5 Of My Favorite SNL Characters
I've been watching Saturday Night Live since the fifth grade. (The cool kids were watching it, therefore I had to watch it. I also liked watching L.A. Law. I guess you can say my tv tastes haven't changed that much in 20 years.) Back then, the biggest challenge was staying up late enough to see all of SNL. I considered it a win if I made it to the first musical number.
Collectively, our class liked SNL so much that, inspired by the political humor of the show, we put on a sketch at Christmas based on the trial of Sadaam Hussein. (It was 1990. We were very topical.) Each class performed a skit at the holidays. I don't know why, but it was fun. I played Nancy Reagan in the trial. It wasn't long after the Reagan years, and we had to have a role for every student, so it seemed appropriate. I wore a red jacket and had one line when I took my place in front of the entire upper school, "Just say no to drugs."
I think that kind of characterization isn't bad for 11-year-olds.
A little while later -- I can't remember if it was 6th or 7th grade -- we put on a Christmas skit that included impersonations of all of our favorite SNL characters. The copy guy (Rob Schneider) was there, and I'm pretty sure I played Pat. There was a lot of stuffing involved.
I could regale you with tales of other sketches and plays my friends and I put on throughout the years -- including a rainy day summer camp performance that involved a fake exercise video for tools to increase your bust -- but I'm not sure I could maintain anyone's attention long enough to get through all of those. I think the overall point is this: I've always had a flair for the dramatic (surprise, surprise), and I've always appreciated the funny.
No matter what kind of year SNL is having, I always enjoy watching it. It's hard to be funny for an hour and a half week after week. I don't expect every skit to be gold, and considering the constraints on the writers and performers, I'm amazed at whay they put out each episode In light of that, here are a few of my top characters from throughout the years. (Like I said, it's "a few" because it's not so easy to narrow down decades of sketch comedy.)
5. The Church Lady
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX8jo8wIIaU]The Church Lady began my love affair with Saturday Night Live. (As well as my conviction that I could do impressions, which is not true but did not stop me from saying "Satan"with a head tilt whenever I got the chance.) For the sake of full disclosure, I also like The Master of Disguise, so judge my humor recommendations as you will.
4. Sarah Palin
Tina Fey, and "I can see Russia from my house." Do I really need to say more? As my earlier allusion to fifth grade would suggest, I love some political humor. Most SNL "politicians" crack me up, but if I had to pick a favorite, this would be it. I only regret that we had to get the real Sarah Palin for this sake of this masterful impersonation.
3. Pat
Again going back to where it all began, it seems unfair not to include Pat on my list. Has androgeny ever been so funny? Or disturbing?
2. Get Off The Shed Guy
Is there anything quite like the barely suppressed rage of the suburbs? I vote "no." Wether Will Ferrell is demanding his kids "get off the shed" or adamant that he "drives a Dodge Stratus," I am beyond amused.
1. Penelope
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX8jo8wIIaU]
I find few things more amusing than one-upping, so can it really can't be a surprise that Kristen Wiig's one-upping Penelope tops my list of SNL characters. I realize Penelope is a total love her or hate her character, but clearly I love her. Not only do I find her hilarious, but she has renewed my conviction that I can -- and I will, dammit -- do impersonations. Who wants to see me twirl my hair while I talk about having invented the Internet, master minded all Google search capabilities and come out with the world's first ever blog?
A Town Not Big Enough For The Both Of Us
I have a Kindle Fire. (It’s hardly big news, but all stories haveto start somewhere.) I think the SO expected me to use my Kindle Fire to readall the time, get into RSS feeds, keep up with news from all over the web,etc., etc. Instead, I quickly developed an addiction for Bejeweled.
(“Addiction” isn’t an exaggeration here. When I findsomething new, it’s all I want to do. So far, the only thing this particularpersonality trait has done for me is allow me to get through lots of episodesof television in a short period of time. I might need to work on my concept of“purpose.”)
When I was done with Bejeweled, I moved on to various hiddenobjects/puzzle games. (I am a complete nerd.) However, it was hard to findanything that gave me the same satisfaction as Bejeweled – until I discoveredThe Oregon Trail.
Unlike The Oregon Trail of my youth, which involved way toomuch dysentary and fording of rivers, The Oregon Trail app lets you build atown out West and make it prosper. You get to build houses, businesses, addlivestock, plant crops … basically, a lot of incredibly boring stuff designedfor 10-year-olds that I seem to find fascinating.
To say that I got into my town would be an understatementakin to saying that the Amy Poehler/Will Arnett split was mildly upsetting. (Ifthose two can’t make it work, I don’t know if the rest of us have a chance.Can’t they stay together for America? Seriously.)
I worked on my town all the time. I cleared all the landpossible to clear. I built mansions. I had every business available, includingthe special edition town hall and a prospecting cart. I occasionally ignored myboyfriend for my town.
“Something, something, something,” SO says.
“Yeah, sounds good,” I’d say while staring down at my KindleFire.
“Something, something, something.”
“Uh-huh,” I’d say, while thinking, “If I can just collectfrom the big log cabins two more times, I can add another telegraph office.”
“It’s your town again, isn’t it?”
“Huh?” (Thinking: “How did I run out of energy so quickly?”)
“That’s what I thought.”
I made it to level 91 on The Oregon Trail. I don’t think anysane person is supposed to do that. I had a $1,000,000 fake dollars stored inmy Trail bank account. I was out of control.
Then, my Kindle Fire died. It stopped holding a charge, andI had to ship it back to Amazon headquarters. Was I worried about my books ormy many, many apps? No. I was worried about my town. What would happen to myprogress? What would become of my houses and the black sheep I won? (You can’tpurchase a black sheep. You can only win one. I’m sure you can all see mydilemma.)
Well, sure enough, when the new Kindle Fire arrived, therewas no town, and that’s when the SO and I had a talk I’m sure every couple hasat some point in their relationship.
“Well, it’s gone,” I said.
“I know that meant a lot to you?” the SO said.
“It’s all gone.”
“I’m sorry?”
“And you know what,” I said. “I don’t think I’m going torebuild. It was a good run, but I just don’t think I have the energy to gothrough it again.”
I’d tell you what the SO said next, but I couldn’t understandhim through the explosion of laughter.
My First Drink
If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you might have picked up that I have some proficiency with alcoholic beverages. At one time, my shot vocabulary was more impressive that what I knew about geometry. (The ingredients for a surfer on acid? Yes. Which is one is the isosceles triangle? No.)
And while this might come as quite a surprise, it wasn’t always this way. I didn’t drink in high school – as in ever, at all.
I was terrified of getting in trouble and convinced that drinking would destroy my chances at going to a good college, but I decided that my senior trip to Europe would be a great time to have that long-awaited first drink. (College applications were done, and it was Europe. The legal trouble aspect was gone.)
Since I was in Italy, you’d think my logical choice would be wine. Even without wine, you’d think I’d go for a beer, but after having a sip of beer at 13, I decided that it was one of the most foul-tasting liquids I had ever put in my body and wanted nothing to do with it. (Nothing to do with it until I was a sophomore in college that is, but bygones.)
