HOME | DD

Description
She Loved His Moo-stache
In the summer of 1996, my little sister fell in love with Adolf Hitler. If you wanted to stop reading after that, I really wouldn't blame you. It's still a really embarrassing time for us all, but, like many families, embarrassing times are standard conversation topics. Kaylee was four years old, and I was fresh out of seventh grade. I was at once both delighted and miserable at my three months of freedom, as I couldn't decide whether it was better to be stuck in school or to be stuck with my family. Let's skip the formalities, and head to a cool June Saturday night.
Every Saturday night, seven o'clock, my dad would dig through his collection of World War II videos and gather us all around to watch. 'Us' was myself, mom, and my older brother Zack, two years older than I to be exact. We would all sit down on the couch, a plaid red that always threatened to break as someone took a seat, squeaking and creaking. No one liked watching these videos but Dad, who felt history was best put by these videos, as a man twice his age was narrating blandly over black and white footage. By that time, Zack and I had memorized them, and sometimes would mouth the words that were to come, until Dad would glare at us from the corner of his eye. "Zack, Eva, show some respect." he would say after such a glare. "Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it." After a while we also memorized Dad's corny warnings as well. But I digress. Back to Kaylee, who actually wasn't part of this tradition just yet.
Kaylee had extremely short hair that wasn't long enough for a ponytail, but always insisted Mom tried to make her one anyway. This gave her blonde hair an odd little spurt on the back of her head, and it looked like her hair could explode from the tension it was being pulled through. Normally during these nights, she would be in her room, making up fairy tales surrounding her plastic dolls. Mom had insisted upon this, as she somehow felt that watching newsreels could scar children for life. The typical watching age was about seven, but that night, Kaylee had run out of fairy tales to make up. It took about three minutes of her giving our parents the doe eyes before she was on mom's lap, feeling like a big girl.
She didn't really understand what these videos were about so far, and usually just watched in silence, kicking her long and gangly legs and waiting until for what she assumed was the 'good part', under some delusion that Zack, Mom and I enjoyed these videos on the same level as Dad. That night, the particular video was part of his German collection, and highlighted Adolf Hitler. When said fuehrer came on the screen, Kaylee's head jolted upwards, her eyes widened, and she pointed right at the screen, her voice shrill and demanding. "Who's that?" It startled us all, particularly Mom, as she had been nodding off and using her bleached hair as a pillow.
Dad grabbed the remote and paused the video before looking at Kaylee, his fat lips pursed into a frown. "That is Adolf Hitler. He was one of the most evil men in all of history." He reached over to grab Kaylee from under her armpits, and sat her upon his knee, ready to bestow his wisdom upon her. "He wanted to kill all of the Jews and take over the world."
"And he would have gotten away with it too," Zack interrupted, pausing in making shadow puppets with me, "if it weren't for those meddling kids."
Dad glared hard at Zack, the force of which seemed to highlight the veins in his eyes, which instantly quelled my urge to chime in with a Scooby-doo impression. "Go to your room!"
"See ya." Zack was off the couch, and I caught his winning grin as he managed to escape. I was envious of his ability to brush off Dad's eyes and words, and I quietly lamented my lack of a shadow puppet partner. After the click of the door to Zack's room, Dad unpaused the video, and the most evil man in all his history went into a speech. At first I was going to make up subtitles in my head and pretend he was angrily spitting about the better boy band – 'N*Sync is my favorite! Backstreet Boys vill never own up!' – when I noticed Kaylee leaning her head in towards the TV. She almost looked like she was going to fall off Dad's lap, her eyes wide and rapt with attention. Looking back, this is probably when I should have noticed the beginning of trouble, but at the time, I thought maybe she had the makings of a history buff. Wouldn't Dad be proud?
It was the next day that cemented the problem, with the family at breakfast. Normally breakfast was quiet, save for the sizzling of burnt eggs, the rustling of Dad's newspaper, and Zack's burping contests in which he was the only contestant and winner. However, this time there was also the sound of Kaylee's humming, which Disney song it was this time is lost on me, as she had brought crayons and paper to the table to draw as she ate. As Mom slipped a sunny side up so burnt it was more like an eclipse onto Kaylee's plate, she leaned over her shoulder and asked "Who's that you're drawing, sweetie?"
