long with the crossword puzzle, the Wedding and
Celebrations section justifies the hefty price of the Sunday NY Times.
Back in the 1960s, I used to peruse this section in the remote possibility
of recognizing a name. Beyond that, there was always plenty of snickering at the east coast WASP elite that was featured,
with ridiculous inverted names and crazy nicknames with Roman numeral
appendages. With a shriek of delight you might find that Goddard (God)
Bruce IV had married Bleeker Cate.
The wedding announcement of yore would then go into excruciating detail on God
and Bleek’s attendants, the wedding dress, what they
ate, and then with a great flourish a recitation of their impeccable blood
lines.
Now, some 40 years later I have returned to the wedding announcements, and things have changed. Gone is the
East Coast preppy St. Grottlesex aristocracy,
replaced with something more akin to a nationwide meritocracy based on the NY
Times’ closely guarded decisions regarding who’s in and who’s out.
Ancestry is sometimes included, but in this era it smacks of gratuitous
name-dropping. Once recent announcement featured a nice looking young man
named Teddy Roosevelt V – well okay maybe we will give him a break since he
can’t help but name drop, but how about the bride who claims she is a direct
descendent of Peter Stuyvestant, the last governor of
the colony of New York who died in 1672? Seems to me that 337 years is
way too long to dine out on his name, which is now more recognizable as one of
NY most infamous slums. Then there is Sage Lehman who feels compelled to
say that she is the great-great granddaughter of Meyer Lehman, the founder of
Lehman Brothers. This name might have lost its cachet with the tattered
collapse of this venerable institution. Tatiana Papanicolaou just has to let us to know that she is related to the developer of the Pap
smear.
I would imagine the wedding beat is a lowly editorial post
(but I’d do it for free). Does the fresh scrubbed journalist appreciate
the power of picking and choosing among the competing nuptial applicants?
Did Tatiana (perhaps Tati Pap to her homeys) get
selected for the Times based on her kinship to a Pap smear?
Personally, I think that her lineage would only be relevant if she had the
great good fortune to marry Vitto Chlamydiolo instead of the rather staid Thorne Perkin. But the bigger question is who
wants their wedding announcement published in the first place? Is it the
status conscious mother-in-law whose family has an unbroken record of making
the grade since the Great War (the Civil War, that is)? Or maybe couples legitimately seeking the cachet of a Times wedding
announcement due to accomplishments, or triumph over adversity? Or is it
simply the result of a wee-hours bar room bet?
The wedding section always profiles one couple in depth
including several color pictures. This must be a real coup, although I
can’t figure out what sort of status it might confer. Often, a wooing
storyline involves a saga of multiple lost opportunities with sparks flying at
random meetings over the years, but either the couple is geographically
challenged or hooked up with someone else. Another typical storyline is a
“meet cute” anecdote, illustrating the wonderful coincidences that can turn
life on an absolute dime. I was delighted to read about a couple who
randomly met squished together on a rush hour subway; she was instantly
besotted to see him reading the book “History of Philosophy, Volume IX.”
Romance blossomed and voila! here are Dixie and
Jeffrey in full color in the NY Times. The profile improbably included a
close up picture of the bride’s back, featuring some sort of complicated straps
that only partially covered up her tattoos, one of which memorialized a
“Buster.” Whoa, momma – the old gray lady of journalism must be
shuddering at the thought of a bondaged bride
brazenly displaying her tats.
The rest of the wedding announcements are all carefully
scripted per instructions of the NY Times, who insist that, “Those posing for
pictures should be neatly dressed, and should have their eyebrows at the same
level.” And it appears that everyone follows these instructions to a tee
– in some pictures the couple’s heads are so aligned that it appears that they
are affixed with a jumbo staple gun. The black and white picture is
then followed by about three inches of text, all of which could be considered
mind-numbingly boring to the casual reader. However, I have found that with a
little imagination, you can turn this into a marvelous sociology exercise; the
trick is to imagine that the sparse text is the initial concept of a Hollywood
script and your job is to supply the back story.
In the first paragraph you learn who married the
couple, which would seem to be of minimal interest, except that occasionally
you get interfaith marriages where you can sense a hint of a contentious
tug-of-war over the ritual, “ the service was
performed by Rabbi Berman, who incorporated Lakota traditions…” Meredith
and Gareth apparently nixed the religious part of the ritual and were married
by Barry, “a Humanist celebrant.” Maybe I could qualify for that role –
according to the website you just need to be a dues paying member for one year
(http://www.humanist-society.org/celebrants/
inquiry.html).
But if you are looking for something quick and dirty I would recommend becoming
a universal life minister (http://www.ulc.net)
which requires no cost and no faith. Next the announcement will let you
know what colleges were attended (still mostly Ivy league)
and even whether or not the blessed couple graduated magna or summa cum
laude. And the fact checkers must really be on their toes; once I spotted
a correction in which a summa got downgraded to a magna. Probably some
jilted suitor called that one in. And then you can ponder the
potential marital stress if the wife graduated magna and the husband was only
cum.
Occupations make up the majority of the text,
including both the couples’ jobs along with that of both sets of parents, and
potentially step parents. This is where your back story can get really
interesting, because the NY Times will also cattily let you know if someone is
unemployed. A typical entry might read, “Until three months ago, Bleek Cate worked as a
kindergarten teacher …” Now when the wife is
unemployed I see three possible story lines. Perhaps Bleek has resigned her job to resolve some sort of geographic incompatibility, or
perhaps she has simply lost her job, or most cynically, you can imagine that
her job was only a stop-gap until she reached her goal of marriage. Now
she is ecstatic to wave good-bye to a regular paycheck and settle down to a
life of undiluted wedded bliss. But we all know that this is a
potentially disastrous scenario - even the wedding section provides a glimpse
of the financial sector woes. Another entry might read, “Until recently
Goddard Bruce was a vice president and financial analyst at Lehman
Brothers.” Who would want to subject themselves to this type of
humiliation? But then I realized that the wedding pages of the NY Times
are just as good a place to network as any. In two short lines and at no
charge, you can inform the entire NY Times readership of your qualifications
and immediate availability. Some entries show how the financial collapse
has ripped through entire families. Melissa Frey is the stepdaughter of
Caleb Koeppel who until last year was a partner in
the Koeppel Companies, a real estate investment
company (was he ousted by his relatives?), and granddaughter of Alan Greenburg
who was chairman of Bear Sterns. Ouch!
Typically the wedding couple will have high profile
jobs, but Elizabeth Rounds and Joel Pinkser are
puzzlers. Elizabeth is a marketing coordinator for a construction company
assembling introductory packets for prospective clients. I’m sorry, honey, but
this sounds like a glorified secretary. Joel, 30, will begin working as a
tour guide with CitySights at the end of the
month. As nice as they might be, you have to ask what qualified them for
a coveted slot in the wedding announcements. Perhaps it was Joel’s mother
who was a well known writer of soap operas. Ranging from Pap smears to
soap operas, the Times editorial decisions keep me guessing. I could
definitely see a Law and Order episode involving a botched bribe to get into
the wedding section.
Lawyers and doctors seem to be overrepresented in the
announcements, both among the married couples and their parents. A common
scenario is the wife who works as the office manager for her husband who is
a doctor or dentist. While this probably represents some cozy
partnership extending beyond the home, your screenplay could just as easily
suggest that the wife needs to keep a tight rein on her husband midst all the
steadily younger and perkier nurses. In general, the jobs of most the
mothers tend to be stereotypically woman’s work – in education or the arts, or
the mother might have some sort of kick-ass volunteer job, like a ballet board
member, or a hobby that poses as a job. Teddy Roosevelt’s V mother, for
example, “is a free lance writer on the subject of endangered primates and
eco-tourism.” My interpretation is that the enduring Roosevelt
wherewithal has permitted her to be world traveler, but this may come to an
abrupt end -because now we all know that her husband Teddy IV is (or
potentially will not be) an investment banker at Lehman Brothers.
Some of the more touching announcements are
professional couples with very humble origins, judging by the jobs of the
parents. Take the marriage of Linda Law and Jim Mui.
Linda’s father is an internist, her mother the practice manager. In
contrast, Jim’s mother is a seamstress at Lookout Sportswear while his
father owns Cherry’s Chinese food. Plenty of story lines here in this
clash of culture and class - potentially a dysfunctional bridal dinner and
other family events.
The choice of one’s life partner is always an
interesting story, but marriage of same sex couples still adds a frisson to the
back story. Phillip and Douglas met in 1967 and were finally married in
2008. One can only imagine the trajectory of this relationship through
the climate changes of the past 42 years, and the total triumph of public
recognition of their partnership through marriage and inclusion in the NY
Times. John and David live in Los Angeles, but John grew up as the son of
a minister in rural North Dakota. I just want to put my arms around them
both in celebration of their triumph over a presumably tortured
childhood. But the best is perhaps Damon and Charles who participated in
a double wedding. Their marriage was immediately followed by marriage of
Damon’s father to his gay partner of 16 years. Bravo! In the movie
parlance, that story line is optionable.
The - - - - - - - NY Times has been the arbiter of class and
culture throughout the ages,
Selecting wedding announcements to be
published in its Sunday pages.
The austere responsibility is left to the discretion
of shadowy - - - - - - -
Who must select the winners midst the
clamoring nuptial competitors.
As - - - - - - - through the listings, I saw
no pattern that was clear,
Who knows, the tipping point might be kinship to
Pap smears.
Click here for answers
The Shape of your Container
n my second year of medical school, I subscribed to an odd
little periodical called “Disease-a-Month,” basically a Cliff Notes for the
aspiring doctor. Each month the bright yellow pamphlet would provide a
summary of the most salient facts about a particular ailment: diabetes, asthma,
hypertension, etc. One day, I was surprised to open the envelope and see
the title, “Diarrhea.” This wasn’t particularly something that I wanted
to get cozy with in front of a roaring fire, but I plunged in anyway. I
was immediately captivated by the first chapter that discussed the challenges
of creating a universally accepted definition. Now many probably think
that diarrhea is similar to pornography - while it might be difficult to
objectively define, you certainly know it when you see it. But nothing
says “science” more than a conference of bigwigs for the express purposes of
reaching a consensus definition. Typically a group of scientists gets
together for several days to hash out a definition, and often in a show of
unity similar to King Arthur’s round table, the definition is named not after a
single person, but to the location of the meeting. For example, the “Bethesda
definition” defines an abnormal Pap smear. Usually the location is some
austere place, lest the process look like an excuse for a boondoggle. I
don’t think that there has ever been a “Maui” or “Cabo”
definition.
