Tunesday : Shake Your Booty

Shake, Shake, Shake (Shake Your Booty)

(Casey, H/ Finch, R)  Performed by K. C. and the Sunshine Band

Aah, everybody, get on the floor
Let's dance
Don't fight the feeling
Give yourself a chance

Shake shake shake, shake shake shake
Shake your booty, shake your booty
Oh, shake shake shake, shake shake shake
Shake your booty, shake your booty

Aah, You can, you can do it
Very well
You're the best in the world
I can tell

Oh, Shake shake shake, shake shake shake
Shake your booty, shake your booty
Oh, shake shake shake, shake shake shake
Shake your booty, shake your booty
Woah, woah, yeah

Shake shake, shake shake
Aah, Shake shake, shake shake

Aah, Shake shake shake, shake shake shake
Shake your booty, shake your booty
Oh, shake shake shake, shake shake shake
Shake your booty, shake your booty

Aah, Shake shake, shake shake, shake your booty
Aah, don't fight the feeling
Shake shake, shake shake, shake your booty
Aah, give yourself a chance

Shake shake, shake shake, shake your booty
You can do it, do it
Shake shake, shake shake, shake your booty
Come home with mama now

Shake shake, shake shake, shake your booty
Woo woo hoo
Shake shake, shake shake, shake your booty
Aah, run down to sister

Shake shake (come on), shake shake (come on) on your booty
Aah! do your duty. Aah haa
Shake shake (come on), shake shake (come on)

Last weeks's Tunesday ended with me, at the end of the summer of '82, on a plane bound for Alberta. I've been pretty much sticking to the timeline of my life with these Tunesday posts, but before I move on: I realise that none of my very earliest memories have been captured, so I'm going to infodump before jumping to Wild Rose Country. 

When I was in college in Edmonton, I needed to do an art project that captured the "experience of being a child", and with Dave illustrating, I wrote a picture book called "When I Was Little". It was a collection of my earliest memories that all demonstrated what my own childhood was like, and it's funny that when I think about that project now, I haven't told any of those stories here (and also lament that I have no idea where that "book" is now). So those stories will be repeated here, along with other old family lore that my girls would have heard before, and a couple of things they haven't. I do not imagine this post would have broad appeal, but everyone should enjoy a little K.C. and the Sunshine Band on a February morning; when I was little, I loved everything K.C. released. 

In my very earliest memory (I was probably no more than 3), I am lost and cold, walking through thigh-high snow banks. I'm turning in circles, and although there are houses in the distance, I can't seem to make progress towards any of them; each step I take depleting me further of what little strength I have left. I'm crying and the tears are freezing on my cheeks and when I finally surrender to exhaustion and collapse face-first into the pristine snowfield, the cold of the snow tricks my skin into thinking that it's warming up and I am content to just rest in its soothing cocoon. Eventually, someone picks me up and that's the end of the memory (because, obviously, I didn't die out there). Years later, my Mum was recalling that when we first moved into some house in Charlottetown, there were no fences between the back yards and she was scared to death the time she had sent me out to play in the snow, and within minutes, I was lost to her sight. It was my Dad's friend Clifford who had spotted me in a neighbouring yard, and when he ran out to get me, he thought I was the most pathetic sight, laying face-first in the snow, snot and tears and snow crystals caked onto my red cheeks. 

