Aunt Becky: “I know you’re trying to dress up more for work and all.”

The Daver (warily): “Yes.”

Aunt Becky: “So I did some shopping with Pashmina.”

The Daver: “Oh NO.”

Aunt Becky (continues on obliviously): “And we came up with the perfect solution. I know you were going to go to Brooks Brothers after work to buy some of those SOMBER suits, but I took the liberty of going downtown and buying you a new suit myself!!”

The Daver: “You didn’t.”

Aunt Becky: “Oh, I did.”

The Daver (puts his head in his hands): “Oh no”

Aunt Becky: “See, now here’s the bright red one, with a matching red shirt and a red jacket and red shoes!!”

The Daver: (groans)

Aunt Becky (whips out from behind her): “And look baby! I got you A MATCHING HAT!”

(puts it on his head)

Aunt Becky: “Don’t you look so nice in red!”

The Daver: “I hate you.”

Aunt Becky: “There, there. You won’t hate me when you see that I got a belt with your name on it! JUST LIKE MINE!”

(proudly points to her BECKY* belt)

The Daver: “…”

Aunt Becky: “You’re going to look FANCY.”

The Daver: “It’s bright red, Becky.”

Aunt Becky (eyes sparkling): “You’re going to look like a rainbow. Like me! Plus, the suit from Brooks Brothers is like 4 zillion dollars and this was $30. I saved you approximately, well, okay, math is hard, but it was A LOT of money. Pashmina even said so. And ENGLISH majors are VERY smart. She has like 8 degrees.”

(smiles happily)

The Daver: (looks doubtfully at the suit) “I’ll try it on.”

Aunt Becky: “PLUS. I got you socks. Some guy was selling them out of a garbage bag for $6. HOW COULD I REFUSE THAT? That is PRACTICALLY giving it away. I SAVED you money.”

The Daver: “Becky, these are pink WOMEN’S socks and they have HOLES in the toes. Plus, they smell like cheese.”

Aunt Becky: “Those are AIR holes, Dave. I am sure the MANUFACTURER intended them to be there. And you love cheese!”

The Daver: “Dude, I look kinda sweet.”

Aunt Becky: “See, I don’t steer you wrong, baby. Now let’s go get some shamrock shakes to celebrate. Just don’t, uh, stand too close to me. You’re giving me a headache.”

*Yes, I really do have a belt with my name on it. You should too.

OH! And delicious secret is revealed…

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.

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.

When I entered the second grade, my mother dutifully signed me up for Brownies, which is sort of the baby version of The Girl Scouts. I don’t know if I battled her for it or not, but I’m going to guess that I did, because that’s the kind of person I was am was back then. Always a sucker for a uniform, I proudly ran home from school after getting my poo-brown uniform and put it on.

Even at 7, I knew it looked bad. The color was just…off.

But I looked official, and that’s what mattered to me. I strutted proudly around the house for awhile while my mother rolled her eyes at me. A couple of days later, she announced that I had to go to my first meeting.

Bwaaa?

Excuse me? I didn’t sign up for anything that required WORK.

I trekked to the meeting and joined a bunch of girls and their mothers who sat around in a semi-circle (something I would later be very, very afraid of) and they all excitedly discussed how we could earn PATCHES!!! for our SASHES!!!! by doing THINGS!!!!

My own eyes began to roll back in my head as the meeting wore on and on. Sisterhood was discussed, as were things like overnight field trips and selling cookies. I was beginning to feel like the whole uniform thing really wasn’t worth the bullshit.

At the next meeting, which my mother dragged me to, even after I faked the stomach flu and a fever of 109 degrees, it was time to make a “kneeling pad.” We had to sandwich two large pieces of vinyl between a piece of Styrofoam and stitch it up with green yarn. I wanted to actively kill myself.

What the fuck was I going to do with this besides try and smother my older brother with it?

My mother snickered when she saw me trudging back to the car with my creation.

“What IS that?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “We’re supposed to KNEEL on it or something.”

I’m pretty sure you could hear her laughter for blocks.

My abysmal failure at selling any cookies when it came time to “FUNDRAISE, GIRLS!!!” and my inability to earn a single patch, finally convinced her to allow me to quit. She’d never insisted I stick with anything I didn’t really like, and I’m sure she was tired of me bringing home my pathetic attempts at craft projects.