Anyway, there it was in italicized print, the official
definition: “Diarrhea is a bowel movement that assumes the shape of its
container.” Oddly enough, I could enthusiastically endorse the brilliant
simplicity of this definition. One summer I had a job working in the enterics laboratory at Michael Reese Hospital, a stool
pigeon, as it were. Specimens were delivered in a wide variety of
containers - whatever the patient had handy at home - I will attest that the
definition worked like a charm. My job was to look for parasites under the
microscope and I always felt a little badly that I did not find one for the
entire summer!
As I mulled over the pamphlet, I began to realize that
the phrase “assume the shape of your container” had broader meanings, both literal, trivial and philosophic. At life’s
beginnings, we all quite literally assume the shape of our uterine container,
that’s quite obvious, but in the post natal world, we are constantly bumping up
and conforming to a variety of limits and containers. My medical school
days were before the era of ATMs, and cash was only available by going to the
bank during the week, or borrowing from my friend Henry who lived around the
corner and was much better organized. Therefore, weekend activities were
pretty much defined by the contents of your wallet, and somehow, I would always
be content to live within these limits. If I had little money, then I
would spend little money. If I was flush, then somehow, no matter how
much cash I had, it would be gone by Monday and it was hard to know why.
The philosophic implications of the shape of your
container are quite obvious, and the limitations of society’s expectations are
a constant source of frustration for educators, politicians and
philosophers. I will certainly leave that discussion to others. All
I want to say is that I have been extremely fortunate to live in a velvet-lined
and very roomy container. My mother enjoyed birdwatching,
knitting, bellringing and writing doggerel and
playing tennis. I have a tennis game later this afternoon. As I sit
here, there is a ball of wool and a pair of binoculars on my desk, and the
bookshelf to the right is full of field guides to birds. Our church bell
choir performance is tomorrow morning. I have assumed the shape of a
time-tested and durable container.
Who would think that “Disease a Month” would - - - - - me
to an aphorism for the ages,
More universal and true than anything
offered by the world’s most prescient sages.
We all assume the “shapes of our containers,” that is a fact
that is hard to - - - - - ,
Whose limits are deeply etched in stone as obdurate as the
Rock of Gibraltar.
Before birth, out container is quite literally the nurturing
womb,
And then - - - - - it’s society’s expectations and limits that
we unwittingly assume.
Click here for answers
Law and Order Fanagram
think that every generation of children has a touchstone
television show whose ingrained theme song immediately brings back their youth.
For me, it was Leave it to Beaver, and then later with my younger brothers,
most definitely The Dick Van Dyke Show. Every night at 6:30 we would
watch the opening credits and try to guess whether or not Rob Petrie would trip
over the ottoman as wife Laura greeted him in a dress, heels and pearls.
The Brady Bunch, the Cosby Show and maybe the Wonder Years were favorites of
the next waves of children. In contrast, my children spent their
formative TV years in the 90s, when warm family sitcoms seem to have
evaporated. If you asked them, the standout TV show of their youth would
have to be Law and Order. In it is original version this show was divided
in two parts; the first half hour was devoted to police work and nabbing the perp or the perv, and the second
half consisted of a court drama, which often hinged on legal maneuvering and
plot twists. Subsequent spin offs included “Special Victims Unit (SVU),”
which introduced the viewers to the term the morbid fascination of sex crimes
and “Criminal Intent” which focused on the eccentric detective Bobby
Goren. With three different versions, and reruns on cable, there was no
shortage of Law and Order in our household. The opening voice-over
for the SVU show refers to "particularly heinous crimes," and I know
my kids are going to have a leg up on the vocab section of the SATs if the word "heinous" shows up!
When my daughter was 8 or 9 the stated bedtime was 9 PM,
which really meant that 9 PM was the starting point for negotiations.
Disliking prolonged bedtime rituals I worked out a deal where if she agreed to
go to bed before 9 I would put her to bed, along with the requisite back rub
and story. However, it she wanted to go to bed after 9,
that meant she was a “big” girl and could put herself to bed. The
original Law and Order started at 9, and as the syncopated theme song started,
she was faced with a big decision. In her innocent voice she would ask, “Please
can’t I just stay up just long enough to see who gets murdered and then you can
still put me to bed?” Distraught psychologists estimate that by their teenage
years, American children have been exposed to some 10,000 murders or other
scenes of violence. Most of ours came from Law and Order.
My mother always waxed nostalgic over her favorite show
Perry Mason, which by the 90’s had faded to late late night cable TV. My parents had grown bored with their TV menu, which
consisted of the Antiques Road Show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and the
History Channel, which we renamed the “Hitler Channel” due to its focus on WWII
footage. Therefore, I suggested that they might like Law and Order.
I carefully explained the time and the channel and even called them to remind
them as 9 PM approached. The plot lines of Law and Order had started to
veer towards socially relevant stories on racism or police brutality, etc, and
I hoped that this night would involve a ripe plot line about a dysfunctional
family with twists more reminiscent of Perry Mason. Everything started
well, and then I was horrified as I realized that the plot line was devolving into
a particularly sordid affair of a mother and 14 year old daughter who shared
the same boyfriend. Uh-oh. At one point
Lenny and Mike got a search warrant of the family’s apartment, which included a
search of the laundry hamper. Using a pencil, Mike extracts a pair of
dirty underwear from the heap and holds it up in the air in front of
Lenny. With evident disdain and a slight perception of a sniff, Mike
says, “I think that there is fluid in these panties, bag em!”
This was clearly too much for my parents to bear. Just think, poor Rob
and Laura Petrie were forced to sleep in separate single beds because a queen
bed was considered too risqué in the 1960s. From then on, we would
refer to the Special Victims Unit (SVU) as the “Fluid in the Panties” show.
Lest you think that I have wasted umpteen hours of time, I
would like to impress you with the legal knowledge that I have gained along the
way. First, throw away everything that you were wearing when you
committed the crime, including the boots with the telltale wear pattern on the
soles, the expensive cashmere item that you can only buy at one store in all of
New York, or that coat with the distinctive cat fibers on it. Get rid of
it all. Never, ever let the cops in the door, even if they say there is a
gas leak or they are raising money for orphans. Once they are in your
house, they can look around all they want. Demand the search
warrant. Also, never leave the house to talk to the cops, it’s best that you talk either through the screen door or
with just a crack open and the safety chain on. I’m pretty sure that
there is some rule that cops cannot come in the house to arrest someone, but
they can arrest you when you leave the house.
If you do get hauled into the “big house” for questioning,
either wear a pair of latex gloves or don’t touch anything. These crafty
cops might offer you a grimy Styrofoam cup of coffee for the sole purposes of
getting your prints and comparing them to those found on the scene. (It
is slightly disquieting to me that my prints are already on file with the
government, since I was fingerprinted when I worked at a VA hospital as a
medical resident.) Don’t sneeze, because in general, fluids are more
informative than prints, don’t let your hair fall out because they can do DNA
on the hair follicles, and don’t bite anyone, since they can match the bite
pattern with those at the crime scene. I can’t really give you
knowledgeable advice about whether or not to “lawyer up,” but I might recommend
it simply because it would be so dramatic to yell, “Get me my lawyer,” - presuming you had a lawyer in the first
place. And while there is much talk about the right to privacy, you
really don’t have any. There are cameras everywhere, at the convenience
store, ATM machine, at intersections taking pictures for speeding tickets, your
EZ pass records your coming and going, etc. And just like PigPen, wherever you go there is a cloud of dust following
you, an efffluvium of epithelials,
fingerprints, fibers and fluids that can pinpoint your every move. We can
no longer go gently into that good night.
Staying up to see the murder on Law and Order is one of my
daughter’s desires,
And to watch Elliot Stabler, the
sensitive SVU detective she most - - - - - - -
With a - - - - - - - tucked into
his holster or in the belt around his waist,
He has not backed down from the violence and cruelty he’s
faced.
Unlike the line up, it’s hard to - - - - - - - the evidence used
to nail a perv,
With epithelials, fiber and fluid,
they usually get the sentence they deserve.
Click here for answers
Road Rage
esterday I had a meeting at O'Hare, but since I had lent
Ned my car for the rest of the school year, I went to my father’s
to borrow one of his. I was running late, and as I headed
off to the airport I noticed the gas gauge hovering near empty, but figured I
could make it to the airport and gas up on the way home. So far so good. However, as I got back into the car at
the end of the day and turned the key, the alarm went off and wouldn't
stop. When I tried the key in the ignition the car was dead. I
eventually found the airport parking customer service and they sent their tow
truck over, and this nice man tried everything to get the car to stop honking,
including pulling out various fuses in the fuse box in the engine. He
said that to stop the horn I had to have the set of keys that had the clicker
on it, but I only had the spare keys without clicker (future fanagram: How Clickers Run/Ruin our Lives). At
one point with some magic combination of fuses, we got the car running again,
but the horn was still blaring. The most feasible option appeared to be
driving the car home with the horn blaring, although I risked being arrested
for stolen property (this being the purpose of the alarm). Since the car
did not belong to me, I imagined a chain of falling dominos, with me saying at
the end, "Call my lawyer," which is something I have always wanted to
say after watching umpteem episodes of Law and
Order. However, off I went, but the nice man told me, “Whatever you do
don't stop the car, because you will not be able to start it again.”
Remember that little detail about no gas?
Well I bravely set off, with gritted teeth as the horn went
off, with startled cars changing lanes in front of me. I thought I could
probably make it home on gas fumes, but by this time I was in the thick of rush
hour traffic and stopped dead at Lake Cook road and I was annoying EVERYONE.
I thought that someone might soon snap from road rage, including yours
truly. Executive decision time - either stall out on Lake Cook, or get off and possibly have the car go dead in the relative comfort of the gas station - which is what happened.
I told the cashier I had to leave the car there in front of the pump while I
got a ride home. She said that I couldn't do this, I had to push the car out of the way of the pump. I was trying to figure
out how to do this myself, when she offered to help. When I was talking
to her, I thought that she was sitting on a short stool, but when she emerged
from the booth, it was apparent that she was standing the whole time.
This was one minute Indian women with no teeth, wearing some sort of turban.
She started to push, but the car didn't budge so we switched places and she sat
in the car with her head just peaking over the steering wheel. I managed
to get the thing rolling and she very expertly managed to make a quasi parallel
park.
I needed to call Iga at my
father's house, but since I didn't have a cell phone, I had to beg another
customer at the gas station to borrow one, which he reluctantly did, perhaps
responding to the wild look in my eye. Iga said
that she would come right down with the correct set of car keys and hopefully
quell the braying car. Mercifully, the car had stopped honking but I had
no place to sit, and thus risked getting back into the car to sit and
wait. As I opened the door, off went the alarm again. However,
I discovered if I sat extremely quietly the alarm went dead and wouldn't go off
unless the car was jostled.
