Hopelessly Devoted

First memories are supposed to be filled with favorite stuffed animals or maybe a tricycle and a warm summer day. Mine involves home invasion and proof that foreshadowing is not just a literary term. 

My best guess is that my first memory comes from when I was about 2 years old. We’d been away to visit my grandmother and we came home to discover the house had been broken into. I don’t recall anything about tampered locks or broken windows. I don’t even have a clue about what was taken. All I can remember is that the burglars took one thing from my room. They took my Olivia Newton-John record. It was even a greatest hits album. 

Apparently, most kids start singing along with Sesame Street or Mister Rogers after learning how to walk. I was singing along with “Physical” and “Xanadu”. My mom will tell you that I walked around singing “Let’s get phibical” all the time. 

What’s even more bizarre about this is that I have no idea how this record came into possession of a 2 year old. I grew up in a household that almost exclusively listened to country music. Looking back, this random bit of pop music seems like such a strange anomaly. Let alone that it was a prized possession of a toddler. 

So, what I remember is that we got home and there was an immediate bit of hysteria. There’s a blur and then I remember going into my room and finding everything was out of place. I noticed my neat pile of records had been knocked over and that she was gone. Olivia was missing. I bawled. My mom came to me and I somehow conveyed what had happened. From there, there were lots of tears until I could be taken to the TG&Y and a replacement could be purchased that very evening. 

It is both the jarring feeling of someone breaking into our home and my mom making everything right again that I remember really strongly about all of this. It says a lot about my mom that in the middle of what had to be a difficult time that she made it a priority to bring Olivia back into my life. I’d also imagine it probably made the whole thing easier to deal with by shutting me up and getting me back in my room with my beloved record player. 

It wasn’t until just yesterday while I was beginning to put the pieces of this post together that I specifically remembered my record player. In this particular memory, it’s completely secondary and not really anything I specifically recall. However, this record player was a huge part of my childhood. I was always a music lover and spent every penny I got as a kid on records and eventually tapes and CDs, but this portable record player was always my favorite toy. 

It was sort of a briefcase shaped thing with a sky blue base and a blue and white striped lid. It had a silver latch and a white plastic handle so you could pick it up and carry it around. I lugged it to the front porch, around my room and to anyone’s house that’d let me bring it along. What I just remembered yesterday was that when you opened the lid, the underside had a little cartoony landscape painted on it that prominently featured a rainbow. 

From there, I remembered that my Olivia’s record label was MCA Records. The center of each of their records had a little rainbow that would spin around with the record. I recall listening to “Hopelessly Devoted To You” and watching that rainbow spin and then seeing the matching rainbow on the record lid and always being perfectly content. 

It wasn’t until much later in life that I realized that between “Grease” and the “Physical” video, that Olivia Newton-John was a gay icon. It now strikes me as more than a little humorous that that’s how my life began. I was a little gay child in southeastern Kentucky taking solace in watching rainbows spin around on the record player and listening to a songs about talking things out “horizontally”. 

And so, I think back to that kid today as our city celebrates Pride and while we celebrate one more state recognizing that gays have rights too. Today, I’ve watched parents take their kids to Pride and even participated in helping 3 little boys tip a drag queen. I’ve come a long way since watching rainbows spin on a turntable, but I think I’m going to go to iTunes and download a few songs. Because even if I didn’t know it, 28 years ago in my Snoopy bedroom, I was celebrating Pride. 

Happy Father's Day, Mom

“You are the original template/You are the original exemplary/How seen were you, actually? How revered were you, honestly at the time?...The Heart of the House, The Heart of the House, all hail the goddess”. 

--”Heart of the House” Alanis Morissette 

I’ve always ignored Father’s Day. Being the product of a single parent home meant that Mother’s Day was the only Hallmark holiday that I had to worry with. While my father wasn’t totally absent from my childhood, he certainly didn’t play an integral role. He’s also kind of a dick. So, it was left to my mom to do the parental heavy lifting.  

I could bore you with a sappy, single parent overcoming the odds story, but that’s all too familiar and Lifetime movie-d now. I will say that for the past few weeks my mom and I have actually not been speaking to each other. Oddly enough, it’s because I’ve been rather displeased with her for talking to my psychotic father after a good 10 years of cutting off all contact. 

