|
Mea Culpa Dominus Deus Qui Tolis Agnus Dei Christi
and all that jazz
by Marianne Brown
Northern Indiana is a place like any other "place" except that it doesn't have mountains, it is devoid and bereft of canyons, and has pretty much been unchallenged by anything more then a minor ice age that left it sitting on the edge of a lake shaped like a penis when the ice melted. Spewed like a trophy at the edge of this penile lake, I was born.
My parents were delighted, as are all Catholic parents, when sperm and egg meet to form a boy. Despite my lack of testicles at birth, I was still welcomed, (perhaps the lake of the giant Dick assauged their disappointment), and they tried again 5 more times, which produced 3 boys and 3 girls, stress, alcoholism,severe need for counseling, drug use ...I digress. The definitions of Dysfunction are best left to those who actually believe they are functioning. Hah. In your dreams, shrinks.
I try vainly to remember the year I was born, 1951, and when I google 1951 I come up with any number of historic events, like the Korean War, the death of the Rosenbergs, and nuclear capabilities that eventually led me to neurosis and anxiety disorder.
The only thing I can recall , despite my ongoing neurosis, is that I owned a Davy Crockett jacket and I had a crush on Mighty Mouse. So much for historical perspective. I guess one does not recall the rush out of the birth canal, or the Korean War as one enters the world of adults. At least I remember the Davy Crockett jacket and any number of jingles that have been playing in my brain since the Evil Television entered our house, and we children all sat with gaping mouths , cross legged and enamored with the corporate possibilities of spending large vast amounts of our parent's monies on what are now considered vintage antiques, but are, basically, a lot of plastic crap and tragic Kitsch. I foresee a maelstrom of confusion when future archeologists uncover a Betsy Wetsy doll.
I also foresee a whole generation of baby boomers on their deathbeds, lying in fervent wait for angels to sing eloquent Arias as they take their last breaths, and the only music playing like endless loops in their minds as they choke for air will be Bucky Beaver or the opening theme song to Captain Kangaroo. Perhaps it would be for the best. Death, at that point, would be welcomed.
The brain is a powerful liar, ergo, many people I know lie all the time about the 1950's (and 60's, and 70's and 80's).
I know this because I hear people tell me every day how great the 50's were. But again, I digress. I also never lie. (That was a lie.) Gotcha.
P.S. If you were black, lived in the South, and were beaten by Dixiecrats and racist morons, the 50's sucked. If you were a white kid and had a Davy Crockett jacket and a hula hoop it wasnt so bad. Life was called "Peachy" back then if your skin color was "peach."
Nonetheless, being a GIRL back then wasn't exactly a trip to Disneyland (Yes, I was there...TWICE, Disneyland, lucky me). Our heroines were pretty lame, and did I tell you the ones on the EVIL TELEVISION were horribly insufficient role models?
Ask any old lady on the street (old, depending on your age , is always someone 20 years older then you are, which is why I hang around with 70 year olds)..
Anyway, ask them, if they are just over 50, "who were the women on TV in the 50s you admired the most???" If they answer " OH FOR CHRIST SAKE" you have your answer.
It was only a few years ago I found out that the Greatest Generation of Women (all people 20 years older then me), actually douched with Lysol. Dont even look at me like that. They did. Google it,LYSOL DOUCHE, and then come back to me. My mother finally admitted it to me on the phone when I asked her. "Hi Mom, is it true you DOUCHED WITH LYSOL?" The other end of the phone was quiet. Then she mumbled something about "have to go retrive meatloaf in oven". CLICK.
Luckily, I saw "the douchebag" hanging in my mother's bathroom closet as a child...Had I not, I might have become one of many women sitting on an ice block in an Emergency Room screaming "BUT I ONLY DOUCHED WITH LYSOL AND I WANTED TO PLEASE MY HUSBAND BY SMELLING FRESH AND DAINTY".
A douchebag in a closet looks eerily like an octopus to a 6 yr old, with any number of long protruding tentacles and hoses, ready to choke the life out of a witless child IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. I stuffed it once and for all behind my mother's enormous Kotex box, but I always remembered it's demonic presence in our bathroom closet, inviting me to it's blackened lure, to strangle me senseless.
