Monday, November 30, 2009

Who's the Bobblehead?

My girl went back to college yesterday. She's nineteen, and she boarded an airplane bound for La Guardia all by herself. Once she landed, she got into a taxi all alone and made her way back to her dorm on Third Avenue in New York City.

Now, I didn’t travel alone until I was thirty-five years old. So hugging her goodbye made me nervous and proud all at that same time.

“Be safe,” I whispered to her as I hugged her. I wanted to say, “Don’t talk to strangers,” but I knew she had to talk to the man who checked her bags, the stranger seated next to her on the airplane, and a cab driver.

And speaking of cab drivers, I knew better than to tell her not to accept a ride from a stranger. Not because that’s the nature of the beast when you’re getting into a New York City cab, though. I couldn’t tell her that because she and I both know I’m guilty of violating that rule.

Several years ago, I had a friend named Ty, a football player who was a little too small for the NFL. Ty signed a contract to play for the Philadelphia Soul, a team in the now-defunct arena football league that just happened to be owned by Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora.

“Ty,” I said to him one day in December 2004, “My girls and I were in New York City this past weekend. Tell your boss, Mr. Bon Jovi, that my girls went to Madame Tussaud’s but were unable to see his likeness. Apparently, he’s been fondled and kissed so much that he had to removed for refurbishing.”

“Why don't you tell him?” he responded. “Bon Jovi is kicking off the football season with a mini-concert doubling as a pep rally. I can get you front-row tickets, and I might even be able to get you backstage.”

Ty came through for me. In mid-January, Morgan and I flew to Philadelphia. We had a few hours that afternoon before the concert, so we did what all good tourists do. We took a cab to the corner of Ninth and Passyunk in South Philly and ordered a Philly Whiz at Geno’s. Across the street from Geno’s is its competitor, Pat’s, the restaurant credited with actually inventing the cheesesteak sandwich. The two have a long-standing rivalry, and each has its loyal fans who argue about which has the better product.

What we didn’t know when the cab dropped us off in front of Geno’s was that the establishment has no indoor seating. It was 17 degrees, and our hands were shaking as we inhaled our sandwiches.

After we finished our food, we began looking for a cab to take us back to the hotel. When it became obvious that we were going to have to call for a cab, I said, “While we wait, let’s go get a sandwich from Pat’s and judge for ourselves which one is better.” We marched across the street and ordered another Philly Whiz and we sat down outside to eat that sandwich.

We must have stuck out in our overcoats suited more for a winter in Georgia than one anywhere north of, say, Chattanooga. As we waited for the cab that obviously was not going to show up, a short, skinny man wearing thick glasses, a black overcoat, and a plaid wool scarf got out of a car and approached us. “I been watching from my car. I see that you’s freezin’, and I can’t watch ladies freeze like that. If you’ll pay me money for gas, I’ll take you anywhere you needs to go,” he said to me.

“No, thanks,” I quickly responded.

“Lady, look, it’s 17 damn degrees out here, and your kid’s cold. I’m a good, honest man who can’t stand to see people suffer. And Geno’s my cousin. Anyone in the joint can vouch for me.”

I started to refuse his offer for a second time. But Morgan leaned over to me and whispered, “Mom, please. I’m so cold.”

I looked at the man’s car. The dash was lined with six or seven Virgin Mary bobbleheads. Several sets of rosary beads hung from the rearview mirror. I couldn’t decide if that was a good sign or not. Was it an overt attempt to assuage a horrific amount of guilt, or was he simply a harmless nutjob?

I looked at the man. He was small enough, I figured, that I could take him, provided he wasn’t hiding a gun in the glove compartment under all those bobbleheads. He stuck his hand out to me and said, “My name’s Carlos Diego MacLauchlin. I’m the only Irish/Spanish/Greek/French Polynesian you’ll ever meet. Let me help you.” I don't know if it was the cheesesteak talking, but my gut told me to go with the nutjob theory.

We got into his wonderfully warm car. I dialed 9-1-1 into my cell phone and kept my finger over the “send” button. The Virgin Mary bobbleheads nodded in unison as he drove, almost an unspoken affirmation that I’d done the right thing.

And true to his word, the crazy man delivered his even crazier guests safely to our hotel. I thanked him with a generous amount of cash, shut the door behind me, and then said to my daughter, “Don’t you ever take a ride from a stranger, do you hear me? Not unless I’m with you.”

That evening, as Ty escorted us past security guards and we waited in the tunnel to meet Jon Bon Jovi, Ty whispered to me, “By the way, he agreed to meet you because I told him you actually bought his old statue from Madame Tussaud’s.”

