I Was Set Up For Failure By Disney...

Every girl grows up envisioning her first real kiss as this magical moment where the first love of their life whisks them off their feet and they fall madly in love, get married, have a baby and grow old together with the very same passion from the first day they met. I blame Disney and almost every 80's love flick made. Prince Charming pursues Princess, Princess falls madly for Prince, they are dancing and singing about their love for one another, there is some arbitrary problem they have to overcome and once they do - insert fireworks and a panoramic, 360 degree shot - the Prince leans in and plants the most perfect, heart melting, soft kiss on his future Princess bride. I have news for all of you... in the words of Maroon 5, "all those fairytales are full of shit".

I don't know that I ever really had those types of visions. I didn't exactly fall into the "Princess" category. I was more of a child renegade that would rather play football, baseball, dodge ball, kickball, soccer or any other sport with the boys than kiss them. I preferred a pair of cleats to a pair of dress shoes, a pair of jean shorts to a skirt or a pair of sweats to a dress. I don't think I really even noticed a boy for the first time until I was in sixth grade. I attribute this to the fact that it wasn't until that time frame that any of the boys actually passed me in height and had the audacity to speak to me regarding anything other than picking me first for their dodge ball team in gym class - not to mention that despite their growth spurts, boys probably didn't notice me until long after this as I was every carpenter's dream and you couldn't tell if I was coming or going. Don't get me wrong. I had my childhood crushes on A.C. Slater (Mario Lopez), Joey MacIntyre (New Kids On The Block), Prince William (when he still had a full head of hair), Daniel Larusso - The Karate Kid (Ralph Macchio), and Eddie Furlong (Terminator 2 and Pet Cemetery 2). However, those boys were just media-hyped fantasies that I shared with every other girl that subscribed to Teen and Tiger Beat.

My older sister, however, was the opposite of me. She had the boys turning their heads long before me. While she was good at sports, she didn't make them her life. She was a social butterfly that both boys and girls flocked to. It didn't matter what she was wearing (because let's face it, the eighties was a tragic time for fashion), she always looked like she had just stepped off of a page from Teen Cosmopolitan - even when she went through her "grunge" phase, it was the "in" thing to do and she could make a pair of black combat boots and a flight jacket look damn good. I would never admit it back then, but I definitely envied the way she could control a room in any social setting. I desperately looked up to my older sister, especially during my most awkward years, but I'd die before I let her know it.

Remember, my older sister and I are only 19 months apart in age. This minimal gap resulted in us only be one year apart in school. This meant that I always felt like I was in a constant competition that I could never win. Boys, friends, clothes, parties, grades... anything that could prove that we were on equal playing fields, we competed for. Only problem was, the only things that I excelled in, she excelled in more (except for soccer). If I only knew back then what I know now, I would have dropped the competition and befriended my sister because I would come to find that I would never "beat" her. Alas, my "Eye of the Tiger" mentality resulted in nothing but a lot of pain and suffrage - mostly for me. Until one day in Junior High School (seventh grade), one of my older sister's friends, JG, asked me to go out with him. (On a side note: What does that even mean? Go out. Where are we going to go when neither one of the parties involved is even old enough to drive, drink, or stay out past 8:00 p.m.? I guess back then, "going out" was equivalent to today's "talking". I don't know.) JG happened to hang with my older sister's crew of friends and also happened to be good friends with my older sister's boyfriend at the time, which meant for the first time in my life, I had found an "in". My "in" was short lived, but I went out with a bang.

Junior High dances were attended in groups, not in couples. I had partaken in my fair share of "couple skates only" at Norwin Skateland, but all that entailed was holding hands while rollerskating and trying not to fall or trip your partner while skating to Boys II Men. I had even had a boyfriend in the sixth grade that sat next to me at lunch and held my hand on the school bus during field trips. However, I had never been asked to "go out" with a boy, let alone one of my older sister's friends.

