Archive for the ‘mom and me’ Category

Sadistic priest burns little girl with cigar!

Thursday, February 18th, 2010
 
“The first time I sang in the church choir, two hundred people changed their religion.” ~  Fred Allen  
 
Ash Wednesday is not for sissies!
 
“Come on Elizabeth, be a good Catholic girl and get in line for your ashes,” Mom and Dad would chant in church every year when Ash Wednesday rolled around.  The first time up, my thoughts turned to complete and utter terror  “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!” I yelled, “I don’t want that horrid priest to burn my forehead with a lit cigar, Ma!” 

(Italian Lesson: cigar smoker = fumatore di sigari)

I was only about seven or eight I suppose, so I had no idea exactly what was really going on in the front of St. Mary’s Church – except for the fact that I sure didn’t want my little forehead used as a friggin’ ashtray by Father Boyle! I can just HEAR the sizzling and smell my young burning flesh melting away – I’ll be scarred for life – NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!  Even worse, this is what you’d call a “special occasion” mass,  meaning it didn’t even ”count” for the week – ugh.  So now we have to head back to the pews to do it again for another hour on Sunday — damn! This church stuff was totally cramping my style! 
 
And all that talk about ashes to ashes, dust to dust.  Like I really want to hear that I’ll be cremated one day and turned to a grey powder – I have my whole life ahead of me for crying out loud! I guess I figured that the burning hot cigar was just the priest’s subtle, yet sadistic reminder, and I just wanted to take a pass — thanks anyway!
Line up, it's Ash time!
        

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Posted in Ash Wednesday, Catholic Church, Dover, St. Mary's Church, madness, madness mom & me, madnessmomandme, mom & me, mom and me | 1 Comment »

The Very Wretched Sister Urselena

Saturday, January 30th, 2010
“The sixties were when hallucinogenic drugs were really, really big. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we had the type of shows we had then, like The Flying Nun.” ~ Ellen DeGeneres

 
St. Margaret's Madness

St. Margaret's Madness

St. Margaret’s Catholic School, Morristown, NJ – Second grade:  my foray into the Catholic school system.  Jesus, how I hated those wretched uniforms  – come on, who can look halfway decent in those ridiculous plaid accordion-pleated skirts and dowdy white buttoned-up blouses? And that stupid little crisscross tie thing in front of your neck – what the hell was that about?   Where was my favorite little black velvet dress now???

A St. Margaret’s education was OK I guess, but the little me did not leave that school without a couple  “incidents” which got me in a bit of trouble — expelled for a day actually, but more about that in a bit.  This post is all about the mean and utterly terrifying Sister Urselena.  YIKES — even typing out her name makes me tremble to this day!

(Italian Lesson: meschino = mean)

Sister Urselena was one of those nuns who would hit kids acting up in class, and God forbid if you were chewing

Sister Urselena wishes she looked this good

Sister Urselena wishes she looked this good

gum, because you’d end up wearing it on your nose and stand in front of the class for an hour with your chewed up gum on the end of your nose.  Yup, this was one frightening nun!  A nun who wouldn’t know a smile if one crawled up her habit and bit her on her ass.  Urselena never smiled at all — maybe it was because she had a mouth like a puppet —a real wooden puppet.  You know, one of those with the deep lines next to her lips, in fact, her mouth opened and closed like a Charlie McCarthy doll.

After seeing Urselena hit a fellow student with a ruler one day, I told my mom about it.  Mom advised me to leave the school if they ever tried to touch me.  So, the next day, I walked to school with my head held high, went straight up to Ursulena and told her that if she, or any nun ever touches me, my mother gave me permission to bolt outta there immediately.  Urselena promptly called my mother to verify this, and mom basically told her “damn straight, sister”! Unfortunately, this was not the last time Sister Ursulena called my mother at home — stay tuned “pencil incident” post.

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A quick post – one of Mom’s gems

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

I just told Mom it’s good for your health to get fresh air daily.  She said “I get fresh air a few times a day – every time I go outside for a cigarette!”  Nice one, ma!

