Daydream Believer

As an Idealist, I sift through the daydreams of my mind on an all too frequent basis; I ponder mindless topics such as the future of our melting world (lots of post-apocalyptic prep going on in my melon), the genesis and continuation of the gigantic universe (or what happens when the computer programmer in another galaxy decides their “Human Project” just isn’t worth maintaining anymore and angrily crams Earth into the trash, salivating as our world flames up before them in the rusty can, immediately pivoting their attention to a new, foolish, primal, vulnerable planet who will succumb to any command they throw out there), or my most favorite gnat-like daydream – what will happen if I ever become famous.

Many folks would tag someone who premonishes fame as vain, egotistical, or just plain ignorant. I mean, who would give me, a whiny cynic, even one peg leg to stand on, let alone two? And for the record, I would proudly stand askew on my wooden legs if and when my current getaway sticks get chopped by the axes held by the critics of life; I would still be complaining, judging, and lecturing as my legs were consumed by pesky, greedy termites who refused to see other perspectives; I would continue to shout as the bullying fire ants, full to the brim with one-sided opinions and closed minds, devoured my opinionated and half-muscular, half flabby body. As a time traveler, I think I have been to the future, and some who are ahead of our time say you can still hear my soul screaming out about justice, humanity, and “going green” on nights when the wind is foggy and thick with pollution.

Unlike Bruno Mars, I do not want to be a billionaire “so freakin’ bad,” although the money would not hurt my venture of wanting to live in a van down by the river and travel the world, all while not going into debt.  However, as my parents sadly know from the several times they have lent me cash to help me stand up to death and taxes, being in the negative never bothered me since you cannot take it with you when you go.  Life is one big credit card, and whether my money is spent paying for that $400 finger wart to get removed for a second time (I’ve since decided to keep it because of its aversion to liquid nitrogen and its ability to withstand extreme conditions; it deserves to live on my ring finger out of its sheer tenacity) or spent to feed my children, I will persist and insist on finding a way to stay afloat regardless of the income flowing in or how many people on this globe know of my name (and potentially relate to it). 

Being famous is not a top priority to me as I write this “book” I keep telling everyone about. Hell, most people probably think I am spending my days writing nonsense, trying to become an all-star tie-dying master, and wait, where in the hell did this soap-thing come from?  The truth is, my quest to be an author of written works is simple:  I want to share my weird and outside-the-box perspective with people, open up minds, create more questions than answers, that kind of M. Night Shyamalan stuff (my heart hurts for him and the expectations he set for himself with The Sixth Sense), and potentially make someone relish a wee bit more in the highs and lows of life because when you look back on it, even the moldy and smelly stuff make life worth living. 

A funny thought that always creeps into my visionboard of fame is the world learning of my upbringing.  I scarf down documentaries on the regular, absorbing the childhoods of my favorite geniuses, trying to connect the dots on how I relate, and I laugh thinking of a scenario where someone wanted to make a film about my origins.  If anything, my family deserves to be famous more than myself; after all, they did create Butt Darts, or at least I think that is how the legend goes.

In Our Family Portrait, We Look Pretty Happy, We Look Pretty [Ab]Normal

Instead of fantasizing about what cool car I would drive, what I would stock my mansion with, or what clothing line I would represent if I became famous, my mind becomes curious about what would happen if they wanted to interview my family members – not even my immediate family, although they are pretty wild to dissect, but rather my extended family, because they are the ones my mind goes to first; I am not surprised by this as I spent the bulk of my free time with them until I was 26 and escaped from Illinois, never once looking back but checking in often on those who remain there. Having children has thrown off the balance and frequency of our visits back to the IL in the past few years, but returning to my family is like visiting with a deeply incredible friend after a long time off – you pick up right where you left off.

For the record—I have no clue who “they” are who have chosen to interview us (what kind of show are we making here anyway?), but in my mysterious brain, “they” show up one day, wanting to share my story with the world and take a tour of my grassroots. Rest assured, this thought is as surprising to me as it is to you.  After consulting with my family, this thought is not foreign.  My cousin Jill, who is a bombastic English teacher and was willing to give up an hour of her life to proofread this post, said this:

Ironically, I have often thought about this too, but in my mind it is a reality TV show.  If Reality TV would have been the rage in the early nineties when we were growing up, and in the height of the family shenanigans, we would all be millionaires…or we would have all been living in different families because CPS would have taken us out of this environment. Because let’s face it, not everyone thinks teaching children the finer points of the lime in Corona’s and shoving quarters up pants-clad back end is a proper, upstanding way to rear children.

