The Truth About The Happy House

The construction crew showed up in my backyard just before my seventh birthday—a team of big beefy men hauling slabs of wood. Yes, I know what that sounds like but you need to get your rotten filthy mind out of the gutter.

When the men arrived, my mom ushered me from the backyard into the house, all secretive and giddy. She was practically bouncing out of her overly arched Dr. Scholl’s sandals. She darted about, yanking closed all the curtains in the rooms that looked out into the backyard: the kitchen, the family room and my own bedroom where my window overlooked the exact spot where the builders were hammering and sawing and making a whole load of noise.

My mom bustled around the house, tossing loads of laundry into the dryer, entertaining my brother and keeping one eye on me to make sure I didn’t go outside.

“Be patient,” she told me. “You’ll see.”

Apparently this was some sort of surprise. For me.

The last time my mom had surprised me was for my birthday in Kindergarten. She’d driven the whole carpool straight to our house after school for a surprise birthday party. In the middle of the party sat the brand new cherry red Schwinn bike I’d been admiring for months through the window of the local bike shop. It had a banana seat with pink roses on it and hot pink, pale pink and white tassels hanging from the handlebars.

It was the best surprise ever.

Could she possibly top it?

I played twenty million questions with her about what was going on in the backyard but she was tight-lipped, feigning being wrapped up in various household chores while my curiosity piqued.

Finally, just before dinnertime, the beefy dudes cleared the yard. My mom eagerly ushered me outside, a blindfold across my eyes. I’d never known her to be so giddy.

I walked across the cement patio, the cold concrete chilling my bare feet. I could smell fresh wood as she guided me up a step of some sort. I could sense I was no longer outside. Instead, I was inside… something.

But what?

My mom dramatically ripped the blindfold from my eyes and yelled out, “Surprise!”

And there I stood in the middle of a small house. Four oatmeal-colored wooden walls and a triangle-shaped roof surrounded me. To my back was a little door that anyone taller than me, like my parents, would have to duck to get through.

“It’s your new house! It’s a Happy House!” my mom said. Her grin was wild as she clearly waited for me to jump up and down or crash into her to hug her.

I burst into tears.

Not happy tears. Sad tears.

To this day, my mom seems devastated by my reaction. It’s clear that in her mind, that Happy House should’ve been my most exciting surprise ever. “I just wanted to give you the thing I always wanted as a little girl,” she tells me. The fact that I burst into tears comes up often, always prefaced with the heartbreaking words: Remember when you cried because I built you a Happy House?

I have tried so many times to explain to my mom why I burst into tears that day. The answer is simple: I thought she wanted me to live in that house. In that small Happy House with the four bland walls and the tiny door that my dad couldn’t fit through.

No bed. No bathroom. No pink-and-white-checkered bedspread or record player.

I imagined sitting alone at night in my miniature house, staring up at the yellow glow of lights in the upstairs bedrooms where my parents and my brother slept. I pictured my family sitting on the couch in the living room to watch Happy Days or in a circle on the floor, playing Monopoly, while I lay alone on the wood floor of my so-called Happy House.

I thought my family would be a family without me.

And still, to this day, I feel like I disappointed my mom so greatly, so irrevocably, that I almost wish she would surprise me with another Happy House (preferably on a walk street near the beach) so that I could give her the reaction she so deeply craved that day so long ago.

Did I ever get psyched about the Happy House?

Kind of.

Eventually.

A little.

Once I realized that it wasn’t somewhere I had to live permanently, it did become a fun place to play. My dad painted it white with yellow trim and my mom hung hand-sewn curtains in the windows. I had a fake stove, refrigerator and sink. There was a flowerbed, stuffed with yellow and white daisies, sitting outside the door, making the house look every bit like a little home for a little person.

But as I grew, the house became less fun. It eventually became our family’s storage shed. Discarded Big Wheel scooters and trash bags full of clothes for the Goodwill took over the space. Weeds sprouted in the flowerbed. Rust covered the door of the fake metal fridge.

Finally, the Happy House was broken down and hauled away in portions by the gardener my mom had hired when my dad got too sick to mow the lawn anymore. The gardener reseeded the lawn and new grass grew in as if the Happy House had never been there.

