There are wonderful pictures of graduates turning up on Facebook these days, from Pre-K, complete with cap and gown, to college. It makes me sentimental for my high school graduation ceremony.....if only I could remember it.
Dennis tells me that is a blessing. I asked him about a detail the other day and he said "You don't want to know." Well, it was the sixties, you know, and you've heard what things were like back then, but it wasn't that my mind was "elsewhere". It is more like when something traumatic happens in your life and you block it out in order to survive with your sanity intact. Okay, the sanity question is still out, but still.....
I do remember that it was in St. Louis, at Ritenour High School. I remember that it was very hot that summer. Back when I was a kid, school started after Labor Day and we didn't get out till the first week or so of June, so it must have been around that time. Heat in St. Louis is hotter than other places. I think it has to do with the confluence of the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers and several other smaller rivers all together there. A temperature of 93 degrees doesn't sound too bad but when you multiply it by the 98% humidity it feels like 9,114 degrees. Or thereabouts. The air is thick. You feel like you need to make swimming motions when you go outside. That's the kind of day it was.
Air conditioning was a new thing back then, at least around where I grew up. Movie theaters had it, and some grocery stores. They would have a sign on the front door that said "Come in. It's Kool inside!" in blue letters to denote ice and a picture of a penguin sitting on an ice block and when you stepped on the magic mat on the threshold that opened the door, cool air would rush out at you and it was heavenly until you had been inside awhile and wished you were wearing a sweater. But I didn't know anyone who had air conditioning in their home and Ritenour Senior High School certainly did not. Accordingly, the graduation was scheduled for outside on the football field.
I'm not sure where the audience sat, the bleachers, I guess. There were a whole lot of spectators because our class was one of the first of the Baby Boomers and it was huge and everyone had grandmas and grandpas and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins, at least. I think they had put folding chairs on the ground for the graduates. We gathered in the gym, getting ready to march out onto the field in alphabetical order. Because the locker rooms were right there, several of us had decided to wait to put on our robes ---boys wore black, girls wore white---after we got to the gym.
Remember how hot it was. I was wearing a white chiffon dress with a full skirt that required a small can-can slip, and long sleeves. I had spent two weeks finding that dress and I had worn it for National Honor Society (there are pictures of that ceremony, that's how I remember what it was), but it was so hot! So, we had those long robes, they zipped up the front, I think, and completely covered us. A robe is like a dress, right? Why wear two? I took off my chiffon dress and the can-can slip, left them in the locker room and wore just the robe over my underwear. Who would ever know?
Now, here's where my memory gets shaky. I don't remember anyone speaking, any awards, any handshakes. All I vaguely remember is someone droning names: ....Roy Bell....dramatic pause....Barbara Brinkhorst....dramatic pause....Larry Brock... on and on. It was stifling. I wanted to nod off from the boredom and the heat. But then there was a cool breeze. A few clouds. A teeny rain drop. Just one. Then a few. The pauses got shorter, the graduates walked more quickly, the rain came faster and soon it was PatriciaPhelenJerryPostelwaitePatriciaPounds (that was me). I ran up the stairs to the stage, dashed across the slippery boards, grabbed the fake diploma (you had to wait for them to send you the real thing in the mail for some reason) and galloped down the other stairs in the pouring rain. It was not a light shower. It was not a small rain. It was, as we say in Oklahoma, a gully washer.
It would have been lovely if I had moved across that stage so quickly that no one saw me, but this was not the case. I have heard from quite a few people that many in the large audience did see me. Much more of me than I ever intended. It could be that I was the unwitting inspiration of the Wet-T-Shirt contest of later years, only with more class, of course. Who knew a sopping, dripping, white graduation gown would become completely transparent when wet?
For some reason, there are no pictures from my graduation. I will just have to wax nostalgic over everybody else's.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Flower Power
I have a love-hate relationship with my garden. I love the thought of gorgeous flower beds and yummy, homegrown veggies. I hate actually having to work to get them. I love being out in the fresh air, but the minute I step my foot off the sidewalk and into the garden I'm praying "Please don't let there be any snakes. Please, please don't let there be any snakes." So far the biggest scare I have gotten, and it happens every year when I first go out, is when a toad jumps out and startles me and I scream, and the toad, dirt, weeds and whatever tools I have in my hand fly into the air.
My friend Joanne says she gardens by the Pointing Method. "I point and someone else plants what I want where I want it." If she can't convince her husband, she pays someone to do it. While I wish I could adopt her method, it isn't in the cards for me. So every year, with great fantasies of bouquets on every table in my house and BLTs for dinner, out I go.
