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My Parents Were Awesome: Before Fanny Packs and Minivans, They Were People Too - Softcover

 
9780345523921: My Parents Were Awesome: Before Fanny Packs and Minivans, They Were People Too
Softcover
ISBN 10: 034552392X ISBN 13: 9780345523921
Verlag: Villard, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

NEWSFLASH: Your mom and dad weren’t always parents.  They used to be people—and they were awesome

They bathed you. They fed you. They raised you to become the person you are today. Your parents are an integral part of your story. But guess what? They have a story too—one that started long before you entered the picture. Before embarrassing fanny packs and Lite FM, there was a time when Mom and Dad were young and carefree—just like you. They were also fun and flirty, full of hope and desire and effortlessly cool.

Based on the wildly popular website, My Parents Were Awesome shares heartwarming and hilarious essays by sons and daughters—including Jamie Deen, Christian Lander, Dave Itzkoff, Katherine Center, Laurie Notaro, and Holly Peterson—who’ tell tales of their folks before babies, mortgages, and receding hairlines: the mom and dad who traveled by VW bus to see Led Zeppelin for $1, the grandmother whose halter top and shorts belied her perfect demeanor, the father whose wanderlust passed down to his equally nomadic daughter. Accompanied by treasured vintage photographs, these stories will make you laugh, melt your heart, and spark your own reflections of Mom and Dad.

“Jimmy and Paula” by Jamie Deen
“Eleanor and Johnny” by Jennifer Mascia
“Steve and Teena” by Mike Adamick
“Tony and Leeka” by Aaron Khefeits
“Bruno and Elena” by Elia Bazan Garcia
“Richard and Jennifer” by Christian Lander
“Bob and Kitty” by Mindy Raf
“Elaine and Jerry” by Mike Sacks
“Josephine and Jim” by Salena Landon Reese
“Lil and Jon” by Sara Benincasa
“Seymour” by David Kamp
“Christy and Teddy” by Kambri Crews
“Joe and Patricia” by Tom McAllister
“Ron and Sherry” by Rebecca Serle
“Chuck and Debra” by Alex Blagg
“Bob and Leslie” by Bex Schwartz
“Gerry and Maddy” by Dave Itzkoff
“David” by Jackie Mancini
“Seymour” by Philip Glist
“Patricia and Jerry” by Mandy Stadtmiller
“Deborah” by Katherine Center
“Carol and Jimmy” by Laurie Notaro
“Heather and Ian” by Gabrielle Nancarrow
“Phil and Karen” by Mollie Glick
“Marty and Aveva” by Rachel Shukert
“Azra and Ilarion” by Veronica Lara
“David and Maria” by Anita Serwacki
“Wayne and Margaret” by Hanna Brown Gordon
“Martha and Jim” by Kate Spencer
“Roger and Terry” by Kyle Beachy
“Diane and Michael” by Leigh Newman
“Kevin and Moira” by Ben Craw
“Pete” by Holly Peterson
“Martin” by Bradley H. Gendell
“Addie and James” by Meg Federico
“Dolores” by Durga Chew-Bose
“Terry and Kathy” by Brandy Barber
“Jim and Kathy” by Jennifer E. Smith
“Hazel” by Rachel Fershleiser
“Andrei” by Alexandra Stieber
“Jud and Claudia” by Ryan Doherty
“Kathryn and Phillipe” by Kathryn Borel
“Astrid” by Ophira Eisenberg
“Don and Corinne” by Rachel Sklar
“Panfilo and Leonina” by Giulia Rozzi

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Eliot Glazer is an L.A.-based writer and performer who currently serves as an executive story editor on the popular Fox series New Girl. Prior to joining the New Girl staff, he was a writer on Darren Star's TV Land series Younger. Eliot can currently be seen in a recurring role on Comedy Central's hit series Broad City, where he also serves as a creative consultant. He has contributed to Funny or Die's Billy on the Street, Hulu's Difficult People, and Bravo's Odd Moms Out. He is the author of My Parents Were Awesome, which was based on his popular blog.

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jimmy and paula

by Jamie Deen

I am so excited to have the opportunity to contribute tothis book, My Parents Were Awesome, because, well they are awesome. I got todigging around my old photo box looking for the perfect picture of my parentsto submit and, lo and behold, two reasons why they are awesome jumped out ofthis photo that is more than forty years old.

First my mother, Paula Ann Hiers. Beauty queen.Cheerleader. The life of the party. I mean, her nickname was Poot. Poot as infart. That's my momma. The personality she was born with is now enjoyed bymillions of people, but in 1965 she only had eyes for my dad...Jimmy Deen. Badboy. Wrong side of the tracks. Fast car. Marlboro Reds with a cold Bud rackedup tight in the crotch cruising Slappey Boulevard on a Saturday night.

Which leads me to reason number one:

My mom doesn't judge people. Never ever. She took onelook at Jimmy and was off. Riding shotgun in that fast car with her feetpropped up on the dash, stealing a sip of cold beer while puffing on her own cigarette-menthol,of course. My mom didn't care where my dad came from, and loved him for the boyhe was and the man that was sure to come.

Reason number two:

Look at that picture again. My dad was cool! Look at him.White dinner jacket with a thin little bow tie. Tan, rested, and ready. Butlook closer...down at his shoes...brown penny loafers. My dad didn't have theability or finances to jaunt off to the shoe store and get a new pair of lace-upsfor the big dance. What's a South Georgia boy to do? Make do, that's what.Shine up those Weejuns and cut a rug. The best part about the whole thing is heowns that outfit. After seeing this photo my wife said, "They were a reallygood-looking couple." You're damn right they were, as much for the brownshoes with a tux as anything else. Good luck solving the riddle of the papier-mâchéface looming over my parents. I've asked for thirty-some odd years for anexplanation and neither one has a clue what it meant.

