Category Archives: Breaking the Law

Getting Naked with Ryan Ballance and Erik Prosser the Night Before the Wilson Ten Year Reunion Resulting in a VERY Bad Swim

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Something you must know about people who swim or play water polo.

We tend to get naked a lot.

Why?

Because when you spend a life time running around in a bathing suit… changing behind towels at meets, at the beach, somewhere in public… you stop caring who sees you.

And… back in the day when we were all swimming, playing water polo or whatever…. our bodies had no wobbly bits… no bouncing blobs of fat… just nice sleek tan taught muscle.

It was lovely.

Ryan Ballance and Erik Prosser two of my high school friends, were both polo players at Wilson… I of course was a Millikan girl…. you weren’t SUPPOSED to like the Wilson boys…. but we often did…. maybe because it was “forbidden” fruit… going against school spirit to want to make out with the “red and the gold.” How extremely unsportsmanlike.

It didn’t matter to me… I adored them both.

Erik and I had a friendship that went back and forth from friends to boyfriend and girlfriend for years… and I still miss him today… I hate that he is gone from this Earth… a fluke accident.. leaving all of us to miss the beauty of his spirit…

Ryan… was always my buddy… maybe a casual flirtation here and there… maybe a moment of sexual “wit”… but nothing more than that…  and today… I take great joy in seeing photos of him in love and happy in Florida where I imagine he still runs around in speedos, mostly naked, with his girlfriend probably shaking her head as she says to herself: “Christ, everyone must think I’m dating a European.”

Anyways… it was the year of Wilson’s 10 year high school reunion, and Ryan and Erik invited me to a night before “pre-party” at Ryan’s parent’s place down on the Peninsula.

Now… I remember that Ryan was dating someone at the time…. but I cannot for the life of me remember who… but… if you are reading this… I’m sorry we were such complete idiots that night. You must have been mortified and by the way… “Well done you!” for taking the high road and not smacking the shit out of all of us drunkards.

Yes.

Drunkards.

I don’t drink often… I really don’t… but with Ryan and Erik… I don’t remember much of that evening except that we thought it would be a really good idea to strip down to our skivvies and go for a swim in the Bay sometime around 2am.

Okay everyone… listen up….

1. Don’t swim drunk. It is probably one of the stupidest things you can EVER do…

2. If your last name is Wood… don’t swim drunk… do you really want me to bring up the whole Natalie Wood incident? I don’t need people running around Long Beach using me as the butt of their driftwood jokes… I’m sure I’m already the butt of so many Long Beach jokes that we don’t need to add another. And Tim Grobaty… if you are reading this… DON’T get ANY ideas.

3. As you are stripping down to your skivvies don’t prance around and prattle on about your body… and how you STILL have it… you just sound like a COMPLETE AND TOTAL  conceited MORON and… nobody likes a show off.

AND…. 4.

Don’t go out in the Bay at 2am.

People will come.

And not in the cool Field of Dreams sort of way…

They will not pay money to watch you play and frolic in the water… as they sit satisfied… content in nostalgic memories of their own high school reunions… no… they won’t…

They will call the cops.

They will have you arrested.

You will be cited for Disturbing the Peace…

Drunk and Disorderly…

Indecent Exposure…

YOU NAME IT…. their ON IT at 2 am when a bunch of yahoos wake up the Peninsula.

The ENTIRE Peninsula.

Now, I do remember Erik went in first and he was half way to the buoy before I shot in after him… we were always competitive so I busted my ass… or what I believed was busting my ass… who knows what I was really doing… probably floundering around in circles believing that I was somehow moving forward and catching up to him.

I looked for Ryan… who started to follow but then seemed to pause and disappear… either he stopped because he had a moment of clarity and thought better of it or his girlfriend grabbed him and forced him to the ground….. either way…. he never made it into the water which ended up being a really good thing for him.

Erik and I frolicked about from buoy to buoy laughing and screwing around up and down the tow line, spitting water at each other, slap fighting waves,  until someone turned on their porch light and stared us down…it was a BIG SOMEONE… a hulking MAD MAN SHADOW of a SOMEONE… ready to call the cops… we reverted back to high school…. hid behind a buoy whispering God knows what,  until he went back inside and turned off the light, leaving us to giggled as we backstroked our way over to the beach grabbed our towels and headed back up to the house.

We were about to enter the gate when I grabbed the pull string… realized the latch was stuck… pulled harder and watched as the string broke, and the metal washer that had been weighting the end flew straight at me and cut a half moon slash right between my eyes.

