Afterschool Special of the Week

My dad is a hunter (if you hadn't guessed after hearing that he owned a jackalope) and always kept a camper in the yard when he wasn't away on hunting trips. In the summer, my mom would let us play in it, which was heaven to me because it was like a mini-house.

Looking back, this probably wasn't the safest of decisions on my mom's part. For one, the camper has a fully functional gas stove. I remember pretending to use it, but must have had some common sense not to try and use it for real.

That's where my common sense ended, however, hence another unsafe feature...the closets. One day, when I was six and my sister was two, we were playing in the camper and I had the smart idea to get inside one of the tiny closets (you know how little kids are...they love private, dark places). As soon as I got in, my sister closed the closet door, inadvertently locking me in (I say that because she wasn't diabolical by any stretch of the imagination...at least not when she was two).

She was too young to understand how to open the door, it was the middle of summer and the closet was the size of a kitchen cabinet at best. I started screaming at the top of my lungs and seriously thought I was going to die in there.

My mom finally heard me and came running out. To this day, I can't think of a time when I was happier to see her.

Funny thing is that I'm fine in small, confined spaces, even today. But I get extremely claustrophobic in crowds of people, to the point of having panic attacks.

Afterschool Special of the Week

Since tomorrow is 6/6/06, I figure that this story is very appropriate. I must warn you though, that it's pretty scary and not for the fanatically religious or faint of heart.

One Friday night back when I was 18, one of my best guy pals from my hometown, Chad, came to visit me. He brought our friend, Paul with him...a kid I'd known since kindergarten. I had them meet me out at a party in the middle of nowhere, and they almost got into a fight with some rednecks so we left. We then linked up with this guy Bo and the four of us decided to go to my house (I was still living with my parents at the time)to hang out. I didn't want to be the only girl, so I called my friend, Frances. She came and met us.

So it's around one in the morning, and me, Frances, Bo, Chad, and Paul and sitting in my room, drinking beer and talking. A friend of ours had died the summer before so Bo talked me into breaking out the ouija board. I should note before I go any further that for some reason, Frances has always been very in tune with the afterlife. She can put her fingers on a ouija board and the thing will go crazy. I could never use the thing without her - it never worked anyone but her (and my little brother, but that's another story for another day).

Frances and I get on the ouija board and of course the thing instantly starts moving. We tried contacting our friend, but possibly because we were so impaired, we weren't able to reach him. Instead, some scary stuff happened. The thing went absolutely crazy...it was moving so fast that it was hard to keep track of what was being said. Frances would ask questions like, "who are you?" and would get answers like "demon" and "666."

Meanwhile, Chad and Bo are laughing because they think we're full of crap and that we're making the board say these things. It gets pissed and spells out, "I'm coming to get you Chad and Bo." They stopped laughing.

I don't remember how long we were on the board, but at some point, I got REALLY freaked out so we stopped. I had one of the guys break the board in half and we threw it in the trash. After the trash man came the following week, my sister found the board in our driveway.

I will never touch one of those things ever again.

Afterschool Special of the Week

During the second half of my freshman year of high school, I started hanging out with a new group of friends. Jill, a junior, was the stereotypical preppy (I don't think she owned anything that didn't have a little Polo emblem on it). Angie, a senior, was an all-around nice girl who always had cool clothes and never got into trouble. The pic is of us on "Have Pictures Taken with Friends Day" - Jill is in the peach shirt and Angie is next to her in the yellow shirt and "bad-ass for their time" Express envelope jeans. Dude, check out my collar -- what's up with that?!? Anyhow, back to the story...

The three of us became inseparable and every weekend, we drove thirty miles north to a teen nightclub called "The Library." We never drank anything stronger than soda and we had a blast dancing all night to music from the Miami club scene. We became friends with the DJ, who was also a popular local radio DJ -- sometimes he'd even give us shout-outs on the air when he was working. We made friends with the regulars and Jill and I even found serious boyfriends. Several times, I entered lip sync contests and won money (dude, I honestly have zero talent...but if there is one thing I can do, it's lip sync like it's nobody's business).

One night, Jill wasn't able to go out, so Angie drove us up there in her Nissan Pulsar NX (my dream car at the time). On the way home, she was really tired and probably driving a little too fast for the country road we were on. We turned a corner too fast, she slammed on the brakes, dirt caught up in the tires and we ended up flipping. We landed upside down and hit a telephone pole.

Thank God we were both wearing our seatbelts because otherwise, we would easily have been dead. I experienced that "movie sensation" where you think that because the car is upside down it means that it will explode within seconds...so I started to panic. Angie kept her cool though and directed me to take off my seatbelt and follow her out the back window.

