Heather in Paradise

I’ve been Tagged! The deal is that I have to list 8 random things about myself, while also mentioning Trauma: The Drama, who is the person who tagged me, then I have to Tag 8 other blogs. I think maybe I’ll make these 8 random things not so “random,” and instead, will make them embarrassing confessions, kitchen mishaps, or terrifically old lies I’m finally owning up to. Here goes.

1.      1. Once, when I was a kid and my mom was at work, I put some Tater Tots on a baking sheet, put them in the oven, and went to watch TV until they were done. About three hours later, when I’d completely forgotten about the Tater Tots, I heard an explosion of glass shattering in the kitchen. “SHIT,” I thought, “THE TATER TOTS!!” Sure enough, the little glass window on the oven had shattered and sprayed all over the floor. I shakily turned off the oven and pulled out the baking sheet. The Tater Tots had shrunken from such long, slow cooking that they looked like charred baby teeth. I called my mom at work and told her in semi-truthful detail what had happened. When she asked, suspiciously, “How long did you cook them?” I said, “Uh, well, I kinda forgot about them and they cooked for about 45 minutes.” She said, “Oh, that’s not so bad, that isn’t your fault, it shouldn’t have happened.” So, mom? Sorry about cooking those Tater Tots for 3 hours and blowing up your oven. It’s too late to ground me, nyah nyah.

2.    2. The Tater Tot story reminded me of another kitchen mishap. I was assigned to make the traditional Deviled Eggs for our family reunion picnic. I worked as a late-night bartender at the time, so I got home from work early the morning of the picnic and put the eggs on to hard boil, then sat on the couch to read until they were done. I was awakened by a huge “KA-BLAM!” and to my then-boyfriend saying snottily, “Excuse me, are you cooking something?” Did you know that eggs will explode if they are cooked for so long that the water boils down in the pot? Did you also know that the explosion is forceful enough to send bits of egg and shell into such far-flung corners of the kitchen that you will be finding them for weeks to come? And did you further know that such a thing will ruin an expensive pot owned by your anal-retentive boyfriend who will never let you forget it (or a million other of your shortcomings), until you finally dump his sorry ass?

     3. When I was in the Army, one of my married friends had people over for Easter Dinner. I was only 19 years old and didn’t have a lot of adult cooking experience under my belt, but I had watched my mom cook for years and had made some simple things. Well, no one knew how to make gravy, so Heather to the rescue. “I know how to make gravy, it’s delicious, my mom’s gravy is the best, etc. etc” ad nauseum until finally I was in the kitchen making gravy. I scraped the browned bits, I mixed the flour with the water to avoid lumps, I stirred and stirred. And still it wasn’t thickening. So little by little, I kept adding flour, and adding a little more flour. And then I stirred some more and added a little more flour. And all of a sudden, all that flour solidified at once, and my “gravy” was a white, congealed mass of slightly gravy-tasting flour. You could stick the spoon in it and turn it upside down for a bowl-shaped, warm gravy popsicle. The memory of my shame still sometimes wakes me up in the middle of the night.

->   4.   I never hit my head on the diving board at camp while attempting an inward dive. When I was 11, I told all the kids at Bible camp that I USED to LOVE to dive off the diving board, and that I could even do flips, but since the “head-hitting” incident, I was too traumatized to try again. I was just too afraid to dive off the diving board, period. It feels really good to get that off my chest.

5.     5.   I walked in on Chad and Derek Tompoles’ stepdad in the bathroom while he was taking a shit. His pants were around his ankles and he was reading a Newsweek. That’s all I want to say about this.

->  6. One Sunday afternoon in the 5^th grade, when I went to the Park Roller Rink, I stuffed my brand new “training bra” that I had begged for with little round balls of toilet paper. As I skated around and around the rink, one of the balls slipped out and fell to the ground. I just kept skating, right into the bathroom, where I pulled out the other ball of tissue, took off my skates, got my things, and went home.

          7. While we’re on the subject, the reason I got the training bra in the first place is because the stupid boys at school used to play a stupid game, where they’d point to locations on a girl’s back and say, “North, South, East, West, Equator.” When they said “equator,” they’d snap the girl’s bra strap. Funny right? Except when one of the little bastards did it to me…when he got to the “equator,” he said, “equator…equator…equator,” and mimicked snatching at thin air. I mean, I had no boobs, what did I need a bra for? I thought that “training” bra meant that if only I had that bra, it would train my body to grow the boobs I so desperately wanted. In any case, my mom finally gave in, so I got a miniscule white lace “bra” with a little blue flower. I wore it proudly to school, with the tightest t-shirt I had, to show the straps. Now what do you think happened? Of course those little pricks made fun of me for having bra straps without the accompanying boobs. I took the bra off in the girls bathroom at school and on the way home, I stuffed it into a knot on the big oak tree on my block, so I’d never have to see it again.

     8. I can’t think of an 8^th thing.

I choose Ginger, Julie A, Pamplemoose, Purple Dragonfly, Char, Rob Schwager, Libby and John, and Alicia. Sorry, guys. You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.