Hello 2007
Starting Off 2007 Single Handedly
This past Christmas, I was gorging myself silly on roast lamb, turkey and pineapple tarts at a friend’s open-house when I received a call on my mobile from The Mother which I initially refused to answer seeing that a) my mother had been slowly driving me crazy and back into a pubescent state of passive aggression ever since I arrived home for the holidays and b) it was only 6 o’clock in the afternoon and even by my psychotically over-protective mother’s standards, I was under no obligation to be home.
“Is that your mother?! Don’t tell me she wants you to go home now?!! You’re 21! It’s early! And it’s Christmas!!” said my friend, The Hostess.
Of course, it doesn’t matter to my mother whether I’m 12 or 21 or 210 years old; I was still to abide by her rules as payback for spending 9 months in her womb rent-free. It also didn’t matter to my mother that in 2006, I had proven that I can successfully live away from home on my own without a) getting kidnapped and having my organs forcibly removed and put on sale in the black market; b) being robbed in a dark alley at gunpoint; c) get run over by a rogue pig-transporting lorry; d) having random, promiscuous sex with diseased strangers; e) dying of a drug overdose or f) all of the above – my mother is of the opinion that the best way to keep yourself safe in a dangerous world is to be locked away from it… and only coming out once a week to shop for pesticide-free organic fruits. Little does she realize that this idea of hers, while annoying when I was 12, is turning me into a verifiable pesticide-free fruitcake at 21.
(The other day, she caught me eating non-organic grapes and she yelled, “Don’t eat that! You’re putting poison in your system!!!!” As an act of civil disobedience or err…childish defiance, I slowly popped a non-organic grape in my mouth and said, “Yummmm…” to which my mother responded by saying, “Fine, if you want to die a slow death of pesticide poisoning, go ahead.” The way I see it, I could either die of a slow death from overzealous parental control or a slow death from non-organic grapes. I choose sweet, juicy grapes, thanks. Same goes for cigarettes.)
“These are really good tarts,” I said to The Hostess, eager to change the subject. I’ve hardly had any mother-free time since I got back and I was determined to make this Christmas Open-House one of them. “You Seranis make the loveliest tarts…”
Laughter all around. Clearly, we weren’t talking about tarts of the pineapple kind anymore.
“Why, thank you. I pinched the tarts myself, you know. Spent ALL day pinching tarts yesterday,” said The Hostess. “Serani girls do make the best tarts.”
My phone wouldn’t stop ringing.
“Oi, answer your phone-la before your mother calls the police,” said The Hostess who after 11 years of being friends with yours truly is more than accustomed to my mother’s eccentricities.
“Shut your skankhole and go get more tarts for me,” I tell her.
The Hostess returns with two mutual friends of ours. “Here you go, more tarts.”
The sound of laughter was interrupted by the sound of my phone blasting the stupid Star Wars ring tone. You know, the tune they play every other time Darth Vader appears on screen. I finally answer the call and as expected, my mother was on the line screaming, “Come home, NOW, NOW, NOW !” What I didn’t expect was for her to be saying, “Your dad fell off a ladder! I need you to take him to the hospital!!”
At first I thought, boy, this is the craziest ploy my mom has ever pulled to get me to come home early. And then I realized that it wasn’t a ploy at all. My mistake.
I sped home to find my dad sprawled on the floor, a toppled aluminum ladder next to him. He had clearly broken something but was conscious enough to say that the incident was my mother’s fault.
“Why?!! Did she push you off the ladder?!!!” I asked, thinking that 32 years of marriage had finally gotten to my mother.
“No,” my dad replied. “But she made me stay at home and I got bored, that’s why I decided to fix the ceiling light and that’s when I fell. If she didn’t make me stay at home then I wouldn’t have gotten bored and climbed the ladder in the first place.”
Falling off a ladder can do funny things to one’s sense of logic and personal responsibility. Of course, so can living with my mother. Still, I felt bad for her.
“Don’t worry Mom, it’s not your fault Daddy fell off The Leaning Ladder of PJ,” I said.
And my mom replied, “Why is your dress so short?!! You’re not going to take your Daddy to the hospital wearing that, are you?”
The dress was knee length. Red with tiny white polka-dots. Very retro. And not at all tarty. I was even wearing a bra and all which is an achievement by my standards.
At the hospital, they discovered that my father’s wrist was horribly broken in three places (other than that, he was fine) and decided that surgery had to be performed on the hand as soon as possible.
“You mean, tonight?” my mother asked the attending A&E doctor.
“Possibly. We already called the surgeon. He’s on his way.”
“From a Christmas party? What if he’s drunk?! What if he drank too much wine or eggnog or brandy or champagne at the Christmas party?!! He can’t perform surgery…” my mother rattled off in panic, convinced that they would let a drunken, scalpel-wielding surgeon loose on her husband if she didn’t insist otherwise.
