On This Day: Your History

[ER]

August 23:

1986: At our grandparents' house my cousin Allie and I decided to see how long we could spin around before we were overcome by nausea. It didn't take me long but she went on and on.

1995: It was the first day back in school, and as any Catholic schoolgirl could tell you, that meant you came home with sore legs, since after summer freedom you were back to sitting with them held close together all-day-long, lest you earn a demerit.

2003: I plssed off some Free Tibet types by comparing the Dalai Lama to a televangelist.

2006: Landon and my last day in San Francisco before heading to Portland, and I sent out postcards that read "Wish you were here." Only they had Alcatraz on the front and in each case I inked in a little arrow pointing to the prison.

2007: Heat wave, 101, and I spent the day in an 1880s un-AC'd house with only open windows, stubbornly helping Landon clean it out so it could be restored. I thought I was gonna keel over.

2011: Went to the Carnegie Arts Center to see The Perfect Host, starring David Hyde Pierce, and one of my eighth grade teachers happened to be there. Ate at Dancing Wasabi, which had wasabi on a 1-10 scale, with 10 being so hot you had to sign a waiver. I stuck with a four.

2022: One of the volunteers at the food pantry where I worked was named Alberto, and his brother was on death row in a neighboring state. "As guilty as s**t," as Alberto disgustedly told me, dismissing my awkwardly offered words of commiseration.

[Alex]

23rd August 2009.

I was half way through a week working 12 hour shifts on nights. At 23:30, I went out to the front gate as an SAC(T), then at midnight as my promotion was now official I had to remove my rank tabs and replace them with cpl ones. It felt silly, but the sgt in charge has insisted to the point where he said if I didn't, he'd charge me for being incorrectly dressed.

And that was it. I was now an NCO. No celebrations or congratulations. Couldn't have a drink because I was carrying a live weapon. By accepting it I was committing myself to another 12 years in the military, something which I had previously been looking forward to leaving, but they'd offered me my dream posting to stay.

Oh if only I had known what was about to come around the corner I'd have told them where they could stick that promotion, but then I'd most likely not have met Kristi then and I certainly wouldn't have been in a position to get married, so I'd needed to have known a lot about the future to make the right decisions there.

[ER]

August 24, 2022 Sat out on the patio from the gloaming into the night with my oldest child, Daisy, first playing MTG, then a variation of Never Have I Ever but instead of shots we used apple slices.

"Never have I ever smelled socks to see if they were too stinky to wear."

"Never have I ever fallen asleep in a restroom stall."

"Never have I ever eaten cottage cheese on a hotdog bun."

"Never have I ever lied about liking a movie star."

(Sorry, the confidentiality inherent in the game forbids me to reveal the answers to these burning questions....)

[ER]

August 25:
1995: Third day of school and I kept going around thinking of this rhyme from The Virgin Suicides: "The trees, like lungs, filling with air/ My sister, the mean one, pulling my hair." There was something about knowing you were going to gleefully stop off after school and have sex that made daily chapel seem pointless.

2006: Landon and I were in Portland, Oregon, visiting his friend Justin, who was married to a woman named Shirley, his elder by a handful of years. The city reminded me it actually was what Austin liked to imagine itself to be.

2009: Already owning a box set of the graphic novels, I shocked myself by spending half a grand on a leather-bound set of The Complete Sandman.

2010: My friends Rob and Tara came over for movie night, chose Time Bandits, and couldn't believe I didn't like it.

2012: My second attempt at reading the series again failed to generate interest in The Wheel of Time, ("The wheel is stuck.") so I gave it away.

2016: According to our back yard weather station, it reached 105 degrees, not heat index, the temperature itself. A camel would've asked for ice water.

2020: Tried Randonautica with Daisy; her intention was to be taken to something nice, and we were led to a book exchange box outside a school, where two titles she'd actually mentioned wanting to read were there for free.
Strange....

2022: Had this conversation with my husband, who managed to reveal both father issues and insecurity about being adopted.

Him: "My dying father has never once said he loves me or is glad I was ever born."

Me: "Then don't mourn him if you think he's a bastard."

Him: "Technically, I'm the bastard."

[ER]

August 26:

1989: Gina's beloved Western-Rider Barbie was missing; Mark, her seven-year-old brother and inveterate Barbie serial killer, was suspected.

