The High Life

PBR ME ASAP

Even before I was born, my dad drank a lot of beer. Like most of his hobbies, he had a tendency to take things to the extreme and his fondness for beer was no exception. He suddenly gave drinking up, when I was eleven and then inexplicably resumed at some point during my freshman year of college, though with less zeal than before.

Alcohol consumption didn’t seem to have much of an impact on his personality. The only thing that I can recall now when I look back with an adult’s perspective is that he would occasionally become more absent-minded, and, though I didn’t realize it at the time, he did have a nightly habit of ‘falling asleep’ on the sofa. Otherwise, he was the same quick-witted, good-natured guy I was accustomed to being around.

My mother owned a dance studio and spent weeknight evenings teaching class. She would rely upon my father to keep an eye on me and my three siblings between the time he got home from work at four-thirty and the time she arrived home at around seven. My mom and dad’s mode of parenting was modeled after the good-cop/bad-cop school of discipline. In other words, my mother was forced, against her will, into the role of the disciplinarian in order to balance out the free-wheeling, occasionally dangerous method of parenting utilized by my father.

The house I grew up in had an unfinished basement with a cement floor, and this is where my dad spent the bulk of his after work time. He built an enormous bar out of redwood, purchased a used pool table, installed a beer fridge and got an iguana. He let us name the iguana and after some debate we decided on Iggy. Iggy lived in a cage that was built into the wall next to the bar. He was a nice pet. Wasn’t a biter, and would frequently whip the mean cat we had named Peanut with his tail if she got too close, which I liked. That cat was a jerk.

If you wanted him to, Iggy would crouch on your head, facing forward as he dug into your youthful skull with his tiny talons while resting his tail down the length of your back so that you could pretend for a little while that you had a mohawk. Everybody loved Iggy, and, when he died, my Father stuck him in an empty cake box, which was then stored in the freezer of the beer fridge. Iggy’s body remained interred in the freezer for the next ten years until my parents moved.

On occasion, my father would take him out and set him on the bar. His carcass had frozen into a position that made him look as if he were alive, sunning himself on a rock and enjoying the day. My father mostly did this to frighten us. I’m guessing he utilized Iggy to encourage our departure from the basement if we were being particularly annoying. It appears, based on videotaped footage, that we may have been a little much to take at times.

Also in the basement, he had a whole menagerie of power tools ranging from a table saw to all sorts of screw drivers, wood glues, clamps, pliers, hammers and other such hardware. When my younger sister and I began playing ‘school’ on a frequent basis, he offered to make us a paddle. The school I grew up in utilized corporal punishment as a method of behavior modification starting in kindergarten.** So this idea seemed like a good one to me at the time. I thought it might inject a little realism and much needed drama into our game. He made us a paddle out of a plank of wood, carving it into shape with his jigsaw. This new facet of our game prompted my brother to set down his Nintendo controller so that he could become our school principal. Pretty soon the atmosphere of our simulated classroom devolved from one of open learning to something out of Brave New World. The student body, composed of my sister, a multitude of cabbage patch dolls and one Teddy Ruxpin, adopted an air of fear. Eyes were wide, hands shook, silence prevailed. Drop your pencil and off you went for a ‘chat’ with the principal. Fail a pop quiz, and you’d better hope the principal’s arm was still tired from your earlier infractions. Down in the basement, my Father cracked open another beer.

**As far as I know, it still does, and I have a problem with this. I remember seeing a female high school junior get paddled by our male vice-principal once for being tardy. Is this normal?!! It seems incredibly inappropriate to me for a multitude of reasons. One being that tardiness doesn’t justify physical violence (in my view), and two being that a male authority figure should not be allowed to force a seventeen year-old female to bend over in front of him so that he can spank her. Male vice-principals should, as a rule, have no contact with any one of the female student body’s butts.

After a day of this, my little sister refused to play ‘school’ anymore. In fact, she hated ‘school’ now. This was probably not the best introduction to academia for a four-year-old. As a compromise, my brother decided that we would all be armed with paddles, and my delighted father cut two more telling us to simply draw the shape we wanted our paddle to be on the wood with our crayons.

