"Free Launch"

At some point in my twenties, my desire to have children became incontrovertible.

Uh-HUH. I wanted kids. Fo' sho'.

This certainty necessitated a messy break-up with my 46-year-old vasectomized boyfriend of six years. I'm sorry, Jack. You had not the sperm I needed. Plus, you were kind of emotionally shattered and full of scary landmines. In all, it was a healthy escape, that break-up spurred on by my insistent femme-eggs.

This certainty was born out of an instinctive feeling that having kids would bring me a life where I might romp with the wee ones--in slow motion--through Central Park, helping their little Hanna Andersson-clad bodies to launch kites into the air. We would fly kites. Then we would eat Italian ices before tripping over to FAO Schwartz, where we'd empty my teeming wallet on the purchase of a 7-foot stuffed giraffe.

Oh, yes. I wanted kids for the fun, the joy, the carefree adventures we'd have together.

After a few years of anguish, I got really lucky and had a couple.



Well, hardee-damn-harhar on my Vaseline-lensed visions of parenthood.

Indeed, as has been well documented in this space previously, life with kids is often more about the suck than the joy.

Sure, sometimes we get out kites. Pretty much, the kids get all excited, and then they get impatient during the 8 minutes it takes to untangle the kite string. Their repeated "Is it ready yet?" questions quickly become annoying. After that, the kite finally ready to go, the kids try running, string in hand, and then they trip and get bloody knees, or they can't run fast enough to ever get the too-big kite to fly, or the kite insists on diving straight to the ground time and again until it noses directly into some asphalt and splinters, or there's not enough wind, or, as you can see, some suck overtakes any slow-motioned vision of joy.

Other times, we go to the park, and often it's fun and all, but equally often, there are issues of strings (of snot) and bloody knees and wind and splintering and hunger and sand in the eyes that send us all trooping back home, quick-step, not at all in sun-dappled slow motion.

On average, parenthood seems to run about one (unexpectedly) terrific kid outing for every two stressful, whining, blister-ridden trips to the playground.

Parenthood, therefore, has proven to be about one-third "we're havin' a ball" and two-thirds "are they asleep yet?"

Despite this reality,

however,

there have been surprising gratifications, ones I never imagined back in my empty-womb days.

Specifically, an unforeseen benefit of spewing out and then raising my kids has been the chance to re-process my own childhood from an adult vantage point. While my kids are having different experiences than I did, there is enough overlap that I can watch my daughter stepping into a moment, gauge her reaction, and then fly back through time to a similar day when I was eight, remembering my own reactions. I actually get to be analytical about experiences that just "were" when I was living through them myself. They give me new reflections of my own junk.

And, really, what is having kids all about, if not giving me a chance to think more about myself and how it all comes back to me?

Honestly, though, look at this series of pictures:

Jocelyn, first day of kindergarten, 1972
MOOD: Tentative


Girl, first day of kindergarten, 2005
MOOD: "Is there a word for both excited and nervous at the same time?"


Groom, first day of kindergarten, 1976
MOOD: Brash


Niblet, first day of kindergarten, 2008 (Girl contemplates shoving him to the floor by the 5th grade lockers)
MOOD: Mock Brash



Der Wee Niblet, even without formal education, uses body language to indicate he realizes all this hue and cry may ultimately signify nothing.

-------------------

The photos have it.

We are all uncannily resonating with each other. She is me, and I is her, and he is him, and we is a jigsaw that makes an us.

I look at these photos and have a revelation: all this shizz is just going to keep happening, inn't? In 2028, some other five-year-old is going to get on a bus, right?

And if that five-year-old is my grandchild, I'll look at her and see my grandmother's smile on her anxious face. Later, when she takes up gymnastics, I'll remember how her mother, my daughter, liked to do a cartwheel to approach the kicking of a soccer ball; and how I, in junior high, loved doing leaps in gym class, fully fleshing out the required navy blue polyester shorts in my arcs through the air; and how my mom, in her own navy blue polyester shorts, used to turn somersaults down the hallway lined with the green shag carpet; and how her mom used to dance in the kitchen on the hot days when she would wipe down the walls to cool down the house; and how her mom used to do a handstand in the lake when only the ladies were looking;

and how each of us will echo the other

until the whole place goes black.

"She Couldn't Pour Water Out of a Boot If The Instructions Were on the Heel"















A few weeks ago, I was driving a van load of kids towards sweet treats. In addition to massaging the New York Times crossword puzzle, pushing back my cuticles, and pouring Malbec down my gullet, this is what I do. I drive the small people. Towards the ice cream.

