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Wednesday, July 9 flash back
hey kids now im solo mama once again anyway take a trip down memory lane with me
I’d heard you were only supposed to go on the Dexatrim diet for two weeks. Dexatrim, for those not in the know, was a diet fad that appeared, oh, sometime around 1976. The idea was simple: You have no willpower? No problem. Pop this little pill and your appetite will magically disappear. What they didn't tell you was that not only was Dexatrim an appetite suppressant but the innocent little pill was speedier than a GTO. We got the "two" right in the warning label, but not in the sense of weeks; my sister and I went on the Dexatrim diet on and off for our last two years of high school. There are plenty of reasons to have jitters in high school: nerves before a test, a crush on the boy (or girl) sitting behind you, fear of fitting in. But Sis and I had the granddaddy of all reasons; we were juiced out of minds on legal speed. I felt as though I were gliding down the halls of Rumson Fairhaven High on ice skates, the hallways magically frozen beneath me. Swoosh. I would skate past my pals slapping their butts along the way. Swish! I would slide into homeroom. For me Dexatrim was not only a way to ft into my skin tight Levi’s cut-offs and black tube top (hey, this was the tail end of the '70s after all) by summer time, but it also allowed me to cram, oh, another 12 hours into my day. Study for my sociology exam while simultaneously rolling joints in pink rolling paper (I had something of a sideline in my junior year; long story, but let’s just say they called me the Pink Lady.), cleaning my room and smoking Marlboro Lights. After which, I could do my history homework, while talking on the phone, trimming my toenails and painting a Rolling Stones tongue on the back of my denim jacket. Oh, it was glorious, that is of course until sleep time, but who needs 9 hours when 4 will do. For Sis who was by nature manic, or shall I say wired for sound, the added Dexatrim boost meant she was propelled into another dimension, where mere mortals walked so slowly she could speed past them invisible, like the Flash. Sister Flash. There were even less pleasant side effects for popping the speed bombs. I recall sitting in the back of a classroom, drumming my fingers on the desk, tapping my toes, counting my ribs, horrified to discover that while time had sped up for me, it had seemingly slowed down for everyone else. By my calculations my sociology class now lasted 11 hours! I felt certain that by the time the bell rang the entire outer world would have changed. Who would be president when I was finally released was like a murderer who copped a plea? I recall a story about a kid in school named Danny, who may have taken the illegal kind of speed but in any case, jumped out a second-floor classroom window. Now I knew why. I stared at the open window and drummed. But for Sis, it was worse. She who cared more about being noticed then anyone I’ve ever met had cloaked herself in Flash invisibility and simply disappeared. She spent two formative years of her teenhood, racing around teen humans who noted her only as a passing insect. In retaliation she was would scream, “You’re a Weeeeeeeeeenie!” as she raced past, but most only experienced a disembodied voice. When she would slow down long enough to be seen, she was usually too exhausted to speak. Oh yeah, I forgot. The crash. Imagine taking off like a jet but just as you reach your peak altitude, running out of gas. The Dexatrim crash could catch you mid-sentence, mid smoke, even mid kiss and you could do nothing but simply putter, putter, slump. I’d nodded off in class, on the toilet, in the middle of sharing a bottle of blackberry brandy in Piping Rock Park, while smoking a cigarette in the third floor girl’s bathroom, where the Pink Lady held court. Most assumed it was a heroin nod, and it only added to my bad girl image, which was, of course, good for business. Sis tended to check herself into the nurses room, pull the curtain around the vinyl doctor’s bed and start snoring the second her head hit the pillow. “I think she’s got a vitamin deficiency,” Nurse Scott announced. “She needs to reload,” I muttered. There was another not so endearing side effect of staying on Dexatrim for a little over a year and a half more than recommended; let’s just call it hazy judgment. For me, it was dating an array of young men who didn’t bathe regularly, didn’t wear underwear, did drive a motorcycle and or 1960s Mustang and were most likely to drop out and become a mechanic. Okay, I liked bad boys. I can’t blame that on Dexatrim, but let’s just say there’s bad, and there’s bad and stinky. I’d like to think that pre-Dexatrim I would have at least had the self-respect to put my dates through a sniff test. For Sis … well, here's how it went down. One morning, a couple of days off the Dex, still exhausted from a crash, Sis went out to mail some letters. She vaguely recalled that the nearest mailbox was a block away, which seemed like miles, and she was delighted to find one right there on the corner just outside our house. Happily she mustered up the energy to skip to the blue box and cram the letters in the top. Then a strange thing happened. The mailbox screamed. “What are you doing?!” it yelled. My sister screamed, dropped the letters on our front lawn and jumped back in terror. Of all the demons of her childhood, a talking mailbox had never even been a bleep in her imagination. Shaking, she blinked, blinked again and finally focused. There standing on the corner taping her foot furiously, with her hands on her hips was my mom, five feet tall, 275 pounds, wearing a post-office blue house dress. Maybe it wasn't so farfetched an error. “I, I, I thought you were a mailbox!” Sis stammered. “YOU WHAT?!” “I thought you were a mailbox?” she whispered. “For crying out loud! How could you think I was a mailbox?” Sis surveyed Mom up and down and thought it was better not to answer. Instead, she retreated to her bedroom and drowned herself in teen magazines featuring The Bay City Rollers. Mom went on a diet. To my knowledge she didn’t take any Dexatrim. Sis and I did eventually tire of Dexatrim. I’d moved on to healthier pursuits like vodka and hash, neither of which made me lose weight, but both of which made me not care. Sis discovered boys. She and her best pal Marcy would dedicate entire weekends to standing around the Monmouth mall pretending to ignore cute boys. Since Sis was now spending all her food money on cosmetics, she didn’t need the Dexatrim. No matter how hungry she was, the five bucks that could have filled her up on pizza and Coke was spent on a fuchsia lipstick and blush combo. Sans Dexatrim, I found I could actually sit through a class without my head exploding. Sis lost her cloak of invisibility. We both still managed to fit into our bathing suits in June. On a recent trip to Jersey, I took my sis to a local diner in Red Bank. Over entrée salads, we reminisced. “Remember when you thought Mom was a mailbox?” “You know … that actually happened twice,” she said alternating sips between her ice tea, Red Bull and cappuccino, the triple caffeine threat that all that Dexatrim must have given her a jones for. “No way! … How the hell could that happen twice?” “It was right near here, in Red Bank, like 6 months after the first time. I was driving down Front Street and pulled over in front of a mailbox. I jumped out and tried to cram some letters into Mom.” “God, Sis. Wha'd she do?” “She just threw her arms in the air and said, 'Do you want that regular or first class?'” “Man. I can’t believe you did that twice.” “She’s just lucky she wasn’t wearing a brown house dress that day.” “Why?” “I had packages to mail, too.”
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