I mean, who could blame her? One of the cats started using the “kneeling pad” as a peeing pad and ruined one of the carpets and my older brother had actually broken a tooth on one of my attempts at making a ceramic cup. It was time to admit that I was never, ever going to cut it as a housewife.

Ha. If they could only see me now…

Wait a minute.

Is it too late to become a heiress?

Most of the essays went out last night for signing up for Das Book. If you haven’t gotten yours, shoot an email to dave@copyontherocks.com and you can tell The Daver your woes (or offer him a marriage proposal. Whatever.). If you haven’t Pledged Your Allegiance to the Book, you should! FREE! ESSAY!

——————–

Somehow, I managed to score the nomination AND won the pick for the Hot Blogger Calendar, Pranksters. Now. I have no doubt that this will be pretty hilarious, because I’m hoping to be dressed like a gigantic Uncrustables for the shoot. Really, there’s nothing hotter than a chick dressed as a peanut butter sandwich, am I right?

(please don’t answer that)

Anyway, as I was looking for a different, yet equally humiliating picture to share with you, I came across another stash of ridiculous shots. I thought today would be a perfect day to share with you some more shameful pictures. Pretty sure you can’t take back your vote now.

*rubs hands together evilly*

I’ll even throw down a Mr. Linky for those of you who want to play along on your own blogs, because Your Aunt Becky is a giver of all kinds of wonderful things. Like headaches! And VD! But that is neither here nor there.

First, we’ll start here. This is my brother and I (you can call him Uncle Aunt Becky) when I was in college. While I know my hardcore-ness might be freaking you out THROUGH THE COMPUTER and causing you to perhaps pee in your pants, I assure you that I am safe around children.

And for the record, we were leaving to go on a motorcycle ride.

Oh, shut up.

Fresh from listening to Mambo #5 for the 804,746 time in a row while short Mexican men poured gaily colored tequila down my throat from industrial sized plastic jugs, I stopped to take a breather. This picture was snapped before I had to go do the motherfucking Macarena AGAIN.

And while that appears to be a pair of Tighty-Whities next to me, I genuinely have no idea what the hell it is. Knowing me, it probably is.

I liked this picture for 2 reasons.

a) it looked like I was either going to have sex with the camera or punch it (which is how I take most pictures)(watch out, BlogHer).

2)It shows off what a gigantic fucking nerd I am.

This is a shot of me in college taken from behind the bar where I worked. I don’t know if I was working or not, but clearly I was studying my balls off while drinking MILK. Lest anyone think I was exaggerating what an overachieving freak I was, there is the proof.

Also, if you look closely, my hair is highlighted pink! WHIMSICAL!

This is the best picture ever, and not just because you can clearly see my hot pink bra through the white shirt (what did I say about looking like I either want to have sex with the camera or beat the shit out of it?).

Okay, let me back up a second for anyone who doesn’t know the story behind this. When nurses graduate nursing school, they’re pinned (and no, sadly, not like in WWE Smackdown or like a porno) and there’s this big ceremony. A couple of days before, they get their pictures taken.

Except, I wasn’t all that excited, you see, so I was blowing off the whole thing. Really, I didn’t give a shit about it, so I showed up the day of the picture shoot looking like cat shit in a bag. I mean, who the hell was I gonna send my nursing school picture to? I don’t exactly have the sort of family that would happily display my picture on their wall.

My friends didn’t approve so they hijacked me, sat me down with some crusty old makeup they found lying around and made me take the picture. Wasn’t even my shirt, yo. And I was pissed because I couldn’t see a fucking thing because I didn’t have my glasses (or contacts) on.

So, I took the damn picture, paid roughly $500 for it, and still have the entire set of them in my room. I mean, really, who the hell wants a reminder that I was a nurse for like .005 seconds? I guess I could send them out as gag gifts to people or something. “Remember when I thought I was gonna be a nurse? PSYCH!!”

Now that I think about it, maybe it should be my Christmas Card pictures this year. It beats the one of the inside of my colon I was going to send.

Also, I don’t think that even based on these pictures, you can recant your vote for the hot blogger calendar. SORRY.

