... Oh, and See If You Can Get Her to Brush the Back of Her Head, Too.

I was rummaging through an old box and found a treasure trove of old notes and cards. Here is one of my favorites: a note my mom pinned to the shirt I had laid out to wear one day in 1981. The thing that makes this funny is that I was in 7th grade at the time. How mortifying! Happy ending: I did not get on the bus (I didn't wear the note, it was just meant as a reminder to me). Sad ending: I got a monster wedgie from Madeline K. on this day.

The Puberty Chronicles

In the spirit of Get Mortified (worth the click), I have decided to do a series known as The Puberty Chronicles, for airing out some of the mortifying aspects of becoming an adult. If you would like to do a Puberty Chronicle of your own, please do. Or, if you would rather have me post it anonymously for you, I would be most happy to. (After I call all my friends and read it to them)


Part I: Middle School Moments
When I was in elementary school, I used to bite my fingernails. My mom painted my nails with some sort of stuff that tastes bad and is supposed to deter you from biting. The problem was, I used to like the taste, so when I was home I would suck the acrid-tasting stuff off my fingers, paint them again, and then suck them some more.

Just another saga in my endless stream of oral fixations.

Then came middle school and I had bigger problems. I forgot all about my nails and looking for pleasantly salty things to munch (I rediscovered this quest in college -- a tale for another day).

In middle school, among the mortification of budding puffies and glasses and waiting to menstruate, there were perms. Numerous perms. Once, my bangs were so hyper that I had to go in the girls’ room and wet them down. After I finished climbing the stall door a few times (for exercise, you know), I soaked my bangs completely and then headed over to the dryer to blow them dry. Alas, the dryer was not working, so I returned to class with soaking wet bangs, which I covered for the entire period with one flat hand. I’m sure nobody noticed.

Another thing I remember from middle school is that the basement level was called The Dungeon, and I never ever wanted to go down there. In fact, I’m rather certain I never did. My twin sister Twirling Girl had a class down in The Dungeon and that made her so very cool. And brave, too. She had all the cool stuff—classes in the scary part of the building, and a class trip to the World’s Fair in Tennessee! What did I have? An oversized dickie, a clog sprain, and an eraser I stole from Mr. Shaw.
I do recall that one of the somewhat exciting things about middle school, grade six, was that there were two eighth graders who would kiss (!) before they got on their respective school buses and went home. They were practically grown up, by the looks of them, and they would actually kiss goodbye just like adults! Wow! I used to time my bus platform arrival to try to catch this magical moment. More often than not, I missed the kiss and also my bus.

The low point of my middle school career was when I got caught throwing toilet paper at the girls’ room ceiling. I feel I have told this before … But anyhow, I had just discovered the joy of ceiling art via papier mache, when in walked the principal and caught me … wet-handed. There was no getting out of this one! Oh, the shame! The shame!!!!!!!!!!! I had to serve a school detention, and I was in this room with all these derelicts, people I had never seen before. Smokers, to be sure. AND the proctor read my offense out loud: Spinnerina M. Girl, throwing toilet paper at the ceiling. Vandalizing the school. Ah ha! Young lady, you may sit right here while you do your time. My red-hot face burned and my ears buzzed with the blood-rush of embarrassment and shame. I was one of them! These ... these animals! These bad, bad boys! I was deeply mortified.

But not as mortified as the time I heard that Beth, an eighth grader in my class, had gone to the movies with a 9th grade boy and he had stuck his finger in her hoo-hah! His finger. Fingers! Plural! Like you could even fit more than one up there, duh! EW! Why would anybody do that? Ever?!?!?!? Luckily, I was on to high school and I never had to hear the answer to that one.

The Black Book (a veritable what the hell who's who? of people who have held little bits of my heart through the years)

Name: Clem
Me: 2nd grade, confused, ADD, never brushed my hair.
Him: the boy who sat next to me, Cuban, dark, mysterious, effeminate.
What happened: I chased him around the playground and pinned him down, tried to kiss him. Primordial sexual stirrings. My mother wouldn’t let me go to his house to play. Interest waned.

Name: Jenny
Me: I adored her in 2nd-3rd grade
Her: My best friend
Why we kissed: We were best friends, so we had to seal the pact. She had the biggest pucker ever.

Name: Martin
Me: Grade 3, glasses, precocious, lost the spelling bee
Him: Grade 4, older, taller, played the lead role in The Mikado, British
What happened: Huge crush; fantasies of being hospitalized and him holding my hand, consoling me. Not entirely sure he knew I was alive. See how much I loved him in this picture.

Name: My Cool J. Fox
Me: Freshman in high school
Him: Senior, repeating a class he had failed, looked like Alex Keaton
What happened: Huge crush; fantasies of being hospitalized and him holding my hand, consoling me. Not entirely sure he knew I was alive.

.

.

Now come the crush years. Too many to list. Include Markus, whom my cousin also dated. 2 guys named Hillar. Blah blah blah. Hard Puberty, breasts, mortification, adjustment.

.

.
Name: Dennis 1
Me: Senior
Him: Sophomore, but older than most because he stayed back and had started school late. Not too bright. Big eyebrows. Skinny.
What happened: I broke up with him the day before the prom but we went together anyhow. He showed up in a tux that did not match my dress. I ignored him all night.

