by Jenny Lawson
WHEN I WAS in the third grade, my father rushed inside one night to tell us all to come out and look at what he had in the back of his pickup. I was young, but still well trained enough to know that nothing good could come of this.
My sister and I shared a wary look as my mother peered guardedly from the kitchen window to see whether anything large was moving in my father’s truck. It was. She gave us a look that my father always seemed to interpret as “How lucky you girls are to have such an adventurous father,” but which I always read as “One of you will probably not survive your father’s enthusiasm. Most likely it will be Lisa, since she’s smaller and can’t run as fast, but she is quite good at hiding in small spaces, so really it’s anyone’s game.” More likely, though, it was something like “Christ, why won’t someone hurry up and invent Xanax?”
Usually when my father wanted us to come outside to see what was in the bed of his truck, it was only because whatever was in there was either too bloody and/or vicious for him to carry inside, so we all stayed in the relative safety of our house and asked a series of questions designed to indicate the level of danger of whatever Daddy would be exposing us to. We’d learned to interpret his answers accordingly, and had invented what we would later refer to as “The Dangerous Thesaurus of My Father.”
An abridged version:
“You’re really going to like this.” = “I have no idea what children enjoy.”
“Put your dark coat on.” = “You’re probably going to get blood on you.”
“It’s not going to hurt you.” = “I hope you like Bactine.”
“It’s very excited.” = “It has rabies.”
“Now, don’t get too attached.” = “I got this monkey for free because it has a virus.”
“It likes you!” = “This wild boar is now your responsibility.”
“Now, this is really interesting.” = “You’ll still have nightmares about this when you’re thirty.”
“Don’t scream or you’ll scare it.” = “You should really be running now.”
“It just wants to give you a kiss.” = “It’s probably going to eat your face off.”
My father was perpetually disappointed by our lack of trust, but I reminded him that just last week he’d brought his own mother a box he’d filled with an angry live snake that he’d found on the road on the way to her house. He tried to defend himself, but my sister and I had both been there when my father laid the box on the front yard and called his mother out to see “a surprise.” Then he nudged the box open with his foot, the snake jumped out, and my grandmother and I ran inside. Lisa ran in the opposite direction and tried to jump into the bed of the truck, which was incredibly shortsighted, as that was exactly where my father stored the skinned, unidentifiable animals that he planned to boil down in order to study their bone structure. The bed of my father’s pickup truck was like something that would have ended up in Dante’s Inferno, if Dante had ever spent any time in rural Texas.
This memory was still vivid in our minds as my father pushed us all outside into the cold darkness to show us whatever horrifying booty he’d managed to capture, shoot, or run over. My sister and I hung back nervously as my mother braced herself with a deep breath and leaned forward uneasily to stare into the eyes of a dozen grim live birds, who looked as if they’d been driven through hell. A few squawked indignantly, but most huddled numbly in the corner, no doubt shell-shocked from the windblown journey, coupled with being forced to share the pickup bed with several animal carcasses my father had probably picked up for taxidermy work. To the birds, I assume it must’ve been very much like accepting a ride from a stranger, only to get in the back of the van to find several murdered hikers who were being made into lamp shades.
My father explained that the birds were well-behaved Wisconsin jumbo quail, and my mother countered that the birds were, in fact, rowdy turkeys. He explained that he’d gotten them in trade for the rusty crossbow he’d brought home a few months ago, and technically the birds seemed the lesser of the two evils, so she shook her head and went back to cleaning. My mother was a woman who knew how to pick her battles, and she probably realized that the quails-that-were-actually-turkeys would be less dangerous to all of us.
Those birds loved my father with a white-hot passion. They followed him around, reverently, in what I can only imagine was some sort of Patty Hearst Stockholm syndrome, no doubt strengthened by the sight of him carrying dead animals into the house every few days. My father was the only person they seemed to tolerate. As the months wore on, the turkeys grew bigger and louder and more obnoxious, and would roost on low tree branches, screaming at my mother every time she left the house. My father insisted that the quails were just eccentric, and that we were misinterpreting the loud, angry gobbling, which he maintained was simply the birds singing with joy. He implied that our response to the quail was probably just an indication of our own guilty consciences, and my mother implied that he probably needed to be stabbed repeatedly with a fork in the thigh, but she said it more with her eyes than with her mouth, and my father seldom paid enough attention to either.
