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