Mar

That time I crowd surfed

Back in the 90’s there was a phenomenon of dancing called “Moshing”. This is where you get with a group of people who would randomly bump into each other for no other reason than releasing pent up aggression and hormones. This was predominantly done in the teenage and young adult circuits.

One day at the beginning of senior year my friend had just announced that there would be a group performing at her church across the street. We were all excited and loved live music. There couldn’t have been a more fitting beginning to last year of high school. The night of the concert, we assembled with many local teenagers in the church parking lot to hear some grunge music. Well; Christian grunge music.

When I told my boyfriend at the time about the concert, he agreed he was going as well with his group of friends. In conversation with him leading up to the concert he had joked that I could go in the “baby” mosh pit which “is next to the actual, much larger mosh pit.” He made the comment away from me, chuckling with his friends. Unbeknownst to him this irritated me to my very core. There is nothing more I don’t like than being told I can’t do something.

When I arrived at the concert with my friends, it was hot, the sun was about to set and we were waiting for the band to come out on the stage. We began to cheer when four young men clad in orange shirts with the word “Juda” on them appeared. By the time they were in their second song, a small crowd of moshers began stomping, ramming into each other with their shoulders.

I had just been told I couldn’t do something because I’m a girl and I wanted in.

I didn’t blink when I fled from my boyfriend’s side. I ran into the sweaty cesspool of teenagers and began ramming myself against strangers. It was a strange freeing experience feeling like a pinball being struck against others who were going through their own angsty rebellion. In that brief moment running from being a spectator in my life I became a mover and shaker. We did what we did because we could. Nobody could stop us and it was incredible.

The crowd then started to give way from moshing to surfing people through the crowd on a sea of teenaged phalanges. It was very much like the scenes you see in movies where hippies, metal heads, or hair band fans are frenetically dancing and begin passing people over their heads while the person being surfed has an epiphany. In the movies the scene plays out over some poignant music of that decade in an arena or an open farm field like Woodstock. This scene played out in four to ten parking spaces.

When I looked to my left, the people launching others into the crowd were my boyfriend’s friends. He was standing in front of me to the left of them, just watching me. Not looking at him, I sensed his disapproval at what I was about to accomplish. I smiled at his friends as they put their hands down and we gave each other the signal. I ran full force, stepping into their grasp in my beloved brown Doc Martens as they launched me into the air.

I flew. In that moment I had no fear and was full of trust. I landed on a bed of fingers, with nails of metallic blue, gently rolling me through the crowd as I screamed all the air out of my lungs.

Photo courtesy of Mindy C.

The crowd gently set me back down on the ground as the music began to pick up. When I was placed on the ground, I hadn’t quite found my footing yet. The rush from being carried by a crowd full of adrenaline quickly stopped when two moshers accidentally knocked me to the ground. When I tried to get up their buttocks hit my head on the left and right side knocking me down again. I crouched in a Spider-man stance getting a whiff of something rancid. One of the gluteus maximuses had passed gas. I got up again only to be struck repeatedly by the pair of posteriors. I was able to perfunctorily wiggle my way out of the permeated labyrinth of derrieres when one of the owners of said derrieres lended a hand pulling me up. A few moments later a church official called out saying there would be no more crowd surfing.

They should have been more specific. We still moshed.

What is something you were discouraged from doing but did anyway? What did/do you do as an act of rebellion?

Aug

Snapchat Hypocrite

A few months ago you may recall a piece I wrote titled, “Obligatory Selfie” where I poked fun at people taking selfies as a part of an everyday mundane practice that has currently become socially acceptable.

I recant this piece. Although I compare the obligatory selfie to yoga pants being accepted as full fledged pants, I have seen the worthiness of an appropriately timed selfie.

Steven Tyler eat your heart out!

Sure, at first I was smug. Why would a 36-ish something like myself want to have a phone full of pictures of myself? Who would want them?

Then came an evening spent with my in-laws and niece. When my sister-in-law and husband stepped outside for a moment, my niece came back into the room with a blanket, we snuggled up together on a bench and she showed me this “new” thing called “Snapchat”. She snapped a picture and showed me how you can transform yourself into a dog. Once finding out she and my other nieces were using this app, I immediately signed up to stay in touch with them.