Now, what to do for 20 minutes while I
awaited my rescue. I fished through my bag and discovered between
the agenda materials on prostate cancer, a slim volume entitled, "How
Animals Have Sex." I had bought it a while ago to inventory for a
future Christmas grab bag gift, but I discovered it was full of fertile topics
for fanagrams. Well, this was the perfect thing
to pass the time away, and hence the following fanagram was borne.
The Sex Lives of Animals, Part I
For centuries, ships have unwittingly served as the
barnacles' - - - - ,
Firmly attached to the hull they sail from coast to coast.
But when they get the - - - - for romance and want to coo and
woo
They're absolutely stuck in place with permanent glue.
It’s still a long - - - - even with a penis that measures 50
feet in height,
In human terms, that's the length of a football field, so
imagine their plight!
Click here for answers
The Sex Lives of Animals, Part II
Amidst a forested - - - - perched atop a tangled jungle tree,
Sits the Bonobo monkey, who is a lot like you and me.
You see this monkey joins our exalted human - - - -,
As the only animals that mate face to
face.
But unlike us, they don’t - - - - if everyone comes to watch,
In fact they prefer a perfectly public debauch.
Click here for answers
The Sex Lives of Animals, Part III
The lowly flatworm occasionally - - - - - for an undulating mate
As he feels the biblical urge to go forth and
procreate.
But flatworm sex is a decidedly bizarre affair,
In his mouth (!), is not one - - - - - but two in there.
He unfurls them and each is like a razor sharp - - - - -,
Then he brutally slashes his bride - isn't slimy love
divine?
Click here for answers
The Sex Lives of Animals, Part IV
The following fanagram is about the
bowerbird, a truly amazing bird of Australia and New Guinea who decorates the
entrance of their elaborate nest with a carefully chosen array of color
coordinated objects, ranging from petals, berries, bottle tops and other bits
of colorful trash. You can see a picture of a nest at www.fotosearch.com/DGT006/11486362
There is nothing - - - - - about how a bowerbird pursues a
spouse.
He first builds a roofed nest of twigs, an elaborate
honeymoon house.
And he knows the missus likes birds with brains and a bit of
muscle,
So his courtship is the picture of creative hustle and
- - - - -.
He collects the - - - - - berries and feathers to create a
welcome mat,
The lovestruck wife crosses the
threshold and they begin to beget and begat.
Click here for answers
Sex Lives of Animals, Part V
Consider the identify crisis of the hemaphroditic - - - - -,
Some days they're female, and other days male.
But if one - - - - - the other by shooting a dart into the womb,
Then the victim is the wife, and the shooter is the groom.
But if their aim is poor and they get hit in the head,
They can just forget about sex, because they're - - - - -
instead.
Click here for answers
Tick Season
e have now almost completed a full year at our new home on
the Middlefork prairie. One of the true
pleasures is a greater appreciation of the year’s cycles. The movement of
the setting sun across the horizon and the waves of migrating birds were both
anticipated and welcomed. Our current infestation of ticks, however, was
not. Starting in early May, the ticks were tracked into our house in
droves, clinging to our dogs. The anti-tick goo keeps the ticks from
lodging on the dogs, but currently there is no human version available, though
I have been tempted to go canine and dab the stuff on the back of my
neck. Our poorly trained dogs jump onto the furniture and the
bloodthirsty ticks drop off and search for new prospects, namely us mortgage
payers. We didn’t catch on to this until the ticks starting routinely
showing up in our bed. Nick would wake up in the morning and discover
three ticks on his neck as he was brushing his teeth. This led to frantic
tick checks before getting into bed, carefully making the bed in the morning to
keep the ticks out of the sheets, and diligently keeping the doors closed
during the day to deny access to the dogs. However, this belt and
suspenders approach is not fool proof. One night there was an old gummy
tennis ball on the bed, a sure sign that there had been a break down.
This tick situation caused a crisis at bell choir
rehearsal. We were practicing a tricky piece that had a riff of competing
doublets and triplets, and I requested that we drill on several problematic
measures. Just as we launched into the piece, I felt a tick marching
across my forehead. Since we were rehearsing for my sole benefit, and both
hands held bells preventing any discrete removal of the tick, I tried to stay
focused and ignore the patter of little feet. However, when the tick
turned northward and headed into my scalp, I snapped. I dropped my bells
with a clank, the music slid off the stand and I yelled, “it’s a tick!” I threw the tick onto the floor, and when I looked up, now
relaxed, I saw the horrified look on my musical mates, who looked at me like
the epitome of pestilence. At this point, I had grown used to peeling
ticks off, but I can understand their disgust and intimation that it is a
simple courtesy to delouse oneself before social events. The very
fastidious women next to me did not want to proceed until we had found the tick
and killed it. While the tick was easily found, killing it is another
matter, since you simply cannot crush them. I was then instructed to
impale the tick with a pencil, and when I attempted to do this, the point of
the pencil snapped and the tick flipped away out of sight. We bravely
continued on with our rehearsal, but I noticed everyone nervously fidgeting and
looking at the floor.
This morning I have enjoyed my sojourn on the internet,
learning more about the life cycle of a tick, and am pleased to report that
they all die by the end of June. Those that have had the great good
fortune of a blood meal die after laying millions of eggs, the others just die
of starvation. The life cycle includes egg, larva, nymph and adult.
The latter three stages all require blood meals, often from different hosts,
which seems to be an inefficient and risky way to
live. The larva has six legs, but the nymph and adult have 8 legs.
What’s up with that? You’ve just got to love the mysterious ways of Ma
Nature.
Tick Biology
Ticks await on the - - - - of grass blades just out of sight,
Then crawl up your pants, looking for soft flesh to bite.
Their hypostome pierces the skin,
and they dig right in,
Using an anticoagulant in their - - - - to keep the blood
thin.
You certainly don’t want the diseases that a tick transmits,
So right now check your belly button, hair line and both
arm - - - -.
Click here for answers
They Suck
have concluded that the first step in facing an irrational
feel is to go to the internet. You not only have immediate knowledge -
the universal antidote to fear - but you will also have easy access to others
who have embraced your fear, turned it into a sustaining passion and their
life’s work. Take for example, leeches, which to me signify what is
rotten about a lake. I can hardly put my toe into the water of the cold
clear lakes that are the defining feature of my Midwestern environment.
There is that pervasive fear that some leech will rise up suck my blood. The vivid leech scenes from the movies African
Queen and Stand By Me don’t help.
But within 0.57 seconds of typing “leech and biology” into
Google, I am knee deep into the 1999 diary of Mark Siddall,
who is in the Andes prospecting for leeches. Siddall says that he first became interested when he was “attacked” by one as a child,
and his mother peeled it off with salt. For many that might have been a
life scarring experience, but he became besotted with them, and tries to kindle
some spark in his readers by claiming that leeches are bespotted with beautiful colors, if you would only take the time to look closely at
them before ripping the leech off in revulsion. Other notes of interest
are that the bite of many leeches is the example replica of the insignia of a
Mercedes Benz, that leeches are related to worms, are hermaphroditic, and some
even care for their young. Siddal recognizes
that despite all this, leeches are an acquired taste.
Siddall is in the Andes collecting
leeches as part of a biodiversity study to determine where leeches originated
and their patterns of spread. He is hiking up and over a pass and is
absolutely giddy with excitement as he packs up his collecting equipment, which
one can only imagine is some sort of scientific version of Tupperware. As
he stands atop the ridge and sees the mountain lakes below, he says, “Shoot me
now, I thought. If I'm not in heaven, I'm awfully close.” Clearly he is
in a stunning location, but one gets the sense it is more the promise of
leeches that is orbiting him heavenward.
The lure of the unknown is a powerful force, but previous
explorers and naturalists have taken all the easy visually exciting stuff, like
condors, pumas and others animals of prey. What are left are the
parasites of frogs or subspecies of leech, but Siddall's display of pure intellectual curiosity in the face of revulsion and
ridicule is compelling. You also get the sense that Siddall’s intellectual rush may be mixed in a bit with
dollar signs. Leeches produce blood thinners and maybe, just maybe, Siddall can find a leech that will produce some sort of
blood thinner that is easily bioengineered and will set the world of hematology
on its head.
I once had the opportunity to interview the scientist who
made one of the key discoveries that simplified the process of genetic
testing. To identify genetic mutations, tiny scraps of DNA typically need
to be amplified to sufficient quantities. While it was known how to do
this, it was extremely labor intensive. The process required multiple
cycles of heating and cooling, and during the heating portion, the necessary
enzymes would basically get cooked and congealed, much like a hard boiled egg. The key to automating the process
was to find some sort of enzyme that could stay intact during multiple cycles
of heat. Enter a geneticist I admire greatly, but whose name I have
forgotten. I will call him Dr. Fortuitous Goes to the Bank. Dr. FGB
liked to spend his vacations hiking in Yellowstone Park, and one day was
lamenting the fact that he could not get any cool clear water from the murky
hot spring where he had stopped to rest. In a life-altering eureka
moment, he scooped up the water and raced back to the lab and discovered a
bacterium that had been sequestered in Yellowstone Park for millions of years.
Presumably out of a dogged desire to endure, the lowly Thermus aquaticus was forced to learn how to relish hot
water. From thence, an entire industry was borne. One can only
imagine Dr. F now sipping a tall cold one as he relaxes on the patio at one of
his many stunning homes. His 1993 Nobel Prize sits on the
mantle.
The medicinal properties of leeches offer both historical
and current contexts to better appreciate this relative of the worm.
Leeches were used for blood-letting for any number of ailments for thousands of
years, peaking in Europe between 1830 and 1850 in Europe. In the past,
leech farmers would just stand in a swamp to collect leeches on their exposed
legs. The species Hirudo medicinalis is now largely extinct in Europe, due to the twin effects of exploitation of
both the leech and its wetland environment. Contrary to my assumption,
leeches do not symbolize the putrefaction of a lake, but are another of
nature’s unassuming little canaries in a cage, an early warning sign of
environmental destruction.
Medicinal leeches are now commercially bred and have
even received approval from the FDA as a novelty drug delivery device.
Placed at the suture line of reconstructive surgeries, say
reattaching a severed finger or other appendage (think John Wayne Bobbitt
here), leeches can delivery a steady stream of
anticoagulant that keeps the blood moving and prevents the appendage from
falling off again. Leech saliva has other anti-inflammatory properties,
and there have been studies of using leeches to treat
knee osteoarthritis. The authors claim the treatment is successful,
but it seems to me that anyone who would agree to affix six leeches to their
knee would want to believe that they worked so badly that it became a self
fulfilling prophecy. There is no better example of the placebo effect
than the Scarecrow, Lion and Tinman, who had come so
far that they were really no other choice but to believe the wizard. But
at $10.00 a pop these leeches are one of the last best medical bargains.
