A Little Somethin, Somethin

DISCLAIMER: THE CONTENTS OF THIS POST ARE MOST LIKELY GOING TO BE SUB-PAR, MERELY AVERAGE, AND BELOW YOUR EXPECTATIONS DUE TO AN OBNOXIOUS AMOUNT OF SCHOOLWORK PREVENTING MAXIMUM POTENTIAL FOR CREATIVITY

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, bear with me as I attempt to blog to the best of my abilities.

Of course it’s crunch time as we’re approaching the end of the semester. My brain is mush, my hygiene is lacking (it’s so sad that I feel a sense of productivity often associated with curing cancer and finishing a marathon simply because I found time to shower AND pluck my eyebrows today) and my comic spidey sense is nowhere near tingling. I racked my brain for hours on end trying to come up with an adequate blog subject that would successfully transition my embarrassing childhood anecdotes into something new and exciting like a rant on pop culture or a movie review, but I knew that would evolve into something like this:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/65920/saturday-night-live-update-bitch-pleeze-blogger

BITCH PLEEEEZE… I think we all know my talent lies in sharing stories that are awkwardly delicious. I could rant all the live long day about who’s bopping who in Hollywood (SAY WHAT KIM KARDASHIAN AND KANYE “IMMA LET YOU FINISH” WEST!!) or what movies are worth paying that $123870.93 ticket to go see (none as a matter of fact) but let’s be honest here, you could care less about what I have to say about things you could easily Google or see on E!. So, let’s get on to one of the few things I’m good at (it’s a short list that includes swallowing massive amounts of gum, knowing countless facts about the demi-god that is Brad Pitt and cracking incredibly corny jokes.)

LET’S SHARE SOME AWKWARD!

This blog post will serve as somewhat of a SpecialK bar, a little nugget of 90 calories to tide you over until the real deal meal. Just so you can have something to nibble on until I can present something a little meatier, here are a few actual awkward quotations I’ve managed to blurt out in life.

Enjoy, because Lord knows I didn’t at the time.

“DAD, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD YOU ARE NOT SAYING NIAGRA!” me to my father as he was in the 8th minute of telling the story of his boyhood trip to VIAGRA Falls as a child

These next two require a bit of back story.

While far beyond the legal limits of alcohol intoxication, me and an unnamed formal date engaged in an incredibly mentally stimulating conversation (obnoxiously heavy sarcasm here) concerning our favorite colors, animals, etc. (Yes, we were THAT desperate for conversation.) Me, the eternal optimist, was determined to seduce the poor young man and attempted to answer every mundane question as sexily as possible i.e. favorite color- Rrrrrrred, favorite animal- Cougarrrrr. We finally reached the awkward tip of the iceberg when he asked what my favorite letter in the alphabet was. I collected every flirtatious fiber in my body and blurted out, ” ‘R’ is most definitely my favorite because RAWWWWWWWWRRRR ( followed by a sexy, clawing cougar hand motion)!!!” Yup, I still turn the other way when I see this guy on campus

Imagine there’s a strapping young man leaning against the bar who is seemingly gesturing for me to come dance the night away. I of course begin sauntering across the dance floor eventually doing the “reel em in” fishing dance move as he fails to reciprocate the dance move of the caught fish. I ignore this and naively believe that maybe he just doesn’t possess the extensive knowledge of dance moves as I do. I finally arrive to where he’s standing. Our conversation goes a little something like this: “Well hey there sexy are you ready to break it dow… Wait……What? You don’t want to… You’re not.. You’re NOT asking me to dance? Ah, but, um, I, uh.. I’m so confused… what was that hand motion?? Were you not waving me over?? Oh… okay….. Ah, I see….. You need another drink… Two whiskey and cokes please bartender..” Oh how I would kill for a life where my dance partners outnumbered my bar tabs

“Is Shhavannah Goodman here? Shhavannah?” – my EDLD Professor who proceeded to call me “Shhavannah” for the entire semester….. sadly, I never corrected him and whenever I do encounter him on campus, he still shouts, “Hi Shhhavannah.”

“Ma’am, you’re going to have to remove your glow in the dark necklaces, it’ll throw off the flash,” said the arresting officer taking my mugshot after the Rave Arrest Incident of ’09. My response? “But they’ll make it FUNNNNAY!” I was flagrantly disregarding the seriousness of my first arrest all in the name of comedy. I thought it’d be hee hee-larious for me to take a Lindsey Lohan-esque mugshot while clad in neon, glow-in-the-dark necklaces, a neon paint-splattered shirt and a smile that one could find on the face of someone who’s dabbled in LSD. Note: I am not John Lennon, nor a damn hippie, so I had not dabbled in LSD at the time…. just a bottle of vodka.