Angie didn't have a scratch on her. Not one. I received an abrasion from having my hand out the window when we flipped. I had glass in my legs as well but was otherwise alright. They took me in an ambulance to the local hospital for a tetanus shot and to give me some butterfly stitches. Then Angie's dad picked us up and drove us home.

Her car was totalled, unfortunately, but at least we were okay. For months after that, I was a basket case riding with anyone in a car, so the trips up to The Library became less fun for me. After Angie graduated, they stopped altogether. My parents made me break up with my boyfriend, Craig, because the long-distance phone bills were too expensive and soon, the whole Library era became a distant memory.

I still get nostalgic when I hear Stevie B or Trinere though.

Afterschool Special of the Week

I don't know whether or not there is a correlation, but not soon after the horrible hair incident of 1987, my grades started slipping. Being the vain person I am, it could be because I was too embarassed about my hair to go to class...though I think it had a little more to do with the fact that my friends and I had taken to skipping class to either leave campus or go drink in the girl's bathroom.

One time, my friend, Jessie, and I forged a teacher's pass to go to the library and got busted. I still have the discipline referral I received from the school administrator...it's in a scrapbook. Another time, my art teacher (who was also a good friend of my dad) caught us sitting on the floor drinking liquor out of a Strawberry Shortcake thermos in the girl's bathroom. Amazingly, he didn't report us to administration OR tell my dad. I could go on and on.

My freshman year was full of these kinds of little incidents, which is why it came as no surprise when I ended up getting straight F's on my report card for a whole semester. When my dad would ask me about my report card, I'd tell him I couldn't find it and that I'd gotten straight C's. He bought it until the end of the school year, when the school mailed my report card to my house.

Believe it or not, he didn't punish me. He didn't scream. He didn't throw things. He didn't even tell me he was disappointed in me. I'll never know what gave him the inner restraint not to kill me when he opened my report card that day.

What he did was way smarter than that. He told me that if I made the honor roll during the first 9-weeks of my sophomore year (which was technically my freshman year over again since I'd failed almost all of my classes), he would buy me a phone with a built-in answering machine and give me my own phone line.

He had faith that I could bring up my grades and he was right. I kicked ass when school started back up and made the honor roll. From that point forward, I never failed another class and was able to catch up and graduate on time by going to summer school. Lord knows I still skipped school from time to time, but I never let it affect my grades again.

Afterschool Special of the Week

THIS is the story of the worst hair disaster ever in my life. You might think that the pic isn't so bad, but keep in mind that photo was taken after my hair had grown out for almost a whole year! After all of that time, it still wouldn't all fit up in a scrunchie - how sad is that?!? Even sadder is the fact that I'm wearing a scrunchie at all, but that's besides the point.

Back to the story...

When I was a freshman in high school, my best friend's sister, Carolyn, was in cosmetology school. DON'T ASK ME WHY, but for some sick and twisted reason, I decided that I would let her bring me with her to class so I could get a spiral perm (and ultimately become a "don't let this happen to you" for all of her classmates to learn from).

Carolyn didn't take into account that I'd bleached my hair blond several weeks before this fateful day, so she left the chemicals on my hair for too long. When she started to pull the curlers out, my hair came out with it. She brought over her teacher to try and help, but it was too late to fix it. What's worse is that the chemicals turned my once pretty blond hair to the color of rust. The teacher then brought over all of the students to take a look at what would end up to be my social demise in school until it all grew back almost two years later.

And my husband wonders why I spend a small fortune on my hair!

Afterschool Special of the Week

When I was in the 5th grade, I was best friends with this girl, Monica and on Friday nights, I usually spent the night at her house. On one particular Friday night, she received a phone call from her boyfriend, Brandon (see previous ASOTW). They started talking and she told him I was there. He said to tell me hi and the next thing I knew, Monica was asking him if he'd like to be boyfriend to BOTH of us. He said, "sure," I said, "sure," and the next thing I knew, I was in my first and only 3-way relationship.

Being that it was the 5th grade, this was a completely innocent thing. For my 11th birthday, my mom took the three of us rollerskating and shopping. While shopping, Monica and Brandon shoplifted all kinds of birthday presents for me, including the 45 singles of Maneater and Mickey, my two favorite songs at the time. I didn't steal anything myself, having learned from my Pac-man puffy sticker ordeal just a year earlier...so you can rest assured that I was on my best behavior. Receiving stolen goods is different than stealing them yourself, right?!?