Right around the Lake Street exit off the highway, 8-year-old Girl-o-mine advised me, "Mom, don't close the windows right now with your magical driver's seat electronic wizardry; I have my fingers hanging out one of them."

Triggered thusly back into the annals of his five vast years of memory, Niblet then chimed in with a dramatic tale of near finger-loss eons ago when he was a mere boy of four, recounting a story that gisted, "One time I had my hand in the window, and then the window started going up, and then I pulled my hand out really fast, and for a minute it seemed like my hand was going to get caught, but then it didn't."

At this point, Brain Trust Neighbor Child, age 6 and strapped securely into the seat next to Niblet (but loosely enough to draw mind-renewing breaf into her lungs), dislodged her finger from her nostril long enough to ask, "So, did one of your hands get chopped off?"

She threw out her query while staring directly at the live, animated version of this clearly double-pawed popsicle sucker:



Up front, suddenly entertaining the idea of cranking up every gadzookian window in the van--especially if Brain Trust's paw wandered near one--I rolled my eyes and pictured this girl's future as a visual merchandiser at The Gap, should all expectations be exceeded.

Yea, Fluffernutter. You got it. Ever since that fateful day, we've had to call the lad Stumpy. He used to be a regular General Grievous, but now, since the amputation, well, he's been relegated to a life of single-light-saber battle.

Fortunately, Niblet piped up with a kinder explanation, "No, look, Brain Trust Girl, I have all ten fingers, and they still wiggle. See me right here next to you with two hands?"

She nodded slowly, still a bit bewildered, and reinserted her finger into the neglected nostril.

“Jesu, Joy of Jocelyn's Retiring”

On the surface, Johann Sebastian Bach was just another poncy wig-wearing composer. But beneath the wig lurked something more menacing: the ability to derail promising futures.

And perhaps lice.

If he’d been born even a year sooner or later, I might actually have a high school degree today, and a high school degree, as popular lore would have it, can open doors and transform income potential. With that degree tucked into my back pocket, I could currently be enjoying a high-paying professional career in a positive work environment, leaning on the water cooler and swapping stories about landing the Steverson Account, signing collective Hallmark cards to celebrate birthdays, all while surrounded by intelligent, supportive colleagues.

However, Bach had another idea when he somersaulted from his mother's loins in 1685, an event that, three hundred years later, put a crimp in my degree-seeking style. That harpsichord-plinking mucker-upper.

It rolled like this:

1985 was the year I was to graduate from high school. 1985 was also the year that marked the tricentennial of Bach’s birth. The confluence of these events was akin to Thomas Edison’s invention of the light bulb and the subsequent birth of a guy named Caleb Powers about 40 weeks after a city-wide blackout 70 years after that invention. In both cases, one thing happened, and later another thing happened, and only the canniest observer could possibly link the two. My head is kind of cannish, for sure--like a Campbell’s soup can; it’s all roundy and full of sloshing liquid and on occasion goes crackers. I canny.

So that’s how I know Bach made me not graduate. My connectual and linking abilities sussed it out. See, to commemorate it being 300 years since Bach popped out, my dad decided, in 1985, to take his college choir on a tour of Europe, where they would travel from country to country, performing in various cathedrals for those citizens who had long wanted to hear Montana and Wyoming cowboy kids warble chamber music.

As long as my dad was taking a crew of teens through France, England, Germany (East and West), Austria and Czechoslovakia, and there was a “the more bodies, the cheaper the price” deal in place with the tour company, my mom decided to go along and sing as part of the choir. What, then, would be the hardship of a couple more tag-alongs, like my sister and me? (alternate reading to satisfy the wrong, plain wrong, hyper-grammar correctors in the audience: "...like my sister and I?")

The tour would depart in May and last for almost three weeks. We would see towers and castles and churches and cheeses and beer gardens and gazebos and tombstones. We could literally weep over Bach’s crumbled corpse. (note to my 18-year-old self: read up a little on that dude, so you care a bit more genuinely about him than you do the lads loitering in each city’s central square, smoking and sporting attractive Euro-trashy Flock of Seagulls’ hairdos)


(Fer Christ. Look: a statue. In a Europe place.)

The plan was set. The choir and the Jocelyn were ready to rock the Continent.

Except.

