I remember my parents having old-fashioned rotary dial telephones when I was growing up and it would take forever to dial a long distance number. Man, that was a long time ago. Wait, they still have them. Oh my God!
I remember riding my tricycle inside the house because the downstairs was unfinished and the floor was just bare concrete. The ceilings were ducts and beams with nails sticking down. And there was a wall missing. We just used the bare opening as the entrance to the laundry room. Years later they had the wall and ceilings finished and added an actual door for the laundry room. It was weird. One day I come home from school and there are ceilings and a door in the hall that was never there before and an entire new wall in the den. Freaky.
I remember my mom making me and my brother take off our clothes in the garage and streak through the house if we got at all wet outside. She said we had good carpeting and God forbid you get anything wet on good carpet. I also remember she never ever did this to any of my sisters. Apparently water, mud, and even horse poop from a girl was OK for the carpet. Funny how it always worked that way.
I remember when my parents used to do mean things to me they'd say "you won't even remember this when you're older." But I do remember. Yeah motherfuckers, I remember it ALL! Oh, pardon me. I lost my head there for a second.
I remember how my youngest sister used to really abuse my brother and get away with murder. My middle sister used to smile as she told me the story of how a long time ago, when my older brother was about 4 or 5 and my youngest sister was 5 or 6, she was picking on him in the sandbox, like she always did. He told my parents who did nothing about it, as usual. So my brother, in desperation, took a piece of 2x4 and whopped her over the head with it. I think this is the only recorded fight between the 2 of them that he ever won. Both of my oldest sisters love to tell this story. My youngest sister was meaner than a Texas snake for many years and my parents made it worse. YeeHA!
I remember how my parents, ever the ones for avoiding doing anything about a problem, allowed my youngest sister, and only my youngest sister, to buy a locking doorknob that required a key for her bedroom. The rest of us got into trouble if we just locked our doors at all. There was no way in hell we would ever be allowed to buy an actual keyed lock for our doors that my parents couldn't even open. But my youngest sister got away with everything, so in high school she got one. The thing is, she was the biggest thief in the house and she'd always hide our stuff that she had stolen in her room. If you asked my parents to do anything about it they'd punish you for bringing it up. Or they'd turn it around and say you were the thief. Either way, you learned not to expect my parents to be of any use at all. Anyway, my youngest sister developed a habit of plugging in her headphones and turning her stereo all the way up. But she wouldn't turn off her speakers, so there was really no point to the headphones. She was just blasting the entire house. Dad had given her the largest speakers in the house, a set of 15 inch mind-blowing woofers and she used every inch of them. One day she got several phone calls in a row which she didn't answer and so we picked it up in the kitchen. We'd knock on her vibrating door and yell for her to answer the phone, but she'd ignore us. Even when my parents knocked on her door to tell her to answer the phone she wouldn't respond. This went on for hours, with the phone ringing off the hook and my parents getting increasingly angry. Finally, my dad got mad enough to actually do something about it. This was probably the only time in his life he ever stood up and yelled at her or did anything at all to punish her. Dad is 6'3" and has been a weightlifter since he was 15 years old. I guess he was in his late 40s or early 50s by this time. He was pretty big and rode an old 1951 Harley. My youngest sister is 5'3" or so. She's the smallest one of all of us, although she was by far the meanest fighter and strongest girl. Dad stomped down the hall to her room and beat on the door. She ignored him like she had all of us that day. So he backed up into the bathroom and came running. BAM! Her door busted open and slammed against the wall with a sound like dynamite going off. Even with the headphones on she jumped out of her skin. But she instantly recovered enough to begin arguing that he had violated her rights by breaking down her door. He told her to answer the damned phone and turn off the damned stereo. Then he said the lock was coming off, which was a moote point anyway since he had broken the door and it wouldn't even latch anymore.
