Doris - My Hero

Doris Ruth (Fuller) Larson Ryan, age 48, of Cove, Arkansas passed away February 28, 2011 at UAMS.

Doris was my hero. I found her obit in today's paper and cried.

She appeared on my radar in the spring of 1975, the day the results of the Junior High cheerleader tryouts were announced. Eight of the girls were no surprise; the usual suspects - cute little petite popular girls. And then there was Doris. All through the day everyone was asking, "Who is this Doris girl???"

In an era of cutesy names like Mitzi, Jenni, and Kristi, there was Doris. Doris, a name associated more with grandmotherly smells and sensible orthopedic shoes than perky little cheerleaders. Doris.

You see, Doris was one of those 7th grade girls nobody noticed. She was tall, gawky, all arms and legs; towered over everyone and slouched just a little to fit in. She had a mop of wild, curly carrot-red hair she hadn't yet learned to tame. She didn't wear makeup and dressed like a tomboy. She was practically invisible to the tight social cliques of a small-town Junior High.

But she had given it her all in the cheerleader tryouts and earned a coveted spot. Against all odds, she, who once was a Nobody, suddenly became a Somebody. She was living proof that Cinderella stories can and do come true, a hero to all little geeky girls who can only dream of sitting at the Cool Kids table at lunch. I always wondered if that fateful day in '75 had a dramatic impact on the outcome of her life. Did she dance in her glass slipper or did it cause blisters?

I didn't know Doris personally because we were in different grades and ran with different crowds, she an exalted Cheerleader and I a lowly Band Geek. I doubt she would have even recognized my name. But I admired her from afar, marveling at the grace with which she carried her unexpected fame.

I've thought about Doris from time to time over the years and wondered where she was and how she was getting on. Sadly, that question was answered today.

Rest in peace Doris. You will always be my hero.

Frozen in Time

(Valentine card from my brother-in-law Poppy.)

I've just returned from a two-week stint at my sister Nana's house trying to get her to part with more of her possessions. It's a hard row to hoe, but she did very well this trip. We took a truckload of stuff to the dumpster and a mountain of paper to recycle. Poppy lightened his bookcases by 250 books which were donated to a community library. Yay! Life is lighter at their house now. Next trip we get to lighten Nana's bookcases. Oy vey.

Anywho, I was at their house on Valentine's Day and got the card above from Poppy. It was perfect for me since my latest obsession is writing papers and fountain pens. When I pulled the card from the envelope, Nana and I both squealed, almost simultaneously, "It looks just like me(you)!"

When Poppy came home that night, he said he had plucked the card from the rack of hundreds just because she looks like me. Well, the little girl does look amazingly like me when I was her age. I'm well into middle age with gray hair and bifocals these days.

It's interesting all three of us said she looks just like me. Not that she looks like me when I was her age, but that she looks like me now. All three of our memories are frozen in time back when I was four, Nana was 16, and Poppy was 18. When we are together we revert back to that time and those ages.

Nana becomes Mother Hen again because she mommied me more than our mother ever did. There are times when I catch her looking at my dinner plate, pausing just a split second to consider if she should cut up my meat for me. I don't mind. I liked being mommied every now and then.

I enjoy not having adult responsibilities, or having to cook or clean or pick up after myself. I get to play with Nana's toys and poke around in her attic for treasures. I get to stay up late, sleep late and eat all kinds of sugary treats.

Frozen in Time is not such a bad thing after all.

Says my inner 4-year-old Speck, "I yike it."

Bustin' Bricks Fer Jesus

More from the Wayback Machine, circa 2005:

I have been cackling about this all day. The hot cultural excitement here in Our Town this week is the big "Bustin' Bricks fer Jesus" show over at one of our largest mainstream Protestant churches. It has been going on every night this week and has been heavily advertised on the local television station.

From the ads it appears to be a cross between a Jim and Tammy Fay Baker Demon Castin' show and a Hulk Hogan/World Wrestling Federation gala. Hot, oily, muscled wrestlers clad only in a pair of tiny Speedos karate chop bricks, boards and slabs of ice....then do a little witnessin' fer Je-HE-sus. I break up in hysterics when the ads come on. "Yew might be a redneck if....the WWF rassles at yer church."

I happened to have the TV muted and a Moody Blues album playing when one of these ads came on tonight. I nearly wet my pants in laughter when, at the exact moment the ad came on, the song "Isn't Life Strange" started. It was the perfect soundtrack for the ad.

I live for the delicious irony of the absurd.

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"The world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."
-- Horace Walpole (1717-1797), Letters

I Grow Old and Other Stuff

More from the Wayback Machine:

Oh, and by the way, that's a reference to Peabody's Improbably History, with Peabody the dog and his pet boy, Sherman, not the Internet archive thingy. The Internet archive thingy was named by a bunch of geeky cartoon-watching Baby Boomers who spent their formative years trying to produce an actual Wayback Machine.

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Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 5:36 AM
Subject: I Grow Old and Other Stuff

Dear Yahoos,

There are times that I get bits and pieces of stuff stuck in my brain that won't go away. They swirl around and around, never congealing yet never fading. Sometimes I've just gotta poop 'em out to get rid of them so I can start a new cerebral belly button lint collection. Tonight I am fully dilated. My brain is full. I gotta poop a little.

---------------------------------------------------

Yesterday two newly hired Patient Care Techs appeared in my department. Since my boss went Christmas shopping, I had to give them the "Welcome to the Department" speech and tour and fill out all the initial paperwork. They sat primly on the other side of my desk with their 19-year-old freshly scrubbed little faces and puppy dog eyes, answering my hundred questions with "Yes ma'am" and "No ma'am."

Somewhere around the third "Yes ma'am" it hit me that I was old enough to be their mother. I looked up at them and, looking in their eyes, realized that to them I must seem like an antique. In that instant I could almost hear my wrinkles forming. My brain keeps telling me I'm just 22.

This morning I fixed my hair as I got ready for work. I admired it in the mirror. It was looking pretty nice...no frizzies, curling under nicely, very shiny and healthy. Then I put on my glasses. There on my right temple was the biggest gray skunk stripe you ever saw. (sigh) I gotta get me some Miss Clairol.

I was reminded of a verse an old college professor quoted all the time:

I grow old...I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

(from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot)

Doc and I became friends about five years after I graduated. He had a scandalous reputation both at the university and in the community mainly because he bucked the administration and bedded most of their daughters. He was an independent thinker and had an off-the-wall opinion about everything. I loved that. He was a character.

After his third divorce he decided to adopt the bohemian lifestyle and set up housekeeping in a ratty old trailer on the banks of the river. His door was always open and something from his garden was always cooking on the stove. Any time day or night there would be an odd mixture of folks hanging around. They would range from his students to other professors, to the mayor or the chief of police. You never knew who you would encounter at Doc's. He would hold court from his piano bench, cigarette in his wildly waving hand, imparting the wisdom of the ages on his gathered audience in a beat poet, coffeehouse style. All that was missing was the beret.

In the summer we would wade out into the middle of the river and set up a card table and lawn chairs. We would play spades sitting in the waist-high water. People floating down the river on tubes and rafts would stop and chat for awhile then float away. After we were thoroughly waterlogged, we would go back up the hill and eat whatever was cooking on the stove. He cooked green beans all day until they wilted. Hubby always wants me to cook wilted green beans that way now.

For reasons I'll never fathom, he hooked up with one of the faculty's daughters and married her. She got him to clean up the ratty trailer and take a shower a little more often. They were an odd couple. They built a beautiful house on a bluff overlooking the lake. Just a few years after it was completed Doc died from cancer. I'll miss him.

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Current day, current hour...my jeans are rolled up just past my ankles. Dammit!!!

NOT a Baby Person

More goodies from Wayback Machine:

Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2002 2:05 AM
Subject: The Daily Dribble 10-02-02

Dear Family,

I guess I'm the last holdout and have to tell about my life. I've been working far more than I want to, four to five days a week. I almost got overtime on my last paycheck. Yuck!

