Month: February 2021

April Love

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I tell folks that Petey was my first love.

But that’s not true.

His name was Lancelot.

My parents bought him for me the April I turned 16.  He cost $500.

He was a 1971 Dodge Dart Swinger.  It was love at first sight.  He was white with a green faux leather top.  He had the kind of windows where when you rolled down both front and back, there was no center bar so the whole side of the car was open.

It was a kinda-convertible.

Is it just me, or do these girls look a little, “Red Rum”?

He didn’t have an AC, but there was a vent with a little door next to the brake.  I could slip off my left shoe, and while barreling down the road, use my toes, turn the latch, and open the little door smooth as silk.

In 1981, my best friend Kitty and I saw the movie, Excalibur. It was wonderful and we loved it; the cast includes Dame Helen Mirren, as Morgan Le Fey and Sir Patrick Stewart.  If you haven’t seen it, do so with all due haste, Gentle Reader.

King Arthur was handsome, kingly, and dignified.

Does he look like a 1971 Dodge Dart Swinger?

But Lancelot.

Chiseled cheekbones and jawline, dark curly hair, and eyes of sapphire blue.  Kitty and I fell in love.  We became obsessed in the way that only teenage girls can be.  And somehow, my dreamy ride was christened “Lancelot”.

My little brother stenciled the name on the back bumper. 

Two things; at the time, there was no “click it or ticket” law.  And, Lancelot had bench seats in the front.  I’m sure you know where I’m going here.

Because although the car usually contained only Kitty and me, there were times when every possible inch of seat was full of friends, with more kids sitting on laps.  In this Jenga-like manner, I could fit a total of eleven people in the car. 

One of the first “death-defying” adventures we had happened on the way home from school.  The car was about ¾ full, the music was on full blast, and we were flying down the road. 

On Halstead Blvd, there was a railroad crossing without lights or gate.  We saw the train coming, but being a neophyte driver, I didn’t yet have the experience to judge the distance and speed very well.  Nowadays I would just wait for the train.

But.

But I was a dumb kid, with a car full of dumb kids.  And as such, we were foolhardy and immortal.  So, I sped up.  We crossed, it seemed, with inches to spare.  Every one of us was screaming bloody murder.  After the crossing, I pulled over to catch my breath from our brush with the Grim Reaper.

In all truth, it probably wasn’t that close of a call, but again, a car full of dumb kids full of drama and imagination.

I loved Lancelot with every bit of me.  That car was my freedom and my sanctuary.

But, I was also careless with him.

Before my dad let me pull the car out of the driveway the first time, I was trained to change a tire, check the fluids, and add oil.

Unfortunately, I never bothered to perform this maintenance.  You’d think the first time I ran it without oil for so long the engine seized up and my dad had to replace it, I would learn.

You would be very wrong.

I can still see my dad, the day the second engine seized and expired.

He was standing next to Lancelot, whispering, “Never, ever let this happen again.” What really made an impression and kind of scared me though, was the way he was gently banging his head against the garage wall.

Thanks for your time.

Contact me at d@bullcity.mom.

Face Plant

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I feel seen.

From the time I learned to walk until I graduated from high school, I sported at least one, two, and sometimes even more skinned knees.

What say you, Gentle Reader?  That a person with the usual number of knees can have no more than two?

I’m afraid, my friend, that you would be wrong.

As I write this column, I have five separate and distinct areas of knee skinnage.  Three on one knee, and two on the other.  And even though my right knee only has two abrasions, one of them is 2 ½ by 1 ½ inches (literally, I just broke out my tape measure).

Three and a quarter square inches may not be a lot when measuring Grandfather Mountain or the dunes at Jockey’s Ridge, but when it’s a completely raw and weeping patch on the body’s largest joint, let me assure you, Gentle Reader, it is positively, painfully elephantine.

But shockingly, I am not the only wounded member of the Matthews Family Band this week.  In the last seven days, every two-legged member has been injured.

Even worse, the assailants were the four-legged family members; our pooch Crowley, and The Kid’s dog, Bella.

