PlazaJen: Passion Knit

I swear, I blogged about this a while back. But I've searched my archives (even using an external search tool), and nothing shows up. (If you remember reading it, tell me! I'd hate to turn this into the Alzheimer Files.) So, here goes, another 8-Track Flashback!

Back in the day - 1976 - when the family moved onto the farm, and we built our dome home, my dad was extremely eco-friendly. We were getting Back to Nature. We had running water, and electricity, and a two-party-line phone (of course I listened in, once, and got totally busted by my mother). That phone, as I recall, could kill a fellow. Back then, phones were made of lead, or something equally weighty, and our phone was mounted on the wall, complete with the 20-foot tangled cord and the finger-button dialers, that whirred and clicked as you rotated it over to the stopping mechanism and it returned to its original position. Anyway, where I was going with this is that we were pretty rustic. In that we had no indoor toilet. We had an outhouse. Allow me to educate you a bit in the construction of outhouses, as I assume most of you were raised with flushing toilets. Outhouses are best when they're a bit of a distance from the house. Ours had a path that led to it, lined with wood (slippery as shit when wet), and no rail - so if you slipped to the right on your voyage out, you could ostensibly end up 30 feet down in a ravine. Things you consider in the dark of night, in the winter. You truly become skilled at determining how badly you actually have to go.

Anyway, as a kid, I went everywhere with my dad. I remember long, boring trips to the hardware store, where I would gaze around and stare at all the uninteresting things, waiting, waiting, waiting. I was too young to be left to my own devices in the VW bus, or in the store, really, so I trailed along behind him, and I didn't interrupt or ask many questions, because he was always really focused on the job at hand. So all of these trips are one giant blur of DULL in my memory, except for one.

We turned down the aisle that held all of the bathroom accoutrements, stopping in front of an expansive display of toilet seats. My father looked down at me, and said, "You pick it out." I was transfixed. And a little disbelieving. I looked up at him, my face clearly saying, "Really?" He nodded. "You pick out our toilet seat!" Finally, a decision, an option, a choice, and not just any choice, but one that we would live with for the foreseeable future. Keep in mind, I was 8? So my taste was not yet formed into the refined, persnickety influence that tries to govern me today.

I gazed up at the three rows of seats. Mostly white, some wooden, nothing really stood out until my eyes landed upon It. I pointed at The One. It was fabulous. Absolutely tremendous. And exactly what you'd get if you asked an eight-year-old to design your outhouse. I remember he looked at me sideways, the way he did when he was still figuring out what to say, what to do. "Really?" he said. "Yes!" I exclaimed. Transfixed. Hypnotized. By what was the most fabulous toilet seat in the entire line-up.

It was completely drenched in Cherry Red paint.

On the lid, in black, there was a tree in the lower right. With a branch extending out, and a hole in the tree, with two yellow eyes looking out. Foreshadowing! Simply a portent of things to come. Because, then, you lifted the lid, and you were greeted by an enormous 1970's owl, in thick black lines, covering the entire inside of the lid, WINKING AT YOU.

He looked at me, and saw my excitement. My abject love of the bright red toilet seat with the communicative owl. "OK," he said. We bought it and took it home.

I think my mother was a little taken aback, and I remember overhearing something to the effect of "What? This? Really?" (Yes, I got a lot of my style tutelage at her hands, and for all her faults, I'll give her that - she has got style, and she probably realized that day she needed to Start Earlier.) I puffed out a little when I heard my father say, "I told Jennifer she could pick it out." Why yes he did. Jennifer did pick it. Picked out a WINNER. And out to the outhouse it went. Many a cold night, I visited my owl buddy. I remember when a grade-school boyfriend gave me a gold ring, with a tree on it, and then a few days later, asked for it back. I lied, and told him I'd lost it, angered that he no longer wanted to be my boyfriend. I looked at that owl as I tossed the ring through the hole that night. Winking, knowingly. Agreeing that he was a schmuck.

