It's All Relative (21 page)

“Hi! I'm Judy from Illinois, and I'm a Pezhead too!”

A mammoth woman with frosted hair, sporting a formless shift, was screaming at me.

“Hi, Judy.”

“You're a Pezzer, I'm a Pezzer, he's a Pezzer, too!”

Judy laughed and offered me some candy.

“We're all Pezzers! Pez people are perfect people,” she yelled.

Judy, it seemed, was insane.

“Dumbo's something else, huh?”

You sure are, I thought.

I was saved from Judy by Bill, who was also a screamer.

“Hi! I'm Bill from Kansas, and I'm a Pezhead!” yelled a man in
a Pez sweatshirt. “I'm kinda the king of Pez! Are you new? Are you staying for dinner, Pez bingo, and late-night room hopping?”

There comes a point, I realized, when every person with an addiction reaches bottom and finally has a clear vision of what he has allowed himself to become: Looking around at this group of crazies, I shouted to myself:
My name is Wade, and I'm a Pez-o-holic!
”

And yet I came with a mission, and I couldn't leave without fulfilling it.

“Bill?” I asked. “Could I ask you a question? I've been a collector since I was a kid, and I brought a couple of things to price …”

“Hit me, my new Pez peep!”

I yanked my Indian-brave Pez out of a Gap bag I was carrying, and Bill gasped.

“Oh, my God! You're carrying the chief around in a bag? Why isn't he in a protective case?”

“My grampa gave him to me when I was little. He's never been covered. I used to play with him. He was my friend.”

Bill covered his mouth with his hand and screamed, as if I'd just set a kitten on fire.

“And where's the chief's feather?”

“I can't find it,” I said.

Again Bill screamed, this time even more dramatically, as if I'd just set two kittens on fire.

“Oh, my God!” he gasped. “You're a … 
collector
?”

“More of an enthusiast, I'd say, if you want to nitpick.”

“Well, I do. I mean, if you'd been a
collector
, you would have known to protect your Indian. And if you'd been a
collector
, he would still have his feather, which would have made him worth, I guess, a few thousand dollars.”

“Holy Sacagawea!” I yelled at Bill.

“But he's not. He's worn. And damaged. And kind of useless …”

I had a feeling Bill wanted to add, “Just like you.”

I walked out of my first and last Pez Collectors Convention that day much like a girl who loses her virginity to the cute boy who will never call her back: crestfallen, a touch sore, but wiser.

To this day my Pez sit—out of boxes, out in the open—on a low-slung bookshelf that faces my writing desk.

About a hundred times a day, I look over at Charlie Brown, Marge Simpson, and my little Indian brave, and I smile every time.

“You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July Fourth, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.”

–ERMA BOMBECK

I
spent the Fourth of July holidays of my youth at our log cabin on Sugar Creek.

There, enveloped by the sandy bluffs and ice-cold water, my family would swim, shoot off bottle rockets, and throw smoke bombs into the water.

At night we built a giant bonfire on our rocky beach and roasted hot dogs and toasted marshmallows for s'mores. Our Fourth of July beach bonanza culminated with a spectacular fireworks display that would run nearly an hour and feature extravagant bursts of purple and gold comets, green palm trees, and giant red chrysanthemums.

I used to sit back, my mouth stuffed with a s'more, and watch the explosions in the blue-black summer-night sky—the echoes booming off the surrounding cliffs, the colors reflecting off the burbling creek.

They were amazing, yes, but I also knew the best fireworks were yet to come when my family would scamper up the stone steps that dotted the hillside to our cabin and huddle together to kick off our annual Fourth of July Game Night. This competition involved every member of the family, young and old, in a series of card and board games, the last man standing the winner.

Fourth of July Game Night was sacrosanct at our family's old log cabin. In fact, looking back, those contests seemed to be held on an even higher level than births and major surgeries that involved the removal of important organs.

The Rouses battled in Battleship and contested one another in canasta and Chinese checkers for two main reasons: boredom, and a genetic defect that made us want to crush the competition, like today's New England Patriots.

Truly, there was little to do at our cabin besides eat, swim, or fish. We didn't have a TV, only an ancient radio the size of a Buick that received faint, scratchy voices that sounded like mice trying to claw their way to freedom. We were also a gene pool not blessed with speed of foot, great coordination, or even passable singing voices, so, as a result, we were forced to entertain ourselves with games.

While our annual Game Night was titled something different but dramatic every year—the Summer Showdown, the Duel to the Death, the Blood Match, the Rouse Rumble, the Ozarks National Board Championship—one thing was always certain: My father would win, no matter how much my family teamed up to slay the dragon.

In fact, he never lost.

But it wasn't just the fact that my father always won, it was the
way
he won that upset the family: He crushed his victims, and did it with such spiteful glee you would almost swear he was spitting venom. My father, an engineer and mathematical whiz, could count cards and memorize players' bad habits. He was invincible.

One of the earliest Fourth of July memories I have of my dad was playing Operation with him as my teammate. Though I was still too young to be much good, my father single-handedly whooped family members, badly, using those little tweezers like a scalpel, plucking organs willy-nilly from that clownish body like a skilled surgeon.