Erik didn’t even flinch… he just started laughing at me which of course led Ryan’s father to become involved.

He wiped off the cut, told me I would live and then insisted on me spending the night… and rightfully so… here is another thing you NEVER do after a 10 year high school reunion pre-party:

YOU NEVER… EVER… DRIVE HOME DRUNK.

EVER.

Do you hear me children?

EVER.

I slept on the couch until about 5 am, when I woke up in a Homer Simpson moment and shouted “DOH!” before I rushed home in a plain white over-sized man’s t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans.

I knew I had more clothes somewhere… but I couldn’t figure out what had happened to them.

I drove home at an alarming pace, all windows down, blowing the stink off, praying to GOD that my husband didn’t see me and think the absolute worst because… if he would have seen me… no matter how innocent that evening had been… I would have paid for it over the course of a lifetime.

I looked like I was heading home from a “walk of shame” and you don’t want your wife showing up at home… 5 am… no shoes… another man’s t-shirt on her back and a crescent moon shaped bloody cut in the middle of her forehead… EVER at 5 am… trust me people… it looks bad.

Now, I learned a lot by being sneaky in my youth and I knew that if I cut the engine as I crossed the Cohn’s house… I could coast up to the front of my childhood home (where we all still lived) in complete silence…

I cut the engine at the appropriate time, and let the car roll easily to the front walk.

I jumped out, quietly shut the door before I crept up the steps, into the house and lay down on the couch to wait and see if the coast was clear.

After about fifteen minutes… of shallow breathing and twitching at every little noise… I knew I was safe… no one was awake.

I tip-toed into the back of the house and found my husband asleep with our son…

I went into the bathroom, washed my face, brushed my teeth, cleaned the wound on my head and covered it with make-up before putting on my nighty, that was hanging on the back of the bathroom door.

I was going to have a hell of a hangover day and I had to get some time alone to recover.

I knew what I had to do… I had to find a way to get my husband out of the house and his love for surfing was my ticket.

I went back into the bedroom and shook my husband gently…

“Babe,” I said in my sweetest voice. “Babe?” I whispered again.

“Yeah,” he answered.

“The surf is supposed to be really good today,” I said.  “It’s 5:30. Why don’t you get up and go catch some waves… I’ll watch the kids.”

“Okay,” he said as I climbed into the bed and he exited out the other side, grabbed his car keys and flip flops, before heading out for the day.

I’m surprised he couldn’t hear my sigh of relief from the driveway. In fact… I’m surprised he couldn’t hear it from the Huntington Cliffs for that matter.

I slept my stupor off for several hours before heading off to load up my system with a lot of greasy junk food and coca-cola and was right as rain by the time my husband was back home.

I returned to the Peninsula later that afternoon in search of the rest of my clothing… and that is when Ryan’s father informed me that my cowboy boots, my black t-shirt, my jacket and my belt had been strewn in a long path across the bay in front of a block of his neighbor’s houses… and that he had to gather them up, apologizing for our behavior, before he placed them in a brown paper bag which… he was now handing to me… as if it were a bag of something dirty… secret porn… and I took it with my eyes cast down, embarrassed and ashamed, as I rolled the top of the bag over and hurried towards the door.

“Oh,” he said. “By the way D.D….”

I turned back to look at him.

“You and Erik might like to know that the Bay was closed yesterday due to bacteria contamination. So… you were basically swimming in shit. Probably wasn’t such a good idea to go for a swim last night… right?”

I suddenly felt like I was seventeen again.

My face flushed red and my mind flashed back to Erik and I swigging mouthfuls of dirty Bay water and spitting it at each other…

I was sure for a moment… that I was going to vomit… but I didn’t… I just nodded my head slowly and said, “Yes Mr. Ballance. I completely understand Mr. Ballance. It will never happen again Mr. Ballance.”

As he looked at me…. fatherly sternness radiating like laser beams from his eyes… Ryan standing behind him…. laughing his ass off.

Erik and I didn’t get sick from our late night misadventure…it’s amazing really that we didn’t… and I’m just glad that neither one of us drowned that night.

I don’t regret it though… I really don’t… it’s a good story… contaminated… or not and it is one of many great memories I have of Erik and of Ryan…. most of which involve some type of inappropriate activity.