On the way home I was researching how to work snapchat, how to use filters and how in general to “Snapchat”. Do I take 5 seconds in public by myself to pucker my lips and pose for the camera? No. However I do wait till’ I’m on lunch break at work or at home and snap a few selfies to catch up with my nieces, cousins, sister-in-laws and friends. Only once has anyone been in the break room with me when this was going on, but he was completely aware of what was happening. I didn’t leave my behaviors an unknown mystery to him like our customers have done in the past.

There is no joy greater than being able to send the ugliest selfie possible to those you love to receive one equally as horrible back. In fact, there was a fun competition my niece and I had one night. If you are ever down or feeling blue, this is the best thing ever. Try to make the goofiest face possible and just hit send. It is the greatest feeling not caring what you look like because the worse, the better.

Here is an example of one I sent, it’s like Steve Martin meets Frankenstein’s monster.

Or the selfie aptly titled, “I woke up like this…”

However, you want your family and friends to remember you in a good light. Not to get too dark but one of my worst fears is something bad will happen and they will have to submit a photo to the news for a story. Ensuring it won’t be driver’s license photo, or worse an outdated glamour shot you occasionally have to send them one of you as a butterfly queen. This way the recipients remember you are a real person and won’t be shocked (or disappointed) you don’t have 3 mouths in your face the next time they see you.

What is your favorite “Snapchat” lens or filter? Why do you gravitate toward that one?

May

Coffee flashbacks

I woke up late the other morning. It was one of the first days off this summer from all three jobs in a long time.

My husband had long since gone to work and left the morning’s coffee grounds in the basket residing in the coffee-maker. A normal person would replace the grounds, but my stomach and nerves no longer tolerate strong java. I filled the coffee-maker’s reservoir with fresh water and moved the steam spigot over the grounds hoping the coffee would be a bit more diluted.

As I was moving the spigot, a case of deja vú washed over me. This simple act felt happily familiar.

Images of my childhood, waking up on Christmas morning to a new Monkees record with their picture pressed in clear vinyl made a smile appear on my face. It made me think of the first 45 that was officially mine aptly titled “The Curly Shuffle”, written in honor of The Three Stooges. It reminded me of getting excited on birthdays because new music was usually waiting for me between the grooves of the compressed lines concealed in a 12 inch by 12 inch cardboard sleeve. It reminded me of when the best songs were gifts.

It reminded me of when things were meant to be experienced. It reminded me of when music was like an art exhibit, you had to stay in the same room to be immersed in it. It reminded me of being able to take it easy, lie on the floor and get lost in the rythm and crescendos of the music. Now that music has become immensely portable, we seem to take it for granted.

Once the flashbacks stopped, I began to get ready for the day, thankful for that little “movement” making me remember a different time when I didn’t need to be powered by caffeine.

When have you done a movement or motion that reminded you of something completely different than what you were doing?

8 years ago Short URL 1 Comment

Art/Life/love/memories/nostalgia/Quirky/Uncategorized

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May

An app to look back

Dear Facebook,

I’ve noticed you’ve added a new feature. Does this new feature really have to be ghosts of my past self?

Do you realize reminding some people of their past is like turning a thorn in their side?

The other night you reminded me of when I admitted in a round-about-way to being lonely and flirting with the IT guy at the other end of my phone while setting up my internet. This also reminded me that my parents were kind of forced into helping me move last minute (even though they won’t admit they were.) It also reminded me upon walking out of the bedroom after the phonecall my parents asked me if I had been talking to a friend because I was laughing so much. You reminded me that I was glad to remember how it felt for someone to be flirty with me just based on my personality.

That one little moment you suggested I repost also reminded me of the other blog I used to write on. It reminded me of how once the internet started working in my new place, I chronicled my first single experiences of trying to laugh instead of cry. It reminded me of how I tried to see something as a bright point in my life when it was just a dim light compared to what my life is now.

Just a suggestion facebook, if you could make this app screen for happy moments that would be a huge improvement.

