I’m often tragically glib about my own issues with guilt: I know this. I’ll joke about how when I see a cop sitting on the side of the road my mind immediately believes that he will pull me over for any number of infractions: flagrant use of the color pink, inappropriate listening of Britney Spears, maybe I’m being recklessly garish with my choice of handbag. I can’t be sure.

I’ve been this way since I can remember, likely since Jesus was my classmate. I was born a guilty soul, I guess. Having a mentally ill parent only intensified this and I’m sure it only added to my Naturally Guilty ™ personality.

Now, I must first give you the disclaimer that the things that I do feel guilty about are mostly irrational. I don’t have a guilty conscience because I cheated on my husband, or because I secretly beat my kids or have a cat fetish. The guilt I have is much more ingrained than that. The guilt is irrational, completely so, and it’s become as much a part of me as my colorblindness or green thumb.

Thanks to my Online Degree from Google University, I’ve read up on excessive feelings of guilt, and while I can see where a lot of the symptoms fit other people, the only one that really is applicable to my situation is this: feelings of over-responsibility. I’ve been this way my whole life: I got a degree in a field I hate and graduated at the top of my class because I felt like I should, not because the coursework was fascinating to me.

The days when I can’t keep up and comment on the 300+ blogs in my reader? I feel terrible. It’s so stupid, I mean, 80 % of them don’t comment here and yet I bust my nuts to make sure to be Super-Aunt Becky, Overachiever, Esq? DOES NOT COMPUTE.

(to be clear so this doesn’t sound all whiny, wah wah wah, I don’t mind commenting and I enjoy the f-c-u-k out of connecting with other bloggers)

I know, I know, I need to cut myself a break now and again–I know I do–and I’m trying. I spent the whole weekend chanting (to myself. I’m still not THAT crazy) “I am not the potter, but the potter’s clay” and it sort of helped.

I mean, I still felt awful about not being able to see my friend Heather, I felt terrible that we needed a new dishwasher even though the thing has been limping along, spurting out half-clean dishes for years. I felt awful that we hadn’t found the dying fledgling robin sooner and had gotten him to the wildlife rehabilitation center before he was really, REALLY sick. The list is long and increasingly stupid.

I am not responsible for anything but the way I react to things.

It’s time to stop this. I know that I need to stop this. I’ve known it for ages, but I’ve been waiting for…something to push me in the right direction.

After months of ignoring it, I am going to meet with someone to help talk me through this. I need to come up with a way around the guilt and I’m confident that I’ll be able to find one after awhile.

I’ve waffled on posting about this, not because I don’t think you’ll be unfailingly kind (wait, did that double negative make sense?), but because it doesn’t really…go anywhere. It’s not something I want to stand up tall and proud in the soldiers uniform I picture myself in when I’m standing proud and tall and speaking my truth and admit to you: hey, Internet, I have issues! Pretend to act surprised!

I’m showing my vulnerability to you because I am hoping that maybe somewhere, sometime, someone will be able to look at this and say “Dude, if that crazy bitch can do it, so can I.”

I’m not the Potter, but the Potter’s clay.

Okay, first, go read this, o! yee who don’t sit at their computer all weekend waiting patiently, crying, and prostrate with grief until I posted something obviously deep and meaningful here. Because who has better stuff to do on the weekend?

(don’t answer that)

Rick, one of the delivery drivers, acted first. He swooped down, all 6 feet of him, and grabbed the pizza suit from Cesar and held it up to his burly chest before running into the bathroom with it. He emerged, several minutes later, as a slice of pizza. A HUMAN slice of pizza with his face sticking merrily out of the middle of the slice.

It was just too much. I nearly soiled myself.

Who the hell thinks that a human dressing up as food is anything other than a) humiliating or b) hilarious? Phil had, obviously, seen this as an amazing way to attract attention and perhaps increase profits tenfold, but his thinking was predictably flawed.

While a dancing slice of pizza was sure to attract attention–the same way an afro on a white man attracts attention: it was, of course, the wrong KIND of attention. And it was such a uniquely Phil way of doing things, just like standing in front of the single pop machine during the dinner rush to inform some server or another that they were using too many napkins. Valid point, stupid timing. Could be the slogan for restaurant GM’s.

But for us, all of whom had been interrogated at one point or another about the Curious Incident Of The Cheese And The Nighttime, it was just that much more hysterical. I mean, really, a dancing PIZZA?

For the next several weeks, during the start of the dinner rush, well before the drivers were needed to shlep pizzas back and forth, the delivery drivers would take turns putting on the pizza suit and running through the dining room. I’m fairly certain that in this manner, many children were suitably traumatized. But it never failed to make us laugh: this a stupid, corny costume.