Another time I nearly died: Also when I was 3, I contracted croupe, pneumonia, and Hong Kong Flu at the same time and I was expected to die of it. I needed to be hospitalised, and I remember that as a terrifyingly foreign experience; all on my own for the first time, not understanding what was expected of me. One night (the first night? some later night when I was nearly all better and should have been expected to care for myself?), needing to pee and having no idea how to leave my bed with its high side rails or where to go, I eventually gave up and just peed the bed. In time, a nurse came in, and when she saw the wet sheets, she very roughly pulled me from the bed and gave me a cold bath in a small metal basin on the floor, muttering the whole time, leaving me to shiver in the punishing water as she changed the linens and lectured me on how to call a nurse if I felt the urge again. I remember I had a doctor at this hospital who was the first black man I had ever seen in real life. He was very dark-skinned and I was frightened of the high contrast it made with the bleached whites of his lab coat, and when he would place his stethoscope on my chest, his large hand would nearly eclipse my pasty torso. My mother always told the story of how this doctor and I had a sweet rapport -- he forever laughing and complimenting me on my red ringlets, I totally oblivious to the difference in our skin colours -- and I never understood how she didn't see that I wasn't oblivious; I was very aware of the difference and it made me uncomfortable. Yet, from the way Mum always told this, I knew it to be shameful to have been uncomfortable and I never corrected her. I think the lesson I got from this was: whenever someone says, "I'm totally colourblind, I never notice someone's race", it makes me skeptical. How can you not notice? Of course I notice, but based on the way I was raised and the interactions I've had with people of other races (starting with a kind and laughing doctor who resides in my earliest memories), I know that race or skin colour doesn't matter -- I would obviously not be afraid of a black doctor today (cranky white nurses are a different story), but I think it would be dishonest to say that I was colourblind as a 3-year-old. Also famous within our family from this incident: when my Dad couldn't get through to our family doctor to get an update on my condition -- when he was asked once again to leave a message with an answering service -- Dad tore the phone off the wall and threw it down the exterior stairs of our second floor apartment. I always admired that story.

Another time I nearly died: I was maybe 5 and Ken would have been 6 and we were living in St. John and he was enrolled in some summer camp that I was too young for. At the end of the week, this camp had a trip planned to go to McDonald's, and as that was such a never-gonna-happen trip in our family, I was beyond jealous. Ken asked one of the camp leaders if I could possibly come with them if I had my own money, and that kid said sure. When we showed up on the Friday, however, the head counselor said that I was too young and they couldn't take responsibility for me on the bus. Ken said okay and agreed to walk me back home, but once we were out of sight of the camp, he said that if they wouldn't take us, we would just walk ourselves to McDonald's. I had always trusted my big brother, and as there was no other way we were getting McDonald's, I took his hand and tagged along. I can't even imagine how long this walk would have been, but before we left the suburbs, we were attacked by a giant black lab. This dog came charging from around a corner like it knew we were going to be there, and from my vantage point, its fevered eye seemed to be focussed on my exposed chubby legs. Moments before this dog -- all teeth and slobbery jowls and fierce, maniacal growls -- could clamp down on my pale, young flesh, however, Ken threw himself between me and the dog. Not only did Ken interrupt the attack, but his dive either startled the dog or painfully clipped its muzzle because the lab backed off and went yelping around the corner; back to the hell from whence it came. Ken had a bad fall and his knees and hands were bleeding, so we gave up on McDonald's and started the long trek back home. (In the illustration for this story, Dave drew Ken with a Superman cape. Man, I wish I could find that.)

Another time I nearly died: This is much later -- but I couldn't have been older than 7 or 8 -- and we were on a rare trip to a beach. I believe it was on a lake (as opposed to the ocean), and although I hadn't done very much swimming before, despite having been born on an island, I was happily running and splashing in the water with my brothers and some other kids. These other kids had blowup toys -- like giant blue logs -- and they would hold onto them and kick themselves out into deep water and back again. When I was offered the use of one, I happily grabbed on, kicked myself out deep, and when it slipped from my grasp, I began to drown. I'm sure I was panicked at first, but as I gasped for air and failed to keep my head above water, I was struck immobile by what a stupid way this would be to die; I didn't even like the water. And then some hairy man was charging into the waves. And then he was a blur of tan flesh and white spray, and oh, the hair on this man, as he hydroplaned towards me and grabbed me before I could totally surrender. I remember being rather terrified of this hirsute stranger and the way that he slightly crushed me as he hauled me to shore, where my mother was standing at the waterline, frozen in horror with both hands clenched in front of her mouth. 

