Ellipsis

Reefer Not So Madness

If my son Zimmerman ever reads my blog, he'll never again listen to me when I tell him to "say no to drugs" or "do the right thing" because the truth of the matter is that I admire his rebellious streak, something I never had, which still haunts me 40 odd years after high school ended (the operative term being "odd").  He recently wanted to get a tattoo - and although I personally could never bring myself to do it - because my mother thought they were "unladylike" - I often regret the fact that I never rebelled against anything.  What was so great about the straight and narrow anyway?  My life was certainly neither in present times.  If I had been wilder then - would I perhaps be more "settled" now? Am I still waiting to do something so wild that I can't talk about it for another 40 years? I'd like to think so, but part of me wonders if that ship has sailed - or sunk - or if there are waters still to be navigated.

Recently, Zim and his friends were picked up for "loitering" behind a convenience store. Beer was present - a 12 pack among 15 of them. Truth be told - when the incident was reported - my first thought was "15 kids...a 12-pack of beer...you're kidding, right?"  But we live in a small town, so it was a big deal for a few minutes.  Thankfully, they didn't get in any real trouble - just had to endure a slap on the wrist and a lecture from the police.  Of course, I was beside myself and had no idea what to say to him or how long he should be grounded or what might happen. He got a lecture from his father about "doing the right thing" - but truth be told - at his age, his father was having secret parties in the house with his siblings.  "We used to find wine corks everywhere," I remember his parents saying as they reflected on raising 5 kids.

But it was different with Zim - he was living with a single working mother - so his friends knew the house was going to be empty most afternoons.  Were they shooting up in my living room?  Was there drug trafficking?  Was he going to grow up to be a hardened criminal?  Was he going to end up in a 12-step program? Worse of all - was I failing him as a mother because I wasn't home to properly supervise him?  Was he going to start (gasp!) smoking pot - and then selling the silverware to make money to support his habit? Or did I just watch Reefer Madness too many times? 

Patrick, a father of 3, is often my sounding board for these types of questions. Although he's the consummate family man, a Republican and possibly a member of the CIA, other than having a harem of nubile high school beauties surrounding him at all times, he looked far too angelic in high school to have ever gotten into any real scrapes.  However, according to him, he and his friends had some wild times.

So, in a panic, I told him what happened with Zim and asked what I should do. He told me that I was overreacting - and shared stories of the times that he and his group found creative ways to dodge police (who were unable to outrun them). This is far too extensive for me to recount; watch for his blog regarding same (names changed to protect the guilty).

Then he said "What he's doing is perfectly normal for a kid his age...but hide the silverware just to be sure."

He wasn't of any help to me, because I couldn't tell if he was joking, but Zim was off the hook to some degree.

"OK, " I said, "I talked to a friend of mine from high school about what happened...he said he and his friends did that when they were your age...and he never served time on Rikers ....so I guess I shouldn't make a big deal out of it - but don't ever do it again."

I was so calm that I think he thought I had dipped into a secret stash of something - but if there was one - I didn't know about it (nor did I want to).

Last week, at a high school mini-reunion, Janine regaled us with stories about wild times she had "back in the day" - like the time she and her friend brought hash brownies to a classmate in the hospital. Others brought up incidents about throwing empty beer cans at cops whom they dodged at athletic fields and about getting school custodians to buy booze for them by offering to share it with him.

I was so wishing I could remember something scandalous to share with them. But there was nothing. I was squeaky clean back then. What was I thinking? Why didn't I experiment? What was wrong with me? I let my youth pass me by...I could have been Natalie Wood in Rebel with a Cause but I was Snow White sans the dwarfs...

"Damn," I said, "maybe I should do it all now...it's never too late!"  I rifled through my cabinets and found a box of Funfetti cake mix.  "Now all I need to do is contact Chef Janice for an Alice B. Toklas recipe," I thought, "she has more than 40,000 recipes - she must have one I can use..."

Then - Zimmerman texted me.