It's a big joke in the Nursery that I am NOT a baby person*. Everybody knows that I avoid babies at all costs and they tease me about it all the time.

Well today Beverly, one of the Nursery nurses, made me hold a baby because everybody else was busy. I nearly had a cow. She said "Here, hold this kid" and thrust him at me and almost let go. I started freaking out because I had no idea how to hold a baby and figured the kid would get dropped in the transfer process.

She pulled him back up just a little when she saw my panic and said "Calm down, it's OK. Take a deep breath..... Now, are you right-handed or left-handed? OK then, you need to hold him this way." She made sure I had a good grip on him before she let go. I think I would have been calmer if she had handed me a large poisonous lizard.

I don't think I was holding him in the most advantageous position but I was too scared to readjust. He seemed to be stuck out there on the end of my boobs. I know this is where a baby belongs, but it just didn't seem natural. I finally got the courage to ease him down below my boobs, but he disappeared from view. I pulled him back up on top but he was right under my nose. I realized then that babies smell funny.

I also noticed he had thick hair all over his forehead and looked like a werewolf. Why is it again that people think these creatures are cute???? I finally figured out that I could work him in *between* my boobs so he was sitting kinda upright. That seemed to be the best position for both of us and I relaxed a little bit.

It was about this time that the other Nursery nurses discovered me and stood and gawked as though I had grown three heads. I guess my ashen face and sweaty brow were quite a sight to behold. I probably had that "deer-in-the-headlights" look.

After the initial shock of seeing me holding a baby, they just stood there laughing and pointing, those turds. Nobody offered to take him from me. The little monster started making poopy, burpy, spitty noises and I yelled at Beverly to come get this kid.

After she took him I bolted out the back door. It was a bad day. I can deal with babies as long as they have four legs and fur. These nekkid hairless-ape babies are a whole 'nuther story.

Love,
Speck

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*Not a baby person.....
I was traumatized at the age of 13 when Nana told me I couldn't hold Billy Joe Jr. the Christchild (my nephew) because I would infect him with Teenage Plague or something. She told me I had to wear a surgical mask if I wanted to go into the same room with him. I figured holding babies just wasn't worth all that. I've never wanted to hold one since.

Traumas at the Library Check-out Desk

I got my hot button pressed today. Had to rant and rave, take a trip down memory lane, and investigate a few rabbit trails along the way. Get a cup of coffee and settle in, this is gonna take a while.

Karen Blados blogged that her first-grade son, "The Punk," was all excited because he had checked out a "chapter book" from the library. There was a substitute librarian on duty at the time who didn't know first-graders weren't allowed to get books from the yellow section.

Well bully for him! I hope he sneaks over to the yellow section every time he's in there. I hope he can manage to tote out stacks and stacks of chapter books that are supposedly too advanced for him. Because if a kid has a burning desire to read a chapter book, he shouldn't be limited to Fuzzy Bunny's Adventures in ten pages with more pictures than words.

Yep, this is a big ol' hot button for me...The Yellow Section Restriction. Brought back a particularly hateful memory which I've never forgotten or forgiven. Trailing on its heels was another library moment as a little kid that turned out OK, and another which happened just recently. Childhood traumas are not easily forgotten it seems.

Let's start this story at the beginning, shall we? Nana, my sister, is twelve years older. She was born a teacher and I was her star pupil and teaching guinea pig. She instilled in me a love of reading. She would bring me the good stuff, Newberry Award winners like Charlotte's Web and Dr. Doolittle, and a mystery series with five kids, The Happy Hollisters. (Yes, I remember this like it was yesterday, are you impressed Nana?) I sucked them up like a sponge. Thank you Nana!

My real passion for reading started somewhere around the third grade. That's when I became too nearsighted to see the world beyond the length of my arm. I could live out my childhood adventures in the pages of books. I read everything I could get my hands on. Our house was full of books and I was free to read anything I wanted. Mother probably didn't realize I was reading Valley of the Dolls at age eleven, but it kept me out of her hair and that was fine with her.

Nana and Pris (the middle sister) brought home their worn out high school Literature books the school was replacing. From those I got my first taste of Sherlock Holmes in The Adventure of the Speckled Band. I also got bits of Pygmalion, Cheaper by the Dozen, The Ransom of Red Chief, and other great classics. I read those Lit books cover to cover at least three times.

I also discovered a cache of the complete Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series in a dusty corner of the church basement. Every Wednesday after choir practice I'd get three and return them Sunday morning. Took me about a year to read through the whole collection.

On Saturday morning Mom did the grocery shopping. She didn't want to lug me through the grocery store so she dropped me at the library and picked me up when she finished. I had about 40 minutes to snatch up a week's worth of reading material, somewhere in the neighborhood of ten to twelve books. That would last me from Saturday to Wednesday until I got to choir practice.

Suffice it to say I was an avid reader and read well beyond my grade level. One of the first "adult" books I was allowed to buy was Shakespeare's Four Tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet. (It's still in my bookcase to this day.) I was in elementary school at the time. I was looking for something a little meatier to read. I chose well. Shakespeare is a bit meaty for a grade-schooler. I remember Mom raising an eyebrow and asking if I rillyrilly wanted *that* book. I said yes. She shrugged her shoulders and paid for it which is very unlike my Mother now that I think about it. I guess she figured if I wanted to try to tackle Shakespeare it was worth the 60 cents.

So, that's my background on books and reading. Now we get to the nasty memory.

Third grade, class trip to the library. The school library is one small room. Low bookcases under the windows for Grades 1-3, tall cases on the opposite wall for Grades 4-6. Every person in the class gets to check out a book to take back to the classroom for the week. The books stay on a reading table and we can read any of them after we finish our work. I always finish early and snatch up a book. Had the whole pile read in a matter of days. By the time I reached third grade I had read most of the books in the Grade 1-3 section.

This particular library trip I'm searching in vain for fresh reading material. I realize I've either read everything at my level, or what I haven't read is below my level. I need to hurry and pick something because time is running out. I turn to the big stacks on the other side of the room. Ah ha! Big books, chapter books, books I won't finish in fifteen minutes. Fantastic! I wander over and gaze in wonderment at all the marvelous books in front of me, scanning the titles, trying to decide on just one.

Then the evil librarian catches me in The Forbidden Zone.

"Hey! You can't be over there! You have to get a book from this section!" she snarls, pointing at the low bookcases.

"But I've read all those books. They're all to simple." I reply.

"It doesn't matter. You can't have a book from over there. Pick one from over here...and hurry up about it."

So, frustrated, I walk to the low bookcases and grab whatever my hand lands on. What I really wanted to do was scream, "Look bitch, I'm slogging my way through a high school Lit book at home and you are forcing me to take Fuzzy Ducky's Bathtime? Are you crazy???" But I was only eight and didn't have adequate vocabulary at the time.

"This one. I'll take this one," handing it to her to check out for me.

"You didn't even look at it!" she says, accusing me of being a smart-ass with her glare.

"It doesn't matter. I won't read it anyway. It's too simple."

She checks it out to me, still glaring, and I'm almost in tears. I want more than anything to read, but I want a big book, one with chapters and no pictures, one that will entertain and enlighten for longer than 15 minutes. But that's forbidden just because I'm in third grade, not fourth grade.

I hated that woman from that day forward. She was the librarian, someone who is supposed to nurture and encourage a child's love for reading and books, not smash it flat with stoopid rules. I thought she should be fired. When I read her obit in the hometown paper I had a satisfied smirk for the rest of the day. Good riddance.

Fast forward a year or two. Saturday morning county library/grocery trip. I have collected my dozen or so books for the week and go to the checkout counter. I'm barely tall enough to see over the top. I set my stash on the counter along with my library card as I have done for weeks and weeks and weeks. The lady at the counter (new, not the librarian) peers over the counter at me and says, "Oh, little girl, you can't check out all these books. There's a three-book limit."

