Moondog

This is a good song to listen to in the dark (maybe because the guy who wrote it was blind). I heard this today here.

Part of What is Normal

My Dad lost all his teeth when he was 15. He didn’t lose them really, he had them pulled out. The story is that he had a lot of cavities and rather than pay for the treatment, my grandfather, a legendary pennypincher, had the dentist “extract”. My Dad, at age 15, had to go to school for two weeks, maybe longer now that I think about it, without any teeth, while they made his dentures. At the height of puberty. In High School. Obviously there are worse things to endure, but I think it’s one of the defining experiences of my Father’s life and goes a long way to describe the funny/sad/rageful part of his personality that all of his children seem to have inherited. Ahem.

The weird part is that my grandfather was a nice guy, well nice isn’t the right word, he was interesting and he was smart and funny and we liked each other, though maybe if I had been around him more, he would have tortured me too. It seems like something more than just frugality would cause a father to make such a decision for his child. Still when my Dad recalls this story, he doesn’t say it with bitterness, so much as a shoulder shrug. Yeah, I had all my teeth pulled out when I was 15. In the middle of the school year. No big.

It reminds me of the things we get used to, in our families mostly, like the three-legged bed or the drawer without a handle I wrote about a few days ago: things that seem like they’d be easy to fix but just get overlooked until they become part of what is normal to you.

It's Lonely At The Top

Sometimes I worry about the fact that I am a champion time-waster. No one can compete with me. You may think you can, I can give the impression of getting a few things done, here and there, and you may have the thought, no, no way, I can waste twice as much time as she can. But you are wrong. So very wrong. So very, very wrong. See that was just a little sample of two maybe three milliseconds of time wasting; the fact that I wrote a sentence with the words “very very” in it. Right there. Like it was nothing. See how good I am? Also the fact that I have now written the words “The fact that…” three times even though Strunk and White (Elements of Style, google it babe) have written that you should never do that. What would Strunk and White say about LOL, I wonder, or WTF? See? I just did it AGAIN; I distracted myself from my main focus with a question. Three points. Shabam. You don’t stand a chance.

Ok so anyway, I’m writing this because I am sick of staring at a script I have been working on for almost ten years. I’m on page 34. I’m still staring at this. When will it end. The thing is, it’s fantastic. The script I mean. Of course it is. How do I have so much confidence when I am a failure at so many things? I just cried as I wrote that, cried and then laughed. Is that a bad sign?

I have an image of myself sitting at a table in front of the computer just clicking through different sites, just navigating through, from house decorating to amazon books, to wedding decorations, to shoe sales, to different blogs, to entertainment “news”, to Huff Po, to medical diseases most common to those in my family, to a photo of George Clooney in 5^th grade. I need to see that, I need to have a good, long look. See George was a dork once, how about that? He may have even possibly cut his own hair with a pair of nail clippers. And now he’s, well he’s George, he’s charming and funny and politically correct. That’s got to be a good sign. There’s hope. Although he did just break up with another girlfriend. Hmm.

Omg, I just distracted myself. I’m that good, people, while writing about wasting time, I distracted myself. There’s no way you stand a chance. The image of myself, that’s what I’m talking about. (Did you notice how rhythmically similar that sounds to “To Be or Not To Be, That is the question?”) The image of myself is this: Of a person stuffing all these thoughts, sites, videos, photos, into my mouth, like a squirrell stuffing nuts. It’s soul crushing: this information stuffing as a way of distraction thing that I do and yet I can’t stop. That’s what all the champions say: I can’t stop.

There should be an award for this.

Summer

On the radio yesterday, they were talking about the sound of summer. This is mine. What's yours?

Here's another one. This drives Mo crazy but I love it.

Oh and one more. Philly yo!

Broken Things that Go Unfixed or Unreplaced

I remember a bed in my mother’s guest room that only had three legs. Sleeping on it felt like floating on a raft in the high seas.

I have a few pairs of glasses with one arm missing and even one pair with both an arm and a lens missing which I wore once because I couldn’t find any others and I really wanted to read before bed.

I once bought a new pair of beautiful shoes for my sister’s wedding and didn’t open the box until the day, and when I did, both were for the left foot. I actually considered wearing them anyway because I loved them so much, and if you go to your closet right now and try on two left shoes you will know exactly why this makes me laugh out loud every time I remember it.

Darla’s favorite toy when she was three was a porcelain cat that she would drop and shatter once every week. Bub put it together with special glue and seemed to enjoy the process of fitting it back like a puzzle so much that I sometimes wonder if he was the one who kept knocking it on the ground. We never got another one, or even tried to encourage a different toy.

We lived in an apartment once where you could lock yourself into the bathroom accidentally because the lock was on the inside of the door and not on the knobs. Instead of changing it though, we took the risk, and once I got locked in there for half an hour before Mo (age 15) was able to shimmy a screw driver in the side and push the button.

I had a pair of black pants that I loved that I spilled bleach on, and rather than get a new pair, I colored the stain in with a black sharpie pen.

I have a drawer missing a handle, and to open it I have to slide a fingernail into the crevice where it sits and pull. It hurts every time.

Sometimes You Have To

Did you know this is my theme song?

The Digital Age

At the movie theater last night Darla and Harry were playing with a 2 year-old while we waited to get in. Darla took some pictures with her phone and I thought I saw the baby’s father give a worried look, like maybe she should have asked first, so I said, isn’t funny how nothing goes undocumented now? And he said, watch this, and handed his i-phone to the baby who scrolled through the apps, found the camera icon, clicked it, held it up (sideways to include everyone!) and took a picture. This girl still poops her pants.

There’s nothing wrong with documentation, blogs are part of that category, but when it replaces actual reflection or solitude, it gets out of control. It seems like 1984 is happening, only Big Brother is us. Everything is revealed, there is no order or progression, no thought edited out, no nuance or subtlety. Look at Anthony’s weiner, look at Sarah Palin’s 65,000 personal emails, Alec Baldwin yelling at his kid, some lady on a train swearing at the conductor.

Do I have to?

Don’t get me wrong, I could look at weiners all day. But I have the maturity level of a 13 year old boy. Is it ever not funny and utterly ridiculous to send pictures of your crotch? Did Weiner think: there’s a cute girl, I know I’m married so we can’t actually have sex, so I’m going to send her a mysterious photo of my waxed, shiny gym-toned belly with a close-up of my giblets, Get it? because my name is--- I sent her a photo of my—like the double entendray—you see? Oh this is fun. No one has to know.

But we do have to know Mr. Weiner, we do, because we love distraction, we seek it out, it soothes us and whispers in our ear and makes us forget our worries and fears and problems. You have forgotten that we are comforted by roadside crashes. It’s ok, it happens, you have been in denial since the first time 38 years ago when someone laughed after you said your name. But now, because of your “problem” and because of our computer and digitalized time, you will be part of our history. At least, I hope you will, I hope this kind of information will never become so common and appropriate that it's how we introduce ourselves. Hopefully in a hundred years, some fantastic 7^th grade teacher, who is an encyclopedia of historical trivia, will tell your story and some dorky little 12 year old boy, most likely my great, great, great, great grandson, will fall out of his chair laughing.