Pre-Birthday Musings
Independence Day signals not only the full onset of summer, it’s also the prelude to the anniversary of my appearance on this earth. My birthday is coming along soon and this year I started noticing signs that I’m getting old(er). Here’s the top of mind list:
1. “Teh Yearz, They R Gud 2 U” Last year, on my birthday, I was leaving my parents’ house after a lovely birthday dinner when a neighbor stopped me on my way to the car. It was the son of the people across the street, the man whose sisters had babysat for me when I was little. I only vaguely remembered him, but he knew my name so I figured I must have known him better at some point. I asked politely after his life - wife? kids? Yes, yes, he said, and then he told me I looked great and blurted ”the years have been really good to you.” I’d never actually heard anybody say that to anybody’s face before so I sort of stood there wondering if this was a joke, a kid, of some kind. He was very sincere, and I thanked him and went home.
It was months later that I realized I’ve hit the age where people start commenting, “You look good for your age.”
For my age? What does this even mean? Are there standards that get lowered the older you get, such that if you make it to forty without too many varicose veins then you get a gold star for having 35-year-old legs? I know there’s all this pressure to look young, to look good, blah blah blah. And I get that, I feel that pressure too. I just find “you look good for your age” vaguely insulting though I can’t exactly put my finger on why. Is it a backhanded compliment? You’re old, but we’re not going to set you adrift on an ice floe just yet.
2. “Chunky. It’s not just for peanut butter anymore.” I have wobbly bits, yes, and it’s true that I woke up on my 30th birthday to find that the Cellulite People, led by Her Royal Highness Queen Golf ball Bottom, had colonized my entire thigh area from tush to knee and I haven’t been able to launch a successful coup against them - but this is really all just about insecurities. I went to the doctor a few weeks ago because I noticed an alarming increase in my weight. Cause for alarm, no? My doctor, in her kind way, suggested that we cannot eat in our thirties what we ate in our twenties. She also said this is typical in America where we have a typical American lifestyle. She suggested more exercise – 6 days a week. I panicked a little because I think this means something about slowing metabolism and even though I eat well and exercise more than most people I know IT’S STILL NOT ENOUGH. EEGAWDS.
3. “You’re Doing That Old-Lady Thing…” So I’ve developed a Knee Problem. Not a knee problem as in, I need anthroposcopical surgery or a brace or what have you, but my knee has been…let’s say it’s making itself known. Like, I’ll be at work, sitting at my desk, and I will need a drink. When I stand up, my knee is suddenly 80 years old – stiff, a little ouchie. Walking around helps. Yoga helps. And it’s not bad enough that I feel a doctor is necessary. I’ve heard of this stuff happening though. Knee Problems and Hip Problems. I want none of it but my knee isn’t listening. I’m also doing that old-lady squat thing. I drop something on the floor and instead of bending from the waist to pick it up, I sort of squat by bending my knees and put one hand on one thigh and pick up the dropped item with the other hand. I have never seen an 8-year-old do this. Only people who mostly wear things called ‘Housecoats’ all the time, even to the store.
4. “You Must Be This Old to Ride This Ride” I’m so glad I’m not 21 anymore. Or 17, or 12. Really. I don’t care if I have a colony of Cellulitists on my booty, I’ll take everything I’ve got now over everything I didn’t have a clue about then. I was talking to a young lady at work who is 21 and bless her heart, she’s adorable, and she reminds me every day that I’m thankfully far from wearing pajamas to class at 8 am and trying to decipher what boys mean when they want to take you to a mud bog* on a date. I like who I am a lot better than I did then and I really hope this trend continues until I’m 85 and I’m like SUPREMELY AWESOME, at least to myself.
I’m sure in the next few days I’ll be adding to this list, but it’s what was on my mind recently.
*Yeah, I don’t know…don’t ask me.
Summer State of the Union
Well, it’s hotter than blazes here in the Ohio River Valley. The heat is a burning boa constrictor squeezing the life out of you between your air-conditioned home and the car, then between the car and your destination. Mr. Writing Spider has been gone nearly every evening since the beginning of May – he’s an umpire and normally has double-headers every night. So it’s just me and the ferrets most of the time. Which means plenty of time to write.
I’ve been working on a book. No, for real this time. I have more than seven thousand words at the present moment. No, you cannot read them. Yet. I’ll need beta readers some day, but for now, it’s just bird by bird, as Anne Lamott says. Here’s what I have to say about writing a book:
1. Not as sexy as you think it is. I do not have a velvet smoking jacket and a snifter of brandy to enjoy while I leak brilliance onto the page from my ebon-inked quill. First of all, I don’t like brandy. And second, it’s eight skillion degrees outside and who wants to wear velvet? (I am looking at you, Goth children.) It’s more like, “I need to write some stuff.” And I sit at the computer as I am now – ratty shorts, flip flops, and a tank top I got for 50 cents at the Gap outlet that says “with martinis and manhattans for all” next to a picture of the Statue of Liberty. There are many nights where I just type a word, take a sip of tea, scratch my ear, delete the word and write a sentence, go downstairs to check the laundry, and then finish the paragraph.
