Raised on a Dog Leash

Just in: attempting to do a load of laundry is just a stressful as trying to stop the war in Iraq.

In the sensible world, this isn’t the case. If President Obama had the choice between doing a load a laundry or trying to stop the war in Iraq, I’m pretty sure he’d pick the latter.

But in my case, my roommate freshman year thought that every task she had to do without the assistance from her mother was like trying to stop global warming— sheer impossible. It was second nature to me to have to do my own laundry, make my own living, do my own homework. My parents raised me to be self-reliant so I didn’t know anything different…until college that is.

I can remember it now. Move in day freshman year, each girl was nervous as can be, yet sizing each other up to see which would be their lucky roommate. You’d pass a gothic girl and be like “ oh God, I’ll go to church for the whole year as long as you don’t put me with her” or you pass a girl who looked like she didn’t know what a shower was and tell God you’d feed the hungry each week if he could spare you this once.

When I got to my third floor room I was able to breathe a sigh of relief. There stood a sweet and outgoing girl who I knew I’d click with instantly. In my head, I was thanking God a thousand times over, but may have said one too many prayers. When my roommate’s parents said their final good-byes, I was trying to reverse every thankful prayer I had said. A girl I thought was so vivacious and outgoing turned into the biggest basket case I had ever met. I’d call my mom several times a day, “Mom, what do I do? I can’t stop making her cry.”

“Now, now,” my mom would reply. “It’ can’t be so bad. Just be patient.”

“Mom, I suggested she do some laundry to take her mind off of home, but when she went to do her laundry, she just burst into tears from the mounds of stress to try to fathom doing it without her mom.”

This, my friends, is a severe case of what I’d like to call disfunctionitis. In laments terms, it’s where the parents caudle their child too long, to the point that they can’t fend for his or her self.

It’s funny to see how times have drastically changed. My mother is the first of five and growing up she was like the second mother around the house. From middle school on, she helped her mom cook, clean, iron…all the above. And today, most children don’t know the cardinal rule of washing laundry: never mix your whites and reds or you will end up with pinks.

I digress.

I think it’s great that parents are there for their kids to guide them through life, but they’ve got to know the difference between guiding and smothering. Guiding is when you walk down a path side by side, there to pick up your kid when he or she hits a bump or two. Smothering is like the poor kid whose parent buys a “dog leash” to walk him or her around. They’re able to control the distance their child goes, and is able to reel him or her back in when they don’t like what’s going on.

Ok, so I gave my roommate the benefit of the doubt. “She’s just really homesick,” I’d tell myself. Until she uttered this question: “Kristina, can you help me make a boxed cake?”

A BOXED cake? My blind grandmother can make a boxed cake. That’s the moment I realized my roommate was raised on a dog leash.

Singing the Blues and Oranges

So much for March Madness... my March has actually been a lack of madness. My bracket was screwed up from the onset with all the top seeds dropping like flies...so much for going for the highly-favored teams. I will never look at the odds again.

I made a bet with my uncle, who is a huge Georgia Bulldog fan and I'm a huge Gator fan, that if my brackets beat his then he has to wear a Tim Tebow jersey and if I lose, I have to put on a Georgia cheerleading uniform. I started to wallow in my sorrows because it's just NOT possible for a Gator fan to lose to a Georgia fan, but then Northern Iowa became my hero! Facing off against No. 1 seed Kansas, No. 9 seed Northern Iowa surprised 90 percent of America and upset the Jayhawks, including my uncle. There went his one bracket because he had Kansas going all the way. I felt on top of the world, yet another victory for the Gator fans.

But then came Butler and West Virginia. Butler came in and beat my No. 1 Syracuse Orange and West Virginia beat my No.1 Kentucky Wildcats. I had both making it to the finals in both of my brackets, 'Cuse winning it in one of my brackets and the Wildcats in the other....

And that ladies and gentlemen is why I'm singing the Blues and Oranges.

Moving on up

Listen up girls, there's a new, exciting element that will be added to ESPN this coming fall. It's called espnW. Yes, this will be a site dedicated to women and high school sports! How awesome is that?!

A big-time network is finally realizing the importance of women in sports. Through espnW they'll highlight top high school female athletes from around the country, in various sports.

It's still in the making and am not sure everything it'll entail, but it just excites me that high school girls will have the same opportunity to showcase her amazing talent as the boys have already been able to do.

Keep your eyes and ears open to this amazing new venture.

Victimize no longer

I remember as if it was yesterday. It was a sunny, but wintery day. A perfect day to go ice-skating somewhere. I heard a knock at the door. At three years old, you’re usually excited to have visitors because that means you have another playmate. But for me a knock at the door signified something else— my real dad coming to visit. Normally a girl wouldn’t mind to see her daddy, but not when your daddy has abused your mom physically and verbally, done every drug under the sun and has several grand theft charges to his name.

At three years old I didn’t know all of these details, but I could always sense he wasn’t right.

As my mom went to answer the door, I hid behind some fake plants that were in my living room. My mom called for me to come out, saying I had a visitor, but I knew who it was. I didn’t want to leave my safe haven to see him. But I did it for my mom, not him. He told me he was taking me ice-skating. I freaked, but couldn’t do much about it at the time because the divorce hadn’t been finalized, so I had to go. Needless to say I gave him hell when I left my mom. He was trying to be all nice and sweet to me as if he cared, but let’s get real, he was only doing it to appease the courts.

Anyways, we get to the ice rink and I throw the worst tantrum. People were looking at him as if he kidnapped me. Needless to say that was the quickest ice-skating trip I had ever been on. We may have stayed for 20 minutes before I got my way and he brought me back home.

That’s the last I ever saw or heard from him.

Now, let’s fast-forward 17 years. I was having lunch with my aunt, who is my real dad’s sister. She was always there for me and my mom because she knew the kind of person my biological father was. When the divorce was finalized, she told my mom she didn’t want to ever lose ties even though she wasn’t married to the family anymore. So, while at the California Pizza kitchen, my aunt dropped a huge bomb at the lunch table. She told me my dad was about to get out of prison, after 10 years, and was wondering if I had any desire to reconnect with him.

I immediately froze. For those 30 seconds that it took her to say that sentence all my past experiences flooded my memory. My mind was going in five directions. That was the first time I had thought of him since I was three. I had totally erased him from my memory like he did to me.

I snapped back into the conversation. I looked at my aunt. I was trying to convey my thoughts into words, but nothing was coming out. I didn’t have to say anything. She could read my facial expressions. She told me she only brought it up because there was a chance he was going to try to contact me.

But he never did, thank goodness.

Then, on November 1, 2008, I got a phone call I’ll never forget. My mom called to tell me that my real dad got hit by a drunk driver and didn’t know if he’d live. She suggested I might have to come home to say goodbye.

I freaked. I felt like I was three again. Is it bad that even on his deathbed I had no desire to see him?

Sometimes we, the victims, tear ourselves apart because we think we’re being bad people and have hateful hearts. But that’s not the case. It’s that we’ve been a victim of our situation for so long that our threshold has met its max.

It’s not that I was being a cold-hearted bitch while my dad lied on his deathbed. It’s because he never respected my mom’s worth nor cared about me until the courts were involved.

This was me taking a stand for myself and not letting him victimize me anymore. I have a life to live and it goes on whether he’s in it or not.