The actual house we lived in, as a family, is probably like that, too. My mom sold it after my dad died because it was too hard, too sad, to live there anymore. Are there reminders of us there? Are the wood steps that my dad built still intact, leading up to the front door? Is the wrought iron gate with the initial of our last name still in place at the entrance of the backyard? Are my baby footprints still in the cement at the back door to the laundry room? Is my name still scrawled underneath those footprints as a reminder that I once lived there?

Probably not.

My life there, in that house, has been hauled away and reseeded elsewhere. People I’ve never met live there now. They know nothing of me.

Perhaps they have a little girl who would love to have a Happy House.


© Copyright 2012  Marisa Reichardt. All Rights Reserved

Thanks, But No Thanks for the Invite

Today, my old self (as in my maiden-named self) received a lovely-looking letter in the mail. The stationery was pale green and a strand of purple flowers prettily crept up the right hand corner and blew away on a carefree wind of nothingness. Enchanting, really. It evoked summer. Or tampon commercials.

All misleading, of course.

Because the letter was actually an invitation for me to plan ahead and pay now for my future cremation.

Simple, Economical and Dignified… It just makes sense! they tell me in bold-faced font perfectly centered in the middle of the page.

Now here’s the thing: Those cremation-pushing dummies don’t know what a spazzy spaz I am about death and shit. They don’t know that some whack-ass fifth grade teacher fronting as a fortune teller told my nine-year-old self that I was going to die at 50. They don’t know that there are only two things I really truly hate in the world: camping and going to the doctor. They don’t know that I suffer from such debilitating white coat syndrome that my blood pressure shoots up just from passing by a medical building, even in my car.

They. Don’t. Know.

They don’t know that I had two surgeries and a biopsy over the last three years for shit that freaked me the fuck out.

They don’t know that every lump, cough, sneeze, sniffle, ache and moment of physical weirdness convinces me that I have terminal cancer.

They. Don’t. Know.

So thanks, but no thanks for your not-so-gently-worded letter on the pretty stationery. While I realize that it’s smart and precious to plan, I just didn’t want to think about that shit today.

After spending a nice day at the beach where I read a good book, dove under waves and dug my toes into the sand, I didn't want to come home to a letter telling me I should stop living and start planning for my impending death.

Today, I didn't want to think about what I will do with myself when I die.

I’d rather google stuff like that when I feel like it. On my own time. Like on some dark dreary afternoon when the cloak of a marine layer is wrapped around me. Maybe on that day, I’ll sit at my computer and look up depressing shit like that.

But don’t ruin today by making me think about dying when I don’t want to. Because believe me, I spend way too much time thinking about it as it is.

© Copyright 2012  Marisa Reichardt. All Rights Reserved

The Truth About The Kahlua & Milk

The first time I ever got drunk, I was fourteen years old. I filled up a pink plastic cup, a remnant of my childhood, with Kahlua and cold milk. I’d invited some new friends over. Cool girls. Popular girls. We drank through straws, sitting in an L-shape line along the sectional couch in the living room of my house. My mom had gone out to dinner. She had no idea that I’d invited anyone over. I wanted my new friends to think I was cool. I wanted them to think I could party. And provide the alcohol. The cups. The house.

I thought I might like Kahlua. I hoped it would taste like coffee ice cream, which I loved. It did a little. And with milk, it wasn’t so bad. It only burned some.

The plan was to get buzzed, not drunk, and head to the last dance of the school year before 8^th grade graduation. The dance would be on the concrete floors of the cafeteria and there would be a DJ playing songs by Oingo Boingo and the B-52’s. Maybe people would crouch down on the ground and jump back up again during the down, down part of “Rock Lobster.” And, most likely, boys would try to act like they hadn’t noticed their hands slip down to cup some girl’s butt when they slow-danced. Maybe there would be crepe paper streamers or balloons. And a strobe light.

But nobody could erase what the cafeteria was. It was still the same place where I waited in line for lemonade Icee-Juicee bars, gave my spare change to cute boys and swore I might hurl after eating something gross from the hot lunch line. Whoever was in charge would try to dress up the cafeteria to try to make us forget where we were, but there was no erasing the leftover smell of chicken nuggets and tater tots that stuck to the pale yellow walls. It stuck there in the same way my friend’s mom’s cigarette smoke stuck to the curtains and popcorn ceiling of their two-bedroom apartment.

