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© 2004-2008 Linda Escaip
"I may be grumpy, but I like you."
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The Suns and Moons of the Grumpiest Girl in the Room.
Welcome to my journal, lamb-lips.
Scattered Pictures 28-January-2006
I remembered this odd little memory the other day. You know those plastic yellow lemon juice containers that are in the shape of a lemon? They've been around a while, and there are also green ones containing lime juice. When I was a kid, my brother scored the empty container, filled it with water, carried it around taking grandiose swigs from it, making sure to do this right in front of me so I would want one of those snazzy lemon-shaped canteens too. And it was a successful endeavor, because I wanted one more than anything.
I pleaded with my mom to buy another lemon juice container so I could live out my new fantasy of carrying my very own glorious lemon canteen, but my dream never saw its fruition. Apparently we just absolutely could not purchase another one of those beauties. Boys get everything. As an adult I have bought a few of them over the years, and let me tell you, when they're empty, I have a dickens of a time getting myself to toss them into the recycle bin. Parting is such sour sorrow.
Then there were the bread balls. I walked into the kitchen and witnessed my brother tossing dough-coloured balls into the air and catching them in his mouth, much like a seal catching fish. I wanted to do that too and inquired about where I might find some of those presumably delicious treats. After several long minutes packed solid with tall tales and my sincere attempts to refute them, he finally let me in on the secret: those tantalizing balls worthy of all that effort were kneaded wads of Wonder Bread. He presented one in the palm of his hand so that I could closely inspect it. You know, its colour was darker than it really needed to be. I'd seen dough before; this clearly had dirt mixed into it. Boys don't wash their hands before they knead Wonder Bread balls. (I am frightened to imagine what the hell sort of search engine strings are going to bring people to this entry.) But despite the inclusion of the dirt and the fact that the moist texture of the bread after a good kneading looked fairly nauseating to me, it felt important to my well-being that I try one. I was certain if I did not partake, a hefty amount of missing out would occur. And I was not the sort of girl who enjoyed missing out.
I won't go into detail about my experience of that despicable thing, due to the fact that my gag reflex is about to kick in.
Another time, I happened upon my brother as he chewed contentedly on something that didn't really look like gum. After proper interrogation, he told me that what he had in his mouth was the white plastic liner inside a soda container's lid. You know, the thing that's glued to the inside of the cap. He had dug it out with a pocket knife and turned it into some sort of flavourless chewing apparatus. Why do boys do these things? I begged him to get one for me, which he promptly refused to do. I would like to state for the record that to this day, whenever I see the plastic lining inside a cap, I have this momentary urge to dig it out and chew on it.
I pretended I was a boy much of the time when I was a kid. When a bunch of us neighbourhood kids would play, I would be a guy named Steve. There was such freedom in being a guy, you know? The few times that I was cast as the mom in one of our neighborhood play sessions, I was bored out of my frigging mind. My friend Matt was always a dinosaur, and that turns out to be a bit frustrating when you're playing the mom, because you're trying to create a peaceful environment and keep the house clean, while the family dinosaur is eating the house plants and knocking shit over with his tail. I loved the adventure that being a guy seemed to offer. The guy didn't have to stay home and take care of the kids and the long-extinct pet; the guy left the house and went on adventures.
I recall fondly the times my sister and I and our pal Jason would play in his enormous backyard. When I say enormous I mean it was a frigging parking lot—literally. His mom had a two-story dance studio back there with enough parking for a few dozen chorus lines. And Jason had this great tree house off to the side, which was usually our hideout when we were bad guys. We repeatedly pretended we were a bunch of biker dudes who were evading the police whilst kidnapping beautiful models and keeping them in a warehouse for some bloody reason. I have no idea, all I know is it was fun, we didn't harm the ladies, and my name was Steve. We rode our Big Wheels around the lot, around the dance studio, through the garage and back out again about a million times. Jason had a Big Wheel and a Green Machine, and he was (and I'm certain still is) a generous dude, so we all got to ride the Green Booger, which is what I called it.
