The church thing.

Even though I have no justifiable reasons for staying home again on Sunday, I'm going to make my excuses anyway.

So here it comes--the bullshitting words of a pastor's kid.

I grew up in the church, gave up my Sunday mornings, and during the week, couldn't attack a plate of food without giving thanks.  And now I write about whacked out degenerates who curse with God's name in the mix.

So when I started this blog, my immediate thought was that nobody from my church can EVER see this.

Bullshit.  They're going to find out someday that I'm not the pristine Christine they once knew.  But really, they have NO IDEA who I am.  No idea.

I already figured that at this stage and age, my toughest critics were going to be the avid churchgoers.  I've told them before that I've wanted to be a writer.  And here's what they tell me:

"Oh, that's wonderful!  You know what you should do?  You should write books for young people teaching them how to be better Christians!"

Aaaah.

So I know the church will someday reject me for what I do.  But that means that I'll be in the same leaky rowboat with someone else--my father.

Apparently, he tells me, the church isn't inspired by what he does.  To them, the idea of assisting the needy and providing them the opportunity to better their lives is not as interesting as sending donations to those hungry kids in Uganda.

I was part of a small faith-based group for a while.  I told them about my dad's work, tried to hype them up about it.  They approvingly said:

"Oh, that's great.  Well, good luck with that.  We'll pray for them."

Since that wasn't the answer I wanted, I pressed on:

"But I was thinking you guys to come out there and help.  I think it would make a good fellowship-building activity."

The answer I got instead:

"Here, try some of my wife's chili."

After not even a full year, I left that group for good.  I just stopped showing up.  And they haven't asked me why I don't come anymore, so you can see how much they obviously miss me.

So my father and I now share something in common--we do things differently for a reason, and that primary reason is because reality exists.  People take God's name in vain.  Couples and families are out there without homes and daily income.  And because we're not hiding ourselves in our Bibles and doughnuts like many churchgoers are, we get called out on it.    

So why go to a party when you know you're not invited?

Well, now I've said it--it's out for everyone to see.  And I know that if my church reads this, I will never be asked to teach Sunday school again.

And that's fine with me.  Those kids are awful.

Normal insight.

I was once criticized by one of my professors for satirizing the conversations of normal people.

She informed me, "It's not a satire if half the audience can't relate to it."

My reply: "But I don't know how normal people think."

At first I had assumed that her questionable pairing of a man's shirt over a plaid skirt and cloth shoes, accompanied by her hypnotizing seesaw walk, would mean that she was eccentric enough to appreciate something different.

Remember, kids, assuming kills.

Unfortunately my rickety professor, the 5-minute time span between classes, and probably my raging urge to insult her terrible clothes, didn't give me a chance to explain why my writings don't appear to relate to the average American college student.

The fundamental reason: My upbringing.  That would take much longer than 5 minutes to flesh out, but well worth missing my Japanese class for.

Whatever you're probably thinking about, no, that wasn't the case.  My unique upbringing was not due to problems, but choices.  

Somehow, when I was still too young to know how to fucking swear, my father decided to abandon the luxurious realm of the normal and enter into the empty barren fields of the degenerates.

And for fifteen years, that's where he's been, and his family reluctantly followed.

Hence, my memories are warped into parallels, but not replicas, of the lives of the children defined as "average."

Instead of going to Chuck E. Cheese's with friendly schoolmates on a Saturday, I'm going to 7-Eleven with a slew of underprivileged, street-smart kids who are unsupervised much of the time.

I'm sitting in the front seat with the window wide open not in the my dad's new Honda faux-leather-clad SUV, but a 90s style Dodge caravan, with the seat belt buckle broken off.

I'm not sitting on Santa's lap, but on the mushy, cushiony thigh of the hefty, toothless-smiling man from the IHS down the street.

In my family, the mother worked and the father stayed with the kid.  And time with Daddy meant visiting others, whether outside or inside, delivering necessities, listening to their problems, asking what else they needed.

Well, he did the work.  I just wandered off, sat around, or waited in the car and pretended the surrounding trees were broccoli. 

And through all this, we had a home.  We had full stomachs.  We had cable.  We had dial-up internet service.  We just had other people to think about other than ourselves.