Alright, pranksters, for anyone who wants to play along with humiliating pictures on your OWN blog, here’s Mr. Linky:

So today, Pranksters, I have a fill-in for Your Aunt Becky. May I introduce my friend Stacia from Failure To Nap. You can call her Aunt Statia because OBVIOUSLY.

Also? My friend Kate could use a hand bringing her daughters Bethany and Laura home. If you don’t know her, you should. She’s a good friend of mine, has been for a long time, and has supported me for ages, through thick and thin. I love her dearly and she’s working to adopt two children with Down’s Syndrome from the Ukraine. She’s good people. CLEARLY.

Without further tongue wagging from Your Aunt Becky, I give you Aunt Statia!

My five year old may get a male teacher next year. I have nothing against this guy. He seems lovely… but I have a bad abuse history which has left me very very wary of men when it comes to kids. Also, one of my own teachers was convicted of abusing children (boys) and recently another teacher from my area has been charged with over 40 offenses. I haven’t got any good reason to request my son be moved but I hate that I have to give a man the benefit of the doubt. I also don’t want to get a reputation as the nutcase mum.

Do I say anything? I have gently asked other mums whose children have been in his class and have had variable results as to how he is.

First of all, I’m really sorry that you had to go through such a trauma. No one should ever have to go through the hell that is abuse. Ever. I think it’s one of the meanest things anyone could ever do to another human being.

And let me ask you, have you sought therapy for your pain? I say this because therapy has saved my life. I’ve been in therapy for various reasons over the years, but after having two kids close in age, I was suffering badly and it took a lot for me to ask for help and if it weren’t for having someone that I could confide my deepest darkest secrets to, knowing they were bound by HIPAA laws, I might have been a lot worse off. So please, first and foremost, it’s OK to take care of yourself.

Secondly, I know it’s really really hard to trust people with your children. Especially in the age of media and technology being so in your face about predators and Bad Things. Not to nullify your fears, but it’s a lot less common than you think. But I hear you. It’s one of my biggest fears too. I lay awake at night worrying about stuff like this, and this is what people don’t tell you when you have kids. That you worry a lot about people hurting your babies. Here’s what I would do:

1. Ask yourself. Do you have a bad feeling about this guy? And if so, is it because of your past history, or does he truly give you a creepy vibe?

2. Ask some of his past students (if you have friend’s whose kids have had him in the past), if they’ve liked him. Asking parents can be helpful, but also tricky, as it’s easy to get mixed results, given that not everyone is going to jive in personality. Kids might be a better gauge of how the teacher really is.

3. Find out more about him. How long has he been a teacher? Does he have a family? Don’t be afraid to ask him questions about him, if it makes you feel at ease.

4. Just be your mama bear self. There should be no reason for him to be alone with your child or any student. And teach your child the basic rules of body awareness and that it’s never ok for anyone to touch them for any reason. And that if anyone should hurt them or touch them inappropriately, to tell you immediately, and never be afraid.

I wish you all the best.

Dear Aunt Becky Stacia,

PLEASE HELP!!!!!!! My ignorant in-laws are constantly ruining the Christmas season for me! I want to appreciate the season, but all I find is that it brings me stress, anger and exhaustion.

We have three wonderful, beautiful children (11, 9, 2). They have one SPOILED, 8 year old husky that is their “child”. The problem – if the children go near something the dog likes, or touch him/brush against him in the wrong way, he GROWLS AT THEM!

Because of this, we RARELY see them. But every Christmas my husband wants to do the obligatory visit (they rarely come our way, and we only live 1 1/2 hours apart).

Despite my best efforts, the dog growled at the baby when he was walking by us on the way to the backyard. I scooped her right up, but then had to listen to them tell me how he would NEVER EVER actually bite. That when he growls he doesn’t mean anything by it, he can just be “vocal”. OH MY GOD THOSE IGNORANT FOOLS.

The holiday visiting has turned me into a big scrooge.I have to be the one to demand that the dog is always kept in another room, and I am still on high alert the WHOLE time (as the dog does need to be let out to use the restroom, etc…)!!!! My husband doesn’t say much, preferring me to look like the bitch so he can keep some semblance of a relationship with his father (and step mother).

My hubby is very upset by this, but he does not want to completely cut his father out of his life. He feels that by limiting our visits to once per year, and allowing me to be the dog police is the best we can do.