I didn’t get totally drunk on the Kahlua, really. I just felt a little bit fuzzy. The world was happily fluffy and I felt important when the popular girls and I strolled up, all attitude and sundresses, to get in line for the dance. We hugged the brick wall, still warm from the sun, outside of the cafeteria and waited for the doors to open. We waited for the music and the strobe lights. We waited for the chance of slow dances to Spandeau Ballet's "True" with somebody we might think of kissing.

Murmurs started down the line that the popular girls were drunk. I only cared that I was suddenly, somehow, one of them. The implications of showing up, reeking of alcohol, to a school-sponsored event weren’t even an idea in my head. Not even a seed. Instead, I relished the fact that people found me suddenly fascinating. Like I was the first girl to ever show up drunk to a school dance.

I was a rebel.

I was crazy.

I was fun.

I was cool.

When the doors swung open, we all went in. I played up being drunk even though the Kahlua had pretty much worn off by the time I hit the concrete floor. I was drunk on myself more than Kahlua. When the music started, I stumbled and tripped. I danced and slurred and laughed. I giggled and swirled.

It was the greatest night of my life.

Until I felt a tap on my shoulder.

I was escorted from the cafeteria to the front office of the middle school by one of the school counselors. He sat behind his desk and I sat in the same dark green-upholstered chair that I’d sat in the year before to register for classes in the middle of the school year; a self-conscious transfer student in January.

“Have you been drinking?” he asked me. “I have reason to believe that you are drunk.”

I nodded my head, admitting everything. Cornered. And naïve.

He picked up the big klunky phone on his desk and called my mom. She walked into the office about twenty minutes later with a look of complete and utter disappointment on her face. My punishment was serious: no 8^th grade pool party, no yearbook-signing party and no graduation dance. I thought of the lavender Gunne Sax dress hanging in my closet. My mom and I had gone to the mall just a week before and purchased it from the juniors department at The Broadway. It had butterfly sleeves and a thick satin sash in the same color as the pale purple lace.

On Monday, the principal would decide whether or not I would be allowed to walk across the stage in the auditorium to receive my middle school diploma with the rest of my class.

For now, I was to go home and think about what I had done. I was to think about the fact that I would be in high school next year, and that I’d picked a helluva way to end my middle school career.

My mom and I walked home in silence. It had taken me exactly sixteen months to disappoint her in our new town. It was a small place where everybody knew each other, so by Sunday night, all of her friends knew what I had done.

On Monday, my mom and I met with the principal. After careful consideration, he had decided that I could walk through the graduation ceremony but that would be all. No parties. No celebrations. For those events that took place during school hours, I was to sit in detention and write essays about how sorry I was for making poor decisions.

And so it was that I spent the 8^th grade pool party and the yearbook-signing party with all the bad kids, the write-offs, the losers, in a room with round tables that I never even knew existed on campus until that day. I wrote regrets onto lined pages torn from a notebook and tried not to make eye contact with the boy with the blue-stained Mohawk who I’d French-kissed only a few weeks before. He might’ve even technically been my boyfriend if I’d been willing to admit it.

But he was not someone my new popular friends could know about.

On the night of 8^th grade graduation, I rode my bike past the school, catching glimpses of multi-colored flashing lights and girls in fancy dresses at the graduation dance. I wore shorts, a t-shirt and flip-flops instead of the lavender dress that hung in my closet. I spent a good portion of the night watching the party from a side door to the cafeteria, longing to be inside.

I wish I’d had the self-respect to hole up in my bedroom and stare at my Adam Ant posters instead. But I hadn’t. I was fourteen.

Sadly, I learned very little that night. That glass of Kahlua and milk was the beginning of a very long four years of drinking too much during my high school years. I would choose tequila over Kahlua and carry a shot glass in my backpack. That look of disappointment on my mom’s face would waffle between fear, disgust and flat out giving up on me. She would join a Tough Love support group and threaten to lock me out of my house the next time I came home drunk.

Until, finally, just before my high school graduation, I would give up drinking forever.

But that’s another truth.

For another time.


© Copyright 2012  Marisa Reichardt. All Rights Reserved

The Truth About My Right Butt Cheek

What? You aren’t familiar with my right butt cheek? Well, then we obviously didn’t go to college together. Because my right butt cheek made quite an appearance on the UCSD campus one day in the ‘90s.

