Yeah, before she was a Della Piana, she was a Catanzano. That was my mom. She was born in Somerville, Massachusetts on March 26, 1910, and she was one of ten children (two of them died as babies). My mom passed away in Medford, Massachusetts on February 19, 1992 from the ravaging effects of colon and liver cancer. In the 82-plus years she spent on this earth, she left her mark on all of us. Even today, people remember her and tell me that she was something else. She was. She was always her own person, that’s for sure. I prefer to call her a piece of work. My sisters and I have joked for many years that my dad had to be a saint. We were convinced that she wore the pants in the family, but we also were very clear that my dad adored my mom. I am eternally thankful that I had her in my life for 37 years.

Although she was a graduate of Burdett’s Business School and worked at J.L. Hammett Company (yes, the oldest school supply business), my mother was a stay-at-home mom the bulk of her life. That changed on August 8, 1963 when my dad died of cancer at the age of 52. It was a shock to us. He was originally treated for arthritis before they found out he had lung cancer. He was gone in three months. She was up that hospital every single day and night with him until he passed away. My mother had to go back to work after that. She worked at a donut shop across the street from my house so she could keep an eye on me. I had my own house key at nine so I could let myself in while my older sisters were at school.

My mother was a tough woman. She was the first woman in Everett to wear slacks. Somewhere at my sister Mamie’s house there’s a photo of her walking down the steps of some building in Everett in a pair of pants. She pulled us all through after my dad died, even though she and I were forced to live with relatives after my sisters were married. First, we lived with my Uncle Tony and his family (including 14 children) in Medford for a while. That was a blast, actually. I was really close to my cousins. After that, we moved into an apartment with nasty Auntie Buddy for many years. That eventually came to an end because she was intolerable to live with. Once I was old enough to move into an apartment, my mom moved in with my sister Mamie, her husband Skip and their three children. She lived there for 18 years.

“Mrs. Della Piana, DSS calling…”

I think I was a shock to my mother’s system. I really do have a pushing-the-envelope mentality. I’ve been like that since I was a kid. She really didn’t know how to handle me. I pulled some really unbelievable stuff, like telling her I had tonsillitis and taking 23 consecutive days off from school. The incredible thing was she listened to me for so long. What mother lets her kid take 23 days off without checking the situation out with a pediatrician? When she finally did that, he proceeded to tell her that I was basically full of shit. After that, all hell broke loose. She was absolutely pissed, chasing me around the house with a broom.When I tried to hide under the table, she turned the thing around and started poking me with the broom stick.  She was determined to make me pay, I’m convinced.

And then there’s the little matter of my Aunt Buddy’s car. The three of us were living on Riverside Avenue in Medford at the time and my aunt had a 1964 Chevy Nova. When the two of them left for work, I’d take the spare keys and drive that mother around the block. I had to be about maybe 12 or 13 years old at the time. I was sitting pretty until one of my nosy neighbors walked over to the house and told my mom I was driving the car. I got whacked with a frying pan for that one, but she never told Auntie Buddy about that little incident.

She also hated peach fuzz. Drove her nuts. We had this telephone table my mom would sit at when she talked on the phone. I’d wait until she’d be in the middle of a conversation, then I’d grab a peach from the refrigerator and rub it down her arm. She’d immediately throw the phone in the air and yell, “You little bastard!” Then, she’d chase me around the house, forgetting completely about the person on the other end of the line. It was like waving a red cape at a bull.

One of the funniest things that ever happened took place on a bus at Wellington Circle in Medford. My mother and I were taking the bus to see my grandmother in Everett, and we went by this shopping center with a Dunkin’ Donuts. I remember pointing to it and yelling, “Ma look! It’s Fuckin’ Donuts.” I had spent the previous night at my Uncle Salvy’s house with my cousin, and she just knew he told me that’s what it said. She knew because he was trouble with a capital T. She gave me the dirtiest look on the planet and said, “I’m going to kill him when I see him.” As soon as that happened and everybody on the bus was laughing, my mother decided we were getting off and waiting for a new bus. She practically pulled me off by my ear. She was determined that I was never going to say that word again. (She lost that battle, by the way.)

Pinching. That was another weapon. It was brutal, but effective.

My sisters and I are pretty much convinced that, if she were alive and parenting today, DSS would be at our house…a lot. In fact, they’d probably just move in with us.

Devoted to her family

My mother didn’t see eye to eye with her sibilings about many things. She had great differences of opinion with my Aunt Buddy. When we lived with her, my mother felt that she was too hard on me…expected too much from a child. That was one of the reasons why she decided it would be best if just she and I lived together. In spite of that, my mother never allowed the rift to become a lifelong rift. She remained close to my Aunt Buddy. They did many things together. She also had a testy relationship with my Aunt Muff. (Really, don’t ask me how she got that name. Her real name was Florence.) Yet, my mother made sure that we remained respectful over the years and, when my aunt had problems or troubles, my mother was there.

My Uncle Joe was the baby of the family, an unpredictable schizophrenic for many years. My mother and her sisters, even as they grew old, saw him three times a week. They cooked for him. They cleaned his house. They interceded for him with the Veterans Administration. They made sure he got the care he needed.

The one thing my grandmother did was instill a deep sense of family in all of her children. My mother did the same with us.

Losing our best friend

My mom had been sick for a while. The doctor had first diagnosed her with a spastic colon, whatever the hell that was. There were other diagnoses as well. I’m not sure what the final test was that they ran, but I suspect it was a colonoscopy. To this day, I don’t have any idea why they took so long to run it. I remember getting the call from my sister JoAnne. They had found a tumor in her colon and, by the time they detected it, it had its own blood supply. That’s never good. Never.

My mom agreed to surgery, but made it clear she was doing it for us and that there would be no chemo at 82 years old. We understood that perfectly. My mother had been a smoker for most of her life and had emphysema for many years by the time her surgery was required. The surgeon, Dr. Frederick Ackerman, decided to put the surgery off for a month in order to strengthen her lungs. During that time, she visited a pulmonologist at Mass General Hospital. The decision was made to do the surgery, then immediately put her into the ICU on a vent until she was strong enough to breathe on her own.

We were all there that day, just hanging out in the waiting room for what seemed to be endless hours. We were joking about her and I remember saying, “I wonder what kind of shit she’s giving those doctors.” Everybody laughed. Finally, Dr. Ackerman came down and said that the surgery was successful. He had to remove some lymph nodes, but she was “clean” of cancer.  My mom remained in the hospital for quite some time.

