Sacraments

The Catholic Church has seven sacraments. 
To a catholic child, only four of these sacraments are important.

The first of these is the sacrament of baptism. We were too young to remember our own initiation into the church, but it was important if you had little brothers or sisters. A baptism in your family meant cleaning the house like the pope himself was coming to visit. It also meant uncomfortable church clothes and a longer than usual mass. But it also meant a big party, brand name party snacks and a lot of witnesses if your mom hit you when you acted up.

The second important sacrament was confession, quickly followed by first communion. In order to partake in communion with the church, you needed to confess your sins.  In 2nd grade, we didn't have much to worry about. The bible didn't have much to say about hair pulling or most of the other things that happened in the backseat before mom heard,"I'm telling!" But it did teach us to think about our actions, maybe saving a sibling from some revenge when mom wasn't looking.

First communion was a big deal. It was your first reception of Holy Communion, or the body of Christ.  The girls had to wear white dresses, symbolizing the bride of Christ, while the boys wore suits, symbolizing that they could clean up nicely. More importantly, it was a party for us, and we got presents. 

All of our family parties were the same. EVERYBODY came over. Friends, neighbors, old relatives that we didn't know bearing jello molds. The food was great! Besides the name brand snacks, communion parties were usually a CBS catered affair...big pans of Chicken, Beef and Sausage supplemented by cole slaw and potato salad. And beer. Lots of beer. You could tell how long a party would last based on how much beer was left in the cooler.
 Like the end of the television broadcast day, everyone knew it was time to go home when the beer was gone and someone pulled out a guitar and played Danny Boy.

Hands down, the most important sacrament of all was confirmation, the sacrament of Christian maturity. Somehow, shrouded in mystery, you received the Holy Spirit. According to Wikipedia, the sacrament is customarily conferred only on people old enough to understand it, but it's still confusing to me. All I know is that it IS NOT like getting bit by a radioactive spider and gaining superpowers. 

Confirmation wasn't the big party sacrament like the others, but you got to pick a saint to help you  live a Christian life. And you got to take their name. 

People had various reasons for choosing their saints. Girls tended to take a relatives name, while boys chose warrior type saints, like Patrick, Richard or Michael. Some people took names as an inspiration, like Christina, Veronica or Claire. Uncle Jim threatened to take Ezekiel or Beelzebub just because they were bible names and he wanted to scare Aunt Carrie. Others took names because they sounded good with the rest of their name.

I chose a practical saint, Elizabeth. Saint Elizabeth taught you to be happy with second place. Imagine, an angel visits you and gives you a miracle baby, who is going to be John the Baptist. How cool is that? But wait, who's that coming over the hill? Your cousin Mary, who is giving birth to The Lord! St. Elizabeth gives you patience when you just can't catch a break.

At this point, we were considered adults in the church. With the help of the the Holy Spirit and the backing of a saint, we were now ready to take on the world. Or, in my case, not sweat the small stuff. We had God on our side. 

The Scary House

When we were kids, we had a limited time to trick or treat. You usually had to be back home in time for dinner, or maybe when the street lights came on. So, after you got home from school, you had about 4 good hours of candy collecting. 

There was no time to waste on houses that you knew had bad candy. You knew that the lady who yelled at you to keep off the grass had bad candy. Probably made with poison in her own basement. Old people had leftover candy from last year. Cat ladies gave furry bank candy and dieters gave pennies. But candy or no candy, no one ever went to the scary house.

Every neighborhood had a scary house. It was the one with trees and prickly bushes that extended onto the sidewalk, making you move to the far side to avoid getting your socks caught on thorns as you walked by. If you looked past the rusty gate, you could see a tiny house set way back in the overgrown yard. The house was always in need of repair and a paint job. At times there was an old dog or cat, not really scary as in dangerous scary, but scary as in really old and still alive scary.

The people who lived in these houses could only be witches. Sometimes you would see a really old person in the yard, and you would hurry past the house, making sure that you didn't make eye contact and become cursed.

One year, Aunt Carrie and I decided to go trick or treating at the scary house. I guess we were feeling brave because we were willing to risk being thrown in the oven a la Hansel and Gretel in our search of candy. 

I remember the yard being dark as we approached the house. Shadows hid all kinds of dangers and everything was quiet as we knocked on the door. Just like in all the scary movies, the door opened slowly, revealing a tiny old lady.