“So you skipped a day on your birth control, what’s the worst that could happen?” – this was said to a friend who, unbeknownst to me, was 2 months preggers and is now the mother of two bouncing baby boys….. WHOOPS

“I’m so sick of Black History Month. So what if MLK had a dream, I had a dream the other night that a shark was swimming towards me and HE HAD BRACES! Now that’s a dream!” – after this was said, I turned around to find my African-American MotherLove maid with tears of anger streaming down her face.. I single-handedly ruined the notion that MLK and the Civil Rights Movement had any impact on me and my fellow crackers.

“So beautiful………” My heavily medicated Grandfather said this in his hospital bed after suffering a major heart attack while Laura and I were in the room. We proceeded to argue about who he was referring to. He manages to sputter out, “Laaauuhhra.” This little anecdote doesn’t contain a quote specifically from me but, HOT DAMN GRAN GRAN THANKS FOR THE SELF-ESTEEM BOOST!

I will conclude this so-so post with a picture of the supposedly “so beautiful” little sister of mine who happens to make this face anytime something awkward escapes my mouth.

Love you, Larry

Bows and Bubblegum

Bows and Bubble Gum

Surely everyone has experienced a situation so horrendously awkward and embarrassing that they shudder at the mere mention of its name….. right? RIGHT??

No? Just me on that one? Okay then, I think it’s time for me to finally revisit and relive the Bubble Gum Incident of 94′.

To this day when I see a child munching on those 72 inches of sugary edible rubber, I have Vietnam-like flashbacks to one fateful day when the happiest, healthiest relationship I’ve ever been a part of crashed and burned.

According to 5-year-old Savannah, Ecstasy and True Love took physical shape in the form of this:

Bubble Tape gum and I were inseparable. It was the tail to my kite. Wherever I was, there was a trail of Bubble Tape trailing behind me. Nothing brought me more joy as a child than a new episode of Rugrats and a fresh canister of Bubble Tape. But of course, that love affair came to a tragic end.

It’s time I reopen this old wound and “Oprah” this painful memory with you all, so bear with me as I “Oprahn up.”

The saddest thing about this tale is that it occurred during a small window of time in my life that I, gasp, looked semi-normal. Okay, I’m being modest, I was down right precious. But like I said, it was a Cinderella time-frame of cuteness in which the clock eventually struck 12:00 and my cute carriage regenerated back into a pitiful pumpkin.

It was 1994. I was in 4k and this was the year my mother finally realized, “Oh, hey there Janvannah, I guess we lost touch while I was birthin’ all them babies,” and decided, “Okay, enough with the gender confusion, let’s grow out your bowl cut and buy you age-appropriate outfits not made out of neon nylon materials.” Enter the age of utter cuteness.

That smirk! That dress! That luscious shoulder-length hair! Forget about those god-awful wind suits and Cosby sweaters, this was the age of dresses and bows. Ah bows, good Lord did I love my bows! I had every color of the rainbow. I even had custom-made bows. Some were made to look like butterflies and lady bugs while others were monogrammed with my initials. While I had numerous styles and colors, I stuck to one size: all my bows were directly proportionate to the size of my head. I gave off the allusion that I was a gift to all those who came into contact with me.

Now while my appearance had drastically improved, don’t be fooled into thinking I was some run-of-the-mill 5 year old. I still had my awkward ambitions in life and one in particular led to the Bubble Gum incident.

A little movie came out that year called The Mighty Ducks. I was delusional enough to think that I too could one day become an ice-skating, puck-slapping, hockey phenomenon like Charlie Conway and Banks. I would remove my bows for one occasion and one occasion only and that was to practice my hockey skills in our garage.

Before I go on, let me just say our garage was probably the size of most walk-in closets, if my mom parked her minivan in it, we would have to shimmy sideways to enter into the house. IT WAS THAT SMALL.

So here I was, rollerblading my little heart out around an area roughly the size of a cubicle. Around and around I would go with my newly grown out luscious locks swishing from side to side. It was like I was training for the damn Winter Olympics, I’ve never been so dedicated to anything in my entire life. And then it happened. The incident…

Summer came and I was involved in tee ball like every other red-blooded American child. Tee ball teams were co-ed and, therefore, I was teammates with members of the opposite sex. These cootie-carrying hooligans introduced me to so many new things like spitting and making fart noises with your armpit. They also introduced me to the concept that real athletes chew obnoxious wads of bubble gum while engaging in strenuous sport activities. I was floored. How in the world did I, Mississippi’s only hockey child prodigy, not know this! And here I was practicing day after day absolutely gumless! This whole time I was sacrificing my religious gum-chewing because I thought it would get in the way of my training! Well hell’s bells now I could engage in two of my favorite activities while en route to my hockey glory destiny! BAD MISTAKE.

