Tractor Races

The other day my Mom mentioned that one of her neighbors is planning on resurrecting the annual Tractor Races.  Nostalgia got me thinking about the first time I introduced my husband to my parents, which was back in 1998, sadly on the weekend of one of these tractor races. 

Reader, please note that when I say tractor, what I actually mean is ride-on lawnmower, and when I say race, what I actually mean is adults dressed in character racing each other atop their lawnmowers, while (mildly) intoxicated. 

This dignified event was the brainchild of (who else?) my Dad.

That summer I was nineteen and home on break after my Sophomore year of college.  You can imagine my distress when my Husband (then my boyfriend of 5 months) called and told me he'd be coming to town to see the Y.M.C.A. play I was directing. 

My sister and I had decided to unleash our inner Damon/Affleck and had penned a script for a children's play.  I think my friend Corey summed it up best when he said, "It was awesome!  It had a little of everything: Karaoke, a laser light show, tap dancing..." 

To this day my Sister refuses to speak of our joint theatrical endeavor, as do five of my cousins who were forced to perform in it. 

"I think I'm gonna come see the play."  Hubby (then Boyfriend) innocently told me one day over the phone. 

"Oh.  OK!"  My eyes were already starting to water. 

"I can get a ride back home on Sunday, but can I just sleep at your house after the show?"  He asked.

"Um, sure!  Of course!  Why not?  That's fine!"  Could he sense my panic?  Probably not, after all, I was attending a top notch acting school.

I hung up the phone and immediately burst into frenzied, desperate tears.  My life was over, finished, and just when I had discovered true love.  It was all so tragic.

My Mom didn't understand my hysterics: "What's the big deal?  Daddy and I will be on our best behavior..."

What does their best behavior look like?  Let me enlighten you.  When my boyfriend's pals arrived to pick him up, Dad was wearing black spandex pants, a wig, false teeth and fake chest hair.  He was Austin Powers, International man of mystery. 

My Mom?  Austin's sidekick, Vanessa Kensington: complete with wig, sexy jumpsuit, the whole nine yards.  I remember one of hubby's friends remarking that this was how he had always pictured my parents would be.

I suppose the Austin Powers theme was pretty mild, considering.  Some of Ma and Dad's past themes included Desert Storm (patriotic tractor), Peg and Al Bundy (tractor strewn with shoe boxes and Dad perched upon a toilet seat purchased specially for the occasion, plunger in hand), and the Flinstones. 

The year prior my parent's had chosen The Beverly Hillbillies as their motif: Ma had dressed as Jethro and Dad was Granny Clampett.  I can still close my eyes and picture Dad atop his lawnmower donning a grey Granny wig and blue dress. 

I tried to decide which would be a more awkward way to introduce my Father to the boy I'd fallen madly in love with: Dad in spandex or Dad in drag? 

The neighborhood takes this solemn event very seriously.  Of course, not everyone participates.  Those who choose not to, or who find the core group too "wild" are unanimously banished from future get-togethers. 

That year one neighbor (a male) was Rose from Titanic, complete with red wig and nightgown.  Another neighbor, dressed as the Red Baron, would later discover the wings he'd created for his lawnmower were slowing him down.  The Red Baron would eventually be forced to throw the wings off, mid-race, in a dramatic last-ditch attempt to take the lead.

As an adult looking back on this, I'm able to find the situation comical.  At the time, Hubby (then Boyfriend) found it totally funny and of course my parents themselves found their antics to be filled with extreme hilarity. 

But back on that monumental weekend I had none of the tractor holiday spirit within me.  I more or less spent the entire day and a half in a constant state of poorly disguised panic.  My teenage self was not rampant with self assurance. 

Years later I discovered that Ma and Dad felt like I'd been embarrassed of them and Hubby found it weird my parents had been missing in action for most of the weekend.  Didn't they want to get to know him?  At the time I hadn't told him I'd orchestrated it so exactly this would happen, and my parents had been instructed to make themselves scarce.  Could I help it that when they finally did choose to emerge they were in costume?

Honestly, it wasn't so much that I was embarrassed, rather I just don't think I was ready for my two worlds to collide.  Back then life was so melodramatic and fragile in a way things only were when I was very young. 

Thankfully, the older I become the more secure I am with myself.  Gone are the days when it bothered me if my family argued in the company of my husband, or rode a lawnmower while intoxicated and possibly in drag.  On the contrary, these days I'd hardly bat an eyelid.  I find this knowledge extremely comforting, and something my nineteen year-old self would never have thought possible.

Right now, I'd give anything to live closer to home so I could attend the annual tractor races.  What a difference a near decade makes...

Comments

[Wendy]

I am officially in awe of your family.