Spiders...yuck
Spiders being thrown at a co worker...awesomely hilarious.
Where exactly does that sound she's making come from?
Ps...this video is from over a year shop but it's so good I had to repost
Enjoy!
The Kracken starts her freshman year of high school next week. That's 9th grade for those who can't remember or skipped it altogether. I can not lie and say I am not excited to wake her at 5:30am. I CAN'T WAIT!! The poptarts will be hung by her door with care or thrown at her pillow. Whichever makes for an easier escape.
Syd told me she is nervous. I would be too. There are super seniors and even better...super duper seniors. 13 & 14 year olds mixed in with 18 & 19 year olds. Remember folks, 1 in 4 teens contract an STD every year...(with the US having the highest STD rate in the industrialized world) I just love fun facts, don't you? Don't be an after school special. Talk to your kids.
I took the Kracken school shopping today. That was fun. I only slammed the dressing room door in her face one time. I have a question...Why is everything in the girls section full of glitter and sparkles? I don't blame her for not liking all that bling on the clothes she wears. Who the hell wants to walk around looking like a living, breathing Lite Brite anyway? Having to point at everything in the store and I mean every single item and saying, "What about this?" was equivalint to being stabbed in my eyeballs. Only to get this answer..."Ehh, I dont know. I guess." I guess means yes & I wasn't taking any chances.
Madzilla is off to college tomorrow, also as a Freshman. She is going to SUNY Suffolk. Yup, in case you weren't aware, Suffolk is a SUNY school. Why did she pick Suffolk? There are a few reasons. First, core classes no matter where you take them are still core classes. She's saving money. Well, she saved her parents money. Second, she can't leave her mommy. At least not yet...
K thru 12 went by so fast. Just yesterday Mad was shitting up her back in retaliation to formula & tomorrow I pray she makes it to class on time. I am glad she didn't go away. Of course when Mad was 12 and going thru that "hormonal change" I couldn't wait for her to go. I even told another mom at the barn who cried for days when her daughter left for college, "Why the hell are you crying so much?". I really get it now. Just the thought of her leaving brings me to tears. Unless she takes Leo, then I am good. Take him and get out. Oh and take those mini velociraptors in your room too. They scream & it's creepy.
Being a parent is hard no matter what the age. It never gets easier. If you ask me, it gets habitual. I watch my friends with little kids & I wonder how they do it everyday. I seem to forget that I did that already. I watch as my friends are planning thier kids weddings & becoming grandparents and I think, "Oh SHIT, how do they do it?" Honestly, I don't want to do either of that. At least not yet. Teen Mom & Say Yes to the Dress is not getting my daughter anytime soon. Back off Pinterest...
Having two teenage girls, I have learned a few things.
1. Text, email, sky write, call & leave a note on every little thing you say...They still lie & say you NEVER told them
2. There are never enough pads in this house...I ain't talkin' note pads fellas.
3. Hide all your favorite T-Shirts...there are cleptos amongst us & they LIE
4. Not being on the same cycle is worse than everyone being on it at the same time...I am glad I am not Sean
5. "Eh" means maybe, yes & no...Take your pick & good luck
6. Towels disappear like socks...Madzilla ate them
7. When in doubt hug them...just because
My girls are moving onto the next chapter in their young lives; High School & College. AKA..Regents exams & Freshman Sem.. Bitchy cliques & Beer Pong. Early wake up calls & Drive your own ass to school. I don't miss any of that shit. (beer pong doesn't count, I still play it)
Good luck Madeline & Sydney. Mommy loves you. I know you will do great this year because you're my kids and neither of you know how to fail. Except you Madzilla, you know how to fail math, but that's trig and who uses trig after high school? NO ONE...
Thanks for stopping by!! See you next time on Inside the Flipside.
Follow me on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/funtasian
Like my fanpage: http://www.facebook.com/thefuntasian
If you are a Disney or Pinnochio fanatic as is comedian Melanie Englert, you will surely enjoy this post she wrote from overthinkingit.com. http://www.overthinkingit.com/2011/01/25/pinocchio-coachman/
To Coachman With Love: Pinnochio & Behavioral Therapy
“Give a boy enough rope and he’ll soon make a jackass of himself!”