Of course, you could come full circle and stand out in a swamp up to your knees
and perhaps get the same effect.
Leeches USA (www.leechesusa.com) provides other endearing
factoids. Leeches are low maintenance – they only need to be fed once a
year after a blood meal, although the company is quick to note that the leeches
are for single use only. They typically fall off the body after about 70
minutes. Planned obsolescence is an excellent strategy for the supplier,
since treatment may last for several days. At first glance the logo of
the parent French company appears to be similar to the symbol of medicine –
that thing that looks like a snake coiled around a stick. However, on closer
inspection you see that the logo is actually two entwined hermaphroditic
leeches that are mating. Leeches USA also provides all sorts of case
histories complete with lurid pictures. A search of the medical
literature produces another case history that was probably published for
the ick factor alone. Some poor guy
chomped down on his tongue in a car accident, and to help with the
reattachment the doctor put leeches in the patient’s mouth (who was
hopefully unconscious at this point). The authors then described how they
had to carefully monitor the patient to make sure that the leeches “did not
migrate down the throat.”
They Suck
For blood brothers, it signifies a bond of both head and
heart
And - - - - the pact that says “from death do
us part.”
If you are blood thirsty, you have a taste for meat, and
want to dig right in,
And rip away the tasty flesh and suck on the bones beneath
the - - - -.
“Blood is thicker than water” means you value your - - - - more
than your kith,
It also defines the people you have to share your holidays
with.
But for the subversive leech, blood is just the stuff of
each and every meal,
First they - - - - their teeth into your flesh and then suck
with unbridled zeal.
Click here for answers
Hail to Thee Fat Person!
llan Sherman, of Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh fame, enjoyed an intense but brief popularity, releasing three albums in 1963 and then a rapid decline and premature death at age 49. But it is still easy to identify an Allan Sherman fan some 46 years later. I was standing in a buffet line with a medical colleague and a third person came up and said, “I always appreciate a good pair ‘o docs,” and both of us the recited the complete stanza, “a pair o’ noia is just a bunch of mental blocks, and when Ben Casey meets Kildare, that’s a ‘pair o’ docs.”
Allan Sherman was a staple of my childhood since my mother idolized his word play and parodies, a talent that was right smack in her wheelhouse as she routinely wrote similar songs for birthdays and other family events. An Allan Sherman biography notes that he started as a producer of the quiz show, “I’ve Got a Secret,” which landed him in Hollywood where he entertained at parties, including his neighbor Harpo Marx, and ba-da-bing all of he suddenly had a record contrast and became a bi-coastal toast of the town. Even as a ten year old, I knew something extraordinary was happening when my mother put on her heels and poppit faux pearls to go downtown to a nightclub to hear Allan Sherman perform. My parents never strayed from the comfy confines of their leafy suburb and rarely socialized with anybody beyond two or three degrees of separation. Who knows, there might have been some swingers at a nightclub! Maybe my mother was a bit jealous, but probably more excited that this sort of clever talent was well appreciated.
Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh apparently reached number 3 on the popular record charts, surpassing Elvis Presley and the early efforts of the Beatles. The song, which is set to the tune of a Ponchielli opera, recounts the misery of a child just arriving at a summer camp. “I went hiking with Joe Spivey, he developed poison ivy. Do you remember Leonard Skinner, they’re organizing a search party after dinner.” It is hard to explain the popularity of this song – I certainly don’t think that it was his best – but one commentator thinks that it touched on the universal themes of fitting in, and in fact, assimilation was a central them in Allan Sherman’s life. His early songs were mostly parodies on Jewish folk songs and culture. “Hava Nagila” became “Harvey and Sheila” and Alouetta became “Al ‘n Yetta.” “Frere Jacques” became Sarah Jockman and Jerry Bachman exchanging gossip (How’s your cousin Shirley, well she got married early) and God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman turned into “God Rest You Jerry Mendelbaum.”
However, Allan Sherman expanded beyond Jewish folk tunes – there were send ups of suburbia (Here’s to the Crabgrass), space travel and aliens (Six Foot Two, Solid Blue) and technology (Automation). He frequently poked fun at himself. In “Hail to Thee Fat Person” Sherman explained that his rotund figure was essentially the result of the Marshall Plan – his mother constantly told him to clean his plate because there were people starving in Europe. In fact due to his efforts and those of other tubby patriots, “we kept this country out of war!”
Allan also went were the where the original lyrics and his fervid imagination took him. . The song “You Went the Wrong Way Old King Louie,” was one of his better efforts, set to the tune of “You’ve Come a Long Way From St. Louis.” This song was one of our family favorites.
You went the wrong way old King Louie
You made the population cry
‘Cause all you did was sit and pet with Marie Antoinette
At your place in Versailles.
Now we’re gonna take you and the queen down to the guillotine
Somewhere in the heart of town.
And when that fella’s through with what his going to do
You’ll have no place to wear your crown.
And now the country has gone kablooey.
To King Louie was say fooey
You disappointed all of France
But what can you expect from a king who wears silk stockings
And pink satin pants.
Allan Sherman was the master of the unexpected rhyme, which turned the lyrics from stupidly stupid to funnily stupid. As you listened to the song, you would hear the word France and know a rhyme was coming, but from the context of the verse you would never expect that it could be pants. “C’est Si Bon,” became “I See Bones,” about a radiologist who sang, “I see things in your peritoneum that belong in the British Museum.” I could picture Allan Sherman thumbing through his rhyming dictionary trying to find a rhyme for peritoneum. Presented with few choices, he figured out a way to work “museum” into the verse.
Similarly, my mother had a pink rhyming dictionary always at the ready near the kitchen telephone. I think that her parodies peaked with a birthday song that she wrote for one of her friends with the improbable name of Hempie, who had just had a bout with jaundice after eating some bad sea food.
“Hempie you excite us when you talk of hepatitis,
Your stool they had to study, since your eyeballs were so cruddy”
She was so taken with the excite us/hepatitis doublet that she used it almost annually as she serenaded Hempie.
“Hempie you no longer can excite us since you don’t have hepatitis
When your eyeballs stopped being yellow, you became a mellow fellow.”
Sherman also wrote entirely new music which set him free from the limitations of a parody. I think that his tour de force was “Good Advice” a song running about as long as Don McLean’s American Pie, where he provided advice to the great inventors throughout history. Sherman encouraged Ben Franklin to go fly a kite even though it was raining, he told Isaac Newton to go take a nap under the apple tree to avoid getting sunburned, he pointed out to Otis that his moving box would work better if it went up and down instead of from side to side. He gave his best piece of advice to the caveman Ooga MaGook who was uncertain what to do with his big square stone with a hole in the middle. “Round off those corners, and Ooogie Baby, you’ve got the wheel!” He would finish each verse with a two liner praising the advice – “I’m so worldly wise, I deserve a Nobel prize,” or “Harvard offered me a phi beta kappa key.” I routinely use one of these lines as a staple of birthday songs that I have written - “The world is a better place since you joined the human race.” (My other favorite line was written by my friend Sallie, “You are so very kind, you’d give your eyeballs to the blind.”)
After poking around the internet, I found a YouTube video of Allan Sherman singing, which made more sense of the theme of assimilation. Allan was singing with Dean Martin and Vic Damone, two of the coolest cats of the mid 1960s. You sensed that Allan thought that he was finally part of the Hollywood elite, but it also looked like he was just trying a bit too hard, and that it just wasn’t going to happen. Dean and Vic looked elegant in their tuxedos, and the short, fat, Sherman with a buzz cut and heavy black glasses just looked out of place. The two men also had beautiful voices, and even though Allan sang on key, he really was not a great singer. Sherman was eagerly grinning at his songs and glancing over at Dean and Vic, asking for approval. Although Dean and Vic were smiling, it really looked more like they were laughing at him. I think that Allan had failed to see the distinction between being part of the elite crowd and a buffoonish mascot, easily disposable.
After his initial three top selling albums, his songs became more pointed and bitter, perhaps because he found that the success he so coveted was actually hollow. The Kennedy assassination soured the country’s mood as well. He slipped into obscurity and found himself reduced to writing jingles for television commercials. If Allan Sherman didn’t write it, he most certainly inspired the Burger King song from the 1970s:
“Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce
Special orders don’t upset us.”
All we ask is that you let us
Do it your way.”
Hail to Thee Fat Person:
After Word War II, food was scarce and Europeans were starving and thin,
That’s when Allan Sherman says his weight problems began to - - - - - .
His mother said, “people are starving so you must clean your plate,
So he started to - - - - - on pies and sweets and generally overate.
This was the message of the Marshall plan that he could not ignore
He was told that - - - - - fat is what keeps this country out of war!
Click here for answers
The Warm Spot in the Lake
am a Midwestern girl who spent her vacations fearfully swimming in the fresh water lakes of the upper peninsula of Michigan. Bobbing in a boat offshore, the surface water was a rich dark blue, but beneath the color quickly turned to a rusty brown and then inky blackness with rays of light emanating upward from a central spot. In my suburban world, I was accustomed to the crystal clear chlorination of swimming pools painted a reflective blue, so that you could clearly see a dime on the bottom. Swimming in the lake left absolutely everything to the imagination. Jumping in, your pale white distorted legs below you turned a rottenish shade of brown as they hung above the abyss. I was most fearful of something touching my legs, whether a stray fish, an odd piece of flotsam, but most especially seaweed. I imagined that seaweed had a cunning strategy to draw me under, perhaps borne of many fishing expeditions where yards of seawood would entangle a fish or lure. I imagined a frond gently stroking my leg, sending me into a thrashing frenzy, which would further entrap and immobilize me like quick sand.
And then of course there was the mysterious warm spot in the lake. A sudden distinct patch of warmth arriving and then quickly disappearing. Everyone knew about warm spots, and everyone universally assumed that the person next to you had just peed and that you were swimming in urine. This theory was probably based on swimming pool experiences, when in the middle of swimming you had to pee, and resisting temptation you ran to the bathroom inside. Peeling off your clammy and clinging bathing suit, the urine seemed absolutely steaming hot in contrast to your cold skin. Presumably the same thing happened in the lake. Even at age 10 or 11, I knew that this theory was ridiculous and that any warmth would be quickly dissipated and could not be sustained beyond a few inches. But on the other hand, this theory was the most acceptable, because if the warm spot was not of human origin, what was it? I didn’t want to think about it.
