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Americans will spend from 2 to 3 years of their life standing in line. Queue etiquette has been referred to as a “self-regulating social system.” Here is one woman’s take on how to do the queue.
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Milestones came at a rapid clip when our son Ned was an infant – crawling, sitting, standing and first words. Once school started, these milestones slowed down, replaced by the predictable progress through one grade after the next. But now here was he was standing in the kitchen in blue blazer and khaki pants – all decked out for his first school dance.
“Let’s go Mom, I’m ready. We’re supposed to pick up Chris on the way.”
“Just one thing before we go, Ned.” I reached for his blue blazer and tied a small red string around the tag, a tip from my friend Marion. “I know that everyone will be wearing the same type of blazer. This will help you find yours in the pile at the end of the evening.” He shook his head in disbelief as we headed to the car.
I had leapt at the chance for this driving responsibility, eager for the captive audience the car provided. Ned had carefully shielded his school life and particularly his co-ed life well beyond my grasp. Perhaps I could learn something along the way with carefully probing questions, or seize a teachable moment.
“How do these dances work, Ned? Do the boys ask the girls to dance, or do you just dance in groups, or maybe the girls can ask the boys?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“At your age, I was in dancing school. The teacher Mrs. Woolson taught us the foxtrot and the waltz.”
“What’s the foxtrot?” asked Ned.
“It’s a type of dance.”
“So when you were a kid, dances had names?”
“Yes they had names, and I had to wear little white socks and gloves. And for music we had this old women thumping away on the piano. We didn’t have any albums or anything.” Continue reading
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Reminiscences from 45 years ago: Was I a loser??
Follow Liza Blue on: Forty-five minutes into our seven hour drive north the traffic comes to a complete standstill just south of Milwaukee. The highway is in the middle of construction and we are totally boxed in with concrete dividers and idling semis; there is no way to peek around to see what is going on. The midday traffic has been light, so the abrupt halt is foreboding, promptly confirmed by the oncoming sound of sirens.
We sit idling for about five minutes, but when the truck driver next to us turns off his rig, I realize that we are probably in for a long wait. I roll down the window to hear the news. “There’s a big accident up ahead of us,” he says, “a southbound semi crashed into the divider and flipped over into the northbound traffic. There are bodies. Both sides of the highway are completely blocked off.” The grim newsseems to travel quickly through the trapped traffic, and one by one engines turn off and people emerge from their cars into the bright sunlight. Continue reading
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Contemplating near death experiences. How many will you have in your lifetime?
Follow Liza Blue on: I could think of nothing to recommend me when Susie asked me to join their senior women’s ice hockey team. After all I had only skated on figure skates, and that was over forty years ago, a time when hockey was still resolutely a boys-only sport.
Susie explained the team was made up of moms who decided to take up the sport after many hours of chauffeuring their young daughters to remote rinks at predawn hours. Not only did I not fit Susie’s demographic as a hockey mom, but additionally I’d be the only AARP member on the team. Even so she pressed forward with her sales pitch. “You’ll pick it up quickly,” she said, “after all you’re athletic.”
Yes, I’d like to think of myself as athletic, but any such reputation is based on racquet sports, and within this narrow field my expertise is entirely focused on my forehand. Mine is a freakishly blistering stroke, both cross court and down the line, but the rest of my game is crap – a wildly inconsistent backhand, no net game, feeble pitty-pat serve and slow lumbering movements around the court. Apparently, my forehand was enough to get me recruited to an ice hockey team.
This compliment prompted me to consider a new sport. My tennis learning curve had long since stalled out. To improve I would need to move beyond my innate athletic abilities and become a truly committed athlete, willing to invest time, effort, and above all money for lessons. Susie had suggested an identity as flexibly athletic rather than as a single sport committed athlete. Perhaps I could quickly ascend the steep learning curve of hockey since I was “athletic.” Perhaps the hand-eye coordination on glorious display with my forehand could extrapolate to hockey. Yes, I not only took the bait, I engulfed it, slurped it up in a spasm of pride. I joined the Hot Flashes, a hockey team whose name accurately reflected my estrogen level. Continue reading
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My brief tenure as a senior women’s hockey goalie taught me important lessons about five holes and the comforting smell of a locker room.
Follow Liza Blue on: After an arduous morning of weeding and other nap-worthy chores, I head to the screened porch, supplement the spring breeze with the overhead fan, plump the pillows and then settle in with a shimmering glass of beaded ice water. My book is merely a prop; I know that within ten pages it will transition to a comforting presence on my chest as I closed my eyes in grateful silence.
And then I hear a fly.
I swing a pillow over my head hoping that a glancing blow will bump the fly into a new remote orbit. Momentary silence – then the buzzing resumes.
As I gather up my things to move inside, I think about the annoying buzz of a house fly as a shared experience spanning all continents and cultures, and the universal knowledge that all peaceful pursuits will be ruined until the fly is dead. Emily Dickinson wrote about this very experience in her poem, “I Heard A Fly Buzz.” She imagines her deathbed, her mourning family around her. All is quiet “… and then there it was, There interposed a fly, with Blue – uncertain stumbling buzz.” The fly is the last thing she hears before she dies. Now I will grant that on the scale of transportive events, death outranks a nap, but effect is the same. A single fly can spoil everything. Continue reading
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From pest to pestilence, flies are a universal experience across continents and cultures.
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I am joyful walker but reluctant hiker.
Both involve putting one foot in front of the other, but beyond that share little. A walk is an umbrella term that includes saunters, strolls, meanders or moseys – all are defined by their low-energy expenditure and modest distance. In contrast, hikes – including treks, tramps, trudges, tromps, slogs and climbs – are all high-energy uphill affairs that involve sweat. The question is really just how much.
I can let my mind wander as I walk along a well-trodden and even path, but the hard physical work of the hike consumes my mental energy. Is the weather unstable? How far is the next campsite? Is the anti-grizzly pepper spray within reach? What can I do about the back pack strap that is digging into my armpit? Yes, the hike may culminate in a glittering vista, and a side benefit is that the relentless defiance of gravity can crowd out the everyday thoughts of a cluttered mind. Hikers are forced to remain in the simplified here and now, reaching the blissful Zen of the trail.
I do enjoy the occasional modest hike, achieving a goal and plucking the buried strings of my hunter and gatherer heritage. And there are other agenda-driven hikes I enjoy – the birdwatching hike, the fern hike, or just merely getting from point A to point B. But achieving the Zen of the trail, to be alive in the moment, to dissipate the stewing juices of the nattering monkey-mind – in my default slothful state I wonder “Isn’t there an easier way? Do I have to climb a mountain and sweat to do this?” Continue reading
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