In the Eighties, we had our own version of “outside accountability” and it was named Aunt Luci. People say that because of modern technology everyone now knows everyone else’s business. That may or may not be the case but be assured, Aunt Luci knew all, and wielded that power with brutal efficiency; she ruled her kingdom as far as her eyes could see.
First off, know that we as children feared her more deeply than we could ever fear the mysterious monsters under the bed of old. This woman, this unforgiving force of nature, made even the coolest of children weep openly at the slightest of offenses. We had been witness to this carnage on several occasions. Abject terror, no other way of putting it, Aunt Luci was the real deal.
Every day, on that little screened porch, Aunt Lucy kept watch from her used leather office chair. Snuggly seated before her little 70’s green formica table, TV guide in one hand, the other alternating between her seventy two year old Weiner dog and the giant yellow plastic phone handle that stayed inserted between her curler filled head and her exposed shoulder, Aunt Lucy ruled with a Cheeto covered iron fist. It had been completely normalized for us.
Aunt Lucy was a large woman who, we believe, revolutionized the mumu in the eighties fashion scene. There was untold agony for any person who ever dared call it a mumu to her face, though. It was much like an animal caught in a gluttonous feeding frenzy.
Slowly, she would terrifyingly rise from her weathered leather office chair, waddle over to whomever dared utter the cursed word, then systematically dissect their greatest fears as she explained in detail how it was NOT A F$@&ING MUMU, it was a MOOS-MOOS! She would then follow this assault with a history of Hawaiian culture and how “stoopid” Americans had butchered their sacred language by calling it a Moo-Moo. And she wasn’t even a Hawaiian. All that was left then were the little symbolic memorials left on the sidewalk to honor the moo-moo utterers tragic end.
When passing her house, one could see her in the shadow of her screened porch, a cigarette dangling from her shockingly bright lipstick caked lips, as she kept watch over the corner of our neighborhood. After all, she knew all. If there was an event that occurred anywhere near us, this woman somehow knew about it. Car wreck? She knew. Someone die? She knew. Little Charlie peed his pants at 8:35 am on Tuesday, as he was going to school? Aunt Lucy knew. It was wholly unnerving.
Every time we heard the deep, incessant ringing of that beat up yellow phone, we knew that trouble was amiss. It is a fact, seldom taught in today’s business classes, but Aunt Lucy was the first to master the art of “infinite networking research”, well before it came to be the common practice it is today. And utilized to its ultimately sick full potential, that phone connected her to the world, well at least our part of it.
The memories of this woman are few but incredibly vivid, like that time she had the entire town convinced that there was an escaped “serial killer rapist kidnapper” loose in the streets of their very home because she saw a strange, disturbed looking man in an orange correctional outfit walking down Anderson Lane. And that led to a lit hornets nest of a week in town, culminating with the Sheriff and the mayor having to call an emergency town meeting at the church to calm the fearful citizens. All because of Aunt Lucy.
Then there was the time that Aunt Lucy was dying of some rare bone cancer that was slowly killing her from the inside. It would seem that Lucy had purposefully mentioned being sick and run down for about two weeks, a malady that she attributed to getting old. Then two weeks later, in conversations with her network constituents, she spoke of “reading” about this rare form of cancer that had recently been discovered. She laid it on thick. When rumors begin to circulate that she, in fact, had the disease, she modestly denied them, an almost apologetic denial with a subtle request to not talk about it. And that did nothing but drive the allegation to actual believability. By the end of the charade, Aunt Lucy had a new glassed-in porch, kid’s weekly cut her lawn, a sizable donation was raised, and multiple casseroles dishes were dropped off, all for poor Aunt Lucy. The longer she lived, the more pissed off her neighbors seemed to grow.
And that’s the story of Aunt Lucy, the knower of all things, the holder of all neighborhood secrets. It is not so much different than now. Some people, in their need for attention, will often go to bizarre lengths, good or bad, just to get their fill. Maybe that’s what old Aunt Lucy was doing. Maybe.
But to a child, Aunt Lucy was the boogey man our parents used to threaten us with when we were bad. And it worked. To know her personally would probably have been to know a very sad and scared person. We know that now. But to a child, watching cautiously from a passing motocross bike, she had been the living embodiment of evil incarnate.
No matter what the adult me says.
Lee
