And now a message that came to me via telegram...

Boy or girl, I don't care, I'm naming my first born

"Patsy Cline."

...methinks the second born shall be called "Carol Channing."

I've found my calling...it paged me on my beeper.

Dear World,

I've just discovered that my destiny dream job is writing captions for the dating reality show "Blind Date." Please send any show connections/networking opportunities/time portals to the 1990s my way.

Love,
Me

My Mother, the Buzz Kill

(starring a young Katherine Heigl)

Sometimes when I find something funny or I'm very happy about something (read: there's a big smile on my face) and I tell it to my mom, she interrupts me mid-topic-sentence and says, "wear your retainers!" and shakes her finger at me. She really does shake her finger; I'm not making that part up.

Suddenly, I'm not so tickled to tell my story anymore.

BEFORE

AFTER

The biggest downer is that I know she's right. Those retainers kill me.

So, what have we learned from this?

Mother knows best.

It takes pains to be comely.

Two clichés in one post. And they say I'm not productive.

Golden Memories and Platinum Prophecies

As a member of the lower school community service club, I spent my Friday lunch periods in seventh and eighth grade socializing with the residents of Mount Pleasant, a nursing home located five minutes from my school.

Despite the frequency of my visits, breaking the ice was always nerve-racking for me. Conversation was a gamble. I never knew whether the people at my table would even want to talk, and during conversations I feared I’d stumble into an awkward or painful subject.

During one memorable visit, I greeted the woman to my left by asking her whether she was enjoying the nice spring weather we'd been having.

Without lifting her eyes from the untouched fish in front of her, she sighed and said,

“I’m just waiting for the day they tell me I can leave this place.”

Still optimistic, I tried to rebound by asking her what her favorite season was.

This question prompted the woman to look up from her plate and stare at me, perhaps to verify that she was not speaking to a four-year-old. The look she gave me indicated that now she was waiting for someone to tell her that at least I would leave soon.

Slightly discouraged, I turned to the man on my right and asked him whether he was enjoying his lunch. The topic seemed safe enough, considering he was licking some stray breadcrumbs stuck to the back of his fork.

“I remember you,” he said with a smile.

“You’re Jewish. We talked a couple of weeks ago.”

This was the first time someone at Mount Pleasant remembered me, or at least thought they did, and I didn't want to contradict him.

After all, I was an eighth grader whose social life was experienced vicariously through the characters of TGIF sitcoms. The idea of getting to be someone else, even if only through the eyes of a bald octogenarian, had its appeal. So I murmured an "uh huh," and made sure that my gold cross necklace was tucked underneath my shirt.

When asked, I told him honestly that no, I had not had my bat mitzvah yet. I felt guilty that he was making such an effort to remember things about the girl he thought I was, so I shifted the focus of the conversation onto him.

Soon, he was telling me about how different life was when he was growing up. Some of his friends had faced a lot of discrimination.

"One man was a Jew, such as yourself.”

He leaned in as he said this and gestured toward me with his open palm.

"Yes, jewish..." I dopily replied, bobbing my head.

However, he went on to tell me, his true passion was dancing. Deep wrinkles formed in his cheeks as he asked me whether I knew who Ann Miller was. Not wanting to disappoint him, I told him that her name sounded familiar.

“I danced with her,” he told me proudly.

Once I had learned a little more about Ann Miller, I was able to appreciate the significance of that man's treasured memory.
Dancing was what he loved most, and he was able to do it with one of the best dancers of his time.

My own life isn't devoid of celebrity encounters: I've shaken hands with Jimmy Carter. My friend's aunt was a bond girl. Heck, once I hung out with two kids from ZOOM.

I've flaunted all of these encounters before, but I aspire to have my own "Ann Miller" experience, something I'll still be bragging about sixty years from now.

I can picture myself as an eighty-two year-old somewhere like "Space Mount Pleasant," talking to a nice catholic boy who visits me weekly. I'll admire his yamaka as I ask him if he's ever heard of William Hung. He'll lie and tell me that he thinks the name rings a bell, and I'll boast that we once sang a karaoke duet together.

Then, drifting away from reality, I'll smugly reflect on my proudest memories. Lost in my thoughts, I'll lift my glass of prune juice and say with sincerest gratitude,

"L'Chaim."

The Tracks of My Years

One of my family's favorite home videos is of me when I was about three years old. The video starts out just like many others with my father, the interviewer, asking me what I had done that day. I wobble in front of the camera, scratching the underside of my chin with the back of my hand as I contemplate his question.

"Iiiyuhh…"

I look up to the ceiling, find my answer, and gaze back into the camera.

"…peed in my underpants."

My blank stare tells him I'm ready for the next question. My father delves deeper into the topic, posing his second question, and I nail the answer: peeing in my underpants was "a bad thing."

