Amusements for children

I've been on the phone with my mother, picking her brain for ideas for my next column, in which I think I'll tell stories about how she used to take all the neighborhood children for big days out in Wilmington and Myrtle Beach, an hour from Shallotte north and south respectively.

We started talking about Magic Harbor in South Myrtle Beach, where we had great times in the 80s. It closed many years ago, so I did some Google research and found it on a site dedicated to defunct amusement parks. In the process, I think I've uncovered the source of many nightmares -- if not from the history of the park, at least from the photo used on the promotional literature.



Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Magic Harbor of my youth.

Are we compatible?

I have found, over the past six years, that people either love or hate this animation clip.


Watch More Videos Uploaded by www.bebo.com/YaManicKill

Did it leave you gasping for air, scratching your head or actively disgusted?

Reasons to be happy you're an old

I was talking to my friend since high school about her 12-year-old son, whose birth I was there for when I was still a club girl. Ok, that's only technically true: I went to the hospital around 9 p.m. on New Year's Eve 1996, dressed in my black fetish clothes before club time and hung out in her room for a while. Her husband, who shares my last name but is not related to me, held her hand and watched the monitor as her contractions intensified. The doctor came in to give her an epidural and I stepped out. The scream I heard from inside that room as that needle was applied scared me more than any horror movie I've ever seen, and I fled and went to the club to ring in the new year, returning at mid-day to introduce myself to the world's newest Frink.

Anyhoo, we were talking about how handsome the boy has become and the awkwardness he's going through during his adolescence. She said his voice is starting to break and that he's mortified.

"Yeah?," I said, "At least he doesn't have to get a period."

"Thank you!," my friend replied.

It's not that we didn't have sympathy for the boy, as adolescence is hard enough on everyone and we want to protect the little ones.

But come on, people. Getting a first period is worse than anything any boy could ever go through: including the boy I knew our freshman year in high school who was the drum major in the marching band and whose voice broke audibly on the football field during "Atten-hut!" That "hut" went right up the music scale, off the charts and into the stratosphere, resulting in the band falling out laughing. And the band was made up of huge geeks: I played last-chair flute.

That's nothing. There is nothing in the world that is worse than being an adolescent girl, feeling gawky, awkward and insecure about every aspect of her life, greeting good old painful Aunt Flo for the first time.

I was onstage in my leotards, ballet shoes and my first perm, dancing to "Ice Castles" in a recital when she came around for the first time. I also went on, as it was the 80s, to experience the horror of the white-pants-with-a-jacket-around-the-waist-at-school thing.

I'd like to say those incidents made me stronger; perhaps they did because only now, 20+ years later, I can laugh about them as a rite of passage. But good lord, I'm glad they're behind me and I never have to go through them (or bad skin, perms or mean redneck girls) again.

Friends of LA, tell me about your awkward coming-of-womanhood (or manhood) moments. Post anonymously if it gives you more boldness. :)

Egyptian lover baby

So Mr. Sweetypants is en route to Cairo. We've sung about this trip all week.

Steve, having grown up in the United Kingdom with two-tone, in a land where Madness were known for more than "Our House," has been singing "Night Boat to Cairo."



I, having Robert Smith to thank for getting me through my angst when I was a frustrated young weirdo, contributed to our medley by waiting for breaks in his verse to sing (loudly), "f-i-r-e-i-n-c-a-i-r-o are are are oh!"



We kid ourselves and think we are the cleverest songsters in the world with our daily arias. But it's silly and pointless to debate over those two songs, because, clearly, the greatest song ever written about Egypt was released when I was an underaged club girl. So I declare a truce as I take time out to curl and tease my perm and squeeze into my mini-skirt.

Steve and Lee Lee make a copyright infringement video

M-------, if you ever stumble on this post, please remember that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. And please remember that I was the girl dressed in black writing diary entries about how you were a poet and the voice of my people 20 years ago. I still heart you! In fact, I heart you so much that when you threw a temper-tantrum at an audience member and stormed off stage half an hour into the one show I ever got to attend, I didn't join the petition for a refund. I knew I had experienced the best of your legend. It was bitchy and awesome. So please don't sue me.

----

Mr. Sweetypants and I are quite comfortable being the two biggest dorks in the world. Here's our one and only hope for a VMA. It was shot in the stinging cold English rain at Brighton on a cell phone in 2006 and edited in the Sony Vega program Mr. Sweetypants figured out how to use in 15 minutes.