Yesterday was the first day I have worked in the yard this year and the way I kind of moan when I have to move my legs today is giving me away. I knew my bum knee was not going to let me kneel much, so I spent a couple of hours bending over, (I remember cringing with embarrassment when my mom did that back when I was a limber teen-ager) pulling weeds and generally sorting through the dregs of the flower garden in my front yard.
I do love to pull up weeds right after it has rained because their resistance is at its weakest but all my flower beds are a ratio of about ninety-percent weeds to ten percent something I can't remember what it was when I planted it. It's been a whole year or more and if I can't remember where I parked the car at the mall, how would I remember what that green thing is among all the other green things? So after two hours in a stoop laborer position it still doesn't look like anybody had been working out there at all.
And then there is the business of what to wear. My neighbor, Harriet, always works in her yard wearing cute shorts and matching tops. She is up and out, dressed to work by about seven a.m. And her nails are done. I think she wears jewelry. She goes out every day and takes care of things, like weeds, as they happen instead of letting things go till she gets snide looks from people walking by. It is really her fault that my yard is a mess. I can't compete so I don't get out there. Well, not till after nine or so and a bunch of caffeine.
Sometimes I go out to get the paper in my pajamas and spot a weed that needs pulling and an hour later I realize (as do most of the neighbors driving by on their way to work) that I have forgotten to get dressed. Again. So I go in and put on my gardening clothes: the jeans with artistic holes, an old under-shirt of Dennis's that he says won't stay tucked down in his pants and why did I buy him that size in the first place? and my trusty gardening clogs that let me walk into mud but also let the mud ooze into the holes on top and stain my feet with our Oklahoma red dirt that takes ten minutes with a brush to scrub off.
Oh, and my headband because just the thought of physical labor makes me sweat and it drips into my eyes and I'm blind enough out there what with the dirt splatting up onto my glasses. If I am really planning ahead I put on sunscreen that probably lasts three minutes, but in case the sunscreen doesn't work I have my gardening hat which is especially designed with some space-age material to keep the sun off my delicate skin. My-son-the-doctor, who thinks about sunburn and skin cancer and such, purchased this for me. It is---I swear I'm not making this up---two-thirds of a yard across from brim to brim and, except for the charming ribbons that tie under my chin and produce more sweat, and when I'm wearing it, if I were not two or three times her weight, I could sail off toward Kansas, like the Flying Nun.
I also have gardening gloves that I put on before I start to dig, several right hand, several left hand but not an equal amount of both, so I turn one of them around backwards and wear the pinkie part over my thumb and vice versa. It doesn't matter that my hand is held in a claw position when I do this because somewhere along the line I take off the gloves and wind up with dirt stains on my hands and mud under my fingernails and there ya' go. The brush I use on my feet works a little and scraping my fingernails along the bottom of the soap dish where the gunk builds up works a little but by the end of spring there will be stains on my hands that last through Fourth of July.
And I love having birds in my garden but when I bend down to pull a weed and they dive down and peck me on the behind. I hate that.
My friend Joanne says she gardens by the Pointing Method. "I point and someone else plants what I want where I want it." If she can't convince her husband, she pays someone to do it. While I wish I could adopt her method, it isn't in the cards for me. So every year, with great fantasies of bouquets on every table in my house and BLTs for dinner, out I go.
Yesterday was the first day I have worked in the yard this year and the way I kind of moan when I have to move my legs today is giving me away. I knew my bum knee was not going to let me kneel much, so I spent a couple of hours bending over, (I remember cringing with embarrassment when my mom did that back when I was a limber teen-ager) pulling weeds and generally sorting through the dregs of the flower garden in my front yard.
I do love to pull up weeds right after it has rained because their resistance is at its weakest but all my flower beds are a ratio of about ninety-percent weeds to ten percent something I can't remember what it was when I planted it. It's been a whole year or more and if I can't remember where I parked the car at the mall, how would I remember what that green thing is among all the other green things? So after two hours in a stoop laborer position it still doesn't look like anybody had been working out there at all.
And then there is the business of what to wear. My neighbor, Harriet, always works in her yard wearing cute shorts and matching tops. She is up and out, dressed to work by about seven a.m. And her nails are done. I think she wears jewelry. She goes out every day and takes care of things, like weeds, as they happen instead of letting things go till she gets snide looks from people walking by. It is really her fault that my yard is a mess. I can't compete so I don't get out there. Well, not till after nine or so and a bunch of caffeine.
