 It’s time to talk turkey. Like how much we love to eat it? No. That’s a given. How lame it is such a delicious bird that is indigenous to our continent is named for a country straddling Europe and Asia? Well, that is curious, and a truly dorky name, too. Just the sound of the two syllables fits as a descriptor of something or someone that is one step off the sidewalk. But, no—again.
Besides being the feathered feature of our feasts every Thanksgiving, the turkey has more association with people than you’ve been led to believe. Some of their behavior mirrors ours so much, it makes me wonder if someday anthropologists will find a bizarre common ancestor. Kind of a turkey-man hybrid. Wouldn’t that be cool. Maybe this hybrid creature could fly. By the way, contrary to conventional wisdom, turkeys can fly. At least the wild ones can, up to fifty-five miles per hour for short distances. They can outrun us, too, capable of up to thirty miles an hour for 100 yards. For the record, that absolutely destroys Usain Bolt’s standing. (He could only sustain such speed for twenty meters.) The domesticated birds meant for our dinner tables, though, can’t do any of that. They are like the fattened pampered humans in H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine. Or the plump and coddled humans in WALL-E. Eating and napping are their big challenges. Also just like humans—after they eat turkey. Hmmm . . . If you squint a bit, the turkey is rather beautiful. The broad spread of tail feathers, the rust and bronze highlighted upper body feathers, the stylish white stripes on the wings. The squinting helps when you get to the head. It has wart-like growths, called carbuncles, all over it. A long red thing dangling from the forehead resembles, in shape and movement, the icky congealed mucus blob swinging from the nose of a sick toddler. That dangly bit is called a snood. As if that weren’t gross enough, they also have a wattle—another dangling bit, this one from the chin. And the toms (males) have sharp spurs for fighting. As in one to two inch spikes. Protruding from the back of their ankles. Do not mess with them. They are powerful. Yes, the American wild turkey is a badass, the Liam Neeson of the bird world. Studies have shown the toms (males) with longer snoods have more success at mating. Much like their human counterparts, toms most likely give those studies a lot of weight. They probably get envious of each other’s snoods. The hens (females) probably snicker at such tom-foolery, then go back to taunting them. It may be difficult to disrespect the males for long, because—also like humans—related toms will band together to approach the females and court them. They have literal wing men. Only one of the toms gets to mate with the female at that time. Don’t waste your tears on the others. The whole lot of them are as randy as lust-driven teenagers and mate as often as they can get away with it, with any bird who’ll let them. Borrowing from The Bachelor, they don’t even pair up for a single season. Turkeys eat insects, seeds, and berries. Even aging, fermented berries. That could explain a lot. Turkeys get beer goggles. Just like us.
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 In days long past, people knew, by the time a child was around five or six, whether or not the kid had all its marbles in the right places. Imagine, continuing the marble thread, the normal ones’ brains looked like a neatly set up game of Chinese checkers. Each marble precisely placed in its appointed spot. And such a child followed the rules, did what they were told.
Remember that old game, Mouse Trap? The one that looked like a Rube Goldberg contraption? (If you haven’t heard of him, Google him. So much fun.) Levers, flippers, scoops, and raceways had marbles flying everywhere. The child whose brain did that didn’t fit in very well. They disobeyed and explored forbidden places and thoughts. Were they geniuses or just idiots? Depending on the village culture, the ones with the flying marbles didn’t fit in. If they were simple-minded, but could be relied upon to complete easy tasks, they were trained to do so. If they were a danger to others, too much of a burden, or just scared the townspeople because of their differences, they were disappeared. Yup. You heard me. Oh, no one spoke about it. There are veiled references to such things in historical records, but stories survived about disabled or deformed newborns being left out in the woods for the wolves. Babies with problems were bad omens. Whacky behavior was a sign of stupidity. A child who couldn’t speak made it to the age of six, but constantly pointed at the sky and screamed. Along came a period of non-stop rain that killed all the crops, and subsequently, most the animals. Poor kid got blamed as being an evil spirit who brought the disaster. Yeah, he didn’t survive. That was from an arcane entry in a church record. Seems barbaric, doesn’t it? Ah, but it turns out, during most of human history, we’ve rejected anyone who was differently abled. More modern times brought ways of locking away the disabled-from-birth kids, but they were still out of sight. Unless, of course, you were rich or powerful. It’s the same old story. People haven’t changed. If you were a member of what my one son calls the lucky sperm club, your chances of survival were way better. Okay, okay. I get it. So far, this is so not funny. See, I’m here to make sure you realize how good you’ve got it. It all makes me especially happy that my siblings and I were born in the twentieth century. I hate to think of how those middle ages villagers would have treated my siblings and me. We exhibited some pretty dopey behavior, and we weren’t rich. So . . . We had a neighbor, who, I’m quite sure, wanted all six of us taken away somewhere. Anywhere. Had she been the head of an ancient village, my siblings and I would’ve been disappeared, for sure. Her children behaved with decorum. They didn’t roll in the mud. They didn’t race bicycles downhill with no hands. They never fell out of trees. We were loud and boisterous. We made messy mud and leaf sandwiches in our pretend deli on the side porch and tried to sell them. Once, after witnessing my brother chasing my screaming sister around the yard—he was attempting to hit a bee, that had apparently decided it loved her, by whipping a rope at her as they ran—our neighbor ranted at my mother but good about her disgraceful progeny. That brother is now a Ph.D. So, I wonder how many children, how many incredibly smart people, were discarded on the cutting-room floor of human history? I have to believe those villagers of old would’ve definitely left us in the woods.  