A herstory of me and chunks

OK here it is. I keep editing and re-editing trying to get it just right, but I'm out of time.

I guess I have a story or two to tell. Or three. The story of me and Chunks is long, and full of tales, good and bad, happy and sad. (Isn't that a song?) Anyways, I remember feelings, details are a sketchy thing with me. She has an amazing memory for details, stories, funny quips from the past. I do not. So I will do my best here. Accuracy may be lacking, but I'm sure she'll let me know if I mix it up!haha.

We met in grade 7, I had moved to our town at the beginning of the year, she came part way through, so we were both newbies. We were instantly drawn to one another.
I was a nerd. Smart, chubby, glasses, really nasty curly hair that I spent hours trying to straighten. My family was poor so my clothes were not fashionable at all, but people seemed to like me anyways. I always had friends from different groups, but I often found the popular girls who befriended me to be a bit boring.

Chunks was not one of those people. She lived on the fringe, you just knew it right away. She looked different than anyone I'd ever met. I thought she was beautiful, and she carried herself with a confidence that I was sorely lacking. She was petite and rather curvy for a girl of 12, and to frumpy old me, that was something! She had these big blue eyes with a little freckle under each one, and this wonderful space between her front teeth. Everyone was intrigued by her immediately. She had this crazy accent, which I soon learned was unique to New Brunswick. Her manner was witty and a bit brash. She wore chokers and had curly hair and glasses like me. I remember one of the boys saying that she wore dog collars and she just kept on wearing them anyways. I thought she was brave and independent. Things I thought I wasn't and aspired to be.

I know she must have come only a bit later in the year because myself and another newer girl were invited to her home for a sleepover for her November birthday. My parents had no idea who her family were, but they were naive and very trusting and they sent me there no questions asked. Well maybe they called her mom to say hi but that was about it.

Her dad had taken a job at the gas plant outside of town and they were living in a company house. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they had little to nothing for belongings and had an even more liberal routine than I was used to. I had mostly been around other poor families before, so it wasn't like it was interesting or odd, it felt more comfortable to me than the middle class homes of other friends I had been in. They were so quiet and sterile. My house was loud and busy with my five other siblings and the folks always underfoot. I preferred the noise and chaos I was accustomed to, just in some different packaging.

We were instant friends. It was pretty quiet at her house that night, I think most of her family was out for the majority of the night and when they did show up, they had friends of her parents there and they were loud and friendly and drinking. I had seen this before as well, so I didn't think much of it at first. Her dad scared me a bit, he made fun of my name that first night and wanted to see if I could take it. I could.

I had spent some time in the homes of some native Indian kids in Dawson Creek, so I knew my way around the drinkers a bit. I found it scary and fascinating. I was a voyeur by the age of 10. My parents never drank a drop, didn't smoke, didn't swear, never argued. Lots of times, they let me go to other people's homes without really knowing anything about the families at all. They had no idea how other people lived. Although it was uncomfortable for me on many levels, I went back again and again. Maybe just to see what would happen next, maybe to be entertained, maybe to escape my own family. There was always a lot of conflict between all the five girls at my house, and it got pretty nasty sometimes, so I was always glad to free of my sisters.

In my home, we were encouraged to sing, argue, be creative, emote, laugh, write, and Mom did the same, but we all knew she was sad most of the time. It was hard for me being there, I never felt like I really fit in well with the rest of my sisters or my family in general. My parents spoke a lot about their inner pain in relation to their families and how God had brought them together. Their marriage was a gift from God. They were born again Christians, my parents, and I had been endoctrinated from an extremely young age. They didn't attend any church on a very regular basis, but they focused what seemed like most of their daily life discussing the bible and God's plans for all of us. I remember thinking, even when I was participating in it, that something didn't seem really right about it. They spoke a great deal of Satan and his tactics. They were in their own world for the most part. And they had this magical relationship with God that I seemed to be unable to access no matter how hard I prayed.

