Today I severed all ties with my maiden name. No longer am I Aunt Becky Sherrick, now I am officially Aunt Becky Sherrick Harks on all of my proper identification, even the one I had been holding out on because I totally didn’t wanna deal with it.

Oh yes, that’s right, I’m referring to the DMV.

My own circle of hell.

When I die, and I’m brought down to hell and I’m stuck listening to the Sandford and Son theme song over and fucking over again, my hell will look like the DMV. I will be stuck sandwiched in between the dirges of humanity in lines that go nowhere.

A gigantically fat woman in front of me, smelling her hands over and over after scratching her ass admiringly for a good ten minutes. A yokel with a dent in his forehead so large I could probably serve soup from it behind me, mouth breathing and occasionally coughing, his moist breath hitting the back of my neck and making me wish that I had been a better person.

This will be my hell.

Every line I reach the end of, I will just have to get into another line, where I’m yelled at and belittled by someone whose IQ is that of my cat’s and then I will take endless pictures, all of which I will look horrible and awful and nothing like myself. And when asked about my weight, they will scoff at me, rolling their beady rat-like eyes. I cannot POSSIBLY weigh 135 pounds, they will laugh.

Then I will shuffle off to a hard plastic chair where small children will throw things at my head. For eternity.

This. Is. Hell.

So it was with great trepidation that I approached the hallowed halls of the DMV to take the written test again AND to beg them for another horrible, awful picture. The last one that I have of me not only is my hair a different color, but I look like a man. No, really, I do. The picture was so bad that whenever anyone was having a bad day, they’d whip out the ID just for a laugh.

Har-dee-har-freaking-HAR.

The good news was, I managed to pass the written test and I got a new picture and I even changed my name all without anyone punching me in the neck, insulting my mother, kicking me, threatening me, or suing me.

It was a personal best.

I now am very, very, very afraid for what karma has in store for me.

A couple of weeks ago I convinced Dave to go to see Buckethead with me and my metal-heads. Because he is a good sport, although he’d never heard of Buckethead he totally came along. So last night, among the young kids covered head to toe in black, we ventured out to the Metro. Although I was a bit overdressed in Calvin Klein and Polo Ralph Lauren, I enjoyed myself tremendously.

As I watched a true guitar master play in his Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket with mask and wig, I found myself strangely getting turned on. I thought back to the Sex in the City episode with Miranda digging on the guy dressed as a sandwich, and I realized that I, too, am so curious about someone who has rarely been seen without a mask, that I am sexually attracted to them. Do I REALLY want to have anonymous sex with a total stranger whom I cannot see? No. Well, maybe if he played guitar.

Because I quickly reminded myself that I’ve always had a thing for guitar/bass players. Why, you ask? You like rock stars? NO. I don’t. But I DO like what men with strong hands can do for my vagina.

Doesn’t everyone?

Sometime after my eighteenth birthday, a couple of my friends and I were driving around looking for something– anything–to do. We had the staples: smokes, weed, gas; we’d had dinner and coffee and were now aimlessly driving around. As we passed a Mom and Pop type video store where I had recently gotten a membership, I had a brilliant idea.

“Hey guys,” I suggested foolishly, “I know! How about we pop in the video store to pick up a gross porno to watch?”

Renting nasty porno is practically a right-of-passage when you turn 18. It’s up there with buying a lotto ticket, a pack of smokes and a cigar. So off we went.

Back in the Restricted Section, where I was finally able to go, we went to town. Scrupulously, we scoured the shelves for something really rank like “Fatties Hump Old Men” or “Midgets Do Manhattan.” Porno after porno was rejected as none was quite up to snuff for comedic value. Finally, after what seemed like hours of searching, we found our diamond in the rough. Our shimmering needle in a haystack of bullshit.

The movie was called “Anal Clinic” and it was to be our entertainment for the evening.

