Story Time

Most of my friends have heard all of my stories, at least twice. What can ya do? Tell your stories to strangers.

Between the ages of three and nine, my parents and I lived with my grandparents - I had my own bedroom upstairs and my parents had a sort of studio apartment set up in the rec room, which was downstairs from the kitchen, upstairs from the basement and adjacent to the utility room/laundry - the bedroom portion of my parent's area also lead out into the back yard.  The reason I'm giving you this mind-numbing amount of information about my childhood home is to illustrate the fact that my parent's domain was a very high-traffic area, which definitely made my mother insane. Not only did she have to live with her in-laws, she had to have them traipsing around her turf, irking her fucking hillbilly liver.

I was an only child to very young parents until I was eleven years old, and I apparently annoyed the ever-loving shit out of my mother. She had this thing about me going in and out of the house - maybe I slammed the god damned door every single time, maybe she just needed a Vodnax (vodka with a Xanax chaser). Your guess is as good as mine.

One day, she decided that if I came in the god-fucking house one more Christly time, I was not going to be allowed back out again, I could just fucking hide and watch, too. Well, that would just not fucking do. I couldn't go back inside. Not now. I was ... standing in my back yard with a friend.

But then I had to pee - urgently - as it always is when you're like, seven years old. Not having the benefit of years of experience drinking underage in the woods, I didn't know how to properly navigate the intricacies of squatting in the grass to relieve myself - at least not in a sanitary fashion.

I'd pissed all over my shorts. My mother's head was going to explode. Fucking explode. I looked at my friend, she looked back. "What do I do?" I begged.  She shrugged and said simply, "clothespins?"

I ran to the clothesline, wet shorts clutched loosely between my thighs. I attached exactly two pins to the crotch of my shorts. The shorts I was still wearing. Nothing happened. I'm sure about that detail, I watched.  I whipped my head back up to look at my friend again, panic screaming from my expression. "It's not working!" I cried.

As I'm sure you've noted, as a child I wasn't the sparkling genius standing before you today. Anyway, that's your story. Begone with you! Mama needs a nap.