A time I could have killed my whole family: Mum often showed us kids some magic tricks with matches -- I still don't know how she could snap a burnt wooden match in two with its own smoke -- and so one morning before anyone else was up, Kyler and I decided to figure out these tricks for ourselves. We had paper and matches and were lighting fires in a big, green ashtray, when suddenly, all the matches and all the paper was on fire and out of control. I ran to the kitchen for some water and doused the flames, which thankfully worked, but we were left with a big, green ashtray that was full of water and soot and spent matches. We threw the mess into the fireplace, cleaned out the ashtray, and pretended the whole thing never happened. Of course our parents discovered the mess, but happily, they were more upset with themselves than with us. That sounded about right to me and Kyler until we weren't allowed to watch M*A*S*H* with the family that night; which turned out to be a worse punishment in our judgement than the spanking we had been expecting.

Another time that could have ended badly: I was a Brownie for about a month at the end of our time in St. John when I was almost 9 (I have no idea why I was signed up right before we left or why I wasn't put in a new troop when we moved to Ontario), but as short as my Brownie career was, I was pretty proud of my little brown polyester dress and silk scarf. It was not long before Christmas and our troop was supposed to gather at the Brownie meeting space to be taken on a bus to an old folks' home, where we'd be carolling. I don't remember how I got there -- did I walk or did one of my parents drop me off and drive away? -- but either way, I was late and the troop had left and I was standing outside a locked door, crying, with no idea what I was supposed to do. Just then, a man drove up and asked if I was supposed to be with the Brownie troop and I said yes and he offered to drive me to the old folks' home and I got into a car with a stranger. Of course I knew better and I did it anyway. Happy ending: I was neither kidnapped nor killed as he, the Dad of some other Brownie, drove me to meet up with the rest of the troop. 

Those times I tried to kill my little brother: There's a picture of me and my brothers when Kyler was just a new little guy, barely home from the hospital. Kyler is in a little chair (what Mum called a "tot-tote") and Ken and I are flanking him, eating potato chips out of our own little bags. I have no idea now if I actually did try to stuff Kyler's mouth with chips (which, to be fair, might have been an act of generosity on my part) or if we just always assumed I was murderous towards him from the start, but every time we see that photo, someone will say, "There you are right before you tried to make Kyler choke on those chips."

Another time, I was mad at Kyler for something or other and I thought it would be hilarious and appropriate to poison his peanut butter and jelly sandwich (for the love of which Kyler was famous at the time) with Dad's nasal spray (for the love of which Dad was famous at the time). Just before he took a bite, I chickened out and said, "No Kyler, don't! It's poisoned!" The sandwich had to be thrown out, of course, and Dad was so mad about the wasted food (and nasal spray) that I was spanked and roughly thrown into my room, where I'm sure I spent my "thinking time" plotting revenge...against Kyler.

Another time, Ken came to me because he needed me to play an important role in a neighbourhood plot against Kyler. Apparently, he and the other boys from our street had spent the morning digging a pit in the forest at the top of the hill (we lived on Forest Hill Drive). When they decided it was deep enough to trap a small boy, they covered the hole with a sheet of plastic and disguised it with dirt and leaves. My part was to lure Kyler to the forest with a promise of free cookies, and as there was a promise of free cookies for me, too, I agreed heartily. I walked Kyler up the street and entered the woods ahead of him so I could stand on the other side of the pit as he approached. As I stood there and watched Kyler come near and stop and look at the badly disguised trap, I again chickened out, but just as I was yelling, "No Kyler, don't! It's a trap!", my baby brother ran around the plastic sheet to where he could reach the cookies without falling in the pit. Right then, Ken and the neighbourhood boys jumped out from the trees and pushed Kyler into the hole anyway. As it turns out, it wasn't really deep enough to trap Kyler and he grinned and ate his cookies and walked back out of the hole.