This is an essay from my book, A Little Bit Sideways. It's about us. Americans. We are unique, to say the least. Happy 4th, Everybody!
*** I once went to a Fourth of July celebration concert with an English friend. When I invited her, she said, “Oh, sure. Gloating’s far more fun when the losers are present.” Huh. I hadn’t thought about the Fourth from a British person’s perspective. It made me consider how little we modern day Americans know about the personalities of the people who were responsible for that little tiff we call the American Revolution. We were ticked off by King George’s government treating the American colonies as though they were property. As if! How dare they! Oh, wait. Technically, the colonies were. But still. The British had the nerve to levy taxes on needed supplies like paper, paint, glass, and tea. Never mind that the taxes were supposed to help pay off the debt from the French and Indian War. In North America and the Caribbean, it was a battle against the French for control of those colonies. The American colonists hated the notion of the French taking over, so England really was fighting for their cause as well. And it was pretty darn pricey. In fact, so staggering a debt, that it nearly destroyed the English government. The colonists didn’t care. Already, the fledgling & soon-to-be rebellious ones conveniently forgot they almost had to learn French and step up their game in the kitchen. And who wouldn’t want to forget? That’s a lot of pressure—going from preparing basic grub (Sorry, English) to excelling in wine reductions, crème fraiche, and escargot. King George III was a little unstable—not completely mad yet, but King Louis XV? Despite being known as the beloved, Louis wasn’t. (It’s kind of like how every North Korean adores Kim Jong Un.) Louis was—as were all the Louies—weird. And surprisingly progressive by today’s standards. He was the first one to send a transvestite to spy on the Russians. Luckily for us, Louis never met a war he couldn’t lose. Might it have had something to do with too much wine and men wearing silk stockings? Back to our British overlords. By 1770, only the tea tax remained. Big deal, right? Depends on how much you know about human beverage history. And lucky for you, I’ve done extensive research. Tea was the first non-alcoholic drink in the Western world that wouldn’t make you sick. See, back in those days, everybody knew if you drank water, you could die. They didn’t understand the why. Until tea, everybody drank beer or wine. Seriously. Even the kids. It’s a miracle the human race didn’t stagger its way into cave walls and off cliffs, stab themselves with poisoned arrows, and get dizzy and tumble down the pyramids to extinction. So tea was a big deal. It enabled the industrial revolution, because sober people can be trusted around machinery. Drunk people, not so much. But perhaps England’s biggest mistake in all of this was allowing volunteers to go populate the New World in the first place. They should have assigned people to go instead. Because the people who would volunteer to leave everyone and everything they know to sail for months to an uncertain fate carry a certain daring adventure gene. No—it’s not really a gene. Don’t make me roll my eyes at you. All of us Americans, back then and now, carry this thing I’m calling a gene. Americans come from ancestors who dared to leave home and try something new. People seeking freedom from other people telling them what to do or believe. As a result, by default—we Americans are independent. Curious. Brave. Brash. Restless. Self-motivated. Inventive. It’s why our spirit is admired around the world. The most adventurous people from all the other countries chose to come here, effectively diminishing their home country’s gene pools of such traits. We can’t help being rebellious. It’s in our blood. So, of course that pesky tea tax was going to piss them off royally. There was a bit more to it than that, but I don’t want to overstay my welcome in the history aisle. My fellow Americans, this is an awesome responsibility. Our demanding that they—whoever they are (Oops, it’s the government, don’t tell anyone)--do something (This is outrageous!) is constantly at war with our inner rebel that doesn’t want anybody messing with our lives. Until we break an axle in a deep pothole. Why the heck can’t these fools manage to fill a hole?! Or dozens of people fall ill from salmonella in a restaurant. Why can’t THEY make sure these places serve safe food?! Or your baby gets lead poisoning from chewing on an imported toy. Why can’t THEY test these things before they allow them into our country?! Nothing’s changed. We want it both ways. And that’s impossible. Happy Fourth of July, you rebel, you.  I've posted this tribute to my dad several times, but it's a good one & I think it deserves another post in honor of Father's Day. My dad passed over twenty years ago. He was a (as he would say) 'real kick in the pants.'
