I Blame Homer Simpson

Parents get freaked out when they think their children are in trouble.  I figured that once I reached adulthood, this silly worry would go away.  However, it just gets worse, according to one of my mothers-in-law (I have two…).  Apparently the older your child is, the more there is to worry about.  I guess I can understand.  Parents spend their thriving years raising kids, keeping them safe, feeding them, spending every last stinking dime on their stupid sports uniforms and yearbooks.  Children are a huge investment of time and money, not to mention all that love and DNA crap.  So when it comes to worrying about their children, can you blame them?

Back to me foolishly thinking that it would stop when I no longer qualified for that 18-24 target age group…

I had a house in Northern Virginia when I was working in DC.  Here is what my life consisted of when I lived in DC:

• Wake up (4:30 AM)
• Leave for work (4:50 AM)
• Leave work for home (4:30 PM)
• Arrive home (5:30 if light traffic)
• Simpsons/King of the Hill reruns (5:30 - 6:30)
• Dinner, read, bathe (6:30-8:00)
• Bed (8:00 PM)

One day, a day just like any other day, I came home.  I was in a great mood because traffic was smooth and I got home before dark.  All the neighbors were coming home too.  I was going to make myself a nice dinner and get some reading in before going to sleep and waking up and doing the whole commute thing again.  I took my cell phone out of my purse, plopped it on the coffee table and turned on the Simpsons.  It was the one where Homer attempts to assemble a barbeque in the backyard.  Things go crappily, and Homer begins beating the life out of that poor, unsuspecting grill.  Homer screams like a madman, and the grill is reduced to a pile of nuts and bolts. 

I listened to Homer scream as I changed out of my work clothes.  The doorbell rang.  No one ever rang my doorbell.  I looked out the bedroom window.  The street was blocked off by a fire truck!  Red lights bounced off the thick trees and the neighbors smart yellow siding!  What the hell?!  An ambulance pulled up.  I ran downstairs.  What in the world?

Two police officers were standing on my porch.  “Can I help you?” I asked.  The officer looked concerned. 

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“…Yeah,” I said.  “What’s going on?”

“Are you in the house alone, ma’am?”

“Yes,” I said.  What did I do?

“Do you mind if we come in and take a look around?” said the second officer.  “We want to make sure no one is forcing you to say that you are alone.”

“Come on in,” I said.  “What’s this about?”

“We received a call that someone had broken in and was beating you,” the officer explained. 

“What?!??!?”

The police came in and looked around the house.  My phone rang.  I answered in.  My mother was on the other end of the line, barely breathing.  She was yelling really loud, like she always does on the phone, like it’s still 1910 and we’re yelling into cans.  “Are you okay?  Oh my God, are you okay?”

Curiouser and curiouser.  “I’m fine, mom.  What’s wrong?”  

“Are the police there?” she asked. 

“Yeah,” I said.  “How did you know?”   I had not yet made the connection.

“Why did you call me?” she asked. 

“I didn’t call you,” I said.

“You called me and you were screaming!  Someone was attacking you.”

“…”

“You called me,” said my mom.  “Are you okay?’

I’ll leave the rest of the very confused conversation out to make a long story shorter.  Apparently when I had tossed my cell phone on the coffee table, it dialed the last person I had called (Mom).  She answered the phone and heard Homer Simpson beating up that effing barbecue.  She was sure it sounded like me, and that I was getting attacked, and that somehow I managed to get the telephone to call her.  I mean, who else would you call if you were getting attacked and murdered? 

The cops didn’t really laugh much when I figured out what had happened.  I guess it’s not funny when a Simpsons rerun is responsible for what was probably several thousand dollars worth of emergency response.  I mean two officers, a fire truck and an ambulance.  Impressively, it only took fourteen minutes for them to arrive at my house…a 911 call in Butte, Montana calling about a potentially dire situation in a busy, populated part of Virginia during rush hour.

So I can look back on it all and chuckle a bit now.  I was furious at the time.  All my new neighbors gazing at my house in curiousity…as the 911 crews swarmed in, ready to get the perp.  I was flabbergasted that my mom would think I would be so retarded to call her…a ten digit dial 2500 miles away…instead of a three digit 911 call to a police department that actually had funding.  I understand a bit better today.  If you think your kids are in trouble, it’s hard to think clearly.  It’s hard to think at all. 

Well I haven’t heard my mom panic like that, that barely breathing thing, again.  That is, until yesterday.  My brother pulled quite the stunt this weekend, which I will get to in the next post. 

 

 

The Next Big Thing

You know how there are those times in life when you are asked to describe yourself?  Maybe it was an “All About Me” essay in the fourth grade.  Perhaps a job made you do a lengthy self-assessment.  Either way, almost all of us will agree that describing yourself pretty much sucks.  We’re always our harshest critic.  It’s also strange when someone else describes you…the “spotlight” feeling is not fun for people that are not actually dancing on a Broadway stage.  The older I get, the more I fantasize about being a hermit. 

Today someone at my new job was asking how things were (we’ve got a LOT going on in life, here at the Speer house) so I filled them in, and they said…

“You’re the most laid back person I know!”

Which made me raise my eyebrows.  I don’t consider myself to be laid back at all.  I have a horrible time relaxing, I’m always strategizing every move (place the empty water glass on the kitchen table instead of the counter and when I come back to this room I’ll have fewer steps to the dishwasher, at which point I will scrub out the pots and pans and let them dry on the half-clean towel and grab that on my way up to the laundry room…) and it’s exhausting, thinking all the dang time.  But I thought about what my life must look like to someone on the outside… 

In one and a half months:  New baby, new job, out of state move, flooded kitchen fiasco, pesky household guests, daycare shortage, the list goes on…and I see what they mean.  Smoke isn’t coming out of my ears or anything. 

But you know what?  It was easy.  Every bit of it. 

The next big thing is always better than the last, especially if you know it before it happens.  Which basically means that you better have lots of faith that it will work out.  And if you do, it will.  The things that go wrong in life are often wrong only temporarily, and they needed to go wrong in order to properly rearrange the events that are waiting for you, just around the corner.  You have to be paying attention to see them though, and you have to expect them.  If you’re expecting the wrong things, your eyes won’t be adjusted to be able to see the right ones.  You know this.  I know this.  Of this I am sure. 

What was in that lasagna?