The old lady was very excited to see us. She invited us inside a house that reminded me of somebody's grandma. Marveling at our costumes, she told us that It had been many years since she had any visitors at Halloween and she didn't have any candy for us. So the tiny lady proceeded to gather some things like stuffed animals, crocheted dolls, buttons... She happily filled our bags with her little treasures. 

Aunt Carrie and I left the nice little lady's house with a lot of things, some of them not even in our bags. Looking back, I think we gave her a few treasures as well. 

Power Play

When we were little, there wasn't much opportunity to stand out and be important. There was always someone older, or bigger to boss you around. As we got older, we got the opportunity to make our own power grabs. 

Any job in grammar school that took you out of your classroom was important, but the jobs that also gave you power over other people were even better. For these reasons, the most coveted school job was that of patrol boy. Patrol boys had the responsibility of keeping you safe on your travels and got several benefits for their services.  Not only did they get to leave school a little bit early, they also had the power to tell on you if you were caught being a jerk on their watch. An orange belt could transform any kid into a neighborhood rock star, and they knew it. 

The girl equivalent of patrol boy was door monitor. Every morning students would arrive to school early and stand in line waiting for the doors to open. It was a situation ripe for cliques and line jumping, a virtual training ground for Black Friday sales or maybe playoff ticket release day. The people responsible for maintaining order outside were the very popular door  girls. Most days the girls didnt have much to do, so they spent their time gossiping and copying each others homework. Their real power was that they had the ability to let anyone into school early. Sometimes it was a student or parent who had an appointment, and sometimes it was one of their friends. On really bad weather days it was to your advantage to be friends with a door girl because you got to come in out of the wind/rain/snow that was so common during a Chicago winter. Not quite as cool as the cheerleaders, these girls had power and they knew it. 

No way near as glamorous but still important were the milk kids. These kids were responsible for making sure each classroom had the right amount of chocolate and white  milk for their lunch periods. Every day, they got to leave the classroom to fill the milk crate for their assigned classroom, so they got a little midmorning break. Milk kids didn't have any real power, but they did get to wander around the halls unsupervised for a bit. They were lucky, and they knew it.

One very important job happened just once a year, but it involved both getting out of class AND secrecy. Our school, St. Nicholas of Tolentine, observed the holiday of St. Nicholas day. Traditionally, children would put their shoes in front of the fireplace or front door on December 5th in the hopes that they had been good all year and St. Nicholas would leave them candy. Our school would let the first graders put their shoes outside their classroom, while their teacher told them the story of St. Nicholas.

During this time, some lucky older kids got picked to help fill the first grade shoes. They had to be very secretive, like Santa, and when they were  done, got to hide and hear the oohs and ahhs of the little kids finding their gifts. Everyone agreed that this was the best job ever. These kids had the power to make magic and everyone knew it. 

Our First Job

Uncle John was one of those kids who asked forgiveness rather than asking permission. He did whatever he wanted, and was always having adventures. Sometimes his adventures got him in trouble, but he could usually charm his way out of anything. Like the time he was sent to the principal's office in grammar school for misbehaving. As he sat there, John made the principal a valentines day card. Of course,  his sentence was lifted and he got to go back to class. That's how my brother rolled.

So it was no surprise the day John came home with a paper route a week after Grandma told me that I couldn't have one of my own. ( it would be some time until I developed my own John Tolley Luck, but when I did, I would convince Grandma to let me keep the mice I had been raising in the closet.)

Grandma made us share the paper route, and that was a good thing. We learned a little about life. And about adventure.

We certainly learned about responsibility. Everyday we would deliver the newspapers, which is no small thing for a 6th and 7th grade brother and sister. Sometimes Grandpa would drive us if the weather was bad, but most of the time we walked the roughly one mile route ourselves. We had a good time-sometimes friends would walk with us on our route, sometimes we would stop at Little Eddy's hotdog stand for breaded mushrooms or some other delicacy we never got at home.

We also learned about finance. Having money led to having adventures. At the end of each week, we always had enough money left over to pay for our weekly roller skating trip to Disco Wheels, where I got to show off my white skates with blue fuzzy balls on them. I loved those skates as much as I loved skating to the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever. Thats where I dreamt about that special someone I would someday skate with to the couples only songs. 