*** We only get one father—biologically speaking. But a dad? That’s a different story. For some people, Dad is the one who contributed his DNA to you. For others, it’s the guy who volunteered to step up and be the dad. I am thanking all dads, whether they’re blood-related or not. And as a tribute, here’s to them and their foibles. There are a few things I know for sure about dads. They like sports, especially football and—when Mom’s not in the room—cheerleaders. They relish a cold beer after mowing the lawn. They make the best tree forts. They believe winking at you erases a clumsy remark. They have deep, meaningful conversations with the family dog, but can’t cough up a word when asked by Mom to help explain the birds and the bees to their kids. They love steak. They wear T-shirts from their high school or college days until they disintegrate. They tell the same corny jokes year after year and laugh harder each time, ignoring Mom’s eye-rolling. They adore their children. My dad passed away twenty-one years ago. I question both his and my mother’s (very much alive) sanity. They decided to have a big family, wanted all six of us. I’ve raised three children and can’t imagine having had three more. I don’t know how my parents didn’t succumb to the temptation to lose one or two of us. In my dad’s wake, he left a legacy of events and stories that still entertain us. Tales about Hawaii after World War II, college pranks, and how he won my mother over from some other guy. Dad loved to dance. When I was little, sometimes I’d wake up at night and hear music. I’d sneak downstairs and find my parents on the sun porch doing a wild, swinging jitterbug to big band music. They were laughing, smiling—no, beaming ear to ear. Dad was cheap. He thought nothing should cost more than fifty dollars—ever. No matter how much time had passed since his find-a-nickel-and-see-a-movie childhood. He’d tip waiters and valets with quarters. As we grew older, we realized Mom always tucked extra cash in her purse for surreptitious purposes. He did get a little better with the tipping thing, but we all were prepared to leave a sweater on a chair as an excuse to run back to the table. He loved cute waitresses, and back in the days before political correctness (think Mad Men era), he’d pinch their bottoms and laugh, embarrassing us. Dad was a charmer, though, and the waitresses never looked angry. Really. I guess some people can pull off anything. My middle son inherited that gene. He’d never pinch anyone, but boy, one smile and whammo—he’s got the popular vote. My dad’s favorite drink was the Manhattan. Four parts rye whiskey to one part sweet vermouth with a dash of bitters and a Maraschino cherry. It’s etched into my brain because Dad taught me to make them when I was ten. These days, that would probably be considered child abuse. Heck, my kids didn’t learn bartending skills until they were at least twelve. Kidding. While Mom was busy preparing dinner for eight people, I’d fill the cocktail shaker with Manhattan ingredients and frost a martini glass in the freezer for him. When he came home from work, he’d sit at the counter and do the crossword puzzle, sipping the drink I’d served and talking to Mom. But here’s the endearing part, something I didn’t realize until many years later. He’d pluck me up and onto his lap and challenge me with some of the crossword clues. No matter what I’d answered, if it was the right amount of letters, he praised me and filled it in. (In ink. He and Mom always did their crosswords in pen.) After a few answers, I’d get bored, jump down, and go find a sibling to pester. Now, as an avid puzzle doer, I can only imagine what a pain in the rear it was to work around and ink over those incorrect answers. Before the internet, or even the concept of a home computer, dads relied on nudie magazines. Keeping them hidden from the wives and children was a big challenge. We kids always found the stash, however. We never let on, and we never told our moms. It was our only source of sex education. What we didn’t know was that all the moms knew exactly where they were also. Yeesch. Everybody just pretended they didn’t know diddly. As it turned out, to share the financial burden of keeping up with the latest issues, Dad had an exchange program going with the Episcopal minister (father of five) next door. They traded copies back and forth for years. I told you he was cheap. I miss him. I hope you have a dad in your life. He may not be the biological contributor, but love is not measured by DNA. Treasure every bad joke, every inappropriate or clunky comment, every moment they choose to spend with you. Appreciate the efforts made to cheer you on, lift you up, and lessen the pain, even if they don’t work. He cares enough to try, and it hurts him more than you know to see you go through life’s inevitable adversities. And don’t ever let him be all alone on Father’s Day.  That’s what my older sister, my dear departed Stephanie, labeled the weird phenomenon of always—as the old knight in the Indiana Jones movie said—choosing poorly.
