My Family | Slow Death | Corporate Heat Lamp

My Family

Some children are born into families that gather around the kitchen table at dinnertime to eat a well-balanced meal and share with one another their many little amusing anecdotes. Dad accidentally missed a button on his dress shirt today and he and his colleagues had a good chuckle. Mom had a run in her stockings so long, that, I swear if it was any longer, somebody would've noticed. Little Sally heard the cutest little joke about a cute little Disney character and Little Johnny wrote the cutest little story about the cutest little puppy that lost its owner, but eventually, with the guide of Jesus' glowing light, found his way back to his cute little home. There are no arguments, only discussions and shouting is something reserved for celebrating Mom winning first prize in the bi-monthly neighborhood bake-off. The ideal American family mold – one girl, one boy, church on Sundays, family night on Saturdays, Mom's knitting group on Wednesdays, Dad's troop meetings on Fridays and dinner at the kitchen table every night. This is not my family. We took that mold and molded it into something of our own. The Lyons family mold wasn't pretty, but it was pretty damn unique – an extraordinary mold impervious to counterfeit.

I have a mom, a dad, an older sister, a younger sister, a brother-in-law and a niece. This is my immediate family. We're all dysfunctionals functioning just fine.

My mom is rational and even-tempered, the complete opposite of most women I know. I used to think rational thought escaped with a woman's first menstruation. Logic was replaced by hormones and mood swings... and nice looking tits. This seemingly sturdy woman (I'm referring to mental sturdiness. This woman still belongs to the double-digit weight club) devolves into an emotional mess given the right mixture of wine and family strife. She is the rock of the family, the source of stability and wisdom.

I have a dad whose insatiable pinky constantly violates his crusty nostrils. I used to think his left hand was an extension of his nose, some unfortunate birth defect. If this man isn't at work or out with friends, he's in his sagging BVDs worn paper thin from his relentless fecal winds. His contagious laugh sounds like a mallard being screwed by a bull. He is a walking comedy show; if you don't laugh at his convoluted stories or hackneyed jokes, you're sure to bust a gut listening to him laugh at himself.

My brother-in-law is a true individual. This man eats like he was the bitch in prison who had all his food taken from him. All the food groups formed an alliance against Brian claiming they'd be endangered if he continued at his current pace. Brian is currently married to my older sister, Kelley. If he were still single, he'd be living in a place so disgusting, rats and roaches would look for a cleaner place to live. This slovenly food-inhaler also happens to be one of the more generous men you'll ever meet, a man devoted to fun and family... and food.

Brian is also prone to lapses in judgment; this explains his decision to marry my older sister, Kelley. If the world were a perfect place, Kelley would be miserable. My beloved sister thrives on human error like mushrooms thrive on cow shit. There are times when Kelley needs something to complain about, which makes Brian a perfect fit. From his shriveled willie to his janitorial ineptitude, Kelley has a lifetime of complaining one pillow away. All the incessant nagging aside, Kelley is an incredibly perceptive woman with a strong sense of right and wrong. And she's an exceptional mother to her son and daughter, Connor and Hayley. Kelley is one of those people everyone loves, somebody you'd love to hate….if she wasn't so damn loveable.

My niece, Hayley, is beautiful, brilliant and behaves perfectly. Any comments to the contrary will be met with gruesome violence. The same goes for my nephew.
Then there's Jessica, the younger sister. She's a chip off of Kelley's block. This young lady can bitch and moan with the best of them. Watching Jessica and Dad interact is like watching a bad episode of Jerry Springer – yelling, screaming, finger pointing, wild accusations, verbal sparring, throwing shit. The only difference is Jessica isn't a toothless transvestite blowing our neighbors chimp and Dad isn't a feces-slinging necrophiliac jealous of the neighbor's chimp. These two will argue about the sodium content in pickle juice and the technical meaning of the phrase "going out" – you know, important shit. Jessica, like her brilliant brother, is destined for great things. She has a gift for poetry and the passion to make it great. She just needs to channel that passion into her writing, not our father.

You may be thinking to yourself, what makes this family of yours so original? I don't have a short response to that question. I have the very brief descriptions I just provided and a story, a story that captures the essence of this family. Three of the people just described (mom, dad, older sister) and myself are the players in this memorable tale. It's a good story. I'm reminded of a friend of mine who used to say, "Anything you do is morally justified if it results in a good story." Actually, he still says this. Also, this friend of mine is actually me. I rather like that moral philosophy despite its many inherent flaws. I digress. Back to the story. This "incident", as I refer to it, happened to me. Well, it really happened to many people, but I was the one who experienced the greatest impact.

