An A-B convo. CYOur way out.
When I hit CNN Center yesterday evening to grab coffee for a co-worker and myself, there were -- I kid you not -- like 14,000 Catholic Youth Organization members in attendance at some convention in ATL. And they were all hungry. So during my 47-minute wait to spend 8.2 seconds ordering and paying for two coffees, I amused myself by watching the teenaged future standard-bearers of my religion walk around in hypercolor tie-dyed t-shirts, ratty jeans and those ridiculous-looking Dr. Seuss Cat-In-The-Hat stovepipe toppers. It was Catholicpalooza, but with everyone moshing for Mary.
Seriously, though, it was pretty cool to be in the company of so many young Catholics from all kinds of different places. Because if you live here in the South and you're Catholic, you're way outnumbered. Should that matter? No. Does it? I think so, sometimes.
At my high school, the total Catholic representation in my class was... me. And one other girl. Our classmates? Pretty much all Baptists and I swear they all attended the same church, headed up by the father of one of the most popular girls in school. She was generally nice and we got along OK. Then, one morning in homeroom senior year when she was apparently tired of talking to her real friends, she asked me "So, like, what do you Catholics, like, DO at your church?" Worship... God?, I said slowly, wondering where this could possibly be going. And then she hits me with the Two part of this One-Two punch she'd started:
"Like... do y'all believe in JESUS? Are y'all CHRISTIANS?"
Well, seeing as how one of Catholicism's principal tenets is that the "Church is truly, though of course not physically, the Body of Christ, made up of members both on earth and in heaven," (thanks Wikipedia!) yeah -- I'd say so. I just kind of sat there so stunned at the question that I couldn't answer right away. Because no one had ever asked me that and it never occurred to me that anyone would.
She kind of tilted her head to the side, like teachers do when they think they've busted you in front of the whole class for not having cracked a book all quarter. I remember she had this smarmy little thin-lipped smirk going. And her friends in homeroom who went to her church were all hanging around by then, waiting for my answer. How often do you get to put a possible pagan on the spot before first period Calculus? Fun, fun. I think I managed this kind of weak "Yeah" that did no favors for a religion then nearing 2000 years old.
"Reeeeally. I mean, like, I thought so but I didn't know." She didn't know. And her dad was a minister. YOU Catholics. YOUR church. Are YOU Christians? I felt strange and isolated at that moment, just for being the one person in homeroom who didn't go to her dad's church or one like it. WE were different, weird, wrong.
This weekend there are a ton of "our" kids in town. And they all seem nice enough, even if their fashion sense is a little stuck in the pre-"Friends" early '90s era. For 47 minutes last night, I got the feeling that the Church will be OK in this generation's hands, the hands that weren't pointing fingers in a smarmy "Us vs. You" manner but were text-messaging friends not here in Atlanta -- friends who may or may not be Catholic, who may or may not believe in Jesus, but who were nevertheless interested in the real spiritual mysteries of life: like why anyone still wears those goofy-looking Dr. Seuss hats in public.
Note: I moved this from my xanga blog since anything I post there that's remotely deep gets ignored.
Happy Jack
Tomorrow, I'll fashion this year's pumpkin into something that will bring as many excited little kids as possible to my door October 31. Because a well-carved jack-o-lantern in front of your house is a universal sign welcoming trick-or-treaters, inviting them to visit you in their ghoulish garb for candy and maybe a little conversation.
Strange, isn't it, that we have to hide behind masks and costumes in order to feel at ease going from door to door in our own neighborhoods, finally meeting the people down the street that we should already know but don't? Halloween fosters the greatest sense of community on a public scale in America and yet, from the outward look of it, appears one of the most bizarre nights of the year.
And so my jack-o-lantern will sport a happy smile, a flickering candle within his heart lighting the dark night with a warm glow that whispers to all who wander by "Welcome... Welcome..."
That bike
That bike was just lying there yesterday morning in the dewy green grass on the park's edge, right by the side of the busy street. I don't know how long it had been there but something about the way it was lying there -- as if it had been dropped suddenly, like if you were startled or fell -- disturbed me.
