Tag Archives: authors

My Matilda or… the Story of How Ms. Wood Procures a Chicken

Leave a comment

This… is Matilda.

Matilda is a chicken.

A Rhode Island Red to be exact.

I didn’t go out and purchase Matilda.

I wasn’t given Matilda.

Matilda, like most of the animals in our home, including Jax, my pet squirrel, just appear to me, usually in dire need, and being who I am… I can’t seem to walk away.

Case in point: Matilda

It was Thursday night, 8pm, after hours at El Dorado park and my favorite time to walk there.

This night I was walking with my two adult friends, Frank and Abe and my 10-year-old friend Finn.

Finn, like me, seems to be some type of  “animal whisperer” and so I was a bit concerned when we jumped the rail of the flood control and ran down the embankment to enter the park after hours that we might run into an injured skunk, coyote, goose, hawk, or owl… but I had no worries that we might run into a chicken. For God’s sake…. a chicken?

We were barely past the LBPD shooting range when we saw a small reddish animal bopping about in the grassline…

“Is that a chicken?” Frank asked.

We all stopped to watch as she made her way closer to us.

“It is a chicken,” Abe said.

We didn’t know what to do… I voted to finish our walk and when we looped back, see if she was still around. With Frank, Abe, and Finn all hailing from Arizona…. I knew that this chicken wasn’t going anywhere unless it was going to Ms. Wood’s house and I was trying my hardest to make sure that didn’t happen. I mean the menagerie was really getting ridiculous: Jax (my squirrel) her babies, three chihuahuas, four cats, seven dogs and a partridge in a pear tree; I wasn’t looking to add a chicken to the mix.

I swear I didn’t want to leave her because I’m heartless… I just thought… Maybe if we give it some time… she’ll magically go back to where she came from and I will be saved from care-taking yet another pet… but the boys weren’t having it.

The Arizonians were looking at me with pitiful sad little faces.

The chicken was looking at me with her pitiful sad little face.

“Come on…” I said to the boys as I strided ahead with purpose trying to get away from the bird, only to turn and find the chicken running after us all as she made the saddest little cooing sounds that seemed to say, “If you leave me I will be eaten by a coyote and you will never be happy when you walk in your park at night again, because you will always remember that you left me to die.”

Fuck.

I couldn’t do it.

It was horrible.

They were pulling at every one of my heart strings and they obviously knew just how to work me.

So… I just gave in and turning on my heal, marched towards the exit, while shouting in my best authoritative tone, “Come on, Matilda. Let’s go home!” and watched as she hustled to catch up and walk beside me… as if I were her best friend and we had never been parted.

After a few feet of walking, we realized that it would take forever to get Matilda out of the park at this pace, so Frank picked her up and carried her with both hands, arms extended straight out in front, as if Matilda were a hood ornament on his human car.

It wasn’t five minutes later that the Park Ranger pulled up next to us, rolled down his window and said, “My God! Is that a chicken?”

Apparently he had never seen a chicken in the park either and now, Matilda startled by his big shiny car and flashing police lights was out of Frank’s hands, on top of the hood of his car and pecking at her own reflection in his windshield, like this was all good fun.

Obviously, the park was a wonderful place for Matilda as long as she had humans to protect her.

I asked him if he wouldn’t mind driving Frank to my van and was pleasantly surprised when he agreed.

I smiled as I watched Frank drive off with a Park Ranger and a chicken and I spent the rest of my walk back to the Wardlow Street bridge whistling to  myself and making up my own stupid little jokes about it:

So… a chicken and a Ranger walk into a bar……

Or…. Is that a chicken under your arm or are you just…

And…

How did the chicken cross the road? By getting a ride in the Park Ranger’s car.

Before hoping back over the rail and walking to the van.

Frank was in the back when I got there, Matilda running around on the floor, pleased that she was in some type of cage that seemed more comfortable then the cold park at night.

We took her home… gave her some water… and watched as she climbed to the top shelf of the squirrel cage and bedded down for the night. Already content in her new environment.

“Good night Matilda,” I said as I turned off the porch light for the evening…. trying not to be attached to a chicken… but knowing… I was already totally in love.

Sissy Breaks My Leg

Leave a comment

If you look closely at the photo above… you will see one little shoe.

Just one.

That is because just outside of the frame… just outside of the observer’s view… is my little broken leg.