Eddie Avalos Part Deux: The Blue Dart

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After Eddie Avalos mortified me with the “hand farting incident” I spent the next several days thinking about what I had witnessed in my front yard:

He fell down on the grass, put his legs up in the air, grabbed a lighter from his pocket, and I watched in utter amazement, as he cut a huge fart, flicked the lighter and suddenly shot a huge blue flame out of his ass. Then he laughed like a maniac and got up and ran away. It took me a moment to register what had happened. I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe.

I really couldn’t stop thinking about the whole scientific dynamic of the situation and wondered… how many people knew about this and how many people actually participated in it?

I knew I was REALLY behind the times with the “blue dart” when my friend Christy, who would never be as crude as me even on her worst day, said to me, “Lighting farts on fire? Oh yeah… people were doing that all the time at the YMCA camp when I worked there.”

I wondered what it felt like.

A blue dart.

I wanted to explore it but… the only person I could ask how to do it was Eddie and I didn’t want him to find out what I was up to… as we have already confirmed… it was SO unGIRL-like and Eddie was just waiting to bait me again…

“You know when you lit your butt on fire the other day?” I asked as we lay on the bed one afternoon… doing the usual… watching cartoons.

“Yeah,” Eddie said, not really paying attention enthralled with something on the TV that was much more interesting then our conversation.

“Does it hurt?”

He looked at me suspiciously.

“Why?” he asked.

I pretended to pick my fingernail and act bored.

“It just looked like it did,” I mumbled.

“You have to wear Levi’s,” he said as he wiggled his little sock covered toes and patted his jeans. “Otherwise you’ll burn all the hair off your ass.”

I made a face.

I didn’t have a hairy ass… I hadn’t even considered the whole hairy ass thing but that really added another dimension to the story in my imagination… and of course I couldn’t tell him we were talking about my ass…

“Eeeeew” I said as I slapped him and went back to watching TV.

A few days later, my friend Margie and her daughter Lily were over at the house.

I told them both about the whole fart incident and then I said, “I want to try a blue dart.”

Margie seemed pleased.

“Do it,” she said and then giggled.

I was wearing jean overalls that day and so I figured that would be okay.

I dug around in a drawer and found a book of matches.

“You think it will work with matches?” I asked.

Margie and Lily both shrugged their shoulders… they were blue dart virgins just like me… we didn’t know what the hell to do.

I climbed up on the bed and tried to put my legs up like Eddie.

I stayed in position for what seemed like forever but I couldn’t make anything happen.

I felt sweaty and confused.

The pressure to perform was getting to me.

Lily was watching me like I was the Finale at the BEST circus sideshow in the world… and Margie was looking on with quite anticipation mixed with skepticism … not sure if I had the skill to pull this off.

Finally, I felt something going on and I tried to light a match and put it next to my jeans but as soon as my hand got close… I shook the match out and put my legs down.

“Do it!” Margie shouted… it was like I had my own personal blue dart cheerleader and I knew I couldn’t let her down.

I mustered my courage and threw my legs back up in the air.

“Go!” She squealed.

I lit a match, pushed hard and a GIANT fart shot out of my ass.

I put the match directly onto the gas blast and watched as a HUGE blue flame exploded skyward and seemed to brighten the room.

I was amazed by the sheer magnitude of the size of it.

Margie and Lily’s eyes grew into large saucer shaped circles… their mouths tiny ooooooh’s of disbelief and excitement.

I was just about to start laughing when I felt my butt get really hot… scary hot… my face changed from one of total amusement to complete horror.

I FREAKED.

I was so afraid that I was going to catch on fire or explode from the inside, that I actually panicked and pee’d all over myself believing I was putting out the flame.

I rolled off the bed and ran to the bathroom, a large wet circle showing prominently on my crotch, crying as Lily and Margie laughed hysterically at my idiocy.

I slammed the bathroom door and sat on the toilet, my hands covering my face… laughing… as I listened to Lily and Margie giggling and going over the play by plays on the stellar entertainment I had just provided for them… quite pleased with the show.

I don’t think I ever told Eddie about this incident… but of course if he’s reading this… which I’m sure he is… he now knows.

I have never tried a blue dart since… I doubt I ever will again… but the sheer joy of doing something so taboo… breaking the “girl code” this time, by choice… left me feeling giddy with my accomplishment.

The Day Eddie Avalos Tricked Me Into Farting On His Hand

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I had been married to my X for almost 20 years.

So…. when we divorced, I was a bit gun shy about dating.

