1. the moosh monster
when i say that i came into this world like a wrecking ball out of my mother’s womb i’m not just making a joke. and i do blame her for everything because she’s the one who took her final push at 11:19am marking me a 09/19/1991 11:19 baby. things may have turned out differently for me if she had just waited until 11:20 to release me. but alas, she made a monster. the moosh monster to be exact.
this was my family’s nickname for me ever since i can remember. it started with moosh but as soon as i developed a personality they added a “the” to the front and a “monster” to the end. i don’t think any of us really knew what we meant by calling me “the moosh monster” it was just the vibe i put out on a daily basis. i was always somewhere talking some shit and stirring a pot. i barely put the laddle down. i was so consumed by gathering all the information and then fucking with its outputs i almost didn’t have time for friends. which worked out well for me because a lot of my friends got sick of me after a few months. they couldn’t stand how much i fought for things. when you’re 12 you just want things to be simple. you want to eat your pb&j without someone questioning whether or not the slices really are bigger when you cut the bread in triangles not rectangles. but i couldn’t stand not having all the answers to everything i thought about. i couldn’t stand authority figures who didn’t have their shit together. even as a kid i had really high expectations for the people around me. i figured, if you were an adult you knew better than me and anytime i knew better than the people telling me what to do, i let them know.
i have a history of speaking up to say the least. i have a history of talking shit directly to people’s faces because i like to be fair about my point of views. i always give people the opportunity to do the right thing before i start acting righteous around them.
and unfortunately, my family was the first court room i ever practiced in. my parent’s didn’t know what to do with me. by age 3, my favorite saying was “you’re not the boss of me” i was uncontrollable and unconsolable. i did my own thing and i ran my mouth knowing i could handle any consequences that would come my way.
i fought for everyone. my siblings, my classmates, my teammates. my perspective on fairness was above me and my own needs. i was reaching for something greater than myself. i was asking for wrongs to be righted.
and when i wasn’t fighting for justice i was inquiring intel about what other people thought was right and good. i was constantly wondering what other people’s opinions were. i needed to know what everyone else thought. this is what got me into trouble at the family dinner table almost every night.
when i was young, my mom was still learning to cook. a lot of women don’t know how to cook until they’re forced to do it for their partner/family. i didn’t understand this. i didn’t connect the food i ate for dinner to my mother’s self-worth. i just wanted to know if anyone else thought the carrots were a little over boiled and if the chicken also felt dry to anyone else at the table.
i needed answers. was i the only one struggling to enjoy the food? was it just me? i knew it wasn’t just me because my younger brother also didn’t like to eat the food. years later we’d find out he just hated eating meat, he’s vegan now.
we had assigned seating at the dinner table. my dad at the head of the table to my left. my younger brother to my right. my sister diagonal from me, my older brother across from me and my mother at the head of the table to my right.
so every night i’d sit down at the table and start asking questions about what we were eating. i’d pry my siblings for their thoughts. my mother could not stand it, so she’d kick me out of the table.
she, and i quote, told me “i couldn’t have a mutiny at the dinner table” i laughed when she finally admitted to me why she always kicked me out, at the age of 30. but this haunted me the previous 30 years. my mother didn’t just kick me out. the first warning was being “sent to the stairs.” which by the way is way worse than being sent to my room because from the stairs i could hear my family member’s lives going on without me.
time didn’t stop when michelle left the room and the heartache of overhearing conversations i was no longer apart of was unbearable. if i misbehaved any further she’d send me to my room without food. and my siblings would egg me on. talking shit about me at the table just to get a reaction from me on the stairs so i’d get the final punishment of banishment.
thank god my father would sneak me up ice cream every once in a while. it’s no wonder i feel so comforted by the sight of a scoop of ice cream as an adult.
with the repetition of me asking questions, getting kicked out for not eating my food and being sent to my room without food - you’d think i’d learn to shut up but i fought harder. because every time i left the dinner table i’d look at my younger brother’s plate and see that he ate less food than me!!!!!!! i would walk backwards out of the room shouting that at my mother before i left her eyesight.
i wanted her to know that her reasoning was bullshit. i always made sure to eat more than my younger brother for this exact reason. she didn’t say “you’re annoying me and i need you to leave” she said “if you don’t like the food, you can leave and if you don’t eat the food, you’ll be sent to your room” and i’d say “how come joseph never has to eat all his food but i do”
from this point on, i understood what was happening. every time my mother would announce a new rule or demand a behavior from us, i’d immediately interject it with “but ‘cept joseph” because i knew he was exempt from it as the baby of the family and as the second in line to babyship i couldn’t stand the thought. i couldn’t believe what he could get away with. i wasn’t even mad that he got to do all these things, i just wanted to be able to do them too. i wanted fairness. i’ve always fought for equality in any form.
and the truth is, i’ve been gathering my opinion on what’s fair and what’s equal for a very long time. my family is just so glad i’m out of the house and they don’t have to deal with me anymore.
a note from the author:
the other day, i was laughing with my older brother about how i used to get kicked out of family dinners and how isolating that was for me. it was sad to be in my room while my family got to hang out together.
he said “sorry but you were always starting revolutions, i had to sit a few of them out. i ate the chicken even though it was pretty dry.”
this was all i needed to hear. it wasn’t just my imagination. the chicken was dry. justice had finally been served to the “moosh” monster at the age of 31.