Dork origins, Mert style

Over at Dork Bloggers, my home away from home ;) we like to do a little thing called Dork Origins where we explain (as best as we can) the reasons for our inherent dorkiness. Dork war stories if you will. We are casualties of Dork.

When I look back at my life, and all it's dorkfulness, I have no doubt of where my dork genes originate. That's right folks I said genes, plural. I think we all know by now that I am above average in the dork department.

I believe what they say is true to some degree... that we are a product of our environment, and I wonder to myself if the fact that my mother (whom I refer to most times as the "egg donor" because I hate calling her mom, because she sucked and doesn't deserve to be called that) is NUTS. Seriously, she has papers.

Anyway, I probably could keep you here all day reading about my dork origins, but I will tell you about the ones that are most prominent in my mind.

When I was about 15, my parents had decided that we kids needed a little culture and took us away from the redneck town we lived in to Annapolis. Annapolis is a beautiful city on the Chesapeake Bay that is famous for its quaint cobbled and bricked streets lined with town houses (for Yuppies), it's inner harbor with elegant restaurants and bay side views of the sail boats going by (owned by Yuppies), and the Naval Academy (which often housed of the spawn of Yuppies).

Being poor and unrefined, my mother (who had a nose for sniffing out bargains and freebies) thought that the best place for used to get a little taste of culture would an art gallery in downtown Annapolis. This art gallery just happened to be serving free wine and cheese! Well, imagine that. Me and my older brother were allowed to have a sip of free wine with our free cheese and crackers. Meanwhile, the egg donor enjoyed quite a bit of free wine with her free cheese and crackers.

My mother, always appreciative of a good piece of art, pointed to a painting of the Annapolis inner harbor and said, "Wook at da pwee-wee wah-wah!"

Roughly translated to : "Look at the pretty water!"

My dad quickly grabbed her by the hand and dragged her out of the art gallery, and we kids followed closely behind with our eyes on the floor. My dad- having had considerable experience with free alcohol and it's affects- decided that mommy dearest should probably walk it off. My parents came up with yet another brilliant idea... why not take the whole family- including more than a little tipsy and inappropriate mommy- to the actual inner harbor? The place where the affluent strolled, and maybe even enjoyed a few quiet moments on their sailboat or yacht, and where Naval Academy plebes and midshipmen sauntered in groups or with dates.

Sure, why not.

We went to a nautical store. This store had in its window a brass door knocker that my mother had been eying, in the shape of and anchor. My dad dragged her to the register, and my mother - the drunken egg donor- was elated and very pleased with herself for finally being able to afford the thing she had coveted for over a year.

As we walked by our station wagon on our way to a hat store called The Belfry- which I assure you, stuck out like... well a semi-redneck family trying to pretend that they were well off enough to even be there mingling with Maryland's upper crust- and just as a group of really cute midshipman walked by, mother loudly slurred that she needed to "put her knockers in the car".

The whole of Annapolis stopped to stare, and a hush fell over the city- but only after a collective gasp that was heard around the world. I looked over to the midshipmen, who were all decked out in their dress whites and plainly said,

"I do not know that woman."

I did an about face and walked into another shop.


AND FINALLY, a story that I recant with fondness and a light heart... well because it involves my dad...

Lets travel back in time to when I was about 12. My step-dad- who raised me from the age of 6, so I really consider him my dad, and was a geek computer programmer in the Air Force- was outside building his new fabulous tool shed. This shed was not just a shed, and in actuality it was probably at least 1/2 the size of the main floor of our house. With some help from friends, we had a foundation of cinder blocks and plywood over the support beams of the floor. My dad was happily working away outside on a sweltering morning as I brought his steaming cup of coffee out to him, because you see- my dad was a proud Okie, and drank coffee all year round.

*Edit to add: To clarify, as I said in comments "BTW, it's only redneck if you're sweating profusely, wearing jeans with no shirt in the middle of summer, AND drinking coffee. :D"

While I was walking out to him, I noticed he was waving a hand around violently. I handed him his cup and giggled when I asked what he was doing. Evidently there was a big, ugly horsefly whizzing around him, stopping occasionally to light on his body and bite him. Oh, I said, well here's your coffee, dad.

I walked back inside, and a few minutes later we heard a yell come from outside. We ran outside to see if dad was hurt. It turns out that dear old dad had been fighting that horsefly for about a half an hour, and my dad had gotten so annoyed that he had even taken a couple of swings at the horsefly with the hammer in his hand. He whacked at the coarse and ugly bug with the hammer and missed several times.

"I finally got it, though, " My dad smiled and chuckled, thrusting his mighty hammer in the air in triumph with one hand and cradling his leg with the other, "But unfortunately it had landed on my shin."