after i was just about 4, my mother became the single parent of two little angels, only fourteen months apart. she couldn't prioritize parenting but she COULD, however, prioritize skiiing. which, now that i've survived the deconstruction of the first 29 years of my life, was actually pretty cool. i was on the slopes by age 2 and basically off by 16. come to think of it, those were the "damage years." skiiing coincidence? god i hope not. we lived in suburban new york and drove to central vermont. six hours with pee stops and seven hours with a four brother's pizza dinner. we had a CB. i think we used it for finding out traffic/weather conditions. i'm sure it was originally my dad's idea. he was cool back then. you should have seen his ski suits. white hot. and we had CB handles. my mother was "blue denim" because she was a denim ho. it was after all the seventies. my sister was "linus" because she sucked her thumb with a little blanket(had to get comfort from somewhere). and i was either "snoopy" or "woodstock". i think the latter. we used to rotate turns playing 8 tracks, then later tapes. my mother's turn ALWAYS, i mean always, was barbra streisand. what could we do? hate it and suffer through one third of the trip, we were already pummelling each other in the back seat and mooning people in the way way back, as we affectionately called it, or decide to not only NOT hate it, but we were going to learn it verbatum and stick it to my mother. which leads me up to one of the few good memories from my childhood. i would take the part of barbra and k-fly would take the part of donna summer, and from the depths of our being, we(6 and 7 years old) would belt out about our love lives and how we won't waste another tear in the only real duet of our youth together, "enough is enough(no more tears)."

just look him in the eye and simply shout.

< yeah >