I happened to be attending this diploma-granting institution named High School. It was a small-minded place with unreasonable policies, like don’t set stuff on fire or urinate on the books or feel happy or miss more than 20 days of school each semester. As it turns out, I had missed four days already, before Plan Europe evolved:

I had missed a morning in my role as president of the AFS Club (American Field Service—an international student exchange organization; I had lived in Denmark with a family the previous summer thanks to this program) to set up an all-school assembly. I had missed two days while attending speech meets out of town. I had missed a fourth day for a National Honor Society activity. I was clearly a subversive.

These four absences plus the 17 days I wanted to take off to tour Europe with the choir—well, I’d had enough college algebra (an honors course all the anarchists enrolled in) by that point to know it all added up to something, like, more than 20.

Thus, I found myself on the horns of a dilemma.

My family’s first recourse was to petition the school board and see if an accommodation to 21 days could be made for me, noting that my “extra” absences had been school-related. After not-much deliberation, though, the board announced its decision, which read, “If we make an exception in this case, we will then have to make an allowance for any kid who wants to go to Vegas for two weeks with his parents. Petition denied.”

The upside of this decision was that it peeved my parents. They came around to a position I’d long held myself: screw the school.

Trying to find a different avenue, my mom called the college (1-800-COLLEGE) I was planning to attend that upcoming fall. Once she explained the situation and asked, “So, hypothetically, if Jocelyn were to not graduate from high school, could she still show up and do a significant amount of underage drinking on your campus in September?”

The college’s response was, “At our institution, we would give credit for a student going on a trip like the one your husband is leading. We would not penalize that student. Yes. She can drop out and still come vomit in our arboretum this Fall.”

Holy Jody Foster, but hadn’t I chosen the right college? I squealed with delight and began packing my bag for Europe.

It was a great trip. Our tour group had a bus driver named Animal, like the Muppet. We had a tour guide named Michael, he of too much cologne and calculated charm.


(The line-up: my dad; Hugo Boss-Scented Michael; Totally-Rad Jocelyn; Gold-Chain Sporting Animal; and a Wyoming Lass named Lori [back in high school, in what no-doubt remains a seminal life moment, she sang "Desperado" to her senior class at their prom])

Ultimately, getting out of high school for last month was a dream. Getting out of high school to drive around Europe was a gas. Getting out of the plodding graduation ceremony of my high school class seemed a pip…

until I attended it, alone, after returning from the trip. I sat by myself, in the highest row of seats in the huge public arena (where I’d rocked out not only to Rush but also to Black Sabbath fronted by—yea, baby—Ronnie James Dio), and I felt,

well,

apart and alone.

I felt sad and disconnected from something that was supposed to mean something.


For three minutes.

Then I realized I was wearing a skirt I’d bought in London and that feeling apart and alone one last time during my high school years was fitting.

As it turned out, my personal graduation--way up high in the rafters there, with the ink still wet on my passport (cheap Eastern European stuff never did dry)--more accurately reflected what high school had been than any formal ceremony ever could have. As I sat there, listening to the tolling of my classmates' names, it was right that I viewed the pomp and circumstance from a distance, the physical space signifying an emotional one I'd felt for years.

Certainly, I had moments of melancholy as I sat in the upper tier that night (Row ZZ--Top!). But burgeoning underneath my disaffection was a liberating sense of glee as I realized that,

quite gloriously,

I'd already moved on.

"Wherein Jamie Lynn Spears Breaks My Bank"



Every time they want an increase in their allowance, the kids pull this kind of emotional blackmail.

Niblet's all, "But I'm scawwed at night and need someone to sleep wif me."

Damn that Zoey 101 episode the kids watched, where the dorm was haunted by a malicious and creeping slimy green mist. Niblet knew there was no way the show-making people could have pretend made that kind of ooze. Clearly, it was real, and, therefore, such a thing could be spritzing around and lurking under his vewwy own bed.

He proved the legitimacy of his fear by waking up, crying, four times the other night, with a final tally of 3 hours of wakefulness between 2 and 5 a.m. (fellow passengers on this tearful journey: long-suffering Ma and Pa). Finally, after a big fight, he gave his pappy a firm embrace in the bed, and they slept in a sweaty headlock until the sun finished rising. During this time, the mother figure crept off to the guest room, where she wound herself in a fleece blanket and a smidgeon of regret that she'd had a second child.

However. The next day, as the parents dipped their heads to the scalp into a steaming pot of coffee,

Girl was all, "Okay, brudder, I'll sleep with you tonight, so you don't have to be scared."

Thus, at 8:30 p.m., the two of them snuggled into his twin bed and slept, without waking, for 11 hours. And again with it tonight.



