3 posts tagged “redunk blog”
I wanted to drive everybody over to Zeldman.com to read this REDUNK story he has shared of his "family ties." Made me think about my family and what weird stories might I be able to share, one of which involves a meat tenderizer and my bare back. Anyways...
A noble history all around.
My father and brother inherited the Ukrainian rapist’s good looks, and I inherited his thirst.
I first learned about the Ukrainian rapist last year, in the context of one of my father’s breakfast table reminiscences. My father mentioned it as if it was one of the old family stories—like the stories about my father’s childhood, or my mother’s father’s death in an airplane crash, or my parents’ marriage. I’ve been hearing those stories since I tasted milk, but the rapist in the family tree was news.
Perhaps because the boy’s face reminded him that he had failed to protect his wife, my great grandfather made a daily exercise of beating my grandfather.
He beat him in Ukraine, he beat him in steerage on the passage to America, he beat him in the new land. He only stopped beating him when my grandfather, with my great grandfather’s written consent, enlisted in the US Army at age fifteen to go fight the Huns.
The US government arranged to have my underage grandfather’s soldier’s pay sent directly to my great grandfather in America.
My grandfather might have thought World War I would be softer than life with Poppa, but if so, he was mistaken. He emerged from trench warfare with a plate in his head, a metal disk in his knee, and certified paranoid schizophrenia as the result of exposure to mustard gas, a chemical agent the civilized nations were using on each other’s soldiers.
When he emerged from the hospitals, the US government gave my grandfather a disability pension, and this time the money went to him. Armed with those small funds, a schizophrenic’s talent for the grift, and his striking handsomeness, he won my grandmother and produced two children, one of whom was my father.
In deference to tradition, my grandfather beat my father every day. He extended the tradition by also beating my grandmother.
That stopped when my father, still wearing his Navy uniform, returned from World War II and threw my grandfather out.
In the decades that followed, my grandfather would sometimes appear out of nowhere, creating emotional havoc until my father gently put him on a train back to New York.
My grandfather married seven women that we know about, but none of the marriages stuck.
He gravitated to the Bowery and probably died there.
We last heard of him in the 1970s when I was in high school. Late one night, the phone rang. I answered. A man claiming to be a New York City policeman told me that he had picked up a deranged homeless man claiming to be my father’s father. Could we come pick him up?
We didn’t live in New York; my parents were out of town; as a minor watching my younger brother in my parents’ absence, I couldn’t travel to New York to fetch my grandfather. So I told the policeman that my father’s sister—my grandfather’s daughter—lived in the New York area and gave him her telephone number. Then, very politely, I hung up.
I had a bad feeling, like I should have done more, but what?
We never heard another word about my grandfather.
I used to go around barefoot all the time.
All. The. Time.
I was a no-shoes-wearing freak. The shoes came off as soon as I opened the front door and weren’t worn again until sometime after I left the house the next morning.
During this season of my life, until roughly… yesterday, I hurt my feet in so many wondrous ways. Not that it was wonderful, just that it made people wonder, “How the bleep did you do that?!” Well, you know, some people cuss when they’re wondering.
When I was a kid, there was this section of the floor where the tile butted up to the carpet, and I never seemed to lift my feet high enough to avoid tripping over the dumb edge hump. Not sure of the technical term for “edge hump”, but maybe you get the picture? It’s quite possible that I broke nearly every toe on each foot growing up. I say “it’s quite possible” because I’ll never know if they were really broken or not. That’s what you get when you have a mother who’s an orthopedic nurse. You get taped and splinted, because really there’s nothing they can do about a broken toe. One toe would barely heal before another toe was injured and the first toe would act as a splint for the newly hurt toe. It was a vicious cycle.
Sometimes, I would puncture a toe on the stairway because I got my piggies too close to the tack strip.
One time, I did this.
Another time, I stepped on a blown-glass Christmas ornament and barely came away with my skinniest toe intact. As it is, I’m still trying not to lose the thing to infection.
Hmmm, okay, I really only shaved a few layers of skin off, but still…it hurt, okay? Plus it was my skinniest toe and it didn’t have many layers of skin to begin with. And it was on the underneath side, so I had to step on it all the time. It’s one thing to cut your knee while your shaving, but you don’t have to walk on your knees all the time, so it’s really not similar at all.
When I couldn’t bear to hurt my feet again I finally decided to start wearing shoes all the time. Even at home, which is where a person should be able to go around bare footed. And, for that matter, bare you-know-whated as well if he or she really feels like it. I hear it’s kind of nice to walk around in your underwear when there’s no one else at home. Not that I do that when Rex is at work and Bx is at school… or when I’m looking for a towel that just happens to be in the living room. I just hear that it’s nice, that’s all I’m trying to say. And, all of that aside, I wear tennis shoes around the house all the time now anyway, and I’m pretty positive tennis shoes just aren’t flattering on people who walk around bare you-know-whated. I’m so certain about it, that I got these cute little lavender slippers that have rubbers soles in order to prevent just such an unflattering occurrence.
Not that I do that anyway. Good grief, y’all! How many times do I have to reinforce that point?
Here’s my main point: My feet have been feeling so much better since I started wearing tennis shoes (and rubber-soled slippers) to prevent mishaps like the illustration above. I highly recommend instituting the practice at your place of residence.
P.S. Please don’t unexpectedly pop by my house to try to catch me wearing my tennis shoes during the day. It won’t work, and my ugly old sweats’ll just disappoint you anyway.
P.P.S. If you’re going to pop by during the day, please call me 10 minutes in advance on regular days and 1 hour in advance on laundry day.
A flag for a country often represents pieces of their history or values. Our flag for instance has its thirteen stripes representing the colonies and our rebellion against the crown onto independence. The stars represent the states and of course there is speculation as to the symbolism of the colors.
was at the adoption of Alaska and Hawaii as states in 1959 to 1960. I love our flag and of course it has come to represent more than it's mere symbols as our history and national identity is attached to it.
