Posts filed under 'Time Travel'
Worse, actually… I did something so convoluted that only I could come up with it. Somehow I decided I was too sexy for my dreams… They weren’t aspirational enough for me.
Admitting this for the first time just now doesn’t make me feel any better, either. More like I need to do something about it… Which sucks.
At one point, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my career, but I never shared the details with anybody. Least of all my family, who would completely freak out once they stopped laughing. After all, my father’s sole interest in me from day one involved making sure I would not remain a financial burdern to him.
So I judged myself and ruled that my desires were lacking… That this ambition was frivolous, and that pursuing it would be admitting to something my mother accused me of so often: Sitting on my brains. Psycho to English translation: I’ve been blessed with an extra measure of intelligence, and should therefore use it to its full potential.
Maybe they’re right, I thought. After all, I had to make a living and survive in this big, scary, adult world. Money doesn’t grow on trees, and fun jobs don’t pay much… Right? Where was Joseph Campbell when I needed him? Wonder where I’d be today if I had followed my bliss instead of those transplanted fears.
The good news is that I didn’t stray far. Although at one point I was an Accounting major (right on track for a future in alcoholism and suicide) eventually I couldn’t resist the allure of something better aligned with my natural aptitudes, and with some luck a career developed.
I’m a lot closer to my dreams than I deserve to be…
But it will take one more leap to get there — Yikes!
November 10th, 2005
In my recent quest to find some friends of the female variety, I’ve been thinking back to the days when I actually had some… Trying to discover and analyze common elements, hoping to glean useful insights that might help me today.
As a marketing girl, I understand well the concept of having a demographic… A segment of the population which finds your product particularly appealing. Looking back, I realize that my market was always rich girls. I can’t figure out why they frequently adopted me, but I never gave it much thought.
Continue Reading November 6th, 2005
My little brother complained all day about how hungry he was. He was getting lethargic. I was starving, too. We were quite often hungry …but only randomly fed.
Mom had neglected to submit the paperwork for free meals at school, so lunches had become a thing of the past. What did she care? Somehow she always managed to be forty pounds overweight, while we stole fruit from neighbors trees on the walk to and from school.
Back home, the refrigerator held only inedible things like margarine, mustard, and ice cube trays. We never knew when mom would be home, or how angry she would get if we dared to bother her for a meal. Often it just wasn’t worth the risk.
Grandma lived only two blocks away, with a kitchen filled to overflowing with the most delicious foods you could ever imagine. But we knew better than to tell grandma and grandpa we were hungry and alone. That would just bring down more of mom’s wrath.
So I pulled down the collection of McCall’s cookbooks and spread them out on the kitchen floor, flung open the doors to the pantry and cupboards, and went to work. Pouring through recipe after recipe, trying to find something to match the few dry ingredients on hand. Imagining all those meals made my stomach growl.
Hope was finally found inside the volume devoted to cookies. How cheery cookies are! Sweet and warm. There was flour, we had sugar, and spices, too. Baking soda lasts forever. We had everything I needed to make the simplest tea cakes… We thought they tasted like heaven.
Sometimes I look at the skinny girls and I wonder how they can like looking thin more than feeling satisfied. How can they choose day after day to regiment themselves to being half empty? I see them with their cans of water packed tuna and salad greens and feel pity.
Anyone who was malnourished as a child knows about the promises you make. Like Scarlett O’Hara, you swear, “As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again!” And it’s a promise you keep so easily in this land of plenty, where there’s an eatery around every corner.
Now, every day of the week my brother and I have lunch together. It’s a blessing working together for a time. I have a feeling we’ll look back on this era later in life and cherish the time spent together even more. It’s been an important time of learning and growing.
These days, instead of worrying what, when, and if we’ll eat, we look forward to letting the other person choose a lunch destination. We take turns. Now the emphasis is on packing the fewest amount of calories into a most satisfying meal, because we’re both trying to cut back.
It’s funny how things only seem to change. We’re shaped by our experiences, especially those early ones. I still find it hard to resist a cookie… And I picked up a vintage set of McCall’s cookbooks on eBay.
October 19th, 2005
My first love was the one and only boy who never grew up — Peter Pan. I’m not ashamed to say it, either.
When as a child I read of his exploits, imagining that wry smile, I melted. Even the horribly unattractive Disney portrayal didn’t change my mind.
Even today I can hardly imagine a better choice. Take a closer look at his unique qualifications:
- He can fly, which makes for a fantastic first date.
- Excellent sense of humor, even under pressure.
- Hangs with fairies, pirates, mermaids & Indians.
- Admirable leadership skills, and lots of moxie.
- That blend of bad-boy mischief girls adore.
- He really knows how to wield his sword.
In the category of “be careful what you wish for” I actually ended up marrying Peter Pan’s equivalent, as found outside of Neverland…
Here we call boys who never grow up “Engineers.”
So, who was your first love?