The first, and most grievously injured of us was Petey.

He had recently changed his dog-walking route.  He switched from an older, quieter neighborhood, to a newer, busier, more populated one (we live kind of in-between both areas).  I walk both, so am familiar with the new neighborhood and its inhabitants, the human and the canine.

I know which homes have dogs and how they react to our pooch walking past their territory.  But I didn’t even think to give him the 411, because he has much more upper body strength, and he’s way better at not falling down than me.

The other night he came in after a walk, sat down, and asked, “Is my head bleeding?”

Uh oh.  Crowley had taken off running.  Petey had put the brake on the leash, but the momentum of our 118-pound pup sent him you-know-what over teacups.

The back of his head wasn’t bleeding but had a goose egg.  His eyebrow was cut and bleeding.  And he’d hurt his thumb.  I took one look at it and knew it was broken.

You see, I’d broken my thumb last year almost exactly the same way—although no dog, just me and my adversarial relationship with gravity.  I’d tripped over my own feet.  When I fell, I landed on my thumb.

I made him promise that if his thumb got worse, we’d go to urgent care. 

It did.

X-rays showed the thumb was broken, and a cat scan showed evidence of brain, but no concussion.

Next up was yours truly. 

A couple of dogs got my silly boy all excited.  He didn’t take off but did these little hops he does when worked up, his legs got tangled with mine, and I went down over him and landed on both knees—hence, the skinnage.

Then tonight, The Kid came over for dinner with a couple of sore knees and a painful ankle.  Bella and Bella’s best dog friend Addie had gotten extra playful, and my child got clotheslined. 

See how close the Matthews Family Band is?  Next time we have a group bonding experience I’d like for it to be less hurty and more amusement park-ey.

If you’re still wondering why I said I feel seen, it because after more than fifty years of shingling multiple Band-Aids to cover a skinned knee, they’ve finally started making one adhesive bandage so big that it covers the whole thing. 

I think I’ll stock up.

Thanks for your time.

Contact me at d@bullcity.mom.

A Jersey Shower Part 2

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In family lore, it’s referred to as, “The Trip From Hell”.

But that’s not true.

New Jersey was a blast.  Our troubles didn’t start until we got on the road to come home.  More accurately it should be referred to as, “The Voyage Into Hell”.

And we didn’t even get a boat ride with a three-headed puppy.

The morning after the shower, we prepared to leave.  We were leaving with enough baby supplies and equipment shower gifts to open a home for wayward infants.

Our first stop was my Aunt Polly and Uncle Bill’s house.  Aunt Polly made us fresh scallops.  They were delicious and we all overindulged.

After lunch, we hit the road.

We stopped for road snacks and soda.  We put the soda into the cooler we had brought with us.  

When we were about halfway home, we stopped for dinner at a restaurant in Alexandria VA. 

As we ate, Mom started slowing down and got an odd look on her face.

“You guys stay here and finish up, I’m going outside, I think I need some air and to stretch my legs.”  Petey gave her the car keys, and she went out.

Petey and I continued eating, finished dinner, and I probably had dessert; I was eating for two, you know. 

We went outside and found Mom.

She was bent over, one hand hanging onto the side of our car, downloading her dinner and the lunch of scallops like she was trying to win a contest.  From the state of the blacktop around her, it wasn’t her first time, either.

She tried to stand up but was shaking so bad, Petey had to help her into the back seat while I ran into the restaurant to get her some ginger ale some damp paper towels.  As a nurse, Petey must have sensed something, because he emptied the cooler and sat it next to her, “just in case”.

We got on the road again, and since we were almost exactly halfway home, we decided to make a run for it.

Everything was okay for about forty-five minutes or so, then I started to feel funny. 

It was the weirdest thing.  I couldn’t describe how I was feeling then, and couldn’t begin to describe it now.  I just felt wrong; weirdly, weirdly wrong.  As we rode south on 95, I tried to figure this feeling out.