Kaylee didn't even look up as she replied. "Adolf Hitler."
The paper was put down and the contest postponed as all of us stared at the youngest sibling, wondering if we had heard correctly. Kaylee kept on drawing, so Mom asked again, nervously cheery all the while. "I'm sorry, sweetie… who is that you're drawing?"
"Adolf Hitler." No hesitation at all, but at least she looked up now, in Mom's direction. "From Daddy's movie. I like Adolf Hitler. He has a cute moo-stache." The way she explained it was as if Mom were the ridiculous one. Zack and I stared at each other, biting our lips to keep from laughing, but it wasn't going to be a permanent solution. Mom's spatula arm began to shake, and she looked back and forth from Kaylee to Dad, desperate for a solution. As for Dad, he had laid down his newspaper, fists clenching hard into the paper. It was a long and unsteady silence before he could finally speak, chewed egg flying from each syllable.
"Adolf Hitler is not – was not cute!" He quickly corrected himself, timing an odd must with him. "He was a homicidal maniac, responsible for mass genocide!"
Kaylee looked up again, eyebrows lifted, Dad's anger bouncing off her sheer naiveté. "What's 'genocide'?"
Dad had only managed to repeat the word before Mom butted in, clutching Kaylee's shoulders and pressing the smaller body up to her own. "Don't you dare tell her what genocide means!"
Dad's head jerked toward Mom, devoting his attention to her, and Zack and I began to lift some eggs off of his plate. We were fairly sure eating wasn't going to be resumed anytime soon. "What are you doing? She has to know!"
"Absolutely not!" Mom even went so far as to cover Kaylee's ears with her hands. Kaylee shrugged it off and resumed coloring, adding in purple hearts around Adolf's eyes. "She's too young to know what genocide means! I only let her watch those videos with us because they don't explain those kinds of things!"
"You baby the kids too much!"
"They are babies!"
By the time lunch came around, Kaylee still loved Adolf and didn't know what genocide meant. Mom and Dad had reached a sort of agreement in that this was just a phase that Kaylee would grow out of, resuming her talk of princes and Barbies any day now. To think about it now, has anytime someone said 'it's just a phase' ever actually been just a phase? I think it's one of those lies parents try to convince themselves with, like 'oh she just blossoms late' or 'he'll meet a lot of girls during cheerleading camp'. During that week, she began decorating her room with more crayon drawings of Hitler, and drew a tiny mustache on her Ken doll. Anytime Dad, Zack or I tried to explain to Kaylee exactly why Hitler was evil, Mom would barge in just as we would get into exact details. To have her baby girl know what death and murder was, she wouldn't have it. Things only got worse when Kaylee got invited to a friend's slumber party that following Friday.
If it had been an ordinary slumber party, things might not have escalated, but you see where I'm going with this. It was less of a sleep-over in the typical sense and more of a group play date in which one family would let their home be filled with brats for one night while the rest of us relearned silence. These would usually go on at least once a month, and more often than not were hosted by the Kingstons, more specifically the Mrs. She was the gossip queen of our suburbia, and her talk was fact. If one kid casually mentioned to her that his mommy got a new nose, it would be on everyone's lips the following morning. Naturally, we were loathe to let Kaylee go there and have her mention her little crush, but her best friend of the time was Jessica Kingston. Once again, the doe eyes worked wonders, and she was sent off.
It was around eight o' clock that Friday night, and I was cleaning Kaylee's hamster cage. He was a brown little runt named Hammy, and at the time it was the only thing Kaylee loved more than Hitler. I was scrubbing out the floor of the cage, when I heard the front door open, and I could hear the voice of Mrs. Kingston. Out of curiosity, I stepped away from the cage to get a better look and see. In the front door was Mrs. Kingston, and to her side was a very confused looking Kaylee, with Mom pale as chalk in front of them.
"I don't know what kind of… twisted things you teach your kids…" Mrs. Kingston was speaking in a quiet but growled tone, glowering and nearly towering over mom. "But I won't let your hate influence these precious children."