"I'm on my way home from dad's," he wrote.

Of course, I knew immediately that it was a sign from the universe telling me "NO! Don't do it!"

"Well," I thought, "At least  I drink martinis."  And have at least two a week...preferably Grey Goose (with a twist) or dirty (with 3 olives).

However, the last time I had one - I dropped the glass after three sips and it shattered into a million pieces.  That technically could have been another sign...but one that I'm currently choosing to ignore. (Horray for vodka).

 

Life Over Easy (With a Side of Burned Bacon)

Ah...life in the virtual world.  There's a name for the inadequacy, angst and ennui one feels when reading about other peoples' perfect lives. A seemingly innocuous comment like "I didn't know which of my three homes to stay in this weekend" can sometimes set the wheels in motion for a round of self-loathing...self doubt...or unbridled envy.

"How can that mook possibly have three homes?," one might think, "while I'm here playing Farmville and wondering if I should refinance this termite-riddled abode as my inert, drooling spousal unit is planted in front of the television set watching 'Anne of Green Gables' and eating spray cheese?"

I'm a strong advocate of social networking - but know all too well that it's a slippery slope.  In "real life" -during the course of any normal friendship-slash-interaction - there are ups and downs - but it's somehow different in the virtual world.  Status updates hang in mid-air waiting without the benefit of facial expressions or intonation so that everything does - as Paul Simon wrote - look worse in black and white.

So, when a high school friend posted status updates about his family vacation,  at first I couldn't help wondering why he would possibly think it was interesting to anyone that his wife bought him a blueberry muffin.  Then - I thought it was a hokey beyond measure when he put it out there to the world (or at least his merry band of followers) that he was going to make eggs for her for breakfast just because she made the sacrifice of buying his pastry of choice instead of the one she really wanted.

Then I  couldn't get the story out of my mind - I tried to get out - and it pulled me back in....I found myself getting progressively more agitated.  Not because of his "so sweet I got a cavity" homage to the apparently wonderful woman who has high maintenance breakfast requirements which he - after three decades of connubial bliss - has managed to memorized - but because if I died tomorrow I knew that no one would know how I liked my eggs. 

Was it my fault - was I too much a free spirit? Was I raising the bar too high? Did I askew intimacy because I was too damn independent and afraid to let my guard down?

"You had three men marry you," my friend said in response to my rant about not being memorable enough, "and you left them all.  It's not them - it's you - you are commitment phobic."

I hotly debated this point, "You're wrong! I believe in true and everlasting love! I believe in passion that lasts a lifetime! I believe in soul mates and twin stars...and people completing each other...I'd rather spend eternity alone than be trapped in a loveless marriage...another bored, neutralized woman ravaged by the compromise of time..."

"Now I get it," she said, "You need a booty call."

Clearly she didn't understand. No one understood.  Who could? Who would? Oh the pain! It wasn't male attention I was craving...it wasn't even poached eggs (on a burned dry English muffin with orange marmalade, burned bacon and hot sauce).  It was to be part of something...to be enduring...not an echo that the wind left unreconciled...

Just as I was walking towards "the ledge" - this time for real - as I was writing my suicide note - suddenly the phone rang.  It was Peggy.

"We're ordering food from the diner," she said, "Come on over..."

In the background, I heard her son doing his interpretation of me at my most dramatic  "Get hot sauce and extra napkins," he said.

"Was that Austin?," I asked, "is he making fun of me?"

"Yes," she said, "he's saying if you eat with us - we need extra hot sauce and napkins."

I knew then that I could continue on my path as invisible as it was to me...even if the birds ate the crumbs from the muffins I had left to guide me home... one mistake at a time - interspersed with miracles, laughter, fireworks, highs and lows...and hot sauce.

