Latest from the Blog

January 7, 2010 | 0 Comments

Potholes never move

On Tuesday I met an old friend for lunch. She’s also a life coach, and extremely new age, if one can say that spirituality comes in degrees. She’s said more than once that there’s a reason I found myself in a little town as isolated as Walla Walla, since my writing wasn’t really happening in the busy bustle of DC. Well, I have oodles of time to write now.

She’s from Nebraska, which I can only imagine, having never set foot in the state. In my mind it’s somewhere between the musicality of Oklahoma and whirling dervishes of Kansas, a state for whom I can only name three places: Omaha, Lincoln, and Platte, because my grandmother had relatives there. All the people I know from Nebraska, who also happen to number three, know farm life well, remember it fondly, and are the kind of folks who proudly announce, when they first meet someone, “I’m from Nebraska,” as if we’ll all have the same reference point. I’m quite sure none of us do. For easterners who only seldom cross the Mississippi, Nebraska is part of the “other” United States. We figure they’re flying the same Stars & Stripes, as us, but beyond that, it may as well be the surface of Mercury. Now that I live westward of ole Miss, I know this isn’t true. They’re just like easterners except quieter, often working with fewer resources, and ruggedly independent. They don’t need the east like we think they do.

What I’ve gathered from my friend is that she is a 21st Century person born nearer to the start of the 20th. She’s never more than nine inches from her PDA, and she handles it with an ease that I, a Generation Xer, never seem to manage, always cursing at a typo on my texting screen and feeling the urgent need to press BACK sixteen times to fix my mistake. She just hammers through on her iPod or whatever new device has just hit the market. She’ll have an Android sometime in the next hour, I’m sure. And for her it’s more than simple, or even amazing technology;  it’s the universe helping us feel more connected to each other, because there’s a positive force that comes with being proximate to our fellow life travelers.

She’s helped me beyond measure, as she helps everyone around her with her warm smiles, booming laughter, and occasional quick frowns that pop up when she wishes you’d behave differently. She tells me that I have one of the loudest interior critics she’s ever met, and that the next time it hovers over me I should just tell it to go away and retire. Such silliness, I have thought, at these kinds of declarations from her. And then the next time I think about writing and I castigate myself for thinking I have the right to waste my time like this, I hear her:

Oh, you again? You know, I am really so sick of you. It’s time for you to retire.

Could it really be that simple?

I look around. Nobody but me is in earshot. I speak her words into the air.

And then I start a new short piece. One that’s been kicking around for eight years or so, and that I’m positive I started writing a long time back. I can find no evidence of it, but I have sharp visions in my brain, scenes and characters and a plot surprise at the end of 3,500 words. I hate starting something all over when I know there’s even a piece out there, my wounded Marine on the battlefield that I’ve promised to retrieve.

I give up the ghost and start over, figuring that at least this way I won’t be burdened by past efforts.

I thank my friend for helping me with a sageless exorcism.

This trip has been good for pieces of me I’ve neglected since moving out west—the ones with unbridled optimism, the sanctuary for my bones by the old and familiar, the joy that comes with knowing how to avoid every pothole on a certain road you haven’t traveled in a long while. It shows me what I’m missing from Walla Walla, even though there are many things I enjoy and even love about that place. I’m missing the fullness of a boisterous life. I don’t know as many opinionated, brash people, have as many options, or have to tune out much noise. Even the frequent wailing of firetruck sirens has heartened me since we returned to the nation’s capitol, the only time Susanne has been here since President Obama took office. Walla Walla doesn’t have enough noise for me, although its springs come close to meeting my requirements for color, with the bright green, baby wheat, bold blue skies, and rainbow-infused balloons during the annual hot air stampede. I can relish Walla Walla for the quiet and agree with my Nebraskan friend that it’s given me—forced me, even, into—writing time, pushing me to reconsider what success means and who I am capable of being in this lifetime.

But while I’m here in DC, I can at least try to unite these selves—past and present—a little, and enjoy all of the good things in my life, which starting with Susanne, are plentiful.

January 5, 2010 | 0 Comments

The beltway is no cause for alarm

My life working for the Federal Government as an IT person wasn’t far removed from your average Dilbert comic strip.

Web Developer: Hey Ev, please take a look at this one screenshot and tell us what we should change with this very complex information system.

Me: Uhhhhh, just from one screenshot?

WD: It’s all we could do on the color printer.

Me: Why?

WD: Our office manager is making budget cutbacks.

Me: Ah. (Stares at printout close to face) Well, it looks like you’re calling the system three different things.

WD: Just pretend they’re all the same.

Me: Okaaaaay. Which is the actual name?

WD: EKS.

Me: Can we spell out the name for new users?

WD: Just new users?

Me: No, spell out the name at the top here, so that even new users will know what system they’re working in.

WD: Oh, I don’t think we can do that.

Me: Why not?

WD: Because it’s an image.

Me: You could just put text there.

WD: Oh, but then it might look a little different on people’s screens.

Me: Well, not very different.

WD: The communications director wants it to look the same on everyone’s computers.

Me: That’s not actually possible, you know.

WD: Don’t tell her that.

Me: Okay, okay. How about we just change the color of this black font?

WD: Okay, why?

Me: Because against this dark blue background, it’s a little hard to read, is all.

WD: Well, but it matches a paper brochure.

Me: I’ve never seen a paper brochure for this.

WD: It came out in 1987.

Me: Uh. So we need to match it why?

(Pause)

WD and Me in unison: Communications Director.

Me: I don’t think I have any recommendations, then.

WD: Okay, great! Thanks!

Coming back to visit DC has been unexpectedly revealing; I almost instantly reverted back to my aggressive-is-defensive driving skill set, weaving and bobbling a tiny Hyundai Accent on the BW Parkway on the drive in from the airport. I feel like I’m getting out of a clown car every time I park, and like I’m entering a parallel Universe of Small Things each time I climb inside, folding into myself like an origami swan. Or maybe it’s like a beam of light being crushed into nothingness, since the interior is small enough to be black hole-sized.

I cavorted through the streets of the city, not stopping to take in the things I’ve seen many times, like the Washington Monument, Union Station, the semi-empty used car lot on Bladensburg Road. But I could feel the energy from them, remembering who I’ve been before, and enjoying their proximity once again. I certainly have a fondness for the Colville Street Patisserie in Walla Walla, as I’ve remarked before, but I don’t feel any sense of being when I’m walking down Main Street like I do on the grimy marble curbs of the District, and I’m not sure yet why that is.

