Mutchie was a fuckin' trip. Behold some evidence of such:

Duh Agony of Duh Feets 
Before I existed Mutchie had foot problems. Her doctors advised and Mom pleaded that she not wear slutty very high-heeled shoes that were too small, but terminally-vain Mutchie wouldn't listen and eventually her feet went Ryan levels of sideways.

I'm unsure even what to call it. They were misaligned, stacked, scissored, and plain disresembled a human foot. I suspect looking at them too long, or even at her footprints in beach sand, would render one unable to achieve an erection for a few days.

That includes female nipples.

HEY! Stop laughing! It's no laughing matter. Limp nips render us all poorer.

Dino-Sore 
Baby Ryan's 1st birthday party in the spring of 1985 was a monument to foolishness.

A great philosopher, I forget who, once wrote that If someone doesn't yet understand the concept of birthdays (or birth...or days) and has no friends yet, they don't get a big party with a margarita machine and a fucking towering dinosaur (or was it a dragon?) bounce house about 20 feet tall.

Tragically, Ryan was scared bloody shitless by the bounce house, so they had to keep him away from the front yard. Even while out back, he keep looking fearfully northward as if the beast would spring over the house and git him.

I'm about 62% absolutely positive this early trauma was a factor in his later galaxy-class derailment. 

Yes, Pert. 
I brought a date, Teresa, a lovely, pert Texas high school sophomore who lived in stifling, oppressive white trash hell, right down to the atrocious, loutish, stained wife beater-clad uberhick stepfather named Purvis. Being able to leave home for pleasure was near-foreign to her. 

Mutchie was enamored upon meeting Teresa. It was hard not to be, for along with being quite pretty, she was distinctly amicable and respectful.

Know that “enamored” has a way of leading to “comfortable,” sometimes at warp speed. 

Toes Before Hoes  
After putting the poor girl on the spot by overly lavishing praise on her, then asking us when we were getting married, Mutchie asked her to fetch a margarita from the machine on the rear deck.

The Pert One returned bearing cocktail, but before she could hand the hooch over, Mutchie removed a shoe and thrust her foot outward and upward at poor Teresa and raspily semi-hollered, “Look! LOOK!!! This is what they did to me!”

The young lady was floored. All she could do was stammer something about OMG and sorry while leaning in for a worser look. Her cheeks, already red from before, reddened further.

Too bad that cold, slippery plastic cup decided to up an' rocket from her hand, coating Mutchie's footlike object with sweet, sour, sticky, boozy, frozen slush. Over 14,000 days later, I still vividly remember it like it was just 13,000 days ago.

I'm not kidding - those toes would flat-out hypnotize yo' ass. Gotta watch what yer doin' in their presence lest the slush fly. I was remiss in not warning the poor lass.

Hastin' Away Again in Margarita Shoe 
Poor Teresa's mortified gasp about sucked all the air from the backyard, threatening the revelers with starkly unexpected asphyxiation. Mutchie was gracious about it, shaking the li'l green snowbank off her hoof and dabbing with a napkin she, now apparently sagely, had clutched in her hand the whole damn time. What a BOSS!

We scrambled to get some water to rinse her foot, for those were some syrupy-ass 'ritas, but she jammed our official Flozberk Freaky Foot right back into her still-too-tall shoe and told us to go eat the nice party food. The only way to get that margarita outta that shoe now would be to boil the sombitch.

As soon as we got out of range, poor Teresa grew inquisitive:

“Who are 'they' and why were they mad at her toes?”

I was already on my third drink, plus that whole "already stoned to the bone when I got there" thing, so I about died laughing. 

"Sorry 'bout that. Let's have some onion dip and just be thankful it wasn't hemorrhoids." 

It turned out to be a pretty fun party, ludicrous as it was, and we youngsters left pretty soused with the Flozberks' blessing. Fortunately, Purvis was already near-comatose plastered when I took poor Teresa home, so she got away with one. Bravo!

For years afterward, Mutchie asked me about Teresa whenever she saw me, even if I was, um, accompanied by another lady at the moment. 

All that said, I gotta tip my hat to my alleged grandmother, though. As is historically so very often the case in FlozLand, she was stuck with relics of her systematic self-destruction, but still somehow got around better than many would have on those assemblages of dick-shrivelers. Mutchie was very weak and flaky in a long list of oft-entertaining and vexing ways, but also was a hearty soul who lived to be quite old and spent just about zero time in the hospital.

Overall, I'm glad to have known her. Mom, despite the litany of abuse, swindle, and annoyance she suffered, loved her dearly. I'm thankful to say I've moved on to a post-Floz world in which considerably higher standards are the rule.    

So Very Contrasty 
I roll in a very different world than the Flozberks. The way Mutchie advanced her notably unpleasant foot upon Poor Teresa (yes, that's her name now) perhaps 10 minutes into knowing her was impressive to us and became a running gag in our high school clique.

In deep, deep contrast my longtime friend/luthier and his old lady were flabbergasted to learn I had been shot by a large caliber rifle at age 12, was missing much of my right knee joint, and have scars from it best expressed not in linear inches, but in square feet.

What blew their mind...no...our minds was that they'd known me for FOUR YEARS and I'd spent hundreds of hours in their living room, always clad in shorts, before they learned of my misadventure. It's my right knee and I always sat at the right end of the sofa, see. That eyesore wasn't aimed at 'em and they were not the type to stare at a dude's knees.  Pretty simple, actually.

Oh, and there's this - I generally find that there are much better things to talk about than my suffering. I don't want to exist on a backdrop of misery. 

They learned of my injury when I was invited to accompany him to the guitar show and I declined, for my old game leg was not up to six hours of walking through zillions of square feet.

“Ah. Sports injury?”

“Naw. Got my leg almost blowed the fuck off by a God. Damn. Mother. Fucking. High, Powered. Rifle.” 

Jeez, were they ever surprised. Hell, I'm still surprised by it.

Just one of many illustrations of how differently The Arkansas Bunch and The Istanbul Bunch roll one can find on this site.

Mutchie was a fuckin' trip. This has been evidence of such.

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