DRAMA QUEEN FOR A DAY
Our 3 painful stories

just when we started feeling sorry for ourselves again, in came this month's Drama Queen submissions, reminding us that our lives are really pretty calm and uneventful. After hours of pulling out our hair, we managed to narrow it down to the three worst tales from parenting hell. They may sound like cock-and-bull stories to you, but our contestants assure us that they are real. Tell us which contestant you think deserves the right to place the sparkling crown of jewels on her dirty, knotted head of hair. Register your vote no later than 6 p.m. PDT on Wednesday, Aug. 6. The winner will be announced Friday, Aug. 8, and will be treated to a free housecleaning session, courtesy of Merry Maids and Mothers Who Think.

there are many charming advantages to living out here in the Wild West. Beautiful sunsets, eccentric characters named Chester, closeness to all things wild and beautiful. But I must draw the line at large bovine creatures that wander freely wherever they please. I occasionally shooed away the stray steer nosing around in my petunias. It is part and parcel of living in ranch land. But my sanity was tested (I believe I failed) when an enormous bull came calling in my backyard. "Mom, there's a realllllly big bull in the yard and you should see his nuts," my shy and retiring 12-year-old yelled one day.

By golly, they were very big. I went out with my broom and assumed my usual pioneer woman stance and said, "Shoo, there, shoo!" He responded by charging very quickly in my direction. I lost the broom in my eagerness to enter the house. The bull blew snot all over the windows looking into my kitchen. This was bad. I called the husband, who promptly assigned the bull chasing task to my boys, ages 12 and 11. The boys charged up the stairs to "get stuff" while I pounded on the windows and yelled very bad words. Soon, my angels were scrambling downstairs, BB-guns cocked, plastic swords waving, handcuffs (why, I still don't know) stuffed in their pockets. "Don't worry, Mom, we'll take care of this!" I felt like the mom in "Ol' Yeller."

They dashed out the back door and I stood by the window, distracting Mr. Big Balls. Soon, I could see the boys cautiously moving up behind the beast. My heart was in my throat. This was really stupid, they are so little, my babies! Suddenly, with a strangled war whoop, they let fly a barrage of BBs into the offending bovine's butt. The bull bellowed, jumped straight up three feet, whirled around and charged my boys! That is when that blind motherly instinct hooked me under the armpits and moved me. I grabbed the nearest item, a blender, and dashed out to protect my young. I ran up and conked the bull right on the noggin with my grandmother's 1946 Oster three-speed blender. He stopped, turned around and faced me. Unflinching (do you think Demi Moore could play me in the movie?), I hit him again. He took off like a shot. Through my flowers, through the fence ($259 repair) and away. I never saw his big balls again. Best of all, my boys have a high regard for my bravery and they know not to mess with me, especially when I am whipping up some milk shakes in my Bovine Blaster.

the day began like many others: I burned the toast and had to make cocoa with water because I had forgotten to get milk. Raccoons had been in the trash again, and garbage was scattered all across the driveway. My daughter was in the midst of an intense love affair with an oversized black sweat shirt, which I had just thrown in the washer, so she sat naked on the couch, howling for 20 minutes because she didn't have anything to wear. To maintain my sanity, I went out in my nightgown and lurched around the driveway picking up egg shells and parts of old coffee filters, spouting obscenities about the evils of raccoons.

Soon thereafter my daughter forgot about the sweat shirt and was happily dressing for a visit to her best friend next door. As I buttoned her coat, she clutched me and whispered, "Pleeeease walk me, Mom. I'm afraid of the chicken."

The chicken. Our neighbors had chickens, free-ranging things that hung around in the woods, foraging and lounging. They also had a rooster who hid himself in the weeds, behind trees and even in the far garden until an unsuspecting person came upon him. He would then explode from his lair, a blur of black and white feathers, his red comb quivering with rage. "He is creepy," I said to my daughter. "I'll just walk you over there."

A well-worn trail runs from our house to the neighbors. It winds through a few trees and past their chicken house and fades into the beginning of their yard. Broken branches lie all along the trail, and I picked up a sturdy-looking one. "See," I laughed to my daughter as we trudged along, "now I have a stick. He's only a chicken, what can he do?"

We were almost through the woods when I heard a brushy little rustling noise. I turned to push my daughter behind me when out of the brush, hell-bent for leather, came the rooster. He seemed enormous, flapping his wings wildly and charging straight toward us, his beady eyes fixed on me.

