It's like Tuesdays with Morrie without all the wisdom
Posts tagged Chesaning MI
General, Inoffensive Seasonal Wishes!
4December 22, 2008
We’re going to Chesaning to roll around in snow drifts with our family for the holidays. I hope we don’t have to be pulled out of a snow-drifted ditch, but if we do, we know lots of people who will pull us out. That’s nice. And that’s why we return again and again.
I’m sure life will go on as usual around here while we’re reveling, but whatever.
If I were the sort who sent out Christmas cards, I would totally send you one. But I’m not anymore because, for me, it’s all about the kid picture and my kids are all over the internets between here, Kids Know Stuff, and our Flickr page, so I don’t even bother anymore unless you’re an old person who doesn’t have the internet. Then you get one. If you got one and you didn’t know you were old, now you know.
I do like to give my brother and sister a holiday card, though, so I went to someecards.com and made one for them. It was inspired by true events. I’ll share it with you:
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We laugh, my family and I. And we laugh more when we drink. And we drink more when we laugh. It’s a vicious circle. Or a vicious cycle, depending on who you ask. Or whom. Whatever. I should be packing.
If I were a good person, I would have written something more like this, which when I found it in my inbox today from my friend Melissa, made me cry a little. So you all should watch this and pretend I wrote something like it for you. Because I would have. If only I had a soul.
My Trigonometry Teacher Was Blind.
8December 18, 2008
And so I cheated.
She was only blind in one eye and I didn’t cheat because she was blind, that just made it easier. I was a junior, and I accidentally signed up for trig because I thought I had to. Turns out, it was really, really hard for me and then I found out I didn’t even need the stupid credit to graduate so I wanted to drop it.
Playing sports was a big deal for me and there were certain things I had to do in order to be eligible to play. Passing all of my classes was one of them. Staying away from alcohol was another, but that was different. I was genuinely afraid that I would fail trig and then I would be benched. And without sports, how would I know if my parents loved me? I wouldn’t! So you can see it was a bigger deal than it seems at first glance.
I asked my guidance counselor to let me drop the class, and let me just note right here that the very fact that I was willing to enter my guidance counselor’s office is proof of how desperate I was. Suffering through a conversation with this guy was, quite possibly, the most painful thing about high school. He had a chronic and unreasonable amount of spittle gathered in the corners of his mouth that he tried to slurp between words. And his breath was like something from The Great Beyond (not the Good Great Beyond, The Other One). It was just like my science teacher’s. In my entire life before and since, I’ve never smelled breath like these two guys had. I don’t know how I was so unfortunate to have them both at my high school. All of you CHS grads, back me up. You know who I’m talking about. I just don’t want to write their names because I mentioned the science teacher in that other post and now sometimes people google his son’s name and find my blog. Makes me uncomfortable.
So I was desperate enough to go to the guidance counselor, and he said something like this: “I know you don’t need it to *slurp* graduate, but *slurp* it will help you in *slurp* college because then you’ll *slurp* be able to skip the *slurp* entry-level math *slurp* classes.” To which I replied, “If I take this class and fail it, I won’t get into college,” and he said, “You can *slurp* do this work. *slurp* You just have to *slurp* put your mind *slurp* to it.” No help. So I went and told my daddy.
My dad, spurred on by my I-will-have-to-sit-the-bench threat, went in and talked to the counselor and the principal who both gave him the same song and dance about potential and stupid college and all that. So then I had to cry. My dad IGNORED MY TEARS as if they weren’t magical daughter tears and said, “Well, they seem to think you just need to apply yourself,” and I said, “They don’t know! They have no idea!” and then I said something about my life being ruined and I hope he’s happy when I’m sitting the bench and I cried. I didn’t even fake cry; I was really that upset about this class. I, in fact, was applying myself and I could not do the work. It didn’t make sense.
My bad luck was that the math department was trying this new self-teaching kind of thing where they put us in small groups and we were supposed to help each other and learn on our f*cking own. I was born to be coached. I don’t have a single instinct otherwise. Also, it would have been better if I had had algebra right before, but I didn’t. The stupid schedule was set up so that you have algebra one year, geometry the next, then trig (if you’re dumb/motivated enough to sign up for it). Stupid. I was a victim of circumstance.
I sulked my way through the next couple of weeks and then I decided to take advantage of my teacher’s blind eye. If the adults were going to turn a blind eye toward my pain, I would use my teacher’s blind eye for my pleasure. When the gradebook was on her blind side, I changed my grades (just my homework grades, not my abysmal test grades). And I felt justified. And I still kind of feel justified. I know I’m an adult now and I’m supposed to know it was wrong and all that, but I told those people to let me drop it. I was failing, and I fixed it. Maybe I could’ve gone to tutoring, but I don’t remember that being an option because of sports. I couldn’t stay after school an hour to get tutored without missing an hour of practice, which would result in being benched, which is what I was trying to avoid. I believe that’s called a conundrum.
And, by the way, I think my teacher knew what I did, but she was almost 100 and in an unhappy marriage. (I know this because a couple years later, when she was almost 102, she left her husband. For her stepbrother.) I know, right? So see? There are worse things.
I went on to graduate and get awards and drop out of college. There are people who might say that this means I didn’t earn the scholarships and awards that I got, but I disagree. A little. If somebody wants to strip me of my Army Scholar/Athlete award, have at it. But you’ll never take my Foreign Language award! Well, if you know where it is, I guess you can take it. Because I don’t know where it is. I just carry the memory of it in my cold, black, trig-cheating heart.