Sometimes I go out to get the paper in my pajamas and spot a weed that needs pulling and an hour later I realize (as do most of the neighbors driving by on their way to work) that I have forgotten to get dressed. Again. So I go in and put on my gardening clothes: the jeans with artistic holes, an old under-shirt of Dennis's that he says won't stay tucked down in his pants and why did I buy him that size in the first place? and my trusty gardening clogs that let me walk into mud but also let the mud ooze into the holes on top and stain my feet with our Oklahoma red dirt that takes ten minutes with a brush to scrub off.
Oh, and my headband because just the thought of physical labor makes me sweat and it drips into my eyes and I'm blind enough out there what with the dirt splatting up onto my glasses. If I am really planning ahead I put on sunscreen that probably lasts three minutes, but in case the sunscreen doesn't work I have my gardening hat which is especially designed with some space-age material to keep the sun off my delicate skin. My-son-the-doctor, who thinks about sunburn and skin cancer and such, purchased this for me. It is---I swear I'm not making this up---two-thirds of a yard across from brim to brim and, except for the charming ribbons that tie under my chin and produce more sweat, and when I'm wearing it, if I were not two or three times her weight, I could sail off toward Kansas, like the Flying Nun.
I also have gardening gloves that I put on before I start to dig, several right hand, several left hand but not an equal amount of both, so I turn one of them around backwards and wear the pinkie part over my thumb and vice versa. It doesn't matter that my hand is held in a claw position when I do this because somewhere along the line I take off the gloves and wind up with dirt stains on my hands and mud under my fingernails and there ya' go. The brush I use on my feet works a little and scraping my fingernails along the bottom of the soap dish where the gunk builds up works a little but by the end of spring there will be stains on my hands that last through Fourth of July.
And I love having birds in my garden but when I bend down to pull a weed and they dive down and peck me on the behind. I hate that.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
A Dozen Things I've Learned Painting Kitchen Cabinets
1.) Once you get over yourself and let the grandkids "help" things go faster and with a whole lot less anxiety. Making memories is a whole lot more important than a perfect paint job and besides, then if somebody inspects things closely, you can blame it on the kids.
2.) Prep is everything. It is a good thing to number the cabinet doors, making a map of the kitchen to show where you started in your numbering so that they can be re-attached easily. Then when you paint over the numbers, you can use the map to wipe paint off your fingers.
3.) If you have to stop in the middle of your job, wrap your brushes in plastic and put them in the freezer. This keeps you from having to clean the brushes every time. It also gives you about an hour to rest and relax while you wait for the brushes to thaw when you get back and are hurrying to do one more coat of paint before you have to stop and drive somebody somewhere. Or start dinner. Or clean the bathroom before the company arrives. Or scream out loud.
4,) Open shelving is very modern and hip. Everything is right in front of you and accessible, including the stuff you shoved in there trying to hide it from yourself and other for years.
5.) A little paint on your dishes, which you so efficiently left on the shelves because there is no sense moving them twice while the doors are being painted in the garage and who would be sloppy enough to get the brush way up there anyway, just gives them more character.
6.) People who already have white hair and choose white paint for their projects will be ahead of the game. It is called frosting, if anybody asks.
7.) When the dog comes through with an interesting white pattern on her side it is good to search the just painted walls for the corresponding pattern.
8.) People pay enormous amounts to have designs painted on their toenails at a nail salon. You should look into copyrighting White Rorschach Patterns on Red Toenails. It may bring big bucks.
9.) If it is raining and the garage door is up, the door does not keep the rain from blowing in and onto anything that has been freshly painted and is sitting around waiting to dry.
10.) Dried paint sticks to newspapers and attaches itself forever to the underside of whatever you have been trying to paint. Years from now archaeologists will drive themselves crazy trying to read the bits and pieces of the news that have been preserved on the backs of your cabinets doors.
11.) Yes, you can park a car in the seven feet of space between the garage fridge and the tables holding wet-painted cabinet doors when the forecast calls for hail, but you will not be able to get out the car door no matter how much weight you have lost during the stress of the project.
12.) Somebody, somewhere is waiting to earn some money rescuing do-it-yourselfers from the messes they have made. It will cost roughly twice what you would have paid them if they had done the project themselves from start to finish.
2.) Prep is everything. It is a good thing to number the cabinet doors, making a map of the kitchen to show where you started in your numbering so that they can be re-attached easily. Then when you paint over the numbers, you can use the map to wipe paint off your fingers.
3.) If you have to stop in the middle of your job, wrap your brushes in plastic and put them in the freezer. This keeps you from having to clean the brushes every time. It also gives you about an hour to rest and relax while you wait for the brushes to thaw when you get back and are hurrying to do one more coat of paint before you have to stop and drive somebody somewhere. Or start dinner. Or clean the bathroom before the company arrives. Or scream out loud.