Sidenote: While I chewed obnoxious amounts of gum, I also swallowed obnoxious amounts of gum. It’s quite possible that I still have yards and yards of Bubble Tape gum in my body. Carry on.

Now here I was chewing and skating, chewing and skating. One of my childhood friends, Mary B. Swayze was invited over to engage in my hockey training one afternoon after I had chewed and consumed 3, yes 3, (that’s 18 feet of gum), canisters of Bubble Tape. Mary B. was serving as goalie because I was currently in the realm of training where I was practicing my knuckle-puck shot. Around shot number 38, my wittle tummy wasn’t feeling so hot.

Shot number 39 turned into projectile vomit number 1 as I coated Mary B. in a parka of pink ooze. I had hurled on the biggest childhood gossip of Yazoo City. As that batch of regurgitated gum escaped my body, so did any hope for an elementary social life.

Sadly, it doesn’t end there. With Mary B. shrieking with horror and rage, I felt another pull to the stomach. Projectile vomit number 2 made its way into the world as I had no where to turn in our itsy bitsy teeny weeny garage. I somehow managed to locate the hysterical former best friend of mine and give her another layer. I was mortified because not only was Mary B. going to never forget this horrific incident, but she would make sure no one else would either. Mary B. finally escaped the confines of my garage and I was left alone with the shame and embarrassment of plastering someone with vomit. But as they say, “third times the charm.” I hurled one more time, finally hitting the target of the garage floor and not a human being.

My reign of cuteness, my hopes of a hockey career, and my love affair with Bubble Tape swiftly and tragically came to an end.

This incident all occurred in the garage of my old house. Nothing was repaired, including my friendship with Mary B. The old garage serves as a gum graveyard of sorts as there are still, miraculously and mysteriously, three puddle stains from where the “incident” occurred. The whole situation had a direct impact on my life- I hung up my rollerblades for good and no longer pursued my hockey dreams, I never chewed gum in front of Mary B. again, and I strangely had an aversion to all things pink that has stayed with me until this day. Oh yeah, and I was FOREVER known as the girl who puked pink goo on Mary B. Swayze. My short tenure as “cute Savannah” was drastically brought to an end. My self esteem was shot and I didn’t experience joy or happiness again. Well, at least not until “The Lion King” hit theaters 2 years later.

But there was only room for one b word in my life after that, and it sure as hell wasn’t bubble gum. I got back to sporting my bows and I never looked at another canister of Bubble Tape again.

And that, my friends, was the Bubble Gum Incident of ’94.

Windsuits and Bowl Cuts and Sweaters, Oh My!

One benefit of going home the past weekend: OLD FAMILY PHOTO ALBUMS….

Hope you enjoy the awkwardness that was my life.

Here we have Breanna, me, Bubba and what appears to be a very social deer. I’m amazed by my mother’s ability to find and purchase a wind suit ensemble that incorporates shorts.

Yeah….. That really happened.

Well, at least my hair grew out. This is my legit 1st grade school photo. I couldn’t find a picture of my yellow and blue wind suit, but I do believe this one is just as entertaining. It appears as though I graduated to more girly colors (maybe because my hairstyle no longer resembled that of an orphaned boy’s from Oliver Twist) and I also decided to ‘spruce up’ my turtleneck by incorporating a choking collar with flare. It’s like Richard Simmons and an Amish nun got together and decided to reproduce.

Speaking of Amish…… Here we have white Bill Cosby and the pilgrim sisters.

Hard Stains and Cocaine

Hard Stains and Cocaine

As many of you can imagine, my mother is a little, ummm shall we say “unique.” Not a bad unique in any form or fashion (damn, there’s that word again, I hear the ghosts of wind suits past fluttering nearby,) but whoever was involved in the procreation process of Savannah has to be a little eccentric. Sure, she appears normal to the untrained eye, but there’s no way a woman who birthed 5 watermelon-sized entities out of something the size of a lemon isn’t a little affected.

So my mother and papa (possibly the two most fertile human beings on the planet) possessed five wee ones by the time my mother was 33. Now I don’t possess the power of ESP nor do I have a crystal ball, but I can guarantee that by the time I’m 33 I will NOT have 5 kids. Hell, I’ll be lucky if I have 5 cats.

