It all started one day sophomore year. We were playing basketball in gym and doing lay-ups. I turned to the person next to me and asked if I was in the right line. He got a panicked look on his face, turned around and didn’t say a word to me. He had a bowl haircut, his name was Terry and he used the word “Jr.” after his last name. He was quiet, shy and on the nerdy side.
Turns out he was a friend of a guy named Jay in my art class. He must have said something to Jay about liking me and next thing you know Jay was asking me all these questions. One day I got a phone call from Jay, even though I had never given him my number. He asked me what I thought about Terry, did I like the way he dressed, etc. I really never thought about it so I said I guess he dresses alright, blah, blah, blah. I found out later that Terry got my name, address and phone number while he was working as an aide in the records office at school. What I didn’t know was that Jay had three-way calling and Terry was listening in on the conversation.
Over the course of the next few weeks I saw Terry in the halls quite frequently. He had found out my schedule and made sure to be in the same hallways at the same time I was. One day he finally got up the nerve to speak to me. Unfortunately this happened to coincide with my having a horribly bad day. I was standing at my locker when out of the corner of my eye I saw him coming towards me. He started saying hi, how are you?, and I replied with one long sentence dripping with negativity, “I’mreallysorrybutI’mhavingaREALLYbaddayanditisNOTagoodtimetotalktome.” He said okay and skulked off.
End of the school year. I was looking forward to spending 6 weeks with extended family in Britain. I had saved up all my paychecks from a horrific job at a school uniform store the summer before and the trip was just around the corner. Right before I left I got a letter from Terry. It was typed on a word processor and printed on a dot-matrix printer. These were the days before everyone had computers. It was 5 pages long. He started out by telling me his life story. Literally. What hospital he was born in (I think what he weighed at birth too), where he lived, what his dad did for a living (he even told me his dad had just bought a new air-conditioner), where his family was building a house, how he came from the typical American family with 2.5 kids and a white-picket fence, what his favorite color was…I could go on and on. He wrote sci-fi novels and since he’d seen my performance in the school play (which he gave me rave reviews for) he was changing the female lead’s name to mine. He imagined that one day his novels would be made into a screenplay and I could star in the movie. He asked me to please write back even if I didn’t know what to write, just write anyway. This was all very flattering (not to mention weird) but I was a shy 16-year-old about to take my first solo trip to Europe and I just wasn’t interested. I never wrote back. Since we weren’t friends I had no reason to tell him that I was going away for the summer. I soon got on the plane and forgot all about Terry and the letter.
When I returned home at the end of the summer I found two more letters, both just as long. The second was an extension of the first and asked why I hadn’t written. The third one, however, was ugly. He was no longer nice and tolerant, and was instead very angry that I hadn’t replied. He wrote that his friends suggested he send me a raw liver in the mail, and even if I wasn’t interested I could’ve at least written back. How he (and I quote) “must just be a dork. Definition dork: whale’s penis.” After pages and pages of nastiness, he ended with a venomous P.S. saying that he had changed the female lead in his novels back to what it was previously.
Well, I was the one that was pissed now. Who the hell was he to write me a letter like that! The nerve. He just assumed I never bothered writing when little did he know I was away all summer. I returned to school at the beginning of junior year with a new, darker wardrobe, Doc Marten-esque shoes (influenced by my British cousins), and a strong dislike for Terry _______, Jr. My chance to express my dislike arrived one day after school. We were all trying to pile on a bus home and I spotted Terry. I HAD to get my own back. I shouted at the top of my lungs, “Hey Mr. Whale’s Penis!” Nobody but my friends and he knew what this referred to but that was okay with me. The crowd to get on the bus was so thick I couldn’t see him or his reaction but I know he heard me. In my own little way I had gotten back at him. Two weeks later his family’s new house in another town was completed and he moved away. I never saw or heard from him again.
I have somewhat diverse taste in music. Although there are many musical genres I’d like to know better (Help Wanted: Woman seeks musical sherpa to teach her the ways of classical, jazz, indie rock, and Tom Waits), my favorite artists are varied and always changing. Led Zeppelin, Nina Simone, Nirvana, Beck, Tribe Called Quest, and Public Enemy all spend equal time in my stereo. But I am here to tell you that it was a hard, long road that brought me to this day in my musical life.
I was raised on Easy Listening.
As a youngster in the 70’s, my earliest musical memories, after the Sesame Street records, are from 106.9 WSWT, Peoria’s Home of Easy Listening. I was weaned on Bread, Gordon Lightfoot, and Lou Rawls. While most of my peers have fond memories of an older sibling or parent introducing them to The Rolling Stones, Tina Turner, Stevie Wonder, or Heart, I have no such Almost Famous moment in my childhood. I wasn’t introduced to those bands until well into the 80’s, when their musical output was not at its peak. I thought Mick Jagger was a freak with terrifying lips, that Stevie Wonder was the King of Velveeta, that Heart’s career began (and ended) with All I Want to Do is Make Love to You.
I had no one in my life to tell me otherwise. In those first few years when the realm of my existence was my home and the family car, my parents made sure the radio dial never left 106.9. They would occasionally slip in a Ray Conniff Singers 8-track, and it was years before my ears were treated to anything beyond Engelbert Humperdink or America. Eventually television played its part in my musical rearing, but even then my exposure was limited to Donnie and Marie Osmond and Sonny and Cher.