One teenage year we decided to have a sunfish war. This was without a doubt the most dangerous activity you could conceive of, but back then nobody gave it a thought. I am sure that parents were probably pleased that we were doing something aside from sitting around listening to the “Eve of Destruction” and sipping cokes. Each sailboat was manned by two people, and the idea was that everyone would chase each other around the lake, and if you got close, one person would leap off the boat and try to board and grapple with the other boat and tip it over by hanging off the mast. I don’t think that it occurred to anyone to wear a life vest even as we dodged swinging booms and rudders. I had scored a real coup by being included in the first place and also being partnered with Butch Turner, a massive football player and wrestler who was several years older than I. If a boat came near us, Butch would stand up and extend his arms and flex his muscles in a body building pose which totally intimidated any boarders and grapplers. Our boat was essentially immune from attack.
However, it was my job to try to be the boarder. Wanting to be a gamer, when Butch yelled jump, I knew not to ask how far, but just leapt. I never even made it to the adjacent sunfish, which quickly came about and sailed off. To my horror, so did Butch, and there I was alone in the middle of the lake literally trying to keep my head above water with a determined dog paddle. In my teenage insecurity, I imagined that I was nothing more than jetsam and that Butch had sailed off to rescue and score a new and improved new partner; a cruel and very visible symbol of my tenuous hold on the social ladder. And then I felt it. The warm spot folded and drifted around my legs and I knew that I could not longer maintain the comforting charade that I was just swimming in pee. The additional theory that this was a patch of sun-warmed water had to be discarded since I clearly felt the warmth spreading upwards from below. Past campfire ghost stories came to mind, of an ethereal white hand emerging from the watery depths, a strange creature from the deep. I imagined some sort of primordial ooze at the bottom of the lake, releasing a deadly vapor that now had me in its clutches. Just as panic began to take hold, I saw that Butch had come about again and was coming to my rescue. As I heaved myself back onto the boat, I was eternally grateful for so many things. I don’t think that I have swum in the middle of the lake again.
The warm spot swirls about my knees like a silky negligee
Then it rises to my - - - - - before it gently slips away.
What is this phenomenon, for years I have been curious to know,
Is it a weird effluvium percolating from the primordial ooze - - - - - ?
Or perhaps the - - - - - of pike or bass has let a toasty fart go free
Whatever it is, it just can’t be as prosaic as a patch of human pee.
Click here for answers
My Hat in the Ring
ver the past two years we have buried both my parents in the family plot in the Lake Forest Cemetery, joining my brother, grandparents, great and great-great grandparents. While the plot is certainly filling up, it appeared that there was plenty of room in front of the monument that is the plot’s centerpiece. I figured that this little plot was ours, and that we could put people where ever we wanted to. However, a head cemetery guy emerged, called a sexton, who said in no uncertain terms where we could and could not bury our parents. The sexton was put in the unenviable position of the arbiter over various and potentially warring factions of the family; in fact certain long lost members of the family had already laid dibbies on different parts of the plot. Furthermore the sexton said that for our family there was only enough room to put one additional headstone, which my parents would have to share. I’m sure that if I wanted to get into it, I could make the case that our branch of the family got short changed a bit on this valuable piece of real estate.
There were plenty of other restrictions as well, all of which were designed to make upkeep of the cemetery more efficient. This mostly meant that there could be no impediments to mowing, and thus no additional decorations on the headstones which could potentially fall off and ruin a lawn mower, and no birdfeeders staked into the ground for the same reason. Potted flowers could only be placed in plastic containers since metal containers could be ripped up by the mowers and turned into jagged projectiles. Oddly enough, there were also restrictions on what type of containers you could bury the cremains in. Specifically urns had to be sturdy and impermeable to water, so that you could find them intact on the odd chance that you might ever want to dig them up. Similarly, only certain types of coffins were allowed and they had to be buried in a water tight liner. Again, the mowing took precedence. If the coffin rotted out over time, it would create a large sinkhole that would be difficult to mow.
All of these restrictions piqued my interest in the Lake Forest Cemetery, which I discovered was somewhat unique - it is amongst the dwindling number of non-profit community-run cemeteries. The cemetery is also situated on an absolutely gorgeous wooded piece of lake front property that I am sure had developers drooling, and the city waving goodbye to huge property taxes, if developed. The only full time staff member was the sexton who reported to a volunteer cemetery commission. I thought that this would be the ideal entry position for someone who wanted to give back to the community and get involved in local government. So I decided to throw my hat into the ring and propose my candidacy for cemetery commissioness.
I filled out an on line questionnaire, which I had to leave embarrassingly empty – prior government experience (none), financial experience (none, in fact I have never balanced a check book), horticulture experience (none, except for the fact that impatiens are a particular pet peeve), other civic experience (none, as I say I was seeking an entry level position). Even so, I was eventually invited to my first interview by the caucus committee of my ward. The first question was obvious – why was I interested. I explained my recent experiences at the cemetery in a very positive light and then commented that the cemetery was one of the unique distinguishing features of Lake Forest. I tried to address my obvious lack of qualifications with a spiel about my transferable skills of intellectual curiosity and analytic ability, assuring them that I would be up to speed in no time. I even gave them my reading list of the “American Way of Death,” by Jessica Mitford and other internet research, and really laid it on thick about how the cemetery was a true community asset.
Phew, I had passed the first round of interviews, and was then invited for the second round in front of the entire caucus of about 50 people. They seated me in a little chair on a platform and I readied myself to be peppered with questions, but it seemed that nobody knew what to ask. I gave my pat statement about how the cemetery was a unique feature of Lake Forest, and then there was silence. Finally someone asked, “How can the residents enjoy the cemetery if they are not buried there?” Well, this was something of a puzzler, but I suggested that the cemetery was a very beautiful and tranquil place to visit, but did not mention that as a kid I had gone to a raucous birthday party that featured a treasure hunt amongst the graves.
Another pause, and the next question, “Who should be buried in the cemetery?” I was tempted to say dead people, but resisted the urge to be cheeky. I then recalled that this seemingly simple question put me on the precipice of a slippery slope, since there had been some discussion in the local paper about a prospective dead person who was denied permission to purchase a cemetery plot. Seems he was not technically a Lake Forest resident although he claimed that he went to church in Lake Forest and bought his groceries here. Although the local paper touted this as another example of elitist Lake Forest, the sexton had pointed out that the cemetery was supported with local taxes and thus, like the beach, should be limited to true residents. The sexton suggested that the man could become eligible to purchase a plot if he elected to live in the local retirement community. There were still potentially troubling questions about the duration of the qualifying residency, when the plot was purchased, and when the plot would be used. Summoning my feeble political spin moves, I merely noted that these tough issues were exactly why the Cemetery commission was so important and needed thoughtful, deliberate people. I might have tried to sell my thoughtful nature by cupping my chin in my hands as I rested my elbow on my knee - sort of like the Rodin sculpture, The Thinker.
For the final question, I was asked what I would do to make the cemetery better. I knew that I had to tread carefully since I did not want to reveal my super secret agenda of greening the cemetery, certain to be a long shot in a city that did not permit solar panels or small discrete wind turbines. My feeling was that we should be able to sprinkle relatives’ cremains anywhere we wanted to in our plot. I had a book called “Cool Green Stuff,” that profiled a few novelty ideas for green burial. One outfit offered to mix your ashes with birdseed and then coat several feeders for a novel approach to recycling. Another described an ash-filled ceramic ornament that is suspended from a tree with a biodegradable thread with a 1-3 years lifespan. One of the appeals of this device is that no one can predict when the thread will break, sending the urn smashing to the ground and spreading the ashes. Knowing my family, the scatter time would be subject to intense wagering.
I also had ideas about greening up the landscaping. My friend Marion pointed out that you could reseed with low mowing turf, as long as you were willing to let the grass grow several inches higher. If you didn’t need to mow, the maintenance costs would plummet and then there would be no need for coffin liners, thus opening the door for other options for those preferring full interment. Perhaps due to her deep commitment to organic gardening, Marion is not an ashes to ashes person, but more of a “worms crawl in and worms crawl out” kind of gal. The Ecopod would appear to be the perfect container for her. About the size and shape of an oversized violin case, it is made of 100% recycled paper. With a very low profile, it would not create a substantial sink hole as it gently disintegrated.
The interview was over in 20 minutes, and I heard the next day that the caucus had been impressed enough that they had forwarded my name to the mayor for his final decision. The mayor was a lame duck due to leave office in one month, but was charged with making these key executive decisions before he left. I was assuming a rubber stamping was in order. But I heard nothing for over six weeks. Then one day my husband noticed the new appointments to the city commission published in the local newspaper. Frankly, it did not occur to me that there would be others seeking this lowly post, but apparently I had competition. There it was in black and white, the mayor had appointed someone else (I am told it was a friend of his) and had not even given me the courtesy of a call. Clearly, the cemetery would not be needing my services. I turned to my husband and said, “Did you ever think that you would end up marrying a total reject for the cemetery commission?”
How We Bury People
King Tut was embalmed to - - - - - - the flow of blood and body rot,
Mummified, placed in a pure gold coffin and hidden in a plot.
He was decked out in pure silk, embroidered with gilded stitches,
And then sealed up tight so that no one could - - - - - - his riches.
Personally, I would gather my family, friends and other celebrants
And fling my ashes to the wind midst doggerelish - - - - - -.
Click here for answers
Law and Order
think that every generation of children has a touchstone television show whose ingrained theme song immediately brings back their youth. For me, it was Leave it to Beaver, and then later with my younger brothers, most definitely The Dick Van Dyke Show. Every night at 6:30 we would watch the opening credits and try to guess whether or not Rob Petrie would trip over the ottoman as wife Laura greeted him in a dress, heels and pearls. The Brady Bunch, the Cosby Show and maybe the Wonder Years were favorites of the next waves of children. In contrast, my children spent their formative TV years in the 90s, when warm family sitcoms seem to have evaporated. If you asked them, the standout TV show of their youth would have to be Law and Order. In it is original version this show was divided in two parts; the first half hour was devoted to police work and nabbing the perp or the perv, and the second half consisted of a court drama, which often hinged on legal maneuvering and plot twists. Subsequent spin offs included “Special Victims Unit (SVU),” which introduced the viewers to the term the morbid fascination of sex crimes and “Criminal Intent” which focused on the eccentric detective Bobby Goren. With three different versions, and reruns on cable, there was no shortage of Law and Order in our household. The opening voice-over for the SVU show refers to "particularly heinous crimes," and I know my kids are going to have a leg up on the vocab section of the SATs if the word "heinous" shows up!
