The Sigh

I looked at a lot of photos of Tony Soprano and I didn't find any that showed him exposing the palms of his hands.

You wonder sometimes how a thing gets passed down from your ancestors. Not just your way of dealing with things (do you yell and battle and challenge? Or do you get depressed and bury your head in the sand?) but the gestures you have to express yourself (do you flip the double bird and bare your teeth when agitated. Or do you go into a room and quietly close the door? Click.) Say your ancestors crossed the plains in covered wagons not knowing exactly where they were headed, say the guy driving had a way of squinting one eye while he looked ahead, worrying that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Flash forward 200 years later to you, that guy’s grandson. You are with your fiancé and she is going on and on about something you don’t agree with. As she talks you start to tune out and stare at her mouth moving. You wonder if you might be making a bad decision here and as you watch that mouth moving, your eye starts to squint just like your great grandpa (X1000) in the covered wagon.

Certain gestures come from even further back. When Harry gets excited for example, when I say: Har, tomorrow we’re going to Six Flags… and you can bring a friend… and go on all 17 roller-coasters… and eat sugar and fried food, he starts to shake his hands at the wrist, first slowly, then faster, then faster, until it propels him to walk round and round in a circle. NnnnnGAAAA. ….Monkeys do this.

Cavemen, probably, did it. And now, here, this 10-year-old person is doing it.

I didn’t teach him that.

My grandfather was Italian. Most Italians have held on to every gesture known to mankind, but usually they get a heavy rotation of just one or two in their repertoire. There are many different shrugs, for example, each with a variety of meanings, but the main one is the head-tilt with the shoulders drawn up to the ears, palms to the sky. Italian babies do this as soon as they have control of their limbs. My grandfather’s thing was his sigh. It could mean “I’m exhausted” or it could mean, “You disgust me so much that I can’t talk about it” but the sound was the same. It was the sound a bus makes when it pulls into the station and the air pressure is released, just before the driver opens the door. It is not a sound you make for yourself, it is one for an audience. And it is usually followed by a long, slow shake of the head.

When I see someone do this, some random person in the grocery store or at the Y, I think: my people.

My Plight

Lately I've been getting emails from people asking me to help transfer large sums of money into a bank account. These people are usually from far away places like Pickareno or Blastafunktown; they do not speak (or write) English very well and most of the stories involve recently deceased relatives they never knew who left them a pile of money, usually ranging from 7 to 20 million dollars (hitherto called a shitload) (and yes I just said hitherto because that's the kind of language these people use) that needs to be collected asap. ASAP! Here's where the story gets confusing. They need my help to get this money but first they need me to send 1000 dollars from my American bank account into the Blastafunktown bank so that the shitload will be released, at which point they will be more than happy and grateful to share with me, usually 50-50 but sometimes 60-40, because, after all, it is their Aunt "Barbara Mary" who just passed. Sometimes these letters go on and on, sometimes they are only a couple of desperate, unpunctuated sentences.

Here's one I got this morning from Leung Cheung:

I need your assistance to Transfer abandoned sum of $22.5 MILLION dollars from Hing Kong to your country we share 60% 40% if positive contact me as soon as possible.

I love that 22.5 million dollars was just abandoned somewhere. I imagine 50 brown sacks with dollar signs on the front sitting on a desert highway, tumbleweeds blowing past. Leung drives by in an old Chevy Impala and sees them there, not sure at first what they are. He slows the car to a stop, gets out and has a look. When he realizes what it is (22.5 million dollars!!!) he can't believe his good fortune. He tosses all the sacks into the trunk of the car and speeds off, leaving a cloud of dust and pebbles. One of the thousand dollar bills sails gracefully out the window but what does he care? Let some poor trucker get it when he stops to pee on a cactus. There's plenty more where that came from!
So, after a long happy drive back to Hing kong (he has whistled and giggled and hummed the entire trip), Leung gets home and carries the sacks inside. Immediately he becomes paranoid. What if this is a trap? What if I start to spend this, what if I walk down to the local corner store and try to use one of the thousand dollar bills on a hairnet, and a swat team of 600 come out from nowhere and riddle me with bullets? Aaaaagh. It's too horrible to imagine. For weeks old Leung tosses and turns.
But then.
He gets an idea. Deposit it in an American Bank! That way he can launder the money and no one will track it back to him. The person who helps him can just wire it back to him, or send him monthly checks. Of course, he'll give a cut. 40% is more than generous. Probably too much. But that's ok, it's worth it. But how? Who can do this?
He calls Mark Zuckerberg and asks him for his top ten list of most gullible people. Mark faxes it to him in code. Leung gets the fax and runs his name down the list: ERDRIED SIWEL
And that's how it comes to me....
Oh. How I wish this was true. 
I would still be counting my money right now.

Adulthood

I love going into my neighbor's apartment when she is out of town. It is the apartment of an adult. It is clean and orderly and orderly and clean: magazines and a book of photos stacked on the table, dining table with chairs tucked in neatly, a standing lamp with a beautiful arch, curtains! Wooden slatted blinds! It smells like expensive candles and the dark wooden floor feels warm and creaky. Her book shelves are perfect and full; there's no action figures or  hairy hairbrush or pile of pennies and gum wrappers. There's no broken coffee cup handle or DVD without a case or cluster of dog hair tucked down at the bottom corners (although she has a furry dog). And her desk! There's a stapler AND tape dispenser, pens, sweet photos, and her bills (all 2 of them) are stacked neatly with a paper clip in the top corner.

