My Little World

My favorite periodical came the other day:

Uppercase Magazine -- the coolest design magazine out there. Chock full of graphic design, illustration and art.

The most recent issue has a map theme. Shown in the issue were stunning, intricate maps. I was inspired to make a map of my own surroundings. Not stunning. Not intricate. But I wanted to get my map down in less than 10 minutes. My own scribbly, not to scale impressions.

State College, PA, on one page in less than 10 minutes.

To me, the world of State College is quite the limited place. Oh sure, I no doubt forgot to put on a couple of "important" locations. But you get the idea.

I spend a great deal of time thinking about space. Not outer space, but the space we inhabit in our daily lives. Our homes and towns. I'm thinking that I need to widen my world just a bit. Or move to where the world is a bit wider.

Name Envy

I spent much of my childhood (and adulthood?) envying the names of other girls.

Mine was Kim Hogan. Sounds a bit like pulling up phlegm. Not to disrespect the family name, but I was not reluctant to change my name when I married.

Some girls names sounded like waterfalls (Suzanna), or a soft rain (Marissa). Some were sturdy: Mary, Beth, Donna. Mine felt like a squeak. Kim. Or maybe that’s just the way shy, quiet me said it.

Some names seemed unique to me at the time: Shelby. I quite liked that one. Cydney. Cecilia. These names sounded swirly and happy. I wanted to sound swirly and happy. If I could not sound swirly and happy, then I wanted to sound tough and strong.

My favorite name among the high school girls was Lou Gott. I know now that Lou was short for Louise or Louisa, and, like my name, it sounded like the gathering and/or releasing of phlegm. But I envied that name. It sounded like the name of a girl that would kick the shit if the shit needed to be kicked. It sounded like the name of a girl who would do whatever she wanted. Say whatever she wanted. Screw the consequences. Somebody named Lou Gott could roll with the changes.

Me? I just sat quietly in the corner with my phlegmy name and squeaked it out when necessary.

I guess I could have used my full name, Kimberly. I tried it a couple of times. Sounded like too much. Too big of a name for such a little mouse. People would expect much more of me if I used that name. I was scared of it. I could only squeak out, “Kim.”

Suppose I had been named Ethyl or Sunshine? Gertie or Margot? How different would my life have been?

What about the names of today? Just like fashion, names follow trends. Several months ago, when visiting family in Texas, I went to my niece’s daycare center to pick her up. Along the wall, above the backpacks, each child’s name was perfectly printed. While I will not list any name here for fear of violent repercussion, I will mention that it read like the roster of an Iditarod dog sled team. What will the future hold for these children? Will they proudly hold their up their heads and fear nothing in life? These are names not intended to be squeaked out. These are names to say loudly.

Or will they, like I, wish for a name like Lou Gott?

A Little Disturbing

Last weekend, the family drove south to visit my mother, known as '"Moppie" to all grandchildren, in the hospital.

All kinds of things are happening to her body. The last 20% of the last remaining kidney decided stop functioning a few weeks ago. This pretty much f*cked up the rest of her body pretty good. Recovery has been slow.

As we were leaving the hospital, my mother requested we go to the drug store across the street to buy her some Depends undergarments. She did not want to ask the nurse for them. She wants to be in control and it upsets her GREATLY not to be. When one is undergoing dialysis 4 hours at a time, one can't just get up and waltz into the bathroom.

My daughter asked what we were going to buy. The hubby just said, "something for Moppie." I'm a bit more forthcoming about such things. I told her they were like pull-ups for grownups, and she needed them because she couldn't move for four hours during dialysis. My daughter, remembering her pull-up days, asked, "Do they have little pictures of Dora the Explorer on them?" I said, no, but maybe they had little pictures of Frank Sinatra on them. After a brief discussion of who Frank Sinatra was, and why old ladies liked him, she stated that having little pictures of Frank Sinatra on one's adult pull-ups would be A LITTLE DISTURBING.

Yes, it would be.

But one has to find a little fun in life among all the bad shit, right? And now I have a disturbing little marketing plan.

I Was Raised by Hermit Crabs

(Mentally insert a close-up photo of a hermit crab. The caption would read: My Mother. Or is it my father? Blogger will not let me insert a photo today. I've done all sorts of tricks for it, but I am not being rewarded. I tried. Sigh)

I have no idea when my parents turned into hermit crabs. Was it at a young age? Did it happen after my sister and I came along? Should I take it personally?

Stories my mother told of her teen years did lead me to believe that she had a few friends, and once in a while, when I was young she would visit with other women. This seemed to happen less and less as I got older. The same with my father.

You would not believe the chaos that ensues when their doorbell rings.