Oh Aunt Becky, how do I survive stomaching these ignorant, foolish idiots?

Signed,

Doggone Tired

Oh sister, I FEEL your pain. I think next to money problems, this is the second biggest source of tension in a marriage. And I know of few people that actually get along with their in-laws. I myself have had my fair share of in-law troubles. My husband has a tendency to be very diplomatic.

When I was pregnant with my son, my mother-in-law gave me a whole heap of trouble and my husband didn’t want to rock the boat. It took me finally being outright in his face in terms of what I expected from him as a husband. This is such a tricky issue, because men generally don’t want to rock the boat when it comes to their parents, and that gives the in-laws free reign to walk all over you, and that is just not OK in my book.

If your husband really wants to keep the peace and help keep you happy in the process (because my thought is, if Mama ain’t happy, ain’t no one happy, and I realize that’s just bad grammar, but sometimes life just calls for bad grammar), he would at least have them come visit you.

I realize that in-laws also tend to be stubborn, but let him know that you’re truly afraid of the dog hurting the children and rather than have to stress yourself out over the thought of a possible accident, it might be best to at least have them over your house at least until the kids are old enough to understand that they have to leave the dog alone.

If all else fails, you can always feign illness and stay home with the kids, and then as a treat, you can all have ice cream for dinner. Because you deserve it.

3) How do you get revenge on the snarky, obnoxious, superior critic of your success as a mother when it’s you?

How do make the bitch SHUT UP!

Ok, here’s the deal. Sometimes, it’s OK to be smug as mother. Sometimes, you have to toot your own horn from time to time. Because let’s face it, being a mother is a thankless job and sometimes the only appreciation is going to come from you.

However, there is a time and a place for it. When you’ve successfully bribed your child with broccoli and they ate the whole plate? Pat yourself on the back.

You can be smug. And if you want to share that with your friends, you can say something like “Oh my god, I can’t believe it, but I totally got my child to eat BROCCOLI, oh glorious day, maybe I should play the lottery!” Make it seem as if you’re so proud of yourself because stuff like this NEVER happens.

You may think that you’re a better mother than everyone else. You may think you’re super mom, but you know what? We’re all trying to do the best job we can, so being smug around other parents is just not cool. No one likes a one upping, judgey mom.

Because you know what? At some point, your kids are going to do things that will pull that perfectly clean sparkling rug out from underneath you and make you question every single thing you ever did as a parent.

Case in point? My son was an angel baby. Never questioned a thing I said, never got into trouble (I could leave oily rags and a lighter out and he wouldn’t even so much as glance at them, seriously). Now? He’s a HELLION.

Just remember. What goes around, comes around, and at some point, it’s going to come back to you.

2: Copies of “Build Me Up, Buttercup” that I now own.

1: IMPOSTOR copy of “Build Me Up, Buttercup,” that I unwittingly bought from iTunes like the moron that I am, making me angrily stamp my feet and mope about the house for being duped.

89: Golden Oldies in my collection.

Infinity: amount of shit I get for jamming out with my clam out to The Golden Oldies.

0: Times I have hit up the Blue Plate Special, despite my predisposition for Music That Brings Me Back to A Gentler Time.

0: Times I have hit up BINGO at the Old Folks home, despite listening to the Supremes croon on about their “Love Child.”

2: Teenage Death Songs in my collection of Golden Oldies.

2: Teenage Death Songs I used to sing as lullabies to my eldest son.

72,073,071,746: times I’ve wondered if that somehow warped him.

5: Members of my family who have succumbed to The Death Flu Round eleventy-five

3: degrees of fever I currently have.

98,746: Times I wondered if I could sue my children–and be victorious–for being demon germ factories.

1: Odd nomination for Hot Blogger Calendar.

28,975,757: times wondered if this was some sort of practical joke.

28,975,757: times decided this is THE BEST practical joke, EVER. SO VOTE, YO. It’s for charity.

0: Bloggies won.

1: Nobel Prize For Awesomeness awarded to self, BY self.

1: Nobel Prize For Awesomeness awarded to each of YOU for being awesome and helping me with my book sign up. (you should get your chapter this weekend, yo)

74: unread copies of The New Yorker, leading me to believe it’s time to cancel the motherhumping subscription already and go back to reading Highlights for Kids.

