And that’s one more reason I shouldn’t have eaten those beans! (And other adventures from 1972)

Last summer, I spent five long, lonnnnnnnnngggggggg weeks loitering like a bum on my mom’s couch, 2000 miles away from home.  Sounds like fun?  Yeah, not so much.  It wasn’t my idea to be there.  At all.  I just got all tangled up in the spider webby, complicated, court-ordered crap involving Wednesday and my ex-in-laws—(or are they called out-laws now?  I dunno….)—because I’m Wednesday’s mama and I was ordered to be her rescuer-in-waiting, should things turn sour.   Which they did.  Duh.


(Yeah, it’s complicated, but don’t worry, I’m not going to delve any further into it.)


(You’re welcome.)


While I was stuck out there in Seattle, living out of a suitcase, with nothing to do for over a month but wait for Wednesday to need me, I decided to tackle a hefty task I’ve been meaning to do for roughly twenty years.  Remember how I was telling you about my parents’ pitiful photo-organizing skills which resulted in everyone in my entire family (but me!) completely forgetting about a trip we took to California in 1986?  (Need a refresher?  Click HERE.)  Well, I decided enough was enough.  Before any more memories could go *POOF!* and disappear like M&M’s near a chocoholic, I decided I would round up all the old family photos I could find, scan them all into my laptop, put them all in chronological order, and piece my childhood back together, picture by picture. 


People, this was not easy!  And, at times, it was most frightening!  Ever stumbled upon a full-on crotch shot of your mom giving birth to your little brother?  No?  Well, I have!  And, frankly, I have never been the same since!


(NEVER.)


(*vomit*)


(*twice*)


Most of the pictures (including the horrific beaver shot) (*shudder*) were found randomly crammed into cardboard boxes.  They weren’t labeled, dated, or in any sort of order whatsoever, just a messy hodgepodge of images spanning the 60’s through the 90’s.  Totally overwhelming.  And the pictures that did make it into the family photo albums were often even worse!  I don’t know what Mom was sniffing while she put the albums together, but absolutely nothing made sense.  I found pages mislabeled “Christmas” which featured an obvious Halloween party; and barren pages with no pictures at all; and entire albums that skipped back and forth here and there throughout the years, like Bill and Ted on a time-travelling acid trip.


Oy.


When I came back to Chicago, I brought the scanned clutter of my past with me on my computer with the intention of putting it all in a nice, pretty, labeled, sense-making order so I could preserve all the memories, say “HA!” to my slacker parents, and so Wednesday could laugh at my 80’s hairstyles and my 70’s pants.  *le sigh*  But….  It’s been seven months and I’m still trying to sort it all out!  It’s been taking some effing serious CSI work, my God.  I’ve been scrutinizing haircuts, coats, and shoes; counting candles on birthday cakes; matching up missing teeth in children’s smiles; looking for subtle changes in house décor; and Googling information on toys and books littered in the backgrounds of old photos, all to try to figure out when these hundreds of pictures were taken.  It’s been one massive, aggravating, puppy-kicking, pain in the ass—*snarl*—but, of course, I have loved every minute of it.


I guess I underestimated what a gigantic journey it was going to be.  When I started, I truly had no clue that I would learn so flipping much about my history and that I would spend so much time twirling around in dizzy circles inside old memories that I haven’t stopped to visit in a long, long time.  It sounds like a dumb cheesy cliché (and you know that clichés are the only time that I am NOT pro-cheese), but maybe you need to face where you’ve been to understand where you are going.  (I know.  Deep, huh?)  That’s part of the reason I haven’t been blogging or skipping through Facebook as much lately.  I’ve been busy in my past.  And I’d like to share some of it with you over the next several posts. 


We’ll be lingering in the 70’s around here for a little bit, talking about toys, TV, clothes, books, music, wigs  (yes, wigs) and just pretty much what life was like back then, sifting through scattered pictures and misty water-colored mem-ries of the way we were. 


Can you dig it?  Far out.


My parents grew up, met, and married in London.  In the late 1960’s, they moved to the US (first Atlanta, then Seattle) because my dad got a job with Boeing.  I was their first baby (and the first person in my family born in America).  I popped out into the world in the Summer of 1972.  Here’s a picture I found of my mom while she was pregnant with me.




