Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Dear Pimples…Love, Rich


Remember back in grade school when your teacher taught you how to make a capital D by extending Mr. Curve on the right all the way down to the bottom of Mr. Stem? Me either. But it’s a good policy.

My face started breaking out when I was in college. It probably didn’t happen in high school, because I didn’t care about much except my boyfriend and dog back then.

But I had to pay for college, so I wanted to participate, be involved in student organizations, get good grades. So I worried, even graduating with an advanced degree in worry, and my face indicated it. I was uncomfortable about my condition, embarrassed. I became ultrasensitive about how others viewed me and from which angle.

My friend Rich, who had already graduated, would go to my house while I was in class and leave fun, sentimental, thoughtfully written cards. His words had depth toward which I still aspire, though we journalists can be perpetually matter-of-fact. He had heart, you could tell, and didn’t seem to be bothered by my facial “worry expressions.”

One day after school in the quiet of my home, I tenderly and eagerly opened an envelope from Rich and read: “Dear Pimples…”

Ahhhhh! That undiplomatic coot, I thought, laughing as if I’d seriously maim him next time I saw him. I was appalled!

Then, in my aftershock, I reread his caustic greeting and realized, in his special method of scribing, he had actually written “Dear Dimples,” his nickname for me.

copyright © 2008 by Auntie Eartha. All rights reserved.

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Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Here’s Lookin’ at You, Kid


My dad has one eye—well, actually two, but one is plastic.

At age seven, he was playing Cowboys and Indians with his brother and the neighbor boys. My dad liked to horse around, so he was a cowboy. Unfortunately, an “Indian” shot an arrow into his eye.

Since then, he has worn a prosthetic eye. Every couple of years he has a new one made, and his old eyes are placed in his jewelry box. If a thief were to search Dad’s room for valuables and discover Dad’s eyes, the burglar may leave a deposit.

Dad has a good sense of humor about the situation. Being in the lending business, he’d say to an unsuspecting client, “If you can tell me which eye is artificial, I’ll give you the loan.” Credibility.

As a child, I grew up seeing Dad’s eye sitting in a glass of water by the bathroom sink at night. For me, it was normal. When I’d have a friend sleep over though, reactions would range from a screech to, “I won’t brush my teeth with that thing watching me.”

To my friends, seeing an eye in a glass was like keeping fat from your liposuction in a Ziploc bag as a conversation piece or saving your appendix in a jar to remind you how useless some things can be. You kind of wonder.

When I was about four, Mom, Nana, and I went on an Amtrak journey from Wisconsin to Indianapolis to visit Nana’s oldest daughter and her four kids. The trip involved sleeping overnight on the train, and I had been raised to understand that some people took out their eye before going to sleep.

At bedtime as we were walking past a group of passengers to go to our sleeping compartment, I innocently asked Nana, “Are you going to take out your eye?” The passengers abruptly ended their conversations and tried not to gawk.

As a rebellious teenager, I always had the urge to freeze one of Dad’s eyes in an ice cube and drop it into a friend’s drink. I figured it would open some eyes. “Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.”

copyright © 2008 by Auntie Eartha. All rights reserved.

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Monday, April 14, 2008

Pancakes

My friend, who for years was a professional Santa Claus, was walking down a store aisle one day when a little boy walked over to him and patted his tummy. “Baby?” the little one asked.

“No, son,” my friend replied, smiling, “pancakes.”

copyright © 2008 by Auntie Eartha. All rights reserved.

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Thursday, April 10, 2008

Wigs Whippin’ in the Wind



Mom had cancer, age 30. As a result of her treatment, she suffered hair loss. While some may sadly and sympathetically offer a syrupy, “What a shame,” Mom saw it as an opportunity to become addicted. She slipped into a parade procession with two friends, Vickie and Rebecca, and became obsessed with expressing herself. It was hairy.

Vickie was a beautician, as they were called, and Rebecca had lovely, bleached, perfectly coiffed locks. The setting was a small Midwestern town in the late sixties: psychedelic mod flowers, miniskirts, wide belts, Simon and Garfunkel, Vietnam, Apollo 13, Mrs. Robinson, valium, and beehives.

Mom’s friends loved to flirt with new hairstyles, and wigs provided them with hours of entertainment. They could be styled and restyled, put on and flung across the room, all without pain.

