Dropping the Balls: A Family Story

Ah, family. So important. So loving. So supportive. And in my case, sooooooooo whackadoodle. I thought I’d start by telling you about my family because they are, debatably, the most influential people in my life. Each member has shaped me into the woman I am today in his or her own unique way.

I am the oldest of three children. My sister, Carly, is in the middle and my brother, Andy, is the baby. We were born unwillingly unto our parental units, Karen and Mitch.

Carly is your typical middle child. Nothing is fair, the world is against her, and she’s always right. Period. Her special talent is twisting any given situation during an argument so that it’s your fault. (She initially inherited that talent from my dad, and then perfected it.) A sub-talent of this would be her ability to unnecessarily turn any situation into an argument. Therefore, any moment you are in her presence can suddenly turn into an argument that is all your fault. Here’s an example:

She called me one night while I was at work and asked if I wanted to get Pinkberry with her. I told her I was about to leave work (which was 30 minutes away) and that I would beep the horn when I’m in the driveway and we would go together. On my way home, I stopped to pick up a single item at the pharmacy. Exactly 30 minutes after she called, my cell phone rang in the pharmacy. I knew it was her before I fished my phone out of my purse. I picked up and said “Yeeeesssssss?”

“Where are you?” she asked curtly. I couldn’t believe she had the nerve. As if she honestly did not know where I was precisely 30 minutes after we first spoke on the phone!

“Uh… I’m at CVS. I just had to pick up one thing.”

“Well, when will you be home?” she asked, this time sounding annoyed and offended that I would interfere with her quest to get Pinkberry with a 2 minute trip to the pharmacy.

“Like, one minute,” I said. CVS is about a ten second drive from our house.

At this point, I already knew that the situation had turned into an argument. I paid for my item and left the pharmacy, bracing myself for the rage that I had yet to have rain down upon me. I pulled into the driveway and beeped. She didn’t come to the door. So I beeped again. She appeared in the window as if she didn’t know who could possibly be beeping in the driveway. She disappeared, then came out the front door about 3 minutes later.

That shit really drives me crazy. I know she was standing in front of the door needlessly making me wait since I had done the same to her with my evil detour to CVS. She seriously pulls shit like this! Despite my mild frustration, I can sense the anger brewing inside of her, so I decide not to say anything about it. But my effort to stay calm doesn’t pay off. She opens the passenger door, gets inside the car, and slams the door shut. I say “hey.” She doesn’t say anything. We drive to Pinkberry in silence.

Once we arrive, there is a line out the door, as seems to be usual at Pinkberry. We wait in silence, until finally after 20 minutes she says, “Ugh, I’m missing Modern Family. I thought you would have picked me up sooner so I wouldn’t have to miss it.”

Since when am I a fucking mind reader? I guess I was supposed to use my telepathetic powers to know that she has a TV show to catch and that my 2 minute trip to CVS (and NOT the 30 minute wait for goddamn frozen yogurt) is the reason she will have missed the first 15 minutes. Seriously… I deal with this shit ALL the time.

Moving on. Andy, my brother, is way more laid back with a very mild temper. He’s very much like me, so we get along well. Although I have to say, the kid is kind of a dud. He sleeps until 1:00 PM every day, has no steady job, studies part-time at a community college, and devotes all of his energy to sports and video games. Though overall, he really is a good and smart kid who is moderately responsible. The problem is, when he fucks up, he REALLY fucks up.

A perfect example of such a monstrous fuck-up was on his 20th birthday. He left the house sober at 10:00 PM. He was celebrating at his friend’s house with a small group of his homies, and we all assumed he would be drinking even though is he underage. Well drinking is certainly what he did. He returned home 3 hours later with no pants on and went upstairs to his room. A little unusual, but whatever.

Almost immediately, he came back down the stairs, through the living room, down the hall, and into the bathroom. Vomiting and shitting. The whole time. My poor mother, who sleeps on the living room couch, was awakened by this and had to scrub the carpets clean for the next hour and a half. That was a good one.

My parents are colorful people, and I don’t mean biracial. My mother is, to put it succinctly, a hot mess. She is a recovering alcoholic and will never admit it, not even to herself or her family. She used to be pretty funny when she was drunk all the time, but sometimes she really crossed the line, like the time she drunk dialed my best friend when we were away at college and talked for 45 minutes about my brother’s balls and their inability to drop. Yeah. That happened.

For nearly a year, good ol’ Ma has been alcohol-free. She claims it was her choice, but I know it’s because she went to her doctor and found out her liver is fucked. At first, we were all happy about her “decision,” but sobriety came with a price. Make that several prices. For one, she is incredibly irritable. You can say any little thing that rubs her the wrong way and she blows up. Even if it’s something like, “I’m going to take a shower,” or, “Look how funny the cat is with her new toy.”