Immediately upon watching my first episode of The Partridge Family, something inside me changed. With David Cassidy at the mike, music was suddenly sexy. Two of the first words I ever learned to spell were “Keith” and “Partridge.” I brought art projects home from pre-school that consisted of a tree, a sun, a stick figure, and the crayon scrawlings “Keith Partridge.” I taped each one to my bedroom door until it you could no longer see the door for the “art”. When I finally pulled the drawings down, the tape removed the paint from in a million little places on the wood. While my father furiously sanded the door in his workshop, I felt a hint of shame. My crush had gotten out of control, and personal property had been destroyed. It was my first taste of music’s dark side, and it was hardly my last. During playtime in kindergarten, I danced in a mad frenzy to the Village People’s YMCA. My kindergarten teacher reprimanded me during one such performance for getting too “aggressive” with the boys. I had worked myself into too much of a sweat for her comfort level, and had to spend the next playtime sitting on a bean bag while my fellow five year-olds boogied down.
In 1979 I started first grade, and rode a bus to school for the first time. Although I was forbidden from (and frightened of) the back seats of the vehicle due to my young age, I could still hear Queen reverberating from the boom boxes of the eighth graders twelve rows behind me. Although I sometimes misinterpreted the lyrics (it was years before I realized they weren't saying, “We are the Chestnuts”), the dramatic rock-opera beats seduced my ears. It was my first true exposure, other than Elvis, to rock and roll. My life would never be the same.
By the time the 80’s hit my parents no longer had full control of the radio. In order to maintain cafeteria credibility, I moved the dial of the hi-fi from 106.9 to 93.3. Anne Murray and Captain and Tennille were soon sharing the airwaves with Madonna and Michael Jackson. KZ93 was the contemporary rock station, although their playlist is now nothing more than the soundtrack to 80’s night at Alphabet Lounge. I don't think the term "pop" music existed back then, but that's certainly what we were listening to. Still, a precedent had been set in the Perino home. The new generation had voiced its opinion and been heard- WSWT had to rotate with KZ93.
At age eleven I joined Columbia House Record Club and was receiving monthly deliveries from artists ranging from Eddie Grant to Pat Benetar. Even my mom started getting into my music – she had joined an aerobics class and was memorizing dance moves to Huey Lewis tunes. Eventually MTV became a household fixture and once again I was able to picture the faces, big hair, and sparkled jewelry of the artists behind the music. By the time my brother had been kicked out of Catholic school and was bringing home Beastie Boys cassettes borrowed from his public school friends, WSWT was a distant memory, only played in the waiting room of my Dad’s psychology practice.
Still, I was missing a huge piece of music history that had transpired in the years before my birth. Thanks to an ex-nun music teacher named Mrs. Harmon, not only did I get to hear songs like Blowing in the Wind and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, but I also got to sing them. In the car ride home from what must have been a torturous three-hour school musical performance, my Dad grumbled about the song Mrs. Harmon had taught my sixth grade class that year.
“When the hippies were singing Aquarius,” he said, “some of us were off fighting a war.”
Soon it all made sense. In the tumultuous sixties, my parents were yanked from their American lives and shipped off to Tokyo. My father was drafted as an officer in the Army and was forced to delay his PhD. By the time he and my mother returned stateside, the damage was done. They hummed along to GI Blues, not Give Peace a Chance. Although now I understand, back then it meant I had to find some of the best music produced in recent years on my own.
This is where my neighbors Nina and Kara Koplas stepped in. Their Dad worked for IBM and their mother was an editor for a high-profile art magazine. Mr. and Mrs. Koplas had a loom in their basement and made their own ketchup. They sported ERA buttons and voted for Anderson in the 1980 Presidential election. Their daughters, both older than me, showed me the Growing Up and Liking It sex ed book a year we were taught it in school (interestingly, that also fell under Mrs. Harmon's job description.) Nina and Kara taught me adult words and told tales of public school lore. They also introduced me to Joan Baez and Cat Stevens. Although the Koplas album collection had its disappointments (they owned the Broadway version of the Grease Soundtrack, not the Olivia Newton-John one, for example), it was different enough from my own to be educational. I am grateful to Nina and Kara for many things, but mostly I’m grateful that they helped fill some of the musical voids that transpired between man walking on the moon and Michael Jackson’s moonwalk.
My high school boyfriend picked up where they left off. Chris not only showed the telltale signs of an easy listening childhood (he often quoted Gordon Lightfoot and took me to the America concert at Steamboat Days), but he also had Too Short and Johnny Cash albums. When I first realized I was falling for him, Pink Floyd’s Time was playing in his stereo. Chris had the most eclectic musical taste of anyone I knew – and most importantly, when he left for a week-long family vacation, he left his entire Led Zeppelin collection in my charge. It was the greatest gift anyone had given me. Thanks to you I’m much obliged... such a pleasant stay.
Throughout the years I’ve met many wonderful people who have influenced my musical taste. Many of the artists I love today were introduced to me by a special person at a special time, and although the music itself is the primary reason I still listen, I confess to sometimes listening just to remember. Now I enjoy much of the same music my friends do, but I have never forgotten my roots. We all love The Beatles and The Stones, but I'm the only one in the crew who got to experience WSWT. In those rare moments when Tie A Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree or Baby I’m A Want You play, I’m the one who’s singing the loudest.
In Glenda’s recent blog, she was called out on her frequent mentionings of ex-boyfriends, and has accepted the challenge to not write about them for an entire month. To fill the void, I present to you a tale from the annals of high school, the story of my ex-boyfriend the school mascot.
The year was 1990, and I was coocoo for cocoa puffs over a younger man in my physical education class. His name was Chris and at first glance we didn’t have much in common – he was a C-student, I was on the honor roll; he didn’t play sports, I was a cheerleader. But every afternoon we suited up in blue polyester shorts and red t-shirts emblazoned with the words “Peoria Physical Education”, and our differences quickly disappeared. Amidst the frustrations of state-mandated school athletics, Chris found fun and humor. It was springtime, and we flirted shamelessly during relay racing and outdoor softball games. He was a complete goofball, but he made me laugh, and by fall, he was my boyfriend.