1993: Gina dared me to brush my teeth with grape jelly, so I did.

1994: A line from a Byron poem called Darkness got me word-high: "Darkness had no need of them; she was the universe..."

1995: Grandpa gave me my Desert Eagle and set paper targets at ten to twenty yards. Hollow-points blasted the dirt mound like geysers. All my years of practicing precision tennis serves had given me a good aim and I made him proud of me. Such a nice day together, and I still own that firearm.

1996: Met for the last time with Tammy, the Appalachian lady I helped learn to read. We've lost touch.

2006: In Portland we went with Justin and Shirley to a sort of Scottish pub called the Rose & Thistle.

2017: I finally told my father about being pregnant in 1997. Til then only one other person knew, that being Brian's dad Joe, who to his credit never told anyone, as we'd asked him not to.

2020: I found out Michael Aquino, my favorite Satanist, died. He had bizarre eyebrows.

2021: My Spanish friend who claims to be a trance medium presented me with the interesting metaphor that my soul was "made of paper." I've been scared of matches ever since.

2022: One of Daisy's fourth grade teachers died, and ten-year-old Trinity peppered her with questions: "Did it hurt when the teacher died? Did the teacher know she was going to die? Where is the teacher now?" I had to remind her to maybe ease up, but I wondered those things too.

[ER]

August 27, 2012 I got a potato launcher off a website that sold both plans and finished guns, then bought fifty pounds of potatoes, and that evening Landon and I summoned Rob and Tara and we took turns blasting potatoes into the woods. We lined targets up and knocked them down. After dark we used wire cutters to trim sparklers and lit them in potatoes, so the sizzling spuds sped into the twilight. We shot off every last potato in the house and never got bored, and afterward came in and watched an animated version of The Watchmen. To this day we have wild potatoes growing in our woods.

[Alex]

28th August 2021.

I was seriously worried I'd miss my chance to see this, but we finally got to go see the Ray Harryhausen exhibit. I practically danced around the place looking at all the models that had played such a special role in my childhood. Going round the museum with Kristi and Ash is one of my favourite memories.

28th August 2015.

I staggered out of the room on rubbery legs. My eyes felt like they had blood running out of them. My heart rate felt thin and thready. I think my brain had been turned to mush and was ready to just pour out of every available orifice. I could barely comprehend how I had just survived the experience I had endured. Endured was the right word. You don't survive an experience like that, you endure it. I had made it through though even if I would never be quite the same person as I had been before.

I had done it though. I had watched The Star Wars Christmas Special.

28th August 2014.

Susie and her mum (Darleen) were visiting. We took them around Elgin (or El Gin as Susie kept calling it), and then went for a meal. Everything on the menu I was asked how large the vegetable portion with it was. Every time I replied "I've never eaten here before, I don't know." She would ask about the same dish several times. We were all hungry and waiting on her making a decision but it was just this endless stream of the same repeated question.  I would tell her she'd need to ask the staff, that I did not know. It did not matter, I still got the same question again and again and again. Kristi could see me getting increasingly frustrated by the exchange, but I remained mostly patient about it. I love Susie and her mum, but I'll never go out for a meal with Darlene again.

[ER]

August 28, 2002 I got passed a counterfeit twenty dollar bill at US Bank. I'd tried to spend it and noticed it looked weird so I examined it up close and sure enough it was bogus. I returned it to the bank and they said they'd been getting some lately, all from the same general geographical area, and this one was part of a thousand-plus dollar cash drop some restaurant employees made. I was tempted to keep the ersatz currency and frame it as a souvenir it but I needed real money more.

[Alex]

29th August 2013.

My foot had started to hurt a bit while I was at work, increasing in pain as the day went on. By the time I was heading home, I knew I was having a full-on gout attack. I could feel my swollen toe pressing against my shoe. 5 minutes walk from my front door I was seriously considering calling a taxi to come pick me up. When I did stagger through the front door, Kristi panicked. My face had went grey. I pulled my work shoes and socks off, and you could actually see my toe swelling up. I had some pretty powerful pills to deal with it, and within about half an hour of taking one the swelling was retreating. I assume it breaks up the uric acid crystals or something, but however it worked I was just certainly glad it did. Me and Kristi argued over who was going to sleep downstairs (she didn't want to risk bumping my toe and wanted me to sleep in the double bed, but I did not want the pain of walking up stairs and wanted to sleep on the couch).