Like when I realized my career goal should be to work with Special Ed students and Behavioral disorder kids. Maybe you could remember the many times a student made me laugh with something funny they said and I posted it?

Maybe you could remind people of when they worked at a job they liked? Maybe you could remind me of the first art class I taught or the new friends I’ve since made while teaching this past year? Maybe you could remind me of all the cool things we’ve made?

What if you made an app that looked back into the user’s past pre-Facebook? I know this isn’t humanly possible…yet, but since I am a frequent user I figure you might hear me out and get on it.

Maybe your app could peer into my brain and pick out moments like the following and turn them into Facebook posts:

“Today my best friends made me laugh so hard Pepsi came out of my nose! All the upperclassmen were staring. #pepsiboogers #chugchugchug ”

“Oops, today I didn’t double knot my shoelaces enough and they wound around the pedals on my bike. #fellover #thankgodnotraffic ”

“Today my mom made me iron my Umbros before playing football with the neighborhood friends. #nerd ”

“Today I almost ate a bee at the zoo confusing it for a soggy Dorito chip. #onceyoupopyoucanstop ”

“Tried to toilet paper a neighbors yard. Note to self and my bestie, take more than one roll. #stuck #inatree ”

“Today I crowd surfed. #living ”

These are just some ideas I’mve been spit-ballin’; my two cents if you will.

Yours Sincerely,
Quirky Girl

What moments have been brought up by Facebook that you’d rather forget? What moments do you wish you could post from your past (if you were born pre-Facebook etc.)?

8 years ago Short URL Comments

Fun/Funny/Humor/Life/memories/Quirky/Uncategorized

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Jan

Dancing in the rain …with hallucinations

They say that life is learning how to dance in the rain. They say when it rains it pours. The last four months of 2015 my family and I experienced both aphorisms.

September started out wonderfully. My inner child came out to play during a lesson I was teaching on Jackson Pollock to young children. We slung paint, and danced to jazz on our canvases. Life couldn’t be better. I just had my birthday, my husband was back in school doing something he loved; things were looking up.

Two days later, I had come home from my second job, settled in for a nap when my phone kept going off. Finally I realized it was my husband’s work calling; he was on his way to the hospital. My parents and I rushed to the hospital, my husband’s parents came from over an hour away. He had a side effect from trying to complete extra credit for his religious studies program he just enlisted in. He was fasting, eating an egg during the morning and nothing else until sundown. The second day is when he went to the hospital. By the time his parents got there, he was still vomiting, and we discovered through the whole ordeal, he had received 5 concussions and a hairline fracture. Needless to say, this impaired some of his thinking.

When he was in one of his awake moments, I shared a special memory with him. He was wired up to all these different machines, they were used to monitor his heart rhythms, and his activity. He looked over at me and motioned with his fingers we should go for a walk. I looked at him and told him there wasn’t any way for us to do so until he got some rest. He then genuinely pouted like a 5 year old. Five seconds later he had forgotten he had just asked me to go for a walk. He then started his plea for going on a walk like this:

“We’re going go steal a chicken.”

I said, “And then what?”

He continued, “We’re gonna ask it whose it’s daddy is.”

“And then what?”

“We’re gonna steal it’s egg!”

“Oh really? Then what?”

“Then we’re gonna eat it.” He then gently thrust off the blankets while still being hooked up to machines and said, “Hurry, let’s get outta here before they’re on to us!”

After I told him he had to stay in the bed he pouted again and fell asleep. Later in the evening his father and I had to force feed him his dinner, time it it for each portion he was eating and we had to make sure he got his nourishment. His parents and I took turns watching him in the hospital, and once he was released, my parents watched him at night while I slept to continue working my two jobs.

He had many doctors visits after that, but it was that moment talking about the chickens that I remember the most. That and him remembering how to recite Hebrew words but forgetting our address. His brain is an amazing thing!