We eventually tore down the dome home, and put in toilets and marble floors and vaulted ceilings and the house became something of a palace, a far cry from its dome home footings, poured over the original concrete. The outhouse, too, was torn down, the path fell away, and the people who bought the farm, who own this chunk of my past, have no idea of the comedy and drama, the style (and lack thereof) that was rooted and grown, interwoven and cemented, in my mind, in my life, in my memories. In addition to the toilet seat itself, my most cherished part of that memory is that my father told my mother we were keeping it. Because I had chosen it. It's why I weep every time I watch Little Miss Sunshine. We all have a little Olive in us, and we all want to be loved for exactly who we are. Questionable taste and all.

P.S. I've looked everywhere for a photo of this toilet seat. I saw one on eBay a while back (wrong color, but same visual), and had no luck today finding it. As they say, they just don't make 'em like they used to....

Labels: 8-track flashback

James just mentioned in an email that he'd finished teaching his class to diagram sentences, and had informed his students Just! How! Much! his wife loved doing that in school.

It made me laugh, but I also felt a crazy surge inside me. There was probably a strange gleam in my eye, to boot. Because, seriously, I L-O-V-E-D to diagram sentences. I can still remember my English teacher dividing us into teams and sending us up in pairs, to different sides of the room (chalkboards on both sides) to speed-duel the process of diagramming sentences. Seriously, I smoked at the task, probably because I was such a reader, and English was my favorite subject. Add my competitive spirit to the mix, and diagramming sentences was my ultimate competition. My dream would have been to just diagram sentences for the entire hour, illustrating my speed & accuracy. This might account for why I didn't really have that many friends in high school... hm. SuperNerd! I can dissect sentences with a single swipe of chalk!

Now, could I do it with the same speed and accuracy today? Probably not. But just the notion of drawing that straight line with the intersecting short line elicits such a rush.

There's just no telling what triggers a person has, I tell ya. Mine have long since been replaced with yarn, but the memory of what once was still makes my senses stir..... I can almost smell the chalk. The worst was when you'd get going so fast the chalk would snap under your fingers and you'd be scritching the last bits of the sentence out while trying not to drag your fingernails on the board.... shudder.

Ooo, look at this quote! I keep good company! Unless she's being ironic and depressing. But I choose not to go with that one.

"I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences."

— Gertrude Stein

Labels: 8-track flashback

There are very few childhood memories that I have that aren't somehow linked, inextricably, to either of my parents. I think the reason is that most of the memories are split between the fact they were actually there & involved, or because I was fearful/excited/triumphant, awaiting their reaction to what I had done. We were enmeshed, sometimes good, sometimes bad.

This one has nothing to do with them whatsoever. Well, in a roundabout way, but so much less than the usual dosing.

The school organized swimming lessons each summer, and we would board a big yellow bus in the morning, to be transported the 11 miles or so to the next, larger, town that had an actual swimming pool. I love water, I love to swim, say what you will about horoscope signs (Cancer!), I've always adored a pool. Wanted one my whole life, and of course it took being much older to even comprehend that pools aren't "magic", they don't clean themselves, adjust their chemicals automatically, BLAH BLAH BLAH. The beauty of swimming lessons, when I was 8, was a morning of instruction, followed by an afternoon of exhilarating play, with TIMED BREAKS FOR SNACKS. God, the concession stand at the pool was the greatest. Push-ups, Fun Dip and those tubes of frozen syrup (that you tore the corner off with your teeth) are the ones that float to the top of my memory pile. Then the whistle would blow and those of us who had to ride the bus back to be collected by our parents would heed the yell of the chaperone, and off to the locker room we'd go, changing out of our suits if we felt like it - other times, just going with the towel-wrap, or throwing on shorts, for the bus ride.

You can see where this is going, can't you?

I would rather stay in a wet suit than put dry clothes on a wet body. And so I threw on my shorts, probably my t-shirt as well, and then tucked my flowered underpants into my towel and marched off to the bus. Where I sat down, in my middle-of-the-bus seat, and looked out the window. Suddenly, from the other side of the bus, through the windows, a commotion unfurled. Like a pair of underpants becoming unfolded. Suddenly, there was a pair of blue floral underwear being thrown about amongst the boys, still filing out from the pool and towards the bus. Underpants that looked extremely familiar. A quick check of my towel confirmed they were, indeed, my underpants. Icy horror filled my torso, starting at my stomach, and seeping out to my limbs, causing utter paralysis.

