December 18, 2004
The Way We Were...
Some observations, after spending the last three days sorting through home video footage.
1. I am shocked and appalled to discover that I have, for the last four years, truly UNDERestimated how much my dad actually did swear. Seriously. If my dad had said the last sentence, it would have come out like this: "God dammit, Gee-zus Christ. I am SHOCKED. You got that goddamn right. Boy, that son of a bitch. He knew how to let it out, that's for goddamn sure. Gee-zus CHRIST."
2. My sister is a freak.
3. At one time in my life, I had a VERY feminine pink room with porcelain dolls, milkglass lamps, pink sheets, a bookshelf stocked with the first fifty volumes of _The Babysitters Club_ series, and a closet door covered in magazine photographs of Skid Row. It looks like Headbangers Ball threw up all over Laura Ingalls Wilder.
4. My sister is a freak.
5. In 1994, Jan Carpenter had a blonde bob haircut down to her shoulders. And she still wears those huge Jackie O sunglasses that I have grown to love and even emulate.
6. Maybe one of the reasons Bill Spring found it so difficult to reconcile with my father is because of the fact that my dad spent the last year of their friendship drunk with a camcorder at Bill Spring's house, videotaping Bill's wife's ass. Just a thought.
7. My sister is a freak.
8. I spent a good deal of the summer of 1990 hiding my father's cigarettes from him. Actual conversation:
Dad: "Are you going to come to my funeral?"
Me: "Only if you don't smoke cigarettes."
Mom: (laughing) "I don't think your dad will be smoking cigarettes at his funeral, honey."
8. I miss you, Dad. And yes, I went to your funeral. You didn't smoke any cigarettes that day, but I sure as hell did. You got that goddamn right.