And now--*dramatic sigh*--since I'm rather a puddle on the floor when faced with their soft, seraphic dewiness, I just might have to up their allowances to one dollar AND twenty-five large American cents per week.

What a couple of manipulators.

"The Chicken/Egg Conundrum, Mammarily Speaking"

For me, the underlying question is this:


Was it Bristol Palin's massive Double Whammies that first attracted the Hockey Hunk who knocked her up?

Or did her sideboard of melons develop later, as a result of said knock-upage?

If so, and she was pancakeish in the chestal region pre-baby-baking, does this lack imply she might actually have other attributes that drew Hockey Hick into her panties?

Like, say, a remarkable personality? (I understand from her mother that Bristol is "strong and kind-hearted." All the best teen mothers are.)

Hmmm. I wouldn't bank on the personality. If it wasn't her boobies that snagged Hockey Honkey, it could only have been her thick, lustrous hair that turned his attention away from the puck.

...or the fact that she jumped out of her seat in the bleachers one time during a big pep ralley, holding a sign reading "Go, Trojans!" However, our Hockey Hero, a bit shakey in his literacy, read it as "No Trojans!"


At any rate, Bristols's got the healthy hooters now, ready to be rolled into the White House on a luggage cart and, one one fateful night, slapped on top of the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago's china plate during a State Dinner when she storms in late after a fight with Baby Daddy, hauling Hockey Hobbit Junior on her hip. She'll huff to the table, toss the kid to Nicholas Sarcozy, and lay her rack right on top of the lucky Trinidadian dignitary's lamb. For her, this body language will smack of frustration and defeat; for the wide-eyed PM of TT, however, it will smack of hope and joy and the dawn of renewed relations between his "country" and Bristol's.

Our country's future lies in our youth.




And the negotiating power of their oversized Rib Balloons.

"A Childhood Well-Lived"



At the end of a summer vacation, these are knees I trust.

They show evidence of

tumbles from the monkey bars

trips down the new brick path

scrounging in the garden for ripe plum tomatoes

falls off the scooter

bang-ups on the soccer field

and one,

random

poke with the evil end of a kids' tooth flosser,



obtained

during a fit of wild and rammy

bedtime dancing

to the national anthem of The Philippines.


I appreciate these knees. They have not lounged on the couch.

"Foreclosed Without Purchase"

It was the yapping that yanked me to consciousness.

Bad doggie woke me.

Curse the bad doggie.

But what doggie? All previous yappers had met their fate as Main Ingredient in Jocelyn’s Yippy Puppy Stew (oft-requested at local potlucks). So what was this odd barking noise that was killing my snooze?

New doggie.

Across the alley.

In the rental house.

Before I adulticized and became a homo-wner, I had no sense of the fear that the word “rental” could strike into a mid-life, quietly-contented heart. When I was a renter, during the Jagermeister Years, I never had the faintest notion that my lack of investment in a neighborhood, or in the quality of life of those around me, might be a bother. Parties were my right, as was coming and going at 2 a.m., car tires grinding in the gravel. Life was all just me and my peeps, doin’ our bang thang. Rhythm was a dancer, and my days were all about good vibrations. That my vibrations resonated sloppily onto anyone else in the two-block radius was so far beyond unthinkable that it took the light from Unthinkable two thousand years to reach my orbit.

But now. I live in my sweet place with sweet neighbors, and we like our family-life vibe and our quiet.

Not so much the renters. In the four years that we’ve lived next to the rental, we’ve witnessed the sad family with Abusive Daddy, he who hollered at his kids that they were “worthless f**ks”. We’ve had the Snaggle-Toothies, telemarketers who smoked out by the garbage can on Sundays (game day!) while dressed in full Vikings football regalia. We’ve had Baby Daddy, who broke up with his girlfriend right about the week their baby, Liberty, was born.

The latest, them responsible for Yapping Doggie Stewmeat, are five 18-year-old boys, all on the cusp of their first term at college.

The yappy wake-up happened about a month ago, on a day when the first of the lads was moving in to the house with the help of his father, sister, and BroBuddy. Trying not to be passive/aggressive, I straightforwardly and, in a psychologically-healthy manner, channeled my peevishness into a carefully-phrased note (“I don’t mean for us to get off on the wrong foot here, but it seems fair to let you know that your dog, while perfectly happy when you’re around, seems to get loudly and unrelentingly distressed in your absence…and if there’s anything we all can do to help with training or making your dog feel more comfortable during the long hours that you are out of the house, do let us know”), which I then tacked to their screen door with a bloody, cyanide-laced dart.