As a result, I was trained from an early age to be deadly, to strike
without feeling, like a child soldier. I learned that humiliating others in board games was a way to prove my dominance, and I loved that passive-aggressive approach to life. I learned it was wonderful to win, but one got even more pleasure if he was able to crack Professor Plum over the head with a candlestick in the conservatory—over and over and over again.

“Life is like a board game,” my dad would always tell the vanquished, holding tweezers or dice or cards over his head in a victory dance. “There are always winners and losers. And I'm always the winner!”

And then I met Gary and fell deeply, madly in love. He was funny, handsome, warm, nurturing, talented, adventurous.

But, as fate would have it, horrific in board games.

I uncovered this important fact quickly—like a woman might discern up front if a prospective husband truly wanted children—by whipping him in every board game we could possibly play: Scattergories, Scrabble, Cranium, Trivial Pursuit. Even Candy Land and pick-up sticks. Playing board games with Gary was like playing board games with a stroke victim. In fact, a stroke victim could take Gary because his attention span would be longer and deductive reasoning better.

Which is why I was consumed with fear the very first Fourth of July I brought Gary back to my family's cabin.

I knew my dad would eat him alive.

I tried to fill the holiday with nervous chatter and activities: float trips, bottle rockets, fishing, sunning, berry picking.

But I could not outrun the inevitable, and the moment I had long feared, the words that had caused my colon to cramp in the wee hours of the morning were uttered by my father at sundown after we'd eaten barbecued ribs and watched the fireworks: “Gary, are you up for the traditional Rouse Fourth of July Game Night?”

I had warned Gary.

He knew what he was in for.

He had even witnessed my own brutality with his family, who played board games without any rules so that everyone won. After playing Tripoli for hours the New Year's before with his family, without any clear set of rules or winner, I finally screamed: “This isn't Neverland, people! Board games are like life. There are always winners and losers. And I'm always the winner!”

We had survived that low point in our relationship, which gave me a glimmer of hope that we could survive our first Rouse Game Night, which my dad sweetly titled the Fourth of July Massacre of the Newbie.

I suggested that we start with something friendly, like Monopoly or Cranium.

But my dad suggested we go straight for the heart with hearts, the card game where the queen of spades is the old biddy, the game where you try to shoot the moon and instantly give opponents twenty-six points, the game my father has never, ever lost.

Watching my father shuffle the deck and deal the cards while smiling and staring down Gary like Paul Newman in
The Sting
, I honestly believed my father had sold his soul to Satan for one simple thing: board-game invincibility.

I mean, the man counted cards like Rain Man. He once made an aunt cry by shooting the moon four consecutive times, thus ending the game in under fifteen minutes. Another family member, who refused to play with my father after being publicly humiliated one too many times, had called my dad “the most vicious man alive.”

Tonight wasn't really a fair fight from the start. My father sat Gary to his immediate left, kind of the way a lion might seat a water buffalo next to him at a safari dinner party. And then my dad shot the moon on the first hand, handing us all twenty-six points. And then my mom shot the moon. And then my dad shot the moon again.

I looked over at Gary, who was over the moon. He sat lifeless, shell-shocked, his double row of eyelashes soaked, close to tears.

I glanced over at my father. He winked at me.

Jesus Christ, he's going in for the kill, I thought. The only successful relationship I'll ever be able to pull off with my family is if I get involved with a professional poker player, or someone creepy smart like Bill Gates.

But then something miraculous happened.

Gary shot the moon.

Despite the fact his hand was rife with losing cards: an eight of diamonds, a six of hearts.

He won hands he shouldn't have won.

My dad threw away cards he should have kept.

And my mom followed his lead.

At that moment—on a stifling July night, despite bottle rockets still popping in the distance—I knew my family's fireworks had officially ended: Gary was loved. He had been accepted into our family.

Gary smiled triumphantly, but I knew my family's one good deed was done. After that, my father proceeded to gut Gary like a fresh bass.

About fifteen minutes later, my dad pushed his chair back after winning and stood to taunt my partner. “You know, Gary, life is like a board game,” my dad said, twisting around in his victory dance. “There are always winners and losers. I'm always the winner, and you'll always be the loser!”

Gary would cry later that night, softly, out of humiliation, as every Rouse had done at one point in our lives. But before he fell asleep, I pulled him into my arms and whispered, finally remembering the reason my family loved Game Night: “You shouldn't be sad, sweetie, you should be honored. It's the only way we know how to show our love to one another.”

G
ary and I once took a loaf of Amish friendship bread to a new neighbor, a kindly, older, sassy woman who looked a lot like Shirley MacLaine and always waved to us from her front porch.

She thanked us profusely for the bread by asking us in for a cup of coffee and depositing us in her dining room, the walls and cabinets of which were lined and stuffed with commemorative anniversary plates and dishes. There was seemingly a teacup, goblet, dessert fork, and sherry glass for every anniversary up to number sixty.

“You've been married sixty years?” I asked, nodding my head at the walls as she walked back in with a pot of coffee. “Congratulations! What's your husband's name? I don't think I've seen him yet.”

“All that shit belonged to my parents,” she said coarsely, pouring us cups of coffee. “I've been divorced three times. Not a big fan of marriage … or anniversaries. Just makes me feel good to know someone made it work. And all this crap will be worth a fortune, too, someday.”

Gary promptly poured the coffee into his lap.

“I should've taken my Amish bread back!” Gary said, charging back across our street when we were done. It looked like he had wet himself.