As the birds grew larger and meaner, I thanked God that we had no neighbors near enough to witness the turkey’s behavior. I was already plagued with insecurity and shyness, and the embarrassing angry turkey attacks were doing nothing for my already low self-confidence. My sister and I tried to ignore the whole situation, which was difficult, because my father insisted on naming the turkeys and treating them like pets. Pets who would angrily run at you in a full-out attack, nipping at your tiny ankles as you ran in circles around the yard, screaming for someone to open the door to the house and let you in.
Lisa tried to convince my father that the birds (led by an unpredictable turkey named Jenkins, for some reason) wanted to eat us, but my father assured us that “quail don’t even have teeth, so even if they did manage to kill you, they certainly wouldn’t be able to eat you.” I suppose he thought that was comforting.
“Do turkeys have teeth?” my sister asked him archly.
My father tried to lecture her on respecting your elders, but he got distracted trying to calm down Jenkins, who had lodged himself on the mailman’s hood and was violently attacking at the windshield wiper, while gobbling accusingly at the baffled postman.
We lived on a rural route, so our mailman was fairly used to being besieged by stray dogs, but he’d been utterly unprepared for an angry turkey attack and indignantly yelled, “You need to lock those damn turkeys up if you can’t control them.”
My father lifted the large bird off the hood, with more than a little exertion, and tucked him under his arm, saying (with a surprising amount of dignity for a man with a turkey under his arm), “Sir, this bird is a quail. And his name is Jenkins.” I was surprised at my father’s elegance and poise at that moment, especially in light of the fact that Jenkins was snorting furiously at the mailman while shaking the limp rubber part of the windshield wiper blade in his beak like a whip. I was not surprised when we found a note in our mailbox the following day, informing us that we would no longer be allowed to tape a quarter to our letters in lieu of a stamp, and that all further packages would be left by the mailbox rather than being delivered to the door. This was upsetting to my mother, both because she hated to have to drive into town to buy stamps, and also because the mailman’s idea of leaving packages at the mailbox was more like him flinging our mail in the general direction of the house without braking. The turkeys adapted to this by quickly gathering up the mail in the yard, which would have been helpful if they’d brought it to the house like a dog, but instead they’d carry the letters around proudly, as if they were important turkey documents that my mother was attempting to steal from them. She’d try to convince my sister and me that it would be a fun game to try to get the mail from the turkeys each day, but we declined, pointing out that a good game of keep-away shouldn’t end with bloody ankles and the threat of bird flu.
It was far safer for our social standing and phys
ical well-being to avoid the turkeys altogether, so my sister and I began putting together a defensive strategy to protect us from bird assault. Flashdance had just come out, and I tried to convince my mom to buy me leg warmers (both to help me fit in with the cool kids at school, and also to protect my legs from turkey attacks), but she refused, saying that wearing leg warmers in the Texas summer was a total waste of money. Instead I ended up just enviously staring at everyone else’s leg warmers, who I suspected probably didn’t even have turkeys. Lisa and I attempted to fashion ankle armor out of empty soup cans that we’d opened on both sides, but my feet were too big to fit into them, and Lisa’s feet were so little that when she ran, the tin cans would clink loudly together and simply attract the attention of the vicious herd. She was basically like a tiny, pigtailed dinner bell. I considered telling her that the ankle armor wasn’t helping, but that was tantamount to telling a fellow zebra that he’s covered in steak sauce right before you both have to cross a parking lot full of lions. Self-preservation is a narcissistic bedfellow, and I wasn’t proud of my actions, but I comforted myself in the knowledge that if Lisa did fall prey to the vicious birds I would wait a week—out of respect—before claiming her toys for my own.