Yeah, you read that right:  WHILE SHE WAS PREGNANT.  Mom looked fabulous, no?   I don’t know how she pulled that off, frankly.  I know I never managed to squeeze out even a mere millisecond of fabulousness while I was pregnant.  Instead, I just galumphed around in over-sized t-shirts, while oozing blubbery, nauseous, crankiness, and looking like Louie Anderson in drag the whole nine months.  How most unfair.


Being fabulous when you’re pregnant has a price though, I suppose.  After Mom sloshed down drinks at a party five weeks before my due date, I, clearly, took offense at her marinating me in alcohol and I kicked so hard that her water broke.  She went into early labor and then magically found herself the surprised mother of a five pound itty bitty preemie who failed the Apgar Test and had to be whisked away to an incubator immediately.  Oops. 


This was me the day I was born, looking exceptionally pissed off and already plotting my revenge. 




It’s a good thing they put me in mittens, so you can’t see the middle finger I’m brandishing there.  But anyway….


These days, everyone gasps in horror, of course, when they hear about Mom knocking ‘em back while she was pregnant, but she assures me that it was no big deal at the time because, hey, it was a party and that was the norm in 1972 and it’s what everybody did.  I guess life was like that bar scene in Hairspray back then.  (“Wow!  They’re so glamorous.”)  But I’m not complaining; I survived. 


Unlike these days when the hospital kicks you out the door 24 hours after giving birth, back then moms and babies got to live it up in the hospital for four whole days before going home.  (Again, so unfair.)  Once they got me home, Mom and Dad were eager to fatten me up, it seems, because here they are, shoveling baby food in my face while I was trying to sleep. 




I seem really perplexed by the whole thing—and rightfully so, I think, because, obviously, I was waaaayyyyyyyy too young to be eating solid food.  (Hell, I was a preemie, and I shouldn’t even have been born yet!)  But, again, it was the 70’s and there were no rules on… well… anything.  After eating?  Yep, they gave me a bath.  And I was most displeased.




This is me, after being force-fed and dunked in water, further planning out my forthcoming revenge.




(”Well, that settles it.  Now I am SO going to be a shit when I’m a teenager.  You have no-one to blame but yourselves.”)


But I guess I eventually got the hang of the whole eating thing, because I was as round as a beach ball just a couple of months later.




Mom thinks I’m laughing jovially with her in that shot up there.  But I’m pretty sure I’m really laughing at her sagging beehive wig.  My mom had a whole collection of bizarre wigs back then.  She even had a gray one!  (Seriously?  Who voluntarily gives themselves gray hair?!?!)  She seemed to have a different hair color and hairstyle each and every day of the week.  I wonder if I knew it was all the same woman or if I thought I had a whole battalion of mothers coming and going?….


Hmm….


Well, anyway….


There aren’t really any decent pictures of what my nursery looked like back then, but I know from the bits and pieces in the backgrounds of various pictures that there was a lot of yellow in it and that I had a cute hand-painted wooden Irmi Mother Goose mobile hanging over my crib.




I have vague memories of that mobile.  I Googled the heck out of it and found out that Irmi mobiles, lamps, and light switch covers were everywhere in the 70’s.  My one played Rock-a-Bye Baby and had cute wooden nursery rhyme characters hanging from it.  These days they sell on eBay for about $10 each.  Here are some close-up shots of the old, long-gone mobile that I borrowed from eBay and Etsy.










Ahh, the glorious 1970’s!  When people put wooden objects the size of grapes in their babies' beds and the term ‘choking hazard’ hadn’t been invented yet.  Fifty bucks says that was lead paint too.


I was about five months old when Christmas rolled around.  Here I am with my dad (who looked like a young Alan Alda) who gave me a teddy bear.




I still have that bear.  He’s a threadbare old man now.  Like, literally.  These days, he’s dressed like Dumbledore and sitting in my den.  See?




Here I am with my bear and the rest of my Christmas presents back in 1972.  Mom opted for a black wig that day, but I’m pretty sure that’s the same purple dress as before!




