A 10 year old misanthrope should not exist in a civilized society. It doesn't always turn out that way, though, and the third pillar of my boyhood misanthropy came to pass via a most unfortunate chain of events midway through the fifth grade in 1978.

My older friend Brian and I were playing a video game in my den. It was a hotly-contested affair, part of an ongoing rivalry. Suddenly, a familiar sound rang from the living room at the other end of the house.

CHAH-leeeeee!
CHAHHHH-leeeeeeeeeeee!!!
CHAHHHHHHHHHH-LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

It was Mom and her accent calling for Dad, in the garage working.

The piercing sound of a tool crashing onto a metal workbench in the adjacent garage punched through our video game din and Dad emerged muttering his trademark “God almighty!” Off to the living room at the other side of the house he went to see what Mom wanted.

He quickly returned to engage me. As a polite gentleman aware we were very involved in our game, he patiently stood to the side until an opportune moment allowed me to regard him. He asked if I knew where the TV Guide was. I replied in the negative and promised to find it once our nearly-done game was over. He relayed the message and returned to the garage.

Here She Comes
Seconds later, I heard Mom's footsteps crossing the kitchen toward us. Her steps were more brisk than usual and smacked of determination. She entered the room, ignored my guest and our game, and stopped in front of me, partially blocking the TV as I craned my head around her to try and see the screen.

This was before video games had pause buttons.

That was annoying, as was the apparent disregarding of my words from seconds before. I was further annoyed that Mom was thoughtless enough to holler across the property to interrupt a working man over a damn TV Guide. But, Mom loved her TV, was often impatient, and was a habitual interrupter, even from three rooms away.

Yes, a habitual interrupter, like the whole Istanbul Bunch. When Mom had the notion to say or do something, she often acted on the spot, no matter if you're telling her something else, or talking to someone else, or doing something else. Arguing with her was often dizzying, for one was likely to be interrupted on nearly every sentence. She was like a bulldozer. Same with Neila and John.

Therefore, Mom was often pretty obnoxious. I was an articulate, smart-ass punk kid. We had an ongoing conflict over the TV Guide. Sometimes I'd take it in another room or roll it up and discipline Mom's male poodle, who had pissed on every surface in the house within six inches of the floor for years. Sometimes she'd misplace it and roust everyone before bothering to look for it herself.

This TV Guide incident turned out to be the Hiroshima of them all, as it ended up wreaking havoc on my already-troubled life thanks to a bizarre, sad turn of events.

The Eminently Reasonable Conflict
Mom was still partially blocking the TV while Brian and I frantically competed through the last seconds of our game:

MOM: Where's the TV Guide?
ME: Do you really think my answer to that has changed in the last 40 seconds??? I'll find it as soon as this game is over!
MOM (ignoring what I'd just said): You always lose it.
ME: That's actually not true. Don't you always watch One Life To Live at this time, and then General Hospital?
MOM (getting mad): I want to see what's on tonight!

I'm not sure why she declined to understand two advisories from two people that I'd help find it in mere seconds, immediately after the end of the game.

ME: Hold on just a moment, PLEASE, would ya?
MOM (ignoring my pleas): Why do you always lose it?
ME (increasingly frustrated): Just use the one in the paper or wait a minute.
MOM (staccato bellowing): I.... DON'T.... WANT.... THE.... ONE.... IN.... THE.... PAY.....PER!

Yeah, I knew the newspaper thing wouldn't work. Daily in the Today section of the paper there was a copy of the TV listings, but she didn't like that version and suggesting it tended to piss her off.

A simple, pragmatic thought occurred to me, but Mom found it unhelpful:

ME (frustrated): This is NOT a fifty room mansion! The TV Guide is not in the pool. It is not in the back yard. It is not in the toilet, linen closet, or attic. Bother to look in the two or three most likely places and you'll find the damn TV Guide in a tenth of the time it takes to bother the entire household!

She didn't like that. My insolence would bring forth Mom's catch phrase, her signature utterance, as distinctive as Tarzan's yell. It was a cry of anger with an uplift at the end that I call the jungle bird sound often followed by a blast of unique Aegean invective. I've heard it hundreds of times.

MOM (yelling): Ahhhhhhh-AHHHHHH! HA SIKTIR BOK PEZEVENK!!!

Out she stormed from the room just as the game ended. I'd lost an insurmountable lead thanks to her unnecessary disruption. Of course, the game doesn't matter now, but it was all so....senseless.

BRIAN (delighted): Holy crap! I can't believe I won! How could you have blown a lead......

Brian stopped cold, realizing that there was something more interesting to talk about and furtively checked the kitchen doorway to make sure Mom wasn't there.

