THE CLOCK STRUCK PRISCILLA 9/20/13

Hey- I'm still alive, still stuttering, and am ready to blog again. I had no idea this would turn into such a long break but I guess it was what I needed. 
     A Birthday Blog is the perfect way of re-starting. I just wrote 52, and have attached 50 & 51 to it. The three share a common theme so they can be read as a group. The Birthday Blogs are very short and very Priscilla.  I'm working on the finale to STUTTERVILLE now and will be finished soon. I promise.--- Gary,  a.k.a. Stutterpuss

     I'm turning 50 tomorrow. Well, I'm turning 50 at exactly 4:40 A.M. That's the time I was born, and it's the time my mother calls every year to wish me Happy Birthday. She doesn't have to set an alarm clock because her vagina instinctively remembers and wakes her. I'm woken up instinctively too, by my arms and legs thrashing around trying to escape out of my bedsheets. 

    When I moved to the West Coast into a different time zone, the Birthday phone call got more complicated. My mother's vagina and my thrashing limbs became out of sync from the three hour time difference. It forces her to do either addition or subtraction when she wants to call on my Birthday, which is enough to confuse her every year. Sometimes the call comes three hours early at 1:40  A.M. Sometimes it comes at 2:40 A.M. when she thinks its only a two hour time difference. It's astounding how many years she has made some kind of error in her time calculations.I even made up a poem for her to help keep the times straight in her mind:

              Gary takes a morning pee
            three full hours after me. 

     Unfortunately, it relied on her either remembering the poem itself or remembering where she put it, which has proven to be too much to expect.
     So off to bed I go with my cell phone right next to me. I may not know exactly what time the call will come, but when that phone rings at 40 minutes past something, I'll know who it is.

                                             *
     
           I grabbed my ringing phone in the dark.
       "Happy Birthday Pooh!. It's 7:44 here so  I know it's  4:44 there. Proud of your ol' Mom for finally getting it right?"
       I chuckled into the phone before I gave her the news. " Ma, I hate to tell you this, but I was born at 4:40, not 4: 44. That was the one thing you've gotten right all these years."
      " Are you sure? I could swear it's 4:44. I even have it written down here so I would call at exactly the right time," she said with certainty.
      " Sorry Ma. I know you tried but it's definitely 4:40."
      "  Oh shit," she groaned. " You're right. I just remembered what 444 was. It was the number of my flight coming home from Africa. I was reading it when I added it to my scrapbook last night. It must have stuck in my head. That's what happened,"she laughed at herself, then groaned a little more in exasperation. "It always happens when I see two numbers that are close." .
     " It was only one '4' off.  You came close at least," I laughed.
     " You're never going to believe this but something inside was telling me to call you at 4:40"- (that would be her vagina)-" but I just sat there staring at the phone until 4:44 because I was so sure that was the right time." 
     " Ma,  what makes it  so special is how you manage to get it wrong so often. It's all part of the call for me. Don't worry about it, it still counts," I chuckled then yawned. " Ma, I have to hang up and sleep a little more. Thanks for the birthday call. Love you.Goodbye." 
     " I love you too. Bye-bye, Pooh."

 The lesson of this little story is an obvious one: Never ignore what your vagina is trying to tell you.

===============================
     

  At the time I turned 50 last September 20th, I wrote THE CLOCK STRUCK PRISCILLA to explain how each year on my birthday, my mother Priscilla attempts to call me at 4 :40 A.M., which was the exact time of my long-ago departure from her vagina. No matter how hard she tries, she is always thwarted by either time zone changes, alarms set too late, phone numbers dialed incorrectly, misread penciled-in numbers, wrong area codes, and by her greatest enemy of all, simple math. 

