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2004-01-30 @ 5:31 p.m.
what really happened in the garden of eden

Hi, welcome to the wittykitty art gallery. This is actually the only thing I'm only willing to show, since my nudes are still a work in progress. So here is one of my silly whimsical thingies...

A pencil drawing of a Snake in the Garden of Eden. Figures it would have something to do with SIN and Catholicism. Gotta thank those nuns at Catholic school for beating Catholicism outta me with a wooden ruler.

Of course, enhancing the experience by doing it in front of 36 fresh faced classmates who laughed when she did it really helped too. Thanks! Guess she was just taking up the slack for what was going on at home.

Of course I wasn't the only one with crazy parents. I actually lived next store to the most unpopular girl in school. Mary L. She was very quiet and a little overweight and she used to pick her nose. I always wanted to give good old Mary a tip, like Mary, don't pick your nose in front of people, it really skeeves us out. But I also knew about her home life. And it was really horrific.

She was adopted and her parents were older. Her mother had cancer and her father, was probably the biggest asshole I had ever known. And a drunken one at that. My Dad was a drunk too, but at least he was a nice one.

But her father Jerry was very loud and obnoxious. He used to walk up and down the street on Sunday afternoon with a large glass of gin and make obnoxious comments to people, like telling them their grass wasn't cut correctly and their house needed painting. And by about 1 in the afternoon, he would usually be laying in the gutter in a drunken stupor.

When we first moved there, my parents were actually friends with him. He could be funny and somewhat charming before the gin took affect, but after a while, he just started walking into our house without knocking and taking liberties with my Dad's liquor cabinet (which was always well stocked). And that wasn't ok.

I remember one day he offered to take me and Mary and Donna, his other adopted daughter, to a local country club in Marin County. They had a pool and it was very exclusive. It was late morning and he seemed to be in control of his faculties, so my mom said ok and we were quickly loaded into his white mid-life crisis convertible.

It was kind of fun riding in a convertible. I had never done that before and I think Mary was excited because she had a "friend" (me). Her sister Donna was also with us. Donna was a very strange child. She never let being unpopular stop her from seeking attention. She'd wear mismatched socks on purpose. She'd wear two skirts at the same time. She once came to school with a homemade aluminum halo pinned to her head. She wouldn't take it off until a nun threatened to send her to the principal's office.

So we turned up into the driveway of this country club. It had a large circular driveway which went one way up, and one way down. I think Jerry had already started his daily toot unbeknownst to my mom, because he was drinking something out of a silver thermos and obviously feeling no pain.

Suddenly this car came tooling down the hill at about 20 mph.

Since I was a little kid and in the back seat, I have no idea if Jerry went up the wrong way on a one way driveway or the other person was going down the wrong way, but suddenly he set down his thermos and jumped out of the car and started arguing with this person. And then that person, a young woman, gets out of her car, and started defending herself. Which makes me think now, that possibly, she was in the right.

So all three of us kids are avidly watching out of the car. I had seen Jerry blow up before. He was Polish and had quite a temper. Him and my mom had had a knock down drag out fight one night, where my dad had to physically carry my mom into the house, with her arms and legs flailing about because she was about ready to punch Jerry in the face. (yeah, we both have a little issue with anger, it seems).

I think the fight was actually about the fact that Jerry was out doing one of his drunken neighborhood walkabouts the day after his wife died of cancer and she was furious at how care-free and non-chalant he had seemed.

So we're watching Jerry, when suddenly, he hauls off and slaps the woman across the face. Just whack! We all gasped. Yikes! She just stood there with her hand to her face and he calmly turned around and walked back to the car and made a U-turn in the country club driveway and then took off like a bat-out-of-hell back towards town. He told me not to tell my mother and of course I immediately told her when I got home.

Jerry hit a lady in the face.

I was never able to play with Mary again and we moved soon after that.

So what that has to do with a snake in the Garden of Eden, I don't know. Maybe it was just the Snake part that reminded me of Jerry, who hit the woman in the Garden at a country club.

Yeah, that's it.

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Lyrics by Lennon/McCartney. All angst copyright by awittykitty

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