One Sunday, I went up to visit her in the White Building at MGH and my sisters were already there. I walked toward her room and saw a bunch of doctors and attendants working on her. I remember that one of my sisters grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back. “Don’t go in there.” I can’t remember if it was Mamie or JoAnne. Her lungs had filled with fluid and she couldn’t breathe. That was a scary moment. It’s funny that all these years later that’s one of the visions that remain clear in my head.

My mom came home and she was in her usual good spirits for many months. Life went back to its routine. Then, one day my sister called me at work. We were talking about stuff and then she mentioned that my mother seemed a little weak. She could tell by her voice. We didn’t know what was going on, but I told her that maybe she was just overtired. That was being optimistic.

A couple of nights later, they had to rush her to the Melrose-Wakefield Hospital. They said she had pneumonia, but there was surely something else at work. They ran some tests and determined that she needed more tests. Her primary care doctor called us and told us that they found some spots in her liver. The CT scan came next. The determination was that she had liver cancer. The doctor believed it had been there all along, but it had been so small that it couldn’t be detected. It was just a matter of time now.

We had the inevitable conversation about what she wanted. The one thing she didn’t want was to be revived. I remember we got the paperwork from the hospital, and my sister carried it around with her for at least a week before we could summon the courage to sign it. At the end of the day, it was what my mother wanted that counted. She told us that she had spent more than thirty years without my dad and that she was confident she’d done her best for us. It was time to let go. We signed.

My sisters and I spent the night of my 37th birthday at the Melrose-Wakefield Hospital. My mom wanted them to bring a cake to celebrate, so they did. She had grown close to one of her nurses, Lisa, and she came as well. Lisa told us that she loved my mother’s sarcastic sense of humor. (Funny thing was that Lisa and I saw each other for about three months after my mom died. I suspect it was that connection.) Later in the night my mom fell asleep. That’s when I decided to blow up the blue latex gloves — about 20 of them — and tape them to her bed.

My oldest sister, Mamie, walked into the room with Lisa and said, “You know she’s going to kill you when she wakes up.”

“Yeah, I know. But I’ll blame you, Mamie. You’re the one that told me it’s important that we don’t treat her any differently than we normally would. I’m just being myself.”

The long goodbye

A few days later, we brought my mom home to die in Medford where she had spent the last 18 years of her life. This was so hard for me to watch. I felt so guilty because I had to walk out of the room so often. My sister Mamie told me that I didn’t have to be a rock all the time, but I have to tell you that she definitely was. Everyone was there all the time, trying to spend every moment possible with her that was left — my Aunt Buddy, her grandchildren, her daughters. It was painful.

She was a proud woman. It was hard to watch my brother-in-law lift her up like a baby and put her on the commode in her room. She had suffered from emphysema for years, refusing an oxygen tank and staying tough. Looking at that shit tore me apart. It was hard giving her morphine. All of it was painful from day one until the very end. I felt guilty thinking that I just wanted it to be over, but I wanted it to be over for her sake. I knew she was hating being dependent and helpless.She had said one thing to me when she came home. She told me she wasn’t afraid to die. She was afraid to suffer. I promised that we would not allow her to suffer.

I was at work one day when my sister called to tell me that my mom was having last rites later that morning. I cancelled all my meetings and left the office, arriving just before Father Gallagher showed up. We were all there in her room. At the end of the process, my mother looked at Father Gallagher and said, “Not bad for an Irish guy.”

Everyone started laughing and he said, “You know, Frances, I wouldn’t expect any other comment from you.”

It was a little bit of levity in an otherwise sad situation, but we all knew the end was near.

Several days later, I was once again at work when my sister called. She was crying. She had been sitting with my mother and talking to her. My mom made her promise that the three of us would stick together no matter what. Mamie promised on behalf of JoAnne and I. She also told my mother that it was okay for her to go. My mother, apparently, was particularly worried about me. It was probably because I was still seen as the “baby” of the family, even at 37. My sister Mamie promised that she and JoAnne would take care of me. At some point, my sister — totally exhausted from the ordeal — fell asleep at the bottom of my mom’s bed. When she woke up, my mother was gone.

I rushed to Medford as fast as I could. I had to have broken the land speed record. I arrived just as the funeral home was unzipping the body bag. That was a horrible experience. I asked them to wait. I wanted to say goodbye alone in her room. I remember closing the door and sitting on her bed, apologizing for not being there in the end. I really hated myself for that for a long time. Then I forced myself to watch as they packed her into the body bag and took her away.

As if this all wasn’t enough pain for her children to bear, my Aunt Muff weighed in with her own brand of lunacy, accusing my older sister Mamie of not doing enough to save my mom’s life. My sister had been the primary caregiver at the end of my mom’s life and, no matter what differences I had with her, she didn’t deserve that. I remember calling my Aunt and telling her to shut her mouth. (I believe it was actually “Shut your fucking mouth.”) My mother had made the decision to go no further. She did not want to be rushed to the hospital one more time. I’m not sure that anyone even knows that I called my aunt, but that’s the very last time I spoke to her even though she lived to be in her nineties. That was the end for me.

The final march

My mom was buried out of Gately Funeral Home in Melrose, right down the street from where I was living. When I arrived for the first night of the wake, I couldn’t believe that the line to get in stretched out the door and all the way down the street. It was like that for two nights. I had been working at Millipore for 18 years, and the place was packed with Millipore people, even those I had considered to be adversaries…people I went toe-to-toe with every day. I remember commenting about this to my boss and she told me to consider it a sign of how much respect I had gained in the Company. Funny, some of those people came to the wake both evenings and also to the funeral.

Kneeling in front of that coffin on the day of the funeral was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I knew it was the last time I’d see my mom. They’d close the top and it would be over. I could barely keep myself together. I remember getting up and turning around and seeing Lisa at the back of the room, quietly sitting there. That was a great help to me. The other thing that helped was that everyone had such funny stories about my mother, especially my cousin Richie. He had us rolling in the aisles with his stories. She used to pull him by the ears too.

But, undoubtedly, one of the funniest stories was told by my sister JoAnne and my sister Mamie’s husband, Skip. JoAnne was at Nahant Beach with her friends, and my mother didn’t like the sound of that. She gave Skip and Mamie a flashlight and told them to go check on her. Nobody argued with my mother. He got there and his lights were disturbing everybody at the beach that night. He said to my sister, “Your mother is going to get me killed.” They eventually did find her with her friends, and reported to my mother that she was okay. JoAnne arrived home later and, when she put her bag down, a bottle of wine rolled out. She convinced my mother that she was holding it for a friend. My mother bought it. It was almost as easy as the tonsillitis lie.