 

Born in the Wrong Era, and other unfortunate circumstances

I realized a long time ago that it’s very easy for me to lose any contentedness that I might have about something.  I’d like to think that it’s a problem everyone has; easy to find something to be unsettled about, hard to be content with everything that is right in front of you.  I think lots of people will say they are content, especially if you ask them “are you content with your life?”  If you stop to think about it, you are probably content with your life.  It’s other times, when you just want a shower curtain that doesn’t stick together, or when you wonder what would have happened had you majored in archaeology instead of accounting, or when you wonder what would have happened if you would have gone to college at all…those are the times when little mites of discontent eat at a person. 

If you ask me “are you content with your life,” I will say yes.  And for the most part, it’s true.  My problem is definitely not sitting around harping about the changeable things in my life.  If I want to change something, I change it!  It’s the things I cannot change that keep me up at night. 

For example…sometimes I wish that I was born in a different time period.  I didn’t get to see the invention of the television set, and I think that would have been an amazing thing to experience.  Especially as a kid.  Imagine the brain-jumble that your young mind would have gone through if your Pa brought a magic box home one day, and you turned it on, and there were flat gray people in there.  Wow.  You wouldn’t have been able to stop talking about it. 

Or what about the invention of the airplane?  All those times you ran around pretending to be able to fly, and then one day, you could.  Sheesh.  How amazing would that have been to see. 

Also, I really envy people who got to grow up in the 1960’s.  Perhaps it wasn’t all that great from their perspective, but the 1960’s were such an amazing time in America and their was great music and tumultuous history and cool clothing to boot. 

I would have really liked to have been one of the first people to see the mountains in our national parks.  When you go to a national park, they always have these black and white or sepia-toned photographs in the lodges that show adventurous 1920’s folk climbing a mountain in a petticoat or a suit and tie.  They got to miss the long lines of traffic and the shuttle buses and the really expensive hotel rooms.  They didn’t know how good they had it.  Or maybe they did, because they sure have big smiles in the photographs.

So what’s up with that?  I’m happy with everything but sometimes it really grates on me that my youth is being spent in decades-long periods of housing overdevelopment, cheap crap from China, and increasing poverty in the world.  What’s so great about that? 

A better optimist might say, “Hey, Maleesha…this is a great time to live in the world!  Look at the pharmaceuticals that we’re making!  We’re curing diseases all the time!  And look at the technology we have!  You can talk with people across the world with the click of a button for pennies a day!”  Sure…but call me skeptical.  Those same pharmaceuticals are being excreted into our water supplies…and who knows what that’s causing.  Perhaps the little bits of various drugs that we’re forced to unwillingly consume that will end up being the cause of the increasing autism, allergies and mental illness in the world.  Maybe it’s what’s killing off the bees. 

As far as technology, I will be the first to tell you I love it, but can’t we all agree that there’s so little mystery left in the world?  I never have to dream about what traveling to the Serengeti would be like, because I can Google it and in half an hour, I will know everything I need to know about the Serengeti.  The mystery is gone.  Perhaps this is why G.W. is hell bent on touring Mars.  He’s an explorer, too.   

 

Ten Year Reunion

I never did write about my ten year high school reunion.  Not sure why I didn’t.  Perhaps I have just finished analyzing it two years later.  Two!  I can’t believe two years have already passed since the reunion.  That means only eight more until the 20th.  Freaky. 

Carli and I had a deal that we would both have to go to the reunion.  We both dreaded the idea for a long time.  Coming from a town with one school district, we had known the people we graduated with since we were all playing hopscotch in kindergarten.  Why on earth would we want to go back?  Wasn’t eighteen years in the same town enough, already?  So we planned to boycott the reunion for years.  But then the invitations went out.  We changed our mind.  It could be fun to go to the reunion.  We could see if the cheerleaders got fat? (Nope, at least none that showed up, darn it all)  We could see who went to jail (G. did.  Not sure for what.)  Who had four kids?  (Becky S.) Who got rich? (Nick K. did…though he didn’t make the reunion) 

We had grand plans to show up Romy and Michelle style, but those plans went away since we realized we’re actually far better off than Romy and Michelle ever were.  No need to claim Post-Its.  Anyway, Carli came really close to not being able to go, because she was still in the iron jaws of medical residency, but she got a ticket at the last minute and met me in Butte, Montana.

So the first thing on the reunion’s agenda was to meet at the Met Tavern.  That’s just what you do at high school reunions in Butte.  I had a strange sense of….strangeness walking in.  I saw many people I recognized but they were the adult versions of themselves instead of the same people I remembered.  I only kept in touch with one person from high school (Carli) so the sense of time-warping was stronger than if I had seen these people age.  “Age” isn’t really an appropriate term, since ten years seemed to improve everyone.  Maybe “clean up” is the phrase I am looking for.  These people could have looked at home in suits and UPS uniforms and behind office desks, etc. 

So as soon as I spotted certain people I had funny memories come back.  Erin M. was the first person I saw in the Met, and I immediately remembered sitting by her on the chair lift at Discovery Basin on a third-grade field trip.  Then I spotted Dawn C., who was always the tallest, and I remembered an elementary school sleepover.  Later during the weekend, someone conned Pauline G. into showing up (they had to lie to get her there…ha! but since she lives there she could) and it was great to see her too.  My very first sleepover, ever, was at Pauline G.’s house.  I still have a scar on my knee from that sleepover.  There was a park across the street from her house, and I was on the merry-go-round holding on for dear life as Pauline’s older brother pushed it as fast as he could…G-forces threw me off the merry-go-round and into the gravel.  Pauline’s mom dumped some iodine into it and put a band-aid on.  I wanted to go home. 

Keli H. was there too and I remembered the 6th grade “Pentathlon” and as the top Whittier Elementary athletes, I thought of our race to the finish…it was neck and neck.  I won’t tell you who won.  Eric R. was there too, and I thought of the time he rode his bike past my house the year we were in 5th grade.  He’s a detective in Idaho nowadays. 

Another person that I enjoyed talking to was Jenn F., who is one of the funniest people on earth.  And I can’t forget Jesse G. who brought his big-city dancing skills back to Butte.  Or Christian M., who is in the Army now, and either in Germany or Iraq, but wherever it is it isn’t home.  Freddy K. was there, and I have to mention him because I spent most of my school years placed alphabetically next to him.  I also had a good time sitting with Erin S. and Cartie at the Met.  I know I’m going to forget to mention someone I should mention.     