Once in awhile, Phil would convince one of the poor line cooks (poor as in the take-pity-on-him not in the broke-as-a-joke way.) during a slow lunch shift to go to the nearby road to wave at passing cars. As far as I know, it never attracted a soul into the restaurant to drop some bucks, but 50 million marketing geniuses (genuii?) can’t be wrong. Can they?

One Friday night after work, Rick and I were sitting and counting our tips and having our shift drink together, and I was grumbling and grousing about how he always made more bank than I did. Little did we know that the opportunity of a life-time was about to be hatched.

I don’t know who suggested it thanks, in no small part, to my tall Jack-n-diet-coke, I can’t full take credit for it so instead I will simply say that we mutually came up with a brilliant plan. The following Thursday night, when I was off work but while Rick was working, we would meet up at the restaurant so that I could help him deliver his pizzas.

Rick would, we decided, dress up in the pizza costume and deliver the pizza to our unsuspecting victims as a slice of pizza. Because short of throwing Rick into a thong, his bulge hanging out for all the world to see, I couldn’t think of anything weirder than getting a pizza delivered by a slice of pizza.

So that’s just what we did. With my friend from school, Arlene, manning the video camera, we–acting as normally as possible of course–drove Rick’s route that night. He’d ring the doorbell and hand the pizza to the victim while I would help make change. Just like this was the most normal situation. Just a random Thursday night delivering pizzas dressed as a slice of pizza lah-dee-dah.

Acting like this was nothing out of the ordinary was harder than it no doubt sounds.

Arlene took some footage that I am certain would rival The Blair Witch Project for most nauseating camera work on an independent film. I would pay a lot of money to see that footage now, but I haven’t seen Arlene since I graduated college and have no idea where to find her.

Shockingly, not a single person commented on this. Not one soul acted as though anything was out of the ordinary. It was as though we were being Punk’d while we were trying to Punk others.

In our efforts to behave as normally as possible, it seems that the houses we hit were full of people for whom this is an everyday occurrence. Maybe they are always served hot dogs by people dressed as gigantic wieners, Chicago-style. Maybe every ice cream cone is hand scooped by a walking, talking milkshake. In a world where a sandwich is always made by a sandwich, we were mere players; costumed pawns in this parade of nameless, faceless food mascots.

I would totally live in that world, you know. So long as I could make the rest of my family wear sausage costumes. Just so I never have to wear the Santa costume again.

All right, loves, dish: I want to hear about pranks. All kinds of pranks. I’m hoping that the laughter I get from your comments will help with this God-awful headache I’ve had for a couple of months.

And if you’re inclined, you can vote for my happy-crappy (emphasis on the crappy) ass here:

Several months after The Daver and I started dating, he flew home from somewhere (boy were his arms tired!) and somehow, rather than allowing him to take the pee-stained EL home, Ben and I went to pick him up at the airport. It was the first time he’d met Ben in the flesh (as my boyfriend) and although he told me later that he was nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs (he totes didn’t use that phrase, but I wish he had because how awesome is that?), it didn’t show.

Ben was a strange kid who didn’t exactly attach himself easily to people so I was quaking in my Uggs. All for nothing. The two of them hit it off all he’s the cheese and I’m the macaroni style. I can honestly tell you that I’d never seen anything like it. They danced and grooved to Erasure (don’t judge my music, people), Ben allowed Dave to carry him across a busy road, and Dave began the first of many Making Sure Ben Drank His Milk With Dinner campaigns.

That was the night that Daver became a father. I’d say it was a choice, but it wasn’t really. Not anymore than one can choose whom they fall in love with. Had it not been over for Dave by then, it was then. He was done, cooked, a father and a partner.

The whole ride back home that night I heard nothing but this from my normally silent child: “Oh…BYE, Dave” in the most mournful tone you can imagine. He never said “Mommy” but “Dave” was the 5th or 6th word in his vocabulary.

It’s still probably his most used word to date.

Every single day when I hear my eldest beg to stay up to see Dave when he comes home, my middle son to say mournfully (again with the damn mournful!) “Dada…work.” If his words could have a frowny face, they would. Then my daughter, the light of my life, wiggles her whole body with utter happiness when she sees her beloved Daddy come into her line of sight.

I know how lucky we all are.

So Happy Father’s Day to you, The Daver, o! the Prime Minister of Poopy Diapers and the King of all Tickle Fests. We raise our glasses (and bottles of milk to you today).