Name: Hodge
Me: College Freshman
Him: Junior (also in college)
How It Went Down: Storybook romance; I spotted him at a soccer game and said, “I would die for a guy like that.” He spotted me in the bookstore and said, “Do I know you?” then hunted me down in my dorm. We were in love for a few months. He showed up to meet my dad in a rumpled shirt & no shave. He broke up with me. We tried to get together a few times but it didn’t take. I was finally over him 2 years later.

Name: Aryan
Me: Sophomore-Senior in college
Him: Lived in my dorm, dated my friend, drove a beatup Chevy pickup that he still has.
What happened: He broke up with her to date me. She tried to kill herself twice. We camped & burned tires in the woods. Love. He was Russian Orthodox and I wasn’t. I think black folks are a-ok and he doesn’t. His former roommate is now my boss. His brother died in 1999 so we got back in touch. 1-2 emails a year.

.

.

Now comes sort of a blurry haze for a few years in the job world. Including Mike, my vice principal, who was arrested the day after we went out for drinks (for possession of cocaine) & forced to resign; Dennis 2, whose mom I worked with and who (I found out) had been arrested for a domestic violence incident at some point; Dennis 3, whose brother I worked with and who left 25 drunken messages on my answering machine one night; some guy whose name I forget whom I escaped by ducking out through the kitchen of a bakery; some other guy who I left at a restaurant after he got up 8 times to make phone calls. I think I might have been making bad choices.

.

.
Name: Shepherd Boy
Me: 24
Him: 19
What happened: Broke my heart.

Name: The Onion

Me: 27, feisty, adventurous

Him: 28, Dot com millionaire, eccentric, liar, somewhat famous.

What happened: I felt like something wasn't quite right. I let it go. Later, I read about him online and found out what he had been up to, and it was not good. I can't give details, because I don't want you to look him up and embarrass him.

Name: Neighb
Me: I don’t know. Almost 30.
Him: My best friend.
What happened: We were friends for 10 years, then we crossed over & couldn’t cross back when it didn’t work out. We stopped talking when he started dating the woman he later married, and we just never talked again. My boss is good friends with him (he also lived in my dorm) & gives me updates I don’t want to hear.

Name: Stefan
Me: Now
Him: A very dear friend
What's happening: I so wish we were attracted to each other, because I adore him and we are amazingly great friends. We are each other’s Plan B; maybe when we are both 90 and we’ve given up the quest for Mr./Ms. Right.

Name: Sven
Me: 30
Him: 39, Norwegian, possible Asperger’s Syndrome, tall, penilely challenged
What happened: I hated his stupid dog and didn’t love him. He cried for 3 hours when we broke up and wouldn’t leave my house.

Name: Neil
Me: Looking for work with birds of prey, recovering from surgery, feeling a need to reconnect with my womanhood.
Him: Doing a study with birds of prey in Wyoming desert, running dogsleds in the winter, living in a teepee, smoking pot.
What happened: Spent a few weeks banding hawks and reconnecting with my womanhood. Then I came home.

Name: The K-Man
Me: Teacher, 31-34, smitten
Him: Charming, funny, alcoholic, married
What happened: Great pals, worked closely together, went to New Orleans for a conference and he acted like a big asshole; I told him to go to hell and fix his train wreck of a life. Left him in New Orleans. Major impetus for giving up alcohol.

Name: Brad the Clown
Me: 35-36, aloof, bored
Him: 37-38, one testicle, artistic, boring, racist, lazy, sloppy eater, has 1 joke that he repeats over & over.
What happened: I dumped him.

Name: The Handyman a.k.a. Brazil nut
Me: 36, 2 days after breaking up with Brad, I said to my friends; “I need a hot-blooded Latino lover to tell me I am beautiful.”
Him: In my house when I got home that day.
What happened: 1 month fling, with bonus (!) of numerous items fixed & painted around my house. Then he went back to Venezuela.

Name: Freaky Hand Fetish Dude
Me: Agreed to a blind date
Him: Bass player, looked like

this guy from Stargate, freaky, carried pictures of his cats in his wallet.
Why I changed my phone number: When I told him I wasn’t comfortable with him trying to hold my hand this early (we had met 10 minutes ago) he said, peevishly, “Oh, what --- we have rules about things now?!?” He asked me to clap my hands so he could psychoanalyze me according to how I clapped. When I did so, he closed his eyes and smiled and said, “That is the most beautiful sound in the world.” Later, he rested his hand open-palmed on my hand and moaned with his eyes closed as if he had just squirted in his pants. He freaked me out so much I didn’t leave him immediately, I was afraid he would stalk me. Luckily he didn’t know where I live or any of my phone numbers but the one I changed.

Name: Calzone
Me: Horrified ... yet drawn to him.
Him: Abusive, condescending, defiling, objectifying, pampering. Ridicules me, feeds me cheese, dresses me up like a cowgirl.
What happened: It’s still happening and it never ever stops.

Name: Monkey
Me: Nurturing, adoring, anticipating.
Him: Fuzzy, has a giant hoo hah, indignant, flattering, incessantly packing and unpacking.
What happened: He is coming here in 3 days!!! It will be the time of our lives. I am, after all, easy to please.