Lori C. was there, and she is married to another person we graduated with, Clayton M.  They live an adventurous life overseas as highly educated teachers.  Someone (initial M.) was there and he showed up really drunk at the dinner and made a huge, high-schoolesque scene, to include a very dramatic walkout.  I was actually surprised there weren’t more drunken scenes.  We did have a pit bull fight though, outside the Met that first night.  The always wonderful and beguiling Mitzi had a lot to do with that.  But I guess if you can’t have a lot of drunken scenes, a pit bill fight will do nicely.

Some of the people who didn’t make it I later Googled and gathered data on.  The big jock from high school, who all the girls swooned over, recently got married.  He went on to play baseball for the minor leagues, not sure if he still does.  I will tell you though, from his wedding photos, that he is prematurely bald.  Still lookin’ good though.

Nick K., who I already mentioned, went on to become a New York City lawyer.  This was a surprise.  I’ll always remember him in semi-hippie attire, with long, mussed hair.  He was brilliant though so it’s not surprising that he could become a lawyer, I’m just shocked he did.  Joslyn H. also became a lawyer but she wasn’t at the reunion.  I would have liked to talk to her and see where she ended up.   

Some of the people I wanted to see the most didn’t show up.  My favorite person from high school, Theresa M., is still rumored to be in Butte but I never seem to make the time or effort to call when I am back in town.  I really should.  I don’t know why I haven’t yet.  Renee B. didn’t make it.  I hear she lives in North Dakota.  I am dying to know why this is.  Becky H., who I am pretty sure peruses this blog every now and then, needs to be at the 20th.  We played the leads in the female version of The Odd Couple senior year.  We were on more than one cover of Time Out! together.  So if you are hesistant about going to your reunion, just do it.  It will be more fun than you think.  Even if you hated high school. 

Which I did. 

Honest. 

 

Driver’s Ed

My son keeps asking me for a driver’s license.  He’s three. 

He loves the idea of driving, probably because he’s never commuted.  His favorite thing to do is sit in the driver’s seat and steer the wheel, flip the blinker on and play with buttons and switches.  This usually happens when we get home from the grocery store.  I unload the goods into the house and he “drives.”  Then for Christmas, one of his grammas got him one of those Power Wheels, a jeep with a real radio and a gas pedal.  He loves it. 

It got me to thinking.  Maybe by the time he is ready to get his real driver’s license, he will really know what he is doing.  I often hear “Mom, are you looking at the road?” from the back seat.  When he eventually reminds me to adjust my mirrors, I might just dump him off on the side of the road. 

I jest.  But thinking about this reminds me of my driver’s ed experience. 

Montana gives out driver’s licenses to fifteen year olds (at least they did, not sure about today).  That means that learner’s permits are handed out to fourteen year olds.  The summer after eighth grade, I enrolled in the driver’s ed program offered by the school. 

The first couple of sessions involved watching flicks like Red Asphalt IV and other fine instructional videos.  “Instructional” in the sense that someone out there thought showing teenagers highway brain splatter was a good idea.  I wonder if there will ever be a government-funded study to determine whether or not viewings of the Red Asphalt series resulted in adult violence rather that safe drivers.  Anyway, after we were all sufficiently naseauted, it was time to get in the cars. 

Half the cars were stick-shift, half were automatic.  At fourteen, I had already been traumatized by a stick shift.  My dad had attempted to let me drive his truck, an enormous pickup with an extended cab.  I could barely reach the pedals from the seat.  Stretching my legs to reach them while trying to shift a really sticky shifter was not happening.  After I almost took out several other vehicles in the K-Mart parking lot, the lesson ended. 

Three kids and one instructor per car.  Ann and Jenean were the other girls in the group.  The first couple of times out, our instructor was “Mr. C,” a well-liked wood shop teacher at the high school.  The first thing he did was tell us to put our seatbelts on.  The second thing he did was open up the newspaper.  The third thing he did was tell Ann, the first driver in our group, to start the car and head for I-90. 

Mr. C was the most laid-back driver’s ed teacher in the history of driver’s ed teachers.  One memorable moment occured during a later driving session when we were on top of a ledge on the East Ridge (If you’re from Butte, you know the East Ridge).  I think Ann was attempting to turn around on the cliffy road when she accidently threw the car into reverse.  Jenean and I yelped, certain we were about to roll down the mountain.  Mr. C, never taking his eyes off the newspaper, said “Just tap on the brakes, tap on the brakes” in a calm voice.  I think he may have been possibly trying to set a good example for us, you know, stay calm under pressure. 

One day Mr. C didn’t show up for driver’s ed, so Mr. A took over for our group. 

Mr. A was the high school dean of boys.  He was the kind of guy who liked high school so much, that he decided to stay forever.  (I didn’t know this until I was in high school, and got to see Mr. A in action)  Mr. A didn’t let us get in our usual car, a white automatic.  Instead he made us get in the green stick shift…which none of us could drive yet.  I had the privilege of being first driver. 

I killed the transmission three times before I managed to pull the car out of the school parking lot and on to the street.  Mr. A yelled at me, picking on my inability to push the clutch in while shifting at the same time.  Ann and Jenean sat silently in the back seat.  I glanced in the rear view mirror–their expressions of wide-eyed horror rattled me even more.  Mr. A told me to turn right and I turned left, being as freaked out as I was.

“Don’t you know your G-D left from your right?” he yelled.

 He told me to head for Harrison Avenue, the main street in town.  I shakily navigated toward what was sure to be a busy road. 

Then it started to rain. 

I was buzzing along at 24 miles an hour, just under the speed limit.  Mr. A shouted “Are you in a race?”  I slowed down to 20 and came to a stop sign.  The engine stalled and died.  Mr. A taunted me as I tried to start the car.  A couple of tries later, I was moving again.  Harrison Avenue loomed ahead, just beyond a stop light.  The stop light was green.  I was in the intersection, turning onto Harrison, when the light turned yellow.  Mr. A shouted “It’s yellow!” and I let off the gas.  The car died in the middle of the intersection as the light turned fully red, and other cars were about to start driving toward us.  This really threw Mr. A into a rage.   “G-D it!  Pay some G-D attention! Are you trying to kill me?!” he screamed.  Jenean and Ann were still silent in the back.  I was trying not to cry. 

It’s really a blur, what happened after that.  It must have been so awful that I blocked it out.  I’m pretty sure that Mr. A made me pull over and let someone else drive.  I don’t really remember.  I just remember feeling really, really inferior.

Eventually I got my first car.  I saved up $250 and my parents matched that to purchase the $500 1981 Toyota Tercel one Christmas.  It was red with one orange door.  It was a stick shift.  I learned to drive it after a couple more sessions with my dad.

