ProcrastNation

So Michael Jackson is dead.  And I'm the gazillionth person to post about it.

At first I was weirdly ambivalent about it.  Don’t get me wrong, when I was twelve or so I was your typical Michael Jackson insane pre-teen (we didn’t do ‘tween’ back then), I followed him even though my tastes changed through middle school, and I still respected him in high school.  Then I didn’t really think about him for several years until he started to become a slow, slippery, scary ride into weirdness.  I’m not even talking about the legal allegations at this point.  I’m talking about the “I’m naturally turning white”, “I would never have plastic surgery”, “I have a pet chimp that is my personal assistant”, “I’ve opened my own place where boys never grow up” (OK he didn’t say that but he did name it Neverland).  Then there were rumors, and talk so he married Lisa Marie for a second.  Then he married some random and they ‘conceived’ two children.  Then they got divorced and he had a surrogate to have a third child.  All weird enough except the first two kids are Prince Michael I (apparently named that before any more were in the offing) and Paris Michael.  Then the surrogate kid named Prince Michael II, better known as Blanket, because we all know why.

 

I guess I mourned the passing of the Michael Jackson I knew a long, long time ago.

And then the rumors, and the lawsuits, and the shutting down Neverland and the creepy and the outright insane.  He being creepy dancing on the SUV, showing up in jammies, the new weird baby talk voice.  The insane were the fans.  I’m looking at you ‘Dove Charges Woman’, I bet you show up on every 24 hour news station in the next three days.  The man turned into someone that should be shielded and handled in front of the public in the last two decades, yet people still acted like two of the guests at my 12^th birthday sleepover. 

 

Unfortunately that night coincided with his hair catching on fire and two of my guests locked themselves in the upstairs bathroom in such histrionics that my parents were certain we’d have to call the fire department (now how awesome would that irony be?), but they were finally coaxed out and we all settled in for a pleasant viewing of Psycho (which is why several of my guests were never allowed to sleep over again). 

 

Anyhow, I guess I’ve gone from my initial ambivalence to outright crankiness.  I think in the days to come I’ll feel much more about this, and think more fondly about my memories, just right now I’m thinking of a lot of other people that are going to be impacted by this that didn’t sign on for it, and because of the person he became I can’t get to het up about it on his behalf.  That is an enormous hospital, there are thousands of people trying to do their jobs, have surgery, be treated, visit loved ones.  Those people’s lives until around 5 PM (EDT) today were the center of their own worries.  Now just to get in or out, grieve, worry, work have been completely overshadowed.  I do not deny anyone’s need to grieve about Michael Jackson, I do deny your obstructing someone else’s life to do so.  I pray the police got there in time to move the crowds so that everyone else could function as needed.

 

And honestly, what exactly are you doing there?  You are not the descamisados standing outside the Casa Rosada for Eva Peron.  You are impeding a medical facility.  Whether you are genuinely grieving or just trying to get on camera, MOVE!  People are dying, working, having surgery, bearing children.  Take it to a park or somewhere else.  I hear Neverland is vacant. 

 

I wish him no ill, I hope he rests in peace, but it’s the people like “Dove Woman” that are camped outside the hospital right now that I just want to collectively slap.  I want to preemptively tell the news media to tone it down, because there is no way this won’t be ten times more insane than Anna Nicole.  Which on some level it genuinely should be because Michael Jackson was legitimately talented and she was exploitation fodder.  But once the new facts run dry, they’re going into the crazy well, and I don’t want to go there with them, and I can’t stomach the “I’ve never had plastic surgery” photos which were just disturbing anyway without the pedophilia (don’t email me that he was acquitted, it was all gross).  The press is going to treat this like Princess Diana and that is just sick and disturbing.

 

I do not refute that he was a brilliant entertainer; he was The King of Pop.  He may have been a brilliant businessman, but I seriously believe that part of the downfall was that he wasn’t.  I think he was an incredibly talented kid that got started when he was six in a local talent show.  He and his brothers became a hit and like so many ‘Behind the Music’ episodes we’ve seen before he got plucked from the herd because he was hell talented and easy to manage.  He became the biggest music superstar in the pop world, he worked really hard to maintain that, and then the pop culture scene left him behind and he couldn’t deal with it.  He was surrounded my yes-men and sycophants and a pile of money.  So in his own very special and heinous way he went mad. 

 

I’ve had this discussion about other famous people with many other people, depending on the person or the circumstance.  Most recently it was about Phil Specter, for the last twenty years it could be about O.J.  More recently it could be about any politician from the city council to the senate.  It takes a certain kind of person to become insanely powerful, wealthy and idolized.  Those are very often the same traits that are found in psychopaths, serial killers, and dictators.  Narcissism, insecurity, constant need for attention, inability to accept change, believing you’re beyond laws, norms, and mores.  There is a split but I don’t know where it happens.  I think people like Michael Jackson, especially since he started so young, just think it’s the norm, then they believe their own press, especially when you call them king.  Seems like that self destructive king issue happened to several other people; actual real ones, and then the ones American pop culture crowned. 