    The three hour time difference between East and West Coasts has continued to vex her since I moved here 17 years ago from New York. 
      Last year she called thinking my birth time was 4:44 A.M. instead of 4:40. This meant I would have had to spend an extra four minutes trying to get out of her vagina. I assured her she was wrong, horrified at the thought of how much  more psychological damage four extra minutes stuck inside her would have caused me.
   When I turned off the lights and left my phone on, I wondered when the call would come. At 1:05 in the morning, the phone rang and I fumbled in the dark to answer it. It was my Nameless Booty Caller, or NBC. He must have gotten encouraged when I answered the phone, but was quickly discouraged when he heard "Mommy?" 
     I fell back to sleep but shot up from my pillow when the phone rang again. This time I had my glasses under the pillow ready so I could see who was calling. The caller I.D. read 'Priscilla' so I quickly answered it before the call went into voicemail.
     "Mommy?"
     " Happy Birthday Pooh!"
     " What time is it?' I immediately asked, dying to know if she screwed up again.
     " It's 7:40, which means it's 4:40 there, right?" she asked with guarded excitement.
     " Congratulations Ma, you got it right!" I cheered her in the darkness.
     " I promised myself I wouldn't get it wrong on your 50th birthday," she said, proud of her great accomplishment. 
     "Ma, what did you just say?" 
     " I said I didn't want to get it wrong again. Like you always say I do."
     " How old am I again?" I asked with  suspicion in my voice. 
     " You're 50 Pooh. The big one."
     " Oh Priscilla," I laughed. "You just gave me the best birthday present."  I paused a few seconds to laugh more and enjoy the moment. "I don't know how to break this to you Mommy, but I'm 51 now, not 50. That was last year."
     " Gary that's impossible. I would remember you turning 50. I counted it out on my fingers to make sure. 1962 plus 50 equals 2012. And Mitchell is two years older so he's 52."
     " Ma, I was born in 1961, not 62. So I'm 51 and Mitch is 53."
     " Oh my God, I can't believe I got that wrong. I never got that wrong before," she groaned. " I give up already. It's impossible."
     " Ma, the more times you get it wrong, the better the odds are of you eventually getting it right, " I laughed again. 
     " Why do all my children think it's so funny? It's hard remembering everything. You try having three children whose ages keep on changing," she defended herself as if this was a common dilemma that all mothers face. "It would be much easier if ages didn't change so often. Birthdays never change. That's why I'm so good at remembering them. I don't even have to write them down. How about some credit for never forgetting any birthday of any one's in this family."
     "It's true Ma. That is without doubt your specialty."
     " So don't laugh at me every year. You know I try."  
      " Ma, I love when you don't get it right. It's the highlight of every birthday,"I smiled in the dark. 
    " Next year, I'll get it perfect," she vowed.
    " If you do I'll never speak to you again, " I warned before saying good night and thanking her for the call again.
    " Goodnight Pooh, I love you."
    " I love you too."

 =============================================

         It's 12:09 A.M. on September 20, my birthday. This is the one day a year I allow myself to write about my mother's vagina. Luckily, her vagina is not on my mind a lot, except for seeing it every time I've closed my eyes for the past 42 years, ever since she did her naked bicycle pumps and jumping jacks  in front of me when I was 10. But this is not the time to complain about her vagina. This is the time to celebrate my mother's vagina. I want to thank it and salute it. After all, it was responsible for My Great Escape, as I call it ( I think a movie was made with the same name).

THE LIGHT, THE WONDERFUL LIGHT!

       The Birthday Call is the greatest tradition that my mother and I share. As a matter of fact, it is our only tradition. Nothing else survived from all the years of fighting and being apart. I guess this is why it's so significant in both our lives.

     The fact that she gets it wrong every year is it's own tradition within the tradition. She has always been very clear with herself that her ineptitude has nothing to do with her heart, and that her love is a very powerful force even without having much talent or skills. She remembers every one's birthday so easily because her heart has a tremendous memory, much bigger than her mind's, which is relegated to remembering time zones and other facts that are boring to her.

      Before I went to sleep, I checked to make sure my phone's battery was charged and the ringer was set on high. I didn't want to chance missing the Birthday Call. I was actually excited about it. It's funny, I never thought I would say that about any phone conversation involving my mother. I've grown to appreciate the calls more just for the immense amount of love that I have absorbed from them even when I didn't want to.

    

                      *

      Well, just like broken clockwork, she fucked up 

again. 4:20 A.M., 20 minutes too early. A premature Birthday Call. But this time she was able to blame her new husband, Joe. She said it was his fault for waking her up at 7:20 instead of 7:40, like he was supposed to, so he could leave earlier. She was scared she would fall back to sleep after he left and not call when she wanted to. The whole thing made no sense to me, especially at 4:20 in the morning. 

     The important thing is that she was true to form and was able to somehow  fuck up the Birthday Call again. She kept the tradition going and didn't ruin her streak. And who knows, maybe all her Birthday Call blunders have brought me good luck over the years. 

    Imagine if she finally gets everything right when I turn 53, and suddenly  everything and everyone around me starts to unravel. How frightening. Luckily, it would take a perfect Birthday Call to see if that would happen. Personally, I think there's a better chance of being hit by an asteroid.

A BIRTHDAY CALL BLUNDER FOR
EACH YEAR I'VE BLOGGED. 
GO PRISCILLA GO!