At the beginning of summer, I took the kids to a megachurch in the neighborhood, just for fun. I was curious about these places that treat church like a big rock concert. The pastor started his sermon with a question. He asked, “Does anyone feel like they’re becoming more introverted with age?”
My twelve-year-old daughter raised her hand. It was the only connection we had with the service. Even the barbecue afterward was lackluster, in desperate need of Lawry's seasoning salt.
Kiki might feel like an introvert at school, but she’s very much an extrovert around her family. She walks around singing songs she makes up. She sang me a song, and I didn’t catch on she was making fun of me till she hit the chorus. Titled “Mom’s not Miss America” the song started with She has pimples on her chin, coffee stained teeth, and wears chunky glasses then moved into Mom’s not Miss America, and one complimentary line about me being nice. It was as offensive as that “Happy for the rest of our life/Make an ugly woman your wife” song.
I generally think all her songs are funny. The other day, she was singing, “Satan is your boyfriend.” And I thought, how clever, she’s just like Taylor Swift, not worried about saying negative things and calling someone out for being rude, and here she’s likened an asshole to having satan as their boyfriend. I told her as much, and she said, “It’s actually Satan is my boyfriend.”
I told her I didn’t like the song anymore, and she laughed and walked away.
I get a lot of spiritual fulfillment from yoga. The lady whose class I attend, Dina, is a certifiable whack-a-doo, like when she shouts to the class, “You’re so sensual,” as we move our pelvis up and down into bridge pose, but she’s incredibly good at her job, which ultimately is to make you feel good about yourself.
She reminded us about Scream Therapy, which I hadn’t practiced since I was in my last year of college, and my little sister and I were spending a weekend together and felt the weight of a lot of stress so we’d count down from three and scream at the top of our lungs while we were driving around in the car.
I tried it with the kids. Kiki seemed to like it, but Geoffrey refused to do it, and he looked at me like I was a certifiable whack-a-doo. Geoffrey is not as much of a hippie as the rest of us.
I was at the library and saw the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull, so I checked it out, thinking, “Great, now I can see what all the rage was about.”
As I closed the cover after reading the final page of the book, I gave the look that Geoffrey gave me after scream therapy, and thought, “No wonder hippies get trapped by cults so easily.”
Kiki, the introvert at school and extrovert at home, asked, “When will you tell me what sex is?”
I said, “I’m still figuring out what to say, but I’ll do it soon.”
When I was in sixth grade I watched a cartoon about sex and reproduction. I didn’t watch it at school, I watched it at home because, believe it or not, my mom was a sex-ed teacher. She must have just pushed her lesson plan into our household because we didn’t get a sit-down discussion on the birds and the bees, we got a VHS.
My school sex education started in seventh grade. My teacher started the lesson by propping open the door and making us scream, “Penis, Penis, Penis. Vagina, Vagina, Vagina.”
All I remember beyond that was a woman with AIDs came to talk to the class. The only reason I remember that is because my mom talked to the principal afterward. I came home and asked my mom what the lady meant when she said her boyfriend and her were “eating leftovers” when they had sex because they use saran wrap. This probably made my teacher hate me, even though I didn’t do it to get her in trouble, I only did it because I felt like I was the only person not in on the big joke. Anyway, my mom’s not going to let someone’s terminal illness (at the time) be an excuse for having inappropriate jokes when headlining the seventh-grade classroom sex-ed show.
The next phase of sex education came freshman year of high school. This one was much more effective, for me at least, because I had a better idea of the mechanics of it all. The teacher followed up her definition of sex with a slide show of herpes-infected vaginas and penises. My mom had no complaints.
Our last weekend of summer we went to Tahoe. I had been craving a cinnamon roll since May and finally decided I was going to make this moment happen. On the drive to the bakery, I called my mom. She yelled at me, “I have a roll of cinnamon rolls in the fridge. They expired last month, and someone needs to eat them.”
I said, “No Mom. I’m craving a delicious bakery cinnamon roll, not your garbage.”
She made me feel like an elitist snob, and then said, “Becky’s kids have no problem eating my expired food.”
When Kiki and I lined up at the bakery, there was one cinnamon roll left in the display case, and I made a major strategic error by loudly saying, “I’ve got to get that cinnamon roll. It looks amazing,” and then realized there were four customers lined up ahead of us. As each customer ordered, I’d hope with all my might that they wouldn’t order that last cinnamon roll, my cinnamon roll.
The man in front of me ordered it. He knew more than any of the others how much I wanted it. I didn’t get mad, I had already waited three months for a cinnamon roll, what’s one more day, week, or month going to do? As we were leaving, and I saw him sitting at his table with the cinnamon roll still in its container with no indication he was going to scarf it down, I knew in my heart, that he didn’t even really want the cinnamon roll.
Geoffrey and I went on a hike that weekend. A second attempt at this mountain. Last year’s attempt was disastrous; sworn to secrecy about the details, I will just say it involved my not bringing toilet paper on what would have been a seven-hour hike. This time I brought the toilet paper, but we didn’t need it.
We made it to the top of the mountain. Our spiritual moment didn’t happen on the summit because the wind was blowing 100 miles per hour, and Geoffrey worried he would blow right off the steep mountaintop. It didn’t happen when we peed behind a giant rock off the hiking path, and I looked up and saw a group of people tromping up. The first rule of peeing in public is, “If you can see them, then they can see you.” I wasn’t about to pull up my pants midstream, but I had to believe, in my heart, these people would look away once it dawned on them I was not flashing my Vagina, Vagina, Vagina for shits and giggles, but because I was taking care of business.
The spiritual moment happened on the last hour of the hike. We were so proud to have completed this goal we set two years earlier and had a fun chat as the terrain became much less treacherous. I said to him, “Your sister’s birthday’s coming up, and I’m ordering her this lotion she wants, so you can give it to her as a gift.”
He said, in total earnestness, “Oh, I already know what I’m getting her… I’m buying her some pampers.”
I laughed so hard, the earth shook, and then the sky opened up, and God floated down on a cloud, and kissed us on the head.
Not really, but it kind of felt like that. I’m expecting a similar experience when I finally get to eat a cinnamon roll.