The rock star came out of his dressing room, and my heart sank. Up close, he wasn’t as handsome as he is when performing on stage. He wasn’t much taller than I am, his face was covered in that awful orange stage makeup, and his teeth had obviously been overly refurbished – they were purple. When he realized I was the woman who had supposedly purchased his statue, he smiled and said, “Oh, thank you for being such a dedicated fan.” I know the man was probably thinking, This nutjob has a life-size likeness of me in her house, and I can only imagine what she does with it. The dash of her car is probably lined with Jon Bon Jovi bobbleheads. At least she looks harmless.

I stammered stupidly, “Don’t believe everything Ty tells you.” But he just continued smiling that famous smile and said, “I don’t mind.”

I left the City of Brotherly Love the next morning having learned a few things about life. First, never believe everything you hear. Second, don’t let appearances deceive you. Next, a rock star will always look better from a distance. And finally, for God’s sake, trust your gut, listen to your mother, and don't ever let a bobblehead be your guide.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

What a Beach

As the saying goes, you never know how many friends you have until you own a beach house. Back when I was married and owned a fancy-schmancy condo in Destin, Florida, friends came to spend a summer weekend. They very thoughtfully left me a hostess gift – a hand towel printed with the quote about owning a beach house and an illustrated print titled “How To Be A Beach Woman.”

Back then, I appreciated the print because of its cosmetic appeal and because it made me laugh. I hadn’t mastered all of the prints recommendations, but I had a few of them down pat.

For example, the very first recommendation is this: "Lose the Uncomfortable Shoes." During those Destin-owning days, two of my friends and I went down for a beached-whale weekend. In other words, we lay on the beach the whole weekend, only pausing in our talking and drinking to come up for air. At some point one evening, one of us suggested we take our pretty selves to a nice restaurant for dinner. Donna pulled her cellphone out of her beach bag and called the restaurant to make a reservation. When she hung up the phone, she took another swig of her margarita and announced, “Six o’clock, party of three, and no close-show-toos.”

“Close-show-toos?” I said. “What’s that?”

“I mean close-two-shows,” she said.

“They’re closed for two shows?” I asked, wildly confused.

“Closed-toe shoes!” Ann said. “No flip flops allowed!”

We opted not to eat at that restaurant since the only closed-toe shoes in my condo were for playing tennis. I was already on my way to becoming a beach woman.

Next in the list of suggestions is “Come About.” When my friends gave me the print, I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I assumed it had something to do with, “Come About six for drinks. We’ll go out to eat around seven.” Since I’d mastered that concept, I checked that one off my beachy woman list.

The third ingredient for becoming a beach woman is “smell like a coconut.” Given that I could eat my weight in coconut pie and consider pina colada mix a pantry staple, I didn’t even need Hawaiian Tropic for my pores to ooze coconut. Coconut smell? Check.

Not long after the print came into my life, my life fell apart. I filed for divorce. My ex-husband got the gorgeous condo. I got, among other things, the “Beach Woman” print and the dachshunds and enough money to buy myself a beach house in St. Augustine. The print now hangs in my St. Augustine beach house, and more than ever, I’ve come to appreciate the wisdom in its simple instructions.

“Pretend that you forgot how to work the oven and that the vacuum broke” is another step in the beach-woman transformation process. My ex got the expensive German Miele vacuum I’d purchased for the condo. But in keeping with the Beach Woman advice, I turned the job over to an eight-pound black and tan dachshund. Technically, I still have a German vacuum cleaner, even if it’s one that only works in the kitchen. For me, that's close enough to check off my beach-woman list.

There is one recommendation on the print that I always had trouble with, however. “Remember that the opposite of perfection is character” just sounded wrong to me. The opposite of perfection is chaos and disorder. It’s a middle-school field trip or a teenage daughter with a surreptitious tattoo.

And it’s also reality.

I’m slowly learning to ease my death’s grip insistence that life should be the way I think it should. Perfection, I'm realizing, is the opposite of character. And happiness.

And one more thing: I discovered that “Come About” is a sailing term. It means “to change course so as to be sailing at the same angle but with the wind on the other side,” which is kind of what my whole life has been about since I filed for divorce four years ago this month.

Which brings me to the final piece of advice on my print: “Be Thankful.” Today, for all the changes that have brought me to this porch overlooking the beach, for the imperfections and the flip flops and for the beachy woman I’m becoming, I’m grateful.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Oxymoronic Dicks

Rhetorical devices such as metaphor, simile, alliteration, oxymoron, and allusion are the little frills that make writing interesting. “See Dick play” becomes “See Dick play with himself” using personification (some may think this is a stretch, but personification is defined as “ascribing human qualities to inanimate objects.”) “Play hard, Dick” is an example of a pun (or an oxymoron, depending on Dick). “Dick did Deb,” -- alliteration. And to complete our little story, “Run like hell, Deb” employs the use of simile.