When my daughter was 8 or 9 the stated bedtime was 9 PM, which really meant that 9 PM was the starting point for negotiations. Disliking prolonged bedtime rituals I worked out a deal where if she agreed to go to bed before 9 I would put her to bed, along with the requisite back rub and story. However, it she wanted to go to bed after 9, that meant she was a “big” girl and could put herself to bed. The original Law and Order started at 9, and as the syncopated theme song started, she was faced with a big decision. In her innocent voice she would ask, “Please can’t I just stay up just long enough to see who gets murdered and then you can still put me to bed?” Distraught psychologists estimate that by their teenage years, American children have been exposed to some 10,000 murders or other scenes of violence. Most of ours came from Law and Order.
My mother always waxed nostalgic over her favorite show Perry Mason, which by the 90’s had faded to late late night cable TV. My parents had grown bored with their TV menu, which consisted of the Antiques Road Show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and the History Channel, which we renamed the “Hitler Channel” due to its focus on WWII footage. Therefore, I suggested that they might like Law and Order. I carefully explained the time and the channel and even called them to remind them as 9 PM approached. The plot lines of Law and Order had started to veer towards socially relevant stories on racism or police brutality, etc, and I hoped that this night would involve a ripe plot line about a dysfunctional family with twists more reminiscent of Perry Mason. Everything started well, and then I was horrified as I realized that the plot line was devolving into a particularly sordid affair of a mother and 14 year old daughter who shared the same boyfriend. Uh-oh. At one point Lenny and Mike got a search warrant of the family’s apartment, which included a search of the laundry hamper. Using a pencil, Mike extracts a pair of dirty underwear from the heap and holds it up in the air in front of Lenny. With evident disdain and a slight perception of a sniff, Mike says, “I think that there is fluid in these panties, bag em!” This was clearly too much for my parents to bear. Just think, poor Rob and Laura Petrie were forced to sleep in separate single beds because a queen bed was considered too risqué in the 1960s. From then on, we would refer to the Special Victims Unit (SVU) as the “Fluid in the Panties” show.
Lest you think that I have wasted umpteen hours of time, I would like to impress you with the legal knowledge that I have gained along the way. First, throw away everything that you were wearing when you committed the crime, including the boots with the telltale wear pattern on the soles, the expensive cashmere item that you can only buy at one store in all of New York, or that coat with the distinctive cat fibers on it. Get rid of it all. Never, ever let the cops in the door, even if they say there is a gas leak or they are raising money for orphans. Once they are in your house, they can look around all they want. Demand the search warrant. Also, never leave the house to talk to the cops, it’s best that you talk either through the screen door or with just a crack open and the safety chain on. I’m pretty sure that there is some rule that cops cannot come in the house to arrest someone, but they can arrest you when you leave the house.
If you do get hauled into the “big house” for questioning, either wear a pair of latex gloves or don’t touch anything. These crafty cops might offer you a grimy Styrofoam cup of coffee for the sole purposes of getting your prints and comparing them to those found on the scene. (It is slightly disquieting to me that my prints are already on file with the government, since I was fingerprinted when I worked at a VA hospital as a medical resident.) Don’t sneeze, because in general, fluids are more informative than prints, don’t let your hair fall out because they can do DNA on the hair follicles, and don’t bite anyone, since they can match the bite pattern with those at the crime scene. I can’t really give you knowledgeable advice about whether or not to “lawyer up,” but I might recommend it simply because it would be so dramatic to yell, “Get me my lawyer,” - presuming you had a lawyer in the first place. And while there is much talk about the right to privacy, you really don’t have any. There are cameras everywhere, at the convenience store, ATM machine, at intersections taking pictures for speeding tickets, your EZ pass records your coming and going, etc. And just like PigPen, wherever you go there is a cloud of dust following you, an efffluvium of epithelials, fingerprints, fibers and fluids that can pinpoint your every move. We can no longer go gently into that good night.
Staying up to see the murder on Law and Order is one of my daughter’s desires,
And to watch Elliot Stabler, the sensitive SVU detective she most - - - - - - -
With a - - - - - - - tucked into his holster or in the belt around his waist,
He has not backed down from the violence and cruelty he’s faced.
Unlike the line up, it’s hard to - - - - - - - the evidence used to nail a perv,
With epithelials, fiber and fluid, they usually get the sentence they deserve.
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Corporate Bonding
have always wondered what goes on in a locker room before the big game. Growing up in the pre Title 9 world of women’s sports, there was simply no such thing as a big game. The only thing going on in our pregame locker room was putting on the uniform, if one even existed. There was no coach helpfully pointing out that “the only thing between champ and chump is U.” The implicit concept was that pride and self motivation and basic concepts of team work should more than suffice. Basically there should be no reason to tap into some collective primal competitive juices. Besides, it was unladylike. The closest thing to a team experience that I currently have is my church bell choir where everyone has to be totally on their game to avoid a dystonal disaster, like last week when my bells were in the wrong hand. Would a pre performance pep talk have sharpened my focus? The thought of all of us in our royal blue robes shoulder to shoulder, jumping up and down in unison with the choir direction in the middle exhorting us to hit those 8th and 16th notes is ludicrous.
In the corporate world, I have experienced the occasional bonding exercise – typically a silly parlor game devised by the clever folks in Human Resources to foster team unity. However, as an independent consultant comfortably isolated in the lower right hand corner of the Meyer-Briggs’ grid, I have been cynically unreceptive to such efforts, figuring that my professional pride should provide more than enough motivation. Recently, I got another chance when Aequitas, one of the consulting companies I work with, summoned me to a company retreat. This is the company that I had thought was on the verge of collapse due to a dwindling client roster, but the managing director and principal investor had decided to give it one last shot and had hired a whole new slew of consultants. He wanted to get us all pumped up about being part of the Aequitas team. As I packed to leave, Nick said, “I can’t imagine anyone less likely to respond to this type of meeting.”
We all sat around a rectangular table and the moderator announced, “I want each person to tell the group why you are passionate about working for Aequitas, and then tell us about one interesting thing that you like to do on the weekends.” At this point I was half listening, idly trying to find a third anagram to join the couplet of “doorbell” and “bordello.” All of a sudden the moderator said, “Let’s start with you, Elizabeth.” I was sitting in the middle of the table, and had presumed that we would go around the table clockwise, giving me plenty of time to prepare my contribution. And now, suddenly, here I was the first to go, and I realized that whatever I said would possibly set the tone for the whole meeting.
Should I take the very noble approach and say that I was motivated by the knowledge that our collective efforts might make medical innovations accessible to patients, and on the weekends my passions were church and family? This was a very weighty drop-of-a-hat decision that was thrust upon me and with minimal time for deliberations I decided to go with the more light-hearted approach. I explained that every single project that I had worked on was intellectually stimulating in some way. I had just spent three months researching fecal occult blood. At the beginning, this project seemed like a total loser, but by the time I completed the 80 page treatise I was completely captivated. And actually this was true. The group seemed to respond to this anecdote - either to the theme of intellectual curiosity or the gentle potty humor whose appeal, I am convinced, is universal. For my weekend passion, I elected to tell the group that I play goalie on a women’s ice hockey team, that I had chosen this position since I did not know how to stop or turn and wanted to be well padded, and that our record was 2-6, meaning we had won two games in six years. Self-effacing humor always plays well.
As we moved around the room, I did feel a sense of unity emerge, and then suddenly the head of business development person burst into the room, “I have unbelievable news, we just won the Sanofi-Aventis account and this was a blind RFP.” The place erupted in cheers, and the managing director, who presumably had been hemorrhaging money for the past year, put his head in his hands. I thought he was going to cry. He straightened himself up and said, “This is great, just great. I knew that if we got the right team together –I mean all of you sitting around the table because you ARE the Aequitas TEAM – We are nothing without teamwork, and I know that with this TEAM we will be successful.” Emotions were rising. He then stood up and with a raised finger said, “I make this promise to you. If we can do 8 million dollars of business this year, I am going to take you all to Italy!” This really got the group going, and I heard quiet chants of, “I-tal-y, I-tal-y, I-tal-y.” And then something totally unexpected happened. I found myself standing up and with a discreet fist pump, I announced, “The road to Italy goes through Sanofi-Aventis!” The place went up for grabs.
What had happened? I was convinced that like hunting and gathering, my subconscious competitive core was a mere smidge of its former self. Over decades if not generations of neglect, it had suffered from disuse atrophy, replaced by conscious and deliberate motivations. And yet here I was, participating basically from the neck down. So maybe with the proper training to call forth more instinctual motivations I could become a better hockey player or bell ringer.
The buoyant mood persisted into the evening poolside cocktail party, where a signature “Aequatini” was being served with great fanfare. I knew I should partake, but I just couldn’t bring myself to drink this awful looking concoction, whose aqua blue color reminded me either of windshield wiper fluid or AquaVelva. Besides, I felt that I had already done my part in stoking the crowd, so I compromised and told everyone that I was drinking an Aequatonic instead.
The - - - - - - of ruthless competition is something I’ve tried to suppress,
And I thought jingoist corporate boosterism had no chance of success.
But suddenly there I was paying homage to a symbolic corporate - - - - - -
That somehow had stimulated a long forgotten primal receptor.
So have - - - - - - for your innate dog-eat-dog world survival skills,
They are still lurking beneath and will even trump your intellectual will.
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Corporate Jargon, Chapter 2
A scut puppy is a - - - - employee, like the office gopher,
In contrast a cube potato is lazy do-nothing loafer.
A square headed girlfriend is a computer who has become your soul - - - -,
A turd in the punch bowl describes a problem that just can't wait.
Foaming the runway is a last ditch effort when there's no time on the clock,
Kevork is when a - - - - member kills an idea just like that crazy doc.
A baby seal meeting is when you're beat to raw - - - - and left for dead,
Finally, prairie dogging is when a cubicle dweller pops up his head.
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Conversation Piece
would not consider myself a good conversationalist, and you can’t convince me otherwise, because every time I take one of those personality tests, I end up with all the other socially awkward people. But I have developed a few work-arounds over the years, and the one that I have field tested the most extensively is to ask people, “What is your favorite sports memory?” This never fails to get a response and sometimes a good anecdote - I figure it is better than asking someone, “Have you read any good books lately?” I am frequently surprised that some people’s favorite memory involves watching sports and not participating in them, which wasn’t really the point of the question, but I try not to be judgmental. Of course, this topic usually gives me the opportunity to tell the story when I went “downtown” in a ladies softball game in the late 70s.