I decided to contribute to the gritty footage and nature of the song by being too tired and hungover to put on makeup. Method acting is the only acting. :)

Brighton Beach

I prefer cats, but I am an Atomic Dog person

I was dreading sweeping leaves from the back deck and walkway, but this song popped up in my iPod, and it put the spring in my sweep. Seriously, I was an old, awkward white lady version of Turbo in the broom scene from "Breakin'."

This song will always remind me of Jo-el Johnson's boombox on our GT class trip to Raleigh from Shallotte when I was in 8th grade. And it will always make me bounce.

Have a fantastic weekend-



George Clinton Atomic Dog Street via Noolmusic.com

Upside down boys

Today's Raleigh N&O column is about why I don't have children. I figure nobody can fuss at me about it like my Grandma Tommie did in the last thing she said to me, knowing it was me, before she died 11 years ago. I was just sitting there, minding my own business on Christmas day when she suddenly snapped out of her Alzheimer's dementia into total lucidity, looked directly at me, and yelled, "You're too selfish to have young'uns!"

Have a fantastic Tuesday. (Sorry about the line breaks, can't seem to fix them.)

Happy to be a world-class aunt

News & Observer, The (Raleigh, NC) - Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Author: Leigh Ann Frink, Correspondent

I consider myself a fairly private person, and I am not prone to personal confessions, but

I get asked sometimes why I don't have children.

It's an awkward conversation, but I'm going to just go ahead and put it out here in this

column to answer it once and for all.

It's not in my control; it's genetic.

Somehow, when my parents' DNA came together to create mine, the chromosome that

causes maternal instinct got left off the double helix.

All differently abled people have skills and propensities that make up for their

shortcomings. Think of the theoretical physicist who doesn't get the punch line of a

knock-knock joke or the copy editor who breaks out in hives when faced with the

simplest algebraic equation. I can't begin to imagine what it's like to be a parent, yet I am

the World's Second-Greatest Aunt (my aunt Jo is the first).

This superhuman ability came as a complete surprise to me. Now that I'm making

confessions, I have to say that when my sister, Jill, called to say she was expecting, I

went into mourning over the loss of my favorite party buddy to this "motherhood" thing I

couldn't comprehend, and I resented this imposition into my social life.

But when my sister laid baby Joshua in my arms, my heart nearly exploded. As I gazed

on his beautiful face, I promised him I would give him both my kidneys if he ever needed

them.

Jill and her family moved to Asheville when Josh was six months old; Banyan was born

a year later. I was burning up I-40 every couple of months to hang out, not with my

sister, but with my two little buddies. Aside from stinky-britches time, when I'd run

squealing from the room, I was all about playing with my littles.

We'd roll around the floor wrestling and making monster sounds. I'd toss them in the air

then pick them up by the ankles to let them be Upside-Down Boy. I'd tickle them and

make rude sounds blowing on their bellies as they shrieked with delight.

Without fail, I'd wear them out, and my sister would come in to announce it was their

bedtime. They'd start wailing and I'd raise my arms, announcing, "Thank you, I'm out of

here!" and retreat back to my hotel. Piece of cake, I thought, all I have to do is be the

cool one and they'll love me.

So when Joshua turned 4, I brought him to Raleigh for a weekend of "Lilo and Stitch,"

the dinosaur museum downtown and the teddy-bear-building store at the mall.

"Aunt Lee Lee?" he asked as we drove down I-40, "are you my mommy's sister?"

"Yes, buddy, I am. Just like Banyan is your brother."

He thought about that for a while before deducing, "You and Mommy have another

sister. She lives in heaven."

It was the first time I had heard him speak of my sister, who died before he was born.

As the tears started to stream down my face over the pure, unadulterated sweetness of

that moment, I felt the searing, almost painful heat of a love I didn't know I was capable

of feeling.

I just wanted to wrap that little boy in safety and comfort and make sure he never, ever

had to feel pain. I wanted to make sure he had ice cream for every meal and Disney movies playing on a nonstop loop all around him.

