make my day

Technotronic's Pump Up the Jam is my favorite song to dance to in the seventh grade. This was before I discovered Tina Turner, but that's a whole different story. And it's before my Dad comes home, otherwise he would get pissed about me having my door closed and playing loud music. Oh, the things I did when that motherfucker wasn't there. I mean, I really cranked it. I would dance until I was sweaty and exhausted. I think there was a lot of bent over head banging. Not that Technotronic makes head-banging music, but it just feels good. Nobody would think I was a good dancer. I mean I probably wasn't a good dancer but I wanted to dance, I wanted to move, and people would have trouble believing even that. But I work hard at it. Make my make my ma-ake my day. Then I feel better. It's another small way of being connected to the rest of the world. Thank you Technotronic.

It's a red brick house in a dead-end all-white neighborhood just off of highway 7. We're in the low-rent section of the neighborhood closest to the highway. The bigger houses with the kids who go to private school are farther back. A matchbox with three bedrooms, it's badly designed. The door off the carport leads into the kitchen. White linoleum floors with an abstract pattern of black squiggly lines. Pink formica counter tops and some shiny-looking wooden cabinets. Girl, I'm ready to puke. There's a door to the left that goes directly into my father's room or one straight ahead which leads into the living/dining room and that's where things really get ugly. Forrest green shag carpeting and gold yellow walls, what were they thinking? It's a big room divided by a wood burning stove-that's for heating not cooking, it's cheaper than central heating. And I guess he likes to make fires, but I don't think he likes to chop wood. Linoleum floors, some pale orange color in the rest of the house including the bedrooms and ugly wooden sliding doors round out the full-on ugliness factor of the house. My father says the man who built it, built for a woman but she said it wasn't good enough and left the man, so he sold it. My father finds it dumbfounding that the woman thought it wasn't good enough, but I understand completely. But the mortgage is one hundred and thirty-three dollars a month, so hey. I wonder if I'll inherit it? And if I do what will I do with it? Go back and remodel it and reclaim my past? No I'll just sell it. There used to be five giant pine trees in the front yard by the street, but he cuts them down because he's worried about the roots messing with the water line. He's always worried. I was always afraid to sleep by myself in that house.