These same boys play an important role in this story: Out back of the houses on our street was an empty field and when it rained, it became a muddy mess. There was such a high clay content to the mud that we could use it to sculpt clay pots and animals that would dry hard and permanent in the sun, and more than one kid (including Kyler) got trapped in the field when their rubber boots would get sucked down so deep that they couldn't raise their feet up again. Using scrap lumber and bits of old carpet, some of the neighbourhood boys had built a clubhouse in the field, and it was a he-man-woman-haters club with no girls allowed...until one day, the boys told me and another girl that if we dropped our panties and showed them what we had, they'd give us the clubhouse. This was too good to be true: the prize was so awesome! And the price was so cheap! And we did it! Me and the other girl went into the shack, dropped our drawers for a few seconds, and then told the boys they'd have to leave our clubhouse. And of course they laughed and said they weren't giving up nothing, and I was so little that far from being ashamed of what I had done, I was righteously indignant that I had been hoodwinked. Eventually, the story got out of what we had done, and instead of taking my side in it and demanding the title to the clubhouse be handed over to us girls, my Dad lost his mind and stomped around the neighbourhood and the shack was torn down. It was forcefully impressed upon me that I was to be ashamed of my body, and although I eventually understood that I had been the one to do something wrong, it took me a long time to get over the fact that that clubhouse -- which we had earned -- was taken away. Just recently, Ken said that he had remembered this story and when he brought it up to Dad (oh my God, why would he do that??), Dad insisted that he didn't remember. And Ken said, "Come on. Remember you were afraid someone had touched Krista?" I told him, "Of course I remember the story and nobody touched me." And Ken said, yeah but Dad didn't know that and I asked him, "Remember how you went door to door and insisted that every one of those punks be punished?" And Dad said no, he didn't remember, and he got angry and wanted to drop the subject and it was dropped. This experience had fangs that stuck into me for years, poisoning all of my assumptions about how I was supposed to behave as a girl in the world, and Ken was treating it as some "Remember when..." story. Bah.

So, related to this: Within some months, and I should say that I was maybe 5 at the time, me and all the neighbourhood kids were running around the houses, probably playing hide-and-seek, and I remember it was twilight and it was summer and it was delicious to be running and laughing and belonging to a gang of riotous kids. As I was crossing through one back yard, one of the boys involved in the pit and the shack started drumming on a barrel. I was so caught up in the lark and the freedom of it all that I stopped dead and then started some kind of exaggerated bellydance to the beat (shake shake shake, shake your booty!), my arms twisting serpentine over my head, my hips jutting back and forth to the drum, me laughing my head off. Suddenly, the boy stopped drumming and started running and laughing and yelling, "Mrs. Jones! Quick! Krista's taking off her clothes again!" I knew I would be murdered if that message actually got carried to my parents and I ran after the boy saying, "No I'm not!", but he wasn't serious and he stopped yelling it and he ran off to join the rest of the kids and I...carefully made my way home, checking to see what my parents had heard (nothing), understanding finally that these untrustworthy boys were not my friends. (This week's song choice and header were both chosen to represent this story...Man, it took me a long time to get here.)

More about Kyler: when he was little, my Mum despaired that he would never stay in the yard when she'd put him out to play (and as when I was running around the houses with the gang, none of these yards were fenced) so her solution was to tie him to a cinderblock like a dog. I totally accepted this at the time -- it never occurred to me that our mother should be outside supervising us -- and as Kyler also had a latch on the outside of his bedroom door to keep him locked in in the mornings, none of us batted an eye at any efforts to keep Kyler "under control". Some older neighbourhood girls saw the whole thing differently though, and thinking that they were doing him a favour, they untied Kyler (I doubt if he was 3 yet) and unleashed him on the world. Of course there was a panic to find him, and eventually, Kyler was found and brought home in a police car. Another time, there was a yard sale down the street, and Kyler and I were given some pennies to go see what we could buy. As I was looking at the treasures, I noticed that Kyler had disappeared and I had to go tell Mum that I had lost him. Of course she was mad at my irresponsibility (at 5, maybe?), but before she could organise a search party, here came Kyler in the squad car again, bouncing around the front seat and setting off the siren. It turns out that, after seeing the poor quality of the yard sale offerings and feeling the delightful weight of the copper in his fist, Kyler decided to walk to the store for some candy. It was here that this little freckled, red-haired munchkin was spotted by the same police officer as before and scooped up before he could get into trouble. Naturally, the cop had also bought Kyler the candy that his pennies wouldn't have covered, and as he maliciously licked his lollypop in my direction, I was the one getting into trouble.