So says the Coachman, the supposed antagonist in Disney’s animated classic,Pinocchio. Everyone knows the tale of Pinocchio and his well documented but poorly understood nasal malady. A lovable woodcarver named Geppetto, having never sired a child of his own and conveniently aware of this missed opportunity just as the wishing star appears, takes his case to the star. His enthusiasm for the occult pays off: Geppetto wakes up to find his most recent creation, a hand-crafted puppet named Pinocchio, is alive and wood.
Pinocchio embarks on a series of misadventures (including a run-in with a puppeteer and his strip show) that lead him to ‘Honest’ John Foulfellow and the Coachman. On the surface of things, the Coachman appears to be your typical vile trafficker of young children. Using Honest John’s talent for leading young boys astray, the Coachman and his lures them to a place called Pleasure Island. Pleasure Island is a state-of-the-art amusement park that sports an animatronics display that rivals those seen in today’s most sophisticated resorts. Unfortunately, the boys turn into donkeys once they’ve sufficiently trashed the place. These donkeys are then carted off to various salt mines and circuses worldwide. The Coachman scores a considerable profit for his efforts.
A closer look at the Coachman’s gambit, however, reveals a fatally flawed enterprise from a monetary perspective. The end product of what could be the then-Eighth Wonder of the World is the wholesale distribution of donkeys. You don’t have to be an economist to realize the futility in ever turning a profit with such an endeavor.
The venture’s origin can be traced to a meeting at the local pub between the Coachman and Honest John. Promising Honest John ‘some real money’, the Coachman plops an enormous bag on gold on the table. Honest John manages to lure a few dozen boys to an undisclosed location. The dollar amount of that bag of gold cannot be ascertained, but you have to assume Honest John is being paid a handsome sum. To avoid detection, he has to bait one boy at a time. He cannot pull a Pied Piper and lure these boys en masse to a life of equidaedous servitude; even bribed officials couldn’t ignore the spectacle of a parade of children heading to God knows where.
Yet however dear Honest John’s services are, they pale in comparison with the cost of bringing the boys to the island itself. The Coachman has to transport the boys to the island, and that means chartering a ship. This means hiring on a crew: a rather unscrupulous crew capable of turning a blind eye to kidnapping little boys and turning them into donkeys. He can’t risk having some hero sound the alarm at the sight of those boys making a midnight field trip. And the Coachman is not going to spend the next six weeks at sea on some sailing vessel; he is under enormous pressure to haul ass and bring his quarry in. This ship is a steamer. It is going to need fuel.
Shipping expenses notwithstanding, the Coachman’s purse strings are about to be stretched to the breaking point. Approaching the island via a man-made tunnel that must have taken an untold amount of time and money to construct, the ship finally reaches its destination, Pleasure Island.
The island delivers on Honest John’s promise – it is a dazzling array of some of the most sophisticated and ambitious attractions ever to grace the Earth. Among some of the amenities is a Ferris wheel that rivals the London Eye and a roller coaster made from some space-age material that can support the entire track without support from below. The latter is an engineering marvel that most likely sported a price tag that ran into the millions. How can the Coachman possibly recoup such an investment?
From what can be observed on the screen, approximately eleven boys can fit into the Coachman’s carriage. The larger carriage of the day ran a length of fifteen feet. A brief screenshot allows for a size comparison between the carriage and the steamer prior to the journey to Pleasure Island; the carriage spans the width of the ship’s beam. Using a simple method of calculating the ship’s length, we’ll assume the builders used a 1:4 width-to-length ratio to keep the ship stable and on top of the water. This brings the overall length of the ship to sixty feet, stem to stern. Allowing room for a pilot house and the ships quarters for captain and crew, we can surmise the usable deck area is about six hundred square feet. The boys are not going to stand for being transported on top of one another, so we’ll give them about nine square feet of room a piece; roughly in the region of one square yard. This allows enough room for sixty-six boys to travel comfortably, more or less.