Apparently, "going out" translated into JG meeting me at my locker every morning and then him holding my hand while walking me to my home room. Then at the end of the day, I'd meet him at his locker and we'd walk hand in hand to his bus. Aside from that, my lackluster Junior High lifestyle didn't skip a beat. The only difference was that for the first time ever, my older sister and her friends acknowledged my presence in the hallways of the school. The tragic end happened one evening after JG, my older sister and the rest of her crew actually came to watch my basketball game - which was a rarity all in itself and I should have sensed my own demise. After my game, JG met me by the locker room and began walking me towards my house (my entire school career, I lived within walking distance of my elementary, junior high and high schools). At the corner of the school, JG abruptly stopped me, turned me by my shoulders so I was facing him, grabbed my face and began to jam his tongue in my mouth. I had just played a full game of basketball, I know I had B.O. and worse than any of that I had no idea how to kiss back because I had no idea that kissing involved your tongue. My immediate reaction was to forcibly push him off of me to the point where he fell down and then what came out of my mouth next would haunt me for the rest of my junior high and high school career.

And I quote myself, "Ewwwww! What are you doing? GET OFF ME!" Follow this quote up with me wiping my mouth off in disgust.

It wasn't until the words rolled off my tongue and I had removed JG's DNA from my lower lip and cheek that I heard the raging, gut-busting laughter beside us. My older sister and ALL of her and JG's friends were sitting there on the steps outside of the gym and had witnessed my most embarrassing moment to date. While JG was still shell shocked and on the ground, I quickly took off running in the direction of my house and I didn't stop until I got there. The taunting snickers and the words "get off me" resounding in my head the entire way. When I got home I quickly ran to my sanctuary - the air conditioned bathroom - and locked the door. Later that night, my mom asked me what happened. I relived every torturous detail and I could tell she was holding back laughter. My father happened to be in the room while I was reliving my most humilating moment but he didn't hold back his laughter. He did, however, add in an "atta girl, daughter!".

The next morning, JG was not at my locker. Nor was he there ever again. Throughout the rest of the school year, the only time any of JG or my older sister's friends acknowledged me in the hall ways was to shout "GET OFF ME". In hindsight, I'm pretty sure that the only reason JG even went out with me in Junior High was because I was the consolation prize to my older sister. I should have realized it then, but that wouldn't be the first time.

While my older sister never talked to me about it back then, we laugh uncontrollably about it now. I still blame Disney for false advertisement and misinforming the youth about how a first kiss really goes down. They never show Prince Charming jamming his tongue down said Princess' throat. Perhaps if I had the right material to base my expectations on, I wouldn't have failed as bad. Regardless, that was my first "real" kiss and honestly, it never got much better... 

"Suck It Up, Stephanie! Get Your Head Back In the Game!" - my mother

The title of this post might as well have been my mantra for my pre-teen and teenage years. Those awkward years of an already outcasted kid due to being at least a good six inches taller than everyone (including prepubescent boys) in your class, makes your peers some of the worst people you've ever met in your life; but when words that trump anything they've ever said come from your own mother's mouth it really extends early year complexes into your young adult life.

I began playing soccer when I was very young - Norwin Tiny Kickers. I guess it was my mother's means of exhausting some of the pent up energy I stored as a kid and to catch a break from having to hear me talk to anyone that would listen. Ultimately, it was a win-win for my mother and an added bonus that I actually excelled in sports - specifically, soccer. The only problem was that much like everywhere else I went as a child, I was freakishly taller than the majority of my teammates on the field. It was on a soccer field, at the age of 10, that I was called a bitch for the first time in my life (while it was the first, it definitely would not be the last). Not only was it the first time I had been coined that term of endearment, but even better than that, it is was by a father of a girl that also happened to be the coach of the opposing team. Due to the fact that I was abnormally tall, I was immediately singled out to play as a goalie. In the net, my abnormality became a commodity.  However, before I was banished to the goalie box for the remainder of my soccer career, I was allowed out on the field from time to time (mostly because in the younger age groups it was an unspoken rule that the positions should be rotated so that everyone could learn each position and how to play it). During those early years, one of my favorite soccer coaches to this day (we'll call him Ace), coined me with my first sporting nickname - The Unguided Missile. I took pride in my new found name and embraced it with everything I had, including my giant feet and my gargantuan height. While I was still too young to really understand and embrace the art of "playing dirty", my gangliness and lack of coordination, coupled with my size made me an instant target to the referees. I'm pretty sure that I was every opposing teams MVP for the number of fouls that got called on me simply because a girl on the other team would run into me and immediately fall over like they'd ran into a brick wall. Which is exactly what happened the first time I was called a bitch.

