Her name was Helen--undoubtedly code for HELLION, though she was ever loathe to admit it, even to herself. She was short, rotund, strong as a pack mule and mean as a rattlesnake and she was all over me like stink on...well, you know, from the moment I committed the heinous crime of marrying her daughter. In fact, I had always been convinced that my beautiful Linda must have been adopted for I could see absolutely no resemblance between them whatsoever but I couldn't get the old goat to admit THAT either. This waking nightmare was a dyed-in-the-wool man-hater who had already succeeded in driving her own husband to an early grave and now she was salivating over fresh meat. The thing about this situation that had always stuck in my craw was the fact that my father, the very epitome of evil who had, predictably, treated Linda very shabbily during our brief engagement had been promptly disowned by me in order to save my bride any unnecessary discomfort and I never saw him again, but it never occurred to her to return the favor. Yes, folks, these two--mother and daughter--were, what we in the business call complete co-dependents. The first thing Helen did, upon discovering that I was more or less inevitable, was to aim the family T.R.A.M.P., who'd delighted in stealing away every boyfriend AND a previous husband that Linda had ever had, at me--a test which I easily saw through and smoothly avoided, earning me BIG bonus points with Linda in the process. Psychologist 1; Hellion 0. So far, so good. Next, she began wheedling Linda not to settle for someone who, "was not a REAL Doctor", when she could just as easily land herself a chiropractor or a dentist. As it happened, Linda was going for her Masters in psychology herself at the time and having a husband who knew exactly how to best navigate those particular rigors rendered Helen's second sure-fire scheme a non-starter as well. From here the old battle-ax got more subtle, scheduling family dinners when she knew I was teaching a class, 'forgetting' my birthday, putting me at the kids table at Christmas dinner ("Well, you're a CHILD psychologist, aren't you?!) and making quite sure that when I DID make an appearance for a meal, there was plenty of cole slaw (which I have always despised!) saved for me to take home. Nothing says &#%$@*! like a bucket of cole slaw, don't you think? The winter of our discontent finally came in the riotous (literally!) fall of '92 when my private practice collapsed overnight because I suddenly found myself operating in 'the wrong neighborhood'. Long Beach was in flames and we decided it was well passed time that we 'got out of Dodge'. A knock at our door as we frantically stuffed all of our treasures into boxes, which turned out to be a strikingly attractive FBI Agent advising us to be 'elsewhere' during the impending sting operation next door, simply made the entire occasion more hilarious. We laughed and laughed as we hurled everything we owned in the back of a leaky (as it turned out) 75 foot U-Haul truck and sped away to the mountains above Bakersfield. My joy at escaping in one piece was to be short-lived, however, as my intrepid wife--in the act of maneuvering our evil smelling eighteen wheeled behemoth onto the San Diego freeway North--turned to me with crocodile tears welling in her delicious deep brown eyes and spoke the most blood-curdling words I have ever heard, before or since. "We're going to have to bring Mother upstate with us, you know." To Be Continued...