October 12th, 2005
This Week: Ten of the Stupidest Things I’ve Ever Said
10. There is no way they will re-elect Bill Clinton after all that.
9. Regarding pit toilets: I don’t poo on other people’s poo.
8. I’d like you to meet my long lost brosister Marcie.
7. I like karate, I just don’t like hitting people.
6. They always chomp the hotties first.
5. All this meat won’t fit in my box.
4. Holy shit, look… It’s a Hobbit!
3. If I get killed I’m gonna die.
2. I just drooled an update.
1. Where is the wall?
September 27th, 2005
Teeth sure are important, aren’t they? You don’t think about them much until there’s a problem, and then chances are you can’t get them off your mind until they’re fixed. And I should know… I’ve got the financial equivalent of a Honda Civic in my mouth.
My baby teeth were perfect, but we knew my second set wouldn’t be. During pregnancy, they gave my mom a drug to reduce her morning sickness. It was later pulled for causing birth defects, like babies born without limbs. Compared to that, I lucked out by missing only one and a half upper lateral secondary teeth.
Here I am today with a fairly perfect set of choppers, and nobody really knows the ordeal I went through. It began with numerous extractions because my adult teeth weren’t coming in on their own. Then six years of braces, with nothing but closed-mouthed smiles on record.
After that came bonding, which was a newer technology at the time. Later I got caps, but the old kind with metal underneath the porcelain. Those didn’t agree with my delicate system, so two years ago I had to do it all over again, and upgrade to lovely Empress ceramics.
Nobody who sees this smile knows what’s behind it. I could take you on a tour of dentists offices and show you the claw marks I dug into the armrests when the novocaine wore off. Months of my life were spent laying back in a dental chair with tears quietly streaming into my hair.
Though I never would have said so at the time… It was worth it.
September 24th, 2005
It’s been over a decade since I left home and moved out on my own, and it took me until just today to have a flashback of my old bedroom. Honestly, I’d all but forgotten what it even looked like. But tonight one of the kids told a story that jogged my memory, and a couple hours later the image of those old yellow walls came flooding back.
To this day orange and yellow are my least favorite colors. They would be for you too, if you’d grown up in a room with shag carpeting in those colors. Oh, and how could I ever forget the Sesame Street bedspread and coordinating curtains? Good job making me use them until I was sixteen and got a job to pay for new stuff, Mom.
I remember having to de-preschool my bedroom before having friends over. Eventually I opted for an Esprit / Duran Duran hybrid theme. Teen fashion and 80s pop… What a combo. By the time I was fourteen I had every visible inch of wall plastered with catalog and magazine pages. Does anybody else remember those huge Esprit catalogs?
As for Duran Duran, I hate to admit John Taylor was my favorite. Today I have only two words for him: brow lift. What was I thinking? I suppose there’s no explanation for the behavior of teen girls. But hell, something had to cover the framed Precious Moments posters on the wall!
So I’m curious, what was your old bedroom like?
June 20th, 2005
This Week: 10 Stupid Things You Did as a Kid
The only challenge here is going to be coming up with only ten stupid things I did as a kid. Believe me, there’s no shortage of material and therefore no need to repeat any of the stories I’ve already written. Don’t laugh too hard, it’ll hurt my feelings…
1. Nearly blinded myself. It was an enticing little bush with what I thought were pretty little red berries, which I proceeded to pick. Turns out they were scorching hot chilis… Found out when I rubbed my eye.
2. Dislocated a jaw. How was I supposed to know that when you unwind from a crouching position and deliver a Mortal Kombat style uppercut it’s at least ten times more effective than a straight punch. That stepbrother of mine totally deserved it.
3. Glued Snoopy to the wall. I was just so darn sick of those boring bologna and cheese sandwiches, so my gigantic stuffed Snoopy agreed to hide them behind his back. A week later mom was very upset.
4. Created a new sister. One hot Summer afternoon we were so bored that my brother agreed to let me dress him up… as a girl. I was so confident in my skills as a makeover artist that I tried to convince the kids on our block he was my long lost sister.
5. Appreciated Art. Art is Fine. That’s what I painted on the back of our playhouse. No, I wasn’t referring to Fine Arts, but my latest crush.
6. Opened a restaurant. Another fun play on words, I opened Le Bon Cafe in our back yard. Sure “bon” means good, but “Le Bon” means Duran Duran. The neighboorhood fat kid gave it five stars.
7. Freaked over fish. Auntie took me on a cruise and on the night it was our turn at the Captain’s table they served a salad with sliced anchovy garnish… I couldn’t stop screaming under the table.
8. Held it for three days. Dad took us camping on a long weekend and my stepbrother told me there were snakes in the pit toilets. I held it until I turned green and Dad had to take me down the mountain.
9. Got the sniffles. For some reason I used to get things stuck in my nostrils a lot as a kid, mostly stray beads. I’m sure the ER techs are surprised I didn’t end up a coke addict… it’s Diet Coke.
10. Experienced a TKO. In an effort to provide entertainment one night, my three-year-old younger brother and I staged a mock fight. Although I was twice his age, he hit me just right in the stomach, knocking the wind out of me, and I was down for the count.
So tell me… What did you do?
April 26th, 2005
Next Posts
Previous Posts