A few more random stories from my "When I Was Little" project: When we lived in St. John, we would go over to PEI and Nova Scotia to visit my grandparents every summer. As it's an island, the only way to get to PEI back then was on a ferry. One summer, Kyler and I were wearing matching patchwork denim pants and jackets on the ferry, and I suppose we were memorable enough running around the decks because when I went into the ladies' room to go pee, a woman forced open my stall door and announced, "Little boy, this is the ladies' room!". I was sitting on the toilet at the time and she and I turned twin shades of red as she looked down at my lack of penis and then back into my horrified eyes. I was humiliated and she left without apologising. (I should also note that this wasn't long after I had cut all my hair off with a pair of scissors -- and then hid under a couch to avoid the punishment I eventually got -- so I suppose I probably did look rather boyish. But what did this bathroom stall interloper hope to accomplish if I had been a boy?) A side note: on these summer trips, we often would start off the long drive with a snack that included the rare treat of a bottle of pop. Eventually, the three of us kids in the back of the car would be squirming with the need to pee, and while my brothers were allowed to relieve themselves into their empty pop bottles which were then tossed into the woods as we motored on down the highway (ah! the '70s!), I was informed, "Girls are built to hold it longer. You'll be fine until we get to where we're going." A penis sure would have come in handy after all. 

Also in St. John when I was really little (maybe 4?), for some reason my Mum signed me up to be a model in a fashion show. My outfit included a knitted poncho which, when the strange woman I was walking the runway with gave me the signal with a squeeze of her hand, I was to remove with a flourish over my head, revealing the t-shirt with an adorable turtle on it that I was wearing underneath. This was all explained to me in the seconds before we went on, and with the lights and the music and the audience and my heart pounding like to burst through my ribs, I was insanely nervous. When we reached the end of the catwalk and the lady squeezed my hand, I twirled that poncho over my head, tossed it over my shoulder, and stood and posed like a total pro in front of the ooohing crowd. Naturally, I then retired from my modelling career; better to go out on top; before you need the Botox.

Also in St. John, there was a local TV programme called "The Miss Ann Show" (sort of like Romper Room) that me and my brothers watched all the time. For some reason, my mother signed me and Ken up to appear on it together. We were probably 5 and 4 and filming the show was a very nice and low-key experience; it may as well have been a day at kindergarten. In one game, we kids were lined up and told to pretend to be our favourite kind of animal and everyone else would play follow-the-leader behind us. My mind went blank: what was my favourite animal? I had no idea. Ken was right in front of me, and he confidently proclaimed, "I'm a horse", and we all followed behind him, galloping and making clip-clopping noises with our mouths. I was up next, and still blanking and not knowing what I was going to say until it came out of my mouth, I said, "I'm a flying horse", and I led the kids around the circle, prancing and waving my arms and making the exact same clip-clopping sounds Ken had made. Ever after, Ken remembers this as typical of the way I'd always try to one up him in everything we did together. As a side note: Kyler was too young to be on the show at the same time as me and Ken, but he did appear a couple of years later. Afterwards, he kept telling us how proud he was that he didn't pick his nose even once. We happened to be in PEI the day his episode was to air, and as we settled down to watch it with our grandparents, Kyler repeated again that he didn't pick his nose even once. And as we watched the show, there was Kyler picking his nose. More than once.