Yum, smoking is healthy!

Yum, smoking is healthy!

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Mom’s Must: Italian Last Name/Ends with a Vowel

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

“Always get married early in the morning. That way, if it doesn’t work out, you haven’t wasted a whole day.”  ~ Mickey Rooney

In the summer of ‘58 Mom turned eighteen, and Nan was wondering when her pretty daughter would marry and start a family.  Nan was concerned that her eldest might end up a old, shriveled-up unhappy spinster (back then, you were deemed a spinster if you weren’t hitched by the ripe old age of twenty — and that was even pushing it.  Ridiculous, huh?)

 In May of 1959, my Aunt Lo introduced her unattached Italian friend, Dominic, to my mom. Mom was a head turner, with her perfect hourglass figure, which was just right for wearing those fashionable Jackie Kennedy-esque dresses and those little vogue hats with her red tresses twirling out from under.  Needless to say, he was smitten.  

Retro Mom

Second generation Dominic stood about 5’10’ had thick wavy black locks, styled into a little pompadour in the front (very stylish at the time).   Dom, “Sonny” as some of his friends and his sister Rosie called him, had a fresh  anisette aroma about him and always a warm twinkle in his dark brown eyes .

Life in his household revolved around cooking and eating, cooking and eating, and cooking and eating.  Mamma Romano cooked day and night – I don’t know if she ever left the kitchen.  She was always there, donning her spaghetti sauce stained, smelly worn-out apron.  If she wasn’t preparing breakfast, lunch or dinner, she was making anisette cookies, picking fresh figs from their tree or squeezing ripe tomatoes into sauce.  Dad’s parents were straight off the boat from the motherland:  Lucia from Sicily, and Joseph from Naples. 

Is it sauce yet?

Dom had a decent job, a stylish car and a bit of that Italian mystique.  Almost thirty with a car and a job, he was quite the eligible bachelor — a total catch.  A young Margaret accepted his request for a date,  and when he arrived at her house looking so chic in his chinos and leather and wool sweater, he blurted out upon meeting my grandparents “I’m going to marry your daughter”.  Wow, a man with confidence!

(Italian Lesson: what’s your name? = come ti chiami?)

Dominic and Margaret were married December of that same year.  My Dad’s mother wasn’t too thrilled with the idea of this half-Italian bride.  She had planned to ship over a Sicilian village girl to marry her youngest little Sonny, not some Americanized redhead.  Much more to tell about this later on.

The best is that Mom tells me she said yes to dad’s proposal of marriage – get this – mainly because he had a good Italian last name, and she just HAD to have an Italian name ending with a vowel.  Good pick, ma — because I really enjoyed my Italian last name all of these years, too!

Young Dad Romano

 

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Ding-a-Lings at the Dover Library

Saturday, November 21st, 2009
 
“I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.” ~ Vincent Van Gogh
 
"It's just Dad and his ding-a-ling mom!"

"It's just dad and his ding-a-ling, mom!"

On good days (luckily for me, there were plenty of those) Mom and I spent a lot of time shopping “downtown”. Downtown as in Dover, a cool old town known for its variety of diners, pizzerias, record shops and retail stores like J.C. Penney, Woolworth’s, JJ Newberry and Sears (actual stand-alone department stores, as these were the days long before malls took over the shopping scene).   A frequent spot Mom and I would visit was the historical Dover Public Library, a place I always found so intimidating (this old brick building seemed so large to me –  it housed dark wooden staircases, creaky banisters and always had a slightly musty mixture of sour and stale smells.  Plus, those never smiling oh-so-serious women who worked there, who always wanted us kids to be quiet – geesh!) 

Our library had 45 minutes set aside each week for the moms to browse books on the “mystery” floor, and the children would have story and coloring time downstairs in the “kiddie” area.  I remember I couldn’t wait to be grown up, so I could go upstairs and browse all of those alluring adult novels.  So there I was with the other kiddies sketching away — a pretty simple concept, until it came time for me to show my inner Degas I just unleased. 

