The first baseball game that I ever went to was a Philadelphia Phillies game, some time around the end of the 1982 season. I'd have been just about to turn nine. I remember that it was freezing cold. It was a close and high-scoring game, possibly extra innings. It was the bottom of the ninth, and I have no idea of the exact score, but the bases were loaded, and Ozzie Virgil was at the plate. If he got a hit, or knocked in a run in some other way, Phillies win. It was a pennant race - I don't remember that part, but I looked it up. So big tension, lots of emotion. Everyone was on their feet, screaming "Ozzie! Ozzie!" And wouldn't you know it, he smacked it right into the stands, grand slam! I vividly remember the scoreboard flashing a crude animation of a sausage with the words "It's a Grand Salami!" The already-manic crowd erupted, my Dad and Grandfather were jumping up and down. Good times. The next day, or possibly later that night at home, I was excitedly recounting the game to friends of my Dad's. When I got to the end, I proudly said, "And Ozzie Virgin hit a grand salami!"
The room just about fell apart with laughter, of course. Someone said, "That's Ozzie VIRGIL. Virgil." For about 5 years, I never got what was so funny. Eventually, I learned what "virgin" meant, and sure, it was funny. But I was pissed off to be the butt of a joke that they wouldn't even explain to me.
It's evidence of my parents' weird aversion to even the slightest reference to anything sexual. They both curse like sailors, and have for as long as I can remember - fuck this, shit that, asshole the other, all day long. But never anything remotely sexual. My Mom was in the hospital overnight once, and I visited, of course. I remember a stereotypical Big Sassy Black Nurse being the primary caretaker while I was there. I must have been fooling around, because B.S.B.N. told me "You'd better behave, or I'll smack you right in the twat!" Now, by this time, I had been around the block. I'd cherrypicked all the sex books from the library, so I sure as hell knew that "twat" meant "vagina." I asked my Mom, "What does THAT mean?" She turned seventeen shades of red and said to my Dad, "Well, I'M sure not gonna tell him!" He just sat there, stupefied.
I later found out, somehow, that apparently sometimes "twat" means "behind." Less offensive than "ass," I guess? Who'd a-thunk it? If I hadn't looked it up, I'd still be wondering if I looked a little girlish that day.
And the time I kept shortening the word "pimple" to "pimp." I was about ten or eleven, I guess. Just having fun with words. Mom got all weird and said to stop saying that, but she would never tell me why.
I mentioned in a recent blog entry that she once kicked me out of the living room during the love scene in The Terminator. Well I sure wasn't exaggerating. It's a ridiculously violent movie, with, among other highlights, a dude getting punched right through the heart so the guys fist went through, and the heart was in his fist as it poked out of the other dude's back. Badass, right?! My mom must've thought so, because we sat through it. But the one brief sex scene, which,as I verified at a later date, contains a sad lack of penetration shots, was verboten, and she scuttled me off to the kitchen. "I don't want you to think love is like that," she said.
I still don't know what the fuck she meant.
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