Sell Crazy Somewhere Else
I was all set to write my 90210 thoughts when I was reading Bill Simmons and saw that he also has written 90210 columns, or has an obsession with the show, or something like that. And so I decided there is absolutely nothing I can write that would even be fair to call a comparison to the great Sports Guy himself, so forget it. I just have to say that when my sister and I were bored when we were little (ok, like last year) we'd have 90210 trivia contests. Those were always useful when trying to get through long car rides, or boring dinner conversations.
My sister and I also had this whole thing going one night when we talked in rhyme. Man that drove my mother nuts. She got so angry at us, but she couldn't really yell at us because she was trying so hard not to laugh. She'd say, "I'm not kidding guys, cut it out." And one of us would reply, "It's okay Mom, you don't have to shout." Then at the dinner table, we'd do the same thing. And when we tried to stop, we really couldn't, because everything we were saying had this sing-song rhythm to it. I really thought we were going to be kicked out from the dinner table. We used to have some real funny conversations at our family dinners, but whenever we'd get on a real roll or things would suddenly start to be interesting, my dad would put a stop to it. He once said - no lie - "don't laugh at the dinner table," claiming that we would choke on our food and die. He told us this story about a woman he knew at work who went to an anniversary party and choked on steak and died. I have no idea if she was laughing or not at the time, but since then, I really am obsessive-compulsive about having people cut up steak, and I get real nervous when I'm laughing and trying to swallow.
My dad would often put a stop to my fun. My sister and I would also play this awful game. I know it's bad now, but at the time, we found it to be the most fun game ever. Well, aside from the "Smoker Game" and "Make Me Laugh." This game was called "Crappy Cars." The point of the game was, while we were on car trips, to point out the crappy cars we passed. We knew of this one woman who had the crappiest car of all, and we'd yell out if one even came close to that car. Sometimes we'd debate it. Like if a nice car just had a smashed in door, that wouldn't always qualify as a crappy car. It was a complicated system, and we were having fun with it until my dad heard us laughing too loudly in the back, and he wondered what we were pointing at and why we kept yelling, "Crappy car!" So we told him, kinda sheepishly, and he yelled at us and told us never to do that again. I'm not sure why the game was so much fun, but it was kind of addicting. And I hate to say it, but sometimes when we're driving now, my sister and I will see a real shitbox and point it out to the other. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that.
The other game we would play is "Smoker." We went out to eat as a family most Sunday nights, and we'd sometimes go to this restaurant that gave out free lollipops to kids. So my sister and I would take lollipops and eat them and then use the sticks to act as cigarettes. One of us would be a high-class person who knew how to smoke and the other would be a low-class person with no manners. We'd basically act-out how the two people would interact. Yeah. We found this to be a whole lot of fun. The Surgeon General would have hated us.
The "Make Me Laugh" game is self-explanatory. We'd take turns trying to make each other laugh, which usually wasn't too hard. Only I have this issue that I still have: I can never say anything funny without laughing myself. It's ridiculous. I can never get through anything without bursting out laughing and being completely incomprehensible. So that would happen a lot. Sometimes, my sister would just stare at me and that would make me laugh because her eyes would go a little nutso after a while. We had our old standbys, like the Constipation Song that we made up. I really thought this was an amazing piece of musical genius at the time. My mom didn't think so. But my sister would usually laugh, only I would continually use it to crack her which she figured out, and as good as the song was, it didn't always work. Bummer.
I do have a brother, too. The thing is, my sister and I spent a lot of time agonizing the poor kid. We told him he was adopted, which basically is a right for all older children to tell the baby of the family. My brother fell for it of course and cried for a while. You'd think it would be enough to tell a five-year-old that he was adopted, but no, we would tell him that his former family called and wanted him back, so that's where we were driving to right then. We were driving him back to his original family. God, that sounds so mean. And you know, my brother would never do anything to provoke this. It wasn't like he was being a little asshole so we decided to make him cry. It was more like, "Hey, Steph, you want to try and make Michael cry?" Awful. We were pretty awful to him.
