Little Monsters

From left: Michele, our grandmother Helen, Lawrence, Brigitte, Mary (Mom), Philip, & Minou

My mother had a demanding husband and five demanding children — the Little Monsters (newborns) and three daughters — Minou (10), Michele (7), and Brigitte (2) — all perfect angels of course,  but demanding none the less. If that weren’t enough, she returned to college at age 40 and when it was all over earned a PhD in Psychology the same year the Little Monsters escaped from college. Not too shabby for a woman who didn’t know English when she arrived in America. Formidable to say the least. She also may have been the most sleep deprived woman in history.

Committed to stealing five minutes of sleep anywhere at anytime under any circumstances, the best place was still the couch in what we call the “Family Room”, which means that’s where the huge TV with the built in speakers and turntable was located. We knew a serious attempt to sleep was happening when she lied down on the couch with her blue gel “anti-Little Monsters headache” mask, which made her look a little like a very tired Superhero.

The ground rules were simple. She made it very clear and in no uncertain terms that she was “magic” , “could see in her sleep”, and “see through walls.” While she was napping, no misbehaving would be tolerated and she would see anything and everything we did. Naturally, given the lack of documentation, methodology, and reputable peer reviews, the Little Monsters didn’t believe a word of it.

But she wasn’t lying. No matter where in the house we were — five feet from the couch or five rooms — Mom’s voice would boomerang through the house the moment any extrajudicial activity was likely to occur. The Little Monsters staged great debates in an attempt to figure out how she ALWAYS knew when the deal was about to go down. After the fashionable “bad vibes” was debunked, the Little Monsters had no choice but to embrace witchcraft and other temporary flirtations with the Occult.

All these years later, we still aren’t exactly sure how she worked her magic, but in a way she was very much like a Superhero. Given how “free-spirited” the Little Monsters could be, there’s no telling how many lives her “magic eye” saved!

The Three Little People at Christmas

The Little Monsters were fortunate to have three mothers when born — Mary (33), Minou (10), & Michele (7). Brigitte, however, was only 2. Thus, the Little Monsters and Brigitte were collectively referred to, in a broken idiom typical of our parents’ misuse of the English language, as “The Three Little People.” I’m not sure why the use of actual names were as limited as they were back then, but between “Boys”, “Little Monsters”, and “The Three Little People”, it was easy to forget sometimes that we had individual identities!

While the Little Monsters were technically outnumbered by the girls, in the early years, by virtue of age, poor Brigitte was relegated to our wild kingdom. The comic depicts her as… I don’t want to say bossy… let’s say proactive about keeping the Little Monsters in line, for it was her unrequested fate to be permanently grouped with us and on the front lines every day. Given the circumstances, she rose to the task in the only way it was possible to succeed. You are not polite to a herd of stampeding elephants. You evacuate the weak and get out the heavy artillery. Here’s one that made it to the confession booth — the Little Monsters would accept cash from Brigitte as hush money and then promptly go tell on her. Not very honorable. To this day, I am not quite sure why she has never sued us for reparations.

I will say for the historical record, and certain future posterity, that as far as sisters go the Little Monsters were extremely lucky. And over time, the Three Little People dynamic definitely evolved from a necessity for the “older people” to a covenant amongst the Three Little People — a covenant to watch each other’s backs. I do not believe the covenant years will be depicted in the comic so I want to be sure to say that The Three Little People were also three little best friends and are to this day.

And now, Brigitte, as my welcome and thank you I offer you this humble serenade:

I’m a nut,

Big and round,

Lying on the cold, cold ground,

People stop and stare at me,

That’s why I’m a nut you see,

I’m a nut! I’m a nut! I’m a nut! I’m a nut!

The common link between Thanksgiving and the Little Monsters is that they are uniquely American.

The first Thanksgiving wasn’t really called Thanksgiving and it wasn’t really celebrated by Americans. It was called “We’re Still Alive, Thank God!” and was celebrated by a bunch of very hungry British religious exiles (later known as The Pilgrims), the Wampanoag Indians, and a guy name Squanto who was personally responsible for keeping The Pilgrims alive.

As time passed, days of thanks were established at various times by various colonies all with the same purpose — to give thanks for the harvest , which meant food and life. In 1789, George Washington proclaimed a Day of Thanks –the first by a national government of the United States — and in 1863, at the height of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving a national holiday. It is a holiday that is at the very center of the American experience — from the moment The Mayflower anchored at Plymouth, MA. Trying to separate Thanksgiving from America is, in fact, impossible.