Thus, one can speculate that sixty-six boys are on Pleasure Island at any given time. Unfortunately for the Coachman, this also means that the entire enterprise hinges on the sale of sixty-six donkeys! At the turn of the 19th century, the going rate for a well bred horse was in the neighborhood of $40; a donkey went for considerably less. The sale of sixty-six thousand donkeys wouldn’t be enough to cover expenses, let alone turn a profit.
It is obvious the Coachman is not motivated by greed. Pleasure Island’s chief architect is intelligent enough to know that the game isn’t worth the candle. Notions of financial gain put aside, what would motivate someone to take on such a drastic undertaking?
A detailed glimpse into Pleasure Island Inc. could reveal a noble cause. Though the film’s setting is unknown, the original story places the characters within the Tuscany region of Italy: the same region that produced the likes of Andrea Pisano, Filippo Lippi and of course, Michelangelo. Obviously things have taken a turn for the worse by the end of the 19th century. The local boys have run amok and no longer offer any contribution to the world at large; fist-fights, substance abuse, generalized anti-social behavior rule the day.
How the Coachman originally figured into this remains unknown. We can assume, however, that his methods of disciplining children have the full support of the populace. What else could possibly explain the fact that Pleasure Island exists? A system such as Pleasure Island can only function as a legal, publicly funded entity. Perhaps entranced by his rumored talents in operant conditioning, the local constituents hired on the Coachman as a last ditch attempt to control the downward spiral of a lost generation. Possibly motivated by personal experience – the loss of a loved one to the depredations of peer pressure for instance – the Coachman fits the role of both consummate professional and compassionate crusader.
The end of their journey finds the Pleasure Island boys transformed into beasts of burden. They come to understand the consequences of their poor decisions. Whipped, beaten, starved of affection, these boys spend a significant amount of time in their new forms. How long remains a point of conjecture, but we can assume the ‘punishment fits the crime’. The Coachman does indicate that the boys are not punished indefinitely but rather until ‘they can pay for it’. It remains a mystery as to whether or not things are handled on a case-by-case basis or for the Pleasure Island gang at large. There are no statistics regarding the rate of recidivism as well, though a repeat visit to Pleasure Island is highly unlikely and – from the Coachman’s perspective – undesirable. A second time offender could simply warn all the other boys and ruin any real chance of rehabilitation for that particular lot.
The Coachman’s incentive is clearly evident. A passionate man, he truly has the best interests of both a desperate society and its lost children at heart. His contribution to the science of behavioral modification cannot be emphasized enough. The ground breaking research of both Joseph Wolpe and Hans Eysenck nearly fifty years hence owes its very origin to the Coachman and the grand experiment known as Pleasure Island.
Miss Englert is an aspiring comedienne (just not a politically correct one) and writer who spends too much time thinking about this stuff. You can reach her atmelanie.englert@gmail.com.
[Is the Coachman a noble educator? A greedy criminal? Some creepy white dude who kidnaps children? Sound off in the comments!]
I had the great pleasure of being a guest on The Chris Monty Show with Host Chris Monty, Co-Host Matt Burke and also Chris Roach. I couldn't have asked for a better trio to sit in with. They are 3 of the funniest comedians I know & I definitely needed a drink first before going in the studio with these guys. It went by so fast. I can't wait to come back.
Click the link below to listen to the Po' Pourri Episode 12 with ME...
http://thechrismontypodcast.wordpress.com/2013/07/29/the-chris-monty-show-episode-12-po-pourri/
We talk deep frying skin, Matt Burke names my first book, my life in the rice patties, why I'm a Minnesota Viking fan, the lovely bar where I met my husband, sperm whales, dung and other fun stuff.
Recently Chris Monty filmed a funny commercial for PBS called meet the Tanners. Click the youtube link below to watch the hilarity
To listen to other episodes of The Chris Monty Show with Chris & Matt: http://thechrismontypodcast.wordpress.com/
Definitely check the schedule at http://govs.com/ for upcoming shows featuring Chris Monty, Chris Roach & Matt Burke. You will not be disappointed seeing any of these comedians. They are all great at what they do.
