My parents are big believers in the American dream. Like most of their fellow believers, they have always equated home ownership with securing a tangible piece of that dream. Unfortunately, as a young deaf couple trying to support a family of six on my dad’s meager associate pastor’s salary, their housing options were limited to a few neighborhoods bordering some less-than-family-friendly areas of Rochester, New York. By the time I reached my tween years, I noticed that our neighborhood was transitioning, and not in an upward direction. Once lulled to sleep by the sounds of crickets chirping and birds warbling, the popping of stray gunfire and wailing of police sirens now drowned these hallmarks of nature out. Though I was largely oblivious to the economic implications of the changing landscape, I definitely noticed that my new neighbors were a lot more colorful than they used to be. When some new blood moved in on the other side of my house, I was eager to make a good first impression. Before I could introduce myself, however, one of my new neighbors beat me to the punch.
Late one afternoon, I arrived home from school and hurried upstairs to my room. I threw my book bag on my bed and pressed “play” on my newly acquired compact disc player. I grabbed my brush and began rapping along with my favorite Christian rap group, DC Talk. I was rhyming hard core when I heard a competing beat. After a brief pause, I mentally confirmed that yes, I definitely heard the beat of steel drums coming from somewhere outside. Curious, I stopped rapping, hit the pause button, walked over to my window and peered out. My eyes scanned to and fro and I tried to pinpoint the source of the music. Suddenly, I saw a flash of bare skin through an open window in our neighbor’s house just above my own. The window, like the others in the house, was not equipped with blinds, shades, curtains, or any other fabric intended to ensure privacy. As the music I heard earlier was seemingly coming from that direction, I kept my eyes trained on the window and was mortified to see that the flesh belonged to my neighbor, a mysterious thirty-something woman with a pack-a-day habit and tattoos covering seventy percent of her body. Unfortunately for me, her tattoos did not fully obscure the undulating parts of her chest and mid-section I saw next. Horrified, I immediately spun around and tried to collect my thoughts. My first thought was to tell someone. Someone important. Someone who could make sure no one else was subjected to the gag-inducing scene I had just witnessed. But who? After mentally scrolling through a list of candidates, I settled on the one person whom I knew would share my sense of righteous indignation: my mother (hereinafter referred to as “Syl”).
My shoulders now heavy with the important news I carried on them, I approached Syl in the kitchen and requested an audience. Syl obliged and I proceeded to relate in fast in furious hand gestures the subject of my moral outrage. Predictably, Syl was furious at my neighbor’s inexcusable indiscretion and sprung into action. Or, as I should say, we sprung into action.
Having discharged my whistle-blowing duties, I attempted to leave the room. But before I could get out of arm’s reach, I felt Syl’s hand tighten around my shoulder blade. Twisting my neck around to see what she wanted, Syl signed, “You’re not going anywhere. We’re nipping this problem in the bud RIGHT NOW.” Slowly I realized that she intended for me to be her mouthpiece. My stomach immediately dropped as I realized I would soon be charged with the unenviable task of confronting my naked neighbor. I begged her to drop a note in the neighbor’s mailbox or adopt some similarly non-confrontational course of action, but Syl demanded that we address the issue right then.
And so we marched out the back door, down our driveway, up our neighbor’s lawn and climbed her porch steps before stopping at her front door—a door that Syl proceeded to rapidly and determinedly beat with her fist. I tried to explain that custom dictated that one knock on another’s door no more than three times, but Syl had no use for such meaningless social conventions. After a few seconds passed without an answer, I grew hopeful that my slutty neighbor would not make an appearance and began my transparent and ultimately fruitless attempt to coax Syl off of the neighbor’s porch. I had just convinced Syl to take a step or two back when I heard the screen door hinges squeak and saw the main door open a crack. Before I could stop myself, I looked back, but then quickly tried to spin Syl around before she saw the door. Alas, I was too late. Syl marched back up to the door, excitedly motioning for me to follow. I slid my feet across the splintered wood porch at a glacial pace, eventually making eye contact with the slits glaring at me from the dark crevice between the screen door and doorjamb.
“Yes?” a husky female voice queried.
I dutifully signed “Yes?” to Syl and waited.
Syl proceeded, unleashing her silent fury. As she signed, I spoke, trying desperately to soften the blow, to bring a sort of diplomacy to the situation.
Syl signed: “You have no respect for us. I have two teenage sons. You need to either keep your clothes on or get some curtains!”
I said to the naked neighbor: “We’re your next-door neighbors. Welcome to the neighborhood! Nice house. Though it sure could use some curtains, don’t you think? They’d really add a lot to your home décor.”
Doubtless sensing the disconnect between Syl’s beet red face, foaming mouth, and wild gesticulations and my composed, flat affect, the neighbor opened the door to reveal the same scantily clad woman I’d seen earlier. At this point, though, she was (thankfully) at least sporting a silky robe, albeit one that hit mid-thigh.
“What’s this about?” my neighbor said this time, with a decidedly unkind tone and an angry eyebrow raised in my direction.
Syl looked at me. I looked at the neighbor.
Syl signed, “Did you tell her what I said?”
