Hello, My Name Is Town.

Weird nicknames run in my family. Some families have diabetes, some have red hair, we have nonsensical monikers. Phyl's mother, Elinor, was probably the one who started this. I don't think my mother and her two brothers even knew their real names until they started school. Mom was generally called "Gags" around the house. This is an awful-sounding word, but not nearly as bad as her other nickname, which seems to have just spurted out of my grandmother's mouth in a torrent of verbal diarrhea - "Pubus Regonia." Read that again. See if you can say it without either laughing or throwing up in your mouth. Can you imagine a childhood in which you are known by something as stupid as "Pubus Regonia," or, for short, "Regs?" I can. I was and still am generally known as "Town." Just "Town." Sometimes my family sings a medley of songs to me that involve the word "Town." I'll walk into a room and hear "When you've got worries go doooownToooown! O little Town of Bethlehem!" and et cetera. I would say it's the stupidest nickname I've ever heard, but for my poor brother, who has had so many ridiculous names that he now answers to almost anything shouted up the stairs. It doesn't even faze him. Some of my favorites have been Flumby, Line Pine, and Goobsie. Yes, my brother, the future lawyer. Goobsie.

I blame this on my mom and grandma, but so help me, I'm just as bad. I've called my father "Pim" for years. I have no idea why. And my husband, Andy, has been Hobs now for about three weeks. It just tumbles out of my mouth like a toaster in an avalanche. I have no control over it. Ask my son, Charlie, who has never been called anything except "Scoob" in the fifteen months of his strange little life.

To top it all of, my mom's name isn't even Phyllis. It's Gayle. This whole blog is based on a lie.

I need to lay down.

The First Day of School

I was not an attractive child. I was very overweight and for some reason Mom thought my hair looked good in a mullet. I was also the tallest kid in my class (although I stopped growing and am now a member of the Lollipop Guild). I tell you this to set the stage for the first day of sixth grade. We had just moved to Virginia and I had exactly one friend, who was not going to the same school as I was. Also I was very into wearing boys' clothing, such as plaid polo shirts and corduroys. So. There I was, the most awkward girl on the face of the earth. And I needed to buy school supplies.

Phyl is always on the lookout for a bargain or some creative way to use crap from around the house. She saved Cool Whip containers for years before I finally buried them in the backyard during the dark of night - she was certain she could repurpose them as, I don't know, tiny bedpans or something. Anyway, this particular school year, Mom had accidentally bought me folders that had no pockets in them. I pointed out her error and was taking my mullet-festooned self out to the car for a return trip to the store, when I heard, "Well, wait a minute..." And then I knew that this would not be a good first day of school.

Mom's brilliant idea was to cut up a brown paper bag and staple sections to the folder to create pockets. I don't know if you heard me, so let me reiterate: SHE MADE FOLDER POCKETS OUT OF A BROWN PAPER BAG. Do you know how much a clasp folder costs? Thirty cents. To save thirty cents, Phyllis was going to force me to go to school with folders MADE OUT OF PAPER BAGS. She might as well have dressed me in burlap and smeared chicken blood on my face.

I don't remember how I responded to this; I think I was speechless. Mom was extremely proud of her paper bag pockets and showed them to Dad as soon as he got home from work. And then, thank God, my dad took a stand against Phyllis' thriftiness, and he took me to the store and not only bought me new folders but also Lisa Frank stickers with which to decorate them. I still had to contend with the hairstyle and the clothes and the excess adipose layer, but I did not have to go to school with supplies made out of garbage.

Mom still insists that those folders would have worked just fine. And they would have if I was going to school in the Third World.

I wonder what she was planning to do with the thirty cents? Probably buy more Cool Whip.

The Will of the Woe

Phyl is the worst song lyricist in the entire world. She has a really pretty singing voice, but she cannot for the life of her get a single lyric correct in the songs she sings. One of my favorite examples is the Rod Stewart song "On the Radio," which Phyl sings as "Under Any O. " Which makes sense. "Dancin' to the music / under any O."  Ahh, how we used to love to dance under any giant letter "O" we could find. Generally we would stop at a Waffle House and do the Twist directly underneath the "o" in "House." Good times.