And a last story about my Dad: After we moved to Ontario, he had to commute into Toronto every morning, a drive that took over an hour each way. Because of that, he got up much earlier than anyone else and would eat his breakfast in the kitchen alone each morning. Sometimes, not very often but sometimes, I'd wake up when I'd hear him down there, his spoon clinking against the sides of his cereal bowl, and I'd go down to join him. We'd put on "Definition" on the little black-and-white kitchen TV (what a terrible low-budget Canadian game show that was, but the only thing on at 6 am back then), and I'd get my own bowl of cereal and delight my Dad by often being able to solve the puzzles on the show before the adult contestants. Even when I slept through these mornings, I was never unaware of the lonely breakfast my Dad had soldiered through and there was a definite air of sacrifice over everything to do with his job; the long drive; the hard work; the stresses that made him too angry to even look at us when he'd get home at night. It was mind-blowing to have my parents casually talk in later years about how my Dad has always loved his job and its challenges and rewards; how he had never minded the early mornings or the commute. I gave Dad a free ride of misguided understanding throughout all of my fear-wracked childhood; thinking that he was doing all of this for us; and it was always for himself.

And a last story about my Mum: One time in Stouffville, Mum was doing some painting, and as we kids were all gathered in the kitchen after school while she was about to close a half-empty can of paint, she decided to teach us about centrifugal force. She quickly started swinging the paint can in a wide circle (perpendicular to the floor) at the extension of her arm, and we were properly astonished that none of the paint came flying out. Mum kept it swinging and explaining the science of it, but she kept it up too long for the fates to allow: on one of her overhead passes, Mum veered too close to the ceiling light fixture, and not only did it explode in a spray of frosted glass, but the sudden stop caused the paint to spill over the floor. While over the years, this has become a hilarious story (and we often tell it as though Mum had had a cigarette stuck in the corner of her mouth, causing her to squint from the smoke and talk in the gravelly voice of a longshoreman), at the time we were terrified: Dad was going to kill each one of us. One of us kids said something to that effect, which stung Mum, and she insisted that no one was going to get murdered, but after making sure all of us kids were okay, she shooed us out and cleaned up every bit of the mess. When Dad got home that night and stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of the missing kitchen light fixture, Mum did the first ever comic performance of "That Time Mum Demonstrated Centrifugal Force With A Paint Can", and luckily, Dad laughed.

So, yeah, it felt like that was a lot not to fill in before I moved on. In the memory reel of shame that everyone suffers with, that episode in the clubhouse is always in my highlights -- and I know it's a fairly common experience, and I know that I was too young to understand what I was doing, and I know that I was actually the victim (if, indeed, the story needs a victim) -- but it is foundational to who I am: just how is a young lady supposed to behave and how is that different from the expectations for young men? Is my body my own or does my father have a say in how I use it? Why would boys trick girls? Or, after the boy who was drumming tried to get me in trouble, why would a boy try to use a girl's shame about her sexuality as a weapon against her? I'm telling you, this episode had fangs, even if it seems so innocent now. No wonder I was ready for K. C. and the Sunshine Band's license to boogie when it came long. Just don't tell my Mum on me.

Shake shake, shake shake
Shake shake shake, shake shake shake
Shake your booty, shake your booty
Oh, shake shake shake, shake shake shake
Shake your booty, shake your booty

Added later: Rereading this, I'm not unaware of the Freudian psychosexual implications; everything is peeing and nudity and a joke about penis envy; not to mention me wanting to keep my Dad company in the morning (when that would arguably be my mother's job). I recognise it but don't know what it signifies -- that Freud was right about his (now generally dismissed) theories of development? That I would benefit from Freudian therapy if these are the type of answers I would give to the prompt, "Tell me about your childhood"? 

Before moving on to something different next week, here's another related story that I forgot to add: Early in grade one, nearing the end of the school day, I suddenly needed to pee very badly. As in the hospital when I was three, I had no idea where to go or how to alert the teacher to my situation. The only rules I knew were that I must stay in my seat, and as it was silent work time, I was to remain quiet. And so I remained in my seat and quietly peed all over the floor. Some other kids did notice, and although over the next couple of years (before we moved away) it would be brought up sporadically -- as in, "Remember the time you peed in your chair at school?" -- I would always deny it. No I didn't. Wasn't me.

Offered up for your analysis, Dr. Freud.