I was participating in a summer league where we were routinely clobbered. We were a group recent college graduates mixed in with some of my mother’s contemporaries; none of us was really any good. There was one particularly warm night where I remember a couple of our players had to retire due to an impending heat rash on their thighs. I think that we might have had a few gals with fading baseball prowess, and perhaps one player who could heave it with all her might from third base all the way to first. My skills were primarily related to my intimate knowledge of the baseball rules, borne of many hours watching the Cubs on TV with my grandfather after Sunday lunch at his house. On my high school team, I was one of the few women who knew exactly when a dropped third strike was applicable, and that if you got hit by a pitch you were only awarded a free base only if you made an honest effort to get out of the way. Unfortunately these rules did not apply in this league. The catcher was not supposed to catch the ball, and since this was slow pitch softball, it was impossible not to get out of the way of the pitch.
We were proud to be sponsored by the local plumber – our team name was the Hoity Toities – but our opponents were bar teams who showed up with a coach, a cooler of beverages, real uniforms and cleats. We all wore tennis shoes, and one of our plays once played an entire game in Minnetonkan moccasins. There was one team that even sported home and away uniforms even though we always played on the same field. After trying out several positions, I stationed myself at first base. I clearly had no shotgun for an arm, and was shocked to realize that I threw like a girl and could do nothing to fix it. At first base I didn’t have to field too many balls, nor throw them, and if the ball ever did come my way, it was because my teammates were trying to throw it exactly to me. Offensively, I was marginal, and drifted down to batting at the bottom of the order. I was also an extremely slow runner, and once I tripped and fell on the way to first base, which was all part of the fun.
This is all by way of setting the stage for my one night of glory. It was a nondescript humid summer evening but as I stood at the plate, I suddenly realized that I was in an otherworldy zone, and I felt a cone of magical light shining down upon me. I remembered an interview with George Brett, the power hitter for the Kansas City Athletics, who said that occasionally, out of the blue, everything would fall into place, the pitches would look like grapefruits and there was nothing that he could do but go “downtown” and hit homeruns. That night I was standing exactly in the same place, and I felt the magic. When first pitch came in, everything suddenly slowed down, the ball hung there and I just stepped up and crushed it in a perfectly choreographed display of hand-eye coordination. This was no bloop, dying quail or Texas leaguer but an absolutely frozen rope to dead center, blazing far beyond the dazed fielder. Not bad for the 7th batter. I slowly jogged around the bases to the cheers of my stunned teammates.
Next time up, I don’t think that the pitcher realized that she was facing me again, and again I nailed it, this time over the left fielder’s head. Another home run. The third time I was up, I received probably the best athletic compliment I have ever had. The pitcher recognized me, called time out, and turned around to her outfield and with a waving motion yelled, “It’s her again, everybody move back – way back!” This of course is the flip side to the more typical gesture I have received when the pitcher waves the fielders in. But my opponents were helpless – once again I hit a rocket over the left fielder. There were no boundaries on this field and so no official home run, but as I was rounding third I could see that the left fielder was still chasing down the rolling ball.
Now just to illustrate that there is no such thing as total perfection, there was one slight disappointment to the evening. I had a boyfriend in tow, who in fact was the only spectator in the bleachers. After each homerun I would come to sit next to him, flushed, chest heaving from my jog around the bases, expecting some sort of recognition for this hall of fame performance. But I got nothing, not a word. In fact I think that he was reading a medical textbook, which he evidently found more compelling that someone who could hit 4 epic homeruns in a row. I conjured up several possible scenarios – either he thought this was routine and expected no less (not likely and in any case an impossible standard to maintain), he felt intimidated to have such an athletic girlfriend and thus was in deep denial (not likely, lack of confidence was not an issue for him) or finally, he took it all in but didn’t give a rat’s ass (sadly, as it turned out, the truth).
My offensive output was typically feeble and meager,
A - - - - at a pitch might produce a weak Texas leaguer.
But the outfield had to keep - - - - on me that one magical night,
But even when they moved back, I just hit it out of sight.
So you want to see perfection, just take a look at my stats.
You’ll see a home run recorded for every one of my at - - - -.
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Gaslighting
stand here a stalwart but beleaguered member of the sandwich generation, a person who has marginal computer skills and even more tenuous tech support. Activities of daily living (ADL) is a commonly used medical concept that describes a person’s ability to function at the most basic level, focusing on bathing, dressing and preparing food. While ADL is a useful concept to determine who needs to be sent to a skilled nursing facility, I think that ADL could be easily enhanced to apply to the hapless computer-dependent worker trying to make a go of it in a home office. Test activities would include rescuing documents that have absolutely evaporated for no particular reason or deciphering the impenetrable jargon in pop-up messages that ask you to agree or disagree. Finally, one of the expanded ADLs would include a measure of patience. I would fail on all of them.
During one computer malfunction, I spent a tortured hour talking to Gateway tech support over the phone as they were trying to walk me through a computer repair. This support was a premium service that we had paid extra for, but it turned out that Gateway would only come to your home if the problem couldn’t be fixed over the phone first. How did they get away with this – clearly when our toilet or fridge is on the fritz, I don’t talk to a repairman on the other side of the date line who insists on trying to turn someone with no aptitude whatsoever into an agile repairwoman. I had to put tech support on hold several times as I rushed around the house trying to find the correct size of a Phillip’s screw driver and then I was instructed to get under the desk and remove the video card (whatever that was) from the “can.” I could just picture the tech person smirking.
Sweating and breathing vintage dust bunnies beneath my desk, I finally found the target screw to remove the video card. My triumph was brief as I heard the “plink” of the itty bitty screw falling out of sight into the bowels of the can. As eager as I was to be a functioning member of the computer generation, this was too much for my meager patience. I let loose with a torrent of naughty words, as which point the tech person said, “I don’t need to listen to this abuse.” I said the feeling was mutual and that we both needed a cooling off period. The next day I realized I had to put my finger back in the socket; my ADL required the use of a computer. When I reconnected with Gateway, I head the tech support pause, and then say, “Oh, Miss Brown, we have an incident report on you, and I must warn you we can’t tolerate this behavior. I will be recording this call.” Ah yes, the computer age, with one click of the button, the entire international tech support world of Gateway, be in India, Iowa or Indonesia, knows that Miss Brown is a potentially abusive loose cannon.
I have on my bookshelf a small volume called “Gaslighting: How to Drive Your Enemies Crazy,” by one Victor Santoro. Gaslighting perfectly describes my travails with a computer. The term is based on the 1944 movie starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. Charles Boyer, the husband, systematically tries to destroy the confidence of his lovely young wife by making her think that she is incompetent or imagining things, with the ultimate goal of committing her to an insane asylum. The chapters describe escalating forms of subtle torture, starting with “Causing Disorientation,” segueing to “Building Paranoia” and ‘Destroying Your Target’s Reputation.” The book seems to have been written for a disgruntled secretary, because most of the revenge strategies require access to your boss’s office. For example, if your boss happens to use a crutch or a cane, Mr. Santoro suggests that you sneak into the office and readjust their height. Or perhaps go to a thrift shop and buy a similar hat as your boss, but two sizes smaller, so he will think that his head is growing. The one that seemed most feasible was to send your boss Christmas cards from people he does not know.
As I glance through the book, I realize that I have been a victim of gaslighting in the workplace. I remember one time I received a letter which contained a ripped out page from an airline magazine advertising a seminar on improving your public speaking abilities. There was a handwritten Post-It note stuck to it, which said, - “Elizabeth, try this, it might help!” And then the signature was illegible. Now I don’t claim to be an accomplished public speaker, but this unexplained note was clearly not a confidence booster. My current work environment is all about gaslighting, based on serious communication issues (see above, “Causing Disorientation), which I have come to believe are intentional (see above, “Building Paranoia”). I have been sent the wrong version of a document to work on, meetings shifted or cancelled without notification and an arcane internal process with a squadron of process police gleefully waiting to yell “Gotcha,” at the slightest provocation. Up to now, I feel that I have been like the innocent frog, oblivious to the fact that he is swimming in a tub of slowly heating water, and will be quietly cooked to death unless he hops out immediately. Almost two weeks ago, I called to resign this job, but nobody has returned my call yet.
Your boss soars overhead, looking for something to eat and a place to land,
But he sees nothing but rotten - - - - - and alewifes strewn upon the sand.
Although you stand among garbage, you offer him a very tasty- - - - -,
The boss barely tries it, spits it out and then departs with a noisy flap.
You watch disgusted as he flies off, and then when he is almost out of reach,
He - - - - - all over you as you stand helpless on the beach.
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In Transit
uring my 25 year working life, I have migrated from working into the office to home to the office and back again, each time in search of the perfect combination of work environment and family demands. When Ned was an infant I made my first attempt to "work from home" and found it to be a frustrating oxymoron. I was trying to establish myself as a free lance medical writer, and one little pesky detail was that my interviewees would call at unexpected times when Ned was not napping as planned. One elusive physician happened to call when I was in the midst of a particularly grimy diaper change, so I just had to just forge ahead. With my left hand I balanced Ned on the changing table and prayed that he would cooperate. I then put the phone under my ear, and with no piece of paper in sight, I had no choice but to take notes for the whole interview by writing on the wall, madly flicking the pen to overcome the effects of gravity. In one house, my office was in the dressing room next to the bathroom. One day, as I got out of shower, the office phone rang. I instinctively answered and found myself plunged into a detailed conversation about heart defibrillators. Little did my caller know that he was having a very cerebral and professional discussion with someone who was stark naked and dripping wet. Time to go back an office environment! When I lucked into a top notch baby-sitter/caretaker/household manager, I knew we were all in good hands and I scurried back downtown to work.
For about 10 years, I made the daily commute on trains, buses or the Els, and came to value the experience as my own personal time. It became a game to always get on the first El that stopped, even if it meant absolutely plastering myself up against some total stranger. Often I took some knitting on the train, and one time I happened to get on a train with three other knitters on it. We all raised our needles to each other in quiet acknowledgement. These were the years that I subscribed to the New Yorker and could actually keep up with its weekly schedule.
I also came to appreciate the subtleties of commuting etiquette. Occasionally, I would arrive on the El platform at the same time as casually acquaintances, often neighbors. What was the protocol here? Would it be considered unneighborly to take a different seat? On the other hand, I really had no interest in exchanging pleasantries for the hour plus commute, particularly with a crossword puzzle, New Yorker or other word game waiting in the wings. I could pretend that I did not see my neighbors, and either slow up during my walk to the station, or turn my head on the platform, but this was a thinly veiled and potentially insulting artifice. My usual strategy was to try and get on the train first and take a seat and then let it be the decision of the other neighbors whether or not to snub me. One time, I got on the train through the back door, and panicked when I saw two vague acquaintances get on through the front door. They must have had the same reaction. One said, "I have a book to read," the other said, "I have some work to do," and I nodded in agreement. Relieved we all took different seats. Another time, I got on the train the same time as my uncle, who invited me to join him in his private club car. He handled the situation with the ease of a 50 year plus commuter. As we sat next to each other the first word he said were, "What part of the paper would you like to read?"
