Please Don't Hurt Me Lynda Barry I Will Never Talk Smack About You Again

My best, earliest memory that is longer than a couple of sentences, told with deliberately bad sentence structure because what I said about Lynda Barry totally applies to me as well.

When I was 4 years old my parents dressed me up and took me over to my cousins' house for an important party.  My girl cousin Theresa was turning 'Sweet Sixteen' and her parents were throwing her a big hullabaloo.  Being good Catholic parents, of course, it was teeners in the basement with their jungle music and every guests' parents present,  the daylight basement windows and floor vents open and the basement door ajar.

So there I was at a grown up party, dressed up like a toilet paper dolly, and I was 4.
I was the only person there who was 4.
The closest person to 4 there was my cousin Theresa, and she wanted to put up with me like cats want to put up with dogs. Aunt Lillian said I could go downstairs to the party.  My cousin Theresa right there in front of me actually started crying and begged her mom please don't let her come downstairs and Ruin Her Party.

(Future me:  bad move, ya dumb cow.)

The husbands were outside barbecuing and smoking the cigars Uncle Sonny passed out and drinking Canadian Club.  My boy cousins were in the back playing hula-golf .  The wives were inside, drinking Canadian Club on the rocks with Grenadine and smoking and pretending to eat my aunt Lillians terrible canapes (I've written about this womans' horrifying table elsewhere) and talking about boring things.  I was three feet shorter than the shortest person in the joint.  Everyone was either half-lit or doing the Frug in the basement...so for all intents and purposes,

 I was completely unsupervised.

 I went downstairs and it looked exactly like this:
http://www.carameloffers.com/img/c8.alamy.com/comp/CMR85J/1950s-1960s-teen-couples-having-party-dancing-in-rec-room-CMR85J.jpg

One of the boys was really nice and came over and actually pretended to dance with me!  He was tall and had a blonde crew cut.  I instantly fell in love with him.

Since it was a record party, everyone had brought their collection of 45's and got to take turns picking songs. Some dumb butt put a stupid slow record on.  It was stupid square Little Surf Girl by the stupid square Beach Boys - which immediately alerted the parents to the possibility of Slow Dancing and Kissing.  From upstairs the moms started hollering threats down the floor vents that there better not be any funny business going on.  Little Surf Girl plus moms yelling "You better not be up to anything down there ELIZABETH AND GREGG I MEAN YOU!" equals Total Uncoolness Party.
  I had standards.  I went back upstairs.

Immediately my mother sprang on me and made me take a shitty canape and say 'Thank you' for it to Aunt Lilian.  It was a pimento olive slice on top of a hot dog slice on top of peanut butter on top of a Ritz cracker with a toothpick stuck in it. Can you imagine the horror?  Luckily I was close to the floor.  Here's why.

Before I had even had a chance to begin snivelling, my Aunt and Uncles' black Lab Tommy, slobberingly overexcited, panting and everywhere at once, ran through the room and grabbed it out of my hand, and his enormous red dog ween was totally showing out.

This was not the kind of party guest any good Catholic mother wants to see.

Aunt Lillian freaked. All the moms went into 'rat in the henhouse' mode and more than a few of them were snickering into their wrists even though what they'd just had seared onto their eyeballs was Not Nice.  The cigarette ashes were falling and canapes by the double handful were sneaked into the trash!  Aunt Lilian, bubble do, cat glasses, dirndle and all took out after Tommy the dog at a sprint.  I followed her because I wanted to see what she'd do.  My mom followed me with another shitty canape to make sure I actually ate one, but I caught sight of her and suddenly jinked left and ran behind the house into the evergreen hedge and hid.

Even though it was very poky, being inside the evergreen hedge was cool to the max.  You could actually stand up in it and not touch (almost.)  It was a perfect hiding place in every way.  It made an arched tunnel all the way around the house.  It was also full of play balls of every description, thanks to Tommy, because he'd go around the neighborhood and steal them from everyone and the secret tunnel inside the hedge was his stashing place.

Tommy and I were both in refugee mode, so he found his way into the hedge and soon thereafter found me.

