Category Archives: Teaching

Mr. Stroosma Sets the Classroom on Fire

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I don’t ask for much from my substitute teacher.

I don’t.

You can ask any of my students: Stroosma’s job is cake.

Silent Reading for 30 to 40 minutes… followed by a nice “book to movie” dvd and his day is done.

Beautiful.

Nice kids.

Good snacks.

Easy day.

No problems.

So when I left for four weeks in the early spring of 2008 for a Writer’s fellowship in Vermont, I assumed, stupidly, that I could somehow trust that my classroom would run smoothly for the entire time I was gone… as long as I had Stroosma at the helm of the ship.

Stroosma is definitely one of the “beloved.”

A small group of teachers, substitutes, and staff members at Millikan High School that students actually really do enjoy being with…

The kids would be super stoked to have him as their substitute teacher for four weeks.

He’s good looking…

Witty…

A very talented musician (former fantabulous bass player for the Sea Monsters) and…

My Facebook husband; which earns him TOTAL cool points in my book.

Girls have crushes on him… (and boys too)

Boys want to be like him… (and girls too)

He is “Thee” substitute and the kids know, when walking into the classroom, that “YES! STROOSMA’S HERE TODAY!” and that they are going to have a lovely day of respite from their regularly scheduled teacher.

Perfect.

Now, I’m sure you have already duly noted that I did not mention academics in the above description and this is why…

Don’t get me wrong… academics are important and Stroosma can teach…

But when you’re going to be 1,500 miles away from your students for four weeks… academics runs a FAR distant second to CLASS CONTROL.

You don’t want the Principal rolling around to your classroom every day, amped up because your substitute teacher can’t keep 180 high school students entertained for a 90 minute period… SERIOUSLY… you just don’t.

You need a “show” man…

You need A HEADLINER…

You need a man with a plan that can handle your clan.

And that’s Stroosma.

Sinatra would have wanted him in the “Rat Pack” every day of the week.

So… I spoke to him WAY in advance… because a substitute like Stroosma is always in high demand… and said:

“I’m going to be gone four weeks, and I need you to take my class. All I ask… (and I paused here for emphasis)  is that you and the kids don’t burn the room down while I’m gone. Okay?”

Stroosma smiled his little Stroosma smile…

Winked his little Stroosma wink…

And gave me the thumbs up.

“No problem,” he said.

And like a FOOL… I believed him.

Two weeks later I was in Vermont… sitting in a beautiful Victorian house, content in my warm room, looking out the large bay window at the snow falling gently all around me, as I typed out the first full draft of my novel.

Ahhhhh.

The view… serene…

The icy river… crystal crisp.

The rolling snowy hills… the water wheel of the old red mill.

I couldn’t ask for more of a picture postcard moment if I had planned it with God himself when suddenly… it was like a text bomb went off on my phone.

There must have been 30 alerts within 10 seconds and I am not exaggerating.

My students were bombarding me with messages all of which read: STROOSMA JUST ALMOST BURNED OUR ROOM DOWN. COME BACK.

Oh funny… I thought… look how much they miss me… I smiled to myself… they just love to tease me… such a funny game… Aren’t they silly children…. like I can just magically get back to Long Beach in a blink of an eye…. aren’t they just so cute…

I was sure Stroosma must have put them up to this and I’m telling you, I thought that right up until message number 31 which was from Stroosma himself and that’s when my little warm and fuzzy moment fled my little writer’s room and my brain almost exploded from my head:

HEY D, THE ROOM WAS ON FIRE BUT EVERYTHING IS OKAY.

Now… “WTF” was not even being used in text vocabulary at this time… but if I had been in my right mind at that moment… I would have made it up on the spot and typed it to him.

I called immediately.

No answer.

I started to panic and  dialed again.

No answer. 

Jesus…

I dialed again.

No answer.

My mind was racing…

I could imagine my students, scared to death after their classroom burned down, all lined up  next to the chain link fence… out on the field in a School Wide Fire Drill all because I had left to go to the Writer’s Colony in Vermont.

