Friday Nights at the Alley Home

Brandon Alley

Christmas 2010

Friday Nights at the Alley Home

My parents developed what I thought was a good habit early on in their marriage. As far back as I can remember Mom and Dad always seemed to manage to go out on a weekly date with eachother. They usually did something simple like dinner or a movie, and while it provided my parents a brief respite from us, it also gave us (kids) some much needed freedom. Of course there were some unintended consequences that resulted from these short bouts of freedom. Case in point…the time Marc decided to take justice into his own hands and duct tape an M-80 firecracker to the Paxton’s back door. You may wonder why. No reason really, it was simply a combination of boredom, some curiosity as to how much power an M-80 packs, and the fact that a few smug, bratty, self-entitled young girls that we just couldn’t tolerate conveniently resided directly across the street from us. Perhaps, this story should be told another time, or maybe not, but suffice it to say that night that Marc vicariously fulfilled something that Ben and I had always wanted to do, but simply could not for lack of cajones.

Another Friday evening, while Mom and Dad were out on their date, Ben and I found ourselves positively bored out of our minds with nothing to do. I don’t recall Marc being with us that evening…he was probably in the process of masterminding his next covert operation or detonating an explosive. Anyway, Ben’s real name was “Robert”, but he always went by “Benji”, until at a later date, we began to refer to him as just “Ben”. I still take credit for making the conscious choice to start calling him “Ben”, rather than something more appropriate for a toy poodle. I don’t know why he went by “Benji” as long as he did, but if Mom had her way, Ben would still go as “Benji”, I would go as “Brandy”, Megan would go as “Muggles”, and Kristen would go as “Kissy”. And, there would’ve been no end to the ass kicking we would’ve received at school on a daily basis. Marc never had to deal with any so called endearing nicknames, and he still had his fair share of ass kicking. I digress.

Back to the story…so there we were. Benji and I had nothing to do, and out of nowhere I say, “You know what ‘Benji’ reminds me of?” “What?” says Benji. Then with apparently no filter between by brain and my mouth, I say, “a barn door”. I admit this was a stupid thing to say, but first you have to understand the logic of a seven-year old. “Benji” reminded me of the word “hinge”, which invariably made me think of a barn door. This makes perfect sense right? But no, I didn’t have time to explain this brilliant logic to Benji, because with his next response you would’ve thought I had used the worst possible insult and kicked him in the crotch.

Says Benji, “You know what your name reminds me of?” There I was stupidly grinning thinking that he was going to repay me with a compliment. “Barn door” after all was a fairly neutral connotation associated with his name. “What?” I said, still clueless to what was about to come. “A bleep”, says Benji without skipping a beat. Now, I won’t tell you what he said, but the word starts with “Fa” and ends in “ggot”. I felt like I had just been punched in the stomach. I had no clue what the meaning of this word was, but I knew enough that, in fact, it was not a compliment. This was too much for me. I came unglued and began to spout out the first thing that came to mind. As I began to form those terrible words, far off in the distance, I heard a familiar sound. But it did not fully register at the time as I was intent on giving Benji a piece of my mind.

Unfortunately, I cannot repeat the words I uttered, but suffice it to say it was the mother of all cuss words strung with another word that I had heard at school starting with “g” and ending in “ay”. Once again, I was clueless as to its meaning, and the word combination made no sense at all as I was not experienced in the use of profanity. It did, however, have the intended effect. Furthermore, the all-too familiar sound I had heard as I began to scream profanities at my sibling turned out to be the jingling and turning of keys in the deadbolt lock of our front door. That sound quickly transitioned to yet another sound, a very terrible sound. It was the sound of Dad’s footsteps rushing down the stairs to the basement at mach speed where I awaited my impending doom.

Dad looked as though he would tear me to pieces, but of course he didn’t. He simply picked me up, carried me to the bathroom in search of some soap, while I began to cry. It was no surprise to me that he didn’t find any soap in our downstair’s bathroom. After all, this was the boys’ bathroom. “Hmmm, no soap!” he said as he flung the bathroom door open. “Well, this will have to do!” he said as he then hurriedly inspected the shower and produced a bottle of shampoo. Soon, my mouth was cleansed of its impurities and smelling like Suave (I think).

Dad then took me aside to explain the meaning of what I just said. The explanation had to be simple enough for a seven-year old to understand, so needless to say, the explanation was short, to the point, and without mincing of words. Not only was this awkward and disturbing, but I was horrified both at what Dad was saying and also at what I had said to Benji. I had never heard of such things as what Dad explained that evening. He then hugged me and all was well.

The whole experience made such a deep impression on me that I took it upon myself to educate my friends and acquaintances at school any time I heard this particular word. Each time I explained the meaning I got the same disgusted reaction, but it seemed to do the trick and the cussing would invariably stop.

THE END