"Inside the Flip Side...Getting the Flip out"

AHHHH the day has finally arrived. I am leaving on a jet plane and I am never ever ever coming back again. Ever. Yes, that was a little bit of John Denver/T Swift right there.

Everybody was crying. There were so many tears. What a bunch of pussies. Just stop...90% of you will be living in my house in no time. The other 10% percent...well there will be blogs for that. Wish I could've seen into the future of all the relatives who were coming to live with us. My house became the gateway to America, land of the free, home of the where the white people at?

Mine of course were tears of joy. I couldn't wait to get the fuck out of there. Yea buh bye...

You can keep your dung ovens, balut, water buffalo, brooms, foods that squirmed, the weird bathrooms, nuns, church, crazy people, dead bodies, edible lizards, snakes and whatever else that drove me crazy...and with that said, they couldn't understand WHY I wanted to come home so bad! 

It was a long journey back to the states. I was extremely squirmy on the plane and couldn't sit still as any child. Could've been my excitement or that fact that a 23 hour journey on a giant tin can built by the lowest bidder is hard for a five year old. There was a little old lady who kept letting me sit on her lap. By little and old, I mean probably 30 & 4 feet tall. I kept telling her I was going home to eat Wonder Bread & bologne with my white Grandpa.

I don't remember my brother being on the flight. I think maybe they finally put his whiney ass in a cat crate in the baggage hold. Thats my best case scenario and all I've got on him right now. Meow...

Unfortunately when you travel in the winter there are snow storms that re-direct your flight. Sometimes you get to go to a nice place and other times...like this time...it wasn't a nice place. It was fucking DETROIT. This was the great blizzard of 1978 dumping two feet of snow in Michigan and forcing us to land there instead of JFK. Why not some place fancy like Paris?

We were hardly prepared for coming home to a blizzard even though it was winter. My dad was trudging through the snow in shorts. Ben & I wore my dads tube socks on our legs. Not ghetto at all, but this is Detroit. We had to stay overnight in a hotel for the night. We took a shady taxi. Thank god my dad relatively knew the area because there was some sketchy business going on in the wrong side of  the 8 mile that night. The cab driver started to take a different route and the lady sharing the cab with us was putting all her valuables into her boots. Sketchy...very, very sketchy. My dad forced him to turn down some road which was better than the dark alley we would've all been left to die in. Afterall, Detroits nickname is Murder Town.  Probably the only moment in my life, I wanted to be back in the rice patty with buffalo dung in my hands, a shrimp head in my mouth & leeches on my legs. Swear...

This wasn't the only scary thing to happen in Detroit. My mom lost me in the airport. Could you imagine? I was only five and my mother whos holding Ben for her dear life loses me. I don't know where my dad was. There were glass partitions everywhere along with escalators. I got trapped and off she went. I was scared fuckin shit. There was a couple that took my hand and asked me if I was lost. No lady, normally five year olds in nothing but a tank top and tube socks wandering the Detroit airport know exactly where they are. They wanted to bring me to lost & found or sell me to thieves. Then just when I thought I would never see my mother again, there she was at the top of the escalator looking for me. I offered them my brother but they declined. ;)

There was a wonderful surprise waiting at home when we got back laying on the kitchen floor. My grandpa got a dog!! He was a big black newfoundland collie mix named Bones & he was the prettiest dog I had ever seen. I thought what a strange name for such a large animal. I turned to my mom and said, "You hear that? His name is Bones, he has no meat, you can not eat this dog!" I hugged my Grandpa and whispered to him to keep a close eye on mother because I had seen things and I was worried for the new addition to the family. Then off to bed I went. I was home...in Yaphank and it felt good. Well, until I had to go back to school and felt like a foreigner once again.

See you next time on Inside the Flip Side...