Meditation a la Mode

I am just sitting here, eating some ice cream and thinking deep thoughts. To wit:

• A very small spider has taken up residence in the corner of my office. It is a S.A.S. (spider of acceptable size), so I will leave it alone. I hope it doesn’t decide to walk across my lips in the night.
• When my twin sister and I were 5, we went to a birthday party that included a trip to the movies to see “Snoopy Come Home”. There’s a part where the Peanuts kids are singing, “Snooooopy, Snoooooopy, oh won’t you come home, come home, come home?” It is so sad. It tears you up inside. We started to bawl; we were inconsolable. Our mother had to come get us.
• We were always that way, getting each other worked up. We’d lie awake at night in our shared bedroom saying things to each other like, “wait … what if mom and dad …die?!?!?! Waaaah!” and then we’d barge in on my parents for comfort after working each other up into a red-alert fit.
• The Honda Element is butt ugly. I actually threw up a little in my mouth when one passed me today.
• When I was six, I threw a giant rock into Lake Huron. Well, I threw it towards Lake Huron. At the precise moment it reached her area, my younger sister stood up and the rock ended its trajectory on the back of her 2-year-old skull. Twin sister & I stifled her screams because we didn’t want to get in trouble. Don’t worry, she was fine and later we told our mother (when we were 17).
• I just can’t wear a do-rag the way I did back then, young & carefree in Key West.

• I really, really miss Jim Henson. Viscerally. Deep in my belly. I love The Dark Crystal! I love when Kira is calling for those stilt-walker things and she yells, “kama leyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” I love when Aughra sniffs Jem and says, “Looks like a gelfling. Smells like a gelfling. Maybe you are a gelfling!!” I love the whole surreal, slow, mystical quality of it.

And did anyone else have a pleasant, albeit disturbing, semi-erotic response to the dog-dragon thing in Never-Ending Story? He’s this giant, strong, undulating, furry beast. How could I not feel a tingle?

• Somebody I know, after reading my comment about waking up in the dead of night with fears, shared the following: For years I used to wake up and check to make sure my breasts and vagina were still there. I had heard that people changed gender, and I thought it happened spontaneously. Just wanted to make sure everything was intact (She finally stopped a few years ago, when she turned 45).

I think I might have actually failed Organic Chemistry II, but the professor gave me a mercy D- because I used to go to his office hours every single day. For extra help, you sickies!

I got a 7% on my Calculus IV final exam. That's zero-seven. I was done in 23 minutes & spent the next hour and a half drawing bunnies all over my test. I was on Dean’s List every semester except the one after that calculus class (and organic); that semester I was on Academic Probation.

I did an independent study in Chemistry that consisted mostly of going out to lunch for Rocks & Wings with my professor. And trying to fix the mass spectrophotometer, which we never managed to do. And learning to shoot a revolver (picture later—in I Might be White Trash VI).

I saw somebody I knew at the grocery store today and I ran & hid behind the organic dairy display until she passed. I just wasn’t in the mood.

There’s a mentally challenged man who works in the cafeteria at my work, and every time he sees me he asks me the same exact question. I don’t know whether to be annoyed or compassionate. Aren’t I allowed to be annoyed by people, even though they are retarded? Dude, I answered you the first 54 times!!! I hate that I feel guilty for thinking “please shut up” every day, in my mind, at him.

I don’t really like Halloween that much. I plan to go out & leave my house dark. Yeah, it’ll be an egg magnet, but at least I won’t have to rummage through my pantry & give the kids canned goods when I run out of candy, like I did last year.

Nostalgika VIII: Stirrings of Prepubescent Desire [repost]

I was so in love with Martin S-C when I was in elementary school. I have mentioned this here before, in my Black Book post and in one of my Meditations. He played the lead in The Mikado, so as far as I was concerned, he was a superstar.

Looking back on the way I felt about him, I see patterns that still exist in my adult life. His effeminate fragility attracted me, as did his delicate bone structure. I find that I am attracted to either really ridiculously manly men, or else men who are really in touch with their womanly side. Martin didn't play rough like other boys. Martin played the viola and read big, fat books.

I pined. I pined, while he was ignorant of my existence. I fantasized that I would be hospitalized and he would sit at my bedside and hold my hand (I also fantasized that I had a dollhouse filled with real, tiny, Borrower-sized people. I would pick up the boy, pull down his pants, and insert a safety pin into the little hole at the tip of his penis. I knew that, despite the pleasant tugging sensation these thoughts gave me behind my navel, I should not tell anyone ... because they were very bad thoughts. This fantasy may have more bearing on the current state of my love life than my love for MSC, come to think of it). I still find any relationship in which I am not in a state of desperate angst to be emotionally unsatisfying. Also, he had a British accent. I like accents, as long as they aren't Russian (sorry, Boris). Since puberty, the ear of my desire has become more attuned to words being whispered and shouted in Spanish; but in 3rd grade, Love spoke British.