To that end, I offer this true story of Thanks and Gratitude. When the father of the Little Monsters was fifteen years old and growing up in Cairo, Egypt his appendix ruptured and he was stricken with peritonitis, a potentially fatal infection of the abdomen that is treated with anti-biotics — at the time penicillin. In 1950s Egypt, penicillin was extremely difficult to obtain. The only people who had penicillin were “The Americans.”

Our father’s grandfather was a banker and, perhaps, on occasion, would play a game of poker or two. One of his poker buddies somehow knew “The Americans” and was able to get a hold of the life saving pencillin and Dad lived. Other Egyptian boys our parents knew who had the same condition weren’t so lucky. And so began a love affair with “The Americans” that spanned our father’s entire lifetime.

Every significant event in our father’s life, and thus our family’s history, can be directly traced to an act of kindness and generosity by “The Americans”, whether it was the doctors at Duke University who gave him a career making medical Fellowship, the doctors at Forsyth Memorial Hospital in Winston-Salem, NC who saved his life (for the 2nd time!) when he had severe bleeding ulcers in his late 20s, the men who lined up to help him and his wife stay in this amazing country and eventually become American citizens, or his colleagues at Wake Forest Medical University who saved his life (for the 3rd time!) just two years ago. And those are just a few major events that do not take into account the incalculable and intangible gifts that every member of our family and extended family has received on our Plymouth Rock. As you can imagine, we take Thanksgiving pretty seriously around here.

With the obvious exception of the Detroit Lions, as Americans we have plenty of reasons to express gratitude for the cornucopia of blessings that this beautiful universe has bestowed upon us. It is easy to forget how deep and truly exceptional these blessings are. This is our family’s first Thanksgiving without dear old Dad, but he leaves a legacy of children, grandchildren, and Little Monsters who quite literally would not be here if it weren’t for his passion and love for America, and all “The Americans” who carried him, and us, along the way. Trying to separate The Little Monsters from America is, in fact, impossible.

Thus, on behalf of the Little Monsters and our family, thank you, God bless you, and have a very Happy Thanksgiving!

The Little Monsters break out matching tri-colored turtle necks for all their devoted fans! (Class picture - St. John's)

One of the most challenging parts of being Little Monster super geniuses was that we had to endure years of torturous school when we could have been trolling Silas Creek looking for water moccasins (do not try this at  home). With that said, I am confident to the point of certainty that we were a joy and inspiration to the fortunate souls blessed with the fate of being our classmates and teachers.

Our first school was not even school. It was pre­-school in a Pre­-sbyterian Church where we finger painted, made impressions of our tiny yet rugged and masculine hands in plaster, ate cookies, and rejected the Calvinist spiritual concept of pre-destination in favor of free-will, a precious commodity for which I will sacrifice virtually anything to this day. The thought process being that no merciful or vengeful God would ever pre-determine that we wear matching plaid pants. God must be more intelligent than that. Our teacher was a very sweet woman named Mrs. Carroll who, at the time, I thought was Mrs. Claus.

Given our newfound commitment to free will, for Kindergarten – 5^th grade we attended St. John’s Lutheran Day School. I’m not sure if there was a night school. To the Little Monsters, the only difference between Presbyterians and Lutherans was that the Presbyterians derive their faith from John Calvin but don’t formally have much to do with pre-destination, and the Lutherans are all about pre-destination except it’s a light fat free version of the original. Regardless, it is not Catholic and therefore it is “the graveyard of the damned”. [1]

At St. John’s Lutheran Day School, every Thursday morning was “Chapel” during which I fell asleep each week. This was a constant source of consternation to the Pastor and teachers who didn’t think my explanation that I was a predestined to fall asleep  was very funny. I do recall, however, that the entire school sang “Go Tell It On The Mountain” with great enthusiasm. We also had a subject called “Religion” for which the Little Monsters received generally high marks so we’ve got that going for us when the big day arrives. We also had to perform a Christmas concert every December at Calvary Baptist Church, which is the size of a Six Flags. Our finest gifts we bring, Pa rum pum pum pum! So we’ve got that going for us too. Pa rum pum pum pum!

At St. John’s, we had these great wooden cubbies. I loved my cubby and maximized the Feng Shui of the space by arranging all my Back to School supplies, books, and “Religion” packets by size, color, and — in the tradition of the ancient Egyptians — facing West.  The other Little Monster’s cubby looked like Three Mile Island and it is still a mystery to me how all the pressure created by the layers of paper, soot, and “Religion” packets didn’t create a fortune in diamonds on which we could have retired at age 10. At one point, and I promise I am not making this up, the fossil of a Pterodactyl was discovered. No lie. Unfortunately, records from that period were lost in a self storage unit fire that remains unsolved.