I lunched with some of my old Social Security coworkers in a tavern yesterday that was all Baltimore: framed posters of Ravens glory, hard-looking women with over-styled hair, “limited” drink refills, and a certain filmy substance on all of the wood surfaces that gave you the impression they cared as much about you here as if you were a guest in their homes. I was back. We chatted about things, and although I wanted to hear how they were doing, they kept asking me about Walla Walla, so I coughed up all the funny stories I could recall. It helped that I was in a company of people who presumed, first and foremost, that I have competence; sitting around on my ass at home has almost erased my sense that I am good at some things other than sitting on my ass and memorizing lines from NCIS, just in case I have the opportunity to throw them into conversation. I was hoping for but didn’t get pictures of new spouses or children, but we caught up nonetheless. With them having to get back to work, a concept with which I was suddenly reminded, I hopped back on the freeway and battled the self-important traffic of the Baltimore-Washington corridor, feeling a little sleepy from my chicken salad and kaiser roll. My “limited” drink refill apparently equated to no refill at all, and I needed a nap. I could have taken in the cityscape, the Potomac, the Pentagon, as I sped back to my host’s house in Arlington, spitting distance from where I used to live, but instead I got a song from Ladytron stuck in my head that used to play during my long commutes home. Apparently my brain saw it fit to replay for me.

January 2, 2010 | 1 Comment

Four years hence

On this anniversary of my first date with Susanne, I thought I’d post an excerpt from my memoir here, of said date, which as you’ll see, I wasn’t sure was a date.

I’d set up the date at my favorite fire-baked pizzeria, a sleepy restaurant until it was featured in a local foodies blog, and then it was always packed to the seams, bursting with young, drunk patrons from the lobbying district, the non-profit set, and Capitol Hill. On the day after New Year’s, however, the place was empty except for one other table.

Susanne met me at the bar, taking off her winter hat and unwrapping a scarf the length of an adult boa constrictor. It took her 30 seconds to remove all of her outerwear. She’d emailed me from her parents’ house in Michigan, saying she was stuck with dialup and had just gotten my message. A quick cheery email exchange, and we’d set up this date.

“Hi there,” she said, smiling.

“Hi, thanks for meeting me,” I said, trying to keep my smile out of the goofy nerdy range.

We got a table and were checked on often by the waitress who both had not much else to do, and who seemed to find us amusing. Our pizzas arrived, hers a sausage and extra cheese, and mine, a mushroom lover’s that I know Michael would have hissed at, given his abhorrence of fungi.

She looked at me and my pizza. “So are you a vegetarian,” she asked casually.

“Oh, no. I just like the mushroom pizza here.” One potential spoiler averted.

“Thank God,” was her response, and I laughed.

We talked about our love of Kitchen Aid mixers, and that we’d each named ours. We’d also both previously bought mixers for other people’s weddings and then wondered, independently of course, why we hadn’t bought one for ourselves.

“I love baking,” I said. “I enjoy it so much I want to retire early and start my own bakery someday.”

“Shut up,” said Susanne, laughing, “that’s what I want to do!”

“No kidding. That’s great.”

Things were going so well I decided to take a risk and just let her know everything about my gender goings on. As soon as I started talking, I wanted to erase the decision and start over with any other topic of conversation. Hummingbirds. The state of the economy in Guam. Bloomsday parties. Monkey rectums.

“So I’ve been transitioning, taking it really slowly,” I said, feeling exposed. “Many of my friends still only know me as Jenifer, but for more and more people I’m Everett now. So you could call me either, really.” Stop talking!

The voice in my head was powerless to stop me.

“Well, that sounds like it can be hard at times,” she said.

I fought to stay on my seat and not fall onto the floor. “Yes, it can be. I’m taking things at my own pace. It’s been interesting, I guess.”

“You’re not the first person I’ve met with complicated gender,” Susanne said, looking at me. She wasn’t backing away. I didn’t know what to make of this. Maybe she was a psychopath, collecting people with gender issues in her basement in little cages so she could have her own private transsexual zoo. Or maybe it was just okay.

The waitress stopped by our table, looking at us with a sly grin, and giving us boxes for the rest of our pizzas.

We stepped outside and saw that it was raining, and each opened our umbrellas. With pizza boxes in one hand and the umbrellas in the other, our departing hug was more like a clumpfest. She thanked me for the good conversation and sprinted across the street to get to the Metro before it rained any harder.

December 30, 2009 | 0 Comments

Licensed to serve

We are vacationing this holiday season-come-semester break at Susanne’s parents house in the “southern thumb” of Michigan. Yes, when you ask a Michigander (it just keeps getting better, doesn’t it) where they’re from, they’ll hold up their hand and point. It’s actually pretty handy [sic]. Every state should look like a limb one could hold up and point to. “I live in the adrenal gland portion of the kidney,” say. Okay, maybe that’s not the best idea ever, especially given Manhattan’s geography.

Anyway, if they’re from somewhere in the vicinity of Detroit, the state’s most populous city, they may say something like “11 Mile,” referring to the regular spate of roads that run parallel to the north boundary, further and further to the top of the hand. Eminem made his 8 Mile movie, everyone already knows, about the area where the suburbs take over—but as far as I know, there are no plans for a “40 Mile” sequel, all about the drama of car parts factories on the outskirts of the dying automobile center. No wait, that was Roger and Me.

After a few days of meals at home, we descended on a local eatery, the Raiders Coney Island. By “we,” I mean me, Susanne, her mom, two brothers, sister-in-law, and their four kids, ranging in age from 2 to 17. It was a little Jon and Kate Plus 8 meets a Top Chef challenge—the elimination kind, not the simple quickfires, either. Taking up three booths in the small eatery, the waitress was a little overwhelmed.

Upon seeing customers who needed her service, she probably would have drawn a sharp intake of breath on a good day, but on this day she had no backup help, either, it being two days after Christmas and the other staff not having the same level of commitment to the family establishment that she did, since it was clearly her family’s establishment. But my immediate concern wasn’t for her ability to take our drink order, it was for the obvious extreme edema she had in her ankles. It was so bad I wasn’t sure how she’d managed to get her feet into her sneakers. My next worry was if her apparently chronic swelling had anything to do with the food in this place. Perhaps I could suck on a gratis lollypop and call that supper.

She slowly made her way to each table, starting with the ones who were already seated before we’d gotten there. Well, slowly isn’t really the right word. She was hurrying in a way that did little to increase her speed in any measurable fashion. Perhaps in an alternate universe we’d eaten already.

Finally she plunked down our menus, and the “raider” concept hit me. They had a knight on a horse, holding a spear, with a weiner at the end. This was the graphical fusion, I supposed, of the raider and Coney Island. Someone should tell the restaurant owners that Coney Island is about to be bulldozed into a suburban-like subdevelopment a la the Goonies. Only instead of pirate treasure maps we have the near-total collapse of the global economy. That’ll slow ’em down. The raider, however, was smiling, so excited about the opportunity for a hot dog that he was obliquely unaware of the doom awaiting the old amusement park.

