FatKidsLie

While going through some old photos and family memorabilia, I came across some of my dad’s old report cards. From gradeschool.

Yeah. He was a slacker. Now while I’m pushing 30 I realize that my dad was a hypocrite, at least when it came to school stuff. He had a worse homework record than I did! And I pride myself on the fact that I haven’t done homework since I was 8.

Well, I was going through them with my big sister, Suzan, who told me a story that my mean mean evily mean grandma told her about my dad’s fist day in Kindergarten.

In the late 1930’s my family was living in Queens. My grandfather had already gone off to work (hauling seltzer bottles) and my Grandmother’s job was to get my dad all ready for school. He was excited! He was ready to start his education! He went in, did the whole pledge of allegiance thing and sat down for class.

At some point, around 11am or so My grandmother is in the kitchen, doing Laundry (because they were poor and that’s where poor people used to do their laundry) when she hears a knock on the back door to the apartment, she walks over thinking that another housewife had come to either gossip or borrow some sugar or gin (it was 11am afterall). But it was none of that. It was my dad.

My dad had gone on a bathroom break, as evidenced by the giant wooden paddle that had the words “BATHROOM PASS” hand carved into it. When questioned he said that he had had enough. That school was boring and that he didn’t want to go any more. He did say that he’d go back in the morning to return the bathroom pass. He would’ve done it right away but he didn’t want to get in trouble for wandering the halls.

Although he had thought all this through, made a few good points, such as other students being boogerbutts, poopooheads and just in general basically schmucky, Grandma wasn’t buying it. You see, for the first time in 6 years Grandma had the house to herself. To drink gin and fart into the couch all morning. And nothing was going to ruin that.

She grabed my dad by his ear, drug him, crying, back to school. Back through the neighborhood. Past the Butcher. Past the Baker. If they had one, they’d’ve gone past the Candlestick maker. But there hasn’t been one of those outside of an historic town like Williamsburg for over 100 years. But that’s neither here nor there.

Made my dad apologize to the teacher. Who he then called a “shithead”. His favorite insult ever since.

My dad never played a game of golf. This, in of its self, is not that unusual considering he was Jewish and country clubs hate the Jews more than blacks or other minorities because Jews can “pass” and infiltrate the secret societies of the country clubs. While I’m pretty sure that he did play a few rounds of minigolf in his life, my dad did not own a golf ball, let alone a club. Nor did he ever set foot on the grounds of a course or have the slightest interest in the game.

Except once when we were on vacation in Scotland, but that was different. And about 15 years after this story takes place…

You see, my dad may not have been a Gary Palmer or Tiger Woods, but he was an awesome liar. And when my sister, Murm, had a guy come to pick her up for a date who happened to be a semi-pro golfer, well, my dad picked up on that and while knowing NOTHING about the game other than some basic terms at the most he talked to the guy about it. For hours. And hours.

For so long that my sister, who had her heart set on gravy fries and making out in the back seat of his busted Volkswagon beetle; who had spent 3 hours getting ready and shaving her unibrow and moustache, she went back up into her room, with the cracked plaster and Blondie poster, smoked a pack of Pall Malls and drank a bottle of Wild Irish Rose.

By the time my dad was done with his interview/golf-discussion with the boy it was 11pm, my sister had already eaten some leftover lomain that was in the fridge and changed into sweatpants. And was half drunk. The boy had to reschedule the date (which never happened).

My dad’s job was done.

My big sister, Miriam used to live with me when I was a baby. She was 18, 19 or so (She’s my half-sister from my dad’s first marriage). Well that’s not exactly true…

Miriam would live with us when it SUITED her. When she was in New York. From the ages of 16 to 21 she’d move from New York to LA, depending on which of her parents she was mad at at the time. She did this 17 times. Getting to be on first-name basis with the Greyhound Bus drivers. Once, when she was mad at BOTH of them she moved in with our oldest sister.

For 2 days.

Until she got a clump of her hair pulled out for some bullshit.

After that she moved in with a gay man. So she could hag off of him.

Anyway, I do remember her being around when I was a little baby, or maybe I was told that she was around so much that I imagined the memories like what happens when I play Beautiful Katamari while drunk and I can’t tell the difference between what is real and what is a video game….

This isn’t a story about her living with us though. It’s a story about her moving out. Well, about why she moved out one time.

My dad was cleaning out the kitchen, getting it ready for a remodeling (a 100+ year old house who’s previous owners didn’t take care of it or modernize much of anything) when he came across a teapot. He felt that there was something in it so he looked in and found….

Marijuana. Pot. Weed. Grass. Whatever you wanna call it….

He ran up to the attic where Miriam was staying. I vividly remember her room being the unfinished attic with a Blondie poster on the wall and her bed being a sleeping bag on a sheet of plywood on 6 cinder blocks. She had a book case and one of those fancy overstuffed Victorian lounge chairs and an awesome New Art Glass floor lamp, with an ashtray that was perpetually overflowing with her cigarette butts and ashes. There was also an overwhelming smell of Patchouli and Cigarettes but I thought that was just her perfume.

Her car (a baby blue 1970’s Volkswagon Beetle with one black door) always smelled of that too.

Well, dad ran over and started screaming about “How could you DO this?!!” “I have a BABY in here!” etc etc… THROWS the teapot at her, missing by an inch where it shatters on the wall getting chunks of porcelain in her hair…

All the time she’s crying “It’s not mine! I don’t know who’s it is… waaahhhh”.