In another awful event, we would have spinning contests where we'd just spin around to make ourselves dizzy. Yeah, that was smart. So my sister and I are in my room, and we're spinning, and then my brother comes in and wants to spin around too. So we tell him okay, but he's real nervous about the whole thing, like freaking out about falling down or crashing into something. He made us promise to tell him if he got anywhere near a door or my closet or a shelf. You can see where this is going. So we promised, and then he starts spinning, and then he gets kinda close to the closet, but we don't really think anything. And then boom! He falls right into the closet, on top of all the clothes, the shoes, everything. That wasn't real nice of us.
I also typed up this letter from his teacher, saying that he couldn't wear a tutu in the classroom anymore and that this was a serious concern to her. I showed him the letter, all typed up and forged, and he looks at it, starting to tear up, saying, "Oh no, oh no, OH NO!" And he's shaking his head and almost crying. He's in third grade. I can't believe I terrorized him like this.
When we would play house, my sister and I would make my brother be the dog.
When I was little, I had this insane fear of witches. I really thought witches were real. I don't know, but I was sure that a witch was coming to get me. And for some reason, I was also certain that I was vulnerable to these witches if I was the person on the lowest floor of my house. So I would never be downstairs alone. I also thought I saw a witch hiding behind a tree in my front yard. I really did. In fact, when I remember the event, I can also see the face of the witch in my mind: I can picture the "witch" that I was afraid of. That's pretty messed up if you ask me. Anyhow, to this day, when I am alone on my floor, if I start thinking about scary things (which I do to freak myself out, which is also pretty messed up), I always come back to this ugly face of a witch, all dressed in black, with that green Wizard of Oz face. Man, that still gives me the spooks.
I also remember watching this movie, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. It's a musical with Dolly Parton. My aunt, who is as cooked as they come, showed it to me when I was like five. Anyhow, I didn't know what a whorehouse was, so I didn't really get the whole concept behind Miss Mona (Dolly Parton) and her thirty housemates (whores). So I would watch it and we would talk about which Miss Mona "dress" we liked best (they dressed up in fancy dresses and then basically took them off for these lingerie get-ups) and we'd watch the musical parts and I thought it was the greatest thing ever. Well, one night, I was in this movie store called Magic Video with my dad. Magic Video was not a chain, and my dad loved that about it. It had good movie deals too, so we went there. Yeah that was vital to the story. So anyhow, we're in the store and my dad asks me, age 7, what I want to rent. I yell out, "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas!" And then we got some shit Ramona movie and left.
One time though my dad took me to see the movie Chuck and Buck. Judging by the title, I don't know why he didn't think twice, but whatever. We had seen the previews in another movie, and it showed these two childhood friends who grow apart. Chuck becomes a successful grown-up, while Buck remains moronic and childlike. Then Buck decides to go out to visit Chuck in LA, and he kinda ruins the lifestyle that Chuck had all set up. Yeah, that was the premise of the movie. So we go to see it, me and my dad. I'm like 12. And we're watching it, and Buck is a real creepo freak, and then Buck makes a pass at Chuck, and suddenly, I am watching some weird homosexual porno flick and my dad is dying. Yeah we left that movie.
My dad also thought up this great system for dealing with tantrums. I have to say that I was really a champion tantrum-thrower, which I'm not real proud of. I've been realizing there's a lot I'm not real proud of, which kind of worries me. Anyhow, when I was throwing a tantrum or being a brat, my dad would get the video camera. Yeah. He had this dinosaur of a video camera that was huge and he'd put it on his shoulder and film it, all calm and quiet. I'd be ranting about something dumb, looking like a total loser, and he'd have it all on tape. It wasn't bad at the time, I don't think, because I'm making fun of him for most of the tape. I also have him taping me doing things I'm not allowed to do. For example, on one tape, I'm drinking directly from the Diet Coke bottle. Man, that was a no-no in my house. And then my sister sticks up for my parents and tells me to behvae, and I tell her to "pin a rose on [her] little nose" which just about kills me every time I watch the stupid video. The point is, my dad was pretty wise to do it because now I am embarrassed as all hell about it whenever he wants to show the video.
