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Hello Chickens!

I have an extra special treat for you this holiday week. I was recently asked to do an interview on TruckStar Radio - a show for people who drive for a living and do a lot of listening to the radio. They LOVE audiobooks and they really wanted to know all about the AudioMovie of RESONANCE.

I had a great time talking with them. Be warned, this 30 minute scheduled interview went for almost 2 and half hours, and it’s all here for you. Happy listening!

AJ

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Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!

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The Chipmunks have a new movie out and, like many chipmunk additions before, it’s often inappropriate. The last movie inspired my kids to sing “Don’t you wish your girlfriend was hot like me.” Ah, yes! The Pussycat Dolls - because singing anything in a squeaky voice makes it okay for kids.

The Chipmunks aren’t the only ones who have crossed the line. Many, many venues are feeding kids adult material in glossy kid tones. KidzBop ads feature one adult song after another and then have karaoke sing-a-long tracks to be sure your kids know the words.

It’s not just music either! For years, movies have been making unsavory stories into kid-fare, too. (I’m talkin’ to you, Disney!) The story of Pocahontas isn’t for kids – she didn’t paint with all the colors of the wind. She was likely the lover of a much older, married man. And many state that her knowledge gave the English the information they needed to wipe out the native people. So get your daughter a costume and pretend that Pocahontas helped eradicate racism!

There was an Anastasia movie as well. The only thing in its favor is that this movie was poorly executed and very few kids saw it. While there is new recent evidence suggesting that the real Anastasia died with the rest of the Romanovs, the stories about her escape were harrowing at best. The cleanest versions had her sheltered by kindly country folk in a Nazi-Germany-like culture. Others had her trading with soldiers - sex for shelter. Some say she yanked her own teeth to destroy a dental record match and most had her ending up in a mental hospital. But apparently if we give her a talking bat for a friend (or some crap like that) it’s all good for kids.

The Chipmunks may have been among the pioneers in this realm. (I don’t know, did Mickey Mouse have some molestation charges that he bought off? Is everything just peachy after he dies, because no one will remember the damning evidence and the need to pay to make the charges go away? A nice glossy movie and we are all soothed.)

I listened to the Chipmunks as a kid. My sister and I sang along to all the songs and to this day I have friends who can pipe up in squeaky voices to “You got to know when to hold’em (when to hold’em!)” (Yes, I hear some of you laughing).

I don’t think any of us would be surprised that the original version of “Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys” didn’t actually include that squeaky “chipmunks!” at the end of that line. Nor did it have that verse about liking roasted acorns and not doing homework. “On the road again” was another song that had clearly been taken over by the little nut-crunchers. And I wasn’t shocked to learn that the Gambler hadn’t actually bummed a “twinkie and offered me a bite”.

A little buff and shine isn’t that big a deal. I had a sheltered life, but not that sheltered, and neither do my kids. I am firmly in the camp that believes if we protect our children from everything, we protect them from nothing. By the same token I’m stomping on that KidzBop CD when I find my daughter with the mic in hand singing the Milkshake song.

It’s the bad stories gussied up as good that get me. If we make Disney Princesses out of real people with unsavory pasts, where do we stop? Are we headed for “Monica Lewinsky, the musical”? Do we send our daughters out for Halloween in blue collared dresses with stains? Do we send our boys out as Hitler: misunderstood underdog?

We can’t just change a few words and make it okay. The other day I was in a store and through the speaker system I heard “The Coward of the County”, another old Chipmunk classic. In my head, I sang along. (If you know this song already, you may be asking yourself “who the hell fed that to kids!?!?!”) As I wandered the store, I heard squeaky voices in my head, right along with Kenny Rogers, up until the part where the “Gatlin boys were bullies and they beat up Tommy’s best friend.”

No. I stood, gape-mouthed, in the center of the store blocking traffic as my mind absorbed the real words. The Gatlin boys didn’t beat up Tommy’s friend, they gang raped the love of his life.

Aside from having my brain blown by what horror I had been fed in a candy shell, I thought, “Who plays this song in public?” Then I realized that was a stupid question. Of course people play it in public. A whole lot of people were involved in making that Chipmunks album and playing a version for kids. Hell, my own parents bought it for me. (And they didn’t allow me to see PG-13 movies until I was 15!) Did people think we’d never find out? That we’d never hear the original and be appalled?

I’m having to resign myself to the fact that I am mostly alone in this battle. No one else seems to care. The movie makers aren’t concerned what kids might find out later, or what the real story is. And why should they be? Too many parents seem to think that if it’s shiny it’s okay.