I, of course, lied and said “Yes.”
I then turned to the neighbor and hissed through gritted teeth, “For the love of God, get some curtains.”
The neighbor leaned forward, cupped her hand around one ear, and said, “Huh?”
Seeing this, Syl all but flew into a deaf rage as she construed the neighbor’s physical gesture as a form of mockery. Before Syl could cut her way through the neighbor’s screen door and stab her, however, I desperately blurted out, “SHE WANTS YOU TO KEEP YOUR CLOTHES ON!”
Unfazed, our tattooed neighbor said, “Tell your mother to get over it” as she shrugged her shoulders and slammed the door in our faces.
“That went well,” I cheerily signed to Syl.
“What did she say?” Syl asked. “Is she going to get curtains or what?”
“She didn’t say,” I responded truthfully, speed walking back to our house, effectively ending the conversation, and praying all the while that our neighbor would move. SOON.
Frozen Sandwiches would like to wish Syl and mothers everywhere a Happy Mothers' Day! In my mother's honor and in recognition of all mothers' apparent need to impart unsolicited advice to their offspring, I offer the following anecdote. Please note that I am not, in any way, making light of the destruction caused by the tornadoes that recently swept across the great State of Alabama. I am only relaying some of the words of wisdom Syl shared with me as one of several tornadoes made its way toward Anniston:
The following is a public service announcement, courtesy of your long lost friends, the Boyd Sisters. It has come to our attention (via an email from Syl) that our stories might have given some of our readers (mostly Syl’s friends) the “wrong impression.” We would like to reiterate here that Phil and Syl were not “bad parents” and that we did not intend to mislead anyone with our semi-hyperbolic accounts of certain childhood events. While we maintain that all of our stories are true, we do, from time to time, take artistic license with certain facts for comedic effect. Any exaggerations are obvious and intended to be as such. Again, the point of our stories is to make our readers feel better about their childhoods by reading about ours, not to lambaste Phil and Syl for their unconventional parenting techniques. Actually, all of the foregoing applies to the stories we’ve posted thus far. But not this one. Syl is completely responsible for…my greatest humiliation.
ses before telling me that I could choose a pattern of my own. I brightened at this gesture of kindness, and strolled up and down each aisle, peering through my glasses and down my nose at each pattern, running my fingers along the material, mentally discounting them as I went along as being “too fancy,” “too adult,” “too scratchy,” or worst of all, “too girly.” I rounded the corner to make my way up the final aisle when the proverbial clouds parted and I saw it: a brilliant red Hawaiian print with an interlocking floral pattern and every color of the rainbow splashed throughout. The Wonderment! The Jubilee! TO BE CONTINUED…
Ah, the family road trip. Nothing sparks more feelings of nostalgia than packing up the car for an exciting new adventure and location. Like most married couples who are contraceptively challenged, our deaf parents (Phil and Syl) considered air travel a frivolous expenditure for our large family and opted to drive anywhere and everywhere they deemed vacation-worthy. We were told that spending five out of seven vacation days in our 1989 red and white striped Ford Club Wagon was part of the adventure instead of a penny-pinching tactic, and camping in the great outdoors was much more enjoyable than sleeping in a stodgy old hotel room. Phil and Syl stretched their dollars even further by ensuring that our trips coincided with the closest Baptist tent revival or bible camp.
No destination was ever within an eight hour radius of our house since everyone knows outdoor Baptist worship events must be held in a godforsaken part of the Catskill Mountains. Therefore, Boyd Family road trips consisted of extremely long hours in the car with Syl carrying on lively one-sided conversations in order to keep Phil awake while he drove. More often than not, we children fell asleep in the back of the van after hours of watching Syl gesticulate wildly to Phil as he tried to both watch her and the road. Syl’s entertaining rants most often began as thinly veiled concerns over various church members’ spiritual growth then moved into the far more unproven rumors surrounding each member.
My parents are big believers in the American dream. Like most of their fellow believers, they have always equated home ownership with securing a tangible piece of that dream. Unfortunately, as a young deaf couple trying to support a family of six on my dad’s meager associate pastor’s salary, their housing options were limited to a few neighborhoods bordering some less-than-family-friendly areas of Rochester, New York. By the time I reached my tween years, I noticed that our neighborhood was transitioning, and not in an upward direction. Once lulled to sleep by the sounds of crickets chirping and birds warbling, the popping of stray gunfire and wailing of police sirens now drowned these hallmarks of nature out. Though I was largely oblivious to the economic implications of the changing landscape, I definitely noticed that my new neighbors were a lot more colorful than they used to be. When some new blood moved in on the other side of my house, I was eager to make a good first impression. Before I could introduce myself, however, one of my new neighbors beat me to the punch.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame often evokes images of a misunderstood creature with a heart of gold. He leads a lonely and meaningless existence until he meets and falls in love with the beautiful Esmeralda. Their one-sided love story ends tragically when Esmeralda is hung on suspicion of being a witch, and Quasimodo is so overcome with grief that he lies beside her corpse and starves himself to death. The whole tale is incredibly macabre (nothing like the Disney version, people—read the book!) and loosely parallels an experience I had as a younger lady.