We also had chocolate milk days on Tuesday & Thursday. Do I really need to explain how major chocolate milk day was? MAJOR. Then there was the Year of the Star Wars lunchbox. Hot soup in an X-Wing fighter thermos. Heaven. And don’t get me started on Recess. Kickball anyone? Except our playground bordered Silas Creek Parkway and during every game somebody kicked the ball over the fence and some poor teacher had to run it down in the street. My last memory of St. John’s was running some kind of race in an end-of-the-school-year Olympics wearing a T-Shirt that had winged shoes on it with the caption “Feet Don’t Fail Me Now.” They failed me. I came in Not First.

Our Kindergarten teacher was a woman with jet black hair and long fingernails named Mrs. Robertson. She watched over us as we built awe inspiring structures with big cardboard bricks that a guy named Kevin kicked down with the brown cowboy boots he wore every day. She taught us how to cut and paste construction paper five thousand ways. She made us be quiet during nap time and hustled us out of the building during fire drills.  These days there are kindergartens that charge $20,000.00 for this type of curriculum.  I’ll stack up Mrs. Robertson against their gold bricks any day.

Our second grade teacher was big man with a dark beard named Mr. Tim. Mr. Tim constantly sent me into the hallway for being disruptive (code for ‘stealing the teacher’s thunder’) and he paddled me twice. I do not recall the specific comments I made which led to multiple, completely legal, and most likely deserved corporal punishments, but I’m going to go on record as saying they were hilarious. Nobody said that being a shining beacon of subversion and sarcasm was going to be easy. At some point, Mr. Tim married another teacher. Basically, the school was a meat market and the teacher’s lounge was a pharmacy. I made that last part up, but it was the 1970s, so… yeah… totally possible.

I don’t remember any of our other teachers, but once again there is no doubt in my mind each one has a shrine to us set up in their homes. It would be creepy if I didn’t know how stupidly great we are. If I could go back in time, I would go back to those days, but as one of  our teachers so I could experience first hand the joyeux-nova that was the Little Monsters.

So if it was all some big paste-eating Shangri La, why would I title this post “School and Other Places in Hell”? Why Hell? Why not some place even just slightly better than Hell… like Texas? It is simple really. One Little Monster suffered because he was just too smart for school. Knowledge for knowledge’s sake? Amateur hour. The other Little Monster suffered because he was metaphysically bored beyond belief. If you don’t know what that means, and I hope you don’t, I can’t explain it. Let’s just agree that it can’t be found in a text book.

The mismatch is puzzling as we inherited an obsessive devotion to intelligence, scholarship, arts, and education from our mother and father. Not to mention work-a-holism bordering on the absurd. In the end, however, I believe it all worked out for the best because the private semi-prophesizing school system was exposed to skinny, brown, Little Monster super geniuses with Egyptian afros who rocked the playground like Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon.

So, to review and in conclusion, stay in school.

Christmas

Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Merry Buddhamas! Happy Kwanza! Merry Boxing Day! Happy Muharram! Merry Flying Spaghetti Monstermas! No matter what holiday you are celebrating this December, The Real Little Monsters wish you and your family all the best for a healthy, prosperous, and downright silly holiday season and 2011! In the spirit of Christmas, I give to you these beautiful words from the first (and only) Catholic President of the United States of America John Fitzgerald Kennedy who famously said, “Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.” Regardless of your beliefs and passions, the holidays are a yearly reminder that as individuals, nations, and as a species we can do better. Much better. So much better that after 2010 years we still haven’t reached the mountaintop. We haven’t even made it to base camp. I would also like to remind everyone that is never too late to send grossly expensive and unnecessary gifts to the Real Little Monsters. My favorite absence of color is black. I like books that aren’t written by Joseph Conrad. I am a 32 regular and I like very expensive wine (aka Jesus Juice). Another ideal gift would be a fully functional light saber. Preferably in red.

This post, however, is not about religion, or philosophy, or life. It’s about the incredibly goofy picture posted above. I read today that somebody somewhere found 20,000 fossils that will shed new light on the dinosaurs’s mass extinction. We don’t have 20,000 pictures of the Real Little Monsters on Santa’s lap but one fossil from the 1970s will do!  Look at this picture! When my mother showed it to me, I finally knew what Howard Carter felt when he stumbled into King Tut’s tomb — elation that a mysterious and wondrous piece of the world’s history had been discovered for historians, scholars, deviants, and extremely beautiful women to treasure. The punctum (Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes, 1980) is undeniable. I doubt a single person amongst our vast and loyal readers does not possess a photograph of themselves on a mall Santa’s lap that evokes their entire childhoods in a single image. Please allow me to guide you through the one above.

