A MAD DAY OUT
One upon a time, deep in the Heartland of Darkest America, there lived three little girls on a haunted island in the midwest known as Paranoid Junction. They were the most notorious group of sisters in the area, daughters of Kate Baddeley, proprietress of the Shady Deal motel. Each of the sisters were born a year apart and Kate waited until the youngest was five years of age before christening them. She wanted to check their obvious personality flaws to help her choose the perfect names for them all. The eldest daughter, so anal retentive she insisted her hair color match that of every outfit was named Pretty-Jo. The middle daughter, the Jan of the house, if you will, was blatantly pretentious, insisting on using the biggest words she could muster for every occasion, continuing to excel in school many years after she graduated, because she just loved school so much, was named Average-Jo. Finally, the third, the last having definitely been the least, was obsessed with garnering any and all kinds of attention in the most negative way to which she could aspire. She would curse like a sailor, drink like a truck driver, and was quite fond of throwing herself in puddles, rubbing mud in her hair and punching her face as much as was required to get it to bruise in just the right shade of black and blue. Her nom de pathetique was Ugly-Jo.
Saturdays were always earmarked as Mad Day Out for the Baddeley girls. Pretty-Jo would tirelessly go on long shoplifiting excursions in only the finest cosmetic and clothing shops. She’d look for a quiet area in such an establishment and pretend to be her own saleswoman and customer, ringing up handfuls of lipsticks and outfits, pretending to put cash in the register drawers and run like hell whenever she would arouse suspicion. Now this was no easy feat when you consider she would flee each establishment shod in freshly-stolen high heel pumps, for every occasion. Her devotion to her craft enabled her to run a 50 yard dash away from security dogs.
Average-Jo was obsessed with libraries. She would spend hours poring over a library’s extensive world history and poetry sections, reading every passage aloud to the annoyance and consternation of every patron. On one particular visit, she noticed a gang of ruffians grabbing books on celebrities from the arts and entertainment section, using exacto knives to slice out photos of movie stars for their own private collection. She raised quite the fuss, but at a price. The gang grabbed her and dragged her down to the book depository she shoved her in face first, cramming her in as far as they were able, only to leave her legs flailing outside the opening slot, calling for help in only the most loquacious and sophisticated manner she could muster. She was rescued by a young man who was suffering from depression and anxiety, who asked her out for a date to the local ice cream parlor only so he could unload all of his problems. They ended up at Dr Robert’s Ice Cream Emporium and gorged their way through sundae after sundae, banana split after banana split, shake after shake. Suddenly, Average-Jo started to feel a woozy sensation. She started hearing voices in her head and stared obsessively at the palm of her hand on which, to her horror, she saw an eye staring at her and singing “I’ll Be Seeing You” in all the old familiar places. For the protection of the patrons, Dr Robert chained and padlocked all the means of egress in the establishment so the patrons could enjoy the trip of a lifetime.
Ugly-Jo, however, decided to stay at home, deciding she didn’t need the hustle and bustle of the village for her day of madness. She had dreamed of becoming the next Carmen Miranda and had once stolen a record of her singing “Mama Equerro”. Wearing nothing but a tank top, a pair of shorts and a huge basket of fruit on her head, she proceeded to sing along and leap into some of the worst dance moves a spastic could imagine. She did hundreds of somersets on solid ground, Tonya Harding triple axels with no ice skates and the grand finale, a Russian Dance to top and destroy all Russian Dances. The record reached its end, the sounds in her head of hundreds of thousands cheering her every move, only to be caught by her sisters, laughing hysterically, shouting out enough cat-calls to severely traumatize her for life. She stood debased and humiliated in the center of her room. She grabbed the sides of her head, let out a guttural scream from the depths of her soul, and threw herself out of the window of her second-story bedroom, racing away for her life, vowing never to return, but made certain she’d remember to be back for dinner at 6.
The sisters reconvene at the dinner table, gushing over their latest mad day out. Average-Jo described it as an exhilirating experience, Pretty-Jo modeled some of her new outfits and bragged “yeah, I got some good shit out there today” while Ugly-Jo stole the focus, sashayed and strutted in her fruit-basket hat, regally assuming her spot at the dinner table by bellowing “I AM CARMEN MIRANDA”
A joyous end to yet another Mad Day Out.