Then my mom comes running upstairs.

Tells them both to shut up.

Because the pot…. is my dad’s.

You see, he was going to sell it (it was a full teapot’s worth of pot) five years before this all started but the guy that was going to buy it got arrested. For pot. So he couldn’t buy it.

My dad put it in the teapot for safe keeping until he could find another buyer.

Which didn’t happen.

Then he retired from teaching and didn’t need to smoke pot anymore and lost touch with all his old pothead friends (isn’t that just how it goes?). He forgot that he had stuffed half a pound or so of pot into a teapot because he was higher than a Willie Nelson contact high when he put it in there.

No wonder this was the last time Miriam lived with us…

Back in 1987 when I was in first grade my dad had an awesome white van. I’m pretty sure it was a 1978 Econoline or something (the kind of van that lester the molester would always try to get me into by offering me HiC juice boxes and giant bags of Halloween candy in mid-July even though I was too smart for him but my buddy Burt wasn’t) but to me, it was the Space Van that ran on Superfuel that was mined on the moon. By a Cyclops and a buncha moon men.

Hey, I was in first grade and most of my spare time was spent reading comics and playing legos and watching Doctor Who. Because, well… you know. I was fat.

So when one day I missed the school bus because I was watching Smurfs or GI Joe or whatever the crap was on at 7am on a school day when I should have been having a complete breakfast consisting of toast, eggs and orange juice and my dad was screaming “GET YOUR PASTY ASS DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW OR I’M GONNA COME GET YOU WITH MY HAMMER, SHITHEAD”.

Well, because I WAS being a SHITHEAD my dad had to drive me to school. Which was OK by me since it involved getting a ride on the awesomeshuttle. And I’d be able to use the super-fuel weapons in the armory (the drills and hand tools in the back. I remember that I used a tire pressure gauge as a makeshift “sonic screwdriver” and the shopvac was a “proton cannon”). When we got outside… right outside our house… not even around the corner but RIGHT OUTSIDE LITERALLY IN FRONT OF OUR HOUSE where the van usually sits because that’s where my dad would park it… it was gone.

Now my dad’s walking up and down the block thinking that he may have forgotten where he parked it. I mean, he was sort of known as an absent-minded professor. He’d been known to forget that he was wearing his glasses. Also, when he met my sister-in-law for the first time he was so excited that he didn’t realize he was wearing a cowboy boot and a sneaker. Each on the wrong foot.

Well, thinking that the van was gone, my dad knew he’d never get it back because the police where useless and lazy and didn’t see fit to call them. Also I needed to get to school because… I don’t know. I never thought school was important and I always felt that I learned more watching Donahue and also the semi-educational TV on PBS. But I didn’t make the rules since I was only 7 so off we went to the bus stop to take Public Transit to my school.

A little “aside”: I grew up in a poor Hispanic neighborhood. My house was on a street where the cross streets on one end of the block were lined with “low income housing” and the other was crack houses. My block was quiet, and low crime etc but surrounding it? Pure ghetto. That’s how Staten Island was in the 80’s.

Why is that important? Because it explains why a Middle-class white family lived in a neighborhood where there was a majorly notorious chop-shop right on a main street. In fact, THE main street on Staten Island.

And yes… the van was parked right in the parking lot.

So my dad tells me to wait at the bus stop and goes in, makes sure it’s his van and starts raising Hell.

I remember a set of socket wrenches flying and a bunch of Albanians running for their lives. I was scared that they’d get some giant with a scimitar like something out of an old Alli Babba movie where the guys where scarfs as belts?

I also remember my dad got a new set of tires and a full tank of gas and a carton of cigarettes outta the deal. And the guy was pleading “please just go”.

I guess that they never heard the expression “don’t shit in your own bed”?

My dad had a lot of jobs in his life. He loved telling his kids, his kids’ friends, his kids’ freinds’ parents, people that he met on the bus or at the diner all about his jobs.

The joke was that when they got to the moon Buzz Aldren found a rock that had my dad’s initials on it. Even though he’s one of the guys that created the set where the moon-landing was faked.

Yeah. Most of these were lies, but you know what? Who cares? CERTAINLY not my dad. I mean, even if he were still alive that is. He didn’t give half a shit if you believed him or not. Even if you called him on it!

One of the most (in)famous was his short-lived career as a fighter pilot in the British Royal Air Force.

You see, my dad wasn’t allowed to serve his country in WW2. He had an injury that destroyed his pancreas and caused him to develop diabetes. And they didn’t allow diabetics to fly because they’ll pass out.

So dad stowed away on a cargo ship bound for England by way of Africa. And when he got there he signed on with the British Royal Air-force as an American volunteer.

This peeved off my grandparents. The son they LIKED was across the ocean, getting ready to fight in a war and they’re stuck with my uncle who nobody likes!

So Grandma books a commercial flight to England, walks up to the Air-Martial and has him bring her son to her. Where she beats his ass in front of all the trainee pilots. And takes his ass back home.

My dad would tell this story in full confidence even though almost anyone (except for my retarded cousin Larry) would instantly know that even in WW2 the British RAF wouldn’t take a 10 year old boy as a fighter pilot, especially if he was a diabetic from an injury he hadn’t even received yet.

Also there were no commercial transatlantic flights during WW2, the largest air-war EVER.

But none of that matters. Because we all believed it. Even though we KNEW it wasn’t true.