First, we are obviously awesome. Otherwise, Santa Claus would not have given us the candy canes we are clutching in our hands. Nothing says “Christmas” like candy canes and a mall Santa with a long flowing white beard, black eyebrows, and a face void of wrinkles. Because we were and continue to be geniuses, we knew that the mall Santa was not the “real” Santa, but were confident that all our holiday wishes would be diligently transmitted to the appropriate Elves at the North Pole and we would soon be unwrapping our desired Tonka trucks, Hot Wheels, and World War II tank models. That’s why we have such big smiles on our faces. That and the inevitable trip to Bresler’s to get black licorice ice cream that would most certainly follow. The best thing about St. Nick is that year after year he makes the long journey around the world to bring gifts to all the Little Monsters of the world — even the ones who had to stretch the truth about being good (for goodness sake!). It’s not that Santa didn’t know that we were “good challenged”, it’s that he was blinded by our aforementioned obvious awesomeness. I also think our parents bought him a Cadillac snow mobile with a keg-o-rator. That may have played a role.

Speaking of awesome, look at those bowl haircuts! We look like the Egyptian Beatles. These masterpieces were chiseled by our childhood hair stylish Butch. Butch had red hair and a beard, an NRA sticker prominently displayed on his mirror, would smoke an entire Marlboro Red 100 while he cut our hair without taking it out of his mouth, spoke incessantly about the foibles of his ex-wife, and officially had permission from our father to “cut off our noses” if we misbehaved (so he claimed). He was also the only person from 1970-1997 who could cut my hair without leaving an enormous cowlick sticking up like a weed from the back of my head. Growing up in Cairo, our father’s nickname was “Chicho”, which means “cowlick” in Arabic, so this was not as easy of a task as it sounds. Once we left for college, Butch retired from the hair cutting business and opened a gun shop.

The Little Monsters spent a lot of time outside — in the woods, in the creeks, in construction sites as new neighborhoods sprung up around us, and in other people’s homes who were not necessarily there or awake when we were. Our dirty shoes are evidence of these experiences. They are downright grungy, and my guess is that they were probably a week old in this picture as I do not see any major self made alterations. If we weren’t wearing creek water logged dirty shoes, we were in Dingo boots that added several inches to our height and at least a foot to our vertical leap.

Notice how the Little Monsters are wearing the same shoes except one pair is red and one pair is blue? How about the shirts? They are the same except one is green and one is blue. Some mornings we would wake up and say, “Let’s be twins today”, and the result was either matching clothes or semi-matching clothes like the shoes and shirts here. Other times we were forced to wear matching clothes by our parents that sometimes involved plaid bow ties. That’s right ladies. Plaid bow ties. Please take a number and form a line to the right.

The other thing I love about our shirts is Snoopy. Has there ever been a more fantastic dog than Snoopy? Allow me to answer the question. No. Snoopy can fly a dog house. He dances like nobody is watching. He plays football. And Snoopy can pretty much do everything you wish you could do. He is a Renaissance Dog. He is Joe Cool. One Little Monster who shall remain nameless and isn’t me could rarely be found without Snoopy in tow. I don’t want to suggest that Snoopy was a childhood deity and that the Little Monsters engage in idolatry in any way, but Snoopy did say, “Dear IRS, Please remove me from your mailing list.” If that isn’t divine then I don’t know what is.

I want to wrap up this post on a very personal note. This is my 40th Christmas in a row in the house where I grew up. I can’t even imagine a Christmas that’s not on Sturbridge Road. This year, however, is the first Christmas that my family will spend without the man who “built” this house — our father. He didn’t build it with his own hands. He didn’t lay the brick or hammer the nails, though he spent almost every spare moment in his beloved garden. He built it with his courage to leave the country of his birth. He built it with his determination to stay here and carve out the very real American dream for himself, his wife, his five children, and his nine grandchildren. Four of us, including me, bear his “American” name. He built this house with his compassion and commitment to the Winston-Salem medical community. He built it with his humor, intellect, and seemingly unending accomplishments. We are extremely proud of his legacy, for not every man or woman is even able to leave behind a legacy that positively impacts so many people. Thus, I give to you these beautiful words from the first (and only) Catholic President of the United States of America John Fitzgerald Kennedy who famously said, “A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.”

That idea is Christmas.

God bless.