Proud to be a Bulldog

I recently discovered that our friend in California has spent his entire fatherhood quizzing his children on mascot names.  Whereas most parents make sure their kids know their multiplication tables and spelling words, John also made sure they knew their college mascot trivia.  I found this bizarre, and then—the more they shared at the dinner table—I found it fascinatingly hilarious!

Mascots, one would imagine, are supposed to be intimidating.  As a Hector “Bulldog,” I often wondered why that animal was chosen to represent us.  Far from regal, I pictured bulldogs with short legs, wide-set eyes, and a protruding underbite.  The torso might have fit for Olympic weightlifters, but not a bunch of lanky kids with pretty-enough faces.

None the less, I reasoned that maybe some people were afraid of drooping lips, thick folds of skin under the neck, and too much gas.  Uh, oh;  that sounds like a look in the mirror.

It appears that mascots are not always picked for their intimidation factor.  Listening to our friends’ conversation, I recognized some silly team names like the University of Oregon “Ducks” (whose costumed mascot is named “Puddles”), the U of Louisiana at Lafayette “Ragin’ Cajuns” (who wears a chili pepper suit), the U of Delaware’s “Blue Hens,” and Texas Christian U’s “Horned Toads.”

By the end of the conversation, I realized that being the “Bulldogs” was an honor compared to the Laurel Hill “Hoboes.”  I tried to visualize the wrestling uniforms for the Poca “Dots,” the Hickman “Kewpies,” and the Blooming Prairie “Awesome Blossoms.”  None of them were fierce.

Even when it came to some animal mascots, I couldn’t help but wonder…huh?  I wouldn’t worry too much about meeting the Fisher “Bunnies” in the alley, if you know what I mean.  I also pondered how a university in Ohio came up with Pete and Penny, two Emperor penguins dressed in stocking caps and scarves.  It’s not like they look out the window and see penguins every day.  The same could be said for the U of Irvine “Anteaters,” Akron U’s “Zippy the Kangaroo,” and Pittsburg State U’s “Gorillas.”

My son and I were talking about his high school mascot, the “Lambkins.”  I reassured him that it would be worse to have the “Banana Slugs” like the University of CA-Santa Cruz.  At least a lambkin is cute and can move an inch in less than 6 hours.

We used to sing, “We are the Bulldogs, the mighty mighty Bulldogs…” on the game buses.  This simply would not work for Banana Slugs.

Speaking of another slow, bizarre mascot, Evergreen State in Washington has the “Geoduck” (pronounced goo-ee-duck.)  No, this is not a type of water bird.  It’s a large saltwater clam with a siphon that can be more than 3 feet long.  Believe me when I say the mascot costume looks like an old sci-fi TV show gone wrong.

At least Bulldogs can put up a fight and go on the rivals’ fire hydrant. 

One of my son’s high school counselors attended school in New Berlin, IL.  With the mascot as the “Pretzels,” she claims the favorite slogan was, “You can eat us, but you can’t defeat us.” 

Before that conversation, I didn’t realize how many mascots belong in the kitchen.  There’s the Fighting Artichokes of Scottsdale Community College, the Fighting Pickles of U of NC School of Arts, and the Fighting Okra of Delta State U.  Unlike the Frankfort, Indiana “Hotdogs”, at least the veggies attempt to sound tough by adding “Fighting” to their names.

I was also amazed to learn that California has a Minor League baseball team called the Modesto Nuts.  “Go Nuts!” is so original.  They probably dread the heckling when having to play teams with names like the “Fighting Squirrels” of Mary Baldwin College.

When I heard about a Minor League hockey team called the Macon Whoopee, I envisioned the mascot wearing an oversized whoopee cushion.  I was actually disappointed to find out it was a crane.

After compiling and learning the names of many mascots (John would be proud), I have begun to wonder why more teams don’t make names that the Average Joe fears or at least doesn’t want to deal with.  You know, the practical intimidation of sorts.  Here are some examples and a cheer for the pep squad:

 

Raging Hormones… “We’ll mess with your minds!”

Dirty Syringes… “Our sting is infectious!”

