Ode to Aunt Heidi

My favorite Aunt Heidi came out to visit. She is mother to my fave cousin, Brucie. He goes by Bruce now, but he will always be Brucie to me.


Many of my favorite childhood memories were because of her. My mother's Nazi-esque ban on sugar, refined wheat (aka white bread), fast food and fun were completely undone in a weeks visit. She would let us load up on crap food, crap cereal, crap toys, crap movies, and enforced no curfew. Better yet, she let us run around town in the middle of the night. Granted their town was so small it was technically a village--it still is, actually. It has about 1000 people. Most nights, we played hide and seek in the local graveyard. One of the headstones was for "Fred E. Krueger." I swear. This was terrifying to a child of the 80's.


We made up this obnoxious routine with Bruce. When we saw each other, we would jump into a huddle and all say our full names. This was followed by "Ancient Chinese Secret, huh???" and then a bunch of karate moves where we kicked each other while yelling "hi-yahh!!" We still do this when we get together. This is a tradition I totally plan on passing down to our kids.

I would stay up all night with Bruce watching scary movies and eating Hardees. I always got shipped off ahead of my no-good sister Eriika. During this time, Bruce and I would plan out all sorts of rotten deeds and tricks. Once, we waited until Eriika was asleep, and then did the old "toothpaste on the hand/tickle face with feather" trick. Worked like a charm. Eriika got toothpaste all over her face and hair, and we convinced her that a team of local thugs broke in and perpetrated the crime. For some reason, she believed this. Heidi knew what was up, but she didn't bust us.

Another time, we took the molting from Bruce's tarantula Harry and put it on her face while she was sleeping. She WIGGED OUT. The next morning, Harry really went missing, and we had no idea where he was. Eriika went to get Bruce's boombox (no doubt to play Poison and Def Leppard tapes) and she found Harry in the battery box. She thought it was the molting again, but Harry started crawling out and made her cry. Harry obviously knew Eriika was rotten to the core, too.

Heidi always drove us 20 minutes away to the movie theatre, mall, Hardees, and DQ. As we loaded up into the old Suburban, she would always say "let's go gang!" I always fantasized that we were like Scooby and the gang, clamoring into the Mystery Machine, ready to fight crime and bust Old Man Johnson. You know, he would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for us meddling kids in the crime-fighting gang!

They also had this gully where we would go sledding for hours and hours at a time. We made ramps and jumps, and did countless runs in our plastic red sleds with the yellow handles. We played with Brucie's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, He-Man dolls, and Star Wars figurines. Luke Skywalker always killed my Strawberry Shortcake, but that was fine by me. We put on shows, and created more lame dance routines than I care to admit, usually to the aforementioned Poison and Def Leppard. There were forts in the living room, jump piles made from the stripped sofa cushions, and endless nights of truth or dare.

I don't see Bruce or Heidi enough these days, and writing this makes me so nostalgic. Time to pay them a visit, methinks. And I don't even have to hide my fast food wrappers from my mom this time. BTW--Bruce, whose mom let him eat **whatever** he wanted, whenever he wanted, is now a lanky vegan. And we all know how I turned out. Lesson in moderation moms. Chew on that.