Easter Week Continues...

This week, Wendy at On 'n On 'n On kindly awarded the Bald Faced Liar Creative Writer Award to moi.  The typical thing to to with this award is to list 7 things about myself, with six of them lies and one of them 100% true.  I'm going to turn this on its head, and list six things which are true, with only one of them being a lie, and I'm going to take it up a notch - all of them are going to be about Easter.  You need to guess which one is a lie, and I will give you the answer on Good Friday.

1. I have been the Easter Bunny, and while in costume I had the Cadbury Eggs kicked out of me by a bunch of violent fourth graders.  One of them inadvertently felt me up while trying to see if The Easter Bunny had 'candy' in her pocket.  ( I know, this one is a gimme since I wrote about it yesterday, but c'mon, I have to come up with six things!)
2. My sister was a big believer in Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street, so instead of visits from mystical creatures like Santa or the Easter Bunny, my family was visited by Oscar the Grouch, who was actually my Italian neighbor in a green fur suit in a garbage can outside of our door.
3. Easter Sunday 1979.  Our black Labrador Retriever, Mandy, brought a rabbit to our doorstep, dead and gutted.  My sister and I woke up, saw the bloodied, dead rabbit on our front step, and were immediately and permanently traumatized.  My sister started screaming at Mandy, "BAD DOG!  BAD DOG!  You killed the EASTER BUNNY!"
4. At my grandma's house in Iowa, dyeing eggs was a huge production.  My grandparents lived on a farm and had their own henhouse, so we would gather the eggs from the henhouse and bring them into the house to boil and then dye.  After dyeing our eggs, we would have a big Egg Hunt in the yard, and get hopped up on candy.  My cousin Yvonne was running through my grandma's living room and dropped her Easter basket, only to find that her dyed eggs somehow never got boiled, so her raw eggs broke on Grandma's beige carpet, and then the bitch blamed it on me.  Of course, everyone believed her.
5. My mom was a good cook, but could be inattentive or forgetful when cooking.  One year, when all of my Mennonite relatives were coming for Easter, she forgot to defrost the ham when she should have, so she resorted to thawing it under running water in the sink (this was before we had a microwave), and then getting it into the oven quickly.  All of the side dishes were done, and she figured the ham was done enough to serve.  Oh how very wrong she was.  I think 10 of the 18 people there ended up with varying degrees of trichinosis (or roundworm) from undercooked pork, with the most prevalent symptom being diarrhea.  We had three bathrooms.  Things got ugly.  It is the Easter Ham that lives in infamy.
6. When I was a reporter for the North Liberty News,  I was to report on a re-enactment of The Last Supper at a local church.  I did the story, interviewed various apostles, and got ready to take pictures.  They were in the middle of rehearsal, and I slunk down the aisle, trying to be unobtrusive.  I put the camera up to my face to see the shot, sat down, and immediately realized I had just sat on Jesus's thorny crown, which would be used later in the production.  The show went on, but for a brief, memorable moment, I felt Jesus's pain.
7. Easter, 2003.  I was very heavily pregnant with Youngest Daughter, and we attended Easter services at our church.  My other kids were 6 and nearly 4 at this point, and they hadn't asked much about how the baby got in Mommy's stomach.  In the middle of the Easter service, The Son (mine, not Mary's) leaned over and said, "How DID the baby get in your tummy Mommy?"  I whispered to him, "God put the baby there".  He thought about this for a moment.  He looked up at the front of the church, where Pastor Frank was talking about Jesus, and how he was the only begotten son of God.  A light bulb went off, and The Son looked at me and said, out loud, "PASTOR FRANK PUT THE BABY IN YOUR TUMMY?"

That is all.  Thanks Wendy!  See if you can detect the false story, and I'll see you tomorrow for Good Friday, which this week will be Holyculture Friday.

I Believe in Oscar the Grouch

Today is my little sister's birthday. She was born on Dec. 22, 1972, and she was a planned C-Section so my mom could bring the baby home for Christmas. However, the best laid plans (Ha! No pun intended, Mom!) went awry, and instead Mom and the baby were in the hospital for Christmas Day, too.

And that's the first time I felt I got screwed by having a sibling.

I wasn't that impressed with the baby. Yeah, yeah, curly brown hair, chocolate brown eyes, little pink chubby cheeks and rosebud mouth, I get it that she's cute, but hello! She has no teeth! I knew from my grandparent's farm that even baby pigs have teeth. This baby was defunct and should be returned. But no one would listen, so she stayed with us.

She was always funny, with her little outfits and dolls and her obsession with Ace bandages (she always had some fake injury wrapped - it's a miracle my parents didn't get any visits from the DHS), and she would sneak out of bed with me in the middle of the night to make a fort in the house to sleep in. We would build sand castles together on our beach and swim, and we often only had each other to play with because there weren't many kids on the lake where we lived. Until I was in Junior High and turned into The Most Evil Older Sister on the Planet, she was my best friend. But the best thing about my sister as a kid was that instead of believing in Santa, she believed in Oscar the Grouch. We actually had the song playing now on a 45 and listened to it as one of our Christmas songs for the holidays.

It's not that she didn't believe in Santa; she did. But to her, no mystical creature came alive like Oscar the Grouch. He was real, right down to his smelly garbage can and pet worm. Some parents try to get people to dress up as Santa and come over to freak the kids out. I think I've mentioned before that my parents were drinkers, so on Christmas Eve, they staged a visit from Oscar the Grouch.

I think it started with a bottle (or box) of Rossi wine and some classy beer, like Red, White and Blue or Old Milwaukee's Best Light, and next thing you know, a bunch of giggling adults are on our patio. Soon, my mom comes in and calls for my sister. She runs downstairs in her flannel two piece pajamas, looks out the door, and screams. Oscar the Grouch is on our patio.

Apparently the tipsy adults crammed our Italian neighbor into a metal garbage can, put a green wig or tablecloth or fur over his head, and covered the trash can with Christmas lights. He barely opened the top of the garbage can, and talked to my sister.

OG: "Hey! Is that Natalie!?!"
N: "IT'S OSCAR!! IT'S OSCAR!!"
OG: "I hate Christmas!!"
N: "IT'S OSCAR!"
OG: "I hope Santa brings me some trash!"
N: "IT'S OSCAR!"
OG: "Why aren't you in bed, little girl!?"
N: "You smell bad, Oscar."
OG: (laugh/choking) "What do you want, I live in a garbage can!"
(Suspicious amount of smoke coming out of garbage can, and the pop of a beer can.)
MOM: "Okay, Natalie, it's time to come in..."
N: "Mom, what's wrong with Oscar?"
MOM: "Come in or Santa won't be able to come."
N: "Goodbye Oscar!"
OG: "Goodbye Little Girl! I hate Christmas!"

(Laughing adults leave drunk Oscar stuck in garbage can. Loud clanging noise on patio later. Parents tell us it was Santa. Did Santa also throw up in the yard?)

And thus, another normal family memory is created. Because we did put the Fun in Dysfunctional. I have a picture of this event, but I don't know if I can find it. If I do, I will post.

Happy Birthday Natalie! I hope you got gifts and they weren't wrapped in Christmas paper! Because this lovely birthday memory has Christmas all over it. It's enough to turn you into Oscar the Grouch, no?

Love,
Julie