I was a bad teacher.

I had abandoned my flock.

I dialed again.

Stroosma picked up the phone and I heard all of my students shouting and frolicking in the background… their voices not full of terror and pain but ringing with complete and total joy and ecstasy that they had just had a memorable “event” in their English classroom…

“What the hell?” I shouted at Stroosma. “It was the one thing… the ONE thing I told you not to let happen! Shit… Stroosma!”

My students were suddenly silent… my voice can cut through a classroom even when I’m on a cell phone across the Great Divide and though they couldn’t hear the words… they most definitely heard the tone… and like the well-trained students they are… they knew that when Ms. Wood was going “insane” you better shut the fuck up.

Silence.

Stroosma was silent as well.

“Well?” I snapped. “What the hell happened?”

“We put a pad thai box in the microwave and then forgot about it.”

I waited… unwilling to give him one inch without more description.

“It caught on fire and the smoke started to billow throughout the classroom,” he tried not to stumble on his words.

“IT WAS TURNING AND BURNING” I heard a wise-heimer shout with glee somewhere in the background, followed by a long barrage of slap sounds and shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhs… vigilantly justice being handed down by the “citizens” while the Sheriff was out of town.

“Nothing happened,” Stroosma said. “Not even the fire alarm.”

I let out a huge sigh of relief knowing that my students were safe, my room was still standing, and my Principal would not be signing my pink slip out of Millikan when I returned to Long Beach.

“Miriam was the one who told me,” Stroosma said.

Miriam… my German foreign exchange student… who could barely hold a basic conversation in English had raised her sweet little hand, pointed her militant little German finger at the microwave, and in heavily accented broken English said… Summ theeeeng ES burn ING!”

Fucking Stroosma.

I could have had a God damn international incident on my hands because of him.

“You having fun?” He asked.

“Oh yeah…” I said sarcastically. “Great time… getting a lot of good writing done.”

“Okay then,” he said. “Talk to you later.”

I hung up the phone and spent about another 45 minutes retrieving text messages from students who wanted me to know that they loved me, missed me, and thought everything that had just happened was super funny…

I sat back in my chair and watched the clock…  as I pictured my classroom back home… sad that I was minutes away from the actual Vermont Ben and Jerry’s factory… and I had none of the children I loved with me….or Stroosma… to go eat some ice cream with and enjoy a good laugh over the day’s event.

An Awkward Moment with Axl Rose

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When my X and I were dating, he was in the middle of a meteoric rise to what I considered at 21 to be “fame” in a former punk band turned heavy metal riot rock band.

Tours went from playing with local Orange County and Los Angeles punk favorites to playing with Guns and Roses in venues that held well over a thousand spectators as GNR was about to reach their peak in the late 80’s … early 90’s.

When I tell my students the stories of these days, they look on with a sort of adoration mixed with total disbelief. They can’t imagine me in THAT setting.  It’s not exactly that they can’t believe that I ever had a life… I’m pretty open, as a teacher, about sharing stories on living that I believe may help to educate or inspire “better choices than I made” decisions in my students.

But… they picture me now: no make-up on, hair pulled back in a pony tail, conservative clothing, a picture of maternal warmth, and find it hard to believe there was ever a: nightclub make-up, big haired vixen, scantily dressed, sex kitten hidden somewhere inside of THAT teacher’s body… and you know what?

That’s really a good thing.

You don’t NEED high school students thinking of you that way. You need high school students to see you as Mrs. Stay-Puff Marshmallow and keep the lines drawn firmly in the sand, wait strike that… CEMENT… as you grade their essays with a bright red marker and give them demerits for chewing gum or sleeping in class.

SUCH a meany!

I do however, like to shock them with my past every now and then… and watch as they cock their little heads to the side, their confusion just so palpable and adorable as they try to make meaning from the oxymoron they are actually looking at: The Cool Rocker Stay-Puff Marshmallow Teacher  known as…Ms. Wood.

