BASKETBALL SEASON IN JUNIOR HIGH

Part of a series of stories I wrote while living in Wisconsin in the 80s
 

My oldest child entered seventh grade this year, and our first year of Junior High School has been an exercise in problem solving.  Take, for instance, basketball season.

My daughter and the rest of the seventh grade cheerleaders have been wearing their mini skirt cheerleading uniforms to the bus stop in sub zero weather.  They say they have to wear their uniforms on the days the 7^th grade boys have a ball game.  Something about school spirit, they claim.

One seventh grader astutely declared that she thought the boys should have to wear their basketball shorts on game days.  Wouldn’t that be fair?  The boys could shiver and turn blue, just like the girls.  And the girls could whistle at the boys’ legs in the hall. 

I saw some older and obviously wiser cheerleaders wearing sweat pants under their mini skirts last week.  I almost suggested that to my daughter.  But this is the last week of basketball season anyway, and why start an argument with an adolescent?  There’s no future in it!

So I ended basketball season in zip-lipped relief. All of us parents of cheerleaders and basketball players will again find our children practicing their music lessons, getting to bed on time, and possibly even doing their homework.  Grades will improve and moms’ and dads’ dispositions will smooth out.  Until the next junior high problem hits.  Wonder what it will be?

SCOFFLAWS

Part of a series of stories I wrote while living in Wisconsin in the 80s

When you look at the hard times farmers are having and the layoffs people are suffering, doesn’t it just make your blood boil to see corporate executives who are too stingy to pay their traffic ticket fines?

I saw in NEWSWEEK that there’s a sting operation in Chicago to nab the city’s “most egregious corporate scofflaws.”  I looked that up and it means remarkably bad traffic law violators.  Some of those corporate executives owe $200 parking ticket fines. 

I must confess that I have stretched my luck a little, too, when it comes to traffic violations.  Like the time I made a U-turn at a major intersection in Milwaukee in front of a policeman.  I told him, in my best Southern drawl, that you could do that in North Carolina.  And you can.  I almost got away with it in Wisconsin, too!

But come on.  How long does it take to write a $2.00 check for a parking ticket?  [I did say this was written in 1987.]  These scofflaws need to be held accountable.  It’s us regular citizens who are taking up the slack for them.

The city of Chicago has put an extra punch into their sting operation on corporate scofflaws.  They’re going to send in their income tax auditors. 

Bzzzzz……..Sting!

TIPS FOR JUNIOR HIGH PLEBES

Part of a series of stories I wrote while living in Wisconsin in the 80s

During a unit about friendships, the eighth graders at church composed the following letter to upcoming seventh graders:

Dear Sixth Graders,

Now that you have graduated from sixth grade into Junior High School, we, your older and wiser eighth grade friends, want to protect you from a few seventh grade pitfalls - in the name of friendship and all in good sport, or course:

·        Don’t start rumors about eighth graders.

·        Keep your nose out of eighth graders’ business.

·        When you go out for cheerleading and basketball, be kind to all team members.

·        In Sunday School, don’t goof around.  [The Sunday School teacher had a little input here.]

·        Don’t do your own seventh grade dance, because the eighth graders won’t come.

·        Eighth graders pick when, where, and what the dances are about.  You’ll get to do it next year.

·        Don’t give away your locker combination.

·        Keep your locker clean so Mr. Kiener won’t give you a warning.

·        Don’t chew gum in Mr. Eddy’s class.

·        Don’t fall asleep in Mr. Eddy’s class.

·        Become friends with your parents.  They act different when you’re in Junior High.  Use adult messages.  If you want to go to a movie, don’t say, “Can I? Please? Everybody’s going!”  Instead, say, “I would really like to see this interesting movie.  We’ll car pool.”  Another example:  Don’t say, “Everybody’s wearing this.”  Your parents will know that’s a bunch of bull.  Instead, say, “I’ll pay for half.”  That’s an adult message.

·        Be friends with people you like, even if they’re ugly.

These are the facts and figures of being in Junior High.

Yours truly,

The Jr. High Sunday School Class of ‘87

TAXI CITY

Part of a series of stories I wrote while living in Wisconsin in the 80s

“YIPPEE! This taxi is off duty!”  I silently screamed.  My hubby had gotten home early and he had offered to drive the daughter to the movie.  That meant picking up two extra riders, naturally.  Rule #1 in Taxi City:  Children must never go anywhere without bringing friends along.

He asked what time the movie started.  “7:00.”  He asked me what time he had to pick up the friends.  “Don’t know.”  He asked how long it would take to get to the movie via friends’ houses.  “39 minutes.  That’s one minute to the first house, one minute stop, six minutes to second house, one minute stop, seventeen minutes to movie, one minute stop, twelve minutes home.”  Rule #2 in Taxi City:  Mother’s mental map and calculator must be available at all times.

