Literary Classics #1...

In an effort to bring some culture, refinement and taste into my life, I have decided to read a literary classic every few months...or at least try to anyway. The first book I have chosen is the 1978 classic Mommie Dearest by Christina Crawford about her life as a child of Academy Award winning actress and mother Joan Crawford.

Um, what a bitch! I'm only through the first 7 chapters and already she's throwing the beat down on her kids left and right. Some of the juicy tittybits are:

Joan liked to use what's called a "sleep safe" when tucking her kids into bed at night, which basically is a straitjacket with loops to strap the damn kid to the bed, face down no less, during bedtime. They are not allowed to move from the bed for any reason throughout the night. If you had to piss, shit or vomit - too bad. Hold it.

Joan would conduct "night raids" on her children's bedrooms. You were subject to an "inspection" at any hour of the night, usually between the hours of 12am and 2am, of your bedroom and anything else that you may or may not have responsibility for. This usually involved her destroying your shit and making you clean it up. During the raids you were also subject to getting beat upside the head with a can of Bon Ami (like Comet) scouring powder repeatedly. Oh, and by the way, you had to clean that up as well.

Any man that Joan porked, you had to call "Uncle". And you had better make them a drink and entertain them if she wasn't ready to come downstairs, which was all the time. Christina probably could have had her bartending license at age 9. Actually, so could I but I digress...

The staff was scared to death of Joan and would rat each other out in order to stay out of trouble. If there were no issues for a few days, she would punish everyone for not tattling on each other as there was no possible way that someone was not doing something behind her back at all times.

She'd make some of her devoted fans clean her house, LOL! I actually liked this one. I call that ingenuity and she called it cutting costs.

Sounds like a real page turner to me. I hope the rest of the book is as good as the beginning.