It was freezing the day of the funeral. I remember that much, although some other stuff is a blur. The last clear vision I have is watching her coffin being lowered into the ground, joining my dad. My sister Mamie then said the funniest thing I heard through this whole ordeal,  “Watch out, dad,” she said, “here she comes.”

Okay, haven’t written much on this, but I’ve had a hopeless Red Sox affliction since the Cardiac Kids (that would be 1967; I was thirteen). That ‘67 team was awesome; they pulled it out of the fire so many times it was unbelievable. The ‘86 team was pretty good too. It broke my heart when they lost to the Mets. I’ve lived through all the bad owners. I watched T0ny Conigliaro’s career-ending injury. I thought Dan Duquette was a putz. Then, along came Theo Epstein. I live by the Gospel According to Theo. I don’t question the man’s moves very much.

That’s why I believe that the Red Sox are ready for the post season. Epstein just goes quietly about his business of building a team. He may start the year convinced he’s got the right mix, and find out some of the pieces don’t fit the way he intended them to. If that’s the case, he makes the personnel moves he has to without mortgaging the farm. This year, he added V-Mart (Victor Martinez), Casey Kotchman and Alex Gonzales, giving up very little in the process. As a result, the Sox are firing on all eight cylinders at the optimal time.

Now, I’m writing this because I had some chump bring up the Manny Ramirez vs. Jason Bay issue. His premise was that the Sox would be better off with Manny. Yeah, sure. Let’s just pretend Manny didn’t slug an elderly member of the Red Sox staff because he got pissed off over tickets. We’ll just ignore that character issue because he can hit. Manny is garbage in a uniform. No question about it. The “Manny being Manny” crap got old fast this year, but I don’t get the big love affair with this guy to begin with. He’s a great hitter. That’s it. He’s a one dimensional player. He doesn’t bust his butt in the outfield. He’s mediocre at best and that’s because he’s freakin’ lazy. He also doesn’t think it’s necessary to run out ground balls.

Let’s look at Ramirez vs. Bay by the 2009 numbers:

Jason Bay: 34 homers, 107 RBI with 27 doubles and 3 triples

Manny Ramirez: 19 homers, 59 RBI with 22 doubles and 2 triples

Okay, yeah, Manny was suspended for 50 games for using a woman’s fertility drug (considered a performance-enhancing substance). He must have been trying to get in touch with his feminine side. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that kept Manny’s stats low.  Again, this whole episode goes right to character. Manny hasn’t got any.

Unlike Manny, we have photographic proof that Jason Bay is the complete package: He hits, he actually runs and he can play left field. I don’t see how people can make the argument for Manny. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think so. In the meantime,  the Sox should be intent on signing Jason Bay to a long-term contract.

Postscript: Oh, yeah, Jason Bay celebrated his 31st birthday today by whacking a home run and single today, driving in 3 runs.

I’ve often told people there are only two places I could live other than Boston. One is Washington, D.C. The other is San Francisco. I took one great business trip out to San Francisco during the late nineties (could have been 2000, not sure). I know the photo I’m using here in the intro is one of those typical San Francisco photos that you see everywhere. But I have to tell you that there is nothing quite like driving over the Golden Gate Bridge in the early morning hours. Instead of staying in a hotel during this trip, I stayed in a condo in Tiburon. Millipore had just purchased a life science instrumentation company (don’t ask me the name; I don’t remember) and I was tapped to work on the new literature and communications plan. I had been friends with Linda, who was the Director of Marketing, so I stayed with her. It was so much better than a hotel. On the way into the city, I had a great view of Muir Woods, and the fog over the bridge as the sun rose was just unbelievable.

I remember that the meetings I was involved in were really irritating, although I can’t remember all the details. But I do know that I had one sweet time in San Francisco. One of Millipore’s best graphic designers, Lisa, had fallen in love with an engineer named Bill. They had moved out to San Jose together and were living in an artist’s loft. She was the first person I contacted when I learned I’d be making the trip. I decided to get there on a Friday, before the weekend. It worked out well because Linda and Lisa also knew each other, and it gave them a chance to see each other again. I had rented a car, so we met near The Presidio and just hung out watching the old Italian guys playing Bocci. Then we all had lunch at Fisherman’s Wharf (and pretty much managed to get trashed in spite of the fact that we were eating).

On Sunday, Lisa and I planned to hook up again. I drove out to her place in San Jose. Not only was she a designer, but a painter. The whole top part of the loft was just filled with huge half-done canvases. I remember thinking this would be the perfect outlet for me; that one of the things I came close to doing when I returned to Boston was give up my apartment and get myself an artists loft somewhere in Cambridge. It never happened, but it was tempting. After we hung out for a while, she said, “Come on. Let’s go. We’re taking Bill’s car today.”

I remember thinking that I couldn’t figure out why, but I was about to find out soon enough. First, we took a trip down Lombard Street, or the Crooked Street, whatever you want to call it. That was interesting enough. But then, Lisa drove to the top of this incredible hill that just had dips in the road all the way down. “Ready?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I knew instantly what she was going to do.

“We’re taking a risk here,” she said, “but I haven’t been caught by the cops once yet.”

“Yeah,” I said, “with our track record, Lisa, today could be your lucky day!”

She started laughing and just gunned Bill’s car. We must have gone bouncing down that hill at about fifty miles an hour, bottoming out his car like there was no consequence.  Apparently she did this with everyone who came out to visit and, clearly, Bill didn’t mind.  More testament to the fact that love makes you stupid.

We were hanging out at their loft later in the day and I mentioned that the one place I had to get to on this trip was The Castro. I had friends who had lived there before. I also had friends who lived in Provincetown, even though it’s positively desolate in the middle of a New England winter, and friends who summered on Fire Island.  The Castro, however, was the stuff legends were made of.

The gay comfort zone

The Castro is like no other gay mecca on the planet. I had left Lisa’s late that afternoon and decided to go right in by myself. After I broke up with Miss Headcase, I took a week long trip down to Provincetown by myself to clear my head. Going to The Castro alone was not a problem for me. It’s incredibly comfortable and everyone is incredibly “out.” It’s a great feeling. Is it a shame that there have to be places like this? Yes and no. Everyone in America should be able to feel comfortable with his or her sexual orientation and gender identity. Honestly, however, places like The Castro and Provincetown are also cultural meccas, and that’s an important thing for the LGBT community…just as the North End of Boston is a cultural mecca for the Italian community, and Southie is for the Irish. How cool is the Castro? My political favorite, Rachel Maddow, grew up there and went to Castro High. Harvey Milk, one of my heroes, was known as the unofficial mayor of Castro Street.

