CHILDHOOD EXPERIMENTAL FAILURE #2

A friend of mine just last week asked me why I hadn't blogged in a very long time. The last few years haven't exactly inspired a lot of happy thoughts or creativity. My imagination was as dry as a menopausal vagina truth be told. I took a nap today, awoke at midnight and had this retro real-life dream that I thought I'd share:

CHILDHOOD EXPERIMENTAL FAILURE #1: When I was a kid television was still in its early adulthood and I could no more distinguish what was real and what wasn't exactly real. I recently posted on my Facebook wall how I failed at my first television-inspired experiment.

After watching the 1968 Summer Olympics, the first time I encountered a swimming pool, I jumped in fully expecting to swim like Mark Spitz. As I stood at the bottom of the pool, completely devoid of any panic; contemplating why my limbs weren't magically making me perform a spectacular butterfly stroke worthy of an Olympic champ; all I felt was letdown. Had my Swim Fairy Godmother been having her mani-pedi? Nope...it was the first time I realized that maybe...just maybe...things that happened on TV weren't altogether true. A lot of things were! Like commercials for certain toys, bicycles, talking and urinating dolls, Tonka trucks, The Brady Bunch and Partridge Family (or so I thought -- turns out the Brady dad, Robert Reed was gay), etc. Though I never could get my motherfucking Slinky to walk down the stairs like the commercial promised: Fuckers!

Anyway, suddenly a giant hand reached down, grabbed my arm and snatched me from the water. In partial panic and partial anger, my dad yelled at my mother, "Why weren't you watching her?" She had been busy getting my little sister into her swimsuit. My father looked at me and screamed, "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?" Completely devoid of guile I answered, "On TV whenever someone jumps into a pool they start swimming! I thought that's what was going to happen!" His look said, "I've-spawned-an-imbecile / her-egg-was-fertilized-by-a-Special-Olympics-sperm!!"

OK...back to CHILDHOOD EXPERIMENTAL FAILURE #2:

My second fail arrived a few years later. Our family now consisted of me, my little sister Linda and my new baby brother Russell who was probably less than a year old. Who incidentally made me and my sister's life a misery.

Whenever we tried to play with him, he would emit this high-pitched whine and my parents in unison would yell, "STOP TEASING THE BABY!" We were only trying to play with the little enfant terrible.

Mom and Dad didn't believe their lives should come to a screeching halt just because they shat a few vag poops into the world. They took weekend trips, they took separate all girls weekend trips and all boys weekend trips. My mother was on one of her all girls trips. So dad had us for the weekend. We were pretty good kids but one night, my dad was out working in the garage with his macho power tools creating something wondrous (he was really talented with building things incidentally), but it always worried me too.

TRAUMATIC CHILDHOOD MEMORY #90: When I heard the song "Moonshadow" by Cat Stevens, I thought it was about a grisly industrial accident by moonlight. A lovely little ditty about a blinded, toothless, mouthless quadruple amputee! I worried about my dad working in the garage after dark with his circular saw, goggles & improper lighting at night for years.

But I digress. Back to CHILDHOOD EXPERIMENTAL FAIL #2:

Worthy of mention, some years later, when I became old enough to babysit solo on occasion, this is what they came home to:

Enough said. So I was left in temporary charge of my younger siblings. The night in question was much earlier in our young lives. My brother started screaming his lungs out. I tried bouncing him on my lap, making funny faces and sounds, rocking him and nothing I did abated his ear-splitting caterwauling. So, I did what I had seen repeatedly done on TV. In any and all situations on 1960's and 70's television if someone was having hysterics -- you slapped them and they promptly came around. I had seen this done repeatedly on all the TV dramas. So...I slapped my little brother in the face. *FAIL* He just screamed several octaves higher and quite a few decibels louder. My sister, "The Snitch" ran outside to tell dad that I had just slapped Russell in the face. I don't think she did it to curry favor or anyting. She was just being brattily informative.

Well, Dad was livid. He snatched my little brother from my arms and screamed at the top of his lungs, "HAVE ME OR YOUR MOTHER EVER SLAPPED YOU OR YOUR SISTER IN THE FACE? HOW WOULD YOU LIKE IT IF I SLAPPED YOU?" I answered in the negative. No, I would prefer not to be belted in the chops. He took a deep breath and asked why I had smacked my brother. I answered honestly. "Whenever someone on TV is hysterical, someone slaps them and then they're OK again." Dad wasn't mad anymore and looked at me with an expression that said, "Me-and-my-wife-have-given-birth-to-a-retarded-boob."

He was rendered speechless and shook his head and walked away with my screaming little brother in his arms. As I've said before, I had to test theories to find their truth. I still do. I'd have either made a brilliant scientist or inadvertently ended up menstural wall goo by trying to come up with a better recipe than my professor. C'est ma vie de merde!