4.28.2010

Help control the pet population. Have your white trash spayed or neutered.

[Quick note from Meg: Not to break the fourth-wall or anything, but I'd like to share with you the email Tulane Chris sent me with his post for today:

I almost asked you to see if you thought this post was too coarse, and then I read your post about suicide and asking readers for recreational drugs.

HAH! It's funny because it's true. Ok, sorry, I'm done now. Back to Chris!]

Being friends with Meg is stressful because she’s so funny. Having an attractive friend sucks, but at least you can claim to fall back on your personality. Meg has a much better personality than I do, so I have to fall back on my SAT scores. (Those of you who were at the bar meet-up will remember me as the person behind Meg to the left, wearing a sandwich board that read “750 Verbal, 720 Math.”) I was reading Meg’s archives at work the other day – because Thursday is “File Your Own Damn Paperwork Day” – and I found her post about having to clean up blood with post-its at work. The wackiest thing that ever happened to me at my current job was when one of my co-workers gave me a Xeroxed Reader’s Digest vocabulary quiz and I got a perfect score, and so I put it on the fridge and everyone thought I was an asshole. (They were right, but they based it on the wrong evidence.)

She’s not even a bitch about it. If she were, I could just hate her in the face and be done with it, but she’s all gracious and says things like, “Oh, thank you for saying I’m funny. You’re funny too, and I mean that” and then makes a joke about a Llama Adoption Robot that kills the room. Sharing friends with her is like being her parasitic twin. She gets to be the funny one, and I get to be the one Bawbawa Wawtews says is “so brave to keep going on with his one kidney and control only over a vestigial flipper.”

So now I share a blog with her, and it’s a whole new level of crisis. Meg has a more interesting life AND tells stories better than I do, so here I sit trying to even FIND a sow’s ear to try to make into a silk purse. I got lucky last week because EVERYONE apparently has some emotion or other about widescreen movies, and so if I haven’t touched hearts, I’ve at least touched nerves.

So, things around the apartment I could

—BREAKING NEWS—

I heard a fight out in the street just now, so we’ll be talking about white trash. You know how some parents have weird hobbies like model trains or swinging? My mother’s was hanging out with white trash. To wit:

When I was about eight, my mother once took an about-to-be-homeless woman in “for a few days” for eight months. “Bev” had an unusual relationship with the Lord. The Lord had gotten her a job as a topless waitress once (“I was pregnant and even breastfed, and I’m 41, but look!” she said as she whipped up her T-shirt. “Still firm!”) and they continued a lively correspondence. Regularly, Bev would go onto the front porch and have a cigarette while staring into space, and then come in and say “I was out having a smoke and talking to God, and do you know what he said?” Invariably, he told her to go ahead and do what she had already decided to do. Bev was an “artist” and custom-painted two and a half cement Virgins for our house. I say “and a half” because she never finished the one she made for me. An attempt to paint over a red dress with yellow had left her with a bloody-looking dress, and an ill-timed distraction while Bev was painting the face left her with a twisted, angry, stroke-victim mouth. This statue stayed in my room for five years, which I think gives me a good all-purpose excuse. Did Mom consider using one of these statues to make a “shrine for travelers” in our front yard? Is the sky blue?

“Hattie” had been raised on Guam by Satanists. She taught water aerobics, which is how she met Mom. Both of her children had spent time in the state mental hospital, and who had to go on play dates with them? Now, I was a really, really weird kid and at any given time had, at best, one friend, so I was fairly lonely, but even I straight-up could not stand these kids. After a few forced playdates and one nightmarish sleepover (“No, pants on, I think. Thanks, though”) they started just showing up at our house all the time. By now Mom had changed her mind and thought they were going to do a school shooting and wanted them to have a COMPLETELY NEUTRAL attitude toward me, so she’d go out and give them weird excuses about why I couldn’t play. Last I heard, one had gone into a home, and the other after MICROWAVING A CAT (who lived, thankfully, since it’s the only sympathetic character in this whole post) went into the Army. This scares me more than a thousand thousand Russian soldiers, probably because “A Thousand Thousand Russian Soldiers” sounds like a low-budget porno. The United Nations needs to close its hole about the damn climate and outlaw lunatics as weapons.

