No Box, No Bow - Speaking The Truth, Uncle Mario-Style

Why do we place unfortunate, tragic, crazy, hurtful, horrific situations that happen in our lives as well as to others in a pretty box tied with a silk bow on it? Why???? These types of questions keep up me at night searching for answers, but it never comes.

Let me give you an example of what I’m getting at it. A 23-year-old guy covered in tattoos from head to toe, nose rings the size of your kid’s hula-hoop, eyebrows altered with a permanent surprise look on his face, is serving you and your children ice cream.

What do you say to your kids? Right. Here comes your box-and-bow explanation to your children, “He’s expressing himself, in an artful way," or “He has problems."

I’m going to share with you pure-persuasive-speaking at its perfection from a person who never minced words, the word-master, my hero, Uncle Mario. If Uncle Mario were alive and this kid served him ice cream there would be no box, no bow, here’s how Uncle Mario would have handled this kid, he would have simply said,  “Kid. Come here, Kid! Closeah, closeah! I got somethin' I wanta to say to you and I want to make sure ya hear me. Capice?”

This kid would have moved fast, really fast, and gotten so close to my uncle’s Roman nose that he would have had to hold his breath until Uncle Mario was finished with him from fear.

Then from nowhere, bada bing, bada boom, Uncle Mario would have grabbed one of this kid’s hoop earnings, slap him upside the head and say, “What’s the mattah with you? What? You’ve got rocks in your head. What are ya, stunad? Here, I’ll give you a 50 for the ice cream cones, keep the change and give it to your mother. She’s gonna need it to buy the suit you’ll be buried in next year from all the drugs ya doing.” No box, no bow. RIP, Uncle Mario, RIP.

You may have guessed by now, but I do have a little bit of Uncle Mario in me when it comes to my words, the rest, yup, is pure me. Okay, sorry I digressed. So, I am at a wake recently standing in line in the funeral home waiting to pay my final respects, and I hear a few of my friends from behind me commenting on how good our dead mother’s friend looks.

Here’s what I heard:

“Kris … she has not looked this good in years,” Amy says. “I know. The only thing is her blouse; it doesn’t match with her new skin tone,” says Amy. “Right, but look how much weight she lost and Lara (the dead woman’s daughter and our mutual friend) remembered to put her Coach Bag on her chest. How thoughtful,” Kris says. If that were not enough, they said in unison, “She’s at peace now, she went fast and did not suffer.”

Me, no box, now bow. Here I go … Uncle Mario-style (I couldn’t help myself, I tried - please know that in your hearts before you read on). I turned around and said to Amy and Kris, whom I’ve known since high school, “How else is she going to look? She’s got formaldehyde pumped into her body making her wrinkles and every-thing else that physically and mentally defined her, the bad and ugly, in life disappear, poof - magic, with only five injections and no follow-up appointments."

If that were not enough, I had to add more of my opinions by saying to them, “How do the two of you know she’s at peace???? Maybe she’s somewhere in the afterlife right now being tormented for the way she treated her friends, family and strangers in life,” I said.

“You know, like dirt, like the dirt that will soon cover her snow-white couch with wheels. She did not suffer, that’s true, but that witch in the box with a bow on it made everyone else suffer. She brought grown men to their knees in tears. Her blouse, the one that does not match her 'new color?'

"I gave that blouse to Lara (the dead mother’s daughter, our friend) for her birthday, and now look where it ends up; on her mother’s neatly starched body to match her precise sewn lips, I want to rip that shirt right off her, when it’s my turn to say goodbye to that hag,” I said.

When I kneeled down on the rollaway steps in front of the box, I looked at my dead friend’s mother and all I could think of was Formaldehyde!! Formaldehyde, Shamaldeyde! Yeah, of course she looks good. Apparently formaldehyde worked well in her system, me not so much.

I left that funeral home in tears because of my experience with formaldehyde. I cried so much walking to my car, three elderly women came up to me and said, “Dear, it’s going to be okay. It’s part of life, we live, and we die."

I wanted to shout at them “It’s not that dead witch I’m crying over. Look at my hair, right? What hair? I barely have any on my head and she still has a long crop that’s being buried with her. Where’s the justice?”

I’m coming clean with my hair and my formaldehyde story with you today. Here’s the truth. Perhaps some you saw me sporting long hair for a while walking on Main Street and I may have told you that I had hair extensions put in “just because.” Yeah, that was a lie.

The truth is my hair was finally growing out after nine brutal-months of looking terrible and because of my Italianism when my hair gets long it becomes thick and bushy as well as extends out and straight up in many places, like a broken fan during a hot summer day—not very attractive, especially given my new single status.

That said I went to the local pharmacy one night and grabbed a hair straighter product, give me a break it was sitting right next to the shampoo. I swear it was next to the hair conditioners.

I brought it home, who has time to read labels, I thought it was a conditioner, so I saturated my head with the product, and 15 minutes later, bada bing, bada boom I washed my hair in the sink and when I looked down at the drain my hair fell off, not just fell off, but in spotted clumps … to be continued.