I’m assuming that most people have seen the movie Finding Nemo. There is a scene at the beginning when father clownfish is teaching son clownfish how to look out for trouble. Young Nemo was instructed to peek out of his anemone home and go back in. Peek out and go back in. Peek out once more and . . .

I was taught to never peek out and that the best things happened at home. I never really thought to disagree. Often, I did get out to play with the neighborhood kids. I was the youngest and smallest, so I took a great deal of abuse. I never really took it personally. But, eventually, the elder hermit crabs taught me to take it personally. I became a hermit crab myself.

My childhood bedroom became my shell. I could pretty much do what I wanted in there except make noise, make a mess or get into my sister’s things. And when I outgrew that shell, I moved into the unfinished back room in my house and made that my new shell. I did things that I assume other hermit crab children did: read, listen to music (quietly) and write poetry.

Eventually, I grew up. But not out. I never was able to leave behind my hermit crab shell. If I didn’t think something (a friend, a job, a party) was going to work out for me, I just avoided it and withdrew into my shell.

One of my parents' favorite questions (I took it to be a statement) was, “You don’t really want to do that, do you?” I have to admit, at times they were right. Every now and then somebody did “put me up to something.” But, other times, I did have ideas on my own. And I thought they were good ones. No matter whose idea, I usually heard, “You don’t want to do that, do you?” The only time I did not get asked that question (heard that statement) was when I said I was going to go to my room. I was safe there, so they thought. Out in the streets I could be accosted by a pervert; run over by buses, cars and trains; be abducted, teased or mauled; meet up with drug dealers; be struck by lightening; attacked by dogs; brainwashed by Hare Krishnas; offered cigarettes, rides or sex; or just fall of the edge of the earth. These things could not happen to me while I was in my room. I could, however, watch all of these things happen on my little black and white televison.

Occasionally, we would venture out to dinner. My sister often would be off with her own friends. For the better, since she was not a hermit crab and had no patience with hermit crabs. So the hermit crabs would venture out just a bit. And back. My dad had to make sure the windows were closed. And out and back again. My mother had to make sure she had put her cigarette out in the sink. And out and back again. Was the door locked? Finally into the car. At the restaurant, we requested to sit in a booth. I always wondered why it was always a booth. I’ve finally come to the conclusion that in a booth, you were in the outskirts of the restaurant, protected by upholstery and not on display in the center of the room at a table, where somebody might recognize us and say hello. The waiters could have served us shoes and spit on our food in front of us. None of the hermit crabs would have protested. We would have nibbled on our shoes and avoided the areas where we believed the spit to be. Send something back? God forbid. The hermit crabs paid up and went home.

I'd love to be able to say I've overcome all of that. I can't.

Slowly, through the encouragement of my husband and a few others, I have slowly ventured out of my shell. Not too far. I often ask myself the question, “I don’t really want to do that, do I?” Ask somebody to show my art? Sit in a tent at an art festival for four days and answer questions? Teach a class? The mere thought makes me shiver and look behind me for a shell.

I will, however, send back a shoe that has been spat upon.

Mean Teachers

from: middle-school-teacher.blogspot.com

My daughter’s 2^nd grade teacher recently left on maternity leave. I’m not sure the substitute teacher is a big hit with her class. I went to school to volunteer in class the other day, and I’m not sure the substitute was a big hit with me either. Each morning, the class gets together on the rug for their morning meeting. They shake one anothers hand and wish each other a happy Tuesday or fun Wednesday or something similar. On the day I visited, the teacher cancelled the happy rug time to berate the children for leaving the classroom in a “mess” the day before. Her tone was not to encourage to class to do a better job, but to humiliate them for their earlier actions. Or so it seemed to me.

At dinner that evening, my daughter asked the hubby and me if we ever had mean teachers. We explained that in the olden days, teachers were pretty much allowed to be mean. My third grade teacher kept a hand-shaped paddle next to her desk and used it when the need arose. I don’t recall any teachers I can call mentors, but I really don’t remember any that ruined my life either. Except one. And I can’t really recall who it was. The memory is just an inky cloud with a whispery voice. And the memory of that voice and what it made me do gives me the shivers.

I believe I was in third grade. The class was learning how to write in cursive. I guess I just didn’t see the point. Why did we have to learn a new way of writing? We already knew how to print, and most of us could have used a good deal more practice with that before learning cursive. I never really mastered either. Could this be the fault of the black cloud with the whispery voice? I’m going to venture a “yes.”