The shouts of "Jennifer's Underwear!" broke me loose from my frozen state. Some fellow girl swimmer had apparently identified them from seeing them on me that morning. Traitor! What to do? They were my underpants! We didn't have much money, it wasn't like they were disposable. A brief flash of my mother's disapproval vanished. I had the course of action within a fraction of a second: Utter Denial. Absolutely not my underpants. Never seen 'em. The boys wanted to play keep-away from me with them, which quickly lost its charm when I showed absolutely no interest in trying to get them. I recall one of them wore them on his head, which in retrospect (and 31 years of distance from THAT particular moment of horror) is hilarious - and made him look utterly stupid, but I had no choice but to stick with my plan. I stoically sat down, faced forward and composed my poker face of steel. Which I'm pretty sure was complemented by a beet-red face. Everyone knew they were mine, including me, but I refused to own them.

I didn't care if my mother would be mad - one of the few times in my childhood where my fear of her was eclipsed by my own decision. I didn't really care what I had to tell her, that they were lost, purloined by gnomes, whatever, I was simply not going to endure the mockery of my floral pantaloons. Ultimately, a "big kid" (someone in junior high) stepped in and took them from the kid wearing them like a flowery Rasta hat, and handed them back to me. I said nothing, (still on some level denying they were mine!) but eventually shoved them into the folds of my towel, my face showing, I'm sure, my pain and awkwardness with the situation. My drama with my mother avoided; my drama with my peers forever branded on my memory.

I look back and am not surprised the boys threw my underwear around, having a heyday and reveling in the chance to tease and torture. They'd have done the same thing if I was their sister - but of course with no siblings of my own, I had no frame of reference, except to feel horribly tortured. That said, I also remember the sense of kindness and lack of judgment the big kid (a girl) had when she retrieved my undies, how she had had enough of their antics and stepped in firmly to end it and restore some dignity (or at least my underpants) to me. I was always grateful, even though I couldn't express it at the time - probably because I was trying too hard not to cry!

It's funny how things that happened over 30 years ago can feel as live and real and palpable as if they happened yesterday. Our brain's filing system is extraordinary! And obviously better than hiding yer underpants in a towel.

Labels: 8-track flashback

I could have sworn I'd written this little gem up back when I was rolling through the hilarity of small-town gradeschool. I've searched Blogger repeatedly to no avail. So here goes, and my apologies if I repeat myself.

Scene: Third grade. New school. Child of hippies, no television set, livin' a dome home on 121 acres that were home to two other hippie families. Giant communal garden. I wore a lot of corduroy. I think you can understand that even though it was only third grade? I was not destined to be embraced by the small conservative burg of northern Iowa, and indeed, I would embark on the path of class president (bossy), class treasurer (who loves money? Me!), Yearbook and Drama (I carry those skills with me to this day.) The prom queen queue was already full. Anyway, back to third grade. I had spent the previous summer eating Cheerios for breakfast. Every day. Because Cheerios, at the time, was doing a promotion. I'm sure a lot of other companies had jumped on the patriotic bandwagon, since it was 1976, however, I lived in the boonies and didn't have a tv, and was too busy reading The Classics. All I knew was that my mainstay cereal was suddenly putting decals in the box, and I got the brilliant idea to start affixing them to my kelly green lunchbox. I probably had ten long skinny stickers proclaiming "Spirit of 76!" "Bicentennial!" with flag colors all over my lunch box. (My father surely had to see it as some form of jingoism, but thankfully he must have also seen my enraptured excitement at the decoration process, and he let me continue.)
Many a lunch traveled to school, and each day I walked home from the bus down our 1/2 mile lane, swinging my bright green lunch box, admiring my handiwork and embellishment.
Then. One day came, when alarms sounded, and we looked at our teacher's face. Immediately, we knew something was wrong. Our principal came running door-to-door and had a hurried conversation with each teacher. Our classroom was on the third floor, so he was a little out of breath, but all of us saw the stricken look on his face. And our teacher's. He then turned to the class and said, "There's a bomb in the school. I want everyone OUT." Well,hi. We all went into a flippin' panic, and jumped out of our desks, and people (big people, adults) were shouting at us to get in line and evacuate, and I remember my little legs just shaking like they were about to collapse. We grabbed whatever bookbag we had in our desk, exited the building, they moved us all way away from the school, just in case it exploded and the rubble blast took out the normal bus lane, and we were trucked home, about two hours earlier than normal.