Once he was out of the hospital, he started healing and his mental alacrity was returning, things started going well, he was working extra hard and getting back on track with school.
I felt we were getting back to homeostasis. Then one morning before my second job, my healing husband comes rushing into our bedroom. Normally he lets me sleep seeing as I’m usually pretty worn out from working so much. He shook me by my shoulders and said the EMT’s were on their way and my mom was having a heart attack. As I peered out into the hallway, the front door burst open and the EMT’s were there with their supplies. I followed them down the hallway to find my mother sitting in my writing chair, completely drained of color, unresponsive. There wasn’t time to panic, by this time the sheriff had come through the front door and was reiterating everything they had just told my mother in the bedroom. They said if it wasn’t an emergency, they would go to the hospital without the lights and sirens on. They usually do this as not to alarm the patient. While my dad and husband were getting ready to go to the hospital I quickly called my boss at my second job, trying to figure out if I should call in. I explained the whole thing about the lights and sirens and mid-sentence with him I heard the sirens blazing, my mother was in the midst of having a full blown heart attack.

When we rushed to the hospital, we sat with my dad trying to keep our cool. The doctor came in saying they had put a stent in the blocked artery and that there were three more blocked arteries that would need to be fixed within the next week. We went in to see my mother and she was already full of color and more energy than she had been in previous weeks.

Within the next week she was scheduled to undergo another surgery in which they were supposed to place the stents in. When the doctor went in, she tried to put the stent in place ripping the artery. Mom would need open heart surgery. I went in after teaching that day to see her and we talked with the surgeon, all was well, she was in good spirits. The following week she had a double bypass heart surgery and she came home as good as new; or so we thought.

Blindly believing that all was well and everyone was good at home, halfway through my teaching shift my husband called with the bad news that my mother had fallen at home and was on her way to the hospital again. Later we found out she had had a stroke as a result of the heart surgery. Needless to say she was in the hospital for a while. It was during one of the nights that I spent with her that we began to have fun with it and “dance in the rain”.

For the first time in a long time my mother asked to take a picture, not just any picture, but a selfie with me. She decided since she felt gross we should burn up my phone with pictures of her eating banana pudding to send to my aunts to determine how gross the pictures could get. My battery died and we resorted to talking about the different hallucinations she was seeing. She was seeing beach balls, tin type pirate ships, and at one point had even been seeing the cartoon characters I used to draw when I was a child. One of our last moments before we fell asleep went like this:

“Do you see them?”

“Who?”

“That tiny couple…”

“What do they look like?”

“They look like figurines…they’re Irish”

I gently had to explain to her, as my Aunts had done previously,, that she was seeing things and they weren’t going to harm her. I will always remember this moment in particular, because it was the first time we accepted things as they were and just went with it. I will always remember that…and the morning after when she accused the nurses of running a liquor bootlegging distillery upstairs, but that is another story for another time.

What traumatic life events caused you to examine your life a little more closely and appreciate the small moments?

8 years ago Short URL 8 Comments

Uncategorized

concussion/heart attack/life/love/Marriage/memories/quirky/stroke/worst fear

Jun

15 minutes

When I was younger I wanted to be famous. Let’s just put that out there. When you were a kid, you wanted to be famous too, you might as well admit it. Any kid worth their salt wants to be famous. Even if you wanted to be something with relative anonymity like an inventor, scientist, teacher, you could still be famous for it somehow.

There was also something else I wanted when I was younger. At the beginning of the school year there’s nothing sweeter than the smell of a fresh notebook before the school season starts. For me, going down the aisles of our local store shopping for school supplies was always one of my favorite parts of the year. Everything was new, everything was still fresh, untouched and more importantly, it was the time of year where we were excited because everyone had the same grades.

One afternoon, I was perusing the blank pages of my new 5 subject notebook while sitting on my bedroom floor. The Mead company had really outdone themselves that year. Back in the early 90’s we didn’t have the internet, cell phones or access to call a company ran by several ladies and Katharine Hepburn who knew the answers to everything.

“Desk Set cinema poster” by Source (WP:NFCC#4). Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia –

Instead, Mead came up with the great idea of putting times tables in the back, along with a few other helpful goodies.

One of the helpful things listed on the final page of the notebook; quotes from famous people. You had the likes of Winston Churchill mingling with Thomas Edison. You might have had a quote from George Washington Carver or Marie Curry. As my eyes read the quotes one by one, an alarming one seized my brain.