4,) Open shelving is very modern and hip. Everything is right in front of you and accessible, including the stuff you shoved in there trying to hide it from yourself and other for years.
5.) A little paint on your dishes, which you so efficiently left on the shelves because there is no sense moving them twice while the doors are being painted in the garage and who would be sloppy enough to get the brush way up there anyway, just gives them more character.
6.) People who already have white hair and choose white paint for their projects will be ahead of the game. It is called frosting, if anybody asks.
7.) When the dog comes through with an interesting white pattern on her side it is good to search the just painted walls for the corresponding pattern.
8.) People pay enormous amounts to have designs painted on their toenails at a nail salon. You should look into copyrighting White Rorschach Patterns on Red Toenails. It may bring big bucks.
9.) If it is raining and the garage door is up, the door does not keep the rain from blowing in and onto anything that has been freshly painted and is sitting around waiting to dry.
10.) Dried paint sticks to newspapers and attaches itself forever to the underside of whatever you have been trying to paint. Years from now archaeologists will drive themselves crazy trying to read the bits and pieces of the news that have been preserved on the backs of your cabinets doors.
11.) Yes, you can park a car in the seven feet of space between the garage fridge and the tables holding wet-painted cabinet doors when the forecast calls for hail, but you will not be able to get out the car door no matter how much weight you have lost during the stress of the project.
12.) Somebody, somewhere is waiting to earn some money rescuing do-it-yourselfers from the messes they have made. It will cost roughly twice what you would have paid them if they had done the project themselves from start to finish.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Gross Stuff and Other Questions
Where does snot come from, anyway? I've had this upper-respiratory thing going on and I've used up about three boxes of tissues and filled as many trashcans and there is still more. You blow and blow and think your head is empty (Hey! I heard that!) and then you have to blow again. How much can there be? How does your body make that from nothing? It seems like you would be hollow after awhile.
And where does fat go when people lose it? This an academic question for me, of course, but in case I ever get there, I've always wondered. What about my grey hair? I've never seen a hair that was half grey and half colored, except on people who need a touch up really bad. But for me, since it's been a decade since I've colored my hair, does one red hair have to fall out before a whole grey hair comes in? And if not, why do I need to get my hair cut every month?
What about the fact that I am an inch shorter than I used to be? Is everything just scrunching together and someday my knees and ankles will be on top of each other? Where did it go? And my feet are bigger than they were years ago. Do they just keep growing your whole life? I've heard ears and noses do, but I'm not sure. Don't think I want to know about that if it's true.
I don't want to ask my-son-the-scientist, because I'm sure he would tell me in minute detail and, in fact, I think he has but his explanations are beyond me. Besides, I never know if he's telling the truth or making up gobbledygook. And how would I know if he was?
And here's another question that I lay awake wondering about. On an airplane there are, say, a hundred people and they bring on fifty pounds of food (back when they fed you on a plane flight. I've been thinking of this for a long time). Then they serve the food, fifty pounds of food are gone, how much does the plane plus people plus luggage weigh then? The same, or fifty pounds lighter? Surely when somebody eats an eight-ounce steak they don't gain half a pound at one sitting. Well, I do, but then I gain five pounds just looking at a menu, but I'm talking regular airplane passengers. Nobody has ever answered that for me.
When someone has amnesia, how is it that they still remember how to talk and even read? And when birds sleep, why don't they fall off the tree limbs? If they just have a tight grip with their claws, you would think a good wind would send them swinging upside down like a gong in a bell.
On Facebook the other day someone asked his friends if they dreamed in color. This is one I think I know. The answer is Yes! Come on, before black and white television or before that, still cameras, how would some one's brain even know that there was such a thing as black and white? People dream what they know; the world is in color. So there. But why do people keep asking that question?
And one last thing, something that I've wondered about for years and I don't even think my son would have the answer to this one. Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?
I keep wondering about these things. Let me know if you come up with any answers.
And where does fat go when people lose it? This an academic question for me, of course, but in case I ever get there, I've always wondered. What about my grey hair? I've never seen a hair that was half grey and half colored, except on people who need a touch up really bad. But for me, since it's been a decade since I've colored my hair, does one red hair have to fall out before a whole grey hair comes in? And if not, why do I need to get my hair cut every month?
What about the fact that I am an inch shorter than I used to be? Is everything just scrunching together and someday my knees and ankles will be on top of each other? Where did it go? And my feet are bigger than they were years ago. Do they just keep growing your whole life? I've heard ears and noses do, but I'm not sure. Don't think I want to know about that if it's true.
I don't want to ask my-son-the-scientist, because I'm sure he would tell me in minute detail and, in fact, I think he has but his explanations are beyond me. Besides, I never know if he's telling the truth or making up gobbledygook. And how would I know if he was?