(There I am, biggest bitch you've ever seen, right? Please note that impressive wingspan.)

What ensued after that though, was not something I could have ever anticipated or even dreamt. As I was helping the puddle of a girl up in front of me, with her coach/father hovering over both of us, red-faced and screaming at the referee to "get that GIANT BITCH off of the field before she hurts someone" in reference to me; my mother swooped in from the sidelines like a ninja and placed herself between myself and the coach/father. Now, anyone who knows my mother can vouch that she is a generally, well dispositioned individual and at times probably too nice - even to people that aren't deserving of this type of treatment. Moreso, anyone who has watched the Discovery Channel or Animal Planet and has seen footage of a mother of any type (human, animal, etc.) protect her young knows how this scenario played out. The verbal beat down of a grown man that happened right in front of my bewildered eyes was one of the most powerful forms of verbal diarrhea I have ever experienced! It was absolutely beautiful. My mother, a woman who at one time was sent to bed without dessert for using the word "fart" at the dinner table as a young girl, had sewn together the most beautiful tapestry of four-letter words that single-handedly made a grown man wish that instead of coming to the soccer fields that Sunday morning he had headed straight to church - because by the time she was through chewing him up and spitting him out, only Jesus could've saved him. It was from that moment forward I learned to never call either of my sisters a bitch (because I never wanted to have that type of wrath turned on me). Not only that, I made it my personal vow in life to take on this vulgar style of verbal punishment when anyone or anything tried to hurt anyone that I valued - friend or family. It was also at that moment that my mother decided (whether it was in my best interest, or her best interest can still be contested) I would be playing up one age group in soccer and my coaches decided that the goalie box was the best position for me.

After moving up one age group, being confined to the goalie box and being renamed Aminal (I know it looks like a typo, but trust that indeed that reads A-M-I-N-A-L. Teen girls, thinking it was cute - what can I say?), I more or less embraced being a goalie. If I'm honest, I had a love/hate relationship with being a goalie. I loved the credit given for a shut-out or a win, but I hated the stress, self loathing and shame that accompanied a loss. Therefore, it was very typical, in my early years of being more or less forced into the goalie position, to find me crying like I had just witnessed my puppy being shot before every game when my coach would inform me that I'd be starting in goal. This became a regular Sunday ritual. I think it drove both my mother and my coaches absolutely crazy. In hindsight, it had to have been worthy of a good chuckle, at the bare minimum, to see a freakishly tall "athlete" with ape like arms and hands, over-dramatically crying about playing in goal. Nonetheless, it wasn't until I finally realized the power that came with being a goalie that I really came to as a true Keystone State Cup Games invited goalie. As a goalie, my height was praised. The size of my hands and my impressive wingspan were admired. The fact that I feared nothing that came at me - both people and shots on goal - was worshipped. Compromising my own body's well being to refrain from letting a goal be scored was exactly what the crowd loved to watch. Coaches, parents, teammates and even opposing teams put my skills on a pedestal. When a teen is faced with that level of deity-like praise, it tends to inflate your head. Not only did it do that, but it also created a new level of competitiveness that my mother didn't know how to control.

It was actually in one of those Hercules-like moments, during a championship game at a tournament in Plum that I had one of the only serious soccer-induced injuries of my career.  We had snaked our way into the finals through a shoot-out in semi-finals - where, once again, my skills had proven worthy of my status. However, I did cry before the shoot out because I knew that if we didn't make finals it would sit on no one else's shoulders but mine. I mean, honestly, it's me and the 5 girls selected from the opposing team to take me on. One by one they come at you, just me and my goalie gloves in a net that didn't seem so big 10 minutes ago but now seems like an abyss. In my defense, that's a lot for a teen to have to come to terms with. Nonetheless, my mom and my coaches were not entertained with this setback - considering I hadn't pulled the cry before a game in quite some time, let alone in the semi-finals. Despite my tears of fear and anxiety, I pulled it together and managed to block 4 of the 5 shots which advanced us to finals.