“Vance” sold reptiles, so of course Mom got on him like a hen on a junebug. He sold her a Bearded Dragon (doesn’t that sound like a middle school sex joke, like Cleveland Steamer?) and she’d go out there every so often to buy mealworms or, on one memorable occasion, biker do-rags with a sewn-in change pocket. She bought herself one with skulls on it and called herself “Big Momma Bones,” and wore it to a poetry slam (yes.) She gave me one with dice on it, which, full disclosure, I may or may not have worn to the same poetry slam. Anyway, years later, she ran into that guy again and went out to his house, and someone put meth in her Diet Coke without her looking and she was up for three days. Yes.

“Doris” thought her husband was trying to kill her by leaving rakes in the yard. She divorced him and moved to the country, and for fun she’d get drunk on wine coolers, put on a ballgown and dance around the house. She and Mom were planning to leave on a road trip to the mountains once, and Doris showed up in an evening dress. She had a mail-order degree from Antigua or somewhere, and we’re 90% sure she had sex with her cousin.

Technically, “Ross” wasn’t white trash, but he was a stray Mom picked up. He had been in the Peace Corps in Bingo-Bango-Bongo or somewhere until he had a malaria-provoked nervous breakdown. He lived with us for about six months. This was mostly weird because he was my teacher at the time. If you think you were weird in school, be the Kid Who Lives with the Awkward Teacher. The kid with the glass eye was way, way cooler than me. He also grew up to better looking, but I can gauge distance, so I feel like it’s a draw.

“Gwen,” Bev’s sister-in-law, married a man who thought he was a prophet. “Angelica” “Bernice”I Dream of Jeannie.) “Lana” had very widely spaced teeth that were a) brown and b) not remotely of a uniform length. “Royce” and “Deeann” lived with us one Christmas when it froze and then left with the VCR.

So, again, I’m at the end of a post with no clear closing. I guess the moral is “My Mom Can Probably Out-Weird Meg’s Mom.” I thought the slumming gene had skipped a generation since I’m an elitist loner, and then I got a call from my best friend from high school. She’s marrying an inmate live on the radio next month.

YOUR MOM IS SORR ABOUT THE BAG

56 comments:

2b1b: The sardonic voice of 20-somethings everywhere, Monday through Friday. said...

Aw, Chris. You're sweet to me. But I think this post is proof that your life is more interesting than mine.

Unknown said...

Yeah, how can you say you don't have interesting stories? I was almost too amused to laugh. Does that make sense? I said ALMOST, so I was totally still cracking up the whole time. Did someone really put meth in your mom's Diet Coke????

Kerri said...

I love your Mom.

No Name said...

I got ill to my stomach for a second when you talked about your SAT scores. I HATE people that talk about their SAT scores. But white trash that talks to Jesus? Well that's just comedy!

kp said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Elisa said...

The whole time I was waiting for you to yell "just kidding!" about all of your adventures with your mother. But you never did. And now I want to go back in time and find Tulane Chris as a smile child and either a) be one of those white trash people and mess with you or (the ever more responsible) b) get you in a foster home.

But I'm taking that dice bandana with me.

Elisa said...

small! small child! well, and hopefully a smiley child but that's REALLY not where I was going with that. what the hell is wrong with me.

Ashley said...

You had me cracking up, Chris! Btw...I hear the Bingo-Bango-Bongo is beautiful this time of year.

kerry a. said...

I laughed so hard this morning, all thanks to you, and your mom, and the part about the do-rags. Love to you and your mom.

Nick H. said...

Don't worry about not being funny enough. Hell, you could probably get enough auxiliary posts out of this one entry alone to keep you in funny for 6 months. Pure. Comedy. Gold.

The Kuh said...

Wow, Chris, it sounds like your mom and my mom would have been friends.

And you are TOO funny, and not in a one-kidney, flipper sort of way, either. You're a DIFFERENT funny than Meg, but to compare is an apples-oranges thing. You bring a slightly different level of funny to the table and I DIG IT.

