This assignment is due in fifty-nine minutes and I haven't a damn clue what to write! Well, my unofficial non-blog assignment was to turn off my inner critic and allow myself to write anything even if it's crap. So, I think I'll let myself write a bunch of crap for my blog entry this week.
What's hard about this assignment for me is that I really couldn't find anything that I've never tried in my writing in the stories we read: I've written poems, I usually write in vignettes for my longer pieces, quite often I write about pathetic, disaffected people, etc. So, I guess I'll just try something I know I've tried, but always failed at: writing about myself. It's something I struggle with from time to time. Let's give it a go. Why not?
When I was younger, nothing confused me more than my grandfather. He was a tall, bulbous, Yiddish speaking man, who loved to eat and loved to pull legs. No one could ever overlook Herb Stein. He was big, loud, and he'd tell you all about it whether you wanted to hear it or not. Grandpa did whatever he wanted. He'd dry beef, drive without his seatbelt, and wore rainbow suspenders every day. He owned a small hardware chain and finally earned himself and his family a modest fortune. He took that fortune and designed and built his own house. White with a green roof. He did it all, because he was Herb and he was my Grandpa.
When ever I would not stop crying he'd threaten to hit my Dad. I would just cry even more. I never got his jokes and he never got why I didn't get those jokes.
Every morning he would walk down the stairs, look at me spilling cereal on my pajamas and boom, "Who are you? What are you doing in my house?" I would just stare, afraid. Why couldn't he remember? He just saw me last night when he snuck me bites of his sandwich.
Late at night, long after dinner, he would be downstairs making a snack: a big sandwich, a big bowl of ice cream, a pizza, whatever, anything, as long as it was big and food -it was the perfect midnight snack. I would sneak downstairs to meet him when my crocheting grandmother's eyes were too distracted by Fred Astaire or a murder mystery. He would feed me then and say things I can't remember now.
Sometimes my grandmother and I would throw tea parties with a miniature tea set served on a child-sized table and chair set. The menu always included: hot chocolate and hot dogs cut into finger food sizes. Grandfather would squeeze into one of those little chairs and sip hot chocolate with me, chatting about the weather.
Grandma loved animals. They had everything: dogs, cats, sheep, chickens, turkeys... Everyday you had to gather up the chicken eggs. Grandpa always took me to go get the eggs. While we would walk there he'd sing his song, especially composed for the occasion:
We're going to pick some cackle berries!
somethingsomethingsomething
somethingsomethingsomething
We're going to pick some cackleberries!
I would go into the dark, smelly coop and put all the eggs in the bucket. They were the best eggs in the world. They had the brightest yokes, like suns rising in the morning. Grandma always said that she could never eat store-bought eggs unless blindfolded.
Sometimes when life was good he would take me out in his old, blue pickup with white stripes on the sides. He would stop at a light for a long time, even after it turned green, "I'm waiting for a color I like," he would say. He would always buy me a rainbow sherbet. I never ate any rainbow sherbet that wasn't from my Grandpa. I always had to remind him to put on his seatbelt.
One evening. My parents get a phone call that Grandpa was in a car accident. There's tension, my Dad paces all over the house and my Mom pretends to do things in the kitchen and I pretend I don't notice and play. We get another phone call. He didn't make it. Dad called a hospital and tried to donate his eyes but it didn't work out. I fell asleep and woke up to my dog Chocolate licking my face.
At the funeral I was afraid we'd have to look into the coffin like how they do in the movies, but we're Jewish, so there was just a box. Everyone took turns shoveling dirt in the grave.
Grandma sold the white house with the green roof and moved, and later died, in a luxury, high-rise Los Angeles apartment. The dogs and cats died, the sheep and chickens were given away to nice people who wouldn't eat them.
I still couldn't write about myself. Oh well. At least I wrote something.