Everyone was scared, I remember a couple of boys hoping the school would, indeed, blow up because then we wouldn't have to go to school tomorrow. I was numb, not understanding why someone would want to do this, and then as I got off the bus, it hit me: my lunchbox was still in the classroom. My prized, prized lunchbox. And I bawled the whole way down my gravel lane, and surprised the hell out of my father, who was working in his woodworking studio. "Jennifer! Why are you home so early? What's the matter? What's going on?" And I told him, while snuffling and alternately wiping my nose and my tears.... there was a bomb in the school, and I LEFT MY LUNCHBOX and it's going to BLOW UP. I saw my little lunchbox in pieces in my imagination, burn marks around my decals.

God love my father, but he always approached emotional situations with me like I was 32 and could be completely reasoned with. "Jennifer. It's a lunchbox. It's not that big of a deal." Being an adult, he focused on perhaps the bigger issue: a bomb blowing up our school.

Not me! HI! WHAT PART OF THE WAILING right now tells you it's not a big deal? However his words were usually my cue to suck it up and get it together, and do what I normally did, which was retire to my room and sob into a pillow until I got it all out. My lunchbox. Poor poor lunchbox that had spent its entire summer getting decorated, waiting patiently for another box of cheerios to give up its prize.
Of course the mystery was solved by early evening, as parents all around town received phonecalls informing them that it had been a prank, by a high schooler, who was trying to get out of a test he hadn't studied for, and thought that a bomb scare at the gradeschool would create enough of an uproar and everyone would go home early. He was correct, but he - like so many of us that age - neglected to think through the back end, in which he was caught and in a heapload of trouble.

We returned to school the next day, and there sat my lunchbox on the shelf, exactly where I left it. Intact, every glossy sticker unharmed and in place. I was so relieved!

The only other notable thing that happened that school year (beyond the Snow Queen thing)(oh, and Jeff running away & being chased by the principal in his truck) was that someone brought in a chrysalis, and we watched it daily to see the pale milky green thin and the bright orange monarch wings start to appear, and our teacher told us to make sure to let everyone know when it was opening, so we could all watch this transformation (and learn! it's science!)....and some doofus named Scott noticed the first break in the chrysalis, and watched as the butterfly extricated itself completely, and THEN raised his hand and told the teacher that the butterfly was out and he'd watched the whole thing. I was SO MAD, because I so desperately wanted to see the unfurling, the process, the damp wings being waved for the first time.

I think it's fair to say that I can pretty much trace my desire to punch another person in the face straight back to that moment. What the hell, I should've clocked him upside the head with my Excellent Lunchbox.