The Wayshower

Today, I went to Target today to buy vacuum cleaner bags. Of course it was the worst possible day to shop anywhere...the store was mobbed with people preparing for the hurricane.  So as I made my way through the crowds of manic shoppers fighting for the last bottle of Poland Spring, I overheard a fellow shopper (who bore a striking resemblance to the late Tammy Faye Baker) ask one of the red-shirted clerks where she could find sunflower seeds.

"We don't have them," she said.

"Are you sure?," Tammy Faye asked.

"Yes - we don't carry them," the clerk said.

"OK," said Tammy Faye, "you sound very positive about that so I'll take your word for it."

Although I should have minded my own business and continued my personal quest for Type M bags for my Kenmore Magic Blue, I couldn't hold back. 

"Excuse me," I said to the clerk, "you used to carry them - as recently as two weeks ago." Then I faced Tammy Faye.

"Do you want them for your pets?," I asked her, "because I think they have some with the bird seed."

"For my kids," she said.

The clerk said, "No - we don't carry them."

"Yes you do!," I said, emphatically.

By then Tammy Faye had moved on - but this lit a fire under me.  I was - in a word - pissed. Pissed that whenever I complain about poor service in stores, the response is "well - what do you expect? The people who work there only get minimum wage."  Pissed that I was in the store to begin with, when I should have been sunning myself on the South of France or in my imaginery Villa in Tuscany, exchaging trenchant repartee with a group of artists, authors and rulers of small countries.  Or something like that. You get the idea.

So I was not about to leave the store till I found the sunflower seeds.  And less than three minutes later - I hit pay dirt.

In the snack aisle - next to the Planters' Unsalted Peanuts - I found three different types of sunflower seeds...sunflower seeds in shells...sunflower seeds unshelled and salted...and dry-roasted sunflower seeds (unsalted).  Victorious - I grabbed the biggest bag of "in shelled" I could find and made a beeline back to the lazy, bored "I only get minimu wage so I don't care" clerk who had misguided poor Tammy Faye.

"Excuse me," I said, "but you told that other woman who was looking for sunflower seeds that you didn't carry them.  What do these look like?"

Of course she had no idea what I was talking about - she was too busy talking to her co-workers about when they would take their respective breaks. But - undaunted - I was on a mission to prove a point.

"You told that other woman that this store doesn't sell sunflower seeds, and I just found several varieties...how do you explain that?" I said staring her down, haughty and righteous.

"Well," she said, "she probably found them."

"How do you know?," I said, "do you even know what they are? Did you check to see if you had them? Do you care? What if YOU were the one who needed the seeds? Would you want someone to treat you that way?"

It wasn't really a question - it was an accusation - so therefore I didn't wait for her response.  But then, I knew I had to find Tammy Faye...to be sure that my efforts were not in vain.

 Of course, she wasn't easy to locate. In North Jersey, baby girls are given Bedazzlers at birth so there's always a sea of big hair and Cheetah-print spandex on display.

Finally - when I was about to give up - I found her near the automotive supplies.

"Guess what!," I said, "I found sunflower seeds!"

At first she had no idea who I was, but then didn't seem to care. "OH!," she said, "you did! That's great!"  I handed her the bag.

"Well, I really wanted the kind without shells," she said.

So I told her where they were and was filled with a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.

Then I looked at my watch. It was 12:00 - but not because that was the time - because the battery was dead - and while I was busy playing Sunflower Seed Cop and trying to convince a lazy Target representative that she wasn't doing her job - I had wasted valuable time when I could have been getting the battery replaced.  I estimated that the entire episode took up 40 minutes of my life that I'll never get back. And - to add insult to injury - they didn't have the vacuum cleaner bags that I needed.

Although it was tempting to buy a bag of Dipsy Doodles and skulk in my car - I took the high road and left the store with nothing but a few rolls of Brawny paper towels and a copy of a magazine proclaiming that "It's TWINS" for Jennifer Anniston.

"Jeez," I thought, "whose more pathetic - the clerk in Target who doesn't do her job or someone who makes righting the wrongs of Big Box Bargain Store employees a raison d'etre?"