And here's another question that I lay awake wondering about. On an airplane there are, say, a hundred people and they bring on fifty pounds of food (back when they fed you on a plane flight. I've been thinking of this for a long time). Then they serve the food, fifty pounds of food are gone, how much does the plane plus people plus luggage weigh then? The same, or fifty pounds lighter? Surely when somebody eats an eight-ounce steak they don't gain half a pound at one sitting. Well, I do, but then I gain five pounds just looking at a menu, but I'm talking regular airplane passengers. Nobody has ever answered that for me.
When someone has amnesia, how is it that they still remember how to talk and even read? And when birds sleep, why don't they fall off the tree limbs? If they just have a tight grip with their claws, you would think a good wind would send them swinging upside down like a gong in a bell.
On Facebook the other day someone asked his friends if they dreamed in color. This is one I think I know. The answer is Yes! Come on, before black and white television or before that, still cameras, how would some one's brain even know that there was such a thing as black and white? People dream what they know; the world is in color. So there. But why do people keep asking that question?
And one last thing, something that I've wondered about for years and I don't even think my son would have the answer to this one. Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?
I keep wondering about these things. Let me know if you come up with any answers.
Monday, February 27, 2012
What's In A Name?
I've always been conflicted about my name. For the first half of my life I was called Patty, but Patty seems like a little kid's name, so somewhere along the line I changed it to Pat, but that doesn't feel like me because in my mind I am still Patty.
Of course it didn't help that when I was finally settling in to being called Pat I got a job where there was already a Pat so they wanted me to pick another name and I went back to Patty. Except at home and at church where I was still Pat. Unless my mom or my sisters called, then it was Patty. Are you keeping up?
In junior high my nickname for awhile was "Poundsie", a play on my last name, Pounds. It's not something I encouraged for long. At the time we all wanted nicknames, but these days it's just a little TOO descriptive, so if I hear it from the mouths of any of my children after they read this, I know plenty of secrets about them too. Just sayin'.
In high school I spent hours practicing my name-to-be: Mrs. Dennis Carey, Patty Carey, Mrs. D. P. Carey. I wrote it all over my notebooks and papers. It was pretty nauseating now that I look back at it but I'm pretty sure you did the same thing.
Then, magically, a couple of years later, that was my name. We went back to college, Dennis's senior year and my freshman, found a new church in that town and decided to join it. I was sure they introduced us as Dennis and Patty Carey, but when people came down to welcome us, each one shook my hand and said "We're so glad to have you, Peggy," and "Welcome to our Fellowship, Peggy," and "Good to meet you, Peggy." I stood there mute. (it was a lo-o-o-ng time ago) For the next nine months people called me Peggy and I answered to it. You can see why I get confused.
These days I am Mom, and Grandma, and Miss Pat to little kids because we live in the South. A friend of our granddaughter's wanted my attention once and yelled "Hey, Hayley's Grandma!" I knew who he meant. Telemarketers call and want to speak to Mrs. Curry or Mrs. Cory. I know who they mean too but I don't care because I am planning to hang up on them if they get too pushy.
My driver's license says I am Patricia Pounds Carey. (Pounds is my maiden name which I took for my middle name when I got married so as not to have my past completely disappear) but Patricia is more dignified than I will ever be. Sometimes they call me that at doctor's offices and I just sit there and almost miss my turn after being in the waiting room for half the morning.
So you can call me what you want, I guess. If it starts with a P I'll probably answer to it. Just call me. I'd love to hear from you.
Of course it didn't help that when I was finally settling in to being called Pat I got a job where there was already a Pat so they wanted me to pick another name and I went back to Patty. Except at home and at church where I was still Pat. Unless my mom or my sisters called, then it was Patty. Are you keeping up?
In junior high my nickname for awhile was "Poundsie", a play on my last name, Pounds. It's not something I encouraged for long. At the time we all wanted nicknames, but these days it's just a little TOO descriptive, so if I hear it from the mouths of any of my children after they read this, I know plenty of secrets about them too. Just sayin'.
In high school I spent hours practicing my name-to-be: Mrs. Dennis Carey, Patty Carey, Mrs. D. P. Carey. I wrote it all over my notebooks and papers. It was pretty nauseating now that I look back at it but I'm pretty sure you did the same thing.
Then, magically, a couple of years later, that was my name. We went back to college, Dennis's senior year and my freshman, found a new church in that town and decided to join it. I was sure they introduced us as Dennis and Patty Carey, but when people came down to welcome us, each one shook my hand and said "We're so glad to have you, Peggy," and "Welcome to our Fellowship, Peggy," and "Good to meet you, Peggy." I stood there mute. (it was a lo-o-o-ng time ago) For the next nine months people called me Peggy and I answered to it. You can see why I get confused.