It’s not a glamorous swinging life, this poo-stained, vomit-encrusted, stinky existence. Sure you traded living downtown for a house in the ‘burbs and the Integra for a mini-van. But it’s a nice house; it’s OUR house, and shit, the van really is fucking useful.

And you, like the rest of us, wouldn’t change it for anything. (Except maybe Prada. But it would have to be a REALLY nice Prada bag or something. But I digress.)

Okay, for that, I am totally putting up THIS picture rather than the super corny shit that I could have. Happy Father’s Day, love.

You see this ring? IT MEANS I OWN YOU.

If there are any other dudes out there who read my estrogen-laden blog, I wish you a happy, Happy Father’s Day as well. May your grills be grill-y and all of your sausages cooked. Except, you know, THOSE sausages.

Wow. THAT was awkward.

When Ben was a couple of months old, I went back to work as a waitress. I’d waited tables for years before, so I was eagerly hired at the new pizza place that opened up in town. In a sea of newbies, I was a Master of my Trade. Queen of the Kingdom.

The general manager of the restaurant was a guy I’ll call Phil (although, I am stating for the record, this was not his name) and he was a decent guy. For an over-worked underpaid restaurant GM, that’s a huge thing.

He’d show up on the weekends and despite occasionally trying to get us to unsuccessfully have team building meetings at 5PM when the dinner rush was beginning to discuss things like “selling more pizza,” and often telling a server who was so slammed that she was eyeball deep in the weeds to “smile more,” I always liked him. Probably because he called me “efficient” which is a label–unlike ‘stupid bitch’ which I am called quite often–that I had never before heard.

Hokey and corny, yes, but Phil was a good guy. Which meant we’d often mock him behind his back–although, I must add, not unkindly–and try to do our best Phil impression. This often involved frowning a lot and bursting out conspiratorially with the often-heard “I think someone is stealing cheese,” and by far and away the best impersonator was one of the managers, a mexican dude named Cesar.

One Saturday night after close, Cesar, who was the night manager, pulled from the manager’s office this large cloth contraption. Mystified, we all grabbed our smokes and gathered ’round, our piles of tips left on the tables near the halfway rolled up basket of silverware. Cesar was laughing so hard that he was crying. Although this wasn’t uncommon as he was known for his excellent sense of humor, we all clamored to know what the hell was so fucking funny.

Once he’d caught his breath and wiped the tears, he turned around the cloth contraption he was holding. On the back it had been brown but on the front, it was red. With large circles of purple and dots of grey felt and slices of green felt. It took us a moment to realize what we were looking at, but we all saw it at the same time.

“Holy SHIT,” Amy–another server–yelled. “That’s a gigantic fucking pizza suit.”

And it was.

Phil had bought us, for no reason we could ascertain, a gigantic triangle-shaped pizza suit. I can swear to you, The Internet as my witness, that I have never, ever laughed so hard in my entire life. It was a typical Phil thing (it is killing me, I should add, to not tell you his real name not because it’s an exciting name, but because I can’t think outside the effing box) to do: pointless yet hilarious, hokey yet comedic, and one of those things that no one else would think was a good idea.

I mean, sure, I do sometimes see those poor fuckers, dressed up as a taco or a sandwich on the side of the road. We live far enough from stuff that driving from place to place is a necessity, so these people merely stand listlessly on the side of the road, wilting in the heat and freezing in the cold and choking on the exhaust of Escalades and Bentley’s. And I will tell you that I have never, ever, EVER stopped to eat somewhere because they had a person dressed as a chicken sadly standing at the side of the road.

If anything, I keep driving and pretend for both of our sakes that it never happened. I had not seen an actual humiliated person standing there, dressed as a large Chicago hot dog or a milk shake. Seemed healthier that way for all parties.

Anyway, there we were, a cluster of servers, bartenders and delivery drivers, staring slack jaw awash in awe of the possibilities that only a gigantic felt pizza suit would provide.

Which.were.endless.

Part Number B will air on Monday.

No, this picture has nothing to do with anything. But it cheered me up a bit, so, you know.

—————–

Back when I was 15, like all hot blooded teenagers I was learning how to drive.

Between my father’s obvious terror at the idea of being in the front seat of a car driven by his daughter and my mother’s out and out refusal to drive with me, I was stuck researching other options so that I may actually get approved for a driver’s license sometime in the next 14 years.

The other option came in the form of my over-18 years old friends, whom I was allowed by the state to drive with.

So one day, I was tooling around with my friend Audrey as we drove out in the more rural areas outside my town. I figured that this was probably safest alternative, considering that there was little to no traffic for me to hit with my car.