Southeast Texas is a giant sauna in the summer time. With temperatures averaging in the mid to upper 90s and the humidity hovering around 90%, Houstonians prefer to spend their summer days either in water or indoors. Retrieving the newspaper from the front yard in the morning can generate enough sweat to saturate the ass-end of your nice khakis, leaving a nicely drenched butt-ring that would make the most ass-hungry prison inmate think twice about sodomy. In other words, it's fucking hot. Well, I played little league soccer in the summers when I was a kid. One summer afternoon, after a grueling tournament in Southeast Houston, all of the soccer parents decided to take all the little soccer athletes (I'm being kind when I say athletes. Some of these kids lacked the skill and coordination to piss in a toilet.) to a nearby water park to celebrate a successful tournament. Naturally, my soccer buddies and I were ecstatic. I nearly pissed myself I was so excited. I even experienced my first memorable erection. That's how excited I was. After the horror that ensued, I'm surprised I ever experienced another erection. Girls and booze eventually replaced the excitement of water parks.

In any event, we all arrived primed to conquer every slide in the park. We weren't afraid. Hell, we were soccer players. We had bumps and bruises and we only cried if someone kicked us really, really hard in the shin. Sometimes we cried when we lost, or wet the bed, or farted audibly in class and we occasionally cried when our parents or a teacher or a coach or another parent yelled at us. Other than that, we were hard-core men! These water slides may have scared the timid little 10 year old who thought recess was a sport, but to a seasoned eleven-year-old soccer stud, these petty slides weren't shit!

As soon as we walked in, my teammates and I began sizing up the water slides. We all agreed that none of the slides were scary. They were all gay and only babies and fairies would be scared of these girly slides.

In all honesty, most of the slides offered very little in the way of excitement. There were, however, three adjacent slides that made even the most courageous brass-balled stud of the bunch, me, a little nervous. They were very high, very fast and very steep.
Well, my buddies and I jumped on our mats and began racing down these slides. It was fun the first few times but the thrill quickly faded. This place had nothing left to offer so our only option was to improve what we had. How could we go faster? We needed more people.

At the time, my father was wearing a hairpiece. This was his way of dealing with his mid-life crisis. Some men buy cars, some chase younger women, some have plastic surgery and some realize they're gay. My dad read an ad about some "super" hairpiece that looked and felt like real hair and bought the damn thing. It was a weave for desperate white men, a chunk of fake hair woven into one's real hair. In addition, this fucking breakthrough in technology would not come off your head if a tugboat tried to pull it off. It was super, a super lapse in judgment and super embarrassing for the children of any father desperate enough to use it. Believe it or not, this is an important part of the story.

Back to the water slides...

We needed more speed. Having just learned about Isaac Newton and gravity, I realized gravity loved heavy shit, so we placed my dad's fat ass on the front of the mat. My mom straddled him from behind so that her stomach was pressed up against his back. She tightly wrapped her arms around his upper torso. Kelley, my older sister, was sitting behind my mom and I was sitting behind my sister. We were all locked together forming a human missile. The lifeguard gave us a little push and we were off...

We were off our fucking rockers for thinking this was a good idea. In about three seconds we reached terminal velocity. About three seconds after that I think we broke the sound barrier (that would explain the sonic boom). Three seconds later, I think I shit my swim trunks, and soon after that I think we hit the speed of light and traveled back in time. I saw Isaac Newton and all he could do was shake his head and say, "You dumb mother-fuckers"...

Hitting the water at very high speeds is not much different from hitting a steel wall. When the U.S.S. Dumbass Lyons Family hit the water, it was an ugly lesson in inertia. I liken us to a family of insects flying against traffic at a NASCAR race. We made it exciting but ended up smacking a windshield.

When we hit the water it hurt... bad. It felt like someone had slammed my head in a car door. I've never had anyone slam my head in a car door, but I imagine it feels like hitting water at warp speed with three other people attached to you.

Luckily, after I hit the water, instinct took over and I struggled to the surface for air and limped to shallow water. My ears were ringing and my vision was foggy from the impact. With my vision blurred, I noticed streaks of colors surrounding the pool area where we crash landed. As my vision slowly cleared, I realized the streaks of colors were the players and their parents. They were yelling things down at me but the intense ringing in my ears muffled their words. Then I realized, I'm the only one standing!

I quickly turned around to see if anyone else had surfaced. My vision was still blurry but my hearing was quickly coming back. A figure emerged from the urine filled water at the base of the slide and laboriously made its ways to the shallow water. As my eyes gradually focused, I realized it was my father. As he was lumbering towards the shallow water, I could hear him moaning in agony. He sounded like a dying cow. There was something terribly wrong with him. I could see his right hand clutching the top of his head, but his face was covered by/with something. I remember thinking, how the hell did dad get black seaweed on his face. Keep in mind, I still couldn't see very well. I also remember sensing a general feeling of uneasiness among all the spectators. What the hell was everyone mumbling about? So my dad got some shit on his face. Who cares? Then my brain decided to quit protecting me and enabled my eyes to focus. My father's pain quickly became my emotional torment.

