It Looked Different on the Model - Laurie Notaro [66]
But that option wasn’t offered, and the first time we were forced to embrace was awkward at best. It was like trying to push two magnets together, each repelled by the force of the other. It would have been merciful if someone had stepped in to stop the carnage, but no one did, and the attempt continued with the approach of different angles and loss of eye contact, until we accidentally touched chins in the agonizing dance of trying to entwine and avoid each other and we both simultaneously called that contact.
We’re simply not a huggy/touchy family, we’re just not. Previous to the chin brush, I don’t believe my mother and I had had any deliberate touching since I was about seven, and even up to that point it was merely concerning the matter of tying my shoes or washing my hair. If you wanted a hug, that’s what stuffed animals and kindergarten teachers were for. My mother had dusting, vacuuming, and mopping to do. Life wasn’t one big lovefest, is what I think she was trying to tell us, and the sooner you figured that out, the better off you were. Wanna be hugged a lot? Walk slow past vans.
I’ve never asked my mother why we were not a hugging family, because I already knew the answer. “Well, did you want to be hugged or did you want to live?” she would have said. “I could have spent my time hugging you or I could have spent my time telling you not to touch hot stoves or take candy from men. Which did you want?”
To my mother’s great distress, we left Felony Camp as the most unpopular people, both our heads hanging low, neither of us being the fractured badasses she believed us to be.
“None,” my mother pointed out as we waited for my dad and sisters to pick us up, “of those people in there are normal. And I’m betting you if your daughter lives in a tunnel, your house is probably filthy and your floor hasn’t been waxed in years.”
Recognizing a foul move when she saw it, my mother never tried to enroll me in another behavior-modification camp, nor did we ever again intrude within two feet of each other’s personal space, lest our chins accidentally graze.
But that never meant that she was done throwing thoughts of perennial terrors at me or my sisters; quite to the contrary. It was my mother’s job to steel us against harmful influences in the world; it was essential that we knew that not everyone had good intentions and that immediate trust was for people who did not grow up in New York City. If someone was nice to you for no reason, they were lying and they wanted something from you; if someone asked you for directions, they really wanted to steal your kidney; if you gave a hobo a dollar, they were going to spend it on something illegal, although to be truthful, I have failed my mother horribly in that subject. In full disclosure, I have a regular hobo that I sometimes subsidize on a corner not far from my house. He’s got one eye that looks at you and another eye that rolls around like a marble in an empty mayonnaise jar, so, really, I don’t care if he takes the two bucks I just handed him and he puts it toward a pint of the cheapest vodka made on Earth. If I had a roller in my eye socket, I’d want to catch a buzz, and if some stupid lady in a Prius handed me her spare change and said, “Now, don’t get drunk with this!” I can tell you that the stink eye shooting in her direction would be revolving at a full 360 degrees.
But if my mother saw that, she would say that’s a lesson I would most likely learn the hard way when the hobo followed me home and robbed me of everything valuable on the left side of my house, but I live several states away and she hasn’t made any plans to visit.