The other day, I found two newspaper clippings from the Martin days. See? I was a stalker even then. What a gold mine! Here they are:

Martin was in the newspaper for taking a class in which he learned to conduct the orchestra. Third-grade SG thinks: I can't believe I am in love with somebody famous! This pattern continues to the present day, of course, but you always remember your first brush with fame. Well ... I wished I could have brushed Martin ... instead, he waved his arms with passion and focus while I sat on the sidelines, eating funny little acrid-tasting pellets that I found on the carpet during Story Time.

This was a great day for me. In grade 4, I was in the same class as Martin again (a 5th grader! With upper-lip fuzz!). We won (!!) a bookmark-making contest and were featured in the newspaper. Even though I traced my picture of Winnie the Pooh, my bookmark got the blue ribbon (that's me on the left; check the hair. circa 1977). Martin got 2nd place. See us all showing each other our bookmarks with pride! I am posing for the camera, but my heart is pounding as this photo is being taken, and my eyes are full of his ivory, translucent skin and his pursed little lips ... his well-appointed trousers and his tidily turned collar. In my mind, the two of us are standing together on the Olympic podium, our arms around each other as we listen to the National Anthem. I am so mad that Jenny and Aleta, with their sub-par bookmarks, separate us.

I'm fairly certain that, despite our shared fame, Martin S-C still does not know who I am. Or ... maybe ... he has just blocked me out, because the heartache of our unrequited love is too painful to bear! I am pretty sure that's how it is. Not that he never looked my way, with all my funny voices and my straight-armed, short-panted gait. And the fact that I told him that David Cassidy was my brother. And that I was half-Chinese (because I thought that would be cool, as though all-Estonian wasn't good enough. I look half Chinese, don't I?) No, I am pretty sure that once he realized I was simply out of his league, he nursed his heart back to health and tried to find a way to move on. I sure wish I could.

Nostalgika

I distinctly remember singing "What's-a matter you? Hey! Gotta no respect. What-a you t'ink you do? Why you look-a so sad?It's-a not so bad, it's-a nice-a place. Ah, shaddap-a you face!" and being called in from recess to sit on a bench. Thanks a lot, Joe Dolce.

Nostalgika XVIII : All Things Oral

circa 1978

I used to spend a lot of time reminiscing about the various joys and tragedies of my childhood in a series I like to call

Nostalgika (see all of them listed in the sidebar); oh yes, my heart still bleeds and purrs when I remember Land of the Lost, wearing shoelaces with ice cream cones on them, climbing the pole at recess, coming in third and crying winning the 3rd-grade spelling bee, and bringing glory to my school with my plagiarized Winnie the Pooh bookmark.

Lately, I've been having memories about school and realizing that I was pretty much out of it for most of elementary school. This is due in part to ...

1. not realizing I had a back to my head, ergo, never brushing it.
2. possibly being ADHD, which back then meant you just managed instead of blaming being a spaz on "skipping my meds this morning."
3. having a very active imagination.
4. eating those little white astringent pellets I found on the carpet during story time, which I think migrated to my brain and crystallized.

Anyhow, I found the following bits emerging from the fog of memory. While I have no stirring of nostalgia per se, these naive sexual puzzlements and oral fixations may shed some light on SG's inner early world.

Sometime in 4th or 5th grade I went to see Airplane! with my mother, who took me and my sister to see this educational documentary about the advances in flying since the days of the Wright Brothers. There's a scene in which the stewardess (that's what we used to call flight attendants, for all you little youngsters out thar) is trying to reinflate the auto-pilot blowup doll through the nozzle located below his beltline, and I remember blurting out, "mom, is she giving him a blow job?!?" My mother was, of course, horrified to hear this phrase coming from my 9-year-old lips that had only a short time ago given up a pacifier. Her flushed and spittle-laced Where did you hear that?!?!?!? was satisfied by the explanation that our slutty and large-boobed (and later hairless, since she suffered from trichotillomania) neighbor Crissy had very thoroughly described the process to my sister and me at the bus stop, aided in part by a visual demonstration on a hairbrush.

Shortly thereafter I went through a phase of drawing blowjobs being given on a series of artwork that looked something like this. ... yes, I drew that in Photoshop today. I don't really understand why the head of the penis is pushing out the back of the head like that, but I thought it was hysterically funny, so I drew a bunch of them, and left them lying around here & there. I did not remember this artistic bout until the other night when Jamwall and I watched Superbad, and Sean talked about his phallus sketching phase. No wonder I was so harsh, years later, asking my penis-drawing student whether he was going to be an astronaut ("I've never seen someone so interested in drawing rocketry!!!") and being met with his embarrassed are you kidding right now? gaze.

Since I was into eating things I found around the classroom, it's no surprise that abandoned baked goods left on a school desk (or inside ... heck, I'm not beneath a little freeganing) called to me. As I reached for it my brain suddenly discerned that I was about to grasp not an oversized fresh-baked oatmeal cookie, but a fresh-upchucked pile of someone's breakfast. Thank goodness for reflexes!

I think I've tapped a vein here --- so many memories are just gushing forward. Let's see where this leads us over the next few days, shall we?

I felt like a repost, so ...