 

There should be a study, maybe there is, why do certain famous people like Ghandi, Einstein, Mandela, King, Mother Theresa just to name a few not succumb to this.  I have some theories, and some realities.  I noticed in my list that a couple of the men are known for let’s say… ‘unpopular’ behavior inconsistent with their messages, and most were known for eccentricities.  Many beloved figures act horribly.  We often compare modern celebs and politicians to those of the past.  But it’s not people that have changed, it’s technology that has changed, and it’s technology that has changed the human appetite for raising up heroes and tearing them down.

 

But I just really believe at some point Michael Jackson broke with reality, completely.

I honestly believe he didn’t think he did anything wrong with those children.  I also believe maybe at least one family did try to exploit him.  Maybe he really did believe that he didn’t disfigure himself to the point of wearing a fake nose and going into exile.  Maybe he really thought he was the lion king, thus he raised his child from a balcony with a blanket over his head to share with the masses.  I don’t know.

 

I know I’ll feel sad, but right now I just kind of feel relieved, especially since this happened before I tour I don’t think he could have done and if he tried would have done him harm.  I think I liked him better these last few years when I thought he was just kind of hiding out and I could think he was getting ahold of himself. 

 

I hope he doesn’t over shadow Farah Fawcett’s passing too much, or even Ed McMahon, they all deserve at least a little bit of our reflection on how they influenced our lives and our culture.  Your ratio of reflection may vary.  I’m very saddened by the loss of what was once a great talent.  I’m affected and trying to deal with the feelings of the loss of a man that was an obsession for me in my formative years.  I don’t know that we’ll never see anything like he was in the 60s to the 80s again.  I hope we won’t see any other celebrities become like he was from the 90s until now again.  I don’t hope very hard. 

 

Rest In Peace Michael.  You deserve it.  I can’t imagine you ever experienced it while you were alive.

I was having a fabulous day.  I was on cloud nine, I had done a dorktastic chair dance over a problem I’d solved, I was working from home on a cloudy rainy day, and it was Friday; I couldn’t have been more gleeful.  Seriously, when is the last time you felt glee?  I had skipped lunch and decided at four to go run a couple of errands.  I got in the car full of happy thoughts of buying things I needed for my new home, for Halloween, and sweet blessed food for the weekend.  And then I cranked up the engine and heard the following on NPR’s “All Things Considered”:

 

Leah Moreland had a much different answer. Moreland sat a few feet away from Hake; the two women are related through marriage. Moreland is supporting McCain.

"I don't want to sound racist, and I'm not racist," Moreland says. "But I feel if we put Obama in the White House, there will be chaos. I feel a lot of black people are going to feel it's payback time.” And I made the statement, I said, 'You know, at one time, the black man had to step off the sidewalk when a white person came down the sidewalk.' And I feel it's going to be somewhat reversed. I really feel it's going to get somewhat nasty."

I was half way down the street before I heard that first line, when I snorted and said “Well, then, you’re a racist”.  Because, come on!  It’s the same as prefacing a statement with “No Offense”, when you say that, all you are planning on doing is offending someone, but you want an out.  And we elitist, snob liberal PC types have given it to you as long as you say ahead of the statement that you’re a jerk.

 

And then I had made the turn and was waiting at the light when I heard the rest.  I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, scream, curse or drive straight into on-coming traffic. 

Moreland says she doesn't think all black people will "want payback." "I'm not talking about you(to the black people in the room, this is part of an NPR panel series), and I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about the people that are out on the street looking for trouble. Putting a black man in the White House — and if he gets there, he gets there; I'm going to live under his presidency and everything. And I'm still going to be friends with anybody black that wants to be my friend and everything. But I really feel there's going to be a time of adjustment. I really feel it. I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong." (bold and italics mine)

Yeah, because there are no white angry people that wouldn’t do just what she’s implying should Obama win.  No, they are all good, God fearing, Christian people.  Good God fearing Christians that want to tell everyone else how to live their lives and think that the American Government; that was founded on the SEPARATION of church and state, should be dictating our lives but not regulating our economy aside from bailing out Wall Street.  The ‘live under his presidency’ really got to me too. 

I sincerely believe there will be a time of adjustment if Obama wins, but I don’t think it’s going to be nasty black people at all.  There could be instances of that.  We’ve already heard about acts of violence against McCain supporters by Obama supporters, but I think that street runs both ways.  Oh yeah, I was trying to think of one… what about those kids at a school in the Pacific Northwest that hung an Obama cut out in effigy.  No, not an attack on an actual person, but I don’t discount that it hasn’t happened.  Suddenly I find myself humming Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”.