“Hey, isn’t that the mascot for your old high school,” I asked Susanne. She nodded. “Well, kind of. The real mascot looked more serious.” She paused.

“And there’s no hot dog in the real logo,” she added, just in case I leave this experience wondering why the superintendent of schools thinks it’s okay for the local high school to model such poor food choices to its impressionable students.

I appreciated that they hadn’t stolen the licensed image from the high school, even as they were clearly looking to it as their reference point. I later learned that they regularly give money to the high school, so I suppose they should go ahead an name themselves after the mascot—they’ve earned it.

“So was your school color orange,” I asked, looking at the menu cover. I went to Syracuse University for college, so I’m familiar with the futility of trying to work school-licensed clothes into one’s general wardrobe.

“Orange and black,” she said, knowing full well I’d be shocked. They were always ready for Halloween, I guess.

“My high school was brown and gold,” I said, “so I never thought I’d hear of worse colors than that.” I made famous a short story from my graduation, when one of the girls asked me why the women wore white graduation caps and gowns instead of gold, since the men were wearing chocolate brown, to which I’d remarked, “because they don’t want it to look like a lot of shit and piss out there.”

There is no restaurant, nice or not, in Hamilton, New Jersey, that has my old high school logo on it. Just saying.

The menu was a strange blend of Greek culinary tradition, pub fare, and Johnny Rockets diner food. I still don’t see my beloved pizzaburger outside New Jersey, but I won’t hold it against them. I tried to order the chicken kabobs.

“We don’t have those made up yet,” the salt-retaining waitress told me, as if any minute now, chicken kabobs would be good to go. “But this other chicken meal is the same thing, just not cut up.”

Wondering why cutting the chicken into smaller pieces would mean it would somehow take longer to cook, I saw that this other dinner also came smothered in green peppers, mushrooms, and provolone cheese, most of which are not to be found on Greek-style kabobs. So okay, I went with that, with a little hesitation about when any of this was going to take to arrive at our tables. Every so often she would call out to her mother for help, and I started to wonder if she wasn’t talking to a ghost or an imaginary friend. But finally, Mom showed up, agreeing to help make the four smoothies and milkshakes the kids had ordered. One look at the mother and I was certain their was some family illness with water retention going on here. Why had no one told them to seek medical help for their obvious swelling problems?

The cooks in the back were doing their best impressions of Wilson from Home Improvement, so I couldn’t analyze whether the male members of the family were afflicted with the same disease, but they put the food up on the counter when it was ready and voila, cheese and fungus-covered chicken was at my table. Susanne and I had finished an impromptu game of dots, with her finding the one and two box spots and me mis-selecting a long chain of 16 boxes for her to label. Damn dots game—you always make me pay for slow diner service by showing me what an awful player I am. Maybe I shouldn’t carry a pen with me wherever I go.

Half our orders were wrong—the mother made milkshakes instead of slurpies, which, 50 minutes after walking in, we were happy to drink anyway. Yes, they needed more serving staff. The food was fine though, and cheap, and finally we were back in the car, heading through the Christmas Week night and jazzed up to play some head-to-head solitaire. Maybe, I thought, we should just cook at home.

December 24, 2009 | 2 Comments

Holiday trains, planes, and automobiles

Detroit Metro AirportThe lack of proximity between purchasing airline tickets and actually getting onto an airplane has not served us well this year. Susanne, in early October, had her face buried in her laptop screen. “What do you think about this flight,” she asked, her eyes mere inches from the glowing pixels, “it’s a really good price.”

“How good,” I asked, leaning over. “Oh, that is good.”

“But it’s a red eye,” she said.

“But the price,” I said.

Abstractly, I understood that it was a middle-of-the-night flight. I do, after all, have a very successful track record with surviving the middle of the night, even if I’m usually asleep for it.

“It’s three legs,” she said, sounding less confident.

I responded by ignoring her fears. “It’s always at least two, hon,” I said, a little too cheerfully. She should have understood right then that I was just blinded by my thriftiness and rethought our approach. But perhaps Susanne was seeing little stars of savings, too.

We sent our credit card numbers through the information superhighway and were rewarded with an email confirming we had just purchased our way to visiting friends and family for the holidays. And then went about our daily routine, forgetting all about it.

And then we were driving, in late December, to the airport. We had an 8 o’clock fight to Seattle, a multi-hour layover, and then a midnight flight to Minneapolis, followed by another couple of hours in that airport, and then a morning flight to Detroit.

What a horrible itinerary! Who had done this to us?

We had. We had done this to ourselves.

We drove by the bad broccoli plant, which for its part sent us an intense putrid odor as a parting shot for departing Walla Walla. Every time we’ve left before, the city has done some kind of stick-its-tendrils-into-us to slow us down. What would it be this time, I wondered, trying not to breathe as I drove past the paper mill. It just loved us so much it wanted to stay in our nostrils.

On the first plane, the flight attendant told us happily that we’d be making a stop in Yakima on our way to Seattle. This meant we were splitting the trip into two 25-minute segments. Never going about 15,000 feet, we stopped like a bus at the Yakima airport and five people joined our flight. About ten minutes away from Seattle, the worst stench of gastrointestinal distress invaded my olfactory nerves. I looked at Susanne and mouthed, “was that you?”

She shook her head no emphatically. We tried to breathe as little as we could, having just practiced this outside the paper mill. The flight attendant empathized with us, as she was also stuck at the very back of the plane with us and the killer fart. As we rolled into the gate, they put two staircases up to the fuselage, and the flight attendant, knowing our plight, told us we could just take the one in the back, two feet behind our seats. We walked the length of the terminal toward our next gate. Having cleared our heads, our stomachs started rumbling, and we decided to get dinner.

The waiter asked what we wanted. As we were in a tap house and pub, we each ordered a wheat beer. He plunked them down on the table, announcing last call.

“When do you close,” I asked.

“In 30 minutes,” he said.

We drank our beers and ate our greasy food quickly, rushing off to the shuttle train to our next terminal and departure gate. I could feel the reuben sloshing around in my tipsy stomach, but we had some time to relax before the red eye. The Seattle airport has free wifi, which seems nice until one notices that it has next to no power outlets. What teases. We wandered around looking for a free outlet, to no avail. And the people who had already juiced up weren’t offering to unplug, even for a little while. This made me wonder if:

1. everyone had terrible laptop batteries that wouldn’t hold a charge

2. they hated Christmas and were hogging the electricity just to be nasty

3. they were inattentive, oblivious Northwesterners

So we booted up my laptop, sharing it between us and hoping to model good behavior for all of the manners-impaired strangers in the terminal. Somehow I think it didn’t make any difference.