On one of the winding roads, just as you came over a hill was a farm. And on that farm they had some chickens.

And those chickens saw fit to cross this road at THE EXACT MOMENT I DROVE UP THE HILL.

It was a blind hill, so I couldn’t see anything on the other side of it.

The next thing I knew, I ran over not one, not two, but an entire flock of chickens. My car was awash in chicken feathers and poo.

I screamed along with the poor chickens.

I slammed on the brakes and turned to Audrey, tears pouring out of my eyes and she grimly informed me that I needed to go back and put any of the chickens that weren’t dead out of their misery. This was an even more horrifying prospect to me, who now just wanted to climb back in bed and wrap myself in the comfort of a large vodka.

I liked chickens, I did! I thought they were cute and sweet and I was happy to have them around. Opossums, however, I would have happily run down with my car, bike or even my boot clad feet. They were mean, they were nasty, and I hated them. But chickens!

My heart shattered loudly at the prospect. Becky, MURDER OF CHICKENS, I could see the headlines now.

But no. I couldn’t sit their daydreaming while there were more chickens to maim! I executed a 14 or 47 point turn and drove my Car of Doom back, crying and blubbering on and found the chickens. Well, some of them. Thankfully (I suppose) for my guilt-ridden conscience the ones that were dead were, in fact, dead, and the ones that weren’t had moved on to less dangerous car infested pastures.

As we drove away, me still weeping over the dead chickens, my car covered with carnage and feathers, Audrey looked at me and said,

“Why did the chickens cross the road?”

She waited a couple of beats as I grimly held onto the steering wheel at a perfect 10 and 2 position.

“TO GET RUN OVER BY BECKY.”

I was highly unamused.

• Most blogs have about a one year shelf life.

• There is such a thing as over-posting, but I’m unclear as to what that is.

• Blogging takes a ton of work. Really, it does.

• The trolls will come and they do not read most of what you say before they chew you out in the comments.

• It’s really up to you whether or not you allow the trolls to have their say on your blog.

• No one will read you for a couple months. It’s okay. Soldier on.

• If you want people to read you, read other blogs.

• You may be 1000% certain that you are The New Dooce, but you’re not. Now, you might be as talented as fucking Hemmingway, but you’re not going to get the same press that she did. No press = no instant popularity.

• There’s more politics than you can imagine in blogging.

• If you want more comments then comment until your fingers bleed.

• Get a reader and subscribe to the blogs you like. Comment the shit out of those blogs. People will (eventually) come.

• I’m more likely to comment on your blogs if you’re a loyal commentor on my blog.

• There will be bloggers who will NEVER visit your blog no matter how many amazing and witty comments you leave. Period. Move on if it hurts your feelings.

• Begging for comments is distasteful.

• Support each other as best as you can, in good times and in bad. Every comment helps.

• Every couple of weeks, some new trend will piss off a number of (especially) mom bloggers and they will become annoyingly polarized.

• Resist the urge to chime in about Your Take On This Trend. Seriously.

• Every time the Today show features Dooce, there’s a bazillion start up blogs that believe (hehe) that you can $40,000 a month blogging. Maybe if you’re Dooce that’s true, but for the rest of us? Bwahahahahaha! I don’t mean to sound mean, and if you do manage this, pat yourself on your back for me but don’t get your hopes up.

• Whenever one of those stupid blog contests gets started, everyone freaks out. It will blow over.

• If you’re totally blocked for ideas about a post, describing the boring minutiae of your day is probably not titillating to others. Write it if you must, then delete it. Hopefully that will get your juices flowing and you can write about something more interesting. A turd of a post will always look like a turd no matter how you dress it up.

• Talking shit about anyone–especially behind their backs on your blog that they presumably don’t read–is a bad fucking idea. Password protect those, or better yet, don’t write them at all. Although they may be satisfying, remember, those are the posts that the very same people you talk about may find. It’s a smaller Internet than you think it is and you’re not as anonymous as you think you are.

• If you don’t want people to respond in a negative manner, then don’t let it all hang out there. Not everyone will agree with you and there are people who will happily tell all of the ways you are wrong. You don’t have to like it, but if you put it out there, you do have to deal with it.

• There is something about being able to hide behind “anonymous” that makes people say really dick-ish things that they probably wouldn’t say to your face. It can hurt, I know this, and people will get you all wrong and it will suck, but if you don’t want to deal with it, go private or password protected.

• Your feelings will get hurt. I promise you this.