Chris spoiled me by being my first love. He called me the prettiest girl in school and we stole kisses between classes under the staircase in junior hall (he was a junior; I, the older woman, a senior.) He sent me flowers and scrawled messages all over my notebooks (“Chris Hearts Gina”, “Gina and Chris 4eva”, etc.) Even my mother said she lived vicariously through our little romance, often ogling my roses while my father was around to witness her envy. The first few months of dating Chris were as blissful as any I’ve witnessed since.
But as I’ve said before, bliss does not forever last. In this case, the threat to the peace and love of my relationship came from a simple football game. At my high school there was great pomp and ceremony surrounding the Friday night football games. A large percentage of the student body, along with parents, alums, and P-town locals, warmed the bleachers of the stadium and watched as the Knights made gridiron magic. Each week the cheerleaders painstakingly created a giant paper shield through which our meaty football players would leap onto the field, accompanied by the school mascot the Knight, a junior named Dave who lumbered around in a green velvet suit with faux chain mail atop. On this particular night, however, Dave was out of town, and was replaced by his best friend, Chris.
I was excited about the prospect of being so close to Chris during the game – usually I had to watch him in the stands from the sidelines below. Our hormones raged unrequitedly as the games plodded on, each advancement down the field bringing us that much closer to pawing each other at game’s end. But the night that Chris suited up and joined us on the sidelines did not evoke the rapture I had hoped for. Unlike Dave, who stood quietly by our side with his face covered with the Knight helmet, occasionally waving his sword in the air and jumping up and down to celebrate a touchdown, Chris took Knighting to a new level. Within the first five minutes of the game the helmet was off, and Chris was rivaling the entire cheerleading squad by leading the fans in a cheer. Except it wasn’t a real cheer, not like the cheers my squadmates and I spent hours practicing after school three days a week. Noooo, it was one of those made up cheers, more appropriate for an elementary school playground than a Class A high school football game:
As he punctuated his performance with a sharp plunging of his sword into the air, I was mortified for Chris and awaited the boos and jeers from the crowd. Except that didn’t happen. They loved it and screamed for more, which fueled the fire for his next masterpiece:
Gimme a T! (… “T!”)
Gimme an E! (…”E!”)
Gimme an N! (…”N!”)
Gimme a D! (…”D!”)
Six letters of the alphabet later Chris had lured the fans out of their seats with an enthusiastic and dramatic spelling of the word, “TENDERLOIN”. He was such a smash that by the following Friday, when Dave had returned to town, Chris was still filling in as the mascot. In fact, Chris was picking up gigs at the basketball games too. He may have been solely responsible for the increase in sporting event attendance that season. Whereas fans usually cheered for the team, or at the very least the cheerleaders, they were now turning out in droves to see the mascot.
You’d think I would have been happy to see people turn out to watch the games, that if I was a true cheerleader at heart I would have appreciated school spirit no matter where it came from. But the sad truth is I was pissed, because I was 17, and I worked really hard on my stupid cheers, and no one seemed to pay any attention to the cheerleaders with Chris around. Even my dutiful father, who videotaped several games that season, was guilty of Chris-idolatry. When I got home to watch the videotape after one of the games, I saw that Dad’s lens was often focused on Chris’s antics: Chris drawing his sword from an imaginary sheath and dueling with an imaginary opponent, Chris leading the adoring crowd in a three-part round of "Row, Row, Row your Boat." Now I realize how hilarious he was, but at the time I waged my own protest and beseeched the faculty member in charge of school events to put Dave back on the mascot beat.
“I can’t put Dave back on, everyone wants Chris,” she explained.
“But nobody’s paying attention to the cheerleaders!,” I whined.
“I suggest you talk to your boyfriend about that.”
Eventually Chris got the message and turned in his Knight’s helmet for other pursuits that year. I don’t know what acted as the stronger driver towards his retirement – protecting my jealous feelings or wanting his Friday and Saturday nights free so he could hang out with his friends. I do know that the mascot fiasco was not the last of Chris’s stunts. The following school year, after we had broken up and I had moved away to college, my parents received phone calls at their office pertaining to this little piece of news:
It was a harmless prank, but yet again I found myself embarrassed by Chris’s antics. In a post-break up attempt to see a movie together that summer, Chris and I were greeted at the theater by high fives and “Hey, Naked Man! Yeah, right on!” Even as the lights dimmed, our fellow moviegoers, upon seeing Chris in the audience, made their appreciation of his “naked surprise” abundantly clear. It was the last movie I ever saw with him.
To this day, I’ve never dated anyone quite like him. He’s no longer alive, but I hope this little memoir serves as a small tribute to a very large life. Chris made me jealous, he made me mad, but he also made me laugh. Now, eleven years later, I finally get the joke.
I recently received the following email from a friend of mine….
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Friday, July 19, 2002 11:34 AM
To: Jennifer
Subject: Six Degrees of Danny Pintauro
Oh my God! I just read a little of your "When Andy Rooney Attacks" story, and it's totally like "Six Degrees of Danny Pintauro"! Everybody I know has a Danny Pintauro story! It's so freaky! My very good friend Alice went to Fire Island one summer, and met this guy Griffin who she became friends with. Well, Griffin's boyfriend was none other than...Danny Pintauro! Alice hung out with them a few times. She said Griffin was sad because Danny still wasn't over his previous boyfriend. Well, guess who Danny's previous boyfriend was? Jose's roommate Justin! Weird!
