FRESH YARN presents: Bunny ... by Des Jedeikin

FRESH YARN presents:

Bunny
By Des Jedeikin

There are plenty of reasons I enjoyed having young parents. Sipping Mommy's lime daiquiri while we watched The Muppet Show together. Frankenberry for breakfast, Booberry for lunch and Count Chocula for dinner whenever Daddy was in charge. Sitting at the bar enjoying all-you-can-eat tacos and maraschino cherries, while my mom worked as a cocktail waitress at the Monday Night Football happy hour in the Jacksonville, Florida hotspot, Bombay Bicycle Club. "Partay!" my mom would say after she told me the babysitter had canceled and I would have to go to work with her! And how could I forget the excitement of cable television, staying up late with Daddy, who let me eat Cremora powdered coffee creamer straight from the jar, as we watched Porky's: The Movie. "Look at the size of those pig's balls" he'd scream with laughter, as I looked at him adoringly.

These things still amuse me. Other parenting decisions they made, although enjoyable at the time, have begun to seem a little more questionable. These decisions range from small (letting me eat people's discarded fried shrimp tails at a BBQ, taking pictures of me when I was a toddler wearing a stuffed bra) to large (waking up one morning to find Mommy and Daddy passed out naked and in the 69 position, letting me have a wild raccoon as a pet). In a childhood of American cheese tacos and a disturbing awareness of un-groomed hippie nudity, perceptions of normalcy are oddly skewed.

Another point to be made about having immature parents is that while they score high marks in the playmate department, they usually flunk out when it comes to actually teaching their children how to grow up. Their emotional maturity gets stunted at the level it was when they had you, making it extremely possible to eclipse their maturity level as an elementary school student. I was a gifted child and managed to become the adult of the house at age five. I confess that I did reap a lot of benefits by being able to outwit and manipulate my parents, but there were times when I could have used someone with a few more leadership qualities. It is one thing to get out of trouble by promising to share your Halloween bounty, but when some serious shit goes down, you don't want someone who thinks it's a good idea to remove a loose baby tooth by tying it to a doorknob and then slamming the door.

While my dad had a laissez-faire parenting style, my mom had an inkling they should be doing something to guide me. Her primary method of "guiding" me through transitions or trauma was to take me to Red Lobster, and give me the good news/bad news option. The good news/bad news option was always a frightening prospect coming from a former knocked-up high school dropout who survived off the glimmer of hope that any remotely good news might bring her. With my mom it was always more of a bad news/ "look-on-the-bright-side less worse news" choice.

When I was eight years old my mom came up with an amazing good news/bad news scenario. I knew it was bad because not only were we having lunch at Red Lobster, but I was finally allowed to order the surf and turf (my first dream come true!) and I was even allowed to get a Shirley Temple (I had already decided that if ever I was on death row this would be my last meal -- with a Dairy Queen banana split for dessert). When she asked me which news I would prefer to hear first, I stared blankly, my brain short-circuited by the enormity of the possibilities. It was very difficult to concentrate because I had run out of my melted butter-like substance. As I tried to get our waitress's attention, Mom decided it was best to tell me the bad news first. I could tell she was serious because she had the pained expression of thought on her face and the scent of crème de menthe on her breath (my mom only drinks daiquiris and grasshoppers). I felt slightly underdressed in my halter-top short set, for what was sure to be an important life moment.

"Punkin', I have some bad news," she said with all the learned feeling of a TV mom on a very special episode. "Daddy and I are getting a divorce."

She looked like she really felt bad for me, so I knew that I was supposed to be traumatized by this news. But quite frankly, I was an extremely jaded eight-year-old. I knew how to play the game.

"Nooo!" I said doing my best, wounded prime-time moppet imitation. I knew I was expected to be really upset, but my child survival instincts kicked in and I thought about what I would ask for to make me feel better, all that cheap junk that is a waste of money -- Wacky Packages trading cards, Chunkies, and real "Day of the Week" underwear, not the cheap Pic-n-Save brand that she bought me, the ones that included the inexplicable "'weekend" pair. I was so busy planning my life as a spoiled divorced child, with parents buying my love with Cabbage Patch Dolls and Pound Puppies, I completely forgot that I also had some "look-on-the-bright-side less worse news" coming my way.

"But don't be too upset because the truth is he's not your real father anyway."

I have pinpointed this as the exact moment when I started eating for comfort.

"Mom?"