We headed back to my ex-boyfriends house to watch our little gem along with a bottle of (stolen) red wine, giggling like schoolchildren. Someone would frequently say “Anal Clinic” at random intervals which would be met with peals of laughter throughout the car.

We schlepped downstairs, after rounding up some of the usual suspects and settled in to watch Anal Clinic. The movie was nothing like we’d thought it would be (as an aside, as this is many years ago, I don’t quite remember WHAT we thought it would be). It was a European porn, full of men having butt sex with various people (again, not sure what we’d expected from a movie with such a title)

AND IT WAS SUBTITLED. WHO WATCHES SUBTITLED PORN?

What are you going to miss, exciting plot twists? It’s PORN. It HAS NO PLOT.

After about 15 minutes, we decided that the porno was too lame to even be watched, so we formulated a new plan. We decided to go naked hot-tubbing, throwing ourselves down in the snow and running back to plop into the hot-tub to warm up.

Oh, like you weren’t an idiot at 18.

(weren’t you?)

As I was getting ready to leave for the evening, I popped back downstairs to the basement to collect my disappointing porno so that I could drop it off on my way home.

I checked the VCR, but it was totally empty. Figuring that someone else had decided to watch something less boring, I checked the area immediately around the entertainment center.

No go. Thinking that it may have been shoved into the couch, I checked between the cushions. Nothing, save for a gold brick (seriously. My ex-boyfriend was very, VERY rich) and a couple of dollars in change. Pocketing the change, but leaving the brick, I summoned the rest of the kids to help me look for the porno.

Nada. Zilch. Zip. Zero.

I waited furiously for the next couple of days to see if anything would turn up. Nothing did.

Figuring that the movie was already late, I wanted to circumvent any phone calls to my house, as I could just IMAGINE my parents reaction, “Uh, Rebecca? The video store called and they need you to return Anal Clinic,” I slunk back to the video store so that I could pay for my lost porno.

Walking the ultimate walk of shame, I headed into the store. I approached the pimply-faced 16 year old kid working behind the counter and said in the most clear and least shamed voice I could muster given the circumstances: “I need to buy Anal Clinic.”

I resisted the urge to explain what had happened when I realized just how much dumber it would sound if I tried to justify it. Better for the teenager to imagine why I needed it then for me to spew excuses.

Turning such a deep red that he looked iridescent purple, the pimples a stark white contrast to his face, he sputtered that I would have to come back when his manager was there. Trying not look ashamed, like I’d been turned down many times before when trying to buy a lost European gay porno, I walked out, head as high as I could make it go.

Several days later, I headed back to see the manager. By this time I was an old pro at this. I marched right up to him and said the exact same thing, “I need to buy Anal Clinic.” Once again I didn’t bother to explain WHY I needed the movie, or what had happened, as I was pretty sure he’d heard it all before. I paid the $36-ish dollars and upon waiting for my receipt, the manager mysteriously disappeared to the back room.

He returned several minutes later with a movie box in hand, the title obscured by his hands. He handed me the box along with my receipt, and I was on my way. After hopping back into my car, I allowed myself to look down at the box in my hands. The manager had given me the original box for Anal Clinic, complete with cover art and bold blaring title.

What the hell was I going to do with that box?

I settled upon placing it in my ex-boyfriend’s pantry, hoping some unsuspecting victim–perhaps the same shit head who had stolen the tape in the first place–would stumble upon it while looking for crackers.

Little fuckers.

When I was 16 years old, because I was a moron, I decided that I wanted a job. I didn’t really NEED a job or anything, but I figured that I should have one because I was 16 and stuff and that’s what people do at 16, right?

So I got myself a job at a fairly upscale restaurant as a hostess, where my brother had once been the head chef, proving, once again, that I am a mutant because I couldn’t cook my way out of a paper bag. I worked as a hostess until I turned 18, when I strapped on an apron and became a waitress.