Jill and I originate from the Caves of Sensitivity, a place only few family members attempt to traverse due to the heightened state of emotion it evokes.  

My Family Is the Centerfold

Ever since I was birthed by my mother, a wise warrior woman, I have been routinely surrounded by a tribe that fluctuated between twenty to forty assertive, humorous, and adventurous people. I write this post in the present tense because even though I now live 1000 miles away, I feel connected, close, and in tune with my kinfolk. We make an effort to meet up–vacationing, visiting, and checking in via social media. The extended family on my mother’s side resides within thirty miles of each other back in Illinois, a longstanding root that will live on well beyond my short-lived time in this world.

Not only does this group live close together, but we gather frequently, well more than the average amount as has been revealed to me as I traverse my [fake] adult years.  As Jill says, we do not need an excuse to gather.  We could decide to get together because it is snowing that day.  Someone sends the smoke signal, food is prepped, beer is bought, and before the day’s end, we have ourselves a party. 

We coerce with minimal drama while diving into tough topics like why some of us did not baptize our children (this one was me) or why one of us chose not to vaccinate our kids (this was was definitely not me, and of course I had an opinion about it), we take on activities and feats of strength that result in maximal fun, we bring up endearing memories about the large percentage of us who have passed away from the Big C and the small percentage of us that avoided cancer but departed in other ways, and we help each other scooch along the road of life with pointed opinions, blunt questions, and ribbing jokes.

I Said Leave Me Alone, I’m Just Carryin’ On An Old Family Tradition

My mom’s side is from Germany, the land of beer, grumpiness, and strong-wills; we bitch, moan, and gripe, all while holding an adult beverage, a paper plate full of various casseroles and side dishes, a sarcastic outlook on life, and potentially an annoyance to the noise level of whoever’s house we are congregating; I forgot to mention that in addition to these glowing and assertive characteristics, we are also pot-clanging loud with any activity we take on. One could sit in the room of our family parties and witness ten simultaneous and involved conversations (some of the pairs being people across the room from each other), children carrying beers to their parents like miniature waiters and waitresses, a tight game of Taboo going on, along with three people watching and becoming very involved in a sports game.  Big D, our newly twenty-one-year-old cousin who allowed me to coddle him back in his toddler years as I pretended to be a thirteen-year-old mom, is now a guru at inserting the lime in the Corona because as a wee lad this was his main responsibility at our family gatherings; he also a noise referee (I will explain later) but I believe he crossed the picket line after he realized the loud ones were the cool ones.

We handle our drinks well for the most part, but we sometimes have people who take the liquid courage too far, aka too many shots of Colorado whiskey or too many Claws (ain’t no laws with the Claws).  When people get rowdy, we banish those clowns to their dungeons; my Aunt Jan once kicked my husband out of a family Christmas for taking down too much whiskey with a fellow out-law, aka, my cousin’s husband. It was quite a year, it has to be in the top-ten holiday moments of all time, or top-twenty, because there have been so many epic memories made. Alas, if we get kicked out by the matriarchs, we (safely) move the party to another house; problem solved. We also have kind members of the team who stay sober and referee the events (one of Big D’s first gigs), tapping one on the shoulder if they get “too loud” (which is well beyond the definition of loud since the refs give us a lot of grace), telling us to “take it down a notch,” knowing this is a useless action and it only makes us enhance our boisterous talk.

I’ll Take Butt Darts for $1000, Please

My extended family likes to wash their vices down with a tall cocktail of games and fun, and the best game we have in our closet, in my humble and assertive opinion, is Butt Darts.

