Have you met my parents?  They’re great people, aren’t they?  I look back fondly at my childhood and all the things they provided for me and the love they gave me.  

That being said…some things are just unforgivable — and NOT forgotten.

If you ever look through my childhood artwork/stories, you might notice my signature on them, written adorably in sloppy kid handwriting: “Allison Michelle Arnone.”  One would assume, then, that this is my full name, exactly how it appears on my birth certificate.  

Well, you’d be wrong.  My parents didn’t give me a middle name.  You might be thinking, well maybe they’re not ‘middle name-type people’… but they both have middle names, and gave my older brother one.  What the hell, guys??  Do you realize how traumatic this is for a kid?  To this day I always have to leave the “Middle Name” section on applications and important documents blank, and when everyone has that “what’s your middle name?  Is it embarrassing?” conversation, I sit there, quietly and ashamed.  I also always get the strangest reaction from people when they find out.  You don’t have a middle name?  Well…why not?  Do your parents not love you?  (OK, fine, they don’t say that last part).  When I ask my parents why they made this terrible decision, they say, “nothing sounded good with Allison.”

Well, mom and dad, I think Michelle goes quite nicely.  So I disregarded their wishes to have me remain as “Double A,” and started using it.

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I guess I have to talk about the lazy eye, right?  I mean — is it directly my parents fault that I had one?  If you include a little thing called “genetics,” then, yes.  When I was younger, my parents noticed that my left eye would often wander (LOL), drifting off into a world of its own.  They wouldn’t allow their daughter to grow up with this freakish quality, so I was taken to an eye doctor immediately.  The solution?  Glasses.  Oh, and an eye patch.

Seriously?  There is NO other way to fix this problem?  I have to become a five year old pirate?  To make matters worse, I had to do exercises at home to strengthen poor ol’ lefty lazy, and needed to wear these red and green 3D-looking glasses when I watched TV.  If this isn’t child abuse, then I don’t know what is.  

I wish I could tell you I am completely cured, but thanks to very thoughtful and lovely friends and family (sarcasm) I get reminded every time the lazy eye makes an appearance.  For the most part, the eye behaves itself, but every once in a while it resurfaces… it’s sort of like the Loch Ness monster.  

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The last two unforgivable childhood memories belong to you, ma.

As a child of the 80s, I, like everyone else, had bangs.  Long, thick bangs that started towards the back of my scalp and went straight down to my eyeballs.  My hair grows like a weed, so I frequently needed to trim them.  When we couldn’t get to a salon, my mother would attempt to do this on her own.  Sure, there were some times where they were a bit too short, and perhaps uneven.

But one day she used an electric razor (why, I don’t know) to cut my bangs, and instead….SHAVED MY EYEBROW OFF.  So here I am, an elementary school student with butchered bangs and who looks like a gang member. 

I’m going to leave it at that, and move on.

Lastly, I leave you with another Sue Arnone gem: the time she made me dress up as a cowgirl for Halloween at school.  I reaaaaaaaaaaaally didn’t want to be a cowgirl, and we fought all morning on the subject.  If I had to dress as one, however, I wanted to be the most subdued cowgirl the Wild West had ever seen.  Instead, my mother laid it on thick — flannel shirt, denim skirt, cowboy boots, PIGTAIL BRAIDS (good God, woman!), and a handkerchief around my neck.  I felt like a complete and utter asshole, and went to school crying.  I stood on the line with the other kids waiting to go into the classroom, and I’ll never forget this…a boy in my class looked at my pathetic crying face and said, “what happened, did you lose your horse?”

JERK.

But don’t worry Tom and Sue, I still love you guys.