"What are you talking about?" In comparison, Mom's voice was weak, timid, and although she had asked that question, the way she quickly glanced to Kaylee said that she had a very good idea of what had happened.
"Kaylee told all of them how she was going to marry Adolf Hitler." Mrs. Kingston leaned in, nearly making Mom bend over backwards. "And then she taught them all how to do the Hitler wave."
"The 'Hitler wave'?" Mom dared to ask, eyes now solely on Kaylee. In response, my little sister proudly raised her arm in the classic Nazi salute. Mom swallowed hard, struggling to come up with an adequate explanation. "Oh, well, you see-"
"I can't believe we've been neighbors to white supremacists all this time!" Mrs. Kingston then turned around, ready to storm off back to her car, nearly smashing her high heels with each step. "You people make me sick!" She turned on her heel and began to leave, and Mom flew out of the house, chasing after her, trying to explain what had happened. Sadly, there really was no arguing with Mrs. Kingston. It was like trying to argue with a brick wall – pointless, useless, and you look like a moron doing it. Kaylee just went inside the house, passing me into her room, and began to make all of her Barbies and Kens do the Hitler wave. I resumed cleaning the cage, pretending I hadn't seen or heard a thing, though I could still hear Mom pounding on the door to Mrs. Kingston's purple SUV.
By the very next day, everyone in town thought we were Neo-Nazis. How do I know this? That day we all went out grocery shopping, because our parents liked us kids to make our own little shopping lists and help pick out what we needed and wanted. The minute the sliding doors opened, all eyes within the store lay upon us, and those who didn't look at us with dread looked at us with hate. People actually fled whenever we went down an aisle, as if being a Nazi was like having the flu and easily spreadable. It didn't really help matters that Kaylee insisted on bringing her Ken doll that she had given the mustache to. Up until this time, Zack and I had thought Kaylee's Adolf adoration was hilarious, but it was during this that we'd start to feel repercussions. I was in the dairy section, trying to think of ways to convince our parents into letting us buy several cartons of chocolate milk, when I spotted a classmate of mine.
Her name was Sasha, and normally I didn't care for her, because she had a spitty lisp. If I was ever unfortunate enough to sit in front of her in class, my hair would be soaked by the end of the day. However, this was a particularly balmy and hot summer, and spitty Sasha had a sizeable swimming pool. Perhaps if I showed her a kindness, she'd invite me over, and I'd happily soak my cares away. I walked up to her as she was inspecting different yogurt flavors, and announced my presence. "Hey, Sasha! What's up?"
She paused, looking at me with some uneasiness, clinging the yogurt to her chest. "Oh… hey." For a moment I wondered if I could make her avoid any and all 's' words.
"How are you doing?" I tried again, leaning forward to look at the yogurt. "Is that strawberry flavor? I love strawberry." I hated strawberry, but I loved pools.
Her eyes darted around, trying to avoid eye contact with me. "Ummmmmm." Since no one appeared to be coming to her rescue, she took a deep breath to confront me. "My mom sssaysss I'm not sssuposssed to talk to you."
I ignored the wet additions to my face in favor of interrogation. "Why not? I didn't do anything." Though I had my sneaking suspicions, just as Mom had with Mrs. Kingston.
"Aren't you all Nazisss?" Sasha began putting the yogurt back, one by one. "That'sss what my mom sssaysss. Your whole family isss like one big Hitler loving ssspectacle."
"We are not!" I insisted, with more defiance. "That's just Kaylee! And she doesn't even know what a Nazi really is. Mom won't let us tell her."
"I gotta go." Sasha began to back up, not believing my desperation. "Sssee you in ssschool."
"I'm not a Nazi!" I began to yell, as visions of pools began to escape from me, and I made a grab for her thin arms. "Here, let me show you!" The only proof that came to mind was a song I heard on the radio a few times that I didn't even know all the lyrics to. "And I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free, … and… something… something for me…" By the time I had gotten to the third chorus where there were more somethings than American traditions, Sasha had fled the scene, sans yogurt. This was also the same time my family found me, and my singing voice died off as I noticed a huge red mark on Zack's left cheek. "What happened?" I asked, pointing right at it.
