Crass, but true.
Maybe someone should paint a fresco of my parents in the Vatican, surrounded by all the children they helped over the years. What they did was admirable but they also did not share a room with these wacky kids or get to endure school with them.
�Heather, why not share WHY you are at my house instead of just making up stuff about what happens in my home,� flew out of my mouth once. Boy, that landed me in so much hot water I am surprised I survived. My parents, as foster parents, knew the limit and elasticity of the law. My parents did not hit physically but you would be amazed at what a clever parent can do to discipline their children.
My story today is not about my parents being clever in raising me but about one of the foster children, I was thinking about today in church. I saw all the kids in their church clothes, sitting in the pews today in church and I though, �I wish I could have gotten away with that when I was a kid.� We behaved in church when we were kids, and we wore clothing that displayed respect for God and worship. I think how you act in church is important, how you dress is not so much. I think God is just happy you showed up.
We behaved in church and in general, so did any foster children that went with us. I remain astounded that we were supposed to take them with us. It was not that we were allowed to, that we could if they wanted to, but the children were supposed to go to church with us � in fact they were supposed to do everything that we did.
We had this one girl, Angie Wacko. She was a mess. The parent that abused her was in jail so she could go home to her family on weekends. That was wonderful. We had our parents back on the two days a week we actually saw our father. He worked an hour away from where we lived so seeing him was in the evening before dinner and then it was time for bed.
One weekend Angie�s stepfather was on a pass to see his other children and go home. I still do not understand letting people out of prison for visits. He was either home for the weekend or he was home for good at that point. I do not remember, but for some reason he was at the house for the weekend, so, she had to stay at our house.
This was pretty terrible because my family is morbidly religious. Church was a special event for us. We would go out for breakfast before church, we would have lunch some place nice after church, and had dinner with our Grandparents � which is a special event for army brats. Our family is also a pack of fatties; we eat as if it is our sport.
Angie was so ill mannered that we did not oppress our Grandparents with the dumb bitch often. This meant no pre church breakfast or post church lunch and dinner. We call our Grandfather, by his first name because with or without the Army we are brats. However, reverence for the man dictates that we refer to him as �The Admiral,� in his absence. We do the same thing with our father although he was a Major. Well, anyone referred to as �the Admiral,� is someone who is accorded respect and is usually someone who is into manners and propriety. Angie has few manners and less propriety. I also think she is a dumb bitch.
Well, one Sunday that we had Angie my parents decided that it would be best to take Angie with us on our family Sunday. My Grandparents were going to their apartment in Paris for what was supposed to be months on end so they decided to risk it.
My parents were advised when my sister and I were little that we get formal training on how to act in public. We only use this with my parents or when it is to our advantage to be socially acceptable. Angie, well she is a dumb bitch, she has no such training. I urged my father to leave her in the dog kennel with some water but he declined. My head was filled with visions of how bad she could act and the things she would do. There were so many places we would no longer be welcome in or would be to ashamed to be seen there again.
It was worse than I could have ever imagined. It was terrible. Breakfast was a disaster and we never did go back to that place. My grandparents went to a different church then we did (they are a different kind of Lutheran) so we would meet for breakfast in the middle somewhere, break for church, reconvene for lunch, and then buy dinner at the grocery. My grandparents offered initially to go to church with us but then demurred when they realized what being in public with Angie was like.
If you are not Lutheran or have not been to Lutheran church it is important to realize that for us, church is serious and quiet. We do not affirm each other ever and certainly do not Amen. She offered an amen at least five times and several, �uh huhns.� Angie was not from a church that did this either. During this episode, you could feel my mother�s rage penning up, it was coming off her in waves, and her affirmations were so loud she woke both my father and sister up. Waking the Major up is easy; waking my sister up is like waking the dead. We are lucky my sister just said, �What?� when she was woken and not a more common, �fuck.�
Do you know how the sky turns green before a tornado? The sky was starting to match the grass.
We also do no smack gum in church; I do not think anyone does that. She did this during the prayers. We are kneeling there on kneelers; doing our best to be pious, praying, and there, she is smacking away at her gum.
I do not sit by my mother in church because we talk during church and most recently have used my camera, camera phone, iPod, and Palm Pilot to cause trouble. Mom reaches over Angie (who was between us), taps me, and hands me a note: �Remember Eric the Red? Finger swipe, your nine o�clock on my mark.� I looked at my mother who then slipped on and slipped me a latex glove. Mom said, �mark� and I held Angie�s mouth open while Mom swiped out her mouth for the gum.
Eric the Red was a three year old we had for a while who was so filthy when he arrived at our house that we did not realize that his hair was blonde. It looked red until someone gave him a bath. He put all kinds of things in his mouth and it would take two people to wrangle him to the floor and get the foreign object out of his mouth. As a family, this became a talent by the time he was sent back to his parents. His older brother Carl is the child for whom my mother coined the phrase, �Honey, life is a bitch, and then you meet Erin.�
We never had to finger swipe a high school freshman. I was horrified because I was holding the dumb bitch�s mouth open and she could have snapped off a finger at any point.
After church, there is normally a fellowship hour where we clear out of the sanctuary so the Catholics could use it, and talk to people (read: gossip). I do not enjoy this activity and I was glad to hear my socialite mother tell us while filing out to wait for her in the Narthex, out of the way of the Catholics.