We piled on to the red eye, hoping for a smooth enough, unoffensively smelling enough flight that we could catch some sleep before getting into the Twin Cities. Susanne conked out on my shoulder quickly, but I have trouble staying asleep while sitting up, so I watched the people around me slumber instead, some snoring, some with their jaws hanging open while doing so. And I realized that it’s no wonder why people eat a good number of bugs over the years.

Landing after the red eye, we were somewhat dismayed to discover we still weren’t there yet.

Our next gate was a little ways down from a Caribou Coffee. A family of three each had a drink from there, and they looked so happy, like a live advertisement for the wonderful things coffee can do for you, too. Have an impressive blonde son and snappily dressed trophy wife! Enjoy endless energy and increase your income potential with our frozen vanilla frappuccinos!

“I’m going to get some coffee,” said Susanne, standing up. “Would you like anything?”

I stared at the happy people. Happy people. I wanted to go to there. I nodded at her.

“Okay, what would you like?”

My voice, exhausted, came out in a whisper.

“A frosty mcfrosterson,” I said.

“A what?”

I pointed at the 4-year-old toe head. “Mocha,” I squeaked.

“Is there anything else you want, like some caramel flavor or hazelnut?”

Why was she making this so difficult? I said frosty mcfrosterson! Just understand what I want! I’m perfectly clear!

That was what I thought. But what I said was:

“Mocha!”

“Okay,” she said, now talking to me as if I were only 4. “Do you want anything to eat?”

I shook my head no.

She came back a really long time later that equaled something like 7 minutes, and I sucked back my frozen mocha in a few gulps. The caffeine hit me like a Boxing Day tsunami. Maybe that’s exaggerating and trivializing. Okay, it hit me like really bad flatulence, except it was so good. And not odiferous in any way. I was suddenly, powerfully awake.

I typed things, I texted people. I was online and sending status updates to anyone who cared. In the very narrow band of things that could be remotely productive while sitting in an airport waiting to catch one’s third flight in 12 hours, I was a king of getting shit done.

Susanne seemed to be buzzing, too. She asked if she should get us a bagel and cream cheese. That sounded like a terrific idea! Sure! Get us 14 bagels!

She found some organic-pretends-to-be-French bakery and got us a hemp bagel. I had no idea people ate hemp. Wasn’t it reserved for scratchy rope and reusable shopping bags? Would we get high from eating this?

We did not get high, which was good, given that we were already loopy. But I did discover that hemp seeds can get caught pretty easily between one’s teeth. Good life experience to note, I guess.

Finally, at long last, we were on our last flight. Only two hours and forty-eight minutes to Detroit. The flight was uneventful.

Our bags were not on the belt. I lined up in a long queue for lost luggage, not confident that I could explain what had happened with any degree of clarity, or words, even. Probably I would just wave my arms a lot and point to my claim tag bar codes, and hope that would suffice for them. I was a raving mad man, a very tired raving mad man. So maybe I wasn’t raving. I was a raved, farted on, ear-drum deafened, sleep-deprived, over-caffeinated, hemp-eating mad man.

Three people before I reached the front of the line Susanne tapped me on the shoulder and told me she’d found her bag on one random luggage belt and mine on another. I trudged out to the car, brought thankfully by her cousin and husband, who came with the car as part of a package driving deal, and didn’t ask how our bags wound up on the opposite end of the baggage claim area. I didn’t care anymore.

We rode 90 minutes to Susanne’s parents’ house, had a cup of tea, and took a 3-hour nap. We had crossed 17 hours, three flights, four airports, one train, two commutes, one really bad cheese cutting incident, two bad meals, one hurried pint of hefeweisen, and three increasingly inarticulate conversations. We woke up at 5:30pm Eastern time, which felt like 2:30 to us, kind of, since I think I never actually saw the sun the whole day, and really, I didn’t even know what day it was anymore.

But hell, it only cost us $525 a ticket.

December 22, 2009 | 0 Comments

Crystal ball persuasion

Back at the beginning of the year, I posted 5 predictions for 2009. I’ll just note that I was unequivocally correct on numbers 1 and 5. Number 4 is kind of right, in that I think Mrs. Obama has been putting herself out there as a champion for children, especially children of color and in the working class. She’s not sticking to uncontroversial events like book expos on the Mall (much as I appreciated having the chance to get my Sandman #1 signed by Neil Gaiman himself, so thank you, Laura). I still think Jon Stewart might leave the Daily Show, since there are other big gaps in the late night time slots now—can anyone argue that 5 nights of Jay Leno at 10 o’clock aren’t 5 nights too many? As for number 3, well, I think the health care bill in Congress is testimony to the forces against abortion, but I wouldn’t call them quiet, and I wouldn’t say they rise—yet—to the level of vitriol we’ve seen against getting gay married.

What I absolutely failed to understand last January was how ridiculously insane and ludicrous everything would get. It was one thing to blame sub-prime borrowers for the housing market failure. Who doesn’t like to pick on people with bad credit, after all? But really, death panels? “You lie!” shouted in the chamber during the freaking State of the Nation address? The entire Fox News staff schlocking gold as an investment for the masses? Hannity’s time-lapse magic to exaggerate the tea baggers’ crowds at a rally in DC? And hell, the Tea Baggers? I couldn’t dream this crap up!

Or could I? Okay, I’ll take a stab at it. I’ll try and springboard off of some of the more outlandish headlines from 2009. Feel free to chime in with your own flash forwarding stories for next year.

1. Glenn Beck, Tom O’Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh officially begin a new third political party, called the Gold Fox Party getting Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney to agree to run again in 2012. All kinds of donations come in, most in the form of gold, which drives the Federal Election Commission nuts as the price of gold keeps climbing and putting donors over the maximum donation limit. After 6 months, the party collapses when Glenn and Rush are discovered receiving kickbacks and prescription painkillers from a laid-off worker of ACORN.

2. Sarah Palin’s own political career is finally dismantled when the public learns that Trig is the offspring of her and Levi Johnson, Bristol’s now-ex-boyfriend.

3. The US media goes crazy with tons of stories about the new “green economy,” even though the GDP is only up 0.4 percent and there’s only one new factory for producing solar panels that because of NAFTA, has opened in Mexico. The Mexican government is dismayed to find out that all of the physical barriers we’ve erected in the last 5 years aren’t any good at keeping illegal US citizens out of Mexico.

