GOOD AS GOLD!

      Here is a piece of advice to all my young friends. I am speaking mainly to anyone who reads this post who is just now starting into sixth grade... and if you have a child or grandchild starting sixth grade, please, pass this on to them. Go out and get a pack of 3 by 5 cards. Each day of your school year - and you can include the summer months as well - write down something that happened during the day. You need to write the date on the card, write what you were wearing and who you were hanging out with. Don't make this a chore, just jot down something that happened. Maybe the teacher cancelled the math test, someone slipped on a banana peel,  or your slip fell in the floor (this happened to my baby sister and thank God she was in the girl's bathroom when this wardrobe malfunction occurred - she just stepped out of the offending garment and threw it into the trash can!) My daughter suggested that jotting down daily memories would be a good thing to do at any age and I agree but let's face it, between sixth grade and graduation, most kids are a hormonal mess! So the cards would write themselves! 

     If you are going to school for 180 days during the year - that's 180 stories in a year's time. Now over the course of these 6 grueling years, you'd have over a thousand stories to pick through for an amazing book, play or movie about those wonderful, full of enchantment, days. Trust me, whether it's a book, play or movie, it will be hilarious!

    How do I know? Well, I've just been reading my sister's recently published book - My Adventures with Earl by Margaret J. Hyler. In one of the early chapters, she mentions taking her neighbors to Atlantic Beach in Morehead City, NC. This story triggered a memory of when I went with them to Atlantic Beach. I was between the ages of 12 and 15. My parents had let me come to Yanceyville, N.C. for a visit and that is when I found out that - surprise! - we were going to the beach! The problem was that I did not have a bathing suit and it wouldn't have mattered if they had told me in advance - I never owned a bathing suit during my entire childhood.  (Long story).

    JoAnne insisted that I wear one of her suits. She chose a baby pink, bikini - with ruffles on the top and on the bottom! Big ruffles!  I go from being a modest, mountain girl to Ann Margaret - beach bunny!  JoAnne is 11 years older than me, so as you might expect, her suit was a little too big on me and here's where this post goes a little PG - 13 ... it was that time of month! GAWD!

    To make matters worse, I didn't have the supplies I needed because I didn't know that we were going to the beach. And since my parents didn't have a lot of money to keep 5 girls in "supplies," my grandmother had shown me how to make homemade supplies by folding toilet tissue. There I was, on this beautiful beach, in a bikini that was too big, so getting it wet would have made things worse, not just because the suit would expand but because those tissues would have been bunching or dropping out or worse, STAINING!.  I had to settle for - teenager, on the beach with big ruffles on my butt and big ruffles on the form fitting cups that my flat chest had no chance of filling. Ah, good times!

   My 3 by 5 card would read - Date: 1965 / 1968. Wearing: Over sized, pink, bikini with BIG ruffles. With: JoAnne, brother in law, baby nephew and monthly visitor. Where: Atlantic Beach, NC. 

    Trust me, when you get some years on you, this stuff, even if it never makes it into a book, play or movie will be better than gold.

    

P.S. Here's another little detail that I forgot to add in the above story. I was wearing my underclothes under the bikini bottom.....talk about your shorts in a bunch.... yet, a girl has to have something to pin her "supplies" to.

A Red RUM Winter

     Here we are - winter on the flat lands. A wonderland of frozen delights. The snow moved in after Christmas, giving us 4 or 5 inches of the white stuff. This week, another snow headed down the barrel for us bringing with it the dropping temperatures that winter is known for and the wind chill factor that TV weather forecasters depend on for added hype and growing viewership. The forecasters went into a panicked frenzy. Look at them, broadcasting from the street as they shove wine goblets purchased at the nearby Dollar Store, into a mound of snow to give the TV audience a sense of how deep the snow is on a wine glass. One weather woman, sitting in the comfort of the TV studio, with a really worried look on her face, said "This is a dangerous situation and at times like this we all need to stick together." And I just looked at her like "What?" If you've got a brain in your head, you need to stay inside!" This is not a cum-bi-yi moment. I don't even know what she is talking about. It's winter - a time when Mother Nature is trying her best to kill us! I turned it off. The forecasters are creating more stress and anxiety on people than the passing storm will ever touch. 
   Our household is not immune to this either. My husband, last week, as he was sitting in the easy chair in the living room, mentioned that he was cold and it was in the low twenties outside. "If I am this cold now, I can't imagine how we're going to handle the -14 degrees coming for us next week." This is the same guy who, every night, opens our bedroom window, a little, so we can have "fresh air." And I do mean every night - even that night!
   He has also taken it on himself to be my overseer during this winter entrapment. It is up to him to make sure that I am doing meaningful work while we wait for the thaw. Last night he was telling me about this creativity book that he is currently reading - Creative Confidence. According to this book - undoubtedly written by amazing geniuses, when you critique a work, you should start by saying "I like" then "I wish." So by the transitive theory, Philip should point out the things he likes about my art before he ends with his wish for the changes to my work. If my eyeballs could shoot out lazer beams, Philip would be sporting a really red tan today and I would mentally be in the car heading for NY to find those amazing geniuses to just let them know that when I am creating art, it is not for someone outside my brain to step in to tell me in their "superior knowledge" how I should be changing things. I'm 60 freaking years old! I will be dead soon enough and I am not interested in what Philip or New York City or any body else has to say about what I am doing! When I tell him this in the calmest way possible, he says that I have always been defensive! (Oops, my imaginary lazer beam just burnt a hole in the wall behind his head!) 
    I'm beginning to understand why that weather forecaster, broadcasting from the street, in 12 inches of snow, bought a wine glass from the Dollar Store. She was the real, amazing genius, sending a hidden message for all of us. Bad weather is approaching, are you "really" ready?