"But, but, but, I always check out this many."

"There's a limit, only three a day."

"But I'll finish three by this afternoon!" I say, my bottom lip quivering and tears welling in my eyes imagining a week with no books to read.

The new lady, who is actually very nice about it all, sees my panic and tries to explain again. I try to explain again to her.

"But, but, but, I get this many every week. I always get this many. Look at my card!"

By this time Miss Baker, the librarian, steps out from the office to see about the commotion. (Yes, at our quiet little county library this would be considered a commotion.) The nice lady explains to her, pointing at my mountain of books, that I'm over the limit.

Miss Baker is something like second cousin once removed to my father and is approaching a hunnert years old. She is the quintessential old-maid librarian who has devoted her entire life to books, the library, and her library patrons. She has checked me out every Saturday for most of my life and has never batted an eye at my carnivorous reading habit. That's why I was clueless about the three-book limit.

Miss Baker adjusts her bi-focals (complete with the little chain that clips on the earpieces and goes around her neck, draping across the shoulders of her ancient cardigan) and peers over the counter at me. Then she smiles a little smile. She turns to the nice lady and says, "It's OK, I know her. She can check out all she wants."

Tears of joy, tears of relief. I got my books but not without some much remembered trauma. I sniffled all the way home.

Fast forward lots and lots of decades to a year ago. I'm at the community college library checking out four art and drawing books.

Nice lady at the counter says, "I'm sorry, but there's a three-book limit."

Just for an instant I am that little girl at the county library again and I get an adrenalin rush of panic. My eyes moisten in an involuntary reaction. My lower lip runs out just a smidge. The library check-out trauma I had as a child has bubbled once again to the surface. Somebody with stoopid rules is trying to restrict my access to books. I know kindly old Miss Baker will not be here to rescue me this time.

But I relax when I realize I'm a big girl now. The three-book limit is not a problem. I probably won't finish three before the due date anyway. I can come back and get more books any time I want. I have a car and can drive myself. Life is good.

I think about Miss Baker as I hand over one to go back to the stacks. Kids need more librarians like her, somebody who understands that just because you are little it doesn't mean your brain is; somebody who understands that sometimes three books just ain't enough, and that they need to have more words than pictures.

Maybe The Punk found his Miss Baker today in the substitute librarian when she let him check out his chapter book from the yellow section. I hope so.

Earth Wind & Fire and Slugs in the Bathtub

I really shouldn't listen to music late at night. I start taking long, winding trips down memory lane and write about it. Verbosity gets the better of me.

Oh well, here goes.

Earth, Wind & Fire was on the radio tonight and it took me back in time to my freshman and sophomore years in college. I was dating Band Boy. Band geeks are weird enough in high school but at the college level they are semi-professional band geeks. Really strange bunch. They all lived in the rattiest, nastiest old houses.

Band Boy lived a block off campus in a ratty old house with 12 foot ceilings. Generations of music majors had lived there and as long as the monthly rent checks didn't bounce the landlord let them wreck the place. The floors were so bouncy the stereo turntable was suspended by chains from the ceiling. I thought this was a pretty inventive solution actually. Music majors didn't have much but they all had killer stereo systems with suspended turntables.

Unfortunately, BB didn't have a very good album collection. Lots of Holst, Rachmaninoff, Dvorak, and Sousa marches. The only popular music album he owned was Earth, Wind & Fire. Parties at his house had this lone album played over and over and over and over. I grew to hate it then but it brings back memories now.

BB lived in one bedroom and Two Guys, both music majors too but hated enemies of BB, lived in the other bedroom. I never quite understood the dynamic of living in a house with people you didn't like. I guess the rent was cheap and it was better than living in the dorm. They seemed to be able to avoid one another so it worked for them.

I liked the two guys a lot and hung out with them more than I ever hung out with BB. That right there should tell you something about BB.

Anyway, Two Guys graduated and Barracuda, the little sister of one of them, moved in to their old room. I really liked her too. Since Band Boy and Barracuda couldn't really afford the rent split two ways, they let a freshman move into what was the breakfast nook. It was maybe 6'x6' and had no heat and no door, but they charged him a full 1/3 rent anyway. Freshmen music majors aren't the sharpest tacks in the box. Once again, I guess it was better than the dorm.

The old house had hardwood floors but no subfloor. The hardwood was nailed directly to the joists. That meant about 3/4" of wood separated the occupants from the Great Underneath. During a toga conga line BB crashed through the dining room floor and squashed his manparts on the floor joist. They covered up the hole with a rug. Manparts got ice. I laughed and pointed.

The bathroom had an old clawfoot bathtub with a homemade wooden surround to turn it into a shower. It wasn't waterproof so water got on the floor underneath the tub and eventually the two back legs fell through the floor. The belly of the tub was sitting on a joist thank god or the whole thing would have gone under the house.

A two inch crack opened up between the tub rim and the trim, letting in an earthy smell from parts below. On warm mornings the tub was full of garden slugs swimming around and crawling up the shower curtain. Ewwwww. I don't know how those guys lived like that. It didn't bother them in the least. Men are such pigs. I felt sorry for Barracuda having to shower in that nastiness.

On Sunday mornings after a party the place was littered with bodies. We would all eventually come to (as opposed to wake up) and watch old black and white episodes of The Lone Ranger and The Cisco Kid. "Ohhhhhh Ciscooooo (smirk from Pancho), Ohhhhhh Panchoooooo (smirk from Cisco)" The Cisco Kid was not a very PC show come to think of it.

TV time ended around noon and we would load up en masse and go to Andy's for breakfast/lunch. We all stunk of old beer and cigarette smoke, and had smeared makeup (the girls did) and uncombed hair. My eight-hour-only contacts I had slept in were sticking to my eyeballs.

We would lurch into Andy's, get our food, and purposefully sit right next to the dressed up church people fresh out of church. We loudly discussed every nasty detail of the previous night's events and planned the next weekend's nasty festivities. Glaring looks from the church people.

I eventually broke up with Band Boy at the end of my sophomore year. Barracuda said, "Dang girl, what took you so long???? He's such an a**hole" I was just marking time until I found me a blue-eyed sweetie. Then Band Boy was toast.

Geez I had a lot of fun in college. I'm too old now to wake up in a nasty house reeking of old beer. But I sure miss those times. And I would like to see one more episode of The Cisco Kid.

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PHOTO GALLERY

Band Boy and I in the Summer of 1980



OMG! Lookit that tube top and mane of permed hair. All I needed was a Marlboro Red hanging off my lower lip and a dubblewide trailer in the background.

I realized not too long after this that I really don't like blondes who use more grooming products than me. I prefer my menfolk dark headed and naturally tousled.

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Barracuda and I in the Fall of 1982 at a western themed frat party. Whew! Ditched that permed hair look right after Band Boy.



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Word count for this post = 893.
People who will read the whole thing = 2

Tap Shoes

Out on the porch the other night, I hear the strains of a lively tune from some old musical on TV. My foot automatically moves on its own...ta-tick, ta-tick, ta-tick, muscle memory of the tap shuffle from eons ago. I look down at the plastic crocs on my feet and long for my old tap shoes.

I loved, loved, loved my tap shoes. They were black, patent leather Mary Janes with a grosgrain ribbon tie.

They were flat "little girl" tap shoes. Only the girls who had been tapping for years got to wear tap shoes with heels.

I would wear them around the house because I liked the sound of the clickity-click they made on the hardwood floors. It drove my mother nuts. She would yell at me to take them off so they wouldn't scratch the floors.

What she didn't know was in the afternoons before she got home I would roll back the living room rug and tap my little heart out.

I tapped with the grace and coordination of a wounded walrus. I probably looked a lot like the bee girl in the Blind Melon video, but I didn't care. I was tap dancing!!!

Just for that brief moment in time I was Gene Kelley, singing in the rain and tapping away through the rain puddles. I was graceful and talented and the movie producers were knocking on my door, begging me to be in their next big musical. I was the toast of Hollywood AND Broadway.