I still prefer stick shift to automatic.  I like to think that Mr. A would be proud, but I doubt it. 

 

The Paranoia of Mothers

There you go, walking along enjoying your life, not worried about anything except for whether or not you will get off work early enough to go to the happy hour.  One day you wake up and there are other people living in your house, namely a husband and children, and you wonder how it all happened.  Or at least I do.  And you don’t worry too much about the husband, even when he is a photographer who wanders among the high cliffs of lightning bolts and the cougars of death, but you do worry about the wee ones.  All the time.  Especially if you work and have to entrust their little lives to others for a good part of the day.  Moms (except for crack moms and meth moms, probably) all belong to the Major Leagues of Paranoia, to some degree.   

Not all mothers are paranoid about injuries, or about germ infestation in their kitchens, or about kidnappers.  And some moms are only paranoid about one of these things, while some are paranoid about all of them and more.  I have certain paranoias when it comes to my children.  Germs are not one of them.  My son often eats off our (disgusting) floor after he drops food on it.  Things like macaroni and cheese.  He also never gets sick.  Immune system strengthening at its best.

They say that people spend most of their lives worried about the wrong things; plane crashes, house fires, wayward asteroids. 

My own mother spent most of my childhood worried about:

Balloons

Every single freaking time my brother and I were around balloons, a strict warning would come from Mom.  She was eagle eyed around balloons.  For you see, at any moment, the balloon could pop, go whizzing around the room, hit us in the back of the throat, at which point we would choke to death on pastel-colored latex. 

Smoke detectors

Sleepovers at other houses always followed a long period of questioning and/or phone calls to the other house.  “Do they have smoke detectors?  Is it a trailer house?  Trailer houses burn down faster.  Do they have a back door in case you need to escape?”  The next day when I returned home, follow up questioning took place.  “So did they have smoke detectors?  Do you think they change the batteries in them?”

Of course they had a back door, Mom.  They didn’t live in a cave. 

Toasters and coffee pots

Had. To. Be. Unplugged.  At all times.  Otherwise they were certain to burst into flames, because it was in the newspaper once, and it happened to a real family somewhere in Tennessee once.  It was sure to happen to us.  And at that time, we better hope that our smoke detectors had batteries in them.

But here is what Mom should have been paranoid about:

Babysitters

I had some doozy babysitters.  The one that comes to mind as a shining example of babysitting horror is the one who locked my brother in a closet all the time, gave us “snakebites” (or “Indian burns”, depending on what your neighborhood kids called them), brought her boyfriend and his friends over to the house and threatened us with interesting methods of death if we ever told on her. 

And of course there was Gramma Gigi.

Toothpaste

As children, we ate massive quantities of toothpaste.  This habit started at summer camp, 1985.  There was no candy to be found, so one of the older kids at summer camp suggested we eat our toothpaste.  It was a delightfully minty flavor.  As an adult, I bothered to read the warning label.  It’s really bad to eat toothpaste.  Besides getting fluoride poisoning, your teeth can turn brown and soft.  Gross!  Plus I bet had I not eaten all that toothpaste, I would have ended up smarter than I am today.  If I ever have to get a brain scan, the doctor will be looking at pictures of the inside of my head and say “I see the problem…a class four toothpaste deposit on the right frontal lobe.”

Weird Al

Not Yankovic, of polka fame.  Weird Al was a guy who lived three blocks away from our house.  All the neighborhood kids were obsessed with Weird Al.  No one knew what Weird Al looked like, but we all knew what he sounded like.  When we kids wandered the neighborhood for hours, our paths went by the broken, weedy sidewalk that went by Weird Al’s weird house.  It was brown, with a caving roof.  Plywood was hammered randomly to the side of the house and spray painted with messages: Keep Out.  No Dogs.  Good Morning.  When we walked by, a deep voice would come from the screened in porch.  Weird Al would call out “Hey kids.  <weird laugh here> Come on over.  You can come over.”   We could make out Weird Al’s large shadow.  Later on in junior high, we’d prank call Weird Al during sleepovers.  We kept Weird Al on the phone for hours. 

Looking back, he was probably just a lonely old dude with a sorry house.  However, there is a strong possibility that if any of us were stupid enough to go meet Weird Al, our bones would have been discovered centuries later in a slab of cement that used to be his basement.

Now here is what I am paranoid about:

Magnets

I am always imagining my son eating magnets, for some reason.  This is because I watched the news story from last year about the Magnetix toys that some kid ate, and they stuck together in his intestines, and his intestines ruptured and poisoned him.  I am always looking at the floor for wayward magnets.  You never know what a hidden magnet might roll out of; remote controls, toy dinosaurs, pillows. 

I should not worry about this at all because I taught my son at a very early age to bring me little things that he finds on the floor.  Over his three years he has delivered heavy duty staples, nails, tacks, and esophagus-shaped plastic items to me, no problem.  If he found a magnet, I am sure he would use it to hang his artwork on the refrigerator.  Still, I am worried.

Poisonous plants

I watch my son outside to ensure he doesn’t eat the mushrooms that pop up after a good rain.  I watch to make sure he doesn’t taste the pine cones…pine cones are a gateway plant.  I know you can eat dandelions, but I don’t want him to do this because today it’s dandelions, tomorrow it’s a poinsettia. 

Rattlesnakes

I don’t even have rattlesnakes around my house.  There is no logic when it comes to paranoia.

And of course I am paranoid about:

Toothpaste

We lock it up.

 

Valentine’s Cards

My son is only three, but he still “has to” bring little Valentine cards to his preschool tomorrow.  So we filled some out tonight.  He picked out a “Pixar” themed pack of cards, so his wee little classmates will be getting cards with Toy Story, Cars, and the Incredibles on them.  He wrote his name on each one, often in the wrong spot…so we went through twenty-three cards to get eleven good ones that will be taken to his class tomorrow.  He is also in charge of bringing carrots and ranch dip for the Valentine party they are having.  Sheesh.  Only three and my son is already a Valentine’s Day kind of guy.  He learned at school that Valentine’s Day is “hearts and flowers” and he keeps reminding me about it. 

Thankfully we didn’t have to make a shoe box this year.  I’m sure that is coming soon.  You know, the shoe box?  From elementary school?  Who knows if they still do it.  We sure did, back in the day.  My class always had to decorate a shoe box (usually we remembered to do this the night before, sending mom one step closer to the looney bin by reminding her that we needed a box tomorrow, as we brushed our teeth for bed) with pink and red and candy hearts, and cut a little slit in the top.  This was so our classmates could stuff a Valentine inside. 