As we barreled up the 405, bathed in the sultry moonlight and the high beams from the RB Furniture truck that was tailgating us, my face turned to stone and my heart leapt to my throat. I felt like a parakeet with an open cage door and a ball and chain on my tiny birdie leg. My first cat, Capricorn, who was poised atop his carrier on the seat between us and having the time of his young life, emitted a low growl of disaffection and hopped down into his box, pulling the door shut behind him. I knew just how the little guy felt. Linda and I had hastily selected Tehachapi, in the mountains above Bakersfield, for our escape from the smoldering ruins of our city life simply because her sister already lived there. The girls reasoned that if the whole family was in one place that Mother would virtually be forced to come and join them eventually. Well, come she did but kicking and screaming bloody murder ever inch of the way and with a withering ball of resentment that would have left Christ, himself, cursing a blue streak and turning his water into wine. Lots of it. The sister had arranged for us to rent a cabin on the valley floor next to the golf course, which turned out to be the only green spot for hundreds of miles in any direction. We had some high-profile neighbors the likes of Whoopi Goldberg (every bit as awesome as you'd think), Chuck Connors (still totin' his rifle with him everywhere) and Jack Palance (quite literally the meanest SOB I have ever met). The highlight of our celebrity tour of the neighborhood was at the country club Sunday brunch, where we discovered the entire surviving cast of Laugh-In carousing at the table next to ours. Then my brother-in-law took me out to some local farm where I completely ruined a brand new pair of $200 Nikes in the act of collecting fire wood for the cabin. Fire wood?! Where the hell's the friggin' thermostat?! And who leads a blind man into a horse pasture?!?! In any case, the negotiations for relocating the adamant Helen dragged on and on. Over the course of the next few weeks Linda and I repeatedly dragged ourselves back down to the shabby three room shack in Bellflower (a three hour drive, each way), managing in stages to get her entire place packed up and on the market while Helen spewed threats and epithets. Astoundingly, her little dump sold immediately, netting her a $160,000 profit into the bargain. Real estate in southern California is a law unto itself. Finally, the entire family gathered at the scene for one gigantic moving party and we whisked the old she-demon up to--can you guess?--our tiny rented cabin in Celebrity Valley. In retrospect, I realize now that I simply did not understand the true meaning of hell. To be continued...
Hi Peter, now that I have been able to pick myself up from the floor a few times and stopped laughing, I am ready for more! You are a great story teller and this is one of the best I have had the pleasure to read so far! I guess I was lucky as my Mother In law was simply an angel. In fact, when I divorced her daughter, she insisted that I move in the family home (ex-wifey poo was not happy with that)! To her dying day, some 20 years later, I was always her "Son!"
Nice work if you can get it, Richard. I'm glad to hear that SOMEBODY had a wonderful mother-in-law and I'm pleased that you're enjoying the story. What you don't know is that, while my first two wives came complete with flesh-eating mommies, the third one brought along something even MORE frightening...teen-aged children. But that's a story for another time, perhaps. Meanwhile, more on Hellion soon.
I learned my lesson the one and only time. Mom was fantastic but her daughter seemed to have a chemical imbalance upstairs!
The next day dawned clear, bright and bitter cold as I awakened reluctantly to the sound of relentless, angry pounding on our bedroom door. Upon arriving, the night before, Helen had immediately appropriated the use of the master bedroom and full bath, leaving us to cram our queen-sized bed into a back room more suited to a very small table and one chair. I pulled the covers over my head and held my breath as Linda climbed out over me to see what the matter was. Capricorn was quick to join me and we silently eyed each other from beneath the ample quilt, fearing the worst. The issue, we discovered, was that the shower was too tall and the old darling needed a place to hang her gargantuan, steel-plated underthings. Two hours and a length of high gage cable later, I had rigged a clothes line for midgets across the shower for which I was thanked with the snarling revelation that now she had no place to bathe. I patiently showed her how the line snapped in and out from it's fastenings so that she could still shower at will, and she suggested that it would be unwise of me to believe that she would be chipping in on the rent anytime soon. Fine then. Mutant undies dealt with. Second order of business: find Helen her own place. Now Tehachapi, today, is about what I've imagined Tombstone, Az. to have looked like in Wyatt Earp's time. One main dirt street with a Post Office, a Saloon and a real estate office, surrounded by vacant lots proclaiming 'New Housing coming soon!' It was on one such dusty offshoot the we found a beautiful new two-story luxury spec house for less money than it would have taken to lease a apartment in Long Beach for a year. It was, by far, the ritziest place SHE had ever dreamed of, let alone lived in and they were giving it away! She hated it. The girls were implacable, however, and Linda and