Who was this Andy? Why did he think this? I knew several “Andys” and none of them had ever thought this or said anything of this nature to me. They were usually too busy telling jokes or singing songs to other girls on the school bus. Why was this guy so special he had a quote? Surely he was a scientist or something and knew something we all didn’t. I imagined a man sitting there with a giant calculator and a notebook trying to exact the least amount of minutes one would have for fame.

Next thing, my mind flitted to the amount of times I had been mentioned in the local newspaper. There was that time my third grade class was featured because we all dressed up funny for school spirit week. That was probably about 6 seconds for every person who decided to read the paper that day and glazed over my name. I knew everyone in class bought a copy so that was exactly 6 seconds times 30 kids and one teacher. That is 3 minutes and 10 seconds off my fifteen minutes this Andy had guaranteed me. Then there was the time I won an award in the science fair.

CRAP.

Sure it was great winning an award, but then there goes about another 3 minutes and 10 seconds of my fame, plus the time it took distant relatives to read the article which my family made sure to send them.

Within 5 minutes I had looked at my life like it was a cell phone plan, before there were cellphones. I wasn’t worried that I wasn’t living, I wasn’t worried about finishing school, falling in love, making the coolest art, or writing the best paper. As far as my 12 year old self was concerned I didn’t even have time for a bucket list.

I was too scared I had used up my minutes.

Lucky for me, there is more to life than fame.

What as something silly that you were afraid you had limited time on?

Feb

Pigpen

There is always that one quintessential smelly kid in class. As a substitute teacher, you don’t figure out who these kids are until you’ve visited their classroom on numerous occasions.

There is always the accidental case where a kid has been raising his hand while you have a million other kids needing your attention; because they’ve accidentally glued their hands together, have a shoelace undone or something else. By the time you’ve managed to get the kid with glue hands to tie the shoes of the other and you’ve made it around to the well mannered child with his hand up, you realize you’ve accidentally miscalculated his need when you enter the musty cloud of, “I gotta go, I gotta go!”

However in an older classroom it’s different. I’ve forgotten how smelly young boys typically are and how they just let it loose. In my household growing up I didn’t have siblings, so if I did something I had to fess up to it. Sometimes I did so proudly. In school however, it was always a different story. In school it had to be kept secret.

This year is the year I said I would own up to things and be honest. Here it is readers, I am confessing something to you that happened in 4th grade. This will help explain why I have such an affinity for this smelly child I encountered recently.

In 4th grade as in most small burgeoning schools, we were escorted to Physical Education class in an empty tiny gym. It was so new that there was not enough equipment to absorb sound. On this unfortunate day, after we had done our beginning calisthenics, we were instructed to do timed sit-ups with a partner holding our feet. My partner was a boy. You can already imagine why this was awkward for me. When the teacher officially started her stop-watch, I decided to do as many sit-ups as fast as I could. For whatever reason, back in the day, I felt I always had something to prove. Then, I was treated to a humbling. After about 5 to 10 sit-ups something had wrangled loose from deep inside my stomach and came out between my feet…with the boy holding them. The sad thing is, it didn’t happen just once. No matter how hard I tried, every sit up resulted in a resounding fog horn sound which then echoed off the floor and bounced off the walls.

As we all know, flatulence in awkward situations is funny. In this particular instance, the entire class was cracking up making it hard for them to accomplish their timed sit-ups. I had never been so embarrassed. (Until that point at least.) To this day, I don’t know if any of my classmates were sure it was me.

Now that you know this about me, it will be easy to understand why as a teacher I felt so badly for this kid in my class but proud of him at the same time.

I was busy working with another student when I saw this young boy whiz by the desks trying to get to the front of the room to work on math. Next thing I knew, one boy walked by in the same spot. “AaaAgGgH!” he screamed.

Then another boy walked by, “OH GOD!”
Then another, “Oh MAN!”

The first boy is trying to stifle his laughter, and the other three boys held their arms up to their noses, laughing, trying to block what was in the air. Raising the teacher’s suspicion, she looked over trying to hide her smile. “What is going on over there?”