But lo and behold, we are the modern day Brady Bunch, or the Goodman Group if you will. Now if we’re comparing Bunch to Group here, that would make me Jan, and sadly, yes I did in fact possess a “Jan Complex.” If you are unfamiliar with what exactly a “Jan Complex” is than look no further than Exhibit A.

Exhibit A:

Yep, that’s me there on the end sporting Aladdin pajamas, looking like I just discovered a bathtub full of dead puppies. I’m clearly suffering from middle child syndrome while everyone else is happy go lucky. Mom even looks like she had so much fun from the previous day that she couldn’t even wash off but one eye’s makeup in all her excitement.

But mom’s disheveled appearance sadly could not be attributed to excitement, but rather tiredness from raising her rambunctious brood of children. So around 1993, mom finally caved and sought a housekeeper/nanny to assist in our upbringing. If you ask me, it was obviously necessary considering she had a child sulking around the house in Aladdin pajamas and Exhibit B.

Exhibit B:

So enter Yvonne. Now if you had to describe Yvonne in three words, they’d be big, black, and BAM! Yvonne was a force to be reckoned with, but good Lord did we love those 220 lbs of black sass.

I can still remember Yvonne hurtling down our driveway in her 78′ Buick, blaring Clarence Carter. My little brother was indeed her white baby and he’d run out to greet her every morning. They played this cute little game where Yvonne would stop and go, stop and go, as Daniel would wave her forward and dramatically throw up his hands for her to stop. It was the cutest thing you ever saw! Eventually Yvonne would get so close that she would just about nudge him with her front license plate, which was obviously a Florida souvenir for an airbrushed inscription of the words “Mother Love” adorned the plate.

As they carried out their morning ritual throughout the years, baby Dan learned to read and soon became a Curious George of sorts and would ask questions about everything, including what exactly did “Mother Love” mean? Yvonne would always reply, “Well it takes a lot of love to be a motha to you chillen, therefore I am Mother Love.”

Oh, if only that were the true meaning behind Yvonne’s license plate alias.

The years passed and Yvonne was a loyal, adoring maid. But then one Monday in 2003, Yvonne didn’t show up for work. Then a Tuesday. Then a Wednesday. A whole week went by and there was no word from our beloved maid. Daniel had that same expression I possessed 8 years earlier in Exhibit A above.

Mom soon thereafter called all around looking for Yvonne. After her investigation into the disappearance of Yvonne, she found something she didn’t like: Yvonne had a bit of a criminal record. A drug conviction or two. She might have even…maybe… sort of.. kinda… been found guilty for laundering cocaine.

Now to say my mom is a bit of a neurotic is like saying Martha Stewart is a bit of an anal bitch. My mother immediately freaked out, sat us down for drug talks that included phrases like “Crack is whack” and “What’s cool is to stay in school,” and immediately began confiscating all household objects that resembled drugs or drugs paraphernalia, especially things that Yvonne was in constant contact with. This is when my unique mother went a smidge crazy.

Upon arriving home from school one day, I pulled into our garage to find white powder strewn all over the car port. Of course, my first instinct was holy cow mom really found Yvonne’s stash!

Now you can judge me all you want about the next sentence that I’m about to write, but in my defense, you’d do it too! I kicked around a few of the white powdery mounds that looked like they came straight out of a scene of Scarface and then I pulled an Augustus Gloop. Just like Augustus and that damn chocolate river, I couldn’t resist the curiosity.

I stuck my finger into that mystery snow to get a sample.

I took an investigative sniff to see if I really was in the presence of Colombian gold, and my nostrils went a flarin’.

I had sniffed my first hit of Tide laundry detergent.

My mom had “read” somewhere that in order to fool police raids, cocaine dealers would hide their cocaine stash in laundry detergent boxes since both share the same physical appearance and consistency.

Every ounce of Tide laundry detergent, baby powder, and salt was expelled from our house. My mom’s own personal drug raid.

As it turns out, Yvonne wasn’t the culprit behind one of Yazoo’s most notorious cocaine laundering rings. Her son was the primary dealer and would conduct the deals at her residence while she was working for us.

While Yvonne wasn’t directly involved, she was unknowingly a part of her son’s operation.

When contacting his loyal customers to set up a deal time, Yvonne’s son’s would issue the following the instructions:

“If Mother Love is away, then Mother Nature will play

Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow”

A regular Dickinson, wasn’t he?

Yvonne’s car was the deal breaker in her son’s operation. If her car, aka “Mother Love,” was away, then Yvonne was away, and the deal was on.

So, in a sense, 5 of the whitest white kids ever, were pawns in one of the biggest cocaine laundering rings in Mississippi.

Street Cred dramatically increased.

