Flashback - 1986

While looking for prom pictures, I found this little gem:

That's my mom, my dad, and my assy youngest brother. He's great now, but when this picture was taken (around 1986, he was about 9), the kid was a top notch a-hole.

So let's start with him. It was about this time that he earned the nickname "Gourd Head" because - well, look at his fucking head! It is enormous and round and very Charlie Brown-esque. He is the Great Pumpkin. Lucky for him, his body grew into that giant planetoid.  I can only assume this is during his Don Johnson/Miami Vice phase, which would explain why a 9 year old is wearing a shirt unbuttoned to his waist. This phase preceded the White Rapper Phase (more Vanilla Ice, less Eminem), the Grateful Dead Phase (which coincided nicely with the Stoned All the Time Phase), and the Tattoo & Piercing Phase. I obviously snapped the photo before they were ready, because he is sneering and my mom is...

WTF is my mom doing? She has her hands out, palms up, lips pursed. Which means my brother and I are probably arguing, and my mom is saying "Just take the goddamn picture, Kelly Marie!" We'll not even discuss the frosted and feathered hair, because I am too distracted by the shiny purple pantsuit. What is that material? Sealskin? Whatever it is, it is so slick she is about to slide right off that fugly chair, which was some sort of corduroy/chenille hybrid. Like if your favorite blankie ate your favorite pair of Tuffskins and shat it out, and it anchored itself with enormous, shellacked, gold rimmed wooden posts - it would be that chair.

My dad looks pretty normal, even though he is flashing his butt-white chicken legs. My dad was part American Indian - the top part. His face, arms, chest and back would get the deepest, darkest brown, but his poor little legs stuck out like two q-tips. He is sporting the ever-present Marlboro, and the ashtray (on a stand!) is nearby. Please note the spittoon on the floor. To my knowledge, it was only a 'decorative' spittoon, and not used for actual spit.

Hanging on the wall above them is a dreamcatcher, that I'm pretty sure my mom made. It was made of - what the hell, I don't know. I don't know what it was about the era that made them manufactured materials that defy description. But it was...fluffy? Sproingy? Kind of like cushion stuffing. It is flanked by some American Indian plaster wall hangings my mom painted (did we have a fuck ton of those!). One of her finest works is seen to the right of the chair on the floor.

That's The Chief. Hours of painstaking labor went into painting him. Honestly, my mom could have had a career with The Franklin Mint, handcrafting fine collectibles. Statues, wall hangings, figurines - my mom was into unfinished pottery before paint your own was cool. The Chief was a masterpiece, and by his presence on the floor I can only assume he eventually got taken out by the vacuum cleaner or peed on by the dog.

And yes, that is a macrame plant holder hanging from the ceiling. My mom (God, she's crafty!) spent hours sitting on the floor, polyester yarn looped around her big toe, macrame-ing every size and shape of plant hanger imaginable. I know for a fact she still has all her macrame supplies in a foot locker in the attic, just waiting for it to come back into fashion. Macrame hung in my parents' house until at least the mid-90s, which was also around the same time they finally admitted that maybe CDs were going to replace cassette tapes, after all.

It is unfortunate that the wagon wheel coffee table is out of the frame in this picture, because it was the cornerstone of the whole design scheme. The best part of the table is that my parents never got a piece of glass to put on the top. So, not only was it the ugliest coffee table ever, it was also completely unusable. It was always fun to see people come to our house for the first time and try to set a glass down. Hahaha! Joke's on you! No glass!

I miss you, dumb pointless coffee table! I miss you, 1986!

(Also, please go vote at Circle of Moms - click on the thumbs up by SFC. Thank you, you are awesome.)