• Although most of your followers will wish you well, there will always, ALWAYS be a contingent that hopes that you will fail. And fail badly.

• Sarcasm doesn’t always translate well through the written word, so be careful when you use it.

• Music on blogs is universally hated. If you want to put it on there, it’s wise to leave the playlist on mute and allow other people to turn it on should they want.

• Don’t clog up your sidebar with crap. Especially blinky crap. Because it makes the page take like 40 hours to load and then people will click away because who really wants to sit there, waiting for the page to load?

• Don’t put shit on the Internet you wouldn’t wear on a tee-shirt.

• Beware of the donate button. It causes many people to be very, very mad.

• Begging for money pisses people off.

• Constant self-promotion can be a real turn-off.

• Meme’s, although a nice tool to get the writing juices flowing, are usually boring to read. If you like doing ’em, then fuck it and do ’em anyway.

• Edit your posts. Edit them religious.

• Paragraph breaks are a necessity. I cannot read anything not broken up by paragraphs.

• The background of your post needs to be something that is appealing to the eyes. Some colors (especially pink, which is a favorite color of mine) although lovely, leave the reader squinty and headachey. Check out what your finished post looks like YOURSELF and see if you can read it without adjusting your monitor.

• A black background is very, very hard to read.

• If all your tweets on Twitter are links to stuff that people can buy from you or ways to get a zillion followers overnight, you’ve probably pissed off a good portion of your readers.

• There is such a thing as over-sharing.

• Remember that your kids may one day read whatever you’ve written, so choose what you share (especially about them) well.

• Writer’s Block does end.

• Don’t lie. And for God’s sake, don’t fake a dead baby. I don’t even have words to describe people who do that sort of thing.

• Don’t idolize the success of another blogger. Also, don’t hate them for it. In blogging, you often get what you put into it. And the higher you climb, the more pressure there is.

• Be kind to other people. You gain nothing by being cruel.

• Blog for yourself, not for other people.

• Stuff on the Internet–even the stuff you erase–is never, ever, EVER gone. EVER. So make DAMN sure you want to live with whatever you say.

• Remember, it’s all supposed to be fun. Enjoy what you write, take pride in it, and if someone else comes along and tells you that you suck, tell them that Aunt Becky told them to shove it up their pooper.

————-

What am I missing here?

You: Five-foot ball of (presumably) woman with wisps of white hair on the top of your head, yet normal looking bright yellow hair to your shoulders on the sides, almost like that guy from Rocky Horror Picture show. You were as tall as you were wide wearing an indiscriminately grey sweat suit with running shoes that looked like marshmallows.

While I initially thought that there was something wrong with you (perhaps you were out on loan from one of the many area hospitals on a Day Out program or something), once you opened your mouth to berate your frail 100 year old (give or take, how could I be sure?) mother for being “a big stupid idiot,” I realized that no, you were just a huge bitch.

I mean, sure, older people can be kind of annoying (especially when they talk about their various medical maladies during dinner, or recount their last colonoscopy as you eat chocolate ice cream), but come on, the woman was clearly looking at a box of tissues. This may mean she has the sniffles, but not that she’s an idiot.

The way you dragged her up and down the aisles, making sure that you’re gigantic self blocked the entire aisle as you loudly waxed on and on about your collection of cats and their various maladies while telling her how much she sucked was pretty deplorable. I was going to say something to you, but I was afraid you would sit on me and that would be the end of Aunt Becky.

AND WHAT WOULD THE INTERNET DO IF ANOTHER MEDIOCRE BLOGGER STOPPED BLOGGING?

Anyway.

You wouldn’t know about my blog.

You were too busy making damn sure that my husband, The Daver and I would not be able to get in front of you so that we would not (I presume) beat you to the pork skins that you filled your cart with. Had you known that I do not eat pork and this would, no doubt, be a moot point, I am certain that you would still have blocked me with your blueberry shaped body.

I only came into contact with your face, which bore a striking resemblance to a melting candle, I must say, after The Daver and I thought we’d shaken you. But no, we approached the frozen food section of the store–where I was trying to buy eggs–just as you and your poor decrepit mother did. And although there was more than enough room for the lot of us, you blocked us with your cart. I noticed you’d bought only Friskies and fried pork skins.

When Dave tried to steer his cart around you (we were not gorging ourselves on all the free samples of ice cream they were shilling) so that we could get our eggs and move onto another section of the store (perhaps pesticides? That information is neither here nor there), you did a most odd thing.