I then open up about the rest of my day, revealing that subsequent events included wanting to play "Candy Land," playing ball, napping, "having another accident," and finally participating in the interview at hand.

In case you missed it, I'll recap: by three o'clock in the afternoon, I had already peed in my pants twice.

To me it had been just another day in my (supposedly) potty-trained life. To my parents, however, it was cause for concern, or at least further investigation.

First we went to the pediatrician, whose only suggestion that I can remember was that I try going to the bathroom backwards. This helped start a day-long trend among my fellow preschoolers who, thanks to our door-less bathrooms, were inspired by my backwards squat and decided to adopt my experimental peeing pose.

Although I may have gained cool points for my bathroom creativity, I gained nothing in terms of bladder control, and the next step was to have my kidneys tested.

The kidney scan was my first hospital experience since birth. I lay down while a machine with a ninja turtle sticker on it moved above my body, and then I peed when instructed to do so. Afterwards, I got pizza. The result of the scan showed that nothing was wrong with my kidneys, I just didn't like using the bathroom.

What finally got me off accidents and onto the toilet was the looming threat that if I didn’t improve, I’d have to wear diapers.

My parents had told me about these "cool underpants" I could wear while I slept so that I wouldn’t make a mess if I accidentally wet the bed. Excited, I had imagined an undergarment made out of bathing-cap material. Instead, I woke up and found that I was wearing a pair of Huggies “Pull-Ups” training pants. Talk about a horrifying wake-up call.

I’m still just as candid today about my past of peeing in my pants as I was in that home video. My friends tell me that I should consider being less open about that part of my childhood, but I don't see their reasoning.

“What?” I say, “It’s not like I had to wear diapers.”

Fun with Family: A Touchy Topic

Happy December, Blog!

Oh gosh. I feel like I have some ‘splaining to do because I’ve been away for a bit of a while. But, as someone once said, “excuses are like [mom won't let me type this part]: everyone’s got one and they all stink.”

So ta-dah. No excuses here. I lazy. I so lazy, verbs not typed. (“typed” is  a passive past participle. Did I have to specify that I meant action verbs? Damn you, grammar nerdzis….)

So, let’s catch-up. A lot has happened since last post. Several days, one holiday (two if you count Eid), and at least two family gatherings. Most notably, I’ve become a game inventor.

The idea came to me on Thanksgiving day, post meal. My family and I were all crowded into our family room, which was awkward, because normal post-feast protocol is that the grown-ups (my parents, my great uncle and his girlfriend, my dad’s cousin and his wife) go into the living room and do whatever it is middle aged people do (drink? sleep? break dance?) and we kids (my three siblings and three second-cousins) hang out in the family room, where we watch silly television and laugh at how Caroline and Brian fall asleep after two minutes. (Whew, run-on sentence. How do you like me now, nerds?)

Back to this year. Something in my dad’s brain must have short-circuited because he led the adults into the family room to (literally) rub elbows with we childrenfolk. Both my brother and I subtly and politely tried to alert him of his faux pas, Excuse me, old man, are you lost? but he brushed off our hints, mumbling something about letting old people lie.

Regardless of their additional company, Caroline and Brian quickly fell into their ritual stupors. With football as the only source of TV “entertainment,” I soon shifted my focus from the television to the most interesting spectacle in the room: my sleeping sister. What a monumental shift that turned out to be. One glance at Caroline, and I found myself eyes-to-nostrils with an opportunity to unleash my creative genius.

I’m no artist.  I want to show you what I saw, but my passion and desire to share my gift with the world are the only things (note lack of artistic training) that guided my hand as I attempted to recreate the blank canvas that lay before me.

Don't be scared. It's just a drawing. 

I called my vision "CGGenga" (pronounced C-G-Jenga) as an homage to both my subject and the classic family game "Jenga."

My siblings and I started the first round, taking turns touching Caroline's nostril. If someone woke her up, all players would exclaim "Jenga!" and the offending toucher would be declared the loser of that round.

         

After the popularity of the preliminary rounds, cousins Olivia and Matt soon joined in on the fun, and my Great Uncle's 80-something-year-old girlfriend, Elaine, thought the game was a laugh riot. (Ah, Elaine. I knew I liked her.)

Unfortunately, Caroline didn't "get" the brilliance we had created, and deemed the game "disrespectful." Because of her pivotal role in the game, her disapproval has put any future rounds on hold. I've offered her a 20% cut of the profits, but she remains obstinate.

I'll get her one day, though.

Right now she is a sturdy tower, but I have the patience and strategy to win her over. I am Joshua, and she is my Jericho. Brick by brick, I shall work on her resistance, dreaming of the day when her walls shall come tumbling down, and my army and I shall exclaim triumphantly, "Jenga!"