We play other games, like our annual lip-syncing competition on the Fourth of July where we dress up and dance to popular songs while the crowd judges our level of tomfoolery and outlandish choreography; one year my aunt jumped into the pool for the final refrain of her song, and this past year she dressed as Kenny Rogers, her husband as Dolly Parton, and they jammed out to Islands in the Stream in the best way possible; Aunt Laurie is a longtime lip-syncing champion and the type of famous you and I can only dream of touching. However, we should all bow down to my fairy godmother, Aunt Nancy, gone way too soon but always with us in spirit, who transformed the lip-syncing landscape altogether, creating an unsinkable dynasty with my godfather (aka THE Godfather), Uncle Pete. Their dynamic duos had us in tears for multiple years as we sat in the backyard, swimming suits damp, bellies full, and hearts happy. One year they performed a pristine rendition of Jay and the Americans “Come a Little Bit Closer” where they did a gender reversal; somehow to this day I cannot erase the image of my uncle in red lipstick.

We also contrived a rendition of Double-Dare that Nickelodeon wishes they would have discovered. We are good at reproducing and we managed to convince an ever-changing team of at least five to twelve kids to play whichever year we had the itch to put on Double-Dare; we converted toddlers, adolescents, preteens, and teenagers who still considered us cool into savage gladiators, battling in the ring, while the adults wagered, cheered, and booed from the stands. Yes, please dip your head into this bucket of water, one after the other, and bob for that apple.  Don’t worry about what is in that murky kiddie pool filled with water, jello, oatmeal or other varying hodgepodge of kitchen ingredients…you are just going to jump in and roll around and then get out really quickly before we tell you to move on to the next thing we think is hilarious for you to do in this game! Germs, spit, none of that matters; keep your eye on the prize. And carry that upside down cone full of water, strapped on your head, while weaving through cones. 

No wonder I am so determined.

In addition to lip-syncing and Double-Dare, we coordinate mean games of volleyball, where one year my cousin Joe’s newly-pierced nipple had a mean entanglement with the volleyball net (yikes, we had been ribbing him about the new jewelry all day, and then that happened, poor buddy), bags (aka Cornhole, screw whoever came up with that weird name), and other fads of the year or games someone came back to teach us from the Land of College. I believe we once got a massive game of flippy cup going one year, but that might have been a daydream or a blurred line I remember from college or from my brother’s wedding shower.

We slash board games too, sometimes playing Trivial Pursuit into the wee hours of the night, that is, if we can maintain a pleasant drunken state and not get kicked out by the matriarchs. One time we played a game that required you to guess the phrase from a conglomeration of other words – for example, a card would say “Way Camp Ache,” and that meant a popular slang phrase. I’ll let you figure out that one instead of spoiling all of the fun by giving the answer. Hint: It makes for an exquisite morning. Anyway, I excelled at that game because I had a toddler who spoke gibberish on the regular and I already spoke nonsense.

Last but not least, we organize the fiercest Christmas gift exchange east (and probably west) of the Mississippi. It is unstoppable, and there was a year when in the heat of the moment my cousin (notoriously of high volume) called my aunt a B#*ch so loudly I pray to this day someone captured it on video; I saw clips from this year and they were playing a rendition of Plinko on an elaborate, handmade board; you never know what games these brilliant minds will make up.

Why Do You Build Me Up [Butt]ercup?

I realize I made you read all of this before actually talking about the topic of this post, Butt Darts, but I felt it necessary to describe my mythical family before taking it to the main stage. Allow me to explain this magical centaur of a game.

Before you continue reading, please know that you might gasp, shriek, and have the inclination to report our family to the higher-ups.  As Jill said, we should have been taken away by Child Protection Services a long time ago, but we were not, and so now you have to deal with us.  I implore you to refrain from incarcerating us, as we are merely trying to have a good time. We are not harming any humans, and we do not impose our idealisms on other families, not unless you decide to visit one of our family functions by tagging along with your friend, aka my cousin, or your boyfriend, aka my other cousin. Should you be so Spartan-like with your tenacity to experience new things, come on in and see us; please know that we will interrogate you with probing and exposing questions, strong-arm you into playing our games, and poke fun at you without even getting to know you, trust me, we will see inside your soul before you depart for the evening, but we require very little “warming up.”  In addition to ribbing you at your first gathering, we will be kind and make sure you are fed and watered throughout, not make you feel like an outsider by including you in our devious and enlightening conversations, and we will make every attempt to make you giggle and want to come back. We have a sizeable following of outsiders who checked us out once upon a time and morphed into our new family members; sometimes I forget who is blood-related and who is not.