Surrounded by all the choices in the world at an Irish bar in Italy (I might have already been starting off on the wrong foot, but I think it was close to our hotel), I ordered a margarita.
“A margarita?” the bartender said.
“Yeah, a margarita.” I’d seen my parents order them enough, and it seemed like a perfectly lovely choice for me.
Of course, there were two major problems with this plan:
- No one in Italy does girly drinks. Traveling abroad, especially in the country of the world’s finest wines, is not the time to order a Midori Sour or Peach Schnappes unless you also want to wear a large neon sign that says “Ignorant American” with an arrow pointing at your head.
- There is no ice in Europe. Ice is kind of important when it comes to a margarita. “Frozen” or “on the rocks,” you’re going to need ice.
Giving me yet another of her confused/disgusted looks, the bartender pulled a martini glass off the shelf, filled it nearly to the rim with straight tequila and squeezed a lime in it.
Not knowing much better, and not wanting to seem like a wimp on my first drinking excursion, I took a swig.
If I thought beer was foul before, I had an entirely new standard.
Still, I couldn’t give up, and I had to keep going with my “margarita.”
I made it through one and a half drinks. (Yes, I was stupid enough to order another one.)
That’s when a friend of mine who knew the potential disaster of what I was actually drinking too my glass away from me.
“You’d have to be very tipsy to want more of that,” he said.
This was more than fine with me because by now, I was feeling very giggly and really needed to use the restroom. A couple girlfriends and I walked back to our hotel, and I was asleep soon after.
When I did have my first real margarita as a freshman in college, I figured the difference in drinks was just another cultural difference – like berets to baseball caps.
It took one re-telling of the story of my first drink in Italy, to a friend whose family was from Italy, for me to realize how innocent (nice word?) I had been. And that maybe picking up a guide book or two wouldn’t have been a terrible choice before heading abroad.
Either way, I can’t say that I recommend straight tequila for the inexperienced drinker. It might not improve your street cred, but a Midori Sour is a lot easier to choke down.
* Obviously, the margarita pictured looks nothing like what I ended up with in Europe.
The Hidden Dangers Of Seasonal Paper Products
The summer I was 17, I took a job at a greeting card store. (I know, I know. As one co-worked once said, “How many jobs have you had?” I’ve never counted, but let’s just go with “a lot.”) I won’t name the store, but I will add that if you turned over one of our cards, you would not be greeted with the special gold crown that lets you know someone cares.
For a place that was supposed to specialize in spreading joy and sentiment, it was an unusually tense environment. Our manager cried a lot. I think it had to do with a boyfriend, but after a week, I wanted to spend most of my days crying, too.
I blame this weepiness on two unfortunate aspects of the job:
- I actually had to spend two days inventorying Precious Moments figurines. Even if I liked Precious Moment figurines, going down a three page list and counting statuettes like “Bobby Fishes,” “Bobby and Ellen Down by the Lake” and “Susie’s Goodnight Prayer,” would nearly bore anyone to death.
2. We sold those nature sounds CDs that were very popular in the mid-‘90s, and they were housed in a special display that ran samples of each soundtrack over and over again in an hour-long loop. No human being is meant to hear laughing dolphins at 15 minutes past the hour, every hour, and maintain his or her sanity. I finally understood what drove Noriega out.
As a card store, we also carried a lot of seasonal merchandise, and according to the employee handbook (the very long employee handbook, I might add), seasonal merchandise that did not sell on clearance had to be destroyed after a certain point. Employees couldn’t take it home, it couldn’t be donated – it had to be thrown away. (It makes no sense to me either.)
As the lowest member on the card store totem pole, I was also on trash duty. One mid-August day, it was finally time for me to tote the St. Patrick’s Day napkins up to the dumpster.
(If you have never worked in a mall, you do not know the joy of going to the dumpster through the maze of hallways that runs through the back of your shopping center. This is not a job you want to do after dark.)
Anyway, as I was toting my boxes of St. Patrick’s day table décor through the back of the mall to the dumpster, I ran into one of the security guards.
“Those new napkins?” he said.
“I don’t know about new,” I said, “but they haven’t been opened.”
“Where you going with those?”
“The trash.”
“Really?” he said.
“Really,” I said. “Store Policy.”
“That’s a shame,” he said.
“Uh-huh.”
When we got to his floor, he looked back over at me and said, “Oh s&%$,” and grabbed all of my seasonal décor before exiting the elevator. I continued my ride up to the dumpsters.
What he was going to do with all of those St. Patrick’s Day table decorations, I don’t know. Why he would take them from a 17-year-old girl, I really don’t know. I can only imagine that he really disdained waste, or for an older black man, loved March 17th with a passion few can understand.
However, knowing our store policy, I wasn’t really into the idea of getting fired from the poor man’s version of Hallmark for “stealing” plastic shamrock tablecloths. With cameras being everywhere and all, and the products never making it to the trash, I thought I should report the incident to my always-tense manager.
“What happened to the paper plates?” she said, her tears turning to an odd form of rage.
I repeated my story.
“I’m calling security,” she said.
Since a security guard committed “the crime,” this did not seem like a good idea to me, but what was a girl to do?
Another security guard showed up to take my report. (All of this over six-month-old paper products, by the way.)
This created a terrible conundrum in my teenage brain: If I really reported the security guard, I might get a guy fired over napkins. If I said next-to-nothing, I’d have a security guard that really hated me wandering the mall. After all, it’s not like there were going to be a ton of suspects for who reported the theft that happened with two people in an elevator, and I was sure my story would be the focus of some mall-wide security meeting.
I ended up giving a ridiculously vague description of the security guard. “He was average?”
It felt like enough to seem like I was trying, but not nearly enough to get anyone fired. It was not, however, good for assuaging my manager’s rage. “I don’t think you’re anywhere close to being ready for cash register duty.”
The next week, I went on a planned vacation. There was some trouble with my return flight, so I asked my mom to call the card store and ask about my schedule. I’d done so much not to get fired, I didn’t really want to get in trouble for missing a shift over a late plane.
When my mom called back, she said, “They said you weren’t anywhere on the schedule. I think they forgot you work there.”
“I think we should just keep it that way.”
And there you have the illustrious story of my two-week career in retail, as well as the reason I prefer to buy all of my greeting cards at Target.
Whitney, The Misuse Of Poison Lyrics And A Valentine
I was a big fan of Whitney Houston.
When I was 9, I sang “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” on a near-daily basis. I even performed her song in front of six grades during our school’s annual dance contest. (Long story short: We didn’t even get an honorable mention, and I was pissed. My hand motions were so descriptive.)
When I first opened the cassette tape holding “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” and found the mass-produced, signed photo of Whitney at the back of the lyrics booklet, I thought I had Whitney’s actual autograph and carried it around with me for weeks.
(On another note, what do you call that thing that you unfold with all the song lyrics and info about the producers? Does it have a name? I considered it a study guide for learning my favorite songs for mirror performances, but I imagine any musician reading this is hanging his or her head in shame with such a description.)
When The Bodyguard came out, I was still carrying a torch for Kevin Costner. (I know, I know, but I thought Dances With Wolves was a really sensitive film.) I could not wait to see Whitney and Kevin together, and “I Will Always Love You” became my new ideal for romantic love.