2. It’s crap. But that’s OKAY I AM ALLOWED TO SUCK. Sometimes I do sit here and amaze myself with my own brilliance, because my idea is just so effing cool and nobody’s ever had this idea for a book before and my characters are so original and blah blah blah. Then that passes, and I realize that my hard-earned 7,000 words are pretty crappy right now. Some are mere place holders until I can tickle the muse into giving me something more. But this part, this first draft part, is just some bones. There’s no flesh, no blood, no fancy clothes. That comes later.
3. Being allowed to suck, rather, allowing yourself to suck, is incredibly freeing. I suggest you try it sometime.
4. I would be a famous writer in manner of Jane Austen or Stephen King if it were not for the existence of: (in no order in particular) television shows I would like to see, the need for sleep, dinner that must be made, and my day job.
5. I have given up on Writing Tricks. I kept reading books about writing, and how to write and whatnot. Neil Gaiman (cue angel choir, although a sort of dark angel choir, of course) says that the key is that you just have to write something. That’s all you can do for a while. So that’s what I’m trying and wow, that combined with #2 has been getting the job done for about two weeks.
6. I did try to download some freeware. It’s called yWriter and it’s supposed to help you organize the chapters and whatnot. First I spent three hours making it work (I am not all that technologically gifted, despite my previous crowing about getting my fancy photo printer and Google analytics to work), then…it gave me the PC version of an STD. A mighty trojan virus that buggered the whole thing up until Husband came to the rescue and deleted it. Now it’s just me and Word.
That’s all for now. I’m going to try to get some more words to up the count before Husband gets home.
What’s the word…?
I’m comforted by the idea that there is a word for everything. For every feeling in your head, every item around you, every little thing under the sun there is, most likely, a word for it. I wonder if painters feel the same way about paint – do they think there is a color of paint for every color in their imaginations? Words are the writer’s paint and the more words you have at your command, the more tools you have to work with. I love that there is a word for when you can’t find the right word for something (although it’s usually because there is something seriously wrong in your brain if you have it for real) – aphasia. I love that there is a word for having a shapely bottom – callipygian. Obelisk. Mysterious. Grand. Homunculus. Wisteria.
The problem, of course, is that if your reader doesn’t have the tools to understand you, well, your meaning remains locked away on the page. I get the sense that writing with words is like having a lock and the reader has the key. I offer you a lock (say, the word callipygian) and if you don’t already have the key to the meaning of that word OR you don’t know how to find the key of the meaning of the word, you won’t understand me if I say I aspire to a callipygian physique. What if my story hinges on your understanding of callipygian?
I know I’m not the first person to think about these things, but let me work this out for myself here. This all started with my idea that there is a word for everything which is perfect because I need lots of words every day. Then I noticed that it made me comfortable – perhaps the idea that I could be more completely and fully understood? Yes! Because like most human beans (dare I say all?) my own little life has been shot through with feelings of misunderstanding. If I just know the right words, I thought, then everyone will understand me which is great – saves time and such.
But that’s not really how it works out is it? I don’t think I’ll ever know all the words to be understood, but I keep trying to learn as many as I can. I can never know if I have the right lock to fit your keys, but we can certainly still try.
Getting Fired, Moving On – Why I’m not a teacher anymore
Here’s a snapshot: Adult me, in crumpled khakis and a cotton sweater, tearstained face, slinking out of a yellow brick school building. If I had known how important this day was going to be, I would have worn something cuter so that when I replayed the scene over and over – which I did, obsessively, for years – I wouldn’t have to say, “Geez…no wonder they fired me. I looked really dumpy.” The focus on unfortunate trouser choice was my way of avoiding the uncomfortable crackle of an old dream sloughing away, one I’d been clinging to that had worn out its usefulness.
In 2004, I was working on my master of arts in teaching with a secondary English focus. Unable to teach in a public school until I had received full certification, a private school position was perfect since I could work and student teach at the same time. I had been offered a job at a posh girls’ school. They had a list of qualifications, I met all of them. I got the job over two alums and was thrilled to start my dream career – teaching English.
I charged into the classroom, full of excited energy but I hit a wall quickly. I struggled to read hundreds of pages in books I hadn’t read in years (or at all) and pages of student writing. There were lesson plans, a computerized grading system, lunchroom duty. I soldiered on, bolstered by the refrain, “The first year is the hardest.”