"Hey!" I shouted, lunging and sweeping my stick in front of me. He did not stop, did not even seem to notice the stick, so I assumed a fighting stance and swung for all I was worth. The connection was monumental: The rooster spun lazily into the air, hit the ground and was on me in an instant. Wings back, claws extended, he was like some prehistoric mega-chicken on a killing mission. His talons sank through my coat and my jeans, going deep into my upper thigh. I could hear myself making gargling, subhuman sounds as we flailed and spun and tore about the yard. I didn't want to touch him, but he was on me, so I finally grabbed his stupid little head and squeezed. Stunned, he let loose and disappeared into the woods.

"I told you, mom!" my daughter wailed as we raced for the safety of our own yard. "I told you he was scary." My pants were torn and bloody, and my whole leg felt like it was on fire. "For God's sake," I muttered as I limped into the house, "he's only a chicken."

That afternoon I sat on the couch, a bag of frozen peas on my wounds, folding laundry and plotting revenge. As I matched socks and rolled them into balls, dark scenes of vengeance from a movie we were watching, "The Lonesome Dove," whirled in my mind and by suppertime (leftover chicken!), my plan was complete.

I found a big piece of cardboard. Across the top I scrawled "DEAD BY SUNSET OR ELSE!" Beneath that, my husband drew a rooster, hanging from a tree, with the sun setting in the distance. I drove over to my neighbors (figuring even that maniac bird couldn't get me in my car) and tacked my sign to their door. Early the next morning, our phone rang. "Mornin' ma'am," my neighbor drawled. "I don't wanna upset the girls, so yew should git yerself down to the path. I left somethin' there for ya."

Hurrying down the drive, I could see that something was hanging from one of our trees. There, swinging from an elaborate noose, was my nemesis. The coiled rope looked huge around his scrawny neck; he moved with the breeze like a feather duster.

"Whoohoo!" I shouted, tapping him lightly. "His fightin' days are over." At my touch, he twirled slightly, and I realized I was staring at true justice. Tied to that rooster was this crudely lettered sign: "AtTacKed A WomAn."

i truly believe that God is fair, so it is only fitting that the week after I gave birth to my first child was as hellish as the birth experience was sweet. Julia came into our lives on an epidural/Demerol cloud. My three best (childless) girlfriends watched, supplying my husband with bourbon from a flask while I pushed for less than 10 minutes and brought forth a beautiful little girl with two-inch eyelashes. In the hospital, she slept, I ate pancakes, bragged that postpartum was less painful than post-horseback ride and all was well. Until we got home.

She screamed, my nipples bled, my husband committed innumerable crimes that could only be detected by me. But I had carefully planned for postpartum misery. During those months of bed rest, I had foreseen the possibility that I might need an escape. So exactly one week after my daughter's birth, when I was able to shower and dress, I waved goodbye to my husband and drove off to my scheduled doctor's appointment. I was on my way to meet my shrink, who could once again prescribe for me the drugs that were forbidden during the little screaming darling's gestation. Oh, I was so happy pulling out of the driveway. It was the day before Christmas Eve.

When I arrived at the doctor's office, I was already awash with the strange panic that I now know accompanies every mother in some degree each time she leaves her infant. The nurse took my name and said, "Your husband has phoned and wants you to call home immediately." The room spun, my knees were weak and my stomach had that sick feeling akin to drinking four Long Island Iced Teas. My baby was dead. Tears rolled down my fat postpartum cheeks as I dialed home.

The baby was alive, but the dog had been hit by a car and limped off into the woods, and my husband had given chase, collapsing in the street with an asthma attack. True, my husband sounded very weak on the phone after having injected himself with his emergency epinephrine, and he paused once to vomit while asking me to come home and look for the dog, but I was on top of the world -- it was only the dog!

I drove home and canvassed three square miles, telling each neighbor to be on the lookout for our limping mutt. At dusk I went home to a nauseous husband and a still-screaming infant. Within an hour, both the infant and the husband were asleep. The next morning, Christmas Eve, the dog was found in our neighbor's yard. The dog was operated on that day, not for any injury incurred in the car accident, but to remove a nail that she ingested some time earlier. If she hadn't been hit by the car, we never would have found the nail that would have killed the dog. Unfortunately, the dog was also injured in the car accident: She almost bit off a quarter of her tongue. We spent Christmas Eve, me nursing the baby and my husband nursing the dog's stitches and sore tongue. Late that evening I found a piece of pink flesh on the sofa and had to ask my husband, "Is that the dog's tongue or the baby's umbilical cord?" It was the tongue. The cord came off later that night. It was a long week.
July 30, 1997

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