Twenty minutes later, First Boy and his posse—burping up eggs and waffles--pulled up, ready to continue to unload the moving truck. I was working in our garden, hugging the carrots a bit, which gave me a fine vantage point from which to watch the reading of the note, which spun them from bewilderment to incredulity to defensiveness. Right as they rounded the corner to “Geez, what a bitch” territory, I stood up, startling them all, and hied across the alley. I introduced myself as their new penpal and started gladhanding and gerrymandering and do-si-do-ing. Before you know it, we learned that First Lad, a thick-necked creature named Kyle, was entering the fire fighting program at the college where I teach. All his impending roommates, too, would be attending what I like to call my college.

Kyle looked distinctly nervous when I pointed out that I teach a range of required classes that would be hard for all five members of the rental to avoid during their college careers.

Quickly, he assured me that Yippy Doggie Stewmeat was only in town for the day and would be returning to his hometown that night. But, er, one of the other guys would, um, hem, haw, be bringing his dog in a few weeks, when the whole crew moved in.

Then he turned and ran.

After that day, we had two more weeks of blessed quiet, as the rental remained empty, save for Kyle’s futon, lava lamp, and keg-o-liter.

However.

The college term started this past Monday, which meant those far-thinking boys were here in town, in full occupancy, the weekend before.

When we were out of town.

Unable to enforce the idea of No Trespassing, You Frat-Boy Wannabe RatAsses.

Thus, when we pulled up Sunday evening, spent and craving noodles, it surprised us to see our tetherball pole leaning awkwardly as it did. Groom, wide-eyed, started wondering aloud what might have happened to it. But since I’ve taught college kids for 18 years, my gaze immediately shifted to the rental, which lay there stolidly, feigning innocence.

“Looks like someone might have backed a car into it,” I noted, loading and locking another cyanide dart. “Or maybe, it looks like about 200 pounds of simpleton decided to challenge 190 pounds of shirtless drunk to a match.”

Agitated, we unpacked the car and muttered about our intention of stomping over there and cracking some heads, realizing, of course, that tempered feelings find better reception. So I began mulling, trying to find the right forceful language that also struck a chord of diplomacy, so that the next 12 months wouldn’t lapse into an impasse and climate of increasing hostility, wherein our cars are urinated upon every night at 3 a.m. and our sunflowers mauled and scattered around the alley before the lads segue to synchronized beer dives into our compost bin.

As I fought down the pissed-off-ishness, my next door neighbor, Mike, spotted me in the yard. “God, I felt like such a jerk,” he called out.

“What? Why? What’re you talking about?”

As it turns out, neighbors on all sides had become alarmed when the crew of big boys entered our yard during the weekend and started whaling on our tetherball pole, whipping at the rope and ball with a flurry of profanities as they played game after game. Mike was finally the one to go up to the boys and ask, “Do you guys, uh, have permission to be here doing this?”

Why yes, he was told, Jocelyn had told them it was fine. They were in Jocelyn’s class at the college. We all were friends. They had my explicit permission.

While a part of me admired the chutzpah in this audacious response, the bigger part of me immediately began slicing up each lad into stew-meat-sized chunks and adding them to the simmering pot.

So I shifted my mulling into high gear. I lost sleep that night. In a riveting inner monologue that lasted from 1:14 a.m. ‘til 2:24 a.m., I called each renter’s mother and advised her that her son needed her, that she should come right away and stay for some weeks, that she should bring all of her Oprah’s book club selections along and read them aloud to her respective son while simultaneously ruffling his curly head and changing the sheets on his bed--sniffing them for any hint of a spew--that the neighbor lady across the alley would love to share recipes (and phone numbers) with her, ending the entire visit with a firm and public embrace between concerned neighbor lady and college-boy mother.

After a few days of stewing the boys in my mental Dutch oven, I decided to let it go. However, I’m on alert now, crouching at the windows and observing every late-night brake screeching and cigarette butt randomly tossed into the alley. With one small incident, they’ve made me The Crazy Lady With Calloused Patellas.

I give them time. My list of infringements will lengthen. I have the landlord’s phone number.

But best of all: even though I have no one named Kyle in any of my classes this semester, there’s always Spring term.

As it turns out, I can be a very—almost unreasonably, crazily—hard grader. And with all the f-bombs being dropped out in the yard over at the rental, I find myself constantly thinking “F” this and “F” that. “'F’ Kyle” is rather stuck in my head..