These days I am Mom, and Grandma, and Miss Pat to little kids because we live in the South. A friend of our granddaughter's wanted my attention once and yelled "Hey, Hayley's Grandma!" I knew who he meant. Telemarketers call and want to speak to Mrs. Curry or Mrs. Cory. I know who they mean too but I don't care because I am planning to hang up on them if they get too pushy.
My driver's license says I am Patricia Pounds Carey. (Pounds is my maiden name which I took for my middle name when I got married so as not to have my past completely disappear) but Patricia is more dignified than I will ever be. Sometimes they call me that at doctor's offices and I just sit there and almost miss my turn after being in the waiting room for half the morning.
So you can call me what you want, I guess. If it starts with a P I'll probably answer to it. Just call me. I'd love to hear from you.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Hair Today--Gone Tomorrow
This morning I got a text from my granddaughter: "I dyed my hair purple!" I texted back: "Cool. Can't wait to see it."
Things have changed since I was a teen-ager in the sixties. Hair wars were almost as volatile as the war in Southeast Asia back then. Parents would insist on teen-age boys getting their hair cut in the old buzz cut that they had worn in grade school; boys wanted to wear their hair longer, touching their collars was pretty daring.
I never did really see the point of that fight, other than parents asserting their authority and kids rebelling against it. I always secretly admire parents who let their kids do weird things with their hair because it shows me they get it: these things pass and you need to save your big guns for the fights that really matter. Besides, when your kids look back years from now and see their high school yearbook pictures and everybody howls with laughter, there ya' go! And their children will probably be wanting to do even stranger things.
I suppose the intent is to shock. I'm sorry, most of the time I just laugh. Of course, in the beginning when I saw some of the current hair-styles I admit I was a bit taken aback. The first time I saw a girl with one side of her hair shaved and the other long I felt so sorry for her! I was sure she had just had brain surgery and was very brave to be coming out in public.
Mohawks never cease to amaze me, although they are so prevalent now they are almost passe'. The first real mohawk I saw was on a guy in London and it was about eight inches high and spiked with different colors on each spike. I was fascinated. How long does it take to do that? And what do you do when it rains? Does the color run down your face like a rainbow? I guess I stared and that was the point for this particular kid.
It seems like the hair wars kind of faded out when the real war was over. Hair was just hair and when our youngest son, Jake, grew a mullet (you should hear how his kids roar when they look at old pictures) we didn't mind. Sometimes he wanted it straightened, sometimes curly. Not having a daughter I had never thought I'd be giving home permanents to my kid, but I did. By the time he was sixteen and looking for a part-time job, the longish hair had lost some of its allure. It was amazing how quickly he got a job when he admitted people were stupid and prejudiced about long hair but "He who has the gold makes the rules". As soon as he got his hair cut, he got a job.
When Jake was in college he decided to make a different kind of statement with his hair. He shaved it all off. I'm not sure it had exactly the kind of effect he intended. He wore a "do-rag" on his bald head and when he went he out looked pretty much like a cancer patient undergoing chemo and people felt sorry for him. Didn't last long.
And that's my point. Hair will grow back, ( well, at least it will when you're a teen-ager) or it can be cut. It can say "Hey, I'm too cool to look like my dad." or "I've got hours and hours to spend on getting this spike to stand up exactly where I want it," or "Purple is my favorite color this week!" If kids are looking for ways to shock there are way worse things.
Now, adults, that's a different story. Yes, I'm talking to you, Mr. Long-Grey-Pony-Tail. We all know that you are growing the tail because you can't grow it on top. And if you have one or two hairs longer than your arm that you have wound round and round your bald head until you are in real danger of a bird making a nest up there, no matter how many millions of dollars or television shows you have, please stop!
Through the years I have gone from my natural red hair color, to five years of being blond, back to red and now this grey. I've resisted the Senior Citizen blue rinse special so far but the purple is intriguing me. I'll have to talk to my granddaughter about it.
For now I'm just trying to remember to comb it when I get ready to leave the house. I don't feel the need to make a statement but, nevertheless, nothing says "Old Lady" like recliner hair.
Things have changed since I was a teen-ager in the sixties. Hair wars were almost as volatile as the war in Southeast Asia back then. Parents would insist on teen-age boys getting their hair cut in the old buzz cut that they had worn in grade school; boys wanted to wear their hair longer, touching their collars was pretty daring.