Another classic is "I Believe in Miracles" by Hot Chocolate. Of course, in Mom's warm, sunny, M.C. Escher-esque mind, this is translated to "I Believe in Malacos." Malaco is a Swedish candy brand. It makes sense to believe in them.

 They are, after all, "Gott & blandat."

Sometimes Mom doesn't even bother trying to sing lyrics that are even close to the originals, or even real words at all. A favorite substitute for an actual word is "scooby," as in "You make me scooby like the sun." It's very moving to hear, belted out from the driver's seat, Mom's rendition of "Fun, Fun, Fun" by the Beach Boys; it goes something like this: "She'll have fun, fun, fun / 'Til her scooby takes her scooby away!" Vast improvement on the original, I think.

Another trick is to just mumble or hum when you come to an unfamiliar part of the song. Mom will often attempt to sing along to a song she's never even heard, so all you hear is a vague rumbling and some semi-formed words: "It's been one wuh hmmhmmhmmhmmhmm, hmm huh head hmmhmmhmmhmm angry" is how Mom sings the chorus to "One Week" by the Barenaked Ladies. We have pointed out that it might be more enjoyable to simply listen to the song instead of trying to sing along if you don't know any of the words, but she can't hear us over her passionate version of Garth Brooks' anthem, "I've Got Fruh Hmmhmmhmm Low Faces."

And here's our absolute favorite, which has passed into family parlance: "You're the One That I Want" by the cast of the movie Grease. Mom is convinced that they are singing "You're the Will of the Woe." Dad has tried again and again to explain that this makes zero sense and is one hundred percent wrong, but Mom's swift retort is always and forever, "Well, that's what they SAY." And she's right. Sandy is the will of Danny's woe, and vice versa. Andy is the will of my woe. Romeo was the will of Juliet's woe. And Mom is the will of everybody's woe, because she is constantly entertaining and amusing and we love her in spite of all the crazy.

Two Degrees of Separation

When we go out to dinner, we rarely spend any time with my dad. He is inevitably cornered by either an old man wearing a World War II cap and wanting to reminisce about the those damn Japanese, or some flight school friend he hasn't seen in thirty-seven years. We usually regain his company around the time dessert is served. The conversation then generally goes one of two ways:

OPTION ONE:

Mom: "Who was that?"
Dad: "I have no idea."

OPTION TWO:

Mom: "Who was that?"
Dad: "You remember Steve Flockman!"
Mom: *Stares blankly*
Dad: "From Ft. Campbell? He was the S3 of the First and Two-Thirteenth?"
Mom: *Eyes glaze over*

My husband Andy is just as bad. No matter where we go, he finds someone to talk to, and then I am forced to listen to the sinuous thread of acquaintance that brought the two together. Andy is from a miniscule town in northern Alabama, with a population of approximately twelve (not including livestock), and yet, somehow, he knows someone who knows someone who knows the person he just talked to. He calls it "Two Degrees of Separation." It's always something such as, "That was John Flitterbottom! He's married to a lady whose mother used to assist with my grandfather's prostate exams!" And then he beams happily, warm with the knowledge that his social web is now that much more complete, while I stare at him in disbelief over my empty plate.

It gets worse when we visit Andy's hometown. After church on Sunday, or at any social function, we are bombarded with Andy's friends and relatives. I love meeting these people and really do enjoy putting faces to names and fleshing out the stories Andy's told me about his past, but invariably I am forced to listen to an introduction as long as "Moby Dick," i.e., "Honey, this is Mary Cogginhoofer! She's my mother's brother's second cousin's aunt! You know, Uncle Jack's sister!" And then my head explodes.

I like it when whomever I've just been introduced to departs, though. After gushing about how great it is to see him or her, Andy waves goodbye and then turns to me and, in a low whisper, tells me all the dirt. "Bye, Mary! Great to see you! *She's insane! When one of her dogs dies she makes soup out of the carcass!*" And then I laugh bemusedly, and it's on to the next old friend or distant relative.