So with that said, I would like to write a letter to Ms. Moreland:

I like to think I’m pretty news and political savvy.  I read a lot of news of all ilks.  If I remember my fundamental public school education correctly, the Republicans have always run on a platform of less government regulation.  They were always the keep your chocolate out of my peanut butter party right?  So riddle me this Moreland…  where the hell do they get off saying “I’m going to put my chocolate (oops bad analogy, I guess they are the peanut butter) I’m going to put my peanut butter in your uterus, your marriage, and all your other civil rights… but keep your chocolate out of my AK-47!”

And honestly I just got sidetracked by rage, because the real feeling I had at the end of that interview was:  bereftness.  Gah, that’s not even a word, bereft-ness, but I felt bereft.  I felt hurt, and violated and crushed.  And as demonstrated above, I did what people do when they feel that way, I became enraged.  Ms. Moreland?  That is what makes people do the things you imply.  If you are afraid that a black woman or man is going to shove you off the sidewalk or to the back of the bus?  Then maybe that’s because you feel like the world is moving forward and it is not taking your racist ass with it.  Maybe you long for the days when you could do that to them with impunity, and I’m sure never did, but you can’t admit it anymore.  Maybe you’re afraid that payback is going to be a bitch.  And if that is the case?  Then you haven’t been paying attention to anyone but your own small self, because this has nothing to do with payback.  It might, to small groups of people; just like it will be payback to small groups of people if McCain wins.  I don’t mind you thinking about how this will affect you.  I mind that you can’t get out of your own small prejudiced mind to realize what a major cusp of history we are on the precipice of.

And yes you are a racist.  Just because you have a few black friends, or maybe you had a nice black cleaning woman growing up, who you feel warmly towards?  When you apply a reaction, a feeling, a mindset to a group of people but exclude the ones you know?  You my dear are a racist.  Oh!  In fact, I am a racist, because all this time what I’ve been afraid of?  Are the ‘real Americans’ Sarah Palin touts that are going to go looking for revenge big and small style if Obama wins.  To be quite honest Ms. Moreland, I am disappointed in both of us.

I don’t know you well enough to feel my disappointment in you very deeply.  I feel my disappointment in me on several levels.  I’ve had a great few weeks.  I did amazing things at work, I did and witnessed amazing things for charity, I spent time bonding with friends and family.  So why am I so disappointed in myself?  And the country?  Because I slipped back into hopeful naïveté. 

Yes, the campaign is ugly, but I’ve read “Scorpion Tongues:  Gossip, Celebrity and American Politics” by Gail Collins; and at least no one this year has implied that anyone else’s wife was a street walker, murdered their own troops in the civil war, or had fornicated with animals .  McCain has been allowed to disavow himself from implicit racism since that’s been being handled by sub groups sending out emails implying that Obama is a terrorist or GASP a MUSLIM!  This probably would have been the same as implying Teddy Roosevelt might have Catholic sympathies back in the day. 

I have the luxury to work in a place where people are very charity minded, in a completely overwhelming sense.  Lately I have been exerting myself for the raising of funds and goods for many of these charities, and the outpouring has swelled my heart and brought me to tears.  Ms. Moreland, I would bet any amount of money that you probably contribute to your own charities, and that your heart and eyes well up too.  I am in no way implying you are not a good person.  From your interview all I know for certain is that you are a racist.  From your interview, I’m going to take liberties and extrapolate that you also are the kind of person that wants to have a say about my civil liberties and what I can or cannot do as a US citizen.  I feel fairly confident in assuming the only civil right of mine that you don’t want someone else to fuck with on your behalf, is my right to carry an assault rifle. 

 

Ms. Moreland, why don’t you and I compromise?  You keep your politics out of mine and everyone else’s:  belief system, uterus, racial status, sexual status and personal life.  I’ll keep my politics out of your and your like minded brethren’s:  gun toting, religion… oh that’s all I can think of, because I don’t support a party that wants to take away any of your rights.  I support a party that wants to uphold all of your rights and everyone else’s.  Yes, we want to regulate whether or not you should own an assault rifle, I’d be happy to sit down and discuss that one.  But I still think the second amendment had more to do with keeping England at bay than strafing endangered species from planes in Alaska.  But let’s have a cup of tea and you can tell me why you think I’m wrong.

 

Ms. Moreland, I apologize for some of my language in my letter to you.  I am as passionate about what you said as you are mealy mouthed saying it.  We’re both women, we can both vote, we both get our say.  So stand up straight, and say what you mean, this isn’t a Faulkner play.  You’re a Republican, not one of us wishy washy PC liberals, say what you mean.  Or if you can’t, maybe you have a really good reason to be embarrassed.  I know I am on your behalf.  You got to speak on the radio, I know NPR will allow a good deal of people to comment on your statements.  All I have to arm myself against ‘oh not you” but you know, those people, are my words and my vote.  And it’s people like you and your people, that makes me hope ‘that guy’, wins.

 

Sorta kind regards, a different kind of racist,

Danielle

What Are You So Scared Of?

