Michelle's House of Horrors

Two of us riding nowhere
Spending someone’s
Hard earned pay
You and me Sunday driving
Not arriving
On our way back home
–the Beatles/Two of Us

Go for a ride together. Motorcycle, car, boat, train, small plane, helicopter, whatever. Going somewhere, anywhere, nowhere in particular.

They used to call it a Sunday Drive, back in the days when gas was cheap.

Talk a little, be quiet a little, turn the music up and sing along. Roll the windows down. Open the sun roof. Put the top down. Sunglasses and baseball caps. Put your head back against the head rest and smile. Dance in your seat. Put your hand on his knee and your head on his shoulder. Laugh. Push your hair out of your eyes.

Shove the seat back. Put your bare feet up on the dash board. Read him the good parts of your book. Read him the good parts of his book and laugh when he gets mad because he hasn’t read those parts yet.

Take pictures out the window. Take pictures of the sky. Post them on Twitter. Check yourselves into places you didn’t go with people who weren’t there. Text your friends pictures of random things you see along the way.

Stop and have a beer. Stop and have a sno-cone. Stop and have a snowball fight. Stop and have the best hamburger ever. Stop and smoke a cigar sitting on the tailgate. Stop and drink Fireball out of a flask. Stop and see a baseball game. Stop and kiss by a river. Stop and hug on a beach. Stop and take a selfie at sunset. Stop and watch shooting stars over a lake.

Hold hands on the way home. Hold hands on the way to a hotel because you went further than you meant to. Hold hands on the balcony with your feet up on the rail.

Share a blanket if it’s too cold. Get in bed if it’s too cold. Get in bed if it isn’t too cold. It’s getting late. Listen to each other’s hearts beating. Smile against his chest.

Say goodnight and be happy.

Sleep late and take the long way home in the morning.

This is the sound of my soul
–Spandau Ballet/True

When I was little, I was a bossy child. I bossed my brother around. I bossed the neighborhood children around. I stated opinions with the perfect assurance of the eternally correct. I was sure I was the smartest kid in town. I didn’t care if I was pretty. I’m not sure I even knew such a thing applied to people other than my mother. I didn’t particularly care if anyone liked me as long as they did what I told them to.

I read any book I picked up anywhere I happened to be and didn’t care what anyone thought about it.

I ran around in the big field and woods behind our house singing, played in the irrigation ditch, snuck oats to the horses when they were in the barn, caught snakes, picked flowers, and climbed fences.

I wore whatever my mother let me out of the house in, even if that did not include a shirt. I still remember the day my mother told me that I was going to have to start wearing shirts when I went outside the house. I was 5, stomping around the yard in blue jeans and PF Flyers. I could run faster and jump higher without a shirt on, I am sure of it.

My main goals were to be able to read every book in the library and learn to draw a horse running, I think I pretty much wanted to be the smartest artist in the world. Or a writer. Or a singer. And have a big dog. I always liked big dogs.

I was shy around strangers, but it didn’t take all that long for me to get used to them and start issuing orders. I don’t think I was a big talker, except when I was explaining how things were going to be.

I loved to spend time alone–but I was not really afraid of anything. I didn’t prevaricate. I did whatever I wanted, and I expected people to do as I said or find their own gig. I did not give a fuck about what people thought about me.

The change started when I was not quite six and they wouldn’t let me start the first grade. My sixth birthday fell a few days past the deadline for starting school as a five year old and the school would not make an exception.

I was sad. I was angry. I was confused. I remember asking my Mom if she told them that I could already read and count, because I just knew that logic was all that was needed. I knew I was already way ahead of the other kids who’d be starting school with me. I knew it was silly of them not to let me start.

When I did finally start school, it was disappointing. Because I was so far ahead of the other first graders, the teacher tended to ignore me. They put me in the back of the class and asked me to read quietly and work on my own. They asked me to stop raising my hand all the time.

The other kids started to make fun of the weird girl who read all the time and knew all the answers in class.

I learned to hate recess.

Luckily, our family moved to Springfield part way through the year and I was much happier at Thurston Elementary. They still didn’t know quite what to do with me in the first grade, but they did send me directly into third grade the next year so I wasn’t bored any more.

I had wonderful teachers from then on: Ms. Macek, Miss Wallace, Mr. Siebert and Mrs. Garn. I loved them all, particularly Mrs. Garn. The librarian Mrs. Nugent let me check out stacks and stacks of books. The music teacher was a wonder. The honor choir even recorded two records while I was in school. Everything about the school seemed to be about helping us learn to be creative kids who loved to learn.

I loved school again, but still hated recess. I have never quite recovered the impressive self confidence I had as a tiny girl. In fact, it got worse and worse throughout my school years. I was scholastically successful, but a social wreck.

It’s only been in the last year or two that I’ve started working on overcoming that and actually enjoying being around people again.

I am still re learning how not to give a fuck.

And I am going to get there, too.

“Not only are there no happy endings,” she told him, “there aren’t even any endings.”
–Neil Gaiman

The notice that the divorce was final came in the mail on the same day she faxed in the paperwork to have her father cremated. There were technical difficulties, and she got ink all over her hands and dress trying to clear a jam in the printer. Which seemed a bit unfair, since it wasn’t even her printer in the first place.

It was, she thought, not a propitious start to the New Year in the traditional sense. For someone like her? It was ideal. Rife with possibilities for testing her newly resolved upon positivity and desire to see silver linings in every situation.

She had also resolved to be the sort of person who used words like rife and propitious openly instead of only thinking them. The sort of person who doesn’t assume that other people won’t understand what she is talking about. The sort of person who doesn’t assume that other people don’t have good vocabularies. A devil-may-care sort of person.

If she couldn’t find silver linings in Death and Divorce, then she clearly was not trying hard enough. After all, endings and beginnings are exactly the same thing, and everyone loves a good beginning. Or something. Right?

She wasn’t sure if there was a silver lining in getting ink on her favorite dress though. For someone her size, it wasn’t going to be easy to find one she looked as pretty in, and that stain was never going to come out completely.

What else doesn’t come out completely, she wondered?

Cat pee. You scrub and scrub, but every time it dries out the stain and smell come back.

Maybe it was OK not to find a silver lining in the dress, but it would be pretty cool if it actually had a silver lining. Stiff, though.

Silver is antimicrobial. Maybe it would keep cat pee from smelling if it did get on things. Like her stiff dress.

Her third resolution was to become the sort of person who was more focused and goal oriented. She would be laser sharp. Or was it razor? Always right on task. What were you supposed to use to get ink out? Was it hair spray? She wasn’t sure she had any hair spray now that her hair was short.

Some day she would figure out that there was not a thing wrong with the person that she already was. This would be quite a surprise to her. Considering how much thought she gave to her own flaws, the only real surprise was that she would be surprised about anything about herself at all.