So I – like many of you – am left playing gatekeeper by myself. Excuse me, apparently I’m going to have to go research the next Disney movie before we can go this weekend. I want to be sure the Princess’s Daddy wasn’t funding that castle with mafia dealings, and that the nasty “little scuffle” marking our heroine as “misunderstood” wasn’t over drug money.

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Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!

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YELLOW
Four years later

Steve slumped onto the couch, the same one that Patsy had left them. Though Drew thought of the things as left behind by Lydia, Steve had always considered them bequeathed by Patsy. But the couch was tired and sagging. And so was his heart.
His mother had begun talking to him two years ago. She didn’t ask about boyfriends and he didn’t offer. No one had ever stuck anyway, so why hurt his mom with things that weren’t going to matter in the end? But this was the first time she had spoken of his father.
Dad had cancer, and to his shame, Steve had cared. The man had been bitter and thrown him out just for saying he was gay. Nevermind that he had been gay all along. His mother had stood by the old man. In the days after they kicked him to the curb, he had waited for them to simmer down, instead he saw them piling his things in boxes and taking his stuff to Goodwill. Worse, he had seen pictures from when he was a child taken out with the winter clothes and his bike.
His mother had stopped and even fought with his father after a few days. But she hadn’t called, hadn’t tried to find him. Even his younger brother hadn’t stood by him. No, Phillip had gotten mad at him for breaking up the family and making mom and dad fight.
No one had cared about Steve. So, when his mother called and said his dad was sick and wanted to make things right, Steve had yelled. “He doesn’t get to love me on his schedule! I am his child.”
No, what he was was a thirty-eight year old man acting like a child.
He turned his thoughts to the house. The couch he sat on was the same as when it had been Patsy’s, but the house was now far different. The living room had been expanded to three times the size of the original floorplan. The kitchen doubled. More bedrooms added on to the back.
For the past several years, Drew had grant money pouring into this place. She had finished her undergrad work and gone on through her masters. She had a golden touch with funding these programs through federal and private organizations alike. She didn’t just house the kids anymore, she put them through school, offered counseling, got them legally adopted – even at age seventeen. She was working with younger kids now, too. And three years ago, she had hired him.
His legal work was all for the kids now. He helped with the grants, drew up the documents and helped put the occasional kid into juvie or keep them out. By all accounts he was quite successful. But a call from his mother had him nearly in tears.
In the end, he relented. He wanted to hear his father say he had made a mistake. He thought he might be able to trade his forgiveness for that. Surprisingly, when he called his mother back, she sent his dad over right away. 
 Steve fought the knot in his heart that she didn’t come, too. But he was used to those knots by now.
On his feet, he greeted his father at the door, but there was no awkward hug or even a handshake. Instead his father started speaking.
“I threw you out a long time ago, and we’ve gone on this way for years.”
Steve nodded.
“We haven’t spoken all this time and I realize now, that was wrong of me.”
Again, he nodded at his father, but couldn’t speak.
“Don’t you think it’s time we ended this?”
“Yes, Dad.” His heart knit into something solid, tight with anticipation.
“Good. There’s a program at the church. They say they can get this out of you.”
“What?” Steve sat, stunned.
“You’ve been stubborn and I’ve let you be. It’s time to fix this . . .”
The old man kept talking, but Steve stared straight ahead, livid. All this time and his father had come here not to apologize, but to tell Steve to fix his own ‘problems’ because his father was dying. His life was seen as a stubborn rebellion against his father’s rules and beliefs. “Shut up, dad.”
“You don’t speak to me that way!”
Though his father yelled, Steve didn’t. The knot in his heart burst, but strangely didn’t cause pain. Maybe that would come later. “I do speak to you this way. I am gay. And I’m not going to speak to you ever again. You have no right to come here after all this time and believe that I am at fault. You need to leave my home.”
His father turned red, his hand shook. He looked like an angry old man with cancer. And, as Drew came in the door at the end of her day, Steve saw his father simply as a person, for maybe the first time in his life.
He was able to speak to Drew’s quizzical look in a calm voice. “This is my father. He has cancer and he came to make things right.”
Though she knew the story, Drew had never met his father. Her eyes lit at the statement, but Steve dashed it. “He wants me to go to a program to become un-gay so he can die in peace.”
He paid little attention as his father pushed himself from the couch and began his slow and furious journey to the front door. It was Drew’s face he watched as she flew into a righteous anger on his behalf.
He loved her. She was his family. And she alone would understand. Steve shook his head and put his hand on her arm, almost to ask permission. “He’s dying. And he’s leaving. He won’t come back. I thought he might be able to use an apple.”
Though she looked at him with questions in her eyes, he felt at home in his own body for the first time. He nodded at Drew, and she nodded back.
He plucked the last of the apples from the bowl that still sat on the table. He handed it out the front door as the old man turned to look at him one last time. “Here, you look like your blood sugar’s low.”
His father frowned at him as Steve closed the door and turned to Drew.