Flash forward to April: a note in my mailbox. “Sara, can you drop by during your planning period? Thanks!” It was signed by the principal of the school. Even at twenty-nine, you don’t want to get called to the principal’s office. Other teachers tried to reassure me, saying she probably wanted to talk about what classes I was teaching next year. That didn’t unwind the knot in my stomach telling me something was wrong.
The knot was right.
I had just pushed the door close to her sunny office but hadn’t settled in a chair when from her monolithic cherry desk the principal said, “Well, there’s no easy way to say this. We will not be renewing your contract for next year.” My breath fled.
I’d never been fired. Actually, they don’t call it that in the school system. They call it “not renewing your contract” but who are we kidding? I was sacked. As a kid, when I heard of people who got fired I imagined them in suits and ties, their mouths round O’s and eyes full of panic as their heads suddenly became engulfed in flames like giant matchsticks. It wasn’t far from the truth that day. My head was on fire with embarrassment and anger as I sat in that former nun’s office while she calmly explained that I was expected to finish out the school year but I would not be invited back next year. Like it was a party and I was one guest too many.
A writhing knot of panic worked its way from my stomach to my chest. My class observation sessions by other teachers and the head of the department had provided no clue that this was coming. The rest of my conversation with the principal included her refusing to tell me why they were letting me go. Sure I’d made pretty much all the classic first-year teacher mistakes, but it wasn’t like I’d lit up a cigarette in class or hit anybody with a ruler. When I asked what I was supposed to tell people now, she said primly, “You can just tell them you’ve decided not to come back next year.”
“But that would be a lie,” I blurted. In my head I was screaming, “Of course I want to come back! I wanted this job! I’m perfect for this job! This is my dream job!” At that moment, I so desperately wanted them to want me to be here, for this not to be happening. The idea of telling people I didn’t want to be there any more was an insult and felt like betraying myself since I’d wanted this job so badly.
I left her office. I ran to my classroom without being seen by a single student, choking on thick sobs then closed the door and hyperventilated while I called my husband. By sidling along deserted corridors with my head down, I was able to skulk out of the school to my car and haven’t been back since.
This day set off an avalanche of revelation, soul-searching, rebuilding and path-finding. For the year following, I felt as if I was rolling down a very steep hill, snagging on boulders here and there, but the clarity I feel now is worth more than my bruised ego then.
I had gotten a big huge cosmic smack – it said YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE A HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER. There was lightning, I think. Possibly thunder. Clearly, I had ignored the other signs. For instance, I thought it was normal to wake from a dead sleep at three a.m., shake your new husband into a half-alert stupor, and earnestly cry to him that you hadn’t taught chivalric love properly and your students will now go through life with an inadequate understanding of this concept. I thought it was normal to have a panic attack every morning before work.
The biggest and most painful rock I hit on the way down the mountain: I had spent five years devoted to becoming a teacher – the masters degrees dedicated to teaching English, reading all the books, calling myself a teacher. Even a throw blanket that read “TEACHERS TOUCH LIVES.” God, the Universe, and Everything had other plans. For a long time, I kept shaking my fists and blaming everything on “that vile school,” on the head of the English department who I never quite clicked with, on the administration. It was difficult to understand that perhaps they were all human billboards saying THIS IS NOT YOUR PATH.
Being fired from this job was only made more humiliating because I’d never failed so spectacularly before. Grudgingly, it has only been recently that I will admit this was the best thing that could have happened to me.
It wasn’t just professional change I found. When I told Husband I’d just walked out of the school and I was not going back, he didn’t get angry, he didn’t tell me I was wrong and to march my tail back there because we needed the money and the health insurance. He went to the school the next day with a biology teacher from the next classroom to clear out my classroom. Later, every time we drove by the school – which was often since we lived close – he would lead the way in an elaborate ritual of flipping off the school as we passed, complete with laser beam sound effects.
We had gotten married in the middle of my first year of teaching, at Christmas. The first year of our marriage was rough, made worse by my difficulty with teaching. I was stressed all the time. Getting fired didn’t help, nor did my impetuous exit and subsequent loss of income. We also lost a pet, endured financial problems and health issues – the usual stuff, granted, but all mixed together. The first year of marriage was frontloaded with the “bad times” mentioned in the vows. I had lost my dream job but that year of struggle and his loving support in the face of my professional failure simply strengthened the threads that bound us together, building a thick rope.
In six weeks I had a new job. The pay was about the same, and it was in a new field – advertising copywriting. In college, I felt a strong pull to be a writer and I have always been a reader. I thought the way to merge the two was to become a teacher. It didn’t even cross my mind that I could get paid to write this way. The new job stayed at work when I left – no more bringing home essays to read when I could have been doing something I really loved. I was learning the ways of a new career and the great weight of molding young minds, a weight I don’t believe I was meant to carry, fizzled away.