Speaking of Kotex. Imagine being forced to wear a diaper at the age of 13. Imagine that diaper stuffed under a Latex panty girdle, which, when recieving my first girdle at the age of 12, (it was a sin to have 2 buttocks in the 1950's , all women wore girdles according to the Universal UNIBUTTOCK MORAL CODE), ...where did I leave off? Oh yes, the girdle..it was 4 inches wide when you took it out of the box with the pretty lady on it with Giant Torpedo Tits. She looked like a Holy Card, a beautific saint of femininity on the box, in her underwear. She was on the brassiere (Torpedo Tit) box too...in fact, women were always portrayed as beautific insufferable saints in 50's ads.
If you ever wore a girdle, you would understand that if suffering gets you to heaven, as the nuns told us, all of us who wore girdles will be at the Right Hand of God for Eternity.
Removal of a girdle, by the way, is a procedure that requires a deep rolling down from the waist..as the flesh is released from the stronghold of the Plastic Prison, a sigh emits from every woman and girl as her bowels fall back into place and whatever has been locked up to nullify her double buttocks, also releases. "Ahhhhhh" and "Pffffft" come to mind. I imagined a collective sigh emanating all over the country as women rolled off the polyethylene ..remember, the War Department had to do something with all those leftover vats of chemicals from WW2, and they did. They shoved them over our asses.
In the Midwest, there really wasnt much to do, unless you had a vivid imagination or you were a boy. Girls were pretty much relegated to staying in the kitchen, unless they had the audacity to venture outside and hide in trees, which was what I chose to do . From day ONE I did NOT want to be an adult. (My menstrual period started in an apple tree, and I find that symbolic now, although it was disgusting at the time and I thought I was bleeding to death from eating too many rotten apples .)
Adults were, well, silly in the 50s. The ones I knew were silly, the ones we saw on the EVIL TELEVISION were silly, and I cannot describe to you how they repulsed us and forced us into therapy at young and tender ages and forced us to have numerous sexual escapades in the 60's to unleash our anguish and repressed buttocks.
People ask WHY DID THE 60s happen? I tell them..look at the 50s.
The LAST thing I wanted to grow up to be was a simpering , AquaNetted woman clopping about clumsily in high stilted heels and tight skirts hobbling about the kitchen sink or sleazing around men (see: Matt Helm movies) drinking martinis, or "MARTOONIS" ( the drunken verbal version of "martini"), nor did I envision my future as a NUN, which was what my mother wanted me to be. I did LIKE nuns , they reminded me of Magicians. Nothing up my sleeve?? PRESTO! Ruler! Kleenex! Pointer stick! Rosary! Bible! 1957 T Bird!
But I didnt want to be a nun. I wanted to be The Pope.
I stood in the corner at school for about 20 minutes asking God for forgiveness because I asked the priest why I couldnt be the Pope, but his grimaced look and violent answer didnt stop me from MY dream. I just became the Pope in my dads Garage, which, in my haste to pontificate , I remodelled into a church by setting up an altar (Red Ryder wagon with sheet), and used Wonder Bread smashed up as communion wafers. We even had music, a 45 RPM of "Our Father", which I played over and over as my brothers and sisters, who WEREN't the Pope,because I was the OLDEST and had relegated them to peasantry, were forced by me (THE POPE) to kneel and take communion, or I wouldnt bless them or remove their sins. They didnt particularly like this and soon left the church I created so I damned them all to Hell. They responded by saying SHUT UP and stuck their tongues out. Hey! Their Loss! Sinners, all of them.
I wore my Brownie Beanie and a large blanket as a Pope must wear specific garments to attain the regal papal image demanded by the Church in the Garage. These sacramental exercises ended quickly when my father pulled into the garage in his Nash and yelled "Get that crap out of the garage".
I still want to be the Pope.