BRIAN: Dude....what was that she just screamed at you?

Not yet having the wisdom to cover my ass at all times, I'd no clue I was at a major crossroads. I wish I'd been more shrewd and sufficiently on the ball to conjure up some disinformation. Something, perhaps, like this:

ME (hypothetical): Well, Brian, I'm glad you asked that and I commend you for your curiosity. What Mom said simply means, in Turkish:

Furthermore, Brian, if you were wondering why she was screaming, well, that's nothing more than an old Turkish custom that honors the passion of the faithful when they brought the bones of Saint Nicholas back to Myra. It's a cultural thing, Brian. The screaming is actually a sign of love. Love at its purest, Brian.

Instead, I told him the truth. It was a fateful moment. We were almost whispering, still checking the doorway for Mom.

ME: Well, uh, it means, uh, “Fuck off, shit pimp” in Turkish.
BRIAN: Shit what?
ME: Pimp.
BRIAN: Huh?
ME: PIMP!

His face turned quizzical as he wrestled with the notion of a mother calling her 10 year old son a pimp. Plus, there was that whole "fuck off" thing.

Brian's mother was a delightful apple pie-baking caricature of a flawless TV mom, nary a mean bone in her body. So, this experience was as bizarre and mesmerizing to Brian as seeing a damn flying saucer land in our damn yard. It tends to be quite interesting to kids to see adults starkly fail the very behavioral standards those adults impose upon them.

BRIAN (incredulous...and worldly): PIMP??? Like as in a guy with call girls???
ME: Yes.
BRIAN: Fuck....off....shit....pimp???
ME (increasingly embarrassed): Yep.
BRIAN: What's a shit pimp???
ME: Beats me. Someone who pimps shit, I guess. She likes to say that.
BRIAN (solemn): Damn.

Too bad neither of my friends with drunken erratic mothers were there instead of Brian – they might not have batted an eye at that striking display. Both went to private schools, too, perhaps making the gossip storm that would soon bitch slap my life a lesser threat.

I was perturbed, yet not particularly rattled by the event. Mom yelled those names, and several others, at me more times than I can recall. I certainly didn't appreciate that humiliating display in front of my guest, but it was far from unusual.

So, I didn't sweat it much, for we would have only gotten into a big fight had I dared to object. I quickly found the TV Guide, which, of course, was in the room with her under some paperwork.

I'd no idea what awaited me when the new semester began the next Tuesday.

Back to School for the Shit Pimp
Someone made a crack at me as I walked by. It was unexpected and I didn't quite hear it. “It wimp?” Why would someone call me “It wimp?” “Pinhead?” No, I don't think so. “Dickhead?” No, that's not it, either. I couldn't figure it out.

In the hall, some of the people started laughing and pointing as I passed. I checked to see if perhaps my fly was open and I'd forgotten to don underwear. Clearly, I had become notorious.

Entering 1st period, I made eye contact with one of my compadres. He shot me a most curious look of sympathy, spinning my head even more. It remains the lone time I'd ever absorbed someone's sympathy without actually knowing what had befallen me.

I shot a silent “WTF???” gesture at my friend. He leaned over to tell me, reconsidered, then abandoned the verbal approach in favor of a note.

A note??? Goddamn. The matter is sufficiently complex to merit a note?

It may have been the most anxiously intrigued I've ever been. I keenly watched my friend thinking of what to write, then writing, hesitating, thinking, and starting anew on another sheet of paper.

Crap! Something fucked up was afoot. Nausea set in as I realized how many eyes were burning holes in me, watching my every move. What the hell is going on?

He finished the second attempt quickly and as he folded it, a particularly ungracious classmate of mine entered the room and zeroed in on me, laughing mockingly, a bad sign.

I wanna go home. Well, not home, for it was the spawning ground of this nightmare, but rather to my patch of woods across the street. Anywhere but here or home.

Anywhere.

The note was delivered. Before reading it, I took an obligatory glance at the teacher, for it's most undesirable for a teacher to intercept a note and read it to the class. As I did so, I noticed I had the attention of several of my peers. It seemed they already knew what was in the note. It remained the most dreadfully uncomfortable I've ever been until the gathering after Dad was killed.

Oh, Dear!
The note was concise. I still have it somewhere:

Everyone is saying that your mom is a crazy foreigner who hates you, tells you to fuck off, and calls you a shit pimp. What's a shit pimp?

My mind swirled as I weighed the implications. OK...I'd be going to school with many of these people for the next....let's see...one...three...seven years. Fuck! How awful for me, indeed.