Before I could answer that question - or drive myself crazy contemplating what it all meant - my friend Juliette, a traveling professor of feng shui, called me.

 "Your friend Marla is coming to my retreat!," she said, "thanks for telling her about it - you're what I call a wayshower!"

She couldn't have called at a better time.... I was instantly vindicated and elevated from the position of "nosey interloper who goes around offering unsolicited guidance and advice". 

My joy was short-lived however... I realized I still didn't have the vacuum cleaner bags I needed.  But at least I had the chance to bone up on Jennifer Anniston's life, knowing that somewhere in the Northern NJ suburbs, Tammy Faye's happy brood was eating sunflower seeds in total bliss.  If only I had bought the Dipsy Doodles... 

Collecting Residuals

Patrick, a contrarian, recently expressed to me his annoyance about the cumbersome and time-consuming task of opening emails, and how many items of the in-box were summarily deleted unopened. He's often an inscrutable man who expresses himself in few words - specifically "Ummm", "Hmmmm" and "Ugh."

"First there are the political emails," he said, "I ignore them.  Then the jokes - some of them are pretty good - I forward them - did you get any?

Then the offers for car deals. Then - male enhancement drug advertisements. I check to be sure they're not from anyone I know - but how could they be?  Male enhancement? Me?  Ridiculous.  So I then delete them - a lot of them contain hidden viruses."

He continued, "Then I get Bible stuff - and 50 updates a day from my high school alumni group chat room.  So I delete those and read them when I'm in the actual chat room. Then I'm done.  Sometimes it takes me days to get to the real email that I have to answer....or sometimes I miss important emails.  Last week someone sent me a suicide note.  I'm hoping he's still alive. It ended up in "Spam." I was thinking of calling him but it might be too late..."

Of course he was mostly joking and being hyperbolic (hopefully at least about the suicide note) and making a point, but he unwittingly hit on something that we've all worried about since the explosion of social media: what is the right way to reach out to someone if you're in trouble?

I've recently been told that ranting on the Facebook Wall - which I do regularly - is not a good way to express angst.  "You post WAY too much," the Queen of Social media recently told me "people are going to start hiding you."

I told this helpful person that her suggestion - though well-taken - didn't phase me at first, as I considered posting like graffiti...you put in on the wall and don't really expect anyone to read it - and if they do - you hope they get a laugh out of it.  However, as I usually think too much, the mulling over phase started - which led to full-tilt social media anxiety.

It's more than worrying about appearing unstable; most of my FB friends know me from "real life" and understand that "out there" is sometimes where I dwell, and that the posts are a form of "performance art" or self-expression.

Nonetheless, I vowed to listen to her and try one or two social network free days  per week - to have only real relationships with people I talk to face-to-face. To use the telephone and not the walls of virtual reality to connect.  To cry into my pillow and not into a status update. And - most of all - to obsess over life's fluctuating ups and downs privately, so that the mini-storms are ridden out in a less public forum that won't someday come back to bite me in the arm.  Or the ass.  Here, I can say "Ass" with no fear of being villified.  Hallelujah.  Maybe there's something to the non-Facebook theory.

But then I foolishly started paging through old high school yearbooks, with Patrick.  It's fun to look back at the pages of a book you don't remember owning, let alone whose photos grace its pages.  When doing with Patrick, it's a veritable Pandora's Box; opening it can unearth old insecurities and long-buried feelings of longing, wistfulness and unrequited adolescent love.  And some happy memories.

"Hmmmmmm," he said, when falling upon a lovely Italian beauty captured forever in her teen-aged splendor.  "We went on a ski trip together...I got to kiss her...only once..."

"But your dream is still collecting residuals?," I asked.

"Hmmmm," he responded.

"Ugh," I thought, "Men are retarded."

Then I found a picture of a boy who had inspired six poems during my senior year.

"Hmmm," I thought, "too bad I never kissed him..."

"Yes," he agreed, "the residuals...hmmmmm."

"Ugh," I thought.