Incidentally, at the time, I also thought the movie had a happy ending. When Whitney climbed off the plane to hug Kevin Costner on the tarmac, I thought they were getting back together. I think this is the same kind of wishful thinking/re-writing of history that made me want to be a writer, but I also just might not be that bright. Mulholland Falls is way beyond me, and I’ve also crafted my own ending to Beverly Hills, 90210 that has nothing to do with the finale or the current incarnation of the show. (In my mind, Brandon and Kelly got back together. I live on the precipice of fan fiction.)
At 20, I broke up with someone using Whitney Houston lyrics. The remix of “It’s Not Right But It’s OK,” was pretty popular at the time. Said boyfriend was explaining to me, after arguing that we should get back together, that he was going to continue dating me and another girl when we started back to school in the fall, and something finally clicked.
“It’s not right, but it’s OK,” I said.
“What?”
“It’s not right, but it’s OK.”
Then there was some staring.
“I’d rather be alone that unhappy,” I said. Then I stood up to leave. (I loved melodrama back in the day). “And I’d rather be alone,” I said.
(This same boyfriend once quoted Poison lyrics to me during one of our fights, so it seemed reasonable to me at the time. Plus, I think my choice was far more dignified than, “Instead of making love, we both made our separate ways.” I also stand by the sentiment – no relationship is worth constant misery. I would rather be alone than unhappy.)
In summation, I guess this cheesy, nerdy, completely lacking in rhythm and soul, tone deaf girl wants it known that she’ll miss Whitney Houston. She was a great talent, and she made some wonderful music. I’m also pretty appreciative for that break-up. Senior year of college was a lot more fun without a BF.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to let a certain someone know that I’d like to feel the heat with him* this Valentine’s Day.
*Mom and Dad -- that is not meant to be dirty.
Christmas On The Cheap
Thanks to some time in grad school, and the lucrative career choice of “writer,” there are plenty of years when I haven’t had that much money to spend at the holidays.
I am a crafty person, but even crafts cost money, and sometimes more than money, they take time. During graduate school, I had very little money, and thanks to finals, very little time. I wanted to do something for my friends, but I didn’t have an answer to the question of how.
Eventually, I drove to a store called Happy Price Zee Outlet. Since you probably don’t have one in your neighborhood, let’s just say that it’s kind of like the Dollar Tree and Dollar General had a crack baby. The prices are very low, and the merchandise can be a) defective b) ridiculous c) cheesy d) borderline dangerous or e) all of the above.
If you want a rainbow-themed umbrella to wear on your head, it’s the place for you. It also carries an unnatural number of bobble-head cats. I cannot imagine the patron that shops here for non-gag gifts, but I sense that his or her home/van might resemble that of a hoarder’s.
(As a total aside, I think few people took to the idea of gag gifts like I did as a child. Once my mom told me what they were, I couldn’t believe anyone had ever come up with such a genius concept and that I hadn’t known about it before. It’s your birthday, you open something hideous and have to pretend you like it since you don’t know whether or not it’s a joke? Hilarious. Since I was also on the beginning of the reusing trend, it was not at all uncommon to open a copy of "Decadent Disco” wrapped in an old granola box from me when I was between 11 and 12.)
That year, I went through the Happy Price Zee Outlet, grabbed a bunch of items (oh, that citrus-themed kitchen thermometer was a treasure!), wrapped them and handed them out to my friends with tags that said, To: X, From: Milo (who was my pet at the time), Happy Holidays!
Whenever anyone opened a gift and seemed puzzled, I said, “I don’t know why he picked that out for you. He’s a dog. It’s not like he knows how to shop.”
The joke seemed to go over well. Then again, I’m not the one who got knee pads that year.
What's On My iPod And Questionable Fashion Choices
To say that I like the musical Les Miserables would be kind of like saying I own a few pairs of Spanx and drink the occasional glass of red wine. In other words – it would be a gross, gross understatement
I saw Les Miserables twice as a kid – once in Birmingham and once at the Fox in Atlanta. My mother listened to the soundtrack non-stop for about four years. (Yes, I am often prone to exaggeration. When I talk about my mother’s listening habits, it is not one of those times.)
I can’t even tell you how often I wore the classic gray t-shirt with the Les Mis orphan on it.
(I also had a Cats shirt that I liked to wear with white Bermuda shorts, but it was old news the moment my Les Mis tee came on the scene.)
I liked to perform most of the score of Les Miserables for my nanny – my favorites being "On My Own" and "A Little Drop Of Rain." Dream role? Clearly Eponine. Oddly enough, my nanny often encouraged me to sing from the porch while she watched her TV shows inside.
“I can still hear you,” she would call from the sofa, even though I often had to remind her when to clap at the end of my numbers.
Now knowing that I’m tone deaf, I bet that two-room distance was not nearly enough, and I feel very loved for not being cut off from my musical re-enactments entirely.
My sister texts me “24601” from time to time just for fun (as well as random Suzanne Sugarbaker quotes, but that’s another story for another day).
So last night, when I got to see Les Miserables on the stage yet again, it was amazing. I laughed. I cried. I stood clapping for an extended period of time like there could be an encore for a play even though that obviously defies all logic, and the cast of Les Mis certainly isn’t Def Leppard.
And for whatever it’s worth, in the bits of theology and wisdom I’ve cobbled together for myself over the last 30 odd years, “To love another person is to see the face of God” still has a spot near the top of the list.
Also, if you think this is bad, just wait for when Wicked gets here in February. I’ve got all sorts of feminist, self-empowerment, “good girl” theories to go along with that one.
Consider yourself warned.
The Parade Of Shame
I grew up with “do-it-yourself” kind of parents. My school projects were never taken over by an eager Mom or Dad who wanted it to be just perfect or an anxious parent fearing for my grade. My dioramas looked like they were made by a nine-year-old, and my science fair projects were usually far less than stunning.
One year I did take home a third place ribbon for “Will your plant grow faster if you talk to it?” (Even as a child, I talked to plants and myself. A sign of genius or madness? Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves.) However, I think most of that win had to do with the fact that fourth grade is around the time kids figure out that it isn’t cool to be smart, so the level of competition was way down. Also, I used the tri-fold white board as instructed by my science teacher, and we all know how science teachers like rule-followers.
However, the worst do-it-yourself incident of all probably occurred in the fourth grade, the year that our class participated in the annual historic building parade.
“What’s a historical building parade?” you say. Well, let me enlighten you.
A historical building parade involves dressing children up in cardboard boxes that represent some of the finest and most famous works of architecture in the city. I think it might also be some cruel form of torture dreamed up by a particularly bitter city administrator or school official to humiliate 10-year-olds.
Either way, I learned two things the fateful day of the parade:
1. It is really uncomfortable to wear a cardboard box. Seriously, having your neck and arms rub up against cardboard for a few city blocks is quite chafing, and when your one of the shortest kids in class, it’s not too kind on the knees either.
2. 10-year-olds really don’t have the capability of making a cardboard box look like a historical building all on their own.
