Urkels and Skunks and Mammas, oh my!

When I was a kid, my mom worked full time.  That meant she let us dress ourselves in whatever we wanted.  As long as we were weather-appropriately dressed and weren’t dressed like little whores (namely I wasn’t), we could wear anything.

This went for our Halloween costumes as well.  As long as it wasn’t an evil, satanic character (witch, vampire, ghost, etc.) and it was cheap, we could dress as whatever we wanted.

In 1991, I was 10 years old and my brother was 8.  I’d dressed as a black cat the following year (which is still witchy, but whatever).  So I reused my costume from the year before and spray painted a white stripe down the back.  I was a skunk, wearing all Black Keds.

My brother decided he wanted to be Steve Urkel, from Family Matters. He had everything for the costume, so my mom was happy about how cheap it was.

But he wasn’t content to just go as White Urkel.  No, he demanded our mother buy him brown face paint, as well. (I’m sure the California State Bar Association would like to know all about how they just accepted a lawyer who dressed in blackface as a kid.)

A few days before Halloween, my brother had some Boy Scout Halloween Jamboree thingy.  My mom was his troop leader and I was a Girl Scout, so I went as well.  As we were getting ready for the Jamboree, my brother refused to let Mom put the face paint on him, so he smeared it on his own face, in the ramshackle manner that 8 year old boys are perfect at.   Somehow, he forgot to paint his forehead, which wasn’t hidden, because he has about 3 cowlicks in the middle of his bangs.

So we went to the Jamboree and I assume fun times were had.  I don’t recall.  I do remember getting back into the backseat of our new Mazda minvan and not putting on my seatbelt.

We lived out in the country and so the trek to and from town could take awhile.  I busied myself with inventorying my haul that I made at the Jamboree.

Next thing I knew, my mom slammed on the brakes and I went face first into the back of the driver’s seat.  I remember thinking Dad was gonna spank my because I got my skunky face paint on the back of the new car seats, since I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt.

Then we hit something.

It was a deer.  Not just a deer. A mamma deer who was pregnant with a little baby.

This is a true recreation of the events.

The people who lived across the street heard it happen and immediately came outside to see if we were ok.  My mom tried to drive the car over to the side of the road, but the engine wouldn’t even turn over.   Since this was the days before cell phones, they let us come inside their house so we could call my dad to come get us.

That didn’t solve the problem of the deer though.  All of her legs were broken, but she was still alive and in a lot of pain.  My brother and I wanted to go outside to see her, but the adults wouldn’t let us.  They sat the little skunk and blackface Urkel down in front of the TV to watch “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”

We were content with that, until I heard the gunshot.  And lost my shit.

I don’t remember my dad getting there to pick us up.  I was in a daze.  That experience traumatized me to the point where I still slow way the fuck down whenever I drive on that road, even to this day.

A few months ago, I found a story my brother had to write a few years later, about “The Scariest Experience He’s Ever Had.”  He wrote about that night.  He said that he couldn’t sleep and kept going into my parents’ room, to sleep on the floor.  Apparently, it wasn’t hitting the mamma deer and then the neighbors shooting it that scared him.  It was the fact that the brand new car got fucked up.  He is a robot.