My mind was flooded with questions. No fight for custody? No loser parent kidnapping me, dying my hair and changing my name to Jennifer, convincing me that it's all some exciting game of playacting? Does this mean I can't watch the basic cable premiere of Motel Hell this weekend with "him?" In my head I was franticly screaming these questions. For a moment a look crossed her face, a look that said, "This kid is fucked," but the look faded as she nervously sucked on her Alaskan king crab leg in an attempt to reassure me that everything was fine as she waited for the hard-hitting questions of a child scorned.

"Can I have your hush puppies?" I said.

"It is a wonderful life," I thought, rubbing my hands together under the table like an eight-year-old Mr. Potter, foreclosing on a hardworking family's home. Bedford Falls will be mine! (Evil cackle). All mine! (Longer evil cackle). Only chumps like George Bailey found happiness in family.

By the time we got to the car I had already adjusted to my new situation. If convulsively shrugging every time my mom looked at me counts as moving on. Another bad thing about a young mom is that you spend a lot of time comforting and advising her during your trauma. I was genuinely consoled, however, by the fact that my long held suspicions were confirmed. It is unlikely that two dark-haired, olive skinned people managed to have a strawberry-blonde ghost child.

About ten minutes into our drive home, I got carsick and we had to pull over. I leapt out the door and casually vomited as I strolled by a bed of California poppies, bending down to smell the flowers as if the vomiting was an afterthought. When I got back into the car my mom handed me a butterscotch lifesaver and reminded me to keep pretending that Keith was my real dad since he didn't know about the divorce yet. I didn't mind. I had already been convinced that he was a "bastard" who had "been fucking around" and I was fully on board with my mom in her quest to "screw that fucker." I really needed to move on.

That afternoon I spent my time thinking of all the drama of it, too busy to notice my Chihuahua, Happy, was humping my furry -- I swear to god -- beaver hand puppet again. I became excited thinking about how my life, minus the money and glamour, had all the elements of a soap opera. I considered myself the ingénue, but I was not the Lucy Ewing or Fallon Carrington of my show. I was the beautiful and upwardly mobile tramp, Sammie Jo Dean Carrington or the mousy but determined Valene Ewing. Sure I was from the wrong side of the tracks, but one day I would marry the black sheep of an extremely wealthy, highly respected family, bringing them disgrace with my unrefined ways and my "fuck 'em!" attitude, yet ultimately winning them over with my spunk. But I wasn't that prime-time vixen yet -- I was still living in the back-story.

My next thoughts focused on a more practical fantasy-figuring out who my real father was. I knew my mom's type, so I deduced that he was a musician with a mustache. I eliminated John Oates and Kenny Loggins immediately due to their coloring. I was catching on to genetics fast. For various reasons, mainly being that he was a high school friend of my mom's and his possession of a golden mane, I decided upon Ronnie Van Zant, the deceased lead singer of Lynard Skynard. A practical choice with no awkward meeting later in life, where he is initially attracted to me, thinking I'm some foxy groupie, trying to kiss me, as I push him away, saying "I'm your daughter!" only to watch him stumble away in a drunken haze, leaving me standing in a pile of crushed dreams and a puddle of what I come to realize is my dad's piss. Corpses can't take a leak on you.

I began obsessively reading meaning into all of Lynard Skynard's lyrics. "What's Your Name Little Girl?" Her name is Candy and she's my momma! "I Ain't the One" was all about how my mom got pregnant but he couldn't marry her 'cause he was a free bird and if he stayed things just wouldn't be the same. "Sweet Home Alabama" became my anthem; convincing me to hate Neil Young and making me feel bad that the South lost the Civil War. Somewhere along the way my more practical fantasy veered off into the fantastic. Clearly I held the belief that I was destined for more than the average illegitimate daughters of the world. I was special.

My mom begged to differ. She had one last truth that she felt obligated to unload on me as we shared a pack of Ding Dongs while watching The Young and the Restless together.

"His name is Bunny," my mom said.

"Bunny? Bunny?" I think I repeated this a dozen times, each time at an increasingly louder volume.

"That's just what we all called him," she said reassuringly(!)

And then she showed me a picture of a guy sporting the classic hitchhiker look -- long blonde hair, a handle bar mustache, and a missing front tooth. A poor woman's Ronnie Van Zant. He was standing in front of a beat-up old boat. Not exactly a houseboat, but a boat that he lived in. My fantasies quickly deflated, accompanied by a sad-sack chorus of flatulent trombones.

Luckily, I didn't have time to be disappointed. There were more important things at stake. My mom told me all about her secret plan to pack up all of our belongings while my asshole ex-daddy was at work. Then she asked me if I was her big girl. I knew I was but I didn't feel like admitting it.

I shrugged and asked if we could go to Jack-in-the-Box for dinner.