Uncle John was also fond of buying exploding cigarettes and fart cushions from Izzy Rizzy's trick shop. John had quite the collection of fun, which was put to good use whenever possible. I learned to appreciate the joy buzzer and the fine art of the well-placed fake vomit.

Both of us enjoyed being able to order 45 singles from Andy's Music. Though it was a music store, everything even remotely popular had to be ordered. The only thing Andy ever had in stock was old, faded birthday cards written in Polish. And sheet music for patriotic songs from the old country. If you wanted to play a German drinking song or the Polish national anthem on accordion, then you went to Andy's. Years later, Andy would take a dislike to Uncle Jim and chase him away from the bus stop in the morning.

One time we decided to treat ourselves to a meal at Carr's Diner. We really were no problem, but for some reason the waitress was not happy to have kids as her customers. And we were no help in that every time she got smart with us, we squeezed the plastic honey bear on the table and said, "temperature rising!" as the honey rose up in the bear. But we still tipped her, if for nothing more than teaching us that some people were jerks.

The paper route taught us things about the workforce and about ourselves. We learned many skills that we could use in future jobs, and we learned that whoopie cushions make us smile. Most importantly, we learned that work isn't really work if you make an adventure out of it. Stop for a hotdog every now and then. It keeps your temperature from rising.

Color Day

School uniforms lacked  imagination. And most kids I knew wore them. With our regulation knee socks and matching sweaters, we all looked like little Irish gang  members, but the different plaids let everyone know which school you called home. There was no room for individuality in the catholic school dress code.

My high school even made you wear a different colored uniform each year you were in school. This made it much easier for the nuns to give us the yearly , "We know who you are, so watch it!" lecture. At the beginning of the school year, each class was gathered for an assembly that invariably began with us being told that someone had called the school to complain that a girl wearing their class uniform was being unruly, smoking and/or causing trouble on the bus, in the mall and/or in general. The message was that we had better behave, because there were spies out there just waiting to turn us in. 

It seemed like we had been wearing uniforms forever, so when my high school announced an upcoming color day, we were thrilled! A color day was a day that we weren't required to wear uniforms to school. We could wear whatever we wanted, just like the Publics!

Public school kids were the closest thing that we had to cool...they got to wear what they wanted and leave their school between classes. They even had a designated area in which to smoke! Publics were the epitome of everything fast, naughty and racy. They had an edgy style that was totally alien to our locker inspected, name tag way of life. We loved any little opportunity that made us look as cool as them. 

Color days were usually a reward for something good, like meeting the schools candy sales goal, or behaving when some dignitary visited the school. The administration was happy, and that's how I got away with wearing sparkles and feathers on color day. I was also the president of the drama club, so I don't think anyone was really surprised with my fashion choices. Think pre diagnosed bipolar accepting an Academy Award. Fabulous!

Ironically,  most students took this opportunity to celebrate individuality by dressing exactly alike in their T shirts and jeans. And make fun of the girls who weren't dressed like them. 

I felt for these girls. Some of them couldn't afford Gloria Vanderbilt jeans. Some of them were first generation Lithuanian refugees and didn't know what Gloria Vanderbilt jeans were. Some of them were color challenged or accessory blind. Some of them just didn't care.

So I decided to  say something about it when it was my turn to read in English class. People chuckled as I sashayed my glittery self up to the front of the class. Amidst some laughter, I adjusted my feather collar and addressed my classmates. I told them that it was okay to laugh at me, I knew that my outfit was amusing. But some girls hadn't planned on being laughed at. This was all they had, so stop it.

I don't remember what happened after that. I do know that I received applause, and Sister Henrietta made me give my speech to the next class, but I don't know if I inspired anyone to stop being a jerk.

But in case I did, thank you from all of us who continue to dress outside of the box. Its our way of being a little fast, naughty and racy. Just like everybody else.

The Author

During my senior year of high school, I wrote a story that was published in a national student anthology. Not very long, the story was about the impersonal communication method of the telephone, and I was very proud of it. At this time, I imagined myself quite the writer, and my work to be quite edgy. After all, I kept a journal. This would be the first of many works that I would publish. I could see that.

The anthology, called "Passages," also included a brief biography of each of the authors, which I thought highly appropriate for such a prestigious work. Of course readers would want to know about the authors of such fine writing; I was sure that the curiosity of the public had been piqued.

