Purple Golf Cart: The Misadventures of a Lesbian Grandma Read Online Free PDF Page A

such a great personality.” Personality?? Screw personality! I wanted to be pretty or handsome or beautiful, too. But I wasn’t. I was an overweight tomboy with a great personality. Swell.
     
    My brother Lenny and youngest sister Bebe shared the other upstairs bedroom. Our parents’ bedroom was on the opposite side of the house but we were only as far away from them as the intercom system through which they could hear our every word. Sherry and I quickly figured out how to muffle the intercom with towels, and then we’d practice the few four-letter words we knew.
     
    Sherry, two years younger than I, was terribly annoying at times. In the early mornings before I awoke, Sher would get out of her bed, climb into mine, and put her nose almost, but not quite, on top of my nose, with her big eyes open wide and a giant grin on her face. Her breathe always woke me up. “AHHHhhhhhhh!!!!” I’d holler, startled but not frightened, because she did this nearly every day. Or if I had a black-and-blue mark on my leg or arm, Sher would push into it with her index finger and ever-so-innocently ask, “Does that hurt?” Cute. And she always won the fart and burp contests we had when adults weren’t around. In fact, she still does!
     
    Len is five years younger than I. He was a genius at creative problem-solving. For example, when he was about nine years old, he had fallen off his bike. The gash on his leg was quite large and bleeding rather profusely. He ran into the house for assistance but when no one was immediately available he went into the bathroom to look for a bandage. He found my box of Kotex, the old kind with the long tail on either end that fit into those  hooks attached to the skinny elastic straps. He wrapped the Kotex around his leg and tied the tails. Voila! Satisfied with his bandage, he went back out on his bike. My friends and I were sitting on a nearby street corner in our neighborhood, singing the words from the current Hit Parade magazine, when Len peddled by, his leg neatly wrapped in my Kotex. I was mortified!
     
    Bebe, seven years younger than I, was a terrible eater. She hated almost all food except eggs and hot dogs. Her method of operation was to chew her food when our parents were watching, then spit the mouthful into a napkin when they were not. She’d hide the napkin in a shoebox in her bedroom closet. I recently asked her whatever happened to that shoebox full of half-chewed food. She said, “Gee, I don’t know. Hamsters? Cockroaches? I don’t know.” Ick!
     
    My father worked for years as a manager in a paint and hardware store in Hollywood, Florida, then started his own wholesale hardware company called LebCo. (Had he been a visionary kind of guy, we might have become Home Depot. I have forgiven him this oversight.) He worked six days a week but always made time to toss a ball or swim in the pool with us kids in the evenings. I remember one Saturday evening when I had a pool party at our house. About twelve of my high school friends were there, playing in the pool, sliding down the curly-q slide, diving from the board, or floating on the inflatable rafts. My father, wanting to know what was going on in the pool lest there be something inappropriate amongst the teen set, decided that my party was the perfect time to clean the tiles that surrounded the pool at water level. That, of course, required his getting into the pool. I was both embarrassed and furious with him, but my father was a favorite with my friends, and ultimately, as usual, he became the life of the party.
     
    I was tremendously excited about going away to the University of Florida in Gainesville in 1965, but my father had serious separation anxiety. My mother, though, championed my leaving, perhaps because she so clearly remembered not being able to go to college herself. My father wanted me to stay home and go to Miami-Dade Community College (You don’t want to go there. You want to go here), especially since Playboy