You can hear their little brains ticking…

It doesn’t fit…

She’s lying…

That just doesn’t make sense…

I smile just to think of it.

I was in my early 20’s when my X’s band was moving it’s way through the Los Angeles Rock Scene… my X was very handsome… in an animalistic sort of way… dark, beautiful gold eyes, growling voice, women loved him or should I say, fantasized about him, and although I was very street smart at the time, I was very naive when it came to love… I honestly believed that I would be the only woman he would have eyes for as he rose to stardom.

He tried… don’t get me wrong… X did love me.

But if you know anything about Guns and Roses in the late 80’s early 90’s then you know that women… at the shows and on the road… were abundant and that ANY band touring with them would be sharing in that “abundance.”

I’d like to tell you that I enjoyed this “behind the scenes” rock and roll period of time in my life, but really… I didn’t much.

And I still have a hard time reconciling myself to that past today.

On this particular occasion though… it was not X’s women or X’s drug addiction getting under my skin… it was Axl Rose.

Yes… Mr. Axl Rose.

Mr. Slithery snake dancer, bandana wearing, ginger haired, 80’s bad boy.

What… a piece of work.

I was in college at the time and had gotten in the habit of bringing my books with me to shows.

That way… when X was in the middle of sound check, I could sit in the auditorium seats, study for my classes, and not get behind in my work.

I was alone that day, sitting in the theater watching Guns and Roses sound check when Axl took the stage.

Now, the guys in Guns and Roses had already shown some interest in my looks. Probably because I was a baby, barely of age, had jet black hair, white skin, dark purple lipstick lips, and tried to never speak in their presence… what a perfect 80’s girl: attractive and mute.

They would often walk by and smile or wave at me and I always waved back, but other than that… I had given them little attention, having grown up in a world of music where most of my friends and family were already Punk Rock Legends or just “notrious.”

I was mid-way through a textbook chapter on God knows what subject… when I realized that Axl was saying some really dirty words from the stage. At first, I thought it was just some part of a song he was singing… but a few seconds later… when I heard, “And she sits in the auditorium in front of me, reading her books, as I imagine myself naked on top of…”

I looked up and watched as he slithered his way back and forth across the stage, microphone stand in his hand, his mouth seductively moaning out sexual innuendoes to his “chosen” and supposedly so “adoring” audience and I thought… Jesus… fuck… Where the hell is X?”

I closed my books, gathered my things, and exited my way out the side entrance as Axl stopped mid sex-rap and looked at me just as my students look at me today…. head cocked to one side… a bit of disbelief… his confusion palpable and adorable as he watched the oxymoron that was once sitting in front of him exit the building: An 80’s rock chick that didn’t want to have ANY thing to do with Axl Rose.

And there goes Axl’s little brain ticking:

This isn’t happening.

She’s just pretending…

She has to like me…

Amazing…

I wandered off to find X who was eating some tacos with the guys in the band around the corner from the venue.

Of course, when I told him what Axl had done… he wanted to go beat him… this was nothing new (see story about the time I brushed Anthony Kiedis’s hair for confirmation if needed)

But X calmed down and we went on with our evening and enjoyed the show.

I was still out front after the performance, thanking some friends and family who had come to the event before heading back stage to be with X when, I said my goodbyes, flashed my backstage pass, and headed down the narrow hallway to the Green room.

Unfortunately, as I rounded the first corner, I came face to face with not only Axl Rose but David Lee Roth.

My first thought was one of shock.

David Lee Roth always looked so sexy in his videos but I had never seen Van Halen perform live… never seen David live.

He was shorter than I had imagined… a bit chubby at the time… and his hair, though still long, was thinning on the top giving the appearance of a balding mullet.

I wasn’t sure how to react.

Here were two internationally known sex symbols standing in the hallway of this venue, and I felt like I was in the Ozarks about to hear the theme song of, Deliverance, begin to rise in the background as I was begged to play the “little piggy” game with both of them.

It was horrible.