100 Things


1. My first language was Estonian. I still speak, read & write it. All the time!
2. I didn't really speak English until I went to kindergarten,
3. where I learned the word "soon" and thought it meant one o'clock.
4. I thought this until I was 11 years old.
5. Because it rhymes with "soon", you see?
6. My twin sister Twirling Girl has always, always been there.
7. I don’t know what I would do without her.
8. My baby sister Tuuna Taco is my other best friend.
9. My parents are some of the best people I know,
10. And I don't tell them enough, so I am telling them now.
11. Since they read my blog.
12. Which sort of censors me, but that is probably a good thing.
13. I can be gross at your blogs, right?
14. I worry that if I ever meet any of you, you will discover that I am not really as pretty as the persona I have created
15. although I have begun to think of myself as "Spinning Girl" and would probably answer to it if someone called to me.
16. Sometimes I get terribly lonely.
17. Often, I love being alone & doing what I want, when I want.
18. I need to tune my piano so that I can play it.
19. I need to clean my chimney so that I can make bigger fires without fearing that I am going to start a chimney fire.
20. Some pieces of music are so beautiful to me that I cannot contain the emotion I feel when I hear them, and I just cry.
21. I can’t stand most of the music I hear on the radio.
22. There are some exceptions.
23. I have an almost unholy obsession with Yellow Ledbetter and every time I hear those first few hesitant guitar notes, I smile with glee.
24. I had a small alcohol problem once.
25. By small, I mean that it had a short life. Maybe two years of really drinking in a way I felt was out of control.
26. Plus 15 years of wondering if maybe I drank a little too much?
27. I gave up the booze on August 6, 2003.
28. In March of 2004 I drank 3 bottles of wine by myself and scared myself so much that I never want to drink again.
29. In July of 2006 I accidentally took a giant swig of my cousin’s vodka tonic, but only because our cups were identical and it really was by accident.
30. If I drink on purpose, I am afraid I will not stop, ever.
31. I still get mad that something so fun could turn into something so bad, but I’m OK with it and I don’t miss it. It just pisses me off that alcohol was such a mean trickster bastard.
32. I become smitten very easily.
33. Recently I was smitten with someone in my grad class.
34. But he never called when he said he would, so I had my answer.
35. That’s too bad, because I still find him really attractive even though I don’t talk to him much.
36. I am also completely infatuated with Jamwall, even though we have never met, because he gets me and we feed off each other’s sick humor in a truly exhilarating way.
37. Right now, I am imagining Jamwall naked.
38. Are you?
39. Someday, I hope to spend a weekend with him, romping through a condiment village that we have built together.
40. Sometimes I am perfectly happy with my life the way it has gone thus far.
41. But I am always ready for the next big, good thing.
42. I would like to be a mom, though not necessarily give birth.
43. Maybe I just need a pony!
44. Or a dog, a non-pooping dog.
45. Having to pick up shit is the one major thing keeping me from getting a dog.
46. Sharing my living space with a box of urine and shit and giant hair balls is what is keeping me from getting a cat.
47. I had the most amazing cat once, and he will never be equaled.
48. I fear the spider, but only once it has reached a certain size.
49. Spiders of Acceptable Size (SAS) are allowed to live freely in my home.
50. Spiders of Unacceptable Size – SUS-- are thrown outside, not killed, unless they are huge or move very fast.
51. I would probably go crazy if I woke up and discovered an SUS clinging to the tip of my nose with all 8 of its legs.
52. I can honestly say that I love my job.
53. It is like a dream. A job cannot be this perfect, can it?!?!?
54. I sometimes fear becoming debilitated and unable to teach anymore; what would I do then?!?!?
55. I don’t spend much time fearing the future though.
56. Most of my fears are fleeting thoughts, lucky me.
57. Maybe I am stupidly optimistic. That is fine with me.
58. I take life’s little luxuries very seriously.
59. My bed.
60. My coffee.
61. That’s a short list, but those are the two biggies.
62. When I was a child, my favorite place to visit was my grandparents’ house in upstate New York.
63. Sometimes we had to weed the garden, and we had to finish before we could swim.
64. This taught me self-discipline and delayed gratification.
65. I used to pretend I was a poor little slave girl, weeding my little row of carrots in the blazing hot sun.
66. Nothing equals the bliss of a cold swim after you have been sweating in the blazing hot sun.
67. There was (is) a spring-fed pond on my grandparents’ back property.
68. It is stocked with fish that were caught elsewhere & put there by my family.
69. They have lived & multiplied there for 50 years.
70. I used to catch grasshoppers in the meadow and then feed them to the fish.
71. I used to be very good at catching grasshoppers; the most I ever caught was 72.
72. Grasshoppers!!!
73. I fear that one day a swarm of locusts will land on me, as payback.
74. This fear, however, is fleeting.
75. When my family sells my grandparents’ house, I don’t think I will be as sad as I was over the past 10 years, watching it decline from what it once was.
76. Nothing gold can stay.
77. I hope that my parents’ home becomes that way for their grandchildren ... a really special place where you can always go and be happy.
78. I believe it is really important to listen to children and not try to spank too much of their personalities out of them.
79. Like the boy who made the grappling hook; it made me really happy to see that.
80. I can think of 5 teachers off the top of my head who would have said, “put that stupid toy away.”
81. Of course, I teach science, and can justify “allowing” a homemade grappling hook in my classroom.
82. It scares me how little science some people know.
83. I’m a little bit obsessed with Carl Sagan, and rightly so.
84. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is one of my favorite books of all time.
85. I should read it again soon. I tend to reread books I love several times.
86. I have read Lord of the Rings at least 22 times from start to finish, plus countless times of reading just certain parts.
87. For me, rereading a good book is like visiting a place that I love.
88. When I want to escape for a while, I go to Middle Earth.
89. I’m OK with being a total geek.
90. I have amazing tits, so I can get away with it.
91. Are you imagining my tits right now?
92. Go ahead, then. I am OK with being objectified by you.
93. Shit, I forgot about my parents reading this.
94. Sorry mom and dad, sometimes I say dirty things to be funny.
95. Dirty and funny is one of my favorite combinations.
96. Wow, 100 is a lot.
97. I might have dyslexia because I often reverse “tomorrow” and “yesterday” in my speech, regardless of what language I am speaking. I think those two concepts got stored incorrectly in my Wernicke.
98. I am a huge procrastinator, and I did this instead of grading papers.
99. I always feel better after a good day of procrastinating.
100. I’ll feel even better later when I get that shit done. Thank you for reading!

