for my life, frantically yelling for my parents to snatch me up pronto. A few moments prior, I had set out ahead of my parents in order to catch up with my older siblings and cousins. The gardens were massive and sprawling and although my parents kept a constant visual on me, we were all spread out quite a distance from one another. I had been merrily skipping down a flight of concrete stairs when I briefly lost my footing and stumbled. What should have ended as a simple skinned knee, a slightly smooshed ear, and a bruised up elbow quickly turned into a far more disastrous adventure.

After temporarily losing my footing, I was miraculously able to recover from what could have been a fairly major faceplant. Unfortunately, I had hardly any time to enjoy the fact that I had somehow managed to keep my balance and stay on my feet. An unexpected consequence of my amazing recovery was that my tiny feet had taken on a life of their own and were currently running one after the other down the stairs at break neck speed. No matter how hard I tried I could not control them. I knew that at this rate attempting to stop myself by falling down was much too dangerous. The rapidly increasing momentum of my little body hurling down the stairs was far too great to be able to bring it to any kind of gentle stop.

To make matters worse, there was an enormous reflecting pool on an expansive landing located directly at the bottom of the stairs. The surface of the water was covered with an intricate patchwork of lily pads and exotic floating flowers. It may have been beautiful to observe from afar but the thought of diving in head first and splashing about was far less appealing. It was at this very moment that I realized that I was most likely about to die given the fact that I had not yet learned to swim. There was no possible way to avoid impact with the brilliant emerald green water. The pool was far too wide to steer myself around and the water was too dark and murky to determine the exact depth. Everyone within a six-mile radius heard my cries for help but my parents were too far behind to catch up and my cousins were too far ahead to help. This left me solo and screaming as I hurtled towards my impending doom.   I could hear my mom saying, "She's out of control...honey...she's completely out of control!" 

Furthermore, drowning wasn't my greatest concern. I was absolutely positive that if I didn't drown immediately, I would be eaten by a bunch of ferocious snapping turtles. In hindsight, I doubt that this carefully planned water feature actually contained any snapping turtles. My conclusion was a logical one given the fact that the only other pond I knew of that was covered in lily pads was near the home of my great aunt and uncle. I knew for a fact that their pond was chock full of those vicious pointy beaked reptiles waiting to take a chunk out of anyone who dared to enter the slimy waters they called home. I had witnessed first hand what those snappers could do to a broom handle and since this pool also had water lilies, I assumed that it too had a flock of resident snapping turtles. I closed my eyes in preparation for the inevitable final impact. My parents would have to tearfully request that the following warning be engraved on my teeny tiny tombstone: "Here lies our dear half-drowned daughter. She would have made it but she could not swim and she was snacked on by snapping turtles before we were able to fish her out by her ankles. If only she had taken swimming lessons like we asked."

As I flew down the stairs towards my imminent demise, I briefly regretted having vehemently refused my mother's reasonable request that I take swimming lessons at the local lake. At the end of every school year, a sign up sheet was sent home for anyone interested in learning to swim. Every single year my mother signed me up to take part and every year with heaving sobs, gnashing of teeth, and fits on the kitchen floor, I refused to attend. Eventually, my mother would grow weary of the theatrics and give in to my ridiculous, unreasonable behavior. As every mother knows, sometimes you have to pick your battles. My refusal to take swimming lessons centered around three pieces of information that I had garnered while observing my older sister as she received swimming instruction at the lake in question.

Before I was old enough to enroll in formal swimming classes myself, I had been carefully watching my sibling and her doggy paddling peers from the comfortable safety of the dock. First of all, the lessons took place early in the morning and the water at that hour was absolutely freezing. The shrieks of entering ice cold lake water on blustery June mornings did not appeal to me in the slightest. Contrary to popular belief, where I grew up swimming season did not truly get into full swing until midsummer. Except for a few unseasonably warm days, everyone who grew up south of Lake Erie knows that entering a body of water in the month of June will most likely cause you to lose your breath momentarily. Seconds later your muscles will contract, rendering your limbs completely useless, causing you to nearly drown. Your only hope is to frantically fight through the pain and start swimming around all the while attempting to visualize that you are some kind of happy little arctic seal.

Second of all, I thought that one of the guys who taught swimming lessons at the lake was a little creepy. He may have been a nice enough cat. I have no idea. I never actually made it to class to find out, but he seemed weird from afar. It was the early eighties and he looked like some kind of throw back to the late sixties/early seventies. In my opinion, he was a bit too old to have a summer job teaching kids how to swim. Shouldn't he have a real job? He had long hippie hair and he wore loud flower patterned swim trunks with gold medallions draped around his neck. He looked a bit like shaggy from the Scooby Doo cartoons but he was a bit plumper. He wore gold aviator sunglasses while standing in the water, looking grumpy and twirling a whistle. I'm sure he drove a van of some sort and he was also extremely hairy. When he came out of the water after diving in, it looked like he was wearing a soggy old v-neck sweater. Of course, he was not the only teacher and it is very likely that he was an all around great guy and an amazing aquatics instructor. Still, I felt the risk of ending up swimming in ice water with seventies man as a teacher was far too great.

