The Real OG (Original Gang-up)

I don’t want to say my family originated ganging up, but we might have been the ones who perfected it.

It’s actually a pretty miraculous story when you think of it. A family of six, a nice even number, managed to find the most effective way to make a few members of the family feel out casted.

Of course my parents never bought in. Still, four children found ganging up a frequent pastime.

But there’s more — an unexpected factor: a kindergartener named Geoffrey.

You’d think that sure, there’s still three little girls that would pool their brains together and gang up three-to-two on the guys. Girl Power, yeahhhh.

Nope. I'd like to make it clear that we got smarter with age.

Each week Wade and Geoff, starting when they met on Geoff’s sixth birthday, would recruit a new buddy to be in the gang. Evan was the chosen buddy for 192 weeks in a row.

That always left Dana and me to fend for ourselves. And fend we did not.

Instead, we often tried to barge into the cool club made in Wade’s room. Or lose all dignity by being the servants to the owners of the club — you guessed it, Wade and Geoffrey.

But really and truthfully the cherry on top of this pathetic watered down vanilla sundae was the time Wade and Geoff recruited Geoff’s older brother, Alex, to join the reindeer games.

Alex was, at the time and still is, a 6’3 athlete. On this particular afternoon in 2003, he was drafted to play on the boys’ team of tackle football in our front yard.

(They did give Evan back to Dana and my team, but really what was a fellow 5-foot girl to do in tackle football?)

Here’s where the parentals make an appearance to stop (which is a strong word for what actually happened) the unfair level of ganging up.

My dad said, “Someone’s gonna get hurt.”

That’s all.

A fair warning? Sure. But that’s like telling an addict he should stop for the sake of his health.

We needed to infiltrate the mighty duo. We were competing to join the legendary gang up and not be ganged up upon. We had to prove ourselves Hunger Games style. 

Now, at our respective ages of 25 and 23, ganging up is a thing of the past; we’re the best of buddies, and a few valuable lessons were actually learned from being shunned.

Dana and I are both well-rounded little competitors who understand the value of persistence — even when it literally never works in your favor.

Evan? Well, she isn’t well-rounded at all. 

Go To Branson, Ya Filthy Animals

There’s nothing quite like a family vacation.

Rushing to the airport just in the nick of time Home Alone style.

Packing more toys than clothes… then having to sit on your bag to zip it shut.

Arguing who got the middle bucket seats in the minivan, which was a must for Willsey vacations.

Because we always drove. And we always drove to Branson. I kid you not, we went to Branson every summer for like 10 years in a row.

That’s what a family of six gets. I’ll have one kid to satisfy the grandparents but still be able to take good vacays. Priorities.

But really, nothing beats Branson. Rolling into town after a 4-hour drive and seeing the lights. Oh so many lights on that damn strip – actually, are we sure our parents didn’t take us to Vegas, Dana? Wade? Evan? It would explain so much.

That’s just the first 5 minutes of getting to our destination. It’s only a matter of time till the smell of gas and burning pavement from the go kart tracks burns your nostrils. Followed by the sight of neon golf balls at the million mini-golf courses. Then the ungodly amount of fast-food restaurants in a one-block radius. 

Come to think of it, those were the best white trash vacations I’ve ever been on.

Every trip to Branson started the same way:

We’d put my parent’s 13-inch TV between the driver and passenger seats of our van, and my dad would rig up a way to make it work. The kids bring 10 VCR movies to rotate through. My favorite was always The Lion King minus the scene where (spoiler alert!) Mufasa dies.

We’d strap the white Excargo, full of our duffle bags (note, I do not call it luggage), on the roof of our gorgeous purple van, and leave the humble abode.

Our neighbors in Walden probably hated how we classed up our hood so nicely. We were constantly making them look bad with our luxurious vacationing. How annoying to have your kids begging to join the Willseys on vacation.

It wasn’t the go karts, or the mini-golf or even the Dixie Stampede that had us returning to the mecca year after year. It was the happiest place on earth: Silver Dollar City.

The Disney World of the midwest. 

Ah, Silver Dollar City – the place where your dreams take on a weirdly rustic haze, your waistline goes up a few inches, and most importantly it becomes perfectly acceptable to yell, “Fire in the hole!” whenever you deem necessary.

Moral of the story is that you should book a trip to Branson stat. Or just show up. Yeah, just show up - I think they prefer that. 

A Writer's Life For Me

There are dozens of things that happen in childhood that foreshadow later moments in life.

Some big. Most small.  

Oh your favorite class is reading? You might be an author, your parents think.

You bat both left and right? You’ll play varsity baseball, your coaches think. 

If we used my childhood, I’d be a large fuzzy animal of some sort. Yeah, I was healthily (not weirdly) obsessed with stuffed animals.