Zack rubbed at it irritably. "I was trying to pick up a cute girl. And it was going good, too. But then somebody…" He looked at Kaylee, who was sitting in the shopping cart and trying to feed an open box of Cheez-Its to Adolf Ken, "had to come over and ask me if I could hold Adolf Hitler while she went potty." Upon hearing his name, Kaylee looked back, and made Ken do the salute. Zack ended his story with a guttural growl. "So the girl slapped me." Poor Zack, my big brother with the baby dimples and freckles, who convinced himself that he was a ladies' man, he normally used Kaylee as an asset to show girls he had a soft, sensitive side. Now one side was just sensitive.
Mom sighed, Dad groaned, and I shook my head. No one was going to believe us when we explained it, Mom refused to have Kaylee hear gory details about her crush, and Dad was too easily won over by the doe-eyes. As we stood there in the dairy section, lamenting our shove out of society, Dad suddenly slammed a hand down on the grocery cart, catching all of our attention. "This has gone on long enough! We're not Neo-Nazi's, and we're going to prove it!"
"You're going to let us tell Kaylee what genocide is?" Zack guessed, and Mom had already covered Kaylee's ear by 'gen'.
Dad pretended not to hear him and went on. "We're going to hold the town's biggest Fourth of July barbeque they've ever seen! We'll prove we are patriots!" He then pointed to each of us, giving us our own assignments. "Zack! Get to the meat section, and bring the biggest of the deadest! Eva! Find as many American flags as you can! Honey, take Kaylee and start making invitations! I'm going to get us a brand new grill!" I was tempted to ask how exactly spending us into poverty was going to convince anyone we were 'true' Americans, but everyone was already up and running to get what was told of them. I did my part to the best of my ability, finding flags that fit in the palm of my hand to ones that probably could have been seen by the moon, if the moon was interested in American flags. And had eyes.
As the fourth of July approached, we worked vigilantly every day to make our backyard look like something Uncle Sam vomited on. Flags were stuck out of every single orifice of the house, and what couldn't be flagged was held together by red, white, and blue streamers. Although I was initially on decorating duty, I was quickly assigned to Kaylee watch, as she kept trying to make our lawn prettier by making stick collections in the shape of swastikas. Mom managed to invite every single person in town, even complete strangers, and despite Mrs. Kingston's gossip, it appeared that our sheer empathy got us several RSVPs. It probably didn't hurt that the invitation also boasted about free food, and lots of it.
The big day came, and everyone was set to arrive at one o' clock. In an attempt of showing neighborhood friendliness, Mom left the front door wide open, so the neighbors could walk right through our house to get to the backyard. When I asked Mom why they simply couldn't just walk around the house, she shoved a glass of lemonade in my face. She was very nervous about this day, and had even us dress the part of the patriot. Kalyee was dressed all in red, I was all in white, and Zack all in blue. Dad's focus had been on preparing the brand new grill, which to him had been a positive side-effect of Kaylee's crush. The way he touched and spoke to it, I was wondering if it was going to be my new adopted sister to replace Kaylee. Not that I would have minded.
It was around 12:30 when Dad announced to us that "She's up and running! Let's start cooking before the guests arrive!" Despite my doubts about this plan, I could never refuse a good burger, so I happily joined my family in lining up the frozen meats to be cooked in order. The wind was particularly harsh that day, and I repeatedly had to blow my hair out of my face, only for it to return with a vengeance. Eventually it got so annoying that I stepped out of line to focus all of my attention on my hair, holding it up with both of my hands. During this crisis of curls, my eyes went upward, to the roof of the house, where I noticed the wind was taking on another victim. One of our hundreds of flags just so happened to be on the roof, but the way it was shaking and moving to the wind, it wouldn't be there long. "Dad?" I asked, eyeing the invisible trail the flag might go on if pushed so far. "How strong is our roof?"
Dad didn't even look up from his steel baby, pressing a sizzling hot dog into fresh flames. "What kind of a ridiculous question is that?"
"Don't call her questions ridiculous." Mom wagged a finger at him, though she wasn't looking to the roof either. "It might affect her questioning ability!"