I vividly remember taking Polaroid snapshots of my building. (It was Firehouse #4. There was also a lot of competition over who got the “best” buildings, but surprisingly, there weren’t too many people jockeying for Firehouse #4. It was quite a relief at the time.)
I then remember spray painting my cardboard box and going to work recreating what I was sure would be an amazing representation. (I was sure all of my projects were going to be amazing. What I lacked in talent, I made up for in dreams. In kindergarten, when I turned in my depiction of the first Thanksgiving, I learned about the wide gap between talent and dreams – not that I let it stop me.)
Firehouse #4 featured a trellis, which was quite a challenge. It also had bricks of a uniform shape and size, a seemingly easy feature to recreate, but when it came down to actually doing it – not so much. While the first row of bricks kind of resembled rectangles, it was all downhill from there, and I mean that in a pretty literal way since my lines started to drift downward from one side of the box to the other creating strange shapes there were narrow on one side and really wide on the other.
In short, I was a mess.
The mother of one of my classmates took her building photos, made them into slides, and then projected the slide onto her box so she could trace every outline of her building.
I couldn’t even trace a ruler from one side of the box to the other.
Then, as if having a terribly homemade project wasn’t bad enough, I think I realized the absolute absurdity of walking through the streets of my hometown dressed as a building just before our teacher sent us out into the street.
And if you are thinking that people don’t judge fourth graders, let me tell you that you are wrong. People judge fourth graders, and you notice the hushes when you and your horribly distorted bricks are marching down Main Street.*
(In fairness, my sister probably had it worst of all because she had to dress up as the fairgrounds. This meant she couldn’t even wear a box, but instead had to strap a piece of white board over herself with something like suspenders. We used cake decorations to try and give her a balloon vendor.)
So, if anyone ever wonders why my bio mentions an extreme dislike of parades – here you go.
Fire Station #4, on the other hand, seems to have escaped unscathed. It turns out that it just got new tenants and everything.
I don’t know whether or not the annual Historic Building Parade still exists, but every time I think back on my experience then, I can’t help but think there has to be a better way to help children develop civic pride. Would a coloring book or guest speaker really have been so much less educational?
*It was actually 20th Street if you’re from Birmingham, but I think we can all tell I’m trying to make a point.
** If you were hoping for photos of me dressed as a building, I’m sorry to say you’re out of luck. No such photos exist. Thank God.
El Matador
When we went to the beach week before last, we stayed at El Matador, a family favorite for the Mills from 1979-1986 or so. I hadn't been back since I was six years old. Luckily, nothing about El Matador had changed. But, looking at this picture my mom sent me this morning, you can see that a few other things have. (I'm on the right in the cool sunglasses.)
Giraffes, Grocery Packaging And Guest Posts
I'm guest posting today, so if you'd like to read about some of the wacky stuff that popped into my head over the weekend, please head over to highly-entertaining Jamie's Rabbits written by the very talented Jamie Golden.
Kids These Days And Some Women's History
In my 9th grade history class, I ended up on a group project with some other girls that was to be a mural entitled “A Century of Women: 1890-1990,” or something like that.
Now, since we weren’t actually painting on a wall – the whole thing was down on a long roll of butcher block paper – and I can’t draw to save my life, I’m not sure why this was our chosen medium of expression (or why we called it a “mural” instead of a “painting”), but there you have it. I can be pretty sure that the women’s history part was my idea since studying is something I was good at.
I had the early years, 1890-1920, and what stuck with me the most after all of that research is how the invention of the washing machine, and later the vacuum, blender, and every other appliance a man should never buy a woman on a romantic holiday, affected women’s lives. While everyone claimed that these products would make women's lives easier, it was the exact opposite that occurred. Instead of being free from the kitchen and laundry for other pursuits, women were just expected to get more done in a day.
Even then, it seemed like a raw deal.
Twenty years later or so, I feel the same way about technology. Only, whereas my industrious forebearers kept house and tended to families, I use the Internet and Netflix to watch every episode of every random television series I’ve ever liked and play way too much spider solitaire. I haven’t created more free time, but I have created more wasted time.
And even though it might seem frivolous, I do think children of this generation are completely missing out on the struggle it used to take to watch your favorite show. Without DVR or TV on DVD or the beloved live-streaming Netflix, you actually had to be home when your show was on. And, if heaven forbid you weren’t home, you had to trust a crazy contraption called the VCR to record if for you. That was a 50/50 shot at best. How many times did you rush home only to find that you had snow on tape instead of The Cosby Show?
I’m going to guess it happened more than once.
To this day, the only episode of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer I haven’t seen has to do with a drive from D.C. to Birmingham and an ill-timed VCR. (I plan to correct this shortly thanks to Netflix, but it was still rough. It was the one where Buffy and Spike finally did it for God’s sake. It left my friend Margaret and I with nothing to discuss for most of that Thanksgiving break.)
Perhaps sadder yet (on many levels, this is a dork story if there ever was one), around the time I was 14, I decided to make it my mission to watch every episode of Quantum Leap. (Again, I know I was weird.) Quantum Leap played in reruns twice a day between 10:00 and 12:00 p.m. So, not only did I have to record the shows, but I had to find the time to watch them somewhere between soccer practice, homework and dinner with the fam.
The episodes were also played in order, so if you missed one, you had to wait for the next go-round for a chance to see it again.
Oh, the struggles of my youth.
I remember when I was only one episode away from completing my goal, when I learned that that one episode was actually called “Trilogy,” so what I thought was one episode was really three.
(I know, it’s hard to believe one adolescent could endure so much.)
"Trilogy" played the week I had soccer camp, so being summer, I could watch it when it was on. I had gotten through the first two episodes just fine. I was finally down to the third episode, and last episode of my saga, which also happened to be a murder trial when, I kid you not, this happened:
Scott Bakula was standing in the courtroom, “I’ll tell you who the murderer is here!”
And my power went out -- one minute from knowing the outcome of a salacious plot line and five minutes from achieving a dream.
The next day at soccer camp was a long one.
Of course, I eventually saw all the episodes of Quantum Leap (and learned that sometimes the worst thing is for a wish to come true – oh, life without new episodes of the greatest time-traveling show the world has ever known can be rough), but it took time and patience.
These days, I don’t need either of those. Can’t recall where you’ve seen an actor before? Imdb.com. Forgot it was Modern Family night? DVR. Don’t like to talk to pizza delivery guys? Order online.
Not only are kids not learning about the potential disappointment of missing a favorite show, they live in a world where everything rests at your fingertips 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Yes, it’s my love/hate relationship with the Internet on display for the world yet again. But, it really does make me wonder where we’ll go from here, and whether or not, like the generations before us, we’re still trading “convenience” for stress, worry and longer and longer work days.
Hot Times In The City
I have a knack for getting myself in trouble in the heat.
When I was 16, I had a mild heat stroke at my parents’ country club on July 4th weekend. I had gone with them to work out when I got slightly overheated. (It’s possible that my failure to exert myself physically in the previous two months might have had something to do with it, too.)
After sitting in front of a fan for 15 minutes or so, I decided to go to the snack bar for something to drink. That’s when I proceeded to faint and start vomiting -- in front of about 30 kids and their parents enjoying the pool over their holiday weekend. Oddly enough, if you know me, throwing up doesn’t bother me, but throwing up in public upsets me immensely. My legs were wobbly, and I was covered in some throw-up and shame. It was every teenager’s dream.