Maybe I read too much into things. OK, I know I read too much into things. That's why I couldn't just drive past it again. My street is to the right of the park. But I turned left.
Cruising slowly by the park, I looked for that bike's owner -- some kid, probably? There was no one in the park. And it was around 10 a.m. so any kid in the park should be in school, anyway. Everything there was still, green and quiet. The swings didn't move.
Kids don't just drop their bikes next to busy roads. Bikes are the only wheels kids have; they don't just ditch them wherever. That bike shouldn't be there. That bike means something happened to some kid in order for some kid to leave it. That bike bothers me.
That bike isn't lying in the grass at the park anymore. I don't know what to think.
Maybe I read too much into things.
You missed it
Everyone missed it except me.
My down the street neighbor who chased the kid missed it. The mom missed it. By the time the policeman rolled up leisurely in his patrol car, he'd missed it.
Let me correct myself here. Everyone missed it except me -- and the two people right in it.
The thing is, when something like that happens you're almost too stunned to act. It's like you have a feeling that things are heading south -- you don't really know why, exactly -- and you try to go about your business like you're wrong, that you're just imagining things even though later you realize that some of the signs were right there in front of you.
Maybe, unconsciously, you didn't want to get involved in the first place. You didn't want to notice anything out of the ordinary.
But it happened and you saw it. You weren't looking for it. You weren't rubbernecking at the build-up because when was there time for any build-up? It happened so fast and still to this day you remember every minute of it like you were seeing it for that horrible first time, the time you didn't believe -- almost couldn't believe -- what you were seeing. Because things like that don't happen where you live, right? You know that it happens but it happens where you can't see it. You may see the results; you don't see the awful cause.
And when you see it going on you know it's all happening so quickly but those movies we see aren't lying. It's like time slows down in your mind. Because your mind is trying to make sense of the bizarre. It's burned there, forever. You don't always think about it but occasionally it comes back to you for whatever reason and you remember how it felt to be in the moment back then, unsure of what to do but knowing you had to do something.
You don't expect to see the teenage girl down the street and her boyfriend strolling along hand in hand, talking, and by the time you get in your house and turn around to look out your screen door, see that boy raise his fist high above his head and lay a crushing hammer blow on the side of that girl's face.
You don't expect to see him then chase her across your street, up your neighbor's yard where she falls down and he kicks her while he calls her every combination of "f***ing b**ch" and *g**damn whore" he can think of.
You don't expect to see her crying and screaming hysterically as he runs away.
You don't expect to find the phone pressed tightly against your ear, listening as the 911 operator tells you as calmly as she's been trained that yes, you should go outside to make sure she's okay but to make absolutely sure that he's gone before you do it so that you don't get hurt.
You don't expect to find yourself across the street, hugging this girl you knew as a little kid but now only know as a troubled teenager while she continues weeping hysterically, screaming "He's going to kill me! He's going to kill me!"
You don't expect to hear yourself telling her that no, he isn't, and that it's going to be okay.
You don't expect her to calm down eventually, then argue with her mother once mom gets there and lays into her for seeing this boy. You really don't expect mom to rip into you for calling the police, but she does.
You don't expect the girl to get up and walk away in the opposite direction from where her boyfriend ran off. You don't expect mom to apologize to you, but she does. You expect mom to go after her daughter, but she doesn't.
You don't expect the lackadaisical attitude the policeman appears to have about the whole thing once he finally gets there -- late.
You never expected to be the only person left sitting there in your neighbor's yard, across the street from your house, a half-hour after you got home from college, amazed at what you just saw happen right in your neighborhood to someone who lives down the street from you, wondering why no one else seemed to give a damn -- not even the girl.
You never expected, after all these years, to still care enough to write something down about that strange afternoon.
But you did.
Itemizations, returns & exchanges
Every so often, I take stock of myself and try to figure out what I like about me and what I would like to change. I've been doing that lately and I'm not happy with the results. There's more that I think needs fixing than needs keeping.
• I'm generous and that's a great quality. But I need to spend my money more wisely, which will take some work.