I moved her stuff in on Christmas Day while everyone else enjoyed their holiday meal at Sis's house. The next news I got was from my landlord, who informed me that he had sold the rental house and the we had one week to move out. This was the perfect opportunity, the girls opined, for us to be handy to help Mother settle into her new digs. We could use the second floor. We could be at her beck and call. We could pay room and board to her for the privilege. The next six months were a whirlwind litany of flaws in the house. The roof leaked. The washer exploded, inundating the marbled entry hall and newly furnished living room. There were angry hornets in the attic crawlspace. The garage flooded whenever it rained. Ditto the backyard which needed an irrigation ditch and the ground was like concrete. The father and son contractors fled to Vegas after a couple of weeks of her constant badgering and were never heard from again. And it was, of course, ALL MY FAULT. The tension inexorably built as we went along but the final Day of Reckoning came, inevitably, as I was out in the back, attempting to repair the rickety fence she'd kicked over in a fit of pique. The kitchen widow slammed open as Helen declared, at the top of her lungs, that I'd better not expect her to pay for those screws! I calmly informed her that I was done here and moved towards the stairs to go up and begin packing my things when she darted around me and prostrated herself squarely in my way. Gingerly climbing over her I began the task of boxing up everything we owned for the third time in under nine months. She had her other son-in-law guarding her as we moved our things out piecemeal in our Honda Civic making for the only apartments in town, a charming spot with vacant-eyed Mexican babies in bulging diapers playing in the road and career dopers blasting 'Suzy Q' at 2:30 in the morning. It was a full two years in paradise before I was able to secure a teaching job in Oregon (our original pick for The Exodus in the first place) but we neither saw nor heard from Helen in all that time, although she was less than a mile away. As we arrived at the cottage we'd selected in the tiny mountain town of our dreams, I had actually begun to believe that I had FINALLY relieved myself of the burden of a completely demented In-Law. I sat down in the first chair I came to, put my feet up on a packing crate, loaded and lit my favorite pipe and poured myself a generous scotch with no ice. Then the phone rang. But that's another story.
It took three years of saving. Three long years at the foundry, taking crap from the “big boss”. Three years of blood, sweat and tears. But I did it. You are really an inspiration to me Peter! Here is how my crazed mind took care of a family! The big cow that I married, (for whatever reason - it was a mistake), and the two goofy looking fat girls which were the product of our long forgotten love life and I would go on a trip to the Florida Everglades. 11,000 square miles of marsh and swamps, 15 blood thirsty mosquitoes per inch...and worse of all, a visit to Aunt Mabel. Aunt Mabel who was never talked about except when her yearly Christmas letter came in the post. The person who insisted we visit (we being my wife and the kids) before she passes. It took about three days for us to drive to the Everglades and it was a nice trip, especially when my wife and the kids were sleeping. There was not too much traffic and the air conditioner did not break down as usual, so I was beginning to think that maybe this vacation may be worth it. Who knows, maybe I would be able to spot a Florida panther, a Bald Eagle or even see a rare painted mule-ear orchid. My dream of tranquility and happy thoughts did not linger too long. Aunt Mabel had a shack, yes, not a home, not a broken down trailer, but a shack. She instantaneously fell in love with the two fat brats and talked to her niece like there was no tomorrow. I was simply ignored. Soon, I found myself being ushered with the rest of the crew on an old and barely large enough to hold us, air boat. It was one of the older ones with a motor that was more noisy then all four engines on a 747 at full throttle. After an hour of sweating in the combination 90 degree and humidity, killing off mosquitoes by the thousands and listening to them scream at each other, and being totally ignored, I broke down. I recall screaming! And then, one by one, I found myself feeding first, the two brats, then my wife, and finally Aunt Mabel to the crocodiles. I guess I should have kept Aunt Mabel alive...11,000 square miles of swamp...and no map to find land.
You have a fertile imagination, Richard. You must bear in mind, however, that every single word of MY story is the utterly unvarnished truth. THAT, I hope, is what makes it so funny.
I do know that my imagination is always in bizarre gear, Peter! I will take you at your word that your stories are true and I would love to have your patience!
You guys have an amazing imagination. How do you put your story telling to good use beside keeping the forum laughing?
Once again, Pat, I must stress that these tales are NOT the product of my imagination. Every terrifying word is The Gospel Truth. In fact, I feel compelled to reveal here that I actually LEFT OUT significant portions of the mind-numbing depravity out of concern for the advanced ages of my readers. As far as other applications for my itch to write about my adventures, alas there are none. I am but a wandering minstrel in cyberspace, with only your enjoyment on my mind.