I thought it quite ironic that all that was requested of us for this author bio was to answer a few general questions about ourselves and our school. We were authors, for goodness sake! Let our public into our lives...

After answering the basics about my city and school names, I realized my opportunity for soul sharing came with the last question listed, "What would you like to be when you grow up?"

So many answers to that question. Did I want to be famous? Married? A concert trombonist? (I was in the school orchestra at the time.) What could I say that would convey the grittiness, the raw angst of my catholic schoolgirl life?

I told them that I wanted to be a bag lady. I thought that would convey my Dadaist spirit and let people know that I was more interested in the message, not the wrapping paper. I thought it made me sound interesting.

Finally, the day came when the anthology was released. You could not imagine how excited I was to read my own words in a book. And I imagined that everyone who read my words would wonder at the author of such prose.

In the back of the book, alphabetically listed, were the illustrious authors of Passages. Glancing quickly at some of the other student entries, I chuckled to see that others wanted to pursue such mundane professions as teaching, writing and medicine. These kids were so cute! 

Then I saw my entry...lives in Chicago, attends Maria High School, wants to be a big lady when she grown up. 

A big lady? A BIG lady? What the hell does that mean? Big lady doesn't say edgy and dada. Big lady says, well, I don't know what it says. I like McDonalds? It certainly said dork to me. This was certainly not what I expected. But it turns out it was exactly what I meant.

30 years later, the Urban Dictionary defines Big as, " something great, really good, a large occurrence."  That's exactly what I wanted people to think of me, I was just a trend setter when it came to cool expressions.

I was edgy. And interesting. Just like I had hoped. I just didn't know it.

A Note for my Friends in Russia

Hello new friends in Russia! I notice that many people from Russia are reading this blog. Why is this?  I hope that I am  making you smile and remember your own stories, but I am still mystified as to why my stories are so popular in Russia. You know a little about me, now tell me a little about you!

Thank you for making ME smile,

Laura

Привет новых друзей в России! Я замечаю, что многие люди из России читаете этот блог. Почему это? Я надеюсь, что я делаю вам улыбаются и вспомнить свой рассказ, но я до сих пор удивляются, о том, почему мои рассказы настолько популярны в России. Вы знаете немного обо мне, теперь скажите мне немного о вас!

Спасибо за заставляет меня улыбаться,

Лаура

The Mitten Game

Most of my family was from the city, the SouthSide in particular. SouthSiders are what I like to call scrappy. They are highly creative people, sometimes motivated by payday being next week, and sometimes motivated by beer. Fueled by SouthSide ingenuity and a desire to impress the neighbors, everything that they touch becomes bigger, better and louder.

Sometimes SouthSiders don't understand people who don't think like them, people from far off places. Like the suburbs. We had cousins who lived in the suburbs and were nothing like us. They were well behaved and nice to each other. And clean. We would come ov to visit and tear apart their house, breaking toys along the way. I think that the cousins looked forward to our visits because they could use our barbarous nature as an excuse to be a little wild themselves.

The cousins shared a nice well behaved game called the Mitten Game with us. To play this game, everyone sat around in a circle and rolled dice. The first person to roll doubles had to put on a hat and mittens and then attempt to open a little newspaper wrapped gift before another person rolls doubles. The next person to roll doubles took the hat and mittens and continued opening the present until either the present was opened completely, or another person rolled doubles and got their chance to unwrap the gift themselves.

The excitement would build as people quickly rolled the dice for their chance to wear the mittens. As more paper came off of the gift, our voices got louder, and people started grabbing hats off of each other...finally, the Dollar Store gift was opened and we all got ready for the next round of play.

Imagine how much more exciting the Mitten Game became after we got ahold of it! The urge to enhance the game was irresistible for a Southsider.

First, we opened the game up to anyone who wanted to play, not just kids. Then, we started wrapping the prizes in duct tape. I believe we also tried hockey gloves instead of mittens at one point. You can see where this is going, can't you? Grandparents ripping the hats off of small children, people being knocked out of their chairs, newspaper flying, screaming and swearing, all this over a plastic backscratcher. Oh, the fun. You haven't lived till you've seen your dad fight your drunk uncle over a set of plastic army men. I don't have any of those old prizes anymore, but I may still have a scar or two.

Sometimes events seem bigger in your memories than they really were. But these are SouthSide memories. Bigger, better and louder. It's a way of life.

