On the day they were handing out parents I must have bee characteristically late. Not by a lot, just by my standard five to ten minutes. Perhaps I had forgotten my smokes and had to race back to the house to get them. Maybe I was rushing around the house desperately trying to find my keys. Regardless of the circumstances judging by the parents I ended up with I was obviously late. Not late enough to end up in the back of the line where there was nothing left but child molesters and parents who’s affinity for corporal punishment would frequently leave their children with an inability to sit comfortably for days at a time. I certainly hadn’t gotten there early enough to reserve a place at the front of the line where perfect parent were distributed. I had obviously landed directly in the middle where the parental stock and trade ranged from eccentric and bizarre to downright insane. My parents exhibited all of these traits at one time or another and when they weren’t behaving strangely themselves strange would invariably come to them.

            One of my earliest memories would undoubtedly feel right at home in the pages of a David Lynch film script. It was early one morning and I was sprawled out on the living room floor with a bowl of frosted flakes completely engrossed in Saturday morning cartoons. It was a comfortable summer morning and all the doors and windows had been opened to allow a crisp breeze to wind through the house. My father sat on the couch behind me allowing him self a rare moment to relax and enjoy the paper while my mother busied herself in the kitchen. I chuckled to myself as Wyle E Coyote managed to fowl up yet another fool proof plan. Just as I hand lifted the bowl to my lips to drink down the last of the cool sugary milk my mother let out a blood curdling scream from the back bedroom. Within seconds my father and I were up and racing toward the back bedroom. What was happening? Had she caught a prowler digging through her underwear drawer? On a Saturday morning no less. Was there a masked man in the back yard brandishing high powered weaponry? As we rounded the corner and rushed into the bedroom the scenario laid out before us was far more unthinkable than any I had previously considered. My mother was standing in the corner of the bedroom with her hands over her face and there standing on top of my parent king size bed was a full sized horse. I haven’t the faintest idea about how it got in the house let alone how it got on top of the bed. Yet there it stood balancing on top of the bed, obviously just as frightened as my mother and equally dumbfounded as my father and I. Once he had recovered from a paralyzing bout of riotous laughter my father led the horse out of the house and back to the pasture from which it had come. For months afterward my mother would complain endlessly about her bedroom stinking of horse. Invariably my father would inform her that if she hadn’t wanted her bedroom to smell like horse she shouldn’t have let one stand on her bed.