Lisa had heard that turkeys were so stupid that if it rained, they would look up to see what was falling on them and drown from the rain falling into their noses, so we began to pray for rain, which was promptly answered by a full-on drought. Probably because you’re not supposed to ask God to murder your pets. We often talked about spraying the water hose on them in order to weed out the stupider ones, but we could never bring ourselves to do it, both because it seemed too cruel (even in self-defense) and also because our father would probably find it suspicious if all his turkeys died in a freak rainstorm that had apparently broken out only next to the garden hose.
Occasionally the turkeys would follow us, menacingly, on our quarter-mile walk to school, lurking behind us like improbable gang members or tiny, feathered rapists. Even at age nine I was painfully self-conscious, and was aware that dysfunctional pet turkeys would not be viewed as “cool,” so I would always duck inside the schoolhouse as quickly as possible and feign ignorance, conspicuously asking my classmates why the hell there were always jumbo quail on the playground. Then other students would point out that they were turkeys, and I’d shrug with indifference, saying, “Oh, are they? Well, I wouldn’t know about such things.” Then I’d slide into my seat and slouch over my desk, avoiding eye contact until the turkeys lost interest and wandered back home to shriek at my mother for their breakfast.
This worked perfectly until the morning when I ducked inside the school lobby a little too sluggishly, and Jenkins blithely followed me in, gobbling to himself and looking both clueless and vaguely threatening. Two other turkeys followed behind Jenkins. I quickly ran into my classroom as the turkeys wandered aimlessly into the library. I sighed in relief that no one had noticed the turkey expedition, until an hour later, when we all heard a lot of screaming and squawking, and we discovered that the principal and librarian had found the turkeys, who had somehow made their way to the cafeteria. They had also managed to shit everywhere. It was actually a little bit impressive, and also horribly revolting. The principal had seen the turkeys follow us to school before (as had most of my classmates, who’d just been too embarrassed for me to point out that they knew I was the turkey-magnet the whole time), so he called my father and demanded that he come to the school to clean up the mess that his turkeys had made. My father explained to the principal that he must be mistaken, because he was raising jumbo quail, but the principal wasn’t buying it.
A half-hour later, when my class lined up to go to PE, I found my father on his knees, cleaning up poop in the lobby. He was unsuccessfully attempting to shoo the turkeys away, quietly but forcefully yelling, “GO HOME, JENKINS.” I froze and tried to blend into the wallpaper, but it was too late. Jenkins recognized me immediately and ran up to me, gobbling with excited recognition like, “OH MY GOD, ISN’T THIS AWESOME? WHO ARE YOUR FRIENDS?” and for the first time I didn’t run screaming from him. Instead I sighed and waved weakly, mumbling dejectedly, “Hey, Jenkins,” as my classmates stared at me in amazement. But not the good kind of amazement, like when your uncles show up at your school in a limo to invite you to live with them, and they’re Michael Jackson and John Stamos, but you never mentioned it before because you didn’t want to brag, and everyone feels really bad for not inviting you to their slumber parties when they had the chance. It was more of the bad kind of amazement. Like when you realize that not having the right kind of leg warmers is really small potatoes compared to being assaulted by an overexcited turkey named Jenkins, who is being scolded by your shit-covered father in front of your entire school. I think this was the point when I realized that I was kind of fucked when it came to ever becoming the most popular kid in the class, and so I just nodded to Jenkins and my father (both equally oblivious to the damage they’d done to my reputation), and I held my head up high as I walked down the hall and tried not to slip in the feces.
All the rest of that day I waited for the taunting to come, but it never did. Probably because no one even knew where to begin. Or possibly because they were intimidated by Jenkins, who I later heard had screamed threateningly at the kindergarteners as he was forcibly evicted from the premises. My sister tried to be blasé and pretended as if this sort of thing was commonplace. She refused to let it affect her social standing, and so it didn’t. This same confidence came in handy a few years later, when she was attacked by a pig on the playground. (That story’s in the next book. You should start saving up for it now.)
I, on the other hand, gave up completely at ever trying to fit in again.
