Some ID, Please

Over the course of the last few months my children have developed full-on alternate personalities. AD waffles between being her sweet, innocent eight-year-old self and a teenage stoner who says shit like "chill out, Elise. Man! YOLO, ya know? YOLO." The RM meanwhile looked into my soul to find what would most hurt me and thus decided that she would now like to be addressed as "Surfin' Barbie" ("surFIN! NO ING!"), have pink hair and get rescued by a "prinztle" who will kill aaaaall the bugs. She's informed me that in her secret life she eats her green beans, so she doesn't have to do it for me. I have had some experience with alternate realities so while I don't like it, I get it. For most of my high school career, for example, I was known to attendees at Memphis Pyramid events as "Elsie Higned" thanks to the misspelled commemorative brick in front of the entrance. I decided that Elsie started an underground newspaper in Johannesburg, drove a Karmann Ghia just like the one in "Pretty In Pink" and had a boyfriend named Ned who wasn't afraid to cry and sent her flowers every week. Cslos, for her part, was evidently a black dude as she was at one point recruited by the African-American men's school Benjamin Banneker School of Technology; this is too much to swallow because in no universe is she technologically inclined. Coincidentally I've also been thinking lately about what my true identity must be; going through my old stuff in the attic has made me question a few things.

In an effort to regain some sort of control over life, I've been cleaning out the house. We've gotten to the tipping point - we now have more stuff than places to put it all, so things are going. Initially I was selling some of it on a neighborhood exchange board, but that became so consuming that I had to stop. I was turning into an asshole anti-Oskar Schindler, snatching toys out of my children's hands and wailing "two dollars! I could get TWO DOLLARS for this!" as I staggered to the computer, so I've started donating the good stuff and tossing the not-so-good like a more decent human being. Anyway, during this process I've discovered that we have a clutter problem because - spoiler alert! - none of us seem capable of throwing away a single damn thing. I get that we'd want to hang on to favorite books or old letters, but why have I felt the need to hang on to a Northwest Airlines paper luggage tag listing an address I haven't even visited since 1998? That's not exactly a valuable piece of my personal narrative. And the clothes are just terrible - even if I could ever again fit into my circa 1991 Adrienne Vittadini turquoise dress emblazoned with giant fleur-du-lis, should I? Should anyone? That just seems irresponsible. Unfortunately, my housecleaning efforts have also turned up a lot of old pictures chronicling some of my more unwise choices; apparently, for example, I was someone who wore overalls. With Chuck Taylor low-tops. I guess I felt the need to be ready to go should Dexie's Midnight Runners need an extra for one of their music videos. Even this relatively recent picture is just so terribly damning

I can't believe I have no memory at all of attending nursing school

 

White hose? White fucking hose? Well, they may be awful looking, but at least they're terribly unflattering. Why not just go full frontal ugly and get the Downtown Brown Baloney Legs look? I don't want to be this person. This whole walk down memory lane makes me feel like I need to reach out to everyone I ever met and just apologize. Especially to this bit of canned heat

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. Rrrrrowwwww!

 He's my absolute favorite cabinet member of all time (and yes, I realize how incredibly dorky that sounds, believe me) and finding this picture in an attic box made me remember that I used to treat this man like shit. Yes, I know I was young and irresponsible, but that doesn't change the fact that hurtful things were said! Yes! I never should have let him take me to Cabo, that didn't help anything! Actually the truth is that I was always seriously enamored with Secretary Reich, but once I met him and realized how terribly serious he is - not to mention the size of a medium cactus - I gave him an alternate reality too. In my world, since he was the size of a child he behaved as such. My friend J and I got endless amounts of amusement out of this; you were late to work? It was probably because you got stuck on Connecticut Ave. behind Itty Bitty Baby Bobby Reich on his Big Wheel. I heard Itty Bitty's coming to the Hill today for the budget hearings - do you think he'll wear his hard-soled shoes with his big boy pants, or will his mom make him wear a John-John? Questioning better be to his liking or he'll throw applesauce at Sen. Exon! And did you see the Sesame Street hand puppet he wore to his swearing-in? Really respectful.

 

The only thing that's made me feel better about how heinous I am is that JHP is evidently almost as unappealing; the attic has yielded an awful cache indeed. He's had his own share of fashion missteps for sure; I've seen physical and photographic evidence of an intense sweater vest phase, for one thing, and found a karate uniform that made me feel as if he and I had never actually been introduced. If JHP actually at some point knew karate then Cslos is getting a freaking full ride to Benjamin Banneker. And don't get me started on the (blessedly small) collection of fraternity mock turtlenecks I stumbled upon. Do you know why they're called mock turtlenecks? Because they mock you for marrying a jackass. You are publicly labeled by three Greek letters your spouse wore that translate roughly to "I'm With Stupid". What has to take the cake though is a power ballad he wrote in high school - I found a sheet of paper with a full set of lyrics and the title "Why Must It Come To This?" Oh to be so cursed to be a child of privilege ensconced in a private school in Houston! On the subject of music I also found a case full of cassette tapes that would stand alone as Exhibit A in any divorce court in the country. Vangelis? "Your honor, we hereby grant full custody of the two minors to their mother. Ahh, ahem, strike that, she wants neither Surfin' Barbie nor Paulie Shore."

 

To be honest all this makes me thankful that JHP and I somehow found each other, overalls, karate, bad taste and worse behavior be damned. And it also makes me weep for the children - our children - of such a sketchy union. They don't have any reasonable hope of being normal human beings, which I guess means they're right where they should be. Surfin' Barbie's going to hop on her Big Wheel, throw applesauce and be on her way while AD finds some kine bud. Why must it come to this? I think we know.