The echoing vault of my memory tells me that this must have been a special class in another room, as the normal beehive-haired, paddle-toting teacher was not a part of this. Nope. It was the snake-voiced witch who cruelly maneuvered our hands through the strokes and loops of cursiveness. I just didn’t get it. My writing was messy and I didn’t care. The witch did. She would float up behind me, and with her snake tongue she would tell me of her disappointment. Then, briefly, the clouds parted and the students were told it was time for art or recess or some classroom enjoyment. But I was to be excluded from this break. Instead she brought me a set of burlap covered boards. Each was printed with a large cursive letter. I was told to repeatedly trace these letters with my index finger. How in the hell was this supposed to help, I wondered (silently to myself). Now, if anyone wants to know how I felt tracing my finger over this rough surface, just go and scrape your fingernails on a chalkboard. I protested that I couldn’t stand the feel of those boards against my fingers. I got no sympathy. Just a disembodied snake voice sharing its disgust with me. Not only was I cursed with bad handwriting, I was a whiner too.

I don’t recall any improvement in my cursive handwriting. I do recall a distinct lowering in my respect of authority. Would my life had been greatly improved with proper handwriting skills? Probably so. But by how much? We’ll never know. And now I can type instead. If I could look up the address for that despicable, snake-tongued, black cloud witch, I’d send her a note letting her know how I still feel about her.

Might have to send it c/o Satan.

What are you going to be when you grow up?

“What are you going to be when you grow up?”

If only I had a dollar for each time I was asked that. And another dollar for every time nurse or teacher was suggested. Those were the only options I remember hearing. No one ever suggested astronaut, scientist, doctor, or airline pilot. Never. Nurse or teacher. Pick one kid. Stick with it.

Actually, no one ever suggested “mommy.” I guess those folks thought they were being forward-thinking by suggesting I have a career as a nurse or teacher.

Let me get something straight, though. There is nothing wrong with being a nurse or a teacher. These are some of the most worthwhile jobs out there. Crucial jobs at that. Where would we be without nurses or teachers? Sick and stupid. But, if you were lacking a penis, well, your options were pretty slim. Or so I thought.

I did not become a nurse or a teacher. I’m guessing that this might be the reason I feel that I have never grown up. I didn’t pick one of the two choices I was told I could be when I grew up. Those two jobs were not for me. So how could I possibly grow up if I didn’t pick one.

By not making a choice, I pretty much became nothing. And here I am. NOT all grown up. I still think the word booger is funny. I like cartoons (especially Charlie and Lola). I have a collection of children’s books (that I need to add to). I find a box of fresh crayons exhilarating. I hate peas and lima beans. And if I could find the same kind of paste I used in kindergarten, I would eat it.

Would I have become an artist if someone would have suggested that option when I was a child? I could have received an art degree. Then I could spout all sorts of meaningful words about how the world is reflected in my art instead of just kicking at the ground when talking to someone about my artwork.

Why have I spent 46 years defining my life with some limited options given to me by a few fools back in the 1960s?

If I could get into a time machine and go back to my childhood, with the (limited) knowledge I have now, how would I react to that damn question? Was I sarcastic back then? Could I have given someone a smartass answer and a withering look? I can do both of those now.

When I grow up, I want to be sarcastic and give withering looks.

Look! I’ve grown up!

Time Machines, Aisle 6

I’ve got a new clock in my kitchen. Finally.

I found it after looking at all sorts of home décor mail order stores. I found one I really really really liked. Big! Bold! Two hundred dollars!!!

I then decided to have a look at the stunning home décor boutiques in my town (HA HA HA HA HA HA HA). I found a fine timepiece at Target. Where else?!? $4.99. Yes. That’s correct. $4.99. And its worth every single 499 pennies. It’s quite special.

Its not only a device for telling time. It is somewhat of a time machine. I’m used to the ticking of clocks telling me that my time on earth is running out and I’d better get my shit in gear and make something of myself. But this clock sends me back in time. It’s magic. But, it will only work for me. Not you. So don’t come into my house to steal my $4.99 Target clock. As I sat here on the computer, doing important things (surfing home décor websites), I realized that this clock sounded exactly like the clock my grandmother had in her kitchen.

Many evenings were spent at my grandmother’s house, sitting in the living room in my grandfather’s chair, watching Lassie or the Wonderful World of Disney and having a bowlful of non-nutritious snacks. The clock ticked away those pleasant moments. I often gazed at the clock with childhood apprehension, knowing that it was getting late and I would have to go to bed soon. But somehow, after getting past the dreaded toothbrushing (and seeing my grandmother’s teeth in a glass mere inches away), I would revel in the huge guest bed with those crisp, line-dried cotton sheets. All would be well. The crickets would sing me to bed. And in the morning, my grandfather would whip up some scrambled eggs. My grandmother would put some berries or apricots in Blue Willow bowls. A huge round of butter would be placed in the center of the table. Sunshine would spill in through the huge kitchen windows. And that clock would tick away the morning over the kitchen table.