To say that the finals game against Plum was difficult, would be an understatement. It was in the middle of summer and about 100 degrees, plus we had already played 2 other games that day. There were about 12 minutes left in the second 30-minute half and we were up by 1 point. I don't know what happened to my typically stellar defense, but somehow an offensive forward powered through and was on a break away. These were the moments I waited for and usually shined in. One-on-one and she was trying to break into MY HOUSE. Bad idea. By this point, I was 13 years old and not only had I learned and embraced how to "play dirty", but I had mastered it to the point where it looked like they had played me dirty. As she was breaking away, I started to analyze her dribble (which was not nearly as close as it should have been to maintain control and screamed of anxious nerves and fear) and then I started to close the gap between her and myself. Like a predator analyzes every move of it's prey, that was how I played in goal. I began to rush her - minding the gap as well as the confinements of my goalie box - and at the last minute I full-out laid out on her sloppy dribbling. When my hands made contact with the ball, my thumbs were extended and right behind the main face of the ball. It was at that very moment, I saw her foot make contact with the ball that was already in my hands. Then I heard it - CRACK. Tears instantly welled up in my eyes and a sheen of sweat popped up on my forhead. The referee blew the whistle and made some call about roughing/charging the goalie and I got up from the ground. I called my sweeper back to take the kick so that I could gather myself, but I refused to look down. As tears continued to roll down my cheeks, I could hear my mother on the sidelines sreaming at the top of her lungs, "SUCK IT UP, STEPHANIE! STOP CRYING LIKE A BABY! THEY DIDN'T SCORE! THE GAME IS STILL GOING ON! GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR BUTT AND GET IT TOGETHER! GET YOUR HEAD BACK IN THE GAME!" Nothing like your mother basically screaming that you're a pansy from the sideline to motivate you.

Nonetheless, I guess what they say about the "boy who cried wolf is true". I knew without ever looking down that my thumb was broke, but I didn't take a knee. My mother thought I was being some kind of drama queen because I cried the remainder of the game. I heard her say a few more unpleasantries in my direction, but I played out the last 10 minutes of that game and when the referee blew his whistle to indicate that the game was over, while the rest of my teammates rushed to the sideline to celebrate a championship I fell to my knees and finally looked down. There was blood coming out of my goalie glove and my hand was so swollen I couldn't get my glove off. I felt like I was going to pass out and still, no one had come over to me. Finally, my coach realized I was kneeling on the ground and ran out to me. At that point, my NURSE mother came running over and had to cut my glove off of my hand. My thumb looked like it was compound fractured and my skin was ripped to the bone at my first knuckle. After a trip the ER, it ended up being merely a few clean breaks, that needed a butterfly stitch and a splint (and years of emotional therapy).

In my mother's defense, she felt awful once she realized why I was crying and that my thumb was actually broken. However, she then also yelled at me for not taking a knee and being so stupid and finishing the game. Fair trade-off, I suppose.  If only I could have recalled my mother's words of encouragement during my first kiss...

Flushing It Out... The Early Years

I received my first swirly (noun: The process of sticking someones head in the toilet and flushing) at the ripe age of 10 months.  It didn't take much to entertain or amuse me as a child and that still stands true today.  I use to beat the heat of the brutal Eastern Pennsylvania summers by killing time in the only air conditioned room of our humble abode - the bathroom. Looking back, I suppose my father's placement of the only AC window unit was rather strategic on his part, considering he spent the majority of his spare time in that room.  Nonetheless, so did I because I had a wild fascination with watching the water in the toilet spiral away to what I could only assume was the world's best water park for all of my dead goldfish. Flush. Watch. Clap. Repeat. Flush. Watch. Clap. Repeat.  This was how my afternoons were spent because my mother couldn't close the door to the only room that circulated the stagnant air in our house.