“Don’t worry. This surgeon celebrates Deepavali, not Christmas,” answered the doctor.
“He can still get drunk with his friends on Christmas!!” said my mother. Yes, doctors on call usually consume bottles of whiskey to while away the time between surgeries. Actually, I wouldn’t know. Still…
When my mother finally met the surgeon later that night, he showed absolutely no signs of being inebriated. Of course, my mother still wasn’t sure of his abilities seeing that she found him “Too young, very young, too young.”
Not that he was Doogie Freaking Howser or anything. He looked like he was in his late 40s. Any older and his hands would be shaking, his eyesight would be shit and his memory would be failing. Possibly. Anyhow, they postponed my dad’s surgery to the following morning. Perhaps to give the surgeon time to sober up.
The operation went well – they inserted some metal thingamajigs to hold the bones in place. My dad came out of anesthesia pretty quick – perhaps because he was ‘bored’- and the first thing he said was, “Where’s my handphone?! and proceeded to spend the rest of the day text messaging with his one good hand and mostly ignoring us. When the lovely nurse told him that his blood pressure was up and that it was best that he rested, he said, “Okay, but don’t move my handphone away from me!” When we did, he nearly burst his stitches trying to grab it back. When the doctor came in to check on my dad’s post-surgery progress, my dad asked, “Doc, how will this affect my golf game? Will this metal thing make me into Bionic Man?” and to every person that visited him in the hospital for the next four days, he said, “I’m the Bionic Man now! The Bionic Man!” and when he wasn’t claiming to be the Bionic Man, he was…you guessed it, text messaging. He was like a teenager stuck with a 57 year old’s body and sense of humor.
Of course, by the time he was discharged, he had found a new statement to repeat over and over and over again. “Now I have to handle things single-handedly! Literally. You know mean? (this is what my dad says in place of ‘you know what I mean’. I don’t know why.) Handle things single-handedly! Single-handedly! Because I only have one working hand, you know mean?! Single-handedly! I have to handle things single-handedly because I only have one working hand, you know mean? So it’s literal. I literally have to handle things single-handedly! Single-handedly!”
In 2007, I’ve heard this ‘single-handed’ comment 72 times. And it’s only the 4th of January. It doesn’t help that ever since I came home (but especially since the great ladder accident), I’ve ended up spending almost every hour of every day with my parents- some by choice and by my own personal sense of familial obligation, other days I was carefully manipulated into doing so (guilt trip!) but most days, by forceful coercion from Mother Paranoia and Daddy One Arm. At my parents’ behest, I cancel plans with friends over and over again which is fine for now, I owe it to my parents to devote some of my time to them but I also need air and contact with people my age that did not contribute to my genetic make-up. Of course, my dad says, “I’m your father, ALL your time is MY time if I say so! Especially now that I have to do things single-handedly! You know mean? Single-handedly! Because one hand is broken so I literally have to do things single-handedly! You want me to do things single-handedly?!” “
No, sir. Here, take my arm so you can successfully strangle me with it. It’s hard to strangle someone single-handedly.
That’s where my mother comes in, “And this is MY house. I can’t control what you do when you’re elsewhere but as long as you’re staying in MY house, you do as I say! You can spend time with your friends when we’re dead.”
Yup, that’s right. I’m ashamed to say it but I’ve been parentally-whipped. It hasn’t always been this way. There was a time when I used to, as the Beastie Boys put it, ‘fight for my right to paaaartaaay’. But that was back when I was younger and had more energy to argue, when my hearing could be switched off on command and my skull was thicker, when my dad still had two hands and my mother, three.
A friend calls to say, “Hey, I’ve got a gig at Laundry tonight, 9 P.M. Come see me play. Haven’t seen you in ages- we’re all beginning to think that you died or something! If you don’t support the Malaysian music scene than at least support your friend. Don’t die on us, woman!”
Dear friends, I’m sorry to tell you this but I am dead. Socially, at least. (I would tell you to come by my house to pay your respects but my dad would immediately hijack our conversation and whisk you off to give you a Grand Tour of The Great Ladder Accident which caused him to have to do things, “Single-handedly!”). My mother says, “No, no going out so late at night! All these music-people with their sex, drugs...” Right. This friend’s a singer-songwriter who loves his mom and sings wimpy John Mayer-like music, probably still a virgin and the one time he took a puff from a joint that I, during my days of being the kid my own mama warned me not to be friends with, cajoled him into trying, he nearly collapsed from an asthma-attack. Hardly sex, drugs and rock and roll. “It’s so unsafe at night. Why can’t you go during the day?” Yes, go during the day to a gig that’s going on at night. Great idea. “I’m your mother and if I say no, it means no. You’re no longer a teenager. You’re 21! So be an adult and stop arguing with me. You can’t go out because I said so.”
Then my dad asks, “Maryam, when are you planning to go back to the Gold Coast?”
