Kid Fears (no, not the Indigo Girls song)

Hey kiddies, how the heck are y'all? I am pooped out. It was hotter than heck today, like 30 degrees and then the humidex made it feel like 37 or some such temperature, so it's just brutal. Of course, it's worse down south, where I saw humidex's in the 40s. So, we are roasting. Right now, the temperature in the house is something like 82 degrees (my thermostat is in farenheit) but we put our window air conditioner in tonight, so at least the bedroom will be cool. Tomorrow it is cooling right off, and will be only like 20 or something. Strange summer again - hardly any heat thus far. i wonder if it will be as bad as last year. But anyway, talking about the weather for so long makes me sound older than I am so I'll stop.
Anyway, been a busy past couple days, and I am tired as usual. And the house is a frigging disaster still, but I have no energy to do anything about it. Nice suprise today - my parents GAVE me their van. GAVE it to me. Just called me up at lunch yesterday and said "are you still looking for a van?" and I said "yeah, just something cheap for around town" and they said "want ours?" and I said "how much" and they said "um, $1?" and told me they have given my other sister old vehicles before and helped my other sister out and blah blah blah and gave us the van. It's old, like 1991 or something, but my parents are old, so it's in great shape, and so there, we have a van to get around in with the kids, AND they told us to keep their plates on it until it expires in October. So, that was a bright thing. Keryn is so excited. Man, it's so awesome to see things through the eyes of a child.
Well, I hate to talk about other people's blogs, but I just have to. Roxanne made me almost vomit with laughter (LOL, vomiting with laughter - good book title, isn't it?) about the stupid thing parents tell you as a child. In her case, the grownups told her that some old crazy lady lived upstairs at grandmas to keep them off the stairs. WELL, I have no story that crazy, but isn't it funny how you get spooked by things as kids and don't know why? Well, for some fucking reason (this is going to show just how mental I am), I was scared of this plate thing at my parents' friends house. You see, we used to go to this lake every summer where lots of my parent's friends had cabins. Well, their one friend had this cabin and in the kitchen it had this decorative plate, that was just this black guy in a chef's hat holding a spoon. Now, when I think of it, it's probably some of that racist memorabilia shit that you see on antiques roadshow, although I can't really pinpoint why it's racist. But anyway, it was this harmless plate. However, since I was little I was scared of that thing. it totally freaked the fucking shit out of me. So we'd go visiting there and it was all I could do not to stare at the damn thing. Then, we'd stay there sometimes when they weren't there, you know, borrow the cabin. WELL, I used to make my mom take the frigging thing down the second we got there. Now, the stupid thing is, the last time we stayed there, I was like 13. We walk in, I see the fucking plate, and I made a bee-line for the thing, grab it, shoved it under one of the beds, and that, my friends, was that. Now, thinking back, it's pretty pathetic that I was scared of this thing, but something about it just freaked me out.
I was also scared of the cover of "The Ghost of Flight 401" and had to hide that book. I was also scared of knocking lamps over, because I had it in my head that the house would burn down if the lamps fell over. We think mom must have told us that because we all sorta have memories of that, and they all say I was quite freaked out about it. If someone was wrestling or something I'd like scream that the lamp would fall and the house would burn down and I was just in a snit. I am so frigging twisted, aren't I?
Margo and I had the convo once about kid fears and she said she was always scared of quicksand, and you know, me too. I was always thinking I was going to end up in a big batch of quicksand somehow, like on Gilligan's Island, and sink to my death. I was also scared of Saskquatches, fish bones, and killer bees. It was always the damn killer bees were going to come from texas - they move 300 miles north each year! the playground pundits would say.
Now, so my parents didn't exactly make up too much shit, but in their own way, they were funny enough. Like one time, when we still lived in B.C., we were in Regina on holidays and we were going to visit friends of my parents who had a severely retarded son. So we are on our way there and my dad is all "ok, now JT, Darryl is retarded so don't say anything or ask anything about him" and I mean, what the hell did he think, that I had never seen a retarded person before or that I was going to point and taunt or ask the parents "why do you think he's retarded? Did something happen during your pregnancy?" Like, come on. So that just made me freaked out, thinking he was going to be drooling and rocking back and forth and freaking out. We got there and he was already in bed, but I was so worked up, it's no wonder I have panic attacks now.
I also remember having to go to the sex ed thing with him at school. it was so lame and i didn't want to go, because I knew everything and was like probably already doing some of it, but my sister made me go, probably more for dad than anything, so I went and it was so lame. We had to play floor hockey while the dad's watched the video, and then we watched the video with the dads and then went home. Well, the fucking video was something out of 1968 and even though this would been 80 or 81, it was soooo bad. And really all it was was some dudes prancing around in striped slacks with big hair and meeting these girls for like milkshakes and then like a shot of them shaving and treating their oily, oatmealy faces, and then standing shirtless while the voice over dude was like talking about how they have to use deodorent because they have hairy armpits now, and I remember thinking "this is an evening out of my life to tell me THIS bullshit?" and then it got into the sex stuff, but it was just a 30 second voiceover and made no sense. So, the dad's got a pamphlet to give us, and he wouldn't give it to me on the way home, but just sorta put it in his pocket, and then I find it 2 weeks later buried in my desk drawer. And that, my friends, was my formal sex ed talk.
Ok, I gotta get to bed before I melt.
Keep Your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars,
xo
JT