While working in the outdoor restaurant, The Gazebo, I met some interesting fuckheads: the biker who pulled out one of my hairs from my head because “It was bugging him;” the yuppie lady who screamed “can’t you DO something about these bugs?” (we were outside); and various drunk ass-wads who would try and dine-and-dash until I chased their sorry asses down.

But my all time, most favoritist customer had to be Old Balls.

He came in and sat in my section one evening and was about as unremarkable as they come. He wasn’t overly kind or rude and he didn’t chat me up or anything. If he had been a color, he’d have been beige.

Until they left. On a $12 check, I had been left a whopping $2, no big deal. A big fat “eh” of a tip. Along with the credit card slip, however, I had a nasty shock.

HE HAD LEFT ME A NOTE.

Now, it happens now and again, especially with young waitstaff. Some overzealous customer mistakes your attention as a server for sexual attention, and thus I have gotten my fair share of phone numbers. Nothing too striking there. Anyone who has ever served knows to just ignore it, unless, of course you’re in the mood for a booty call. Other than the booty calls, people who leave you their phone numbers are not good for much.

I turned over the 3 X 5 card to read what he had written. Imagine my shock and horror when I realized that it was a pre-printed note, ala Penthouse stats, you know the kind on the centerfold. Now I don’t have the exact card anymore (but I wish like hell that I did; I’d have framed it and put it over our bed), but I’m going to try to reconstruct it from memory:

Hi, you’re an attractive woman who has caught my attention. My name is Richard, and I’m 56 years old. I’m 6 feet, 220 pounds, with grey hair and hazel eyes. I like to take long romantic walks on the beach, I love to play chess, and I like to read the Classics. I also like Mom’s Five Alarm Chili and spending quality time with the person I care about. If any of this appeals to you, call me anytime at (630)232-6578.

Hope to hear from you soon!

Wow. How special am I! I’ve gotten a generic pick-up note! From a dude with a dangly ball bag! AWESOME.

Well Richard, that poor dick, he never knew what hit him. Or maybe he did and he was used to it because no one ever reached anything but his voice mail all of the 237,128,373 times that we’d call him. Over and over, day and night we’d call the guy. Some days we’d pretend to be his scorned lover, others we’d croon into the phone and beg for a call back.

I’m sure that Richard and his old balls were glad when I finally lost his number.

We need to be clear on a point, Internet, I am not particularly squeamish. Unless we’re talking vomitous. Because that will make me very, very squeamish indeed. So much so that I will have to go running into the other room)

Being a nurse, and a mother, and someone with Crohn’s disease, I am no stranger to The Dookie. I have very little issue with cleaning it off of puckered poopers, be it my own, my son’s or even a stranger’s. No huge deal to me.

(no, I will not look at the rash on your penis)

Lately my Crohn’s has been particularly awful, rendering me bathroom-bound for many hours a day. It’s part of the disease process, so I have a hard time being too upset about it. It’s just life for me.

Since I moved from living with one male to living with TWO males, I have learned that having a penis = something besides the obvious and lingering smell of urine in the bathroom. It ALSO = Skidmarks. Since I have the misfortune of doing laundry, I am constantly coming across poo-stains on the seat of 2 sets of tighty-whiteys. Once large and one small.

I’m not sure the correlation, between penis and poo-crusties, but I do know this. I shit more regularly than anyone else in the house (aside from Joey The Mean Hamster) and I fail to import that poo onto the seat of my drawers. Guess it’ll be the subject of an upcoming History’s Mysteries.

And as a parent, I have been particularly lucky in one regard. Ben has been (literally, NOT figuratively) constipated since he was born. Once the meconium passed in the hospital, he didn’t have a bowel movement for DAYS. As such, although I had to venture into the realm of suppositories, I was spared the “my baby shit in his pants and wiped it all over the wall and crib.”

Until yesterday.

Ben came out of his room after taking a nap covered in something suspiciously brown and crusty. I had fleetingly thought that maybe it was actually dirt. Now, I wouldn’t be happy that there was enough dirt in my house to make that sort of mess, but it was better than the truth. Upon closer inspection, it was worse than I had feared.