Not soon after my birthday, Monica decided that she didn't want to go out with Brandon anymore. That meant that I had him all to myself. We went on our first date at Christmastime...his mom took us to see "A Christmas Story." We held hands in the theatre. On Christmas day, my mom took me over to Brandon's house for brunch -- I gave him a 45 of Cum on Feel the Noize and he gave me a stuffed monkey. Oh, young love!

Believe it or not, our relationship lasted for 5 whole months. He decided to break up with me on Valentine's Day, which I thought was pretty harsh. From that point on, we absolutely loathed each other. Not knowing what bad words meant, my demeaning name for him was "slut" and his for me was "fag." He threatened to beat me up on the playground after I called him up and told him that I flushed his monkey down the toilet. Actually, I gave it away to a girl in my neighborhood, though I wished I'd kept it because it was super cute. Alas, it likely contributed to my fondness for all things monkey.

Brandon and I became friends again in the 8th grade, but for many years prior, I was probably known by him as the fag who flushed his monkey down the toilet.

Afterschool Special of the Week

When I was in the 2nd grade, I had the absolute meanest, nastiest teacher in the entire world, Mrs. Myers. Seriously, this woman had no business being around children because it was obvious that she hated them...and her job as an educator. She had black rings under her eyes and though she was probably in her 50's, she looked more like she was in her late 60's. She reminded us all of an evil witch, and had the long, curly, yellow toenails to prove it, which she kept on display by wearing Winn Dixie flip-flops every day.

I remember that she singled out the only Hispanic boy in the class by making him sit in the very front of the classroom, with his desk touching the chalkboard. One day, he had to go to the bathroom really bad and Mrs. Myers wouldn't let him. He started crying and she still wouldn't let him. He ended up shitting himself, though I don't think anyone laughed at him because we all felt so bad.

She smoked cigarettes in the classroom and always had a drink on her desk. Sure, there was no label to know what was in that drink, but it couldn't be coincidental that every day after lunch, she'd force us to listen to a record with Hawaiian music on it, put our heads down and take a nap. About halfway through the record, she always passed out.

Because I hated the woman and she knew it, she sat me in one of four desks that ran alongside hers. The other kids (Laura, Robert, and Jennifer) who were in the same predicament took thorough advantage of Mrs. Myers' liquor comas. We would squat down, grab our ankles, and walk around the classroom like that, doing silly things to make the other kids laugh. We would throw things at her desk and put our heads down like we'd been that way the whole time. It was the one time in my childhood that I was truly a class clown.

One day, this kid Brandon (who ended up being my first boyfriend ever -- I'll save that story for next week) got in trouble for something, and she made him have lunch in the classroom by himself. While he was there all alone, he whipped out his little weenie and peed all around the carpet by her desk. He never got caught, and was considered a hero by the other kids.

I don't remember learning a single thing in that class. I have no recollection of her standing in front of the classroom and teaching us anything. I wonder whatever happened to that woman. I'm thinking that she either developed lung cancer, cirhosis of the liver, or some other ailment that gave her much pain and took her away from the teaching profession. Such thinking gives me hope that good can prevail over evil.

Afterschool Special of the Week

For at least a week, when I was in the third grade, I was the most popular kid in school.

I grew up in a rural neighborhood in South Florida -- everyone had acreage and all of the roads were dirt. Nowadays that area is all paved and most of the new houses are like estates, but back then, most everyone owned a ranch style home with a pretty decent sized yard.

It was about a half mile trek to my busstop every morning - sometimes my mom would take me, but she would usually just drop me off, as she did on this one morning in particular. The bus was late (as usual), and my friend, Laura, and I started getting bored. I suggested that we look for money because there was nothing else to do.

Believe it or not, within a few minutes, I turned over an old piece of newspaper and found $100 bill! It was very old and dirty, but money is money! I didn't want to part with it, but Laura ran over and told her mom. Her mom insisted that she take the money to my mom, where it would be safe.

I was mad at the time (because I wanted to show it off), but looking back, I am so glad she did. Otherwise, I'm sure some 5th grader would have tried to steal it from me.

For at least a week after the incident, I was a hero. Kids would come up to me and ask if I was the girl who found $100 bill at the busstop. Neighbors went crazy scouring the busstop for more lost money. Everyone was talking about it.

That night, my parents took me shopping for clothes at the mall (I specifically remember getting at least one snazzy Garanimals outfit, maybe two) and then took the family out to dinner at Pizza Hut (won't go into details except to say this was a true treat because I was so bad in restaurants that they normally never took us out anywhere to eat). I want to believe that I got at least one toy from the money, but honestly can't remember. I'm sure whatever was left over, my mom pocketed for herself, but that can't be proven.