At 4 I did not like any dogs.  Either they were taller than me and knocked me down, or smaller than me and bitey.  And here Tommy was all up in my grill, needy and overexcited, slobbering and panting and smacking the side of the house with a tail like a baseball bat, wanting me to play fetch.  He kept picking up every ball and bringing it to me like if he found the right one I'd play.  Totally no way Jose, dog. Tommy was gross.  He always had long blops of foamy slobber hanging out of the two flubby parts of the side of his mouth, which also stuck out and flubbered and looked like something washed up on the beach.  Now here he was all a-wag, with his slobber full of hemlock crud stuck in it hanging from his flubby dog lips wabbling and swinging all over the place, and the ball he proffered was all covered with dried slobber that was mixed with wet slobber and ball fragments and Christ knew what,   so I took the ball and threw it as hard as I could out into the street and a car almost ran over him.
Almost.  Sooo close.
I did not like that dog.

The people in the car screeched to a halt and got out and ran into the driveway!  My Uncle Sonny, tall, bald and built like a fullback came hustling out of the garage with his shiny head glistening in the sun to meet them and they all had a screaming argument!   When the people told Uncle Sonny that the dog had been chasing a ball I froze.  I was quiet and waited, but nobody came looking for me because Uncle Sonny immediately blamed it on the boys.  The people finally drove away while my uncle Sonny was still yelling at the boys for throwing balls into the street.  I was safe!  So I hauled down my skivvies and peed and got it all over my little lacy ankle socks.

When you are 4 and a girl, you are way down in the weeds when you squat to pee so it goes everywhere.  And never pee in a hemlock hedge because it will poke the crap out of you and you could hoist ass and get pee on your socks.

Nothing daunted, I crept my way around the foundation of the house, using the natural tunnel the plantings had created, the rock-n-roll music coming from the basement through the open daylight windows, feeling very secret-ey and tuff. There were some good go go music playing and I wanted to dance too.  I got thinking about my mean stupid cousin Theresa and her me only you have to go away party.  Oh yeah, Theresa? Oh yeah?

  I went back to the first open window to the basement, collected as many tore up play balls as I could carry, and threw them into the basement through the window.  Every window I passed I'd grab a few balls off the ground from the hundreds there and throw them into the basement as I went.  It was so great and fun because it made everyone start screaming and the records skip.  Happy Sweet Sixteen, Cousin Turd-resa!

Once I was on the opposite side of the house, in the back yard, I figured I was as safe as I was going to get.  I ran out and WHAMMO  a bummerball (a used golf ball with a red ring of paint around it's equator) smacked into the side of the house right next to me. (It wasn't on purpose.)  While I was marvelling at that, I got caught by my boy cousins and their buddies who thought it was puss to dance with girls and were the ones out in the back yard playing hula golf.  OK.  They said I had to go run around the whole back yard and find all their stupid golf balls or they'd tell on me that I wasn't in the house. Looking back I can't remember there being anything said about me needing to stay in the house.  It worked, though.

My oldest boy cousin Raymond  was 17 and he looked exactly like the oldest boy in the T.V. show My Three Sons and he was sooo handsome.  Mostly he ignored me.  My next older boy cousin was 15 and puggy and snotnosed and mean and looked like a dumb stupid butt and was named Richie.   I was wearing a little polkadot dress that looked like this:   https://witness2fashion.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/mc-5365-and-6384-1960-and-1962.jpg

So ok man, geeze, be cool.  I ran around the edge of their huge back yard and I filled my skirt with stupid bummerballs.  When I couldn't fit any more into the skirt of my little dress I ran over to my cousin Ritchie, the one who looked like a dumb stupid butt and who was dog poop also.  I acted like hey here's your golf balls but instead I flipped my skirt out at him and all the golf balls hit him and rolled everywhere and all the other boys laughed and I ran into the garage where my dad was.

My dad picked me up just because I was there.  My dad smelled good, like gasoline, tobacco, outdoors and booze.  I was so safe.  Cousin Ritchie came in all bluster faced and waa waa waa'd she hit me with golf balls to Uncle Sonny about me. All the dads made fun of Ritchie and Uncle Sonny grabbed him by the arm and kicked him out of the garage and out he went, crying and with snot hanging down.  Which, HA on you, Ritchie.  He never changed either.  He was the exact same when he was older and married.  Ew.

