1. What would you do with a cardboard box?
True story
As children, probably up until I was ten years old, we used to use cardboard as a primary toy. My mother used to babysit a whole herd of kids – cousins, neighbors, friends kids. To keep us occupied she would supply boxes and steak knives and we would saw through the cardboard and create cars and trucks and buses and castles and prisons and all sorts of crafts and buildings. Mom used to get bulk groceries delivered in the pre- Sam’s Club and Costco days and she would keep those boxes. Also, we would have her groceries boxed and keep those as well. My dad, a mail carrier with the beloved USPS would work with some of the furniture and appliance stores in town and those big old cardboard monstrosities would end up as great cardboard sculptures. Did I mention steak knives? Yes, my mother supplied serrated edged steak knives to children as toys. the late 60s and early 70s were very different times.
2. What are some polite ways to say “fuck off”?
My sainted grandmother Lois had a knack of doing this by strategically changing the subject in such a way that you didn’t know you were just insulted until you left the room. I try to use words the way she did – it was an art.
3. Which celebrity’s death hit you the hardest and why?
2016 – the year when everyone and everything died. I think it was Robin Williams. So sad. What a talent. What a waste.
4. Did your parents tell you their alternate name choices for you?
A different grandmother and a different story. My mother was intent on naming me Ian, with a middle name of Allen and thusly my initials would have been I A N – Ian. Well, I was a C-section baby, so while the mother was under anesthesia and the baby was born and time to fill out the birth certificate, grandma Violet took charge and named me Roy Wayne. Goy for my great grandfather and Wayne, my grandfather’s middle name = not bad at all but I sometimes wonder if things would have been different if I had gone through life as an Ian.
5. What were some weird rules your parents had for you as a child?
Maybe not weird, but rare. If you wanted to leave the table at mealtime and your plate wasn’t clean, you had to at least take three no thank you bites of everything on your plate. It was actually a pretty clever psychological trick. Often I ended up eating a lot more of something I didn’t think I would like as a consequence.
1) Put it up as window coverings so I could black out the room when working nights.
2) Life’s to short to sugar coat a good fuck off. But I find that a derivative nod with a good hoookay eye roll combo works as well.
3) Yup Robin Williams ?
4) Never asked. So dunno. ????
5) No one got to leave the dinner table until everyone was done. This was fine until high school when my mom had her accident, after that it takes her twice as long as anyone else to finish eating.