My father found me, scooped me up like a child and carried me to the car, so we could go home.
At 18, as a freshman in college, some friends and I were on our way to the first football game of the season when someone started complaining about the heat.
“You can’t think this is bad,” I said. “You should try living in Alabama.”
Well, I might as well have shot myself in the foot because it wasn’t even 30 minutes later that I had an EMT student checking my vitals and recommending that I get back to my dorm before I had a real heat stroke.
Here comes the weird part of this story: A friend of mine decided to help me back to the dorm, and to do so, she had her arm under me for support. We were ambling along when a frat boy on his way into the stadium yelled, “Lesbians!”
It’s not that I was offended; I just think it’s really strange. It was almost like he thought he was on a road trip and should point out interesting specimens on route to his friends. “Oh my gosh, did you see that deer by the side of the road?” Only this time, his fascinating find was lesbians?
Surely a college male has seen women and women that are close to one another before in his life. Also, everyone else was already in the stadium. There was one, count it, one, person, to hear him, and if he really wanted to be offensive, I’m sure you can imagine the terms we would have expected to hear.
My friend thought his behavior was very rude and would have liked to tell him so, but since I was having a little health issue, we tried to turn it around. We agreed that we would make an incredibly attractive lesbian couple, took it as a compliment and moved on.
However, the hottest I can ever remember being is in the summer of 2003. My friend Annie and I had purchased around the world plane tickets and were on the last leg of our global tour in Italy. There was an infamous heat wave in Europe during the summer of 2003 – to the point that the train was often delayed by melted sections of track.
We were in Venice, and we checked ourselves into the hotel we’d found in our guidebook. Being 23, we thought we’d save money by staying in a hotel without central air.
This was not a good idea.
As Annie later said, “The next time we see a woman lose consciousness in the lobby of a hotel as we check in, it’s probably a sign that we shouldn’t stay there.”
After dinner and some drinks, I feel fairly confident in saying that I then spent the most uncomfortable night of my life trying to fall asleep in that sauna they called a hotel. At one point, I even got up in the middle of the night convinced that a cold shower might save my sanity.
I stepped into the icy cold water only to have it switch to burning hot water within three minutes. I stepped back out of the shower and waited. A few minutes later, there was more cold water, and I climbed back in. Then the hot water came back.
I couldn’t even find cold sink water to save myself. By the time the morning came, I was an angry and nearly insane person.
“We said we’d stay here for two nights,” Annie said.
“I don’t care,” I said, when I decided to speak. I was so angry with Mother Nature or the world or our guidebook – you can pick one --- I didn’t even want to talk. “I don’t care what we have to pay. I can’t spend another night in this misery.”
“But they have our passports.”
“Don’t worry about that.”
Believe it or not, I am normally a nice, non-confrontational person. Most of my bad thoughts are just that, thoughts, and when I recount long strings of crazy, confrontational statements, it’s what I wish I’d said, not what I actually did.
This was a different day.
After we had packed, I walked into the hotelier’s office. I had money to pay her for one night in cash and was hell bent on a passport for cash trade. “We’ll be leaving now,” I said. “I’d like our passports back, please.”
“You made reservations for two nights,” she said.
“We changed our mind.”
“But you said you would stay for two nights.”
“Your shower runs boiling hot on the coldest setting.”
“That happens sometimes.”
“That happens sometimes?” My voice was rising at this point, and I thought I might lose it. I wanted to ask where this happens. I thought most of the Western world had conquered plumbing and faucet settings, but we were in a very delicate place in our negotiations. I’d also seen her turn towards the cabinet where our travel documents were, and I wanted to keep what little of my wits I had left since I was pretty sure I was going to get what I wanted.
“In the summer. It is hot here in the summer.”
The idea of a physical attack briefly crossed my mind. As if I didn’t know that summer was the hottest month of the year? Instead, I nodded.
She brought the passports over; I basically snatched them out of her hand, gave her cash with my other hand and was at the door before she could say anything else.
Annie said a little “Thank you,” while I told her to book it out the door before the conversation could go any further.
Still angry – heat makes you crazy, there’s a reason the South has so many more crimes of passion than other areas of the country – we went to find lunch, and half a pizza and some white wine later, I finally felt human again.
Annie found us a great hotel for that night. It was more expensive, but you have no idea what I would have paid for a bucket of ice, let alone an air-conditioned room at that point. When we opened the door to our new room, and I saw a thermostat I could control on the wall, I think I cried tears of joy.
My advice to fellow travelers is to pay attention to those hotel ratings in travel books. Two stars are not enough, three is cutting it close and you will pay in so many non-financial ways if you’re not careful.
Also, if you ever really need an enforcer, deprive me of some AC for a few hours, and it’s like having a hive of angry hornets at your disposal.
Throwback Thursday: The Old Guard
Last night's Lifetime DVD selection starred the lovely Richard Crenna.
You see, I actually started out the evening watching "Evidence of Love" with Barbara Hershey, but Barbara's frightening fashion choices in the film, from her crude, nearly shaved pube-like hairdo to the large overly round, bug-eye glasses, were so overwhelming and lasting that I didn't want to go to sleep with that being the last image in my brain.
There are 2 reasons for this:
1. I didn't want the nightmares.
2. As Lifetime has strategically led me to believe, someone could break into my home and strangle me at any moment. And, I might not be able to count on a psychic waitress to warn me of said serial killer's attention. Therefore, I didn't want Barbara Hershey's 80s-era Midwest androgeny to be the last thing I saw of this world.
Also, in case you were wondering, "Evidence of Love" revolves around a gruesome murder committed with an axe. And, yes, Barbara's hair scared me more than the hideously painful death by axe thing. So, I popped in Richard Crenna as a hardened cop who, through struggle and hardship, learns a lot about himself so that we, as his audience, can learn a little about ourselves.
For those of you who don't recognize the name, you might remember Richard Crenna from his stint on "Judging Amy" or for "Rambo: First Blood" or even "Hot Shots: Part Deux." My personal favorite is "And the Sea Will Tell." (I don't want to spoil anything, but let me say this - boy, does that sea have a lot to offer about love, deception, and the price of trust ...)
Seriously, I love Richard Crenna, even though I do find it unforunate that he made movies with titles like "First, You Cry," "The Rape of Richard Beck" and "A Pyromaniac's Love Story."
Richard Crenna is a member of what many of us know to be the "Old Guard" of Lifetime. He's no flash in the pan. He won't do 1 "based on a true story" deal for the money or a desperate need to be in the limelight. He's in it. For the long haul. You'll see him again and again. He's with Meredith Baxter-Birney, Brian Denehy, Kate Jackson, Lindsay Wagner ... You know their faces even if it takes a second on their names.
They're always there. They've been wronged, but they keep on ticking. Meredith Baxter-Birney has been left by more men than I can count, and she's even killed a couple of them, but she'll still turn up on the tube sometimes, and she'll still have hair that yellowy blond color you've come to know and expect like the turning of the seasons or the fertility of K Fed.