Eventually, I guilted her into letting me have the couch and she got the bed. The next day my foot was still tender and I was aware that bumping it against anything would merely result in a renewed attack, so I took the day off. Kristi did get her wish of running around and looking after me though.

[ER]

August 29:

1994: Finished The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles' magnum opus, the plot of which made you think you were in Masterpiece Theater country, only to find out at the very end that you'd been in The Twilight Zone.

1999: At lunch I told my Aunt Christie I was glad she was staying close to Brian, after my having to live on the east coast expended his patience back in January, no matter what we still felt for each other. In retrospect I'm glad she didn't cut ties with him in what turned out to be the last year of his life. If I'd been here I think he'd still be alive, but also my children, these children, wouldn't.

2000: My grandpa died of small-cell lung cancer. I was sad, but with the way he'd isolated himself it was also like he'd died months before and it was just his body catching up to the fact. Being 6' 4" and mighty doesn't spare you from death, neither does being pretty or loved or young or needed or anything else. "I tell you now to enjoy life."

2008: In my third trimester my thoughts were about babies, so I asked my dad to tell me about when I was little. He said when I was a baby he put me in my playpen so he could study for college, but I smiled at him so big he picked me up and we hung out the rest of the morning instead. Heartwarming except upon hearing that I abruptly burst into tears. Being pregnant has a lot in common with being possessed.

2020: Driving home from Wright-Pat, I saw Larry Flynt's Hustler Superstore was using a banner to advertise a signing by an adult film starlet, though probably not the great Pumpis Johnson.

[ER]

August 30, 2016 On the day we heard Gorbachev died, I got Daisy from school and we went to the funeral of her fourth grade teacher from 2018-2019. There was a bus doing shuttle duty to the funeral home from a parking lot down the road, but Daisy and I just changed shoes and walked about a furlong, then changed shoes again before going in. The funeral home was packed, and while there Daisy impressively handled herself with a perfect fusion of dignity and polite sadness, making me proud of her. We didn't go to the cemetery, which was north of Dayton, but we sat near some tall pine trees in a park and talked about the service and I told her in our funeral dresses we looked like a couple of hot babes, which made her laugh despite feeling sad. We saw a murder of crows sitting in the grass in front of us, and when a red-tailed hawk landed beside them, the crows started cawing and aggressing on the hawk til it fled. Since I've always had a fascination with crows, I could almost let myself see an omen in that, as the wise stay attuned to nature's secret language.

[indianasmith]

The place sounds kind of cool, honestly.  I'd browse there for a while.

[ER]

August 31, 2022 Ever heard about bad mojo attaching to an object? Yeah, that's silly, right? Right? Went to a strange shop which was like some mad scientist's garage sale, offering small taxidermied animals, unwelcome mats, headstones, urns, Victorian corpse bells, tiny pieces of the crashed plane that killed Carole Lombard, death masks, shed python skins, Anton Lavey's umbrella, a ritual scarification knife from Ghana, embalmer's tools, gallstone marbles, tobacco-stained 1970s AstroTurf, Bigfoot urine, petrified cobra eggs, saints cards Padre Pio cried on, Jerry Garcia's cigarette butt, tragic fortune cookies, canned air from Graceland, Jim Crow 1950s canned goods: in short just the weirdest collection of eclectica I had ever seen, but I was too creeped out by the merchandise and the absolutely horrible energy of the store to buy anything, and felt like taking a shower in holy water when I left.

[Trevor]

Sunday August 31 1997: the start of the third worst day in my life. 

[ER]

September 1, 2002  Got up early to play three sets of tennis before three-year-old Tyler came to spend the day with me, then drove him up and bought a sandbox at Home Depot, which we sat up out back. I told him about Dune and how Dune worms erupted up from the ancient sands of Arrakis, and he wanted to see a picture of one, so I found images from the '80s David Lynch movie, and instantly Tyler said, "No, dat's a peenus!" Nothing I said could convince him he was not seeing a giant male member bursting from a dusty landscape, so for that and many reasons it did not particularly shock me when as a teenager he told us he was into sex with boys....lots and lots of boys.