Let me tell you a story...

Once upon a time, not so long ago, there lived a young boy named John. He was the youngest of four boys. Each of his brothers married quite young and so when John's father died when he was only 9 years old, he was left alone to care for his mother. He was a good son. John hardly ever got into trouble, he completed his schoolwork on time, and would spend his free time playing handball in the park with his friends. At home he learned how to clean and cook and even developed a love for cooking hearty homemade meals.

Not so far away, in the same town in fact, lived a young girl. The eldest of 4 children, she was adored by her family and friends. Margie was easily the most popular girl around. With auburn hair, green eyes, and a smile that would melt your heart, it was easy to understand why all the boys were enamoured by her.

John was quite the opposite of her. While Margie was a social butterfly, John was more of a wallflower. Although they had some mutual friends, for the most part they ran with different crowds. John would admire Margie from afar, hoping to one day catch her eye.

When she was 15-years old, Margie began dating John's friend Jackie. Jackie was quite the lady's man. At only 14 years old, John was more like 17-year old Jackie's personal assistant and messenger than friend. John never minded this role. In fact, he looked up to Jackie and he knew that Jackie respected him. Plus, John enjoyed spending more time around Margie since she and Jackie had started dating.

The hardest part of John's "job" became a blessing in disguise. When Jackie would decide at the last minute to call off a date with Margie for a game of pool with his buddies, John had to be the bearer of bad news. Margie would vent her frustrations to him about Jackie and she soon realized how comfortable she felt talking to John... about anything. He was a great listener and soon they became good friends. When Margie's senior prom came around, she didnt' mind taking John as her date despite the fact that he was exactly one year and one day younger than her.

Over the next year, they were inseparable. At first when their friends would ask them if they were dating they'd say, "Kind of. But we're more like best friends." As the year came to an end, their dating status changed from "kind of" to "definitely." They could hardly keep their hands off each other.

But as soon as they had realized their love for each other, John got the call. His date of birth had been selected by the US Army in the draft and within the week he would be leaving to train in South Carolina before going overseas to fight in Vietnam. Margie was hopeful that John wouldn't have to go, that the war would end and he would return home quickly. But in 1968, this was not the case and after 3 months of training he was sent overseas on a 2 year tour. While away, he promised to write to Margie everyday. Margie gave up her all-time favorite meal (grilled cheese) and swore to never eat it again until he returned home safely.

John wrote to her everyday as promised. Only once in over one year did they ever have the opportunity to speak. He called her from Japan when he was on R&R leave from this tour. He told her about how much he loved and missed her and about the beautiful dishes he purchased for their home once they were married.



The 2 years seemed like forever. Margie prayed every night for his safety and occasionally cried herself to sleep at night when she wouldn't get his letters for a few days. News of more and more soldiers dying terrified her and postal service from the frontlines was highly inconsistent. Sometimes she would go weeks without hearing from him and then get 12 letters in one day.

Finally the letter came that she had been waiting for. John was coming back to the states. He needed to spend his last 2 months in Kentucky but promised to drive up to see her the first chance he got.

And he did.

He came home for good in April of that year. They were married two months later.


They spent the next 10 years of their lives living together as they had dreamed. They traveled the world and experienced life together. Their patience had rewarded them with an undying love for each other. After 10 years of marriage, they adopted 2 children and bestowed their love for each other onto them.

I can still remember times as a young child when I would see my father holding my mother in his arms and kissing her gently. These memories and the story of their love will stay with me forever. Because of this, I am a hopeless romantic who fully believes that I can have their kind of love one day. I just have to be patient.

Maybe I Need a New Mattress

I remember very vividly sitting in my Physiological Psych class and being in the middle of a lecture on sleep disorders, when I realized that I suffer from sporadic bouts of sleep apnea.

"I think I have that." I announced to the class, completely interrupting the professor's monotonous drone. She hadn't looked up from reading her notes for at least 15 minutes. She was always so boring - well maybe that's not accurate. SHE wasn't boring, her lectures were. SHE was quite not boring. The prototypical weirdo psychologist. Mid to late 40's with poorly dyed brown hair. She always looked unkempt and I often wondered if she was one of the rare colorblind women of the world because of her mismatched outfits.

If there's one thing I'll never forget about her it would have to be her mouth. After sitting through 6 classes of her lectures and 3 years of mandatory advisement time, I got to know her face pretty well. Her glasses were ALWAYS dirty and I often wondered if she sought stronger prescriptions when in fact all she needed to do was clean the crud off her fucking glasses.

Back to her mouth. For whatever reason she seemed to only own one color lipstick and it happened to be a fluorescent magenta. She had the thinnest lips I've ever seen and seemed to be self conscious of this fact. So much so that she'd where the lipstick around her lips as well as on them but because her face was not in the least bit symmetrical her lips always looked like a bloody mess... literally. Her teeth were also pretty bad. A brownish yellow crooked mess from too many cups of black coffee, which you'd often find stuck to her desk in her office.

