Haven’t voted? Maybe more pictures?

Arghghg! I see that I am being trampled on at the Weblog Awards which is entirely what I’d expected would happen, but that doesn’t mean it feels good.

Am I going to have to haul out more family photos? Don’t make me do it! I don’t have a scanner! I’m hauling out the album, as I type!

I have a picture of my paternal grandmother; she has a mustache, thick ankles and she’s wearing men’s shoes. She sits on a parkbench and somehow manages to have her hands on her hips, as she sits. This is not a happy-looking woman. I understand my birth father was her favorite child and that she would proclaim that “he came from the white chicken’s *ss!” I don’t know what that means, though. I think it’s an expression from old Napoli.

I have a picture of my maternal grandmother, holding a cigarette and a martini. She’s leaning forward and looking at something that is highly amusing. Or she’s just in her cups.

Both of them sport boobs down to their kneecaps! Genetics strikes again!

I have a tintype of some great uncle or whatever, wearing what appears to be the uniform of a revolutionary war soldier. My understanding is that was what he had to wear as a theatre usher, and I am not sure entirely why he had his portrait taken in his work clothes.

I have a picture of one of my brothers sporting a black eye, where I’d kicked him as he’d bent down to do something. I believe he had pissed me off. This was just days before my sister’s wedding, and yes, the kid has a shiner in all the pics. I was the flower girl, and very sweet.

I have a picture of me, charming child, smiling wickedly as I hold a hose between my legs approximating what I imagined to be “boy peeing.” This is right around the flowergirl time. I don’t recall going out in public much after that.

How about if I tell you a funny story about my birth parents, as it was relayed to me?

Apparently they married to keep him from being drafted into WWII, which did not work. She got pregnant and had a baby girl (the sister whose wedding I contributed to so memorably). Wanting to show him the baby, which was named for him, She trained down to Biloxi, Mississippi, and in the course of the visit decided to make for him a home-cooked meal. She went to the little general store in town and requested a bottle of oil.

Being Brooklyn born and raised, what she actually said was, “Gimmee a bot’le o’ earl.”

The Southern Gent, not being born and raised, responded: “Eh? Beg pardon?”

Said she: “I need a bot’le o’ earl.!”

“I’m sorry, missus, but ah’m not unnerstandin’ ye.”

Exasperated, she repeated herself, pointing to a shelf behind him. “Earl! Earl! I need a bot’le o’ EARL!”

The man looked around and saw the bottle of Wesson Oil. Dawn broke. “Ohhhh,” he said cheerfully, as he reached for it, “you’re askin’ fer a boddle of ALL!”

“Yeah,” Mother agreed, “that’s what I said, EARL!”

Baby and boddle-of-all in tow, a meal was cooked and consumed before one went to Okinawa and the other went back to Coney Island. Language problems continued for both in their respective situations, for some time. There is, rolling around in my memory, a competing story about himself struggling to do business with a Japanese woman who had no word for “no” and kept saying “hai” agreeably, which was off-putting, because to his way of thinking, the conversation kept getting cycled back to the greeting.

“Hai!”

Sigh. “Yes. HELLO. I said HELLO already. Can you show me some socks?”

“Hai!”

Sigh. “Hi.”

Okay…now I’ve told you an old family fable from my birth parents. Will you go vote for me? :-)