See the little pink doll just beneath the bear?  That was my Baby Beans Doll.  Baby Beans was made by Mattel in the early 70’s.  She had a vinyl face and hands with a floppy, soft body that was stuffed with orange plastic “beans”. 


According to family legend, Baby Beans wasn’t with us for long because, one tragic morning, my mom found me sitting in my crib, eating the plastic “beans” that had poured out when I had ripped open Baby Beans’ seams.  Whoopsie!  Even forty years later, Dad still loves to tell the harrowing tale of the Battle of the Baby Beans.  (Apparently, the next several diaper changes were quite beany…. and orange…. and interesting to say the least.  Ugh!)  Here’s a better picture of Baby Beans that I borrowed from eBay.




These days Baby Beans goes anywhere from $5 to $50 on eBay.  $50!  Can you believe that?  And that’s ONE MORE reason I shouldn’t have eaten those beans!



In the next post, I’ll be telling you what I’ve discovered about 1973—that magical year when I rocked out to the Stylistics, rode a motorcycle, discovered the joy of birthday cake, and taught my grandpa a valuable lesson on when NOT to play horse-y with a baby.





© Coracabana

I’m going to be just like Elaine with the sponges, I just know it! (Are you Twinkie-worthy?!)

I hit four stores to stock up on all things Hostess-y (and mourn my childhood) since I heard they went out of business this morning.  Did you?!


*sniffle*






© Coracabana

The Mr. Wrong Diaries

I’m getting serious now.


I have this friend that I’ve known practically forever.  She married Mr Wrong when she was too young and, in a nutshell, he was an abusive jackass from day one.  There.  Even after they split up, he was constantly pounding on her front door and showing up at her workplace, hounding, assaulting, and tormenting her.  He was an angry, scowling, belittling, cruel, and violent kind of creep, and she was terrified of him. 


Let’s call her Lily.


Lily was too afraid to call the police or even tell anyone what was happening because she knew that would just make Mr Wrong even MORE angry, so instead she tried whatever she could to keep him calm.  For years she tried to handle it all by herself and for years she suffered alone with it. 


Sometimes people would notice things weren’t right.  They’d see Mr Wrong storming around.  They’d hear Lily crying.  They would ask Lily about it when Mr Wrong wasn’t nearby, but Lily would always say things were fine when things were definitely NOT fine.  She was ashamed of the way things were and felt like maybe there was something wrong with HER because of the way Mr Wrong treated her.  She didn’t want anyone else to see her the way Mr Wrong did, so she tried to act like everything was normal…. because when she pretended things were okay, everyone else thought things were okay, and then things kind of felt okay, okay?


Yeah.  It was complicated. 


But, even more complicated….


They had a child together before they split up.  Let’s call the baby Daisy.  Daisy was adorable, chubby, and such a happy little thing!  Mr Wrong—who didn’t pay child support or daycare or contribute a single penny towards the child for a long, long time (until the child support officers caught up to him, of course)—used that child as an excuse to stalk and berate Lily.  She could never, NEVER get away from him. 


Somewhere along the line early on, Lily got some secret legal advise behind Mr Wrong’s back.  She was told to write down everything Mr Wrong did to her and the baby, to keep a record of it all to use against him some day.  So, she did.  She amassed a huge box full of journals detailing all her interactions with Mr Wrong.  However, years later, she found out that her journals were useless and couldn’t be helpful in court against Mr Wrong because the only kind of proof that the court wants to see is police or medical reports, and Lily had none.


Disgusted, Lily boxed up her diaries and gave them all to me.  She said she couldn’t stand to ever see the damn things again because she felt like they had kind of betrayed her.  She had poured all her misery out in those little books all those years, thinking she was doing the right thing and that those books would swoop in and save her one day…. but they didn’t.  Instead, they left her alone in battle with Mr Wrong all over again, just like she had always been, and she hated them for it.