I actually remember crying to my friends, “Who’s going to ever like me again?”

And I’d like to say that they patted my back and comforted me but they actually laughed at me and said, “Are you fucking serious?”

I was.

Divorce will do that to you.

It completely rocks your moral, spiritual, physical foundation and makes you think really crazy thoughts like: No one will ever like me again.

I recovered.

Most of us do.

It takes time, totally cliche but true, and distance and a fair amount of compassion and love.

My first long term dude after my X was Eddie.

We dated one year.

Eddie was a good first dude because he’s funny, down to earth and liked to do a lot of the same stupid things I liked to do:

Walk in the Nature Center

Eat

Lay around and watch South Park

Eat

Listen to music

Eat

and… believe it or not with all this laying around, eating and watching cartoons…

We both had a solid work ethic which kept us from killing each other by spending too much time together.

But the best thing about Eddie, was that he was like my junior high school boyfriend. Seriously… the way we played and hung out was like 7th grade summer.

I’m surprised I didn’t make him ride me around the neighborhood on the handlebars of his cruiser every night around 9 pm… before we had to rush home to beat our curfew and an inevitable grounding.

Eddie could get me to do things that only your junior high school boyfriend could do… And one day… Eddie actually got me to do something I thought I would NEVER do in front of a boy… fart. And… not only that… but actually fart on his hand.

He tricked me.

He knows he tricked me.

Believe me… I DON’T want to write this story but to not write it would mean that I was a complete FRAUD.

If you truly want to put your life out there in the world.. than you have to be HONEST about it and so… I must concede that Eddie Avalos was smart enough to trick me into farting on his hand and I feel like a totally idiot to this day for falling for it.

And if Eddie’s reading this right now… he’s laughing super hard and clapping his little hands because that’s what Eddie does when he thinks something is really funny.

So, Eddie and I were out in the front yard and he was showing off… he was running around on the grass and playing slap fight with me.

I was slapping back but he was quick.

He’d get in a good slap, run away laughing and when I would try to catch him, he would slap me again and run away.

Then, he fell down on the grass, put his legs up in the air, grabbed a lighter from his pocket, and I watched in utter amazement, as he cut a huge fart, flicked the lighter and suddenly shot a huge blue flame out of his ass. Then he laughed like a maniac and got up and ran away again.

It took me a moment to register what had happened.

I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe.

He was dancing in little circles, thinking he was super funny… when all of a sudden he came over to me and said, “Fart on my hand” and put his hand on my butt.

I slapped his hand away hard… mortified as I shouted, “NO! Girls don’t do that!”

He circled me again… doing some crazy little dance just to egg me on before he put his hand on my butt again and said, “Fart.”

I was slapping him with both hands now but it just made him laugh harder.

“Do it!” he shouted but I repeatedly refused I was NOT going to fart in front of a boy… NO WAY.

But Eddie, who knows me very well… said exactly what he needed to say to get me to take the bait.

“You are such a pussy,” he taunted. “You act like you would do anything… like you are so tough and look at you,” he began to do his little dance again, “You can’t even fart on my hand.”

I became suddenly determined to prove him wrong.

How dare he insinuate I was weak… not up to the task…. less than him because I was too embarrassed to do what he had just done with utter abandon.

I would show him.

Girls could fart just as good as boys.

I would fart on his hand.

The next time Eddie ran up to me, I waited until he put his hand on my butt and then I held my breath, pushed hard, felt something move, and then heard a small “bweeeep” before my fart vibrated across the palm of  his hand.

It seemed for a moment that everything in the world stopped. Completely stopped.

I knew immediately that I had fallen into a trap and that there was no way I could have a “take back.”

I looked up and saw the shock and amusement register on Eddie’s face… his eyebrows actually bounced, his mouth turned into a sly smile and he ran away laughing as he squealed, “Oh my God! You’re a girl! You’re not supposed to fart on my  hand!  Girl’s don’t do that! I can’t believe you just farted on my hand! Eeeeeeew!”

Then he laughed, danced around some more, pretending to smell his hand while shouting, “Eeeeeew! My hand is ruined! You farted on my hand.”

He humilated me in the worse possible way.

First, by basically getting me to fall for the old fart on the hand trick and second, by tricking me into breaking the number one girl rule… don’t ever fart in front of a boy EVER.

I felt my face flush a hot red as I ran over and slapped Eddie as hard as I could, heard  him screech “OUCH!” before I ran into the house TOTALLY embarassed.