Yesterday.
“I hope not so soon…”he says.
And so I began to think that maybe my parents appreciated having me around; maybe they actually enjoyed my company.
But then my dad says, “Because, we’re moving to a new place in February and we need you to move and carry all the things. Besides, with a daughter around, your mother doesn’t pick on me so much.”
I am a fool.
Then he added, “If you go back, I’d have to handle things single-handedly. You know mean? Single-handedly! Because my left wrist is broken! So it’s literal. I have to handle things single-handedly! Single-handedly! You know mean, single-handedly!”
Okay, okay I get it. One arm = Single handed = no carrying boxes, climbing ladders or changing lightbulbs = daughter will help out.
“SINGLE-HANDEDLY!!”
Oh, hell. Shoot me in the head already. Shoot me. That is, if you can handle a gun single-handedly. You know what I mean?
Music I’m Starting 2007 with: (Yeah, I’m going old-skool)
- Strange Face of Love by Tito & Tarantula – Makes me think of slinking around in tight leather pants with a dangerously sexy, mysterious stranger in some smoky, whiskey-soaked bar in the Middle of Nowhere. Nevermind that I’m currently in the world’s ugliest, Pasar Malam shorts at home in The Sterile Depths of Suburbia with no sexy anything in sight. Where there is music, one can dream.
- Speaking in Tongues by Eagles of Death Metal – Even after a 100 listens, I have no idea what is being said in this song. Hence, the title, I suppose.
- In A Gadda Da Vida by Iron Butterfly – Who has the time to listen to a song that lasts for 17 minutes, half of which is quite possibly, the world’s wankiest drum solo? Well, I do and I love it. Love It.
- Carry on My Wayward Son by
- Poison Whiskey by Lynyrd Skynyrd – Because deep down, you know I’m just a lazy hillbilly with a mullet.
- Laugh, I Nearly Died by The Rolling Stones – If someone forced me at gunpoint to list my top ten favorite bands, The Stones would be one of them. If someone forced me at gunpoint to list my top ten favorite songs of The Rolling Stones, this would be up there with Paint It Black and Gimme Shelter. I think Mick is complaining about how fame doesn’t bring happiness here. I don’t get the fame part but the misery, estrangement and lack of fulfillment connects. Funny, how a dirty old man with hip spasms would connect with me. “I’m living for the city, but I’m all alone, I’ve been travellin but I don’t know where, I’ve been wonderin’ but I just don’t care……Livin’ in a fantasy but it’s way too far, this kind of loneliness is way too hard, I’ve been wonderin’, feelin’ all alone, I lost my direction and I lost my home, oh, I’m so sick and tired, now I’m on the slide…” Oh you say it, Mick, you say it in your simple, rhyming words! And I like the gospel choir thing going on in the chorus. Who knew a bunch of pasty Brits could have so much soul.
- Back in Black/ Highway to Hell by ACDC – There’s something about ACDC that seems custom made to be listened to while driving. And since I’ve been doing a lot of driving lately, well, there you go. There’s also something about listening to ACDC while driving that earns you a lot of speeding tickets. Bitches, speed doesn’t kill (ask
- Don’t Fear the Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult – When I was a kid, I watched a crappy Michael J. Fox movie called The Frighteners (or something) which featured this song and I fell in like with it. Still like it, I do.
- Paranoid by Black Sabbath – The first time, Sharon Osbourne met Ozzy, he wore a water tap around his neck. When asked why, Ozzy replied, “In case I get thirsty.” Yeah, this little anecdote has nothing to do with the song but I’m just saying; how can you hate a song sung by a dwarf-hanging, bat-eating, tap-wearing loon?
- All Right Now by Free – another song perfect for driving along a highway to. Watch for speed traps, cops and idiot drivers.
- Bad Company by Bad Company – This song makes me think of a lone vigilante gunman in the desert, beneath an orange sky. Perhaps, crushing a cigar with his worn cowboy boots and squinting like a young Clint Eastwood. Leather pants recommended. *Bandito mustache not included.
- Me & The Devil Blues by Robert Johnson – Robert Johnson is like the David Copperfield of Blues Musicians. No, not because he once dated a German supermodel that was way out of his league (because he didn’t) or can make a building vanish into thin air (because he didn’t). It’s because there were rumors that he apparently, made a pact with the devil to acquire his skills/ talents. It didn’t help that most of Robert Johnson’s songs had to do with Hell and the Devil. In this song, he sings, “Me and the Devil, we’re walking side by side….” Of course, unlike Mr. Copperfield who is currently alive and well somewhere in Washed-Out land, Robert Johnson died young, screaming that there were black dogs coming to drag him down to Hell. But then he did also sing, “Man, I don’t care where you take my body when I’m dead and gone..” Uh-kay. While the story is creepy, the music is brill, if you like old-skool blues.