She said I could read them if I wanted to, she didn’t care anymore.  I didn’t want to for a long time, but eventually curiosity got the best of me and I broke into the box of books.  And I have never been the same since.  My heart physically hurts, you guys.  I can hardly stand thinking of my friend and her bubbly baby going through shit like that!  Domestic violence and emotional abuse is never pretty, everyone knows that, but here in my hands I have a blow-by-blow account of it, spanning over a decade.  I can’t believe no judge would accept this as evidence for Lily against Mr Wrong!!!!  


I’m going to share snippets of a few of the many, many entries here in Lily’s own written words (with names altered to protect the innocent—and the guilty).  Tell me what you think about the court system ignoring all of this either in the comments below or in email, as I know a lot of you prefer.


Domestic violence is not always like Law & Order, chock full of black eyes and restraining orders.  Here’s what abuse more often looks like….



SNIPPET #1 (written one day in the Summer of 1997 when Mr Wrong flew into one of his many rages in front of Lily and baby Daisy while they were still living in the same house and Daisy was about eight months old): 


“I don’t think I will ever make it out of his grip alive.  He is getting more and more enraged over little, little things.  I don’t know what to do.”….

“I’m not ‘allowed’ to touch his things anymore in case I somehow break them.”…. 

“He started yelling at me and getting in my face, saying, ‘you will treat my things with respect!’ and ‘if I come home and find my things ruined, you will be SO SORRY!’”…. 

“I didn’t break and ruin any of his things.  How many times do I have to defend myself on that?”…. 

“He had his finger pointing in my face.  He was yelling on and on about what a terrible person I am.  He said I am ‘pathetic’.  He said I am ‘hopeless’.  He said I am ‘just a bitch’.  He said I am a ‘fucking idiot’.  He said I am ‘stupid’.  He said I am a ‘moron’.”…. 

“He told me repeatedly to ‘fuck off’ and he told me all our problems are all my fault.”…. 

“He said that I ‘don’t deserve’ his ‘attention’ and I ‘don’t deserve’ his ‘respect’ and that I will never get it from him.”…. 

“He said I have nothing ‘important’ or ‘interesting’ to say.”…. 

“During his rampage I was feeding [Daisy] some cottage cheese, and right there in front of her, he kicked her Donald Duck toy across the apartment and it hit a wall by the front door.  She burst into tears, with cottage cheese falling out of her mouth, tears running down her cheeks, and her arms up by her face, shaking in fear!  I scrambled to get her out and comfort her.  He didn’t feel bad, he didn’t stop to see if she was okay, he continued his yelling and accusations and went past us into the kitchen and kicked Donald Duck around some more until it broke!”….

”He told me that he thinks I don’t love [Daisy], that I was only comforting her to make myself look good and to feed my ego!”



SNIPPET #2 (written in the Spring of 1998, eight months after Lily and Mr Wrong had been separated, and the day baby Daisy had just had surgery in the hospital):

”He followed us home and while [Daisy] was sleeping off the anesthetic in her crib, [Mr Wrong] was pulling me around and trying to talk me into having sex with him!  He offered me money for it!  That makes me so sick.  He leaves us dead broke, then thinks he can get my pants off by waving money in my face.  This is not the first time he has tried this!  That is his opinion of me?”….

”After all that has been happening and his not paying child support, the only way [Daisy] and I will get money is for me to have sex with him?  We don’t need the money if that’s how we have to get it!  I am not a prostitute!”….

”I kept bluntly saying no and he kept asking for it.  He wouldn’t stop!”….

”He said he could ‘rape’ me if he wanted to.”….

”He even offered me $100 to just drop my pants and let him have a look!”….

”Then when I made it clear I didn’t want to be poked, tickled, or otherwise touched by him he started making fun of me.  He brought up all the physical things that are ‘wrong’ with me.  Then he said that he knows that a lot of the things he said and did to me during our marriage were ‘physical and emotional abuse’, but that I ‘had it coming’.  (I could just scream!)  He said that he knew when he was doing it that it was ‘wrong’ and that he ‘should stop’, but he didn’t because I ‘deserved it’.”….


SNIPPET #3 (written one day in the Summer of 1998, a year after Lily and Mr Wrong had separated):


”[Mr Wrong] came over unannounced again today.  He kept grabbing and touching me and trying to talk me into sex.  He pinned me to the floor, got on top of me, and was trying to pry my legs apart, all in front of [Daisy].  I fought and kept yelling no, but he wouldn’t listen or stop.”…. 