A few moments later, he followed me in, jumped on my bed, threw his legs up in the air again and let another fart on fire, giggled like a madman before he kicked off his shoes and prepared to watch cartoons.

“Come on,” he said and patted the bed. “Don’t be such a baby… I was just messing with you. Come on, lie down now and watch cartoons with me.”

I tried to pout as I stomped my  little feet over to my side of the bed and lay down next to him… my legs and arms crossed in silent protest.

We lay there a few moments… waiting for South Park to begin before Eddie smelled his hand one more time and giggled.

I ignored him…or tried to… pretending that I was just so engrossed in the cartoon that I couldn’t even see him… and I probably would have been able to manage that for awhile but in true Eddie form he waited until things were calm and then said, “Have you ever heard of a Dutch Oven?”

I didn’t even give him a look… I just reached over and gut punched him.

He curled up into a ball moaning and laughing and I knew that though I had gotten him back… I would never live down the day that I farted on Eddie Avalos’s hand.

Evangelic-ed

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I heard them.
Outside my house.
Preparing to come up my walk.
Jehovahs.
Six women, different shapes and sizes, all dressed in thin polyester pastel summer blouses and floral calf length skirts.
Much like the Mormons that had been stalking our house for several years obviously, there was news that the devil was rumored to be living somewhere in our home. There must have been an all points religious bulletin sent out that said we would need several different brands of religious zealots to eradicate him from the house.
I was in the back writing when I heard Lola begin to bark, annoyed, I went to the bedroom and told her to be quiet and then I saw them out the window. I ducked, hoping that the thin bamboo blinds camouflaged my Spongebob pajama bottoms and my braless breasts bouncing past the screen.
They paused.
They had heard me scold Lola and now they were wondering why I had never answered the door. My mom still answers. She shuffles over, listens to them quietly with the door pressed tightly across her chest. Head nodding gently as she waits to pass them her $1.50 in change so that she can buy their newest edition of ‘The Watchtower’ before she can return to Regis and Kelly and highlights from Dancing with the Stars and American Idol.
I do not open the door. Today, I didn’t even hear them until Lola barked. Caught up in a new story idea related to Harvey Keitel’s penis, I was enthralled with pictures of H.K. in ‘The Piano’ and the ‘Bad Leuitant’, really, enough to make anyone deaf for a matter of minutes, not even realizing they had been at the front door.
Then, the herd of women moved away and all was quiet again. Lola stopped barking, mom went back to the blue chair, and I went back to Harvey’s penis.
5 minutes passed when Lola was at it again, this time, her bark was different, immediate, vicious, she was off the bed, out the dog door and tearing at the fence before I could even get to the window to see what was wrong.
Outside, I saw a police officer creeping passed my fence, tip toeing up to my neighbor’s back gate. Three cop cars were parked in strategic locations about the corner of my house. What the fuck had the Jehovah’s done now?
I snapped at Lola to come back in the house, she popped through the dog door, eyes up, ears back, as if protecting our house was a bad thing. I grabbed her collar and closed her in the bathroom.
I crept outside and now saw four different police officers tip toeing up to my neighbor Linda’s house. I ran back in the house, grabbed my cell phone and called her.
“Hello?” she said.
“Linda,” I said, “Are you in your house right now?”
“Why?” she asked, “What has Sophie done now?”
Linda is a big dog lover and I mean big as in BIG dogs. She has two Irish wolfhounds, Maggie and Sophie, and a greyhound named Joe, who are all taller than me when they stand with their paws on my shoulders. So I tell her what is going on.
“Can I talk with them?” she sounds concerned.
I run outside, “No, their guns are drawn.”
“What?”
“I’ll call you back.” I say as I snap the phone shut and run outside to check on the police.
The cops are ready to make their raid to the backyard. They are signaling me to be quiet but I ignore the signal.
“She has big dogs,” I shout, “Really big dogs. Don’t go in there!”
They stop.
I can see them peek through the front window to the backyard before they call off the raid and back up and over to my fence.
“Sorry,” I said, “but I knew it was just the dogs.”
Now there were four cop cars and I wondered how these cops ended up at Linda’s house. Did she have an alarm? I don’t remember one. I had been taking care of her house for the last few years while she was away on trips and she had never said anything about the alarm. So I asked.
“What made you guys come here? Did an alarm go off?”
The oldest cop said, “No the Jehovahs called us.”
Fucking Jehovahs. I should have known it had something to do with them.