I suppose I should have realized back then that if this was what I looked forward to each day - mediocrity was something I would excel at. Alas, flushing, watching, clapping and honey dipping from time to time, were the highlights of my day.  That was until I ended up face first in a flushing, courtesy of my helpful older sister. She was so adamant in helping me obtain a closer look that she just flipped me right over the rim into the bowl, face first.  My eldest sister, the mother hen that she always was, informed my mother that I was, yet again, playing in the commode.  My mother had heard that her youngest daughter was reportedly playing in the toilet more times on a daily basis than any good mother would like to admit.  Therefore, when my eldest sister performed her sisterly due diligence in reporting my every move to my mother, she didn't exactly jump up to stop me.  To this day, I don't think I made it into the accelerated program in grade school nor did I learn to swim until I was 11 years old due to this childhood traumatizing event. By the time my mother realized that I was not merely playing in the toilet but was submerged, head first, in the damn bowl with water whirling around my head, I'd like to say that my lips were blue and she had to do a few rounds of baby CPR; but all she really had to do was pull my water logged head from the bowl (I also attribute my larger than average head size to this incident). I guess it was after this event that I was no longer allowed in the bathroom unsupervised (later in life, this rule would still apply due to inheriting epilepsy). Which I also attribute to my inability to have a regular BM (which from here on out will be referred to as corn, corning, etc.).  I mean, who wants to corn with the door wide open or even worse, with someone watching?  I mean, I'm sure that there is some creep on a Craigslist personal add right now looking for that exact person - the one who is aroused by watching someone else corn, but that kind of freakishness is just not for me.

I'm pretty sure the reason I learned to talk and walk so early was not, much to my dismay, due to me being some kind of child prodigy, but rather a true testament to the law of Survival of the Fittest.  In order to still be standing here today, I had to learn to protect myself from the elements that surrounded me - helpful sisters, toilets, a father who forgot me at daycare (twice). Since that swirly, my survival instincts perked up and I quickly learned that in this life I was going to need all the skills that MacGyver had in his tool box and more.  Unfortunately, my tool box didn't include common sense.  I guarantee that I was the most gullible child you'd ever meet.  Couple that gullible characteristic with my open and unharnessed willingness to trust just about anyone and I was doomed from the start. By the time I was just about to start grade school, I had been hung up in the closet with the lights turned out and told that if I let go of the bar, I'd plummet to my death, coaxed into the back of the linen closet once all the linens were removed, the linens were then replaced and the door closed (again left for dead), led to believe that one of my favorite uncles had hijacked the Easter Bunny and may or may not have killed him so that none of my friends would be getting delicious candy and would all blame me (which resulted in the first ever child under 5 years of age panic attack) and that my real name was Delphine Courtney (courtesy of my eldest sisters childhood best friend and our next door neighbor). 

The only thing that my tool box did include was an awkward amount of height (I blame this, too, on ingesting too much toilet water because both of my sisters are of normal height), the ability to eat an inhuman amount of food and a really sharp set of incisors. By the time I was 5, I was already as tall as my older sister.  This would also make for many years of pain and suffrage, that will be discussed in detail later. Regardless, I was a giant kid that had developed a trust complex by the age of 5. Oh, did I also mention that my grandpa's nickname for me was "Chubby Chunker"? Well, it was. I think sometimes my family would just let him feed me ridiculous things just to laugh while I devoured them. What child sits on their grandpa's knee while enjoying a jar of pickled herring heads? This girl. I was like a human garbage disposal. Beyond that, I was a closet eater. One time, I snuck to the basement in the middle of the night and ate an entire 2 pounds of imitation crab legs... raw. In retrospect, I guess it was a good thing that I was tall as a child as opposed to the alternative of resembling a child sumo wrestler. As a child, my best defense was my teeth. Anyone that got too close for comfort or was questionable in my mind was bit. The neighbor that coined my childhood nickname, my sisters, my dad... anyone. At first, I guess my parents thought it was funny or cute.  However, after I sank my teeth into my dad's ankle like a starving vampire at a fresh feed, it wasn't cute anymore. In fact, it was so not cute that my father swept me up off the floor, marched downstairs with me in tote, laid me out on his work table, opened my tiny, blood covered mouth and put a pair of bottle nose plyers on my incisor and threatened to pull each one if I ever bit again.