He asked if I wanted to ride along.  I bit my tongue and did not say, “Are you crazy?”  Instead, I said, “No thanks.  I have to wait for our son’s friend’s mother’s taxi service to bring him home.”  Also thinking, “Thank goodness it’s her turn.”  Rule #3 in Taxi City:  Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

Hubby said he might shop for a lawn mower on his way home.  He knew I wanted a different one than he wanted.  Now I understood his generous offer to play taxi driver.  Rule #4 in Taxi City:  When it comes to taxi drivers’ benefits, anything goes.  It’s squatters rights.  He catches on fast.

SCATTER BRAIN

Part of a series of stories I wrote while living in Wisconsin in the 80s

I have been plagued with a bad memory all my life.  I’ve even been called a “scatter brain.”  Now I’m plagued with scatter brained children.  When it all hits in the same day, I feel like I’m trying to fight back Lake Michigan.

One morning before school last week my son Fred asked me where his coat was.  He had asked me where his watch was the night before.  He had asked me where the turtle’s worms were, too.  I wondered how he thought I knew all these things, even though I did happen to know that his Tae Kwon Do pants were at City Hall.

Fred planned to ride his bike that day.  He looked in the garage and it was gone.  He asked me where it was, like I had been riding it or something.  He found it where he himself had hidden it while playing hide.

Then my daughter Susan said she wanted to watch the VCR tape she had forgotten to watch the night before, and would I drive her to school late today.  At the bus stop, she asked, “Will you feed my turtle today?”  The turtle we had bought the day before was on a hunger strike, and I got a mental image of myself coaxing it to eat a worm.  I replied NO, but I would check in on it from time to time to see if it was upside down.

Fred said he owed the school for the lunch he forgot to take yesterday, and Susan said she owed for the milk ticket she forgot.

After they left for school, I found the check I wrote to the school and gave Fred to put in his pocket.  I threw out the pizza I forgot to refrigerate overnight and fed the dog, who hadn’t come home in time for bed and ended up sleeping outside.  I searched for the past due library book, the Christmas gift I kept forgetting to exchange, and my list of phone calls I forgot to make the day before.

I try to help my kids overcome forgetfulness by making them take the consequences for their forgotten duties.  That reminds me, I forgot to make Fred go to bed 15 minutes early last night for forgetting to clean his room.

I think it’s hereditary.  I think it’s a losing battle, too.

LABELS

Part of a series of stories I wrote while living in Wisconsin in the 80s

I loved it when someone in the audience asked Burt Reynolds why he was wearing a green shirt that didn’t match his outfit and he answered, “It was my last clean shirt.” 

We are judged by our uniforms.  Put on a ski mask and you’re either a sportsman or a burglar.  Put on a wet suit, a cowboy hat, or a suit and tie, and you’re transformed into a role to play.  Put on a designer label and you’re saying, “I’m gullible and will pay anything for this label.”  I broke down and bought one once.  I still have the jeans, but that “Gloria Vanderbilt” label on my butt drives me crazy.  I’m giving free advertising to that company.  Don’t they know that their advertisement might be turning people away, depending on whose butt it’s on?

I guess I just don’t understand labels.  I have to look at the price tag to know if an item is an expensive brand or a cheap one.  Other shoppers just look at the label and automatically know the price.  Do they go to school for this or what?

Now that I’ve aired my insecurities, you can go ahead and label me “mixed up mouse.”  But don’t ask me to wear it!

RAT TAIL

Part of a series of stories I wrote while living in Wisconsin in the 80s

This is a tale of a tail – a rat tail that is!  My ten-year-old son Fred has grown his tail halfway down to his waist.  Rat tails are long sections of hair that people allow to grow indefinitely.  I don’t know what makes them eventually decide to cut them off.  I hope to find out soon. 

We went to Grandma’s house for Christmas.  When I saw my nephew walk in with one side of his hair sticking up like a rooster comb and the other side down in his eyes (and an earring in one ear!) I quit worrying about my son’s rat tail right then and there!

We adults went about our business and tried not to notice the boys’ hair again until one evening after dinner.  I had found my husband’s high school yearbook and left it on the table – after reading all the notes from his girlfriends, of course.  The kids started pouring over it to find their dad’s football pictures and graduation pictures.  They checked out every detail of the strange prom dresses and crew cuts.  I hardly noticed them until I heard John (the one with the rooster comb) say, “Boy!  They sure had some weird hair styles back then!”

Fred tried several times that week to get his hair to look like John’s.  It’s hard to do, though, if you aren’t willing to cut off your tail!