Summer Vacation

My mom was fond of calling us little animals, and like little animals, we didn't need calendars or watches to tell time. We had what were called "cirkidian cycles" to keep us regular. 

Calendars might  say that the first day of Summer began on June 21st, but we kids knew better. Summer officially began when our family went out to Dove's Candies to celebrate good report cards at the end of the school year. From the moment the bell on the door rang as you entered, you knew you were in an honest to goodness ice cream parlor; everything was trimmed in stainless steel, including the little water cups with the paper inserts. And the air smelled like homemade chocolate, much like I imagined Willy Wonka's factory smelled. In fact, Dove ice cream bars were invented at this Chicago shop in 1956. (The rest of the country didn't get them until 1985. )

 It was a great way to start the summer.

The clock might say that the end of the summer day came at about 9:30 in the evening, but we kids knew better.  The official end of the day came when the street lights came on. And we found many ways to occupy ourselves during the hours before then. If you didn't have a pool of your own,  you might go swimming at the nearby firehouse pool on 60th Steet. The YMCA had a pool, as well as summer sports leagues and arts and crafts. Little league, scouting, family vacations...there were all kinds of things to do to keep busy and avoid your mom giving you housework.

Sometimes you just stayed home and played with the neighbors. You would go to your friends house and in a sing songy way yell,

"Yo Kathy ! (or whoever)" through their screen door to call them out for fun. Legos, Barbies, board games, ...we spent hours being creative because nobody had invented  playstations yet. Heck, we didn't even have deluxe lego sets. Sometimes a group of neighborhood kids would get together and play games such as kick the can, red rover and a game called statue maker, in which you were flung across the lawn and became a statue in whatever position you landed in. I have reason to believe that this game was made up solely as an excuse to fling people. We were big on things that involved flinging people.

As we got older, we took the bus to Comiskey park to watch the White Sox, or maybe we took the bus to Oak Street beach because back then it was safe to let kids do that. Or, maybe our parents, having seen us fight amongst ourselves,  knew that we could take care of each other in times of trouble.

The fall equinox, or end of summer, comes at the end of September, but we kids knew better. Summer officially came to an end with the St. Nicks school carnival at the end of August. It wasn't a big carnival, but it did have games and rides and a beer garden and whatever else you could fit in a parking lot and down the alley.

The carnival was a big deal to us kids because we got see our school friends that we might not have seen all summer. More importantly, the school carnival was often the first time you got to see which of your friends had grown boobs over the summer. Or grown a mustache. Or both. And since everyone's parents were working the carnival, it was often an unsupervised night of funnel cakes and tilt-a-whirl for the rest of us. Little animals following pheromones, and maybe a little beer?

And at the end of the summer, everyone agreed that this was the best summer yet and it couldn't get any better than this. But we kids knew better.

Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit

The Tolleys believed that the first person to say Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit on the first of the month would receive good luck that month. As is the Tolley way, this usually involved yelling loudly throughout the house and at times muting your brother till you shouted your rabbits directly into his ear. Everybody did it, including our next door neighbors, the Wallows. In fact, Kathy Wallow Murdoch says that her family still wishes for rabbit luck every month. 

Nobody knows how this superstition started in our family. It would not surprise me to learn it was something we made up,  like the star fork. Grandma and Grandpa seem to remember hearing about it years ago on WGN radio's Wally Philips show.

Unlike the star fork, it turns out that there really is such a thing as rabbit luck. According to Wikipedia, the exact origin of this European superstition remains unknown, but the first noted use was by children in 1909. 

There are several variants to the ritual, but they all involve saying "rabbit" the first thing in the morning on the first of the month. It also seems that this luck can be obtained by anyone uttering the magic words. Nowhere in my research did I find reference to a monthly contest between screaming siblings. And nothing about punching each other, either.

So just when I'm thinking that our family is a little weird, it turns out that we are not alone. We weren't even first.

Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit 

The Kojak Card

This is the Kojak card. It originally came as a trading card in a pack of gum, probably between 1973-1978, which would make me and Aunt Carrie between 7-14 years old at that time. As you can tell, the card has seen a lot of action at the hands of kids, most notably Aunt Carrie and myself. Hidden and at times fought over, it was a very important part of our preteen years.