My dad held me for a long time. He was standing in a semicircle around the engine of the car with some of the other dads, smoking a cigar.  It was nice.  I was way up high to where you could look down and see right through parts around the engine to the floor of the garage!  But the cigar smoke was bothering me, and I was getting squirmy and bored, so my dad put me down.

I had an amazing idea!

I crawled under the car so I could surprise them!  And I did!  Lying in a puddle engine oil and metal shavings and dirt I shouted "HI!!!"  Boy, were they surprised!   Suddenly I had a bunch of arms trying to grab me.   I was laughing and scrabbling around on the floor under the car trying to escape.  Someone grabbed my shoe, which looked like this: http://www.thedetoxwarrior.com/image/cache/data/category_139/superior-mary-janes-polo-ralph-lauren-alyssa-mary-jane-little-kid-girls-black-742-800x640_0.jpg

Too slow, gotta go!  One shoe on and one shoe off I ran back into the house and down the stairs into my girl cousins Sweet Sixteen party again.

The boy I was in love with danced with me again and I asked him to be my boyfriend and he said yes.  Then he danced with another girl and I cried.  My cousin Theresa told me to bug out of her party and get lost, but another girl told Theresa she was mean so I got to stay.  I got to take turns dancing with all the boys.  Someone put on 'Do The Twist' and everybody showed me how to do the Twist!  I climbed up onto the ping-pong table and I did the twist like a go-go girl!

When the record was over I tried to climb down but one side of the ping pong table collapsed.
I slid down, clanged off the snack table and  dumped over the punch bowl which was almost empty anyway.  Wow!  Humungous Freak-O-Rama!!!!!  With my enraged cousin Theresa close behind, I shot upstairs and scuffed my knee on the stairway (and got a case of gross ringworm later on in the same spot), cousin Theresa with murder in her eyes, in tears, disheveled, trying to catch me and probably eat me.  But she was too slow because she was wearing heel shoes.

Of course she went straight to Aunt Lillian waa waa waa and tattle-babied on me that I was ruining her party.  She got in HUGE trouble!  Aunt Lillian grabbed her by the arm and actually SPANKED HER at her own first grown-up party in the middle of all the moms and my mom started yelling at me and tried to grab ME by the arm but I ran upstairs and sat on the top step and and refused to come down for a really long time and everyone forgot about me.  My cousin Theresas' cheerleading megaphone was on the top step.  I sang 'I Love You Yeah Yeah Yeah' into it, not loud enough for anyone to hear but me.  It sounded pretty good like my voice was coming from a record.  I sang all the Beatles songs I knew, then I got bored and came back downstairs.

It was a very agitated group of women downstairs there in Aunt Lillians front room.  In the wake of the upset, all the moms were cranked into high gear, ice cubes crackling as drinks were freshened,  lighters sparking as they lit up,  and cigarettes sizzling as they were stubbed out angrily into the half-eaten canapes on Aunt Lillians' good saucers.  The smell of Ronson, cheap Maybelline lipstick and tobacco smoke filled the air.  They were all complaining really loudly about their terrible kids and how horrible they were,  and they were comparing punishment techniques (they'd been hitting the Canadian Club pretty hard.)  It was like they turned into monsters!  I just stood in the middle of it all with a little paper cup full of Aunt Lillians crappy diet Koolaid someone had given me and was kind of appalled, as much as a 4 year old kid can get appalled anyway.  And in the middle of all that my mom just swiftly took me outside and then we all got in the car and snuck home.

It wasn't a very long drive.  I got out and my mom finally got a good look at me.  There I was! I had on one shoe and my white tights were tore out on both knees and I was covered in dirt and dog slobber, my socks were wet and I smelled like pee and I had hemlock crud in my hair, my braids were all coming undone, AND I had grease and red koolaid ON MY NEW CHURCH DRESS (Total lie. It was a hand me down from my cousin Theresa.) Plus I had engine oil and grease on my face because it had got on my hands and I kept smelling it because it smelled good.

I could see her cranking herself up into an end of the world as we know it fit, but my dad saved me.  He saved me because when he came around the side of the car it was obvious that he'd been driving Three Sheets To The Wind, as my mom always put it.  So the fit that was meant for me turned into she got angry at him for driving Three Sheets To The Wind and she blew up and it was like an atomic bomb.

I got totally forgotten about AGAIN.  So HA on everybody!  I rule everything!