4. An independent study comes out revealing that 72.4 percent of people previously detained at Gitmo know nothing about al Qaeda’s operations from 2001, much less anything that could help counter-terrorism officials now. They have, however, secretly formed a support group with tips on making their prison lives better, including  how to make a lovely bisque from ephemera, though they can’t find any in the middle of Illinois. They turn to Martha Stewart for advice on working with dandelion greens.

5. The CEOs of AIG, JPMorgan, Lehman Brothers, and Countrywide Mortgage take their latest year salaries, pool them together, and buy an island in the Carribean, setting up a new government with so many tax shelters for the rich that they make a fortune in taking other people’s money at their new banks. They also send out a message to Roman Polanski that he should find a way to get out of Switzerland and come to Moneytopia so that he can direct a film about their story. It wins 8 Golden Globes and 2 Academy Awards and is hailed by critics as an “opus of epochal storytelling, delivered by the master storyteller himself.”

December 18, 2009 | 2 Comments

Your neighborhood restaurant

I say that I lived in DC for 11 years, but really, about half of that time I lived just across the River Potomac in Arlington, Virginia. The southern part of the city was littered with G.I. Bill-era condominiums, depressing in their seemingly unending beige-ness, save the small rectangular swatches of orange, avocado green, or chocolate brown that were strategically affixed to the outside plaster walls. Row upon row of chunky modern buildings stymied many a newcomer who was driving in for some party or other, and who would likely mention, at some point in the evening and against their better judgment, that the roads were confusing. This was really a standby phrase for, “This place sucks,” or “How the hell can you live here,” two questions I heard with some frequency from the people who were closer to me.

Commuting didn’t seem that hard, after all, it was only a bus, generally on time, to the Pentagon Metro station, and then either a 40-minute ride if you took the Blue Line or a 25-minute ride if you caught the Yellow Line, to the Foggy Bottom Metro station, which then gave way to a 10-minute walk. Of course you could forgo the Blue Line train and hope the next one coming was a Yellow Line, but most folks had the same stratergy, and it was challenging to get oneself on the car, as the platform would have swelled with Blue Line eschewing people.

Okay, okay, commuting sucked. At some point Metro installed display screens in all of the stations that broadcast when the next trains would be arriving and which lines they were on. It took away some of the confusion, and a modicum of the stress. Now one didn’t have to hurl themselves into a train car so much as stand right on the edge of the track and sneak their way onto the car. This did draw the risk that the driver, seeing people too close to the precipice, would honk the horn, which meant that one was startled and had to cling onto the next neurotic to avoid accidentally falling onto the tracks. And it did occur to me that though I feared not making a train, I never actually saw anyone who wanted on a train not make it, unless they hadn’t reached the platform by the time the train had pulled in. Those drivers didn’t wait around for the sun to rise.

So living in Virginia, I didn’t really feel any less of a city person, because Arlington was about as urban as DC. With some major differences.

DC didn’t have chain restaurants. Not a one that I could think of. Now then, for purposes of this discussion, we’re not talking $5 Foot Long Subway or Wendy’s, although both of them serve things that sometimes resemble food. We’re talking sit down, has a menu you can hold, has waitstaff service restaurant. There are no Ruby Tuesday’s in the District of Columbia. There is a TGIFriday’s, in the aforementioned Foggy Bottom (which is one of the most fun to say places ever, right after Virginville, PA), but other than that, the only real chain entities are the ones that specifically cater to large groups, like Buco di Beppi and The Cheesecake Factory, the latter of which is so close to the Maryland border that it barely counts as “in” the District. For the most part, DC has independent, one-of-a-kind restaurants, which I’ve always loved about the place.

Not all the residents feel this way, however. I was shocked when I heard a friend ask if, when we were planning a dinner date, please, could we maybe possibly go to the Olive Garden in Virginia? The what? The place with the never ending bowl of limp overdressed salad and spongy baguettes? Where you can practically still see the tin foil on the entrees from where they peeled off the top of the frozen dinner? Surely they were jesting.

They were dead serious. After that first terrifying request, I was more jaded to the rest, but faithfully, I would honor my friends’ wishes because I was sure they’d honor mine when I wanted to partake of Ella’s wood fired pizza, pick through a still-hot plate of real paella at my favorite tapas bar, or break through steamed crabs at Eat First in Chinatown. Hindsight shows that I was the more flexible among most of my friends, but I always thought it was amazing that with such good, affordable options in the city they wanted to hop into my SUV and get some pre-cooked crap at Ruby’s or worse, Old Country Buffet. After eating there a couple of times, I begged not to have to go there anymore. That stuff was just toxic to me. I think I’ve had nightmares about their pink-frosted sponge cake and overcooked buffalo wings.

Here in Walla Walla, we don’t have any chain restaurants. In the next town over there’s an Applebee’s, which I’ve never been to, and probably never will, even if I wind up living here for 20 years. (Note to the universe: that is not your cue to get me to live here for 20 years, okay? Thank you.)

But nobody, and I mean nobody, has suggested I eat there, or said anything approximating a request to go there for some patty melt action. I’m just disappointed that if we have to have a chain restaurant, it couldn’t be a Friendly’s. I feel like Wallyworld would benefit hugely from the massive pile of fried clam strips and overflowing peanut butter cup sundae. Okay, maybe not in the same meal. But they don’t know what they’re missing.

So I’m wondering why the urban crowd and not the rural folks want these establishments as a dining option. Maybe the cityfolk were once suburbanites. Thus they find some level of comfort in say, thinking they know what to expect in terms of the culinary fare. Or being on what they consider the pedestal of city glitterati entitles them to “slum it” with the 4-person family set at the local bedroom community’s Chili’s. After all, nothing says “mall experience” more than a little P.F. Chang’s. And the only mall in DC is the blocks-long lawn between the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol. I’ve actually seen tweens grumble to their parents, all of them tourists, upset that the District mall isn’t what they had in mind. Those are shopping malls, children. This is why your teachers want you to have reading comprehension.

Walla Wallans are an adaptable, resourceful lot. You want Indian cuisine? Make friends with Shampa and her family and get an invite for dal and lamb curry. (I can attest it is very good.) Or buy a cookbook and spend some money ordering ingredients online. Or, go to Trader Joe’s 4 hours away and buy 63 of the vacuum packed lentil and chick pea side dishes for use over the long winter, because spicy lentils are like summer fruit around here.

If you want Thai, well, there are two, count em, two, Thai restaurants. One was just redesigned after the landlord and divorcing owners had a falling out, but after all the brou ha ha, there appears to be nothing different about the new place, even with the new owner. I hear they replaced the chairs. Red vinyl, make way for . . . black vinyl!