And now it's been fifteen years.  Lessons learned and burned into my brain:

- Possessions are like toothpaste.  You only need a little bit.

- It's not enough to not do drugs.  It should be rephrased to, "DON'T EVEN TRY DRUGS."

- Never settle for mediocrity, not in terms of wealth and success, but of character and morality.

- Trees are NOT giant broccoli.

Now it's been fifteen years.  And my upbringing has left me quite alone in a world that says, "Screw the needy!  Worry about yourself!  Work your ass off, do whatever it takes to get rich, until you die!"

So living among the so-called "average" is a daily struggle.  I try to talk to them, act enthusiastic about their lives, laugh nervously.  But it's engagement in social activity, so I just deal with it.  For those who are not categorized under "average," it's different.  They may seclude themselves, have strange habits, and curse at the sky, and somehow I feel a stronger connection towards them.

This is the lifestyle I've been assigned to.  And apparently, that puts a cripple on my "relatability" status as a writer, according to Professor/Dr. __________.

So obviously my audience is not going to consist of the average American college students, and they read Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey.

Well, I guess I'm on the right track, then.

(Click on the link,
 http://zionipuka.bellstrike.com/, 
to see the real deal.)

My world.

Usually when local people ask me where I'm from, and I tell them, the reaction I get is similar to that face people make when you tell them to fuck off. 

It's as if the name of my town alone whacks them across the face, unleashing its invisible impact as soon as it puffs out and collides with the dead air.  I know.  I've seen it happen.  I just say the word, and people flinch like they're trying to jerk away from it before it hits them.

Obviously they've read some of the recent headlines regarding my town, most of them that can be worded as "Handsome Innocent Man Attacked By Ugly Mean Thugs in _________, Hawaii."  And considering how beautiful and pristine they probably believe themselves to be, it's enough to strip them with the naked fear that even they could become potential victims to such bad-guy treachery.  So best keep the kids, and the silver Lexus, safe at home.

Seven years ago, my family would have done the same thing. (Excluding the silver Lexus.) But seven years ago, we moved to this supposedly dim area for personal reasons, and we've been out here ever since.

Now that I'm currently living about 30-40 miles away from home, I occasionally try to remember the beloved details about it.  Friendly faces. Vibrant sunsets.  Marijuana.

Being that it's been only two weeks since my Christmas vacation, I'm able to recall the moment I knew the holidays had come-- when I saw that distorted-looking house that marked my street, with that tin roof with the tires on top of it to keep it from blowing off, followed by the brilliantly colored, blinking lights... of police cars.  Jesus' birthday was well on its way.

In my room stand proudly my gold-plated plastic made-in-China trophies and valedictorian medal, all engraved with the name of my old high school, once ranking one of the lowest in academics and athletics.  Open the window and gaze at the brilliantly painted sky, and be greeted by an herbal, organic wave of weed.

The morning consists of a vehicular stroll through the garbage garden, with overflowing dumpster fountains.  The flies joyfully pirouette around the scenery.  It's glorious.  

This, and many other things, is what I left behind.  And I have until Spring Break to look forward to it again.

Three years ago it was the place that I loved.  Now after three years of living the city life, it's become a different planet to me.  But it's still that undeniably true part of me that requires me to say, "I'm from __________."

Then comes that quick blink.  Head jerk.  Nervous laugh.  Then finally that gust of words-- "WHOA! REEEEAAALLY?"

My response: A short chuckle.  Dramatic shrug.  Then a confident nod.

"Yeah, I'm serious!"

(Pause)

"But it's not THAT bad!"

Hellementary. (Part 2)

Now that you've read of my encounters with my very own monstrous Chewbacca lady, I recount on my second hellementary experience-- first grade.  The minor difference: there were two of them.

The first one would paint her eyeshadow on so dark that if she had gotten a black-eye, we wouldn't have noticed.  She was another one of those teachers who liked to wear long, draping, frilly old lady dresses.  So basically she was a walking curtain with two black-eyes and loofa hair.  And a quick, time-bomb temper.

She always appeared to have that cloudy look about her, as if her the color of her eyelids matched her mood or something.  And she never smiled.  When annoyed, she'd squeeze her eyes shut, so that the bruises were clearly exposed, and shake her head s-l-o-w-l-y.  Knowing her, that was pretty often.