The black seaweed consuming my dad's face was his NASA engineered hairpiece. Upon smashing into the pool area, a surge of water rushed under the hairpiece, ripping it from his scalp and taking with it chunks of his own hair. His hairpiece not only robbed him of his dignity, it robbed him of some of the little hair he had left. I love irony. To be honest, at that point in time, I could give a shit about irony. It would take several years before I could see the humor in that day.

On with the story...

My lovely father was in obvious pain. I was obviously embarrassed. I could feel my friends and their parents staring at us, trying desperately not to laugh. I pictured them in their mini vans driving home laughing about the ridiculous Lyons family. I pictured them saying things like:

"I thought we were screwed up before I saw that family."

And

"Poor Jimmy must've been so embarrassed."

And

"Jimmy is such a dork. I can't believe I was friends with him."

And

"What possessed that man to wear that awful hairpiece?"

And

"Jimmy is destined to be a loser."

I couldn't say anything. I was trying to make myself invisible, but failing miserably. My dad just kept gingerly touching his scalp where the hair had been ripped out, his hairpiece still covering his face, holding on to a few persistent follicles. After a moment I noticed my mom and sister in neck high water laughing hysterically at my father. My dad slowly turned around to address his wife and daughter and said with growing rage, "This hurts, dammit!"

For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why they were laughing. I wanted to grab my sister by her throat and scream, "Everyone here knows that's your father, buttface!" I was eleven and "buttface" was a terribly insulting thing to say. I wanted to grab my mom and beg her to stuff me back in her womb. I wanted to beat up everyone of my teammates for the laughter they'd eventually share at my expense. I wanted to hide, I wanted to kill, I wanted to maim, I wanted to scream. I wanted to do all these things, but all I could do was stare at my father.

My mom, sensing my humiliation, walked over to me in the knee high water to offer some comfort. My sister remained in the deeper water, giggling at our dad. My sister has no idea how close she came to getting choked to death that day. Anyway, this surge of emotions was overwhelming me. Eleven-year-old kids typically don't handle embarrassment very well. I was no exception. I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. Don't cry, Pussy, I remember thinking. Crying will only make it worse. So, I managed to control the tears, that is, until my mom tried to comfort me.

I know what you're probably thinking. Once your mom put her arms around you, you just turned to putty and the tears started flowing. I admit, this has happened before. Moms have a way of luring a son's pride to the closet door and letting the tears out. On that day, my mom's loving arms didn't push me over the edge. It was her tits.
That's right, her fucking tits! My beloved mother's bikini top was around her waist... and she had no idea. Actually, I didn't notice right away. At this point I was staring out into space trying to guide my mind to a secure place. I didn't know my mom was approaching me. I heard a collective gasp to my left; then I heard my dad start laughing. He had moved the rug from his eyes and noticed his fucking wife walking topless towards her mortified son. At first I assumed he was laughing at himself. Then I saw him point at something to my right. I looked over and there she was, my mother, obliviously showing off her itty-bitty titties to every friend I had. It's not like she had half a nipple showing or a piece of an areola exposed or pubic hair billowing out of her bikini bottom (I may vomit). She had both breasts entirely uncovered and it appeared to the uniformed innocent bystander like she didn't give a damn.

Finally, she looked down and realized what my dad was laughing about. The audience was stunned. Some parents were shielding their kids' eyes. Some were desperately trying not to laugh. Some just stared at us. My mom may have inadvertently forced some parents to have the "sex talk" with their little ones a few years earlier than intended. They brought their children to a water park to have some innocent fun and see some colorful theme park characters. Instead they saw a man with a dangerous wig and a pair of forty-one-year-old A-cups.

Parents embarrass their kids. It's a part of growing up. However, most parents don't humiliate their children on such an awesome level. When I saw my mom's tits, I started crying. I wept. I checked my manhood at the door and wept like a two-year-old girl with a skinned knee and a shitty diaper. My embarrassment was so profound, so enormous, adding a little more embarrassment didn't really matter. So I cried.

For years after that day I endured the torment of my soccer buddies. Any time we talked about girls or tits or sex, invariably, my mom was mentioned:

"Dude, look at that girl's melons."

"Are they as big as Jimmy's mom's?"

The common term "second base" (i.e. feeling up a girl) was replaced by "Jimmy's mom." For example:

"How far did you get with that girl last night?"

"Well, I got as far as Jimmy's mom, but she wouldn't let me go any further."

That is a taste of what I had to deal with for seven years. Eventually we all went to separate colleges and the memory of my mom's tits was consumed by grain alcohol and bong resin.

My friends have tucked that memory away, but it lives with me every day. Over time, I've been able to remove myself from the "incident" and imagine how it would've looked as an outside observer... and I laugh my fucking ass off... fourteen years later.