Horse Flies… “We’re out for blood.  No pain, no gain!”

Rabid Mutts…  “We’ll leave you foaming at the mouth.”

The DMVs… “We’ll make you stand in line!”

Your Mother’s Disapproval…“You’ll feel even worse when we’re through with you!”

The Enclosed Spaces…“We’ll bury you alive!”

Then there would be mascot names that would terrify in and of themselves:  the Trump Comb-Overs, the Paper Cuts, the Pink Eyes, the White Socks with Sandals, the Pop Quizzes, or the Hairy Spiders.

One of these days I’ll need to ask John if he’s ever taught his children the mascot of the Rhode Island School of Design.  Their basketball team named themselves the “Balls” and the hockey players are called the “Nads.”  Let’s just say when their fans started shouting, “Go Nads!” the school used their designing abilities to create exactly that for their mascot.  No lie.  You have to see it to believe it.

Suddenly I’m proud to be a Bulldog.

I've had an Accident...but I'm Okay!

I started thinking today about how the typical human being at one time or another stretches the truth a wee bit to make him or herself not look quite so…well…human.  This phenomenon seems to be particularly true when it comes to women friends of mine and car “incidents.”  

I recall the time when the commissary (that’s the military word for grocery store) on base had placed an order for way too many Coke products.  To clear the overstock, they had marked each 24 pack to only one dollar.

Many of us took advantage of the sale, but none like my friend.  With teens in the house and a husband deployed overseas, she decided to stock up like a crazy woman.  Reasoning that it cost her only four cents per can, she bought forty 24 packs.  In her Miss Helluva-Steal Homemaker mind, this would save her a lot of dough and time in the long run.

With a compelling adrenaline rush from a good deal, she neatly stacked her 11,520 ounces of soda into her truck and headed home with her “liquid gold.”  Picture this white soccer mom bouncing along in her now Low Rider car.

She decided to pull into her driveway backwards to make unloading the forty cases an easier task.  Then the unintended and unforeseen happened.  She ran into…or should I say scraped the bumper over…the curb.

Not calculating the extra 720 pounds of cola in her truck, she pulled forward and ripped the back bumper more than partially off her car.  It was tacky enough to require a quick fix to keep it from dragging and igniting sparks on the pavement.  After all, she had to get to an orthodontic appointment for her middle schooler.

All of us friends learned from her trial and error.  She made sure to inform all of us that neither Scotch tape nor packaging tape work to hold up a cold bumper in the middle of December.  She ended up using a red bungee strap and, deciding that it looked completely ridiculous, tried to make it a statement by sticking a wreath and fake poinsettia on it.  

She pulled up to the middle school where her just-turned-teenage son was completely humiliated.  Any of us that deal with kids this age can get a clear vision of the scenario.  She claimed that he slumped down in the seat the entire way to the orthodontist just in case someone could see him in the now clown vehicle.

Another friend of mine had other tactics to soften the blows of her accidents. 

Already running late for school, her daughter had forgotten something and asked to run back in the house to grab it.  With the car still parked in the garage, she jumped out of the back door.  

She jumped back in, but this time through the other back door.  Unbeknownst to my friend in the driver’s seat, her daughter had left the first exit door open.  Evel Knievel (her name has been changed to protect her identity) backed (or should I say peeled?) the car out of the garage.  With a crunch and a pop, the door was ripped off.

But not totally.  Just enough to not be able to drive to school pretending she was in an open door Jeep.  My buddy did anything a logical mother would have done (after mumbling a few expletives!)  She grabbed some water skiing rope and tied the inside handle of the mangled door to the opposite back door (you know, the one that was closed properly in the whole ordeal!) 

Come to think of it, I think that the rope was also tied to the toddler car seat and maybe even three children. 

That night she told her husband that someone had tried to steal the door off of their car.  I think he even believed her because how could anyone make that story up?

Later in life she would accidentally leave the gas pump’s spigot in her tank and drive off.  The gas cap door ripped off, and she tried the same approach.  She couldn’t believe someone had stolen that little door off of her car. 