“Then he kept trying to kiss me on the lips.  When I guess it finally became clear that I wasn’t going to give in, he said something mean about my weight and then kicked my stuff across the room.  I could just puke!”….


SNIPPET #4 (written one day in the Summer of 1998 when Mr Wrong was in Lily’s house to, supposedly, have a visit with Daisy who was one and a half years old):


”[Mr Wrong] refused to leave me alone.  He kept sneaking up behind me and jabbing me in my sides.”….

”It didn’t matter how many times I told him to stop it, he just kept doing it.  He pulled me to the floor and dug his fingers in my sides—it is very painful, he just digs his fingers in my sides as hard as he can and grinds them in me and ignores my crying, my telling him it hurts, and my telling him to stop it!”….

”I hate myself for not punching him in the face.”….

”[Daisy] kept shouting ‘Stop it! Stop it!’”….

”’It wouldn’t hurt if you didn’t struggle,’ he said.  ‘Don’t fight me!’”….


SNIPPET #5 (written the morning after the previous snippet):

”I woke up today with bruises all up my sides from what [Mr Wrong] did to me yesterday.  I’m still in pain!  He has no business touching me!”….

”I am SO ANGRY!”….



SNIPPET #6 (written one day in the Summer of 1999, two years after Lily and Mr Wrong had separated, and the day after Lily had told Mr Wrong to stop talking about her body in a degrading way because it made her uncomfortable):


”[Mr Wrong] told me he is mad at me for telling him my breasts are none of his business.  He said it was ‘shitty’ of me.  He told me he is a ‘smart’ person and ‘smart people should never be questioned’.”….

”He yelled at me every time I said a word.  He said ‘I can’t have a conversation with you if you talk!’”….

”He told me to never say it is none of his business again, because when I did that, I was being ‘disrespectful’ and ‘discourteous’ to him.”….


SNIPPET #7 (written one day in the Summer of 1999, two years after Lily and Mr Wrong had separated, and when Lily was having trouble with Mr Wrong stalking her):


”Today [Mr Wrong] called my workplace and my chiropractor’s office looking for me.  When the receptionist at the chiropractor’s office told me he had called, I figured something terrible had happened, so I called him back.  But he had called me there just to tell me he wanted me to go out to dinner.”….

”When I got home, my caller ID showed he had called [my home] 5 times this afternoon in addition to calling my workplace and my chiropractor!”….


SNIPPET #8 (written one night in the Fall of 1999, when Mr Wrong was in Lily’s house, supposedly, to visit Daisy who was two years old):

”[Mr Wrong] kept telling me and [Daisy] again and again that he is ‘evil’ and a ‘monster.”  He actually put his face right into [Daisy’s] face and told her he is a ‘monster’.”….

”He was saying he can foresee a day when [Daisy] will understand what he is and will want to kill him for it!”….

”And he said ‘in five years, we will be friends or I will be dead’.  I can only assume he means suicide.”….

”He kept trying to hug me.  He kept talking about my body.  I was trying to hide my body under couch pillows again so he couldn’t see it.”….


SNIPPET #9 (written one night in the Fall of 1999, over two years after Lily and Mr Wrong had separated, and when Mr Wrong kept hiding in the dark to startle Lily outside her house and Daisy’s daycare night after night):


”[Mr Wrong] snuck in the dark and followed me.  I didn’t know he was there until I turned around to find him behind me, glaring at me with a really frightening look on his face.”….

”A chill ran right through me and I felt like running.  He looked furious and I couldn’t think what I might have done to piss him off.  I felt trapped in a spider web.”….

”But it turned out [Mr Wrong] was just following me to ‘scare’ me.  Mission accomplished!”…. 


SNIPPET #10 (written one night in early 2001 when Mr Wrong was at Lily’s house, supposedly, to visit Daisy, who was three years old):


”[Mr Wrong] said he threatened [an acquaintance] with a baseball bat and hid the phone so [the acquaintance] couldn’t call 911 during ‘the beating’ and now [Mr Wrong’s sister] is ‘afraid’ of him and thinks he is ‘a monster.’  That’s what [Mr Wrong] told me while sounding all proud of himself, acting like being seen as ‘a monster’ appeals to him.”….