A few months later, I was waiting outside an S&H Greenstamps store for my mom and decided to look for money again. I found a buck, but that was the end of my "look for money and find some" streak. Still, you won't find me complaining!

Afterschool Special of the Week

If you haven't guessed yet, I was a party girl in high school and all through college. By party girl, I don't mean the kind of girl who does drugs and sleeps with strangers...I'm talking about the kind of girl who's out every night, drinking and having fun.

When I was 20, my friend, Tara (from the tequila incident), and I frequented a club called 701. We knew all of the bouncers (they let us in for over 21), all of the bartenders (they gave us free drinks), and the DJ (who let us hang out in the booth, work the light show, and pick out what songs we wanted to hear). We knew the owner, the managers, and at least half of the people who frequented the place, so every time we went, we were practically guaranteed to have a great time.

Sunday nights were the best. They called it "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and had 2 for 1 import beers and played incredible alternative music from the 80's (think Depeche Mode, The Cure, etc). We never missed it. On the Sunday Bloody Sunday of Labor Day weekend, we hit 701 as usual. It was particularly crowded because of it being a holiday weekend. All of the local college students came out to play when there were no classes the next day.

Tara and I had a few beers and were walking around the club. We didn't notice a fight breaking out to our right, which was unfortunate for me because out of nowhere, I got knocked to the floor. When I stood up, there was blood everywhere (of course it was the one night I decided to wear a brand new and super-cute white top). Suddenly someone realized that it was coming from my head and a bunch of people rushed me outside.

It was determined that when the fight broke out, some Einstein tried to break it up by slinging a full bottle of Molson Ice (end over end) at the guy who was beating up his friend. The guy it was intended for moved his head at just the right moment and that sucker cocked me right between my temple and my right eye, on the brow bone (thank God that's where it hit though - could have been much worse).

Anyhow, someone called 911 and an ambulance came. The paramedics rushed in and took a look at the injury. Once they determined that I was coherent, they said, "You need to get to the hospital" and they left.

I kid you not.

So Tara goes outside to get my car so that she can drive me to the hospital. She comes back inside with a grim look on her face. Apparently, my car had been towed. She runs back into the club and starts asking around to get us a car. Meanwhile, I'm standing outside when I see the police questioning the supposed perpetrators (which made me feel a little better, despite the fact that I was about to pass out from blood loss). Luckily, Tara scores a car from one of the bartenders and we are able to get out of there and head to the hospital.

At the hospital, they let Tara come back with me. I was coming out of shock and was starting to feel the pain. To get me to stop crying, Tara - being the wonderful friend that she is - told me that she's buy me a nightgown from Victoria's Secret if I stopped. She was true to her word. Finally, a doctor came in and stitched me up (but not before letting Tara physically touch my skull because she thought it would be cool). I ended up with about 36 stitches.

When we left the hospital, it was about 6 in the morning. We still had to return the bartender's car and find out where my car had been impounded. The bartender's girlfriend let me borrow the money so that we could get my car back. We made it home by 7:30 or so in the morning.

Because of the incident, I suffered from debilitating cluster headaches and had to spend time in physical therapy. I ended up suing the club for a measley settlement and not long after, 701 closed down.

I still have a scar, though luckily my hair hides it well.

Afterschool Special of the Week

When I was in the fourth grade, I was obsessed with money...my meager $2/week allowance just wasn't cutting it, so I decided to find a way around the system.

I realized that I had been overlooking a huge opportunity, as my mom was handing me money every week for my lunch at school. So every night, after my parents had gone to bed, I would sneak into the kitchen and make a bag lunch to take to school for the next day. I got the best of both worlds...I could eat AND make some cash!

One night, my mom asked me if I wanted to keep her old checks to play with since she was changing banks. I knew an opportunity to make money when I saw it, so I asked her to write one out to show me how to do it. I asked her to make it out to my elementary school for a lunch ticket...just for fun.

The next day, I took that bad boy to school and bought me a lunch ticket. I was still able to pocket the cash she was giving me for my lunch money every day, plus I could eat a hot lunch (PB&J was getting old). It was a beautiful thing.

A month or two later, someone from the school called to say that my mom had bounced a check and asked her to come up to the school to rectify the situation. As soon as my mom saw the check, she knew what I had done.

She hauled my ass to school to apologize for writing a bad check. I would have been truly sorry if not for the fact that the principal and my teacher couldn't keep a straight face. They thought it was the funniest and cleverest thing a little kid had ever done in their charge.

The moral of the story: Never let your kids play with your old checks!