You’ve Never Heard of Chesaning

I had a good perm and stuff,which, believe me, can cover a lot of faults so I understand why there was some confusion by my commenters on yesterday’s post as well as on Facebook. I stand behind my statement that my family and I were a little trashy. It’s ok, there’s nothing wrong with being a little bit trashy and I don’t mean it in a mean way at all. We didn’t have a cess pool in our backyard, but let me count the other ways in which we were trashy so you can all agree with me:

1. We didn’t have a phone even though my dad worked at the phone company.

My brother ran the phone bill up talking to his girlfriend. His Ecuadorian girlfriend. She had been an exchange student and when she moved back to Ecuador, my brother called her a million times until we owed $500 or something like that. That’s $500 in 1987 money. This was pretty much right exactly when my dad moved out. Some people might say it was my brother’s fault my dad moved out, but I won’t go that far. Anyway, we owed my father’s employer $500 and we couldn’t pay it. And, in fact, never paid it. That’s a little embarrassing. And trashy.

Some time after we moved to the apartment, my mom decided to just see what would happen if she tried to get a phone in her name.  I think she thought that because she and my dad weren’t divorced, the phone company wouldn’t allow it, but they did! Anyway, she didn’t tell me her plan, but there was a phone attached to the wall in the apartment and one day, it started ringing! I’m not kidding when I tell you I just about shit myself with joy. I was 15 by then, and had been using  payphones for at least 3 years.

2. I thought the Rathskellar was a restaurant, not a bar. It happens.

After my parents separated, my mom spent a lot of time at the Rathskellar, where I would occasionally meet her for food and drunken conversation. Her sister was a waitress there and sometimes we would get free drinks and snacks. This was before the days of the computers in restaurants. God bless the “human error” aspect of keeping a bar tab. Anyway, I always thought of the Rathskellar as a restaurant and it wasn’t until I was much older that Bryan heard me refer to it as a restaurant and he said, “That was a bar, not a restaurant. Just because you could get nachos there, doesn’t make it a restaurant.” I said, “Well, we always ate there when we were kids.” And he said, “Were there ever any other kids eating there after 5 pm? No? That’s because it was a bar.” Know-it-all. I still think this point is debatable, but because most parents wouldn’t have taken their kids to the Rathskellar, I will cop to the fact that the fact that it was my favorite restaurant as a kid might add to the trashiness.

3. At a certain point, none of my friends were allowed to spend time at my house anymore.

My friends’ parents always said, “No, you can’t go Abby’s house, but she can come over here.” There’s a lot of reasons for that, but I think the very last time I had a friend over was when Jenny V. came over and her parents came to pick her up earlier than expected. We lived in a 2-story house in town (walking distance to the Rathskellar of course). When my dad moved away, we rented the upstairs out. At this point, one of my brother’s friends was living there and he happened to be having a party. Mr. and Mrs. V. came to pick Jenny up and accidentally went to the door that lead to the upstairs instead of where my mom, sister, and I actually lived. (Had they gone to the correct door, they would have seen a note, written on a paper plate and shut into the door that said, “At the Rathskellar!” which, in their very stable minds, maybe wouldn’t have been any better than what they found when they went to the upstairs apartment). So they went upstairs to look for 12 or 13-year-old Jenny and there were all of these teenagers and maybe some young 20-somethings drinking and smoking and probably getting high. Mrs. V might have flipped out a little bit and I’m pretty sure my sister accidentally called her a bitch for harshing her mellow or something like that. My sister feels bad about it, but she said, “I might have been a little tipsy,” which totally makes sense. After that, Jenny couldn’t come over anymore.

3a. We used to write notes to each other on paper plates and shut the paper plate in the door. That’s low on the trashiness spectrum, but still. At any given moment, you could find a paper plate note shut in the door that said, “At the Rathskellar!” or “Chicken patties in the freezer!” or “Do the dishes!” or “Stop taking my wine coolers!”

3b. Our upstairs tenant grew pot in my baby cradle.

It wasn’t the cradle that I used as a baby, it was a cradle that my parents made together when they had a folk-art business in the 80s. It was wooden and it had my name stenciled on it. And it was a perfect spot to grow weed. Apparently.

4. One of our porch steps had a great big hole in it, which we covered with a couple of pieces of wood (that’s not the trashy part). One of our porch steps had a great big hole in it, which we covered with a couple of pieces of wood, and that’s where I hid my wine coolers (it gets better). One of our porch steps had a great big hole in it, which we covered with a couple of pieces of wood, and that’s where I hid my wine coolers when I was 12.

*cough* Moving on.

5. I liked Debbie Gibson. (Maybe that doesn’t prove anything, but it’s still embarrassing).

6. I used to drive our Chevette to school when I was 14 or 15.

By then, we lived in that apartment up above the stores and my mom worked at one of those stores, so she never needed the car during the day. I made a bunch of copies of the keys to the Chevette so every time I got caught and my mom told me to “Hand over the keys! All of them!” I could safely hand her 3 copies without running out. Trashy, but clever. Maybe the most clever thing ever!

7. Our family car was a Chevette.

You guys, I could go on and on, I swear. You have no choice but to agree with me. I had a good perm that may have covered up the smell, but I was a bit trashy.