Ben had SHIT IN HIS UNDERWEAR AND PLAYED WITH IT. It was shoved under his fingernails, on his face, and in his hair. It was crushed and smashed in his underwear.

I went through the roof. I was so angry that I made Ben sit in the bathroom, after de-shitting him (I wished like mad that I’d had a radioactive suit) until he could remember where poop goes. About 30 minutes while I stewed in the other room.

Several hours later, my Crohn’s came a-knockin’ and I rushed to the bathroom to evacuate my bowels . Noting that the toilet hadn’t been flushed since Ben’s stint in the bathroom, I casually reached over to flush. My toilet, let’s be clear, Internet, isn’t always so good on the whole “flushing” thing, but this, of course, did not cross my panicked mind.

I flushed, and the water didn’t even THINK about going down. It rose into the bowl, stopping JUST before the rim. I pulled out the trusty old plunger and set myself to work. 30 minutes, and gallons of poo soup later, the water STILL wouldn’t go down. Now it was simply all over the bathroom. My white tile was now a brownish-yellow color.

It was then that I called Dave and screeched into the phone “GET HOME NOW, MOTHERFUCKER.”

I stood in the bathroom clutching my guts in agony trying to figure out why the toilet had been stopped up. Lo and behold, while Ben was being punished and I fumed in the other room, he had graciously emptied the ENTIRE roll of toilet paper into the toilet. Maybe in houses with normal plumbing, this would be no problem, but in MY house, my toilet quivers and shakes at the THOUGHT of anything larger than a pea being flushed.

I heard the weather this morning, and it didn’t say ANYTHING about a motherfucking shitstorm.

Did you know that I didn’t want a wedding? And that I have a vagina? TRUE MOTHERFUCKING STORY, INTERNET.

I was in favor of the Vegas-way. Elvis, gambling, boozing? All up my alley. A 440-lb white dress? Not my scene. Nonetheless, *someone* stupid told me that relationships were about Compromise so I gave in. We had a wedding on 9/10/05.

And I give my thanks EVERYDAY that it is over. Seriously, every day I wake up and am grateful that it is NOT my wedding day.

Over the course of the wedding, I had several epiphanies of things I will be sure to do the next time I get married. Because I am not just stupid but annoying too:

1. Don’t do it. Romantic as the whole shebang can seem from afar, it isn’tt. Don’t let any rosy-cheeked newlyweds tell you differently. It’s not a rite of passage, it’s a highway to hell.

2. If you’ve ignored my advice, do yourself a favor and elect someone from the wedding party to be the Annoying Questions Lazy People Ask Fielder. Make someone else be your bitch or people will walk all over you.

3. Do NOT get an upper respiratory infection before the wedding. Because then you will turn into Typhoid Becky and infect the entire Chicagoland Area with a Superbug worse than MRSA. Unless, you know, you’re into that stuff.

4. Make sure the DJ plays Nazareth’s “Love Hurts” as your first song. Because really, it does.

5. September 10th is a fucking hot day. Also, your knees have sweat glands.

6. Everything is better with bacon.

7. Elope to Vegas. Because, obviously.

8. Do not allow yourself to be suckered into doing all of the work for a wedding that you didn’t want to have in the first place because then you will be bitter and annoying to everyone around you.

9. Do not make your friends wear strapless dresses. They will bitch and moan and make YOU wear 608 lbs of yellow taffeta at their weddings. And ride on a llama.

10. RSVP’s are optional. Get over it.

And lastly, just don’t do it. Really, no. Don’t do it.

Around 3 months ago, our good friends were having a garage sale, and we having recently moved loads of The Daver’s crap from one apartment to our freshly-bought condo, had tons of shit to unload. So, I packed and packed the unused crap into boxes for Dave to pack into the car to take to their house. Pretty much any story where stuff gets moved involves me packing while Daver lays down with a headache.

