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Welcome to Bettina Boderick’s blog. Who Knew is a piece of fiction and a story which will forever be a work in progress. The story is an experiment, an attempt to mesh fiction with reality, words with photos and the past with the present. Whether or not it is viewed as an interesting concept or one big giant pig-fuck is for you to decide. Let me know. If you would like to read the story in chronological order -click on Who Knew in the side bar.
Please visit the Ides of Flash page if you are interested in submitting material. Of course, I’ve added my opinions, rantings and ravings about what I consider to be the ignorance of certain segments of our society and I would really like to thank Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Fox News, George Bush, most Republicans and the Religious Right in general for pissing me off enough to start writing again. Amen. I began to realize in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania during the summer between my sophomore and junior year of college that I might have to prepare myself for a not so ordinary existence. I didn’t know for sure, but I had an inkling.
I thought I had a normal childhood and I don’t remember noticing, until that summer, that I wasn’t just a plain ordinary girl living in a plain ordinary world full of just plain ordinary folk. I knew there would be an occasional Eddie Haskel or two and maybe a Mr. French, but I had no idea that I would often find myself amongst a plethora of downright bizarre human beings and in situations akin to a Twilight Zone episode.
 In retrospect, there were signs before that summer, but they were hidden among a middle class house in a middle class neighborhood with a not so middle class horse farm at the top of Queen Avenue. There was the neighborhood drunk whose car was always parked a little cockeyed in front of his house and occasionally he would single me out and chase me around the street slurring, “I’m gonna getch ya”. There was also the one armed father of seven who could often be seen screaming obscenities on his front lawn while trying to whack the head of one of his children with his only arm swinging wildly and if I happened to be anywhere in the vicinity he would make a beeline for me. But these were just one or two oddities among a street full of middle class people in a middle class neighborhood in a small town in Rhode Island, below a not so middle class horse farm. I guess squeak-squeak, jingle-jingle could have been a sign. She was the fear inspiring elementary school principal who you could hear coming down the hall with her sneakers squeaking against the shiny wax floors and her keys jingling against each other as they bounced off her hip. Students had more than enough time to stop what they were doing, freeze and smile politely. I had no reason to freeze that fateful morning when she squeaked and jingled up behind me, grabbed me by the arm and hurried me into my classroom, yelling that I was an insolent and disrespectful child as my whole first grade class sat frozen in their seats. Apparently I was reading some important mail I was bringing back to my teacher, but I didn’t recall reading anything and what would I have been able to read in the first grade anyway. Very odd fat old bitch.
Come to think of it – the man with the little pink purses was also rather strange. Gaunt, thin, very pale and probably in his fifties, he often came into the Hong Kong Restaurant where I worked on Friday and Saturday nights from four p.m. to seven p.m. I thought it a little odd, but the first little pink purse with white beads attached was well received by my parents who thought it was a cute little gesture by a lonely old man. I thought the purse was very antiquated and even at that age, seemed to have intuitively known that no good would come from that little pink purse and no good did come. The thin gaunt man would give me many more purses (all pink with beads and less and less well received) over the next few months and he would begin to show up in the oddest places, at the mall, in the parking lot of my junior high school and finally around the corner where Queen Ave intersected with Park Boulevard. He and Earl had words that night and as I watched from my bedroom window, I couldn’t help thinking all could have been avoided if only I had been more adamant about what I sensed. The pink purses were thrown in the trash and I was told never to accept another gift from any strange man ever again, which I already knew.
Ignorance is bliss.Unfortunately for some of us, Republican Conservatives and the Religious Right (same thing) are allowed to vote in elections despite being mentally impaired and severely misinformed – AND- no one has told them that there are actually books in that Borders written for people who read above a six grade level. Born – January 14th, 1957 – Bettina Broderick- Warwick, Rhode Island 2:22 a.m. – 2 below zero – 2 parents – Carl and Darcy Broderick – 2 siblings – John (4 years old) Joanne (3 years old). Catholic by default. Humphrey Bogart died at 2:25 a.m. from cancer of the esophagus in Los Angeles.
1957Betty Friedan began working on The Feminine Mystique
Leave It to Beaver premieres on CBS – the fictional portrayal of the typical American family is confused by many television viewers as a realistic standard of behavior for men, women and children.