In and of itself, this tale of a (minor) celebrity encounter was really nothing to write home about. However, this particular sighting was not an isolated incident. Danny Pintauro entered my life when I was 13 years old, and I have yet to shake him.
On March 22, 1990, my after-school snack was interrupted by a sharp knock on the door. I dragged myself away from some bad afternoon television and found a uniformed Western Union Employee standing on our porch. “Mailgram for Jennifer Stephan!” She said brightly. The fact that Western Union still delivered mailgrams door to door was perplexing enough on its own; the fact that someone was actually sending ME a mailgram was even more difficult to believe. I signed for the letter, opened it, and found some startling and exciting news. There it was in black and white..."Congratulations! You have been named a winner in the Speak For Yourself letter writing Contest…."
At first I didn’t even know what they were referring to, but quickly remembered back to a youth group meeting a couple of months before. While at the meeting, the youth group leader informed us that he wanted us all to enter a writing contest. The RespecTEEN Speak For Yourself writing contest asked that the entrants draft a letter speaking out about an issue that was of concern to them. “It doesn’t have to be long,” he said. "It just needs to be from the heart. Oh…AND the prize is $500 and a weeklong trip to Washington DC for the RespecTEEN National Youth Convention!!” Spurred on by the thought of cash and a free trip, everyone immediately set out to find an topic to write about. While most of the kids immediately began writing about standard adolescent issues such as drug abuse or teenage pregnancy, I took the opportunity to voice my opinion about a problem that was very near and dear to my heart at the time: eliminating the practice of dissection of animals at the junior high and high school level. At the time, I was embroiled in a heated battle with my 8th grade biology teacher. I was refusing to participate in the latest mandatory experiment; the dissection of approximately 30 innocent little frogs. I completely understand that dissection is necessary in the case of say a medical student studying to be a doctor. It is however completely unneccesary for 13 year olds to kill an animal so they can see what it looks like inside. I insisted that the knowledge gained from such an act was negligible, and most likely we would learn more if we simply saw detailed pictures of the frog’s anatomy, or used computer programs that simulated dissection. I was quite emphatic about my beliefs, and I saw this contest as a perfect opportunity to further validate my point. I had no idea that the 20 minutes I put into writing the letter would result in winning the contest.
The letter stated that I had won the Speak For Yourself contest for the state of Rhode Island, and was invited to attend the RespecTEEN National Youth Convention in Washington DC. I, along with 49 other winners from around the country, would attend conferences, tour the nation’s capital, and meet with congressmen from around the country. It was actually really exciting for me at the time. I was interviewed by a couple of local newspapers, I received letters from my congressmen, and I got to buy my first pair of high-heeled shoes. What more could a girl ask for??
After a month of preparations, my mother and I set out for Washington DC. Upon arrival we were thrilled to find that RespecTEEN was no shoddy operation. It was clear that the convention was going to be first class all the way. They were putting us up at the Westin Grand Hotel in Washington DC..not too shabby. Our days were to be filled with fancy meals, first class tours, and (as was labeled on the itinerary sheet) getting to know your fellow “Respectable Teens.” Regardless of how cheesy it sounds now, I was really excited. The first event was a formal Congressional Reception, to be held at the Hyatt Regency. As I donned my very first Laura Ashley dress and slipped on my new 1-inch white patent leather heels. I couldn’t have been more delighted. The reception was lovely, I met congressmen from all over the country, and for the first time in my life attempted the act of “mingling.” We were just beginning to enjoy the crab cakes and pigs in a blanket when someone at the podium interrupted us. After welcoming us to the convention and going on and on about what a special experience this was going to be, the speaker announced that he had quite a surprise for us. “I want to welcome a young man that you all might find quite familiar,” he bellowed, “star of the television show Who's the Boss?…Mr. Danny Pintauro.” I don’t know about you, but like most children of the 80’s, I was a religious follower of Who’s the Boss. Granted, my favorite character was Samantha (she was soooo cool), but Danny was the one that had graced us with his very tiny presence, and he would have to do. He gave a little speech, his voice cracking every so often with the telltale signs of puberty. He was wearing a cute little suit, and gigantic eyeglasses that changed color in bright light. I was smitten.
The next couple of days were filled with excitement. Sure the special White House Visit and the tours of various national monuments were great, but most of my energy was focused on hanging out with Danny Pintauro. He was a fixture among the group. He went on most of the outings with us, and hung out in the RespecTEEN lounge in the evenings. He even went with us to Hard Rock Café where we danced the night away. The highlight of the week came as the convention came to a close, when I mentioned that I wanted to take a trip to Georgetown Mall. Much to my surprise, Danny agreed to come along. Granted, we were not alone on our mall date per se (there were several other RespecTEEN members along for the ride), but he did walk next to ME. Also in attendance was Danny’s father-slash-bodyguard. The senior Mr. Pintauro followed along about 20 feet behind the group, sporting a red, white, and blue leather “Who's the Boss?” jacket. It was bliss. Sadly, Danny said goodbye to us the next morning. He gave me a hug, a kiss on the cheek, and an autographed postcard displaying a picture of himself. At that moment I thought that he was the sweetest boy in all the land.