IRONING

Part of a series of stories I wrote while living in Wisconsin in the 80s

I never find the time to iron.  I don’t mind ironing.  I sort of like it.  It is my alone time when I can smooth out things in my mind while smoothing out the wrinkles.  I love to see, smell, and feel a smooth, clean, hot piece of material under my fingers.  It’s one of those satisfying jobs that gives visible results – even if nobody else notices, and even though you have to do it again next wash day.

Unfortunately, I don’t do it again next wash day.   I shove it into my hiding cabinet above the washing machine and tell myself I’ll do it right after breakfast.  Then lunch.  Then supper.  Then I say Saturday would be a good day.  Then Sunday.  And so on.

Last night I kissed my daughter good night and spied her un-ironed shirt that had been in my hiding cabinet.  It was spread flat on the floor with two large books on top.  Seemed like she thought she could press it overnight.  Let her think that.  If I enlightened her, I’d have to do it right then. 

It must not have worked because she didn’t wear it to breakfast.  I found it in a corner of her room after she left for school.  I decided to leave it there.  It could wait there just as well as in the hiding cabinet.  Perhaps she would get inspired and actually iron it herself.  We mothers do have our fantasies, you know.

As I pondered the idea, I heard the dryer turn off.  I ran to grab my son’s Tae Kwon Do uniform and fold it before the wrinkles set in.  I fantasized about ironing it.  (And husbands think we fantasize about other things when they’re away!)  The Tae Kwon Do instructor would have ironed it.  In fact, when my son forgot to stuff it into his bag after class last week, his instructor took it home, washed, and ironed it.  What a guy.  (Now there’s a fantasy.)

Maybe I’ll iron that uniform after all.  Right after supper tonight.

CHICAGO

Part of a series of stories I wrote while living in Wisconsin in the 80s

This country mouse visited the city last week.  Chicago!  And I didn’t see anything “toddling” about it even though Sinatra’s tune played in my mind’s ear all day long.

No, Chicago doesn’t toddle any more.  It takes full, confident strides, as if it has a life of its own.  My mission on this, my first trip ever to Chicago, was to become semi-skilled at moving from point A to point B without getting mugged.

I took my kids there on the first day of their spring break.  The event my teenage daughter longed for finally happened, but not until after we had visited the Shedd Aquarium, the Art Institute, and the Sears Tower.  Finally, I said the magic words:  “All right.  Let’s go for lunch.”  I wondered what Hardrock Cafe was like, but I had received good advice before leaving home that it was a safe place to go.  Earlier in the day, a taxi cab driver had told us it was so expensive they had valets there to park your car for you.  I gasped.  He apparently thought we were out of our minds because it was just a hamburger joint with $5.00 hamburgers, and didn’t we know that we could get a hamburger cheaper at McDonalds?

Upon arriving at Hardrock Café without a car and therefore without having to worry about how much you are supposed to tip a valet, I gasped again.  The place was decked out in my language – 50s memorabilia!  Platinum records on the walls.  Old fashioned pinball machines clanging everywhere.  Fifties music blaring. Waitresses dressed in 50s uniforms flitting to and fro across the room.  The focal point was a motorcycle perched on a ceiling beam. 

The hamburgers were indeed delicious, but the cabbie was wrong.  They cost $6.00 instead of $5.00.

COMMUNICATION CRAZIES

Part of a series of stories I wrote while living in Wisconsin in the 80s

I’m not sure I understand everything I know about this, as my father in law used to say.  But sometimes our family gets the “Communication Crazies.”

All I said was that liquor goes to your head faster if you drink on an empty stomach, at which my thirteen year old daughter remarked that it would do it even faster if you stood on your head.

The Communication Crazies are especially funny when they catch you by surprise.  At dinner my husband, speaking about a grade point average, said, “I’m sure it has to be high to get honors,” to which our daughter responded, “It ought to be!   You put enough Tabasco on it!”  

Sometimes Communication Crazies are embarrassing.  I had been sifting through information at the library for two hours when I went to the desk for help.  The harder I tried to speak, the more I stuttered.  I finally said, “I’ve been reading so long I can’t talk.”  Having accomplished speaking that complete sentence, I left.

Sometimes the Communication Crazies hit just because you are talking too fast.  My son describes it thus:  “If someone is saying something sixty thousand miles an hour and they don’t make sense, you pick up your camera and tell them, ‘I’m looking inside your head at your brain, and it looks like a double exposure.’”

Some things come out backwards when you try to communicate them.  Last week a girl at a financial service company was trying to explain the economics of bid and asked prices of gold certificates.  She said, “You just have to buy high and sell low.”  I thought, “Yes, that’s what my husband says I do all the time.”