 

A good friend asked me a question last weekend in a vulnerable moment.  I didn’t really know how to answer, aside from saying “Of letting people down.  Of letting me down.”  It was a horribly vulnerably, honest moment; it’s no less true when I’m sitting here feeling stronger than ever, incredibly sure of myself.

 

Have you ever been in one of those group activities, where they make you take the Briggs/Myers test that puts you in a quadrant?  I made a lot of you do it recently,  I love those, they’re great.  You usually end up exactly where your outdoor voice should be.  I love to go home later and pick at where my indoor voice lives.  I’m always two sides of that coin, I always have been.  I bet most of you are too.  I wonder often about people who aren’t. 

 

I always come up introvert/extrovert.  At work and at play I’m the head of many committees.  I put myself out there.  I’ve refined the ability to be Rah Rah Cheerleader and cynical snob.  There are days I resent everyone, like I assume most people do.  But then I look around at all those people I assume about and realize I’m being a jerk.  They’re jus trying to get through their lives, they want to move on to better things like, just like me. 

 

Well some of them are still jerks, let’s face it.  That guy/gal texting behind you at a traffic light?  Total jerk.  Obviously.  Moron texting, while wearing earbuds and crossing the road without looking?  Total jerk.

 

I like to think I’m a cynic.  I like to think I’m jaded and world weary.  I like to think I’m tired of the coops and interns that think they don’t have to pay dues. 

 

I’m a big fat liar.

 

I’m a giant optimist.  Yeah, I still think the jerks walking into traffic texting and re-programming their IPods should pay the price. 

 

Here’s the thing: 

 

Kindness is powerful.  Kindness can change a life.

 

It’s hip (and hip is hip again) to be cynical, snarky, mean.  I get that!  But I only get that if it’s because someone famous is doing something stupid, or wearing something outrageous.   It’s a harmless way for the unheard to be heard.  What other explanation for Perez Hilton.

 

But think about what I wrote up there.  Kindness is powerful. Kindness can change a life. 

 

In my twenties I was so sure I knew everything.  I was sarcastic and dismissive.  Sometimes, I still am.  Those days I may think I’m clever, the day after I usually  think I’m an asshole. 

 

Kindness is powerful.  Kindness can change a life.

 

Think about that.  It’s been played with in movies and commercials (there was recently one, about paying nice things forward and how good that was).

 

The movie “Pay It Forward” had a terrible twist.  But the message was still clear. 

 

We’re in dire straits people.  If we don’t help each other, no one is coming to help us. 

 

We’ve bought these McMansions, on huge lots.  But do we know our neighbors?  Would they help us?  Do they care?

 

They do.  Everyday, I read amazing stories about people that didn’t know each other but reached out.  A 66 year old man was jailed because of his brown lawn.  Once his neighbors (not his horrific neighborhood association that sued him) found out; and people that were not his neighbors:  they pulled together in a day to re-do his lawn and free him. 

 

We have become a place where false governments (HOAs) influence our actual government.  We have become a place where keeping your home is less a priority than keeping up your lawn.  We have become a bunch of idiots that can’t see the forest for the trees.  If a community organization has a man imprisoned for his lawn being brown, at the sake of his home being his?  We have seriously decided to drink the sand that we believe to be water in the mirage before us.

 

Let us all step back.  Let us all rethink. 

 

Kindness is powerful.  Kindness can change a life.

 

In these new hard times there are so many options before us.  Go through your possessions and donate.  Really?  Really?  Look hard at what you own.  Think about The Spring, where abused families just need basics like clothes and shampoo.  Think about the homeless tent cities that were destroyed.  Do you really need a new lemon zester?  Or are you buying it because you can?  Because you haven’t been hit?  Or because you are afraid you will be?  And in two months, you won’t be able to sell it on Ebay. 

 

No one is asking you for money.  Although everyone is. 

 

Kindness is powerful.  Kindness can change a life.

 

It’s easy to be cold, sharp, abrupt.

 

It’s just as easy to smile. 

 

Not even give, just smile.

 

Yes, people are annoying, and in your way and horrid and smell.  But how hard is it, to smile?  And once you try it?  You might find you actually mean it.  And others will mean it too.

Desi has always been an embodiment of the best of who I really am inside.  When Des and I first met, I was beginning my path on a career in IT while still living with my former ballroom dance partner.  I was probably 22 or 23.  I find it amazing I don’t remember exactly.  Desi was a lone 4 week old kitten, nourishing himself out of puddles in the back lot of the dance studio where Thom still worked and I still subbed in sometimes.  Thom caught him one night with an elicit can of tuna from the gas station in front of the strip mall that housed the studio.

 

Thom called me around 8:30 and told me to come quick and bring the cat carrier.  Back in those days, Scarlett was just around a year old and the only carrier I had was the cardboard one I was given by the Humane Society.  I arrived to find Thom and some others standing on the sidewalk out front.  Thom, all six foot two inches of him was holding a wee tiny yowling bit of stripey fluff.  I leapt from the car, reached out my hands and cried “Oh you darling…. Stinkbomb!!!!” 