Dizzy and questioning the reality of the nightmare, I reread the note, acutely aware of many eyes soaking in my growing despair. Something changed forever in me at that exact moment and the room started to disappear in a blur of colors and white noise.

Class commenced and the teacher noticed my inattention and the note in my hand, then called on me for a reason long forgotten. Frozen with agony and afraid I was about to die from shame and sadness right there on the classroom floor, I was unable to respond.

The prospect of the teacher exposing the contents of my note flooded me with even more dread even though most everybody already knew the contents. Even the thought of her silently reading the note was terrifying, for I feared she'd call Child Protective Services and have me taken from my home. One's mind can run wild at such moments, but it was not an irrational fear - Mom often threatened to have me taken away from home with just one phone call.

Fear that the bottom would suddenly drop from under me was ever-present for many valid reasons.

Very fortunately, the teacher was a nice, intuitive lady who realized I was shell-shocked and had had the good sense and decency to leave me be. She asked me after class if I was OK as I sat motionless, staring at the desk. I can't remember how I answered.

Mom is Held Accountable and Gracefully Fesses Up...NOT!
After school, seething, I confronted Mom about what I'd suffered. One could say it went poorly:

MOM: What are you upset about?
ME: Do you have any idea what that stunt you pulled over your precious, miserable fucking TV Guide has cost me?

Diplomacy was not my strong suit then - I was just a dumb kid far too hurt to be rational and effective.

Mom's response was somehow both stunning and unsurprising.

MOM (screaming): Ahhhhhhh-AHHHHHH!! AH SIKTIR BOK!!! PEZEVENK!!! ANTIPATHIA!!! ASHOLASHEK!!! DISGUSTING THING!!! I DON'T KNOW AND I DON'T CARE!!!

Ah yes, the expanded version of the very source of my woe! She even denied having the outburst in front of Brian just a few days before despite having an even bigger one when I called her out. The conversation went no further.

The bitterness I felt would have been much soothed by a bit of acknowledgment and atonement, but it just was not to be. Any appeasements would have come at the brutal cost of a big fight and be so dripping with self-deprecation, melodrama, and insincerity, making them wholly devalued.

That night, weighed down by that and other woes and wanting it all to go away, I came very close to thrusting a butcher knife through my throat in the back yard. How sad that would have been, all over a misplaced TV Guide.

So began a spiral of misery that mercifully eased over the next 7 years as the story grew old and freshly-disgraced saps supplanted the old ones. It's obscenely difficult to haul such a burden through much of a public school career and the simple fact that it was because of the madness of someone who was supposed to protect me made it all the harder to swallow. The malaise and unease felt like an itchy, smothering, weighted blanket.

Many, many, many times I was asked “What's a shit pimp?” as the story repeatedly made the rounds. Hell, I still don't know. I guess it's just an opportune pairing of two harsh words.

That New Car Smell
Shortly after The Shit Pimp Affair, we got our first new car, a 1979 Cutlass Supreme Brougham with a moonroof and plush velour seats. The memorable new car experience was short-lived thanks to Mom's heavily-aforementioned lack of temperamental restraint + delinquent neighbor kids.

The youngest, kidney-ill Shannon, was a girl in my class and a close friend. Sister Robin, a cute freckled girl also my friend, was in junior high. Brother Chris, male, was in high school.

These dregs were unique in our 'hood – Spam-suckin' white trash in nice surroundings. I don't know how they even got into that part of town. Inheritance, perhaps, 'cuz I don't think cooking meth had quite taken off yet. Maybe they got in early before property values went up.

The father was a telecom lineman. I forget what the mother did. He was a lush, she a skank, both rarely seen. Mostly unsupervised, the kids ran amok, yet amid that wild frontier environment they had to answer the phone with military discipline or face savage punishment. Strange people, indeed.

I liked them.

Their furniture leaned toward the wire spool motif and while our house reeked of poodle piss, theirs smelled like piss, shit, and puke, for they had a German shepherd dog and rarely cleaned. I kept a casual eye on one dung heap behind the sofa for a good 6 months and several fly hatches. Their pool was a green mosquito refuge.

Yippie Ki-Yay, Motherfuckers
Chris was an aspiring bull rider, so they made this contraption from chains and a 55 gallon barrel, adorned it with the words “Kow Bell Rodeo” painted badly askewly (of course) on it, and hung it from their metal carport. Rider mounts barrel, friends shake four attached handles in a cringeworthy attempt to simulate riding an angry bull.

Not even Debra Winger could bring dignity to that affair and the only thing it simulated was a herd of elephants running through a valley of beer cans and hubcaps.

