The Costco Fambly

My people are big on Costco. We all have cards. If you don't have one, I should tell you that as part of the membership process, they take your picture and insert a small, crappy, black-and-white version of your face on the back side of the card so they can verify that you are the one with the membership.

We'd hate for people to be sneaking in and buying 7-pound cans of nacho cheese sauce without paying their fair share.

Plus, there are all the free samples to consider. Without a system in place, the stations could get overrun by outside people seeking tidbits and morsels. And then there might not be meatballs right when I expect there to be meatballs.

So, they put your picture on your Costco card. A crappy one. 

I tend to lose cards, so I'll start this next section out by saying "A couple cards ago..." A couple cards ago, something happened to my picture, so it pixilated or something across my teeth, (or perhaps I should say, "teef") making it look like there were just big spaces there. Of course, I found this highly fabulous. I bragged about this fact and shared it with my family (or perhaps I should say, "kin") and they responded by producing equally impressive pictures.

I wouldn't be the person you know me to be if I didn't take this chance to share those photos. Some people have a sense of history even while it is being made, and fortunately one of those people is my brother Andy. He demonstrated his sensitivity to the importance of this event by compiling this commemorative montage. Please enjoy.

You have to work pretty hard to get a picture this bad of my mom, Bev. Most of the time she's quite cheerful and sunny; she has sparkly eyes. Here, she says she looks like Ma Barker. "You killed mah son." 

Andy said that, as bad as his is, he looks like a freaking Kennedy compared to mom and me. He's right.

Possum Story

My friend Kordt went out for a cigarette once and there was a huge possum with needly teeth and it hissed at him. When he told me this, I jeered at him, because who's afraid of possums? He said it was a really BIG possum.

Months later we were driving past the exit for Rye Patch Dam in Nevada (Kordt's comment, "Rye Patch DAM? What's it holding back, sand and cowskulls?") when I saw a very large dead possum. I asked Kordt if that possum was a big as his possum. He said, "That possum could have crawled out of the WOMB of MY possum."

Rivets and Rutabagas - The Time We Got Up-Dos

Once, Teresa and I decided to get up-dos for New Years Eve. I won't tell you where, but it was not a good call. 

My hairdo took more than two hours to create, made me look unhinged and a hundred years old, and cost a ridiculous amount of money. My hair was pulled tightly back, as if racing away from my forehead like deer from a forest fire, and secured with weird little pearls that looked like Frankenstein rivets; behind that, hard, tight, shiny little sausage curls tumbled, Jonbenet style. This was sprayed with so much hairspray that when I touched a curl, I mistook it for a plastic comb, asking Teresa, "When did they put THIS in?" 

Teresa's hairdo took less than twenty minutes to create, made her look seventy years old and neurotic, and cost a similarly ridiculous amount of money. Her hair was a scrubby mess of loose, languid frizz surrounding a strange lump in the shape of a chrysalis or root vegetable on the back of her head. It looked like a big dust bunny or a matted rat's nest.

Oh, and it wasn't just hair; we got our make-up done directly afterward. Teresa's wasn't bad, but I had mine done by an older lady who aptly sized me up as hideous and decided I deserved bright orange lipstick and a thick coating of pale foundation and powder which cracked and added wrinkles that weren't even there. It was Bob Hope Kabuki make-up. I remember my ancient, worried eyes staring back from the rear-view mirror on the way home as I tried to figure out if it was as awful as I thought it was.

It was. We started to laugh, and decided we had to share our new looks.

Giggling, Teresa and I went to show Mom, acting like we were totally okay with the hairstyles. We saw her look up happily, register how awful the hair was, and then realize she had to conceal her look of shock. We could tell she was trying really hard not to laugh, and we finally let her off the hook by laughing ourselves, at which point she howled, hanging onto the sink. She asked why Teresa had a rutabaga on her head, and why they had driven rivets into my skull.

Teresa adds to this narrative, “Needful to say, we then showered and scrubbed away the awful makeup and styling products, and did our own hair and makeup for New Year's Eve. I WISH we were unselfish enough to go out in our scary looks, spreading mirth as a public service, but vanity triumphed. By the time we hit the parties, we looked rather fetching, and not so much old, insane, and bizarre.”

As I recall, I did not look fetching - my hair was rendered lifeless by the many washings needed to get the spray out, and I ran out of time to get artful with my makeup. But as it turned out, looking great was not the thing that brought me joy that night, or in the many times since then that I have remembered that New Year's Eve.