Of all the rhetorical pretties, my personal favorite is irony. There’s nothing like a little contradiction to perk up a story; in Dick and Deb’s case, we could add Donny to the mix. Deb could run like hell into the arms of Donny, who is creepier than Dick ever thought about being. That’s irony. And if Donny’s as horny as a hippo in heat, that’s alliteration, simile, and irony all at once!

One of the best examples of irony I’ve ever come across involves a friend of mine. She’s a beautiful woman, my friend, who also happens to be a hotshot in a huge government agency. The woman makes a lot of money, and on top of that, she's very thin. As often happens, her dumbass husband -- let's just call him "Dick" -- left her for a dimwit freelance aerobics instructor with bad skin and a nasty personality several years ago. That marriage lasted sixteen months.

Not long after that marriage failed, Dick reconnected with a woman he knew in college. It was a whirlwind romance, and it wasn't long before my friend’s daughter called her mother during a weekend visit with her father.

“Mom,” she whispered, “Miss Diana has clothes at Daddy’s house now.”

“Well, sugar, they're together a lot,” my friend said, adding, "They're probably going to get married.

“Mom, I went through her stuff,” her daughter continued, “and guess what?”

Before my friend could scold her child for going through the woman’s things, her daughter came out with this gem: “She wears Granny Panties!”

The lesson, of course, is the age-old "Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it." And I love the irony of Dick trading his beautiful wife for a couple of big asses. In fact, I wonder if he ever asks himself this question: "Does this ass make my dick look smaller?"

Friday, November 13, 2009

I Am What I Eat -- In What Year?

The Whole Foods on Ponce de Leon Avenue in Atlanta has a sign admonishing its customers to “only eat it if you can read it!”

That’s good advice, actually. Those yummy Pepperidge Farm Orange Milano cookies, for example, cookies I have no business eating, contain “interesterified and/or hydrogenated soybean oil.” Now, I’m not quite sure what interesterified oil is, but the very fact that the name includes a form of the word “terrified” kind of terrifies me.

The subject of scary foods reminds me of green Fruit Rollups. Years ago, back when I didn’t know about only eating what I can read, I thought Fruit Rollups were actually made of fruit. I now understand that they’re like having a little fruit with your psychadellically-colored chemically-based food additives. We owned a condo on the beach in Destin, Florida. Friends were staying in the condo, and their toddler, Anna, ate a green Fruit Rollup or two. Now, I don’t think the Fruit Rollup made her violently ill, but Anna barfing up that Fruit Rollup in six different spots on my white carpet made me violently ill. After that, my kids no longer enjoyed those little pancake-thin fake fruit thingies ever again.

But I wonder, is the reverse of the “if you can’t read it, don’t eat it” axiom true? Just because you can read it, should you eat it? I remember back to a time when I was a little girl and clearly read a food label for something that I would not have put in my mouth for all the Ding Dongs in Dallas.

My grandfather, my mother’s dad, was a World War Two fighter pilot who flew jets for a worldwide shipping company after the war. He retired in 1982 to a 300-acre farm in Milner, Georgia, where he raised what we now know as organic local grass-fed beef.

I was raised on that beef and on the pork from his pigs. And on my grandmother’s chickens, which were just as organic as Pa’s cows. And on those chicken’s eggs. And on vegetables from their garden and from my father’s garden, which might have been the most organic garden in three counties. I vividly remember how our yard smelled when Dad spread a load of stuff he got from the Clayton County Water Authority to put on that garden. He called it “sludge,” a kind of euphemism for what really was just sanitized shit.

Eggs, steak, beans, greens, pork – words a kindergartener can read. According to the experts, that’s what is healthy. And I’m pretty sure that’s why the people in my family have consistently enjoyed terrific health.

Back when Pa had the farm, he and my grandmother had a large chest freezer in the basement of that farmhouse. When my cousin Barbie and I got tired of playing in the creek and swinging on the tire swing and naming the cows, we used to go down to their basement and investigate the contents of that freezer.

I remember one time pulling out a package wrapped in brown butcher paper that had a three-inch strip of masking tape on the outside. The words “pork shoulder – 1965” were written in my Nanny’s perfect cursive handwriting. Barb dug her hand deeper into that freezer and came out with “beef ribs – 1963.”

“Ewwww!” we shouted in unison. It was around 1976, and I was probably nine years old, Barb ten.

“Eat it if you can read it?” We read those labels loud and clear. That shit was older than we were.

