A Number 4, Hold the Patriotism

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This month 5 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

Your “Secret Subject” is:

Are you a fireworks person? How do you celebrate the 4th of July?

It was submitted by: https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

___


No.

I feel like I could probably leave it there, but that wouldn't really make for an interesting read, so let me overshare some more of my thoughts and life. Why the fuck not?

I've never liked fireworks even as a kid. Cried over them every time. I startle easily, though--loud noises, someone just randomly coming around the corner or speaking to me when I'm in my own world, the most tame scene in a not even very scary movie. It doesn't take much.

Let me introduce you to my friend, Childhood Trauma. C.T. has been faithfully by my side for as long as I can't actually remember at all because, you guessed it, Childhood Trauma. She's pretty cunning but ever-present in my life. Honestly, she really shaped who I am as a person even this many years later. I don't know who I'd be without her. And the great part is no matter how hard I work at pushing her away, she pops back up at the weirdest times, and it's like she never left at all! And she definitely likes to give me some jump scares.

Seriously, fuck fireworks. I get little snatches of memories here and there about being a kid. There are things I know without remembering specific events, but there are many little blurs of things I can recall, and there are some terrible images of my parents having knockdown physical fights over fireworks especially on the 4th buried in my brain. July 4th is my mom's birthday, you see, and she didn't want my dad using the 4th as a reason to get drunk and shoot off fireworks (and his mouth) and pretend it was for her birthday. We couldn't get very many fireworks in a Georgia legally back then, and I remember crossing state lines to this little hole in the wall shop in Alabama with the tension thick enough it slapped against your body like a weighted blanket so heavy you couldn't kick it off.

So we'd drive back, the car either scarily quiet or loud with the fury of two people who didn't have a clue how to love or understand one another. By the time my dad shot the literal fireworks, the metaphorical ones had ruined the day. And unfortunately my feelings about fireworks are forever associated with those metaphorical ones my childhood was so often witness to. There's nothint but panic and fear and a desire to hide under the covers and pretend it's all okay.

As you can imagine none of this really lays a great foundation for celebrating the 4th, fireworks or not.

I didn't grow up in a very patriotic family. We were poor working folk. Money was a hard topic. We were rural and low class and in this part of America in the 80s and early 90s, that meant something different than it does now. It was outlaw country then, for us at least, real rednecks like the warring for unions kind. And outlaws like the we don't fuck with cops kind. American was just a small part of our identity, the smallest. Everything else was just so much more pressing, right? So this "holiday" that my parents would still have to work on was always more about my dad getting drunk on my mom's birthday than America. America took a backseat to my mom wanting a day for herself in a life slowly killing her and my dad wanting to let loose because being a fucking adult sucks bricks especially when you're killing your body for barely enough money to keep everybody dressed and fed. And as shitty as all that sounds, I'm very glad that on top of all the trauma my childhood gave me, I didn't also get brainwashed into blind patriotism or religion. I feel like it left me open, if I somehow worked through the trauma at least, to bigger, different ideas, to be curious, to ask questions, and to demand better.

What exactly are we celebrating anyway? America is rarely any of the things we were taught in school. And the older I get and more I learn, the more I realize how little there is to celebrate. We won a war for our sovereignty and immediately started doing the same exact things to other people that we started a war for in the first place. I think we have a lot of work to do before it's time to celebrate, but I certainly don't shun others for wanting to use time off or whatever excuse to have a good time with some good food, friends, and family...if you leave the fireworks out of it at least.

And even if somehow I could get past all that, my friend who was murdered back in 2002 had a birthday on July 3rd, and even this many years later, as I always say when I write about him, he stays on my mind. Loss and grief are weird things whether it's the loss of a friend in a tragic, unexpected, and senseless way or the loss of childhood to trauma and pain. They're always there. They're always the same size...you just learn to grow and shape yourself around them.

Halloween is the better holiday anyway.

__


Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:


Baking In A Tornado https://www.BakingInATornado.com

Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

What TF Sarah https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com/

To The Boy

We were sitting, you on your DS and me reading while snacking on cauliflower with cucumber dill dip, when you asked if you could try a bite. I, knowing your extremely picky palette, was not exactly hopeful that you would enjoy but acquiesced anyway partially out of morbid curiosity imagining what sort of gagging noise and horrid face you might make this time after you had barely touched your tongue to it. To my surprise, you didn’t squint your face up and making your usual round of retching noises. Instead, it was a face of mild interest followed by only half a grimace, but in my steadfast watchfulness I noticed the smile threatening to spill forth before you opened your mouth.

“Not bad,” you said. “It has a bit of an aftertaste, but I can DILL with it.”

You didn’t burst out laughing, but looked at me knowingly, cunningly even. The joke laid out so well, so punny, that I couldn’t stop my giggles giving that look on your face a little more strength and a whole lot more satisfaction.

I was struck in that moment how it seems that overnight you’ve become something all your own. In the blink of an eye almost, you grew from the sandy blond baby who laughed uncontrollably at the silliest things to making me laugh with your own quick wit, puns, and smartassery.

You’ve evolved from loving any sort of music I play to finding your own styles and loves, to discovering things that speak to your own core.

We watch movies or read books together and notice different things gathering different meanings from what we see or read and enjoying the chance to talk about it and enlighten each other.

You have your own taste in clothes no longer content to let me pick it all out and want your hair your way worn the way you want.