I really was just going to write about 90210, but then I started reminiscing about the whole trivia contest with my sister. Family memories are so weird like that. What's great is if you have a bunch of your friends around, I bet every single one of them has funny family stories. Really. In the words of my great brother (thanks to another stellar family home video), "if you ever want to go looking for memories, just go look in your basement."
Yeah, don't ask. We're all stocked up here.
My sister and I also had this whole thing going one night when we talked in rhyme. Man that drove my mother nuts. She got so angry at us, but she couldn't really yell at us because she was trying so hard not to laugh. She'd say, "I'm not kidding guys, cut it out." And one of us would reply, "It's okay Mom, you don't have to shout." Then at the dinner table, we'd do the same thing. And when we tried to stop, we really couldn't, because everything we were saying had this sing-song rhythm to it. I really thought we were going to be kicked out from the dinner table. We used to have some real funny conversations at our family dinners, but whenever we'd get on a real roll or things would suddenly start to be interesting, my dad would put a stop to it. He once said - no lie - "don't laugh at the dinner table," claiming that we would choke on our food and die. He told us this story about a woman he knew at work who went to an anniversary party and choked on steak and died. I have no idea if she was laughing or not at the time, but since then, I really am obsessive-compulsive about having people cut up steak, and I get real nervous when I'm laughing and trying to swallow.
My dad would often put a stop to my fun. My sister and I would also play this awful game. I know it's bad now, but at the time, we found it to be the most fun game ever. Well, aside from the "Smoker Game" and "Make Me Laugh." This game was called "Crappy Cars." The point of the game was, while we were on car trips, to point out the crappy cars we passed. We knew of this one woman who had the crappiest car of all, and we'd yell out if one even came close to that car. Sometimes we'd debate it. Like if a nice car just had a smashed in door, that wouldn't always qualify as a crappy car. It was a complicated system, and we were having fun with it until my dad heard us laughing too loudly in the back, and he wondered what we were pointing at and why we kept yelling, "Crappy car!" So we told him, kinda sheepishly, and he yelled at us and told us never to do that again. I'm not sure why the game was so much fun, but it was kind of addicting. And I hate to say it, but sometimes when we're driving now, my sister and I will see a real shitbox and point it out to the other. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that.
The other game we would play is "Smoker." We went out to eat as a family most Sunday nights, and we'd sometimes go to this restaurant that gave out free lollipops to kids. So my sister and I would take lollipops and eat them and then use the sticks to act as cigarettes. One of us would be a high-class person who knew how to smoke and the other would be a low-class person with no manners. We'd basically act-out how the two people would interact. Yeah. We found this to be a whole lot of fun. The Surgeon General would have hated us.
The "Make Me Laugh" game is self-explanatory. We'd take turns trying to make each other laugh, which usually wasn't too hard. Only I have this issue that I still have: I can never say anything funny without laughing myself. It's ridiculous. I can never get through anything without bursting out laughing and being completely incomprehensible. So that would happen a lot. Sometimes, my sister would just stare at me and that would make me laugh because her eyes would go a little nutso after a while. We had our old standbys, like the Constipation Song that we made up. I really thought this was an amazing piece of musical genius at the time. My mom didn't think so. But my sister would usually laugh, only I would continually use it to crack her which she figured out, and as good as the song was, it didn't always work. Bummer.
I do have a brother, too. The thing is, my sister and I spent a lot of time agonizing the poor kid. We told him he was adopted, which basically is a right for all older children to tell the baby of the family. My brother fell for it of course and cried for a while. You'd think it would be enough to tell a five-year-old that he was adopted, but no, we would tell him that his former family called and wanted him back, so that's where we were driving to right then. We were driving him back to his original family. God, that sounds so mean. And you know, my brother would never do anything to provoke this. It wasn't like he was being a little asshole so we decided to make him cry. It was more like, "Hey, Steph, you want to try and make Michael cry?" Awful. We were pretty awful to him.
In another awful event, we would have spinning contests where we'd just spin around to make ourselves dizzy. Yeah, that was smart. So my sister and I are in my room, and we're spinning, and then my brother comes in and wants to spin around too. So we tell him okay, but he's real nervous about the whole thing, like freaking out about falling down or crashing into something. He made us promise to tell him if he got anywhere near a door or my closet or a shelf. You can see where this is going. So we promised, and then he starts spinning, and then he gets kinda close to the closet, but we don't really think anything. And then boom! He falls right into the closet, on top of all the clothes, the shoes, everything. That wasn't real nice of us.