The rules of Butt Darts are as follows: You take a roll of quarters, you place them between your buttocks; Jill wisely reminded me to remind you all to wear pants while doing this.  No one needs butt germs, they are doing just fine on their own.  However, the type of pants you wear could make or break you – jeans seem to work best, but I have heard sweatpants can give you a flexible advantage.  Once you have the quarters between your ass cheeks, you waddle over to a 16 oz cup (not anything made of glass, no need to break anything), strategically flexing to hold the quarters in between said cheeks; when you arrive at the almighty cup, you release the quarters, aiming for the hole and hoping all of them made it into the cup.

Any missed quarters go into the pot, or ante if you are fancy, which goes to the last [wo]man standing who will be crowned the Butt Dart King or Queen. Somehow I feel like I am making most of this up, or getting my rules wrong, and my family is going to be so disappointed in me, but let us keep moving on to discuss the importance of Butt Darts and why you should incorporate this into future family get-togethers.

Look To the Butt Dart

Butt Darts has taught many lessons – not only do you get exercise, but you get instant satisfaction if you are skilled at the game. You reflect on your abilities – your butt did that swan dance, it got the quarters into the cup; you have champion glutes and cat-like steps, and you eventually have a chance at winning all of those quarters, which you will have to probably wash before you go cash them into the bank….or will you? We don’t talk about Bruno, no, no, no.

Perhaps my favorite part of Butt Darts is its lesson on vulnerability and awareness of one’s own potential. Think about it, you are having to squeeze quarters in your ass in front of many people, those on the sidelines laughing incredulously as you develop your own creative technique for getting those coins, which have now become slippery and somehow smaller than you thought judging by the way you have to clench to the right so much, from point A to point B without losing your cool or laughing too much that you let go midway and blow the entire operation to smithereens. People, this is where you find out about your true self. This is where the magic happens.

You also learn if you are superstitious, since that rusty old quarter from 1993 is the one that religiously goes into the cup after each round, dubbing this your “lucky quarter” and profusely rubbing it between your thumb and forefinger before inserting it back into the butt sleeve again for yet another adventure.  No whammies, no whammies, no whammies.

On gloomy days, I like to think about my cousin Mitchell, conducting a ninja-like dance of an unknown species, successfully carrying his butt-pocket change to the precious cup in a way that no one had ever witnessed before, taking home the gold for the evening. It still makes me laugh as hard as the first time when I saw the choreography, and no one can deny that kind of awesome memory recall.

Even though butt darts might sound strange and a vector for infectious diseases, I continuously thank my family for the courage they have given me to be myself via these games and other feats of strength. I will never forget being poked at for not dancing at a Mama Mia concert; being a shy and sensitive one in a family of bold and blunt extroverts is not always easy, but it has allowed me to learn how to come out of my shell, to express myself, and most importantly to laugh at myself often and to never take myself too seriously, because I am a dip, (and okay with it).

Jill also reflected on her life-skills obtained from our rowdy family:

I really have “no shame in my game” and I tell my students that frequently.  I am free to be my silly, singing, dancing, corny self because I do not care about the thoughts of others and I am self-aware.  I learned this through this family, these silly games, and this fun upbringing.  Be loud and proud and expressive of who you are.  So you might get kicked out of your aunt’s house for yelling at a 10-year-old…the next day all will be well; all will be forgotten and you still will be welcomed and loved in this family. (I don’t know if that was the incident with the whiskey or not–but I know Aunt Jan kicked someone out at Christmas too because Rick and Dawson (aka Big D, our family child who morphed into a twenty-one-year-old adult in a flash) stayed to play games, Dawson learned to be a smart ass from this family, was talking shit, and then someone started yelling at him for talking shit…so she kicked that person out…).  Even being the sensitive soul in the family doesn’t bother me as much in adulthood, because I know this about myself and I simply don’t care that others do too.  Learning to laugh at yourself and to be self-aware are some of the best lessons to learn in life.

For the sake of your happiness, for exercising new ab muscles from laughing, and for new glute muscles from clenching,

get out there and play Butt Darts.

It might make the world a better place, it could make you braver, and you might even learn something about yourself.