(as an aside: we have a division of labor here; Dave carries shit down the stairs to wherever it happens to be going, and I do EVERYTHING else).

(an aside TO the aside: and by “division of labor” I mean that I pretend that Dave is going to carry the stuff downstairs and so I get it all together and about half of the time he actually carries it down)

(an aside to the aside to the aside: I want an elevator)

Predictably, the garage sale came and went. And the boxes sat. Dave always gave me some vague mumbles about donating the stuff to charity while the boxes remained in the same dining room position, slowly gathering dust and moss. For months.

Rather than getting angry about it I figured that I would take care of it myself.*

According to my calculations, it dawned on me that the longer that I let these items sit there, the more apt Dave was to remove them from the boxes and lovingly welcome them back home because he loves his things unnaturally. Like old threadbare underwear and broken cassette tapes.

I, of course, was having NONE of this. Our condo had no storage as it was and the less stuff we had, the better.

So there I went, huffing and puffing my way down to the dumpster, where I put the stuff to the side, hoping that someone might go through it and take what they’d needed. Because while I wasn’t going to be giving the Gnomes on Ice glasses a home any longer, someone else might find them perfectly lovely.

Before I brought my last load down, I took a break to eat. By the time that I had managed to get back downstairs, I noted that all of the boxes that I’d set out NEXT to the dumpsters were gone. Vanished. Fin.

This assuaged my guilty ego in more ways than one. Maybe I should invite them in to peruse Dave’s collection of old receipts and gum wrappers.

*this would prove to be THE running theme in our marriage. Well this and “Becky is kind of a bitch.”

Daver and Ben are clones. They’ve always been clones.

We’ve joked about it a lot because while Dave is Ben’s step-father and certainly the father in Ben’s life most of the time, he’s not biologically related to Ben. It doesn’t matter a lot to us because that’s the way it’s always been, but it’s so interesting to see someone share so many of the same quirks and eccentricities.

If they shared genetics, it would be one of those “that is OBVIOUSLY YOUR side of the family things,” but since they don’t, we just laugh. Dave’s the cheese to Ben’s macaroni.

The final proof occurred when we ventured out to Pashmina’s condo. Now, upon arrival and close examination, Ben realized Pashmina, not having children of her own, has no *toys* and was directed to play her old Nintendo.

Ben’s first foray into video games was Duck Hunt and was eerily good at it. He actually killed ducks which is something that I’d never mastered, not then and not now. Next Dave gave it a shot. I saw years of painful training behind his perfectly executed shots at the ducks. I sat slack-jawed and drooling as I watched my husband kill them ducks dead.

I was spellbound, enraptured, and utterly unable to remove my eyes from the screen.

Given a couple of more tries, Ben was remarkably better. He even began to shoot at the annoying dog, like generations of kids before him.

Then attention was focused on me. It was my turn. Let me explain that I had not had a Nintendo as a child, I had come from a Sega Genesis household; two vastly different worlds. I had played Duck Hunt maybe 3 times in my life over at my next door neighbors house, and I’d never killed a single duck.

I warned my captive audience of this as I sat brandishing the beautiful orange gun, and I fired. And I fired. And fired again. I sat there, firing impotently while Dave, Pashmina and Ben laughed hysterically. I did not, and probably never will hit one of those damn ducks. Being good at video games is just not in my genes.

Wasn’t then and it isn’t now.

Ben, though, he’s clearly The Daver’s son.

When I was pregnant with Ben, in order to stay under my parents insurance plan, I had to remain a full-time student. That meant that I could start to take the blow-off classes I’d always wanted to take but been too busy with my Biochemistry Labs. I gleefully (read: hungrily) signed up to take a couple of lit classes and a child psych class. It was a refreshing change of pace for me.