Brian Denehy is kind of like your really creepy uncle. Sometimes he's defending the wronged. Sometimes he's attacking women in his dental office. He's not always a good guy and not always a bad guy ... It's a little like life, isn't it kids?
Joanna Kerns, God love her, she pretended to find Alan Thicke attractive for years and still had to make the movie "See Jane Run" (which is, of course, about an amnesiac who must not only overcome her own physical and psychological handicaps, but also save her daughter from her husband's abuse).
Their TV movies are cautionary tales in the truest sense. They remind you of every lurking danger, every unfulfilled dream, every psycho who might have commandeered your child's robot to spy on you in the shower ... For that, Old Guard of Lifetime, I salute you.
When You're Not Out In The Club
Weekend before last, I went up North to hang out with my friend Jane* and meet her new four-month old baby. Our friend Rita joined us, and we had a great time together. On the Saturday afternoon of our weekend, we decided (or really the one of us who is actually a mom decided) to hire a babysitter so that we could go see Bridesmaids (loved it, wish I could be Kristen Wiig, must move on now).
When we got back from the movie, Rita and I decided that it was wine time. This set us off on a slew of questions:
Was the babysitter 21? The answer: yes.
Should we offer the babysitter a glass of wine? I mean, we’re Southern, so it feels rude not to ask, but she is the babysitter and has to drive. We went with “no” on that one.
Is the babysitter going to judge us for drinking at five? Does she think we’re the lush friends of our suburban mom friend? The answer to that one is probably a sad yes.
I could have sworn that yesterday I was babysitting to supplement my income (and due to the Great Recession, “yesterday” is probably closer than you’d think), and suddenly I was on the other side of the babysitter scenario. I do not know when this happened. (In my head, I’m 17. Seriously. I just wish my face would stop giving me away.)
The next day, the babysitter came back so that Jane could drive Rita and I to the train station and the airport, respectively. While I was trying to hide just how much wine S and I actually drank the night before, we struck up another conversation with the babysitter.
“So, did you go out last night?” Rita said.
“Not really,” the babysitter said, “I was pretty tired.”
I decided to ask my own questions about where she liked to go and what there was to do around town.
And then it happened. I should have seen it coming, but it was a little like a freight train – not really welcome, but unstoppable. Within five minutes of what should have been a very innocuous conversation, I started to relive my “glory days” that were, if you know me well, not really so glorious. (I thank the magazine writer who put a piece in something I read about how she spent most of her early ‘20s in a bar bathroom stall crying about some dude or other before getting her act together. It gave me far more hope than any older adult or mental health professional at the time.)
Before I knew it, Rita and I were on a little bit of a roll. These are the kinds of phrases that came out of my mouth:
“I actually had a fake id that said I was 30 for awhile. It came complete with a social security card. Can you believe that?”
“Hey Rita, remember when I used to have a beer or two while I wrote my summer school papers? Did I really think Latin American economic policy and Bud Lite were a good mix?”
“What was that guy’s name we met in Adams Morgan over Spring Break? Didn’t somebody make out with him?”
And my favorite, which I believe I threw in there as I was walking out the door (a parting gift if you will):
“Don’t worry about having a gay ex-boyfriend or two. It happens to all of us.”
?!?!?!
In a way, my hope is that the babysitter got bored and stopped listening to us pretty quickly. Otherwise, I have a sinking suspicion she went home that night hopeful not to turn into the older crazy lady that was disposing of wine bottles and reminiscing about her borderline-indecent going out wardrobe from college.
*Names have been changed.
In The Event Of The End Of The World
I realize that some people think the world might end tomorrow. I’m not actually one of those people, and honestly, I don’t even know what the theory is based on, but I do pay attention to the four stories that pop up on my Yahoo! home page, and May 21 has been getting a lot of attention lately.
I mean, if the world is going to end, it’s not like there’s a lot I can do about it. (Not that this is an excuse to stop recycling or pursuing green initiatives in case there are still any conservatives left in my blog audience.) As I was discussing with a friend over the weekend, I think most generations would almost like to think that the end of the world would come within their lifetimes. It’s a good way to put off the unnerving truth/realization that, most likely, life will go on without us, for generations and generations, and possibly even eons. An ongoing world means we’re all a little more forgettable, and no one wants to be forgettable. (Sorry to get a little dark there.)
I also know some people are freaked out by the fact that the Mayan calendar ends in 2012. Anxiety disorder and all, I think this is one of the least upsetting signs of a possible impending apocalypse. Let’s be real. For a group of people that went out around 1450, I think it’s pretty impressive they even bothered taking the calendar to 2012. How far out front are you supposed to get with those? I doubt anyone is working on day planners with New Yorker cartoons in them for 2415 right now, and I hardly take it as a sign that the world will end whenever the people down at the warehouse decide to stop making kitten calendars.
However, since we never know what can happen, I might need to get a few things off my chest before tomorrow – just in case.
1. I cheated on my menu tests at both La Paz and Calypso Joe’s. I have never cheated on any other tests in my life, but those menus presented some problems. At La Paz, I was a hostess, so I didn’t really see a need to learn the menu. They were going to make me take the test until I passed, so I used the menu as the hard surface on which to take my paper test. (I did learn a little though. That job is the only reason that I know the difference between an enchilada and a burrito is that a burrito is made with a flour tortilla while an enchilada is made with a corn one.) As for Calypso Joe’s, well, that one was just pride. The manager liked to post scores at the end of the day, and I refused to come in behind a bunch of perfect scores because I couldn’t have cared less about what dipping sauce came with the conch fritters.
2. I didn't like Titanic -- or Sex and the City.
3. From the ages of 21-25, I gave out my fake phone number to boys far too many times. It wasn’t very nice, but that’s kind of what happens when you’re a slightly cowardly people pleaser. It’s probably a little late, but I’d like to say I’m sorry anyway.
4. I don’t like the symphony, ballet or opera. I find them boring, and they always remind me of being forced to do educational stuff when I was a kid. (And this is coming from a girl who likes learning new vocabulary words.) If I nod when these topics of conversation come up, I’m only pretending to be cultured (or listening).
5. In the third grade, I stole my classmate's square dancing partner. I had a crush on the tallest boy in class, and square dancing partners were assigned by height. As the shortest girl in class, I was screwed -- and stuck with the boy who got very, very angry every time we played dodge ball in gym. When my classmate was out for a couple of days with a stomach bug, I saw my chance to move up, and we she came back to school, I pretty much implied that our teacher thought the new dance partner relationship was better. (Although, I hardly think our teacher had an opinion about the dancing partners.) Oh, the things we do for love ... And again, sorry about that one.
6. I prefer my dog to a lot of people. I can’t help it. She’s adorable, snuggly and completely non-critical. I should probably have some more love and compassion for humanity, but in general, a lot of my affection goes towards the dog. And that whole thing about there not actually being dogs in heaven if you go by strict theology? (I told you Sunday school was quite upsetting for me.) I’m not pleased.