You walk into a bar with a few friends. There are enough vacant stools, all looking perfectly fine. You choose one. While the others in your party take their seats, you hang your purse on the hook under the counter, then boost yourself up on your stool. And it’s the one with a leg shorter than the other three. It’s the tippy barstool. Every bar has one, and you’ve picked it. Again. My family excels at this. Welcome to our world. A world where your brand new package of three pairs of socks has a sock missing. You have five socks, not six. The package hadn’t been opened—it was simply a freak from the factory. Or your seat on the plane is in front of the only kicking toddler on board. You get the idea. Nowhere does Tippy Barstool Syndrome kick in as hard or as often than at the grocery store. First you select a cart. So many to choose from, yet you take the one with the sticky wheel. The next has loud, squeaky wheels. A third has gum stuck to the underside of the handle. Around you, other shoppers are putting no thought at all into cart selection. They simply grab one, and off they go happily—on silent and gliding wheels. As you peruse the store, placing items in the cart, Tippy hovers like Eeyore’s dark cloud. The first bag of flour you lift has a rip on the bottom that you don’t notice until it leaves a trail of white powder and the floor feels slippery. You glance down to notice your new shoes are dusted white. The first jar of jam you select has its little safety bubble already popped. The yogurt container’s sealed top has a slit in it. The bag of M&Ms was opened via the bottom seam by somebody sneaking some out, and they spill everywhere when you pick it up. You’ve completed your list. Now you scout out the shortest or fastest line. You zip past all open lanes. For each line of customers, your brain is calculating, rapid-fire, what types of people are in that lane and how much they’ve got in their carts. A line may have fewer people with fewer items, but experienced shoppers know if more than one of those waiting are elderly, skip that queue. You don’t want to be smiling politely while grandpa can’t figure out the debit card or granny endlessly searches for her checkbook, then takes five excruciating minutes to write the check. Are there any harried moms with screaming toddlers? Does the cashier look new? Does the bagger pack slower than sludge? So many factors, and your brain calculates them brilliantly. The analysis from your logical quadrant reports in, and you get in a line. Two people soon stand behind you. And this is when TBS kicks in. The customer at the register realizes she bought a wrong thing. She panics, says “I’ll be right back,” dashes out of line, and disappears down an aisle. The rest of you make small talk about the drivel on the gossip magazines’ covers in the checkout rack. Which, I have to say, are so unfair. Either the celebrities are too skinny or they’re too fat. Whatever the starlet weighs, it’s never good enough for the tabloids. Alien babies and people selling their grilled cheese sandwiches that look like Jesus, however, are never criticized on those covers. I’m digressing. After a few minutes of us showing incredible patience and restraint in resisting eye rolls and sighs, the lady scoots back, apologizing. Those who can’t fake a nice reply merely nod. She pays and vamooses. The next person does everything right, but the register runs out of receipt paper. It continues like that as the lanes on either side flow effortlessly along. I often tell people I meet in line to memorize my face. If they ever see me in line again, they’d be smart to get in a different one. A Note: My beautiful sister Stephanie passed away from a particularly ugly and aggressive throat cancer, 4 years ago this week. She was so flipping fun and funny. I begged her for years to quit smoking. She always said, "I'm going to. I promise." She never did. Please, if you smoke, quit now. Find a way. If you could see the pain it caused all of us, but especially our mother, you'd do it. Maybe you'll beat the odds, but why take that chance? We want you here - with us.  This is an essay from 2014 - and it appears on page 74 of my book, A Little Bit Sideways - but it (sadly) never grows old. There's a whole new generation of young (and older) men who are ridiculously clueless when it comes to romance and Valentine's Day in particular:
My new editor asked me to write my February column about romance. Borrowing from the great Bugs Bunny – “She don’t know me very well, do she?” Poor thing probably hasn’t had time to read many back issues and doesn’t realize what my track record is. But I take pride in doing what I’m told (sometimes). And I relish relaying romantic tales. So here goes. Valentine’s Day means a lot. To women. Not so much to men. Most men do what they’re told to do by their woman in order to maintain the household peace. This I know with certainty, because I have three adult sons and have had three semi-adult husbands. I believe this makes me an expert in the romantic gifts and gestures department, or—perhaps more accurately—what not to give the woman in your life if you ever expect to have intimate relations again. After all, every man hopes that giving the right gift will lead to what we women call romance. The men call it something else that I can’t say here. The smart ones realize that a thoughtful, mushy gift will open a woman’s heart and make her feel all warm and tingly inside. Which leads to a long walk in the woods, then some playful swapping of baseball caps, then a relaxing soak in twin bathtubs outside in the yard while watching the sunset. Oh. Wait. No. That’s a special pill commercial. Most men these days do know that most women are wired differently and require a little schmoozing. They don’t understand it—because, honestly, all they need is a simple nod toward the bedroom, and they’ll be out of their boxers and under the sheets before you take three steps down the hall—but if some affectionate gestures and canoodling make his woman want to jump his bones, a man will comply. But this is where some of the worst stories come into the picture. Seems that even what comprises those gestures is a mystery to men. Just when they think they’ve got it nailed and are doing something romantic, it can all blow up in their faces, poor things. A few things not to do: Shoulder rubs are wonderful and most women will welcome one—but not when standing at the kitchen sink scrubbing pots—you’re likely to get hit over the head with a frying pan. Better idea? Gently nudge her away from the sink, dry her hands, pour her a glass of wine, and you finish the job. By the way, this only works if you do a good job of it, not the old - I’ll do a crummy job, and she’ll never ask me to do it again ploy. Because that just pisses her off worse and gets you further from your goal. Much further. You have no idea how much further. One of the best pieces of advice for a male cohabitating with a female is to learn early on how she likes certain household tasks done, then actually DO them that way. If more nookie is what you’re after, listen and follow my directions. Doing chores badly only makes her think of you as she would an irresponsible teenager. Someone she needs to supervise—so she’s still on duty, not relaxed. And if your woman is the weird exception that finds a grown man who acts like a petulant teenager a turn-on, well, it’s up to you, of course, but I say there’s a whole lotta trouble coming your way. If you stay, then you deserve what you get. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Don’t tell her you’ve planned a romantic evening, have the wine poured, get her all comfy on the sofa, then have a porn movie start playing when you hit the remote. (Unless you know, for a very, very, solid fact, that she’s into it. Come to think of it, get that in writing and have it notarized.) Women will compare themselves with the gorgeous, but anorexic, girl with huge boobs on the screen and wonder why you need to look at her to get turned on. Which leads to massive feelings of inadequacy and lower confidence and not so much fun in the bedroom—if the door hasn’t been slammed in your face already. Do not write her a poem that has any words rhyming with bucket. Just don’t. In addition, do not give her the following ‘gifts’—all courtesy of my exes: Fencing lessons when she’s never expressed ANY interest in it. A white yarn mop head (without even the accompanying mop stick to put it on). Yeah, wish I was kidding you on that one. A box of real coal chunks in a pretty box from the most expensive jeweler in town. No jewelry hidden inside, just the chunks. A used coffee mug. A scrub brush for the car. And a framed picture of your mother. You are welcome. One of my greatest fears from early childhood was that I’d fall into the three-quarter-inch gap in the seaside boardwalk planks in Asbury Park, New Jersey. We lived a few miles inland and would go to the boardwalk amusements every once in a while. I remember so vividly the smell of tar mixed with the tang of salt air. Every time I smell tar, I go back to childhood and the boardwalk. Here’s the weird thing—I love when that happens. I love the smell of tar. But for some reason, the little gap in the boards absolutely terrified me. In my mind, they were a foot wide.
