I Don't Know What You Know Me From: Confessions of a Co-Star Read Online Free PDF Page A

suing for all my lost wages.
    She would hide Christmas presents so well she would forget about them until she found them months/years later. Which wassomewhat disappointing on Christmas Day, but fun when they turned up after the fact.
    I’m sure all the craziness was what made my dad love her so much. There was never a dull moment, and for an engineer that’s pretty awesome. If I didn’t come home from school to find her in a power suit, heels, and rubber gloves pulling panty hose out of my dog’s asshole, I might find a new baby grand piano in what used to be the family room but was now the music room. She’s never been able to figure out how to turn on the TV or watch a DVD, but she can run an entire hospital, go to college, and find time to hit up T.J.Maxx on the way home. I admire her selflessness, energy, and positivity, and as a stepmom I hope I have some of those same traits.
    She is not shy about rewarding herself for goals accomplished, and one year, when I was very young, I remember she bought herself a mink coat. I know it’s not PC now to have fur, but it was four thousand degrees below zero in Detroit in the winter, and fur really is the warmest. I have such a vivid memory of riding home at night with my parents: it would be past my bedtime, and I would fall asleep on my mom’s lap, my face buried in her mink coat. I know, I know, you can’t let kids ride on your lap anymore, but back then it was different. I would always wake up as we pulled in to our driveway but pretend I was still sleeping, hoping that my parents wouldn’t want to wake me and I could stay like that all night. Warm, my mom’s arms holding me tight, smelling her perfume, and feeling the soft fur of her jacket all over my face. I have that mink coat now. I don’t wear it often, I don’t need to in L.A., and I worry about having an activist throw paint on me, but when I’m feeling especially Mollie-sick, I will get it out of my closet and bury my face in it. It takes me immediately back to those nights in the car with her when I felt so safe and loved. Even if I was a fender bender away from being launched out the front windshield, I wouldn’t trade those car rides on my mom’s lap for anything.

Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better
    IN FOURTH-ISH GRADE I WAS TAKING BALLET CLASSES , and I seemed to be getting serious about it. I don’t remember exactly why my parents pulled me out of Miss Bunny’s School of Dance, which was conveniently located a few miles away from our house, or if they even wanted to, but they started driving me twenty-plus minutes out of the way to the Milligan School of Ballet. And for some reason, it was decided that dance was my thing.
    See, all kids had a thing, and I didn’t have a thing yet. I wasn’t sporty—I tried soccer once, it wasn’t good. I was resentful that I had to miss morning cartoons on Saturdays. It was cold outside on those fall mornings, and I really wanted to just be home and cozy up in front of the TV while my mom made pancakes. Also, my dad was the assistant coach, which ensured that we fought a lot about soccer. I didn’t want to do it, but he made me stick the season out, and then I quit.
    Then there were the instruments, piano and flute to be specific. My mom was obsessed with a boy I went to grade school with, Tony Bonamici (he goes by Anthony now, or at least on the Internet he does), and he was a child piano prodigy when wewere seven. I couldn’t compete with that! But my mom was convinced that if I practiced more, I could play like Tony. I didn’t practice, because I knew I’d never play like that kid. I don’t care what Malcolm Gladwell says about ten thousand hours; if I practiced thirty thousand hours, I
still
wouldn’t play like Tony. He had music in his soul. I just liked listening to my Madonna records, and practicing the piano really cut into that time for me.
    There were art classes, ice-skating, swimming lessons, and I think I even signed up for hockey at one