The Anatomy Lesson

My mother’s family is Lebanese. When we were growing up, that meant two things to “the kids.” First, we had lots of great food. Second, when our parents didn’t want us to know what they were talking about, they spoke Arabic.

It’s difficult to render in English some of the words we learned. Arabic is a much more musical language than English. “God willing” is “Uzzha Allahruud.” Uzzha has the u-sound like ‘up’ and the zzha sounds like ‘Zsa Zsa,’ as in Gabor. Allahruud starts with the same ‘up’ sound, and you have to kind of roll the r into the uud, kind of like you’re saying “rood.” I know a few more words in Arabic, but aside from the words for grandmother and grandfather, nothing you’d use in polite company.

Then there’s the Z-word, Zubra. We learned the word when I was in college, and started calling each other zubra all the time. My brother David became the Big Zubra, and Ronnie became the Little Zubra. It was a convenient and stealthy way to call each other dicks without anyone else knowing what we were saying.

The anatomy lesson came the day before I graduated from college. David showed up at my fraternity house on the morning of the day before graduation. He came with my brother Michael and his friend Mitch. They had my friend’s pickup truck; the plan was for Michael and Mitch to go to Dickinson, my college, get my belongings, and return home. They were to leave David with me. We would later be joined by my mother, Ronnie, and her two sisters, Aunt Phil and Aunt Esther. The Aunts, as they are known to the entire family, are textbook maiden aunts. They love the hell out of all their nieces and nephews, but they also have high standards for us. They found it hard to tolerate any sort of misbehavior, and have, I think, lived their entire lives believing sex is dirty and disgusting. All the time, not only when you’re doing it right, as Woody Allen put it. They therefore didn’t like us throwing the Z-word around.

Aunt Esther, now retired, took up one of the three options that were available to women who grew up at the time she did. She became a nurse. The other options were teaching and the convent. She eventually ended up teaching at the nursing school of a nearby hospital and taught religion for her parish’s Confraternity of Christian Doctrine program. That’s about as close to the Trifecta as you can come.

Aunt Phil had a number of administrative/clerical jobs and was the family enforcer. When we were kids, we were all terrified of her. She was our parents’ ultimate threat. Whenever we’d start to get out of line, somebody’s mom or dad would order us to straighten up or they’d send in Aunt Phil. After that, you could hear a pin drop.

To get back to the story, the afternoon before graduation, my mother, the Aunts, and Ronnie showed up to my fraternity-house room. Ronnie was wearing a jacket his team had been awarded for winning the Pop Warner football championship. Like all little brothers, Ronnie was terrible for stealing my clothes. His two rationalizations were a) “I never see you wearing it,” (Of course not. I’m usually 200 miles away at college). And b) “It fits me good,” as if that entitled him to have it. I once tried walking into a department store and leaving with a Hart Shaffner & Marx suit. I was all prepared with the “It fits me good,” argument. I made it out of the store. The suit didn’t.

I remarked on how nice the jacket was, and tried it on. I turned to David and said, “Look, Zu, it fits me good.” Ronnie kind of smiled, but my mother and the Aunts just looked disgusted. It was such a pleasure to see my brothers that we carried on in our usual manner for much of the time, annoying the Aunts, and my mother, who tended to be much less tolerant of us when her sisters were around. We were scheduled to go to dinner that evening with my then girlfriend, but David didn’t have a belt to wear. I don’t know why it was so important, but we had to get him a belt. As I drove to the J.C. Penney store at a mall in Carlisle, Pennyslvania, David and Ronnie were giving each other their usual hard time.

By this point, the patience of the three women in the car was just about gone. The final straw came when one of them punched the other on the arm and drew the response, “You zubra!” That was too much for Aunt Esther. “You boys! You use that word, zubra, and you don’t even know what it means.” Obviously, she was angry, because otherwise she would have known this was exactly the wrong thing to say to David.

“So tell me, Aunt Esther, what does it mean?”

“That’s your penis and your scrotum.”

I almost wrecked the car. Even my mother laughed.

We eventually made it to dinner, and Ronnie and David were well behaved throughout the meal, probably out of fear. My mother and the Aunts were charming. My girlfriend passed inspection; she and I eventually went our separate ways.

I’ll never forget how and when I found out the true meaning of the Z-word. Someday, I’ll pass that bit of knowledge on to my brothers’ boys. After all, what are uncles for?

Who Says I'm a Dork?

Actually, I do; all the time. I often stake my claim to being ‘the prize dork of all time.’ It’s time to document the incident that will settle the debate permanently.

In 1985 I was director of Employee Relations for the county government of Beaver County, Pennsylvania. My staff and I were in the midst of installing a new Payroll, Benefits, Position Control and Budgeting system. It was a huge undertaking, requiring lots of weekends and late nights. It happened on a weeknight in September or October. We were in the Employee Relations office, me, some of my staff and people from the Data Processing department.