Though I don't remember any particular clash I had with her, I remember that made me feel like a fucking idiot quite a few times.  And I also remember that she had a tendency to be forceful.  Very forceful.

One one occasion I had to write a letter to Santa.  The other kids tackled the assignment immediately.  They all knew what they wanted for Christmas.  But I sat there with a face as blank as the paper in front of me.  And she noticed.

The curtains swished in my direction.  Her bruised eyes melted mine.  Suddenly she clenched my pencil-ridden fist in her fist and scrawled on my paper.  Now there was a deformed "DEAR S" at the top.  

And just like that, the time-bomb went off, right in my ear. "WRITE!"

Wanna know the real reason why I couldn't do the assignment?  Because I didn't BELIEVE in Santa!

However, the black-eyed curtain lady was in cahoots with another woman.  Her skills in child debasement was far superior to her own.  Compared to her, she was just an amateur.

This one didn't wear curtains.  Instead she wore leggy streetwalker dresses, and indigo eyeshadow that could make the cheapest-looking women jealous.  What completed her look was her hellish lipstick and matching nails, complimented by a hinge-like creaking voice.

When I first saw her, my initial reaction was that I was entering a witch's classroom, and she would cast a spell on me and make me look like her.

But now that I've been given some years to absorb the image, I now refer to her as the hooker lady. She could easily flirt with sad, lonely bastards by flashing her legs and blinding them with that eyeshadow, then lifting up that short hem and screeching to them in that shrill, nasal voice, "Eh, you wanna date?"

She was a huge fan of the word "outrageous".  That described her perfectly-- outrageous in appearance, outrageously vocal, and outrageously rude.

She was my reading teacher.  A regrettably frequent assignment: Sit down, listen to her read a story like a broken violin, and retell the story on paper.

I remember one of the first stories she ever read-- When the Goose Got Loose by Steven Kellogg.  The story was so damn difficult to follow, and I couldn't ignore those 15-minutes of her shrieking away like that.  The other students proudly fell into their summaries.  By the time recess bell rang, I was still in there with the Playboy of the Month, issue 1998.

She moved me to her front desk so she could see me better.  I struggled to remember that stupid story.  But half a page was all I could squeeze out.  Recess ended.  She click-clacked over to me and shot me with her indigo eyes.  "Write more!" she squawked.

"I can't."
"Why not?  Are you brainless?  Do you have rocks in your head?"

Since I obviously wasn't the smartest six-year-old, my response was, "Yes."

I don't remember exactly how I finished.  I think I actually snuck away that fucking book and copied from it as she taught the other class that came in.  By the time the lunch bell rang, I showed her a fully-written page, and with a sharp wail she let me go.

That night:  "Mom?  What does brainless mean?"

It wasn't until 7 years later when my mother told me what she had learned from a phone call with the school principal. Turns out that Mrs. Black-Eye had been undergoing the effects of menopause and Mrs. Witch-Whore had been in the process of a divorce.  Well, of course!  ANY six-year-old would understand that!

So basically, these were two women who clearly needed to get laid.  And it was only fair for them to take out their sexual deprivation on a bunch of ignorant six-year-olds.  As fucking fair as the O.J. Simpson trial.

Now you know about the wardens of my earliest years of my hellementary incarceration.  The others?  Well, there weren't any very serious cases.  Probably because they had better sex lives.

So my hellementary teacher stories end here.  

I once heard that normally you're not supposed to remember things from when you were 5 or 6.  How I wish that were true.

But I guess that person also forgot that I'm anything but normal.

Hellementary. (Part 1)

You say "elementary," I say "hellementary."

Elementary, hellementary.

I attended a hellementary school that was the breeding ground of some of the worst bitches anyone could have the pleasure of meeting.  And they were there to teach and we were there to learn.

One of those was my kindergarten teacher, the sumo wrestler in a dress.  During recess you could always get an impressive panoramic view of the hem of her muumuu sweeping gracefully as her elephant-feet tramped along the grass.

She showed her ability to work with 5-year-olds, just so she drove us kiddies to tears with her enduring impatience and loving obnoxiousness.  We were fortunate to have her for our first life sentences of primary education, weren't we?

One day we had an assignment-- do the math problems and color the fishes.  The other kids finished it and turned it in with no problem.  By the end of the half hour, I was the only one with the crayons still out.  I glanced over at the bulldog in puffed sleeves.  She was growing impatient.