Leaving the school and starting on a path to copywriting brought me a step closer to what I think God, the Universe and Everything is pushing me toward – becoming a full time writer. I needed to be at this school, with these people, to understand that I was not meant to be at any school. This forced me to look at why I wanted this and if I really wanted it at all. I understand now that bad jobs happen to good people and getting fired does not involve actual flame.
She Works Hard for the Money
I’ve been thinking all day about this thing that happened. I recount this story to you here for reasons about to be illuminated: 1. For those of you who are also writers who may be able to commiserate or add your thoughts, 2. for those of you who are not writers who need to understand what the Writing Life is really like, and 3. because the whole thing kind of pissed me off and I need to get it off my writerly chest.
As you may know, I have recently started broadening the Writing Spider’s writing web by building and launching a professional freelance website. I have decided, for better or for worse, to accept that I’ve been called by God, the Universe, and Everything to be a writer and that means accepting what comes with that – we writers have to hustle to earn our daily bread but we also have to take a good hard look at such things as what our time is worth, what our services are worth, and so on. I have been pretty happy with the website so far, and continue to build and fortify my online presence so that one day I can live in my freelance web full time.
One of the things I have been doing is getting the word out that I do what I do – hence the website – but I’ve also obtained some shiny business cards and I find ways to work my biz into conversations. I’m marekting myself in as many free and creative ways as possible. One of those ways I do this is to post myself on a certain site that is LIKE craigslist.com (but it isn’t). This site is a local classified ad type site and once a week, they allow you to post services you offer. This is the time for your in-home childcare or lawn service to be promoted. Once in a while (READ: when I remember) I post my freelance writing services on this site.
So far, the response has been dismal, but it has opened my eyes to what people think I mean when I say I AM A PROFESSIONAL WRITER.
Let me ’splain.
The first time I posted, a woman called me, and after a few minutes on the phone it was clear she was interested in not only someone to write her college papers for her, but to write her college papers for her very cheaply. I finally said, “I don’t think I’m the service you need, but please keep my information on hand if you ever need it.”
I posted again this week on the site and got an email from Danny.* Danny asked in his first email if I “do resumes.” Well, sure I can write your resume. I’ve written resumes for myself and others that have landed actual paying jobs, so why the heck not? We went back and forth over email for about a week – I couldn’t pin him down about what he needed. He finally said he needed someone to “type the resume in the correct format, and give me a paper copy and a copy on a disc I will provide. I don’t need proofreading.” I fiddled around with this for a day and emailed back. I said, “For $35 I will type your resume and give you a paper, disc and electronic copy. I’ll throw in proofing as I go.”
Before you blanch at $35 (as Danny did) let me show you my thought process. It would have taken me AT LEAST one hour to type up whatever he had, plus the accompanying emails and then mailing the stupid paper copy to him (go to post office, obtain postage, affix postage, etc etc). When one factors in what I have to pay in taxes, my home office usage, and other items, you will discover that I should easily be charging an hourly rate of $65 right off the bat. My time and my expertise are worth every bit of that.
Danny’s response:
“Like that you are striking out to establish a business! I wish you well. I need typing I can get free from a neighbor. I have plenty of discs to provide. Come in around $10.00 and the copy will be in no need of proofing. You would save me a bit of time, but you need to realize that your audience’s aren’t all inept. I can pull up an e-mail and accomplish what I need. I just can’t type! If I find someone needing your services, I’ll gladly refer them. I learned the hard way with my own business for 17+ years.”
My first response, Dear Reader, was indignation! Effrontery! When reading it aloud to Husband, I was even more affronted! He wanted to pay me ten bucks to type his crappy resume.
Off the top of my head,
Dear Danny,
1. If you can get this service free from your neighbor…why did you waste my time with this? Does your pro bono neighbor know you would have paid $10?
2. Do you ask ALL professionals to accept ridiculously low payments for their services? Do you inquire about a 90% discount at the dentist? Restaurants? Do you say, “Hi, pathologist. What can I get for $80?”
3. If you plan on doing your own proofreading…good luck. There’s at least one glaring typo in your email. (And MAN DID I WANT TO WRITE BACK AND POINT THAT OUT TO YOU.)
4. What exactly did you learn the hard way in your 17 years of small business ownership? That people writing you passive aggressive emails deserve your services at a guilty discount?
5. You seem proficient enough to type out this stupid email to me. I cannot see why you couldn’t type out your own typo-ridden resume and copy it onto one of your zillions of discs.