"Kojak" was a television crime drama series in the '70s  featuring Theo Kojak, a New York City detective played by actor Telly Savales. The tootsie pop sucking Kojak became a pop icon when he popularized the phrase, "Who loves ya, baby?" Women found his Greek looks sexy, but my friends and and I were a little young for that. We were just starting to experience hormones and bras of our own for the first time.

We were, however, old enough to be interested in boyfriends, whatever that meant. Our Barbie dolls were all dating the neighbor boys' GI Joes,  but the guys were always off to war so they didn't have to play with us. Rather than play together, the boys would load a toy jeep with their GI Joe dolls and push it down the street until it hit a curb and spewed all the soldiers all over the lawn. They would do this over and over again. Should have taught us something about boys, but it didn't.

So we fantasized about boyfriends of our own to marry us and fly us somewhere exotic in our Barbie airplanes.  And we dreamed big! Bobby Sherman, Donny Osmond, and Michael Jackson were favorite boyfriend choices of ours because Tiger Beat Magazine was always writing stories about these guys. We knew all of our idol's favorite colors, their favorite foods and what turned them on...we didn't exactly understand what that meant, but we knew that these guys would be great boyfriends and husbands. We knew that they would rather play dolls with us than blow up jeeps. Nevertheless, our boyfriend choices would change on a daily basis, sometimes depending on new Tiger Beat stories, and sometimes depending on whatever it is that that floats through the minds of preteen girls. 

And that's where the Kojak card becomes important. Because whomever held the Kojak card got to be the first person to pick their boyfriend. It didn't matter if someone else like Chad Everett more than you did, if you had the card, you had first dibs. You could be Mrs. Randy Mantooth for the day. And you could change your mind as often as you wanted to. You had the Kojak card. I don't know how this started, but we took it pretty seriously back in the day.

So I was quite surprised to receive the Kojak card in the mail from Aunt Carrie the other day. It seems that she is happy with her life with Uncle Larry and doesn't intend on trading him in for Leif Garrett.

I am also quite happy in my relationship with Uncle Fred. But, in the event that Uncle Fred would rather crash his jeep than play with me, I am now free to pursue a relationship with David Cassidy. Maybe I'll finally get my dream house. And a pony.

This Is All Their Fault

My parents, Jack and Gloria Tolley, were truly a love at first sight relationship. Growing up across the street from each other in the 1950's, my dad says he first noticed my mom in a little polka dotted dress taking pictures in front of her house. And he wanted that girl.

As my father was, how you say, a little "rough," my mom's parents were concerned. My dad was the stereotypical greaser teenager of the 50's, complete with leather jacket, cigarettes and attitude. Dad later admitted that he used a switchblade to threaten any other men wanting to date my mom. That's how he rolled.

But Grandpa Maza was soft on my father's charms, probably because he himself had some adventures under his belt. Most notably, Grandpa Maza once got caught breaking into a church and playing "Hold That Tiger" on the church organ. That's how he rolled.

So, under the watchful eye of the Dragon Lady, as my dad fondly called Grandma Maza, my parents dated throughout their high school years. 

My dad turned out okay, and he is the first one to give credit to that girl in the polka dotted dress. After getting married, my father became a Chicago Police officer, eventually retiring from the boys in blue as a lieutenant. He also went on to get his Bachelors degree in his spare time (ha! sparetime!) if my dad wasn't working a second job over the weekend, it was quite common to find him listening to a football game on the radio and watching another one  on tv while reading a textbook. I believe that he was the original inventor of multitasking but was too busy to notice.

And while dad was arresting Martin Luther King Jr. and breaking up the riots of the Chicago Democratic convention, that cute gal in the polka dotted dress was busy putting creativity and magic in our lives. My mom is like those kids decorating the Charlie Brown Christmas tree - she can make something fabulous out of nothing. And at a moments notice, too! Mom was an expert at last minute patron saints costumes, school banquets and third grade art projects.  Many a St. Nicks student remembers her fondly with origami and fingerprint mice.

Mom is an accomplished artist and nurse, but her real talent is finding bargains. She kept our family going by being able to combine discontinued products and coupons with generic food. In fact, the term "To Pull a Gloria," means to get an even better deal than you had set out to get in the first place. Senior discount day, an in-store special,  and paying with credit card points is a triple-play-hat-trick in the game of saving money. And mom is the best.

