Lies....

In 3rd grade, Mrs. Canella made us write an essay entitled "How I spent my summer vacation." It was our first day back in school and I wanted to make a great impression on the teacher, so I wrote in great detail about my trip to Africa. I think I wrote about lions and tigers, and black people. It's all I really knew about Africa when I was that age, and that's pretty much all I know about it now. I have obviously never been there. We handed in our assignments.
I sat back in my little plastic chair, trying to make out all the engravings on my desk from last year while I waited for Mrs. Canella to bring me to the front of the class and praise me in front of all the other students. Instead, she came over to my desk with my essay in her hand, and said "if I called your Mother and asked her if you had been to Africa over the summer, would she say yes?" Not knowing the consequences, or even what a lie really was, I froze. My face turned beet red and started to tingle, I knew that if she called my Mother and told her what had happened, I would get grounded for sure. I quietly told her that I had never been, hoping none of the other kids would hear me getting caught in a lie. She explained to me what lying was, and never called my Mother.

I used to watch Laverne & Shirley every tuesday night on channel 7, that and Happy Days were my reason for living at that age. I started mixing my Pepsi with milk, just as Laverne used to on the show. One night my Mother came into the kitchen while I was mixing up a batch and asked me if I was doing that because of the show. I looked at her like she was crazy and said, "no... I don't even watch that show!" I knew that she knew that I watched it, because she used to watch it with me, but I lied anyway. I had no reason to lie, but I felt embarrassed because I knew it wasn't my idea. No wonder I liked carbombs so much when I drank, they taste very similar to a milk and Pepsi combination.

My lies slowly progressed over the years, I had eventually graduated from telling my Mother that I had lost my GI Joe's, when I really burned them and buried them, to, "no I'm not shooting Heroin!"
Chris lived up the street from me when we were kids in Jersey. One New Years Eve I got stuck babysitting my little sister while My parents went out to some party, I was either 13 or 14 so I had just been moved into the "practice stages" of drinking. We had somehow got our hands on a gallon of white zinfandel, and a liter of peppermint schnapps. I was excited to have this little secret mini party behind my parents back, and my sister was so young she wouldn't know what was going on anyway. It was one of my first real "parties," even though it was only 2 of us, it was still very exciting. I tucked my sister into her My Little Pony comforter, and waited for her to fall asleep, closed her door, and went back into the kitchen. I knew no one would be home for hours, and we had the whole night to do exactly what we wanted, and pass out before anyone got home and knew what was going on. My Mother would have killed me if she knew what we were doing, I was already fucking, smoking, and drinking at 12. I look at kids nowadays at that age and think to myself... no fucking way did we look or act that young. We may have looked it, but no fucking way were we acting our age at all.. I find that to be pretty amazing about the alcoholic, we grow up so fast, and as soon as we get older, we turn into 12 year olds.

We ordered a pizza... I remember singing Crazy Train in the kitchen, I remember watching Chris spin around while dancing, I remember drinking that entire gallon of wine by myself, as chris polished off his bottle of sugar piss. We were laughing and falling all over each other, while my Sister slept innocently in the next room. It was the best time ever! I had never had that much fun getting away with something before, and was excited it was going so smoothly.


All of the sudden Chris stopped dancing, and the yellow painted walls in the kitchen started spinning on him. He put his hand on the kitchen table and started slurring something to the effect of, "I don't feel so good." I didn't have a chance to get 2 words out of my mouth before he just started projectile vomiting pizza and peppermint schnapps all over the rust colored linoleum tiled floor. He wouldn't stop... it just kept pouring out of him like a fucking broken fire hydrant, except there were no little kids running down the street to splash in this shit.
I ran to the closet to get towels. I just kept hearing it hit the floor, it sounded like someone dropping a huge rock into a pool, over... and over.. and over. I called his older brother to come pick him up, as I started to panic figuring out how I was going to clean this mess up, and get away with it. It was around 11pm so I didn't have much time to figure this out... but even at 13 I was a pretty crafty dopefiend.
Chris' Brother finally came to pick him up and get him out of my house. I was completely offended that he couldn't handle his liquor, I had drank an entire gallon of wine and all 120 pounds of me was just fine. He completely ruined my New Years even more than it already was from having to babysit while everyone else was at some crazy party, and now to top it all off, I was going to be grounded for the rest of the winter. I helped drag his puke covered, slurring dead weighted body to the car, pushed him into the passenger seat, and ran back up the stairs. It smelled like candy cane and feta cheese soup in the entire apartment, it smelled like Smurfette's pussy after the entire village had gangraped her, then Pappa Smurf ending it all by jamming a giant tube of Provolone into her ass and sticking her in an oven. I had no idea how I was going to pull this off. I didn't even know how I was going to clean this shit up, let alone get that smell out of the apartment. I'm surprised I didn't puke myself after witnessing that whole thing.
I Grabbed a bunch of towels and whatever cleaning product I could get my hands on, and began working my way from one end of the kitchen floor to the other. I was so drunk I could barely see, and now I had to make sure every speck of that sticky, chunked up, vomitous mess was cleaned off of the table legs, the stove, the chairs, and most importantly... make sure the floor wasn't sticky. Schnapps is think, thick as fuck... almost impossible to get all the way up off of a linoleum tile grooved floor, but I did my best. I couldn't do anything about the smell though, it was so thick in the kitchen, that no matter what I tried, nothing was working. The later it got, the more I started to panic. I was so fucked man, my mother was gonna tell my stepdad to wack my ass with his belt, then they were going to take my cassette deck boombox away from me and not let me go out past the front porch for months.

Then all of the sudden it hit me...

This is where my life started to turn to the dark side a little I think. I walked into my Sisters room, woke her up, and convinced her that she was sick. I convinced her in her sleepy daze, that she had thrown up all over the kitchen after eating a bunch of candy canes off the tree... wait, it gets worse... then I put an extra blanket on her so when my Mother came home and felt her head, she would assume she had a fever and totally buy my story. It may sound kinda fucked up, but it TOTALLY worked..... I got away with it. My Mother walked in the house, while making a face saying "what the hell is that smell!!??" with my stepdad right behind her doing the same thing. I told them that Aimee threw up because she ate too many candy canes and they both ran into her room, turning the light on and picking her up. "Ricky feel her head! she's burning up!" My Mother worrily whispered to my stepdad as my sleeping, sweaty, little Sisters head bobbled off my Mothers arm. She woke up a little and my Mother asked her "Aimee did you get sick baby?" I stood there... heart pounding, sweat forming, mouth pasting up. My Sister barely opened her eyes and said "yes Mommy, I got sick." I'm pretty sure you could see the smoke of relief burning off the top of my head, as my heart rated slowed down to almost a complete stop.

The house smelled like minty vomit for a good few months, but I never got caught for it. I still don't think they know about it to this day actually... I guess I'm going to be getting a phone call or two in the next few days.....