Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: Mishpucha (mi familia)
Your morning blast from the past
This is my favorite photo of me and Jake. We took it at my parents’ fiftieth anniversary celebration in Las Vegas — about six years ago, I think.
Cute kid, eh?
D.
No Blogging Today
Karen’s version: Doug has a note from his doctor excusing him from blogging today. He injured his index finger picking his nose and cannot type. (That’s an ENT doctor joke, they’re snot doctors.)
Jake’s version: He injured his pointing finger while sticking it up his butt.
Doug’s version: I pulled a muscle in my back while coughing.
How the hell do you pull a muscle coughing? Well, he did it this morning. Jake claims he screamed like a girl. I unfortunately had to help him put his underwear on. Ewwww!
Okay, that last bit was Jake again.
Doug will never let us post again after this. WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Karen and Jake
Formication
Subtitle: We be schleppin’ spiders
formication
An abnormal sensation as of insects running over or into the skin, associated with cocaine intoxication or disease of the spinal cord and peripheral nerves.
T-lady is back
Karen finished reading my book and she has gone back to blogging. Bone up on your Proto-Elamite script, everyone.
D.
T-lady’s keppy hurts
Karen has been having bad migraines the last few days. Migraines that laugh in the face of Imitrex. She’s planning on continuing her Afghani history; next up, Alexander the Great finds out he isn’t well nigh invulnerable.
I’ll use this political platform to say one thing. George Bush needs to get on with his life. Preferably in the crappiest, most water bug-infested nursing home in Mississippi, cuz that’s what he deserves.
Thank you ;o)
Doug
Dad’s Eightieth
My father’s eightieth birthday is tomorrow. I can’t go to Vegas to help him celebrate because
- any temperature over 75F feels unbearably hot to me,
- my patients threaten me if I use any syllables in the word ‘vacation’, and
- have I mentioned recently how far overbudget we are on our remodel?
So, instead, I offer this short bio of my dad’s formative years. (Don’t worry. He got a card and a gift certificate, and he’ll get a phone call, too.)
He was born in Boston, at the west end of Bowdoin Square near Scollay Square. Here’s an image of a post card showing Scollay Square circa 1900:
I really wanted to scan in some photos from my album, but Karen’s had a devil of a time getting either of our scanners to work. Just as well; my dad has seen all of those photos anyway. Maybe he’ll have more fun with these.
His father was a grocer — one of those small stores that predated chain supermarkets (predated, but not by much, as you’ll soon hear). Little Arthur waited on his first customer at age 3. Probably sold someone a pack of playing cards, if I know my dad.
His pop’s name was Hyman, which (if I remember correctly) was Ellis Island’s way of spelling Chaim. Hyman moved around a lot in those days. By the mid-30s, he’d moved the grocery store to Roxbury, across the street from the synagogue.
I found this while surfing for “Roxbury” images. It’s a picture of Boston Latin School. Recognize this one, Mom? My dad went to Roxbury Memorial High, but I couldn’t find any pictures of Roxbury High.
Back to Hyman and his war with the rabbi. He kept his store open on Saturdays (for you heathens, that’s the Jewish sabbath) and his clients were, you guessed it, primarily other Orthodox Jews from the neighborhood . . . thus proving that my issues with organized religion go back at least two generations. Hyman must have thought this all great fun; in the late 30s, he moved to Dorchester, right across from another synagogue.
You understand, I’m winging it. Maybe this was the synagogue Hyman locked horns with; maybe not. Maybe my father had his Bar Mitzvah here. A life, reconstructed through Google Images.
By the late 30s, the big supermarket chains moved into town, grinding small businessmen like my grandfather into the dust. Damn you, A&P! Hyman moved on and became a soda pop wholesaler. Meanwhile, the now not-so-little Arthur found work as a supermarket stock boy and mechanic’s helper.
He was a big kid so he hung out with older boys. When Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, many of his friends went to Canada to fight with the British. Arthur was still too young (14). Come 1941, he’d graduated high school and moved on to Iowa State.
I imagine he had a blast that year. Not only was he big; he looked more mature than others his age. His older friends got carded at the bars, but not him. Hyman had taught him well, so Arthur also scored big playing pinochle with these suckers. They were his financial aid plan.