Then at 5:00 pm I would take off my tap shoes and roll the living room rug over my dreams for another day.

I didn't learn much in the few months I took lessons but shuffle-hop-step and "shuffle off to Buffalo." At least that's all I remember. But every now and then I hear a song that calls for a tapdancer to do it justice, and my right foot begins the ta-tick, ta-tick, ta-tick involuntarily.

Sigh.

I still dream of being Gene Kelley and I still miss my Mary Jane tap shoes.

And I still look a lot like the Bee Girl.

Coming Out of the Closet

Note: This is a long story. Get yourself a fresh cup of coffee and get comfortable, this'll take a while. And no, I'm not fixin' to out myself as a lesbian. Different closet. You'll see.

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I remember the moment very clearly but not the actual date. I can still see it vividly in my mind's eye. It was some time around 1996. I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror getting ready for work one morning.

I had been under a lot of stress because I had been commanded by The Big Boss to plan and organize a company picnic. I hate doing extracurricular crap like that for work. However, I did what I was told and the picnic was wonderful and went off without a hitch. A good time was had by all...or so I heard. I didn't attend. I hate parties. I would rather have a root canal than attend a party.

So I'm standing looking at myself in the mirror. What a hypocrite I was for talking up this picnic to everyone then not even putting in an appearance. What was wrong with me? Why do I dislike parties so much?

Then I had an epiphany, a seminal moment, a moment of clarity. As I looked at myself in the mirror, I thought, "I am an introvert. I hate parties and always have. I will never be the 'life of the party'. I will never be petite and blonde; no one will ever use the word 'cute' to describe me. I am an old curmudgeon. I will never be a warm -n- fuzzy people person. I will always have this Southern hick drawl. I will never be considered fashionable or sophisticated. I will always be a bespectacled blind bat. I will always suck at sports. I will never be considered athletic. I will never figure out how to play the piano. I will always be #2, never #1, at anything I attempt. I am a 'B' student, not an 'A' student. I will never make a million dollars. I will never own my own business. I will never have children. I am just an average Joe, somewhere in the middle of the pack. This is who I am. This is who I've always been. I will not change. I will not be any different no matter how hard I try. This is me."

It kind of hit me all at once. Like a smack between the eyes.

You see, I had tried all my life to be "normal", to act like the rest of society, but it wasn't me. I knew I was different somehow, but couldn't quite put my finger on it. Trying to be normal was an enormous burden. It took a lot of energy to pretend to be something I was not. I thought I was being honest with how I presented myself to other people, but in fact I wasn't. I think the mask/facade showed. It made folks uncomfortable to be around me. They could see there was something else under the surface, so my apparent dishonesty of actions didn't match my very vocal, "What you see is what you get" mantra. I didn't realize at the time that I had on a mask. I thought everyone was like me, but that most people just had a lot more practice at being outgoing.

I pondered on my morning epiphany all day. The more I thought about it the wearier I became. The burden of pretending to be someone I wasn't had become too much to bear. I was tired of lugging that millstone around my neck all the time. It was time for a change. I decided to be brutally honest with myself and with everyone else. I was a curmudgeonly old introvert and that was that.

The next day I told my friends and co-workers about my epiphany. Some gave me strange looks, some looked relieved. Relieved! I guess they were relieved that I had finally admitted out loud what everyone else already knew. Gak! Was my mask that obvious?

From that day forward I freely admitted my curmudgeonly introvertedness to people, at appropriate times of course. It's not like I shouted it from the rooftops or anything. When invited to a party or social gathering I would grin a big grin and reply with a chuckle, "Hey! Thanks for the invite. I appreciate it, I really do. But I'm a curmudgeonly old introvert and I would rather have a root canal than go to a party. I only attend funerals. But I hope your party is wonderful and everybody has a great time. If you ever have a funeral, please let me be the first one you call."

Thinking I was kidding they would reply, "Aw, come on and go. There will be tons of people there. It'll be fun!"

I would retort, "That's your definition of fun. But I'll tell ya what, I'll make you a deal. If I come to your party for three hours and have fun your way, you have to come to my house the next day and have fun my way. We could catalog my South American Spitting Cockroach collection for three hours, just you and me. It'll be loads of fun. I can't wait! Whadya say??? Deal?"

They would roll their eyes and walk away shaking their head.

After I "came out" as a curmudgeonly introvert, some of my friends fell by the wayside. They didn't have the time of day for me after that. But then the most amazing thing happened. Even though I proclaimed to be a loner introvert, people started flocking to me. They wanted to be with me, around me, talk to me. Hey! This wasn't going anything like I had imagined. Introverts like their solitude and here I had a flock of folks that wanted to Velcro themselves to my hip. I didn't understand. I thought that once I was a publicly professed old grump people would leave me alone like I had leprosy or something. Nope. Wrong. They were attracted to me like flies to honey.

What happened, I now see in hindsight, is that I finally presented a cohesive personality to the world. I didn't speak one way and act another. There wasn't the veil of uncomfortable dishonesty that was there before. People actually got what they saw...and they liked it. They liked it a lot. I guess there is a place at everybody's table for a curmudgeonly old grump. Good for a laugh maybe.

Life for me after coming out was nothing short of miraculous. My millstone was gone. I no longer had to expend a huge amount of energy pretending. I had fresh eyes and saw the world in a whole new way. I was energized, motivated. I was finally happy. I could fly.

I feel a huge amount of empathy for my gay brothers and lesbian sisters who are still closeted. I understand (kinda, sorta) the hell in which they live not having the freedom to be themselves. I salute and embrace those who have come out of the closet. Welcome to the world! Let true living begin!

I think lots of people out there (not just the gay folks) are living in a closet of their own making, trying to be someone they are not just because of some societal stricture. Not being honest with themselves about who they are and suffering for it. That's not to say folks should quit trying to achieve their goals. I'm just saying that pretending isn't a good or healthy thing, either for themselves or others.

Take a good look in the mirror tomorrow morning. Is your true self gazing back? If not, open the door and step out of the closet. It may be scary and dramatic at first. Some friends may be lost, but new friends will be gained. I know of what I speak.

Life is good out here in the fresh air.

The Secret Life of Crayons

I am four years old sitting at an institutional mint green horseshoe-shaped table at Miss Higgs Little Red Schoolhouse. It is the first day of kindergarten and I open my brand new box of crayons. Umm...can't ya just smell 'em?

There are eight big, fat, crayons; flat on one side so they won't roll off the table. I cherish the new crayons, not yet despoiled. They are the first crayons that are mine and all mine, not the leftover crumbles from two older sisters.

But oh!, they are in the wrong order. I know inherently that they are supposed to be in this order: yellow, orange, red, green, blue, purple, brown, and black. They must be in that order so I will know where to find them in the box. I put them away in that order when coloring time is over.

I know too, at the age of four, that all the colors have a gender, and they all have personalities. It's just obvious to me and I don't understand why the other kids don't see it too. Today I have a better vocabulary to explain the personalities, but they haven't changed since that first day of kindergarten.

Yellow - female. Yellow is the most feminine of the colors, a real girly-girl. She is ruffles and lace, and must be "taken care of" and protected from the big, bad world. She is a princess and not much will be asked of her because she is too delicate to accomplish much. She doesn't play outside because she doesn't like to get dirty.

Orange - female. Orange is the tomboy of the three girl colors. She eschews dresses, preferring to wear jeans and boy clothes. She is the treehouse builder and mudpie maker. She is not afraid of hard physical labor and can diagnose and repair your carburetor troubles. She probably lives on a farm and spends lots of her time caring for animals.

Red - female. Red is bitchy and dominant. She is the queen and what she says goes. Nothing or nobody is an obstacle to getting what she wants. Not many of the other colors like her because of her harsh personality.

Green - male. Green is rather meek, mild and submissive. He has a happy-go-lucky personality but is the underdog and gets picked on at the playground. He is the class clown, trying to fit in with humor.