I never heard from Danny again and after Who's the Boss went off the air, I didn’t see him either (Nor did anyone else for that matter). In fact, he almost completely faded out of my memory. He would randomly come up in conversation on occasion. Friends of mine who knew about the illustrious mall-date with Danny Pintauro would occasionally bring him up to poke fun at me, but for the most part Danny became a thing of my past…that is until about a year ago. I was watching the E True Hollywood Story about the cast of “Whose the Boss?” and was intrigued to find out what had happened to little Danny Pintauro. I was not so shocked to find out that he had very bravely and quite publicly come out of the closet. He was one of the first child stars to do so, and was a huge gay rights advocate, making tons of public appearances. (I wonder if he still does spots with RespecTEEN?) According to “E” he was living in New York City while pursuing a career in the theater. That career in the theater was precisely where we found him. Last December we discovered that he was starring in a play called “A Queer Carol” at The Duplex in the West Village. “A Queer Carol” was basically a gay version of “A Christmas Carol.” In this version of Dickens’s classic, the setting was not in fact an old lending house, but instead an interior design firm. Tiny Tim (played by Danny) was not a little boy, but a young gay man dying of AIDS. The ghosts of Christmas's past, present, and future, were not ghosts, but flamboyant drag queens. We immediately purchased tickets. At the show I was surprised to realize that he was much as I remembered him (of course sans the big ugly glasses, Guess Jeans overalls, and fluorescent Hard Rock Café shirt). Unfortunately, I couldn’t work up the courage to speak to him, so I instead forced Gina to accost him as he was running out of the dressing room. He did not remember me, but did in fact remember the Guess Jeans overalls. Go figure.
After the play, stories of Danny began popping up everywhere. First I had a very involved, and very strange dream about Danny, and shortly afterwards, while walking in midtown Manhattan, I found myself standing shoulder to shoulder with him on a street corner waiting for a light to change. Again, I couldn’t work up the courage to speak to him, and instead flashed him a smile in the hopes that he’d maybe recognize me. He did not. A little while later, Gina and Jerry spotted him at a party at The Park, surrounded by scantily clad male dancers. Now, as per the email above, we’ve found out that he’s one of our friend’s roommate’s ex-boyfriends. Confused yet? I am. I have no clue how a relatively unknown child star has become somewhat of a constant presence in my life. Seriously, what are the chances? Perhaps some things are just meant to be....
Hippie Teenagers Have Kidnapped My Brother By GxxP
I know that everyone thinks they’re a little psychic at times, and I’m no different. Throughout my life I’ve encountered situations in which I’ve had an overwhelming feeling that I knew what was going to happen before it did. Sometimes my premonitions come from dreams, other times from feelings, and still other times from just plain common sense. In my past relationships, for example, I’ve often known what my boyfriend will do before he does it, what he'll say before he says it, and who he’ll cheat on me with before he cheats on me. It’s uncanny sometimes, enough to lead me to question whether I have a bit of psychic power or just a propensity towards the self-fulfilling prophesy. There are times when I’m grateful for the premonitions, such as when I experience a negative situation in a dream before it happens so that it’s not quite so awful once it does. Yet there are also times when I resent them, and those are the moments that constitute what I call the Cassandra Syndrome.
Cassandra was the character from classic Greek mythology who was given the gift of predicting the future by Apollo in an attempt on his part to win her affections. When she rejected him as a lover, he turned the tables on her and added a curse to his gift – that no one would ever believe a word she said. My first Cassandra Syndrome occurrence was a two-parter. It started the day that my parents traded in their Mercury Cougar for a Ford Pinto station wagon. I didn’t like that car from the moment I saw it, and cried all the way home from the dealership, in spite of my parents’ attempt to appease me by allowing me to sit in what they christened the “way back” (they lowered the back seat and gave me full range of the back of the vehicle.) No matter. There was just something I didn’t like about that car – I still remember how upset I felt, even if I didn’t know the reason. I’m sure my tantrum could be attributed to a resistance to change -- at a young age you put a lot of value on things you are able to rely upon, such as being picked up from pre-school in the same vehicle every day. I was about five years old and was already miffed about sharing the spotlight with my new baby brother. First my parents added another person to the house, then they expected me to be happy riding around in a dark blue Mom-mobile with wood paneling. I just wasn’t having it and cried myself to sleep that night.
Nearly two years later I had, out of necessity, learned to accept the Pinto, until one day I had another emotional outburst regarding the car. By this time my brother Greg was a rambunctious toddler still stuck, at three, in a phase my mother had called the “terrible twos”. My brother is a wonderful person and I love him dearly but his early years were tenuous at best. He wore corrective shoes for his pigeon-toed feet and was twice the size of the children his age (therefore very difficult to handle -- there are several family photos in which I am visibly crushed by his body weight while trying to hold him.) When he was very young he suffered from colic, thus relegating us to the “crying section” of church during Sunday mass every week. Not only was I no longer an only child, but I was forced to live with a crooked-footed chubbo that cried a lot. Our early years together were an interesting juxtaposition of unconditional love and extreme resentment. Basically your normal brother-sister dynamic.
On that fated day we were going to deliver girl scout cookies (Stop laughing. Now.) to my cousins' house, who lived about five minutes away by car. As I was readying myself for the ride I overheard my mother yelling at my brother. He’d done something wrong – something not important enough for me to remember now but offensive enough for my mom to have been very angry with him – and his punishment was to stay in the car while my mom and I delivered the cookies. Immediately this struck me as a horrible idea and I pleaded with her not to make Greg stay in the car. “He’ll do something bad,” I repeated again and again while I beseeched my mother to be logical. “Please don’t let him stay in the car.”
My request fell on deaf ears – at least my mother’s deaf ears, who told me I was silly and loaded several boxes of cookies and two sulking children into the Pinto. When we arrived at my cousins’ house we parked in their driveway. Their house was built atop a small hill. That driveway had always frightened me because it was a rather steep upward incline and emptied into a steep downward incline in the driveway of the house across the street. I was always leery when we parked the car there – another fear that my mother on many occasions tried to assuage by assuring me that the emergency brake would prevent the car from rolling down the drive. On that day, like every other time we parked there, the emergency brake was on when we left the car and headed for the house. Only this time my brother was not with us, banished to the innards of the Pinto while we chatted over thin mint cookies inside.