As I recall, we were knee deep in paper, validating data. I was in my office, and everyone else was in the outer office. Someone came and knocked on my door. “Ed, there are some people here to see you.” I walked out into the office and saw my former girlfriend, Molly, and her roommate, Mercedes. At the time, they were undergraduates at West Virginia University, in Morgantown, West Virginia some 90 miles from where I was, in Beaver Pennsylvania. I was able to collect myself well enough to say hello and invite them into my office. On a lark, they had driven from Morgantown to my parents’ house with the idea that the three of us would go somewhere to for drinks. They visited with my parents for a while, then drove to the Court House to see me.

There I was, in my office with two attractive co-eds, who wanted to go to a bar with me, and had driven nearly a hundred miles to do so. It was the first time I met Mercedes. She was gorgeous, and Molly was nothing to sneeze at either. I knew enough to realize I couldn’t leave everyone else working and go out with them. I suppose I could have sent everyone home and then gone out. My favorite bar was right down the road. But I was 25 years old, and trying to make a name for myself as a guy who could get things done. Our target for full implementation of the new system, ‘going live,’ was January 1, 1986. I made my apologies and sent Molly and Mercedes away.

It’s now 23 years later, and just last night, I was driving home and realized what an idiotic choice that was. Two hot chicks in my office asking me out. That just doesn’t happen to guys like me. Me and the two of them. Alcohol. Freedom. I even had a credit card. The possibilities were endless. The legendary ménage a trios was not out of the question. It could have been the greatest night of my life, up to that point. I sent them away, stayed and worked.

I am the prize dork of all time.

Hiding From Sister Mary Audrey

Some years ago, my cousin was in the intensive care unit of a local hospital. She had a history of asthma, and had developed pneumonia, which progressed to Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome. It finally killed her. My Aunt and Uncle were at the hospital constantly. By this time Audrey was on a ventilator, and heavily sedated to keep her from fighting the ventilator.

It was a Saturday, and my wife, Dawn, and I were in the family waiting area trying to give my Aunt and Uncle some support. My cousin Mary and her husband Joe were there too. The family waiting area was two rooms, in an L pattern. My Aunt and Uncle were in the room closest to the corridor. Dawn and I and Joe and Mary were in the rear room. While we were there, two of the nuns from my Aunt and Uncle’s parish came to visit. I didn’t know one of them, but the other was frighteningly familiar. Sister Mary Audrey.

I had Sister Mary Audrey when I was in fifth or sixth grade at St Titus School, the school that is part of my Aunt and Uncle’s parish. Sister Mary Audrey hated me. She was always on her moral high horse, lecturing us about our shortcomings as human beings. In what I now consider an anticipation of Yoda’s admonition that anger fear and aggression lead to the Dark Side of The Force, Sister Mary Audrey condemned sneakiness. In her mind, being a sneak led to being a thief, and if one was a thief, one inevitably had to lie about one’s thievery. The triple crown was becoming a sneak, a thief and a liar. One of the wittier guys in the grade ahead of me asked if I had yet been admitted to Sister Mary Audrey’s Sneak, Thief and Liar Club. Feeling somewhat ashamed, I admitted I had. He gave me a look of commiseration, suggesting I was in good company.

I’m not entirely sure why Sister Mary Audrey disliked me, but at over 30 years’ remove, I can now think of several valid reasons. First, I didn’t work at anything near my ability. I didn’t want to. Second, I had become a bit of a class clown. Once I discovered I could get laughs, it was all over but the crying. One of my favorite approaches was to provide a running commentary to whatever we were hearing from our teachers that day. I could get my friends to giggle, and my parents were told I was slick enough to avoid being caught red handed, but there was always ‘that undertone.’ Finally, at age 13, most of the boys were beginning to experience the awkwardness and confusion of puberty. It’s well known, at least to cynics like me, that nuns in Catholic schools take out their own sexual frustrations on their male students, and the nuns at St. Titus were no exception. They were not above smacking us with their rulers or any other weapon that was at hand. Most of us hated them back.

For some reason, they didn’t seem to mistreat the girls as they did the boys, even though some of the girls had developed obvious breasts and were not above using their newly acquired feminine wiles to get us boys to do all manner of stupid things. Perhaps the nuns held out hope that some of the girls would enter the convent. Obviously, no member of the Sneak, Thief and Liar Club was material for the priesthood. The girls even called Sister Mary Audrey “S.M.A.” with something like affection. I didn’t get it. Bottom line, Sister Mary Audrey hated me (or so I believed) and I hated her right back. There’s something about an old, celibate woman with a ruler tucked up her sleeve that didn’t sit well with me.

Fast forward 20 years to the family waiting area outside the ICU. My Aunt and Uncle were glad to see the two nuns and conversed with them for some time. As soon as I saw ‘S.M.A.’ I made sure Dawn was between me and her at all times.

Dawn, who is no one’s fool, caught on quickly, and soon cornered me and said “You’re hiding, aren’t you?”

“You’re damned right I am!”

I don’t know if Sister Mary Audrey saw me, or if she did, whether she recognized me, but I sure saw and knew her. And I was afraid. I was thirty odd years old and in the prime of life, and she was a frail old woman, but I was afraid.

I’ve heard she has since passed on, and I hope she has reaped her heavenly reward. God knows she suffered enough in this life, what with students like me, celibacy, and all. I promise you this, however. If I see her in the next life, before I say hello, I’ll make sure she’s not packing a ruler.