Another thing. I never understood where Limbo was. Limbo, if you are not Catholic, is a dance that very few people are very good at, unless they live in Jamaica. If you were Catholic in the 50's it was a place where all the unbaptized babies went. For gods sake they had to go somewhere! They floated there , I was told by the nuns, waiting for someone to rescue them from floating around in Limbo. I supposed they were happy, but bored. Limbo is only a dance now, and the Catholic Church dumped the whole idea when the babies floating around Unionized and picketed for Limbo to be eliminated. Good on ya Floating babies!
Nonetheless, Limbo still beat the hell out of actually going to Hell, which, as a nun told me, was FOR ETERNITY. I asked her about eternity, and she told me to imagine a bird flying up to a large steel ball the size of Jupiter, and flapping its wings against this Large Ball every million years just once.
"When that bird has flapped that steel ball down to NOTHING, well, thats how long Eternity is!"
I was a very good girl after that. I also had nightmares that the devil lived under my bed.
I especially liked getting Holy Cards to save my soul, and was enamored with the ones that had little pieces of wood stuck in them with the words
THIS WOOD TOUCHED THE WOOD THAT TOUCHED THE CROSS OF JESUS
My favorite gift from the nuns was a rosary given to me on my 8th birthday, that HELD IN EACH BEAD THE HOLY WATER OF OUR LADY OF LOURDES. Anyone who knows anything knows that Lourdes water is miraculous, and cures anything, from leprosy to warts to missing legs and constipation.
This was perfect. As a wannabe Saint, I knew I had hit pay dirt, so I decided to test the waters, so to speak.
It took a giant scratch on my arm from climbing trees to convince me one day to smash the rosary beads with a hammer, and trickle the holy water onto my arm, which was bleeding in a very Saintlike fashion at the time. I closed my eyes and waited, but, alas, no miracle occured and the rosary was toast. I suppose THATS a sin too, blasting a rosary with a hammer. I never confessed it though.
I had committed too many sins I guessed, to be a Saint, and I was a bit wary of Holy Cards and divine rosaries after that. Dont worry, said my mother, after all, Jennifer Jones was allowed by God to play Bernadette in the Lourdes movie and she was also a sinner in real life (D-I-V-O-R-C-E)..so I guessed if Jesus could forgive Jennifer Jones, Jesus would forgive me too, despite my secret sins and transgressions that refused me a Miracle that one day I waited for my own personal Divination .
There were a few good things about the 50s. Captain Kangaroo was one.
I wrote to Captain Kangaroo about 5 years ago and thanked him for teaching me to read. Hey, I never throw the baby out with the bathwater (who made that up ?) If I did have a hero it was Captain Kangaroo, who taught me not to pick my nose in public, which I did anyway, and who also taught me about Ping the Duck, the Little Engine that Could, and Mike and Marianne the steam shovel, all books I read over and over to my own children when they were young.
He wrote back. His name is Bob Keeshan. Write him a letter. He is still a nice man.
Im older now then the Captain was way back when I sat watching him teach me the machinations of life along with Mister Moose, another prolific mentor..Im getting old now, but I really resent one thing.... IM AS OLD AS THE PRESIDENT! I AM NOT SUPPOSED TO BE AS OLD AS THE PRESIDENT THE PRESIDENT IS SUPPOSED TO BE AN OLD MAN ..I try to imagine what Bob Keeshan feels like...the President must be like some kid who needs to go on a trip to the woodshed to learn to behave.
Well, I didnt become a nun, or the Pope, and I never used Aqua Net. I still climb trees, which, I have found, eliminates my social life but cures menopausal symptoms along with medication and large quantities of potato chips and beer.
Im not in Northern Indiana anymore either. Im in Michigan, and still living next to that same Phallic Body of Water, more polluted then ever , which is pretty much what Northern Indiana is anyway. Polluted.
I wont retire in Florida either. That's even worse, if one uses their imagination, and thinks of it as the limpest state in the Union, penis wise.
Mea Culpa, Sister Juanita, Sister Paulette, and the rest of the gang who have long since passed into Eternity and good luck explaining to those floating babies in Limbo why you didn't at least offer them a coloring book or some crayons to keep them from going stir crazy.
Bless me Father for I have sinned, and I have a feeling a lot of them there sins were the best times of my life, but don't tell that to my mother. She still makes a damned good meatloaf.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
