I'm feeling out of sorts today. But because I love you (and you, and you, and especially you) I'm going to spare you the whiny post and instead post one of my favorite slack articles ever.
The House of Fuck
I was five years old and in kindergarten, wearing my red, black and yellow argyle wool dress with a white blouse, thick black nubby tights and patent leather mary janes, my long black hair hung to my waist in two thick, shiny plaits. The entire class was seated at two long tables, seventeen sets of eyes all on the substitute teacher. We had never had a substitute teacher before, and in my childhood mind, this was my idea of intrigue. Drama. I didn’t know how this woman was, but now she was going to lead our motley group in Arts & Crafts!
She was blonde, and I remember her as pretty, although I remember everyone as pretty back in those days. Her too-big adult hands worked the pint-sized scissors through a thick piece of construction paper. She folded and cut and unfolded and cut some more and suddenly she had in her hands the form of a round-bellied little person.
You’ll decorate them to look like you! Won’t that be fun?
This is where she lost me. I didn’t appreciate her patronizing tone. My mother didn’t use it. My father, when I saw him, didn’t use it. Out-Sick Mrs. Parmeter never used it.
Besides, I would have rather decorated them to look like someone else. I was just a five year old with a big brain and long black hair; that wouldn’t take long to do. I wanted to decorate my paper doll as Famous Writer or Famous Veterinarian. Or Lost Russian Princess, sitting on a wine-colored sofa in front of a roaring fire with a fur blanket pulled around me for warmth.
But this wasn’t an imagination drill, so I’d toe the party line like I always did, and leave the imaginationing to my brain, which always worked overtime in such cases.
We formed a polite kindergarten line to receive our materials, having been taught the Rules of Polite Society by our Mrs. Parmeter. First the twins, Alice and Sarah. Then Amy. Then Jay. Then me.
She handed me a piece of thick white construction paper and a pair of scissors with green rubber gripping on the handles.
Those are lefty scissors, I told her.
There are other kids waiting in line, she told me brightly.
I'm not a lefty.
The other kids are waiting.
That was it. I’m not a fucking lefty, I told her. And those are fucking lefty scissors.
All color left her pink face and her mouth formed a round O. I shrugged and dropped the green-handled scissors into the box where she had gotten them from, and selected a pair of regular scissors. I grabbed them by the blades, point down. Safety first and all that.
I returned to my seat and began working on my doll.
Later that evening, my mother attended a PTA meeting. I was at the kitchen table, reading a book and eating crackers when she came home. She made herself a cup of coffee and asked if I wanted one. I did. She sat down at the kitchen table and shook out a cigarette from her package of Newport Lights, stuck it in her mouth, and lit it. I sipped my coffee and watched as she inhaled deeply through her nose and exhaled through her mouth. I loved the smell of my mother’s cigarettes.
She finally spoke. Did you say fuck in school today?
I thought back. Yeah, I did.
What happened?
I told her about it. The paper dolls, the patronizing tone. The sheer lack of imagination. The lefty scissors.
She tapped an ash into the ashtray on the table. No, no you are not.
It suddenly occurred to me that I might be in trouble. I looked at her nervously. She smiled, shaking her head which made the afro-like curls on her head bounce.
Language like that we should only use at home. That’s not for school.
Oh. I didn’t know.
I know you didn’t. It’s not your fault.
I’m sorry.
Don’t be sorry, you didn’t know. Now that you do, I know you’re smart enough to figure it out, kid. I just forget that you’re five sometimes, and not forty.
It happens. I shrugged.
She laughed and tapped out the cigarette on the green glass ashtray, this time resting it on the notched edge so she could pull out her double deck of cards. She shuffled and began laying out a game of solitaire.
I watched, mesmerized, as I always did. I took a sip of the sweet, hot coffee. Mom selected a card and began to play.
What the fuck, mom?
She laughed again, not one of those aren’t-you-adorable? laughs, but a real, throaty, adult laugh. She took another puff on her cigarette.
Yeah, kid. What the fuck?
