Tough Girl - March 21, 2005
I lived the first eight years of my life in a little town outside Syracuse, NY. It was like all towns in that area, depressed. Businesses packed up and left or went out of business. People lost their jobs, but didn't have the wits to move to different place where they could get another one. They just gave up on having a job. It was really easy to get welfare in that county. It's rumored that in parts of Florida heavily populated by immigrants, there are signs in Spanish that instruct people to move there for it's lofty welfare checks.
We lived there because my father had a good job with a local bearings manufacture that was soon to pack up shop and move to a state that didn't rape its citizens in the form of the tax to pay for its welfare. We had a cute little house on an unassuming street. It was old and beautiful, but was constantly in need of maintenance. My father was always working on it, roofing, painting, chipping, sealing etc. My father was the ONE and ONLY homeowner on the street that worked on his house.
It happened slowly. One welfare mother, then two, and within five years the whole street was full of foul-mouthed bastard children who ate frosting off their dirty fingers for lunch. Bobby Banona was the King of these kids.
My father was a proud man, so he refused to go the way of the welfare check. He kept toiling away, raking, fencing, planting and mowing. The square our property cut on that street became more and more visible as his neighbors grew more negligent. Soon our neatly manicured house was surrounded in jungle.
I started rolling with a bad crowd. I soon learned what several swearwords meant, and found out that a blowjob had nothing to do with blowing bubbles. I thought I was the coolest kid ever when I explained it to my big sister and watched her jaw drop in shock. I developed a mean right hook teaching Jill Terpentine not to mess with my Cabbage Patch doll. She would always counter back with a gut-busting jab, but she didn't have the strength to do much damage. Plus she always kept her thumb inside her fist when she did it. Dumb Jill Terpentine. All she could do was scream "Yeah, well your family is poor 'cuz you don't have vinyl siding like we do. That's what my daddy says."
And I would say, "YOUR DADDY'S ON WELFARE, DUMBASS!"
No one could touch me. I was fucking tough.
I would put my surly cat "Soupy" on her leash and drag her around the neighborhood with my chest puffed, just waiting for someone to fuck with me. I wasn't scared. Kids would hide from me behind the tractor trailer of whatever big-rig driver their mother was fucking at the time. Our street always looked like a truck stop.
And then it happened. I got too proud.
It was a summer day. My father was toiling on the roof of our house. He was pulling out the shingles so that he could lay fresh ones down. As he was the only one doing all that work, it took quite a while. It rained shingles and rusty nails in our yard for days. My mother wouldn't let us play in the yard, which was agony.
I decided to test the waters, and went out in a pair of sandals. I waltzed up and down the side yard like I was queen of all I surveyed. My father threw a shingle off the side and saw I was being naughty. "Murph! You get inside right now!" (That's my nickname. He always calls me that).
I acted like I didn't hear him. I pretended I was entranced by a large earthworm sliding over a shingle piece, bent down and petted it like it was my surly cat Soupy.
"Murph! Did you hear me? Inside. NOW!"
I kept on with the charade. Oh wow. Just look at this worm. That is so cool. Where is my magnifying glass? I think this guy needs to be burned in half.
"Erin Leigh Tyler!" Uh oh. Daddy said my name.
I stood up and said, "But daddy, please! I wanna play, I don't waaaaaaannna go inside!"
"No. Get your little butt inside right now!"
And that's when my career as a tough girl ended. I put my hands on my hips, cocked them to one side and exclaimed, loudly, "WELL, IF SOMEBODY WOULD CLEAN UP AROUND HERE..." I couldn't even finish the sentiment. My father rushed to his ladder, I've never seen a man descend a ladder so fast. I ran into the house, screaming all the way. He followed me in and smacked my bottom like never before or after.
I was sent straight to bed, and wept like a baby while all the kids of the neighborhood gathered round my window and laughed. "You're not so tough now, are you?" Soupy, being surly, wouldn't comfort me at all.
The next Spring, my father's company closed shop and left. We moved to Jamestown, NY, into a neighborhood free of tractor trailers, illegitimate children and jungle lawns. That was twenty years ago today.
Posted by at 9:31 PM
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huh. My mom spent 9 months picking out that name (as she has told me at least once a week as long as I can remember).
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at January 13, 2006 12:15 PM
