Vampires Made Me a Pirate
My grandfather was a pirate who hailed from the exotic Island of Staten. This is what I believed when I was a small child. In actuality, he was just a man who lived on Staten Island, New York. I thought he was a pirate because he had only one hand, but he never wore a hook or a technicolor parrot. To a child, a person missing a limb is certainly the subject of great lore, a character from a fantastical story like The Goonies. I actually wish my grandfather had been cast in the Goonies instead of Sloth because he really alarmed me and put me off Baby Ruths for life. There was quite a tale behind the loss of my grandfather’s hand. In the 1920s, a little Irish boy happened across a hand grenade that had been dropped by a soldier who had returned from war to march through his hometown in a glory and confetti filled ticker tape parade. The hand grenade was a live one and when my grandfather pulled the pin, gone was his hand forever.
My grandfather has been on my mind because I lost my own hand this week. Truthfully, it’s still attached but it’s as lame as an evening clutch. It’s just ornamental and doesn’t hold anything other than chapstick. I went to Boston with the kids this week to enjoy what is left of fall and to get that city dose people who love cities need to nudge them awake. G was working from his Boston office, meaning hotel and parking were ‘on the house.’ After a dinner in the North End, which prompted exactly three patrons to remark, “Wow, we leave our kids at home with a babysitter,” (Thank you, jackasses, are you offering to babysit?), we went back to the hotel where we had big plans to watch Eclipse. G and I are reluctant Twilight fans, won over after I read the series aloud to him during our daughter’s stint in the NICU. It was a dark time filled with agonizing over the welfare of a newborn who had an infection that baffled the medical staff. Twilight was our escape into someone else’s eery portal, and it allowed E to hear my voice during those long days she was trapped in an incubator. I now wonder if early auditory overload of my voice is why she smacks and spits at me today. She’ll know what to expect when I give her to a coven of vampires if she doesn’t shape up. Or werewolves. Doesn’t matter.
We managed to lasso and duct tape a sitter to our kids so that we could see the first two installments in the theater, but Eclipse premiered during the bleakest move in history, referred to by those who know me as the La Quinta Days. And now that we’re in a small town in Maine, movies like ET and Back To The Future have yet to arrive. The ringleader of the Trench Coat Mafia who worked at the video store lost his life to my icy glare when he told me Eclipse wouldn’t be in until after Christmas. Needless to say, I was more than excited to pay $900 to watch Eclipse on hotel pay-per-view. What I didn’t know was that I’d have to forsake a limb as well. When asked if you’d be willing to stake your unborn child on a bet, just make sure you don’t have to lop off a limb, as well. You’ll forget about the child, but you’ll be reminded every day of the arm you wagered away.
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