• I'm willing to make sacrifices for others. This would go better, however, if I didn't feel as resentful about it as I have lately. I definitely don't like this in myself.
• My friends are wonderful people and I love them. I'm not always as nice to them as I should be or I don't see them as often as I should. I'd like to exchange me out for a better friend to my friends.
• I'm intelligent, literate, deep thinking even. Yet lately, I've become this snarky jokester who rarely picks up a book anymore. I miss the old me, who liked to discuss wide varieties of topics seriously, and with real insight and thoughtfulness, instead of just making snippy quips about them.
• I enjoy challenges. Now I look forward to avoiding them. I need to get past that.
I'm looking at everything I just wrote and hoping that I will find whatever it is that I need to draw on within myself to work -- really work -- at making these changes so that I can be a better me. But I know that the odds are the more I want these things to change, the more many if not all of them will stay the same.
This year's list and last year's list look a lot alike.
Group thinking
While it may come as a surprise to anyone who knows me now, I really do have good friends who absolutely love me. Some of you are probably thinking "Uhhh... Why?" but, snarky as I am now, I was actually a sweet, kind of innocent kid back in my early college days who did her best to work and play well with others. The snark was always there but it didn't blossom until much, much later.
In high school, I never participated in a single afterschool club or activity. Because I was really shy - socially awkward, even. I didn't have many high school friends, except for the kids who lived in my neighborhood. My friends were older - the people I worked with at the mall, Cinnamon and her then-boyfriend - both in college, my older cousins who had all already graduated from high school or college. So I didn't relate to most of the kids at school. I just passed through the hallways, invisible and not caring. But not really happy, either.
But at GSU, friends were waiting for me to complete their circle. I'm talking about my friends who are really like a second family to me, my friends who Knew Me When and who have helped shepherd me into being the kind of woman who's worthy of "Aunt" status to their kids now, my friends who I would do anything for and who would - and have - been right there for me when I really needed them.
I've been blessed to be a member of The Group.
Can I tell you how we came to be known, amongst ourselves, as The Group? Not really. From 1995-98, we saw each other all the time, usually up at Thom and Vanessa's bungalow, for get-togethers involving good friends, great conversation and always, always excellent wine and food. Rob and Merry and the "singles" -- Julianne, Mark and I -- would tool up there to party on the porch, just hanging out, laughing and talking until it was so late that everyone had to go home and grab some shuteye before getting up for work or, in my case, the college tenure that would never seemingly end. Maybe "The Group" came about because of Vanessa always answering my "So who's going to be there?" party guest questions with "Oh, you know. Just the group." That's got to be it.
The Group. Man, we had so much fun back then when we were going strong. They threw me the best birthdy party I've ever had or, actually, have ever been to. Yes, I said "birthdy" and no, it's not a misprint. Halfway through the fiesta (and the selection of cabernets), Vanessa looked up at the hanging lettered Happy Happy banner she'd bought at Kmart down the street earlier in the day and just laughed out loud. The banner, in brightly colored capital letters, read HAPPY BIRTHDY. And so ever since then, I don't have birthdays with The Group. I have BIRTHDYS. It was the best birthdy ever. I turned 25.
But people change and move or whatever and splintering happens. Julianne moved back to Michigan and I lost one of my best Group party chatter buddies. Mark got married to someone we tried to accept into The Group (we're all for more members) who had some real problems, with us and within herself. We never see Mark anymore and that's the way it has to be, sadly.
And yet, The Group lives on. The core membership is still there: Thom, Vanessa, Rob, Merry and me. We've got great new members, too - Thom and Vanessa's little boys, Nora (my new party buddy) and her husband Eric, Dave and Pam - party couple du jour, Vanessa's brother John-John and his lovely wife Kim, their sweet baby girls -- the list keeps growing. Thom, Vanessa, Rob and Merry - they love me, for whatever reason. They saw something in me that they knew was special back when everyone else passed me over and for that, I will always love them. Always.
