Trash Trampoline and the Party Girl

I think to hard.

So hard, that after I typed that, my first thought was that you might think I'm implying that I'm smart. Or a deep thinker. Wrong. I think I'm a dipshit. A dipshit who thinks to hard. Which is why I was thinking of an early morning exchange between Wy Wy and his Mom on my way to work a week or so in the rearview.

"Mom, why don't you ever play your game?" Wy asked.

The game in question was another stellar gift that I had recently given her.

"How do you know I don't play it." She replied, "Maybe I play it when you are at school."

Sweet mother of all that is good, the incredulous look on Wy's face was priceless. It captured the egocentric nature of a four year old boy who can't begin to comprehend that things happen when he's not around.

Thinking to hard about that exchange got me thinking to hard about the Boy(s) and my upcoming trip to Oklahoma. Not only would we be seeing Old Granny, we would also see Pops. It would be the first time we'd see his new pad since he moved back to the Tulsa area.

That sounds innocent enough, but dig this. It would be the first time we saw Pops and Old Granny together since before Mom died. She's been dead since October 2006.

I don't meant to imply that Pops and Old Granny hadn't seen each other. They had. They just hadn't been together with me. I guess my egocentric thinking isn't that far removed from Wy Wy's.

My Grandma's house is small enough without the elephant in the room. Crammed behind her dining table, well, I felt absolutely claustrophobic. It was odd enough that I hadn't been with them both since September 2006, but when you factor in that there was no acknowledgement of Mom, not one mention of her in fact, and well it was just weird. Instead the discussion centered on the post office. Seriously. The fucking post office.

My Dad argued that the United States Postal Service pretty much sucks everywhere, but most recently had failed to get him his utility bills at his new apartment. This had led to friction with the complex. Old Granny countered that she had never had trouble with her mail. The implication being she was in her 80s and had been in the same house for more than 40 years. Dad countered her point by stating the obvious. Sand Springs was small, thus the post office was small. The entire city is but one zip code. Old Granny countered that by telling Dad that someone had told her that my zip code in Texas, was one of the best in the nation.

This went on and on and on. I'm surprised my head didn't explode.

Mom brought these two people together in the first place. Since she was dead and gone, I guess it was her memory, albeit tenuously keeping them together. Perhaps me too. A pawn in their twisted game of mutual dislike. I am a tangible manifestation of Mom. Or is that more of me, thinking to hard? Or, am I simply being like Wy, and being egocentric?

I don't know.

What I do know is this: Being an only child sucks. It sucks now, and it sucked when I was young. I've always felt some stigma about it. I'm sure some of that is because I truly do think to hard. But not all. When I was young, and people learned that I was an only child I'd always hear the same thing, spoiled brat. Granted, this was Oklahoma in the 1970s and being an only child was damn near freakish. But still, why was that the immediate response? It was so bad that I shrewdly made up stories where I had a sibling who had died, or was lost. Seriously.

That way if a tactless adult made a comment, I could play that fake story in my head. If a kid said something to me, I'd tell them the story. Even then I realized words have power. That they can change a person's perspective. You tell someone that you're an only child in the Oklahoma of my youth and they called you a spoiled brat. You tell them you're an only child because your sister died, and well, they don't mess with you in quite the same way.

That is certainly messed up, but on the flip flop and fly, I never got why they messed with me in the first place. What did they think was so great about being an only child? Hell, anyone who has ever seen the Jan, the Only Child episode of The Brady Bunch knows that being an only child isn't all that it is cracked up to be (as well as how much fun square dancing is.) You got to love The Brady Bunch --- life lessons in less than 30 minutes, plus a hoedown. If only real life could be that easy.

Until I BLOG again...I think I know what you want.