A bit about Britt

I wanted to tell you some stuff. I thought we should get acquainted, real quick. I was brought up in San Diego in the early ‘80s; my parents divorced when I was six and three years later I followed my dad to Lincoln, Nebraska, after he got a job at the university. Why did I choose a state that would elect a man to public office because he honed his political chops coaching college football over trips to the Pacific Ocean and fluency in Valley Girl speak? Like, I still don’t know why those lily white Corn Husker kids looked at me funny when I waltzed into fifth grade sporting my paint-splattered jump suit and day-glo jellies. So, whatever.

Being the daughter of a professor was kinda fun. It was in Dad’s lab I first discovered my affinity for Sharpies, a love that continues to this day. Stocked for labeling beakers and mice tails, I’d sniff my way to bliss scrawling my name in red, green, yellow, and, if it wasn’t being hogged by an under-grad student doing research, purple. Yep, it was those trips to Manter Hall that fostered the special relationship I have with my 37 fine points today.

Those early days in Lincoln were full of adventure. During summer break, my brother and I would eat Campbell’s Vegetable Soup cold out the can and watch Today’s Special and Press Your Luck. Remember the Wammie who looked like Boy George? We blew those weird balloons where you’d poke a blob of multi-colored toxic shit (read: awesome smelling chemicals) on the end of a tiny straw and watch the fun unfold. I was never embarrassed when he had to pick up his plate and lick it clean at Twin Dragon, it just broke my heart, that’s all. He was always popping his neck and doing a whistle/puff thing out of his super-chapped lips. You know Scooby Doo at the end of the intro, how he licked all around his face after a Scooby Snack? He was like that, only no cookie.

My brother’s behavior would typically warrant a pat on the thigh and a, “Relax, xxx” or, depending on the place and his ferocity, “Knock it off, XXX.” I know my parents were frustrated at the five-year lack of answers about their first-born child, who was rapidly turning into an overweight teen with poor hygiene and hard blinks. And I know my brother wasn’t proud of those little jump/peep combos, though he was getting really good at them. Or that he’d forgotten his Blistex for the 748^th day in a row.

See, I remember him as a cute blond kid at Universal Studios fake riding a bike projected on a screen that made him look like he was trekking across a bright sunny field. He was smiling and little and sweet. But to the world he became a fat kid who threw his Trapper Keeper at people and cussed at his teachers, and later, an overweight adult who dropped the f-bomb through rotten, smoke-yellowed teeth (now a full set of dentures).

 

His struggle continues today, but living with Tourette’s Syndrome made my brother who he is. He may never offer you a ride (in fact, he’ll probably try and bum one from you) or know how to write you a check, but he’ll teach you, like he taught himself, American Sign Language, Japanese or Esperanto, or let you in on what he found while reading Godel, Esher, Bach when he was twelve.

So it was just growing up in a divorced family, trying to ace my charade as the normal kid in my bro’s bird-flipping shadow, and trying to put a finger on my penchant for rainbows. I coped by doing my “patterns.” They took a bit of work, and I was proud of them. In fact, most of my energy went to reciting under my breath billboard vowels front ways and back so my family wouldn’t be murdered if I didn’t do it from memory with my eyes closed while holding my body perfectly still before I’d passed the sign. Whew. Unable to explain stuff like this, I decided I was an alien involved in an inter-galactic competition. You should have come to the conventions (where I totally skunked the humans, fyi).

I had all the Chevy Citations in Lincoln counted  by the time my junior year was half over (that sparkly burnt sienna guy really got around), and I’d just started the previous October. You can bet your sweet ass I brought home most of the Best-in-Cosmos air trophies. What got me ahead? I put my world in order while holding my breath. Try that, mortal–it’s harder than it sounds. But I shed that OCD stuff when I was old enough to believe that narrowly missing disaster never did come down to gagging myself with my toothbrush five times before I could finish brushing my teeth. Bitch, you shoulda told me fifteen years ago.

So of course I was going to attract certain personalities and forge bonds with people, as maladjusted as I was. Probably in an effort to help me make friends at my new school, my dad signed me up for an extracurricular Spanish class at Beattie the year I moved to Lincoln.

There was this girl. She not only stared at my neon jellies, she wanted to borrow them (despite looking pretty snazzy herself in grass-stained Stadia Velcro high tops). She looked carefree, but I could tell her load was heavy, even at ten. Thanks to her frazzled mullet (sooo not hating–I was taken to freakin’ Chet’s Barber Shop for my new school debut), she looked liked a worried Fraggle in heather gray. When Senorita Sanchez asked us to find a partner, we immediately went to stand next to each other. She had me at “Hola, Alicia, me llamo Juanita.”

My first visit to her house, her baby sister’s head bobbed and dipped while I waved and poked at her. Jessie told me, “She can’t see you yet, she’s too little.” Here was this 10-year old, telling me how to approach a newborn, hold her neck, and later how to clean her shit from the slats of her crib while I tried to crank a mix tape on her boom box. By sixth grade Jessie was browning hamburger for the Helper, changing diapers and administering medicine while the noodles softened in the skillet. She was the friend who was always busy at home, but she could play if Dad would drop me off. She caught my brother’s irreverent humor and was never weirded out by him. In junior high to avoid being grounded, she timed our ten speed trips to Twisters, where we scrambled for the latest Red Hot Chili Peppers cassette. She cooked dinner, mowed the lawn and cleaned the house before I was home from Hinky Dinky with my Stridex pads. She sat me by the speaker blasting some cool thing called a CD, Melissa Etheridge for all of 16^th St. to hear. Hell, she had a baby of her own at eighteen while I was off doing drugs in New Orleans. She still makes fun of me and I love it every time. After 22 years, my dad refers to her as “Good Ole’ Jessie.”

This is just our story, a friendship. What you write and say to your oldest friend in between raising a teenager and driving from your full-time job to visit your mom who doesn’t know who you are because she will die of multiple sclerosis, seeing your partner of fourteen years through breast cancer treatment and making dinner and spotting the first gray hairs and finding the funny in life when it’s hard. Everybody has one…

LIFE…ours aren’t marvelous, but such is our fodder.