I don’t think her husband fell for it the second time.

By the way, my Coca Cola-buying friend talked to her husband over the phone the night of the bumper incident.  He was stationed in Iraq, so she—like so many of us military wives—didn’t want her husband to worry about the little things at home so he could concentrate on his safety. 

“Well, honey,” she started, “I have good news and bad news.  The bad news is that I had an accident with the car.  After a healthy pause she sighed and said, “The good news is that I’m okay.”  And with no mention of soda, she left it at that.

At Least Mommy's Out

We’ve all known a mondegreen at one time or another.  Either we’ve come up with it ourselves or we’ve overheard a friend or relative singing one, probably at full-lung capacity.

You see, a mondegreen is the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase.  People do this all of the time with songs and often don’t figure out that they’ve been singing the wrong words for years.

I was recently reminded of mondegreens when I heard the infamous “Feliz Navidad” on the car radio.  Last Christmas our neighbors were driving in their van with Christmas music blaring. Their then seven-year-old, upon hearing the song, perked up in the back seat with an innocent question.   “Why do they keep singing ‘At least Mommy’s out’?”

That has now become Melissa and my theme song.

When I told her that I was writing about Olivia’s question about Feliz Navidad, she laughed, then—in usual fashion—made me laugh again.  “At least it’s not her 15-year-old brother’s version that goes ‘Pu-lease smell my butt.’”

That got me to thinking about what other people had misheard the song to say.  Come to find out, non-Spanish-speaking folk have been singing everything from “Denise la dee da” and “Please mop it up” to “Release Mother Duck” and “Feel snot I’ve got”. 

Surprisingly, most other mondegreens for this song had to do with police, dogs, or mommies.  “Police shot my dog,”  “Police nodded off,”  “Fleas…naughty dog,” and “Release mommy’s dog” are perfect examples.  

When you try all of these, be sure to use a Frito Bandito accent.  You’ll be surprised how well they work.

Next to Olivia’s rendition, my second favorite would have to be, “Let’s grease mommy up.”  Perhaps it’s because I’ve baked with enough Crisco in my day to make it a funny visual.

Which brings me to another point:  Why do so many mondegreens have to do with food?  Maybe there’s a correlation between being hungry and hearing lyrics wrong.

Some of you remember Crystal Gayle’s “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue.”  Foodies have been known to hear it as “Doughnuts Make My Brown Eyes Blue.”  Bachmann-Turner Overdrives “Takin’ Care of Business” has been transformed to “Baking Carrot Biscuits” and the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams are Made of This” has become “Sweet Dreams are Made of Cheese.”

My dairy farmer dad would have liked that one.

The most humorous is from “Can’t Help Myself” by the Four Tops.  As if the actual lyrics don’t boast enough calories, some food lovers try to change “Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch” to “Sugar Fried Honey Butts.”   They’re the ones (like me) who line up to get fry bread at the town’s celebration every summer.

In doing my research, I found a new song for my own household.  Seeing that my husband’s part Asian and I’m part German, I’m going to start singing Billy Joel’s song a different way.  Instead of “You may be right, I may be crazy,” I’m going to use the mondegreen, “You made the rice, I made the gravy.”

When I read some of the misinterpreted lyrics online, I began questioning people’s view on relationships.  Juice Newton’s “Just touch my cheek before you leave me, baby” became “Just brush my teeth before you leave me, baby.”  Now that’s a weird visual, right along with the guy who heard Roy Orbison’s, “Pretty woman, won’t you look my way” as “Pretty woman, won’t you lick my leg.”  Weirdo.

Then there are those out looking for imperfect women.  Like the people who hear the Beatles’ “The girl with kaleidoscope eyes” as “The girl with colitis goes by.”  Or the ones who turn The Monkees’ “Then I saw her face, now I’m a believer” into “Then I saw her face, now I’m gonna leave her.”

On the other hand, some view women as super-human.  For example, what were listeners thinking when they turned Kenny Rodgers lyrics of “You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille… four hungry children and a crop in the field” to four hundred children?  It makes me not want to sit down just thinking about it.

