sarah masen
The Woman the PTA Didn't Want
by [jp/p] on Fri Sep 03 21:11:38 +0000 2004 in Melting Pot
The Woman the PTA Didn’t Want
Kids, you tried
and failed miserably.
But I hadn’t really thought we failed. I thought
my mother had failed. Or Georgia, whoever she was.
I never met her, but she was always sending us these little green
stamps with red letters and lickable backs that Mom would count
and drop into her purse like promises. I used to think my Mom would have
more fun getting glue and glitter on her hands, building us a big new house
out of Ms. Rice’s burgeoning third grade popsicle collection. But she didn’t come. Or
she wouldn’t. (Couldn’t isn’t real, after all.) But still, she kept coming home. Coming,
but never really getting anywhere I was. The worst part, I guess, was
never really getting anywhere my friends were at. King’s Island, no.
Chuck E. Cheese, no. The movies, what? Toys “R” Us, are you kidding?
You really think I’ll change my answer just because you keep asking?
No, not really. I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I guess it’s worth a shot. And that
was fun for a little while, just trying to get this incredibly brainy mother to say yes
to something she really meant no to. But poverty is poverty (as much as
wealth is wealth) and it carries a scourge. It whips your ass. It comes home,
screaming like a madwoman in need of a man to raise her son and work a second job. But as
we got older, my mother and me, she told me about the pains: the deep red embarrassment
of sending me to school in my grandfather’s cigarette-holed clothes, of listening
through the stairwell when I had to explain to them, my strange and even stranger
well-off friends, why we drink powdered milk instead of “the regular stuff,”
and no, I don’t have a Nintendo, not yet, but I’m getting one for Christmas.
And that was when it came. That was the day we moved, the first time. Mom was
gonna get a new job and I was gonna stop stealing chips from the convenience
store (more out of unfamiliarity than a change in moral attitude). I watched it come true.
Yes, Nintendo gave way to SuperNES and before long, puberty was doing its thing.
I was enjoying bathtubs more than ever and my best friend, Mikey, said
I couldn’t call him Mikey anymore. It’s Mike, he told me, like he was
repeating something his father made him say. By then, Pop Rocks were safe again and
Clearly Canadian was chic. I was starting to figure it out. Learning what no, in reverse,
really means. That, just as sure as you grow up, you go down. And eventually I stopped asking, my
bold interrogations faded like taillights and, fast-forward a bunch of months, I started making sandwiches
for a living. And then it was the drive-in. Better money at the big box stores, but not quite enough. Wait
on people, hand and foot. Fine, move across the country, kiss ladies, wait tables. But one thing’s true:
No matter what, whether you’re coming down or going back up, it’s the same for me as
it was for her, as it will be for you and you and everyone else who thinks they’re excused.
You only go through this shit once, I thought, with the extraordinary exception (like those
ever-ending video games) that you die a lot in the middle, whether you want to or not.
Like, the immortal words of Homer
Simpson, that is:
The lesson is
to never try again.
Context
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