We kids were told multiple times that we “better bring enough Valentines cards for everyone, or else.”  This part was the worst.  The dread of wondering if the cute kid in the third row was going to give you a really good card, you know, one that said “You’re the best!” instead of the lame card that said “Totally rad!” or “Friend Time.”  On top of the stress of waiting, trying to pick out appropriate cards for classmates was also rough.  Which card to give the cute kid in the third row?  (I’m almost certain that only girls thought about this) 

Or more challenging, which card to give the smelly kid in the back who frequently pooped his pants?  You didn’t want to give the wrong idea.

 

Saturday Morning Cartoons

I remember Saturday morning cartoons being a lot better “back in the day” than they are lately.  I mean, today’s options for the kiddos really stink.  Am I just viewing the past through rose-colored glasses?  We tend to do that, when remembering the past.  We only remember sitting in front of the toasty-warm fireplace, watching the road-runner float safely above the canyon, drinking the chocolaty milk from the cereal bowl.  We forget that we had to shut the cartoon off prematurely, and then get stuffed into a snow-covered vehicle, filled with cigarette smoke (windows rolled up) to drive to the grocery store to help look for the sale hot dogs.  But that is not the point.  The point is, the cartoon was really good. 

I’m mostly upset that my son doesn’t seem to have Bugs Bunny as an option.  Can anyone point me to it on DVD? 

Let’s compare yesterday’s options to today’s, just to see if I am imagining things.

Yesterday:  Bugs Bunny

Summary:  A clever bunny uses his mind to outwit, outplay and outlast the futile hunting attempts of Elmer Fudd; a happy-go-lucky desert bird continues to evade a hungry coyote with clear and questionable political ties to the Acme company.

Today: Yu-Gi-Oh

Summary:  Weird, angular humanoids battle each other with magic cards.

Winner:  Bugs Bunny.  The other one sounds lame, unless your diet consists of Cheetos and Pepsi…then I can see how a mushy brain may get sucked into its repetitiveness.

Yesterday:  Sesame Street

Summary:  A cast of likeable, mammalian characters face life’s lessons in a quaint, tree-filled neighborhood, while learning numbers, letters, and how to tie one’s shoes.

Today:  Teletubbies

Summary:  Four furry, jellybean shaped robots with televisions for abdomens chant unintelligible sounds while dancing on a hill under a garish, baby-faced sun.

Clear winner:  Sesame Street.  Thankfully it’s still on PBS.  It seems to have gone downhill since the introduction of Elmo and Mr. Noodle (how I hate Mr. Noodle) but it’s still seems to be a good choice, considering the alternatives.

Even with Mr. Noodle, I think it only takes these two examples to see that Saturday morning cartoons, and kids’ television in general, is less plot-driven and educational today than it used to be.  Today it appears that to be a successful children’s program, you don’t even need real words, you just need flashy, seizure-inducing images and a decent timeslot. 

It’s really just best to shut the box off and go play in the trees instead.

 

Sun Tea

Who remembers Sun Tea?

I’ve been making a lot of iced tea lately, using a brand-name green tea, “infused with Orange, Jasmine, and Lavender.”  While this sounds more like shampoo, it makes a really good iced tea.  I boil ten bags of it in four cups of water for about 15 minutes.  Then I pour it into a large pitcher and add cold water until the pitcher is full.  But all this thinking about tea has me remembering Sun Tea. 

I didn’t grow up in a tea-drinking family.  My parents guzzled coffee instead.  But many residents in my neighborhood left these jars of Sun Tea out on their front porches in summer.  These jars, clearly made for making Sun Tea, fascinated me.  What is Sun Tea?  How does the magic power of the sun contribute to the tea-making process?  Okay, I have long since figured it out.  But I haven’t seen those jars in a really long time, and I am just wondering where they went.  Was Sun Tea a fad?  Did Sun Tea jars go the way of the pet rock?  Or is Sun Tea’s existence more like that of the Chia Pet…just when you think it’s gone for good, a commercial comes on asking you to purchase the new Chia Garfield?

Maybe the deep panic about Sun Tea harboring bacteria has something to do with its demise.  I don’t know.  The ol’ boil method works fine for me, anyway. 

 

Coffin Delivery

For the somebody that asked “what did you mean about the funeral home” let me clarify.  The house of my youth was down the block and across the street from Wayrynen-Richards funeral home in Butte, Montana.  I never thought twice about it (didn’t everyone have a funeral home in their neighborhood?) until my friend Jennipher convinced me that it was full of dead people.  I’m sure we were eight or nine when she came to my house for a sleep-over, and she suggested we go down the block to look at the funeral home.

We walked to the end of the block and hid behind the giant trees in front of the big red house, the house with the white German Shepherds in the yard.  Luckily for us they were nice dogs, unlike the one that lived three blocks away, who liked to leap over the chain-link fence and chase us.  We were looking at the lovely white-yellow brick building, and Jennipher gasped “Look, the door is opening!”  A large box-truck was pulling up to the funeral home, and at the same time the large, garage-like doors on the side of the building rumbled open.  We sat and watched as the men in the truck started unloading coffins into the building. 

“Oh my God,” Jennipher said, in a very earnest voice.  “You can see red eyes floating in there!”

I squinted to see into the dark building, past the stacks of freshly delivered coffins.  I couldn’t see any red eyes, if memory serves me right.  But when you are eight years old, you can’t admit this.  “I see them!” I said.  “Let’s get out of here!”

“We can’t get out of here,” Jennipher said.  “The eyes can sense fear!  If we run, they will chase us!”

We continued to freak ourselves out near the funeral home until we were shrieking messes, sprinting back toward the safety of my house.   

The funeral home continued to be a mystery to me for a long time.  Some days there were lots of cars parked there, with people in nice clothes walking in or out. 

The first time I went inside the funeral home, it was because the neighbor lady died.  We didn’t go to the funeral.  My mom doesn’t do funerals.  Instead, my mom took us to “sign the book” the night before.  I remember seeing our neighbor there, inside one of the coffins.  She didn’t really look like she was sleeping, like people said she would.  Rather, she looked like a plastic, life-size, toy version of herself. 

Unfortunately, once you go inside a funeral home the first time, you find yourself going there again.  And again.  Suddenly it is no longer entertaining to watch the coffins being delivered.  I don’t remember what age this transition occurs…but I will never forget sitting outside the building, watching the “red eyes” and enjoying the unknown.