The first boy replied, “Well, I farted and then the others walked into it one after the other. You might want to get the Lysol out.” I was proud because instead of trying to hide it, or act like it didn’t happen, he owned up to it. Granted, it’s gross, but at least he didn’t let the ire stack up between all the boys in class leaving them to wonder who really dealt it.

Have you ever been a Pigpen?

Dec

Let’s put a pin in it…

As I’ve come to look back and analyze my life in a series of vignettes, I realize there might be some valuable information in these stories for future generations. Some might even label them modern day parables. (O.K. maybe I’m just calling them that.)

Regardless of what you want to call it I’ve been called out by a fellow blogger for ruminating on the past. I see it less like that and more like I’m doing the world a favor by offering young people a warning.

When you begin to navigate the waters of dating, please don’t start out like I did. I didn’t start with a bang, but rather a silent acknowledgement of mutual like, followed by a concerned talk with parents needing clarification of modern “dating” lingo, only to end in agony two days later. The agony was very real, and not in a lovelorn way, but in a rather small, but violent way.

A bit of back story…

It was 1991, living in small town America there had been growing concerns of the Gulf War and how it would affect the future of not just our nation but the world. Operation Desert Storm ended quickly in February with a surplus of American flag pins. Everyone had one in their pocket, or in my case, in the pencil holder of my desk.

By the end of March my childhood concerns of recycling, rainforest deforestation, pollution and war were quickly dashed by surging teenage hormones. A new boy had come to town, and lucky me the new seating arrangement in class forced him to sit within reaching distance to my right.

As you can imagine, as some of you have seen my 7th grade picture, my self-esteem was not very high. 6th grade wasn’t much better. This was the year of V-cut bangs, which when tackled with a hot iron looked like a neatly curled tumbleweed resting on top of your head.

All of the girls in class reminded me of how lucky I was to be sitting next to the new boy. All I remember is sitting there nervously in a shirt that I thought looked Hawaiian and cultured, but really it was just covered in red and purple fruit.

One sunny recess, as I was playing tetherball a classmate walked up with a note in hand exclaiming, “Special delivery!” The note appeared to be a hand scrawled voting ballot. It read, “Will you go out with me?” with specially drawn boxes for checking yes or no. I was nervous and not old enough to vote, but this process was much easier leaving little room for rigging.

We had library after recess, again the girls in class reminded me of my good fortune. One girl even walked up whispering with elation, “Go for the gold!” When we got back to class, I don’t remember what I did after happily marking the box yes and passing the note back to him. All I remember was when the bell rang at the end of the day on Friday I had my first boyfriend. Next came the hard part.

When I got home I had to tell my parents. I told them I was “going out” with a boy. Their alarm and concern immediately made me wonder what was wrong. They sat me down and asked me to define “going out”. I explained innocently it is when a boy and girl decide they want to stand next to each other in line at the water fountain, talk during recess, maybe sit on the swings near each other and possibly hold hands in line. Honestly I wasn’t sure, I was going by what other classmates told me what “going out” was. An immediate sign of relief was displayed on my parents faces, they returned back to being happy and at dinner time dad made sure to tease me about having a boyfriend.

By Saturday night, the pressure was too much. I couldn’t handle the rigors of having a boyfriend at 11 years old. I was too young and had a whole life ahead of me, I didn’t want the responsibility of being tied down. What if I wanted to work for Green Peace? What if I went to Africa to help other starving 11 year olds? What if I went sailing with Jacques Cousteau to save the whales? I didn’t expect him to sit at home waiting for me to come back with tales of the world. Sunday night I settled into bed with the mindset of conclusion and finality in this relationship.

After the first recess on Monday it was done. We had officially broken up.

This sounds pretty cut and dry doesn’t it? It wasn’t. Apparently a few days after we broke up he already had a new girlfriend. Not only was she new, but she was also very pretty. Something ugly began surging in my body. Suddenly I didn’t feel like I was the special “chosen” one, but very vengeful and jealous. Like maybe our whole weekend of “going out” (which was me sitting in my parents house by myself thinking) didn’t mean anything to him.