Do you know that rush of wind that tells you the storm is coming up on you, and you should come inside? It is the wind that raises all the hair on your body on end, gets you heart pumping, and is generally exciting.
We felt that when my mother walked down the hallway after dropping in and out of the fellowship hour toward us. Someone was going to be torn up, and I honestly thought it was going to be me. All of my teachers went to our church or to the Catholic one right after ours. If I did anything or had not done something in school the week before I caught it after church, as my parents would run into my teachers.
If Mom was a tornado and the four of us standing there were a trailer park then Angie was the one that was picked up and bounced around the rest of us. My mother rarely touched us in anger and never touched a foster child in anger but my mother must have used the Force or something. I forget her words but I will never forget her tone, body language, or manner during the conversation in the Narthex crumbled that child like a biscuit. One time my mother was interrupted by her insolence. Angie mentioned how she was an abused child and she could not help it. My mother said that life was hard for everyone there was never a good reason for poor behavior even if you have a bad excuse. When we make excuses for people, we prevent them from self-improvement. (I use that one on parents of wack kids all the time).
My mother then asked my father to bring up the car as she continued to have this (one sided) discussion with Angie Wacko and I was jealous of my father for being able to drive and getting to miss this. Then Angie interrupted my mother AGAIN. My sister and I never did anything that stupid: interrupt her, twice. My mother then used foul language. I will always remember this because Mom never does that and compared to the Admiral (who has a Navy issued foul mouth) could never really be foul mouthed. �Honey,� she said, �Life is a bitch and then you come and live with me.�
Coming back to today, I realize that the kids in my church are not that bad and even if they were bad: those kids are not Angie.
The stranger thing about having Angie was that her stepsister was one of my sister�s casual friends and I dated her sister for a very long time. This made seeing her sister difficult since Americans in Germany are spread out, and she could not come to my house and I could not go to hers because her stepsister was in our home for foster care.
I guess now it is okay to say that this is when I learned and mastered the German public transportation system so I could sneak over there and visit her at locations between our two apartments to make out like hippies in public places, which, we found out is not legal where we were living. If you think it sucks to be a hippie in America, try acting like one in Europe � they are really fascist there.
This is also when I started talking German money for my babysitting fees instead of American money. American money would have been squirreled away for college but German money presented the hassle of exchange rates so my parents did not monitor that money or what I did with it as closely.
Oddly enough, my parents did not ask where I was going or what I was doing. They thought I was hanging out down the street at a friend�s house whose parents were friends of my parents. Fortunately for me and unfortunately for the friend, her parents were alcoholics. This meant that they were aware that I was at their house but to what degree they could not be sure of, they were drunk. I would stop by and my friend and I would leave, she would go off and see her forbidden boyfriend and I would go see my girl friend at prearranged locations.
One time that friend�s family was on vacation and I was leaving to go see the girlfriend when my dad asked, �what are you doing today?� I only had a few rules growing up but one of them was that I was not allowed to leave the base without permission and I was not allowed to go alone. There were many good reasons for this and looking back it was stupid of me to do what I was doing as often as I was doing it.
I replied, �I am just going to go try and loose my virginity. I just want to see if my penis works and if sex is as fun as all my friends claim it is. Drew gave me some pointers on how to talk my way into a girl�s pants and I am going to try out what he told me.� All of that was true, but who says that to their father? The use of the word penis and the frankness of me saying it meant that surely I was being absurd. Surely, I was not going out with the intention of having sex. It worked, he laughed and told me not to be too disappointed if it did not work out. We were having company so I had to be clean and social before five.
Knowing my parents, if they had known what I was up to they would have locked me in my room. Drew had two kids by that time, and, had not married either of the children�s mothers before conception.
Everything I have needed to learn about life I have learned from Drew and two of them are that honesty is the best policy and if you are going to use it, wrap it up. Erin, if you breathe a word of this, you die.
I did not loose my virginity to that girl, or anyone at time of press, but not for lack of trying on either of our parts. It is probably for the best that things never came together as had wanted them to.
Later in high school and then into when I went to college and because of her screwed up family life she did not, the girl friend became an ex-girlfriend and a first rate skank.
This is really sad becuase she was a smart, ambitious, and talented girl whose depressed over her father's crimes was allowed to ruin her life. Even her physical beauty has been eroded over the years.
Erin said a couple years ago, �You should be glad you did not have sex with her, she turned out to be a real slut.� I said, �Erin, a car is only used on its second owner.�
Crass, but true. I still have a small crush on that girl, but not on the woman she has become. I would have had sex with her then but not now, I am not in the market for something used. Virginity is a funny thing, my gender spends a ton of time trying to loose it and then we regret who we lost it to ten years later. I ran into that girl one time with friends at a bar in Kansas City and we talked. She said she had wanted to loose that part of herself to, and with me, it was weird to talk about it later - removed from our lust as if it were a thought out process. I really loved her but I was fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen; I loved her but did not have the forsight or self-respect to keep myself in line. That is the longest, most meaningful romantic relationship I have ever had and it has colored every one since. I do not even kiss most girls because it is rarely as good as kissing her. I guess I am glad fate intervened, just not right now.