Full cast.

One-year-old.

Look at that baby.

The perfect Gerber Cupie Doll mix right?

How could anyone break the leg of such a nice, sweet, little baby girl?

Well… you’d have to ask my sister.

The practically perfect person pictured here:

Only, if you did go to ask my sister, she would probably throttle you. In fact… she would probably throttle me.

I used to tell the story of how “Sissy Broke My Leg”  in my classroom each year and when I got to the good part… I would call her on the cell phone, press “speaker,” and let her tell the whole class how she damaged me for life.

She hated it.

I don’t do it anymore.

Why?

Because she verbally throttled me.

She waited until she was at my house, vis-a-vis and shouted as she bordered on slapping me, “Why the hell do you have to call me and make me relive something I feel terrible about? Can’t you see you’re causing me pain?”

“I’m the baby,” I said smugly. “You broke my leg… I think you should have to pay for that the rest of my life.”

She gave me “theeeeee” big sister look… the I will kill you right now look… and I never, ever called her during class time again.

My students beg me to…

They do I swear…

But I stop them and shout, “Listen! She won’t let me… and you know how big sister’s are.”

Many of them nod their heads in silent solidarity. (Obviously, having been throttled by big sisters too.)

Sigh.

I don’t know what my sister was thinking that day back in 1966 when she broke my leg… She was seventeen… one of the most popular girl’s at Millikan High School. TOTALLY RESPONSIBLE IN EVERY WAY. Or so I thought… all of these years even AFTER the leg breaking incident but when I told my sister that I was writing this story she said, “Me? Practically perfect? Get real. I used to run around Millikan in my head cheerleader outfit, show all of the teachers the “forged” note from my mom and say, “I have to leave school immediately” before I’d flash them my all-American smile as I exited campus to ditch class with my friends.”

I was actually stunned for a moment when hearing this.

After years of taking the wrap as the “bad sister” the “bad seed” it was interesting to find out that the “good sister” the one who was always “so wonderful” was actually quite a bit of a naughty.

My sister has always been like a mother to me, so I don’t doubt that she had the best intentions when she hopped on her Schwinn Cruiser that day and propped me on the handle bars. I’m sure she thought I would giggle and squeal and love her all the more for it… but unfortunately the short ride went terribly wrong.

She lost her grip on my petite baby body and watched in horror as I slid off the front of the bike, where my small leg entered the turning spokes of the wheel, and snapped in several places before I landed helpless on the ground, caught as if a small animal in a snare, with my tiny leg twisted like delicate ribbon between the rough metal spokes of the rim.

My sister was beyond distraught and ran, frantic for help, to our neighbor: Mrs. O’Grady.

And though they both tried to free my leg, they actually had to remove the wheel from the bike, my leg still ensnared in it, and bundle “us” off to the hospital where the doctors could release me from it’s cruel grip.

The worst part, according to my sister, was not the break in my leg, but the break in her heart, as she held me in the backseat of the car, my little arms raised up to her, my hands opening and closing as I begged for understanding and a hug saying only three of the ten words I knew at the time:

“Sissy, Sissy sweet. Why? Why?”

“I would have preferred you to cry,” she said. “At least that would have been normal. But for you to lie there, like a little Buddha, not one tear on your face, as you asked me to explain in your tiny baby voice why this happened to you… was unbearable.”

The evil baby in me always smiles when she tells me this… I like that I was a master manipulator even at the age of one… assigning guilt and blame a talent passed down effortlessly in my genes.

My leg was “casted” from toe to hip, and my mother was enraged when she found out what my sister had done. It was weeks, no months, a constant barrage of angry words, that my sister had to endure from her parents for that “one” fatal mistake.

But oh… the story gets worse.

When the time came for the cast to finally be removed, I was beyond ecstatic.

They were taking me to see Santa that day for being such a brave girl through the months I had suffered my casted leg.

My sister said she was full of joy, so relieved that finally the day had come when she would no longer look at my cast as the “albatross” around her neck.

They took me from the hospital, straight to my grandmother’s, who was anxiously awaiting my arrival, just one of the many relatives who wanted to witness my full recovery and my visit with Santa.

I remember climbing from the car.

I remember skipping towards her house.

I remember tripping into a giant sprinkler hole and hearing a loud “SNAP” as my leg completely re-broke for the second time.

