I catch myself concentrating on the way my feet make contact with the ground, and I'm rather unhappy.
Is my... left leg... shorter than my right?!
I have no clue just how true my observation may be, but I do know my body was NOT built to run... by any means. I'm highly inadequate at that shit, hence why I was a fucking post in my short-lived high school basketball career. I just stood under the basket and had others pass me the ball so I could lay that shit up. I wasn't about to run AND dribble... that's what the forwards were for (what I tell myself to feel better about my refusal to dribble).
Anyway, as lousy as I may be at running, I have to do it. It's a necessary evil.
Lucky for me, the treadmill is in the garage... and that place... well, there is never a lack of shit to observe to keep my mind off my unsymmetrical, clumsy body.
While Mom isn't "hoarder" status just yet, she is a pack rat... and boy! the shit I spot as I pant my ass off on the devil's machine is awesome.
My sister's first communion crown is still in there, there's a bag full of my barbies (I can still name some of those hoes off the top of my head-- Kira... Teresa... Esmeralda... Courtney... umm... Ken), a bag full of my sister's baby dolls-- actual dolls, not the lingerie, GOD NO--, shoes I wore in sixth grade and could have sworn I threw away but Ms. Mom over here decided to keep... in case they came back in style and my foot shrunk back to a size 6... ?
All interesting shit, nonetheless, but nothing compares to what found tonight:
 |
| Fuck you, fuck you, FUCK YOU! |
Back in my ghetto days, we stole cable... obviously. Go to a ghetto, and I guarantee you that shit is going on. That lovely box up there is what we used to view the channels.
La caja. The box.
God... I still see it and I want to puke.
I only have one negative memory of this thing, but it's that disturbing.
I was younger than five... because I remember I still didn't go to school... and my sister still didn't crawl.
Mom would entertain my brother and I in the living room by making us sit on our little plastic chairs to watch cartoons. Rafa had a blue chair, I had a pink one... and when Mom wouldn't be watching, we'd race to the television, climb up on our little chairs, and try to change the channel.
Rafa somewhat knew his numbers... he clearly knew what the hell ESPN was (yes, he has been making my life a living hell since then when it comes to that damned channel!)... as well as... I think it was FOX (it had "boy" cartoons... and NOT CareBears, which I mean, HELLO, I was a toddler, OF COURSE I liked the CareBears). I just pressed random buttons after Rafa had changed the channel to his crap.
All I really knew how to do properly was turn on the box... which was accomplished by just pressing down on that big blue "Enter" button (I just knew it was blue).
Anyway, Mom would hear us fighting, she'd run in, and she'd change the channel back to some tame shit like Univision and we'd be forced back into our chairs to watch programming that neither of us liked.
Mom: DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH THAT BOX! I'm listening!
Well... one day, I had had enough, and I was like "I'm a big girl... I know what I want to watch! I want to watch the fucking CareBears!"
I remember saying something like "Let me turn on the TV! And I want to put it on my cartoons! I know how!"
Mom wasn't in the best of moods (of course) but she was like "Fine... go."
She was sitting on the couch, watching me approach the box.
Ok... Rafa has done this plenty of times... the numbers look like each other on the box... they're in the middle row... the swans... are they facing each other... or floating apart?
What were the swans? The numbers 2 and 5. Was is it 25 or 52?
I stood on my little chair... pondering what to press. Rafa was getting exasperated, and quickly offered to take me down and change the channel himself.
Mom: NO! Let her do it. SHE SAID SHE COULD DO IT! DO IT, AnoMALIE!
Me: (internally) Oh no...
Rafa: LET ME DO IT!!!
Mom: NO! AnoMALIE! DO IT, GODDAMN IT!
Me: (internally) OMG... what is it?!?!
Mom: FOR FUCKS SAKE, DO IT!!
Mom was the fucking devil by now,standing right by my ear, her voice totally turning me deaf... so I just pressed the buttons to get out of the situation.
5.
2.
ERRRRR! WRONG!
WORSE YET... Disney was channel 25... channel 52 was the Spice Channel... and... wehhhhll... that didn't go over so well.
Mom was irate, Rafa was frozen in place-- watching the porn on TV-- and I jumped the fuck off my chair like it were a land mine, and took cover behind the couch.
Mom was Godzilla now, and since I wasn't around to get smacked, she grabbed the next best thing: my chair.
Graaaaaagggghhh!
She smashed the hell out of it. She just grabbed that pink chair and smashed it against the floor like a drunk dude smashes glass bottles to attack an enemy. The pink shards flew in the air and landed everywhere.
My chair was decimated.
(HA! My brother's blue chair ran a similar fate about two years later... but this time, Ms. Mom destroyed the chair because we were all knocking on the locked front door furiously. The ice cream truck was coming and Mom was busy inside the house showering, but she had locked us out. When she ran to the living room door in nothing but a towel to unlock the door... and saw that we were knocking like maniacs for popsicle money... well... Godzilla made a special appearance once more and blue chair was the casualty... as well as one of Rafa's toy trucks which she kicked out the front window. And people wonder why I'm a timid person who fears people...)
Mom: DON'T YOU EVER TOUCH THE BOX UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING! GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!
Mom switched it back to Univision. I ran to the bedroom and hung out under my Baby Sister's crib... while I whimpered and cried in the dark.
I never volunteered to do shit from then on... and I never asked her to help me with anything for a while... you know... up until I had to learn how to drive... and that was some shit (shit I waited for until I was 19, when I felt prepared for the verbal abuse. Obviously, I was wrong, but that's another story).
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