I looked down the street and I could see them three houses away. Huddled up in a tight knit little group, hands securely tightened around their leather purses, ‘Watchtowers’ held tightly under each arm. They were looking at the commotion they had caused and I swear I wanted to step past the cops flip them the fucking bird and yell “I’m the DEVIL and I LIKE IT!”
The oldest cop continued, “They told us that they knocked on the door but no one answered. Then they heard a disturbance and knocked again but no one came to the door. So they called us.”
He ended this informative narrative with his hands on his leather gun belt, adjusting it in a manly manner and then shifting his weight from one hip to the other to add emphasis.
I thanked them for their time and then returned to the house. By this time the two younger cops were already ogling Lex. It isn’t often that you end up at a crime scene and find a six foot blonde with a body that can be seen in Playboy, wearing a t-shirt that reads “I’m six feet of heat”. I felt bad for them. I wished I could think of a reason for them to come in and search our house, get a closer look at Lex. Maybe they could look for the devil and report back to the Jehovah’s that all is well in the Grisham-Wood household.
By this time, Linda had called back on my cell and asked me to stop the cops and have them go into her house with me and just do a double check that there really isn’t anyone inside.
I pause for a moment, wondering if I should just have Lex take the two younger cops on an inside search of Linda’s home but then a bad porn movie comes to mind and I tell my daughter to go back inside as I approach the older officer in my Sponge bob’s and my braless t-shirted chest, with my arms crossed firmly over my cleavage and ask him if he will please come back with me and just do a quick check of the residence.
I can see after looking at me, no make-up, short boyish chopped black hair, chubby lump in my k-mart pajama combo that he is thinking of a bad porn movie as well but something more along the lines of “Big dykes bang cops” and is weighing the odds about going with me back into Linda’s home in case I have any ideas of taking him. I raise my eyebrow and cock my head and he sees that I am all business and not of the sexual kind.
We walk up the front steps and he gives me a demonstration of how an intruder could easily slit the screen and climb in the open front window. I nod slowly and seriously, trying to give off the effect that I understand the seriousness of this matter.
I open the door and step to the side. The two younger cops have followed behind us and when they see that Maggie, Sophie and Joe, look more like a herd of camels than a pack of dogs, the younger cop says, “Holy cow! Those are dogs?”
The dogs, wag lovingly hoping that the new group of people will stay and play until “mom” gets home but the cops start their search and I must leave the dogs to answer the cops questions.
“Has this window sill always been chipped up like this?
“No,” I reply, “Maggie ate that sill during the Winter of 07”
Maggie seems to smile from the back porch window.
“Has this mirror been broken like this?”
“No,” I reply again, “Maggie broke that when she rolled off the bed in Spring of 08.”
Sophie and Joe both seem to be looking at Maggie now, as if to say, “We would never do anything as bad as you do Maggie.”
I am not fooled.
The cops finish the search, I lock Linda’s house, and thank the officers once again for their time.
“Tell the Jehovah’s thanks for calling,” I say as I walk back to my gate.
In my mind I really want to tell the Jehovah’s that when they hear rustling going on inside of a house but no one comes to the door, to mind their own fucking business. It’s probably just people trying to hide from them and their stupid fucked up religion.
I mean, who would want to be a Jehovah? The chosen ones have already been giving a spot in heaven, the rest of the followers are fucked, and you can’t celebrate Christmas or your birthday any more.
If they think the draw of poorly made floral clothing, and copies of the ‘Watchtower’ are going to pull us in they are sadly mistaken.
I will write. I will live with the Devil. I will wear my Sponge bob pajamas and I will celebrate whatever heathen holiday comes to mind.
I will not however, ever stop Lola from barking at the Jehovah’s again. I will open the front door, let her run wildly to the fence, fierce pitbull teeth bared and blasting, and watch them all run, run down the street and off to a new location far from my world where Linda and my “hell hounds” are on their trail.

Playing Quasimodo with Dylan Resulting in a Trip to the Emergency Room and an Awkward Moment with the Police and Child Protective Services

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Dylan believes that Joe and I bordered on the edge of abusive while raising him.

Not physically… but mentally.

He seems to think games like “Goat Man” and “Sanctuary” and “Mean Mommy” and “I’m Blind” were meant to torment him, but we try to explain that they were just good fun or in some cases… meant to protect and educate.