 

I was now holding a hissing, spitting, enraged, oil and dirt covered tan and brown striped mass that had a softball for a head, very little body, a stick of a tail and very large feet.  I initially deposited him in my tiny bathroom, where he took cover behind the toilet and hissed at me constantly without making a sound.  I was charmed.  All that rage, and fury and fear and angst from something so young and tiny.  He had to be bathed several times over to rid him of the woods and parking lot grime.  He got a good check up from the vet and some worm medicine and was sent back to our tiny bungalow.

 

The vet guessed he was about four and a half weeks old; but when your brain is the size of  walnut, and your mother and all your litter mates die, and then you’re scooped up and shoved in a box, the world sucks and can scar you pretty bad in a pretty short time.

 

When we opened up the condo to him, beyond the bathroom, he made tracks straight to under my bed.  Only having had Scarlett for a year at this point, I was new to the idiosyncratic nature of cats for the most part.  I was used to troubled animals, abandoned animals, but none had ever been cats.  I quickly learned that even cats that had spent their whole 4 weeks of life outdoors would use a litter box if you gave them the option:  if you didn’t?  They’d use your laundry.

 

Almost everyday, I’d come home from work, lie on the floor, on my stomach, next to my bed, and read.  At first he would just hiss, now with sound!  Then maybe a month later he’d come to the edge of the bed skirt and watch me.  Then maybe around the end of the third month he’d sniff at me.  By the fifth month, he was laying in the small of my back, but I could feel him taught as a coil.  By the sixth month, he’d lay there and doze purring.  By the beginning of the seventh month, he was exploring the condo and was using the regular litter box, adept at avoiding my roommates none too bright dog, and following Scarlett’s lead.

 

It’s been at least ten years, I can’t recall, so much has changed.  Desi and Scarlett moved from that condo to my first apartment alone.  Then they moved from that apartment to my next place in a new city two and a half hours away, then they moved to another apartment two minutes away.  In August we all moved in to our first house… home. 

 

Again the cats were hidden in the bathroom while the movers did their thing.  Again, Scarlett came out almost immediately and explored every nook and cranny of her new surroundings.  Desi made haste to find the bed and hid under it.  But for the first time we were in a place large enough, that this was not a tenable option for day to day living.  He was 10 or so, not 4 weeks; I wasn’t going to put a litter box in my new bedroom.  The only litterbox was on the opposite side of the house.  He would steal under darkness of night. 

 

He and Scarlett had some displaced anger/territorial issues.  She didn’t care after the first week.  He still did. 

 

Like I said, Desi represents the best and worst of me.  Desi is the part of me that is quick to make unfounded snap judgements and stick to them for no good reason.  He’s also the one that desperately wants comfort, quiet, acceptance and love.  He denies himself amazing opportunities because of that. 

 

The new house has a completely screened in patio with a cat-tastic level shelf running a foot above the ground at the base of the windows that Scarlett had been enjoying since day one.  Desi missed out on the birds, lizards, squirrels, frogs and view for a month and a half because he was convinced that Scarlett wouldn’t let him out there.  To be honest, for a while she kind of didn’t, but he didn’t really even try until recently.  But back to the theme.  Once he realizes he was wrong, he’s so happy to tell you you were right.

 

Desi and Scarlett are the two halves to my whole.  Yin and Yang to use them as kitty clichés.  She’s the confident, curious, flirty, outgoing, demanding part that most people know.  He’s the shy, scared, skittish, defensive, grumpy, cranky, solitary inside that so many people don’t see and would never understand. 

 

Lately, Desi has been making an effort.  He’s been hanging out in more rooms in the house.  And he’s been trying to hang out on the patio.  He would poke his nose out and then go lay on the other side of the sliding glass doors looking out.

 

In the last week, especially when my Mom was visiting he took his fledgling steps out, always watching for his sister/keeper.  Depending on her approach and demeanor he would scurry back inside.

 

Tonight he came out, over and over.  The first two times he watched her and when she approached, he fled.  Finally, I think she got it, and she just laid down and let him come forth. 

 

He hid, he watched her, he realized she wasn’t watching him.  He began to stalk the ledge strongly.  She approached, he didn’t back down.  She showed him the best places to watch for lizards and moths.  Like she has taught him to hunt in the past.  He overloaded and ran back inside.  He came back out.  He jumped in my lap.  He purred and rolled around.  Then he hopped down and hopped back up to the ledge.

 

My heart broke a little when I saw him out on that ledge, because he was me, out on that ledge.  Still a little afraid, but ready to start again, even if he had to come back every once in a while for that reassuring head scratch.

You’ve Come A Long Way Baby!