(Side note: Mom, if you’re reading this, then that means you finally figured out how to fully use the internet… I apologize for the less than flattering photos… Consider it payback for the bowl cut.. LOVE YOU)

And here, we, go…

I find it only appropriate to begin this blogging venture of mine with a heading dedicated to the immortal words of Heath Ledger’s the Joker. May Patrick Verona rest in peace. But let us not dwell on the passing of an incredibly attractive Australian who starred in quite possibly my favorite movie of all time, 10 Things I Hate About You, rather let’s move on to what exactly I will be blogging about- absolutely everything that occupies this little peanut brain of mine. The possibilities are endless! (But plan on awkward anecdotes, tons of pop culture commentary, and mindless, meritless rants on life.) Luckily for anyone who seems to be interested in the DVD commentary on the Lifetime movie that is “Alone and Awkward: the Savannah Goodman Story,” this blog will satiate your hunger for little nuggets of what exactly I think about on a daily basis. Mmmmmkay, let’s dive in shall we?

Today in class, one of my professor’s went on a mini-rant about taking his kid to baseball practice. And that got me to thinking about childhoods, which led to me reminiscing about my fawkward six-year-old self. Oh, if only I could hop in Doc Brown’s DeLorean and time travel back to 1995. Six-year-old Savannah was an absolute trip. Of course, I had no girl friends. I blame my mother for this for the way she let my appearance suffer from even the earliest age: I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to play Barbies with someone sporting an 80’s-rific bowl cut hairstyle and a multi-colored, gender neutral Cosby sweater. Of course the Cosby sweaters, with their intricate patchwork that made me look like I was a walking ball of yarn, were solely worn during the dead of winter, while the rest of the year I sported the outfit which had to be the product of some 80’s meth addict/childrens’ clothing designer: THE NEON WINDSUIT.

I sported the church carpet blue and highlighter yellow ensemble with a white polyester turtleneck. Ahhhhh, turtlenecks… specifically designed for awkward children, hickey-inflicted adolescents, and Diane Keaton.

But my mind was focused on the windsuit today. As I recall, the papermache-thin windsuit was not only worn at school to ineffectively protect me from playground winds, but also on family vacations, dentist appointments, piano lessons, and, gasp, family reunions! What the hell Mom, did you really think putting me in a durable, bright-colored, grandma leisure suit would make up for the loss of self-esteem that resulted from the Bubble-Foot gum incident of 94′! (Bubble Gum incident of 94′ is another story for another time.) Fortunately for my mother, I was oblivious to how big of a flaming dork I looked. I would pose on the playground with one hand on my hip with one leg extended forward and one extended back and the other hand behind my head (similar to the pose many children struck and continue to strike in dance class picture day photos.) I looked HAWT, or so I thought. And then, it happened.

For as far back as I can remember it was the first awkward moment I ever experienced.

It was 2:35 on a Tuesday in 95′. From that moment on I’ve been extremely aware of the uber-healthy, direct relationship between my dorkiness and my awkwardness. My grandmother hopped out of her Camry to help me with my school bearings and what was she wearing? A. Damn. Matching. Neon. Windsuit. Almost identical to the one I was wearing at the time! I was mortified!

That was the day that the reality meteor hurtled down to earth and knocked me awkward leaving a crater of disappointment. Here I was, thinking I was revolutionizing the style of 5-k, but no, I was a mini-mamaw. Dreams of popularity and skate party invites were dashed. Unicorns ceased to exist, the Bradys were not a real family, and no, we were not all “special.” I was crushed as me and my grandmother strolled out of the Manchester Academy parking lot hand in hand, blinding by-standers with our windsuits. I knew I’d never achieve any sense of acceptance. I would always be the girl who donned senior citizen leisure wear and ate too much Bubble Foot gum. But then a rainbow began to show through the rain. My twinkie grandmother pulled into Mrs. Black’s, a Yazoo clothing store, and decided to treat me to a new horizon of fashion possibilities:

I BOUGHT MYSELF A PAIR OF LA GEAR LIGHT UP TENNIS SHOES!

To quote Cameron, a just-kissed-by-his-crush character from the aforementioned film classic 10 Things I Hate About You, “AND I’M BACK IN THE GAME!”

I LA GEARED my happy little ass into kindergarten the next day and never looked back. I found the fashion path I wanted to follow…………… with the help of some red flickers of light mind you… and soon thereafter, the whole damn grade could have lit an airplane runway by stomping their wittle footsies.

Just to jog that memory of yours back to a time when VHS was all that filled a Blockbuster and Ace of the Base was everyone’s morning school ride jam, here’s a pic of the notoriously tacky, but delightfully refined neon windsuit of yore. RIP you bright colored son of a bitch.