(Italian Lesson:  Library = biblioteca)

You see, a day or two earlier, I happened to see my Dad in his birthday suit, when I just happened to be strolling by their bedroom while dad was getting dressed for work that morning — oops! I asked my mom what that “thing” was that Dad had kind-of hanging there, and she promptly told me “oh, that’s his ‘ding-a-ling’”.  Aha- that Chuck Berry song! Now I know what Chuck was singing about!

Well, you can imagine what our storytime librarian did when a proud little me handed in my drawing of a naked man with his dangling ding-a-ling.  My mother was immediately found and pulled aside by the staff to see what was going on in our family.  All was explained, and mom told me it may be best to keep my new ding-a-ling findings to myself.

Dover Library c1911

OK, Ding-a-ling talk is now over, hope you enjoyed. Now please go back to the home of Madness:  www.madnessmomandme.com.

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Madness & Morose Mom

Sunday, August 2nd, 2009

Retro Range “I try to take one day at a time,  but sometimes several days attack me at once.”  
~ Jennifer Unlimited

I’ll get straight to the point of the dark side of being a young mom…my young mom.  Looking back (fondly), I now believe mom had undiagnosed issues like today’s classic panic attacks sprinkled with generalized anxiety disorder.  Maybe Mom felt a bit trapped in the reality of her world — maybe she was just a bit nuts.  She may have just craved more attention, and perhaps she relished the drama just for drama’s sake (I definitely think mom loved drama, but it was most likely a combination of all of these gems). 

A bad day for mom would usually mean the oven goes on.  You could always smell when our gas range was on, so I’d wander down to the kitchen and see what mom was cooking up for dad and me.  On my way,  I’d wonder  “will mom be baking my favorite treat today? Maybe chocolate fudgy brownies – or a creamy chocolate Betty Crocker cake? Lemon cupcakes with colorful sprinkles on top? Would I be able to lick the batter off the spoon?”.  Licking the batter – mmmmm, one of the best yet simplest pleasures life has to offer a kid.  Well, unfortunately, this was not about cakes, cupcakes or my delicious chocolately cake batter….damn!

(Italian Lesson: gas stove = cucina a gas)

No, this was all about our gas oven, a prime prop for my mother’s drama.  Mom would turn on the oven, open the door – gas aflame – that “funny” gassy scent filling up our tiny kitchen.  At times she threatened to stick her head in the oven and end it all, leaving me a motherless kid.  Sometimes she said we were ALL doomed, and our trusty little gas oven would take us all out. 

I was just a kid, so I believed her (not knowing that just lighting an oven with a working pilot light wouldn’t kill a freaking moth).  However, for some strange reason I never panicked when the range of death went on.  Yeah, I thought it was peculiar, but perhaps it was the frequency of this nut-job behavior that it became an in home show – a performance put on by a mom for her daughter.  Masterpiece Theatre in my own kitchen.  Bellissimo, Bellissimo!

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Joe Pesci is my third cousin, you gotta F*%#!n’ problem with that?

Saturday, July 25th, 2009

Just so you know, I do plan on skipping around with tidbits of retro madness and recent madness.  One: because of my own personal ping- pong ball which enjoys bouncing all over the place inside my head (I gotta have some form of  ADD) –  and Two:  simply to keep readers entertained with real life snippets of insanity.  Since this is not the book or the movie (by the way, did I mention there will be a book and a movie?), there is no chronological order, but worry not – when MADNESS hits the big screen, all will be in order for your viewing pleasure (so YOUR head does not develop ping-pong ball syndrome).  OK, on with a snippet -

My mother’s mom (my Nan, whom I called “Nanny” my entire childhood) Olga just turned ninety one.  Nan is such a sweetheart of a woman – always was.  Women in our family live a pretty long life – not that each and every marble is still in tact, but most of them are still rolling around there in nan’s head.  My great-grandmother (nan’s mom) lived to be one hundred and two — of course she thought it was the fifties and she was a much younger woman but hey, whatever works for you, especially after a millennium of living. 