The other Thai restaurant is in the next town over. An extreme amount of kitch went into the decor, which showcases a couple of kinds of linoleum flooring, some discolored tableclothes set protectively under plexiglass, a whole host of plastic sculpture designed to inform patrons about the wonders of Thailand, and many mismatched Asian-inspired drawings on the wall. It is owned and run by a white man and his Thai bride, the former of whom runs the front of the house, and the latter of whom does the cooking. When they’re having a bad night together her food gets increasingly spicy, which is perhaps her strategy for getting out of the restaurant business. A culinary cry for help, as it were. But really this tendency means two things:

1. get there early

2. really early, as they close at 8PM.

Another saying around town is “Never eat Chinese food in Walla Walla if you can help it.” No really, that’s a saying around town. While Susanne’s brother was a fan of a local Chinese restaurant, we didn’t find it particularly inspiring. I hate when food only can remind you of better food you’re not currently eating. That’s this place. Milk toast, mediocre, not gut-or-anus-clenching bad, but just kind of bland and not worth the money you just spent on it. There’s also an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet, but I’ve already admitted to my buffet misgivings. By the way, Walla Walla does have an American/Italian all-you-can-eat buffet; one day when we didn’t realize what it was (we were thinking they had pizza), we walked in and were astounded to see a warning sign at the front door, which read:

THIS ESTABLISHMENT USES SULFIDES FOR PRESERVATIVES. ASK YOUR WAITER FOR INFORMATION IF YOU HAVE ALLERGIES.

Oh, waiter, can you tell me which of these buffet items will kill me?

We turned around and left. And craving pizza.

December 15, 2009 | 3 Comments

Word to the wise

Susanne and I visited our friend in the hospital last week, thinking that she wouldn’t yet be able to talk, as her cancer surgery was in the neighborhood of her neck. I can imagine few people more garrulous than me, which she is, so it must have been difficult for her, relying only on a small white board, looking something like Tim Russert on Election Day in 2000. Only in this case, it’s to ask “When can I get out of here,” and not to suddenly realize the future of the country is “Too close to call.”

My plan was to walk in her room and announce that she could speak up if she didn’t want a visit, give her .2 seconds to chirp, and then say, “Okay, great, so I had a few stories to share with you…”

As it was, she was already sitting up and speaking, to her surgeon. I looked at the older, chubby man with a halo of white hair on his head and the smart Kenneth Cole pinstriped shirt, and realized I knew him from somewhere. But where? Quickly, my brain flicked through Walla Walla experiences like a coke addict with a Fischer-Price Viewmaster. Not the pharmacy. Not my outpatient knee surgery. Not the coffee shop. Not a winery. Not the Bi-Mart. Who was this guy?

They were finishing up their conversation about her prognosis. I stood out in the hall, too focused on placing him than eavesdropping, although the tone they shared indicated that things were better than expected. It occurred to me that I had shared something vaguely intimate with him—which was weird, of course, given the whole married to Susanne thing. I asked her if she remembered him from anywhere, and she shook her head in that way she has when she realizes, again, that I am something of a loon. I would just have to put my sudden fascination aside and think about it later.

He acknowledged us on his way out the door and I gave him one last stare, begging my synapses to at least pretend to give a crap that they were in my brain for my benefit, not theirs. My synapses, absences of material that they are, scoffed at me. Screw those uppity dendrites, they synapted at me. My dendrites, meanwhile, just shrugged as if none of this brain communication was their responsibility.

We sat down and she smiled at us, firecracker that she is. A long red scar ran the width of her neck and I had a memory I’d forgotten previously of when I’d had a very swollen underchin after falling off my bike when I was 7. So apparently something was going on upstairs in my head after all.

She looked at me and said, gravelly voiced, “I’ve been telling everyone about what you said to me 6 weeks ago. You told me I could handle anything.”

Okay, that’s how I remember it. What I had actually said, which our friend recalled as well, was that I’d said, “Mary, you could be a conjoined twin and you would handle it just fine. You could handle anything.”

“I do believe in serendipity,” she said, looking at me intensely. “You said the right words to me at the perfect moment, so thank you.”

Jeez, I was just blathering on, but I was glad she found such meaning in them. I blinked back tears.

Ever the talker, she started launching into various thoughts and opinions, and Susanne and I tried to fill in the space between her words with our own, so she wouldn’t tire herself out. But a couple of days in the CICU, and the old professor wanted to make up for lost time. She wanted to know, it seemed, everything that had happened on the face of the planet in the last 48 hours. To me, things seemed pretty stuck—health care still being bandied about in Washington, Tiger groping for some relief from his PR nightmare—

“Oh, I know! What was he thinking? Can you even believe it?”

“Well,” I said, adding my only “news” about the event to the conversation, “I read that his wife has adjusted the prenup agreement.”

“She’s a smart one,” Mary said, “good for her!”

We devolved into a conversation about reality television and the stars who populate its universe, and Mary mentioned the White House party crashers. Oh good, I thought, I can tell her my stories about their vineyard so she won’t have to talk. I told her my stories, speaking more quickly than I usually do because I was afraid she’d jump in and start chattering. Even Susanne cut me off a couple of times, lest a nanosecond of silence inspire her to start talking.

“I wonder if there isn’t a hierarchy of reality tv personalities,” I mused.

“How do you mean,” asked Mary.

I explained. At the top are the celebrities who have deigned to be the host of some reality show, probably a competition of some kind. You’ve got your reality tv stars, people who at any given moment, are the rage of some show or other. Then you have the reality tv stars of lesser-watched shows, or spin-off shows. Then there are the has beens whose moment has passed recently, and on their heels, the ones who were like, on The Real World eight years ago. Then there are the reality tv figures who weren’t ever really popular, or who were on awful, short-lived shows like The Mole. And now we see there are even the rejects from the reality television world, like the balloon boy parents or the White House party crashers. So it goes something like:

Heidi Klum (Project Runway), Padma (Top Chef)

Jeff Lewis (Flipping Out) Stacy London (What Not to Wear)

Lauri Waring (Real Housewives of Orange County)

Danielle Staub (Real Housewives of New Jersey)

John Gosselin (Jon and Kate Plus Eight)

Diane Ogden (Survivor, season 3)

Valerie Penso (Temptation Island)

Balloon Boy parents

And all of these are still above someone like Brian Bonsall, former child actor who got arrested yet again last week, although I’m not sure I can articulate why.

“I think there’s a study in there somewhere,” Mary said, and we laughed.

All throughout our discussion she kept touching the lower half of her face, presumably to see if it was still attached. It does give one the illusion that one’s head is much, much larger than it is when you can only feel it from the outside and not from within itself. I knew we’d tired her out, so we made our departure, leaving her with a copy of my memoir, since we’d heard she had exhausted her reading material. She nearly yanked it out of my hands, so I’m looking forward to her comments.

