1970 – 1971

May. Oh, okay, another celebration. This one’s all about me, somehow? One year, they say. What does that even mean? I have a fuzzy concept of time. My sister’s being nicer to me. I guess she’s accepted that I’m around. I don’t know what she’s jealous about. Her room is by far better decorated than mine and no one is trying to foist a bunch of sports paraphernalia on her. She even has this life size doll that she’s supposed to use to practice ballet, not that she ever does.

June. Ah, okay, now I think I get it. My sister’s getting a celebration like the one I had last month. Her birthday had much more interesting gifts and food than mine. Mine was all strained carrots and weird sports themed clothes (no thanks). She had a GIGANTIC sheet cake with a candle shaped like the number 4 (thanks Sesame Street) on it. She also got a Lite-Brite, Operation and an Easy Bake Oven. I want all of these things. She was luke warm on the Lite-Brite and Operation game and downright upset by the Easy Bake Oven. So rude!

July. Oh man, the fireworks are back. This is the best. We went to Sooner Park and listened to a band play. Everyone was wearing clothes that matched my bedroom color scheme. Mom and Dad ate these super gross sandwiches with something called pimento cheese. Adults are so weird. My dad was smoking the whole time and seemed sort of bored by it all. He does not know how to have a good time. The only time he seems happy is when he is listening to his baseball games on the transistor radio out in the garage. I seriously do not get it. The only thing worse than watching baseball is hearing people talk about it.

It is August — hot and miserable again. However, I have discovered the most amazing machine in the world. It’s called a Hoover. Okay, so my mom keeps this thing in the hall closet and it has metal and plastic tubes that connect to a pink-ish sphere on wheels. She then uses it on the floors to clean. It makes an incredible noise, involves plugging it in to those tiny holes in the wall that they cover over with white plastic caps whenever they’re not in use. Why didn’t anyone tell me about this thing sooner? As soon as I am up and walking, which should be any day now, I am going to be all over this contraption.

September brings my first footsteps. I have a fully loaded diaper and am on the prowl! This is amazing. At night I can’t get out of my cage but during the day the whole world is mine. I’ve been trying to get to the Hoover, but the door knob is too high for me to reach. I can almost reach it but I’ll have to wait until my mom leaves the door open just a bit for me to get in there. Susan is out of the house at pre-school which to be honest is a relief. I’ve gotten to explore her room a little while she’s out. She hates it when I go in there. She has a Folger’s Coffee Can filled with crayons. They look great but take it from someone who knows, they taste terrible.

I got to be Casper the friendly dead baby for Halloween! You know what’s amazing about ghosts? They can move through closed doors and walls. If I were a ghost I could go right to that Hoover. Susan was dressed as a Cowboy and took my gun. It’s fine. I don’t really want a gun. My grandfather gave it to me — great! Now like those dullards on Gunsmoke I can go around risking my life to protect some dusty patch of weeds. Why is that even a show on television? Oh, but you know what’s really good? “The Partridge Family.” Wow! I want to be in that family. That one or “The Brady Bunch.” They both live in California which is a million times more interesting than Oklahoma. Keith Partridge has amazing hair and his mom is so cool! I love my mom, but she doesn’t have star quality, you know?

I have another Aunt and Uncle. They’re here for “Turkey day” which I sort of remember from last year. I don’t know how I’m supposed to keep all these relatives straight in my mind. They all look and sound alike. They all like football a lot (zzzzz) and they all smoke. It’s really not my fault that they’re all conformists. They do, however, have great jewelry. Both of them wear big rings and bracelets and fur coats. I’ve never seen a man in a fur coat before and I’m not sure how I feel about it. The Uncle sells cars in Atlanta — which is in Georgia (that place where my grandparents live) and I get the feeling he’s up to no good. It’s the stains on his fingers and his shaky hands that freak me out.

December brings another one of those holidays — my Grandmothers both sent me books — like I can read. Anyhow, both of these books have really dramatic pictures of people wrapped up in bed sheets and sandals talking and freaking out in the desert. There’s a picture of a giant boat with a lions and elephants on board — all under a rainbow. That makes zero sense — everyone knows lions will kill you. Who would put them on a boat? These must be stories my grandmothers like but they’re nowhere near as interesting as the Charlie Brown Christmas special. Next year, if I have the ability to speak, I’m going to ask them for a Hoover.

January started out in the middle of the night. I woke up to my parents counting down — like on Sesame Street — and then all their friends were blowing horns and singing. It was annoying to be honest. I was woken from a sound sleep and naturally started crying. My mom came and got me. She’s so great. She looked super glamorous with her big hair and the sparkly paper hat she had on. She does everything for me, like way more than my dad. He’s often gone for weeks at a time. When he comes home he brings us cool stuff. Next week he’s going to Tehran — on an airplane. Lucky! There are long daggers of ice hanging outside my window. I hope someone is checking on that dog outside because I’d probably be dead by now if they left me in the snow.

My mom is decorating the house with paper daffodils for her birthday. She’s having a party with her friends — a bunch of other nurses from the hospital. They sit around the kitchen table laughing at jokes I do not get. When they laugh, I laugh. It’s weird — I don’t have any control over it. I just love it when people laugh. So, I’m talking more now. Mostly just a word or two here and there. I’m very shy around people I don’t know. They think it’s because I’m scared of them but it’s actually because I don’t want them to know anything about me. Hoover is one of my favorite words. Also Aminal, as in “Stuffed Aminal.”

It’s March and while we’re all stuck here in Oklahoma, my dad is traveling again. He came back from a trip to Singapore and brought home these little brass and glass “bicycle lamps.” They’re like tiny pagodas that you put on the handle bars of a bike with a candle inside so that when you ride around in the dark people can see you. Imagine that. I love these pagodas. I use them as doll houses for my GI Joe. He lives with his boyfriend Tarzan in one of these pagodas that I’ve hung from my mom’s dried arrangement in the living room.

Okay so something seriously messed up happened. It’s April and we were celebrating another holiday? Pretty good actually, involves coloring eggs and there are these baskets with plastic grass in them. Also, chocolate, which if you’ve not tried it, it’s amazing. Anyhow, point of story, we got up super early and went to this castle over by the TG&Y. At first I was kind of excited about going into the castle — then I saw the letter “t” which I recognized from Sesame Street and from those dumb books my grandmothers both gave me. (They should co-ordinate their gift giving. Call each other!) Okay, so we’re in the ‘t’ castle and we all had to be really quiet while this angry guy yelled at us for an hour. What was he yelling at me for? I hadn’t done anything. So I started crying then other little kids started crying and my mom had to take me out of the main room of the castle until I stopped crying. We were in this smaller room and I saw a picture again of that boat with the lions and elephants on the wall. There was also this picture of this sad guy wearing a barbed wire hat and he had blood on his face. What the what? Just take the hat off, don’t stand there looking sad, posing while someone paints you. I’m really worried about my parents. Like, why would they get in their car and drive, on purpose, to a place like this? I’m not so sure I can trust them.