Taking the train home involved a different strategy. I often got on the train when it was half full, but knew by the time it left it would be packed. So although I could certainly get a seat, I knew that I would shortly have a seat mate. If I chose an empty seat, who knows who would sit beside me. It could be a chronic cougher, a loud talker or someone eating a bag of greasy McDonald's French fries. One time I sat next to someone brushing their hair so aggressively that I was covered with a veil of their ripped out black hair. One strategy was to take an empty seat and then try to protect the adjacent seat by either spreading out or making the other seat look unattractive. Even the slightest little bit of liquid on the adjacent seat would be a major deterrent. Knitting needles also seemed to scare people. The alternative strategy would be to pick your poison upfront and join an innocuous looking person, even though there were empty seats available.
The companion issue is whether or not it is in poor taste to get up and move once another seat becomes available. People have done that to me, and it always made me wonder if I was somehow objectionable. I remember one time feeling entirely grateful to snag a seat in a crowded and overheated car. But as the car thinned out, I realized that I my seat mate was appalling. He was a huge and hairy man overflowing the seat so that our thighs were not just touching at a single point, but all along their length. He had on a sickly hued polyester shirt with yellow armpits. His nostrils were cavernous and tiny drips of sweat hung from his nose hairs. And yet somehow I felt that it would be disrespectful to move to a different seat - it would be so entirely obvious that I was rejecting him. Slowly the entire car emptied, and for the last three stops, we were the only two people on the train. But I stayed put, trapped by some ridiculous notion of politeness.
One time I got on the train at the second stop on the way out of the city from Chicago. I knew that I would be lucky to get a seat. As I stepped into the rear of the car, I noticed one available seat, and was immediately filled with misgivings. Every single person who had gotten on that car had presumably considered and rejected that seat for one reason or another. What was it about that seat? I couldn't see who was sitting there, because I could only see the backs of heads. I could only imagine that there was something very creepy or unpleasant about the seat mate. Swallowing hard, I decided to go for it. As I reached the seat I burst out laughing when I saw that the empty seat was next to my brother!
I am now back working at home again. Although I have heard many people say that once their kids are in school full time, that it is time to go back to work. It seemed to me that this was the time to come home to work, since the kids' needs at the end of the day were more complicated and beyond the job description of a "baby" sitter. Now that we have further segued into empty nesters, it would be entirely feasible to go back to an office to work, but at this point I am spoiled and cannot imagine a life of daily commuting. Early this year, I waved goodbye to my salaried job, and now am a full time self employed consultant. Although it is nervewracking to forego a regular salary, I decided to celebrate "my time is my own," by removing the clock in the bedroom, and always sleep with the curtains open. Now I just get up whenever I wake up, and typically don't find out what time it is until I get into the kitchen for breakfast. This morning I was up at 6:10, while the other day it was 9:15.
As I get on the train, I try and find a relaxing and comfortable place to - - - .
Avoiding the snorer, the gabber, the sweater, and the unkempt nosepicking misfit.
But as I look down the car, I despair and see there no reason to rejoice,
- - - too crowded - there is only one seat left so I really have no choice.
Who is this person that made everyone reject this seat and seek another,
So - - - very surprising when I find the empty seat is next to my brother!
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Bad Baby Shower Gift
was not accustomed to baby showers when I got my first formal invitation. I was in a peer group that tended to get married later and defer children, but also wanted to do everything right when it came our turn. I also always wanted to give an unique and thoughtful gift that perhaps tended toward the eccentric - at least something memorable as opposed to the standard fodder of cute little blankets or outfits.
The invitation, oddly enough, came from Nick’s boss, a brassy and bossy woman who had similarly deferred childbearing and was probably now in her late 30s. I had met her once, did not particularly like her, and had never met her husband or any of her friends. If any situation called for the appropriate and unimaginative gift, this was it - there is an entire industry built around bland corporate gift giving, but I was committed to blazing my own trail.
My desire to be imaginative and lack of organization produced disastrous results on that warm Sunday afternoon in June. We were living in the city, and thus it would take way too much time to zip over to Toy R Us or even some overpriced children’s boutique. And then I had a brilliant idea. Just around the corner from our condo was a locally famous butcher that featured very high class cuts of meat. What could be more unique that getting some very fancy high class steaks as a baby gift? The idea was that this would be a gift pack for the happy couple to celebrate their blessed event in the coziness of their own home. Now of course a bottle of wine would have certainly sufficed (i.e. corporate gift basket, you idiot!), but I got really fired up over the steak idea, since I thought it would also appeal to the husbands who were included in the party. I steamed over to the butcher and asked for 4 of their best steaks. In the shop they did look beautiful, firm and well-marbled and just asking to be popped on the grill. The butcher wrapped up the steaks in that slippery white butcher’s paper, I added a layer of wrapping paper on my own, and off we went to the afternoon tea.
The party consisted of a sea of cooing ladies wearing more fashionable clothes than I, and their bored looking husbands, who certainly would prefer to either be playing golf, watching golf, or even ideally napping in front of TV golf. The preamble to the gift giving seemed to stretch on forever and I felt beads of perspiration welling up on my forehead. As the first presents were opened, I looked around and realized my novelty steaks were simply all wrong. I had violated another basic principle that any performer should know, whether the performance is in front of a vast audience or in a stuffy basement apartment - Know Your Audience!
My mother was a master at writing little ditties that she would perform at various family functions, such as weddings, birthdays, etc, and I remember one such performance at an out of town Cleveland wedding, my father’s hometown, when she had made the same mistake. She had written what she thought was a rippingly funny song to sing at the bridal dinner about the compromises inherent in any marriage and the importance of keeping a few inviolate rules. As she launched into it, she looked out at the audience and could see that this group of mostly strangers was way too staid for the next verse. The key line was, “there is one thing with which I cannot cope, and that is pubic hair upon the soap.” There was nothing to do but forge ahead and deal the awkward silence and nervous laughter that ensued.
And then it was time to open our gift and I had to suffer the consequences. The steaks that had been so lovely in the cool butcher shop had changed in the heat. They were no longer firm, but really raw, red, saggedy and raggedy. It actually sort of looked like we had wrapped up some road kill for a present. I think that it also took everyone away from the abstract joy of birth to the jolting reality that childbirth was going to be painful and bloody. The mother-to-be jumped away in fear and astonishment and I saw a rivulet of blood trickling down the fold of the slippery white paper. I felt that I was looking at an impending disaster in agonizing slow motion. Plop, a blood droplet landed on the shag rug. In unison, all eyes turned to me with horror and disgust.
Baby showers are great, but here is my one complaint,
All that cooing and fussing as if the baby will be the next pope or - - - - -.
Then there are all those clothes that everyone thinks are so cute,
But you won’t use that - - - - - blanket or that precious linen suit.
So I thought a gift of high class steaks would be a nice change of pace,
But when blood dripped out and made a - - - - - I was totally disgraced.
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Family Expressions
y childhood was decorated with a slew of family expressions. My father liked to say, “Well he really stuck his ass in a tub of butter,” which referred to a man who had an amazing stroke of luck. It typically referred to a man who had married a wealthy woman, but when my father said it was without remorse or jealously but with a wry smile, since he knew that situation created its own challenges. Whenever my siblings and I were rough housing, particularly in the tight confines of a car ride, my father would say with a weary note of resignation, "it will end in tears." Although he was inevitably correct, I always felt that a little tears were the price to pay for raucous fun. But I am probably biased, since as one of the older siblings, I was not the one crying. As a parent, I vowed never to say "It will end in tears," and I actually came to look forward to crying as an universally recognized turning point - one could now easily say, "time to pick up," time to get going," "time to go to bed" - without feeling like the bad cop.
My mother had a series of expressions that were typically unleashed on the tennis court. "Hot spit" or "hotsy totsy" were used to celebrate clever winning shots. She would announce her weak second serve by yelling "Poopy one," as she tossed the ball, or she would sing out "That was out by a whisker" for close calls. My mother had a Polish friend whom she taught both English and tennis, and it was always amusing to hear the same but slightly mangled jargon coming from across the net. "That was out by THE whisker," Marya would yell.
But perhaps the most peculiar expression from my mother was "I'll cut off your arm and beat you with the bloody end of it!" This was often said with her arm twirling around her head, so that the one could imagine a dripping, severed limb being used as a weapon. The utter viciousness and violence of this image did not even occur to me until adulthood, it was just one of those childhoold things that you just accepted and somehow assimiliated. I am not really clear as to what my mother was trying to communicate. This was not said in anger, but somehow it came across as just good fun with only a tinge of authority. My mother was an "anything goes" mother, and I think that we afforded the same kind of leeway. I remember one time my brother was practicing one of those fake punches where you used your left hand to slap your chest to make a punching sound, while simultaneously feigning a real punch with your right hand. Well my brother's timing went awry and he absolutely nailed my mother in the chin with his fist. Another time my brothers were playing hockey in the playroom. This game involved clearing all the furniture out and playing hockey on your knees with a small plastic hockey puck and abbreviated hockey sticks. My mother opened the door to see what was going on at the same time Tony unleashed a slap shot. Once again she got nailed in the chin. These might have been the instances where she would threaten beat us with a severed limb, but considering the circumstances, it seemed to be a wash.
Recently I vowed to create a family expression of my own. If you asked my kids they would roll their eyes and say our expression is "Be a problem solver!" While I wouldn't argue with that, I wanted something more fun and truly unique. One evening I was sitting at a dinner honoring the board of directors of a small local club. The tradition was that in the awkward after dinner silence, someone would leap to their feet and start telling slightly off color jokes. This seemed to be a somewhat perilous task, as you had to tread that fine line between cutely smutty and downright tacky. The joke was particularly tricky for the club manager where the fine line between acceptable and tasteless was presumably even finer. As he launched into a long winded joke about camping, I could see him getting more nervous as he neared the punch line. He faltered a little bit as he tried a last minute salvage attempt to upgrade the joke. I don't remember the details, but the punch line that was delivered to great acclaim and his visible relief had to do with "pleasuring the bear." I nudged Nick and said, "that's it - that our family expression!" The punch line has been transformed into our family expression for "its time to go," i.e. if you are at a party and want to leave, you say "I think I have pleasured the bear."
All of our family trips in - - - - were punctuated with rough housing and a fight,
Wearily my father would say, "It will end in tears," and of course he was always right.
When my mother hit cross court drop shots with their gently curving - - - - .
"Hot spit" and "hotsy totsy" were here famous celebratory remarks.
"I'll cut off your arm and beat you with the bloody end of it" would - - - - most everyone,
But when my mother said it, it seemed like harmless loving fun.
