Jen Mann - Just a Few People I Want to Punch in the Throat (Vol #4)

Throat Punch Media

Copyright 2015 by Throat Punch Media, LLC

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A ll of the names and identifying characteristics of the people who appear in this book have been changed to protect the bad, the good, and the ugly. So if you think you see yourself in these pages, please be assured that you are almost certainly wrong. These are my stories and this is how I remember them.

H i there , I'm Jen. I'm assuming that if you bought this Kindle Single, you already know that. I can't imagine that anyone except my mom and maybe a handful of the die hard fans of my blog People I Want to Punch in the Throat would buy this, so I'm not sure why I'm writing an introduction. I figure that anyone who bought this book already knows me and what I'm all about.

Wait. You don't know who I am? You're just sitting in a carpool line or in your cubicle at lunch time with your egg salad sandwich and you've never heard of me or my writings before? Well, then! Pull up a chair and let me tell you a little bit about myself.

I'm a sarcastic, sweary, hysterical, sometimes offensive, middle-aged, exhausted, married, mother of two who tends to say out loud what everyone else thinks. One of my friends actually called my writing brilliantly acerbic with a surprising warmth. I couldn't write a better descriptionthat sums me up perfectlyso now I just use that description everywhere!

I have two kids: Gomer (aged 10) and Adolpha (aged 8). Before you have a coronary and pull out your embossed stationary to write me a nasty letter about my horrible taste in names, just stop, because you're an idiot. Of course, those aren't their real names.

Their real names are actually worse, but I can't take the ridicule.

If you still feel strongly, go ahead and write me a letter. Hate readers are my favorites.

I call my husband The Hubs. It annoys the hell out of lots of people, so I keep doing it. His name isn't important, you can call him The Hubs too. Everyone does. He's a cheap bastard who can be a tad anti-social, but he treats me like gold, so he's my lobster. Oh yeah, he's Chinese and I'm Caucasian, sometimes that information is good to know when you're reading my stuff.

I've lived in Iowa, New Jersey, Illinois, Kansas, and New York. I currently live in Kansas. It doesn't blow as much as you'd think it would. I don't live on a farm or anything like that. I live in a suburb with gun-toting competi-moms, douchey dads, McMansions, and award-winning schools. It's like its own circle of hell, but with Targets and Starbucks on every cornerand a few of our Targets have Starbucks INSIDE of them (a sure sign of the impending Apocalypse).

My mom is a certified overachiever who mastered the fine art of housekeeping. That woman gave me a white glove test every week before I could go out with my friends and actually combed our stairs. In return for ironing his undershirts, my dad is her Sugar Daddy who keeps her outfitted in fancy vacuums and pays her Chico's bill without question. Hey, it's a good gig if you can get it.

I moved around a lot as a kid. My dad had one of those corporate jobs where they test your loyalty by making you move every couple of years to an even worse place than where you started. Because we moved so often, I never got to have a bright pink bedroom or hang pictures on my walls. My parents insisted that my bedroom be a neutral color, thus no need to repaint and they were convinced that every nail hole brought down their house's resale value by the thousands.

You would think that moving all the time would have made me an outgoing kid, but it didn't. I hated standing up in the front of a new class and being introduced on my first day. I hated when the teacher would ask, Who will have lunch with Jenni today? But what I hated worse was moving in middle school and high school when teachers didn't set up lunch dates for you. I didn't find my voice until college. That's when I changed my name to Jen, because it's soooo much cooler than adorable Jenni with an i and that's when I started saying whatever was on my mind.

This is a collection of original essays about what makes me tick and what makes me Jen. These essays and stories can't be found anywhere else. Not on my blog and not in my other books. Just here!

Each volume is different and you never know what you'll find. They are an assortment of my childhood memories, stories about my kids and the Hubs, and rants about everything that make me punchy all told with my usual snarky take.

I think the stories I tell are mostly true. You know how you remember an event one way and another person remembers it another? I'm sure there's some of that in here, but I'm not going to worry about that. If they have a problem, they can write their own damn story!

I t was the week of the Hubs' birthday. My parents took my family and my mother-in-law (who had just moved to Kansas from New York City) to dinner to celebrate. We knew there was severe weather coming, but this is Kansas. We can't cancel dinner every time there's a severe weather warning. That's like Canadians canceling dinner plans because there's snow in the forecast. We're always under some sort of severe weather watch. Plus, the Hubs wasn't about to miss a free meal.

So, we threw caution to the (70 mph) wind and headed out to the restaurant. We were sitting in a noisy restaurant when my mother said, Shhh. Listen. Are those the tornado sirens?

I listened carefully. YUP. Those were definitely tornado sirens. We were near the back of the restaurant, so they sounded kind of weak, but I could hear them.

Now, being a child of the Midwest I have had tornado safety drilled into my head since the wee age of five when we were taught at school that when you hear tornado sirens that means: Take shelter now! Death in the form of a swirling vortex of wind, mud, two-by-fours studded with rusty nails, tractor trailers, and cows is coming towards you and will be upon you in a mere matter of seconds. Grab your loved ones and nothing else! Run! Run! Run! I hope to see you on the other side of this terrible storm! God save us all!