So I did my best to escape, for a variety of reasons. Chunks house, be it crazy and tempestuous, was definitely not a damn thing like mine. Her mother was NOT trotting around the house, singing God songs and baking cinnamon buns, and then crying in the bathroom when she thought no one knew. She was yelling, chain smoking, reading magazines, swearing, talking for hours in animated French on the telephone and scuttling around like a little bird when one of the males in the house yelled for food. She rarely seemed to cook anything when I was there, and when she did, there wasn't a fruit or vegetable to be seen. The fridge was overflowing with food that no one seemed to eat. I was always hungry when I stayed there but had been trained not to ask for anything at other people's houses. So, if no one offered, you just didn't eat. After a few times there, I understood why they were all so small, the house was full of nervous energy and no one seemed to eat anything but toast and cereal!!

Then there was Hoo-ard, the infamous father figure. It took me a while to realize that he mispronounced my name just to tease me, maybe even include me, so I finally starting saying his name wrong back to him. It has stuck all these years. I guess it was our little joke. He spent his time at home on the weekends or on days off pacing around, drinking beer after beer, getting louder and louder, swearing a blue streak, chain smoking and saying mean things to whoever was handy to amuse himself. Well, he was teasing, but it felt mean to me because I was unaccustomed to it. People only teased like that in my house if their intent was to be unashamedly cruel, so it was hard for me to take it lightly at first. Everyone would laugh, so I knew I should laugh too and think of something funny to say back without crossing some undefined line in the process. I knew alcohol equaled unpredictability, I just didn't know the extent of it. He seemed to enjoy me in his way, so I felt like I fit in somehow. I liked it, and disliked it, all at the same time.

Both of them were quite hard on Chunks. She was belligerent and sarcastic one minute, laughing with them the next, and crying in loathing and pain another. I never really understood how that was for her to have an alcoholic for a father. I just thought everyone kind of hated their parents and she was just hating hers for different reasons than some of us did. Everyone in her house tried to laugh along so it seemed a contradiction to laugh one minute at it and then cry the next. I don't think one really can understand it as a kid unless it's their father or mother. My frame of reference was so far removed from hers.

He was and still is a functioning alcoholic. He always provided for his family, and it wasn't long before they bought a house in town and a big tv with Superchannel. We would hang out for hours on end, watching movies my mother never would have let me watch, and listening to the ranting and raving of her dad and/or her mom. Her mom didn't drink in those days, but they would get into it sometimes when he was drinking. He had a weekend band, so they would often come home late on the weekends when I was there, and it would be loud and crazy, and Chunks would be really upset by it. Sometimes there would be other people with them who would sleep on the couch for days, weeks, months, and just hang around and drink with her dad all the time. It always felt dangerous and weird to me to have these strange men in the house drinking, with all these little kids. And the cigarette smoke in that house was horrifying. I would be so congested and sick from it when I would come home, but I still preferred it over my own home at times.

In the summer, Hoo-ard would cook sometimes, and it was always one thing. Two dozen hamburgers with buns, or a huge plate of steaks, or a huge plate of hot dogs. Every now and then, he would make up a huge pan of the most wonderful lasagna you could ever eat, and I remember being so shocked the first time he made it. It was one of the few times you saw vegetables in their kitchen, I think!! haha. They often invited me over when he made it as he knew I loved his lasagna. He was quite proud of it. They often had a steady stream of East coast friends and relatives who would come by in summer and they would sit around outside and in, playing guitars and singing, which was always something I loved every minute of. They loved to laugh, and they all had some nasty old jokes to tell and dirty lyrics to sing for us. Sometimes I wondered in my little Christian-ish mind if those men were a bit perverted or something with all the sexual innuendo, but they were always just looking for a laugh and a red face.

Christmas at her house was boisterous and loud. Their tree was absolutely loaded underneath with gifts and everyone was laughing and eating and imbibing and I thought she had it quite good over there. She got way more loot than I did, so I figured that was a pretty good deal. They didn't have to sit at home quietly and sing religious carols together as a family and listen to all the females in the house be witty and creative and intelligent. It was loud and crazy and a bit low brow and heathen-ish. I liked that. I didn't spend a lot of time there at Christmas so I never got to see her dad go completely overboard and say and do awful things to ruin the magic of it for her. I was a voyeur, and it was so different than my house. I suppose I should have offered her a trade or something, in retrospect. haha. Of course, none of those frilly nighties she got would have fit me. I lived in the land of homemade cinnamon buns, remember?

