My parents owned a stationery store when I was 9 or 10. It was a fun time.

Pa would always call before he came home and ask which candy Teara and I wanted. Teara usually chose a Whatchamacallit or gum. I’d choose a Hershey Bar or 3 Musketeers.

Teara would call me a nerd for picking 3 Musketeers, and I kinda understand why; the marketing is odd. Why would a company name a bar of chocolate and nougat after 3 men? And really, nougat isn’t cool. What even is it? Milky Way has nougat too but Milky Ways are cool candy. Which again, is all about the marketing. The Milky Way is Stars! The Universe! Out of this world! 3 Musketeers are 3 old guys with swords and feathers in their caps.

Anyway, Pa also sold cigarettes, greeting cards, those cool plastic charms & necklaces that were all the rage in the ‘80s, and the teen heartthrob magazines we were obsessed with like Teen Beat, Tiger Beat, and Bop.

He also sold dirty magazines that were shrink-wrapped and held in the very top of the magazine rack. Teara and I were instructed to go in the back if a guy came in and milled around for a minute, not buying anything.

It was obvious why they were there, and they surely didn’t want to purchase their porno mags in front of 2 doofy buck-toothed kids.

Of course Teara and I had to be *extra* and make a bigger deal out if it than necessary. One of us would call out loudly, “COME ON. LET’S GO IN THE BACK AND CARPET SWEEP!” All proud that we recognized a perv and knew what we needed to do.

* Can we all just take a moment to appreciate how the interwebs have allowed us the luxury of no longer having to do the walk of shame in a friggin stationery store just to see a pair of boobies? Thank you Al Gore!

Our store was in a strip mall where Ralph Macchio’s family owned a laundromat 2 doors down. I never actually met him, but in retrospect, I’m surprised I didn’t try harder since he was my first serious crush as Johnny Cade in The Outsiders. Pa never met him either, but Grandpa Macchio would come into the store once in a while. For Christmas, Pa asked if he could get Ralph to autograph a couple Teen Beats for me and Teara. I’m still not fully convinced they weren’t just forged by Lol.

There was also a salon called Custom Cuts in the strip mall. This was the first place where we went and actually paid someone to cut our hair. Before, it was Aunt Diana or her friend Donna in my aunt’s kitchen. I thought they were both so cool chopping away on our hair with cigarettes dangling from their mouths. I’m not sure why we started going to Custom Cuts, but ever since then, Pa refers to every salon as Custom Cuts.

Great Clips? Nope. Custom Cuts.

Supercuts? Nope. Custom Cuts.

John Frieda Salon? Nope. Custom Cuts.

There were a group of teens who frequented our store to play video games. One kid named Davey would try to impress me and Teara by blowing spit bubbles. To this day I still gag when I picture it floating off his gross tongue and sailing down in front of me, landing on his sneaker, then popping and leaving saliva-stained suede behind.

When he and his friends played the video games, they’d curse and hit the machines if they lost. Pa found this to be offensive and off-putting to the other customers, so he hung a “no cursing” sign on the wall. He warned that if they cursed they’d get thrown out. So instead, they made up their own make-believe curse word, “boola”.

Now, Teara and I were as dorky as dorky gets, but even we knew how lame it was for them to yell “BOOLA!” in place of cursing.

From that day on, BOOLA became a part of our everyday vernacular. We got our cousins and friends to say it too, cracking up over the fools from Pa’s store. We didn’t even play hide & go seek anymore, we played hide & go boola. We’d count to 20 and instead of yelling, “ready or not, here I come!” We’d just tell “BOOLA!!!” Haha, I’ll never forget those fuckin nerds 🤣

The store was about 15 minutes away from our house. Lol hated the music me and Teara listened to. I can still hear her saying, “Madonna, that slut!”. Her solution was to lie and tell us the radio was broken.

So instead, I’d sit in the back of our red Buick Skylark and make up jingles for all the stores along the way. There were little ditties about funeral homes, a wig store, gas stations, and The Sizzler Steakhouse. Every song had the same fast, jazzy rhythm and they all ended with an enthusiastic, “Yeahhh!”

I can still remember every word to every song. You might find this unbelievable, but they’re all pretty bad. Except The Sizzler one, that one slaps. It goes:

🎶 Siz-za-ler…we sizzle your meat! We sizzle, sizzle, sizzle every day…sizz-a-ler, sizz-a-ler, sizz-a-ler…. Siz-za-lerrrr…Yeahhhh!” 🎶

You really have to hear me sing it to get the full effect.

At one point, Teara decided she wanted to become a mime. I think there was a Facts of Life or Diff’rent Strokes episode about miming and it peaked her interest.

She begged Lol & Pa to let her do it in the store window. Lol made up some lie about it being too cold or too hot, and one touch of the window could shatter the glass. We were so dumb that we believed her. The older I get, the more I realize how much Lol took advantage of our stupidity while raising us.

One day they finally let us go in the window and Teara’s miming was a vision to behold. The only giveaway that she was a real person was her perm bouncing and swaying in the wind as her robotic arms and hands flayed about.

I begged her to show me her miming ways. Together, we pretended to be trapped behind glass, reveling in the irony of really being behind glass. We were rewarded with the astonished looks on the faces of pedestrians as they passed by. It was amazing.

We wanted to become a running mime act in the window, we even told Pa we’d do it for free! But soon after, my parents sold the store. I think it’s the only reason they allowed us to do it that one time – they no longer cared about their embarrassing daughters chasing customers away.

Ah, good times.