Now Dad looked at her, annoyance obvious. "Will you stop treating the kids like they're babies?"
"They are babies!"
Before that familiar argument could take place again, Zack summed up the following situation elegantly, as he grabbed Kaylee to move her out of the way. "FLAG!"
The flag had already begun to fall off of the roof and for a landing spot, chose the grill. Mom and Dad managed to step back in time before getting hurt, and reacted accordingly.
"My grill!" Dad reached out without touching it, yearning to console his wounded child and check to see if this child had a return policy.
"The flag!" Mom shouted at the same exact time, not so much pointing out that Zack had been right in what had fallen, but to the matter of the flag rolling off the grill and landing on the grass in flames. It was now red, white, blue, orange, yellow, and black.
"What do we do? What do we do?!" That would be me, as I had the wild vision of the flames engulfing my entire house, killing us, and even worse, destroying my new CD player. The logical solution to this problem might have been to use water, or lemonade, or anything besides what we did next.
"Stomp it out!"Dad ordered, and in a terrified rush we all agreed to it, crushing the flames with sandals and sneakers. It worked rather well, and it almost made me feel like a superhero, able to withstand the flames in order to save my home. Before we were done, I had already come up with six possible superhero names, and two hidden lair locations. When the last orange ember had flickered, thanks in part to THE AMAZING FLAME GIRL, we were catching our breathes, and slowly beginning to notice that we heard more sounds of breathing than the number of people there were here. We all lifted our heads to our back door, where some of our neighbors had decided to show up early.
Among them was Mrs. Kingston.
Dad stood up straight and proud, not realizing that it was sheer horror on our neighbors faces, not the awe of his majestic backyard that was causing them to be silent. "Hey, you all made it! And you're early! Who wants the first hot dog?"
Kaylee raised her hand to do the Hitler salute, and before she could misconstrue "Hiel!" as "Hi!" again, I had already tackled her down to the ground among the burnt remains of our flag. But the damage had been done, and we were American-hating Neo-nazis all over again. The neighbors fled in a stampede, and a new game of phone tag was being played.
The following morning, we received the latest edition of our community newsletter, 'The Crow's Nest'. It was different than a newspaper because it was mostly made by volunteers, and during the summer, that meant Mrs. Kingston and teenagers who were sent to work for her as punishment by their parents. I had always believed I would one day be famous, and I was rather certain it was going to be for dating Justin Timberlake or curing cancer, whichever came first. Instead, my first dose of my name being publically printed was with the rest of my family as the Nest blasted for what we were not. There weren't any cameras at the barbeque, so the teenagers had drawn stick figures of us stamping on the flag. To be fair, their artistic portrayal captured Mom very well. Dad still kept trying to come up with ideas to save our name, aside from actually telling Kaylee what Hitler did.
"You know," I once tried as the family washed thrown eggs off of our car. "This could scar Kaylee worse than actually learning what genocide is."
Mom had immediately planted her sponge-filled hands over Kaylee's ears, somehow knowing just when someone would say the big 'g' word. "She's just a baby!"
Zack appeared to be as sick of this argument as I was, flicking eggshells off of a window. "Kaylee is not a baby! Eve and I aren't babies! There is no one in this house who is a baby! We are sans babies!" As Zack continued to list ways of how no one in the house was a baby, I took a break from washing the car to admire a young man who just so happened to be skateboarding down our sidewalk. Like most of my youth, I believed in love at first sight, and all of that other Disney nonsense. I studied him carefully as he moved along, and while he was no Justin Timberlake, he wasn't bad in his own right. My imagination went full speed again, as I already knew what house we would love in, how many kids we would raise, and how we would explain to each and every one of our bundles of joy who Adolf Hitler was. I put aside my sponge and bucket, ignoring the chores to walk up to the sidewalk, wanting to make more than eye contact with who I assumed was my destined soul mate. Red hair, green eyes, nice and tall… take me away, Prince Ginger.
"Hi there." I called out to him, and he began to slow down now that he was being addressed. He looked to be about Zack's age, which only increased my desire. Older men had experience… experience with what, I had no idea, but it was always announced as a good thing.