If you try, you can guess the rest. When America got into WWII, my father’s friends enlisted, and he followed suit. No one bothered to ask him for proof of his age. Two blinks later he found himself in boot camp in Fort Benning, Georgia.
He managed to hit many of the high points (low points?) of the European theater of action: first in Africa, at Kasserine Pass,
then the Allied Invasion of Sicily (that’s my dad in the helmet*),
and the D-Day invasion at Omaha Beach,
In Aachen, some German soldier got in a lucky shot and clipped my dad in the knee. That gave him some primo rehab time in a Paris hospital, where they pumped him full of toxic levels of penicillin and buffed him into shape in time for the Battle of the Bulge,
Woops! This Battle of the Bulge:
The Army kept Arthur around for the German occupation, too, and discharged him in January 1946.
One of my dad’s favorite war stories was the time a shell dropped into the foxhole right next to him and blew him clean out of the hole. He sustained no injuries (save for some noise-induced hearing loss. Sorry, had to work that in — occupational hazard), but the shell killed a friend of his who had been a great deal farther from the blast.
This, and doubtless countless other experiences like it, turned him into a Calvinist Jew. Well, he’s not much of either, but he does seem to have a belief in predestination. Something must happen to you when you see all your friends dying around you day after day, month after month. Survive that, and the rest of your life must seem like a gift. Gravy. Frosting. Borrowed time. One of those must surely fit the bill.
My dad’s other war stories tend to fit one of two patterns:
1. Green lieutenant arrives. He’s too arrogant (and/or stupid) to listen to the voice of experience, and promptly does his best to get himself and the rest of the guys killed.
2. They try to promote my dad, but he won’t put up with the brass’s BS and always manages to get busted down to sergeant again.
He got back to the States and found himself in the “52-20” club: all vets received an unemployment wage of $20 a month for 52 weeks. By June of ’46, he was doubtlessly bored silly, and went back to school at Iowa State. He took a degree in statistics. Later, he married my mom in January of ’48, and they moved to California shortly after he graduated.
He worked in banks for a while. Eventually, he became a high school math teacher, and kept that up for MANY years. I suspect his students had the same impression of him as I did, growing up.
(In case you can’t read the upper bubble, it says: “Did you clean your room???”)
I’ll save early memories of my dad to a later birthday. Did I leave much out, Daddy?
Anyway . . .
D.
*Just kidding. That’s Patton!
Arachnophobia!
Not two years ago, if I found a spider in the bathroom I’d scream like a banshee. Just ask my wife.
“Karen! A spider!”
“So?”
“Do something, anything!”
Yes, those were the days. A time of peace and tranquility, when I didn’t share my bedroom with forty tarantulas. Yeah, you heard me.
It wasn’t always this way. As a kid, I used to catch flies and throw them into spider webs. And before you ask, no, I didn’t wet the bed, set fires, or torture small animals (except by feeding flies to spiders, of course).
I’m not sure when spiders began creeping me out, or why. I do know that I got over it fairly quickly. Nothing like constant exposure to take you past your fears.
Once Karen started collecting, oh boy did she start collecting. She says it’s a chick thing.
Think about it. Tarantulas could be feminist mascots. The females are bigger, faster, smarter, and longer-lived than males. They control the sexual encounter, not the boys. For every time a male eats a female, it goes the other way 1000 times. Nor does the female always eat the male after sex. If she has a good time, she’s free to keep him around for future flings.
But back to the main focus of this blog: me. I mean, arachnophobia. I still won’t let the tarantulas crawl on me, but I help Karen out from time to time. Lifting cages, for example — I’m good at that. And pointing things out. “Oooh, Karen, look at the fat ass on that one.”
For the arachnophobes in my audience, I’m going to give you a gradual introduction to spiders. Desensitization therapy: that’s the name of the game. We’ll begin with the new image for Karen’s blog (over there on the right somewhere). Isn’t she cute? And so yummy, too. Is there anything better than candy corn fangs?
D.
Sex Ed, self-taught
I was never what you would call slow. Dense, maybe, but not slow. I chased girls at two, stole kisses at five, and copped feels at eight. Despite my forwardness, I didn’t understand what it was all about until high school.
At three, I asked my mother where I came from. “Ask your father,” she said.
My father has never been one to lie, but he’s never been a talkative cuss, either. When I asked him, he pointed to my mother’s middle and said, “From there.”