People do not want to pay other people to write. Or edit. Or proofread. We are not taught that there is an art to writing. People think, in general, that any idiot can write.*** The truth is that like having kids, any idiot CAN do it, but it takes a special person to do it well. Again, I think of other professional services we pay for. I brush my own teeth, but I pay my dentist to do the heavy duty cleaning. You write your own name, but you leave the heavy lifting to a professional writer. Because being a freelance writer isn’t like being a doctor or an accountant, the payment issue is different. This all reminds me of the response teachers get – people think teaching is sooo easy because “you get off at 3 every day and you get summers and holidays off!” NO NO NO NO!!!
I continue to think about this and I keep coming back to, “I’m worth more than ten dollars.”
So neener neener Danny. Sorry you won’t get that job you so highly covet.
*Names have been changed to protect the clueless.
** I’ve been freelancing now for about ten years. I have a BA and and MA. If I can say ONE THING about myself it is that I am not only really good at grammar and spelling, I’m a good writer. As I have mentioned, I am A PROFESSIONAL WRITER.
***If you’ve read Stephanie Meyer’s work, you might have a solid leg to stand on here…
Music Lessons
I wanted to take piano so badly as a kid. My friends who’s parents “forced” them to take music lessons were, in my opinion, the children of indulgent, wonderful parents, while I was clearly being abused by the witholding of musical education. Every year I asked for two things for Christmas: a dog and piano lessons. “You’re allergic to dogs,” my mother would say, “and you’ll hate piano lessons.” Of course, she was talking about herself. I never quite lost my fascination with the piano. My favorite music is keyboard-driven, from perky harpsichord Baroque to Tori Amos and her beloved Bosendorfers. as is always has been.
My best friend from birth until about the second grade had a baby grand piano in her family living room. A baby grand! Her mother was an opera singer. This sort of friendship repeated itself in junior high when my other best friend’s mother played piano, organ, and cello, plus she sang in a barbershop quartet. I learned “Heart and Soul” in about the fourth grade and still have never tired of plonking it out. I could sing pretty well but I had to have an accompanist for every talent show or church hymn performance. How I wished to play and sing at the same time! My parents had friends whose daughter took lessons on a baby grand outfitted with a peculiar old-fashioned wooden metronome and I was always sneaking in and sitting at the keyboard, just to test drive. I wanted to unlock the secrets of the white keys so badly.
In the fifth grade my mother started countering my “please can I play piano” begging with something along the lines of, “You know, I knew this girl once who brought her guitar on a camp out. We all sang along, and she played. You can’t bring a piano into the woods.” Or, “You can play all those cool songs on a guitar. I think I’d like to learn to play guitar.” I finally blurted out, “Well then why don’t you just TAKE the stupid guitar and let me play the piano?” which went over like a screen door on a submarine.
Can you guess what I got for Christmas that year?
A used guitar, complete with ancient picks and a beat-up case. I can still remember how it smelled – of damp plywood and rotted sheet music. “And what’s more,” my mother burbled, “I’ve arranged lessons for you.” In exchange for my mother’s babysitting services, her friend agreed to give me private lessons. The woman was sweet, and a wonderful guitar musician, but how could I tell her I’d rather be learning chopsticks on the Baldwin upstairs than picking out “Twinkle Twinkle” on a crummy old guitar?
Practicing at home was a nightmare. I spent most of the time crying that I didn’t want to take lessons anyway so why should I practice? I don’t remember how long I took lessons with my mother’s friend but I finally (crying, and with much hand-wringing) told my mother, “No more.” Shortly after, the guitar-teacher friend moved to Tennessee which made me feel better about my musicide.
Because a Catholic mother’s guilt is rivaled only closely by a Jewish mother’s, I started taking lessons about six months later at a music store near our house. That summer, I could walk there after swim practice in the mornings. We had our lessons in closet-sized practice rooms. My teacher had long frizzy hair that had pulled his hairline back beyond his ears, and a mustache/beard combo to match. He told me that he really wanted to change his name. Not to something normal like “Joe” but something cool, with letters and numbers. “Like…X-14 or something,” he said. One lesson he told me he liked to write short stories and quickly detailed a story he’d written about a boy who eats his whole family, including the dog. “But it’s a satire, right?” In sixth grade I indeed did know what a satire was. Maybe he was being sarcastic or ironic, but I’d had enough of X-14 so when he went on vacation and told me to call in two weeks for a lesson, I just never did.
Finally, in college (college!) my mother relented. Not only did she buy the neighbor’s ancient piano for me as a birthday gift, she paid the $100 for me to take lessons at school. Not just piano, voice too. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven, sitting alone in the college practice room with a baby grand and my electric metronome keeping time. Practice piano for a while, practice voice for a while. Recitals! I finally had recitals! They weren’t called recitals, they were called something else like “juries” or something, but they were recitals. And I had them.
