The Lunaticistas

A man came up to me at Friday night soccer the other day and said, “You know, I’ve finally figured out who you remind me of”. He’s a middle-aged dad that I make small talk with to pass the time while we both wait for our respective children to finish playing. He stares at me for a moment before continuing. Actually, he appears to be staring at my hair. It is particularly bulbous and bozoesque after yet another bad haircut by yet another stylist not trained in the art of bush trimming and I self-consciously reach up and attempt to tame it with my hand. “It’s your hair,” he says. “You look like Amelia Earhart. “ I stare back at him, unsure how to respond. Then I can’t help but to laugh when he adds, “you know, I was quite taken with her when I was a child. She had that bob like you’ve got.” He is merely stating a fact and it is clear that he is in no way hitting on me. Naturally, he is a bit of a whacko.

Of course, I call one of the Siblings to report this. I do not call Sibling #1 who, demonstrating his typical style of brotherly love, frequently referred to me as Romaine when I was at an impressionable age. Yes, Romaine, as in the lettuce, as in my head looked like a head of lettuce. Instead, I call Sibling #3 who suffers the same hair fate as me. “Oh,” she says when I tell her this, “She looked like a nun.”

I can’t help but to find this even more disturbing as Father has apparently referred to me as ‘the nun’ to my other siblings on numerous occasions. Sucker, more like, as I’m the one that deals with all the day to day madness that frequently besets lunatic parents. I won’t go into the details. Suffice it to say, lunacy only gets worse with age. It comforts me to know that the majority of the siblings, being much older than I, will reach that frightening place that is the future much sooner than I.

Aside from Father referring to me as a nun, the siblings have, on occasion, said I dress like a nun. Now, this is really more than just a little rich for them to comment on my style of dress. Sibling #2, for example, has always had a penchant for tight, short, flashy clothing. Her clothing style, at times, was less nun, more street walker. She would wonder why the married pig that lived across the street from us growing up would pull up alongside her as she rode her bike, stick his hairy hand out the window of his car and pinch her ass while making animal-like sucking noises at her. This was before she was old enough to get a gun license.

This sibling has an even worse mouth on her than I do. I had called her once and instead of saying hello like a normal person would do, she says, ‘Hold on. Some mother fucker,’ and she’s now shouting this part, ‘thinks he’s gonna mother fucking come up to my car. That’s right, keep on walking you asshole, keep on fucking walking asshole.’ Then she reverts back to her non-attack voice and continues with no explanation at all, ‘ Yeah, what’s going on?’ Normally, the language she would direct at someone that had just pinched her ass, regardless of how short her shorts happened to be at the time, would prevent further pinching. But the man that lived across the street was an immigrant without a very good grasp of the English language. Or perhaps he was just a big fan of Queen and wasn’t going to let some potentially non-idle threats get in his way.

Sibling #2 likely inherited her fashion sense from Mother, who was always fond of showing more than a little leg. Although, Mother liked to add a little militant activist to her dress on occasion. During her pro-terrorist days, Mother had a special t-shirt made up for all of the races she ran in. It had printed on it in blood red letters, ‘English Pigs Get Out of Ireland Now.’ Fortunately, this was before the government watch list or I probably would have had to undergo cavity searches anytime I traveled abroad, complements of Mother. Sibling #3, on the other hand, really imitates Father in her particular clothing style.

Father has always been a uniform type of man. At work, he wore his police uniform. Now that he is retired, he only wears his home uniform. This consists, unfailingly, of a white t-shirt, a pair of khaki Dickies, and a flannel, depending on the weather. When he would run races, he wore his running uniform. A pair of white shorts and a pair of Chuck Taylor’s. No shirt, regardless of how many degrees below zero the temperature was. Eventually, he replaced the Chuck Taylor’s with actual running shoes and he discovered at some point that if you cut a knee-hi stocking in half and wore it on your shaved head like a hat, it served as a good barrier against frostbite. His head, of course, is always shaved bald. Another aspect of his uniform.

Sibling #3 wears her own version of the white t-shirt and khakis uniform. She wears a black t-shirt and jeans. In the summer, she’ll swap the long jean pants out for jean capris or jean shorts. She is the exact polar opposite, when it comes to fashion sense, of Sibling #2. Perhaps this comes from an incident that occurred many, many years ago that Sibling #3 really needs intense therapy to help her overcome. Father seemingly took both Sibling #2 and Sibling #3 downtown one day. Before the day was done, Sibling #2 was purchased an expensive pair of white go-go boots and Sibling #3 returned home with nothing. Only when Sibling #3 retells this tale, as she frequently does, she refers to herself in the third person as “the fat one”. Like I said, intense therapy. (It should be noted that Sibling #2 remains, to this day, for reasons as mysterious as the Holy Trinity, the golden child.) Johnny Cash once sang that he dressed in black for the poor and the down-trodden. I think Sibling #3 dresses in black because of go-go boots.

I never got white go-go boots, either. In fact, I was eight years younger than sibling #2, the eldest girl. Imagine how out of date the clothes were when they were handed down to me! I painfully recall being forced to wear a lemon-yellow, bell bottomed jumpsuit to a roller skating party when I was about seven. My hair, against my wishes, had been done in formal ringlets down my back and a waterfall on top of my head like a two year old would wear. Did I mention that lemon-yellow, bell bottomed jumpsuits had been out of style for almost ten years? Utter humiliation, even if the party was for the girl next door that we all hated at the time. Incidentally, she and her other friends, the ones that were invited by her and not by her mother, were all wearing leg warmers. Not a single bell-bottomed jumpsuit in sight. Although, I do recall noting that the grown man with the scary mustache that skated around with his hips and arms swinging to the beat, rapidly weaving in and out of those of us that had to push around with a walker, namely me, had on skin tight bell bottoms.

Oddly enough, I can’t really recall Sibling #4’s clothing style. You’d think I’d remember this as we were closest in age. I believe she favored Mother’s rather loose woman type of clothing. I know she favored Mother’s terrorist stage of dress, only it wasn’t reflected in her fashion sense but in her actions. I’m sure it’s because of her whirling dervish terrorist acts that I can’t remember her actual clothes. Ask me how much she charged me to get a large black ant off my back, and I clearly recall that. In fact, I vividly remember my young little legs making a mad dash up the back stairs, with the ant on my back, to get the exorbitant five dollar fee for ant removal before the ant took up permanent residence in my hair. The lunatic wing of the old people’s home where our children will dump my siblings and I is going to be a very interesting place.