During my childhood, I played the part of various soldiers, thugs, cowboys, pirates, etc. There was nothing more liberating than being a guy for an afternoon. And when we would be setting up the scenario for our day of play and quickly introducing who we were going to be, I eventually didn't have to tell anyone what my name would be that day, because everyone knew I was inevitably Steve.
I believe that had everything to do with Lee Majors' character Steve Austin from The Six Million Dollar Man. He was some kind of cool.
I always thought GI Joe was far more fun than Barbie. My brother's GI Joe had that wonderful fuzzy head and beard you could actually feel. I didn't have my very own Joe, and I suspect the reason had everything to do with the fact that I wasn't a boy. Boys like GI Joe and girls like Barbie. Boys wear blue and girls wear pink. But my favourite colour was blue and I preferred GI Joe, so to hell with those rules. I watched with envy as my brother sent Joe on various dangerous missions with his backpack and parachute and GI Joe emblem necklace. And every now and then, like when my brother had to go to inside to use the bathroom, I would get to hold that glorious man-doll for a few minutes, wipe a bit of the dirt from his clothes, and wish he was mine. If he had been, I would have renamed him Steve.
Barbie is rather boring in my opinion. Her feet pissed me off, the way they were poised and ready for high-heel shoes at all times. If she went barefoot, she had to walk around on her tippies as though she was trying to get out of the kitchen safely without stepping on broken glass. Barbie was a bit too precious for me, what with her pointy boobs and her fabulous shimmering hair, dainty hands, and pug nose. Sometimes I just about wanted to slap that smile right off her face. You know why she's smiling all the time, don't you? No, not because she's having awesome sex with Ken. Ken is Barbie's wonderful friend who doesn't swing in that direction. I know you've heard the rumours, and they're true. Ken is very open about his sexuality and has nothing to hide. And why the hell should he? Heterosexual dolls don't have a monopoly on love. Anyway, Barbie is smiling all the time because she is the ultimate princess. She doesn't have to lift a finger to do a single thing; you dress her, bathe her, comb her hair, take her on adventures, take her shopping, make her have sex with her gay friend Ken, etc.
Oh, it's true. I used to do that last one, but it was for a good cause, which was to disturb my sister's happy playtime composure. See, my sister thought pretty highly of Barbie. I remember her begging our folks for the Barbie shopping mall, which she got for her birthday. She also had the Barbie apartment, so she was pretty serious about ol' Barb. We each had our own Barbie camper, thankfully, because my sister's Barbie was a horrible driver. Plus she had gas and a tendency to sing too loudly to songs on the radio that my Barbie really liked and preferred to hear untainted by the off-key voice of another Barbie. (Please note that I am not talking about my sister's singing voice, which is lovely. The same, however, could not be said for her Barbie's voice, which was positively awful.)
While my sister was busily helping her Barbie and Ken enjoy a nice dip in the lake by their camper or some similar scenario, I would arrange my Barbie and Ken in these X-rated positions inside their camper. And then I would say something to get my sister's attention. When she turned to look, I would open the camper's side door to display my fine, perverted handiwork. She'd pepper the atmosphere with ew! and gross! and plenty of other words to express her disapproval. But the thing is, she always looked. What a pervert.
Speaking of perverts, the first time I saw a dirty magazine was up in Jason's tree house with Jason and my sister. I had seen Playboy magazine's in the bathroom downstairs from Jason's mom's dance studio, but didn't consider them dirty magazines. I thought the nude women were stunning and I admired their beauty. This was a publication titled Call Girl, and in this issue some short-haired lady was getting ready for her "date" with this guy who had Andy Gibb hair and who wore freakishly tight white pants. This was not Playboy, let me tell you. We looked through the pictures together, our mouths frozen and wordless as our brains raced. My sister and I looked at each other a few times, our eyes shouting, "Help! I don't ever want to grow up!" After we had stared at the photos longer than necessary, Jason announced, "They say it's healthy to try that stuff out when you're really young." Nice try, dude. And wherever you are, soldier boy, thank you for every bit of fun we had together, which would be impossible to count or measure.
Quote From My World
"Why did you just look at my mouth?"
"Because it's there. Am I not allowed to look at your mouth?"
"Not when you're mad at me."
Well, I'm off to rearrange my tulips. Thanks for reading.
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