Axl was leaning into the corner of the turn… sweaty from his set and smirking at the fact that I was going to have to make my way past both of them by squeezing through the middle of their conversation.

I knew that either way I turned… I was in trouble…

If I was face to face with Axl as I passed by… he would just say a bunch of dirty things and try to get me to want him… and if I was face to face with David Lee Roth… Axl would grab my ass while I had to think of something nice to say to David about my admiration for his talent… while trying to ignore the thin, balding mullet and Axl’s creepy little hands on my butt.

It was definitely a rock and roll gauntlet.

I thought about just turning around and going out the way I came in but if I didn’t find X… he would probably come to the conclusion that I was with Axl and then there really WOULD be a brawl… and David Lee Roth would lose ALL of his hair… and it would be ALL MY FAULT when he had to accept his place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame TOTALLY bald.

Shit.

I was trapped.

I decided it was best to face Axl head on and leave my butt for David Lee Roth.

I strided forward with purpose before wiggling my way through the two of them.

Axl locked eyes with me as if he thought that he could somehow “voodoo spell” me into wanting him.

“Like the show?” he whispered in his most seductive voice.

I rolled my eyes as I felt David Lee Roth put his hands on either side of my hips and say in his “comic” goofy stage voice, “Excuse me..”

Jesus.

I almost ran down the last third of the hallway turning back only once to see them both admiring the jiggle and the shake.

I felt flushed with embarassment as I turned the last corner and ran right into X who was talking to Slash.

My face must have registered shock at being confronted with yet another “Gun,” since I was barely recovered from my brush with Axl, and Slash looked amused by my entrance.

“This is D.D.,” X said.

“Hey,” I said as I reached out my hand to shake his, still a bit breathless from the incident. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Oh man,” Slash said. “We all thought you were Russian.”

“Russian?” I said.

“Yeah, the way you look and all.”

Suddenly… it clicked.

I bet Axl thought I couldn’t understand a word he was saying at sound check.

“Ty che blyad?”

Jerk.

X of course was just pleased that GNR thought that he was dating the hot foreign chick and I wondered if I might be able to keep the farce going by practicing a thick Russian accent and learning a good selection of Russian vocabulary. That way, I could basically make my way through the Rock World without talking to any of the key players if I didn’t want to… the thought of it was quite enticing…

“Ready to go?” X asked as he wrapped his arm around my waist.

“Nice to meet you,” I said to Slash as X grabbed his guitar case.

He lead me back down the small hallway and I watched as both Axl and David stepped aside for him.

“Good show,” X said as we walked by.

David shook his hand, Axl gave him a nod… and I just kept stepping… no turning around…. no looking back….

Dasvidania.

Steve Soto coins the phrase “Dramatacus” which sparks a semi-serious conversation at 3am

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Let me start by saying Steve Soto swears he coined this phrase… and I’m okay with giving the sassypants credit but, if someone has a “beef” with it… take it up with Soto…  he’s somewhere in Europe right now hosting a “sausage fest” (his words…. not mine) as Punk Rock’s favorite nice guy in his band The Adolescents.

I wish I had coined that phrase…

NOT “sausage fest…”

but “Dramatacus.”

I really do.

Steve was brilliant to think of it and now… it is one of my favorite non-words, that HAS become a word, and I pray that someone will add it to Webster’s Dictionary next to GIANORMOUS… and SWAG.

Now… I’m sure we can agree, that we have all been guilty of being a “Dramatacus” at some time in our lives… yes that’s right people…. each and every one of us… don’t even try to deny it.

And…anyone that knows me… knows… that I can definitely be the BIGGEST “gladiator” of dramatic play when provoked…

or sometimes… just because I’m bored.

Being a high school teacher alone cranks the drama-meter off the chart on a daily basis:

“Ms. Wood, so-and-so… told so-and-so… that I was pregnant with so-and-so’s baby.”

Or…

“Ms. Wood, so-and-so… likes so-and-so… but I’m SO in love with so-and-so… I don’t know what to do.”

