Todd's Story Corner

During college, my friend Todd would habitually send us all short stories that he wrote as a way to both procrastinate and foment his creativity. Not only was he a procrastinator himself, but he was also a world class enabler who provided all of us with just what we were desperate for: a reason to put off productivity for as long as humanly possible.

The Todd's Story Corner fan club (otherwise known as the recipients of his stories) grew and grew over the course of the four years we spent at our respective schools. As Todd himself describes, Todd's Story Corner was "like a secret society, but slightly funnier than the KKK and with more of a "can do" attitude than Heaven's Gate."

Anyways, now that he's a hot shot in LA, he's taken on the digital age by writing and directing skits. Take a look- they're pretty fantastic.

www.ToddsStoryCorner.com

halloweenies

With newspaper spread over the entire floor, the coffee table pushed to the side, three different knives and spoons of various sizes... we carved the best jack-o-lantern EVER. For the record, Alfonso was an excellent first-time scooper.











Despite the sad and inevitable day each year when the local Dairy Queen would close for winter, I have always loved fall and everything that it entailed. Picking out pumpkins. Leaves in deep shades of red and orange. Apple-picking and haunted hay rides at the town's orchards. Chilly walks and running from the frigid waves at the beach. Cider. Brand-new fleece jackets. Lighting the fire in the fireplace for the first time of the season. Launching ourselves, kamikaze-style and giggling, into giant piles of fallen leaves... much to the dismay of a certain dad who may or may not have just spent hours raking all the leaves in the yard into orderly piles to be bagged up and discarded.

Fall, of course, culminated in the biggest event of the season: Halloween. When I was growing up it was FANTASTIC. I think it's what led to the chocolate binges that I still succumb to from time to time... well, replace "from time to time" with "on a daily basis." I don't know until what age I trick-or-treated, but it was probably pushing that limit when adults open the door and think to themselves, "hmm, aren't we a little old for this?"

Our little pint-size posse - the Matternlets and the Walkerlets - would always meet up first for pictures at the request/ demand of our camera-toting mothers who would somehow each manage to use up three whole rolls of film on a mere six costume-clad kids. We have envelopes upon envelopes jam-packed with snapshots of smiling superheroes, angels, clowns and cats, all of us armed with our pillow cases and pumpkin buckets and with a clear mission ahead of us: sugar.

The best years were the ones in which, after the picture-taking frenzy finally wrapped up, we managed to coerce one of our dads into pulling us around from house to house, us crammed into a wagon hitched up to the back of a tractor and sticking our tongues out as we passed the neighborhood kids who had to trick-or-treat on foot, while the moms stayed behind to hold down the fort and shower the arriving princesses, monsters and devils with ooh's, ahh's and candy. To this day my mom still lives for Halloween, her jack-o-lantern lit in the front window hours in advance, a big bowl of candy waiting in the foyer and a pen and piece of paper set out to keep a tally of the number of kids who come to the door. I will bet money that she'll give me the official 2007 stats during our next phone call.

Once we made it to the very last house on Village Drive, a route which at the time seemed to last for hours and hours, we piled back into the wagon - our once-empty sacks and buckets now bulging with sweets - for the voyage back to our respective houses. This is when - well, in our house at least - the business part of the evening commenced.

My brother, my sister and I would each rip off our costumes and claim a separate parcel of the family room carpet, where we then conducted inventory with a surprising degree of organization and formality. This is also when we'd find out that there were really cool neighbors (the ones who handed out king-size chocolate bars) and very, VERY uncool ones (the neighborhood grinch up the street who insisted on handing out free samples of toothpaste each year).

Candy was sorted into their respective piles and rows. KitKats lined up side-by-side. Packs of Bubbalicious gum. Ring pops and Skittles. Tootsie rolls, M&M's and gummy bears. Then there was of course the designated "junk" pile, where things like Sugar Daddy's, little boxes of raisins and the annual tubes of toothpaste were quickly discarded. This was subsequently also the pile we allowed our parents to choose from.

We'd spend at least a half hour with our stern business faces on, bartering our candy and trading with each other, our energetic negotiations fueled by a steady consumption of one of everything. The family room quickly turned into a microcosm of the New York Stock Exchange trading floor. One Snickers bar for 2 tootsie pops. Three bags of Skittles and one of Sour Patch kids for that king size Hershey bar. I imagine it must have been quite the eyebrow-raising spectacle for our parents.

Once the trades were complete and we began to come down from our sugar-induced highs, we'd place the candy back into our buckets, which were then placed on top of the refrigerator. However, I'm relatively certain that once we were all tucked into bed with stomach aches, sticky hands and traces of paint still on our faces, our parents would sneak our pumpkins down from their high perches... and deviate from the junk piles we so graciously gave them.

east lyme's main attractions

Aside from my family, friends and menagerie of loveable pets, my absolute favorite thing in East Lyme is essentially little more than an old tree branch.

Clearly I'm not too hard to please. (Let's keep that comment G-rated, mmmkay?)

Sure, I look forward to stopping in for a nibble at my favorite breakfast and lunch niches when I'm in town, but nothing pleases me more than to go out for a drive past... the turtle log. Well, that and maybe a double scoop of Michael's Dairy ice cream with my fellow ice cream-loving Matterns (cough, cough.. you know who you are). It's in the genes.