When the teacher had to excuse herself from the classroom, I decided to make a move. It was a move of revenge, not just for me, but to do something for all of the wronged vengeful American women and teen-agers. I looked no further than my pencil holder and found my American flag pin.

Back in the 40’s there were Archie comics where they talked about wearing someone’s pin. If a gal decided to wear a fellow’s pin, then they were dating. I had a very different interpretation on “pinning”.

While the teacher was out I waited for my former boyfriend to get up out of his seat. He of course got up to do something mischievous as the teacher was out of the room. Before he sat down I jokingly placed the pin in his chair where he would see it. Which he quickly handed it back to me smiling as the class watched. Just as he was in mid-air about to sit on his chair I thrust the pin where I knew his rear-end would make contact with it.

Bear in mind, I watched a lot of cartoons. Not only did I think this sophomoric stunt would be funny, but I thought even through my weird jealousy which I wasn’t old enough to understand, he would find it funny too.

As he shot up out of his chair, the teacher entered the room to find him bent over, stumbling to her desk while he was fondling his backside trying to find what became stuck through his blue jeans. He was in so much pain he couldn’t really make a sound but the entire time his mouth was open. The class was stunned and immediately I felt guilty when a classmate ratted me out.

However, the former boyfriend didn’t say a word. He was being the better person in all of this. I never got in trouble from the teacher, something tells me maybe she had enough of the mischievousness too.

The important lesson in this modern day parable is this; when you think someone is doing you wrong, never “stick” it to them. Happiness and self-worth is an inside job, don’t allow someone else be in control of yours. Follow your own bliss, don’t feel guilty about it and never wait 24 years to passively aggressively tell someone you’re sorry for your patriotic weirdness you inflicted upon them.

What silly guilt have you carried for a long time? Have you worked up the nerve to tell them you’re sorry?

Oct

Slim pickens

Sometimes while at work I will let my mind meander while I’m washing the dishes. Today, my mind went too far. My thoughts made a wrong turn down a dark alley with a tiny light showing through at the end of the tunnel.

Meanwhile my hand was armed with a scouring pad and navigating the soapy water to find the next utensil to scrub.

Back in my mind I was peering through the tunnel and suddenly sitting in my Kindergarten class room. My classmates all have their metal lunchboxes out, mine has a picture of random Care Bears doing something with a rainbow.If you were lucky, your thermos wasn’t defective. I wasn’t lucky. Just ask my soggy sandwich. Suddenly I look to my right and the teacher has taken out the automated slide projector. This is one of the first times I have experienced a projector.

Back to the present day, in the sink at work, my hands are turning into prunes when suddenly I remember an alarmingly unexpected image.

In my memory, I’m still at the table, halfway through a chocolate chip Quaker Oats bar when suddenly on the projector screen appears a man. Not just any man, a man who seems to be wearing his vital organs on a nude leotard.

There were whispers echoing across the crowded darkened classroom. “Is that Richard Simmons?”

Quickly my mind flashed out of Kindergarten, back through the tunnel in my brain and back in the present with my hands scrubbing a mug.

“Why did she show us THAT during lunch?”

This is a repressed memory I could live without. I still beg to wonder why my teacher thought it was a good idea to show us Richard Simmons in a form fitting leotard that accentuated every last morsel of his tiny body.

You have to admit, they do look alike.

What is a repressed memory you have forgotten until recently? Did you laugh or did you wonder why the event took place?

10 years ago Short URL 5 Comments

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Sep

10 Books

Recently I was challenged by a friend to list the top 10 books that have had a major impact on my life. Because I’m a verbose person and take challenges seriously, I couldn’t just answer his request with a few blanketed answers. Here they are in no particular order with their explanations:

The Outsiders is a book you get something out of at different stages of your life. Recently for a class we re-read the classic, it was mind blowing to find out it was written by a 16 year old.

Eat Pray Love. This is a great book for any one who has ever experienced divorce and tried to make sense of it. This book made me want to travel, get lost, make new friends and then write about it. It taught me how to put some of my past behind me and work though some life lessons.