Chunks has a sister two years younger than we are, and then a younger brother and the little sister. It was like two different sets of kids, two different sets of rules and expectations. It was strange. The younger two were coddled and pampered and whiny beyond belief and she and the older of her sisters were in shit all the time. It was incredibly annoying to watch. It was sometimes like one of those tv shows where you see the little one make a smacking sound against their own arm and start fake crying and then they say "So and so hit me!" And mother would scuttle to their rescue without fail. It worked every time. They got blamed for a lot of crap, and lived under a completely different set of expectations. Myself having the HUGE sense of justice and fairness that I do, found this part of her family dynamic incredibly irritating at times.

Both of her parents suffer from anxiety. It is part of their genetic makeup. Instead of seeking alternatives, they learned to self medicate with pot and alcohol. As young teens, we knew they had a bag of pot in their bedroom and had easy access to it. I don't think that she and I ever took any of it together although I'm sure she did later on during periods of time when she and I weren't hanging together. Chunks and I gravitated towards another fringe group of kids from her neighborhood who had alcoholic parents and blossoming drug addictions. Sometimes, during the summer, we told her parents that we were staying at my house and my parents that we were staying at her house and we would wander around town most of the night looking for something to do. We would end up sneaking into her tent in the backyard if we didn't find any other strays to hang around with. Neither set of parents checked our stories, ever.

She and I were inseparable for most of grade 7, 8, and 9. We drifted apart with boyfriends, and other friendships, but we would always end up coming back together. She was a solid place for me to be, even with her unstable family. That is actually why she was like that. She was the only stable force in her family. She didn't have much choice really. Whenever we would gravitate back toward each other, it was just like falling back into a comfortable routine. I think we hung around on and off throughout most of high school, but we became very close again in Grade 12, when the end was nigh. Our moms and us girls went shopping together for grad dresses and we planned and prepared for it together. My mom tells a funny story about that trip where Chunks' mom used the c word in a funny story and Chunks' jaw dropped on the table in utter mortification. My mom laughed it off and was really cool about it. She had recently learned what the word meant so she was just happy to feel included!! haha. I am really glad that my photos and memories of getting ready and going to Grad are of her and I together. Not some other schmuck I don't even keep in touch with anymore.

Her mom started to drink from time to time later in high school and one night right before our graduation, they were all partying hard one weekend and she decided to leave. I have never seen Chunks so angry or upset as she was that night. I was trying for some reason to convince her to leave the house with me and walk away from it, and she couldn't. She was enraged and tearing everything out of the cupboards and fridge and cleaning and scrubbing everything and yelling and crying for what seemed like hours. I just could not for the life of me understand why it affected her so. I felt so helpless and confused and annoyed by her response. At first I had expected her to be happy because maybe it would force her dad to step up and/or quit drinking. I guess she knew better.

In my family, I felt free to ditch them at any time. I didn't feel I had any active role there I suppose. She felt so trapped, like who else but her would take care of everything? She wanted out, but wouldn't/couldn't even let herself walk outside of the house with me for an hour to cool off. She was chained there by her mother's abandonment. She was in a lot of pain, and I didn't fully understand why until we talked about it many years later. It was HER turn to leave. Not her mother's. Her dad just drank and cried and was completely useless until her mom came back. She did everything to take care of the other kids and the house until her mom returned.

I know that her life with them has made her who she is today. Strong, independent, unaffected by the opinions of others, with an absolutely life saving sense of humor, even in the worst of times. They gave her a lot of pain, but along with that, she developed an incredible sense of self and a determination about her path in life. She had the strength of will and character to create the life for herself that she wanted all those years growing up. And she has paid a price for that, yet is undaunted in her strength of conviction. She moves through her life with such honesty and unfailing humor, that it is impossible for me not to admire her just as much as I did all those years ago. Our friendship is now 27 years old, and the sense of comfort, familiarity and sisterhood that we share will last us a lifetime. And I think fondly of her family and the time I spent in their lives, however crazy it was at times. I am thankful that they brought her to that shitty coal mining town so she and I could be connected for life.