Anyway, I hung around the Castro most of the day checking the area out and I thought it would be absolutely amazing to live there. The one place I absolutely had to go to was Twin Peaks, undoubtedly one of the most famous gay bars ever. It was the first gay bar in the nation with fully open plate glass windows. No hiding. That’s what I liked most about it. It was like telling the world this is the way it is. If you’ve got a problem with it, it’s all yours. The people hanging there are a bit older (as is the staff) and, instead of the pulsating video bar music, it’s just a great place to sit and meet people, shoot the shit, and watch the rest of the world go by at the intersection of Castro and Market.

Ah, but all good things must come to an end. By about ten, I was headed back to Tiburon. I had meetings in the morning and certainly didn’t want a hangover.

One last highlight Yeah, the next three days were taken up by meetings and business dinners. Honest to freakin’ God, you have to wonder why how this company ever made money. Their ideas about how to spend their communications budget were absolutely absurd. Try this one on: They spent somewhere on the order of $30K to produce an ad — just production (writing, photography, films, etc). Then, they spent a mere $18K running the ad, which is a frequency of about three times. What was worse, they ran the ad one time in three different journals. What a colossal waste of money. Here’s the rule of thumb: If you can’t run the ad at least six times in one journal (but preferably 8-10), don’t bother running an ad at all. It’s like pissing in the wind.

They were really irritating me. I’d listen to them. Then, I’d say something unbelievably sarcastic. Then, Linda would reach over and pinch my leg. I don’t have much patience for stupidity, and I really have no patience for these marketing clowns who think they understand marketing communications just because they have marketing in their titles. And I know Linda knew I was right because she had her hand over her mouth and was laughing while she was pinching me.

On my final day there, I was free all day. There was one other place I absolutely had to visit, and that was Haight-Ashbury. Somewhere in my vast collection of sixties memorabilia were several posters from The Haight. This was another one of those places that stood out in my mind from the sixties. I wanted to see what it looked like thirty years later. There are still some places reminiscent of that flower-power,  acid-dropping, ganja-smoking era…places like Pipe Dreams and The Love of Ganesha. However, much has changed. A lot of the old shops have been replaced by high-end boutiques, Internet cafes, second-hand stores and trendy restaurants. I would much preferred to have visited thirty years ago.

I stuck around for an early dinner at a place called The Citrus Club. It was basically an Asian noodle shop, and I love that stuff: Simple food, reasonable prices. It reminded me of a place I used to love to go to in Harvard Square called Ma Soba. When Thalia was really little (still being carried around in a Kelty Pack), I used to take her there and she’d eat the hottest freakin’ noodles you could give her.

After this day of walking around, I was pretty wiped out and headed back to Tiburon. I was flying out the next day so that I could be home for the weekend. I felt like I had been gone for a long time.

At one point in our lives, Greg, Jack, Sam, John and I partied like there was no tomorrow in Vermont. But we didn’t just party anywhere. We were partying in luxury homes at Hawk Mountain. There were two sets of these homes back then, one in Pittsfield and one in Rochester. The majority of these places were owned by New York doctors and attorneys. The rent was steep back then, but we’d just pool our Friday pay checks and head up. It didn’t matter how many of us stayed in these places. They were huge. Hell, once we got up there, we didn’t care if we ever went out, particularly if it was snowing…and it often was. All we cared about was that we had enough money left over for booze and ganja. We did. There was a security deposit and we’d get that back. So, we’d just split that money and we’d have money for the following week.

I don’t know how many freakin’ trips we made up there. They kind of all run into each other in my mind, and for good reason. I’m lucky I can remember any of these trips. Forget the hooch. That was fine. Nobody ever died from that shit. The drinking, however, was crazy. I was lucky I didn’t die of alcohol poisoning.  It was always the five of us, and then there would be several other people who would come at different times. Hell, we met people at the general stores in Vermont who would end up partying with us. It was absurd. We didn’t even know these people. They could have been serial killers for all we knew.

How old were we? Well, one of us had to be at least twenty-one to rent and I was the oldest in the group by a couple of years. The homes were always rented in my name, so I was probably about twenty-three or twenty-four. I was working at Millipore at the time, but it was early in my career there (I started working there when I was twenty).

What were we drinking in those days? Name it. Rum. Jack Daniels. Tequila. Sometimes we drank all of them together. We were just whacked out back then. I remember one day we were waiting for a bunch of people to come up after work. It was a Friday, and we’d been up there from late morning. By the time the early evening arrived it was pouring outside. It was fall, because I was sick as a freakin’ dog and I was sitting outside in the pouring rain in the leaves feeling like death. Buddha only knows what I was drinking that day. I think it was probably Jack Daniels on the rocks.

It was freezing out, so the rest of the gang came out and got me to come inside. They put me in the bathroom because I told them I was sure what went down was going to come up. And that’s when the adventure began. They left, I was about to be sick and, instead of picking up the hopper, I just stuck my head in the toilet. That’s when it got stuck in there. It wasn’t really stuck. It was just that I had absolutely no motor control, and neither did any of them. So, they couldn’t get my head out once it was in. They kept flushing so that I wouldn’t drown…at least they thought I was going to drown. I probably wasn’t. Worst of all, as sick as I was, I was laughing my ass off and so were they. If there’s one advantage to all of us being gay, it was that there was no sweat when I took all my clothes off in front of them and got in the shower. Know what happened after that?

I got my second wind. The rest of the party goers arrived and I dressed in clean clothes, went upstairs and promptly resumed partying. I never even got sick. This particular party went on until about seven in the morning, when we all finally collapsed. We slept pretty much all day. We woke up sometime late in the afternoon to eat dinner and start partying all over again.

There are other unbelievably psycho scenes from this particular movie in my life. We managed somehow to pick up this guy who worked at a gas station across from the entrance to Hawk. His name, if you can believe it, was Silvertooth. Yeah, he had one, right smack in the front.  We met him at this local bar called the Roadhouse, and he was funny as hell. He fit right in. His only problem was that he just couldn’t get it into his head that lesbians didn’t sleep with guys. Don’t know what he was thinking, but he never managed to get what he was looking for. Too bad he wasn’t gay himself because every freakin’ guy there wanted to sleep with him. He was pretty good looking and  could have had an excellent time. Needless to say, Silvertooth became a fixture for a number of months, then he moved out of state. That was the end of that. Seems we had some other transient partiers that I can’t really remember.