 

Man, can you believe that slogan used to apply to women smoking?  Although in NYC, I believe it was as recently as 80 years ago (and longer in other areas) that it was frowned upon for women to smoke in public, even after they had the right to vote (it was actually illegal for two weeks in 1908).  That was the slogan of Virginia Slims starting in 1968 by the Phillip Morris owned company. 

 

This isn’t an ode to smoking, but I thought the phrase was apt, and then I remembered I actually had a tie to that old slogan.  Bear with me on this one, I started out on one path with this story, but got massively sidetracked.  I actually think that’s a testament to what I started out to write.  Stay with me here, it will come full circle, and I believe even I’m going to learn something about myself on this trip.

 

I grew up in an ideal suburb located in Upstate New York in the 80’s.  When I say ideal suburb, it really was.  But now I think the better term with hindsight would be ‘idealized”.  I grew up three blocks from my elementary school in one direction (with my dentist helpfully across the street from the school), and three blocks in the other direction was a corner store, the likes of which I’ve never seen since I moved from there.  “Terry Road Market”.  It was much like a modern convenience store in what it carried, but minus the gas pumps and it was mostly family owned and neighborhood employed.  It was one of those places you never hear of anymore where a seven year old could bring a note and two dollars from her Mom or Dad and buy a pack of smokes and a Chunky Bar or Pop Rocks.

 

When I was under eight or so, I’d walk there with my parents and brother on hot summer nights and get novelty ice cream out of the cooler.  We’d walk the half a block down Meadow hook a right on Clover Road and then the block to Bronson, and then the block to Terry taking another right, saying “Hi” to neighbors as we passed.  We’d wait to cross Terry Road, which was always very busy as a through road off a main street, then even with no cars coming we’d exaggeratedly run across.  I was taught at an early age Terry Road was dangerous.

 

Those things I remember oh so clearly.  I don’t remember so clearly at what age Jennifer and I met Becky and Rita.  I find that funny now; I know it must have been what we called ‘middle school’ and what now is called junior high.  I was so much closer to them in high school; I just can’t remember how I met them before that. 

 

In this ideal little world, I went to a school system that started out at Cherry Road, unless you went to St. Charles, the private Catholic school.  But even the majority of kids at Cherry Road made their First Communion; and if you were devout your Confirmation at St. Charles.  And Father Matthews was who you took instruction under.  From Cherry Road, you went to Onondaga Middle School and then Westhill Central High.  Westhill in the 80s had an average graduating class of between 100 and 150 students, and was rated one of the top 40 schools in the U.S. I don’t know what the judging was based on, I just remember being really proud.

 

In my neighborhood of Westvale; well Westvale covered a fairly large area, but by middle school, my knowledge of it was about six roads parallel to each other running off of a main road that spanned the city and another eight bisecting those.  We all knew each other from before kindergarten to graduation and beyond.  Even the St. Charles kids, the Bishop Ludden kids (high school of St. Charles), we all played together, or fought together, changed alliances, formed new pals, abandoned old, broke up and reformed.  And then in the years after we graduated, we all met up again at the same pub our parents and grandparents had, and laughed about it over Irish folk music and beer.

 

It was a small city, known best for its university, major manufacturing headquarters and was doing well under the mantle of Reaganomics.  My father worked full time in a printing factory and my mother only occasionally worked part time while my brother and I were young.  Once I was in junior high, Mom took a administrative job in a bank. 

 

My parents both grew up in nearby villages or suburbs in the post Depression Era.  Both of them were Blue Collar, in the way we used to mean that meant hard working, honorable, loyal, patriotic; not stupid comic low class jokes. 

 

Dad was the only child of two musicians in practice and heart; one of whom was a veteran, and unfortunately an alcoholic.  The other was torn between being a good mother, and the wife of a frustrated and unhappy man; that never got over scrimping to keep her family together and herself a whole woman.  Her strong Polish heritage and Catholic faith kept her an amazing woman throughout.

 

Mom was the second child of a second generation Irish man who was so storied he deserves more stories than this one here.  He attended and graduated multiple high schools to play sports, without necessarily spending much time at the books.  He turned an Irishman’s work ethic towards the factory and family, and turned his charm to unions and politics.  His stoic, warm and hard working, hard living second generation Polish wife managed the realities and the respective duties with pride and pragmatism.

 

Both of my parents learned to work hard, deal with the realities of life and invest well.  Neither went to college.  They met in their early twenties at work.  Mom played hard to get; except it wasn’t playing, she wasn’t interested.  He wore her down.  They like so many couples were disappointed to find out they might not be able to conceive; they proceeded to adopt a boy and then five years later… me.

 

At that time, in that climate and culture both of my parents smoked; most of my friends had one or both parents that smoked, as well as older brothers and sisters.  By then we all knew the surgeon general’s warning, we just weren’t yet ostracized and criticized for ignoring it.  Again, this is not a treatise on smoking, anti-smoking, or cancer.  I’m getting to tying it back to the title, wait for it. 