Such is the strangeness of childhood fears. What’s also strange is how we all remember what those crazy fears were. So, I’ve been asking people about theirs, and, to a person, they had no trouble dredging up an example from early in their lives. One man was completely freaked out by Winnie the Pooh. Screamed bloody murder when he saw the cartoon or, heaven forbid, came face-to-face with a stuffed one in the toy store. He can’t figure out why, though. Tigger, Eeyore, Piglet? No problem. Only the cute little soft-voiced, gentle bear made him cringe. A more common one was mannequins. That, I can understand. Some of them creep me out, even now. Especially when they’ve been made to have facial expressions. I saw one recently whose face was cast in a freakish wide-mouthed laugh. He had heavily painted eyebrows that pitched together over his nose and way-too-bright blue eyes. He looked maniacal, like something the Joker would leave around to taunt his next victim. How that mannequin was an asset in selling men’s clothing was beyond me. What store owner would buy him? I ponder the good judgement, not to mention the sanity, of such a business owner. He’d be the type to have a trap-door in the dressing room or a secret two-way mirror. An older man confessed to a paralyzing dread of chalk as a kid. Chalk? He had this fear long before the jumping into Bert’s sidewalk chalk drawings happened in the Mary Poppins movie, so we can’t blame Walt Disney or Dick Van Dyke. Maybe his mom banged the dust out of chalkboard erasers near him when he was an infant? One little girl went nuts if she saw colored sprinkles. All-brown chocolate ones were okay. Just the happy and festive multi-colored sprinkles gave her nightmares. In an unexpected side note, clowns, known for multi-colored faces and outfits that universally give us the willies, didn’t affect her at all. You’d think they’d trigger the same reaction. Speaking of nuts, a boy had a near-panic attack if confronted by peanuts. Not peanut butter, but the nuts. He didn’t have an allergy. All he can fathom now, as an adult, is the Mr. Peanut icon spooked him. Product mascots when we were young were everywhere and pretty bizarre, come to think of it. The Jolly Green Giant? I was leery of him. Thought he was always about to squash those cute little green sprouts dancing around him. Speedy, the Alka-Seltzer boy? On the old black and white TV, he looked like a demented ventriloquist’s doll, and I hated those things. The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man with his stupid tilted sailor’s cap? I can’t explain why he creeped me out, but he just did. And why did he look so much like The Michelin Man? And for the life of me, I couldn’t comprehend Mr. Clean. An adult man who helped women clean the house? Oh, Please. My dad never cleaned anything, except the grill and the lawn mower. None of us kids fell for that one. We were supposed to like and trust these icons? We were supposed to be happy to eat Charlie the Tuna’s friends? I submit that maybe the reason for our childhood terrors had more to do with the Madmen's three-martini lunch where they dreamed up such stuff, rather than anything actually being wrong with us.  Have you ever seen the aftermath of an exploded, spoiled can of cranberry sauce? When I was a kid, I didn’t like the taste of cranberries. Mom taught us how to string them with popcorn to make Christmas tree garlands, but eating them? Nah. By my teen years, my palate had matured, and I realized Mom’s homemade cranberry relish was pretty darned good. Made with oranges, a few spices, and not too much sugar, it became my go-to for consuming cranberries. This was way, way before sweetened dried cranberries—Craisins—were temptingly dangled in front of us on TV like the California dancing raisins’ long lost cousins. The problem with having a mother who made most things from scratch, and very well at that, is almost nothing served by others—individuals or restaurants—measures up. So I tend to take a pass on canned anything. Sometimes my Thanksgiving guests will come with donations for the dinner, which is so very thoughtful and nice. For the record, I prefer fresh flowers or wine as a hostess gift. But once in a while, that donation is a can of cranberry sauce, which I conveniently forget to open and serve. At the end of the meal, I’ll politely slap my forehead and apologize for forgetting. While cleaning up, I feel heartless just tossing it, so the can gets shoved to the back of the pantry. Perhaps my guilt will go away, and I’ll throw it out in a week or two? Several years go by. I legitimately forget all about it, and if I haven’t cleaned out the pantry (which I almost never do), disaster strikes. Purplish-red gooey stuff goes everywhere. It’s sticky, and it stains, and it’s a pain in the rear to wash absolutely everything down. True confession here, though—it’s only happened once. But once was enough. Some might