Probably one of the most bizarre nights in Vermont happened for Greg and I at the same time. He ended up in the bedroom with a woman, and I ended up in a different bedroom with a guy. We all knew each other, but  neither of us have any idea how it happened. I can tell you that I was drunk. I can also tell you that dead drunk or dying absolutely nothing happened except I said to this guy, “Put that thing away. It isn’t happening now or ever.” Like I’ve said from day one, gay from the womb, baby, and lovin’ it. We both escaped the bedrooms at the same time and just sat on the living room floor laughing.

I’m not sure when the Vermont experience ended. I know it had to have gone on for at least a year. In that time, we probably made more than twenty trips up there. It was surely one of the most out-of-control times of our lives and, while I can’t remember much of it, I know for sure we had one hell of a ride.

Never let it be said that business travel isn’t sometimes adventurous. It is especially adventurous when you’re somewhat fearless and have no idea WTF you are doing or where you are going. That would sum up my trip to Chicago for the Pittsburgh Conference. I’m not sure when this little event took place, late eighties maybe early nineties. The Pittsburgh Conference is an analytical instrumentation show. Prior to moving it to the McCormic Convention Center in Chicago every other year, it had always been held in New Orleans. At the time, I was the Marketing Services Manager for Millipore’s Analytical Division, and was attending the show to conduct a Press Breakfast and work the booth.

But first, we had to get there and that proved to be a challenge right from the get go. The guy who worked for me, Brian, and I left on a Saturday morning so that we could go to the convention center and supervise the booth assembly.  We only had forty feet of booth space, small for us in comparison to other shows, but it was a key market for both our HPLC sample prep filters and our lab water purification systems.

I know that we were flying right after some type of international terrorist event, so it was particularly touchy going through the gate. So, here we are standing in line and the woman in front of me sets off the alarms. I’m thinking. Okay, this will be simple. The problem was that she kept setting off the alarm. First, they had her remove all her jewelry, including her earrings. She still set off the alarm. Then, her belt. She still set off the alarm. Then, they asked her to remove her shoes. That’s when my alarm went off. Why?

Maybe because I had a quarter ounce of hooch in my shoe. I remember turning around to Brian, “Hey, I need to get the fuck out of this line.”

“Why?”

“Because I stuck the ganja in my shoe.”

“Yeah, in your sock, right?”

“No, in my shoe. I didn’t have time to put it in my sock.”

He was very comforting, “Oh, then you’re screwed.”

Yeah, thanks, Brian. What a pal. I was at the point of no return, however. The woman had finally cleared the security check. It was my turn. After all that sweating, I cleared it the first time. Don’t ask me why I didn’t set off alarms, but the best part of all was that Brian did. Yeah, sometimes I love payback, man.

The flight was pretty uneventful and it was, as unusual as it sounds, right on schedule. We got to Chicago and got settled into the hotel. Then, we headed over to the McCormick Convention Center to check on the progress of the booth assembly, and go through a dry run of the press briefing. The booth looked great so far. There were no problems there. But I have to tell you the worst thing about working with tekkies is that they just don’t get what kind of material to present to editors. These guys were writers, not chromatography scientists. I can’t tell you how many times I tried to drill that into their heads before the trade show. Now, I was at the trade show going through the dry run and they were editorializing again.

It started with the first guy. He started his portion of the presentation and made it so complicated I wanted to just tell him to STFU and let me do it. I remember telling him to stop, and then I told him if he went into this kind of an explanation half of the editors in the room would stand up and walk out. I remember saying, “Just tell them in layman’s terms what the products do and the benefit to the customer.”  That’s all they need to know. Every editor in the room would be given a package of detail, a copy of the presentation, and access to one-on-one discussions with the scientists in the room while they ate breakfast. Still, they insisted on cultivating what I like to call the deer-in-the-headlight effect.

After two hours of this torture, Brian and I headed out to dinner with Ed Black, the sales manager from Analytical Chemistry magazine. Ed was one of my best friends even though we were on opposite ends of the political spectrum. He was a true conservative from Georgia, now living in Connecticut. His wife Lynn was an airline stewardess, and she was just an awesome person. She was so funny and quick witted. We were close enough on the friendship scale that I’d go to Connecticut and spend the weekend. We had one rule: He and I never discussed politics. But that didn’t mean we didn’t jab each other good naturedly once in a while. We surely did.

I remember we got home in the early morning hours and we were wasted. Nevertheless, we had a free day Sunday. The only thing we had scheduled was a three o’clock review of the hospitality suite set up and a meeting with the convention center support staff. Brian and I made plans to go to this great flea market we saw in the local paper.

Our second close call: WTF were we thinking?

Brian and I ate breakfast and immediately hit the road. We hailed a cab and told the driver where we wanted to go. “Are you sure?” I guess I was kind of puzzled by his question.

“Yeah, we’re sure. Let’s go,” was my response.

When the driver had gotten us to our requested drop off point, he turned around and said to me, “Are you sure you want to be here? I’m not sure I should leave you here.”

We looked around. It looked perfectly fine to us. I replied, “Yeah, we’re good.”

I paid the driver and he drove off. We started heading down the street toward where the flea market was supposed to be when we saw this gang across the street with baseball bats. Yeah, that was comforting. The fact that they were looking at us was also comforting.

So, Brian and I started walking. “Can you see that they are walking with us across the street?”

“Yeah, Brian, I can see that.”

“You know, we’re dead meat.”

At that point, we started looking for somewhere safe to hide. Brian first suggested the church. I thought that might be a bad idea. Aside from the fact that I hadn’t been in a church for about a hundred years and was afraid of it collapsing, it didn’t seem like there was any action going on there and the doors might be locked. So, we started looking for any open stores we could find. We were sure we’d be safe there. Brian found, of all places, a hat shop. We talked about it for a few minutes, then the two of us broke into a hell-bent run and managed to get ourselves into the shop safely. We explained to the shop keeper what was going on and he started laughing.

“This isn’t a good place for you two. Don’t believe everything you read in the papers. This may be an ordinary flea market, but this is not a safe part of town. The gangs don’t bother the shopkeepers, but they like to victimize visitors to the city.”

He was a really nice guy. He called a cab for us and told him to pick us up at the back of his shop. As fate would have it, the driver was the same guy who had dropped us off. When he saw us, he laughed.