7. For a few years now, my chest has actually been known as “the rapture.” It was a name that a female friend came up with for my boobs while we were drinking one night. I kind of thought it was awesome (especially since my late-blooming meant I didn't have a chest until the age of 18), and the name stuck. I hope this will not be considered blasphemous during the actual rapture, but clearly I can’t be sure. Even in the end of days, we can all appreciate a good joke, right? Maybe?
Anyway, I look forward to our continued interactions next week when I will most likely be experiencing some shame for what I hope are a few very premature confessions.
A Sunday School Drop-Out Spared
My parents tend to worry – a lot. Kidnapping, hostage-taking, teen pregnancy, drugs, drunk driving – you name a problem; my parents have considered how to keep it from happening to their kids.
There’s only one thing my parents never worried about when it came to me and that had to do with joining a cult. Their theory? “You had so much trouble with conventional religion; we never really figured you’d fall for some extreme splinter group.”
I guess there’s at least one plus to raising a natural skeptic.
My parents both taught Sunday school when I was growing up. My father taught kindergarten, and my mother usually taught sixth grade.
Through what I will claim is no fault of my own, I tended to be a troublemaker in Sunday school class. It’s not that I ever meant to get in trouble; I just like to ask a lot of questions. (Outside of Sunday school, my mother and I spent many hours in the library researching my various topics of interest from why ostriches liked to stick their heads in the sand, how an egg develops and the growth of asparagus.) Curiosity, neurotic-ism or annoyance? You decide.
Wikipedia and IMDB have been Godsends in my adult life.
Long before I knew the difference between evolution and creationism, when one of my Sunday school teachers went over Genesis, I had to ask why she seemed to be in direct conflict with my science teacher. “If the Earth was created in six days, what about the dinosaurs?” I said.
Mrs. Johnson, my science teacher at the time, had explained that dinosaurs roamed the Earth with no humans, and I really didn’t see where Adam and Eve fit in on this time frame.
Then, there was the day our Sunday school teacher came in to explain that “We were all adopted because we were all God’s children, and He had given us to our parents on loan.” (The “on loan” might not be a direct quote, but I promise that that Sunday school teacher was not particularly eloquent.)
I think I started the crying that day, but I know a lot of other kids eventually joined in. I think adoption is lovely, but as a kid who feared learning she was one day adopted, breaking the news this way seemed insensitive to say the least.
I also did not know how much I would upset my first grade Sunday school teacher when I answered the question, “What’s the last movie you all saw?” with “Aliens.” My mom had been out of town, and it was true. I’m sorry she only wanted Disney answers.
Eventually, my Sunday school teachers seemed really tired of my questions, and it could be hard to get them to notice my raised hand, but I’m not one to give up easily.
“Would King Herod really have cut the baby in half? What if none of the moms said anything?”
“How could you really have all of your power in your hair?”
“Wouldn’t the whale’s stomach acid be a problem for Jonah?”
“Just going from Saul to Paul doesn’t seem like a real earth-shattering name change. Wouldn’t Joe or Sam have been more dramatic?”
Apart from making my class the Bible Trivia champion of 1980-something, I was not an asset to most Sunday school classes. (I actually had to share that title with another Sunday school class, a decision I contested and still consider to be an unfair ruling, but the journey to move on continues.)
I don’t know whether or not it was discussed during some sort of Sunday school teacher conference, but from fourth grade on, I spent three years in my mother’s Sunday school class. She was used to my questions, and I imagine my departure from the regular course of Methodist teachings was a relief to many.
So, this Mother’s Day, I’d like to thank my mom for putting up with a lot – from the struggle to define infinity for me to typing up the school newspaper my third grade class dreamed up one day. But, I suppose that most of all, I’d like to thank her for taking me in when no one else was eager to, listening to and trying to find answers to my questions and never making me feel like I was the weird one for going against the flow.
Happy Mother’s Day Mama! I love you!
The Beach, Perfection And Big Wheels
This past weekend I went to the beach, and I was reminded how important it was for me when I was little to create a “perfect” last day vacation memory. Basically, if we were leaving the beach the next morning, I thought that the last time I stepped off the beach the day before needed to be postcard-worthy ideal. (Can we say obsessive much? This is even before that obligatory age when you have to read Our Town, after which I tried desperately to notice life in the moment. I found it exhausting and only made it about two weeks.)
In particular, I remember a time that we were staying at one of those condo units where you had to use a raised bridge to safely cross the street from the beach to your hotel.
On our last day of the trip, I walked up the center of the stairs at sunset (because no perfect memory happens without symmetry or when you’re too close to the hand rail), turned around to face the ocean, took in a deep breath of sea air, and then turned to walk down the center of the bridge – without looking back – towards our condo.
At the time, I thought, “This is a perfect moment.”
Since then, it’s been my experience that trying for perfect moments is more likely to ruin an experience than enhance it. Putting too much pressure on anything other than a bleeding wound usually tends to backfire, and it’s pretty hard to manufacture perfection outside of a movie set. I find imperfection much funnier (usually) as well as a good indicator of whom you should and should not be dating. (I mean, if you’re going to be stuck in the airport for added hours, wouldn’t you far rather it be with someone who can find some fun in the situation rather than the person who yells at every flight crew member they spot?)
Also, being quite flawed myself, a life that didn’t involve embracing imperfection would be pretty darn frustrating. And I just don’t think Thornton Wilder wants that for any of us.
Moving back to what was going to be my core topic, I also remembered some other awesome ideas/beliefs/misconceptions I had as a child. Here are a few of the “brilliant” ideas from my youth:
1. Doctors should use magnets on gunshot wounds. If a bullet is metal, why wouldn’t the magnet just pull it out of the skin?
2. Unicorns – real. Everyone else – confused and unwilling to believe.
3. Drinking and driving applied to any beverage. Therefore, I would not take a coke or water with me before a bicycle or Big Wheel ride.
4. There’s no such thing as infinity. Space may be vast, but it has an ending or borders. It just fit inside a really, really big box.
5. Policemen were mind readers. If you had done anything wrong and were anywhere within their vicinity, they would know – whether it was sneaking cookies or robbing banks.
Truthfully, I’m still holding out hope on #2, and every policeman makes me nervous to this day, but at least I’ve given up on the idea of patenting #1. As for those perfect vacation memories? They have a much broader definition as well. As long as I don’t drown in the ocean, I tend to call it a good day.
The Birds And The Bees
No one ever had the sex talk with me.
My mother once asked, while I was locked in the car (her preferred means of trapping me for uncomfortable conversations), clearly embarrassed herself, “Do you have any questions about sex?”
I, equally embarrassed and after a long pause, said, “Yes.”
“Do you have specific questions?”
I shook my head “no.” I was not prepared for this, although I did have a bad feeling when the lock dropped on the passenger seat door for our impromptu “fun trip to the mall.”
“Do you think you’d like a book or something?”
I nodded.
A few days later, my mom slid a large picture book under my bedroom door. (I was 11 at the time and hadn’t read a picture book since about the age of 5.)
Of course, I immediately dove into the picture book. I had had questions about sex for years (or two, whatever). When we went to my grandmother’s house, I used to grab the “S” World Book encyclopedia for her shelf and look up “sex” when I thought no one was looking. (I always kept a hand on another page like “Syria” or “sulfur” just in case someone would come downstairs and wonder what I was researching.) Unfortunately, the 1963 World Book only covered sex as a topic having to do with plant reproduction, so that was a quick dead end.
