How on earth did people live without the internet? I mean, where did addicted Hollywood celebrities get their dirty pic fix before broadband? Where did you get yours? If you were like me, you simply stumbled onto it now and again, when you were all of ten.
On Fridays my mother did the bookkeeping for my father’s business, a towing service. During the summer, my sister and I had to go in with her. (There was no such thing as summer camp, or space camp, or soccer camp, or whatever the hell kids are sent to these days to “keep them off the streets” or “prevent Mommy or Daddy from killing them”).
We sat in the back of the office BORED out of our ever-lovin’ minds desperate for something to do. We would watch crappy television (game shows) with crappy reception, playing with the antennae every 5 minutes like it would make a difference. Man, talk about nothing being on TV: three or four channels to choose from and no cartoons in the middle of the weekday. You could watch Guiding Light or you could watch Password, or you could sit on your thumb and spin.
We entertained ourselves with office supplies, playing exciting adventure games like Store! or Filing! or Know Your Lien Sale!, while irate customers came in to pick up their cars. Perhaps ‘customers’ is an inappropriate term. They had parked in a red zone, or had been in an accident and were never happy to trudge or limp in and hand over their money to the thieves who had towed their vee-hickle. Why would my dad go into such a business? It’s so . . . confrontational. But, like proctologists, somebody’s got to do it.
I suspect these horribly imaginative games with pens and pencils and While You Were Out notepads may explain my obsession with office supplies now. I could roam around Staples all day, planning what I would do with all those forms and filing cabinets and Post-Its.
There were two desks in my dad’s office. My mom would sit at the primary desk to work while seniority ruled who got the second desk. If the other tow truck driver left, that freed up desk #2, and I was all over it pretending to work or swiveling the hell out of the chair. I was ten years old, but I’d go through the desk drawers as if conducting important work. Then one day while rifling around in the drawers, I found Polaroid pictures of a young girl with a penis in her mouth. (That’s right, a detached penis. Honestly, what am I going to do with you people? No, it was attached to a man, but you didn’t see much else of him.) I remember the girl (and the penis, for that matter) had very dark skin and she looked a couple of years older than I, and the penis seemed gigantic and the girl, who was wearing two or three pigtails, was staring into the camera. I wonder where she is now…
Here is a picture of an ad that my mother designed which appeared in our high school yearbook:
You can click on the pic to see a larger version and peek at the writing, the kind of stuff 1980s people wrote in yearbooks. Do not ask me who Brian is. I have no idea; maybe Susan (the one who wrote it and apparently liked some guy named Mitch) remembers. She hoped we could be friends forever. She also advised me not to lose my virginity (the 1980s alternative to “Have A Nice Summer”). What, did she think just because I was exposed to polaroid porn at such a young age that I would be so easily corrupted?
Oh wait, I remember who Brian was. He was my boyfriend from the youth band. It was a June-August romance, between my freshman and sophomore year of high school. If I recall, he was a year younger. Yeah, I was a real cougar, man. As soon as summer ended and we went back to our respective high schools, he dumped me. HE…dumped ME! Boy, I’ll bet he rues this day, now that I’m a big famous author of a blog about goats and underwear. Ha ha, Brian-whatever-your-last-name-is! You lose! You loser! Lew-hew-hewwwzzzzzerrrrrrrrrr!
Speaking of penises, my dad slept in the nude. Since his towing service was a 24-hour one, he slept whenever he could. If he slept on the couch and the phone rang, you could hear the coins in his pants jingle as he got up and my sister and I would run over to check between the cushions for loose change like it was a piñata. If he took a nap in bed, he’d often sleep in his birthday suit, or just underwear. I guess I eventually got over his coming out of the bedroom to answer the phone completely naked, but it got a little embarrassing if I had friends over.
