Left to My Own Devices

My parents rarely left me alone until I was 10 or so. On the occasions when I was left alone, at home, to my own devices, I went buckwild.

My parents were, until very recently, very boring people. Boring by these standards: They paid their taxes. They had the same jobs since I was born. They subscribed to your standard suburban people magazines: Time, Better Homes & Gardens, Sports Illustrated. The people in their address books actually lived at those addresses and those were their real names. Their hobbies were reading, golfing, cooking, and vacationing to non-exotic places, like the beaches in South Carolina. They never talked about illicit drug use, shagging in microbuses, or anything else truly insane, other than doing unscrupulous things while drunk, like driving over railroad tracks, but that happened before I was born, so it really didn't count. Not that I wouldn't have been horrified (!!!) if my parents actually had talked about these things like they actually happened recently, "So, you know, we were all just lounging on Patty's back porch and talking about the best way to tame Wisteria when all of a sudden, Monica, started the wave, and by that I mean she lifted up her shirt..." but my childhood was mainly stable and very boring, and, for this, I consider myself very fortunate.

These days, my parents are much more interesting. But I'm not going to give you the goods on them for free. You'll have to pay to read about them in my autobiography. After I write it, someday.

But back to being home alone in the house of my boring parents. Even if my mother was only gone to the bank for 15 minutes, I would raid all of her Christmas letters - the ones that were addressed exclusively to her. I would go through her jewelry box and try on all of her gypsy-ish earrings. I would try to unlock my father's briefcase. I would go jump on the living room couch, reserved only for sitting on when company came over.

None of these activities ever netted me the kind of mischievous satisfaction I had hoped it would. Of course it didn't. My parents were very boring people.

And if they had anything exciting to hide? I'm sure they would have hidden it, in places that I would never have thought to look.

As years passed by and I was left at home with my siblings for long nights, and as I garnered a fairly large pool of babysitting clients, the temptation to stir up trouble began to fade. I didn't want to look at things that didn't have my name on them. I didn't want to open doors, or briefcases, that were obviously barring me from entry. I don't know if this was part of becoming a teenager and feeling as though I had so many thoughts of my own to keep under lock and key, but I began to be more respectful of the responsibility of being left alone.

Now, however, since I am Never Alone, since I have the loathsome chore of coming home every night to a warm, loving body, who immediately asks what I want for dinner, the moments that are Mine All Mine alone in our two floors of ghetto fabulosity are rich and delicious. Yesterday, while Warm Loving Body was practicing for his triathlon, I staged a photoshoot -- Ohhh and we've lost the entire state of Utah's readership and that of my sister at the mention of the word photoshoot. Not that I implied it was anything risque, even though, when my bunkmate finally found the pictures after sitting at his laptop for 8 hours where the pictures were SAVED TO HIS DESKTOP WITH HIS NAME AND "LOOK AT THESE" clearly typed, I told him that the man from craigslist had come over to assist me, since I wasn't very talented with the tripod.

I soon think my bunkmate will be password-protecting his laptop from now on....

Mama didn't raise me with no manners. But she sure did give me an imagination.

Jury Duty

The groans begin for most when the official summons is received. The language is along these lines:

You, Citizen Sucker, have been selected for jury duty, largely because, Citizen Sucker, you did something responsible and timely, like renew your driver's license or register to vote. Based on this responsible behavior, we know we can count on you to be present on [Insert Most Inconvenient Workday Here] at a time when only farmers and meteorologists are expected to be awake and moving.

I received my summons a few years ago, and stupidly postponed it because at the time I was about a month away from wedding day, and OMG, how could I be bothered to expend brain cells toward Justice for All when those brain cells had already been reserved for thoughts of whether or not fake eyelashes were trampy. Last year, the summons indicated that I was not needed. This year, when I am mired in publication deadlines and, oh, not to mention gestating a small eel in my uterus, my uterus which is now the size of a cantaloupe, I was summoned to report to the court o' law at the butt crack o' dawn -- and, gurl, was it a long day.

I won't subject you to the typical groans of waiting (it was actually good reading time) and waiting (I must have peed an average of every fourth minute) and waiting, being reduced to a number (#59 in my case) and then sitting in that jury pool of my peers, meaning people that know not how about reasonable headphone decibel levels nor about how not to talk and giggle TO THEMSELVES appropos of nothing. I'm sure you've heard it or lived through it all before.

I was nearly picked for jury duty, but they wanted me, fresh-faced, big-bellied me to sit on a medical malpractice case for two weeks, but this girl is traveling in that time. No can do, Judgey Judgerrobes! So I was released from my civic duties for the day.

May justice be served. By someone else. See you in three years.

Regression

Must be all the re-runs lately of "Who's the Boss" (Tony Micelli? Hottie boombalottie!) and "The Wonder Years" (still my favorite show of all time) that has me waxing nostalgic. I went to B.J.'s the other evening with the express purpose of buying the bulk box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Of course, a cart full of rations later, I had justified the trip. I've eaten roughly six heaping bowlfuls in three days. Is this my expression of regression? Like when older siblings are expecting a new baby sibling, they suddenly regress and crawl back into their booster seats that no longer fit and play with the toys long since forsaken in an effort to savor the last shreds of their youth before the New One arrives and they have to man up and take out the trash and do their own taxes, even though they're still dependents. Maybe I want that last heaping bowl of sugary cereal before I have to be a role model, or, more practically, a cow. Mealtimes are going to be all about shooting out my udders for the wee one's suckling in a short little while. A strange and terrifying thought in some ways, which is why I think I'm suddenly regressing.

A few of my other favorite bygones which conjure up my girlhood:

Now and Laters, preferably sour apple, maybe a tad melted - Summers at Bay Pool, walks to the Bay Superette where a pack cost $.10...

Umbros - You might not have played soccer, but you were so bad in your purple Umbros with the flourescent orange trim.Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - "Secret of the Ooze" was a half-way decent movie. And we watched it enough times to attest to this.

The Cocktail Soundtrack - Oh the hours of sleep I have lost blaring "Wild Again" and "Kokomo" on my cassette tape walkman. Pay no attention to that girl making up dance routines in her nightgown. Pay no attention to her at all.

Handi-Snaks - There's a reason I craved them so bad during my first tri-mester. They are one part food, three parts salt. They are disgustingly, inedibly delicious.

If you ever see me rocking my Umbros (with pockets full of Now and Laters) and chillin' with my walkman, while playing with my TMNT figurine and chomping on a Handi-Snak, please commit me. I am one jelly sandal away from a psychotic break.