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December 28, 2004
I Went to My Parents' House - Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve day I woke to a bang on the bedroom door. The room was still too cold for me to get out of bed even though my parents turned on the heat for the day; I lay my head back on the pillow and went back to sleep. Two minutes later there was another knock on the door. "Get out of bed."
"Give me a minute."
"We don't have a minute. You have to help me take out the old dishwasher." My parents were having the extended family over for Christmas Eve. The house had yet to be cleaned (the living room was covered in papers, boxes, newspapers and magazines), food had yet to be be cooked, and they chose that morning to have a new dishwasher delivered. I had to take out the old one so the delivery guys could take it away, then I was supposed to install the new one.
Remove and install a dishwasher while my mother tried to make dinner for 20 people and remove the trash from the living room. A month prior she had decided that the room she used as an office was too dirty so she removed everything from the room and spread it around the living room. All the chairs, the sofa, and the floor were covered with papers and magazines.
"Oh, shit! I left the soda in the car." The temperature was in the single digits and she had left all the soda she bought a couple days earlier in the trunk of her car. She ran out and brought back a couple cases of frozen, distended cans.
I got as far as I could with the dishwasher installation, but couldn't finish because I needed a drill. "Here, use this while I run to work to see if I left my drill there." My dad, a librarian, handed me a hand drill. I was supposed to drill a hole in a 1 1/2 inch thick floor with a hand drill -- the kind of drill that requires two hands and no electicity. One hand to push the drill down, the other one to turn the bit. The kind of drill that Amish (the people that don't use buttons because they are too high-tech) use.
I was left in the house alone with food cooking, in the oven and on the stove. Somehow my mother had disappeared without me noticing, leaving all the food untended. It wasn't long before my dad came back from the library. "I couldn't find it. I'll just buy a new one and finish it myself." After a while my mom came back, then after finding out we had taken a break from the dishwasher installation said, "We need a tree! People will be here any minute! We need a tree!"
My dad and I drove out to buy a tree. The first place we stopped was a parking lot with several trees and a sign that read: All trees $25. Go across the street to 520 Clark St to pay.
"$25 for a tree in Wisconsin? What a racket."
"Fuck them. Let's go some where else." my dad said as he give the finger to 520 Clark St.
We drove down the road and came to a farm with several trees in the driveway. The picked out a tree and went to the farmhouse to see how much the trees were. "No one's home. Let's just leave them $10 or something."
"No way. I'm not going to steal a tree."
"Or we could just leave with it. That's a good idea."
"No, Brian. Unless we can't find one anywhere else. But I think they have them for sale at Home Depot."
We drove down to Home Depot and found trees for all prices ranges. Top of line was $35. Bottom of the line had no price. "It can't be more than $17, and they're half off."
We went to the cash register and the tree rang up for $0.01. Concerned, the cashier called the manager who said what the hell and they sold it to us for a penny. Once we loaded it in the car my dad said "I'm telling your mother it cost $25. Don't say a word."
When we got home several guests had already arrived and were trying to shake their sodas from their cans. I set up the tree in the corner.
Around 11pm my sister arrived. She flew in from LA with her boyfriend. Shortly afte,r a couple guests who had stuck around just to see my sister filed out. It was down to me, my sister, her boyfriend and my mother and father. My sister started in on her catharsis. "Why did you buy me those shoes? I hated those shoes."
"What shoes?"
Apparently 20 years or so earlier my mother bought my sister a pair of shoes she hated. My sister objected, but mom bought them anyway. One wanted the shoes because they were nice shoes. The other one thought the shoes were hideous. What they agree on was what happened next: my sister threw a fit and bit my mom on the hand. My mother was wearing a ring and it caught on my sister's lip. She bit so hard she split her own lip and blood came rushing down her face.
They bickered about the shoe episode from the 80s, both, from what I could tell, serious about it.
"...And you never cared about me. The whole time I played the clarinet you called it a flute."
Sean, my sister's boyfriend leaned over to me and told me my sister once flipped out on him when he called her clarinet a flute.
"I played the clarinet for, like, 5 years and I was good at it, but you always called it a flute."
"I'm sorry."
Sean and I began our own conversation using cues from the mother-daughter discussion.
"And you never even noticed when I came home high and drunk." Things lightened up when my dad came into the room.
"Dad always asked to see my eyes to see if I was high, but I was only drunk." She started bragging.
"Then I noticed that he was always drunk too, so it didn't matter when I started coming home high too. He'd ask to see my eyes, but wouldn't notice anything."
"Sure, take advantage of your drunk old man."
"Why not?"
"So you were lying to us the whole time? Lying to us about drugs and drinking. You were probably lying about being a virgin too." My dad didn't seem to have much invested in the conversation. First off he doesn't really care about such things. Second he started drinking well before he banged on the bedroom door to wake me up.
"No. I just lied about the drinking and drugs. I was a virgin until ..."
"Until I walked in on you?" My mom asked.
"Yeah."
I broke from the conversation with Sean to address my sister. "Sure. A technical virgin. One of those girls that claims to be a virgin because she only gives head and takes it in the butt."
"No. I've never taken it 'in the butt.'"
Sean seemed like a good sport. "Sean told me he was going to give it to you in the butt when you guys get back home." He nodded "yes."
My dad said, "I'm getting my shotgun."
"Dad! No!" my sister started screaming when he walked back into the room clearing the chamber on his shotgun.
Posted by calculatoronfire at December 28, 2004 01:04 PM