Or…

“Ms. Wood, so-and-so… told so-and-so… that I was the one that crapped on the floor in the locker room and now so-and-so won’t ask me to Prom.”

See what I mean?

Drama.

Now, add in a daughter that likes to pick up dead bodies for a living…

A son who is a cross between Phil Spector and Brian Eno…

An X who is working on years of recovery… (a Dramatacus in his own right) that’s at the house once a week playing music in the garage…

Throw in a couple of band projects, book projects, and a few sober bad boys in need of reform… and you’ve basically got yourself a “Circus Maximus” of Dramatacus fun.

Now at times… I really like being a Dramatcus… it amps up life…. and adds to the excitement…. but when you are in a relationship with someone… it’s really not a good thing.

You basically go from being their beautiful statue on a pedestal, their reason for living…. to a ROYAL PAIN IN THE ASS in a matter of minutes.

And the worst thing is… you just can’t stop yourself…

It’s like you’re possessed…

You know you are acting like a total idiot…

That you are making the situation worse…

That you are the engineer of your own train wreck….

But you just keep going…

People could be running from you… screaming in terror… looking back over their shoulder at you as if you are GODZILLA about to destroy them… and yet you will still chase them on and INSIST that you MUST EXPLAIN WHY YOU ARE BEING A DRAMATACUS… which only makes them run faster and further as they pray to God that he will “EXIT” you from their life FOREVER.

Sigh…

So it was while Steve and I were both dealing with major emotional upheavals in our worlds…. and trying VERY hard not to both go into Dramatacus mode at the same time… that we started having our  “late night” phone conversations.

Problem is… “late night” to me is around 9 pm, especially on a school night…

And “late night” to Steve Soto is somewhere around 3 am.

We fixed the problem by meeting somewhere in the middle with Steve texting around 11 pm with an “Are you up?” message and if I was… I would call and we would chat.

Now I have known Steve for years… and he has always been able to make me laugh… but one night when I was on the phone howling over someone who I felt had “wronged” me and reading him an email from this person that had caused me to be terribly upset… he stopped and asked,

“Wait… was their sex involved in this relationship?”

I paused……

“No,” I said quietly.

“You guys weren’t like going out right?”

“No,” I said quietly again.

“Well, that seems like a LOT of drama for a non-sexual relationship.” He paused for a moment and then said, “What a Dramatacus.”

It stunned me…

He stunned me…

What a wordsmith.

I was impressed.

I knew that he was speaking about the person in the email… that they were being a Dramatacus in writing… but it stopped me long enough to recognize how DRAMATIC I was being about the entire situation as well.

I was being totally ridiculous.

Someone expressed their feelings to me in writing… That’s it.

I didn’t need to get all bent about it.

Maybe I could for once just bring it down a notch… which I did… waited to respond… and the friendship survived the episode.

The next day I was out walking with my friend Margie when I told her about Steve’s word and the event that lead up to it.

The day after… I was a bit late arriving to her house for our daily walk…. and as I pulled up…. the text alert beeped on my phone and I saw “McLate-acus” flash across the screen.

I looked up to see Margie… giggling from her front porch.

Steve and Margie really know how to make a point when they want to… in the best artistic sense of the matter.

I hope they add McLate-acus to Webster’s as well.

Tom and Lexi “Meet Cute” While Picking Up A Dead Body Together

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A good friend of our family, Bobby Sepulveda, worked as a Removal Driver for several years.

What is a Removal Driver you may ask?

Well… it’s a person who picks up dead bodies.

From homes.

From Nursing homes.

From the hospital.

From the beach.

From the store.

From parked cars at the football stadium.

Really… wherever you decide you want to punch your final ticket you’ve got someone to take you on that “last call” cab ride home: A Removal Driver.

Now… if you have a problem with dead people or removal drivers… please don’t read any farther.

Trust me.

You won’t like it because it’s about to get good… in a really, really bad way.

Bobby always had great stories about people he picked up.