Not only did you deliberately try to run into him with your cart, you then did the “talk to the hand” gesture in his face. Which, for a ball-shaped fat white lady, looked even more absurd than you can imagine it did. He narrowly escaped with only a minor scratch on his leg, but, you done fucked with my husband.

Bad idea, lady.

I waited until the right moment, as you were making a frantic beeline to the frozen pizzas and just as you thought you’d done showed me, I came up from behind and totally blocked your ass. You had to use all your muscles to stop your cart from t-boning mine.

The look on your melty face was priceless. And I just wanted to say a hearty, ‘Thank You.”

You made my year.

—————

Who’d YOU miss a connection with, Internet?

From the ages of, oh, I don’t know, 3 to 24, my brother hated me. Unresolved issues, a sprinkling of jealousy and a (now ex) wife who fanned the flames of contention with her equally fcuked-up relationship with her own little brother made for a gigantic cluster-fuck of a relationship. For years I was baffled, then sullenly resentful, then I got over it.

You can’t make people (even family) like you. Period. End of story. Fin as those wily French say. Or is it the Eye-Tal-Ians? I can’t be sure.

(Years later, thanks to my sister-in-law, we get along just fine, thankyouverymuch, to the shock, I think, of us both)

But back then, when I was a teenager and he was my current age (28), he and his shrew of a (then) wife who shared my name (first, then last) bought a house in St. Charles, not too far–maybe 5 blocks–from where I live now. The only difference is, my house is in a 70’s construction subdivision, and his house was one of the original in the town. And, because he has a penchant for the dramatic and macabre, the old house he bought wasn’t any old house.

No, not a bit. Not MY brother.

It was built in 1837 in the heart of what was then downtown St. Charles, by a builder whose wife was a member of the spiritualist movement. Her name was Caroline and she believed that she could send and receive messages from the dead. As a famous medium of her time, she held many seances in her home, including one for Mary Todd Lincoln, who came to St. Charles in hopes of communicating with her deceased husband Abe.

But no, the macabre doesn’t stop there.

Once Caroline passed away, one of her daughters picked up right where her mother had left off, conducting seances in the same house. Her daughter later married a man who was an undertaker. The house was then used as a funeral home with one of the basement rooms used as an embalming and viewing room. The name of the undertaker is still etched into the glass on the front door, my brother happily pointed out when we came to tour the house.

(To think I was happy that my own home had central air.)

Anyway.

My brother and his then wife bought this home in the later 1990’s when I was a teenager. Shortly after this, my brother began to travel for business, leaving the country for weeks at a time. Also around this time, my former sister-in-law asked for a divorce. Even less reason for Aaron to be home.

So, when he was gone, I was occasionally asked to house sit, which confounded me: here I was, 18 with a boyfriend, and I was asked to stay in a house ALONE without parents, by my brother who hated me? Surely, there was a catch.

Turns out there was.

For someone like me, who firmly didn’t believe in ghosts, I wasn’t scared by the rumors that the house was haunted. Sure, the chalk painting on the wall in the basement (later, I learned, was the embalming room) of a wide-eyed girl with the phrase “JUST A PURE GIRL” underneath it was a little creepy. But St. Charles is an old town and between the houses I’d been to that had passages for the escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad and all the other old weirdness, I chalked it up to nerves.

He’d bought a creepy house.

End of the ever-loving story.

But no.

One night, after I’d promised my mother that I would pop over there to water the plants and hang out so that it looked occupied and lived in, I dragged my then-boyfriend over with me. Figured we’d listen to some music, hang out without any interruptions and maybe get a chance to have The Sex.

But no.

We pulled up, parked and walked in after I unlocked the door. It was like walking into a wall of unease. All merriment, all joy, all laughter was suddenly just gone. Sucked out of the both of us, like we’d entered The Vortex of The Fun-Free Zone. I eyed him and he eyed me back. The disenchantment was mutual, but we were going to power through it. Maybe it was just nerves or something.

But no.

We walked around the house and if we’d been actors on a stage, the directions would have read “The couple walks about, trying their best to act normal.” Very awkward and highly unexpected for the both of us. I went to the CD rack to pick out a CD as I knew my brother’s collection was far better than my own, hoping, I guess that a little familiar music would still the feeling of disquiet.

But no.

We sat down on the rug in front of the stereo and began to listen to some Mazzy Star. Okay, I thought, maybe it was just a case of The Nerves. Then the phone rang. Startled beyond anything, I jumped up, my heart thudding unhappily in my chest as I realized I was sweating profusely. Better answer that, I thought as I went for the handset in the kitchen. Give the illusion that someone is home, yeah, that’s the ticket.