When other girls had tea parties on the playground, I brought out my secondhand Ouija board and attempted to raise the dead. While my classmates gave book reports on The Wind in the Willows or Charlotte’s Web, I did mine on tattered, paperback copies of Stephen King novels that I’d borrowed from my grandmother. Instead of Sweet Valley High, I read books about zombies and vampires. Eventually, my third-grade teacher called my mother in to discuss her growing concerns over my behavior, and my mom nodded blithely, but failed to see what the problem was. When Mrs. Johnson handed her my recent book report on Pet Sematary, my mom wrinkled her forehead with concern and disapproval. “Oh, I see,” she said disappointedly, as she turned to me. “You spelled ‘cemetery’ wrong.” Then I explained that Stephen King had spelled it that way on purpose, and she nodded, saying, “Ah. Well, good enough for me.” My teacher seemed a bit flustered, but eventually the principal reminded her that my family had been the ones responsible for the Great Turkey Shit-off of 1983, and she seemed to realize that her intervention was futile, and gave up without feeling too guilty, because it was pretty obvious there was no way of turning me into a “normal” third-grader. And I felt relieved for her.
And actually? A little relieved for me too. Because it was the first time in my life that I gave myself permission to be me. I was still shy and self-conscious and terrified of people, but Jenkins had essentially freed me of the bonds of having to try to fit in. It was a lesson I should have been happy to learn at such a young age, if it weren’t for the fact that it was a teaching moment centering on a public turkey attack witnessed by all of the same kids that I would graduate from high school with.
Soon afterward, Jenkins and the other turkeys disappeared from our lives, but the lessons I learned from them still remain: Turkeys make terrible pets, you should never trust your father to identify poultry, and you should accept who you are, flaws and all, because if you try to be someone you aren’t, then eventually some turkey is going to shit all over your well-crafted façade, so you might as well save yourself the effort and enjoy your zombie books. And so I guess, in a way, I owe Jenkins a debt of gratitude, because (even if it was entirely unintentional) he was a brilliant teacher.
And also? Totally delicious.
If You Need an Arm Cond
om, It Might Be Time to Reevaluate Some of Your Life Choices
(Alternative Title: High School Is Life’s Way of Giving You a Record Low to Judge the Rest of Your Life By)
I was the only Goth chick in a tiny agrarian high school. Students occasionally drove to school on their tractors. Most of my classes took place inside an ag barn. It was like if Jethro from The Beverly Hillbillies showed up in a Cure video, except just the opposite.
I purposely chose the Goth look to make people avoid me—since I was painfully shy—and I spent every free period and lunch hiding in the bathroom with a book until I finally graduated. It was totally shitty.
The end.
UPDATED: My editor says that this is a terrible chapter, and that she doesn’t “even know what the hell an ag barn is.” Which is kind of weird. For her, I mean. “Ag barn” is short for “agriculture barn.” It’s the barn where they teach all the boll weevil eradication classes. I wish I were joking about that, but I’m totally not. You could also take classes in welding, animal husbandry, cotton judging and cultivation, and another class that I don’t remember the name of, but we learned how to build stools and fences in it. I’m fairly sure it was called “Stools and Fences 101.” None of this is made up.
UPDATED AGAIN: My editor says this is still a terrible chapter and that I need to flesh it out more. I assume by “flesh it out” she means recover a bunch of awkward memories that I’ve invested a lot of time in repressing. Fine. My ag teacher told us that once, years ago, a student was hanging a cotton-judging banner on the ag barn wall when he fell off of the ladder and landed on a broomstick, which went right up his rectum. The idea must have really stuck with my teacher, because he was forever warning us to be constantly vigilant of any stray brooms in the area before getting on a ladder, and to this day I cannot see a ladder without checking to make sure there aren’t any brooms nearby. This is pretty much the only useful thing I ever learned in high school. Oh, and I also learned firsthand how to artificially inseminate a cow using a turkey baster (but that was less “useful” and more “traumatic,” both for me and the cow). This is what we had instead of geography. It’s also why I can never get the blue pie when I play Trivial Pursuit.