This past Sunday, Vanessa hosted a baby shower for Merry and I wanted to be there but couldn't. I'd left my big bag of baby gifts for Merry and Rob (and Baby Cole) with Vanessa earlier in the week, driving the near-50 miles north of my house to do so. Not being at Merry's shower saddened me. Because Merry and Rob are like family to me and soon Baby Cole will be, too. I get to be an "Aunt" again, which I love. Baby Cole. He's going to be our newest member.
Welcome to The Group. We're glad you'll have us.
Nesting
Looking at a gourd birdhouse hanging in the backyard a couple of winters ago, my then-nine-year-old niece and I were admiring the intricate handiwork the occupants had put into their home. They'd thatched the pine straw into the entry hole with extra care, making sure the cold wind wouldn't get inside. It looked warm and cozy in there.
"I wish I had a nest," my niece said, sadly, as we walked back towards the house.
Me too. My nest would be a comfy little getaway, high up -- as high as I could build it in the tallest tree. It wouldn't necessarily be far away from people but it wouldn't be all that close to everyone, either.
But now it's too late to get started. Autumn takes the safe cover of leaves with it and when winter rolls around, you're exposed and it's cold.
How did our eyes get so red?
Much of my day has been spent putting photos, new and old, into albums and I realized that somehow I've become the documentarian of my family. As far as I know, that is. I never see anyone else whipping out a camera when we're all together, so I guess it's me.
But that's OK. I enjoy snapping candids of us doing family stuff since we're not together that much and, compared to some of my friends and their kin, we're sort of just getting the hang of it after all these years. Don't get me wrong, though; we have plenty of old photos in albums from our family's apparent heyday -- the 1970s -- when my parents were in their 40s, my sister was a swinging twentysomething and Cinnamon and I were kids.
There's a great group of photos telling a summertime story. The whole family is partying at the old house. Why? Because my parents finally traded in our 1973 sky blue Ford Gran Torino station wagon, ("The Old Blue Ghost") that Cinnamon and I tore up with too many spilled Cokes and dropped snacks and fights on trips and lost little toys, in for a shiny new red truck at East Point Chevrolet. And we're all posing with the new toy -- in the truck bed, on the hood, standing by it, whatever. My Aunt Jean and Uncle Randy drove down from Smyrna to see it. Doris Ann from up the street just had to come down and see what all the fuss was about, which meant Tracy tagged along, which meant Cinnamon and I probably tried to hide from her but couldn't because there were too many people around. My sister's former best friend, Donna, was there, being the coolest, hippest '70s chick ever. There's a great shot of them back then, when they still had things in common.
And Aunt Roseanne swung by, too, just over from College Park. We called her "Aunt" Roseanne even though she's really just my mom's best friend. We still do because we love her. She's our aunt like that. Even Marie, Yvonne and Melinda, the three redheaded sisters from down the street, joined the party. My mom took a shot of all of us in the backyard with Cinnamon's shaggy black dog, Muttley. Maybe Tracy wasn't there. She didn't like those girls and Cinnamon told her once that they were our friends and if she didn't like them, SHE could go home.
Most of my photos these days are of my nieces and the vacations we've taken together or the daytrips we've enjoyed at the zoo or up in the North Georgia mountains or from back a few years when they lived up in Iowa and I'd visit. There are pictures, too, that the girls will probably wish I'd never taken when they're teenagers: the famed "Diaper Babies!" shots. Cinnamon and I know these are gold - parental blackmail tools for years to come. The best part is that in most of the snaps, the girls are just being little girls - making weird faces, goofing off, smiling innocently, thinking kid thoughts in quiet moments.
If you put them side by side with the old shots of my niece - their mom - and me back in the '70s, back during that summer afternoon house party that someone in our family had the good sense to document for all time, you see that my nieces are a lot like us. Or actually, that we were once a lot like them.
For a fascinating look at one man's life in pictures, go here and look at everything. And I mean everything. How cool is Miles Hochstein?
Solitary refinement
Other kids in high school hang out at the mall. I couldn't be bothered with anything as normal as that during my teen years. Being misunderstood was much more inviting.