Finally, there was the little matter of the giant man eating fish that frequented these local waters. The lake had a little snack shack that sold...wait for it....snacks. I never actually ate a meal there so I don't know exactly what other kinds of fare they specialized in, but true to its name, they did stock chips, candy and soda err...I mean pop. (After moving away from the area where I grew up, I have been forced to modify the vocabulary word that I once used to describe fizzy carbonated beverages.  Don't worry, I'm not getting uppity, it's just that no one outside of the regions where people say "pop" know what you are talking about when you order a "pop" unless you change it to the more universally accepted soda.)  Occasionally, while my mom sat on the edge of the dock chatting with the other mothers, (carefully observing their teeth-chattering children who were desperately trying to learn the back stroke before full blown hypothermia set in) I would be allowed to walk to said shack with two shiny quarters jingling in the pocket of my pink pedal pushers. I would happily surrender my fifty cents to the friendly clerk in order to purchase a tiny green and white bag of sour cream and onion potato chips. It was an odd post breakfast snack to be sure, so it was a rare treat, but don't worry I would only ever finish half of the bag. I always saved the second half to feed those feisty, fighting fish.

With bait in hand, I would stomp back across the sandy beach, crunching away on my salty snacks until I finally reached the dock. I would make my way across the planks looking for the perfect spot. Once I found a large enough space for my little eyeball to see through, I would lay down on my belly and peer down between the boards into the shallow silty waters below. Just a few feet from where my sister was splashing around in an effort to keep her core temperature from dropping to dangerously low levels, lived a massive herd of ridiculously enormous silver carp. They were bigger than my entire body, they stunk horribly, and they loved thrashing around and rolling over each other in order to fight for a few leftover bits of potato chip. It was a great way to amuse myself and way more fun than watching those boring old swimming lessons. My major concern was if those huge fish went totally wild for a little shaving of fried potato, imagine what would happen if they got a hold of a swimmer. Totally terrifying. There was no way under any circumstance imaginable that I was going to put my big toe in that chilly water let alone submerge my entire body with those filthy fish flopping around just beneath the surface of the lake.

Unfortunately, as I was flying wildly down those concrete stairs with limbs flailing and filled with panic, I began to regret this earlier decision. Perhaps eschewing swimming lessons on account of frigid water, odd teachers, and stinky carp had been a mistake, but it was far too late for regrets. There was a skinny little sliver of drab grey cement lying between the very last stair and the murky lily-pad covered pool of putrid slimewater. When my tootsies finally touched this puny piece of pavement, I closed my eyes tight and prepared for the giant foamy green splash that was guaranteed to happen at the moment of impact. I could practically taste the pond scum.  At that very second, instead of hitting the stinkwater, something hit me instead. It felt as though I had been unexpectedly whacked in the throat with a log. I wondered if this was what it felt like to be dead. I sputtered and coughed and opened my eyes, fully expecting to see those enormous pearly gates before me. Instead, I realized that I was actually still alive and that by some sort of divine intervention, I had stopped short just inches away from that disgusting deep green pool of inky darkness.

I had no idea what had happened, but one of my uncles was now standing next to me asking if I was alright. I will never know how he made it to me in time, but out of nowhere, like the Flash, the very same uncle who had been hula dancing against his will earlier in the story had just saved my life. By trade, he happened to be a police officer. Prior to this incident, I would have never said that he was a particularly fast runner, but unbeknownst to the rest of the family, all those years of chasing baddies must have kept him in tip top shape. With one outstretched arm, he was able to sprint to my location with only seconds to spare in order to stop me from careening head first into the algae ridden reflecting pool. Given the urgency of the situation, his only available option was to clothesline me with his forearm bringing me to a rather sudden and abrupt halt. My uncle felt a bit bad about purposely knocking the wind out of a preschooler, but he was left with little choice. Of course, at that moment, I couldn't care less that my whole neck was throbbing and that my breathing sounded like an old busted Hoover sweeper. (Of course that's midwestern speak for vacuum in case any of you out-of-towners were wondering.  We also frequently eat supper in these parts instead of dinner.) The alternative outcomes of drowning or death by snapping turtle were far more unpleasant to imagine than simply being clotheslined by a cop who also happened to be your hula dancing uncle.

In modern times, our entire family could have probably sued both of these venues for negligence and emotional distress. The restaurant for causing public humiliation on the part of my uncle, smoke inhalation for everyone else, and undue stress for all the moms in the room frantically counting the number of steps between their families and the nearest available fire exit. As for the mansion and its surrounding property, I would like to know what wizard of garden design decided that it would be a good idea to construct an enormous water feature at the bottom of a set of stairs. I'm still traumatized after all these years, but rather than get a lawyer on the horn, I'll just continue to share these crazy little stories in the hopes that they will provide my readers with a few chuckles. Then again, suing the estate of a bunch of millionaires from the heyday of the tire industry could prove very lucrative.

Nah....instead of pursuing litigation, I think I will use my free time to teach my toddler to swim. Once he masters the basics of the aquatot curriculum, we'll work on snapping turtle identification and self-defense measures.  My great-grandfather taught me how to get a snapping turtle to release its grip if you are ever bitten by one, but that my friends is a story better recounted in person. Finally, we'll google "How to dance like a Hawaiian" and practice our best hula moves (minus the flaming fire batons of course). After all, you never know when this kind of thing might come in handy.

P.S. If any of you happen to run into our local hula dancing hero in your travels, tell him his niece said thanks for going above and beyond to make sure that I made it past the age of five!

Posted with Blogsy