say I got what I deserved, but I really, really, really hate serving that gelatinous goop. I don’t know why they call the jellied stuff that slides out of the can cranberry sauce. It looks and acts more like Jello. I suppose it tastes like cranberries, in a way. But it’s a far cry from real cranberries. Another reconfigured and reconditioned Thanksgiving food I can’t stomach is fake mashed potatoes. There are people who buy a box of dried potato flakes (I guess they’re flakes, I really don’t know), mix them with water or milk, and the resulting mush is supposed to be instant mashed potatoes? It’s shocking. That sounds blasphemous on top of unappetizing. Plus they have all sorts of chemicals added to them. I guess I don’t understand, because boiling potatoes, then mushing them up with some milk and butter, is one of the easiest things to do in the world of cooking. There’s nothing complicated about it. The English and Irish were able to do it, for crying out loud. No offense meant to either nationality, but you are not famous for your great food. We love you for other reasons. (I do have English and Irish in my mixed-mutt heritage). And real potatoes taste good. So I don’t get it. According to info I found on the Internet, instant mashed potatoes have been through ‘an industrial process’ of cooking, mashing, and dehydrating—resulting in ‘a close approximation’ of mashed potatoes. Ewwww. Sounds yummy. Not. Unless you’re cooking for Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters, where he uses a gallon of mashed potatoes as a sculpture medium, please try to do it yourself at least once. Your grandmother would be so proud. What I never figured out was—why Teri Garr made enough potatoes to satisfy a famished fire department when they had three little kids who each probably consumed a couple of forkfuls. But then Spielberg would have had to make Dreyfuss raid his kids’ Playdough stash, and that would have been too hard? There’s a lot I don’t understand about movies. Like why Bryce Dallas Howard’s heels didn’t snap and break while doing all that running from dinosaurs—through the forest, over rocks, on asphalt—those were some impressive shoes. Or why babysitters open the closet or basement door, when they know darn well what’s behind it? I spent much of my adolescence in babysitting mode, and that is just plain insulting. I suppose there’s much I don’t understand about a lot of life’s mysteries. But I do understand the wonders of homemade, from scratch—food. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving! That’s what my older sister, my dear departed Stephanie, labeled the weird phenomenon of always—as the old knight in the Indiana Jones movie said—choosing poorly.
You walk into a bar with a few friends. There are enough vacant stools, all looking perfectly fine. You choose one. While the others in your party take their seats, you hang your purse on the hook under the counter, then boost yourself up on your stool. And it’s the one with a leg shorter than the other three. It’s the tippy barstool. Every bar has one, and you’ve picked it. Again. My family excels at this. Welcome to our world. A world where your brand new package of three pairs of socks has a sock missing. You have five socks, not six. The package hadn’t been opened—it was simply a freak from the factory. Or your seat on the plane is in front of the only kicking toddler on board. You get the idea. Nowhere does Tippy Barstool Syndrome kick in as hard or as often than at the grocery store. First you select a cart. So many to choose from, yet you take the one with the sticky wheel. The next has loud, squeaky wheels. A third has gum stuck to the underside of the handle. Around you, other shoppers are putting no thought at all into cart selection. They simply grab one, and off they go happily—on silent and gliding wheels. As you peruse the store, placing items in the cart, Tippy hovers like Eeyore’s dark cloud. The first bag of flour you lift has a rip on the bottom that you don’t notice until it leaves a trail of white powder and the floor feels slippery. You glance down to notice your new shoes are dusted white. The first jar of jam you select has its little safety bubble already popped. The yogurt container’s sealed top has a slit in it. The bag of M&Ms was opened via the bottom seam by somebody sneaking some out, and they spill everywhere when you pick it up. You’ve completed your list. Now you scout out the shortest or fastest line. You zip past all open lanes. For each line of customers, your brain is calculating, rapid-fire, what types of people are in that lane and how much they’ve got in their carts. A line may have fewer people with fewer items, but experienced shoppers know if more than one of those waiting are elderly, skip that queue. You don’t want to be smiling politely while grandpa can’t figure out the debit card or granny endlessly searches for her checkbook, then takes five