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GREEN
One year later

The knock at the door was a surprise. All the kids came and went without knocking and most of their friends did the same. Drew didn’t think anyone had knocked on Patsy’s door in years. And that was how she still thought of it, even as she pulled the door wide open on her surprise . . . it was Patsy’s house she stood in, lived in. And Patsy’s work she continued.
“Jason!” Drew almost moved to throw her arms around his neck, then remembered that she wouldn’t have given or accepted a hug during the years she’d known Jason. He wouldn’t expect it from her and would likely pull back if she tried. “I haven’t seen you in . . . almost ten years!”
Her smile grew as he darted a small one at her. Probably his best effort. Drew remembered how he had grown up. The same way she had, booted from one house to another until she had landed here with Patsy. Jason hadn’t.
“Hey Drew.” He seemed reserved, but interested in her house. So she covered the awkwardness with chatter showing him around and pointing out a few nice things that had belonged to Patsy. Lydia had sold them everything in the house . . . probably just because she was too lazy to bother cleaning it out, but it had pleased Drew and Steve.
Drew mentioned the painting on the wall, by one of Patsy’s kids who was now in art school and might one day sell make a living at it. Only after she blurted out a few neat things about the house did she realize that it might not be polite to rub it in to Jason that she had found somewhere warm and kind when he had not. She remembered the way he had exited the last house he was staying at, and how he was certain the couple was still collecting money for him.
The conversation was stilted and rough around the edges and when he finally asked to use the bathroom, Drew sank to the couch, exhausted.
Why, she wondered, was this conversation so tough? She spent her days and nights talking to teenagers who had been abused, who had been unloved and kicked out, who wanted to join gangs, hurt animals, break things or try dangerous combinations of sex and drugs. But talking to Jason, by all measures now an adult, was wearing her out in away that all the kids and problems and a full load at college had not.
He emerged, looking even less comfortable than when he went in, as she stood to ask what she could help with, the words choked in her throat.
The gun wavered in his hand, jerking with the tremors in his arm and about to go off by accident in her direction. She sucked in air. “What do you need?”
“Come on!” He berated her, the words coming easy now. “What do you think I need?”
He had been her one friend for two years at the group home, and now he was here, gun in hand, wanting her money. Which she had never had and still didn’t. So she said it “I don’t keep money in the house.”
“Everyone does.” The gun waved as he gestured and the old skill of not flinching returned with ease.
“Jason, I run a foster home. I have teens in here just like we were, so I don’t keep any cash around or even cards. I don’t have anything.”
He asked for things to pawn. The painting? Not valuable for several years at least. The nice crystal bowl? Only worthy to her and Steve. Jason rampaged through the house, but it had been cleaned for just this purpose.
Finding some strength, Drew followed him, trying to limit the destruction, trying to keep him out of the limited belongings most of her kids had. The few things she tried to do earned her a hard-knuckled punch to her ribs and the crack of his pistol against her temple. When he was close, she smelled the rancid sweat and the odor she had learned to recognize a long time ago. Jason had been with her, at a foster house that the police had raided while they were in their beds. Meth.
Drew breathed deep. Jason was using, and she had nothing of value to give him, to keep herself safe. He was the boy who was always stronger than she. He had always stood up for her, and some part of her mind had considered him the big brother she’d never had. Now he was here with a gun and no rational thought process. She’d learned enough in her courses to be very, very afraid of the man who had once been her best friend.
“Jason, I don’t have anything to offer, and I’m sorry.”
Some part of him seemed to see that. She had loved him, and she had been jealous of his strength and his brains, and now Drew stood trembling before him and held out the one thing she thought he needed. “Jason, take this.”
“An apple?” His eyebrows went to his hairline as though she were the one who was high.
She started in before he could say more, trying to modulate her voice, to not sound as educated as she was becoming. “A monk came, he blessed it, it’ll help you.”
“I can’t sell it.” His voice and face became harsh, no longer her protector or even friend. “What would I do with it? Eat it?”
At her barest nod, he slapped her hand, sending the beloved apple in an arc to the floor. Though it bruised, she didn’t flinch. Nor did she show the pain she felt at many levels when the gun came at her.