Only about five minutes passed while my mother, grandmother, aunt, cousins and I were inside the house that morning. I don’t remember what propelled us to leave when we did. I can only assume it was my mother’s need to get back to her 3 year old son, who had suffered enough for his crime and would likely be treated to a girl scout cookie or two upon our return home. As we made our way to the door, the screams of someone – my Nana, aunt, or mother, at this point I’m not sure – drew my attention to the Pinto in the driveway.
It’s been over twenty years since that day, and although my memory of the details leading up to and following this event are sketchy, I know exactly what I felt at the moment I saw the car. The Pinto was moving down the driveway, and smoke appeared to be coming out of the tires. In my utter shock, I thought I saw a couple of long-haired heads peeking up over the tops of the seats. I believed at that moment that hippie teenagers had kidnapped my brother.
The seconds that followed passed in an instant yet lasted an eternity. I can still hear the pitch of my aunt's frantic screams as the entire family sprinted after the Pinto. My sixty-five year old grandmother slipped and sprained her ankle so badly that she was on crutches for weeks to follow. It was the super-human prowess of my mother that saved my brother from disaster. She somehow managed to open the driver’s side door while the car was sliding backwards into the driveway across the street. To this day I’m not even sure how she did it, but she stopped the car just as it crashed into the garage of the neighbors’ house. Several layers of bricks smashed into the back of the car, crushing the top of the “way back”, and scaring the living shit out of everyone who was there to witness it. Had the car rolled another 6 inches it would have toppled the support beams and the entire second floor of the house would have flattened the Pinto-- and everyone in it-- like a pancake.
My mother and Greg emerged from the car, unscathed, but visibly shaken. No hippie teenagers followed them out of the crushed station wagon that day – in fact there hadn’t been any hippie teenagers in the first place, it was just the theory I came up with in the milliseconds before the accident. The tire smoke made me think of the squealing tires from cars driven recklessly down our quiet street by, as my father called them, “damn teenagers”. The hippie part I suppose came from the long hair I thought I saw (I saw them in flannel shirts too – as if Wayne and Garth circa 1980 had taken over the car. I appear to be confusing "burn-outs" with "hippies", but I was young, and confused.) I had completely overlooked the possibility that it was my brother who had been driving the car, or at least assisting its descent down the drive. In his boundless curiosity he had released the emergency brake, which had sent the car on its collision course down the hill, in the moments before my mother saved his life.
In the aftermath of the accident, the cops were called, neighbors gathered, and my dad and uncle arrived on the scene to lend support to their freaked out family. At one point someone called the people that lived in the house, who were on vacation, to tell them about the disaster they would be returning to. I learned this from the people traipsing in and out of my aunt's house, and I watched the activity across the street from the front window, in between the comedy routines I was performing for my 2 year old twin cousins. Someone needed to keep them in the house while the adults sorted through the mess outside, and that person was me. I know that Greg now realizes the gravity of the situation that was at hand, but that day I think he was so excited to be talking to a real live police officer that he wasn’t nearly as rattled as he should have been. Even in the moment of high drama, Greg still managed to get something out it. I never even got to leave the damn living room. Although given my questionable perspective on the accident, I’m sure I would have made a lousy witness.
In time, everything affected by that day returned to normal. The Pinto was fixed, the garage was rebuilt, Nana’s ankle healed. To this day I don’t quite know if I had a psychic connection with that car or if my mere insistence that something bad would happen allowed it to be so (am I the one who gave my brother the idea in the first place?) Either way, I have given enough subsequent warnings to people that have gone unheeded for me to still believe I carry the curse of Cassandra. I suppose the predictions seem so absurd that no rational minded individual would believe them -- not even myself, if someone else were to say them to me. Must have been awful to be Cassandra. Take it from someone who knows.
Over the past 10 years, the following story has been told so many times that I feel as if I must finally put the official account down on paper before it takes on a life of its own. No matter how many times I tell it, it never ceases to amaze even me. However, the most remarkable thing about the story itself, is that it is completely and utterly true…
In August of 1992 my family was relocated to Hawaii, courtesy of the United States Marine Corps. The move was welcome as far as I was concerned, as I was coming off a rather rocky and awkward couple of years in Virginia. Puberty had been less that kind to me during my tenure at First Colonial High School in Virginia Beach, and I was anxious to make a fresh start in a new place. When my family told me that we would be moving to Hawaii I couldn’t believe my luck. I couldn’t possibly have dreamt up a better place to spend my last two years of high school.
It took almost a month for my parents to find suitable housing on the island. Real Estate on Oahu is expensive and scarce. In addition to it being hard to find, most of it is also somewhat unacceptable. Due to the casual nature of most of its inhabitants, many homes were not kept up incredibly well. Since neither of my parents wanted their family living in a rundown shack, the search for a decent place to live took quite a while. While my parents were searching for a place to live, the USMC put us up in a hotel on Waikiki Beach. For about a month, my family and I resided quite comfortably at The Hale Koa Hotel. My siblings and I spent the majority of our days sitting by the pool, eating fresh tropical fruits, learning to surf, and (in my case) flirting with the hot Hawaiian lifeguards that worked at the hotel. By the time we moved to Kailua, I was quite content with island life. Kailua was (and is) a sleepy little town on the west side of the island of Oahu. It was a mere 20 minutes from the bustling tourist attraction of Waikiki, but it felt light years away. The beaches were gorgeous and uncrowded, and the people friendly and welcoming. I kept my fingers crossed that this blissful life would continue as I entered into what would be my eighth school since I began kindergarten so many years ago. Clearly being the “new kid” was not a foreign thing to me, but I was still rather nervous. I knew that I would be finishing up my High School career in Hawaii and, more than anything, I really wanted to make a good impression.