Blue - male. Blue is the All-American male. He is good-looking, smart, does the "right thing" and never gets into trouble; the guy you want your daughter to date. He is a natural-born leader. Blue gets along with everyone and is well-like by all the other colors.

Purple - male. Purple is another strong male personality, but unlike Blue, he marches to the beat of a different drummer. He stands to the side in a crowd, watching rather than participating. He doesn't conform with mainstream thought and is a quiet radical: a passive-aggressive type. He is the quiet hippy and beat poet.

Brown - male. Brown is the cowboy of the bunch. He drives a pick-up truck and drinks Schlitz beer down at the pool hall. On Sunday morning he goes to church with his momma and watches his language. He will do honest, hard work on the farm all his life like his father and grandfather before him.

Black - male. Black is cloaked in mystery. A cool, James Bond type character that lets no one into his world. He is not meant for this time and place and will be a traveler to far off exotic places.

My crayons had secret lives that I was always eager and excited to discover. They knew about the world and revealed their knowledge to me little by little with each stroke of color. All I had to do was watch them dance across the page as they told their tale.

I loved kindergarten.

---

UPDATE:

This is what the flat crayons looked like in their box. Different brand, but the concept is the same.

---

UPDATE #2

Even though I am gray-haired and bi-focaled with nary a child or grandchild in sight, I still have an affinity for Crayola products. The smell of a fresh box of crayons still stirs my soul to this day. My personal collection:

If I was Playmate of the Month

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, where I was once a young and beautiful college co-ed, I thought to myself, "Self, when you are Playmate of the Month, you ought to put the yellow cardigan picture in the bio."

I haven't seen a Playboy magazine for what, oh, a couple of decades or more. But in that galaxy far, far away, Hef published little childhood pics of the playmate and her turn-ons and turn-offs. Does Playboy still do that?

Turns-ons were always something like, "Warm fires, furry kittens, and beaches." Oh yeah, snorting cat hair always make my britches a little moist. Pfft. What dingbats. And trust me, you don't really want to be turned on at the beach. If your britches get a little moist, sand sticks to your tender pink parts. Any frisky business after that is gonna be agony.

Back to the yellow cardigan pic. It was taken in 4th grade. I was a pretty cute little kid up to that point.But somewhere in the summer between my 3rd and 4th grade year, something went horribly, horribly wrong. I got a shag haircut because I was tired of pigtails and ponytails and I wanted to be a Big Girl and be stylish. Since I lived in Arkansas at the time, shag haircuts were probably five years out of date when I finally got one. And I got glasses. Again I wanted to be stylish and get little round granny specs which were groovy at the time. They didn't have those in wire rims for little kids, so here's how I looked:

Eek!!!

That, ladies and gentlemen, is some *dirty* hair. This photo must have been taken on a Friday because I got my hair washed on Saturday night whether it needed it or not. Daddy washed my hair in the kitchen sink while I laid on the kitchen counter. Momma never washed my hair because she had long fingernails and scrubbed too hard with them. Daddy was gentle as he soaped up my mop of hair with Prell shampoo and detangled it with Tame creme rinse.

This was our Saturday night ritual until I was so tall I hung off the kitchen cabinet, probably just before I went to Junior High. I know that seems a little old, but proper Southern Belles DO NOT wash their own hair. Sniff! They have someone else do it for them. I have not yet convinced my husband of this widely known fact however, and he refuses to wash my hair for me, the princess that I am.

And how about those buck teeth? I could "eat a punkin through a picket fence." I begged for braces. School pics grades 7-11 all show a mouth full of metal. I was SO proud of those braces. I got them off just in time for my senior year. Yep, that's five years if anyone was counting. I spent a lot of time in the orthodontist's chair.

Anyway, back to the cardigan photo. Although it is the most awesomely horrible photo taken of me ever, it holds a place near and dear to my heart. I want to show it to all those little girls out there who think they are ugly, who think they will never be pretty, and who think that boys will never like them. Because this is the eternal ugly ducking story. That dirty haired, bespectacled, buck-toothed little girl grew up to become this:


Woo Hoo! That, ladies and gentlemen, is some *big* hair. The lady at Glamour Shots asked me if I wanted business-like hair or Texas pageant hair. I told her I wanted the biggest hair she could make. Not just Texas hair, but tri-state hair. It took several days to chip off all the hairspray shellac.

I don't look like this now so I have no qualms about posting the photo on the Internet. My sister-in-law, whom I see every other day and twice on Sundays, studied the pic for a long while and finally asked, "Who is THAT?" Pfft.

I'll admit that most days I look closer to the yellow cardigan picture but I clean up nice when I need to.

Fresh and New with No Mistakes

The end of the year brings a certain amount of reflection on things that have happened and things that are yet to come. 2007 was a good year, all in all. Not too much drama happened in our lives...about a two on the drama scale I suppose.

All of the notable events in our lives are recorded on my refrigerator calendar along with most of our nightly dinner menus. I started keeping track of dinner when Hubby complained that I never cooked. Showed him! Pfffttt!

Here is the old fridge calendar with the days X-ed out in green, and the new one with 44 holidays and special days, 29 birthdays, and 7 anniversaries duly noted.
I like having the calendar in this year-long format so I can see where I've been and where I'm going and just how long it is until the next event. With the standard monthly flip calendar, events happening on the first or second of the next month tend to sneak up on me.

Making the new year's calendar is an after-Christmas tradition and lots of fun. I get to be a little creative on the holidays and draw in the appropriate iconic symbol. My Thanksgiving turkey looked pretty good last year but the one for 2008 looks pretty sickly. The party hat on New Year's Eve was sharp for 2007, dull for 2008. Oh well. I'll be in my jammies by 8:30 p.m. both nights so it really doesn't matter.

I ponder for a moment on the new calendar with all the empty spaces and wonder what life will hold to note there in those little boxes. I like all the crisp, clean whiteness because it is "fresh and new with no mistakes."

That's one of my favorite quotes and I use it often. It's from Anne of Green Gables, one of my all-time favorite PBS miniseries with Colleen Dewhurst and Megan Follows. I think both women are amazingly beautiful by the way.

Anne, for all her good intentions, always manages to muck up a situation. Her hope for redemption is tomorrow which is "fresh and new with no mistakes in it." I try to remember that when I've messed something up - those Doh! moments when I realize the things I've said or done weren't taken the way I meant.

I dig myself deeper in a hole when I attempt an apology or explanation and muck things up even more. I've learned to keep my mouth shut and hope folks forget quickly. But I still mentally berate myself for days, thinking, "Stupid, stupid, stupid! Why did I say THAT???"

Then I remember Anne and her hope for tomorrow.

So as this blogging year comes to a close, Auld Lang Syne and all that. I hope 2007 didn't suck real bad for you.

A toast: Here's to 2008. May it be fresh and new with no mistakes.

Christmas Panties

Preface: My mother passed away just after Christmas 2005. This is an email I sent to my sisters just before Christmas the next year. That was back in the pre-blog days where I had no forum for my ranting stories except emails to my poor, long-suffering sisters.

---

December 18, 2006

Tonight I am in a holiday funk. For the first time in my life I will not be receiving panties from Santa for Christmas...cheap, white, Dixie Belle brand granny panties, size extra-huge, available at the local dollar store for about $1.38. The panties have been a yearly tradition for me and my two older sisters, The Christmas Panty Queens. It was a tradition I detested when I was young. After all, who wants underwear for Christmas?

In later years, after we were all married, it was kind of an inside joke to get panties from Santa. Daddy took photos of us, year after year, holding up the panties among the piles of opened gifts. Dixie Belle has kept the same style for the last thirty-five years so every panty looks exactly the same every year. I appreciated the panties. I wore them out knowing there would be a fresh batch under the tree next Christmas.