Meditation on a cup of perfect coffee

A long time ago I used to do a series of posts called Meditations; they were just free-roaming streams-of-consciousness things, but I did enjoy them. I have gotten so far from everyday writing; I think that using a daily writing tool will help me to re-lubricate the muscle and get back into a place where the ideas flow regularly. Like many blocked writers, I am haunted by the idea that there's nothing to write about. But we know that's not true, don't we?

Jamwall taught me how to make the perfect cup of coffee. He is so good at so many things. He is my hero. Anyhow, the coffee: It's easy; you just have to grind the beans right before brewing. He also has some sort of formula, which he was trying to tell me as I was putting on my makeup and he was using my computer to surf the internets ... it was all 24s and sixes and something about a scoop, but I stopped listening because I don't like measuring.

There is this ice cream truck that drives around the neighborhood playing its little ding-a-ling tunes, and today I swear it was playing Man of La Mancha. Who wants to eat ice cream when poor Don Quixote was so painfully thin?!?!? We should be buying him a cone!

I've discovered that the way to keep from mindlessly snacking in the evenings is to stay away from the TV and instead get involved in a project; so tonight I assembled this humongous steel shelving in my garage and organized all my garage crap onto it. I felt really productive and proud, instead of sleepy and lethargic, for a change. With summer coming I am kicking the motivated project-doing SG into high gear. I just realized that winter doldrums should be over, as it is indeed June.

At the old-fashioned theater where I went to hear Dar Williams on Friday, there is an insufficient railing on the balcony. As I stood next to it I had the temptation to throw myself over it. Well, not the temptation so much, as the scary thought of what if? ...I were to just do that? I scare myself like that sometimes. It's not the first time.

I miss Monkey and the days when all of us met in Monkeyland and frolicked together, semi-nudely. Ahhh, alas ... nothing gold can stay. And nothing furry can stay. Which reminds me; I need to shave my legs.

There are these dry-erase markers at work that have gone bad; I think they have started to ferment. So I take a whiff, and I say, Ew! These reek! Then I sniff again, make a face, and sniff again. What is wrong with me?!?!?

That's about all I can do today. I'll see you folks again soon. Tomorrow, if I can keep a promise to myself.

When having a double chin was cute.

Spinning Girl, age 1

Nostalgika XVII: Bookmark Fame

Once long ago, I told you about the fame I encountered when my bookmark was chosen out of 4, or possibly 5 entries in a contest at my elementary school. Oh, the pride and shame I felt when mine was chosen! For I alone knew that I had traced the picture, and that the win belonged not to me, but to famed Pooh artist Ernest H. Shepard, and to the magic of mimeograph.

Here is a portion of the story, in which my win and my love for Martin S-C mingle in newsprint:

This was a great day for me. In grade 4, I was in the same class as Martin again (a 5th grader! With upper-lip fuzz!). We won (!!) a bookmark-making contest and were featured in the newspaper. Even though I traced my picture of Winnie the Pooh, my bookmark got the blue ribbon (that's me on the left; check the hair. circa 1977). Martin got 2nd place. See us all showing each other our bookmarks with pride! I am posing for the camera, but my heart is pounding as this photo is being taken, and my eyes are full of his ivory, translucent skin and his pursed little lips ... his well-appointed trousers and his tidily turned collar. In my mind, the two of us are standing together on the Olympic podium, our arms around each other as we listen to the National Anthem. I am so mad that Jenny and Aleta, with their sub-par bookmarks, separate us.

I struck a goldmine on the day that my mom brought me my childhood scrapbook, which has coughed up such gems as my spelling bee third place cryfest. What did I find nestled in its crusty bosom, but the original bookmark!