Dylan was prone to taking off his clothes and running away when he was a baby so Joe, my X, invented “Goat Man” basically, “The Boogie Man” so that whenever Dylan ran away he could shout, “Goat Man! Goat Man!” and Dylan would scurry to the safety of the house. You don’t want your child running around the neighborhood naked. It may have been good fun back in the day, but now…. that’s a big no.

We didn’t think about the lasting effects of “Goat Man” … a monster that would now live forever in our child’s imagination. We just thought “Goat Man” would live until Dylan was old enough to understand that we created G.M. just to protect him. No… we were wrong. Dylan is now 22 years old and if I stood outside in the dark and yelled “Goat Man! Goat Man! Goat Man!” Dylan would still scream and scurry for the safety of the house afraid that a little hoof footed evil man was about to nab him in a matter of seconds.

“Mean Mommy” was one of my games and it was my way of letting Dylan know what was in store for him if he should so happen to cross the line and break Mommy’s rules. Any time he would do something terribly naughty, I would make crazy eyes at him, switch my voice into a high pitched tone and say, “Mean mommy” and Dylan would freak out and beg me to stop afraid that I had gone crazy and might kill him.

I was 26 when I invented this game, not much more of a baby myself… but I would still invent it again right now if it meant Dylan would turn into the great person that I believe him to be today.

So…. the day I invented “Sanctuary” I never thought anything would go terribly wrong…. I just thought it would be fun to beat Dylan with a yellow plastic stick ball bat while shouting “Sanctuary!” dragging my right leg behind me as I pretended to be the Hunchback of Notre Dame while Dylan scurried along the floor screaming “No Quasimodo! NO!”

We were half way through the living room, then rounding the corner of the hallway with Dylan crawling on his hands and knees, while I smacked his butt with the yellow plastic bat as he squealed  and giggled with delight and tried to escape me.

At that time, we still had carpet in our home but it was old and worn and in some of the door frames, sharp carpet nails had become exposed due to the many years of heavy foot traffic.

Dylan rounded a corner to hide in a bedroom when the top of his fat, soft, pink baby Fred Flintstone foot, caught on one of the large sharp rusty nails which ripped his foot wide open.

He flipped over, covered his foot in shock and terror, little arms shaking in pain and anger before he looked up at me and screamed, “LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO ME!”

His face was that of ultimate betrayal.

I thought he was being overly dramatic until he removed his hand and I saw the damage: exposed meat and a fat gaping mouth of a wound.

Joe had come running when he heard the commotion and after seeing the injury, and then giving me a look that could have frozen hell, placed a clean towel over Dylan’s foot, carried him to the car and we rushed him to the emergency room.

They took us straight in and in a matter of minutes, Dylan was sitting on a hospital bed as they took our information and a nurse went to get the doctor.

When the doctor arrived, he asked that Joe and I take a seat in the chairs against the wall and wait while he spoke to Dylan privately. I did not know that this was normal practice, that doctors often speak to children alone to check for child abuse. A police officer from child protective services was also called in to listen. I’m not sure if they just hang out at the hospital waiting for these types of cases or if they called him in specially.

I could see Dylan’s little rounded back… he was still sniffling as children do after a hard cry and his shoulders would pulse up and down every few moments as he tried to catch his breath.

The doctor pulled up a chair and sat down facing Dylan. Because of our location, we could view the doctor’s face, the officer’s face… but nothing of Dylan’s expression.

The doctor said very calmly, “Dylan. Tell us exactly what happened.”

And Dylan replied in broken sobs, “My mom… was BEATING ME… with a Baaaaaattttt.”

You can’t even imagine the look on the doctor’s face… I don’t know if I can even describe it… he looked at me like I was the biggest moron in the world. I swear… it wasn’t a “You are obviously a child abuser” look it was a “How the hell did you come up with such a stupid game like Sanctuary Quasimodo you idiot?”

The child protective officer looked at Joe like he was the devil and I could feel shame radiate from Joe’s entire being before he looked at me and whispered, “We’re so going to jail.”

But we didn’t go to jail. We never went to jail for raising Dylan. They stitched up his foot and sent him home with the crazy woman and the devil after Dylan through broken sobs explained while having his foot stitched up that it was just a game… and that he loved his mom and dad very much.

Thank God.

I’m sure if Dylan is reading this now… he wishes he could go back in time and give us a taste of our own medicine. Maybe a game called, “Send Mommy and Daddy to Jail”

Sound good Dylan?