(*Please note all of the following: My height in comparison to my sister that is 19 months (to the day) older than me, the girth of that dress and the food stain on that dress. That is all.)

Needless to say, that is just a glimpse of my early years. You really need the background to understand the forefront. My five year old self was just the beginning of everything that would essentially be flushed....

Where It All Began...

Technically, I suppose it all began somewhere around mid December, 1981. I'd like to think my father, the chivalrous individual he was, told my mother to dress in her Sunday's best because he was taking her to a lovely matinee and then a fabulous, early dinner that would be accompanied by only the house's finest bottle of pinot grigio. Followed with a few glasses of wine, a few slow dances and my mother being swept off her feet by the best looking man in the house and whisked away to a night that would never be forgotten. Soft snow falling, glistening in the pale moonlight. Snuggled up by the fireplace... and then, BOOM... a legend was made. However, anyone who really knew my father coupled with the fact that they had a 4-year old and a newborn at home, leads me to believe it probably went down much, much differently. More along the lines of my mother coming home from a 12-hour work day as an RN and then slaving away in the kitchen to cater to my father's hunky dinner requirements - one meat, one starch, one vegetable... A glass of half white milk, half chocolate milk, of course, on ice.... All completed whilst he slept on the couch - Al Bundy-style with one hand over his head and the other hand in the waistline of his jeans, with "All In the Family" or "Star Trek" blaring in the background because he clearly wasn't sleeping, but "watching" TV. Once my mother had put the final touches on the meal, got both kids set-up at the table and ready to eat, she'd wake my father up and they'd eat the dinner that my mother made while juggling entertaining a 4-year old and soothing a newborn. After cleaning up the dinner dishes, bathing the babies and putting them to sleep, I can't imagine my father swooning my mother so I imagine it probably went down more like an injured antelope being attacked by a lion as opposed to the love story picture painted previously.

Regardless, what resulted from this primal dance was probably the best thing that ever happened to my parents - me. Not to dote on myself, but I'm a pretty fabulous person. Even from birth, my parents knew they had hit the jackpot with me. So much so, that even though my mother who told everyone she wanted seven boys, told my father they were done after me!  If that doesn't say that they knew a good thing when they had it, I don't know what does. I mean, I basically completed the trifecta of perfection that my parents were going for... I was the missing link, I completed the puzzle.

Realistically, I have been beating my parents up since birth. I was ready to go home from the hospital before my mother. Her pregnancy with me was not enjoyable in the slightest. Then when she actually went into labor, they found out that I was breach.... or so they thought, until they realized that what they had coming down the life canal was an arm and a leg - so I was not breach, I was sideways. Insert emergency C-section, an extreme loss of blood, a couple blood transfusions for my mother and one badly bruised infant... and that was my grand entrance into this life. I guess, it's really been a mutual beating since birth.  Oh, on a side note, the reason I am Stephanie is because I was suppose to be Stephen Witowski III, but I've also been pulling aces from my pocket and taking body shots on my dad since birth too - hence, Stephanie Lee Witowski the last. 

Since that glorious day in August of '82, my parents' and sisters' lives have never been the same... and not necessarily for the better. I began talking in full sentences at the ripe age of 11 months and I haven't shut up since.  Even before that, I started walking at 10 months and haven't stopped going since. I was out of diapers before my older sister and at the rate I'm going these days, I'll probably be back in them before her.

This is just the beginning of my own demise. My life has been one debacle after another since birth and I don't expect anything less as each day passes me by.  Nothing comes as a surprise to me anymore and should you choose to read along on this tumultuous journey, you'll soon realize why.  This lunacy that I call life is what has made me strive for mediocrity with passion. If you're ready, buckle up and join in on the ride and enjoy the nuances of what I've come to call my life...