Nan does have some quirky habits:  making her coffee the night before and leaving it in her thermos for fifteen hours,  defrosting frozen meat in her sweater drawers and forgetting about it until my cousin smells the rot of decaying animal flesh stinking up her cluttered house, and she has a thing about cooking her banquet TV dinners a day or two ahead.  She covers them with Saran wrap and put them in the fridge until ready to microwave again.  Earth to dear Nan:  frozen meals take just three minutes to nuke – but I digress.  My Nan and I share a special birthday bond (I was the “grandgift” from my mom to her mom) as we share the same day of coming into this world.   Recently I heard that nan put a few of those little butter packets in her purse and forgot about them – what a hot mess.

 Lately, Nan keeps forgetting we share the same June birthday (something we must have talked about for over 40 years) but she’ll never forget to mention her bladder suspension surgery (I’m talking a surgery she had from decades back) at least three times in every conversation we have, and how she’ll sneeze and pee her pants (Jesus Christ, getting older certainly has its share of some really sucky shit)!     

 

Joe Pesce is my third cousin, you gotta F*%#!n' problem with that?
Joe Pesci is my third cousin, you gotta F*%#!n’ problem with that?

 

So, you might be wondering why I have Joe Pesci’s photo here if I’m writing about my grandmother.  No, that is NOT my nan.  A fun family tidbit is that my nan babysat for Joe Pesci (well-known Italian actor in Goodfellas, Casino, My Cousin Vinnie, etc.) and his sister when we they were little.  She tells me that his mom Mary was a cousin of hers, which would make him, Joe Pesci, my third cousin!  Pretty cool, huh? I never wrote down all the names years ago or wrote a note to him (Nan wanted me to, but I felt cheesy about it) and unfortunately, she does not quite recall all of the details these days.  Hey Joe:  if you remember Olga Gabora Robosky changing your diapers, please drop me a line, cuz!

*%#@&#!  FUHGETABOUTIT! Return to the “Madness ” Home Page:  www.madnessmomandme.com

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Mom really never met a pill she didn’t like…
Self-medicating was her hobby.

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

meds-retro

Ahhh yes, as a kid I remember mom’s Empirin breaking apart in her “special” water glass, the glass which was always perched next to the kitchen sink.  Mom’s glass (she called it her pill glass) usually had a chalky Empirin or two fizzing away…actually more like just sitting in the water disintegrating. These magical and mysterious pills of hers were a must-have diet staple – mom’s little a.m., midday and p.m. treat.  She ended up moving on to other goodies — Darvon was her favorite drug of choice, and of course taking a few of my dad’s pain, heart or sleeping pills from time to time.  Mother’s little helper they say, right? At least mom drew the line when someone offered her horse tranquilizers or some kind of veterinary meds.  Way to go, mom! :)

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Summer 2009 ~ Let the MADNESS begin!

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

They say insanity is the spice of life, right?  Got it – chock full, in fact.  Hmm…maybe it was something different.  Variety?  Yup, got that too! I have my own crazy 70s variety show to share with you, chock-full of snippets of a lunacy-filled life topped off with a zesty pinch of Italian.  An overflowing treasure chest of life’s moments  including such gems as: the Jersey Devil, death spells, 16 different foster kids (many varieties), a lawn goose beating,  naughty spell-casting relatives, burning Ouija boards, Sicilian cures, one hot Irish priest, butt crayons, trio of old biddies (trying to kill them),  the Exorcist, fat lips, wheel-chair racing, the gas oven of doom, funny money, black pornucopia, gangsta rap, gangs, guns, knives, happy pills  (and more pills) and years of madness (complete with pee-your pants laughter and maybe a few tears) to come.   Back with you all soon, I need a shot of tequila.

Yours in lunacy,

Me

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My favorite and first crystal tee

Me

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