"I think I have sleep apnea." I said again.
"Oh... Oh really?" she asked sounding intrigued.

She had just finished describing that sleep apnea was a disorder of one's breathing where the person would stop breathing and gasp for air and then either wake themselves up or continue to sleep normally. She was probably most intrigued by my admission because I didn't exactly fit her description of typical sleep apnea sufferers. Obviously I'm not an over 40, overweight male and from what I have been told, I don't really snore.

"What makes you think that?" she asked sounding a bit concerned.
"Well, ever since high school, every so often, maybe once or twice a month, I'll wake up gasping for air as though someone or something was choking me but I tend to think I just forget to breathe sometimes."
"Wow. Well... uh... maybe... uh..." and then the bell rang and cut into her awkward loss for words.

As I left the classroom I smiled to myself knowing I had left out a vital piece of evidence in my sleep apnea mystery.
This air-gasping phenomena all began in my sophomore year of high school when my crazy friends and I were deep into our drug addictions. I wasn't really into the hardcore stuff but I thoroughly enjoyed smoking pot, eating and falling asleep... especially since I've always been plagued by insomnia.

Sometimes I'd get so high that lying in my bed at night I'd begin to get paranoid because all I could hear and feel was my heart beating. Thump Thump-Thump Thump-Thump Thump. Louder and louder and faster and faster. I'd become really paranoid that my heart would stop beating and I'd be the first person to die of a self-induced heart attack while high as a kite. Then to calm myself down I'd focus on taking deep breaths. Inhale slowly through the nose and exhale deeply through the mouth... oooooo.... ahhhhh! And soon enough I'd begin to feel a soothing calm spreading over my body. My skin would become prickly with goosebumps. And just as I was beginning my journey into the land of dreams... I'd realize that I'd stopped breathing.

My eyes would suddenly pop open and I'd spring up from a dead sleep gasping for air. I thought that this would stop after I quit drugs but it only slowed in frequency and not in severity. I'm pretty used to it by now. So much so that sometimes I don't even wake up when I sit up gasping. I'll be told by any of the unfortunate individuals who've happened to have the misfortune of sleeping in the same room as me - or even worse the same bed. I'll often fall back to sleep while the other person is left asking, "Hey! Are you alright??"

I definitely have some odd sleeping habits. I always have. Insomnia and sleep apnea aside, I've been told that as a kid I'd wake up my family because I'd be laughing in my sleep. I wasn't really ever a sleep-walker... which I find really fascinating... but I have woken up in my bed in some really odd positions. Like this one time when I was a kid, I woke up in a pre-tumblesault position with my ass sticking straight up in the air and my head bent over near my knees and my hands flush against the bed. Had I proceeded with the tumblesault I would have smacked my lower back into the wall. That would have sucked. There were a few other times when I woke up curled into the fetal position onthe floor next to my bed and once in my bathroom but that was only because I had gotten really drunk.

My ex-fiancee used to tell me that I sometimes would talk nonsense in my sleep and I never remembered doing it even though I'd love to see it recorded sometime. There's also a picture of me sleeping with my eyes open. It's pretty freakin' creepy. Gives me the heebee geebeeies....

Well well... look at the time... I'd say it's about time for a nap. Good night! And wish me luck :)

The Tomboy Reformation

I can't remember when I got my first haircut by a professional but it couldn't have been before the 3rd grade. My mom always cut my hair into a bob with bangs and because she wasn't professionally trained it wouldn't always look the way she had envisioned it originally. So from a very young age I was quite used to being mistaken for a boy. It was nothing I appreciated despite my tomboyish affection for playing with dirt and earthworms.

"Shouldn't you be in the little boy's room?" I'd be asked. Or, "My how handsome you are. What's your name young man?" The older women with cotton candy hair and terrible eyesight were always the worst.

As you might imagine, I had a strong desire for long hair. But gender identity was problematic for me for reasons other than hair length. The only person who treated me in a way I'd consider "girlie" was my mom. And although I hated being mistaken for a boy, I never wanted to be identified as a girlie girl. Girlie girls couldn't play sports or manhunt or enjoy wrestling (on TV and in real life with my brother). They never wanted to play with me and I certainly never wanted to play with them. I was the girl that hung out with the boys. And the harder my mom wanted me to embody her little princess vision, the more I rebelled against her. Instead I'd wear dirty jeans, pick my scabs and try to burp louder than my dad.

It really wasn't until I was in junior high school that I finally met girls like me. Girls who knew they were girls, who liked cute boys and who wanted to beat up the girlie girls. But as we entered puberty we realized that the only way to get the cute boys was to look like girlie girls. So we did what we thought girlie girls would do. We'd pierce our ears at this run down jeweler/thriftshop on 86th Street. It was free if you bought a pair of their $2 earrings. Then we'd run across the street and buy jeans that rode low on our hips before hip huggers were "in" again and pair them with a shirt that would expose our mid-drifts. Our hair was all one length back in those days. We could wear pigtails, french braids or leave it long and whispy and romantic. We'd also wear mood rings, toe rings, bangle bracelets and chokers.