I still have my $200 birthday piano. It is the bane of Husband’s existance because we have moved it three times already. Husband played the saxophone in middle and high school. He didn’t dream about playing the saxophone when he was a kid. He didn’t imagine himself playing every sax part in every pop song on the radio whenever he was in the car. He didn’t go over to people’s homes and ask them to play “Heart and Soul” on their saxophones with him. (And if he had, that’d be weird.) So I’m going to keep my piano, just in case I ever have kids who want to take lessons. If not, I will buy them a stinky guitar and we can have a singalong in the woods.
Ghast Station
There’s a gas station in my neighborhood that I recently decided I will no longer patronize. I got gas there once, when we first moved in to our condo, and before I knew better – before I knew the Speedway 100 yards away was a much safer bet, bodily and financially. Husband and I have walked the half mile or so to this gas station on sunny Sundays to buy a newspaper and drinks, even though we’ve been shorted on our change a few times. It’s the easiest place to walk to from our house without risking life and limb in the traffic.
It sits on the corner beside one of those hotels for business travelers who stay for a week or so, the kind with the kitchenettes. Across the side road are ratty apartment buildings, many with front doors that have seen better days – days without holes punched in them or black marks where someone kicked at them. It was once a BP station, but about a year ago They (I say “They” because I don’t know exactly, who is responsible for the whitewash) came and painted over BP’s bright green and yellows with white. It is as if the whole building bleached out in the sun and remains a skeleton of its former self. No signage has replaced the BP. It’s a rouge gas station – no identifying marks, no commercials from TV to help you remember why you should go there.
And there’s hardly ever anyone there. No one gets gas there. I’ve never seen anyone inside the handful of times I’ve gone in, save the one skittish kid from the ratty apartments who came in to buy a phone card for his mom. The gas prices aren’t posted outside – only on the pumps. Every once in a while I’ll see someone get into a car and drive away from the door, but they clearly haven’t purchased petrol.
The inside is shabby and filthy, the linoleum has long since peeled off most of the floor. The beverage selection is spotty at best, though you can get all those unusual Mexican soft drinks there, including something that we believe is supposed to be a nonalcoholic soda version of sangria and is just as gag-inducing as one might imagine. One aisle features an impressive array of spices and other ingredients for Mexican dishes – corn husks, dried peppers, cookies with names I can’t pronounce. There is some beer, a few foodstuffs, and a wide variety of nylon doo-rags.
The last time I went in, I had been home sick with a Stomach Thing and sometime in the afternoon had a great desire for ginger ale. Husband was at work, it was a nice day, and I wanted some air, so I walked. Stepping from the bright daylight into the dusty dimness of the store, I saw no one at the counter so I made a certain amount of noise in an effort to alert the cashier that a customer had arrived. I wandered back to the soda aisle, shuffling my feet and coughing a little, and discovered this place doesn’t carry anything so banal as ginger ale. Or Sprite. Irritated, I grabbed a Diet Cherry Dr. Pepper and went to the counter.
When no one appeared, I considered walking out with my soda just to make the point that nobody was minding the shop. I’m not that kind of girl, so I peeked into the back room where a radio softly played something in a foreign language. “Excuse me?” I said to the back of a man slouched in a folding chair. He jumped up and hurried to the till. I’d seen him behind the counter before, a short Indian man who always wears pilled acrylic sweaters.
“That’s all for you?” he said. “Two dollars.”
“Yes,” I said irritated still at the lack of ginger ale and customer service. I handed him a ten.
“Here you go, eight dollars,” he said, fanning them out as he handed me all ones. Not wanting to linger longer than absolutely necessary, I shoved the bills in my pocket and murmured a thanks, then headed back home.
I’d started feeling lousy again and looked forward to watching TV and sipping my cold soda. I pulled the change out of my pocket. Only seven dollars, not eight. Nice.
I chalked it up to Stupid Tax and warned Husband we’re not going there anymore. We’re making the scary sidewalk trip to the Marathon or maybe just driving to Speedway. Besides, I think this gas station must be a mafia front. Or a gang thing.
Ta-Da!
Some of you already know about this and some of you don’t, so if this is a repeat for you please read one of my other fascinating posts or just wait for the next installment.
In an effort to get my freelance writing business off the ground (or at least take off one of the training wheels…) I’ve created SaraThompsonWrites.com. It’s not finished but it’s getting there and it’s A START. If you need writing done or maybe you know someone who needs writing done, please drop me a line. I will write for money. Or we can barter, I’m open to that, too.
This is part of the beginning of reazling a dream for me. Thanks for your support!