And all of a sudden, I was hanging over the highway guard rail, downloading like a champ.  The rest of the ride was a symphony of mom downloading in the back into that just in case cooler and me screaming for Petey to pull over.  After each highway download, I’d shake so hard he’d help me back into the car.

At one point I was in a truck stop bathroom trying to clean myself off, my cute little maternity outfit speckled with food I’d eaten in kindergarten.  Petey was outside trying to clean out mom’s cooler.

He told me later that as many sick people as he’d seen, he never heard the noises I was making.  He likened it to a Japanese movie monster.

Once home, he helped me change my clothes and took me to the hospital.  I needed fluids for The gestating Kid.  The doctor treating me prescribed nausea meds for Mom, and for Petey too, “just in case”.

Turns out, poor old Petey was as sick as Mom and I.  He’d just been holding it together to get us home. 

That stowaway we’d brought along?

It was the scourge of cruise ships and college dorms—norovirus. 

Our final shower gift.

Thanks for your time.

Contact me at d@bullcity.mom.

A Jersey Shower

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I was five months pregnant with The Kid, and Petey, my mom, and I were driving north.

Unbeknownst to me, every living soul in New Jersey that was related to me in any manner was coming together to throw me a baby shower.

And this wasn’t a sweet, sedate Southern baby shower where one ate tiny little pimento cheese sandwiches, little pieces of cake, nuts, and sweet tea. 

A baby shower in New Jersey, or at least the ones thrown by my Italian relatives, is a very different kind of soiree.

First of all, the attendees are not the mother-to-be, her mother, mother-in-law, her sorority sisters, and a few older ladies from church.

When I say it was every family member, I’m not kidding.  This was every living sibling of my mother, their spouses, male and female, their children, their spouses or SO’s, their children, and anybody else who had a drop of shared DNA.  There were new babies, babies on the way, and a few gleams in various eyes.

The tables were groaning with bowls and platters of potato and macaroni salad, sausage and meatballs to pile on sub rolls, stuffed mushrooms, at least three kinds of pasta, and zucchini and eggplant parmesan.

The cake was neither small nor dainty.  It was a large, showy, whipped cream drenched confection that came from the local Italian bakery.  Even if every single guest was pregnant and eating for themselves and a litter of babies, there would have been more than enough food. 

I was still in the dark, party-wise, and didn’t know what was coming, so mom and Petey took me to the Englishtown mall.  It was January, and I had been disappointed that there was no snow when we arrived.  But at the mall door, I saw what looked like one last lonely mound of snow.  So, I decided to jump into it.

After I leaped into it with both feet, I discovered it was a mound of ice cream—sticky ice cream that splashed my sweet little maternity jeans from the knees down. We went in anyway (we really entered the mall because preparations were going full tilt putting the party together).  And Petey had been tasked with keeping me away.

Downtown Emglishtown, I spent a lot of time here as a child, when my family visited New Jersey.

I’m really glad about this mall visit, because of two memorable encounters I had.

The first was at a Body Shop store.  When I walked in, the salesperson asked if I was expecting.  Normally, this is a very dangerous question to ask, as I have learned to my own shame and embarrassment.  Now I wouldn’t ask a woman if she is with child unless said child is actively exiting her body.

But, she was right and I was thrilled to tell any and everybody that I was growing a human.

She gave me a gift bag of products for the new baby and mother.  Think baby wash and skin cream. 

The second encounter was revelatory.

It was at lunch.  The food court had a real Jersey deli.  I wasn’t able to eat rare roast beef because, pregnent, so I had a Reuben.  It was delicious, but the stellar part of the meal, that thing I’ll never forget, was the pickle.

It was the greatest kosher dill I have ever tasted.  It was crispy and balanced and perfect.  I wish I’d bought a barrel of them to bring home.

But of course, after the baby shower, there was no room in the car for a barrel of pickles.  There was barely room for the three and a half of us.  And we also had a stowaway.

Next week, I’ll share part two; the road home.

Thanks for your time.

Contact me at d@bullcity.mom.