Shall I go on? (yes, I did just say shall, and now I'm pointing my toe)

The kitchen, as you can see, is spotless, not in a bachelor-pad, unused sort of way, but more like a master chef/working kitchen way. Pots and pans hang from a section above the stove which is old fashioned and white and free of old spaghetti sauce droppings or grease splatters. There's a bowl of lemons and onions and garlic, a row of fancy kitchen gadgets, and a huge double sink, clean and sparkling, with the faucet lined up exactly in the center. Spoon and spatulas fill a ceramic vase, and the dog food dish is presented on it's own special iron stand next to a water bowl filled with clear fresh cool water.

Follow me into the bathroom with it's beautiful old french style black and white tiles, a tiny chandelier(!), a huge bath and separate shower with a shower head as big as a frisbee, a thick glass jar filled with all kinds of handmade soaps, a mirror where you only see from the neck up. Just close your eyes and breathe; you'll feel instantly relaxed. You won't see funky thread-bare beach towels in a moldy heap, no crusty dirt and foam on the soap dish, no rubber shark or sqeezed out empty shampoo tubes on the side of the tub, and certainly, not one single lone pube on the toilet.

Now do you get why I'm down here?

I'm not sure what you have to do to get to live in an adult apartment but whatever road it is that leads you there, I have yet to travel it.

Narrow Escape

Tonight I was walking home from Bob’s market with the dogs and I heard someone crying loudly. It was dark out but I could see the person across the street talking on a cell phone, walking and crying. I think it was a tranny. She was crying the way a clown or a three year old would, dramatically and for an audience. Waaaaaaaaaaa. It was sad and funny. I wondered what happened. I had literally stopped and was openly staring when, like a zombie who suddenly catches the scent of its next victim, she turned and headed right for me. She was still wailing away but there was definitely a dark and evil trill to it. I walked quickly in the opposite direction and thanked god the dogs were barking their heads off.

(an oldie)

The Group That Rides My Bus

Normally, on an average day, I have about three personalities. There’s the me that is doing stuff: getting dressed, waking the kids, walking in the woods, going to work, and then there’s the me that comments: “How did I get back flaps? I really need to stop yelling at children. I just need 2000 more dollars a month and then we can move”. And there’s the me that judges and frets and prods and chatters endlessly, like background music at a grocery store. I can manage this group. I know where each one sits on the bus inside my head, and though occasionally one of the me-s gets noisy or the background-music-me needs to be turned down, I am not freaked out by “the multiple personality” nature of it. But then I go to a school event or some group situation where I am expected to behave like a functioning adult and the bus in my head is suddenly standing room only. It’s like I pulled in to the Port Authority and picked up a whole bunch of me-s that I don’t usually have to deal with.

Ugh, I hate these things.

This is so much fun.

This is like a healthy family activity.

I need to volunteer more often.

Everyone here lives in an actual house and pays their bills on time.

I wish I had a husband and a normal family.

She is seriously medicated.

I really need to get my health insurance straightened out

Uch, there’s that mean kid. Oh there’s the mom, makes sense.

What is wrong with you (me)?

Why are you just standing there with your hand on your hip, go talk to someone.

I’ll never fit in.

Me Vs. A Stupid Online Article

I saw online yesterday a list of "Things Women do that Men Find Annoying". I don’t know why I get distracted by these things, but I do. I’ll have battles with myself about having a look: who cares, it’s stupid. I’m trying to write! And then I’ll successfully avoid it and get on with things for 5 minutes only to “reward” myself with reading it after that. Suddenly I’m a boxer stepping into the ring: Ding Ding. Come on stupid article that just taunted me: You are going down!

I'm not going to complain about the list, because it was too stupid and obvious: Men don't like it when women are too emotional, for example, or when they talk too much. Please. But the number one item was so ridiculous it was almost inspiring.

Number 1 on the list said “Nothing says “I don’t care” more than a woman who doesn’t shave her legs”. Nothing. Nothing? More than smoking crack in front of your kids? More than wearing stained clothing? More than imitating what you just said in a whiny, sniveling voice? NOTHING PEOPLE! 

Off the top of my head I thought of my own quick list:

Nothing says "I don't care" 

-more than a guy who snorts up a big meaty glop of phlegm and then spits while you're walking together.

-more than a guy who scratches his balls and then sniffs his fingers,

-more than a guy who has a bottle of pee next to his bed.

I could go on but,  #1 Ladies and Gentlemen: Nothing says I DON'T CARE

-more than a guy who doesn't use his powers of observation.

Ka-Boom!

I win! And now...to get back to my real work.

Things I Believed At One Time or Another

When my cousin Geoff once told me that they were going to take the word gullible out of the dictionary, I said "Why????"

When I was 15, my friend Phil told me that if I wanted to get water from the tap to be really cold (or hot) all I had to do was tap it on the side a few times. (I did that until I was 30 or so).

When I was 11, my homeroom teacher told me that the reason that God let children die is because they would have been horrible, bad adults.

I forget how old I was, but I used to ride the train with this kid who told me he fell out of a second story window and would have broken his leg but on the way down his eyelid got hooked on a branch and he hung there until someone helped him get off.

In my 20s, my friend Jamie told me that you will break your big toe if you pull a hair off it.