All my family is across the country, so I feel pretty left out in the father's cousin's wife's brother area. I might have to start making things up when I introduce Andy to people just so I can feel better about myself.

ME: "Andy, this is June! She's married to my mom's aunt's husband's sister!"
JUNE: "No, I'm not. I'm just here to read your meter."
ME: "DAMMIT, June!"

Just Add Water!

You know when you've got about half a serving of Ranch dressing left, and damned if you didn't forget to pick up a new bottle last time you were at the store? Phyllis has a remedy - just add water!

Poor Dad was introduced to this the hard way one evening at dinner. He upended the bottle of what he thought was Ranch, and his salad was inundated with watery, beige-ish liquid. Immediately, he checked the expiration date, but, surprisingly, the bottle was still new. Mom saw his perplexed expression and cheerfully told him that she had extended the life of the dressing by as much as several weeks by adding tap water to the remaining dregs and shaking vigorously. Voila! Now we had half a bottle of dressing, thanks to Phyl's creativity!

Unfortunately, nobody else has found this to be a pleasing subsitute. We eventually had to start clearly marking the old bottle of Ranch ("Phyl's Dressing) so that we wouldn't end up with our plates swimming in heavily diluted, watery, tasteless dressing. In the year or so since Phyl first came up with this idea, she has put a spin on it by adding Tabasco to the concoction. She insists she prefers it to original Ranch and is constantly trying to get us to try her recipe. Mmm, leafy Romaine with off-white Tabasco-flavored water on top!

What I don't get is that Mom is a really, really good cook. She can make any recipe well and can usually improve upon the original. So why, when it comes to salad dressing, is she so bizarrely tasteless? I think I've figured it out:

My grandma smoked while pregnant.

Expiration Dates: "More Like Guidelines"

Everyone has that one person in their family who doesn't "believe" in expiration dates. (After all, milk that goes bad just turns into cottage cheese, right?) In our family, that person is Phyllis. I enjoy going through her and Dad's refrigerator and cupboards and culling the fossilized foods and medicines.

Here's a little background: Dad is retired military, meaning we moved every two or three years until I graduated high school.

Which means the jar of popcorn seasoning I unearthed that expired in 1991 moved with us at least three times. THREE TIMES. That small jar managed to travel across state lines, into and out of four houses, and come to rest in a cupboard hundreds of miles from its original home. And Mom still insisted that it was "still good."

This is a phrase I hear often when purging Phyl's house of food so old it has evolved language ability. I've never been able to determine whether by "still good" she means "good to eat" or "probably nonlethal," but I have nearly had to armwrestle green Cheddar cheese from her because it is "still good." (She has actually attempted to argue the point that cheese is just mold, so it's okay if it's covered with colonies of penicillin so advanced they have independently developed democracy.)

When I mentioned this post to my dad, he told me to be sure to remember The Visine Incident. Our story begins with Dad, eyes red and irritated from our famous Alabama pine pollen, rummaging through the cabinet for some eye drops. He found a half-full bottle and applied several drops to each eye. Disturbingly, both eyes began to burn unbearably immediately after application. Through his tears, Dad peered at the Visine bottle and discovered that the liquid inside had expired no less than ten years before. When confronted, Mom insisted that she had used the Visine recently and it hadn't bothered her. She ventured the theory that Dad's eyes were just too sensitive. Dad ventured the theory that eye drops that have been allowed to ferment into vinegar would have fried the cornea of even the manliest eyeball.

This is not to say that Dad is the most normal human being. He writes grocery lists on his iPad, for one thing. We also had to teach him how to put together an acceptable outfit when he retired and went from camouflage BDUs to civilian clothes - those first few weeks, he came downstairs in everything from navy chinos and white socks to a Hawaiian shirt and dress shoes. Bless his heart, it took him months to learn that a black belt and brown shoes just aren't okay.

But both my parents are wonderful. Really, really strange, but wonderful. And Dad's eyes are still a delicate shade of pink that matches the vile hue of the bleu cheese I had to throw out of Mom's refrigerator a few months ago.

It was "still good."