And I sometimes doubt my adequacy as a parent when I do something completely unbourgeois such as declare it "popsicle breakfast day" or "wear our slippers to the grocery store day" or "we can brush our teeth tomorrow day."
I just can't deny it anymore. I'm totally ghetto. And I've been wondering how the hell I got this way when my parents and sisters are so seemingly respectable.
And then, the other day, I came across this:
Contrary to what you might be thinking, this is NOT part of the ad campaign for the remake of 'Heidi.' It is actually a picture of me at age four and a half. On my farm. With my pet goat. Barefooted. And no, that's not spilled cocoa puffs off to the left of the picture. It is, in fact, goat turdlets.
Laugh all you want. But I was glad to reacquaint myself with this picture, because now I know. I know why I am the way I am. Why I am a white-trash hick. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But now I can stop wondering.
I do have some questions for my parents after finding this image. Questions such as: 'how long since my knees were cleaned?' and 'what did we have against hairbrushes?' and 'did the ASPCA know our goat had no water?' and 'Dad -- weren't you a structural engineer? I thought so. So why did our goat live under a shanty-town shack?' These are important issues. I may never know the answers.
But what I do know, finally, is that the person I am today is due to my roots. My little hobo-girl upbringing. It's not 'just me.' My parents were ghetto once, too. And I now have proof. See? So there's hope for me. One day, I'll outgrow my white-trashiness like my parents did. If I'm lucky.
7 comments:
Your parents didn't want you to know, but your goat was very tasty and you thought it was too although they told you it was beef.
I never would have dreamed that your "roots" were goat tender. Although I live in Apache Junk-tion, and am surrounded with so called white trash....Come on, "we can brush our teeth tomorrow?" (popscile for breakfast I could do). I hope LC finds this fun and funny. Love Ya.
Kevin -- actually, we had a pet cow, too. "Mr. Mooser" was renamed to "Sir Loin" (no joke) and soon was able to join us at the dinner table. Hmmmm....and it's a wonder my sisters and I ALL turned out vegetarian????
Catlover -- I hope LC finds it funny, too. While she can't ground me or deny me my allowance, she CAN write me out of the will:)
OK. First of all, we can wash knees tomorrow. Second, I think your hair WAS brushed. You had hair a lot like Claire's - Case closed. Third, that was a temporary shelter for Flower. You must remember her spending years in the pasture and figuring a way to let the horse out of her pen after irrigation. Do you remember king of the mountain with Flower? She always won. Kevin, we did not eat the goat. But, we did eat Sir Loin.
You should all know that Vicki and her sisters did their own laundry once they were tall enough to reach the controls on the washer and dryer. Vicki was very tall for her age, so she started at a younger age. It was not discovered until years later that she had 3 piles of clothes on the floor of her closet. Clothes worn once, clothes worn twice and the third pile got washed after worn 3 times. And, she blames me for the knees!!! Gee, now that I write all this I am thinking we must have been white trash. But, I think you are a wonderful woman. And, it appears that "white trash" can be outgrown. M
well, you know I am totally against the no brushing your teeth thing. However, I am way more against the standing near a goat thing...
Gran -- I do remember "king of the mountain" and the fact that the goat used to ram me in the back and even pin me to the fence on ocassion. In hindsight, I think it was payback for the hooversville shelter we provided ;-)
As far as my clothes washing system, I was just trying to be environmentally conscientious. You know me -- always thinkin' of others!
Ronda -- Toothbrush, smoothbrush. You and your "no cavities" policy. If God didn't want us to have rotten teeth, he wouldn't have invented laughing gas and silver.
You really are a wonderful woman.....
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