While not a big as the Ringling Brothers, these crazy kids from the South side  raised their own little circus. Much like the professionals, there were always several acrobatic acts being performed simultaneously, some even death defying. (at times there were broken bones and broken windows.) Juggling bills and after school activities, they walked that tightrope between what we wanted and what we needed. Surrounded by an assortment of animals, you could always find a clown or two sitting around watching tv or playing Pong on the tv. 

And sometimes there was fire.

And more often than not, a great story came out of everyday adventures.

Prom

Prom has been a big deal for girls since time immemorial. The fancy dresses, the flowers, maybe a little champagne? This was a magical time for us, our first foray into adulthood that didn't involve school uniforms, and we were all princesses.

Prom season was extra special when you went to an all girls school. It involved something so alien to our little lives that we had to have a special  assembly  just to address this issue. Prom meant Boys. Charming boys. Boys in suits. Boys that weren't your brother or your cousin. Boys that you would remember for the rest of your life whenever you thought about prom night. 

Among other things, the nuns told us that boys were filthy animals who were out to take advantage of our morals. We were not advised to encourage them in any way, and the nuns promised to place flowers in any low cut bodice that they encountered at the dance. I swear I can remember the nuns also telling us that we should avoid going out to dinner with our dates after prom because white tablecloths reminded boys of bed sheets. Or maybe it was white dresses that reminded the boys of going to bed. I believe we were told that everything reminded the boys of bed.

But no matter. Nothing could stop our night of all nights. We had been dreaming of this night since we played with Barbies, since we first skated couples only at the roller rink, since we started reading TigerBeat magazine.

Details, details, details! 

Hair, makeup, matching accessories, jewelry, nails, purses, garter belts...

Plans, plans plans! 

Are we double dating? Getting a limo? Getting liquor? 

So many choices!

As the night of the dance approached, many people had advice for after prom activities. Some people suggested a late night boat ride. Others thought it would be fun to get a hotel room (I guess you weren't a whore unless you went out to a restaurant  with tablecloths first), other people thought it was a good idea to go home early since there was a class picnic the next day.

Sister Henrietta thought it would be nice to go to the planetarium after prom. Now why she thought this, I'll never know. But she shared her 80 year old nun thoughts with either her English IV or Great Books classe (I had both). We thought it was funny because "going to the planetarium" was a euphemism for making out with your boyfriend. Maybe she knew what that meant and was just trying to be hip. Maybe that's where she went after her prom in 1910. Anyways, we all smiled and thanked her for the advice.

What a weekend! Big dance, romance, picnics and plans. We could hardly wait to get to school on Monday to exchange notes. (It would still be another week till our pictures were developed at Walgreens and another 30 years till we could twitter, tweet or twat about that night.)

Sister Henrietta was just as excited to find out how prom night went for all of us. She opened our Monday class by asking each of us what we ended up doing after prom. 

The first girl she asked quickly responded that she went to the planetarium. So did the second and third. It quickly became apparent that the entire class was lying through their teeth or that every one of them had gone to the planetarium. Until Sister Henrietta asked me what I had done.

"Well, sister," I answered. "After prom, my boyfriend and I went back to his place and tried out those souvenir prom glasses with a bottle of wine. Then we made out for awhile before we met some friends for a party.

Sister was silent, as was the rest of the class. I remember everyone looking at me with big eyes, waiting for sister to respond.

She paced slowly in front of the room, silently looking at the floor.

The palpable silence was broken when she looked at me and said, "Now Laura, what did you Really do after prom?"

To everyone's relief,  I answered, 

"I went to the planetarium." 

I hope everyone enjoys their prom, however you choose to remember the night.

Traditions

The play, "Fiddler on the Roof," opens with the father explaining the importance of traditions in the family. He even sings a song about them. How do I know this? Because Uncle John played that father, Tevye, in his high school production of Fiddler on the Roof. Therefore, we listened to the album approximately ten and a half gazillion times.

Tevye explains that traditions help you keep your balance, like a fiddler on the roof. Now, no one in our family is well balanced, but our family had traditions too. Like private jokes, they meant something to us, but maybe not to people outside of the family.

Some traditions have been a part of being a Tolley since before I can remember.  Like the way Grandma Tolley used to tuck us in at night. After we were in bed, Grandma would say to us:

     "Night night, sleep tight.

       Don't let the bedbugs bite

       your nose or your toes,

       that's the way the story goes,

       Pop goes the weasel!"