Nanny and Pa sold the farm several years ago and moved to a house with no basement. Pa died nearly three years ago, and Nanny will celebrate her 86th birthday this month. That old chest freezer, now completely rusted over but still running just fine, sits in their carport, and I’m willing to bet there’s still some stuff in the bottom of it that’s older than I am.

I joke about staying on Nanny’s good side because I don’t want her to leave me that freezer in her will. But if she does, I’ll drive down to that house in Barnesville and dig through that old freezer. And I’ll laugh through my tears when I read her handwritten labels on packages that will surely remind me of the fun times I spent at the farm when I was a kid.

But there’s no way in hell I’ll eat any of it.

Monday, November 2, 2009

All That Candy is Going to My Head

The day before Halloween, my niece, Kate, came out of school carrying two bags of candy and the hat to her witch’s costume.

She was a cute little witch. But the best part of that costume, according to my sister, was the fact that they didn’t have to fix Kate’s hair that morning. Tangled, matted curls are part of a witch's persona.

Kate climbed into my car and immediately began rummaging through her candy. She pulled out a Twizzler and said, “Oooh, I like these!” before polishing it off in two bites.

She held up a Twix and said, “Want one?”

“No, baby, but that’s really sweet of you to share. You eat it,” I answered.

As she unwrapped the Twix, she said very matter-of-factly, “I know what too much candy doos to you.”

“Does,” I said, the English teacher in me feeling the need to correct. “What does too much candy do to you?”

“It makes your hair tangled.”

Someone could have told me that when I was a kid. You see, I have enough hair for three people, and when I was a kid, all that hair was a major pain in the ass.

I remember making my brother and sister late to school because both my mom and I were trying to tame the wild kingdom on top of my head.

It was so bad that my brother nicknamed me “Werewolf.”

Raymond Adkins, the boy who sat in the assigned seat behind me every year in school because Adkins came after Adams, loved to shuffle his hands through my hair and say during Bible class, “I bet this is what Gideon’s golden fleece looked like!”

Kate’s answer made perfect sense to me because I clearly have hair issues and I dearly love Milk Duds, Raisinets, and malted milk balls. In fact, my hair kinks up just thinking about Heath bars.

The next day, I received an email from Disney with this teaser: “Unleash Your Inner Disney Villain!”

I’ve already explained how the whole Disney princess thing turns my stomach. But I can do villains; they're more realistic, in my opinion. I clicked on the email, and to my great delight, Disney had provided a quiz to help me discover who, exactly, is my evil cartoon altar ego.

The first question was, “Your closest friend is . . .” The choices were (A) My hairstylist (B) My gym buddy (C) Anyone who would lend me money (D) I prefer henchmen or (E) I have lots of close friends.

Hmmm. I’m pretty close to my hairdresser. One can’t cope with hair like mine without a dedicated and competent hair stylist. Josh has been taming my mane every four weeks for nearly fifteen years, and in that time, he’s seen me through the birth of a child, a bitter divorce, and sending a kid off to college. He’s a friend and amateur therapist with enough dignity to consistently refuse my offers to live rent-free in my home in exchange for doing my hair every morning.

As for the rest of my options, I have no gym buddies because I prefer to do walking lunges alone. I don’t borrow money from friends. I prefer to pay my henchmen in order to guarantee their silence. And the “I have lots of close friends” option is a copout – that answer will surely result in some sappy “You can’t possibly be a villain” result.

Having eliminated the other choices, the answer to that question is (A) My hairdresser.

Another question: Do you have a fatal flaw? For me, the most appropriate answer is again the first choice, A, which reads, "Well, I do collect more than my fair share of speeding tickets."

And this: What do you worry about? The choices are (A) A bad hair day (B) Looking bad in front of my loyal fans (C) Getting outwitted (D) Nothing (E) Failing in my quest. Of those choices, unfortunately, my best answer is (A).

I tallied up my score to find that I’m not Ursula the Sea Witch, even though I am of German heritage and feel much better when I’m near the ocean. I’m not Maleficent or the Evil Queen or Gaston or, thankfully, Hades.

I am Cruella De Vil, thanks to my over-processed hair and horrendous driving.

It’s quite funny, actually. Three horribly mischievous dachshunds run my life, yet I’m cast as a villainous puppy killer. I finished the quiz and walked downstairs to put my dogs outside for the day. I opened the door leading out to my garage to find that during the night, they somehow managed to jump onto the seat of my golf cart and from there reach onto the shelf of my barbeque grill and pull down the large bag of chewy treats – doggie Milk Duds, if you will. They ate all the treats and then shredded the bag. And then they got sick from eating too much candy.

At least their short hair won’t tangle.