9: Uncrustables eaten this week.

12: Times I’ve wondered if I was going to get scurvy for living off Uncrustables and edamame.

12: Times I’ve wondered if I really cared because then it meant that I could legitimately talk like a pirate.

If you haven’t gone here to sign up for my book, I’d love you thiiiiisss much if you did. Because OBVIOUSLY. I need some more peoples to sign up (chapters will go out this weekend) and to reward you? I am going to run a contest to give you guys stuff for being so awesome. Seriously. I love you all.

Also? I somehow got nominated for the Hot Blogger Calendar, maybe because I didn’t win The Bloggie, and clearly because they didn’t see my Suzie Bright Eyes picture. So, if you want to vote for me (it’s for charity, people!), you can go here, scroll to the bottom, and click VOTE. Then it takes you to a SECOND screen where you tick a button. Not hard.

—————-

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.

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?

When I enrolled in my second college (which was technically more like my 0743067290 college, but for sake of the story, we’ll call it College #2, the college where I graduated from), they, unlike the other colleges I’d attended, had a Philosophy credit. I had Philosophy products and philosophies (i.e. “do not get out of bed before noon WHENEVER possible”), but I’d never intended to take a class in philosophy on purpose.

Let’s face it: I’m not the sort of person who wants to sit around debating what it really means when a tree falls in a forest. I’m too busy plowing through the forest in my mother-humping baby pink Hummer.

(okay, that’s a lie. I don’t own a Hummer.)

Your Aunt Becky is simply not a philosopher. It’s just not in her nature. Books that don’t have colorful pictures or swear words don’t much appeal to me. I tend to tune out when books have long unnecessary words and sentences that exist simply to exist, and the smaller and denser the text, the more I’m likely to use the book as a drool cloth.

But that doesn’t mean that I can’t do it.

Apparently, however, walking into my Philosophy of Religion class dressed not in the requisite black trench coat and stringy black hair made me an instant misfit. Perhaps I should have stopped showering and started shopping at Hot Topic. Because when I walked in, the sneers of the obvious philosophy students were palpable.

I took a seat, grabbed the book out listlessly and took out a notebook where I drew myself with a noose around my neck. That, at least, should have given me SOME sense of goth cred, but no.

The professor was interesting and I always liked to hear him talk, so the class, save for my classMATES, was tolerable.

By the end of the semester, their disdain for me was palpable (it was prophetic of how nursing school would be for me the following year, but I didn’t know that yet). Particularly full of vitriol was the guy that sat in front of me. Maybe he thought I was cute, maybe he thought I was a vapid bitch, maybe he thought I should be sacrificed as a sheep, I don’t know. I called him Suzie Bright Eyes.

But the day that we were supposed to get our final papers back, worth something like 65 percent of our grade, he was incredibly nervous. Clacking his fingers and drumming them on the long tables, he jabbered on to the guy next to him about how this would determine his grade for the class.

Our teacher was a notoriously hard grader, it seemed, and he seemed terrified that he would somehow fail and be unable to progress to the following class (this was a really high level philosophy class and how *I* wound up in it is anyone’s guess).

On our other papers, I’d gotten 99%’s so I wasn’t very worried. It just didn’t seem worth the extra anxiety, especially since I was lazy and tired. 50 million red pygmy hedgehogs didn’t give a shit, you know? It was fucking FINALS week and I had a 2 year old. I’d already DONE the best that I could do.

He got his paper back first and must not have done well because he looked miserable. His skinny, slimy pony-tail shook with emotion and his pale skin blotched red. I felt sorry for him, despite that he’d been a real ass to me for months before.

I got mine back and noted my perfect 100% with a “GOOD JOB” scrawled across the top and smiled to myself. I may look like this:

but I am a good student. Love me, hate me, say what you want about me, but I am an annoyingly good student.

So, Suzie Bright Eyes flips his greasy body around, glares at me and addresses me face first, instead of through snide whispers about “how they let ANYONE into the philosophy program these days.”

“What did YOU get?” he spat at me in a shockingly high voice, clearly hoping to rub a higher grade in my stupid-looking face. I could clearly see his “C” paper from my seat now.