When I was six or so, a friend of mine told me what sex was as she’d learned from her older sister, but I had a hard time with her definition. In the end, she was right, but it sounded awfully made up at that point.
What I remember from the picture book were drawings of an overweight couple and mention of loving one another a whole lot, nudity and friction. It might be because I was a very shallow child, but the really overweight cartoons were an immediate turn-off. (I now think it was an excuse to keep from making the figures anatomically-correct. Those bellies covered a lot.) These people just disturbed me, and I was glad they had found one another, but I did not want to read about their expressions of physical love.
That book was the last mention of sex my mom made to me for another eight years.
We clearly had sex education in school, but our first sex ed program was a little extreme, and I think it scarred most of us for life.
At the beginning of the day, a woman stood before us with a pink paper heart. “There once was a girl named Jane. Jane met a boy that she liked. She thought she loved him. Jane decided to have sex with this boy – before they were married. Then the boy dumped Jane, and she lost a little bit of her heart …” At this point, a corner of the paper heart was torn off.
“Then Jane meets another boy, and she thinks that she loves him too …” she went on. Before long the entire heart lay shredded before us.
“By the time Jane wants to get married, she has no heart left to give.”
There was a later story along similar lines about a girl who decided to wear the special pearls her parents were going to give her on her wedding day before their special time. She snuck in to her parent’s room and stole the pearls to wear when she went out (which is what everyone does with pearls); so that by the time she received the pearls on her wedding day, they were brown and dirty. In short – damaged goods.
The latter story bothered me only because I knew from my mom that pearls needed to be worn to keep their shine. Something about the oils in your skin being good for the jewelry. I got where the woman was going with her story. I just thought she should have chosen a more accurate metaphor.
The day ended with abstinence pledges that were “our choice” to sign, but everyone from the program stood over our shoulders for extended periods of time while handing them out.
After the disastrous paper heart incident and poorly-chosen allegories, the school stuck to puberty and “our changing bodies.” When I changed schools, sex ed was led by someone who looked like the picture-perfect grandma, and after she said “fellatio” more than once with her lovely, I-made-you-cookies-dear smile, I think we were all traumatized in a different way. (If trauma was meant to counter raging teenage hormones, I suppose it was borderline successful.)
Cosmo was my new textbook, for better or worse.
It wasn’t until years later, when I was already in college that my father referenced the sex talk my mom and I had had when I was younger. My mother, my father and I were in the car on the way back from dinner.
“Sex talk? What sex talk?” I said.
“Your mother and I talked about it, and she agreed that she would be the one to give you and your sisters the sex talk. Surely, you remember that?” my dad said.
“There was no sex talk,” I said.
This is when my mother finally 'fessed up. “I couldn’t go through with it,” she said. “It was just too hard. I couldn’t do it.”
“Laurel’s mother!” (I don’t like to use real names.)
“You try it,” she said. “It’s not easy.”
“Clearly,” my father said, “but I think it’s a little too late for me to give it a shot.”
“You promised,” my father said.
“Well,” my mother said, "like you said, it's a little late."
Finally, the missing piece of my adolescence made sense. “So,” my father said after a few minutes, “where did you learn about sex?”
And that’s when I gave him the answer every parent wants to hear, “On the street, of course.”
My Sordid Past And New Relationships
I’m not sure how common this is in the rest of the country, but there are many Southern homes that still love their portraiture.
(If you are imagining English royals sitting on velvet tufts while petting King Charles Spaniels as you read “portraiture,” you wouldn’t be that far off the mark. Though, personally, I and no one I know have ever been painted on a velvet tuft, I can’t say for sure that it hasn’t occurred in the 21st century. The dog is also not out of the question. In my part of the country, it’s just more likely to be a lab in an outdoor scene than a lap dog.)
Olan Mills doesn’t count here. I’m talking about honest-to-goodness, calls-for-a-sitting, put-forever-in-oil portrait.
I believe portraits of children are most common – the kind with girls in smocked and French hand sewn dresses (you’ll have to Google it) and boys in, well, similar smocked and French hand sewn outfits. (In the South, we really don’t have issues with dressing boys much like girls until at least the age of two. Usually their smocked outfits are jumpers or shorts, but there are no guarantees.)
Some homes have portraits of adults, and there are even some people known to have nude portraits of themselves. The former are often rather wealthy. The latter are usually discussed in whispers at cocktail parties.
Personally, I have three portraits hanging in my parents’ house. One is actually in pastels, so I’m not sure I have to count it, but I’m in smocked dress, and I’m two. The second portrait is of my mother, my sisters and me. Again, my sisters and I are in very delicate dresses. I think I was six. The last, and final portrait, is of me at 17 in the dress from my junior cotillion. (Some day I will subtitle my memoir “Tales of an Irreverent Debutante.” Until then, I’ll leave the topic of cotillions alone.)
Now, portraits are hardly likely to come up in day-to-day conversation. Most of the time, I forget they even exist. I also tend to forget all of the other pictures from childhood to adolescence that my mom and dad still have. That is, until, a boyfriend is invited to the house to meet the parents. In the living room, the two following questions always ensue:
1. Is that you on a five and half foot canvas hung in a gold frame in the living room?
2. When was your hair red?
The answers are:
1. Yes. My mom likes portraits. Wouldn’t you rather check out the one of my sister in her bowl cut years? (Sorry to throw you under the bus, Sis.)
2. Off and on between the ages of 15 and 20. I was also blond at 22. If there’s a hair color, I’ve had it.
In my father’s study, we get into even more trouble:
"Why are you in a hoop skirt?"
It’s that one that takes a little longer to explain. (Note to reader: the hoop skirt is in a photo and not a portrait, just like the Birmingham Belle ceremony is separate from the junior cotillion. I wore the hoop skirt twice – once as a Belle and once for Halloween. For the sake of family peace, I’ll just say that I wasn’t too excited about joining that organization.)
For the uninitiated, the Birmingham Belles are a group of girls chosen to represent Arlington, Birmingham’s only remaining antebellum home. Arlington is also open for tours and home to a museum. Originally, Belles had all sorts of civic duties, like going to community functions and giving tours of the house. Then, thank heavens, Birmingham finally caught on to the fact that sending girls in hoop skirts, hats and white gloves to the airport to pick up visitors was a) incredibly embarrassing and b) not exactly doing a lot for the image of “The New South.” They also realized that self-guided tours were sufficient for a home with 7 rooms.
My friend and I attended one volunteer event as Birmingham Belles, and it was a bake sale where we wore jeans. I think I was still embarrassed even though we didn’t have our bloomers on.
In short, the visual artifacts of my adolescence can be quite fascinating – especially if you’re not from here. You also have some frightening insight into the kinds of information a Mills boyfriend is bound to discover.
* I apologize that the hoop skirt photo is not available at this time.
My Trinity And Good Intentions (With Video)
I fully believe the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Of course, I’ve also always hoped the adage wasn’t referring to a literal hell. I just figured it was pretty obvious that we all get more than we bargain for when we try a little too hard ... [Read more]