I started my Junior year at Kalaheo High School two weeks before my 16th birthday. I was slightly upset that I was going to have to celebrate such a momentous occasion so early in my days at the high school. I knew I would be hard pressed to make a lot of progress in the friend-making department during my first week at the school, and no doubt my birthday celebration would be a quiet, family-type thing as a result. Thankfully, the transition was much easier than I expected and, though the majority of the people I met were boys (hot surfer boys at that), I considered my first week at school a success…So much so in fact that I asked my mother if I could throw a birthday party at our home for my big “Sweet Sixteen.” She agreed immediately, happy that I was making friends with such ease, and we set the date for that Friday night.
During lunchtime on the day of the party I was talking to several of my new friends who would be in attendance that evening. After expressing some concern that not enough people might show up, I was asked a question that seemed pretty innocuous at the time. “Dude,” they asked, “Do you want us to make it RAGE??” Not knowing the full implications of what I was about to get myself into, I answered… “Yeah, sure. I guess.”
I went promptly home after school that afternoon. Several of my new friends came over to help set up for the party. My parents had purchased a ton of juice, soda, and potato chips for the revelers to enjoy. We put the chips in bowls, cut up some veggies, and put the drinks on ice. I told everyone that the party would start promptly at 7 pm, and as the hour approached I began to get more and more nervous that no one would show up. My parents sensed how anxious I was getting, and decided that they would assuage my nervousness a bit by leaving for a couple of hours. They decided to take my brother and sister out to a movie so the party could get rolling without parental units in attendance. When they returned home a few hours later and found that they couldn’t get down the street due to the fact that it was packed with cars and teenagers as far as the eye could see, they quickly realized how big of a mistake they had made.
In those short two hours in which my parents were away, approximately 200 people had shown up at my home. Just about the time that I was absolutely convinced that no one was going to show up, people started gradually trickling in. Then, really without any warning at all, my entire backyard, front yard, and the surrounding area on the street, was filled with people, most of whom I had never set eyes on before. I have never been so overwhelmed or scared in my life. In the blink of an eye, my innocent little 16th birthday party had been transformed into a scene from Animal House. I had never really been a “partier” while living in Virginia Beach. My social agenda had previously consisted mostly of dance practice and study groups. Therefore, the event that was unfolding before my eyes was somewhat of a shock to my system. I was in a state of disbelief as I walked around the party. I was having a hard enough time just taking it all in, figuring out what I was going to do was another thing altogether. Most of all, for the life of me, I could not even begin to guess how 200 strangers could have possibly ended up at my home. I was completely baffled.
At first, I focused all my energy in preventing people from getting inside my house. I figured that if I could at least keep people away from my parent’s most valuable possessions, I could alleviate a lot of damage that I was sure was going to take place. Thank god I was mostly successful. Though several people had managed to sneak in, they seemed to be causing very little trouble. I found several people smoking pot in my younger brother’s room, and there were various couples making out all over the place, but relatively speaking it seemed rather tame. I had actually managed to calm myself down a bit until one of my friends from the soccer team came running in and said, “Jen, you should come outside. Now.” I made my way back outside, and quickly realized that what was going on inside the house was child’s play in comparison to the scene that laid before me. Someone had dumped out the trashcan full of sodas and juices and replaced it with a giant keg of beer. The chips and veggies that I had so lovingly placed on the bar appeared as if they had been ravaged by a pack of wild animals. All of the windows in the outdoor bar had somehow been knocked out of their panes and were lying discarded and broken on the deck. With tears in my eyes, I continued to survey the situation. It appeared that a small reggae band had set up shop in the corner of the yard, and there were people dancing, laughing, and having a grand ole’ time. Someone had taken the cover off our broken hot tub and, after realizing that it was in fact NOT filled with water, decided to sit in it anyway. A small group seemed to be having a lovely time sitting casually in the dry tub. As I continued to walk across the deck a body whizzed by me from above. People were jumping off the roof into the pool. Every few minutes a large splash would drench any poor soul who happened to be standing too close to the edge. It was complete and utter mayhem. I had no clue what to do. I knew that my parents would be home fairly soon, and in all honesty, I was sort of glad. I had no clue how to control the crowd, and was certain that if things continued to progress in this manner, it was entirely possible that my home be taken over by unruly high school kids.
At that very moment my parents were parking their car at the end of our street and making their way toward the house. I was in the backyard trying to break up a fight when they arrived. A friend of mine tapped me on the shoulder and informed me that my Mom and Dad had returned and were waiting for me inside. I walked toward their room, and dejectedly opened the door. I have to say for the record that I am quite lucky that my parents are such reasonable people. They expressed confusion as to how so many people had ended up at their home. I informed them that I was equally as perplexed. They assured me that they knew that the situation could not have possibly been entirely my fault. They realized that though they did know that I was certainly a likable person, they also knew that there was no way in hell that I could have made 200 friends in the span of 10 days. In an effort to help me save face, they allowed me to attempt to remedy the situation on my own. They told me to tell my “guests” that the party was over, and to try to get them to leave peacefully. I did just as they said, and was completely unsuccessful. My announcement that the party was over was met with a lot blank stares and quite a bit of laughter. I informed my father that I had failed at my task, and he proceeded out into the party.