Without waiting for a response, he looked down at my paper and noting the perfect score, his face literally dropped like a thousand toothpicks had been removed at once. A fwwwump!

You could literally see the wheels in his head turn as he simply didn’t know how to react. “How did YOU get this grade?” was the best he could sputter out, the disdain dripping from his every word. If a word could roll it’s eyes, each of his did.

I don’t know what he wanted me to say, but I’d had it with him and the rest of the class. I might look like a fucking idiot, but I’m not. I don’t have to wear all black and read Nietzsche in my spare time to understand philosophy.

So I said, for the first time since I entered the class, exactly what I thought.

“Fuck you, Suzie Bright Eyes.”

————————-

If you haven’t signed up to pledge your allegiance to my book, I’d love it if you did. Just go here, drop in your name and email address and I’ll send out a chapter just as soon as The Daver shows me how. Tell your friends, your co-workers and your IMAGINARY co-workers!

Your Aunt Becky needs help and feels like a douche asking (sorry).

First, I have to say that I love you. Seriously. I love you all hard. Thank you for signing up yesterday. I was beyond touched. I have a post about it, but seriously, you guys made me cry.

SHUT UP.

I still need more help and people to sign up here for the pre-pre-order of my book. Just names and email addresses, really, so that I can dazzle publishers and show that really, I do have people who’d buy my book. But thank you, Pranksters. Thank you. I owe you all a big bottle of vodka and some sloppy wet kisses. If we manage to pull this off, drinks are on me.

——————

I might be a little obsessive, Pranksters.

Okay, stop laughing. Seriously, stop laughing. It’s not funny. Okay, it’s really funny. Because anyone who knows me well knows that the minute that I get an idea in my head, I can’t get it out until it’s done. One look at my orchid collection (which will kick YOUR orchid’s ass) will tell you that.

I’d be an awesome Evil Drug Overlord* if I had any desire to be evil, because I’d stop at nothing until I was, well, full of The Evil and I owned most of the Midwest. But anyway. My desire for evil is about equal to my desire to listen to Michael Bolton albums, which is to say that I don’t really want either. MUCHLY.

My desire for deliciously filled sandwiches with the crusts cut off, though, knows no bounds. You might be thinking, “Now, Aunt Becky, you’re 29 years old. What would you want with a product designed for 6 year olds?”

And that is where I would point out that you’d never had a clearly crack-filled Uncrustables. Which are as close to heaven in a neat, frozen package as I can find, EVEN if they sound like a rare STD**.

Sunday-Sunday-Sunday, rather than watching a monster truck rally, I set out on a mission to find me some Uncrustables. Clear over on the other side of town, I figured I’d simply POP into another grocery store and nab some more.

NOT SO, Little Butterfly. It was not to be. They didn’t have my Peanut Butter Filled treats. I nearly cried. Only the PB and & J filled ones, which, I’m sorry, I don’t think so.

Grimly I drove to grocery store number two, joking with The Daver and the two small kids who weren’t thrilled to be along for the ride that “Heh-heh, Mommy is SO SILLY!” They didn’t look amused. I wasn’t amused when I realized that the second grocery store didn’t CARRY the damn things for the love of sweet baby Jesus. THEN, to soothe my son, I had to drop $12 on a balloon arrangement. Because he’s 2 and balloons and red Solo cups are his obsession and really, I can’t deny him that.

Surely the THIRD grocery store would have my delicious, delicious Uncrustables! Why, I nearly pictured the boxes of neat little sandwiches and I running down the beach together, hand in, well, sandwich, laughing and playing, before I ate them.

My dreams fizzled into an audible pop as I realized the store did, yet again, NOT carry the brand that I wanted no NEEDED. Sadly, dejectedly, I walked back to my mini-van and faced up to my fate: I’d have to go back to Target yet again.

Dave said the words no one should say to someone who is obsessive: “Maybe they discontinued the plain peanut butter ones.” He might as well have said, “Maybe you should stop breathing for awhile.” I cried a little.

Once the kiddies were firmly ensconced in their wee beds, I took the first opportunity I could to run out to Target. And, as the lot of you told me that Target is also YOUR boyfriend, I should warn you to get tested for VD. We don’t use protection.