 

Won’t you be my neighbor?

I wish that we lived in a neighborhood with actual sidewalks, and front porches; and old people sitting on said front porches, and people standing out on the front lawn with a hose, spraying the kids that keep zipping through their yard.  Basically, I wish for something out of a 1950’s television show…or at least something that resembled the neighborhood I grew up in. 

We really did have sidewalks, and as kids, we drew all over those sidewalks with chalk and sticks and rocks.  We pulled the vegetables from our neighbor’s garden, and the neighbors would yell “I’m telling your parents!” but they never really did.  We strung a string-can telephone down the entire alley behind the house, and used it as a form of communication during the frequent Boys Against Girls neighborhood water balloon wars.  We picked the poisonous berries from the bushes in our yards (the kind of berries that birds sometimes eat and fly into windows, drunk) and squished them everywhere including on the sidewalk in front of our neighbor’s house.  The neighbors would pffft with disgust, and get the hose out again, and spray off all of our hard work.  This happened all summer long.  We got tossed out of our houses sometime in the morning and we didn’t come back until the sun was going down, and even then we didn’t want to go back inside, but we had to, and we took baths and the water was pretty much mud when we finished with the bath. 

The only neighbor the local kids feared was ‘Old Man Swisher’ who lived four houses down and never came out.  We could hear the ferocious dogs barking when we dared to pass by the house on the way to the park, or when we walked to the end of the block to spy on the funeral home’s coffin deliveries.  Swisher was rumored to have a basement full of kids’ skeletons, because when kids went in his yard, he grabbed them and they never made it home.  Because Swisher hated kids.  So we kids stayed away from Swisher.  Those were the rules.  Know which neighbors you can irritate, and also know the degree of irritation they will tolerate before calling your Mom.  We knew this as children.

If only grown-up neighbors behaved as such. 

The second day in our new house we were greeted by a nice older couple.  Older couple carried baked goods, once known to Americans as the national goodwill gesture for new neighbors.  Unfortunately, these baked goods were merely a distraction device…a plate of brownies baked only to guarantee their safe entry into our abode.  They made small talk, invited us over for dinner, and left their phone numbers.  They seemed like really nice people and we were happy with our choice of neighborhood. 

Recently it has come to light that the brownie-bearers were here only to determine whether or not we had connected to the county sewer line.  (Long, ugly story)  

These neighbors weren’t nice, friendly folk after all.  They are old, cantankerous HOA-police, nosy retirees with nothing left to do but prepare for death and spy on everyone else while they wait.  We’ve met some other neighbors who have had similar run-ins with them, or their evil henchmen.  Can you believe they have evil henchmen?  They report on the state of people’s roofs, yards, walls, stucco, and gravel color.  They write letters to the land developer asking to count flowers purchased for the common areas, thankfully they courtesy copy everyone in the neighborhood so we can enjoy the fun:

Neighbor’s letter to the developer:    “Your amenity bill charged me $1.22 this month for landscaping, I see that it says you have purchased 314 flowers for the neighborhood.  I don’t see any flowers planted.”

Developer’s response:  “The flowers are not going to be planted until May when the ground is ready.  Since it’s only February, we’re going to keep the plants in a heated greenhouse.  I assure you that we have purchased the 314 plants and you are welcome to come count them if you like.”

Neighbor:  “I would like to count the plants please.  Can you tell me where the greenhouse is?”

These are not the kind of people that need to fret about $1.22 in charges.  But fight on, neighbors!  The more you bother the land developers, the less you are bothering the other homeowners! 

I’m doing everything I can to resist posting them here.  I’d do it, but I think that would put me in the same category that they reside in: jerks.  I’ll tell you what, though: next time they come sniffing around with a plate of brownies, I am totally spraying them with the hose.     

 

Thoughts On Thirty

The stretch of November 10-11 is always my favorite weekend of the year.  Besides being the Marine Corps birthday and Veteran’s Day, it’s my birthday too.  I love my birthday.  I really do.

This past weekend was my 30th birthday.  I’ve never had a birthday where so many different reactions came to me from people.  Some folks actually seemed apologetic.  I’ve never been one of those people with Birthday Hangups.  The way I look at it, you can’t avoid your birthday, and if you do avoid your birthday, that means you have died.  Being dead is not a fun-sounding option compared to having a simple, unavoidable birthday.

Lots of people warned me that I might be somewhat depressed over turning 30.  Maybe that comes later in the year?  So far I’m pretty happy about it.  It does feel mentally different than being 29 did, but in a good way…like finishing a long race or something.

A good reason to be 30 today is that being 30 means you are no longer in your 20’s, and with such outstanding 20-something public representatives such as Paris “What’s Work?” Hilton, Britney “Crap Mom” Spears, and Jessica “Short Bus” Simpson…well, who wants to be associated with that age?  I’m glad to be exiting that decade for good.

The world is increasingly a place that worships and obsesses over youth, money, beauty and status.  That may be the way it is “in general,” but I know plenty of people who could care less.  These are the kind of people I like to associate with.  When I meet another woman who has never had a manicure, I think, “Friend!”  If I bothered to get a manicure, or hell, even a decent haircut, I might still look like I am 25.  But I am not 25.  Either way, my own personal philosophy on hair is “if I spend more than five minutes thinking about my hair each day, I need bigger problems.”  Being suddenly 30 has not changed this idea.  Ask me again when the gray hair comes.  Maybe by then I will have changed my thinking on this, but I’m pretty stinkin’ cheap when it comes to this kind of thing…I can’t imagine spending a lot of money on my hair…it has happened a couple of times (usually gifts from people who possibly think I have hair issues) and I always feel really, really dirty about spending money on “looking good.”

30 is the age when athletes and actors are considered old.  I’m not either of those, so it doesn’t apply.  Plus this is a really stupid concept.  30 is not old anymore.  50 really doesn’t seem old anymore.  80…well, that’s pretty frickin’ old.  But what is wrong with being old, anyway?

I read a biography about Charles Schulz several years ago.  I wanted to be a cartoonist (it’s still within the realm of the possible, someday) but Schulz said not to bother until you’re at least 40.  His reasoning was that you cannot possibly have the life experience to draw effective cartoons until you are in your forties.  I can’t argue with a great, you know?  Besides Schulz’s sound advice, one can research a lot of artists, authors, and other esteemed folks who didn’t even get started until they were in their later years.  This isn’t an excuse to sit around until then, but it should tell people that even if you are celebrating your 40th, 50th, or 60th…there are still plenty of possibilities.  Consider Ms. Nola Ochs, the country’s oldest college graduate, who received her degree at age ninety-five!