But we'd never leave our tomboyish ways far behind. We got in fights, burped like pigs, could chug beers, french inhale and cursed like sailors. For a few crazy 12 and 13 year old brats from Brooklyn we felt ready to take on the world of teenage boys... and man did we have fun!!!

I'll never forget how excited we'd get when we'd find a porno left in the VCR by my best friend's older brother. A real live penis! Balls and all! How weird! How intriguing! How fun! Did every guy make those noises and faces? And why on earth would a girl that pretty agree to have sex with a guy that ugly? And on FILM for that matter!! Was it THAT great?!?! Imagine our curiosity. Regardless of how much fun we could have had with an anatomically correct Ken doll, we were all sure of one thing: There was NO way in hell that something THAT big was going somewhere THAT small anytime soon. And thank god because lord knows one of us would have gotten pregnant and might be the 25 year old mother of a 12 year old.


Me getting by with a little help from my friends.

Not all girls like pink.

On Saturday mornings we'd be woken up by the fatty smell and the crackling sound of frying bacon. It was wonderful. The aroma would flood your nostrils and you wouldn't even need to open your eyes to realize you'd stopped dreaming.

Usually the scent was followed by "the call."

My mom or dad would stand at the bottom of the stairs and shout up, "Bri? Brian??? Kath? Kathleen???"

And even though I probably heard it the first time our names were called, I wouldn't move until the third time just to be a brat. The third call always sounded a bit irritated and if it was my dad calling us, I could hear his patience running thin. But if it was my mom we could have laid there all morning listening to her call our names. She'd eventually get worried that there was something wrong with us and when I could hear her footsteps climbing the stairs, I'd shout back, "YEAH?" so she'd know I was still alive. "Breakfast." she'd reply. Like I couldn't smell the bacon.

In those days my bed was more like a cot. It was so low to the floor that it really didn't hurt whenever I'd fall out of bed, which was pretty often. Just to wake up I'd roll off the edge of my bed, usually landing on my hands and knees and then rising butt first. It might sound a bit ridiculous but to a bratty little kid like me it was the perfect start to a day of recklessness.

After having my fill of pancakes dripping with maple syrup, I'd plop down on the couch and vegitate in front of the TV watching cartoons with my brother. Sometimes there were activities to run off to and sometimes there weren't any plans. Those were the best days. My brother and I would play freeze tag and man hunt with our friends on the block until dinner was ready. Sometimes we'd take the couch apart and turn it into a tent that probably looked more like a military bunker.

The best was when we'd get a new refrigerator or some other large appliance and I'd set up shop in the box. It was my own little home away from home in my living room. My parents even got this cardboard playhouse for me from Kellog's cereal company. We set it up in the backyard and had it not been for the rain that night I swear I could still be living in that thing. I loved the thought of having a place of my own. My room didn't count because in a turn of the century frame house with railroad rooms, there really wasn't much privacy. Not to mention, I had no control over what was in my room or even what color it was.

My room was pink for as long as I can remember. It was dreadful. When I started bringing my friends over I did what I could to cover up the girlie girl pinkness. I taped up posters and pictures everywhere of anything I found remotely intriguing. Everything from Brad Pitt to Absolut Vodka ads. It was wall to wall pre-teen madness. My dad finally decided to paint my room a color other than pink the summer going into my senior year of high school. But he was somewhat forced into making this choice.

During my junior year in high school, I let a group of about 6 of my friends draw all over my room with chalk pastels from my AP Art Class. Two of the guys were really good graffiti artists and the rest of us were just really bad artists so you can only try to imagine what it looked like. I seriously doubt anyone who never saw it would ever fully appreciate the gravity of the situation. Oblivious to the concern of my parents, I slept contently surrounded by purple and green nicknames, orange stars and suns, big black curse words and a huge green pot plant all with a muted carnation pink backdrop.

About a week later, after 3 coats of primer, my dad agreed to paint my room a glorious sage green. It stayed that color until 2 years later when we had the house renovated. Recently, I noticed that the paint is peeling in the corner of my old room. I can still see a layer of green and beneath that a layer of pink.


This picture of my old room doesn't even show the half of it. [Click to enlarge]

Chicken Soup for My Soul

So a while ago my girl Beth began an informal writing group. I decided to go and check it out figuring it might be a good way to meet new people and vent. Boy was I ever right. It fit perfectly into my life because I had just started therapy and writing has always been a form of catharsis for me.

Not that I was ever good at writing but I thoroughly enjoy it anyway. I've always kept journals but not the "Dear Diary" kind. They started out as drawing books and then morphed into quote books and then I started venting into them whenever I felt sorry for myself as a teen... which was often.

And so because of Beth (thanks hun!) I started really writing again. But this time I started writing about the memories of my crazy childhood and adolescent years. Let me know what you think. I think the stories are pretty amusing.

Ciao!