 

So back to Virginia Slims, Terry Road Market and Rita; not a full loop, but I swear we’re getting there.  I know I knew Rita in middle school, because I remember it was with Rita and Jennifer I started smoking.  Despite the fact that neither of my parents ever touched a Virginia Slim, I was somehow able to buy a pack at Terry Road Market I’m guessing when I was twelve or thirsteen.  I kept them in a zippy bag in a zipper compartment in my zippy giant 80s purse inside pocket. 

 

Two blocks up and parallel from my Meadow Road, was a street called Parsons Avenue.   In that small, insular pocket of the world which didn’t even cover a mile, Parsons was considered the high end.  Parson’s after all was an Avenue.  It had a median, and trees, and bigger houses than most of the neighborhood (which looking back now, they all were enormous two story colonials with huge yards).  Brick houses with white pillared porches, stained glass doors, fan windows above the gleaming doors with their gleaming brass polished handles.  Or at least that’s how I remember them.

 

Lord.  Rita, Jennifer and I probably made that pack of Virginia Slims 120 Menthols (of course) last two months, while sneaking out to sit in the small low trees of Parsons Ave. 

 

I didn’t become a smoker because of those Virginia Slims, but boy did we all think we were so chic, and mature, and that we’d “come a long way”.  I didn’t become addicted to cigarettes then.  It wasn’t until the summer after eighth grade that that happened, and I got busted.  I haven’t thought about those days of hiding in trees with those ridiculous lollipop stick cigarettes in ages.  And especially tonight; and only because I started this, with that old chestnut of an advertising line.

 

Let’s assume, I was eleven or twelve sitting in that tree.  It’s now 22 years later.  And I have come a long way baby.

 

If we flash back to high school, I was already probably starting to smoke ‘regular’ by then.  Maybe 8 a day.  But that is not what this is about, this is about a thread and tying it to an ad that became a part of pop culture and feminist history.

 

I was fortunate to be bright, and by the first week of Junior year at Westhill I was ready to speed things up.  Perhaps because it was shortsighted, or perhaps because it wasn’t meant to be, I moved to Florida to become a cocktail waitress instead of going to college.  I like to think it was meant to be. 

 

In a story for another time, we’ll again flashforward to now.  I skipped the part of my youth where I became obsessed with computers, because at that time I thought I was really obsessed with journalism.  Lucky me, it was the other one that paid off in spades.  Once I moved to Florida, I always seemed to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right skills.  Of course, there were bumps, ditches, Grand Canyons.  But from what I learned from my parents and their parents, my neighborhood, friends, my teachers, and myself:  I’ve come along way baby.

 

I am thirty four years old now.  I am a highly respected computer professional in a highly respected financial firm.  And last week I signed a contract to buy myself a gorgeous house.  Not a McMansion, not a dream house by maybe anyone else’s standards.  I bought ‘MY’ perfect house.  And because of the way I was raised, those are the only standards I really have to meet. 

 

And I have two porches I can smoke on.  Because I still smoke, and I’ve come along way.  But I think maybe starting to only smoke outside might be the path to quitting.  And that?  Would be truly coming a long way.  But right now, I’ll take what I’ve done.

 

 

 

 

How the Wii-Fit Changed My Waistline and My Life

 

Tomorrow will mark two weeks since I came home from work to find my friendly little Wii-Fit waiting for me on my doorstep.  As a lifelong Nintendo Geek (well, I’ll admit that I’m older than their first consoles), I happily ripped into the Amazon box, dug out the sleek other box and was up and running in minutes.  Since the announcement that Wii-Fit would be coming stateside, I diligently watched Amazon so I could pre-order.  I was going to get in shape!  Finally!

 

Before I start on my journey with Wii-Fit, I feel like I should give some background.  I’m 34.  I am not highly active, I don’t go to the gym, I do always sign up for work or friend related sports festival kind of things.  I am not overweight as confirmed by my doctor prior to Wii-Fit.  At times in my life I have been very physically active; in junior high I did cross country and softball, in high school I did track until my knees decided they hated me, then I joined my part time job’s company softball team, in my early twenties I taught ballroom dancing, in my mid to late twenties I played on co-ed rec league volleyball teams (I think the beer negated the exercise), in my early thirties I had a job that included a lot running through airports, carrying massive quantities of weight, and tons of speed walking.

 

So here I am at 34.  I’m just a bit over 5’5”, and after the crazy job with the carrying and the running, and the non-stop traveling, I settled very happily back into my chosen world of working in IT, playing a lot of video games, reading, and being on the computer non-stop.  So on the day the Wii-Fit showed up, I wasn’t overweight, I wasn’t a lost cause, but I was definitely… squishy.  I was however, highly competitive, motivated and captivated by games, and not wanting to be squishy anymore.