Follow Chris Monty on twitter @comicchrismonty
Follow Matt Burke on twitter @_Matt_burke
Follow Chris Roach on Twitter @ROACHCOMIC
Follow me on twitter @funtasian
Like my fanpage facebook.com/thefuntasian
As always thank you for stopping by, reading my blogs and supporting my dysfunction. MWAHHH!
My cholesterol was high...very very high. So high that my doctor mailed me my blood work with little notes next to all the bad things. First things first he wrote...lose some weight and cut your carbs and sugar. Oh ok...have you seen my daily intake? You just want me to give up everything that is holy to my food needs? For instance...My boss keeps a candy box that is loaded with all my favorite chocolates to pick from everyday. My mom makes the best home made biscotti I have ever eaten in my life and then tops it off by drizzling chocolate over every piece. There is finally a crepe place that knows how to make a crepe right up the road and lets not forget I can't drive passed a White Castle without grabbing a sack or two of onion rings. Not to mention anytime someone wants me to do them a favor at work, they are very proactive with the Godiva and snacks promptly left on my desk in advance.
The doctor was right. I needed to watch what I put in my body. For the first time in my life, I was going on a meal plan. Being on a meal plan isnt easy. It fucking sucks. You can only eat whats on that list and you cant cheat at all. Really...how bad could one raisinet be? Its so wittle!!
First you get your food shopping list together thinking, "YEA!! I can do this!" I compare it to everyone who gets new sneakers for Christmas and they can't wait to start their New Years resolution at the nearest Planet Fitness only to last 5 days before retiring those Reeboks to the back of the closet and all your new workout clothes from Marshalls still have the tags attached & won't see the light of day.
The first day on the meal plan or any diet is always good because you are gung-ho on being healthy. This meal plan makes you feel like you are at a Golden Corral buffet because you are eating five times a day every 3 hours. Let me tell you something very important...this feeling fades fast. On day one your brain still has no idea whats going on yet. By the middle of day two, your brain is on to the trickery and is hell bent on making sure you can feel its wrath. By day three you are fiending for sugar, carbs or anything that is NOT on the list. You would lick the burnt nooks and crannies off the bottom of the toaster oven. Your head hurts and you can't think straight. Your brain is coming off the sugar and it is PISSED.
Chew some gum they said. It'll help you they said. LIES LIES LIES. You know what would help me? A big fat blueberry cream pie from Briermeres. I called my nurtrionist and begged her to eat something. 3 hours between meals is a LONG ASS TIME when you are dying for food. I had to put tape over the clock on my pc and shut off my phone so I couldn't see the time. She told me I couldn't eat anything, but what my meals were and that in a few days I would be ok. Drink some tea she tells me. Scew you. I was not going to be alright. I was starting to look at people and weighing my options. I wasn't opposed to cannibalism between meals. People were definitely NOT on the list.
By day four I couldn't take a dump and now my head really hurt. My body was in shock and being posioned by my own poop. Where are my fries it asked. Please give me a Snickers bar it begged. Instead it got a fuckin rice cake and 3 oz of chicken salad as my 3rd meal of the day. I can't even tell you how I looked forward to my tablespoon of all natural peanut butter & sugar free jello. I never licked a spoon so clean in my life.
So what happened by day 5? I took a shit. Have you ever seen a rabbit shit? My body was absorbing all the good food and leaving nothing for my intestines but little bunny foo foos excrement. This was terrible. I literally wanted to die, but I was going to show my doctor I could do this and lower my cholesterol. I was so bloated. It was like being on vacation when your body betrays you and your intertines shut down til five minutes before your flight leaves.
By day 6 you are doing better with your hunger and your bowel movements make it to milk dud status. Of course day 6 landed on a Friday. This meant that day 7 & 8 were on the weekend. There would be no going out to dinner for me. I brought a muscle milk to the movies and didn't get any popcorn which for me is comparable to having my legs torn from my body.
On day 9, there is good news though. I weighed myself and I was down 8 pounds. So really, it was working. Is it easy? Not at all. Would I continue? Of course. At some point between day 6 & day 9 my ass decided to turn itself inside out from the 4 cups of salad it was getting every night. Just keepin it real folks. Weight loss was swift and imminent now. I can cancel my appointment for a colonic.
