Family Ties
Around noon on Saturday, as I sat on my living room couch blinking, it occurred to me that I had the entire weekend off from work, a very rare thing indeed. I tried to think of some way to spend my time and came up blank. Let's be honest, folks. I can't book an acting gig to save my life right now. My best friend moved to Michigan to do a show until the end of October. My roommate just booked a show and moved to Chicago for six months. And myself: Absolutely 100% Could Not Be More Single At The Moment. So I did what any loyal, desperate, terribly lonely young girl with a three-day weekend free would do: I drove home to visit my parents.
It was the best decision I've made in awhile.
I knew things were going to be okay when I pulled up in the driveway and saw my dad cleaning out the garage. He was wearing a MATH-A-THON t-shirt, shorts and socks that came at least halfway up his thick Polish calves. Brilliance. My mother and I decided to go shopping and after three hours, I came away with two pairs of shoes, a dress, a shirt and a new quilt for my bed. My mom? Totally paid for half of those purchases. ROCKSTAR.
We're having a YOU FINALLY RETIRED! brunch/party/shindig this morning for my dad and his cancer-ridden prostate. Apparently, the cool thing about prostate cancer is that you can retire a year early! Because you can tell the school district in a very serious, concerned voice that you have cancer. Also, let's be honest. My father is an old man and has been teaching mathematics for 36 years. I think it's time for him to sit around watch reruns of the Honeymooners, don't you?
So my little sister arrived yesterday from college for the party. My sister...she is a force to be reckoned with. I'm not sure how to begin to describe my sister except to say that she's 4'11, has the thickest Long Island accent you've ever heard and has been known to give the impression that she's not that smart. She IS smart. She is quite brilliant actually. But. Well. You can almost always catch her looking like this:
Anyway. I knew things were going to be GREAT when she said "Ohhhhh have I got a story for you!!" With my sister, the term "story" can loosely be translated as "A Time When I Looked Really Stupid", which are my FAVORITE KINDS OF STORIES.
Our favorite Debra story so far occurred in high school, during a gym test. I know, a GYM TEST!? WHAT!? I'm pretty sure our school district is the only district on the planet to have written physical education tests, but I digress. You basically sit on the gym floor with a Number 2 pencil and a scantron and answer questions about raquetball or lacrosse or what have you. I think it's a way for phys ed teachers to pretend that they have a real job.
So there sits my sister, taking the test and she's fine until she gets to Test Question #7. She's staring at the paper, utterly confused and looks up, frantically trying to get someone's attention.
"PSSSSSSSSSSSST!" she whispers to a friend. "NUMBER 7!"
"What about it!?" her friend hisses back.
"What is it!?" Debbie asks, panicked.
"What is what?!" asks her friend through clenched teeth, trying not to get caught.
"What does it mean? What is FAT-IH-GOO?"
"What!?" her friend asks, clearly confused.
"Fat-ih-goo!" my sister says louder. "Fat-ih-goo, fat-ih-goo! What does it mean!?"
At this point, a lightbulb goes off in her friend's head and she finally understands. She puts her head down over her test and starts shaking with uncontrollable laughter.
"Deb," she says, through tears, "It's not fat-ih-goo. It's fatigue."
I asked my sister if her new story was better than her fat-ih-goo story and she answered YES. And I waited for it, because I knew, I just knew, that it was going to be spectacular.
And it was.
This is what she told me.
My sister has taken a position at school that's similar to an RA except she's in charge of events at the student union. Because of this, she gets free room and board but she also had to go back to school early for training. During training, each day, there was a new icebreaker so that you could learn about each other and bond with your peers and blah blah, been there done that, HATE ICEBREAKERS.
But my sister? She LOVES icebreakers which is probably why she is 10000 times more social than I am.
One of her teammates came up with an icebreaker entitled "The Four C's". On a piece of paper, you had to answer four questions that began with "C". Then you handed in your paper to be mixed up with everyone else's. At the end, you would select a piece of paper, read the answers outloud and try to guess who wrote the answers. (See also: why I think icebreakers are dumb!)
