Excuse me professor is there another word for secret pirate treasure?

Sometimes I get really tough questions from my friends. It’s hard having all this great knowledge and understanding. I feel as though it is truly my duty to share it with you all. I don’t want to be greedy.

Today’s question comes from the Playa MC:

Hey, I did mean to tell you about the Mystery of the Magic Panties. I was sitting behind this girl wearing one of those midriff shirts and hip hugger jeans today in my bar review class, and she was making it very hard to concentrate because I could see half of her ass -- no panties. But then after the first break... WHAMMO! All of a sudden there were panties there where no panties were once before! Magic! So which is more plausible -- was she originally wearing invisible panties that all of a sudden became visible, or was it that this girl happens to carry an extra pair of panties around with her just in case she has to deal with an "emergency ass-crack escape" experience? I don't know, but it fascinated me. As an infrequent panty-wearer, can you shed light on this mystery?

My dear Playa MC,

First of all I would like to suggest that you spend a little more time contemplating your review books, and less time on the Mystery of the Magic Panties. Unless of course the bar includes a section for pervs like you, which could explain the justice system as it stands today.

Secondly you should know that several situations might increase the chances for an emergency panty placement. Things you might want to consider are:

What was the temperature of the room you were in? Was it cold? Could this simply be the need for this fine young lady to keep her ass at a more comfortable temperature?

Did she catch you leering at her buttocks? It is possible that she could feel your eyes burning an extra hole into her but. Since she probably doesn’t need a second pooper, she might have been defending her body from such damage.

Any chance she had a hot nooner with someone else in the class? Perhaps they were strategically missing in the beginning for the sake of quickness. (I’ve hear women can be whores like this)

A more boring explanation could be the dreaded Aunt Flo visited her and her undies came to the rescue in order to preserve her pants.

Another hypothesis could lay in the size of her derrière. Was this girl carrying around a budonka but? If so her panties could have been hiding in the extra fold of her enormous ass and escaped during a routine visit to the ladies room.

Sadly I cannot explain the mystery of the missing panties if the case was that they were later placed on her bootie. As an infrequent panty wearer, I do not keep a pair of backups with me. It is a bold, bold decision in the morning to go commando. I would never question my judgment by bringing a long an emergency back up. Once you’re out the door feel the breeze and revel in your decision knowing that you dear, are a brave woman.

That being said Playa MC, please pull your head out of her ass and get to studying the real material covered in this review course. I have a feeling I will be needing an attorney very soon due to my own ass crack endeavors.

Do you have an unsolved mystery the Snowflake could help you with? Is there a question you fear of asking due to impossibility that might ever be explained? If so, feel free to post your questions here. I will do my best to discover the answers to all your mysteries.

Wings to Fly

Maybe I’ve been listening to Donavon too much, and you probably don’t have a clue who he is or what he sings. I have to get it out. And maybe it’s because I’ve been listening to that song about his boy, and I don’t have a baby. I haven’t had that opportunity, but I have my nephews. I have my Boo and my Brave Man Brother, and I listen to my sister cry because she thinks she’s a bad mother. On Mother’s Day of all days, and I want you to know.

I moved in with my sister when I moved to Austin. I went from living in Houston in a shared bed with Miss Universe, to living in Austin with my new husband, my nephew, sister and brother in law. I went from hedonism to “pretend you’re happy” overnight.

When I was there I wanted to write a book about living with Boo. My nephew was 3 at the time. He is extremely bright and gifted. Sharing Cheerios with him each morning was the highlight of my day; sleeping with my new husband was a void that filled my nights. I would awake each morning with his call.

His little body at the corner of the doorway, sniffing was a language our own. “Sniff….sniff”, he would make the noise like an aboriginal body. When I was awake enough I would mimic his sound with my own version of his “Sniff, sniff.” This meant in Boo and Snowflake language, ‘I’ll meet you in 5 minutes for Cheerios.” I’m not sure how or why we created this syntax. Or what it really meant on a deeper level, but we both understood it in a way I’ve never spoken to another.

Five minutes would go by and he would be waiting for me at the table downstairs. Everyone else busy beginning their daily routine, we would be our ritual. “How’s it going Boo? Sleep well?” I’d ask in a haze. “Not bad, you?” he’d respond. Not wanting to get into the idiosyncrasies that were my love life or marriage I would reply in some form of the affirmative, but I always felt he knew I was lying.

Before long my sister would show up, pregnant and feeling like hell. She was followed by my brother in law and next my husband. We moved as if in a play, as if distressed from time. Fluid like water running through the stones of a well aged man made dam. Each knowing that we were not natural, but forced to go into this path we chose.

Each morning I’d hear him sniff, and I would sniff back and it was the highlight of my day. Every breakfast was the beginning of possibility for him, and the possibility of redemption for me.

Soon afterwards we bought our house, but not before his brother came. Brave Man Brother appeared in such a different fashion than his elder. Calm, cool, and collective his little brother entered into the chaos we called “family”. Boo and I were amazed at the light that appear from his little body. He claimed a serenity neither of us has ever known.

Last year Boo started talking about killing himself. At 5 he was ready to slice his father’s ears in his sleep and content with talking about throwing himself from the window. My sister and I watched in horror as he began a spiral left for old alcoholics and the severely disturbed.