My sister said that I laid on my back, disbelief engulfing my pretty baby face, before I threw my arms outstretched over my head and WAILED, tossing my body from side to side screaming, “WHY? WHY!!!!!!!!”

Before my father picked me up, a writhing wild animal of a child, a snake ready to bite and hiss at anyone who tried to get close to me.

The next photo you see of me as a child is not a pretty one.

And if I could find it and post it here, I swear I would… but I have a feeling my sister has already burned it.

It’s me, a red corduroy jumpsuit, full leg cast, crooked bangs, a doll wedged tightly under my arm with no head, and a look in my eye that clearly shows that I have changed from a sweet little doll to a demon seed.

A look that seems to imply that I have already suffered the weight of the world and LORD HELP YOU if you try to cross me.

Today… I still limp when tired, the only reminder of that fateful ride… other than my yearly classroom story of how “Sissy Broke My Leg.”

Mr. Stroosma Sets the Classroom on Fire

2 Comments

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.

Begging Lexi to Bring Ray Charles to the House for a Visit

Leave a comment

You would  have thought I had asked to have dinner with the President of the United States.

You would have thought that I had asked to be the first woman to go on the Mission to Mars.

I don’t really understand why Lexi seemed so bent… my daughter who once burned past my house, a dead body in the back of the hearse and Ozzie Osbourne blasting from the speakers.

It was Ray Charles for Christ’s sake.

Look at the photo of Ray that I posted above.

Does he seem like a man that would have a problem coming over to our house and having a little visit and photo-op with mom?

I don’t think so.

From what I know about Ray Charles he was quite the ladies man… I’m sure Lexi with her playboy body and quick wit could entice him to come to the house.

Okay… so yeah… he was dead.

I know that.

I’m not being disrespectful here.

I just wanted to pay homage to Ray and Lexi was about to be his driver.

“I don’t know if I’m going to be taking him to his final resting place mom,” she whispered into the phone. “I think I’m the one… but I don’t know for sure yet.”

“Well, you have to get Ray,” I demanded. “He’s one of my all time favorites and I never got a chance to meet him.”

“I thought you did,” Lexi said.

“No, that was B.B. King.”

“Really?”

At this point I became annoyed. “It doesn’t matter who I’ve met bring Ray by the house.”

“Jesus,” Lexi said. “It’s not like I can just swing by with Ray and open up the casket so you can take a photo with him.”

“Why not?” I asked. “Ray won’t mind and if you put on his glasses, it will look like we were just having a lovely little chat while he was still alive.”

“You’re out of your mind,” she said, her tone full of disbelief.

“Bring Ray to me,” I shouted. “You bring Ray Charles to our house or you don’t come home.”

She mumbled under her breath… something that sounded like “Totally out of your fucking mind…” before she hung up on me.

I ran to the bathroom and freshened up.

I wanted to look my best for Ray.

I brushed my hair and put on my favorite dress before sitting out on the porch steps with my camera and imagining my time with Ray.

I wondered if Lexi would let me prop him up on the piano bench.

I could put a lit cigarette in the ashtray and a highball glass next to it.

I could stand behind the piano… leaning over it casually… sharing a private moment with Ray… a bit of a giggle really as he played me one last song.

“What are you doing?” Dylan asked as he looked out the door and saw me daydreaming.

“Waiting for Ray Charles to drop by,” I said.

“Didn’t he just die today?” Dylan asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Lexi’s going to bring him over… just for a short visit.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“That’s what Lexi just said,” I told him.

“You know they’re making a movie about his life,” he said. “Why don’t you just go watch that when it comes out.”

“That’s not the same as having Ray over,” I fussed. “I mean really Dylan. You know that.”

At this point… Dylan rolled his eyes and walked away.

Every time I heard an engine come close to our house I sat up straight, excited that I was about to be with Ray and each time it wasn’t him… my hope would fade.

Then… the phone rang.

“Listen,” Lexi said. “I know how much you wanted to meet him… but you can’t meet Ray. I’m sorry,” she said. “But he won’t be coming over.”

It was horrible.

Ray.

Forever kept from me by my own child.

“Fine,” I said and hung up the phone in a huff.

I sat there for a moment… my hopes crushed… my heart…broken.

I pictured Ray in heaven, stopping mid-song, disappointed that our visit never happened. I mean really… why wouldn’t Ray want to meet me?

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

Leave a comment

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.