And so while the other girls in my homeroom spent their Mondays comparing how, like, Friday night's haul at The Limited was, you know, totally more rad than, like, Saturday's grab at Merry Go Round and stuff, I slithered into school prepared to start another long, dull week of sunny days spent indoors squinting at blackboards I was starting to have trouble seeing (I didn't know that I needed glasses) and dreading whatever horrors Algebra II was just waiting to spring on me.
There were a couple of reasons I never participated in these Monday morning social bees. One, I worked at the mall and hated the place so I never spent any more time there than was necessary. Two, the idea of hanging out with anyone from my high school outside of class just made me laugh because it was so ludicrous. I didn't like those kids and they didn't like me, either. The only friend I needed back then was my best pal at work, Brandon, who was 19, rode a red Yamaha racing motorcycle way too fast, hung out in late-night clubs, did cooler things than anyone at my high school had ever done or would ever do and went to Georgia State University downtown. That's where I was going to college, too. Because he went there. I loved Brandon. He was The All, my first real older guy crush.
Brandon convinced me that there was nothing really weird about staying in my room, listening to records, something I've always enjoyed. In fact, it was a cool thing to do. Cooler than being like the kids who hung around down the mall at Spencer's, trying to act like they were soooooo bad. No one had ever told me that before. All I heard at school was that kids who weren't seen at the mall, hanging out and spending allowance money on clothes and shoes and lame cassettes by Technotronic and Maxi Priest, were losers -- as were those of us who worked at the mall for minimum wage in order to sell these airheads their coveted clothes, shoes and lame cassettes.
Listening to Brandon talk about what it was like at GSU, I realized that high school was a minor, inconvenient blip on life's big radar. College was where you made your friends, forged your identity, pursued your passions, explored cool stuff, had your fun, where you told people to step off, as Brandon put it. This was where I wanted to be -- no, needed to be.
This afternoon it hit me that I've been out of high school for 15 years now. And I'm glad. There won't be any reunions in my future. Those days are better left in the past and I never wanted to be part of them back then anyway. Besides, when's the last time you heard a Maxi Priest song? And Merry Go Round has been closed for a long, long time.
Rainy day music
"Well, she's kind of pretty
Drives a big car too
and when I hold her in my arms
I never know what to do...As a kid, few things made me happier than going to the grocery store. But that was back in the '70s when I didn't have to pay for anything and got to ride in the shopping buggy. Now that I have to actually make the list, drive to the store, do the shopping, pay for the stuff and haul it into the house, the supermarket has lost whatever allure its bright lights and miles of colorful aisles once had for me. I hate grocery shopping now.
"If she's got everything she needs
what does she need me for?
I'm just a crazy fool
comin' back for more...These days, the only benefit I find while doing the troll stroll for deep discounts is the occasional lost hit of yesteryear that only I seem to remember from what Cinnamon and I like to call That '70s Childhood that's piped in over the store's speaker system, some song that we never heard on my mom's scratchy old AM-only truck radio but something sweet, savvy, rockin' and cool - something magically FM and clear - that drifted out of my sister's car stereo in the summertime when she took us around with her to run errands on those long days that never seemed to end.
"and I know
she's no good
Can't leave her
but I know I should
everybody says watch out boy
she'll break your heart like it was a toy...But it's not the Muzak I remember from days gone by. Until I was 18, we usually shopped on post at Fort McPherson and the Commissary didn't pipe in music. And thank God, because who wants to hear "Reveille" over and over while you're pricing Frosted Flakes? On the odd occasions my mom got lazy and we headed off to A&P, where Cinnamon and I could go wild and ride shopping carts and tear up things and try to act like we, little angels that we were, didn't do it, the piped-in music was that weird, freaky "beautiful music" you only heard (and again, thank God for that) back in the '70s. Or else you'd hear some instrumental by The Ventures, like "Telstar." Try squeezing the Charmin on the sly to that.
"You better Save it for a Rainy Day
You better Save it for a Rainy Day...So today, while I was quietly fuming as I debated the merits of Fab over Cheer, Stephen Bishop's "Save It For A Rainy Day" started playing and you know -- there was a sudden spring in my step. This was one of the sweet songs of a '70s summer that Cinnamon and I used to love as kids, cruising around with my sister, feeling so much older and cooler than we were.