30 used to be old, around the time when you could expect a mid-life crisis.  Well that shouldn’t apply either, because now psychologists tell you to expect a quarter-life crisis (already had it, moved to Colorado) in addition to a mid-life crisis, with all kinds of smaller existential crises in between and after.  The bottom line is that just about everyone goes through some form of a life crisis, so you can’t really feel sorry for people who do.  Deal with your crisis, and move on.  What’s the alternative?

30 in pioneer years means that it’s almost time to die, but I’m not a pioneer; and let’s face it, you can die any time, whether you are young, old, or in denial.  Which brings me to the reason I’m thrilled about being 30…it means I am still alive.

I think people tend to make grand plans, and set grand goals to accomplish by age X.  Several years ago I took what I thought would be a normal walk into the bathroom at work.  Inside the bathroom was my friend “Win”, crying into a wad of Kleenex, leaving streaks of black mascara.  I asked her what was wrong.  Did she get fired?  Did someone die?

“My thirtieth birthday was Saturday,” she said.  “And I had to spend it at the wedding of my sorority sister.”

“Did something bad happen?” I still didn’t see the problem, but then I have zero sorority experience.

“You don’t understand,” she wailed.  “Now I am the last unmarried sorority sister.  And I’m thirty!”

This was a really, really big deal for Win.  I can understand the frustration of not accomplishing something that you really wanted to do, but Win wasn’t even dating anyone.  She was really upset over the lack of someone who didn’t exist.  I guess I can try to imagine how upsetting this could be but I don’t like to worry about things I can’t control. 

“You’ll understand when you’re thirty,” she informed me.

There were a lot of things I once said I wanted to do that have changed: for example, once I said that I wanted to climb Mount Everest.  You know, because it was there.  Well it took a single reading of Into Thin Air to convince me that everyone who climbs Mount Everest is missing a critical part of their brain, so that goal went away.  I always wanted to volunteer overseas, but with a family with plans firmly rooted in the US it’s not a realistic goal at the moment.  Hopefully if I live to be 60, I can volunteer then.  The goal has been postponed, possibly forever.

But when your goals go away, you can always get new ones.  Once (actually, it was more like several hundred times) I said that I would never have kids, and that turned out to be a silly notion.  I still don’t like diapers and whining, but I’m pretty sure no one does, whether they have kids or not.  

I think I have had a pretty great and adventurous life so far.  Lots of living packed in.  As far as “standard life accomplishments” that lots of people measure themselves by (house, spouse, rug rats, job, and travels) go, I feel like I have accomplished them.  At the same time, I would like to think that even if I didn’t have these things under my belt, I would still be satisfied with life, because life just doesn’t operate according to plan.  I have the same “best friend” that I met in first grade…and good friends all over the country that I still keep in touch with, though I can say I don’t see them nearly enough  (Thank goodness for the Internet).

I don’t sleep a lot, but I don’t just sit there either.  It’s amazing how the night sky looks between 2 and 3 in the morning in Colorado…I see a shooting star nearly every night (but I’m not into wishing).  There are few things in life better than seeing the sun come up in the morning, if you ask me.

I can say with confidence that I haven’t wasted any time while on the planet.  Maybe that is why I am so glad to finally be 30.

 

The Cheesecake Stalker

My blog is currently locked down; I’m not sure when I will un-block it, and again show it to the public…but let’s just say I have kind of a little bit of a stalker problem (to put it mildly).  Just another sad case of someone with a life that just isn’t going his way.  Po’, suicidal nutcase.  And the whole topic has me thinking about creeps and other sorts of ass-munches.

Now lots of ladies I know have had stalker issues in their life.  I have had two previous experiences.  One was an out-of-control control freak, a high school idiot, who liked to park in front of my house and call me and say “Nice orange shirt with white stripes on it.”  That was a little freaky, because I would actually be wearing an orange shirt with stripes on it, and I would look out the window and not see anyone.  He would leave roses in my car, my locked car, and there would be no indication as to how he got in.  If anyone knows lock secrets to a 1981 Tercel, let me know…I’ve always wondered about that.

But the best stalker by far, one who really contributed to a mildly freaky, yet amusing, time of my life, is definitely the Cheesecake Stalker.  Let’s call him Che’ for carpal tunnel’s sake.

Che’ was a longtime employee of the company that I had just started working for in Washington DC.  Che’ resembles ‘Comic Book Guy’ from the Simpsons.  He was one of those archetypal “SCA” guys who was big into medieval stuff, Renaissance festivals, that kind of thing.  Che’ was the kind of guy who, if he had a turkey leg in his hand with grease dripping down his arm, and a sheathed sword on his belt, yet he was standing near the entrace to a subway, would look right smack-dab in his element.

Che’ was in the office kitty-corner from mine.  He used to arrive at work around noon.  Lots of times Che’ would get “talkings to” because the dress code was something ol’ Che’ really couldn’t wrap his mind around…God love ‘em, there were probably too many Doritos bags in there.  For the first several months I worked in that office, Che’ was listening. 

One day, my office mate and I, being women, discussed how much we really needed some chocolate.  It must have been a passionate conversation, because apparently it made an impact on someone (Che’).  I’m sure we talked about how at that moment, on whatever day it was, we would gladly give the President’s left arm for some type of cocoa-infused bit of goodness. 

The next day I checked my mail slot to find a small, angular package of Toblerone.

Now if you’re anything like me (at the time) you’ve seen Toblerone on the shelf, but assumed it was some kind of sausage.  But now I had one in my hand!  I read the ingredients.  Chocolate.  Goodness.  Yes!

I didn’t really stop to think about where the Toblerone had come from.  I guess I just assumed that I had sent out a message to the universe, a message that I was requiring chocolate, and a fancy, heaven-sent Toblerone had simply materialized right there in my mail slot.

That is, until Che’ passed me in the hallway later and said “Hey, did you like your Toblerone?”

Oh, shit.

“That was you?” I asked.  “Geez, thanks.  I really liked it. ”

Che’:  “Well, I happened to overhear you and your office mate discussing your impending desire for chocolaty goodness.” (He actually talked like this)

I say:  “Toblerone, eh?  Never had one before.”