At that point in my childhood, I hadn’t yet taken a physics class. I didn’t understand the concept of wind resistance. In my seven-year-old mind, bigger equaled better, so my paddle was as large as I could possibly make it. It resembled a cutting board. My sister took her cue from me and drew up a similar design for herself. My brother, age ten, was vastly more intelligent and requested that my father drill some holes into his. His plan was to create a pattern much like a block of Swiss cheese in order to improve its aerodynamics. My Father chuckled under his breath, ruffled my brother’s hair and refused his request.

We decorated our cutout paddles using crayons and markers. At the time I wanted to be a comic strip artist, and had, accordingly, become adept at drawing Garfield. So that’s primarily what I used to cover my paddle. I also threw a few goggle-eyed smiley faces into the mix and wrote my name out in clumsy bubble letters. My brother wrote things like ‘fah-q’ on his and made references to his favorite bands, like Bonjovi. My younger sister mostly just drew those weird people that all little kids draw. They look like aliens more than anything. She also scrawled her name across the paddle in messy little-kid letters. The ‘R’ was backwards.

From then on, all pretences of playing school were dropped. For the next three nights, we would take turns spanking each other until our butts were numb and red. That’s what happens after awhile. Your butt goes numb. On the third night of the spank game, our mother arrived home from work to the sight of her three youngest children beating each other with hand-made paddles in the front hallway of the house. She stood there for a moment staring down at us, her sweet angels. I was missing one of my front teeth and had unevenly cut bangs because of a run-in with my scissor-wielding brother the day before. My little sister had allowed me to fix her long, brown hair, which I’d styled into a messy, teased up side pony-tail utilizing half a can of aquanet hairspray. My brother’s exposed knees were covered with scrapes and dirt, and his baseball jersey was torn in the lower left-hand corner. After watching for awhile as we giggled and lunged around noisily, she walked into the den to where my father was napping in front of the TV. She exhaled loudly, but the sound of her sigh was drowned out by the Wendy’s commercial playing on TV. Where was the beef? She headed into the kitchen to make us some dinner.

That evening, my little sister refused to eat anything but ketchup.

TGIF

Friday after work, my shuttle was late and I missed the train, which meant that I had an hour to fill waiting for the next one. Fortunately, there are several entertainment options around the train station. There’s a bar called The Lantern, a little independent bookshop, a wine store and a place called Foodstuffs. Foodstuffs is a tiny, ridiculously priced grocery store chain that carries mostly pre-made foods. They always have samples sitting out and if I’ve missed my train, it’s the perfect setting to assuage my evening hunger pangs. My favorite samples are the dips. The best is the roasted red pepper dip. I can’t even describe its flavor. I think about it while lying in bed at night. A twenty-four ounce container of this dip costs nine dollars. Occasionally I’ll buy something from there because I feel guilty for loitering around the shop eating their food all the time, but mostly I just loiter around eating their food. Afterwards, I’ll either meet the other train refugees at The Lantern for a beer or head over to the bookshop. On Friday I was feeling particularly ambitious, so I headed over to both the bookshop and the wine store. I picked up the novel Middlesex, which I’d heard was good and grabbed a ten dollar sauvignon blanc.* I shoved the wine into my commuter bag thinking I might see if Jack wanted to grab dinner at a BYOB restaurant that night.

*The cheapest one they had that was already chilled.

I started reading Middlesex on the train and was hooked by the end of the first chapter. I’ve got about thirty pages left and will likely finish it tonight. The book is fantastic. It’s definitely one that I’ll read again. The storyline is interesting, but in addition to that Jeffrey Eugenides’ writing style makes it a pleasure to read. Kind of like Don DeLillo. I’m an enthusiastic DeLillo fan merely because I love the way he writes. His style is simple and subtle and seemingly straightforward until you realize months later that you’re still mulling over something he’s written. I’ll often find myself thinking about a certain sentence or flipping back to reread a paragraph that I can’t get out of my head because it’s so perfectly composed. His novels address themes and characters that I wouldn't normally be particularly interested in. Makes sense. Don DeLillo is a seventy year-old man who was born in New York City. I’m a twenty-seven year old woman originating from rural Alabama. I get excited, though, when he publishes something new.

I loves me some DeLillo.

So anyway, my point is** that you should read Middlesex if you haven’t already. It’s a page-turner and you’re gonna love it.

**Despite the fact that I mostly talked about Don DeLillo.

- Enjoying your Educational experience is Key