With her thinning hair, Mom had reason to comb the beach in search of a cover-up, so she purchased a cute human-hair wig. Each time Vickie or Rebecca would buy a new wig, so would Mom. Before long she had amassed a closet full of hairdos—human strands and synthetic. On the top shelf, all neatly posed as if on a catwalk ready for show were Styrofoam heads topped with every style of the sixties. Coupled with my dad’s pistol, it was quite the scare.

Each wig had a personality and, therefore, a name: Martha Washington, Dutch Boy, Dutch Girl, Twiggy, Morticia, Blondie, Elvis. When Mom would rise in the morning to prepare for work, she’d decide who she wanted to be and plop on the appropriate character.

One Saturday on a grocery shopping escapade at the Red Owl, the bag boy and I walked outside while Mom paid the bill. I opened the back door of our station wagon, and he started placing our groceries in the backseat.

Just as Mom stepped out of the store, a big gust of wind blew under Mom’s wig and lifted it off her head, exposing her bobby-pinned thin hair. It flew across the parking lot, under cars, faster and farther away from her. Every time she’d catch up to her wig, the wind would revive and she’d have to start running after it again.

The boy tried his hardest to muffle his laughter, while I watched in amazement as my mom chased her ’do. Exasperated, she finally reached her wig.

Embarrassed and frustrated, instead of laying claim to the dirty hairball and picking it up, she kicked it another ten feet, stomped over to it in a huff, picked up the hair, and walked to the car.

copyright © 2008 by Auntie Eartha. All rights reserved.

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Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Swallow This


Note: You may want to read “Tattoo and Piercing” (Dec. 8, 2007) before reading this.

I don’t believe a woman’s intuition is any better than a man’s, but women may listen to and follow through on intuition more than men. In fact, I have male friends whose intuition is better than most, so when they offer insight, I listen. On this day, I wish one of my friends had stopped by and shared some insight, ’cause I certainly didn’t listen to my own.

I’d been doing my annual hand-sewing to repair a sweater and laid the thread-laced needle on the living room window ledge. Walking past the window, admiring the greening spring grass, I glanced down and thought, I should put that needle away in case the kitties find it intriguing.

Of course, a needle doesn’t offer the same fascination as twitching yarn, a bouncing ball, or Shiloh the dog’s tail, so why worry? I proceeded to the dining room table and began to write.

Half an hour later, I looked up from my computer and saw the last of my thread being swallowed by the younger, extremely skittish of our two felines—the one I called Piercing because I needed him as much. Oh my gosh, I thought. How dumb can an animal be? Me being the animal.

I pushed myself away from the table, stomach in my neck, and ran toward the freakish cat to pull the needle from his tongue.

Catching this cat is like catching a hummingbird on caffeine. Since Shiloh, our Lab, first found him in our neighbor’s woodpile, he has never been tame, except to Shiloh and Tattoo. You can’t reach down and pet him, much less hold him and duct tape him to the wall. He has the personality of traumatized Siberian tiger and the weight to sound like one when he walks.

When we decided to keep him, he was a fur-covered twig, emaciated and starving. Feeling sympathetic and feeding him was my first mistake. Accepting him after another neighbor discovered him in her garage was my second. Paying to get him neutered and vaccinated was my third. The fourth is right around the bend.

Down the stairs he ran, faster than my ex when I said a bill was due, and into his unreachable cubby. He’s going in there to die, I surmised. I felt awful. Honest.

An hour later he emerged from his cubby and tried to eat. Sadly, he tried to eject the needle with a gag. Thanks to our hardwood floor and his inability to dig in and launch, I caught him. Six calls to veterinarians and one return call later, my daughter and I drove to a vet, who, since it was day’s end, sent us to emergency, which he said would be cheaper. Ha! My friend who just sold her animal hospital informed me otherwise.

Three and a half hours and $220 later (mistake number four), the kitten was still alive and had a hole in his tongue where the vet had to pull the needle and thread out—after cutting the knot off—and not through the same passage in which it went. Piercing now wears a tongue ring.

copyright © 2008 by Auntie Eartha. All rights reserved.

If you like it, link it!
http://auntieeartha.blogspot.com/2008/04/swallow-this.html