At some time in my thirties I realized that my Santa mother had purchased the bulk of my lifetime supply of underwear. There's something a little icky about your mother buying your underwear when you're thirty-something but that's how it was. Oh, I have purchased a few sexy Victoria's Secret underthings... "Party Panties"...but for daily wear I always reach for the white granny panties. They must be white; must be granny.

I cringed at the first pair of granny panties I received and refused to wear them for a long time. The inevitable day came, around age 14, when they were the only clean pair in the drawer. They felt funny but at the end of the day I realized I had gone the whole day without a wedgie. After that I was a granny panty devotee.

My middle sister Pris, the prissy, girly sister, wears granny panties also. You would think she would go for the skimpy, lacy numbers. My older sister, Nana, the only real granny among us, prefers bikinis. I guess she finds them sexier than the granny panties.

I've never found granny panties to be a hindrance to my sex life. Men discover that extra-huge granny panties provide lots of room to frisk around in. They want what is in the panties after all and, like a Christmas present, the wrapping is minor in the scheme of things.

Sexy little panties are a not-so-subtle indicator to males that the wearer would like to get laid. Men, being rather dense on their best days, sometimes don't get the hint. I find that saying, "Hey honey, do ya want to git nekkid and screw?" works well in most instances. Only the comatose of the testosterone set don't pick up on the hint. Whatever panties might have been on at the time are quickly forgotten.

So here I am on the eve of the Christmas season in my year-old ratty granny panties feeling rather blue. They are the last of the last-ever Santa panties I will receive. Yes, I will have some new granny panties in January. I will go to the local dollar store and plunk down a buck thirty-eight and buy myself a handful of Dixie Belles out of necessity. But it won't be the same.

There will not be the comforting feeling of the knowing the Christmas panties are under the tree. My sisters and I will not check around the room this year to be sure we are all holding the same size box, indicative of the identical panties within, so we can open them at the same time so as not to spoil the "surprise" for the other sisters.

There will be no hullabaloo exclamations of "Oh LOOK! Panties!" as if they were a novel gift. There will not be the joy of the pile of crisp white panties in the drawer to start the new year. The Christmas season will not be the same. My hiney will not be the same.

I realized tonight I have reached a turning point in my life. I must now be a grown-up and be responsible for the acquisition of my own underwear. Since I sport gray hair and bifocals I guess it was about time anyway. But I don't like it, I don't like it at all. The Christmas Panty Queen will not go quietly into that good night.

There must be a way to have the tradition continue. I wonder if it would help if I wrote a letter to Santa, "Dear Santa, I've been a good girl this year. Please bring me some Dixie Belle granny panties, white, size extra-huge." Do you think he would get it before Christmas????

The End

---

The Rest of the Story

Under the tree that year was a box tagged TO: Speck, FROM: Santa.

Inside were seven pair of extra-huge white granny panties. I laughed when I opened the box and found Christmas panties. Nana Santa had done well with the surprise. They were indeed size Extra Huge, but we exchanged them the next day for size Merely Generous.

Later when I got home, I opened the box and held them to my cheek, thinking of the legacy of the Christmas panties and how sweet my sister was to try and make this a 'normal' Christmas, and just cried and cried and cried.

Half a Message from The Other Side

My mom passed away two years ago this Christmas. Her rather quick, untimely death was a blessing in a way. Otherwise she was facing a slow hell of a death from a cancer that was eating away at her body and brain. Eighteen months after she died she returned to me with a message, but I only got half of it.

It was this summer, at the annual Clan Speck reunion (Hubby's family), in a tiny cabin by a lake.

Early Saturday morning Hubby gets up, bangs around getting dressed, and heads off down the hill for breakfast. I drift off back to sleep in the darkness. Thirty minutes or an hour goes by and the squeak of the front door opening wakes me up. I figure it is Hubby coming back to kiss me goodbye and tell me he is off to the golf course with his brothers. But the door bangs shut and there is only silence. It must have been Hubby leaving, I surmise. He probably came in and kissed me goodbye while I was still asleep and the sound of him leaving woke me up.

I squinch open my eyes and the overhead fluorescent light is on and glaring. "Damn that man," I think to myself, "He didn't turn off the light when he left." Then I realize there is someone in the cabin standing by the door, just beyond my view behind the closet wall. I panic for an instant thinking some psychotic mass murderer has found me in the deep woods of Arkansas.

Then I see her. She walks across the cabin looking at me very intently. It's my mother, back from the dead, 18 months gone now. I know she's dead, I know she's a ghost, but she isn't wispy or ghost-like. She isn't floating across the floor. She is just as solid looking as a live person, has on shoes, and is walking around like normal. I am excited but unafraid. I don't think the dead coming back to our world is an odd occurrence anymore. I am merely surprised that it is my mother because I didn't expect to see her of all people.

She looks wonderful dressed in a brown pant suit with a silk paisley blouse. She never, ever wore brown, I think to myself, but she looks great in that color. Her hair looks nice too, all piled up in a Marge Simpson hairdo.

At that moment I feel a wave of love for my mother like I have never felt before. It is deep and genuine and warm and fills my soul....and surprises me. For the first time in my life I know what it is to really, truly love my mother. Our relationship had always been rather cool and impersonal but that's a whole 'nuther story. Suffice it to say we were not warm-n-fuzzy close.

Mom is looking intently at me to see if I'm still asleep. She has that look on her face like she doesn't want to wake me, but urgently needs to talk to me. She is very quiet as she crosses the floor, all the time keeping an eye on me to see if I'm awake or not.

Yes, Mom, I'm awake. You can see I'm awake because I'm looking at you. You don't have to tiptoe. You can say something already.

She crosses the floor away from me and heads for the back door. She disappears out of view around the corner. Dang! Why didn't she stop or do something or say something? Why did she just walk by? What was that all about? I figure she is gone. Then she rounds the corner and strides right up to my bedside. I am so startled it almost knocks the breath out of me. My heart is thumping ninety miles an hour. Can this really be happening?


Mom makes an exaggerated puckered kissy face and bends down to kiss me. I'm still a little groggy from just being woken up, but I manage to crane my head up to meet her and make the puckered kissy face back. Instead of our lips touching, my face...well...goes through hers. She is ethereal, like a 3-D hologram. She straightens up and we both get a funny look on our faces; that we somehow knew that wasn't going to work, me being living and her being dead and all.

She gets serious, furrows her brow and says, "I've got something very important to tell you."

WOW! My brain snaps to attention. I am fully awake now. Whatever she says next will be the most momentous words ever spoken - wisdom of the ages from The Other Side.

"Xrciosion kos slepoise lwisbjios sljew boawlje llbjlkjxfow lxjgoi aejlsjd."

It's just garble, as though she is speaking Chinese. There is a windy, ripping, zippery sucking sound and the lights go off, Mom disappears, and I am alone again in the darkness, the nightlight glowing softly across the room.

Apparently when my brain went from hazy sleepiness to fully cognizant, it disrupted the connection between this world and the next. Dammit! I really, really wanted to know what she had to say. I was listening with every fiber of my body. I wondered why she choose this time and place to find me. She had never been up here, and this is an odd place for me to be. Where did she get the brown outfit? Why brown? I had a million questions and no answers.

When I later told this story to my sisters, they said I had this experience because of unresolved issues with my mom. I don't think so. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. The simple fact is my dead mother returned from the other side to give me an important message. That's it. That's all there is to it. Nothing more. I just need to learn Chinese so I will understand her during the next visit.

And yes, I realize that by sharing this with the world, I have just given my family all the fodder they will need for my commitment hearing. Sigh.

Old Boyfriends, Old Memories

I was in the same room as my old boyfriend Tony on Thanksgiving day, a mere one table over, and missed him completely. The next day a friend clued me in that Tony had been there with his wife. Dang! We live just 20 minutes apart and had both driven over 100 miles to be in that same room Thanksgiving day and failed to find each other. Just two ships passing in the night. Sigh.