excruciating minutes to write the check. Are there any harried moms with screaming toddlers? Does the cashier look new? Does the bagger pack slower than sludge? So many factors, and your brain calculates them brilliantly. The analysis from your logical quadrant reports in, and you get in a line. Two people soon stand behind you. And this is when TBS kicks in. The customer at the register realizes she bought a wrong thing. She panics, says “I’ll be right back,” dashes out of line, and disappears down an aisle. The rest of you make small talk about the drivel on the gossip magazines’ covers in the checkout rack. Which, I have to say, are so unfair. Either the celebrities are too skinny or they’re too fat. Whatever the starlet weighs, it’s never good enough for the tabloids. Alien babies, however, are never criticized on those covers. I’m digressing. After a few minutes of us showing incredible patience and restraint in resisting eye rolls and sighs, the lady scoots back, apologizing. Those who can’t fake a nice reply merely nod. She pays and vamooses. The next person does everything right, but the register runs out of receipt paper. It continues like that as the lanes on either side flow effortlessly along. I often tell people I meet in line to memorize my face. If they ever see me in line again, they’d be smart to get in a different one. Some folks just hate to say goodbye. We all understand. We’ve been there. Separation brings tears when your baby gets on the school bus for first time. When your best friend moves across the country.
When children go to college - Wait. No. Most of us throw a secret party when that happens. We love our teenagers, but by the time eighteen rolls around, everybody needs a break. I remember thinking, don’t let the door hit you in the patookie on the way out. He knew everything, and I knew nothing. Boy, did he need to get out in the world. Of course, the final goodbye is the hardest. And there are some who simply can’t handle the departure. Will never handle it. I like to think that those who have passed on to their soul’s next phase are at peace, maybe at long last. We who are left behind are the ones who endure the pain of loss. But for a strange demented few, they do pretty bizarre things - as I’ll explain in a bit. It’s October. Halloween month. Creepy stuff displays are in the stores. Some of it way too icky for me. Especially the pretend corpses shown in various states of decay. I know lots of people who love that sort of thing as Halloween décor, but I am not one of them. How in the world did the idea of displaying fake ‘dug up’ corpses ever become a thing? Well . . . it stems from real life episodes over the centuries where people did exactly that. Dug up their deceased loved ones and moved them back into the house. Yes, really. There are references all through our history of folks doing it. Not a lot, thank God, but enough to make it not unheard of. Now, why the people way-back-when did it isn’t really explained, but the knowledge that they did do it was passed on. And on. And on. And now it’s a decorating thing in the age of glorified zombies. Granted, a person would have to be missing more than one belt loop to even imagine committing such a gross act for real. But the human population has always had its percentage of loopers, hasn’t it? A Detroit man moved his father’s body into a basement freezer because he was convinced Dad would come back to life. Ickier was a woman named Jean. Jean and her twin sister, June, were very close. When June passed away from cancer in 2009, Jean had her dug up after a few days and placed in a spare bedroom. But they weren’t alone. Jean had also been living with her husband’s corpse propped up on a couch for ten years. Ultra-ickier still, a man in Vietnam slept in his wife’s grave for years, until his kids made him stop. So he moved her into his bed, where he slept with her for another five years. It’s not an ‘only lately’ kind of quirk. Nor is it limited to western nut jobs. There’s an island in Indonesia where the locals exhume their ancestors’ mummified remains every year. It’s like a holiday. They clean out their graves, put new clothes on them, take them for a pleasant walk about the village, then place them back underground. The kicker is, from the pictures I saw, the poor dead people are at the mercy of their descendants’ fashion sense. This one poor old man got paraded around in a suit with a Hawaiian-print shirt and a red, green & white plaid tie. Lesson? Throw out your ugly clothes you kept meaning to give away before you kick that final bucket. Yes, some folks just can’t bear to say goodbye. And if your skin isn’t crawling at the thought of these stories, it’s time to check your belt loops. |
Author noteI believe the only way to get through the slings and arrows life throws at all of us is to find the humor. Archive
January 2020
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