Unknown said...

I hope this whole thing is truth, hilarious!

Layla @ The Midnight Garden said...

I don't know why, but reading that your mother called herself Big Momma Bones was by *far* the funniest part of this for me. That's hysterical.

Anonymous said...

I agree with Jessica. You are definitely funny, just in a totally different kind of way than Meg. We love you both. This post was LOLZ. It can't get any funnier than stories about cracked out white trash.

Laurie said...

I couldn't put this post down. You need to write a memoir.

Anonymous said...

LOVE this. have you ever read anything by augusten burroughs? your post reminds me of his memoirs/novels.

mrs. darling said...

i don't know which part is my favorite. it's all so wonderfully, white-trash AMAZING. METH IN HER DIET COKE?! holy hell. also, please do a recap of the live radio wedding with the inmate! i am in awe of your life.

Anonymous said...

Three things:

The post did something weird, and left out a story: Once, I was made to stay in the other room and watch "I Dream of Jeannie" while a home exorcism was performed.

I'm mostly jealous of Meg in person. I'm usually fairly proud of my posts, but she gives a much better live show than I do. I'm pretty fast, but she's light-speed.

These stories are 98% true. I moved things around a little to lower the risk of someone recognizing himself. Names have been changed to protect the obnoxious.

And Nino... if it makes me less of an asshole, I failed creative writing in high school and German in middle school.

-Tulane Chris

Sarah said...

Tulane Chris,

I know we don't know each other, but would you mind if I spent Thanksgiving at your house this year?

My life is also unremarkable and I could use some good stories like these.

Patrick said...

http://tinyurl.com/3ybev4x

I got bored at work.

Mrs. P said...

Do you have any pics of the cement virgin? I really need to have the visual burned into my memory. I agree with the other comments - you and Meg are different types of funny. Both styles are completely entertaining.

dontgetsentimental said...

“Doris” thought her husband was trying to kill her by leaving rakes in the yard. She divorced him and moved to the country, and for fun she’d get drunk on wine coolers, put on a ballgown and dance around the house. She and Mom were planning to leave on a road trip to the mountains once, and Doris showed up in an evening dress. She had a mail-order degree from Antigua or somewhere, and we’re 90% sure she had sex with her cousin.

best. paragraph. ever.

Sarah said...

My mom may not have had a thing for white trash, but she was a magnet for freakshows. She had to move 15 miles away once, because people in the town where we lived would not leave her alone. Seriously. I'mma blog about it one day. Like you did. Only not as funny.
And also? Your mom's taste in friends = the reason you had very few friends. Guaranteed.

Anonymous said...

Sarah - Thanksgiving is usually around my birthday, so I usually refuse to do it with family, but you can still come!

Patrick - ! Giant Camel and I stole about 20 of those stickers from the state line with Tennessee.

Pooker - No, but whatever you're imagining is close. It was about 20 inches high, and she was standing on a small half-dome painted like the world with her arms modestly spread.

Don't Get Sentimental - THE RAKES. Because, you know, if you step on it it flips up and hits you in the face. To this day when we see the Simpsons episode with sideshow Bob stuck in the rake patch, my father and I think of Doris.

Sarah P - You're sweet, but since I spent half of sixth grade speaking with fake AbFab British accent, I think at least some of the blame rests with me.

-TC

Anonymous said...

TC- the fact that you are aware of AbFabs existence is probably part of the reason as well.

kisses!

Anonymous said...

where are you from

Kristina said...

I'm not going to lie, I didn't get "the rakes" thing with our dear "Doris" but as soon as I read TC's explanation, I nearly lost it. I'm not trying to explain to my coworkers why I just spit out my lunch while laughing hysterically. Officially love you, Tulane Chris!

Meghann said...

Here's the thing:
Not one detail of your childhood shocked, or even fazed, me so much as your use of the phrase "like a hen on a junebug." Which, by the way, when googled, leads directly to 2b1b first.

I find this phrase so offensive, so inherently disturbing that I'm not sure YOU weren't the one nukin' cats and dopin' sodas.

SHAME.

Anonymous said...

