Bemis and the J's

My parents had way too many kids. Eight because they were Catholic in the 1960's...they might have had more until my mother finally discovered that we had a living room couch.

Of the eight, I was one of the "Four Girls." Because my parents thought it would be wicked cute to give all of us girls names that began with the letter "J.", this is how my dad would refer to us when he needed to speak to anyone of us individually if we might have POSSIBLY done something wrong: "JoanneJanetJoyceJulie...Or whatever the Hell your name is! My sister Jean was exempt, because she was close in age and thus a kindred spirit to the Holy Patron Saint Michael of The Sacred Church Of Five Howard Road.  Or so she was told until she said "Huh? What's so fucking great about Michael? I had to tell HIM there was no such thing as Santa Clause!"

Not that any of us Four Girls JoanneJanetJoyceJulie did anything WRONG, by the way. No sireeee. When SOMEONE sprayed my dad Bemis's shaving cream all over the closet and he was so pissed and we were scared and we were never scared of him, it wasn't ME. It was Richard. It was always Richard. But if it wasn't Richard, it was Joanne. Because who can get mad at Joanne?

Virtually all of my friends grew up in big families, and we all have the same advice to anyone getting all Brady Bunch or Kennedy nostalgic on us. Birth control is awesome. And if that doesn't happen and someone in your undoes something really stupid to piss your parents' off, just blame it on my brother Richard. Because he probably did it. I know it wasn't ME.

A Wicked Wonderful Life

We all know the movie. George Bailey (The terminally sexy Jimmy Stewart) gets into financial trouble during the Great Depression, because no one except George Bailey had money problems during the Great Depression, and he just decided that everything would be better if he had never been born etc... (My daughter recently told me that the "theme" for the Junior Prom at her school this year would be the 1930's....and I said "Cool. I guess everyone will save money on their dresses and tuxes since they'll be showing up in ragged overcoats with tin cups begging for money...and the meal will be like a soup kitchen! Buffet style! And she said "Oh...I meant the 1920's"  But my daughter is REALLY pretty!)

So George leaves Mary and the kids and ends up getting drunk and crashing his car and meets the angel Clarence and the pristine haven that was Bedford Falls becomes the Sodom and Gomorrah  "Pottersville" where everyone is hanging out at bars and going to brothels on Christmas Eve and George is running around not being recognized with a bloody gash on his head acting all weird because he's never been born.

Allow me to confess that I've been watching way too many Hallmark Channel Christmas movies. Even Lifetime has them. I'm sort of obsessed. They have titles like "The Christmas Miracle," or "A Bride For Christmas." My daughter is concerned about me. When she walks into the house and sees me watching them, she just rolls her eyes. Recently she said I had "A Problem." Oh yeah Missy? "You just wait until YOUR Christmas Miracle happens and the angel on the tree becomes magical and I find the perfect man of my dreams who was actually right in front of me the entire time to make our Christmas perfect and magical and the best Christmas ever ever ever!" And she said "Good luck with that mom. I'm gonna go get my belly button pierced."

Now, let me just give you a synopsis of the classic "On Strike For Christmas" Lifetime movie. Perfect woman with a perfect family and a perfect house is just so darn TIRED of being taken for granted when she does Christmas all by herself while still running the amazingly successful "Black Friday at Wal Mart" Yarn Store. She put her heart and soul into that place, or at least five minutes during the movie when there was a whole crowd of people in her store, buying YARN. .So by God, enough was enough. When she saw the local supermarket employees on strike, she decided to go on strike too! And after her husband and sons TRIED to make her homemade cookies and only managed to make a mess of the kitchen, By God, they realized how important she was! And then they all sang at the end, realizing that Christmas was all about being together. Sigh.

But my favorite Christmas message comes from It's A Wonderful Life. Clarence did an awesome job teaching George how important he was, so when they got to the cemetery and Clarence told George how his brother died because he wasn't there to save him from drowning so then a crapload of OTHER people died because his brother wasn't there to save them during The War, George asked "Where's Mary?" (or something like that.) At that point angel Clarence lost it. He could barely choke out the words.

"Mary is a spinster. She never married George." OMG! And where did George find Mary? At the LIBRARY!!!!!!! Wearing glasses!!!!!!! And a grey suit, clutching books. No wonder George finally came to. It was a Christmas Miracle...Mary got to ditch the books and take care of George and a pile of kids again!

Protect

I can't see at night, so when I'm driving, I basically rely on memory.  I stick my chin out over the top of the steering wheel and squint, because everyone knows that when you can't see anything, shutting your eyes even tighter is super helpful. But I live in a relatively small town and don't get out much, so if you're walking at night in my town when I happen to be driving, not to worry, as long as you're wearing a florescent orange space shuttle suit and a fully equipped miner's helmet.

But while I was tooling along at a reckless possible 20 mph tonight, there he was. A crafty, highly trained crime fighting machine; a small town Officer Of The Law, hidden away in a cemetery, cruiser lights off, just far enough away from the road so that no one could possibly see him. Except ME. Or Helen Keller. Or any satellite that can detect a terrorist training camp in North Africa. 

Now, no one is going to accuse small town Officers Of the Law of being intellectuals, but I'm curious about what this hiding in the cemetery shit was about. First, was this some attempt at camouflage, like anyone would think a cop car with beaming neon YOUR TOWN POLICE DEPARTMENT letters plastered all over it parked in a cemetery without its lights on was a tombstone?

But I'm happy they're here. I'm safe, because my town's cops have a Zero Tolerance Policy for black people and teenagers. I watched them in action once, "pretending" they were getting coffee at the local convenience store while their eyes were totally fixed on the black couple (I think there might be three in our town) acting shady, picking out what kind of cereal they were going to buy while they were clearly being black. But the black people weren't going to pull  anything over on OUR boys, and I hung around long enough to watch the couple actually PURCHASE their cereal. Whew! Crime thwarted!

And as for teenagers, well, don't even THINK about being a teenager around here. Because that's illegal too. Our cops are fully armed with tazers, night sticks, bullet proof vests, drug sniffing dogs, semi-automatic weapons and way cool badges to make sure that there are no teenagers anywhere. But since they aren't superhuman and can't actually taze all teenagers out of existence, they make sure the rest of us semi blind while driving at night citizens are protected from the under 18 crowd.  Because they might gather together, become "Gangs," then "Do Drugs" and "Bully" people.

So our small town Officer's Of The Law are brave soldiers who can actually fight crimes before they actually happen. And at the end of a busy weekend night, they will have a teenager in custody for possession of a full bottle of Mike's Hard Lemonade