Huh? From her belly?
Back to my early misconceptions in a moment. My Dad never sat me down for the Big Talk. Instead, when I was eight, he took me to the library and pointed me in the right direction. I checked out David Reuben’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* with my father’s blessing.
The trouble with this book: it assumes its reader has a decent fund of sexual knowledge to begin with. In those days, you couldn’t find words like cunnilingus and fellatio in the dictionary (not our dictionary back home, anyway!) Masturbation sounded like a worthwhile avocation, but damned if I could figure out how I was supposed to do it. As for cunnilingus, I only knew about one hole Down There, and it baffled me why anyone would want to get his tongue anywhere near it. (In my ignorance of the vagina, I had discovered the rim job.)
Some time in junior high, I learned about vaginas. No pictures, mind you. I gleaned additional useful information from Xaviera Hollander‘s book Xaviera! (sequel to The Happy Hooker). My sexual education would have been complete if Xaviera! had had pictures.
Somewhere along the way, I acquired some very romantic notions about sex. Intercourse would have to be with a girl I loved. We would spend all night together and wake up in each other’s arms. I also vowed that I would not see my first vagina in a nudie magazine (we’re not talking bush, by the way — I’d seen that in the movies when I was five). Rather, I would see my first vagina in the, erm, flesh.
Stubborn as I was (I made good on those promises), I refused all opportunities to examine hard core smut magazines. Still, I was curious as hell. This led to some uniquely twisted dreams.
You women, you don’t know how lucky you are. You’re surrounded by phallic images. You probably learned to recognize a penis before you ever examined your own package with a mirror. I’ll bet you never had a nightmare wherein you pulled down a man’s pants and discovered . . . fill in the blank.
Among other things, I dreamed of broken lightbulbs, sliced watermelon, pigeons. A baseball. Or maybe it was a softball.
Back to three-year-old me. My Dad has just pointed to my Mom’s belly. “From there.”
“From there? From where?”
“Down there.”
“From her belly?”
“Yeah,” he said. “From her belly.”
“But there’s no hole there.”
“Sure there is.”
So I racked my teensy brains. What hole? The only hole I knew about was the belly button hole. I’d discovered it not long before, and found out I could seriously tweak my parents by coloring in my belly button hole with a ballpoint pen. My father even tried to spank me for it, and stopped because I kept laughing. He dubbed me “Iron Ass” after that.
The belly button hole? I had to protest my disbelief.
“But it’s too small!”
“It gets bigger,” he said, and left it at that.
At last, I knew where babies came from.
*But your father wouldn’t tell you.
Story link
In case any of my non-BBS readers want to see a bit of my SHORT fiction (875 words), here’s a link to my entry for Keith’s challenge. For a limited time only — I’ll delete it once the challenge is over.
The challenge: in 750 words or less*, show your protag going through a substantive change.
I have a massage scheduled for this afternoon. Yippee! I need it. Practically speaking, I’m checking out this practitioner before subjecting my son to her ministrations. It was the only way Jake would agree to it, after that disastrous foot massage experience.
Guess I’ll have to tough it out . . . . The things we do for our children.
D.
*See how well I follow directions?
The Distaff Blog
Karen never does anything halfway. When she decided to raise chameleons, we bought sixteen Ficus trees so each adult could have his or her own tree. I imagine she used to spend hours misting the chameleons, hand-feeding them, cleaning up their poops.
Nowadays, she has tarantulas, forty of them, and she fusses with them as though they were AKC-pedigreed poodles. I’m quite sure I’d get more attention around here if I had four extra appendages, but then, she’d probably go and sprout fangs.
She has become a news junky, too. She used to be an Arachnopets junky (a bbs for spider people), but I guess that got boring after a while. Now she spends hours a day surfing the net, hopping political blogs and other news sites.
I’ve been after her for weeks to start her own blog. As you might imagine from an intelligent person who spends hours a day, seven days a week at the same thing, she has become a fairly sharp analyst. Why blog? Why the hell not?
So here’s an open invitation: come check out Chelicera, Karen’s political blog. No pretty window dressing — Karen’s into the Zen minimalist thing.
(Note added later: all the Chelicera posts have been moved here, to Balls and Walnuts.)
D.