Since beginning a life of sobriety, she has been consuming an alarming amount of coffee. Even late at night, she makes herself a café con leche or three. Then she is up until 4:00 AM and sleeps until 2:00 PM once she finally dozes off. When she wakes up from her deep slumber, she says, “Oh my god! I can’t believe I slept so late!”

One afternoon when she said this, I said, “Gee, Ma. It’s not THAT hard to believe. You sleep late every day.” Just like having an alcohol dependency, my mother is in complete denial that she oversleeps on a daily basis. Needless to say, she becomes furious at my comment and insists that she sleeps in only once a week, twice tops.

My mother is essentially just like her mother (my grandmother), who passed away a few years ago. The old goat drank, smoked, and had survived cancer a whopping 18 times before she finally croaked. I remember one time my mom called to remind me to call my grandmother on her birthday. “Just so you know,” she told me, “Nanny was caught smoking with her oxygen tank in her room the other day so she is on probation at the nursing home. She’s a little sensitive about it so don’t mention it to her.”

So I called my grandma up and heard her nasally voice answer, “Hellooooo?”

I couldn’t help myself.

“I heard you almost blew up the joint, you badass,” I said slyly.

She scoffed and said matter-of-factly, “Oh, please. You’re exaggerating.”

I only sort of extensively studied biology and chemistry in college, so what do I know, right? Not to mention all that common sense I have.

Anyway, it’s only a matter of time before my mother is chain-smoking in a nursing home with her own oxygen tank and café con leches instead of sherry.

All right, so I’ve saved the best for last. My father really is a case. He is a lot like my sister in terms of his temper, but the main difference is that he has quite a realistic view of the world, despite his “everyone is against me” kind of outlook. A chain-smoking, Manhattan-drinking, wise-cracking man in his mid-60s who doesn’t know how to just relax. Even on the rare occasion that he doesn’t have any work to do, he can’t sit still. Especially if it means being in my mother’s presence. He will cut the lawn twice, work in the garden for hours, reorganize his office (again), and go grocery shopping for the third time that week instead of kicking back.

The man drinks a lot, but usually consumes more or less the same volume from day to day. Sometimes he drinks a bit too much in the evening and can be heard cursing to himself in the kitchen. The only person who really has to deal with that is my sister because she is usually the only other person home in the evening, so I don’t mind much.

Growing up, I didn’t really get along with my dad because of his temper and heavy drinking. But since I’ve become an adult, I quite enjoy my father’s company. We’ve spent many nights awake well past midnight drinking Captain and diet, reminiscing and laughing our asses off about our dysfunctional family. By spending more time with my father, I’ve come to realize that the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree. In fact, I remember the moment I acknowledged that we are so much alike.

My neighbor is a total dick. He’s like our very own Neitermeyer from Family Matters. Not the kind of guy you could borrow a cup of sugar from. Allow me to take a moment to give you an idea of his douchebaggery. He nitpicks constantly about anything and has called the police on us regarding various preposterous claims, such as the cheap plastic fence he put up last summer. It started leaning within a month and apparently it’s our fault for trying to push it over.

Not only is Neitermeyer mean, he’s pretty thick. One day, he left his lawnmower outside after cutting his lawn. It was stolen. The next day, he put up a huge (and by huge I mean utterly enormous) sign on his big plastic fence that said “PLEASE RETURN MY LAWNMOWER.” My father really thought this was too much. For two days he constantly burst into laughter, saying “What an asshole!”

Just when we thought he had gotten the sillies out, my father takes things to the next level. It wasn’t enough for him to silently snicker to himself and think about how Neitermeyer deserved it. No, no, that is hardly enough satisfaction. Karma for this big of a dick requires a little salt rubbed into the wound. So Dad decides to put up a sign of his own. It read “LAWNMOWER RENTALS.”

So who am I? There is no easy answer to this question. I try to be real, honest, and forgiving. But it doesn’t always work out. And when it doesn’t, I shrug it off. I am confident, perhaps too confident, but I think I have reason to be since I grew up in such an insane household and got out alive. I am the kid who constantly disrupted class by cracking jokes but got an A on all the pop quizzes. I'm the hooligan who ran around the neighborhood at night stealing the neighbor's property and setting it on fire, then running from the cops on foot and getting away because I knew the sweet backyard shortcuts. I'm the teenage girl who figured out way too early how to manipulate men and fucked with them just for fun. I'm the college student who gave a major presentation in molecular biology by doing an interpretive dance. I'm the determined young woman who decided on a whim to move to another country and learn a new language just because I could. I’m an incredibly perceptive, adventurous, mild-tempered, risk-taking, wise-cracking, in-your-face, too smart for her own good, sardonic, emotionally insensitive, line-stepping, inappropriate prankster, and I will hit you where it hurts. Mostly just for fun.