I made it to day 14 with excellent results. Ten pounds gone. Mostly due to the instant poo. I no longer want to hit the candy box. White Castle doesnt seem too appealing althought I still want it. Kinda like a crack head. I pray that no one brings me a Krispy Kreme because then it would be all down hill. Making 5 meals a day does take work but at least I know what I am putting in my body & that's a good thing. What comes out afterwards...not so good, but at least it's a clean wipe.
Thanks for stopping by...
Follow me on twitter @funtasian
Like me on Facebook.com/thefuntasian
See you next time on Inside the Flip Side!!
As some of you may know my oldest child Madzilla just graduated from High School a few weeks ago. Days leading up to her graduation I would start tearing at the thought, but on the day she walked up to the podium to grab her empty green Longwood High School diploma holder, I did not shed a tear. Instead, I sighed. Strangely enough it wasn't a sigh of relief. I am not sure what I was feeling, but it was odd & it wasn't from the mimosas hidden in my backpack. I cried for days when she went off to kindergarten. I cried when she got her first ribbon at the Hampton Classic. I cried when she left for prom. I even cried when she went on her first date in a car with a boy. I am such a pussy...
From the day tiny humans are able to carry a conversation they have been asked, "So, what do you want to be when you grow up?" I know I have been asked a million times. Let's see...I wanted to be an astronaut, a vet, a musician, a ninja, the Bionic Woman(of course I didn't realize I would have to lose my limbs for this and possibly an eye and an ear drum), Batman, a Crayola crayon color namer & a police officer just to name a few. Curiously nobody ever asked me "who" I wanted to be.
Now that I am a mother of a graduate who is moving onto college this fall, I am inundated with the age old question..."What does she want to be?" That is all you hear people say every June. Do they really know? I still don't know and I am 41. Eeeek. They are just children going off for expensive schooling and having to choose a career. Of course I love that Madzilla wants to be a Large Animal Vet and like everything else she does (besides keeping her room clean) she will excel at it. Really though at this stage of her life, I am more concerned with who she wants to be and I think that is a question that should be asked more often.
So I did just that at a table of teenagers recently by first asking, "What do you guys want to be?". They rattled off everything from the medical field to teaching to computers. (Except for the Kracken at age 13 said the question bothers her.) Then I asked, "WHO do you want to be?" CRICKETS. Lots & lots of crickets. They looked at me like I mind fucked every one of them. They had no idea how to answer it and just stared at me. One even said, "Oh my god, you just blew my mind & I don't know what to say."
With social media taking over the world, I feel like our children are slaves to technology. Too much instant gratification and not enough thinking for themselves. It's all about right now and it has made them very lazy. Who cares about 20 years from now. I will deal with that later. Well, for me it's twenty three years later & I am a mother scared for her children. Know who you want to be before knowing what you want to be. I've told my kids to strive to be a better person for yourself and not for what you think social media wants you to be. You are not your tumblr account or your twitter account or how many "friends" you have on Facebook. Who follows you on twitter does not define who you are. You are the future and from where I stand, that's a scary thought.
Of course this is just my opinion. Who do I want to be? Here is my short answer...I want to be the one my children say make them laugh & learn from even though I am a complete maniac. Who am I? I am Batman. HA HA HA kidding. I am just a girl in love with laughter who cracks up at herself everyday in the hopes that I crack you up too.
Are YOU who you want to be?
Yea so I kinda screwed with you on the title. It's the only funny thing in this post. Every once in awhile the Why So Serious Funtasian comes out. See what I did there? Thanks for stopping by and for your support.
Like my facebook page. http://www.facebook.com/thefuntasian
Follow me on twitter @funtasian
Enjoy this little video of me waking the Kracken on her birthday. Yes, I am cruel & enjoy this a little too much, but I love her so.
Yep...another year has gone by and my Ginger Kracken is 14. I lost a bet to her today because she knew Arthur was an aardvark. I thought he was a fancy mouse in sneakers. She said he was half human and half aardvark. The visual still disturbs me if you know what I mean.
