The Jackie Blog

A poster from the restaurant bathroom. How "charming".

This past weekend I ventured into the rural, Amish armpit of Pennsylvania (a place so dear to my heart) in order to take my Grandmother and Great Uncle out for their birthdays, which happen to be a mere week apart.   Apparently my great grandparents preferred to get down and dirty in the month of June.  Hot, sweaty, old-people-sex June.  Mmm.

This dirty deed actually came up naturally in conversation, as my uncle regaled us with stories of his and my grandmother’s childhood.  He tried to work through how his parents could have possibly had sex given that they shared beds with their children and were never alone in the same room.

But he had a theory.

Apparently, all the kids were locked out of the living room and told that their parents needed to “count the change in the piggy banks.”  My uncle proposed that this was the only time they were alone, and now in his maturity couldn’t figure a reason that such an activity warranted privacy.  Which means it’s likely my uncle was conceived in his very own living room.   Mmm.  Old-people- living- room-sex in June.

It’s conversations like these that put the charm in my Central PA roots.   There’s just one problem with good ol’ Amish country: it’s so friggin’ hard to get my family to come see me.   I don’t know if you’re aware, but there are a number of challenges to maintaining a relationship with a central Pennsylvanian.   Namely, hunting season and Nascar.

My brother was married in October of last year.    Our family was outnumbered by his wife’s family something like 3 to 1.  The reason?  It fell on October 23rd, which happened to be the last statewide anterless deer hunting day for junior and senior license holders.  I know this to be the reason because my family is known for its painful honesty, and when I called the missing RSVPs they confirmed my hunch.

My brother soon had to face a harsh reality that his extended family would rather take their youngins to bag their first deer than celebrate his nuptials.    As his best man (yes, his best man), I spent a great deal of my time before the wedding emphasizing that this wasn’t a testament to how unimportant his wedding was, but rather how important deer hunting was.

It’s a specific and necessary distinction.

NASCAR’s a toughie too.  My uncle said that yesterday was the first time he’d been invited out for his birthday.  But he quickly noted thereafter that it was a sacrifice for him to attend given that he was missing the Daytona 500.  Specifically, the Daytona 500 on the 10th anniversary of Dale Earnhardt Sr.

Without sacrifices such as this, I would never be able to see my family.

And to think – I would have never known what “counting the change in the piggy banks” really means. ♣

Tags: 365 Project, family, Humor, life, musings, postaday2011

My dad. Basically.

I think my parents are selling drugs.

Now I know what you’re thinking: didn’t I just do a post exploring the hunch that I might be a drug mule for Marge, the cleaning lady at work?   The answer is yes, I did.  I won’t deny that this is perhaps too  much fascination with drug running in too little time.  But I have ample evidence and I’d like to make my case.

I’m visiting home this weekend for the first time since Christmas and have found a number of interesting additions to the household.  There’s a new, fancy garbage can that lets itself down easily,  an authentic, antique sewing machine, which hides away in a desktop (complete with paperwork), and a freezer chest.

Apparently my parents have such a constant superfluity of meat that they require a freezer chest to hold it all. 

There are only two of them and they still have enough meat to warrant this purchase, so that gives you a sense of how much meat I was eating while I was growing up.   That may have something to do with why my weight hit triple digits in 6th grade.    I haven’t seen a single digit pant size since.  I can’t help it – I was raised on delicious animal carcass.

There is no way they can afford these things without my dad being a drug lord.   My family has been poor my entire life.   Don’t get me wrong – we were blessed with a number of lovely half-houses and I never went to bed hungry (though the same couldn’t be said for my parents).   Growing up, my brothers and I used to joke about how awesome it would be to have milk and cereal in the house at the same time.

I remember this ridiculous attempt my parents once made to help cut down on grocery bills.  Their plan was to allot each child a grocery allowance and we could only eat the food that we bought throughout the day.  Dinner was covered by them. 

My brothers were 3 and 7 years older than I, and at the time I think I was 8.    So naturally I bought bread, peanut butter, and jelly.   One of my brothers brought home three loaves of bread and an enormous pack of deli meat.   He ate nothing but ham sandwiches for two weeks before my parents noticed the inherent flaw and cancelled the grocery allowance strategy.  It’s one of my fondest memories of childhood.

So you can imagine my concern today as I step into my parents’ home to find all these newly acquired conveniences.    My mind cannot compute how they can possibly afford this unless they’re involved in dirty, grimy drug money.

I imagine my father would be the brains of the operation; my mother is far from intimidating.   Suddenly it’s all starting to make sense that my dad is so antisocial and refuses to use ample lighting in the house when he’s home.  He’s a hulk of a man and has fists that could pound a tunnel through a mountain.   These are all clear marks of a drug lord.  Then again, as I sit here writing this I notice that he has also spent this alleged drug money on a new stack of Wii games and is currently playing Epic Mickey.

I’m not so sure that being into a Nintendo game featuring a Disney mouse setting things right in the world with a magical paintbrush quite fits the profile. ♣

Tags: 365 Project, family, Humor, life, musings, postaday2011