HAPPY BIRTHDAY LORRIE

1/22/11

I am currently sitting in a Dunkin Donuts in Secaucus, NJ, drinking coffee and listening to Judas Priest's classic album Painkiller. And I am doing so because today is my sister Lorrie's birthday; and while she lives two states away we remain connected through our memories and experiences.

Which explains why I'm listening to Judas Priest, a band she introduced me to in my fairer years. We saw them live together many years ago on the Operation Rock and Roll tour, where they shared the bill with Alice Cooper and Motorhead. But that was later, in the summertime when there was no snow on the road and no cement donkey to be transporting.

Lorrie had decided to purchase said cement donkey as a Christmas present for my Mom. We had a store in the outskirts of nowheresville that sold cement figures, some of them life-size representations, other smaller scale models. I don't know what drew Lorrie to the donkey but she knew that was what she wanted to bring home for Mother, so we drove to the place amidst the beginnings of a brutal Northeastern Ohio snowstorm, one which we barely heeded as we listened to Judas Priest's new album Painkiller in her Suzuki Samurai cloth top Jeep. It wasn't the safest vehicle to be taking on icy snow covered roads but we did it anyway without a thought, hauling ass down 46 and it was snowing harder and harder.

I think you know which way this story is going already. We got the donkey, probably 70 pounds or so of cement projectile laid across the back seat of the jeep, not really tied down or secured in any sense. She paid for the thing and we drove into pure white, back home. We're on the road, fighting through it, and wouldn't you know we hit an icy spot and the Jeep careened out of control, going into a wide spin out that pushed us across to the edge of the opposite side of the road, where a deep ditch lay, and we pitched into a roll out into the gulf of nothing. I felt us turning as I held on for dear life to the handy grip bar in front of the passenger seat. The donkey began to buck and bray as it kicked the living shit out of us, all hooves and sharp ears to bounce off of in that moment of anti-gravity. We were upside-down, pitched like the car of some sort of ultra realistic amusement park ride. Finally, we came to a stop on the wheels, completely still. And then I heard the song Nightcrawler playing on the stereo, and I realized we'd just rolled the Samurai.

We were in someone's yard, and we got out of the Jeep and made sure we were still intact. The donkey had beat the hell out of the backs of our heads. Lorrie's neck was kinda jacked. But this stranger let us into the house and called the authorities to come pick up us and a tow truck to transport the Jeep. We roused our Mom and Lorrie's old man Jim and we got taken to the hospital to ascertain the damage. I got to stay home from school the next day, which was awesome. It was a crazy experience, but just one of many that Lorrie and I had. She lived her life with a devil-may-care attitude and in a lot of ways she was a really bad influence on me, but I thank her dearly for her corrupting abilities. Now she's settled down and she has twin teenage daughters who constantly amaze me, and a new generation of kids in our family that she can encourage to be holy terrors. That's what big sisters are for, and Aunt Lordy made the transition to be a rode model in every positive way. Plus, she's really into zombies and gave me a cool zombie anthology for Christmas. I thought about buying her Max Brook's zombie epic World War Z and I might still, but for now this is the best present I could give her, for her to know how much I love her and how awesome it was being her brother growing up. She took me to get my ear pierced when I was 12, and just recently she took my nephew Mario to undergo the same ritual. Now that's multi-generational influence that you cannot knock.

Happy Birthday Lorrie!!!

love,

your brother