Uncle Jim remembers the tradition differently. He says Grandma would just tell him:

       "There's a weasel under the bed.

          Now go to sleep."

    

The Madelyn Padelyn song*, your special goodnight song, carries on the tradition that Grandma started. Your song, while longer and with more embellishments, contains the same verse that Grandma sang to us.

     

Some traditions came to us from other families, like the special way Aunt Rita would sing Happy Birthday. This was something started by her in laws family, and we kind of inherited it. Before singing the actual birthday song, there was a pre-verse that went:

     Shine your shoes, comb your hair,

     Come along with me,

      It's ______'s birthday, 

      that's the place to be!

A nice, clean addition to any song.

Of course the Tolleys had their own birthday song:

   Here's to you (Birthday boy) here's to you!                  

   Here's to you Birthday boy here's to you!

   Oh you think your upperclass,

   But you're just a horses ass,

   Here's to you Birthday boy here's to you!

Not quite as clean,  but it got the point across. You knew you were an adult when they stopped singing about shiny shoes on your birthday and just called you an ass.

And Aunt Cathy's neighbors from Fairfield Ave.  gave us "X Marks the Spot," * a little routine where you trace things on a kids back while you sing a little song. A tried and true ice breaker with kids, it has only been a part of the family since 1977 or 78. Once you do it to a little kid, they want you to do it again. And again. And again. I now X marks the spot to little Mexican kids in the neighborhood. They don't understand the words, but they want you to keep doing it till your own arm wants to fall off.

Both Aunt Rita and Aunt Cathy were surprised that I remembered these little rituals. Obviously, they do not appreciate the Importance of tradition to a Tolley. Heck, we still tell and laugh at the same jokes and stories we heard 25 years ago. Our motto is: if it got a laugh once, it's good for another million laughs. 

Some traditions have only been around since you grandkids have been here, like the fairies. Did you know that fairies dance in your garden to the sounds of your wind chimes? You can always tell when they have been there, because they leave fairy dust, which looks an awful lot like glitter you might get at the craft store. To say thank you for letting them dance in your garden, the fairies would leave little gifts, which look an awful lot like trinkets you might get at the dollar store. None of you kids ever questioned this because, like I said, there were gifts involved.

I guess traditions mean alot to me, too. Grandma might have been the first to bring the fairies to our family, but you and I were the first ones to plant sour ball candies to grow suckers. We also found out that if you planted pennies, you could grow pencils that looked like $100 bills. 

And the cloud factory!  You and I first saw a cloud factory while driving down I-55 near Springfield, IL. It looks like any other factory along the highway, but its not. You could tell it was a cloud factory because there were big towers with white smoke billowing from them. What else could they be? Over the years, we saw that factory make many big puffy clouds as we drove back and forth between our house in St. Louis and Grandmas in Chicago. We always smiled because even when the weather was bad, the factory was making happy clouds.

Sometimes these traditions seem silly. They might have meant something to us when we were little, but that was just us being part of a family. They were the little things that set us apart from other families, the little things that made us fit with each other.

And just when I think they have lost their importance, you ask your niece Alyssa if she sees the cloud factory in the distance from our car. And it makes me smile to think of future generations calling each other asses on their birthdays.

Tevye was right. Our traditions show us who we are and where we come from. Without them, our lives would be as shaky as a fiddler on the roof. And ten and a half gazillion times more boring.

     

*X Marks The Spot

X marks the spot       (Draw an x on the    

                                           child's back)

With a dot, dot, dot    (Draw 3 dots)

And a dash, dash, dash   (3 dashes)

And a huge question mark  (question mark)

Up goes the weasel   (Little footsteps with

                                          your fingers up the

                                          spine)

Down goes the weasel     (footsteps down

                                                   the spine)

Feel a breeze?           (blow on their neck)

Here's a squeeze!     ( Give a big squeeze!)

*The Madelyn Padelyn Song

Now is the time when mommy tells you good night. But when I try to find the words, there are none. All I can say is

        You are the love of my life.

And I will tell you good night, and tell you that I can't wait to see you in the morning.

So,

       Night night, sleep tight

       Don't let the bedbugs bite

       Your nose or your toes,

       That's the way the story goes,

       Pop goes the weasel!

Madelyn Padelyn, Madelyn Padelyn

Madelyn Padelyn Vahle,

That's all.

Love you forever, like you for always

Forever my baby you'll be.