I never did really see the point of that fight, other than parents asserting their authority and kids rebelling against it. I always secretly admire parents who let their kids do weird things with their hair because it shows me they get it: these things pass and you need to save your big guns for the fights that really matter. Besides, when your kids look back years from now and see their high school yearbook pictures and everybody howls with laughter, there ya' go! And their children will probably be wanting to do even stranger things.
I suppose the intent is to shock. I'm sorry, most of the time I just laugh. Of course, in the beginning when I saw some of the current hair-styles I admit I was a bit taken aback. The first time I saw a girl with one side of her hair shaved and the other long I felt so sorry for her! I was sure she had just had brain surgery and was very brave to be coming out in public.
Mohawks never cease to amaze me, although they are so prevalent now they are almost passe'. The first real mohawk I saw was on a guy in London and it was about eight inches high and spiked with different colors on each spike. I was fascinated. How long does it take to do that? And what do you do when it rains? Does the color run down your face like a rainbow? I guess I stared and that was the point for this particular kid.
It seems like the hair wars kind of faded out when the real war was over. Hair was just hair and when our youngest son, Jake, grew a mullet (you should hear how his kids roar when they look at old pictures) we didn't mind. Sometimes he wanted it straightened, sometimes curly. Not having a daughter I had never thought I'd be giving home permanents to my kid, but I did. By the time he was sixteen and looking for a part-time job, the longish hair had lost some of its allure. It was amazing how quickly he got a job when he admitted people were stupid and prejudiced about long hair but "He who has the gold makes the rules". As soon as he got his hair cut, he got a job.
When Jake was in college he decided to make a different kind of statement with his hair. He shaved it all off. I'm not sure it had exactly the kind of effect he intended. He wore a "do-rag" on his bald head and when he went he out looked pretty much like a cancer patient undergoing chemo and people felt sorry for him. Didn't last long.
And that's my point. Hair will grow back, ( well, at least it will when you're a teen-ager) or it can be cut. It can say "Hey, I'm too cool to look like my dad." or "I've got hours and hours to spend on getting this spike to stand up exactly where I want it," or "Purple is my favorite color this week!" If kids are looking for ways to shock there are way worse things.
Now, adults, that's a different story. Yes, I'm talking to you, Mr. Long-Grey-Pony-Tail. We all know that you are growing the tail because you can't grow it on top. And if you have one or two hairs longer than your arm that you have wound round and round your bald head until you are in real danger of a bird making a nest up there, no matter how many millions of dollars or television shows you have, please stop!
Through the years I have gone from my natural red hair color, to five years of being blond, back to red and now this grey. I've resisted the Senior Citizen blue rinse special so far but the purple is intriguing me. I'll have to talk to my granddaughter about it.
For now I'm just trying to remember to comb it when I get ready to leave the house. I don't feel the need to make a statement but, nevertheless, nothing says "Old Lady" like recliner hair.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Doctors
When I was a little girl our doctor's name was Dr. Payne. You can already see the problem. I don't think people had health insurance back then and my mom's rule of thumb was that you didn't go to the doctor until you had been sick for three days to make sure you were really sick, by which time you probably were on the mend and didn't need to go to the doctor. I fell off the back porch and broke my arm when I was three years old and, not knowing the severity of it, my dad had me exercise it to try to get over the discomfort. After three days I went in for X-rays and got a cast on it.
Dennis's childhood doctor was named Dr. Mullarky. He lived up to his name also. On our honeymoon Dennis had a relapse of an inner-ear infection, Labrinthitis, that had put him in the hospital about a year before. He called Dr. Mullarky, told him we were on our honeymoon and he was so dizzy he couldn't sit up. Dr. Mullarky laughed for five minutes before he prescribed some medicine that made Dennis sleep for almost twenty-four hours of our three day vacation. I didn't think it was that funny.
When we lived in Oklahoma City our neighbor was a veterinarian. He was very accommodating when we needed minor procedures, and handy, to boot. Dennis was getting allergy shots at the time and Tom would come by on his way home from work and give them to him. Dennis said it was fine except for Tom holding him by the scruff of the neck to keep him still. (Just kidding!)
It was great to have Tom close by when we really had a minor, but painful, emergency on a Sunday morning. Jake, our youngest son, and I had been making snowmen out of marshmallows the day before and I guess we didn't clean up very well. We had used toothpicks for the arms and one was on the floor and when Dennis walked through the kitchen he got to a toothpick jammed under his toenail. Needless to say, he was not amused. Or quiet. Or able to walk. Dr. Tom to the rescue. I guess he had had a lot of experience getting thorns and things out of paws in the past.
