In Dutch, when you boil an egg and then place it into cold water to make it easier to peel an egg, it’s called “to scare” the eggs.
One day when I was about 6 or 7, my mom asked me to “scare” the eggs. So, little joker I was, lifted the lid of the pan and yelled “BOOO!”
My mom cracked up and has been telling this story ever since, for over 20 years. She’s come to love the story and still truly thinks that I wanted to really “scare” the eggs. Truth is I knew what “scaring an egg” meant and only wanted to make her laugh because she was in a sad place and time back then.
It’s made her laugh for over 20 fucking years, that means it’s the best joke I’ve ever pulled off and I’d die before I’d let her find out I was just kidding.
when i was 12 i babysat this girl for a few years and she would come to me and show me her art, drag me by my wrists and point at the pieces she’d made during the week. and she’d be like “do the voice” and i’d put on a sports-announcer olympics-style voice and be like “such form! this level of coloring! why i haven’t seen such perfection in crayola in a long time. and what is this? why jeff, now this is a true risk… it seems she’s made … a monochrome pink canvas…. i haven’t seen this attempted since winter 1932… and i gotta say, jeff, it’s absolutely splendid” and she’d fall back giggling. at the end of every night she’d check with me: “did you really like it?” and i’d say yes and talk about something i noticed and tucked her in.
she was just accepted into 3 major art schools. she wrote me a letter. inside was a picture from when she was younger. monochrome pink.
“thank you,” it said, “to somebody who saw the best in me.”
“I’m much younger than I thought I would be. When I was in college, I thought 43 seemed so old. It just seemed everything would be set by then and my life would be over. I thought I’d only be doing things that I had to do. Everything is a choice when you’re young. But then you graduate from school and make your big decisions: your career, your marriage, your kids. And it seems that with each big decision, you have less opportunity for choice. But I still have a lot of choices. It’s just not all about me anymore. I enjoy choosing ways for my kids to experience new things. I’m thinking about bringing them to the Ben and Jerry’s factory in Vermont next weekend. I think they’ll get a kick out of it. I can still remember my daughter’s face the first time she saw Yankee Stadium. I’d already been dozens of times, but it almost felt like the first time for me too. And I love taking my son to his soccer games. He’s only six so he has no clue how to play. But he’s decided that his job is to run back and forth in front of the goal. He basically invented defense and I got to watch it happen. These things are a lot of fun for me. When I was young, I imagined they’d feel like obligations. But they’re not. They’re choices.”
“I’ve known her since I was seven. I had a crush on her even back then. But she lived back in the Dominican Republic, so I’d only get to see her during the summer. We just got tired of being apart. So I asked her to marry me. My parents were against it. I was twenty-one. I was going to City College. I was still living at home and they thought I wasn’t ready. And there was definitely some truth to that. I had to drop out of school once she moved in with us. I couldn’t handle everything. At first I was depressed but I started to progress quickly at work. I got raise after raise. We moved out of my parents’ house and got a small apartment in the Bronx. Now I’m studying to get my electrical license. I’ve seen a lot of the guys I work with start their own companies. You’ve just got to want it. You’ve got to want to move up, and you can find a way. The marriage has been great and it’s been tough. We have a two-year-old daughter now. It’s a lot of work. But it’s also awesome to go home everyday and find two people who love me.”
wupacing 