A friend and I would be watching TV and he or she would be caught off guard, staring slack-jawed and wide-eyed as my father flopped his way into the living room to answer the phone. Oh sure, it’s funny now, thirty-five years later, but if that happened today? He would have been hauled off to jail by the parents of whichever traumatized friend of mine sat on our blue, black and white tweed couch while I burned a silent but mortified shade of red.
And if you include the loud RING-RING! in the middle of the night and in the middle of dinner, I grew up to hate the sound of a ringing phone. Even in my dad’s office, the phone rang so loud, so that if someone had walked out to the storage yard, he could still hear it. The ringing phone represents disturbance in my life. On so many levels.
I have time to kill at work and it’s just a desk job…I think about people who had desk jobs before the internet was around and what they did to kill time—read a book maybe? yuck! 🙂
Well I was all ready to relate to you and having to spend my summers at my parent’s business,and watching crap tv all day while playing with office supplies…and then you dropped the penis in the mouth bomb…and I haven’t been able to regain comment composure since.
Well in MY day we didn’t have porn on the Internet! In fact we didn’t even have an Internet! If we wanted porn we had to drive down to the video store and go into that little room that said “adults only” and rent it for $1.75! And we were thankful that we didn’t have to go to the porn theater because that was where Pee-Wee Herman hung out (ha ha) and he was all creepy in his little suit and funny makeup!!!
How funny that you leave a comment on my blog about Metallica, and then I come here to find a post titled “For Whom The Bell Tolls…”?!?! Hysterics, I tell ya!
I completely understsnd your obsession with office supplies, as I LOVE the back-to-school season, because every store around is LOADED with pens and paper and FUN FUN FUN!! OMG… Between my mother and I, we probably could rack up some 250+ pens. LOL
As for the ringing phones, I grew up with my Dad on call at all hours of the night as a Surgical Tech Nurse… who ALSO slept in the nude. So, yeah, I have a feeling we had quite a few similar experiences growing up because of those lines. Now that he’s a quadriplegic, he’s nude 24/7 – and apparently I am more “medical” than “daughter”, so he no longer even cares if he’s covered when I’m in the room. Ah. I’m surrounded by penises – I have a young son, also. LOL
You kept your virginity through high school? Dang, you’re good!!
You write brilliantly – I love this post.
My parents ran a motel in Florida for a while and we LIVED there. If you think a ringing phone is bad, try being visited regularly in the middle of the night by drunks and prostitutes.
uh, disturbance? that’s putting it mildly.
Yeah my Dad got called out at all hours too but since it was just me and him and I was all of 6 (until age 12) I got my ass hauled out with him because he didn’t want to leave me at home alone. He gave me peach brandy for a cough for gosh sakes so why not leave me home alone so a girl could get her sleep. But there was no nude dad at my house and in fact I did not know what a penis even looked like until I was 16. Gods honest truth. Oh the things we remember when we were young and dumb.
Margaret: I was somewhat with you, up until your dad walking out in the nude. 😉 I mean, I could relate to the rest…well, not to the tow truck driver with the porn in his desk either….but okay, I guess the only getting three or four channels on the TV. I could relate to that. Eh. That’s about it. 😉
The little girl was not “into” penis sucking I am quite sure. I wonder who the ass was who got his kicks from looking at it.
I wonder where she is too…
Hmmm… See, based on this story, I would have assumed that the feel and smell of office supplies would be an association of fallatio for you, so that when you go out and by new pens or a notebook, you immediately feel like giving a blow job. (This, of course, would add a whole new function to “The Easy Button.”)
But that’s just my twisted mind.
P.S. I get a hard-on in office supply stores. We share the same fetish. But I always feel like getting a blow job, so the association thing wouldn’t work with me.
I enjoyed this post, as usual, but I wanted to comment that I’m disturbed by your assumption that the penis was attached to a man. Isn’t that sexist?
ALSO – I hope you will be thrilled to learn that NGIP was a linked guest star in my latest post at:
PowerfulPeace.WordPress.com!