I did not, in fact, grow up to be a loveable, huggable, snuggable animal. I’m only 23, so there’s still time.

Instead I found the creative life. Or rather, the creative life found me.

You see, I wasn’t a creative kid.

The stuffed animal in which I was inseparable from was a bear dressed in a duck costume. (Flipping. Adorable.)

You know what I named him? Bearduck. Bear effing duck. I gave him a literal name. One so bad it's like I was repelling creativity. 

The most creative thing of my childhood was the language D, E and I spoke to each other before we knew the widely accepted usage of English. I’d like to say I came up with it, but that’s probably not the case. Plus, in retrospect a.k.a. home videos, we sounded like idiots communicating through the use of grunts and babble.

So no, I absolutely didn’t come up with it.

Even more creative: the way I defended myself. Biting. I bit people. And you know whom I learned that from? Dana. I took my sister’s defense mechanism and used it against her.

Like how obvious: “I bet she’ll never expect this.”

She was an even better biter than I was. We have the home videos to prove it.

.....

Was I a leader growing up? No. We split that job three ways.

Was I creative? No. You should see my pinch pot from art class. Actually you can’t since I’m sure my mom tossed it thinking it was a forgotten ball of hardened clay.

At the time did I think I was good at all things? Yes. And that’s truly how we got here. I could be anything I wanted. My dad said so.

 I chose writer.

 Did signs point this way? Hell to the no. 

 But here I am. So suck it, 7-year-old Amy. I did it without you. 

Mindy, Let's Be Friends

The ever-fabulous Mindy Kaling inspires this post because she’s absolutely splendid.

To start, I love Mindy and in another life, I’d like to be best friends with her. Well, definitely this life too, but I just don’t see that happening.

She’s way too cool/funny/famous/trendy/put together to be friends with me.

She is self-depreciating, which automatically makes someone hilarious. She’s a fabulous writer, which makes a person worth knowing in my mind. She willingly writes great jokes about her curvaceous body and Indian heritage — an unfair combo that leads to sitcoms titled after your moniker.

She’s perfect.

When I think about it, what would we have in common, really? Our foundations are just too different from one another to build a sturdy friendship upon. She’d probably talk to her other cultured friends about how basic I am. I’d talk to my sisters about how jealous I am.

If we’re being honest, which is important so you don’t have people saying hateful things about you, this blog post is about how gypped I feel in life and why I could never have a show titled, “The Amy Project.”

To start I am a middle class, white, 23-year-old woman in the smack dab center of the country working 40 hours a week, living with my parents who I shamelessly refer to as my roomies.  

It actually doesn’t get more stereotypical for a millennial. I bet 25 million people in America are in the exact same boat as I am. Let’s be friends. Not all of you. But I could use 100,000 more people in my corner.

We’ll talk. 

To make matters even worse, I’m also one of those people that runs for fun. (Actually in recent years I do this just sometimes, mostly if the hawt buff guys are up in the gym working on their fitness, ya know?)

Regardless, it’s in writing, which makes it true. I run for fun. I RUN FOR FUN. You can’t make me take it back. (If you’d like to end our friendship right now based on that statement alone, I understand. I predict my new friend pool just dropped by approximately 72,000.)

Something that might make Mindy consider my friendship: I started my workday by listening to Anaconda by Nicki Minaj, and it wasn’t on the way to work but rather at work. Take that, corporate world. Take that.

So overall, I have one thing to contribute to this fictional friendship — terrible taste in music.

I have a weird inkling she just might like that quality.

*Ordering best friend necklaces now*

A Royal Thank You

“Is this real life?”

I couldn't tell you how many times I heard that this postseason.

It was real life, and it was worth the 29 years. Ask anyone.

The question was asked continuously, and I think we all understand the reason.

The 2014 Royals baseball team seemed to be something that’s made up for an underdog movie, played on the big screen and acclaimed at the Academy Awards.

It was something so wonderful it could only have happened in Hollywood, right?

Wrong. It happened in the middle of the country in a place called Kansas City, Missouri.

It was real.

I want to thank the KC Royals for showing me what a real underdog drive looks like.

I’m used to rooting for the unfavored team, but I’m not used to getting an extra 15 games in the postseason.

For that, I thank you, Royals.

Thank you for giving Kansas City something to believe in.

Thank you for bringing baseball back to a city that needed it.

Thank you for showing us what speed do.  

Mostly though, thank you for showing so many of us our first postseason. 

To kids, you’re an inspiration. To baseball, you’re a story to be told. To the fans, a forever memory.

So for those of you asking if this is real life. The answer is yes.

Is it 1985?

No, it’s 2014 and this city is damn proud.