The kids' pediatrician, Dr. B., was a friend of ours and went to our church. On Sundays and Wednesday nights there was usually a line of patients after the service waiting to have stitches removed or questions answered. If I had had any illusions left of doctors being "holier than thou", Dr. B. quickly dispelled them. He was always joking and when Jake needed tubes in his ears for ear infections but I was resisting, Dr. B. said "Oh, lets forget about it, then. We'll get him the best hearing aids they make." And when Josh needed stitches in his lip when he was nine, Dr. B. said "Josh, do you know any cuss words?"
I don't think doctors get to do that kind of thing anymore, with lawsuits and all. I'm not sure any doctors want to, anyway. It is nicer for the doctor if he gets to have an evening out or a day at church without people trying to make him work. I heard one doctor got around that by asking people who wanted his medical opinion in a social situation to disrobe so he could examine them.
There was a time that it seemed to me that doctors were somehow "more" than the rest of us; not quite real. The first time I went to a doctor and he was younger than me I was appalled, and of course now that I have given birth to one and broken a bread board on his behind when he was about eight when he sassed me (Oh, please! It was a little bread board and had a crack in it already from being in the dishwasher and he was wearing heavy jeans anyway and he deserved it!) I don't have that awe of doctors that I used to.
It's not that I don't have respect for doctors any more. I probably respect them more now that I know more of what they have to go through to get to be doctors and how much work they do to keep up their skills and how often they go in at three in the morning to do emergency surgery and stay all day for the rest of their patients. It's just that when I am arguing with my son about something or other and he says "Mom, who has the M.D.?" I say, "Josh, who has decades more experience than you do? Besides", I tell him, "You're not too big to spank, you know!"
There has to be a bread board around here somewhere.
Dennis's childhood doctor was named Dr. Mullarky. He lived up to his name also. On our honeymoon Dennis had a relapse of an inner-ear infection, Labrinthitis, that had put him in the hospital about a year before. He called Dr. Mullarky, told him we were on our honeymoon and he was so dizzy he couldn't sit up. Dr. Mullarky laughed for five minutes before he prescribed some medicine that made Dennis sleep for almost twenty-four hours of our three day vacation. I didn't think it was that funny.
When we lived in Oklahoma City our neighbor was a veterinarian. He was very accommodating when we needed minor procedures, and handy, to boot. Dennis was getting allergy shots at the time and Tom would come by on his way home from work and give them to him. Dennis said it was fine except for Tom holding him by the scruff of the neck to keep him still. (Just kidding!)
It was great to have Tom close by when we really had a minor, but painful, emergency on a Sunday morning. Jake, our youngest son, and I had been making snowmen out of marshmallows the day before and I guess we didn't clean up very well. We had used toothpicks for the arms and one was on the floor and when Dennis walked through the kitchen he got to a toothpick jammed under his toenail. Needless to say, he was not amused. Or quiet. Or able to walk. Dr. Tom to the rescue. I guess he had had a lot of experience getting thorns and things out of paws in the past.
The kids' pediatrician, Dr. B., was a friend of ours and went to our church. On Sundays and Wednesday nights there was usually a line of patients after the service waiting to have stitches removed or questions answered. If I had had any illusions left of doctors being "holier than thou", Dr. B. quickly dispelled them. He was always joking and when Jake needed tubes in his ears for ear infections but I was resisting, Dr. B. said "Oh, lets forget about it, then. We'll get him the best hearing aids they make." And when Josh needed stitches in his lip when he was nine, Dr. B. said "Josh, do you know any cuss words?"
I don't think doctors get to do that kind of thing anymore, with lawsuits and all. I'm not sure any doctors want to, anyway. It is nicer for the doctor if he gets to have an evening out or a day at church without people trying to make him work. I heard one doctor got around that by asking people who wanted his medical opinion in a social situation to disrobe so he could examine them.
There was a time that it seemed to me that doctors were somehow "more" than the rest of us; not quite real. The first time I went to a doctor and he was younger than me I was appalled, and of course now that I have given birth to one and broken a bread board on his behind when he was about eight when he sassed me (Oh, please! It was a little bread board and had a crack in it already from being in the dishwasher and he was wearing heavy jeans anyway and he deserved it!) I don't have that awe of doctors that I used to.
It's not that I don't have respect for doctors any more. I probably respect them more now that I know more of what they have to go through to get to be doctors and how much work they do to keep up their skills and how often they go in at three in the morning to do emergency surgery and stay all day for the rest of their patients. It's just that when I am arguing with my son about something or other and he says "Mom, who has the M.D.?" I say, "Josh, who has decades more experience than you do? Besides", I tell him, "You're not too big to spank, you know!"
There has to be a bread board around here somewhere.
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