“I told you, man, that I couldn’t figure out why you wanted to get out here. I don’t even like driving in here.”

We sat in the back seat and, once we were safely out of there, Brian and I started laughing. “How many days are we here for?”

I looked at him. “We’re here through Wednesday, why?”

“I can’t wait to see what other kind of trouble we can get ourselves into,” he responded.

Yeah, people love to hit my hot buttons, probably because I am so easy to suck into a debate. This generally happens over politics, but sometimes it happens over other topics. Like, oh say, the Red Sox and music.

Now, I’m not going to reveal the source of my irritation. He knows who he is and, admittedly, he loves to get me going. I didn’t have the opportunity to pursue the drive-by discussion he started with me yesterday because he had me at a disadvantage. I was working. So, I’ll make my case now and, if he so chooses, he can reply by commenting on this post.

The Beatles vs. The Rolling Stones

Before I rip into the Stones, let me say that I think they’re a great rock and roll band…but that’s where it ends. They are defined by one type of music only. Not so with The Beatles. In fact, listen to Rubber Soul. It’s one of the most eclectic albums of all time and many consider it their best. I find it impossible to name a “best” Beatles album. There are many potential candidates for that honor. Rubber Soul is one, but Revolver, Sargeant Pepper and Abbey Road are also stand outs.

Yes, let’s give the Stones the longevity award, but some bands don’t know when to leave, just like sports figures (read: Brett Favre). Yes, they are still propping Mick Jagger up, botoxing his lips and going on stage, but the Stones haven’t made a meaningful album since Steel Wheels, and that was back in the 80s. The stuff since then is mediocre to blah; their best stuff is their old stuff.

In the relatively short time the Beatles were together (a mere seven years; even Wings was around longer), they had an incredible influence on music. Not only is their list of accomplishments impressive, but they were “out there.” They were doing things musically that others were not doing. They pushed the envelope because they wanted to push it, and the Beatles were smart enough to choose a guy like George Martin to help them realize their musical genius.

Eric Clapton may be considered the greatest guitarist in rock music, but even Eric Clapton credits George Harrison with “inventing” the lead guitar solo.  The Beatles were the first to use instruments like the French horn, and the first to use an orchestra (The London Philharmonic) in their music. They were so far ahead of the curve on so many different levels: The concept album, songwriting, and the birth of the music video. The best thing of all about the Beatles was that you always knew it was them — they were very distinctive — but no two songs sound the same.

In fairness to the Stones, maybe they never wanted to be anything but a great rock n’roll band. More power to them. They are all that. I have most of their music as well. Music innovators? Hardly. Pioneers? Not even close.

Come on, Paulie, bring it on!

When I was going to school at both Aquinas and BHCC , I had a great Pontiac GTO. I loved the thing. It was mint and it was a teal blue. Okay, so it had a few problems, not the least of which was the driver (that would be me). This is the infamous car that I unwittingly parked on my front lawn.  After a day of partying at school — and I mean partying — I drove that thing home. This was when the old Thompson Square elevated train station was still intact. I have no freakin’ idea how I negotiated all of those poles on the way home, but I managed to get there without cracking the thing up. Then, I kind of missed the curb, wound up on the lawn, turned the car off, went inside and passed out. About two hours later, I heard this unbelievable banging on my front door and I dragged myself down the stairs. It was my friend who just happened to live next door.

“What are you doing with the car on the front lawn? Your mother’s walking up the street from work.”

“Wow,” I said, “did I do that?”

“Well, it sure wasn’t me. It’s your car, and you’re the only one home at the moment. But if you don’t hurry up and move it, someone else will be home and you’ll be dead meat.”

I handed her the keys. “Here. You do it. I obviously was in no condition to park it then, and I’m not sure I’m much better now.” I shut the door and went back to bed. Needless to say, she moved the car onto the street in front of the house just in time, and put my keys back in the mailbox.

We had plenty of fun in that car. The trunk was a virtual wet bar. Everybody kept their party shit in my car because I had a car to myself. It wasn’t my mother’s (she never drove a car). It wasn’t my sisters’. It was mine, and it was the group party vehicle. I had one friend I absolutely hated to drive around in that thing because she was a lightweight when it came to drinking and I was terrified she would let it fly all over the inside of the car. Then, I pictured the warm weather setting in.

Luckily, she had a drinking pattern. She’d start with beer, then move on to whiskey sours. What a freakin’ disgusting combination. I can’t drink either one, so the thought of combining them was more than nauseating. If you paid attention to Karen, she could suck down about three whiskey sours after a six-pack, then she’d pass out. We figured we had about an hour from the time she passed out until the time she started hurling. (I used to call her Yakmaster Plus.) So, we’d time our leaving the event carefully, laying her across the back seat. Then, we’d drive to our school parking lot and roll her into the grass near the bushes. (And I mean roll.) She’d wake up, get sick for an hour or so, so we’d listen to the radio or nap ourselves. Then, we’d retrieve her and bring her home and tuck her in. In the three or four years I owned that car, I managed to keep it yak-free.

The car with an extra-special talent

I mentioned earlier that the car had a few problems. One of those problems was a leaky driver-side window when it rained. The rug was constantly damp and it was highly annoying. But I inadvertently found a way to turn that into a positive. Not only did we drink in this car, but we smoked a lot of weed in my Pontiac back in those days. Never let it be said that we didn’t push the party envelope.

One day I dropped the lighter and couldn’t find it. I pulled the car over to look under the driver’s seat and lo-and-behold found a marijuana seedling farm under my seat growing in the the ever damp carpet. It makes sense. A lot of seeds were dropped in the GTO. Nobody vacuums under the seat (at least nobody in my world). I’m lucky I vacuumed the car at all! I mean, these things were impressive. At first I thought I was hallucinating, but I certainly didn’t have any blotter acid with me that day. I rubbed my eyes to be sure I was actually seeing what I thought I was seeing. And I was. Needless to say, my little farmer friends and I carefully extracted these gems for further cultivation.  It was at that moment that I decided not to fix the leak. Ever.

That parking thing again

About a year later, I was coming home from a long night out drinking tequila shooters somewhere on Route 9 in Framingham. It must have been two in the morning before I got home. In Medford, you can only park on one side of the side streets (or at least that’s the way it was back then). Unfortunately, I was too wasted and tired to do something as trivial as try to find a legal parking space. So, I parked the GTO on the opposite side of the street, risking a ticket.

