Monday, March 7, 2011

Max gets an earing and Brad almost burns the house down.

Back in the day, I used to host BIG Thanksgivings here. And Brad Hennigan (from the Dallas Theater Center blogs) was my trusty side-kick/co-host/MAIN MAN in the kitchen. The 2 of us were a formidable team. And money wasn't so tight as it is now, so we did it UP. Back then, Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday. I'm talking 35 - 40 guests,3 or 4 big tables in what was the formal front room (the biggest one),200 bucks worth of fresh flowers from the flower mart, Brad and I at our foodie best, working in perfect synch to try to out do ourselves from the year before - and anything from the bar you could possibly have a craving for.

This Thanksgiving that I am referring to was at the HEIGHT of those glory years. Brad announced to me about a week before the day that he wanted us to do TWO turkeys this year. HE would be in charge of our first experiment in deep frying a whole turkey.
Brad did his research, bought a whole MESS of stuff from Costco, and other fabulous places, set up a deep frying station on the side my house, and proceeded to pour gallons of vegetable oil into a huge cauldron that was heating up on a propane stove out there. THEN, as I was making giant baking pans of andouille sausage and apple stuffing, Brad came into the kitchen and brought forth a huge syringe which he used to inject his bird with Cajun spices. ""Fabulous!", I thought.

Max, in particular, was ultra fascinated with this turkey frying concept. Probably because of the open fire aspect of the project. All of my children have inherited my pyromaniac tendencies - but, Max, is the worst of us all. He was about 12 years old at the time, and had bright blue hair.

People started to file in, the house was smelling delicious, the kids were all running around, I was juggling 3 or 4 things at once in the kitchen, when Brad walked in the side door with a bit of sweat on his brow and a slightly concerned look on his face.
"Jennifer." he said in his deep, commanding voice. "Do you have a fire extinguisher handy?"

Before I could answer, Max ran in right after him shouting, "Brad caught the tree on fire! The house is going to burn down!" (He said this more gleefully than afraid. I think Max was quite looking forward to what would have been a spectacular bonfire.)
Lickety split - my brother, Marcus, James Brown, and Matt all rushed to scene of the fire with Brad. I don't remember HOW it was exactly dealt with in all the commotion, but the Texas Men got that fire out quick, moved the boiling cauldron to a safer location, and hosed down the roof. (just in case.) Texas is a hot bed of racist, sexist backward pigs, but generally men from that state know how to hunt, fish, fix things and put out fires.

Brad's cajun-spice-injected-deep-fried turkey turned out GREAT! And of course we all laughed about the incident all through dinner. That was a great one.
Then, as I was whipping up the cream for pies, Izzy came into the kitchen and ratted out her brother.
"Uncle Marcus is putting a NEEDLE through Max's EAR!" she informed me.
I just looked at her like she was crazy.
"I don't think so, honey." I said to my ridiculously pretty daughter. "He wouldn't do that."
"He is, he is!" she claimed, clearly worried about the whole thing.

So, I washed my hands and went back into the front room where everyone was still hanging out, talking, digesting. Sure enough, Marcus had a needle through Max's ear, and a few people were gathered around chiming in with their advice.

"What are you doing!?" I exclaimed.(No one had consulted ME!)
"Oh. Well, he wanted his ear pierced, so I just did it. Don't worry, it's all done." my brother said, matter of factly.
"Well, I didn't sign off on that." I declared, a little miffed.
"I ASKED him to, Mom. It barely hurt - don't worry." said Max.
"Well, that's not the point. You can't just do stuff like that without asking my permission."
"Look," Marcus responded, "the kid has BLUE HAIR. I didn't think you'd mind if he got an ear pierced."

It was not a battle worth fighting, so I let it go. I didn't really mind about the piercing, I just minded about Max not ASKING first.

Then, Christmas break rolled around, and Max went to visit his father in Texas - who then took the family (his new family) to Florida.
Max called me up late one night, shortly after they got there. He was sobbing.

"Mom! I want to come home! I hate my dad!!" he burst out on the phone.
"WHY? What happened?" I asked. It was HORRIBLE to hear Max cry from so far away and feel helpless to do anything.
"Well, we went out on the boat today, and my dad called me a fag and a homo! He HATES me!"
"Oh NO!" I said, my heart breaking for Max. He was coming from such a different world than the one his dad lived in. In his dad's world, men DON'T cry, they DON'T have blue hair, and they DON'T have earings. Not even in the nineties.
"He said only fags have earings, Mom! He was so mean about it, too!"
"I'm so sorry, honey." I said. "your dad doesn't mean that. He's just really different than me - and different than, you know, people in California.."
"He's been giving me a hard time about my hair, and it's barely even blue anymore. And he's been giving me a hard time about the earing the whole time, and then today he called me a fag and asked me if I was gay...but in a mean way." Max's voice was starting to calm down a little bit. That made me feel a lot better.
"...And then I just looked right back at him and said, 'What ARE you? A homophobe?'"
"No! You DIDN'T!!!??" I practically howled. (that's my BOY!!!)
Max finally laughed a little then, "Yea. I did. I really did."
I couldn't believe it! What a great kid! I was laughing now - that made me so happy!
"And what did HE say?!" I asked.
Max laughed again, "He just looked at me. And I said, 'Do you even know what a homophobe IS, dad?' That pretty much shut him up."

I was howling with laughter.
That cheered Max up.
And when I got off the phone with him, I kept thinking about that scene. It was one of those moments when I felt like I was doing the right thing as far as how I was raising my kid. I was super proud of him.

We STILL talk about how great that deep fried turkey was to this very day. As far my kids are concerned - Brad's turkey that year ranks as 'best of all time'.

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