"Well I'd leave in a minute
If I only could
But when she touches me
It makes me feel so good
My heart's in her hands
This is a sure a mess
There's no way I say no
when she says, "yes yes yes"...And I rolled my squeaky-wheeled cart over to aisle 4B (Coffee/Tea/Sugar/Spices), wondering if I should take a chance on buying one of the wiggier-named "exotic" coffees I always see but never pick up.
"Take me, shake me
and tell me this ain't a dream
Everybody says watch out boy
She'll break your heart like it was a toy...Back at home, putting up the day's haul, I was glad I stuck to the original plan and bought the Folgers. I'm just not adventurous enough for Cafe Bustelo or Pilon yet.
"You better Save it for a Rainy Day
You better Save it for a Rainy Day...
No strings attached
After talking, in a sense, to my friend today about the idea of being there for someone even when it's incredibly tough for you to do -- being someone's safety net -- it hit me that often when I've taken a hard fall, there haven't been many nets cast to catch me.
So what you do when you don't have many nets to choose from is this: You make your own. It's tiring, lonely work but if you don't do it, no one else will. Your fingers go numb from working on the knots, your hands ache from trying to strengthen the same ties over and over and you can't let yourself think about the task too much because the truth is that you'll never really be finished. And just when you think your self-made net is strong enough, the tiniest thread starts unraveling and the whole thing can come undone. When you fall and the net isn't there, naturally it hurts. You can lie there and wish someone had held a net out for you or you can get up and get started on your next net.
Once you start working on the first new knot, you get really involved in planning how this creation will be so much stronger than the last and little by little the pain starts to subside.
Knowing
Today at work, one of my friends jokingly teased, "Do you have ADD?"
I was, admittedly, really behind on some minor thing I should have already been finished with. But to answer his question, no -- I haven't been diagnosed, as yet, with Attention Deficit Disorder. And if I had been, back in June 2002 when my psychiatrist
did diagnose me as having clinical depression, the Zoloft I take every day for that would also handle any undiagnosed ADD. So I should be in the clear.
It was a joke. He's a great guy and I'm not hurt, angry or upset. But for just one second, maybe even one-tenth of a second, while we all kind of laughed about it, I wondered what everyone would think if they knew that they work with someone who has, technically speaking, a mental illness -- one that you know you shouldn't be ashamed of because you can't help having a chronic chemical imbalance in your brain. Maybe they wouldn't care at all. Or maybe they would. You wouldn't be embarrassed about having a chronic disease like diabetes, right? So telling your friends that you finally got help three years ago and it was a great thing to do and that you feel better - lots better now - ought to be something that isn't as tough as you're making it out to be.
But it is. It just is.
St. Francis and Dauphine
On certain days when I have nothing better to do, I make this odd kind of pilgrimage to my old house in East Point - the house where I grew up. I lived there from 1972-81 but the house itself was built in the late 1940s. My mother was the original owner, I think. She raised my sister there with the help of my grandmother, who died before I was born, during the '50s and '60s as a single mother, which was almost unheard of back then.
It's a small house - cramped, even - and back when my mom, dad, Cinnamon and I shared what space there was, you couldn't miss its obvious flaws. Whenever you walked down the central hallway, you had to step over the exposed heating grate in the floor. If you were a grownup, I guess it wasn't difficult. But as a little kid, you couldn't hardly make the giant leap and so you ended up trying to skirt around its edges, burning your bare feet in the winter. Our house sat next to a small drainage ditch that turned into a creek during heavy summer rains and for whatever reason back in the '70s, every summer rain in East Point was heavy. This meant that my mom and dad would spend hours trying to pump flood water out of our already cold, musty, dank, unfinished concrete basement.
Our old hardwood floors were freezing in the wintertime, no matter how high my mom cranked up the heat. Cinnamon's back room, which had been her mom's as a girl and as a teenager, was always drafty because it connected to the basement. The kitchen was so tiny that we never ate meals in there; we ate in the den. Driving by now, I notice that the backyard, which seemed huge and limitless when Cinnamon and I ruled it (OK, when
Cinnamon ruled it and I followed her every command), is actually not even half as big as my backyard today.