I also typed up this letter from his teacher, saying that he couldn't wear a tutu in the classroom anymore and that this was a serious concern to her. I showed him the letter, all typed up and forged, and he looks at it, starting to tear up, saying, "Oh no, oh no, OH NO!" And he's shaking his head and almost crying. He's in third grade. I can't believe I terrorized him like this.
When we would play house, my sister and I would make my brother be the dog.
When I was little, I had this insane fear of witches. I really thought witches were real. I don't know, but I was sure that a witch was coming to get me. And for some reason, I was also certain that I was vulnerable to these witches if I was the person on the lowest floor of my house. So I would never be downstairs alone. I also thought I saw a witch hiding behind a tree in my front yard. I really did. In fact, when I remember the event, I can also see the face of the witch in my mind: I can picture the "witch" that I was afraid of. That's pretty messed up if you ask me. Anyhow, to this day, when I am alone on my floor, if I start thinking about scary things (which I do to freak myself out, which is also pretty messed up), I always come back to this ugly face of a witch, all dressed in black, with that green Wizard of Oz face. Man, that still gives me the spooks.
I also remember watching this movie, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. It's a musical with Dolly Parton. My aunt, who is as cooked as they come, showed it to me when I was like five. Anyhow, I didn't know what a whorehouse was, so I didn't really get the whole concept behind Miss Mona (Dolly Parton) and her thirty housemates (whores). So I would watch it and we would talk about which Miss Mona "dress" we liked best (they dressed up in fancy dresses and then basically took them off for these lingerie get-ups) and we'd watch the musical parts and I thought it was the greatest thing ever. Well, one night, I was in this movie store called Magic Video with my dad. Magic Video was not a chain, and my dad loved that about it. It had good movie deals too, so we went there. Yeah that was vital to the story. So anyhow, we're in the store and my dad asks me, age 7, what I want to rent. I yell out, "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas!" And then we got some shit Ramona movie and left.
One time though my dad took me to see the movie Chuck and Buck. Judging by the title, I don't know why he didn't think twice, but whatever. We had seen the previews in another movie, and it showed these two childhood friends who grow apart. Chuck becomes a successful grown-up, while Buck remains moronic and childlike. Then Buck decides to go out to visit Chuck in LA, and he kinda ruins the lifestyle that Chuck had all set up. Yeah, that was the premise of the movie. So we go to see it, me and my dad. I'm like 12. And we're watching it, and Buck is a real creepo freak, and then Buck makes a pass at Chuck, and suddenly, I am watching some weird homosexual porno flick and my dad is dying. Yeah we left that movie.
My dad also thought up this great system for dealing with tantrums. I have to say that I was really a champion tantrum-thrower, which I'm not real proud of. I've been realizing there's a lot I'm not real proud of, which kind of worries me. Anyhow, when I was throwing a tantrum or being a brat, my dad would get the video camera. Yeah. He had this dinosaur of a video camera that was huge and he'd put it on his shoulder and film it, all calm and quiet. I'd be ranting about something dumb, looking like a total loser, and he'd have it all on tape. It wasn't bad at the time, I don't think, because I'm making fun of him for most of the tape. I also have him taping me doing things I'm not allowed to do. For example, on one tape, I'm drinking directly from the Diet Coke bottle. Man, that was a no-no in my house. And then my sister sticks up for my parents and tells me to behvae, and I tell her to "pin a rose on [her] little nose" which just about kills me every time I watch the stupid video. The point is, my dad was pretty wise to do it because now I am embarrassed as all hell about it whenever he wants to show the video.
I really was just going to write about 90210, but then I started reminiscing about the whole trivia contest with my sister. Family memories are so weird like that. What's great is if you have a bunch of your friends around, I bet every single one of them has funny family stories. Really. In the words of my great brother (thanks to another stellar family home video), "if you ever want to go looking for memories, just go look in your basement."
Yeah, don't ask. We're all stocked up here.
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