Finally I slid out of my seat and dropped the worksheet into her bear paws.  First a grunt, then a roar that sounded like my name.  Then a loud rip.

I watched as the magenta hippopotamus tore my paper into colorful ribbons of crayola flesh and force fed them to the trash can.   Then she thrust at me a fresh new paper.  "Do it again," she mooed.

I returned to my seat, unable to discern what the wooly mammoth had just done.  But I blindly began again.  Soon I was back in the elephant's realm, staring at her staring at me.

She trumpeted something and mauled my paper into a dead rainbow.  Again.  A few monkeys from the back tittered.  This was classic entertainment for them.

Third time: Tear, tear, rip, rip, rubbish can slam dunk. "How many times do I have to keep ripping up your paper?"  
"Oh, that Christine!" screeched one of the chimps as I trudged back for round 4.
"I know!" the pink Chewbacca crowed.

I don't remember if I ever finished that damn worksheet.  But I do believe that the moment was one of the rare times that Jesus would say that using the "f" word was okay.  What I regret the most is not knowing the fucking "f" word at that time.  I was only five, for fuck's sake.

And that's my first hellementary memory-- a scenario that could have been in an Animal Planet Safari special, complete with graphic desecration of abnormally large predator upon tiny helpless prey with indifferent species looking on, available on pay-per-view.

Six years later, I had the pleasure of making her acquaintance again, as a school library assistant.  The hairy elephant had gotten a shit-colored perm, and was still in the same pink ruffles.  She barked at me all afternoon as I shelved books and she sat on her lard ass.

Mrs.________, just to let you know, when I find your obituary, I'm framing it in gold. But if before that happens, I happen to be visiting a close friend or relative who's on life support and I happen to see you there, I'm pulling the plug on you myself.

But according to records, she passed away on March 2007, and she's buried at the same location my grandfather's buried.  So all the vengeful shit I wrote above is void.

Well, wherever you are, I hope there's a bunch of hapless kids for you to torment for all eternity.  Just to let you know, all the children's lives that you've touched, as probably mentioned in your eulogy, are probably now troubled, distrusting adults.  So we thank you kindly for your tireless years of service.  We'll remember you, just not fondly.

Stay tuned for Part 2.

Crickets.

I think I'm one of the worst writers I know.  But I keep trying.

I knew at the age of 11 that I wanted to be the best writer I could be.  But 10 years later, I now know that I can only be the as good as I am now--unoriginal, unfocused, no sense of prodigiousness whatsoever.

Being an English major has convinced me of this irrefutable truth, so I've given up trying to write like I'm a frickin' genius, because I'm not.  I'm just the average over-thinking, critical-minded, satirist-wannabe.  So here I am, writing as the only person I know I write like-- me.

The reception I get on my pieces is mostly none.  The poem of dry, brittle leaves blowing in the wind gets more of an applause than mine about the dialogue of the guy who sits in front of 7-Eleven talking to himself.  So what do I get exactly?  Crickets.  Just a no-question silence with a whiff of offense and WTF reactions. 

Some other student blatantly says that he wrote his short story last night.  He gets a generous clap-clap-clap with a ha-ha or two.  When it comes to mine that I spent the whole week on, what do I get?  Crickets.

So, yeah, I guess that means I suck, don't I?  Well, I think I can live with that.

What the English world has taught me is that the public is not as open to free-styling as I thought it was.  They want to hear generic goodness such as the innocence of children, or a poem about grass being green, or being sad about someone dying-- things that evoke that "aww" feeling.  They don't want to hear about the homeless guy who refuses to move into the shelter because of his dog, or the prostitute who hates everyone, or the pregnant drug-using twenty-three-year-old.

Their initial reaction: Oh, reality!  Run away!

So I guess sometimes, if you want be the best you can be at something and put your heart into it, everyone will ignore you.  Present yourself at your worst, put no thought into it, do what everyone else does and has done for centuries, and they will worship you.

At least, this is how it works with writing. 

Now feeling rejected by the people who were supposed to encourage me, I've subjected myself to sucking at what I'm best at, for as long as it takes for someone to appreciate my ideas.

But for now, all I hear is crickets.