Meghann-

My grandfather once described a girl he knew during the war as "cute as a speckled pup under a red wagon."

Was it the junebug?

Also, I may or may not have looked at your blogger profile and I may or may not be impressed that you love "Out of the Girls' Room and into the Night" as well.

Kristina - we assumed that was it, but I guess there was always lockjaw?

-TC

Anonymous said...

your childhood scares me.

Kelsey said...

HAH, first you tell us how your life is boring and you have no good stories, and then you go into THAT!

God there are so many crazy people in the world. And apparently your mom attracts them. My mom's into gardening...

bruiser said...

That actually doesn't fall into the category of white-trash at all. No judgement, I just think its a miscategorization.
But I have to say "The kid with the glass eye was way, way cooler than me. He also grew up to better looking, but I can gauge distance, so I feel like it’s a draw." was absolutely HElarious. spot on.

Anonymous said...

The fact that you just made a comment referencing AbFab makes me love you six thousand times more

chelsea said...

Chris - that was amazing! Please tell us about the friend marrying the inmate next.

Brianna said...

At least your mother had quirks. The craziest shit my mom ever did was show up to a softball tournament SOBER. Meanwhile, completely cracked out on xanax, my mother's idea of a good time is not to eat, drink until oblivion, and lay on the entrance hall floor at her condo because "it's cool on my face." My mom is so scared of people, i'm not even sure she would let ME in the house if she didn't have at least a week in advance to prep herself. Gotta love that GAD. Tulane Chris, be glad you have such ridiculous memories that you are living to tell the tale about. I'll meet you in therapy and we can be best friends.

Meghann said...

TC- So good right? One of those that I pick back up every few years just to revisit. The Good People of New York severely disappointing, however.

With your sly, may or may not be a compliment-compliment, I rescind my criticism of your pithy sayings.

Kat said...

We have the same overall SAT score. For some reason I got really super excited about this EVEN THOUGH I also tend to think it's obnoxious to talk about SAT scores a lot.

Anonymous said...

TRUE STORY: I got a perfect score on the verbal section of the PSATs, which my mother, with characteristic enthusiasm-slash-lack-of-concern-for-accuracy, inflated to a perfect score on EVERY section of the SATs. And she told this to a family friend who uses that fact whenever she introduces me to people, because she thinks it is SO AWESOME, it's like her one fact about me and she drops it all the time, but I'm 28 now and I took the SATs, what, like over a decade ago, but I never corrected her misinformation from my mom, so I feel like I can't say anything without explaining why I didn't correct the record ten years ago, so every time she says, "Did you know she got a perfect score on the SATs???" I cringe and boil with self-loathing. I literally live in terror that someone will find out my SAT scores. In fact, I just Anonymous'd myself on the off chance that somebody who knows me reads this blog. And like, for real, the PSATs are soooo less a big deal than the SATs, and it feels like I'm complicit in this giant social lie where my options are:

#1) Keep pretending I'm the smartest kid ever, whilst feeling like a big fatty-fat fraud every time this comes up, which is does, like, SO OFTEN,

#2) Claim my mother was mistaken, and come up with some explanation about why I waited until I heard her announce this five hundred times to correct her,

or

#3) Call my mother a liar.

Okay, I just re-read this and saw how absurd it was, considered deleting it, but then decided I had invested too much time in it not to share.

Thank you for your time.

Sarah said...

TC -

Thanksgiving also falls around MY birthday (Nov. 23rd!), so you're right -- let's skip the dysfunctional family dinner and instead enjoy a multitude of birthday Jager shots.

Loretta said...

Are you from Hampden in Baltimore?

Anonymous said...

Meghann-

No, it was a real compliment. She came and spoke at Tulane while I was there!

Loretta-

I'm a little leery of saying exactly where I grew up, since I just mined the whole county for comedy fodder, but sadly it was nowhere near Baltimore.

Flavor Savors-

If selling lizards and meth does not white trash make, I don't know what does.

-TC

Anonymous said...

thumbs up, tulane chris

Anonymous said...

I have the same problem as your mom. I heart white trash.

pook555 said...

I love your post, hilarious!

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