<This is where Che’ is aghast, and begins citing the best chocolate sources on the planet.  Somewhere between Switzerland and Belgium, I start thinking about last night’s Survivor…>

The next day, Che’ pokes his head into my office and informs me that he has baked his famous Triple Chocolate Cheesecake for me the night before.  Said cheesecake is currently in the office kitchenette.

Oh, double shit.

I thank him, and say “Oh, well I hope you don’t mind if I share it with the whole floor…I can’t eat a whole cheesecake by myself.”  (Note:  I probably could, if I wanted to.  This is not the point.)

Che’ looks a little hurt. 

Later he overhears my office talking about the hit movie (that just came out at the time) Office Space.

I get an e-mail a couple of days later from Che’.  It informs me that he “has viewed my recommendation of the film Office Space and he found many comparable situations between our office and the fictional Initech.”  He then proceeds to list who in Office Space would be in our office.  I, for example, am the Jennifer Aniston character.  He, of course, is Ron Livingston.

You know, the couple.

I laugh in my e-mail (lol) and say, “funny, I never would have made that connection.”

Over the next month or so, Che’ invites me to movies, outings, and even the Kennedy Center for a New Year’s Eve symphony.  Dammit.  I am forced to tell him that, while flattering, I just don’t want to date him.

Che’ is suddenly offended.  “Why?” he asks. 

I am tempted to blame the Comic Book Guy resemblance.  Instead I take the high road, and list our differences that I have picked up on over the months.

“Che’,” I say.  “You hate the military.  I was in the Marines.  You hate cats.  I don’t care much for dogs.  You get in to work around noon.  I get in about six AM.  Do you see where this is going, Che’?”

<insert tumbleweed>

Thankfully, I am moved offsite to a hellish project, but it is a welcome break from Che’.  I am offsite for five months.  At no time during this five months do I see Che’.  Che’ does not cross my mind.  I am Che’ free.

Then the project has a budget cut.  I am getting sent back to the office.  Yet I don’t think about the implications of this until I see Che’ in the hallway.  Then the memory of the Triple Cheesecake enters my mind, and I can only hope that he has found another female to hound.

No such luck.  A couple hours later, Che’ is in my office.  I no longer have an office mate, so he is free to launch into his diatribe.  He says:

“I know that you said we shouldn’t date because it would never work.  But I’ve been thinking about you a lot.  I look at your website, and I see you and your friends on there, and I feel sad that I am not a part of your life…”

Ugh, oh, the creepiness.

“…and I want to change that.  <Insert corny lines about him changing himself here>  So, with your permission, I would like to begin courting you.”

If I had been sipping a beverage, this is the point where the beverage would come splattering out with the Flllllllllpppppppp sound.  Uh, courting?  Did I come back to work in a different century? 

I politely tell him “hell, no.”  Che’ gives me a wistful look and slowly leaves the office, looking back at me from ‘neath those Coke-bottles and tells me “We will be together.  One day.”

Then I went to my manager and told him that if for some reason I didn’t come into work for a couple days in a row in the near future, to please check all drainage ditches and that Che’ did it. 

And that is the story of the Cheesecake Stalker.

 

Spread the Wealth

Rain. 

The front range of southern Colorado has been getting doused with rain.  For a couple of weeks now, maybe more, it’s been humid in a place that is generally dry.  I’m not complaining.  I think that it’s great.  It lessens the chance of wildfires and keeps things green.  I won’t even complain about the mushrooms dotting my front yard.  They are everywhere.  Last night, (and the night before…and the night before) we woke up to a loud, lightning-filled thunderstorm that seemed to last for hours. 

My home state, Montana, is having a bad wildfire year.  I’d like to go back and visit this fall, but I don’t want to while it’s smoky and dry and hot.  Idaho is also having a bad fire year.

 Then you look at all the places in the world where it floods.  Right now in India and Bangladesh, there are tens of millions of people displaced by terrible flooding.  A little bit closer to home, in Texas and Oklahoma, there has been a lot of flooding too.  Then, of course, there are many places in the world where there is no water at all.   

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could spread the rain around a bit? 

 

Cougar

We had a Teddy Emergency this evening.

Teddy was left behind.

I have vivid memories of relying solely on “Cougar” during my early youth.  Cougar, a brown stuffed kitty cat, had been my best friend since before I can remember anything.  However, I do remember the terror of losing Cougar. 

Artist rendition of Cougar, newly loved

There were many close calls; times where the A&W lady would chase our car through the parking lot shouting “You forgot this!”  The tires would screech and my mom would thank the lady (it was always a lady) for saving Cougar.  Cougar left at my cousin’s house.  Cougar accidentally under the couch.  Cougar on long vacations to Wisconsin, nearly left at Grandma’s and mistaken for a dishrag.  My mother was vigilant about making sure Cougar was safe and remembered.   

Parents know that if anything ever happens to the Comfort Object, darkness and torment await.

I used to slowly pull the threads that made up Cougar’s fur out, bit by bit.  I chewed on Cougar’s nose.  Cougar’s tail was also fun to use as a handle.  One day, much to my dismay, Cougar’s head came off.

My mother attempted resuscitation, but Cougar’s body was unsalvageable.  The tail was still intact (mostly) so she sewed it directly to Cougar’s head.  She also noticed that Cougar’s eyes, nose and mouth were long gone (probably picked away) and took it upon herself to recreate these vital items with thread.   

 

Artist rendition of Cougar, later in life

One day, I can’t remember exactly when (only the feeling) Cougar disappeared.  It is a mystery, the fate of Cougar.  My dad always insisted that my mom hid Cougar in order to surprise me with him when I became an adult.  I know this can’t be true, my mom would never suppress Cougar.  Cougar just was no more.  I always wondered what could have happened to Cougar.  The possibilities were horrifying!  I might have blocked them out.  Someday, when I end up on a therapist’s couch, Cougar will end up being discussed in great detail and perhaps I will remember what I did.  Did I leave him in the neighbors yard?  Goodness no!  The neighbors yard was so overgrown that cars and dinosaur bones could have been in there.  Did I leave Cougar at the A&W again?  Tragically, I will never know.     

This may be why I have three identical teddy bears for my son.  Teddy, Teddy, and Teddy.  The Teddy triplets are rotated, washed, and stored carefully out of direct sunlight.  I understand the fear of losing Teddy.  This may be a bit extreme, and part of the reason Iraq hates us, but I am scarred from experience and am determined to keep Teddy around until AJ grows out of his Comfort Object naturally. 

We also avoid A&W like the plague.