I’d gotten all done up in my “nice” clothes because I had a class presentation that day. Yes, I was a dork because I dressed up for class presentations, but I had learned from my days on the high school speech team (like I said, dork) that it was important to dress nice on occasions when you had to stand up in front of a bunch of people and say shit.

Professors took you more seriously. Maybe.

Although I’ve bombed many a class presentation, dressed up or not, in my lifetime (I still have nightmares about a particular presentation I did on Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison where I went on and on about triangles and my professor straight up cut me off).

But anyway.

I had a class on one side of campus followed by another class on the other side of campus. I stopped for coffee and to use the bathroom in the old student center.

And it was in that bathroom that I inadvertently tucked a portion of my skirt into my underwear, leaving my right butt cheek exposed to the world. Did I mention the underwear was sheer? Like see-through? So yeah.

You’d think maybe someone would have told me, right? Or, that I would’ve noticed more of a breeze or something? Well, here’s the thing: it was one of those hippy dippy flippy skirts like girls wore to college in the ‘90s, so there was a breeze whether my skirt was stuffed into my underwear or not. And of course I’ve played this scenario over in my head about 8 million trillion times so you just have to give me the benefit of the doubt when I tell you that not one single thing hinted at the fact that my skirt was crammed into my underwear.

Except for a couple of double takes as I walked all the way from one end of campus to the other.

I thought maybe I was looking hot or something. I was 21, after all. Lots of 21-year-old college girls look hot. Why not me?

I’m not good with distance so I’m trying to think of how far I must have walked with my skirt shoved into my underwear. Maybe half a mile? I was on the UCSD campus a couple of weeks ago and I don’t even recognize that place anymore, so I can’t even give it to you in terms of where I went. Are there still ATMs east of the Price Center? Is it called the Price Center anymore?

The point is: I walked through a very main drag of campus with hundreds of students walking on all sides of me. At least 500 people saw my right butt cheek that day.

At least.

Did I mention my underwear was see-through?

Because it was.

Which was awesome.

About the time I hit the ATM line, a guy who was really super cute, poked me on my shoulder.

“Um, is your skirt supposed to be like that?” he asked, gesturing to my ass.

I reached around and felt sheer underwear. And butt cheek. I felt see-through underwear absolutely positively not hiding butt cheek. I swam every day. I walked a ton because I didn’t drive. But that didn’t mean I had butt cheeks to die for. They weren’t something I wanted on display.

“Um, thanks,” I said, casually pulling my skirt out from my underwear, like I did it all the time. Like oh that? I hate when that happens. I smoothed my skirt down over my ass and confidently walked away.

Honestly, the guy seemed so embarrassed by having to be the one to point out my exposed butt cheek to me that I almost felt worse for him than I did for me.

I said almost. I mean, let’s be real here.

And seriously, why didn’t some girl do me that favor so he wouldn’t have to? Wouldn’t it have been kinder and less humiliating for all parties involved if a female had been the one to tell me I was half-mooning my college campus?

I’ll tell you why. Because deep down in the very crevices of their girly beings, a lot of women want to see other women look like shit. Or, they at least want them to look worse than them. Which is exactly why chicks are so catty and shitty to each other so much of the time.

I try not to do that. I mean, I would totally tell a rando girl that she had her skirt all hiked up inside of her underwear. But that’s because it happened to me.

Right?

I’ve also learned that I have to be responsible for my own self. Nowadays, I do a full turn in front of the mirror before I leave a bathroom. It’s nobody’s responsibility but my own to check that I don’t have my underwear shoved into my skirt. Or crud stuck in my teeth. A glob of mascara on my cheek? I use my compact mirror, dummy. Booger nose? Too bad so sad if you’re not looking out for yourself. Bad breath? I carry my own fucking mints thankyouverymuch.

And if I could find that guy again, the one person on the whole campus of UCSD, who, even though it might’ve been the most embarrassing thing he ever had to point out to another person ever, had the balls to tell me that my skirt was crammed into my underwear and my right butt cheek was hanging out for all the world to see? I’d thank him.

Whoever he is.

Wherever he is.

I’d thank him so hard.

I’m not worried about him. He probably turned out to be a really awesome husband to somebody somewhere.


© Copyright 2012  Marisa Reichardt. All Rights Reserved