He called me once from the morgue… and I said, “Where are you? The phone connection is really echoing.”

and Bobby said, “I’m with Donna Reed.”

“Donna Reed?” I asked… a bit confused… not “getting” the big picture…

“Yeah,” Bobby said. “She passed away today and I’m with her at the morgue.”

I felt my face drop.

I had always really liked Donna Reed… ever since she played Jimmy Stewart’s sweetheart in It’s a Wonderful Life, and I wasn’t really sure I wanted my last memory of Donna Reed to be “hanging out” with Bobby Sepulveda in the morgue.

If you knew Bobby Sepulveda… you would understand… I swear you would…. but since you don’t… just picture this…. one of the guys from Jackass in the morgue with Donna Reed.

See what I mean?

It doesn’t really seem right now does it?

Sorry Bobby… but you KNOW it’s true.

So… anyway…

Lexi, my daughter, was very interested in working in the medical profession when she graduated high school.

She wasn’t sure exactly what she wanted to do at that time… and so she decided to talk to Bobby about becoming a Removal Driver.

“Why the hell do you want to do that?” I snapped at her, my own fear of being a Removal Driver getting in the way of my child’s one true dream.

“Because I want to know if I can handle being around dead bodies,” Lex said.  “I don’t want to go all the way through medical school and find out I don’t have the stomach for that type of work.”

It was a good answer… A reasonable answer and so… I backed her choice.

Our friend Bobby was happy to get her a job… in fact, I’m sure he was amused… he probably thought an 18-year-old who looked like a Victoria’s Secret model and was often mistaken as a show girl when we went to VEGAS… probably wouldn’t last a day picking up dead bodies… but he was wrong.

Lexi got the job, and reported to her first day of duty wearing a nice tailored black suit.

She looked stunning… a TOTAL GLAMAZON on a mission to care for the dead.

I waved goodbye to her, proud as I watched my daughter drive off to her first job… so excited to meet her “Removal Driver Trainer.”

But later that afternoon… Lexi called me on the phone and sounded a bit emotionally distraught.

“Mommy?” she said.

“Yeahhhh?” I said a bit hesitantly.

“I want to come home and see you for a minute is that okay?” She asked.

“Yeah, sure,” I said even though inside I was really saying, “Oh Jesus God please don’t come home because you’re gonna smell like a dead body or something and I’m gonna freak out.”

But… when you are a parent… you have to make sacrifices and if that means you have to support your child by smelling dead bodies all over their clothing… then so be it.

She rolled in about 5 pm with a good looking young man named Tom, from Boston, and his accent killed me.

I  love that South Boston accent… I’m a PUSH OVER for a “Southie” I really am… a guy could be the biggest tattooed criminal from the East Coast and walk up and say something to me all flirty like “Ah Dee….  you’re wicked smaaaart.” And I would probably BEG him to marry me… and run off to be a little toonie… living with my townie… somewhere down around Charlestown or maybe Dorchester hiding assault rifles in my dresser drawer and wildly in LOVE. (East Coast Irish boys being my fatal weakness of course)

Tom and Lexi were just adorable together you could absolutely feel the “spark.”

Their conversation popped back and forth with witty banter that could’ve given Kate Hepburn and Spencer Tracy a run for their money back in the day… and I couldn’t help but pray that these two would end up together just so I could tell people how they met….

Tom, sweetheart that he is, had brought Lexi home to see me because unfortunately… the first dead body Lexi ever saw… was a pretty bad one.

Now… maybe you think all dead bodies are pretty bad… but I think I would prefer someone who was fresh and had died in their bed over what Lex had to witness.

She walked in to meet Tom, her trainer and soon to be “love” interest, and found him in the morgue with an old guy they had just brought in…who had been dead… for over a month.

He had died about 30 days prior, had been laying out in the backyard naked decomposing… until one of the neighbors peeked over the fence and got quite a bit of a shock… and so when Lexi got her first look at him she said that she actually thought he was wearing a plaid bath robe and then felt like she wanted to vomit.