Let’s hope this teaming makes us both very rich and famous; although, I have to be honest and say you probably won’t notice any major impact from this mention in my blog. I think I’m the only one who reads it, and even I’m not very impressed.
– P2
See, this is why you subscribe. I can come see you just as soon as I get this in my e mail. I loved this story. It does bring back memories. No, my dad did not sleep naked, but I did grab his penis once. Now that’s a memory. I just may post about that. Funny story.
This reminded me of a few childhood things:
1. I used to work in my dad’s store for free because I thought retail home improvement sales were fun. He probably got a part-timer’s hours out of me every summer for nothing. Child labor! He owes me!
2. I also hate the ringing phone AND getting the mail, thanks to years of harassment and litigation following my stepdad’s death and our subsequent discovery that he hadn’t conducted his business terribly legally/ethically/carefully. All this time later, when my mail consists of not-late bills and magazines, I have a mini panic attack when I open the box.
3. My ambulance duty gives me all the random someone’s dad nudity I could possibly want. Much more than I want, actually. I’m thinking if you get to that possible stroke age, you should invest in pajamas. You never know who might have to pick your naked junk up in the middle of the night.
Did you go to Folsom High School in CA? My grandparents lived in the yellow house on Riley St across from the Circle K in Folsom. In case you care.
Scary on the naked dad thing. My dad never did that. Thank god!
For whom the bell tolls? Sounds like a Metallica fan to me. Check out our review of their new single at “Are you F—ing Kidding Me???”
http://www.rufkm.net
Real Life, Real Shenanigans.
Where have you been? I just gave you 3 smileys.
Sincerely,
LC and the RUFKM Army
this was so disturbing and funny all at the same time. thanks for entertaining us!
I also grew up in a home with a family 24 hour business.
Telephones were the mortal enemy, and remain so to this day.
class of 80? wow…you’re like, nearly 50 and stuff?
i’m glad i wasn’t allowed near the tow truck office as a child. i don’t think i would’ve come up with cute games like you did as much as i would’ve tried to scour the parked vehicles for drugs.
oh that ad is such a blast from the past. I had almost forgotten how much handwritten and drawn stuff was put into print!
@FreaKeroppi – Thanks, kiddo! And I’m sorry you have to hear about the horror stories of your ancestors, but what’s family for?
See, the difference between your normal readers and me is that I live with your dad. And I can tell you that whenever Lex sleeps over, it’s almost the exact same thing… except now he’s up in the middle of the night taking his pills rather than answering the phone.
So knowing that you went through the same thing when you were a kid makes me feel a little more content… like… “good, it’s not just me then.” Still. It is the same guy. You’d think he’d have a better sense of decency by now!
Still, you just gave me enough nightmares to last ’til the end of the year. Yeah. You’re the best Aunt ever! ):
Oh don’t remind me! For the last two days, when I finally get to sleep in the morning, either my Mom or my husband calls to see how I’m doing. How am I doing? I’m SLEEPING! Oy!
I used to go to work with my mom in the summers when I was younger. She was a nurse for a plastic surgeon’s office.
They used to stick me in one of the lesser used back rooms. They hooked me up with a color tv with an attached VCR so that I could watch Sleeping Beauty over and over. They also gave me these awesome highlighter markers that I used to use on that paper they roll out onto the examining room tables.
Oh the stories I could tell about the patients from that office.
FLASHBACKS…
i hate them… unless they’re flashbacks from someone else.
Suppose the girl with the penis is running for some sort of elected position today?
Well qualified candidate by any means.
I HATE the phone.
My Dad slept in his t-shirt no underpants, what gives there?
We had THREE channels and a 14 inch black and white t.v to view them. When my children mumble that nothing is on while gazing at a 60 inch t.v. broadcasting over 500 channels I want to kick them.
Love the yearbook add.
I too feel like a ringing phone is just an imposition in my life. How dare anyone disturb my peace! At least I don’t associate it with penises!