My father was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Marine Corps at the time. He is a man that had commanded thousands of troops to victory on the battlefield, a man who is highly respected by his superiors, and revered by his colleagues. Unfortunately, none of these attributes helped him in his efforts to remove 200 disorderly teenagers from his home. He did manage to get them out of the backyard and, for the most part, off his property. They would not however leave the street. The party may have ended at Casa de Stephan, but it continued to rage on the street outside. Scared that their new neighbors might not appreciate such a raucous neighborhood party being thrown without their permission, my parents trekked outside to face the music. Upon going outside, they realized that most of the neighborhood had gathered on their lawns to watch the spectacle that was going on at our house. Many neighbors had even brought out lawn chairs and coolers and, for the most part, appeared to be having a pretty decent time. My parents went across the street to speak to a family that had lived in Hawaii all their lives. After explaining to the neighbors what had happened, and expressing their disbelief that it COULD have happened, they were then told about how things work in the land of paradise. Apparently the news of a party can spread like wildfire on the island of Oahu. There’s some sort of “coconut” information line that can inform an entire island about a party in the span of a couple of hours. In the hours after lunchtime on that fated day, word had been passed from person to person and from high school to high school, until virtually the entire Island of Oahu had been informed of my little shindig. I know this sounds absolutely unbelievable, but it’s the unqualified truth. If you want to have a quiet party on the island, you have to keep it VERY, VERY quiet.
“Okay then,” my Mother replied to the neighbor with skepticism. “I think I understand, but what do we do now?”
“Call the cops,” he answered.
So…with a heavy heart, my father dialed 911. Upon the arrival of the policemen, the crowd quickly began to disperse. My parents, happy that the situation had been contained, approached the officers to express their gratitude. “You know,” one of the Policemen said, “It’s illegal to serve alcohol to minors. You could be fined for this.” “EXCUSE ME??” My father bellowed. “I called YOU. These people are trespassing on MY property. Do you think I planned this??” The cop had a difficult time processing the concept that someone had called the cops to break up their OWN party, but eventually he nodded and went on his way. Gradually most of the kids left and we returned back into the house, thinking that the worst was behind us. Scared to even look my parents in the eye at that point, I went immediately to the backyard to begin cleaning up the mess. As I was cleaning up the debris left behind by the partygoers, I heard my mother yell.
“JENNIFER!! GET IN THE BATHROOM NOW!!”
Shit.
No…really. I mean SHIT. There was poop everywhere. Someone had smeared his or her poop all over our hall bathroom. It was all over the place. On the floor, on the walls, on the shower curtain…it was appalling. I didn’t know what to say. I mean, what exactly CAN you say at that point? I was ashamed enough at what had already happened. Hell. I was having a hard enough time coming up with a way to explain how 200 people ended up at our home. I had NO idea how to explain a bathroom smeared with poo. So…I really didn’t say anything. My Mother told me to get away from her, let me know that she would take care of it, and then asked me not to speak to her for a little while. I agreed, and ran off to continue picking up the mess that my “guests” caused.
My mother woke me up the next morning at about 6am, handed me a box of garbage bags, and told me to go pick up every beer bottle and piece of trash that had been left in our neighborhood. I obeyed without a word. I was still waiting for my the other shoe to drop. I was positive that my punishment was going to be quite bad. It had to be. I threw a rager and someone spread poo all over my Mom’s bathroom. That had to qualify me for some MAJOR punishment. I was sure that they were just trying to dream up something suitable enough to fit the crime. I returned inside after filling countless garbage bags with cans and bottles. Upon entering the house, I found my parents scratching their heads (and holding their noses) trying to solve quite a conundrum. My Mom had cleaned and cleaned, and yet the bathroom STILL smelled like poop. They could not for the life of them figure out what was causing the smell. After doing some searching, we found that the perpetrator of the poop-smearing incident had left behind a little present. Under the sink we found his poop covered socks and underwear. They were disposed of immediately, and it was quite some time before I could mention the bathroom incident to my mother.
The aftermath of the party was not as horrible as I thought it might be. As I mentioned before, my parents were and are incredibly reasonable people. They knew that the cause of the party was largely not my fault, so my punishment was relatively simple: I was not allowed to attend any parties in the town of Kailua for quite some time…and understandably so. My parents had seen firsthand EXACTLY what went down at these functions, and could not in good conscience let their daughter attend such debaucherous events. A couple days later I found out via the grapevine who had been the cause of the bathroom incident. I decided to confront him at school during lunchtime. I was slightly intimidated, as he was perhaps the largest Samoan teenager that I had ever seen. Regardless, I put aside my fears, and I forged ahead. I felt it to be completely necessary that he know that what he did would not go unchecked. I didn’t make a huge scene. I simply walked up to him while he was eating lunch with his friends, and informed him that if he happened to be missing any dirty socks or underwear, he could find them at my house. I let him know that he was free to pick them up at anytime. From that point on he took to running the other direction when he would see me in the hall.
For the next two years while we lived at that house, we were constantly reminded of the infamous party. Randomly, during the weekends, kids would stop by our house to see if there just happened to be another party going on that night. We were also pegged by the police as a potential “party house,” and would often see police cruisers rolling by on Friday and Saturday nights just to see if I was up to my old tricks. I would also frequently find bottle caps and beer cans hidden in the strangest of places. When I did, I would point them out to my parents, and we would all laugh and recount the story of that night. As time put a greater distance between the party and our day-to-day lives, we were all able to make light of the incident more and more. The 16th Birthday Party Story has become a rather famous one in our circle of family and friends. To this day, I am constantly teased and ridiculed about what happened that night. Almost everyone I know knows all about it, and each time it is told it is met with the same disbelief. In all honesty, if I didn’t see it with my own two eyes, I don’t know that I would believe it either.