Mike Wallace interviews Margaret Sanger about her controversial stance on women using birth control. WALLACE: Well let’s look at the official Catholic position…opposition to Birth-Control. I read now from a church publication called “The Question Box” in forbidding Birth Control it says the following: It says the immediate purpose and primary end of marriage is the begetting of children, when the marital relation is so used as to render the fulfillment of its purposes impossible–that is by Birth Control–it is used unethically and unnaturally. Now what’s wrong with that position? SANGER: Well, it’s very wrong, it’s not normal it’s — it has the wrong attitude towards marriage, toward love, toward the relationships between men and women. WALLACE: Well the natural law they say is that first of all the primary function of sex in marriage is to beget children. Do you disagree with that? SANGER: I disagree with that a hundred percent. WALLACE: Your feeling is what then? SANGER: My feeling is that love and attraction between men and women, in many cases the very finest relationship has nothing to do with bearing a child. It’s secondary. Many, many times and we know that –you see your birth rates and you can talk to people who have very happy marriages and they’re not having babies every year. Yes, I think that’s a celibate attitude… WALLACE: Surely, a celibate attitude but you agree that Catholicism according to the tenets of Catholicism they rule that birth control violates not only the church’s position –it isn’t the church’s position but they say it violates a natural law as I have just explained, therefore birth control is a sin no matter who practices it. Now the violation of the natural law–you certainly can take no issue with the natural law as the hierarchy of the Catholic Church regards it… SANGER: Oh, I certainly do take issue with it and I think it’s untrue and I think it’s unnatural. WALLACE: Well let me ask you SANGER: … It’s an unnatural attitude to take –how do they know? I mean, after all, they’re celibates.They don’t know love, they don’t know marriage, they know nothing about bringing up children nor any of the marriage problems of life, and yet they speak to people as if they were God. New York Times Bestseller List – Fiction President: Dwight D. Eisenhower I do not remember much prior to my sixth year, but I do know the years leading up to my sixth birthday were full of visits from the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, Santa Clause and Jesus, Mary and Joseph. I know because of the nicely organized photographs and the numerous discussions at holiday gatherings. I have heard the stories of my childhood many times over told by my mother with love, laughter and affection while the squash and mashed potatoes were being passed around the table. Carl had little to add – he just wanted the god-damned turkey plate at his end of the table (or gravy or turnips – depending on the year) and would have preferred complete silence while eating, but the retelling would begin despite him. The top two retellings of my Schnickelfritz years would invariably be….
We were on our way to the apple orchard in northern Rhode Island in the fall of 1960. It was a beautiful Sunday with the smell of Autumn drifting in and out of our 1959 station wagon as we drove down scenic Route 6. I wasn’t quite tall enough yet to see completely out the car windows from the back seat, but was as happy and giggly as always and seemed content to just watch the tops of the trees go by. We took a left at a cow pasture and rambled down the dirt road toward the apple orchard. The wind shifted. The new aroma arrived, and I proclaimed loudly and confidently “I SMELL ELEPHANTS”.  At York's apparently having to pee. My mother and sister had a very good laugh and even Carl let out an authentic, uncharacteristically hearty guffaw, so they say. My brother, not surprisingly, had no reaction at all. He wasn’t listening – a character defect which would be brought to his attention many times throughout his life especially during his first divorce. Mom would finish the retelling by explaining that we had spent our summer vacation that year in Maine and I had seen and smelled my first elephant at York’s Wild Animal Kingdom. In adulthood I would often be tempted at the end of the retelling to adapt Gertrude Stein’s famous line – “A rose is a rose is a rose” and change it to – “A shit is a shit is a shit”, but we weren’t allowed to say shit in my parent’s house. We still aren’t. And for a very long time the runner up retelling was the Santa Clause incident, but the details of the story would become fewer and fewer as the length of time I remained unmarried lengthened until it became merely an aside. “I WANT A MOTORCYCLE”, I demurely asked Santa at the local toy store on my fifth Christmas. There I was, my mother would say, dressed in my red plaid skirt with matching red sweater and black patent leather shoes looking so feminine…… I never had the heart, nor the courage, to tell anyone in my family I purchased my first motorcycle at the age of twenty-five, and they never seemed to notice me staring intently at my turkey stuffing whenever the retelling of my fifth Christmas began. If there was a complaint mentioned about me during the Schnickelfritz years, it was my weak bladder. I was prone to wetting myself, and according to the women in my family (it was only discussed after the males in the family had relocated to the finished basement) it occurred mostly when wearing a skirt and always when I was not at home. My family had no other reason to believe that I wasn’t just a normal, happy Roman Catholic child and to this day, they cannot explain the changes which took place during my sixth year. They can say the changes started to appear on Sunday mornings.
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Copyright © 2010 Bettina Broderick - All Rights Reserved |
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