However, today I can’t help but think back to my first memory which is of her righting a wrong and saving the day. Growing up, she was always there to encourage me to follow my interests of writing and music even when other boys were playing Little League. She endured the endless drumming on the back of the car seat when I played percussion and barely raised an eyebrow when I conducted along with the radio after relenting and letting me try out for drum major. 

She drove me to the airport and watched me fly away to places across the country and the world to go find myself and become a better person, even when we were broke and driving in big cities scared the crap out of her. Nevermind the heartbreak and terror she had of putting her baby boy on a plane and shipping him out into the world alone. 

Despite how much irritation it may currently cause her, she raised both her kids to be independent, free-thinkers who are as quick to assert themselves as they are to laugh in the middle of crisis. Whether or not she intended to, by example she taught us how to stare down the world, while keeping your head down and getting through it. 

It seems to me that the strongest people I know are products of single parent (usually mom) households. While I suppose that I agree with the consensus that two parents are better than one, I think there’s some valuable life lessons about self-reliance and getting  through adversity that kids learn when there’s just one person playing both roles. 

And so, while most are buying ties or golf gear for Dad, I think I’ll end the stalemate I’ve been at with my mom and give her a call. I should probably wish her a Happy Father’s Day. 

The Wall: Part 2

We’re all familiar with the alleged textbook definition of insanity and what it might imply about one who repeats certain actions. I’m back in Cleveland for my second rotation of working Catastrophe duty and it really shouldn’t come as a surprise that I’m back to feeling completely spent. It was about this same point in my last rotation where I hit the proverbial wall and it appears that today I’m back on the wrecking ball and swinging away at it.


I’m more physically and mentally drained this time. Mercifully, this trip has been less emotionally taxing. I’ve really only had two moments where I had to step away after hearing some harrowing story from a customer in Joplin. I’ve also been balancing out my moments of stress and homesickness with the knowledge that I shouldn’t get too stressed out, because after all, we are living in the End Times.

The day that I drove back here was the day that had been proclaimed as The End of the World by some nut job. And while some may argue that clearly didn’t happen, it does seem like it was about this time that the globe exploded in storms, earthquakes, volcano eruptions and general geological and meteorological chaos. I now hear there’s a hurricane ‘a brewin’ and I’d just imagine we’re due for a good oil spill or tsunami about any day.

If I learned anything from my Baptist, Liberal Arts education, it was that the Bible isn’t necessarily meant to be taken literally. For instance, the 6 days that the world was allegedly created in might not directly translate to 6, 24 hour spans of time. A “day” on Heavenly Father Standard Time (because we all know Daylight Savings is from the devil) might be anywhere from a millennium to an eon. So, I’ve taken to believing that while the End of the World might not have happened, it could be we’ve just reached the beginning of the end.

First off, we have to acknowledge that Oprah is off the air. The fact that the woman who had the power to elect a president has now decided to leave us to fend for ourselves has to be a bad omen. We now have to decide what to read, what to eat, how to exercise and what’s an acceptable level of overweight on our own. The vacuum she’s left is surely a sign of the apocalypse. Oh sure, she has her own network now, but we aren’t going to learn anything from watching The Judds except how much is too much mascara and red hair dye.

We have Sarah Palin running for President again, a guy named Weiner exposing himself without a hint of irony, and even the winner of American Idol was a good ol’ wholesome American boy who continuously sang a song about having sex. I can’t imagine the message America’s impressionable youth got from hearing “lock the doors and turn the lights down low” every week.

If all of these in tandem aren’t a sign that Jesus is comin’ for to carry us home, then I don’t know what is. So, bearing this in mind, I’m living it up. I’ve been eating and drinking well. I carelessly rode a roller coaster that took me 410 feet in the air at 120 miles per hour and I’m regularly driving in traffic with Ohio drivers. I stuck my bare feet in Lake Erie. I may even get careless and throw a match in the river after work.

I’ll be back home on Friday and we’ll see if my hedonistic living continues. The boyfriend may not appreciate my philosophy that Armageddon is nigh. We did go to the same college though, so maybe it won’t be too much work to convince him that we can use my few days off before I return to regular work to build an ark or at least go to J. Crew for a new rapture outfit. Baptist college also taught us that one would want to look their best when checking in at the pearly gates.