Whoever owns the house now has let it get in horrible shape. The yard and trees that my parents kept so trim and neat are weedy and overgrown, the trees so unkempt that no sunlight gets in the backyard and the grass there is gone -- dead. Cracking in the corners, the old brick foundation is sagging with age and neglect. No one lives there anymore. It's the same house I remember and yet, it isn't.
There aren't many pipe dreams that I allow myself to hang onto but this is one: I buy back my old house and restore it to its former glory. It wouldn't be fancy -- just comfortable, like it was in the '70s when Cinnamon ran Tracy from up the street all around the backyard, forcing her to play "Obstacle Course" until she finally gave up and went home (which meant Cinnamon won) and I laughed and laughed because Tracy's misfortune meant that I was off the hook for a little while. Or like it was when Cinnamon and I spent entire summer mornings swinging in the backyard, singing "Copacabana" at the top of our lungs, not quitting until we got all the lyrics just right. Or like it was when the older neighborhood girls, Cinnamon and I set up our Kool-Aid stand on the corner where our house stands, St. Francis Avenue and Dauphine Street, selling cherry refreshment to the handsome, uniformed military men who worked at the National Archives building down the street. Or like it was on Halloween night, when we walked all over the tiny, close-knit neighborhood, going from house to house in the first chill of October. I'd love to live there again, to see East Point come back as a thriving little city. I miss my house. It was a friend.
Mainly, these days, I drive by every so often to make sure that my old house is still there. I have this nagging fear that one day I'll find that it's gone and there's no way of getting it back. Cinnamon and I remember the good things about 1457 St. Francis Avenue but once you can't go home again, who else will know? Who else will care?
Decisions, decisions
Maybe I shouldn't have asked.
"So have you girls figured out what you're going to be for Halloween this year?"
"No," my nieces and their super bestest friend ever, my adopted "extra" niece, replied in a morose way that caught me off-guard. The girls sat at the kitchen counter, looking like three little old-timers at a bar as their high-pitched giggling and squealing about general girlstuff took a powder and the more serious question of trick-or-treat costuming, with all its intricacies, took over their thoughts. My 10-year-old niece absentmindedly pushed her near-empty glass towards me and I refilled it. She took a long, slow refresher, pondering. This was heavy stuff.
"Well," Niece No. 1 said, finishing her pick-me-up and pushing the glass my way for a second refill, "I was going to go as Darth Sidious from
Star Wars but Anna beat me to it." Looking lost, she stared off into the space of the breakfast nook.
"Yeah," Niece No. 2 chimed in, "that could be a problem since we're going trick-or-treating with Anna this year. I don't know what I'm going to be." Propping her elbows on the counter, she forlornly tucked her chin in her palms, sighing.
My Extra Niece didn't even bother explaining her own woes. Instead, she sat quietly between her buddies, staring blankly at the house dog, Roxy, who was literally loving her fluffy sheep chew toy to death by gnawing its face off. Niece No. 3's thin little slumped shoulders and wide, sad brown eyes said more than words ever could.
Later that evening, I posed the same question to Niece No. 2's friend from school, who was spending the night: "What are you going to be for Halloween this year?" She had a ready answer.
"A witch," she huffed, frowning, in a tone usually reserved for teenage girls, not nine-year-olds. "AGAIN. In my mom's old witch costume that she wore when
she was a kid. I've been a witch for two whole years now."
The world needs its Darth Sidiouses but October 31 is a witching night if there ever was one. You can't argue with the classics.
The rising cost of transmission fluid
"Are you driving that purple truck?," the man asked, catching me by surprise as I made my way across the shopping center parking lot this afternoon. When I said no, that the purple truck wasn't mine, he asked me if I was driving - like, anything at all. Yes, I said -- a little taken aback by the question. I was driving the Honda parked next to the purple truck. He hastened to explain.
"Do you have any transmission fluid I can have? I got my kids in the car and we've been here an hour and a half and I just need some transmission fluid." I told him I didn't carry any extra with me, unfortunately. I'm bad about planning ahead that way.