I look at you, a perfect mixture of me and your father…you with his eyebrows and my freckles, his eyes and my nose, his lips and my smirk and it's hard not to think of you as my baby. It seems nearly impossible that you, almost 10, have grown from the tiny little wiggler that thought it quite hilarious to play in the toilet or eat cat food or shove a green bean up your nose to the almost-tall-as-me ball of limitless energy you are now.

I see my influence, assuredly, whenever we talk, when you make me laugh, when you give me that look of exasperation because I. just. Don’t. get. It. I can’t look at you without seeing a little bit of me, can’t talk to you without knowing that I’ve been someone you love and look up to, and that certainly makes me proud, full to bursting. But, I suppose the thing that makes me proudest is that same independence that shocked me as a sat giggling at your little pun. I love that you are becoming your own self not content to mirror me, to share in everything I love because I love it. I am so proud to watch you explore and to want to exert your own identity on the world, to seek out what makes you happy unafraid that I won’t like what you do. You only care if *you* like it and that is an incredible feat at just shy of 10 years.

I want so desperately for you to be your own man, and I see you are headed in just that direction. It thrills me to no end to see these changes in you, changes you are unafraid to make because you know through and through that I will love you always and forever no matter what you like or who you are. I have told you that time and again, but it means so much to see that you have taken that to heart and are content knowing that even if you do listen to dubstep, I love you no less even while I squint my face and make retching noises.

She's Truly Outrageous

A long time ago, in a land far, far away called the 80s....

I had a Jem doll.

   

Jem was one of those shows created around a line of toys (Hasbro) like GI Joe, The Transformers, and My Little Pony. The basic plot of the show involved Jerrica Benton, the main character, having a "secret" identity as a rockstar. By day, she owned a music company and a foster home for 13 orphaned girls. By different time of day, she was Jem of Jem and the Holograms, a rocker girl whose badassness could hardly be rivaled. The shows the band played were used to fund Jerrica's altruistic activities, and she always foiled the attempts of bad girl rival bands like the Misfits out of stealing her thunder. Bad girls, seemingly, never win even in the world of animated bubblegum pop rock...

Jerrica transformed from herself to Jem by aid of a hologram machine and a pair of nifty earrings which would envelope her in Jem's image. And, of course, no girl show is complete without some romance. Why is it that girls are seen as only being interested in boys and love with their toys and shows? I guess that's a longer question for another day. Anyway, in this case, the love interest was actually unwittingly digging on both personalities. What do you do when you find out your boyfriend is cheating on you with yourself?

I digress.

I also used to have this Barbie style family of dolls called the Heart family.

This was cute and gaggingly wholesome fun with a Mommy, Daddy, baby girl, and baby boy. Aw! Or not really aw. Not at my house anyway. In my imagination and in my 3 story dollhouse, Mr. Heart used to have affairs on Mrs. Heart with Jem.

That is correct. Before the age of ten, I made Jem into quite a "homewrecker." That jerk. Or, I guess I'm the jerk. Either way.

Don't let this fool you into thinking something negative about my perceptions of relationships at the time, though, or that, perhaps, my parents' relationship had my views skewed. My parents did get divorced by the time I was 12, but it had nothing to do with infidelity. I'm fairly certain neither of them were cheaters, and in fact, the extent of their problems centered around my father's abuse and drug use. I do have my own ideas about love and relationships now that are not exactly traditional, but at that young age, I don't think it crossed my mind too much. Besides all that, the affairs Mr. Heart had with Jem had nothing to do with the drama of a secret relationship and having forbidden fruit. They snuck around, sure. But, when they did, they mostly hung out on the plastic furniture after she brought over plastic fruit in full rocker costume. She never once saw him in her Jerrica attire. And here's why: in my mind, Mr. Heart simply thought Jem was the coolest girl he'd ever seen.

Jem was something completely different from his American dream family. She loved music and dancing. They listened to Cyndi Lauper and moved around the house singing along. Those style dolls really can't dance well, so moving robotically is as good as it gets. She made up songs just for him and dressed differently than his sweetheart wife. She also did her own thing and wasn't afraid to be an upwardly mobile woman of the 80s. Okay, so my mind at the time couldn't conceive the term "upwardly mobile woman of the 80s," but I knew she supported herself and didn't need a damn dime of his while his wife wouldn't have gotten a job if her life depended on it (and she'd end up living on alimony checks for the rest of her life). Perhaps this is where my parents' relationship dynamic was the influence. To me, independence was awesome. Who wouldn't want the cool girl with her own job who could sing her ass off, had flashy earrings, and dyed her hair pink? Mr. Heart just couldn't resist.

And, that's why the affair began. I thought Jem was bad-fucking-ass, so how could he not see her the same way?

The influence of such a character seems pretty small when your child is watching cartoons on Saturday mornings while you're doing the laundry or sleeping in, but here I am today with that influence still quite apparent with my love of music, self sufficiency, education, tattoos, unique style, and outside the box thinking. Fuck am I ever glad my mom never got the depth of a show like Jem...I imagine I'd be sucking down Xanax in massive quantities right now if my life were anything like that of the nauseatingly domestic Mrs. Heart.


On another note...

I wonder what would happen if these Misfits were pitted against the real Misfits in a Battle of the Bands....I also wonder who would spend more time doing their makeup. Would it be more involved to tease that pea-soup-colored hair and electrify those cheeks or gel that one strand into the perfect face blocking place?