”He told me not to tell anyone and told me he would come after me too if he ever hears back from anyone that I told them what he said.”….


Wow.  Can you believe the legal system just dismissed all of that because it was written in journals instead of police reports?! 


That was just ten diary entries.  Ten out of hundreds and hundreds of them!  That was just a small sampling of the earlier stuff Lily and Daisy went through.  I haven’t even gotten to the more recent diary entries yet, because I could only stomach reading through the first couple of books on the pile, but I do know that in more recent years, things were really no better for Lily and Daisy at the hands of Mr Wrong…. although Daisy’s school did end up calling the police over red flags they picked up on regarding Mr Wrong’s behavior, and that changed the dynamic somewhat.


Why am I telling you about this?  Well, because it dawned on me that just because Lily’s journals couldn’t help protect her from Mr Wrong within the legal system like she had thought they would, that doesn’t mean they can’t still be helpful.  What’s that saying?…. If you can’t be a good example, at least be a horrible warning.  (Or something like that.)  Maybe by talking about it here, someone in a similar situation will be helped by it and then it won’t have been for nothing.


You guys, if you get the feeling someone you know is in an abusive, controlling, or otherwise twisted relationship, you are probably right.  And, if she is, she likely feels that reaching out for help will only make things worse and that it’s best if she just handles it by herself.  Don’t just ASK her if things are okay, because you probably won’t get an honest answer:  GET HELP.  Just do it.  Do whatever you can to help her get out.  She needs you, even if she can’t say so.


If you, yourself, are in an abusive relationship, please, PLEASE get help.  If he is hurting you, threatening you, degrading you, scaring you, stalking you, or doesn’t understand that no means no, YOU NEED TO GET AWAY FROM HIM.  Tell someone who can help protect you and whose statement will carry weight in court—a therapist, a doctor, or the police—but also tell your friends or family members as well, because the more people you have in your support system, the better. 


One of the things I read in Lily’s journals that really crushed me was how much her friends and family disliked Mr Wrong, so they would just scatter like cockroaches whenever Mr Wrong showed up because they didn’t want to be in his company.  That meant that, over and over again, Lily and Daisy were abandoned and left alone with him, and that’s when the abuse would occur.  Mr Wrong knew Lily didn’t have much of a support system to protect her, and that’s why he kept doing those horrible things.  Because he could. 


Abusers can’t do what they do best in a crowd, they need their victims isolated.  If someone is mistreating you, keep your support system close, tell people what is going on (even if your abuser tells you no-one will believe you—as Mr Wrong kept telling Lily), and always remember that what he does to you does NOT define who you are. 


Abusers are just assholes.  Plain and simple.  It’s not YOU, it’s THEM.  They don’t outgrow it.  They don’t change.  They don’t magically wake up one morning with newfound respect for you and realize what shitbags they have been.  They just keep abusing people and convincing themselves that their victims ‘deserve’ it….  Like Mr Wrong, who just two weeks ago called Lily his “adversary with benefits” (in front of a court-ordered therapist!!!!—can you believe that????) when she attempted to confront him about the times in the past when he sexually assaulted her.


Wow.


Assholes never learn.






© Coracabana

Oh, To Be a Teenage Girl!

My daughter has a friend. Let’s call her “Dippy,” because she is.

Dippy got mad at Gwen the other day because Gwen invited another girl over to our house this weekend. Dippy decided to get revenge. Her revenge? She claimed she fell, hit her head, got amnesia, and didn’t remember who Gwen was anymore.

Uhh…. okaaaayyyyyyyy.

(You see why I call her Dippy, right? Sharpest knife in the drawer, she is NOT.)

So, Gwen got HER revenge by “reminding” Dippy in front of everyone at school that before she got “amnesia” she lost a bet to Gwen and owes Gwen $1000!

And suddenly—*POOF*—just like magic, Dippy’s “amnesia” was cured.

GOD, I ADORE TEENAGE GIRLS!!!!

© Coracabana