Summer Camp
I went to summer camp exactly twice. Once was the summer before sixth grade – a disaster for many reasons – and the next summer before seventh. As a bookish kid, I’d read all sorts of charming novels about summer camp. The point was to go, get fresh air, talk about boys, learn to shoot arrows with bows, and make lifelong friendships with girls who would later be in your wedding and then send you Christmas cards from the Hamptons. Or something. My favorite movie from ages eight until about…last week….was The Parent Trap which largely features summer camp as a pivotal plot point. How disappointing to find that summer camp is not really like that.
The first summer I went to a YMCA-run and sponsored week-long camp. There were three other girls from my school there, though none were in my cabin. Probably a good thing. Fifth grade was a bad year for me, so that summer I was still reeling from round after round of the mean-girl offensive. That’s another blog post entirely, so stay tuned. My counselor was a college girl whose trunk was plastered with bumper stickers like Virginia is for Lovers and Wall Drug. There were six girls, I think, including a girl from Pennsylvania. I couldn’t fathom why you’d send your kid to Kentucky from Pennsylvania, although she did claim her father was a doctor and she had nine horses. Another girl from from Ohio and she had the weirdest voice. She sounded like a mouse that had inhaled helium talking through a straw. Another girl claimed to have ridden horses her whole life so she and the Nine Horse Girl circled each other warily like cowboys with trigger fingers, waiting to shoot holes in the other’s riding ability.
I was a very shy kid. I remember spending a lot of time by myself or just barely hanging on to the fringe of a group, and that carried on at camp. I had signed up for swimming, horseback riding, and some other activity which I have since forgotten. Being at least proficient in activities kept me from any sort of related teasing which was a relief. I also spent a lot of time wanting to blend in to the trees. Swimming was a gimme. I’d been on the swim team at home for years. I just wanted to get in the water. Horseback riding – de rigeur for girls of a certain age. I don’t know what it is about girls and horses. Husband has asked me about this and I just don’t know. Why do girls all have a horse phase?
We sang some songs, and the food was crummy. We slid down a mudslide. There were afternoon rest periods. I found an enormous grey moth in the bathroom one night went I crept out to go tinkle. I felt bad for it. If the other girls had seen it they would probably have insisted on its immediate squishing via the counselor’s boyfriend’s shoe. I tried not to disturb it and hoped it would be gone by morning – it was.
I came home from camp that year with a pair of shorts ruined from the mudslide, and I’d picked up the Squeaky Mouse’s speech pattern. It drove my mother nuts. “QUIT TALKING THROUGH YOUR NOSE,” she snapped. I have always picked up the speech patterns of the people I’m around. I’m an excellent mimic and impersonator and clearly missed my calling on a stage somewhere imitating famous people. It took my mother four months to break me completely of this nasally whine I’d come home with.
The next year I ended up at Girl Scout camp. That erased much of the stress that boys at camp induced. There were a few male counselor-types around to do canoeing and the like. I don’t really remember my counselors from that year. I remember being the best swimmer, allowed with a select few to swim outside of The Crib, a wooden structure intended to babysit the girls whose parents hadn’t thrown them in the water before they could walk. I remember the tents on wooden platforms and the night that, in an effort to “hide” with my bunkmates to scare a group of girls walking by, I managed to roll off my bunk and land on the hard wooden platform before rolling out into the woods. Ouch. My suspicions about what, exactly, a dildo is were confirmed, but only because some other girl asked out loud.
The camp songs were better here, as were the s’mores. I still remember many of the songs including one about sharks and one about an aunt who brings myriad strange things back from her world travels. I also made a friend I’ve mentioned here before, J. J and I were BFFs, and it’s a long story but we lost touch and I heard years later from a girl I met in college who knew J from their hometown. She said J had been in a car accident and very badly and permanently injured.
I can’t remember which camp this happened in: I managed to sit on my glasses and break off both of the side pieces. I remedied this by making stand-in side pieces from twists of purple and white wire from the arts and crafts cabin. Everyone thought this was remarkably clever. I wrote my mom a letter describing the misfortune of my spectacles, including an illustration. I wish she still had that letter.
I have some books that were my grandmother’s. They’re about the Camp Fire girls, which was an old school New England pre-cursor to what we know as Girl Scouts. The girls all had Native American(ish) names like Sahwah the Sunfish who like to swim. The girls in the books learned how to chop down trees and pitch lean-tos. They actually cooked over open campfires! They had a camp theme song. I wanted my camp experience to be more like those – character- and friendship-building experiences I’d carry forever. Instead, I ruined a pair of shorts, a pair of glasses, and all my romantic illusions about summer sleepaway camp.
An Open Letter to Our Neighbors, Thug Life
Dear Thug Life,
It’s 2:59 am EST and I’m awake. Not awake in the sense that I’m doing something productive like rounds on the oncology ward or recording the nocturnal habits of lowland gorillas. I’m awake because you, my 3 neighbors at the condo (to whom we refer as Thug Life for reasons about to become apparent) have launched another ante meridiem assault on the neighborhood. I’d like to offer some assistance to you and also get a few things off my very sleepy and rather cranky chest.