I wanted to give him a pet unicorn that could fly over rainbows. I wanted to mortgage my

house, max out my credit cards and buy every candy bar in the world so he could have

the golden ticket and live in the chocolate factory with the happy Oompa-Loompas. I

realized at that moment that I would give anything and everything to keep sadness from

coming anywhere near that precious little boy.

Joshua's 10 now and Banyan is 8. I can't lift them and play Upside-Down Boy anymore,

but they know they can count on Aunt Lee Lee for a fun time. And I know that I would

do anything in the world to protect them, make them feel happy, safe and loved, then

give them back to their mama when they're cranky and ready for bed.

: Final

Section: Life

Page: D1

Column: Our Lives

Record Number: ka5qoo89

Copyright 2008 by The News & Observer Pub. Co.

Point, Counterpoint with Mr. Sweetypants

I’ve been slack lately on this blog. Between the election and coming up with an original column for the paper guaranteed to offend nobody, I’ve just really been drained.

Today, I thought I’d try something different. I’ve invited the smartest, funniest person I know, whose razor-sharp wit keeps me on my toes every day to join me in a point/counterpoint interview post. Ladies and gentlemen, friends of Leigh Ann, please welcome my best friend, my legal co-conspirator Steve Plowman, Mr. Sweetypants for a gentle discussion.

Me: Welcome, my darling. Introduce yourself to the blogosphere. Tell us about yourself.

Steve: I am the result of a long series of unlikely unions. I know this because I’ve seen my Mother’s genealogy paperwork. In a census during the 17^th century I noted with some pride that nobody in my ancestors’ house was listed in the columns provided for “imbecile” and “idiot”. I have yet to elucidate a significant difference between the two terms. Among these heroic forebears, I list a train robber in India, the inventor of the bicycle brake and a bunch of general serial philanderers. I provide this information so as to give context to the unlikely union between the author and her consort. Together we sing badly constructed (and often rude) shanties from the shower, eat whatever I can be bothered to throw together and laugh in the face of yard-work. Really, we laugh at it.

Steve: Leigh Ann, describe your perfect day.

Me: That would include doing nothing at all: Laughing at you, whining occasionally when I need feeding, and being grateful that I don’t have to go out to the club at midnight or slog through match.com anymore.

Me: We joke about the fact that I spent $300 on match.com to meet you, but you only paid $19.95 to meet me. What gives?

Steve: Clearly I had crafted a masterpiece of self advertisement such that within two weeks of my cyber-declaration of availability I had attracted a likely candidate. Who described me to her friends as being “without hair.” Consider now the English major with years of communications experience, who spent a couple of years running around meeting Ned Flanders look-alikes and flatulent Cro-Magnons before chancing upon this silver tongued devil. Oh, the humanity.

Steve: We agreed years ago that we were allowed a movie boyfriend / girlfriend and a TV show boyfriend / girlfriend. Identify your current muses from silver screen and idiot box and tell us why.

Me: This hardly seems fair, as you keep changing yours. Your movie girlfriend bounces between Kiera Knightly and Uma Thurman and your TV girlfriend between Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. My movie boyfriend has been solidly Ewan McGregor through the years (we agree that the first half of “Trainspotting” is the best work of cinema ever), and yes, my TV boyfriend has switched from “Jim” on “The Office” to “OMG Don Draper” on “Mad Men.”

Me: We rock, obviously. How did this legal arrangement come into being? Knowing you, it must have been romantic, right?

Steve: I remember it well, that heady, star-crossed evening. I was sitting on the back porch with you, smoking cigarettes, as was popular back then. It was two hours before a friend’s 40^th birthday party. We were discussing Christmas gifts and I said I had one to give you now. You immediately knew what I had in mind, and so alternated between “no, don’t give me anything!” to “what is it?” And so, as you cradled a beer in one hand and a Virginia Slim in the other, I shuffled over in my slippers (henceforth known as The Proposing Shoes”), bent down on one knee and asked, if there was any chance that… maybe you wouldn’t mind… I dissembled charmingly like Hugh Grant. Before that unpleasantness he was involved in, I mean. Anyway, I managed to ask you and you hissed “OK” as a reply. And that was it – I ruined our friend's birthday party and stunned you into hysterical silence (if such a thing exists). Oh yes - I know how to treat a lady.

Steve: What are 5 things you could not live without?

Me: DVR, my cats, Trader Joe’s shrimp gyoza, hope and my Mr. Sweetypants.