I remember the day. There were 3 pictures of the 3 temperaments: a happy child smiling (easy child), a child who looks somewhat apprehensive about something (slow-to-warm-up), and a child who was pushing away a bowl of food and looks pissed off (the difficult child). I remember saying a prayer to whomever was listening that my unborn child be an easy one.

Well, whomever was doling out personalities had a good laugh at the child that was dispensed to me. As a baby he screamed ALL OF THE TIME, he wouldn’t eat, he was up ALL NIGHT LONG, never wanted to be held or snuggled, so much so that I found myself wondering if my child hated me. My Ben, he just seemed to hate me.

When he got older, he was diagnosed on the autistic spectrum and went through millions of hours of speech and occupational therapy sessions. It was surreal, raising him, and it still is.

I mean I made the kid eat a hot dog just so he’d try it. A HOT DOG! ALL kids love hot dogs! They’re full lips and butt holes, and salt and fat, and in kid-speak, that means extra-specially delicious. What kid DOESN’T love hot dogs?

Mine, and only mine.

(he loves them now, lest you think I’m beastly for it)

I’m constantly regaled with stories from friends, and friends of friends who tell me about their children sleeping through the night, trying different foods, LIKING HUGS and it always kinda chafes my ass. In all of those stories, I always can detect a certain smugness, a sense of superiority, intentional or not, it’s still there.

And it always seems to do the trick on me, I mean, at some point you begin to wonder if all of these people have normal kids, what in the hell am I doing wrong?

There’s a lot of therapy available for kids with special needs. They’ll teach the kids to try different foods and handle textures, noises, and sensations. If the kid is non-verbal like mine, the therapists work with the child to speak, first sounds, then more sounds, and eventually words, sentences and so on.

But what about us? The parents, I mean. Those of us who sit sobbing quietly in the bathroom, wishing for a hug or a simple dinner without a battle over food. Those of us who know how much it hurts to hear about how we’re fucking up our kids and how inferior our children are.

Where’s the therapy for that?

Last night was Parent Night at Ben’s new school. I sat there nervously next to The Daver on the hard pew and looked around into the sea of hippies all 10-15 years older than us, dressed in various shades of browns and greens nodding attentively. I was dressed in an electric red sweatshirt while Dave was wearing a bright purple shirt with blue jeans. The gasp of “there goes the neighborhood” when we walked in was palpable.

It’s not just that we were younger or that we were wearing designer clothes that weren’t from sustainable farms or that we didn’t listen to NPR or eat all organic foods, it’s just that we were different. They knew it, we knew it, and there was never going to be anything we could do about it.

I sat there, trying to pay attention as my ass cheeks feel asleep and noticed that I was the only parent in the room who spent the meeting figuring out how I was going to convince Dave that $450 pants were an investment.

Even Dave looked more enraptured by the speakers than I did. He wasn’t fidgeting, re-reading the handouts for what could be missed gossip about Britney Spears, or trying to count the hairs on HIS legs like I was.

It’s not that I don’t care about my 4 year old. I care very much about his preschool. I care what he eats and when he sleeps and if he potty trains on time and that he’s well adjusted and that he’s getting enough calcium and if he gets to play enough and most of all, if he’s happy. I care a lot about that.

But I can’t live my life for him.

And as we chose “groups” to join after the meeting was done, I introduced myself to the ethnic/cultural group that I had to join (joining a group, I learned, was mandatory) I plastered a smile on my face and was as polite and friendly as I could be as the circle of parents formed around me.

Pretty soon I was standing outside the circle, edged out by all of the unwashed, unshaved hippie women who, were living their lives for their children. So there I stood, on the outside of the circle, unwanted. I saw that, sighed and I walked away.

One of these things is not like the motherfucking other. Thank Jesus.

—————

Several months after that, we pulled Ben out of that horrible school and then we moved out of that town. Our interactions with other parents and staff at the school never improved and it was very, very clear that there was never going to be anything that we could do to fit in.

Thank God.

With friends like that, you wouldn’t need enemies.