Since you moved in about a year ago, we have seen one of the gaggle of scrawny testosterone-inflated of you taken away in handcuffs. We have listened in horror as you and your testosterone-inflated posse members and your gaggle of shrill drunken ladyfriends proposed creating a bonfire on your deck. We’ve nearly been run over as one or many of you peel out of the parking lot in your pathetically tricked-out jalopies. You wake us up with profanity and the gonglike clang of your many many beer bottles when you play beer bottle basketball and use the dumpster as a basket. You and your girlfriends get drunk, high, stupid, mad, and obnoxious with alarming regularity.
I have personally called the police on you twice. Once the 3 am conversation went like this, and mind you it was raining:
Me: I’d like to report a loud disturbance.
Dispatcher: What’s going on?
Me: Well, the white guy just threw the black guy’s clothes and stuff out in the parking lot. And they’re yelling obscenities.
Dispatcher: Have you seen a weapon?
Me: No…Oh, there goes a stereo…And a big bunch of jeans. That white kid is MAD.
Dispatcher: Are they cohabitating?
Me: Yep.
Dispatcher: Domestic disturbance.
I sort of expected one of you to return with a boom box and blare “In Your Eyes” out there in the rain in manner of John Cusack, but it didn’t happen. I thought you might find it humorous that the dispatcher was really trying to figure out if this was two gay guys having a little tiff. Especially since one of you, the white one, never has a shirt on. By the way, may I suggest that this is why so many of your ladyfriends find you a less-than-desirable mating partner since your concave chest and puny arms suggest nothing more than a freshman weakling too small for the starting lineup? I know they find you less-than-desirable because they shout such things as they squeal out of the parking lot at 3 am. I’m sorry she’s so unhappy with your size, by the way. I’m sure you have nothing to be ashamed of and the right girl won’t mind that you’re a little small and lopsided.
I’d also like to suggest that you improve your vocabulary. The dramatic scenes where you and your friends all flow chaotically into the parking lot to put on the semi-weekly Nighttime Profanity and Violence Revue would be truly improved if all your lines did not consist solely of pronouns strung together with curse words. For example, let’s see how we could’ve improved tonight’s little tete-a-tete, featuring one of your ladyfriends, Shirtless Boy, and another of you, Schlumpyman (seeing as how you favor the oversized jeans and sweatshirts of an overweight suburban hausfrau): *Note, language has been modified to protect my feminine sensibilities.
Ladyfriend: You motherfrocker, frock you askhole!
Shirtless Boy: You gorram birch, get the frock out of my house!
Schlumpyman: Frock frock frockity frock frock!
A more effective version might have been:
Ladyfriend: I am overcome with strong drink and shall take a constitutional for some fresh air.
Shirtless Boy: Yes, let us get some air in the hope that we may resolve our conflict rationally.
Schlumpyman: This disagreement is too much for me, my darling. Yes, I shall follow you to the courtyard and regain my composure.
See how much better that was?
Now, what I would really like to say to you is that I really hate that you’ve moved into my neighborhood. We were all getting along just fine. Oh sure, we had the occasional hiccup – the time S put his daughter’s baby wipes in the toilet and clogged up the entire condo’s sewer lines, D’s car alarm that goes off twice a day because she can’t work it properly, the guy who listened to that one Christian rock song over and over in his car outside our bedroom window for forty-five minutes until Husband went out and told him to QUIT – but nobody ever got arrested. We have never before suspected anybody was selling meth out of their kitchen. We have never had to call the police on ANYBODY before now. Even the dramatic teenagers next door aren’t nearly as obnoxious as you.
We have complained to the condo association. We have called the police. We have seen one or two of you arrested, but sadly you always come back. One of your fathers – we believe it’s Schlumpyman’s – has purchased this condo fair and square and installed you and your cohorts Shirtless Boy and Sideways Hat/Manpris-man, into this condo without our consent. Though he swears each time will be the last (the condo president calls him) there is nothing we can do. If we should confront you during your violent outbursts, we fear we may be harangued. Or shot. You probably have weapons and Schlumpyman certainly has a lot of room to store them in his baggy baggy pants.
So frock you, Thug Life. If there is any justice in this world, or karma, or a very clever police officer, may you get all your just desserts, your comeuppance, and what’s coming to you. I’m going to try to go back to bed.
Sincerely,
The Writing Spider and Husband and Probably all the other neighbors, too
PS – I ended up oversleeping from the fracas and missed my yoga class. I wish you’d come to my yoga class, Thug Life. My yoga teacher would have you begging for your mommies in ten minutes flat.
thewritingspider