Tony was the first boy I was sweet on. I can't say that I was in love with him because I was just five years old at the time. He was in my first grade class and I thought he was cool. He was the only boy I deemed worthy enough to invite to my sixth birthday party. He knew he was going to be the only boy there among seven little girls and he came anyway. That alone tells you what a sweetie he was.

Here we are at the party. Aren't we cute????? My sister boofed my hair for the occasion.


After first grade we went to separate schools but were in the same Junior High and High School until we graduated. But alas, by 7th grade our paths were divergent and would not cross again. Tony was a young JFK, a member of everything and president of most, loved by the teachers, and destined for great things. I hung out with the stoners. Tony went on to become a lawyer and run for Congress. I...um...did not.

But Tony remained near and dear to my heart all those years, even after I was married. You see he gave me a very special present on my sixth birthday; one I cherished for years and years. It was a white teddybear-looking cat with pink ears. I named him Bear because I already had a real cat. That's Bear in his box at the bottom of the photo.

Bear had a hard plastic nose and whiskers which fell off almost immediately. The poor thing had only a glue smudge for a nose for the rest of its life. I loved all his fuzz off and a good bit of the stuffing fell out of a hole in his arm. Mom sewed up Bear many times trying to keep him alive.

I'm not and never was a big stuffed animal fan. I thought hugging around on stuffed animals was rather silly even when I was a little kid. I had a live cat to hug on so stuffed animals didn't do much for me. But Bear was different. I loved him special just because Tony had given him to me.

When I left for college I packed Bear away in Mom's attic in my box of special treasures. He was one of my few childhood possessions that made the cut. Everything else got trashed because I was now a "grown-up."

I found Bear a decade later cleaning out the attic. He had become hard and crunchy from the heat. I grieved to part with him but he had become a fire hazard and had to go. I silently asked Tony's forgiveness for throwing away his gift when I tossed Bear in the trash bag.

sniffle

I miss Bear.

Tony not so much.

A Warrior's Album - Part 2

Continued from, "A Warrior's Album - Part 1"

I graduated college, worked various jobs, and found myself climbing the corporate ladder on an executive track. By anyone's assessment I was successful. I was moving up quickly in a burgeoning career, had a big house in a nice neighborhood, two cars in the garage, more money in the bank than I was able to spend. I had gotten married in there somewhere, but later divorced, in part because of the career. I was set to retire early at age 50 with about $2.5 million in the IRA.

I had all the trappings of success, but at the end of the 12-hour work day I came home to my big house to be greeted only by my lonely doggy. What good is a big house if you never have time to spend in it??? The only person who cared whether I came home or not was the doggy, and she didn't care if we lived in a big house or not. I started getting a gut feeling that this was not the way my life was supposed to be, but I could not see a clear alternate path to change it.

As part of my job I had to get an executive physical every three years. I guess the company wanted to make sure they were investing in healthy individuals. As part of the exam I had to get a hearing test. This was not one of the quickie hearing screens where you put on the earphones and the nurse asks, "Can you hear the beep" in a noisy doctor's office hallway. This was to be a full-fledged hearing test in a soundproof room at an audiologist's clinic.

As I sat in the large bustling waiting room, I was afforded a few moments of downtime. I began reflecting on my life and what I wanted out of it. There in the audiologist's waiting room, I experienced another profound, life-altering moment of clarity.

---

THE OLD DEAF COUPLE

I noticed them struggling with the double glass doors leading to the waiting room. They were in their late eighties or early nineties and the door was a little more than they could manage alone. Both were shrunken and stooped with age, their height barely above the push bar on the door.

He was dressed in a suit and tie even though it was well over 95 degrees outside. She was wearing her best dress and carrying a large, patent leather, Sunday-go-to-meetin' purse. A used tissue was under the wristband of her watch. It was obvious they had been married about a hunnert years.

They were yelling at each other, but not out of anger. He was deaf as a stone. I could see the wires leading from his hearing aids down to the receiver in his shirt pocket. She was yelling at him because he couldn't hear her, and he was yelling at her because he couldn't hear himself.

He managed to get the door open and was holding it for her.

"LET ME HOLD YOUR POCKETBOOK," he yells at her so she could free her hands to maintain her balance around the other door and over the threshold.

"NO, I HAVE IT. YOU GO ON AHEAD." she yells back.

They managed to navigate the doorway obstacle and shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, shuffled over to the first set of chairs.

"IS HERE OK?" he yells.

"YES THIS IS FINE."

"YOU GO AHEAD AND SIT DOWN AND I'LL GO CHECK IN."

"NO, I NEED TO GIVE THEM SOME PAPERWORK THIS TIME," says she.

"Eh???" he says cupping his ear.

"PAPERWORK! PAPERWORK!" she screams. "YOU SIT AND I'LL GO."

"EH???"

"SIT, SIT, SIT. I'LL GO."

He takes a seeming eternity to get his knees bent just right to sit down. He eases down in the chair with her hovering over him, concerned. He finally gets planted and lets out a sigh.

"ARE YOU OK???" she yells a few inches from his ear.

"YES, YES, I'M FINE, I'M FINE."

Another big sigh. Then he looks up a bit worried, "ARE YOU SURE YOU SHOULD GO? I CAN GO SO YOU CAN REST," and starts making motions to stand up again.

"NO, HONEY, IT'S OK, IT'S OK. I'LL GO. HERE, YOU CAN HOLD MY POCKETBOOK."

He sighs back into the chair.

She sets her purse in his lap and makes sure he has a good grip on it. She wipes her palm across his forehead to smooth his few remaining hairs and to wipe away the sweat from his exertions. She takes the tissue from her watchband, licks the corner, and wipes something unseen from his cheek.

Tucking the tissue back in its place, she turns and shuffle, shuffle, shuffles, shuffle, shuffles away, leaving him sitting there clutching her purse.

---

This elderly couple's interaction on an ordinary day, on an ordinary visit at the doctor's office, was a profound event for me. I realized the care and tenderness they showed to each other was what I really wanted in life; not the money, not the career, and not the possessions.

I wanted to be changing my husband's Depends right after he helps me up from a fall in the kitchen. I wanted to be shuffle, shuffle, shuffling out to the porch each evening to catch a cool breeze in the rocking chairs. I no longer wanted to be in the !%*@& corporate world dying of a heart attack at my desk with no one at home to care but the doggy. All I needed was the right man to do that with...and I knew just where to find him.

My life's path was irreversibly altered that day. All I had worked for, all my goals, all my hopes, all my dreams, were reduced to ashes.

A Warrior's Album - Part 1

I've just started reading The Active Side of Infinity (Carlos Castaneda, 1998) after letting it languish on the bookshelf for eight years. I bought the book after hearing Howard Stern mention Castaneda's name during one of his radio shows.

Stern's guest (don't remember who it was) was rambling on about something and Stern piped up with, "Isn't that just Carlos Castaneda's theory?" Howard Stern may be an a-hole on the radio, but the guy is a sharp cookie and a well-read world-class geek. I hadn't heard of Castaneda so he piqued my interest and I bought the book.

Last night I went to the bookcase to get another book, and Active was next to the one I wanted. Hey, I'll read that one instead!

I wasn't very far into the introduction, page 6 to be exact, when a passage ended my reading for the night and started my brain spinning. By the way, I think a good book should cause you stop reading and start thinking, but I digress. The passage was by don Juan Matus, a Yaqui Indian shaman from Sonora, Mexico.

"Every warrior, as a matter of duty, collects a special album [of events], an album that reveals the warrior's personality, an album that attests to the circumstances of his life."

"The [events] are memorable because they have a special significance in one's life. My proposal is that you assemble this album by putting in it the complete account of various events that have had profound significance for you."

"Not every event in your life has had profound significance for you. There are a few, however, that I would consider likely to have changed things for you, to have illuminated your path. Ordinarily, events that change our path are impersonal affairs, and yet are extremely personal."

I mulled that over for a minute or two, mentally whipping through the major events in my life. Yes they were major, but most unprofound.