When I read that some had sung the Beatles “She’s Got a Ticket to Ride” as “She’s Got a Chicken to Ride”,  it again brought me back to little Olivia.

Her family recently got four chickens.  I asked her 11-year-old sister what she had named hers, and she exclaimed, “Well, my chicken’s white.  So I named it White Trash.”  I asked Olivia what she had named her chicken, and she simply answered, “Fred.”  Later she would rename it Broccoli because, she informed me, “It likes green things.”

Feliz Navidad, everyone.  And, for Pete’s Sake, let Mommy out.  Or at least grease her up. 

Turkey Troubles

Thanksgiving has always been a wonderful holiday for me.  Even the ones when-- with three small children born within 3 ½ years of each other—my military husband was deployed to some foreign country and I was too tired to cook.  Those were the Thanksgivings when I’d bundle the children up and head to a one-stop-buffet-pleases-every-appetite restaurant like Country Buffet or Golden Corral.  I’d be a tacky mom and place a holiday-sporting centerpiece in the middle of the table to make it feel like home.

With my dad being an only child, my childhood Thanksgivings were always spent with my mom’s side of the family.  This was a very good thing, since there was always action (there were 29 cousins, after all) and all of my relatives could cook and bake like female Emeril Lagasses and French pastry chefs.  Not bad for a bunch of Germans.

As for other Thanksgivings, I distinctively remember spending one with my husband’s brother and his wife in the L.A. area.  My sister-in-law realized that her very frozen turkey which should have already been thawing for a couple of days wasn’t going to fit in the fridge.  Rather than place it in cold water like I suggested, she decided to put it outside in the back yard to thaw after the rest of us had retired for the night.  No one would know any better, she reasoned.  

The next morning she awoke to find the entire turkey mauled and shredded across the entire yard. Whether it was a coyote or a dog, we’ll never know.  What I do know is that we ended up having spaghetti for Thanksgiving.

One of my favorite Thanksgivings as an adult happened when we were newly married.  Since we couldn’t be with family, we decided to invite one of my husband’s high school best friends and a single female soldier over for a home-cooked meal.

A few days before the dinner, the soldier called to say her mom would be able to fly in to visit.  She asked if she could bring her to dinner, which pleased us.

The day arrived and, in my husband’s typical fashion, each person during the course of the meal had to answer a question that had been strategically placed where they were sitting. 

The soldier had been asked what she was most thankful for and, with her mom in town, found it quick and easy to answer, “Family.”

The mother was then asked to tell us about one of her most memorable Thanksgivings.  Her story was one that I have never forgotten, even though it has been almost 25 years!

She told of being a young Army Captain’s wife.  She described how the officers’ wives had been asked to roast the turkeys for the enlisted soldiers’ Thanksgiving gathering.  The mess hall was going to provide all of the pies and fixings, but thought it would be a nice touch to have the officers carve the birds and serve it to the soldiers.

Right when we were all ahhing and oohing and visualizing the wonderful occasion, the story took a turn for the worse. 

 

She described how it was the first time she had ever roasted a turkey.  She was standing beside her husband as he was carving and serving, when suddenly he began to pull newspaper from the bird’s innards. We remembered how giblets weren’t always packaged in plastic, and began hysterically laughing. 

 

The soldiers lined up to be served her turkey started slowly moving over to other lines.  One could only imagine how mortified she was, but somehow she was laughing to the point of tears now.

Our dinner would end fabulously.  The high school friend had become an English teacher, so his question asked what his favorite poem was and whether he could quote it.  He began to quote Robert Frost’s “The Road Less Traveled.” 

He began, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…”

To our surprise and delight our other guests began to join in… “and sorry I could not travel both…”  

We had no idea that the soldier’s dad was a big poetry buff and that he would insist that his wife and children memorize poems during their dinner times together.  The joy on everyone’s face at the table was priceless.

Four stanzas of the poem later, the three of them ended: 

“…Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving no matter where you celebrate, who you celebrate it with, what you end up eating, or what humiliating things happen!     Trust me, someday you’ll look back and smile at your turkey troubles.