“He was naked,” she said….

(and I wondered what the hell he was doing out in the backyard naked… but I didn’t ask)

“but his body was all red, blue, and green… with these weird patterns on him from where the blood pooled,” she cried before running over to me, begging for a hug.

I swear to GOD I almost pushed her away.

I wanted to run to my bedroom door and shout, “It was nice meeting you Tom… but Lex is ALL yours now! You two have fun with your dead bodies! Mama needs a nap and a valium!”

But I gave in… holding my breath the entire time… before she pulled back and smiled at Tom while I tried to get a good gulp of air… hoping that their little flirtation would keep my antics from being obvious…

And then watched as she batted her eyes at him and said, “Thanks for bringing me to see my mom.” And I loved it.

I knew right then and there… that Tom was a good man.

Later that night, Lexi returned home… excited and chattering on about how she couldn’t stop looking at Tom… how even over the dead guy’s body she couldn’t help but flirt with him…

and that after their shift was over, he had taken her upstairs to his apartment, which was of course, over the morgue, and they had shared their first kiss.

It was SO romantic.

The two of them… over the dead bodies and the refrigerated body drawers… having a moment while everyone lay there…. waiting… doing nothing really.

And I thought…Ahhhhhhhh…. young love… Nothing can distract it. Not even dead bodies.

Tom and Lex became quite the “serious item”  for awhile and I can only imagine how many fond memories they’ve shared retrieving dead bodies together…

But… young love is young love…. and often doesn’t last…

Tom is back on the East Coast now… running his own funeral parlor… while Lexi of course is still out here working on her medical training…

And though Lex claims they are both now “just good friends” I pray often that someday they will end up back together… working as a team… Lex helping people to live… Tom taking care of all the ones that got away…

And me…. sitting on the front porch swing… their children on my lap…. telling them the story of how their parents “Meet Cute.”

Thanks to Everyone for Reading: New Stories Post EVERY Wednesday and Saturday…

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The Day Tim Grobaty was Screwing Around and Almost Took Off My Legs

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To this day, Tim Grobaty tells his daughter, Hannah (Who happens to be one of my favorite students and so… as my little educational minion… has no problem spilling all of her father’s secrets to me) that… Mr. Grobaty, columnist of the Long Beach Press Telegram, refuses to admit, yes actually DENIES, that he ever tried to break both of my legs after hanging out with me on the porch, one summer evening, many moons ago… while dicking around behind the wheel of his car.

But I am here to tell you… that he did.

Of course… If I were Tim Grobaty… I wouldn’t admit that I almost tore Ms. Wood’s legs off in a freak accident either.

Ms. Wood, Beloved High School English Teacher maimed by Beloved Long Beach Newspaper Columnist… it would just be bad all the way around… worse for Tim because he may have a shit load of readers following him but I have a veritable Dumbledore’s Army at my command…. 20 years of teaching… averaging over 1,000 interactions a year, with young adults who have pledged their loyalty to their favorite teacher until DEATH (mine obviously) and you can see why Tim would be in trouble.

Serious Trouble.

If Grobaty HAD actually taken both my legs off… and left me as a little bitter stump of a woman… I would still be able to roll around… (much like Johnny Eck in the 1932 film Freaks)

barking commands…

bossing people about…

controlling my young adult army

and basically making sure that the rest of Tim Grobaty”s life was h*ll.

Lucky for Tim… my legs are still intact.

So…

Back to my story…

Tim and I had become fast friends after meeting accidentally during a bar show at the Blue Cafe.

I still remember when I first opened my mouth to sing… Tim turning around slowly on his bar stool and watching me quietly. I think I was the only member of my family he had not seen perform or written about…

We didn’t talk that night… but the next day in the newspaper… I opened the entertainment section and saw that he had written a full page article titled I’m in LOVE with D.D. Wood…

Thankfully, Jane… his wife, better half, and definitely the most reasonable person in the relationship, was not bothered that Tim titled his article this… OR that he decided to post this on the date of his actual wedding anniversary…

Jane, as always… takes these things in stride and I love her for it… I really don’t know how she does it.