Let's get back to the birthday girl...
From the moment of conception Sydney was trouble. She was the epitome of a pregnancy from HELL. Ever heard of P.U.P.P.S? No, right? Let me give you a little summary. I am allergic to the paternal cells the baby sheds while in utero. In other words. I am allergic to her father...
PUPPS is a rash you can get from your neck to your ankles. How lucky for me it doesn't affect your face, hands or feet because with Sydney that was the only place on my body I DIDN'T get this rash.
Now when I was pregnant with Madzilla, I did not get PUPPS until right when I was having her on ONE leg and if you notice Madzilla is more me than she is her father. Sydney is well...more him. Twins...
At just a few weeks into my pregancy the rash had started right by my crotch. Seriously?? Then it spread. EVERYWHERE. Every nook and cranny of my body. Anytime I even got the itching (pun intended) for another child after Sydney, all one had to say was...RASH and it snapped me right back into reality. It was bad. It was crying, freezing cold oatmeal baths, steroids, sarna cream, benedryl every single day. This kid was going to kill me from the inside out. Other than the normal pregnancy issues like peeing your pants, being as big as a whale and I was, heartburn that made me eat tums & prevacid like a crackhead, & rapid tachycardia just to name a few...OK RT is not normal but from my whale size, it could not be avoided. The Dr. even told me to drink wine because she was giving me contractions very early on. Imagine me huge at 7 months having dinner at the Carmins River Inn and ordering myself a big ass glass of wine. Just the look on the wait staff was fun for me. Between the constant Benedryl and glasses of wine I am surprised Sydney wasn't immediately put into a 12 step program at birth.
On June 30th...The Kracken was born...with a highlighted mohawk, a love for pop tarts, horses & naps.
So what was the first thing Madzilla did when she saw her new baby sister? Wacked her right on the head. From that day, I knew their relationship would be forged with immense love...yea right.
So here we are 14 years later and I am still itchy. I break out in hives at the thought of waking her for the next four years of High School. She just doesn't like waking up in the morning and doing so is a fate worse than waving a chocolate bar in my face then walking away with it.
As a mother you pray for good things to happen for your children. I pray she starts using an alarm clock come September. The Kracken Kronicles do not end here. This year was just the beginning of my morning madness with her. I hope you enjoy reading about it as much as I enjoy writing it. Happy Birthday Sydney. I love you more than food. I swear.
Enjoy these photos of the Kracken I have added...
As always thank you for stopping by! See you on the Flip Side with spotlights on some of my favorite comedians like Mike Keegan and Mel Englert coming soon.
Follow me on twitter @funtasian and like my facebook page http://facebook.com/thefuntasian
Cue the X-Files theme song here.
The Mick Thomas Show has taken a different turn for their 39th episode. Conspiracy Theories. Joining Mick in the studio are Jimmy Britt, Dom Dolce & Comedian Matt Burke.
Was the Boston Marathon Bombing Staged? Was Marshall Law necessary? What happened to the guy who blew off his legs? Is the government working to remove our guns over time? Does fear govern the people? What really happened with Building 7 in the World Trade Center? Did we really land on the moon before everyone else? You can be sure that anything huge in the news will trail with a conspiracy theory. What will you believe? Did aliens really landy at Area 51? Cue the X-Files again...What would Mulder & Scully do?
Conan O'Brien Fully Exposes Mainstream Media...check this out http://youtu.be/Hh_Kx7UKndI
I agree with Mick that nobody had any idea who Chris Christie was before the storm. I had no idea who he was before this show.
Jimmy questions everything he hears in the media, Mick plays devils advocate & Matt Burke is the all knowing conspiracy theorist. Thank god for Dom who brought the laughs and his wonderful head of hair.
Do you know what HSBC stands for? Listen to find out...those damn Asians
Check out the Clinton Body Count. - An interesting read. http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/clintonbodycount.htm
One thing I did agree with in this podcast was the clip of Jeff Daniels on my favorite show Newsroom where he talks about America not being the greatest country in the world. Whoever wrote that is a genius. http://youtu.be/9zZxBNRTkd4
I personally love hearing & reading about conspiracy theories although I hold no opinion so this was a good episode for me. If you are into all the supposed conspiracies around us, listen to the Mick Thomas Show Podcast Episode 39. Click the link below.
