Before you read this blog, there are a few things you should know about me.
I was raised in a white,
middle-class family in a small suburb about twenty minutes North of Dallas,
Texas. My parents have been married thirty-five years. I have an older sister
and a twin sister. Growing up we had a family dog that lived for nineteen
years, named Little Bit. My mother stayed home until my sisters and I were in
school and then she became a high school teacher, at the high school I
eventually attended. My father worked at Ford, and was a self-proclaimed “Union
Man.”
From a distance my family was not
unlike any other. For a long time I told myself that. “I’m just a girl, in the
world,” I might sing to the
Clueless soundtrack, in my room, wearing my dad’s headphones (from the 80‘s,
the kind that managed to rip out every strand of hair on your head each time
you removed them) and a Beastie Boys shirt that I took from my sister’s closest
and stretched awkwardly over my plump, eleven year old, prepubescent frame.
Downstairs, behind the security of our front door, in our red brick, two-story
house, that was similar to every third house next to it, our family lived a
quiet life that was anything, but normal.
We were the reality television show
waiting to happen; ...except we weren’t famous, it wasn’t cool to be eccentric
back then, and no one would pay us to film our garage, packed to the ceiling
with old computers, karate trophies, dusty encyclopedias, and VHS tapes.
It was around that time that my
father took up acting. He of course did what any good parent would, and
immediately solicited his children for acting roles. He forced us to memorize
the Oscar-Meyer Weenie jingle, and then made intimidating, ‘do it or else’
faces behind the woman working the camera as we forgot what came after, “Oh, I’d love to be an
Oscar-Meyer Weenie...,” at
an audition. He once landed a role as an extra on Walker Texas Ranger, but they
eventually sent him home because he kept pitching Kung-Fu movie ideas to Chuck
Norris during breaks. After a few ups and downs with CiCi Pizza commercials,
stints on PBS, and several community theater Greater Tuna gigs, he settled into
working as a gun-fighter at Six-Flags. To an eleven year old, this was amazing.
Free Six-Flags tickets, you can’t go wrong! This gig lasted for years.
Eventually it became routine, normal even, to see my father come down the
stairs dressed in full Western attire, complete with loaded pistols (with
blank, trick-bullets) in their holsters on his hips, in hot Texas summers.
Years passed, and a boy I was to go
on my first date with was on his way to my house to pick me up. I was
frantically pulling clothes from my closet trying to decide what might best
compliment my Kool-Aid (Cherry, if you’re curious) hair-dye job that I had
managed the night before. I ended up choosing a Polo shirt of my dad’s that
seemed hip at the time, but looking back, made me look a lot like Chaz Bono. I
threw it on and raced downstairs just beating my mom to the door. I begged her
to not make him come in (since our house resembled an episode of Hoarders, sub
the dead, decaying cat for one misplaced hamster in the couch), but she whipped
around my shoulder, and invited him in, just as I started out the door.
We sat awkwardly, three feet away
from one another on the sunken couch that my dad usually slept on, while my
mother made small talk, asking him about his likes and dislikes. He was sitting
on a dirty piece of laundry. I focused in on it, trying to decide if it was a
pair of my father’s underwear or a white t-shirt, when I noticed the look on my
date’s face. His eyes were looking past my mother to the landing at the bottom
of the stairs. There, in full Western wear, looking like Wild Bill Hickok, stood
my father. I was mortified! My father on the other hand, took this as an
opportunity to reward my date (my first date!) with a personal show, featuring
a professional gunfighter.
He stood, feet should-width apart,
hands on his waist, whistling Western gun fight tunes, twiddling his fingers
over his pistols, and then, without warning he drew his pistols and,
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Before the smoke could clear and my
date could unfold himself from the fetal position he took cover in, my dad was
had produced a headshot from his office and was asking my mother to get a
Sharpie so he could, “get this feller an autograph!”
Despite what statistics might tell
you, or how our white middle-class family appeared on paper, we were anything,
but normal.
I could tell you about how my mother
once mistook duck food for gourmet Trail Mix at the zoo and consumed five
packages before we made it to the penguin exhibit. Or about the time my
father’s childhood friend, who was now a raging alcoholic, came to stay with us
for a week (after his wife unexpectedly left, claiming her sister had an
emergency) and told my aunt she looked “damn good,” right before shitting
himself on our back porch, and then stripping naked as the day he was born, let
my father hose him down. Or I could tell you of a time my older sister and I
strategically placed Cheetos in the bathing suit top of my twin sister while on
a vacation we later deemed, “The Seagull Massacre of 96’.” I could describe the
time my mother dared me to ask my big-bosomed choir teacher if her favorite
restaurant was Hooters, then sitting in the Principle’s office afterward, while
I listened to my mother say she had no idea why I would say such a horrible
thing. I could go on and on pulling memories from files in my mind with labels
like “Things I’d Like to Forget” or “Why I Need Counseling.” I could elaborate
on the time my mother declared we could finance a rental car for a vacation and
after a heated debate with my frugal father, rented a two-door Geo Metro, and
my father, upon seeing it, furiously remarked, “Damn Brenda, I could fit more
in my pocket,” as he wedged a suitcase between my twin sister and I. I could
share with you, that on that very same vacation, I threw a large piece (OK,
more like ten pieces) of chewed Grape Bubblicious bubble-gum out of the window
of that rented Geo Metro as we drove on the highway, and how at the next rest
stop my father made me spend my “Fun Fund” (aka saved up allowance), on
overpriced cleaning supplies at the gas station, and how every member of our
family worked to remove the grape gum that had stuck, and then stretched, down
the side of the rental car.
Reality television too often gets a
bad rap. When I see shows like “Honey Boo Boo” or “John & Kate, Plus 8,” I
no longer take them for the train wreck, sloppy, shit-show they hold for face
value. They are someone’s memories. Someone’s awkward family photos. Someone’s
mental “This Is Why I Am In Counseling” file.
I think as adults we bottle
ourselves up, tuck away our embarrassing Olan Mills photos in a closet, and, to
the rest of the world, do our best to appear normal. People like Honey Boo Boo
are pioneers, really. Little Honey Boo Boo is trailblazing paths that maybe we
all should walk down a time or two. I defy you to look down you family’s Memory
Lane and deny your crazy Uncle Larry, or block out the memory of the time you
pulled your grandma’s pants down at Thanksgiving as a prank, only to discover
she doesn’t like to wear underwear. It’s in the revelation of these family
secrets and the disclosure of these private, often embarrassing family moments,
that we all discover a very real truth about ourselves.