I remember the only real knock down, drag out fight I ever had with my youngest sister. I don't remember what we were fighting about, but with my youngest sister, no matter how obviously wrong she was she'd always keep fighting. She just liked to fight. At one point I went into my room and shut the door and locked it. For me to ever lock my door was a sin to my father, but he wasn't the one trying to get in so I didn't care. My sister tried to bust into my room to get in my face and see if she could intimidate me. She was accustomed to always getting her way. I was barely a teenager at this point, so she would have been about 18 or 19. She was screaming at me to "unlock this door before I break it down." She used the exact words my father had used before breaking down her door, which told me that she had heard him all along and just chose to ignore him. Anyway, she went and got a screwdriver and picked the cheap lock on my doorknob. With those locks a screwdriver was the only key, but it was all you needed anyway. I'm sure you probably have these in your house so you know what I mean. Anyway, once she had picked the lock she tried to fling the door open, but I was standing on the other side holding it shut with my foot. As soon as she got it unlocked I would lock it again. This made her really mad. She'd unlock it and I'd lock it back. So she decided to knock it down just like my father had done to her. WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! She didn't have the strength to break it down, but she had a definite rhythm to her pounding, so I timed her pounding as best as I could. Just as she was coming for another slam against my door I flung it open and stepped aside. She went down like the 3 Stooges. CRASH! Woo woo woo woo! Even while she was down on the floor she was already screaming at me that I had better never lock my door on her, as if she were my father and this were her house. I just stood there and laughed at the sight of her crumpled in my floor. She looked ridiculous. When she got up she tried to get right in my face. I think this was when she first realized I had grown bigger than her. And I didn't back down. So instead of attacking me she left, still yelling. The fight was over.
I remember when My Brother sold me a 1973 Mazda RX3 stationwagon. I didn't even know any such car had ever existed before I bought it from him. It was a rotary engined car, just like the Mazda RX8 they make now. But it had one small problem. This problem was the reason not many people ever bought these cars and caused Mazda to issue the very first 100,000 mile warranty ever in the history of the automotive world. It nearly bankrupted Mazda. The engine had been built with the ability to rev higher than the engine case and seals could withstand and so these brand new cars' engines would blow up. This came just 3 years after Chevrolet had suffered through a huge problem with a crankshaft design flaw in their LS5 Chevelles which also caused the engine to blow apart. So our Government was not happy and poised to take action. Mazda, not anxious for the U.S. Government to "help" them with this problem, issued a recall of all RX3 model cars. They then detuned the engine to prevent it from reving high enough to explode. But the detuning caused the engine to backfire through the exhaust when you turned the car off. The backfire would blow off the muffler, so Mazda, now stuck between a rock and a hard place, a lawyer and an accountant, the Government and the Public, ran a separate pipe parallel to the exhaust just for the backfire. I kid you not. So, getting back to my own Mazda RX3 wagon, it had a pipe that ran along the exhaust and skipped the muffler. Its' only purpose was for the backfire. Every time I stopped to pick up my then-girlfriend, or to get gas, or to go to the store, or to come home at 4 a.m., when I turned off the car there would be a pause of about 10 seconds, and then BLAM!!!! It would backfire with a sound remarkably similar to that of a .38 caliber pistol. My parents, meanwhile, were trying to help my oldest sister recover from a divorce and go back to college. She needed a car, so they made me give the backfiring Mazda to her. She absolutely hated it. She especially hated the loud gunshot-like backfire. So Dad, ever one to avoid any conflict with a female, traded her his beautiful 2-door Cadillac for her Mazda wagon. My dad, you must try to understand, is an engineer who spent the start of his career in the Army and the remainder working for the U.S. Government in Army Missile Command as a brainy civilian. His idea of what constitutes "funny" is slightly different than that of a normal person. He absolutely loved, loved, loved going to get gas in the Mazda and watching all the people jump out of their suits when the car backfired. He thought this was so funny that he actually got me to help him design something to attach to his 1969 Buick Wildcat that would make it backfire and throw a big puff of smoke any time we pushed a button. Anyway, we never finished this Hillbilly gadget, but he would have actually used it if we had. Seriously. After driving the Mazda for awhile, Dad, the motorcycle enthusiast, decided that Japanese cars are too small and dangerous, so he started wearing his old Harley half-helmet whenever he drove the Mazda. Meanwhile, I had purchased a 1973 Toyota Corolla from My Brother, who seemed able to aquire an awful lot of unusual cars totally for free somehow, and was driving that to school. Dad tried to force me to wear my motorcycle helmet whenever I drove the Toyota. I tried to explain to him the extreme difficulty I, an 18-year-old male, was already having getting a date at an engineering school where the average student was 27 and divorced with kids, while living at home with my parents, and driving an antique Toyota Corolla that some nimrod had repainted with housepaint and a brush. He somehow failed to grasp my arguments. Engineers are funny about not being able to grasp anyone else's arguments. Anyway, he continued driving the Mazda while wearing his helmet and I continued driving my Toyota while not wearing a helmet. And every once in a while I would encounter someone talking about a crazy old man driving around town in a little blue stationwagon while wearing a cop's helmet. I kid you not.
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