These people were truly something else. Yes, they were my friends, but the neighbors didn't much appreciate their effect on the block. We were something of a curiosity and indeed even a laughing stock, but they were a damn scourge.

Mom disliked white trash more than any group with the possible exception of Jews (I've never seen white trash Jews, but if such exists, she'd have despised them). But, she and Dad were very nice to the two girls. They swam in our distinctly translucent pool often and gobbled down a whole bunch of free food.

The day after we got the car, a lovely Saturday morning, they came and wreaked havoc on our property, then screwed themselves with their own stupidity, impatience, and failure to account for Mom. It was not terribly early and we soon would have been up, but they just couldn't resist ringing the doorbell.

Dumbasses.

This was just before Mom became ravaged by her vices and a series of unusual, terrifying medical woes. Hearing the doorbell sound at an uncouth hour, she sprung from bed like a cat and had the front door open before the idiots could cross the street to their lair. Were she even slightly more removed from Mercury himself, the culprits may never have been known.

Aghast, We Were
An impossible amount of toilet paper hung from our trees. Shaving cream, toothpaste, and eggs were everywhere. Worst, our very new car was violated. Someone, perhaps me, perhaps Dad, had apparently left it unlocked. Ironically, it was our first car with power locks.

Amid the mess in the car, they had drawn a rather unflattering likeness of me, right down to the number 2 Adidas jersey I'd worn to school the day before, on the cushion of the driver's seat. Next to it was written “SHIT PI” in big, clumsy letters - they ran out of toothpaste before attaining “PIMP” completion, dumping the empty tube in the floorboard.

How awful for them. What poor planning, too. Not only were they trashy, dense, and malicious, but also logistically weak.

Poor Dad Makes an Unintentional Funny
I'll never forget poor Dad standing there, so very angry, baffled, sad, and hurt, looking at his vandalized car. At age 47 after working his ass off since he was a little kid on the farm, it was the first new vehicle he'd owned and it was trashed before he'd even had the time to peel the dealer sticker off the window.

Staring at his violated driver's seat, sweaty face twisted in profound disgust he asked:

“What's a shit pi?”

Madness as a Catalyst for Madness
We'd no quarrel with those people. In fact, we'd long made their lives better with fun, food, and fellowship. We were utterly baffled at first, but my friends and I figured it out.

The Shit Pimp Affair so dented our standing that it opened the door to even friends we treated well seeing fit to violate us. We were already curiosities – Dad was a straight-up good ol' boy but Mom was an obvious foreigner who talked funny, ate “fish toothpaste,” and was a provocative left-wing feminist. John and Neila were also clearly foreigners and quite different from the neighborhood norm. Mutchie was a world-class kook. Grandpa was a fuckin' trip. The house smelled like dog piss.

We simply stood out. Way out. Interestingly, so did the vandals, but in quite different ways.

Throw in a bizarre spectacle in front of a guest who had a popular and gossipy sister and things got way freaky. One of the worst taunts for a child is that his parents are deficient and when one's dignity conspicuously implodes they often are targeted by the cretinous.

It was years before I had the nerve to tell Mom why our car got vandalized and how her foolish behavior had impacted my life, but she angrily accused me of making it all up and called me a “disgusting thing.” I never mentioned it again, for the whole thing was just too harsh for both of us. I hope and suspect somewhere in there, Mom understood.

I did discuss it with Dad after Mom died while illustrating how The Istanbul Bunch can come up with with so many ways to fuck life up. He remembered "Shit pi" and was relieved to finally get an answer.

The disgrace eventually faded, thank heavens, and I later became a well-socialized leader, yet The Shit Pimp Affair would live on.

The Shit Pimp Legacy
Upon finishing high school, much relief marked the apparent end of The Shit Pimp Era. The night of graduation, a special day yet again marred by a big fight with Mom, I came up with a drunken, stoned, tripping teenager spoof ditty:

Ding, dong
The Shit Pimp's dead
His hair is gray
Balls are red
Ding, dong
The wicked Shit Pimp's dead

Well, not so fast. 30 years later, I found an old acquaintance on the web.

“Hey man, great to hear from you!!! Whassup? Does your mom still call you a shit pimp? LOL! What's a shit pimp?”

A pang of discomfort rang with the unexpected reminder of that relic horror show, but now I'm a well-adjusted fellow with a broad sense of dark humor and much greater understanding of our dysfunction, so I couldn't help but laugh.

Sometimes ya just gotta be that guy who gets conspicuously called a shit pimp by his lunatic foreigner mother, making life tragically and needlessly implode, and ya just gotta live with it.

I mean, like, uh.....DUH!

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