I drifted off to sleep that night and realized I’d gone to see that doctor when my hearing was getting bad, about 8 weeks ago. He’d found some ear wax stuck against my eardrum, and had sucked it out with the smallest vacuum tube I’d ever seen.

I’d call that vaguely intimate.

December 10, 2009 | 3 Comments

The Walla Walla Macy’s Festival of Light, or, It’s a Small Town, It Doesn’t Need But One Light

Walla Walla trolleyLast year Susanne and I went to observe the local Holiday parade—oh heck, it’s Walla Walla, we don’t need to pretend to be PC. Or rather, calling it a “holiday parade” is really a misnomer, because in fact it’s a Christmas parade. Yes, Christmas. As in, not Kwanzaa, not solstice, not any of the Jewish High Holidays, and certainly, most definitely, how could you even suggest it, anything Arabic. Last year, at least, the floats were about two thirds Christian church groups and denominations, one third the Elks Club and dog rescues. So for those of you doing the math, yes, there were six floats. Okay, there were a few more, but the whole event was over in 10 minutes. And each float was really intense, with lots of waving, small children—the one who got my “Best Waver” award was tween girl who gesticulated somewhere between Queen Elizabeth II and Maddona’s “strike a pose” vogue choreography. Seriously, the girl had it down. This year there were more floats, no MiniCooper brigade, although there were a slew of 60s and 70s-era muscle cars, lots more church groups, and a few fire trucks decked out in white lights, with Santa atop the ladder, which was pretty freaking cool, if you ask me. I was on a ladder truck once. I was 4, with my preschool class, and it was so exciting I nearly peed all over the vehicle. Something about a red, plastic firefighter’s helmet was just too much for me. Maybe that’s why I went into computers.

Anyway, there’s nothing really wrong with church groups per se, just that one gets  a little tired, whilst standing on the sidewalk in the 6pm pitch darkness, fending off folks who are walking with the floats and handing out scripture, lest one’s soul take a detour to that fire and brimstone place at the end of one’s life. That’s presumptive. To my mind, if I am interested in your church, I’ll check it out all on my own. My grandmother moved a lot with her farmer/carpenter husband, and she practically interviewed the pastors of competing churches in each new town to see which one would best reflect her family’s viewpoint. Obviously not a shrinking violet, my grandmother, and I want to applaud her initiative to basically make churches compete against each other. I’d like to see a sack race, actually, with a Ryrie Study Bible at the goal line, maybe.

But really, it’s just a little too exclusionary for me. People should feel excitement to see a town’s parade, not feel alienated by it. I’m sure it’s not their intention; it’s just a reflection of the fact that for 36,000 residents, Walla Walla has a lot of churches. DC certainly had its houses of prayer as well—drive down 16th Street NW into Maryland (which is also the President’s ground escape route, by the way) and you will count more than 25 churches and synagogues, as well as other buildings for less mainstream-in-America faiths, like Baha’i, Buddhism, and Hinduism. In Walla Walla, a small group of Quakers meets in the faculty lounge of a Whitman College building because there aren’t enough of them to warrant building a Friend’s House. There is a synagogue on Alder Street, at which I’ve never seen a person coming or going. Maybe the congregants take secret tunnels in and out of it.

My intention isn’t to gripe about Christians. I was raised Catholic (I can hear the booing and hissing), and it imparted a lot of valuable lessons and beliefs I hold dear to this day. Don’t break your chalk in anger. Always put the period inside the quote marks, always, always, ALWAYS. No talking during announcements. You will never know everything, so don’t even try. Turn the other cheek, always, always, always. The good in life that you do counts, so do some good, you rug rat. Forgive the sinner, hate the sin.

This last life lesson was highlighted my senior year of parochial high school, in religion class. Religion class for seniors was all about how to have “The Catholic Marriage,” which, now that I think of it, was also a bit presumptive, if not at least unintentionally pressuring us to get married right away. We were mostly 17, after all. At any rate, our teacher, Sister Doretta, who I gather had never actually participated in Catholic Marriage, was leading discussion that spring, which must have been tough. I mean, I felt no need to continue the last month of class—I’d already selected my college and was marking big red Xs on my calendar as a personal countdown to getting to leave New Jersey. So it was only with one ear that I heard her talk about one tiny little paragraph at the end of the workbook (don’t even ask what our workbook practices were about) on homosexuality. And then she had my attention, because the official stance didn’t make sense to me.

17-year-old Me: Wait a minute, Sr. Doretta. It’s not being gay, it’s the behavior the Church opposes?

Sr. Doretta: Yes, exactly.

17YOM: Okay, okay. So you can be gay, you just can’t do anything?

Sr. Doretta: Well, right. It’s the sin, not the person.

17YOM: Wait, wait, wait. They could be gay, as long as they’re celibate?

Sr. Doretta: (sounding exasperated) Yes, child.

17YOM: Well, then they might as well be clergy!

Out of the mouths of babes. I wonder what she told the other sisters in the nunnery at supper that night.

Sr. Doretta: So this smart ass in class today figured out that gay people can be clergy.

Sr. Barbara: (finishing a sip of water from a crystalline challis) Oh, dear.

Sr. Cornelius: Let me guess. (chews slowly) The Maroon kid.

Sr. Doretta: You are a wise woman, Sister Cornelius.

Sr. Cornelius: (cutting into her roast lamb) Please. I’ve got that character for homeroom. Always talking during announcements.

If there were a float of nuns at the Walla Walla parade, I’d have to burst into laughter. Maybe I just like my religious figures to come with a jaundiced eye, instead of a 4-color, glossy cardstock notice that I too could be a fervent follower of Christ. Maybe I prefer being a fatass follower instead. Maybe, just maybe, I think my work for the Lord is by making sure I witness to everyone that they should always always always put the period inside the quote marks.

As it is, I’m glad people can be spiritual however they want, as long as they respect my ability to do that as well. As for the Walla Walla Christmas parade, I greatly enjoyed the guy riding his snowmobile on skateboards, and the grandfather who pulled his granddaughter behind his tractor that had so recently been used for field work that it left little bits of wheat behind in the street.

I was a bit concerned for the people who kept dashing across the street, looking for a better view, but I quickly realized they were more than capable of clearing the road before the vehicles traveling 8 miles an hour got anywhere near them. Every so often someone driving a pickup truck would get to the end of a side street, totally befuddled that there was some kind of event going on, and then you could see a light appear over their head as they realized that they had in fact, driven around a detour sign. So that’s what that orange thing was, they’d appear to think, scratching their heads.