The four elements to the icebreaker were as follows:
1. COLOR:
2. CUISINE:
3. COUNTRY:
4. CLOSET DREAM:
Everyone began scribbling out their favorite foods and colors and secret ambitions. They mixed the papers up and everyone chose someone else's paper. Debra knew something was horribly wrong when they started reading the answers outloud. Someone else answered, "The color blue, Italian food, France, and my closet dream is to become a millionaire."
Debbie slowly raised her hand and asked, "Um, guys? What exactly is a closet dream?"
They explained to her that it was something that you've always aspired to be but have never really told anyone--to be a millionaire, to be a movie star, etc. My sister nodded like ohhhh, of course and then realized that she had to get her paper back before anyone heard her answers. Too late.
The lucky person who retrieved Debbie's paper was not even a student, it was her supervisor. He unfolded the paper in front of him and began to read aloud:
"Color, orange. Cuisine, Thai food. Country, Poland. Closet dream..."
And then her supervisor trailed off, staring hard at the answer that followed. When it finally clicked, he started laughing uncontrollably, in a sheer perfect Fat-Ih-Goo Moment. My sister's peers wanted to know what was so funny and begged him to finish reading her answer because don't YOU want to know what my sister's Closet Dream is?
He wiped tears away from his eyes, took a deep breath and read loudly,
"CLOSET DREAM: A closet with rotating shelves and a place to color coordinate my shoes."
On that note, the entire assembly of students fell onto the ground in peels of laughter. My sister just stood there, knowing that this was so damn typical of herself, to misread the question.
I told her that that was a pretty good closet dream and if I had any dreams about how my closet should be, I would totally color coordinate my shoes too.
It's good to be home.
It was the best decision I've made in awhile.
I knew things were going to be okay when I pulled up in the driveway and saw my dad cleaning out the garage. He was wearing a MATH-A-THON t-shirt, shorts and socks that came at least halfway up his thick Polish calves. Brilliance. My mother and I decided to go shopping and after three hours, I came away with two pairs of shoes, a dress, a shirt and a new quilt for my bed. My mom? Totally paid for half of those purchases. ROCKSTAR.
We're having a YOU FINALLY RETIRED! brunch/party/shindig this morning for my dad and his cancer-ridden prostate. Apparently, the cool thing about prostate cancer is that you can retire a year early! Because you can tell the school district in a very serious, concerned voice that you have cancer. Also, let's be honest. My father is an old man and has been teaching mathematics for 36 years. I think it's time for him to sit around watch reruns of the Honeymooners, don't you?
So my little sister arrived yesterday from college for the party. My sister...she is a force to be reckoned with. I'm not sure how to begin to describe my sister except to say that she's 4'11, has the thickest Long Island accent you've ever heard and has been known to give the impression that she's not that smart. She IS smart. She is quite brilliant actually. But. Well. You can almost always catch her looking like this:
Anyway. I knew things were going to be GREAT when she said "Ohhhhh have I got a story for you!!" With my sister, the term "story" can loosely be translated as "A Time When I Looked Really Stupid", which are my FAVORITE KINDS OF STORIES.
Our favorite Debra story so far occurred in high school, during a gym test. I know, a GYM TEST!? WHAT!? I'm pretty sure our school district is the only district on the planet to have written physical education tests, but I digress. You basically sit on the gym floor with a Number 2 pencil and a scantron and answer questions about raquetball or lacrosse or what have you. I think it's a way for phys ed teachers to pretend that they have a real job.
So there sits my sister, taking the test and she's fine until she gets to Test Question #7. She's staring at the paper, utterly confused and looks up, frantically trying to get someone's attention.
"PSSSSSSSSSSSST!" she whispers to a friend. "NUMBER 7!"
"What about it!?" her friend hisses back.
"What is it!?" Debbie asks, panicked.
"What is what?!" asks her friend through clenched teeth, trying not to get caught.
"What does it mean? What is FAT-IH-GOO?"
"What!?" her friend asks, clearly confused.
"Fat-ih-goo!" my sister says louder. "Fat-ih-goo, fat-ih-goo! What does it mean!?"
At this point, a lightbulb goes off in her friend's head and she finally understands. She puts her head down over her test and starts shaking with uncontrollable laughter.
"Deb," she says, through tears, "It's not fat-ih-goo. It's fatigue."