One is me. Savor that well-turned phrase! Reach out and caress the pink paper! Smell the fresh mimeo ink! One of the benefits of winning this contest was that the winning bookmark was copied via blue-tinted mimeograph and handed out in the school library to everyone who checked out a book. I love to think that my little bookmark was carried by readers young and old, inspiring them to delve into the STOPIES of A.A Milne. Despite the fact that I traced the image, my superior artsmanship is evident. I imagine that Martin's 2nd-place artwork was nearly as moving, nearly as inspired. Let all others flock to our banner and only wish they could touch the lives that we were able to touch. Dream on, Jenny and Aleta!

Spinning Girl Deep Cuts: Stupid x3

Originally posted 7/20/05

Top 3 Stupidest Things I Have Done:
A Sharing Session

1979: My sister & I decided to ride bikes side by side, with me holding her handlebars and her holding mine. The ride lasted 0.13 seconds and we traveled approximately 9.75 inches before falling over. She jumped off, I fell -- on her bike -- and the axle poked a 1” deep hole in my thigh.
High point: The exhilaration of considering a future circus career.
Low point: The realization that this dream, too, must die.

1988: Traveling halfway across Long Island Sound in a 12’ rowboat. We took 3 outboard motors that my boyfriend had rebuilt & wanted to try out. No life vests. Only other boats out there were the ferry and a huge barge.
High Point: Swimming off the middlegrounds lighthouse.
Low point: What I did for Love.

2000: Jumping off a cliff near the Via dell’ Amore in Manarola, Italy and breaking my tailbone. A 35’ jump and I didn’t clench properly. Water shot up my butt and snapped my tailbone. It hurt for a year.
High point: The view on the way down was gorgeous.
Low point: The instant I hit the water and made that elephant-seal-like groan that you only make when you majorly hurt your ass (you’ve made it too, when you fell off your bike seat onto the bar) .

Nostalgika XVI: The Tragedy of the School Spelling Bee

Goldmine! My mother found my childhood crapbook scrapbook (basically just a binder with plastic sheets filled with things I cared about). Lucky you! Now I can document & share more of my childhood.

Now then:

(click for the bigger goodies)

I don't know if you can tell, but in this picture I am trying really hard not to cry. I'm the cutie on the right with the jaunty neckerchief and the new glasses. I have just completely embarrassed myself, and winning third place is no consolation. Even when I take my prize coupon to McDonald's and get my free burger a few weeks later, its taste is bitter and rank with shame.

Everything was going fine, and then I got cocky. I breezed through all the words they threw at me, and by the way, did I mention I was a fourth grader at the fifth grade spelling bee? Seems like the town newspaper left out that important detail. Hmph! I am in the big league now!!!

I cranked out all these hard words: Ridiculous, neighbor, phrase. Then came my death-knell: Scissors. I know how to spell it, really I do. But you would never have known it by the way I reeled out the letters at lightning speed:

S--C--I--R--R--O--R--S. Scissors!

The look of horror on my mother's face in the audience instantly told me I had blown it, but I had no idea how. What did I say?!?!?! Her mouth agape, her eyebrows fixed in a frown of dismay ... that look is forever burned in my brain. I felt a flush begin at my heart and rush upwards to color my face and force its way out of my eyes as I listened to the second-place winner next to me recite the proper spelling. She fell shortly thereafter, but there was no joy in her fall for me, the loser who substitutes R's for S's.

Later, during our press photo, I tried to smile but the corners of my mouth did that funny little dance that they do when you have been smiling too long, as I fought to keep my tears and my choking sobs inside. On the drive home I listened to the consolations and teachings of my parents, and carried the lesson about "taking my time" into my bedroom, where I flopped onto the bed and cried, with visions of double S in my mind.

In later years, I would brag to others that I had "won" the town spelling bee. Nobody seemed to remember the truth, and I felt that my fall was really just a technicality, after all. I knew how to spell both of the words that came after "scissors," so if I hadn't rushed through that one I probably would have won. This was my mantra through middle school and even into high school. But I never ate a McDonalds hamburger again without visualizing that word and tasting the salt of my own tears.

Click IMBWT and the "nostalgia" tag below more childhood fun!

Nostalgika XV: Solid Goldmine!

I was rummaging through the piano music that I studied as a child, and came across this amazing find:

Can I hear a big, circa-1977-style Far Out?!?!?

Repost: The Saturday Night Double-Banger (Nostalgika)

Remember how thrilling Saturday nights used to be? Make some popcorn (on the stove; we didn't even have microwaves. Popcorn in a bag? Whazzat?), settle in on the bed, lying on your stomach facing the TV, poised for two HOURS of TV-land bliss. I am speaking, of course, of the Love Boat-Fantasy Island Double-Barrelled Bang-and-Bang-Again!!

I knew I was supposed to think Captain Stubing was the hero, but in secret fantasies Doc would sneak into my cabin to examine me. Usually, it was because I had twisted my knee on the diving board. Before he could pronounce my diagnosis, Vickie would interrupt us with some shipboard problem, uttered in that spittle-laced speech-impediment way of hers. I never much cared about what Julie was doing, but I thought Isaac was the coolest guy I had ever known. I never took Gopher seriously. Not like now.

Everything about this show was great, from the realistic-looking moonlight, to the innocent little PG love triangles, to the spats between the crew members. I loved how the old married couple came on board facing the demise of their passion and left cooing like doves. I loved the teenaged girl who fell in love for the first time with a boy from Greece. I loved the way Julie's polyester dresses hugged her breasts in the cool night air. The Love Boat stands as the flagship of my childhood TV life.