On the drive from my part of town towards the bustling action of our so-called "down town," you inevitably pass a big ole pond with an old, fallen tree branch that sticks up out of the water. Now this isn't any old hunk of wood. I'm surprised we don't have postcards of it. Then again, maybe we do. It has become an East Lyme landmark, which I'm sure would just thrill Mr Thomas Lee (the Thomas Lee House was built in 1660 and, by East Lyme standards, is a pretty big deal).

On sunny days, this seemingly simple log becomes the hip hang out for a hoard of tiny turtles just lookin for a little low-key fun in the sun. I don't know how many times I've almost driven right into the pond as I "awwww, lookie!" at the little guys with their wee heads poking out of their wee shells.

If East Lyme ever gets rid of the turtle log like they are doing with the Shack (insert solemn moment of silence for my favorite breakfast place), y'all are going to have to deal with one bitter, bitter Betsey.

Ohhh Elaine...

Disclaimer: My sister is one of my best friends and we get along wonderfully. I lurve her to death and can't wait until she comes to Spain to play. That said, read on.

Growing up, my brother, my sister and I all had what could be defined as "roles" or "personality types." I have always been the mellow sarcastic one, my brother was traditionally the moody-broody one, and my sister has been and always will be the dramatic one.

In the photo is my 20 (or, according to the identification she is carrying at a given time, sometimes 24) year old sister. She looks like an all-American girl straight out of a wholesome small town lifestyle. If you were to create a little profile about her based solely upon first appearances, you'd probably go for the "attractive, intelligent, fun person, nice personality, good sense of humor, all around great person" route. Oh how naive and mistaken you would be...

I find that Elaine's existence can be more or less summed up by a scene from the cinematic gem "Mean Girls," starring Hollywood mess Lindsay Lohan. The referenced scene to which I refer is towards the end when Regina (aka Rachel McAdams) finds out that Lindsay Lohan's "Cady with a C" character had been giving her fattening energy bars instead of diet bars, thus causing her to gain 15 pounds right before the school's annual and highly anticipated Spring Fling dance. Stomping around and wielding a pair of scissors, Regina proceeds to shriek violently for the next five minutes of the film.

For much of my life, I was fully convinced that my sister suffered from a psychological disorder that required heavy medication... possibly to the point of sedation and brain-shock therapy. There was no middle ground with her. Elaine had exactly two modes: she was either asleep (mildly content) or awake (angrily psychotic). She fit the description of bipolarism to a tee, and I remember actually insisting to at least one of my parents that we needed to stage an intervention and get her into some psychological clinic for testing and observation, albeit against her will and despite the inevitable fact that she would try to fight back with her fangs and talons.

Trying to engage in any sort of conversation was like awakening an evil god from a 1,000-year slumber deep in the dark abysses of the underworld. The following are true life examples. If you were both sitting on the couch, and your pinky toe happened to be touching "her side," she'd scream at you. If you told her - after a volleyball game in which her team had won - that she/the team played well, she'd scream at you. If you asked her to grab a napkin from the counter right behind her chair at dinner, she'd scream at you. I once told her she had too much eyeliner on, and she screamed at me. If my mother even made a move that suggested she was going to speak, she'd scream at her. If you asked her if she wanted some of your ice cream sundae, she'd scream at you.

Following such an outburst, most typically while the rest of us attempted to enjoy a nice meal, she'd get angrier with each passing moment until the following sequence of events occurred:

• The following sound, first a deep rumbling in her throat before emerging as a full-blown shriek out of her mouth: "Ahhhghhghghhhrgggiiiiiiahhhhh!!!!"
• She would stomp up to her room, screaming as she went
• She'd slam her door
• She'd open her door again to scream out one more "I HATE YOU! Ahhhghghhhgriiiahhhhh!!!"
• She'd stomp around her room and throw objects against the door.
• She'd blast her "I'm angry" music at top volume.
• She'd plan her next angry letter to us all about how abused and tortured she was.
• She'd emit an assortment of shrieks, growls and other sounds that I assumed to be vocal yet sounded as though a scene straight from the Exorcist was transpiring within the confines of her room.
  

One of the worst possible things you could to yourself do was to end up in a situation that involved you and Elaine in a confined space with no bars, electric wire or other protective precautions separating you from "the beast"... in a car, for example. Once, Elaine's bitch button was switched on (ie she was awake) and started going off on anyone who was fortunate enough to be partaking in that same car ride. Under his breath, my brother muttered "psycho," clearly not a wise decision on his part. Seething with rage and with the vein in her forehead visibly pounding, she replied, in escalating decibal levels, "I.. am not... A...PSYCHO!!!"to which my exasperated brother could only respond "Look at her!" The high-pitched screaming that ensued cracked the windows and there has been an incessant ringing in our ears ever since that specialists have been unable to cure. For obvious reasons, this is one of our most referenced family stories.

For some reason, my mom voluntarily endured the psychological abuse thrown at her by my sister by continuing to go to Elaine's volleyball and lacrosse games. At said athletic events, cheery parents would come up to us - namely up to my mom - just to tell us how much their daughter just loved Elaine. How Elaine was just so gosh-darn nice-helpful-funny-interesting-thoughtful-caring. We'd naturally look behind us to see to whom this smiling parent was actually speaking. Seeing that we were alone and that this parent was indeed talking about Elaine, we'd think dumbfoundedly to ourselves, "her?"