She woke hours later, the afternoon light dimming, the front door opening without a knock. That, in itself, was suddenly reassuring. Thankfully, it was Steve. She recognized his shoes and his voice and his smell, even though she couldn’t see his face for the large cardboard box he held.
“Leon dumped me.” The sound of those words was sad, but resolute. Steve, through and through. “And this time I just decided to move in here with you. Like you keep asking me to.”
When he set the box down and finally got a look at her, he blanched. “Did one of the kids do this? I’ll put them in juvie.” He was at her side, not daring to touch the marks on her face.
She shook her head. “Old friend, high on meth. Luckily, he didn’t shoot me.”
Steve offered ice packs, heat pads and legal retribution. Drew asked for the apple. “He bruised it. I should eat it now, before it goes bad.”
Steve smirked, “That apple’s been good for three years, you think it can’t survive a tumble on the floor?”
“Don’t wanna find out.” She rubbed it on her shirt, then took a bite.
“You really think there was something in that blessing, don’t you?”
Drew nodded.
Three days later, she was awarded her first grant money for the house.

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RED
2 years later.

Steve and Drew sat side by side on the old couch. Though the crocheted throw was as ugly as it had always been, he wanted it. Drew simply wanted to cry in the room that had once been hers. But Lydia was here now. And Lydia was a reminder that the room had never really belonged to her.
Though Patsy’s family milled about, the conversation turned only occasionally to what an amazing woman she had been. Instead, they all asked Lydia what she was going to do with the house.
“Like I know.” Perfect in an expensive black dress and matching heels, Lydia shrugged. “I was expecting her to leave it to one of those foster kids she had. I wasn’t enough for her when she was alive, why would she give me anything now?”
Steve cringed. Drew had been one of those foster kids. And he had been a charity case, too. Patsy was the only one who would take him in after he’d come out to his father and had his clothes scattered across his front lawn by his mother just two months shy of his eighteenth birthday and five months before high school graduation. His church had cut him off, and they cut Patsy, too, for taking him in. But she had shrugged it away.
Lydia had been mortified to have him in the house. To this day she had spoken to him only when Patsy had forced her.
In Drew’s mind, the only problem Lydia had ever suffered was not having her home to herself, but Lydia had never forgiven her mother for making her only daughter one of many rather than the one and only she wished to be.
As the crowd thinned, Steve and Drew stayed behind, though they weren’t sure what reaction that would garner from Lydia. Steve stayed as a buffer. Drew stayed because she had been checking in on Patsy as she had needed more and more care this past year. It had been Drew who found that Patsy had passed. It had been Drew and Steve who cleaned for the service, and now they sat with Lydia and her husband at the same table where Patsy had fed them for so long.
Lydia spoke first. “I know she left things to each of you. Surely you aren’t expecting more.”
Steve knew better than to be affronted, but he was. Every time. “No. We wanted to see if you were planning on selling the house. And for how much. We’re interested in buying it.”
Lydia laughed. “I’m going to flip it. All the furniture is going to Goodwill and if I can swing it, I’ll have a crew in by next Tuesday to start knocking out walls and taking down cabinets.” She huffed. “It has to be gutted.”
Drew’s heart sank. They’d never be able to afford it refurbished. Her eyes squeezed, fighting tears, and she grabbed Steve’s hand.
Lydia snapped again. “Oh please. You were her favorite. I got this hideous old house and no mother.”
Her husband gently touched her arm. “I think your blood sugar’s low. You haven’t eaten since breakfast. Here.”
He pulled an apple from the bowl that Drew had left on the table just as Patsy had. She bit her tongue. Not that one. She hadn’t replaced it since the monk had visited. It was still shiny and red, but when Lydia bit into it she would get a shock. Oh, well, the bitch deserved it.
Drew waited.
But Lydia chewed without comment. After several bites and a labored sigh, she glared at them, “What could you offer for the house?”
Their highest offer only made her roll her eyes. She polished off the apple and tossed the core into the trash as Steve winced.

But three days later the call came through. Lydia called Drew, probably still not willing to speak to Steve. Drew’s heart soared as she listened to the diatribe about the podunk town and how no one would come out to work on the house for at least two months. Lydia demanded their highest price, but Drew and Steve scrambled for a week and came up with what they needed.

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It seems that simply participating in the holidays isn’t enough anymore. No, now we have to be able to talk about them and understand them with each other. So, I offer a small handful of holiday terms and advice to help you get through the season!