"Then can I bum $2.79 off you for some transmission fluid so I can put it in my car?," he asked. I knew he'd get around to asking for cash at some point. It was just a matter of when. He'd intercepted me heading into Subway. I told him, truthfully, that I didn't have any change at the moment and I'd have to get some. So I went in and placed my order while he waited, rather patiently, outside the store. I ended up with $3.61 change, .$.61 of which I put into the tip jar and the remainder of which I held out for another purpose.
Handing the $3 to the man once I got outside, he thanked me, saying "Now I can finally get out of here" in a good-natured tone. I watched him walk back across the parking lot in the opposite direction from where he'd approached me. He headed in the direction of Best Buy, which is along the route to the gas station where I imagine they sell small containers of transmission fluid. I didn't see him stop at any car. I didn't see any kids.
If his car really needed a tranny boost, I hope my contribution helped. If he needed $3 to have enough to buy some CD he wanted at Best Buy, I hope he at least has good taste in music.
Girls talk
"Cathie Scott's gonna kick your ass."I just stood there, speechless, because how do you form words when your throat seizes up in terror and you're
this close to crying, even though you hate the idea of crying in front of people?
"I'm telling her you were talking about her."And you can't defend yourself, thanks to the whole throat thing, but you know you've never said a word about Cathie Scott. Ever. You know her reputation around school. You don't talk about Cathie Scott. Ever. Because she will kick your ass.
So you stand there in the girls' room, knowing that you won't live to see tomorrow, even if it is fifth period and you just finished gym class and Social Studies is next and then you'll get right on the bus to go home and Cathie Scott isn't in your class and she doesn't ride your bus and as far you as you know, Cathie Scott doesn't have a clue who you are. But she's going to kick your ass. Because Tanya Dooling, who you thought was your friend since just yesterday you were sitting in the coveted back seat of the bus with her, cutting up loudly and talking about Rick Springfield and making fun of the other less-fortunate, totally-not-as-cool-as-you kids in the seats ahead of you on Bus 198, has told Cathie Scott that you were talking about her. It's Friday and even though your only weekend plans were to ride bikes with Jamey all afternoon and maybe make fun of Brent and his annoying little brother Adam before you and Jamey and Kevin sat around in Kevin's front yard, debating whether Led Zeppelin was cooler than Jimi Hendrix, you won't be doing that because you'll be getting your ass kicked by Cathie Scott. It's not fair.
While Mrs. Ontal tries her best to convince you that knowing the difference between longitude and latitude will benefit you greatly later in life, you start thinking up survival strategies:
I'll tell Cathie that it isn't true, that I didn't say anything about her because I don't even know her and I don't talk about people anyway... Cathie knows Jamey. I'll tell her that Jamey's my friend, too, and I wouldn't talk about one of Jamey's friends. And I'll tell her that Jamey told me she's really nice... I'll tell Cathie that I really really REALLY didn't say anything about her and that if she thinks I did, I'm really really REALLY sorry because I really didn't... If Cathie Scott kicks my ass, I'll tell Cinnamon and then SHE'LL kick Cathie's ass... Maybe I can just run really fast and get on the bus right after sixth period and Cathie won't see me... During a break in my junior-year data processing class, one of the lamest classes I ever took in high school, Cathie Scott and I had a really nice conversation about what we were thinking of doing after we graduated. She was pretty tired of being lumped in with the hoods, she said, because even if she wasn't super-smart she wanted to make something of herself and taking this class, which was really boring, was her way of doing that. She asked me where I thought I was going to college and I told her I didn't know, but it probably wasn't going to be anywhere special. "You've always been really smart, you know," she said, smiling in a way that made me feel both embarrassed and highly complimented at the same time. "That's really cool."
I bet, back in sixth grade, she never would have kicked my ass for two reasons: Tanya never told her anything; she was lying, just to be mean. And since the Cathie Scott I met in high school was just a nice girl with an undeserved bad rep, how tough could she have really been at eleven? Once we talked things out and agreed that while Jimi Hendrix was cool, Led Zep was totally radical, we'd have both gone on to enjoy our weekends.