(my brother hates to talk on the phone, so in hindsight, this was NOT what he’d have done)

Having been somewhat of a phone aficionado for most of my life, I was shocked that I couldn’t answer it. I tried to answer it, I pushed the right buttons on his new-agey looking phone, but no one was there. On and on it rang, Tim and I looking frantically at each other like answering this fucking phone won us the right to live or die. I couldn’t manage to answer it. No way, no how.

Then, just as the phone stopped ringing, the sirens downtown began to go off. The house wasn’t super close to the police or fire department, but the sirens were loud and close. All of a sudden, I got a vision of a car wreck somewhere close where people I loved had died. Popped into my head out of the clear blue sky. My whole body was covered head to toe in goosebumps and I began to shiver uncontrollably in the warm summer air.

It was then that I knew we had to get the fuck out of there before something Really Bad happened.

There was a murderer there and I could smell his sickeningly sweet cologne right behind me with a knife and a gun and a rope and i was going to die like this, in this creepy house, there was a fire about to start oh my god a fire a fucking fire and we would be trapped, burnt to a crisp, the gas main oh my god the gas main was going to suddenly pop a leak killing us quietly while we slowly drifted off into a never-ending sleep DANGER!DANGER!DANGER! red danger, red danger!! the porch was going to collapse on us wow it must be unstable holy shit got to go got to go, killing us in a load of dusty horsehair plaster where we can’t get out and crushed, oh my god crushed the swarm of bees in my head, oh my head, oh my god, my head.

I took one look at Tim who looked back at me, both of us ashen under our summer tan, and we ran. We fucking bolted from that house as quick as we fucking could, panting and breathless. I called my mom to beg her to come and lock up after me because I couldn’t do it. My hands were too shaky to work the key into the lock.

Aaron sold the house several years later, had a couple of good laughs at my experience with the ghost, whom he claimed “hated women.” My mother, conversely, loved the ghost in that house who, apparently, loved her back. So the ghost, just like anyone else, had preferences.

It sounds so flimsy when I retell it here, because I can’t inject terror into your body like it was injected into mine. The analytical side of me says that what happened was just a stress response to being in the house of someone who didn’t like me particularly. It says it that I was feeding off the emotions of my surroundings and letting it overtake me. It says that there’s no such thing as ghosts.

The irrational, emotional side of me, though, doesn’t agree. The emotional side of me calls bullshit.

————–

Do you believe in ghosts? Have you had anything like that happen to you?

Operating on about 3 hours of sleep combined, my husband of 40 hours sat across from me shoe-less, his shirt up around his pasty nipples while another man rubbed him up and down. While an awkward woman rubbed my butt and patted down my vagina, our eyes met. Without attracting any more attention, I mouthed “I’m sorry.” His eyes smiled right before the man grazed his balls with his elbow. Then he wasn’t smiling anymore.

It was all my fault. Honestly.

Later, he expressed, several screwdrivers to the wind, that this was his first experience with being singled out and searched by airport security.

Mouth full of egg and cheese biscuit and several screwdrivers drunk myself, I slurred, “Well, dude, at least they didn’t take you to that back room.” I took a long drag off my drink, “Because that shit is WHACK.” I paused. “And hey, the let me keep one of my lighters.”

The Daver looked less than pleased.

“I’m sorry,” I said, chastised. “It’s all my fault.”

But was it? Was the issue with having a face (presumably) like a terrorist my fault? Certainly I’d been stopped by customs and security more times than I could possibly count, singled out from a crowd each and every time I flew since I was a small child. My father and brother, who turn equally brown skinned in the sun, get it also, but not as bad as I do.

I can’t put a toe into an airport without securing a nice frisking and potential strip-search.

While I can easily claim that I *am* an asshole, the moment I hit the airport, I turn into the mentally challenged sister from Hee-Haw. I’m all “Golly Gee,” this and “Jeepers, Mister,” that with a side of “Gee wilikers” thrown in for good measure. You’ll never see a more ridiculously PC, G-rated version of me.

And still. And yet. And how.

I’ve learned to show up to the airport extra EXTRA early. I’ve learned that flip-flops–even in the dead of winter in Chicago–are the footwear of champions, and I know to wear loose baggy pants for easy up and down access.

But this begs the question. Why me? Was I marked as a potential terrorist when I was a baby? Is this on my ever-fucking Permanent Record?

I’m going to California on Friday at the ass-crack of dawn and I’m certain that on each leg of the trip, I will be searched up and down, and God forbid I pack the wrong toothpaste or something, because I am hoping to catch each connecting flight.