If you ever want to impress a literature professor, drop the name Rex Stout. When I finally resided alone in my apartment in St. Louis I knew I would be restless at night. The answer to listlessness was found in a fabulous mystery The Sound of Murder. It was originally written in the early 40’s at the dawn of industrial espionage. With quirky characters and a foresight of an upcoming industry in a new material called plastic, the setting Mr. Stout paints in so surreal yet believable.

The first book I remember falling in love with is, I Mean It Stanley. This is the book my parents started reading to me and by the age of two, I had it memorized page for page. Every night I asked them to read it to me before bed, each word drilling it’s way into my brain. When my Grandparents came down for a visit, my Parents suggested to my Grandma she should read me a book that night. So I retrieved this book, sat in her lap and as she turned the pages I started reciting the text. My Grandmother was a lot like me, she was a former teacher and had a sense of wonder. She thought I was reading the book. She didn’t know my parents tirelessly read this to get me in the habit of a sleep routine. She looked in amazement at my parents thinking I might be a genius. Then my Dad cracked a smile and the gig was up.

Everyone needs a good Doctor in their life. Mine had the last name of Seuss. My first grade teacher asked everyone in class to pick their favorite book to bring to class and read. I poured over my selection at home. It was between Fox in Socks and 101 Dalmatians. In the end I chose Fox in Socks, mainly because in the beginning of the book, Dr. Seuss goads the reader with this graphic: How could you resist? At the young age of six I wasn’t willing to back down from a challenge and for once settled who won the tweedle beetle battle with paddles on poodles eating noodles.

If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What am I doing in the Pits? This book I read because it had been sitting in the drawer of my Parents’ end tables and was begging to be read. The cover wreaked of late 70’s artwork and humor. I was 17 when I first picked it up, read it on a Journalism class trip to Chicago and for the first time in a long time was caught laughing out loud to a joke no one could hear. This book appealed to me because I felt displaced, and Erma Bombeck made sense of everything.

Batman a Death in the Family was my first experience with a gritty plot only capable of taking place in between the pages of (at the time) my favorite Super Hero’s life. Little did I know in comic books characters can perish at the hand of a madman armed with a crow bar. Until then I was only exposed to characters who died of natural causes. This may have been when I learned the word bludgeoned.

Any Archie comic EVER. In the 80‘s and early 90‘s Archie was all I ever read during the summer, sometimes in between Garfield books I checked out at the library. I devoured these wishing I could be Betty Cooper. Unfortunately, one of my best friends growing up had blonde hair, where I learned the ugly truth, only she could be Betty because she had the correct hair color. These books taught me blondes had more fun and brunettes were snooty, confusing my idea of what a woman should be. Eventually along the way I realized these were just characters and nobody should have to be compartmentalized into either image. Instead I developed a crush on Jughead and a love for art by trying to re-draw the images. Archie comics also helped to forge the way for me in a literary sense. The featured cover below is the one they published an interview I did of my Aunt.

When my parents realized comic books were no longer just a hobby but something that could cause my two loves to collide they wanted to help. They purchased two books by Will Eisner in which he states the best scenario for comic book writing is when the artist and the writer are the same person. If this isn’t the case, he goes on to illustrate what can happen when people get their ideas mixed up. Even if you aren’t into comics, it’s a wonderful book explaining the process with beautiful illustrations.

The next book is something everyone needs to read to understand how to become a better writer, even if it only pertains to correspondence. The Groucho Letters is a book of letters exchanged between Groucho Marx, some of his colleagues and son. This was a gem I discovered at my parents house. It probably belonged to my Grandma and one of my Aunts at one point. One specific part in the book stuck out to me. Groucho had built a rapport with a fellow funny person who was at the time living in Maine. By the third letter of catching up, the friend wrote to Groucho, “The town is so boring the tide went out and never came back.” This book goes to show how friendship can bring you unexpected things, like the gift of laughter or witty writing.

To my friend, hopefully this answers your challenge. To my readers…what are some of your favorite books and which ones have influenced you the most?

Diary of a quirky girl

Tag Archives: memories