Communications really get crazy when you throw in a dash of Southern accent.  I went to a pancake breakfast at the American Legion.  As I approached, I wondered if the people standing outside the door were coming or going, so I asked, “Is this the line?”  The answer I got was, “No, this is the Legion.”  ……That’s okay.  It took me a few minutes, too.

BEST BALL TOURNAMENT

Part of a series of stories I wrote while living in Wisconsin in the 80s

I swore I would never try to hit another golf ball.  However, when my kids joined the junior golfing league, they enjoyed it so much that they asked me to take them to the driving range every week.  Rather than watch from the car, I chose to whack at a few golf balls myself.  To my surprise I hit them pretty well,

My kids encouraged me, but they seemed to sense that they shouldn’t push the matter.  My husband snickered and recalled that I had told him to shoot me if he ever saw me with a golf club in my hand again.  My old golf lesson buddy (who did learn to play and now golfs with her husband) stared curiously when my family told her I was interested in golf again.

One day an invitation came in the mail.  Did I want to play in a “best ball” tournament?  My husband explained how it works.  Everybody in your foursome hits the ball, and the best ball of the four gets to stay where it is while the other three golfers collect their balls (if they can find them) and take them to the spot where the best ball lies.  From there, they all take another crack at it.

I figured I could do that – until they told me the rules stated that we had to use at least three of my drives.  I cannot make a driver (that’s the longer club with the wood end on it) come in contact with the ball.  I arrived early to practice, thinking perhaps my drive would have miraculously changed.  Not!  On my first swing, the club sailed twenty yards.  The ball stayed on the tee. 

What a relief when they said I could drive with an iron instead of a driver.  (Also relieved that they didn’t kick me off the golf course.)  Our foursome won the Soggy Balls trophy for the most balls in the pond.  I put mine on the mantle beside my son’s huge trophy from the junior tournament.   

While living in Wisconsin from 1985 until 1988,

I started writing stories about my experiences there. 

The next series of Hugh Mouse Tells Stories

will give you many of these stories. 

SNOW!  NOT AGAIN!

Part of a series of stories I wrote while living in Wisconsin in the 80s

When my husband George told me he had a job opportunity in Wisconsin, I agreed to move there.  I knew nothing about Wisconsin.  Our son (second grade at the time) asked if they spoke English there.  (Turns out they spoke better English than I did.)  I decided to make the most of it.  Perhaps I would learn to like cold weather.  And white Christmases would be nice.

On our first house hunting trip we landed in Milwaukee in a blizzard.  George could read my mind as it did its female thing and changed.  I stared at the people at the airport to see if they were out of their minds.  I marveled that they were talking and laughing like nothing was happening outside.  My fears started subsiding but they quickly heightened at the car rental counter where I overheard a story about some ladies getting stranded in the snow and getting frostbite, and how it was a good thing their lungs didn’t freeze.  Huh?  I didn’t know that could even happen!

Another house hunting trip brought us to Green Lake on the weekend in 1985 when chill factors went to 80 below zero!  We moved in March.  As the spring thaw advanced, I noticed a smell of cow manure in the air.  “This is Wisconsin?” I wondered.  Later I learned that the smell only lasts long enough for the spring spreading.  It turned out to be a wonderful summer, except for the tornado. 

Then the snow started.  In November.  Snow was still a novelty for me, and I liked it.  But by January it was two feet deep – and that was just in our driveway.  I was desperate for warmth.  George took me to the tropical dome at Mitchell Park in Milwaukee.  It made my pain worse. 

I did learn to love the winters, and the wonderful little town of Green Lake.  But I didn’t thaw out until we moved south again!

CAT IN THE WINDOW

I walk past Mojo and look over at him.  He turns his head and looks at me.  Soon, I walk by again and we look at each other again.  He’s sitting under the window.  He thinks he’s cool, but I know what’s really going on in that cat brain.  He’s wondering whether to jump up onto the window sill again. 

You see, I raised the blinds a few minutes ago, but not the window.  Then I went around the bed to open the other blinds when (and I’d give my soul to have seen this) I heard a thud.  I couldn’t see Mojo, but I did see some saliva on the window glass. 

Honest, I really did try hard to stifle the howling laughter that was exploding inside me, even while wondering if Mojo had broken his nose.  I just couldn’t help it.  Finally I gained a little composure and tiptoed around the bed to see if Mojo was lying unconscious on the floor. 

He was just sitting there.  He looked at me as if to say, “So what are you looking at?” or maybe, “I meant to do that.”  I raised the window for him, still heaving with strangling giggles. 

He’s still sitting on the floor looking at the window now.  I’m sure he thinks I did this intentionally and is plotting his revenge.