If my husband had written an article about Jane on our wedding anniversary… I probably would have crumpled the piece up with fury… tried to stuff it down his gullet, before walking outside and beating his favorite 59 Ford Fairlane with a bat…

You could say… that I’m a bit of a hothead.

My mother of course showed the article to everyone and I figured… it would probably be a good idea to get to know a man who was supposedly “in love” with me… and so Tim and Jane, me and my husband started getting together for dinner, or a visit on my front porch swing, on a regular basis.

These were lovely times….

Great music…

Great company…

We spent summer evenings laughing together… our children all very small… Hannah actually just a baby then… Dylan and Ray still little enough to be into toy guys and camouflage… until one night Tim and I were alone on the front porch playing guitars…

My husband must have had a show… because he was absent from this scene… and I’m sure Jane was already in bed… all cozy and comfy reading a good book… all of our children fast asleep…

While Tim and I were jamming away until our 10 o’clock curfew came around… and it was time for me to go inside and for Tim to go home.

Neighborhood rules.

Tim and I packed up our guitars before I walked him out to where he had parked his Jeep…directly behind my car…

and for some reason…

I decided that I needed to grab something out of my trunk. Now, to this day… I can’t imagine what I obviously felt I HAD TO HAVE out of the trunk of my car at 10 o’clock at night but, that isn’t important.. what is important… is THIS is when all of the trouble began…

(Although some would argue that the trouble began when Tim Grobaty wrote that he loved me in a local publication.)

I walked between the space of the two cars as Tim waved goodbye and climbed into his Jeep.

We shared a quick smile as he pretended that he was going to put his car into gear and run me over.

I laughed the “ha ha ha you’re so funny” obligatory laugh, then turned back to pop the trunk when I heard Tim’s car lurch forward and felt a sudden hard hit to the back of my legs…

My spine pitched towards the trunk, my knees buckled and pinned beneath the rear bumper of my car, and if I had been just an inch or so taller, Tim would have snapped both of my legs right then and there… and this story wouldn’t be quite as funny as it now is…

My hands slammed onto the hood of the trunk as if a police officer had just knocked me down and told me to “spread em”… the pain was intense.

I looked back at Tim in utter horror.

His face was one of shock… and I could see him fumbling to shift the gear stick and free me from my misery when we both had a moment…

A “cosmic” connect I guess you would call it…

A moment where Tim suddenly knew exactly what I was thinking….

Me: Please God don’t let Tim shift it into another forward gear and break my legs.

and I knew exactly what Tim was thinking…

Tim: Oh my God, what if I shift it into a forward gear by mistake and break her legs?

I freaked out.

“Tim!” I shouted. “Jesus Christ, what are you doing?”

Now… this probably didn’t help the situation but I have to admit that I was under duress and not thinking clearly…

Tim shifted the gear into reverse and backed up about four feet as I felt my legs release. I took a moment before letting go of the trunk and trying to stand full weight on my legs afraid of what I was left with and wondering if they would even work.

I looked down… no blood… no protruding bones… I was fine… a bit agitated… but fine.

I hobbled over to the driver’s side window and leaned in… “Are you insane?”

Tim was already laughing…. laughing as he ignored me and turned the wheel tight before peeling out for home….

I watched as he screeched past me… his tail lights heading into the night…. and I thought about getting into my car and chasing him down to make him acknowledge his part in this fiasco and demand an apology but… I didn’t …

10 o’clock curfew had come and gone….

My husband would be home soon…

Jane would be waiting on Tim…

and our confrontation would just have to wait until another late night jam session on the porch… or maybe on stage, in the middle of a set, the audience witness to our brawl.

I’m sure Tim will post a rebuttal to my tale… maybe an I HATE D.D. WOOD article will appear in the paper some time in the next few weeks but I doubt it… we share a love of writing and music… and that is a bond that can withstand anything.

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.