Two brief moments in time, simple uneventful moments, did have a profound impact on my life. I still ruminate about them on occasion and have told the stories to a few folks. I'm sure there are more, but these two leapt to the forefront of the ol' gray matter just then. I'll call them The Nickle Raise and The Old Deaf Couple.

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THE NICKLE RAISE

I was fifteen years old and just starting my junior year of high school. I got a job as a carhop at an old-fashioned burger joint where the food is brought out to the car. Since I was under 16, child labor laws prevented me from working past 5:00 p.m. on school nights, so I worked every Saturday and Sunday until school was out for the summer.

There were three job categories at the burger joint: cook, fountain, and carhop. The cooks had the nasty greasy jobs of running the grill, cooking fries and dressing the burgers. The fountain made the drinks, sacked the food, and handled the money. The carhops delivered the food.

Since I worked only on the weekends, I saw pretty much the same people all the time. There was a day and night shift and the crews were all kids, probably the oldest one was a 19-year-old college girl. We all worked part-time to afford the luxuries of teenagerhood, like name-brand jeans and record albums.

Summer came and I starting working weekdays. The cooks on the day shift were Joan and Barbara, two ladies in their 40s who drove across the county line to come to work there. They worked Monday-Friday, 9:00-5:00, year-round, and had worked there for years.

Minimum wage was increased by $.05, so my hourly pay went from $2.10 to $2.15. I was underwhelmed with the raise. I worked at the burger joint for fun. The owner chastised me once because I had failed to pick up my last three paychecks and it was throwing off his bank statement reconciliation. Five cents more per hour made absolutely no difference in my life.

Because Joan and Barbara were long-time loyal employees, the owner had given them an additional $.05 per hour raise. They were not expecting this and when the paychecks came out, they were excited. I watched them standing there in their grease covered aprons, heads together, faces beaming, examining their checks. I can see them clearly in my mind's eye to this day, this moment of clarity in my life.


It hit me that for these two ladies, this burger joint was their life, their career, the thing they did day in and day out all year long to pay the bills. A grease covered apron was what they faced each and every day when they went to work. This was not a temporary job for them. They would not be moving on to something better. THIS WAS THEIR LIFE, and a nickel raise from minimum wage was the highlight of it.

I was saddened by this realization, and horrified. I don't know what forces of fate had landed these two ladies in the frybucket of life, but there they were. And from the looks of things, there they were going to stay. There but by the grace of God go I, some thirty years hence.

I resolved then and there that I would not be consigned to a life of grease and minimum wage. I was going to college and getting an education. I wanted to have options in life other than a fry cook at a burger joint. I didn't really know what "getting an education" meant at that young age, but I knew intuitively that was what I needed to do.

This brief but profound moment would alter my life's path in ways I couldn't imagine back then, but it set me on a course I would pursue for the next 23 years.

(continued)

The Tennessee Waltz

Today would have been my parents' 60th wedding anniversary. In honor of the occasion here is a little piece I wrote many years ago.

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I was dancing with my darlin' to the Tennessee Waltz
When an old friend I happened to see
Introduced him to my loved one and while they were dancing
My friend stole my sweetheart from me.

I remember the night and the Tennessee Waltz
Now I know just how much I have lost
Yes I lost my little darlin' the night they were playing
The beautiful Tennessee Waltz.

Ahhh....The Tennessee Waltz. A beautiful song. One of my favorites. Hearing it evokes memories of stories Mom used to tell of an open-air dance pavilion on Lake Hamilton called Fountain Lake. Dances were held there every Friday night way back when. In my mind's eye I can see the gay couples dancing under the Chinese lanterns on a warm summer evening as the cool breezes blow in off the lake. The live band, resplendent in their white jackets, plays Tommy Dorsey tunes.

There is an old black and white photograph of Mom and Dad taken there at Fountain Lake. They are frozen in time, embraced in mid dance step. Both are in their early 20s. Mom is beautiful, the belle of the ball. Her eyes are squinched up with merry laughter. She's wearing a beautiful silk dress with a full skirt made from some material Daddy sent home from Japan. Dad, home on leave from the Korean War, is looking dapper in his Navy crackerjack. He is sporting a cheesy pencil thin moustache and his thick black hair is slicked down with a quart of Brill Creme. He has a rascally grin on his face and a twinkle in his eye. They both look so young. I'll bet Daddy doesn't weigh 115 pounds in the picture.

For this moment in time they are carefree. All the worries of the war seem far away. They don't know about the coming trials and tribulations of the world and their life together. All that matters is each other and the next dance tune. What a wonderful time.

Fifty seven years and three kids later, Mom and Dad are still together, survivors of several wars of the world and of the heart. The hair is a little thinner, a little grayer. There are a few more wrinkles around the eyes. The silk and the crackerjack have been replaced by a daily uniform of comfy sweatsuits. Fountain Lake has long since disappeared. It's been years since a band in white jackets played the Tennessee Waltz. But Mom's eyes still squinch up with laughter, and Daddy never lost the rascally grin. Who knows, maybe some night on an oldies station they play the Tennessee Waltz and the young-at-heart old sailor twirls the belle of the ball around the living room floor. I certainly hope so.

Autumn Sunshine

Today was a glorious day weather wise. The autumn chill was unseasonably cool for September in Lower Arkansas. Sunshine through the trees cast long shadows in the morning and afternoon. The world was rather still and quiet.

It is the end of summer. The sun is looking at the Earth through heavily-lidded eyes, drooping towards a long winter's sleep. The world slows down on days like this. Life is a little slower, a little more deliberate and less frivolous in its actions. Time is growing shorter and there are things that need to be done before the first frost.

I love days like this but they make me sad in a way. The fun of summer is over. Shorts and t-shirts will be packed away soon. Weather will factor into any future plans. The coming grey days of winter huddled inside seem like a looming prison sentence.

I remember a day like this back when I was a senior in high school. My BFF Patti and I were romping through the woods near her house one Sunday afternoon. We were squealing like little girls as we galloped through the piles of fallen leaves. It was a bittersweet time. We were both about to leave home and knew our days of innocence were about to be over. I think we were trying to recapture the days of our childhood that afternoon by playing in the leaves. Days that had no worries, no plans, no expectations.

I remember that day long ago on days like this. I see the long sunshine, hear the rustle of the leaves, and the echo of our voices down the hillside. It was a magical time back then. I'm happy it lives in my memory.

Daddy's Home!

Each day when Hubby comes home from The Daily Grind, I stop what I am doing, run to the door, and greet him happy squeals of "Daddy's Home! Daddy's Home!" He gets a big hug and some sugars. The cats and the dog join in the commotion making all kinds of happy critter noises. It is the highlight of his day and ours. This has been our routine for as long as I can remember. Yes, we call each other "Mommy" and "Daddy" even though all our "children" have fur.

I started the "Daddy's Home!" routine after a conversation with my father. He told me how he never felt as though anyone cared whether he came home or not. He related a story about how he had returned a day early from a two-week trip. (I actually remember this incident.) He opened the door with a bright smile and said, "Hi honey, I'm home!" Mom looked at him rather annoyed and replied, "What are you doing home early???" His smile faded and he stammered that he finished up sooner than expected and they let him go home early. His shoulders sagged as he dragged his suitcase into the house. Mom turned and went back to what she was doing. That was one helluva welcome home.

As I thought about it more, nobody ever greeted him with a smile or a hug; not me, not Mom, not my sisters. I can understand why he felt that way. Poor man, it's a wonder he ever came home at all.

I decided right then that I would not be the wife my mother was. I will greet my hubby at the door with a smile and a hug whether I feel like it or not, whether he's coming home from work, returning from a round of golf, or after running errands for a few hours. I do this because I *am* happy he came home. The world is a big, ugly place with evil forces that can keep my baby from me. One day he may not come home ever again.

I also figure that if I don't welcome him home, some other female surely will....and I'm not talkin' about one with paws.