Follow these guys on twitter
@jimmybritter
@mickthomas
@_Matt_Burke
Dom doesn't do twitter
Follow me @funtasian and like me on facebook.com/thefuntasian
Thanks for stopping by. See you tomorrow on Inside the Flip Side...Spotlight on...
The first thing I saw when I ran back into my Grandpas home was a big black dog on the floor of the kitchen and my grandpa sitting at the table. Naturally, I looked at my mother and said, "Don't eat him!" He was the most beautiful dog I had ever seen. His name was Bones. Ironic for the biggest Newfoundland Collie mix I had ever seen. He would be my very best friend for the next 7 years. I can't lie, I worried for his life with a full breed in the house...
We lived in the upstairs of my Grandfathers house. Prince Ben slept with my mom of course a lot, but during his screaming fits of seperation anxiety during the day, they threw his chunky, I want my mommy 24/7 ass in my room. Have I mentioned how when he was born, I was sent away for a week? Not bitter at all...
I did all I could to shut the little prince up. I sang him songs of my people like...Mommy had a little dog, little dog, little dog, Mommy had a little dog...til she ate it. Ben did NOT like my songs...go figure?
I came home speaking fluent tagalog. I was now bilingual. This would be a problem when I went back to my elementary school after being gone. The teacher was not a fan or impressed of my multi - cultural ways. She sent home letters to my mother on how I couldn't speak english. She sent me to the school speech therapist who laughed when she asked me to look at pictures and say what they were because the teacher was wrong. Worst of all she called me names to the other kids & even egged them on when they teased me. I can hear you. I certainly showed her when I was able to read before anyone else. She mocked me in front of the whole class and said I couldn't do it. Well...if there is one thing about me everyone should know is that if you tell me I can't, I will go out of my way to show you I can. Her only reply to me reading in front of the class was, "Wow, I guess you really can read". No shit. Never underestimate the brain power of an Asian no matter the percentage.
I loved being home. White Grandpa made me coffee everyday on the sly & snuck me peanut butter cups. He always told me I was full of bolognie with all my stories of the Philippines. I had a new dog, the muppets were on tv & of course I had little brother to torture. It wasn't without its faults. My Grandpa rented his back rooms to stinkers. I have never smelled an odor this bad in my life. It smelled like the Brookhaven Landfill or a dead animal.
Bones would sneak upstairs to be with me at night. Hopping the gate and sleeping on my floor especially during storms. I warned Bones that he could be dinner if he wasn't careful especially since he was so hefty. Whenever she caught him under my bed she would scream holy bloody murder at him to get out. I thought she was scared she would eat him too so she refused to get attached. Had he been a turkey on leash, it would be a whole 'nother story. Nom Nom Nom...
My mom would walk to the deli and post office everyday. I always went along since it was right around the corner. The dog would come too, sneaking away from gramps and taking a short cut through the lake to beat us there. I spent my time at the deli crawling on the floor looking for change under the counter so I could buy Cracker Jacks. All I needed was a quarter. Man food was expensive when you didn't kill it yourself.
I learned very early on how mean people could be about race. I knew I was different & so did everyone else in town. They whispered about my mother and I didn't like it. Five year olds have the attention span of a gnat, but we are not deaf. At least in the Philippines being half white wasn't held against me as much as being half Asian in an all white town called Yaphank. Hide yo dogs, hide yo cats...we were here to stay Pankers. MUAHAHAHAAA....
Follow me on twitter @funtasian
Like me on facebook.com/thefuntasian
See you next time on Inside the Flipside spotlighting some of my favorite things. Thanks for stopping by!
Six white boys who go to Longwood High School debuted their first mix tape today. I don't really know much about them except that I really really like their new songs. It's an accomplishment they should be very proud of. I am going to bring them in for an impromptu interview in the near future and get all the deets for ya. Maybe I will video tape it. Should be fun. Can't wait.
Here is the link to all their new songs. Tune in.