Labels: 8-track flashback, life

The lunch conversation today swirled towards fashion and how much things have changed over the years - back in OUR day, wearing jelly bracelets meant you were cool like Madonna or Cyndi Lauper, not indicating what you would or wouldn't do with a guy. Friendship pins. Those ribbon-braided metal barrettes, with the long ribbons hanging down from one end. Satin jackets. (Oh, I was the only one at the table with that fad. But what a fad it was, and how we all had to get a different color, but the only one I found was a pale gold, and it had to suffice. I so longed for a bright pink or blue one...) One person would go to garage sales & buy items with the logo (e.g., the "Guess" tag) and her mom would sew them on her jeans. Basically, growing up when I did, we didn't have excessive fashion tastes or needs until 6th grade. We didn't have much money, and I recalled my first real Valentine's Day of grade school (Third grade. Also the year of the Lunchbox Debacle (I'll bring you that tomorrow!), and the year preceding the Snow Queen Drama.) We spent time decorating our boxes/receptacles, and the night before our big party day, there was a realization that nobody had bought any valentines for me to hand out. My mother looked at me and told me I could MAKE them. Well, I've been crafty my entire life, and so I got out a yellow legal pad, and started cutting out hearts. I had my list of schoolmates, and I printed their names on them and said "Happy Valentine's Day" and then signed my name. Eventually, I ran out of paper. So I had to start using the scraps, and I had some valentines that were probably no larger than a matchbook. (I did, however, write on EVERY SINGLE ONE.) I remember staying up past my bedtime to get this done (see? the groundwork for last-minute scrambling was set in the formative years!) and it was only after everyone started putting their store-bought, glossy, colorful valentines into everyone's boxes that I began to second-guess myself. And I felt less-than. Surprisingly, all the shame and dread came from within. Nobody teased me, and in fact, I remember my classmate Steven saying, "Jennifer? Did I get a valentine from you?" And I told him to look again....with a sick feeling in my stomach, because his name began with "W",and I had done my yellow hearts-with-green-lines greetings in alphabetical order. So as time had progressed, and my paper supply dwindled, those folks towards the end of the alphabet got smaller and smaller and smaller pieces of paper. He found his heart, so tiny, with the words curling up around the angled side of it, so it could all fit, and my name on the back, and he held it up and read it and seemed to like it - if only because it was different from all the others.

I remember walking home from the bus, with all my store-bought valentines in my aluminum-foil-covered box, and felt the feeling that would become so familiar in my lifetime: You don't fit in. You're not like us. You don't do things our way. And even in my shame, and the negative things that have happened to me because no, I didn't fit in, or I tried to find a different way to do something, I never stopped being that person. I worked hard on those little hearts, and put my heart into making sure everyone had one from me. Sometimes people want us to be just like them, or do things their way, the storebought valentines and the sameness, because it's comforting, familiar - or because it's all they themselves can do. We are all bound by our own limitations and resources, and even circumstances. How we accept each other - and ultimately, ourselves, is what's really important.

Labels: 8-track flashback, life

Holy Moses. I came back to my desk from a meeting, and my iTunes had continued toodling along through my music and had landed on "Kenny Loggins: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow." I do not tell you this to elevate my indie cool. (I have indie cool, dammit. It cannot be eroded by 80's pop stars because I am THAT Teflon about it. I even have some Emo and I'm not gonna SHARE if you make fun of me.)
Anyway.
I got back JUST in time to hear "This Is It", and it was like all my adult problems were gone. I was only 11 when that song came out (1979), and I probably heard it a hundred times on the school bus.

Did you KNOW that Kenny Loggins sang that song about getting back to Pooh Corner? It's enough to make a grown woman weep. I will admit, it was all I could do not to sing along to Every! Single! Song! The album's only halfway through folks, it could still happen. (However, even I recognize the damage to Emo and Indie Cool if I do this. Mortar shells and napalm would do less damage.)

This afternoon ranks right up there with the Michael McDonald day. Yah Mo. I'm Alright. Don't nobody worry about me. I'll put some Amy Winehouse on in a minute and everyone can exhale and put away the Googling for Nervous Hospitals....but let me know if you find one that's stuck in the 80's.

Labels: 8-track flashback

But I just read an article on how A-B is redesigning all of the Michelob bottles to have a teardrop shape -- And I had an intense craving for a Mich Light. That was the beer we only could afford around payday back in college. The beer that used Phil Collins singing in the commercials, and the night belonged to Michelob. What a flashback.
(Ha! I just remember a note my dad left me on my apartment door my senior year, when he did a surprise visit & I wasn't home. "I was here. Love you, Dad. Michelob Light?" Because he could see the bottles in the kitchen through the apartment window. Heh. )

I want to watch Miami Vice and drink a six pack and then go to the gas station for a really cheap burrito and watch Friday Night Videos. God, how times have changed.

Staying classy in Kansas City. TGIF. Still coughing. Still not getting enough sleep. Did I mention I'm glad it's Friday?

Labels: 8-track flashback