The parade this year was much longer, and we were chilled to the bone by the end of it, having only moved enough to keep up with the bystanders who insisted on creeping into the road. These people needed the New York City police barricades, lest they begin attacking the parade floats like joyous zombies. If the parade had gone on much longer the trucks would have only had about 4 feet of street left, the rate we were all crouching in on them.

We walked back home, our legs frozen but still willing to ambulate so that we could reach warmth. Susanne poured a few chocolate martinis and I drew a fire, and I realized I am a fervent follower of Holidays. What a nice distraction from awful weather.

December 4, 2009 | 3 Comments

You get what you get and you love it

Susanne and I got some pretty bad news last night about a colleague of hers who is ill. She’d been having a sore throat for a few weeks, and went to see her doctor. Out here in Walla Walla there seem to be something like 3.8 doctors for every regular person, so perhaps she could have just passed one on the way to the actual medical center, but they don’t exactly walk around with floating neon signs over their heads proclaiming “Random Health Care Service Here, Cheap.” In fact, thinking about it, that was one of the things that still makes me mad about all that time spent watching Electric Company—I never would get to make orange letters appear over my head as I pronounced words. Such false advertising.

So the doctor sent her to an ear, nose, and throat doctor, who sent her to an oncologist, who scheduled a surgery for next week. I don’t know a heck of a lot about cancer, but I do know that when a relative of mine came down with prostate cancer, the physician said it was okay to wait a few months so he could finish a project. This is not that kind of scenario.

A couple of months ago this lady and I were at a potluck dinner of Susanne’s colleagues, so for the non-faculty such as myself, it’s a little bit of navigating around insider gossip and attempting to bring the conversation away from academics to something more average, without looking like an anti-intellectual Neanderthal. Happily, she and I landed on the topic of Flipping Out, the Bravo reality show about a Califnornia designer with OCD-like perfectionism. He’s nearly impossible to work for, likes his employees to be attractive and subservient, but he has a strong ribbon of compassion that ensures his humanness. It’s also fun to watch the people around him learn how to manage him, and then one realizes that while unorthodox, these are still mutually beneficial relationships with a big dash of absurd just to round out the interpersonal interest.

It’s hard to describe, but this connoisseur of garbage television is Grandmother Incarnate. If you were to take grandmothers everywhere and exaggerate them—warbly voice, prone to high highs and grumbly lows, include the dottiness that comes with no longer giving a shit what anyone thinks of you, and throw in some excessive levels of energy, you’d have her, all in a 4-foot, 10-inch frame. This woman stands on the desks in the front of her classrooms to give lectures. And is not afraid to dance to get her point across.

She was dismayed about Jeff Lewis, who had found out, in the course of this last season, that his best friend of many years had stolen construction/design work from him and denied it, vehemently. So over dinner conversation she remarked to me, her decibel range approximating that of 20 3-year-olds who’ve just had some good measure of processed sugar:

“Oh, I just can’t believe what happened to that poor Jeff Lewis! It’s so sad!” This was pronounced a bit more flaccidly, like this:

“OOOOOOOOh, oi just can’t beLEEEVE what HAAppened to that POOOOOOR Jeffff LOOOOis! It’s SOOOOO SAD!”

We agreed that we needed to catch up later after the reunion show, which is how Bravo ekes out a few more bucks in revenue without actually having a full camera crew, as one interviewer, who seems to have been trained at the Entertainment Tonight School of Broadcasting, talks to everyone who appeared in the previous season. Or at least the ones who were contractually bound to appear.

That conversation tabled, we moved on to other discussion points, and somehow it came up that I’d once been a patient at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia when I was, obviously, a child. Actually, I was 16. It was January, 1987. I was there for a neurological issue (yes, I’ve heard all the jokes), missing my junior year midterms as I spent a week recuperating. On the floor with me were two conjoined twins, later made famous on TLC, attached at the tops of their heads. One was significantly larger than the other, but they were both playing chess against each other, over by the nurses’s station, so being different sizes didn’t seem to intellectually advantage one over the other. Unless, I guess, someone was throwing a lot of games. If I had to spend every waking moment with another person I might do something like that.

Anyway, I’d had an IV for a few days to contend with, and I got sick of dragging it around every time I left the bed. One evening my Dad and I were taking a walk around the floor, shortly after the IV had come out. He asked me how I was doing. We passed the twins.

“At least I’m not attached to anything,” I said, to my own horror as I thought about the context. He patted my shoulder to suggest I wasn’t going to hell for my faux pas. “I wonder if they get along,” he said.

According to TLC, they get along great.

I’m not sure why this story came up during dinner with this older colleague, but my point about it at the time was that you know, everyone has something to contend with, and you just decide you have to handle it and get through it. I could be attached at the head to a smaller me who has to keep dealing with my twin’s annoying Reti opening on a daily basis. Or I could be in a small town, unable to sort through what to make of myself here, absent old friends and sans any kind of substantial income potential. As my niece said when she was 4, one disappointing Christmas, “You get what you get and you love it.” Young and innocent aside, she was explaining why her older sister should not covet the wood puzzle not given to her, so she wasn’t exactly free of ulterior motives. But whatever, it’s still a good line.

When the doctor gave her a diagnosis and course of treatment, she started thinking about our conversation, apparently, and has taken the “you just handle it” as a mantra. It seems that I should write a card for her, tell her something funny, since she appreciates a belly laugh and is such a tiny fireball of humor. I wish I could make cancer funny, but I’m failing. I find a lot of things funny—doctors and hospitals, for sure. Human bodies are funny; how else to explain ear wax and tongue structure? Not uh, not ear wax and tongue structure at the same time, of course. Just in general.

But there’s something about cancer that is just plain harrowing. Cells out of control, cells on a rampage with a maniacal streak toward body domination. Something as tiny as the nail on my little finger can throw any of my organs into shock enough that they stop working, abjectly relinquishing their duties to filter my blood, or let my brain know where my limbs are in space, or decide that it’s not necessary enough for me to smell the food on the plate in front of me. I hate the very idea of cancer—that my own body can decide to self-destruct. So I hate knowing that it’s so unbearably common.

I didn’t feel this way about the diseases I’ve encountered. I’ve made jokes about having all of them; the epilepsy (anyone need a milkshake?), the lazy eye I’ve attempted to repair seven times now, and so on. Perhaps when they happen to me I feel free to find the humorous stuff. When they happen to someone else I just want to go all Braveheart on them, even if Mel is an anti-semitic drunkard. I still want to get my Scottish rage out.

So I am working on something funny, something card-sized, something that she can hang her hat on, that I can pass to her with a warm meal for her after-surgery dining needs. If I’m open to what’s funny, maybe it’ll hit me. But not hit me hard.

← Older posts
Newer posts →