About an hour after I fell asleep, we heard a huge bang outside. My mother tried to wake me up. I rolled over and told her, “Don’t worry about it. Some idiot’s car probably just got totaled.”

Yeah. Now, who could that idiot be?

This particular event involves Miss Headcase. It also involves Sergei. Again. I’m not speaking out of turn when I tell you that Sergei has not approved of one woman I’ve been with since I met him. I believe, however, that Miss Headcase was his least favorite. I’ve been treated to such comments as, “You know, that big WL on all those womens’ foreheads means they’re members of the Wicked Losers club.” Or how about this one: “I swear to God you’re a shit magnet.” That’s what I like about him. Direct and to the point. I can deal with people like that on any level. We’ve been friends for far too long for me to be insulted by him.

He had a lot of problems with The Headcase, not the least of which was the way she pilfered my hard-earned dollars. We’d be in the bathroom hanging out the window smoking ganja and he’d say to me, “Okay, Deb. Let’s look at this. You work sixty hours a week and get paid for forty. Granted it’s a shitload of money, but still. And here you are with a ten in your pocket while she spends the rest of what you make.” He’d just stare at me and say, “What’s wrong with that fuckin’ picture?” I had to admit he had a point.

And that whole hanging out the window smoking thing, that used to piss him off too. He’d say, “Who pays the rent? You. Who pays the electricity? You. Who pays the heat here? You. Yeah. So, what the fuck are we hanging out this teenie little window doing this for?” We were doing it because she had an issue with it being illegal, but really she was just doing it to make me miserable. She succeeded on most levels for nearly nine years.

The trip to Oz

Okay, so this particular flashback incident occurred during the time Miss Headcase was sleeping with her landlady out in Turners Falls (only I wasn’t quite sure of that at this stage). Remember that? Go here if you don’t (and keep in mind the Turners Falls posting is a multi-part posting). By the way, let me tell you that, although I was pretty upset at the time, I’m now eternally grateful to Barbara for taking Miss Headcase off my hands.

Sometime during this event, Miss Headcase decided to take a trip out to California to visit her mother and sister. Of course, I paid for it (in more ways than one, I might add). They’ve always had a tenuous relationship at best. I sometimes wonder if anybody but my sisters and I actually grew up in a family that wasn’t dysfunctional, and I often wonder why those who manage to extricate themselves from those dysfunctional families continue to put their freakin’ hands in the fire by going back for more. But that’s not for me to pass judgment on.

Several days after this visit began, I received the first box from Miss Headcase in California. She told me not to open it. It was full of Christmas gifts. Two days later, another huge package arrived. Same instructions. Don’t open it. Just put it in the back room. The back room was my office where I was, at the time, running a magazine called Counterpoint Publications. While I was at Millipore and in my twenties, I had decided to produce and publish a woman’s writing journal. I actually did pretty well with it. I had been a print buyer and had a lot of contacts in the industry, so it was easy for me to get my magazine put on a print run with other jobs and keep my costs down. I had a lot of contributors and subscribers for a while. I suspect if my personal life hadn’t been so messed up, it would have continued to be successful. But in the midst of my anguish, I gave it up and decided to focus on my Millipore career.

After the second box arrived, there was a lull in contact…until her mother called one day and asked if I’ve received any boxes. I told her yes and that Miss Headcase told me not to open them because they were Christmas gifts. Her mother had one response. “Open them.” Then she asked me to tell her what was in them. When we were done, I said, “Well, they can’t be Christmas gifts for me because I wouldn’t wear this stuff.” On the other hand, Barbara would. Apparently, Miss Headcase broke into her mother’s spare room and just basically stole a bunch of stuff, and her mother was pissed. She just plain wanted the stuff back and told me she’d take care of all the expenses. I had always gotten along with her mom and, in fact, would spend a week out in California after her daughter and I split. I had no problem taking care of returning her stuff.

I’m not even going to tell you what Sergei said when I told him the story, but the two of us were practically rolling on the floor laughing.

Fast forward…

It wasn’t long after that incident that Miss Headcase and I split. After that relationship, I was pretty much alone for four years. I spent the time hanging out with my friends at the bars and just enjoying life. I wasn’t looking for a relationship, not that I didn’t fall into one of sorts. My mom also passed away in that span of time and I started dating one of her nurses, a woman named Lisa. She was a perfectly wonderful person, but I wasn’t in love. It was as casual as you could get, but it was what I needed at the time. The next big relationship, however, was just around the corner, and this is where we get back into the Sergei Zone.

After I met Beth and had been seeing her for a while, I decided it was time for her to meet Maria and Sergei. He told me that he was going to have to make sure she wasn’t a Wicked Loser. I told him that I had expected no less, since I’d done such a piss poor job choosing women for most of my adult life. I can remember this like it was yesterday because it was so damned funny. He was already concerned for the match because I told him the day Beth and I first met, she had just come from her bankruptcy hearing. Sergei didn’t like the sound of that from the get-go and, trust me, his fears were not unfounded.

I decided the best thing was for me to make dinner in Melrose, so that’s what I did. The night was fairly pleasant and things were going well. Maria and I were out in the kitchen when we heard Sergei morph into his role as lesbian protector. We’re out there in the kitchen and all of a sudden he asks Beth, “Do you ever have the desire to steal from your own mother and sent it to women you might be sleeping with?” No shit. Maria and I were rolling out there, and we were trying so hard to not laugh out loud it was pathetic. Beth had no fucking idea what he was talking about. Of course, we explained the harebrained question out of nowhere to her and she laughed, assuring us that she had no such affliction. She didn’t. There was nothing to worry about where that was concerned. And the bankruptcy didn’t bother me either. I’m here to tell you that shit happens.

However, I probably should have worried a bit when she up and quit her job two weeks after we moved in together.

I rarely watch the Celtics these days. There’s just too much individual showboating.  I really loved the game of basketball back in the Bird-Parish-McHale days. It was just amazing to watch that team pass the ball. I also loved the Boston Garden with all its warts. The atmosphere was really electric every night because of all the history there. I really dislike the Fleet Center. The eighties Celtics decade really represented one of best times of my life. My Celtics cohort (and niece’s husband), Sergei, and I had our priorities. First and foremost, our goal was t0 get to as many games as possible. We did that by buying packs of obstructed view seats for $10, particularly during playoff time, then we’d figure out a good place to see the game from once we got in. I also had an alternative source of tickets.