"Hey." He stopped right in front of me, one foot on his board. He took a quick glance at the house, then right back at me. "You live here?"
I figured a 'duh' wouldn't win over his heart. "I sure do."
Of course, that's when Zack lost his patience in the argument, and loudly declared "That's it! I'm going to tell her what genocide is! And death and murder and sadness and that there is no Easter Bunny!" I didn't dare turn around, but from what I could hear, I could only assume Zack had thrown away his own bucket, splashing Dad accidentally, and was wrestling with Mom, trying to get her hands off of Kaylee's ears. Dad yelled at Zack, Mom yelled at Zack, Zack was doing his own yelling. "Listen to me, Kaylee! Adolf Hitler committed genocide! Genocide is death! Lots and lots of death! Death and death and more death!"
"Stop saying the word death!" Mom was pleading, nearly in hysterics of how much control he had lost over everything. She then shrieked – apparently Dad had grabbed the hose, trying to stop Zack's lecture by getting him soaked, but aimed in the wrong direction, blasting Mom. It took a few tries, but he managed to adjust his aim towards Zack, and soon all that could be heard from him was gargles of "Jews! Death! Jews! Death!"
Kaylee, with Aolf Ken in hand, decided that instead of this scene being some sort of degenerative chaos, was a new opportunity to make a song, as four year olds are often so musically inclined to. "Jews, death, jews, death, jews, death, jews…" To the tune of Mary Had a Little Lamb.
That skateboard carried away my future husband extremely quickly. I was now convinced this was going to be the worst summer of my life… or, worse, that from here on, this was my life. At that age, you're convinced that a singular tragedy can go onto infinity.
Thank God hamsters have short life spans.
In the second week of July, it was my turn to clean Hammy's cage again, and I noticed the runt hadn't moved while I scrubbed. After giving him some exploratory pokes, I quickly realized this was an ex-hamster. This was the first death in the family Kaylee had been around for, as Hammy was our only pet, and our relatives were neither too old nor too sick to be in the danger zone. Deciding that honesty was the best policy – and still feeling bitter that a future with no pool was to be mine – I picked up the cage, and headed towards the kitchen, where lunch was just about ready. They had been waiting for me to finish my chore and join them, so they were relatively surprised I had come back early, and with the cage. I put it on the table, just barely avoiding to squish the tuna sandwiches, and announced, "Hammy is dead."
Dad raised his eyebrows, not really too shocked. Mom put a hand to her heart, sympathy pouring out. Zack looked right at me, and for years would question if this death was of natural causes or of retaliation for not getting into Sasha's pool or losing the boy who I had actually forgotten already. As for Kaylee, perhaps she was smarter than I gave her credit for, as she seemed to automatically understand what 'dead' meant, and burst into loud tears. I began to feel some guilt as she hugged the cage, mourning the loss of her not-really-creatively-named pet, and she was unable to make coherent words for some time. Mom held her from behind, and the males tapped the wooden table, unsure of what to do. When Kaylee could speak, she raised her head towards me, hiccupping in between sentences. "Why? Why is Hammy dead?"
I took one look at where she had been sitting, and noticed she had been making crayon drawings of her bigoted beauty. So I replied with the first thing that came to mind. "Adolf Hitler." I said very quickly, pointing accusingly at the drawing. "Adolf Hitler killed Hammy."
Kaylee's eyes blinked hard, and she looked down upon her drawing. In a sudden fury, she grabbed the drawing, and ripped it to pieces, creating confetti with her broken heart. "I hate you, Adolf Hitler!" She screeched at the top of her lungs, and, shoving Mom off, ran away to destroy the other memorabilia she had created in her room. From that moment forward, she recanted her love of Hitler, and by the end of the summer, we were able to be in normal society without glares and slaps. Sasha's pool was wonderfully refreshing that August.
To make up for the loss of Hammy, Dad got us a sweet little dog which Kaylee named Mister Woof. We resumed watching the documentaries every Saturday night, and still do to this day. Even though it's been a while since the summer of 1996, I still get a little worried when we watch that show. That's because I really like Mister Woof… and I don't want to need him gone, should my sister ever decide to become Mrs. Mussolini.