In the year 1965 Jimmy proposed marriage to Paula andafter a small wedding attended by family and friends, they lived happily everafter...until about 1971 anyway.

My mom lost both of her parents within a few years ofeach other. Grandfather Hiers passed away before I was born, and GrandmotherHiers went to Heaven right after my brother Bobby was born in 1970. Mom'sbrother, Bubba, was a teenager at the time and moved in with us. The loss ofher parents coupled with the pressure of raising not only my brother and me,but her brother too, proved to be too much. It was slow to come, but when I wasin middle school my mom was a total agoraphobic.

My dad was raised in a family that had their own set ofchallenges. He came from a big family on a very small budget. The easiest wayto classify his childhood was dysfunctional. People deal with situationsdifferently, and at that time my dad self-medicated. Nothing illegal, mind you,but not within the boundaries my mom set...which were pretty damn toughconsidering her condition. Right now you may be thinking I'm taking a prettystrange route to the "My Parents Were Awesome" part, right?

Well, here's the awesome part:

My mom and dad loved us every day. More important, theytold us every day and kissed us and hugged us. My dad kisses me on the mouth tothis day and I'm a forty-two-year-old man. And you know what? I'm gonna kiss myson on the mouth until I'm pushing up dirt. A parent's love, y'all. That'sawesome.

We also learned to let yesterday go. The past is in thepast forever. Learn from your mistakes and try like hell not to repeat them. Noregrets, y'all. That's awesome. We also learned from my parents the importanceof not taking ourselves too seriously. When you laugh at yourself first, itdrowns out the sound of everyone who is really laughing at you.

Love, a free spirit, and laughter. That's not a bad lifeplan. And the fact that we learned it from two kids born in South Georgia whowere chewed up and tumbled through their early adulthoods is damn near amiracle.

The curtain came down on my parents' marriage after twenty-sevenyears but it proved to only be an intermission. My father has moved back to ourhometown, Albany, Georgia, and married the woman he dated before he met my mom.He has straightened out all his curves in the road and taught me there is noway to measure the will of a man. I am as proud of him as I am of anything elsein my life.

And my mom, well, you know about her already.

* * *

Jamie Deen is one half of the Deen Brothers Incorporatedand wants to the be the best husband, father, son, and brother he can be.


eleanor and johnny

by Jennifer Mascia

I was eleven when I realized my parents Did It.

It was sometime after science class in sixth grade, and Idon't know how the conversation started, but before long, sitting on one of thesteel benches outside our homeroom, Julian Garcia, Jessica Quimbo, and I hadpieced together the origin of our existence: Somewhere, sometime, at leastonce, our mothers and fathers had given in to animal lust-the same animal lustwe ourselves were on the threshold of feeling-and mashed their private partstogether and Did It.

"Ewwww!" we screeched, writhing and restless,darting to and fro as if we could physically shake the utter grossness of thisthought from our tender systems. But it was too late: The notion had been planted.Our parents had had sex. And in Julian's and Jessica's cases, definitely morethan once; I am an only child, but that was cold comfort in light of this ickyrevelation.

The thought of my parents having sex was horrific enough-unlikemy classmates, my parents had birthed me in their forties, and imagining fifty-somethingsdoing the nasty was just too much for this prepubescent girl to handle-but fromthis idea, another evolved: My parents had lives before me. And that wasdownright barbaric.

My short life was all I knew, so certainly my life wasall they knew, too. Right? But now I imagined that they must have hadexperiences that had nothing to do with me. Years full of them, in fact. Itfelt like cheating. They had cheated on me, with each other! How dare they!

Several years ago, not long after my father died (and afew years before my mother followed), I rescued my parents' phone-book-thickred and blue photo albums from the basement of my mother's apartment building,which flooded every winter like clockwork. Over her shrillobjections-"Jenny, stop! They're full of mold!"-I carefully extractedhundreds of 1970s-era Polaroids from the soppy albums. Luckily, most of thesnaps were untarnished, clear as if they'd been taken the day before, but somehad been tinted blue from water damage, which actually gave them an artsyflair.

And there they were: Eleanor and Johnny in the Keys.Eleanor and Johnny mid-laugh, slightly stoned and loving it. Eleanor sitting onJohnny's lap, beaming with newly minted devotion, a cigarette dangling betweenher delicate fingers as his muscular, tattooed arms tightly encircled herwaist. Johnny with his arm draped over Eleanor in the living room of hismother's house after she tasted her mother-in-law's marinara for the firsttime. (Years later my father would admit that my mother's red sauce was better,much to her delight.) Forget about being a twinkle in their eye-I'm not even afragment of a thought in these pictures. And though seeing them that young andcarefree is undeniably a trip, that fact sends a shiver down my spine.

We can't help it-we think of ourselves as flesh-and-bloodinevitabilities, wandering the earth, paying our taxes, emptying our DVRs, andit's chilling to think that there was a time when our existence wasn't socertain. An unexpected aberration-an untimely breakup, a "Honey, I have aheadache," a condom that didn't break-and we...

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Verlag
Villard
Erscheinungsdatum
2011
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
034552392X
ISBN 13 
9780345523921
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
240
Herausgeber
Glazer Eliot
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