I still haven't unwrapped my Capt. Stubing doll to see whether his underwear is painted on or not. I figure a wrapped package is worth a lot more on eBay.

And then, immediately after Love Boat, came Fantasy Island! Where your dreams come true! I loved how in every episode Tattoo announced that "de pleen!" was flying in, and Mr. Roarke would smile his benevolent, omnipotent smile. He was the most gracious host.

This show delivered like Domino's. I loved the guy who came with the fantasy of being a cowboy, and left with a cowhand in tow ... I sure wish I could quit you ... wait, did that happen? Strangely, I don't remember a single fantasy. I remember that sometimes they didn't turn out as expected, and that there was always a lesson in there somewhere. A lesson that Roarke had planned all along. Not too comfortable about the Tattoo-Roarke relationship either. What was that? It's a little too late to ask Herve, I am afraid, but maybe Ricardo will come out with a tell-all one of these days. What's that you say? ... Oooh, save me a copy.

P.S. Did anyone else have this experience?: I was just a little bit troubled by how felinely sexual I found Mr. Roarke to be, after I saw Ricardo Montalban in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. I just didn't know that under that white suit, he was a man. A man who bared his chest and spoke with a Spanish accent. Ay ay ay.

Blog of Note

Here's the 80's

Now if you'll pardon me,

I have some bangle bracelets to find ...

A little something caught in my teeth.

I was flossing this morning, and I came across this:

twolf1920 has left a new comment on your post Keep those questions comin': Might be too late, but here goes! Whats the most EMBARRASSING thing that ever happened to you? If you tell me YOURS, I will tell you MINE!

Sorry twolf, I hope you didn't feel too left out of the blogsnuggle. Here is my reply:

I have two related embarrasing tales, both of which involve underwear.

Embarrassing Tale #1 (grade three): Amy Campbell untied my wrap-around skirt so that when I stood up to return my tray, my skirt fell down and the whole cafeteria saw my little briefs with the assortment of colored mushrooms all over them (what in the seven levels of Hell were those all about?!?). At least, I always blamed her; but I was never really sure whether she did it, or if it just came untied on its own. Fuck you anyway, Amy Campbell!

Embarrassing Tale #2 (circa 1998): I was teaching high school and sharing a room with a woman who was in charge of the Senior Homecoming Float. Hence I thought nothing of it when I saw a scrap of fabric lying in the middle of the floor. After the students had gone, I picked it up and discovered, holy shit, this is underwear. Holy everliving fuck, this is my underwear! I had a pair of panties stuck inside my pants leg from a previous wearing, that had worked their way out onto the floor of my classroom of sophomores. To this day I wonder at what point they were hanging, hermit-crab-like, half in/half out of my pants leg. Fuck you again, Amy Campbell!! Fuck you foreverrrrrrr!!!!

Tuesdays are for Highlights circa 1946

Find the hidden drawings!

A blogging contest

I love the following quote: It affords many minutes of fun for the whole family. You just don't get any better than that!

The challenge: The first blogger to send me photographic proof of having found all 12 items will receive a prize! I don't know what the prize is, but it will probably be crap from my house, and most likely will have spent some time inside my clothes before being mailed to you.

Good luck!

one entry per household, please.

p.s. am I the only one who ever rubbed one out to Goofus and Gallant?

True Story

Readers of Word Nerd have been treated to 13 installments (thus far) in an epic saga known as The Misery Trip, describing WN's hellish roadtrip from Wisconcin to Missouri to rescue her friend from a raging man. I've been following it closely, and it is worth the hop over to this blog and the back-scrolling to read it.

I'd like to share with you a comment I wrote recently at this site, for WN's story reminded me of my NH adventures:

When I taught in New Hampshire, we had a family that lived in a trailer a few miles from school, with chewing tobacco signage staple-gunned all over the outside of the house. The parents were 1st cousins and had a child in every grade from preK-12. All of the boys were named Jeremiah, and all of the kids, boys & girls alike, were dumb as posts. Even though that sounds made up, I certify with this notarized stamp: (*) that it is 100% true.

Wintry Mix

I don’t think anybody could be as happy as I am at this very moment. Well, maybe every other teacher in New England ... but mine is a particular kind of happiness because I wanted it, I prayed for it, I did the dance, I put ice cubes down the toilet, I slept with my entire silverware drawer dumped into my bed, I said “see you Thursday” to the kids. And this morning, when the phone rang at 5:00 to tell me we had a snowday, I smiled because I finally got my way. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh! Joy of joys. Better than a weekend, more delicious than summer vacation, this borrowed time, this cocoa day, this pajama day.

Teachers pretend not to like snow days, and moan about the time having to be made up in June, about the quadratic formulas that won’t get practiced today, the verbs that won't get conjugated. A few might really believe this, and grumble as they gaze out the window, cursing the sleet. All that learning time, wasted ...

Ha! Secretly, inwardly, we are children just standing at the door with our sleds in our hands and our mittens dangling on strings from our sleeves. At least, I am that way, and forget about June ... it’s all about immediate gratification here in Spinning Land.