He’s my little boy. He’s already taking more pills than anyone else I know, and seeing more shrinks that I have. He’s bright and gifted in ways that I will never know. I taught him how to read music in 10 minutes. I think it took me months, if not years, to understand that pattern.

He woke up this morning early so he could make my sister breakfast, but she was already awake. The pressure of raising her two boys and the impositions of her husband’s family made her get up and rush to the shower for a break down. She said she stayed there as long as she could. She stood there sobbing and hoping no one would know how desperate she was. Boo ended up having a breakdown because he woke up early to make his Mom breakfast in bed and she was already awake and in the shower. He felt like he missed his chance, his opportunity to love her.

I can not tell you what it is like having a loved one diagnosed with mania at 6. I can’t tell you the brilliance I see in his eyes, or all the love my sister gives to him. I can’t begin to tell you the strength she has in facing his challenges and the destruction she feels at her ignorance with this disease.

I can tell you this, all the goodness I see in her children – all the love they pour from their little hearts speaks of her kindness and her belief in them. She will do anything to make sure that they get a better life than she had. She will make sure that the demons that hide in their heads, instead of underneath their beds like other little kids, are confronted. She will not stop short or pause to take a break, because she loves them. Because she has too.
Love gives us no option to give up on little boys who create languages because they love us. Little boys and little girls who don’t have it so easy make us try. Because life for some little kids isn’t about making paper dolls and planes out of newspaper, it’s about making it through the day intact.

My sister is a deeply religious woman, because that is all she has. I don’t know what you believe in. Hell, I don’t always know what I believe in, but whatever it is – whatever you think is good – could you ask them to give her strength? If not for her, then for little kids who dream of death instead of wings to fly.

Pretty shoes and Strong Girls

I just turned it off. I’ve decided that I’m done. If I’m wrong, then I have at least 4 more months of hell. If I’m right, then I am free woman.

All the struggles of growing up with dyslexia come back when I study. I hear that smart girl with the pretty shoes laughing at me because I can’t recognize the difference between chief and chef.

I remember me struggling to get it together for the geometry test, and then finally paying off the dork in class for me to cheat my way to a “B”.

There I am my freshman year in college, hanging out with kids in remedial math. There I am excelling in foreign languages. Its memorization. The same way I learned to read and write. Other kids have special things called phonetics. I have spell check and a dictionary.

I hope I’m done. I hope this chapter is behind me. Yes, I can fool the whole company into thinking I’m a pretty good accountant. They don’t know that if I had to add anything in my head, my eyes would pop out and roll out onto the floor. Loss ratio? Just nod after someone else comes up with it, like you knew it way before they did.

I’m hoping this is the last time I have to sit for the CPA. Once this is done, I plan on hanging it up with my degree in accountancy (which I still don’t think is real word), but then right next to I plan on placing a childhood picture my mother refuses to hand over to me.

She thinks I put myself down with it. I think it inspires me. It’s a typical little drawing of a house and flowers, and across the top it reads, “To Karin, Love Me”.

Only special kids with specials tutors can read it. It’s written with those crazy little backwards letters that supposedly kept me a step behind. In reality, it kept me one step ahead of the other kids with their pretty little shoes and straight A’s.

Free at last!

Last week wasn’t the best of all birthday weeks. First the fall that landed me keyless and bruised from head to toe, and then Friday I got into a wreck with the X. Sure it wasn’t his fault. I know he didn’t mean to beat up the cabrio-gay, but here we are.

In retrospect, I can’t help but smile a little over it all. He was gleeful that day. There we sat at the bank signing the last piece of paper that held us together financially. The house is sold, the bank accounts separated, the mortgage paid off, on an on. All that was left was a little transaction at the bank and we were done. Forever. For good. He was grinning ear to ear, and it bothered me. Not so much that I can’t understand moving on, I can. It was more that I took his joy to mean that he was happy to rid himself of my presence.

So off he skipped out the door of the bank, asking to follow me to the restaurant for lunch. He wants to celebrate my birthday, and all the while I’m thinking he is such a pussy that he has to hide it at lunch so my replacement won’t get hurt. Wow. I feel so belittled. Insipid little remarks like,” Aren’t you glad we are done? I’ve been looking forward to this day for months now!” are oozing from his lips.

We’re at a light and I’m trying to turn, but being cautious of the traffic. I move up a little to see better. WHAM! He guns his SUV and goes flying into my car.

Seconds later we pull over to inspect the damage. He gets out and throws his sunglasses over the hood of his car and into the meticulous grounds of Pier One. I get out asking if the woman behind him pushed him into me. Turns out she didn’t. Too bad I flipped her off thinking that she had.

He apologizes for days and I’m here with a little case of whiplash and a smashed up car. Turns out for him, we’re not so separated. I have a claim against his insurance now. Guess I’m not so easy to get rid of. We spend the rest of my lunch hour on the phone with the insurance company and I watch him shake his head in disbelief. “I was so happy about today when I got up. I felt free, at last” he whispered looking down at his shoes.

All in all, I must say it makes me smile. Just a little on the inside. Rubbing his happiness in my face was insulting. Yes, I’m happy we’re completely removed from one another. But he’s still my friend. I wouldn’t rub it in front of him that I’m happier without him, which is his normal status quo.

So now when I see the dents in the cute little car, I’m okay with it. It will be a pain to be without it for a couple of days, but somehow even with a sore neck I’m just a little bit happy. In a smug little way.