PrettyFakes

Today my sister turns EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS OLD!!

People are always asking me about the various pseudonyms and code names on the PrettyFakes, which is one of my favorite parts. Some of them make sense, some of them don’t, but I love to hear “where does Pinky’s name come from?” Most people know that she is my sister, but it’s still a great opportunity to tell some of my favorite stories about her.

When we were around twelve or thirteen (I can’t really remember, and we’re always almost the same age: Pinky is 15 months younger than me), we decided it would be hilarious to record an ad-libbed series of car commercials. Our target was the breathless insanity so common then on the television—car salesmen dressed in chicken suits flapping around screaming at the competition. We had one of those little boom-box things with a sketchy microphone on it, and proceeded to tape a series of “commercials” with a revolving cast of characters.

My sister chose her name based off her favorite car—a Karmann Ghia—and, to my best recall, the first name of the Fonz’ legendary girlfriend-equal, Pinky Tuscadero. So: Pinky Karmannghia. She did all her commercials in this hilarious screechy voice that kept getting higher and higher as she slandered the competing car lots.

Yeah: we were weird kids, but this is the kind of stuff we did for fun. I mean, she was twelve years old with a favorite car? How cool is that? Part of this came from making our own stuff up a lot. We’d grown up in an older neighborhood in Birmingham where we were the only kids from miles and miles around. We lived down the street from our elementary school in Sandusky, and we walked to school every morning. The one rule was that we were supposed to stay out of the road.

I’ll never forget how freaked out I felt one time when Pinky, who was all of five years old, refused to walk on the sides of the street. Calmly, she strayed from the side and walked to school down the middle of the street. I demanded that she return to the side of the street; then I commanded it in my best older-brother voice (since I was, you know, six). My fear turned to sibling snottiness as she refused to head back to the side of the road, and I realized that I could totally get her in trouble later. I was pissed when my mom brushed me off later, and stunned to learn something that had never crossed my mind before: my mom stood on the front porch and watched us walk to school every morning. So she already knew.

I never walked in the middle of the street. Pinky didn’t always, either, but she could.

So that’s what I tell people about my sister: she named herself after a fictional rock and roll girl from the 1950’s and an obscure German sportscar, and she walks in the middle of the road.

One of our adventures from that time period was “The Cave,” which you can read in parts one and two. I wrote about Pinky’s wedding and her daughter Sarah in an ode to to life and love and Starkville.

Happy Birthday, Pinky! I love you!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 16th, 2006 at 8:27 am and is filed under Gorjus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.