I asked my sister if her new story was better than her fat-ih-goo story and she answered YES. And I waited for it, because I knew, I just knew, that it was going to be spectacular.
And it was.
This is what she told me.
My sister has taken a position at school that's similar to an RA except she's in charge of events at the student union. Because of this, she gets free room and board but she also had to go back to school early for training. During training, each day, there was a new icebreaker so that you could learn about each other and bond with your peers and blah blah, been there done that, HATE ICEBREAKERS.
But my sister? She LOVES icebreakers which is probably why she is 10000 times more social than I am.
One of her teammates came up with an icebreaker entitled "The Four C's". On a piece of paper, you had to answer four questions that began with "C". Then you handed in your paper to be mixed up with everyone else's. At the end, you would select a piece of paper, read the answers outloud and try to guess who wrote the answers. (See also: why I think icebreakers are dumb!)
The four elements to the icebreaker were as follows:
1. COLOR:
2. CUISINE:
3. COUNTRY:
4. CLOSET DREAM:
Everyone began scribbling out their favorite foods and colors and secret ambitions. They mixed the papers up and everyone chose someone else's paper. Debra knew something was horribly wrong when they started reading the answers outloud. Someone else answered, "The color blue, Italian food, France, and my closet dream is to become a millionaire."
Debbie slowly raised her hand and asked, "Um, guys? What exactly is a closet dream?"
They explained to her that it was something that you've always aspired to be but have never really told anyone--to be a millionaire, to be a movie star, etc. My sister nodded like ohhhh, of course and then realized that she had to get her paper back before anyone heard her answers. Too late.
The lucky person who retrieved Debbie's paper was not even a student, it was her supervisor. He unfolded the paper in front of him and began to read aloud:
"Color, orange. Cuisine, Thai food. Country, Poland. Closet dream..."
And then her supervisor trailed off, staring hard at the answer that followed. When it finally clicked, he started laughing uncontrollably, in a sheer perfect Fat-Ih-Goo Moment. My sister's peers wanted to know what was so funny and begged him to finish reading her answer because don't YOU want to know what my sister's Closet Dream is?
He wiped tears away from his eyes, took a deep breath and read loudly,
"CLOSET DREAM: A closet with rotating shelves and a place to color coordinate my shoes."
On that note, the entire assembly of students fell onto the ground in peels of laughter. My sister just stood there, knowing that this was so damn typical of herself, to misread the question.
I told her that that was a pretty good closet dream and if I had any dreams about how my closet should be, I would totally color coordinate my shoes too.
It's good to be home.
6 Comments:
Jump, jump, jump....your MOM's house!
HAAAAAAAAAAAA.
Ash, were you be at?
Can we chill? NOW!?
Great to have ya back bloggin', Laura. Now the closest I can figure to a thick Long Island accent is a friend who lives here in Lawrence, and yes she is from L.I. and she calls it "LonGYland."
Enjoyed the Deb stories. Now if you had been the little sister, and she the older one, would you be the one with the blue collar style??
It was good you went home for the holiday I can tell. cheers, Hal
I'd actually never heard that term before either so your sister shouldn't feel so bad. Or maybe I should feel bad, too.
I also hate icebreakers and once during this work meeting with a bunch of snotty pants project managers we did an icebreaker which involved going around the room and answering the question: "If you were an animal, what animal would you be and why?"
(p.s. Omg, are you serious?)
Anyway, everyone's answers were really stupid things like "a monkey because I like to make people laugh!" and "a rabbit because I love carrots!" and then I was like "an aardvark because, little known fact, aardvark's hate icebreaker games."
Everyone in the entire room just stared at me like I was from another planet. I think I might be.
I had written tests in gym class my last couple of years in high school. But we didn't have #1 and fill in the bubble sheets. We had a study guide and it was basically fill in the blank, sometimes matching. It just made me loathe the class even more.
And also, whoever put down, "I want to be a millionaire," shouldn't be laughing at your sister. How unoriginal and not even a good secret. I admire the honesty of your sister's answer, even if she misinterpretted it.
~Andrew
Next time I will reread my comment before posting, lol. #1 means #2 pencils.
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