Bryan’s Grandma’s on the LSD!
3December 4, 2008
Not now, but she admitted that she used to take it, “A lot, a lot, a lot, a lot!” She has just a touch of dementia. And by “just a touch” I mean, a huge gallon of it. In her brain. I’ve written before about how she has the funny kind of dementia, and she always ends up being one of the highlights of our trips back to Chesaning.
Last weekend, we were sitting down to dinner and I mentioned to the rest of the table that, according to my brother-in-law’s nephew, some people think LSD helps increase brain function and maybe in the future they’ll be treating people like Grandma with low doses of LSD. As soon as I said that, Grandma perked up and started to laugh. I said, “Would you like that, Grandma?” and she said, “Yeah, oh yeah!” and then I said, “Grandma, did you used to take LSD?” and she said, “A lot, a lot, a lot, a lot!” and laughed and laughed. I believe that just the very mention of LSD caused her to have a moment of lucidity. And if I had any money at all, I would throw it at LSD research. In the name of science. And in the name of funny videos of the test subjects tripping.
Grandma always used to tell us that she danced on tables while people threw pennies at her when she was a young girl. Now I wonder if that was just a trip that she took.
I Don’t Like it.
7December 1, 2008
I can’t get it out of my head that people died while shopping at Toys R Us, or working at Wal-Mart. I don’t like that.
We’re in Chesaning right now, so I haven’t had time to really think about a post or anything, but every once in a while my brain goes, “How in the hell do we trample a Wal-Mart worker on Black Friday?”
I’ll admit my bias here: I worked retail for 5 years and, since then, I’ve never set foot in a store on the day after Thanksgiving. To me, there’s no sale worth that hell. I feel so strongly about this that I really believe that if it came down to Black Friday sales being the only way Christmas could happen in the Aldrich house, then Christmas would have to wait. I don’t like it. I don’t like that they advertise a super-huge deal on something fancy and then only stock 4 of them. That makes people want to kill each other, so maybe we shouldn’t do that. I don’t know.
Anyway, my brother-in-law’s dad died the day before Thanksgiving so we’re up here for his funeral today. And the snow is all piled up. Incidentally, piled-up snow is another thing I don’t like. Feeling curmudgeonly today, apparently.
Something I do like: Going to Dave’s Bar with my sister and brother-in-law and reminiscing about his dad. My brother-in-law is the youngest in his family, so he’s definitely more like an older brother to a couple of his of-age nephews who were at the bar, too. It was lovely to hear these men speak with such affection and, at times, derision (in a good way) about the family patriarch. Rolly will be missed, but he has most definitely left an enduring legacy of humor and sweetness that can be seen in all of his grandkids. Especially my sister’s kids. I’m super biased like that. I wish they were old enough to hang out at the bar with us. I told my sister they could because I used to when I was little and nothing’s wrong with me, but for some reason, she laughed at that. It wasn’t really a laugh, it was more of a “HA!” I don’t get it.
Our Parents Are Old
10November 20, 2008
And it’s a little bit freaky. Because they’ll die and then we’re next.
Bryan’s dad turned 59 on Monday and Bryan and I talked all night about how that’s almost 60 and we remember when our parenst were 33 and 34 and weren’t they old? Yeah, but we’re not old, right? Nah! And our kids will be doing this when they’re in their 30s and they’ll talk about us like we’re about to die and that’s not cool! Those kids are mean! Let’s wake them up and beat them, thus proving our youthfulness. They’ll remember that, I bet!
My parents will be 60 in January and April. They’ve never seemed old before, but 60? It seems kind of old. Not because they’re old, but because I’m too young to have parents in their 60s. It’s about me! My parents were 26 when I was born, which is pretty young, so if they’re old, I’m old. It’s only logical.
Speaking of my parents, do you know that I still know the phone numbers to all of the bars in Chesaning, even the ones that are closed now (I’m looking at you Rathskellar and Farmers Inn) and the golf course? And of course Dave’s Bar, which has outlasted them all. I do. Because I used to call them a lot when I was a little girl. (No, not to order stuff, but if you know me in real life, I can see how you would think that). I’m not judging, but I can’t imagine a scenario in which my kids regularly had to call me or my husband at the bar. My parent shame would be unbearable and my wife rage would be, well, extremely unpleasant. Like the kind of unpleasant where you say, “Wow, this gunshot wound is extremely unpleasant.” But I guess if our kids had to call us at the bar, they would just call our cell phones and it wouldn’t suddenly hit them in adulthood that they know all of the phone numbers to the bars where they grew up. I guess that means we should go to the bar more often. Then we can forget about all of this oldness nonsense. Problem solved.
Adding to the oldness problem is a little theory that Bryan and I have. We believe that if you had kids before you turned 30, then you have to add the age of your oldest child to your actual calendar age and that gives you your true, social age. So we’re not 33 and 34. We’re 42 and 43, socially. It’s true. When we hang out with real 33 and 34 year olds, we have no idea what we’re doing. None. They talk differently. They drink differently. They care about different things. If they have children at all, they probably only have one so they’re still operating under the illusion that their child is interesting to other people. And it’s awkward when we laugh at them when they tell us their 18 month old is gifted. Because we think they’re joking, but they’re not. And then they think we’re mean, which we are, but that isn’t the point. The point is, we’re way older than everybody our age. And we’re all going to die. And now I have to take pictures again.
