1. I despised most vegetables (with the exception of pickles, iceberg lettuce and carrots) until I was in my late teens. As a child, my Polish grandmother forced me to finish my bland canned lima beans at the dinner table, so I sat and sobbed with a mouthful of green mush. When she would go back to the kitchen, I would get up and spit it out behind a huge bar which was always stocked with whiskey and vodka. Years later, during a thorough spring cleaning, she found a huge pile (it reached her knee cap) of macerated dehydrated lima beans behind the bar.
2. I played Pinocchio in my sixth grade play. My naturally elongated nose stole the show.
3. I went to Polish girl scouts camp in Ontario, Canada every summer as a teen. One year, my friend and I left camp in the middle of the night to visit the boy’s camp (teen hormones were culpable.) Unfortunately, we were caught, then reprimanded and humiliated. This moment of shame occurred the next day in front of the entire camp. To add to this humiliation was wearing the grey communist-inspired uniforms. The only reason they didn’t ship us back to the US is because they didn’t have enough money. That worked in our favor, but spoke volumes about the camp’s financial mismanagement. (PCM – Polish Camp Mismanagement.)
I can only feign a half smile knowing I am wearing this hideous communist-grey drab uniform. But at least I learned how to make a knot, pitch a tent, build an outhouse and sing church songs in Polish.
This porky minx is me at the age of 13. I used to shuffle around camp in my Woolworth’s purchased underwear with dungarees around my ankles, dragging in the dirt and say things like “Say, has anyone seen my Jordache jeans?” (Check out the pink and white striped pulled up sock. Sweet!)
4. In my 15th year on this planet, I slept over a friend’s house since she threw a party while her parents were away. New to alcohol, I drank too much cheap whiskey and passed out in the kitchen next to a bowl of cat food. When I awoke, I was so hungry I tasted it to see what it would be like. For weeks after that kids in high school would “meow” every time they saw me.
5. I was a “Face in Hole” addict and spent countless hours superimposing my face next to celebrities as seen here with Michael Jackson.
6. Senior year in high school I won the title “Class Clown” which was acknowledged and printed in my yearbook. That didn’t make my mom proud. She yelled “How the hell did I raise you? Why can’t you grow up? That is nothing to be proud of.” My response “Why the hell can’t parents shut up and stop stifling teens’ creativity?” I turned out all right after all.
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