I nearly ran to the frozen food aisle, pushing aside little old ladies and strollered children, and finally, finally, it was like the light of heavens opened up and shone upon me. There they were: my savory morsels of peanut buttery-goodness.

All.for.me.

Before anyone in the vacant aisle could rush up and elbow me out of the way, I quickly shoved them all in my cart and furiously ran to the front of the store to check out. I dared anyone to look sideways at the 8 boxes of Uncrustables in my cart because I would have run them down without hesitation.

If the checkout girl was surprised to see a grown woman with a cart full of children’s food, she said nothing. I half-expected a manager to come by and try and stop me from buying them out of plain Uncrustables, but no, nothing like that happened. I happily walked out of Target with my bag of loot, grinning vacantly like the simpleton that I am.

And they were worth it. Every single bite.

*Heh-Heh. I am TOTALLY kidding, Mr. (OR Mrs.) DEA Agent. Drugs are for LOSERS. The DARE Program taught me WELL.

**By that sentence alone, you should know, Mrs (or Mr.) FTC Agent, that I was not paid to say this.

———————-

I am over at Toy With Me talking about things people stick up their, uh, YOU KNOW. Yeah, I know, it’s weird and awkward. But I actually SAW this stuff as a nurse! It’s REALLY not safe for work.

———————

The second half of my podcast with the fabulous Dr. Dick is up here and here. It’s full of The Awesome and I hope that you take a listen.

So wow, huh. If you’re reading this in a reader, I suggest you come and take a look around. Come see! Come see! It’s pretty! *claps up and down like a chimp*

Anyway. I kind of need your help today. But don’t worry. It’s actually not, like, HARD.

See, ages ago, when I rode a dinosaur to school and Jesus was my classmate, I was fortunate enough to land myself a couple of agents, Michael and Kristina of Ebeling Literary Agency. I had a book proposal that was full of The Awesome, everyone said so, and it was only a matter of time before someone eagerly snatched it up.

Then the crash of Aught-Eight happened.

The publishing world, along with the rest of the world, got burned when the economy plummeted and while everyone agreed that my stuff was great! My numbers just weren’t high enough.

But Your Aunt Becky, she is many things. And she is a tenacious beast, so Round Two of Book Proposals were drafted, incidentally, as Amelia was born, and sent off to publishers. Again, the publishers were interested, but worried. They’d been burned badly. People weren’t buying books in such droves.

New vs. old media! Cats and dogs, living together, mass hysteria, Pranksters!

Publishers, it turns out, they like numbers. No one has said that I don’t have talent or appeal, because if LOL Cats can get a book, I should probably be able to score something.

It’s a numbers game. Publishers want numbers. They want to see big Twitter numbers, big Facebook Fans, huge subscriber numbers, all of that stuff, publishers want.

Along with my new site design, I have a new page up at the top left corner called, brilliantly “The Book.” If, my agents think, I can get a ton of people to fill out their names and email addresses saying that, “uh, hai, we’d order her book, publishers would be swayed over.

But if I need numbers, I need your help, my Mery Pranksters to get them. Blog it, Tweet it, beg people on the street, just please help Your Aunt Becky out.

It’s not money or a credit card I need, it’s just names and email addresses of people who might be willing to buy my book. Consider it a PRE-pre-order. Ask your coworkers, your mom, your dad, your friends, your IMAGINARY friends, whatever.

The higher the numbers (they’re looking for numbers, I emphasize, not your NAMES)(it’s not The Man looking for you, people), the better it looks. And really, this beats me coming around banging on your door and peeking creepily in your windows. WHICH I WILL DO.

I did door-to-door sales for Girl Scouts and I’ll do it again if I have to but I am not going to look cute in a costume designed for a third grader and mark my words, I WILL wear it.

In return for signing up, I will HAPPILY send you a chapter of my book (soon). Really, nothing about this sucks.

Just don’t make me hold a bake sale because seriously, that will make no one happy.

So, Internet, while you’re exploring my new site design and admiring all of the hard work that went into it, done by the disjointed efforts of The Daver, Your Aunt Becky (Sherrick Harks), Keeping You Awake and Mrs. Soup, won’t someone think of the NUMBERZ? By no means is it complete, but sometimes, you have to just get ‘er done.

Let’s get ‘er done.

Can you help me? Please?