(What the hell can’t I pack anymore anyway?)

(also, LA, here I come!)

And if I do end up in the clink, let it be the California clink, where not only can I make Heather bail me out, I’m sure my cell-mates will look like models. Maybe they’ll make out with me.

When I was an overly dramatical kid, I used to read a lot of books where the heroine would say something deep and meaningful to herself which the adults would later find both profound and amazing. While I would occasionally try and wax poetic about this or that in a sad attempt to emulate the book-girl, the adults never seemed to be that impressed with me.

(note: they still aren’t)

So when we were at the antique store and I rhapsodized on about how many people had looked into the antique mirror before me–people in Olden Times (quote, unquote)–I was surprised when my mother didn’t clap me on the back and buy me ice cream for my witty observation. She merely uh-huh’d me in the that’s nice dear tone and went back to looking at serving bowls.

In hindsight that was a kind of cool way of thinking about old things like that. I grew up in a house that Antiques Roadshow would love to sink it’s pearly teeth into and it was safe to say that my bed really had been slept in before by someone else in Olden Times (quote, unquote). The silverware we pulled out for the holidays had been in someone else’s mouth–a mouth I’d never even seen before. The mirrors really had reflected the image of an ancestor or two.

Who were these people who once used the stuff that I now used? What did they like? What did they hate? What would they think about the pithy observations of an irritating 8 year old?

If I’d been the type to daydream, I’d have had a field day there. I’m more practical than that, though, and it was nothing more than a passing observation.

But that was the first time I’d ever thought about an inanimate object having a sort of an independent memory attached to it. Like it might come with it’s own story. I’ll call it a karmic memory because I’m not sure what else it would be (scent memory is what is on the tip of my tongue, but it’s not the right phrase), and that fits best.

For 8 years, I’ve had an engagement ring. It’s sat there sadly unworn in my jewelry box, occasionally seeing the light of day when I’d rush into the box to find my pearl necklace or snake ring.

It was purchased for me and given to me by Ben’s father after I’d gotten knocked up. I can’t tell you why either of us thought that getting married was a good idea–I’d never really thought much about marriage at all–but I suppose it was a life-line in a sinking ship.

Any port in the storm.

When I slipped that ring onto my finger, though, it changed me. Not into the crazy bridezilla who obsesses endlessly about table linens, but into someone I didn’t like. That ring, that cheap ring that Nat begrudgingly shelled out for while complaining about conflict diamonds and American greed, weighed a thousand pounds, a loosely hanging noose around my neck.

I only wore it for a couple of months, feeling inexplicably shameful and often hiding my hands so as not to have to comment on it when people wanted to gush over my engagement. A couple of months, I wore that diamond unhappily, unsure of how my life had taken such a drastic turn for the crap, and then I took it off in a fit of rage.

When he didn’t come home one night, instead sauntering in the following morning with a cat-that-swallowed-the-canary look on his face, hickeys red on his neck, I took that ring off with an angry “you stuck your dick in HER?”

My son rolled about in my stomach, oblivious to the chaos surrounding him.

I kept the ring.

I don’t know why.

Maybe so that I could give it back to him if he asked.

Maybe to give to my children to play dress-up with.

Maybe I just didn’t know what to do with an engagement ring that was just…wrong.

It was like a reminder of an alternate universe every time I’d open my jewelry box to see it nestled there, next to my other, treasured diamonds. A shameful reminder of where I’d been and how bad things were. Maybe I kept it to remind myself of how far I’d come. How hard I’ve worked to get where I am. How I should never compromise who I am for someone else.

Maybe I was just too lazy to figure out what to do with it.

I sold it today.

Today is not a day that means anything to me. It was a gray morning, it’s a lovely sunny afternoon now, it’s June and June is one of my favorite months.

Today has no significance to me whatsoever.

It’s Saturday, tomorrow is Sunday, yesterday was Friday. It appears to be a good day today, my kids are happy, I have a load of laundry in the dryer, although this is Nat’s weekend with Ben, he never called me to pick him up, so Ben’s home today; his real home. We’re having burgers for dinner later.

I didn’t wake up with the intention of selling it, the idea struck me out of the overcast gray sky: why not put it to bed? Why not rid myself of that burden? I’ve paid the rest of my debts, why not this one too? Maybe the gold and diamond will help someone else build something that I hadn’t wanted.

It’s gone now. Over. It’s been over for years, probably doomed from the start.

My memories, my pain, my hate, it’s gone now.

$40.

That’s what I was owed. That’s what I got.

It’s more than it was worth.