At the time, I was in charge of a $7 million marketing communications budget and handled a lot of outgoing contract work. I had become really good friends with the sales manager at Multiprint in Boston, a guy named Peter, and his wife. Not only did he and I go to lunch together, but I’d go to his house for dinner once in a while. Peter was a really fun guy to go to lunch with, to say the least. It was like open bar at a freakin’ wedding. There were a couple of days I didn’t make it back to the office. But the best thing was that Multiprint had unbelievable first balcony Celtics seats at dead center and I got them all the time. Peter used to tell me that the owner at Multiprint used to say, “Give them to Deb. She really appreciates them. The other people don’t even know what’s going on during the game.”

Needless to say, it wasn’t uncommon for Sergei to call my niece, Maria, and say, “Hey, I’ll have to come over after the game. Deb got us tickets.” Yeah, I could feel the pain in my back as she stabbed that voodoo doll I brought her back from New Orleans. The absolute worst thing Sergei and I ever did to Maria happened in 1986, the year the Celts won their final championship of the Bird era.

Will you marry me? (But not right now.)

One day, Sergei and I went to a game and he pulled this ring box out of his jacket pocket. “Hey, I’m going to ask Ria to marry me.” I just looked at him. “You can’t do that now. We’re heading in to the playoffs this week. It’ll be an incredible distraction and I have a ton of seats coming from Multiprint.” He looked at me. “You’re right. I’ll wait until after the playoffs. It’s not like she knows.” We thought that was a brilliant master plan.

Anyway, that was a great Celtics year and a great Celtics team with Bill Walton as the back-up center. If he hadn’t been there, no championship. (How can you go wrong? The guy’s also a Dead Head.)  And Larry Bird is just my all-time favorite athlete, hands down. The guy has class. He was an incredible leader with an amazing talent, and he played the game with passion and to win…whatever it took, even if it meant sacrificing his own stats. That doesn’t happen today. Best of all, when he retired, he really retired. He was done. He didn’t torture the planet with a bunch of absurd “come backs.” Bird was just plain finished.

Anyway, Sergei and I embarked on our excellent championship adventure. When we couldn’t get tickets, we’d go to the Town Line (affectionately called The Town Slime by us) in Malden to watch the games on the big screen TVs (and to get trashed on vodka). My mother would be mortified because it would be me, Sergei and then all of Sergei’s brothers. And she knew we’d be yelling rude stuff at the refs when they called fouls against the Celtics. Hey, at least the stuff we yelled wasn’t as bad as what the guy next to us in the Multiprint seats always yelled. Whenever Jake O’Donnell (our least favorite ref; we were convinced he hated the Celts) blew a foul on a Celtic, the guy next to us would yell, “Hey, Jake, the whistle blows. Does your wife?” I think it was really nasty, but I also admit that the first time I heard it I turned to Sergei and said, “What a great line. How come I can’t think up that stuff?” His response? “Because you’re a lesbian.” (That was always his explanation.)

Anyone remember a guy named Mark Aguirre who played for the Dallas Mavericks? He was a pain in the ass. There were times when he could just turn it on and kill us during a game. One night, he was whistled for a technical foul. It was really quiet in the building, when Sergei yelled, “What did Yoda say?” Know what, the guy really did look like Yoda. I just hadn’t realized it until Sergei yelled it out. The whole section started laughing.

Sergei finally did propose to Maria and, in a fit of passion no doubt, confessed that he had been holding off because of the playoffs. Not only did he confess, but he told Ria that I instigated the whole thing. Benedict Arnold. She called me up one day and left me a message, “You are such a jerk.” Hey, at least she was laughing. She’s never let me live that one down more than twenty years later, and I never let him forget that he threw me under the freakin’ bus.

The plot thickens

The following year, the Celts were in the playoffs again and, unfortunately, Maria would yet again be a victim. My sister decided to have her shower at a restaurant down the street from the house. They scheduled it the day the Celts were supposed to play the Atlanta Hawks, and it was a final and deciding game. Sergei owned this one. He brought a television to the shower. Hey, I was eternally grateful, but this seemed to me to be a big risk after the engagement delay.

Worst of all, it was the day when Larry Bird and Dominique Wilkins went on that amazing scoring bender, matching each other point for point.Everybody at the shower was mesmerized by the shoot out, which meant that nobody was really paying attention to what was going on in that room. Wilkins finally scored 56 and Bird 53. The win, however, went to the Celts. Ah, but now not only was Maria pissed, so was her mother (also known as my oldest sister). And they were pissed at both of us because they were convinced, somehow, that I had instigated this whole television thing. Me?

Seriously, though, we were so bad. I look back now and I’m surprised Maria even speaks to either of us.

Okay, I have a really good sense of humor where my family name is concerned. I mean, I understand that unless it’s something like Smith, Leahy or even, you know, Russo…it’s a challenge. But seriously give me a break here. My family name is spelled exactly as it sounds ‘Della Piana’. No, it’s not De La Piana. There’s no pause between Della. Okay?

The other night brought a new twist to my family name in the form of a certificate of achievement given to Thalia. Yes, something even I have not seen yet. Not only was the appearance of this certificate of achievement a couple of months late because it sat in Thalia’s book bag, but the name on the certificate was very adventurous, as you can see, because it was awarded to Thalia Dellapenia. Yep, just one change in letter and she could have been Thalia Dellapenis.

It’s not like she’s new at Amesbury Middle School. In fact, next year will be her last year in Amesbury Middle School before she moves onto high school. It’s not like they don’t have files to consult. They sure know how to spell it when they’re sending home bad reports or warnings, I might add.

Check this out, I had to go up to the school to pick Thalia up after school, which meant I had to check in at the office. So, I think I might have actually dealt with the person who made out the certificate today. I’m standing there and this older woman asks if she can help. I told her I needed to pick up Thalia and she was in homeroom 305. She gets on the the phone right in front of me with the correct name pulled up on her computer screen. Here’s what she says:

“Hi, this is Mrs. WTF, is Talia Del Penia there?”

Yeah, Talia (as in Shire). Ugh. Del Penia. Are you fucking kidding me? I just kept telling myself, “Bite your tongue, Della Piana. Don’t get too sarcastic on the first day of school.” But WTF, can’t these people even read a name off the computer screen? They work at a freakin’ school. I knew the other woman behind the desk really well and even she couldn’t believe this woman couldn’t read the name. She had her arms raised in the air and was shaking her head as she was listening to her. I started laughing. I was secretly hoping that Thalia would refuse to answer to the name on the other end because she hates having her name mangled as well.

Walking out, I asked Thalia how often this happens. Her only reply was, “You have no idea, ma.” Actually, I do.