 

As for my eating habits?  I’m mostly herbivore.  I just have weird issues about meat and how I eat it.  Catching the least bit a gristle?  I’m done with my meal.  Fat?  Same thing.  It’s not a stance on anything, I’m just very texture oriented and freak about certain things.  Plus being single, as much as I love to cook, I need stuff that’s easy and re-heatable.  Not to mention in this day and age when I cook for groups there are so many dietary restrictions to cook for.  I hit fast food maybe once every two or three months.  I love peanut butter, milk, TGIF Potato Skins frozen or chips.  I love fruit candy (sour gummy LifeSavors, JellyBelly).   And anyone that suggests South Beach/Atkins, runs the risk of being stabbed with a sharpened celery stalk, because I live on bread, potatoes and fruit.  Food made of happiness.

 

Here’s another admission:  I’ve used the Wii-Fit almost every day (I think I’ve missed four days) since I got it, and not only have I not lost a pound?  I seem to have gained one since my first weigh in.  My daily weight chart goes up and down and the little balance board avatar quite honestly tells me that daily weight fluctuates two pounds a day.  On the first day I set a goal of losing four pounds in two weeks.  Tomorrow is the deadline and I’ll actually weigh more than when I started.  There goes my goal of losing four pounds in two weeks (which the Wii-Fit wisely decried as too ambitious when I set it).

 

I started out easy.  The first night I played for hours.  Oooh yoga!  Skiing!  Hula Hoops!

Then I didn’t play for two days.  Then I did almost every day.  I started at 20 minutes, I worked up to 50.  But I quickly became hopelessly devoted to yoga, strength training and aerobics.  I wouldn’t touch the balance games until I had done at least thirty minutes of all the other activities.  I wanted to squash the squish.

 

There are hundreds of Wii-Fit stories out there that will say:  ‘It works!’, ‘It doesn’t’, ‘It does, but it won’t long term’, endlessly.  But just like the South Beach Diet, or Spinning Class, it’s going to have different results based on how you use it and who you are.  When I finally found a co-worker that had it from the same day I did, I was ecstatic to compare notes.  Until he told me he lost nine pounds in a week.  I was crushed.  I felt like that stupid supplement commercial cartoon woman bitching about her and her husband giving up soda.  He lost ten pounds she gained two. 

 

Aside from skipping a few days early on for various reasons, I find, especially on work days, thinking about what combinations I’m going to do when I get home.  I do some of the basic yoga in my cube.  I’ve also started checking out and trying my free ‘On Demand’ yoga channels in addition to the Wii-Fit.  I’ve become a yoga junkie.  And a jackknife crunch junkie.  I look forward to working out.  It takes a video game to remind me to stop at the one hour mark.  I bought 3 and 5 lb free weights that I’ve figured out how to incorporate in step aerobics and strength training.  I bought new work out clothes.  My already existing clothes fit better. 

 

In two weeks, I haven’t lost any weight.  And I don’t care.  I feel better; all over.  My waist is actually discernable and starting to be curvy; my legs (which were always my best feature) are taught, my upper arms (those of you in your twenties?  Don’t realize how quickly that bat wing situation happens) are toned, my hips and thighs are sleeker.  I feel sharper and more energized.  I’ve had several people ask if I’ve lost weight. 

 

That’s an interesting question, since I haven’t… I’ve gained a pound plus.  I hope that’s muscle mass, but I have no idea.  I do know that when I’m standing naked drying my hair in the morning, a lot of parts look better.  Especially my abs and hips and gut, which two weeks ago, I hated about myself.  I know my slim pants?  I no longer want to discard by 10:30 in the morning.  They’re now comfortable.

 

But the only person wearing my clothes, and seeing me naked in the mirror every morning is me.  The scale didn’t see a difference, but I did.  And the Wii-Fit did on my center of balance and my scores.  And people that know me think I lost weight.  They also sense that I have a better energy.  I’m more positive, focused, and aware of myself. 

 

The only downside is that my friends that always exercised constantly are now right about how much I would love it.  And I haven’t mentioned it yet, because they are going to be insufferable. They will also at the same time make fun of me working out with a video game. 

 

It would take a video game got me to do what they couldn’t.  I’m now a fitness/video junkie.  I’ve also ordered a yoga title on DS.  Then again, I’ve also started doing the local cable OnDemand yoga programs. 

 

Wii-Fit isn’t a revolution, but if it can get mid-level (obviously not hard core RPG FPS maniacs) this into it?  Rock.  Yes, most people will focus on the games, but the work out bits are for real, to an extent; especially if you get creative. 

 

I’m anxiously awaiting intense and customizable yoga and aerobics. 

 

So I didn’t lose nine pounds in the first week.  But I lost a lot of bad preconceptions, I lost several inches, I lost a fear of what I didn’t know I could do. 

 

Now I just have to figure out how to deal with the excess work out adrenaline, work out rush that seems to keep me up until at least 1 AM.  I mean seriously.  Those stupid endorphin rush issues are annoying.