Black Friday – an offensive term for the Friday immediately following Thanksgiving Thursday. Stores are now advertising using the term ‘Black Friday’. There are two schools of thought as to how this term came about. 1) this is the day businesses move from the red into the black. If this is the reasoning then it would be more honestly called ‘just give us your money day’.
2) stores are so crowded with shoppers that people have actually been killed in stampedes that resemble the panicked buffalo of the old west. If this is the reason for the term, then everyone who smiles at the camera and suggests that we all come out for a “Black Friday Sale!” should be lined up and shot. No wait, they should be trampled.
Protest insulting advertising while staying safe, stay home.

Thanksgiving – 1) a gluttonous American holiday that celebrates conquering a native people and taking their land. Pass the corn!
2) a gluttonous American Thursday that used to signal the start of the ‘holiday season’

Holiday Season – a term referring to a series of winter days wherein we are supposed to be thankful and joyous even though most of us are freezing our butts off. The ‘season’ used to begin with Thanksgiving and run through New Years. Though New Years still signals the end, Thanksgiving is no longer the beginning. Now, we start with Halloween.

Halloween – 1) a pagan holiday appropriated for dressing in costumes and begging for candy. This day is unusual in that it runs the entire gamut from being protested as profane, passes by apathy and humor in the middle and goes all the way through to the sacred.
2) The new beginning of the season. Starting the holidays with Thanksgiving is so . . . last season. While Thanksgiving, a purely American day, offers up much in sacrifice to the supermarket gods, it does virtually nothing for the retail sector. Thus, stores now begin decorating for and pushing merchandise for winter days starting on November 1st.
Protest stores pushing you to buy tinsel mid-November by vomiting when you see this. If you are anything like me, this won’t be difficult as you probably already have the urge!

Winter holidays – no longer referred to as the “Christmas Season”, the Winter Holidays include a wide variety of mid-season celebrations from a variety of faiths. The major versions practiced in America are “Christmas” and “Hannakah”, although Pagan days such as “Yule” are observed as are festivals like “Kwanzaa”. There are also made-up holidays from places that have no naturally occurring mid-winter holiday because, well, they don’t really have winter.

Deep Fried Turkey – a turkey cooked by a process in which you heat a large cauldron of oil, usually on a stand with a gas burner under the pot. Then, using a strong wire and sensible turkey-roping technique, you dunk the entire bird under the hot oil until it is fried. Though this is customarily done outside, it remains the number one cause of burning your house to the ground during the ‘holiday season’. Notice I said ‘you’ do these things to get a deep fried turkey, because I sure don’t. I like my house. If you hate your house, but hate the idea of going to jail for fraud, may I recommend deep-frying a turkey in your back yard? As I have pointed out other times, there’s no law against stupid.

Semi-boneless – I have no idea what this means, but you can get a ‘semi-boneless’ ham. Still, it had a big ole honkin’ bone right there in the middle, right where you would expect one in a ham. Go figure.

Turducken – a stuffed chicken, stuffed inside a duck, stuffed inside a turkey then cooked. Because all three birds are de-boned while left whole, a turducken is often the sign of an overzealous cook.

Tofurkey – tofu. That’s all it is. Just soy product. Though vegetarians will try to convince you that it tastes just like turkey, it does not. A torfurkey is often the sign of an overzealous environmentalist.

Small Turkey – Thirteen to fifteen pounds. An indicator that Butterball thinks I am unloved and low on friends. As there were only eight people at my house this year, this is far too much bird (even when accounting for the planned gluttonous leftovers). This comes out to about 1.5pounds of meat per person! (I figure this because birds fly (well, turkeys kindof do) and therefore have hollow lightweight bones. Allowing a full pound and a half for skeleton, the smallest turkey we could find still had twelve-plus pounds of meat on it!) This, along with the six pound, semi-boneless ham, should make us all fat and make the supermarket gods happy for approximately another month, when we will make another nearly identical sacrifice.

Crazy-ass – the idea that we need to eat more, buy more and pretend to be happier during this portion of the year. It’s just winter. If we are supposed to be happier, then why do we spend so much time running around like fried turkeys looking for a gift that we have been designated to get? Seriously, with this kind of attitude, you would think it was Valentine’s day – another day where Hallmark and Wal-Mart designate how you should feel and that you should feel like less if you haven’t given them a lot of your money. Okay, like many others, I am full of a lot of hot air on this one. I love getting my family gifts. I actually love when I can find just the right thing. But I am working on being better.

Giving Thanks – many of us SAY thanks, but do we really GIVE it? This holiday season, whatever you celebrate, I challenge you to truly GIVE thanks for something in your life.

I am grateful that I can pay my bills, so today I gave to an organization that helps people who can’t.
What will you do?

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