Quite elegantly, grades for Spring term will be posted just when the lease across the alley runs out. Bon Foyage.

"Lord of the Borax"





















Ever since the execrable Laundry Elf Massacre of 2006,

my lot has gotten much harder.

Effing Dishwasher Dwarves and Vaccum Chimeras and their insatiable need for random beheadings and household domination.

Their bloodlust has resulted in constant heaps of wrinkled fabric splayed across the carpet, awaiting my attention.

Effing, effing, effing.

The creatures are mythical, as is the notion of a clean home.

“Dear ObaMcCain: Good Luck Targeting This”

I’m sitting on the ground next to an elementary school, the backs of my legs tickled by grass.

I’m watching a crew of five-year-olds play soccer. One of them is mine. He’s kicking a red ball and scratching at his scalp, leading me to think some adult in his life should see that he bathes.

My husband is three miles away, sitting with grass tickling the backs of his legs, too.

He’s watching a crew of eight-year-olds play soccer.



We do this four nights a week.

We own a mini-van.

We are soccer moms.

It is only the fact that I am wearing lacey underwear (midnight black with a fetching rosette) and reading William Trevor short stories that reminds me soccer mom-ing is simply my day job for a few fleeting years.

I am more than the sum of car keys and cleats.



Clearly, I am also someone with saucy undies and a good book.

Which makes me, like, complex.

"The Day of Your Life"

Patriotism tires me; xenophobia makes my eyes cross. Doping is poop on a Triscuit.

So I should be able to bypass them Olympiciacites that are being broadcast on the talking box, right?

Not so much.

Every night of late, the fam has been gathering on our full-sized bed in the master bedroom and watching the images being thrown through the air from Beijing. As much as I don't really care who wins what, the media coverage does manage to scoop me up and dangle me from its pinch . As a result, I find myself a fan of much-decorated American swimmer Michael Phelps. So does Girl, who asserted the other night that someone in our family needs to marry him, the man with the most gold--since Mommy clearly didn’t when she was choosing a mate.

Ever the giver, Wee Niblet piped up immediately and offered to marry the swim master, stipulating that his willingness rested on getting permission to call his new husband "Michael Phelpicannia" during their duration of their relationship. This being less demanding than a vow to "honor and obey," I fully anticipate a poolside ceremony in 20 years, an occasion that will certainly merit the purchase of a spectacular mother-of-the-groom bespangled tankini.

The kids built an Airplane to Beijing, which they have been flying to various sporting events this week. All of the stuffed animals pictured here are currently residing in The Olympic Village. The big blue bunny in the front (Snurkle) is rooming with French swimmer Alain Bernard; Snurkle begins each day by yanking Alain's Speedo to his ears and giving him an atomic wedgie.

Indeed, our household finds itself carried away with enthusiasm for certain of the athletes, those who seem awed and moved by their exceptional fortune. In addition to lapping up His Phelpicannia, I didn't hate the U.S. men's gymnastics team for fighting its way to a bronze medal--and then being delighted and humbled to have achieved that "mere" third place.

Yup, in the face of these public triumphs, I prickle up with goosebumps, despite myself.

As I ponder why that is, I've realized that it feels a privilege to witness another human being's best day of life, someone's perfect moment of realizing potential, a person's cresting the arc of training and talent. Cynicism drops away, and I am affected as I watch an athlete’s heart skip a beat from sheer joy.

All of this got me thinking, of course, about what the “day of my life” has been so far. Sure, I dropped out of the U.S. Junior Olympic archery team’s training program at age 5, just before I actually took up the sport or ever picked up a bow, so my day of life is less than Olympic in scope. However, I’ve still relished my own moments of primal excitement, of serendipitious vicissitude. Sifting through the candidates has proven, too, that I am Phelpicannian, for I have a host of golden moments to draw from.

There was, for example:

**The day in preschool when Mrs. Ungafu took us, her widdle midgies, on a field trip to the local potato chip factory, and we each got a free bag of chips at the end. Yea, you read me right: free chips.

**The day in kindergarten when Mrs. Jacobsen, my teacher, forced me to use scissors with my right hand, even though I’m a leftie; tearing the scissors from my left paw and shoving them into my right, she instructed, “Only the Devil’s Children use their left hands.” Salvaging the day, I promptly called upon my winged minions and fast-tracked her to the bowels of my daddy’s crib. Good times in Hell that night, feasting upon the scrawny flesh of a biddy with a beehive.

**The day in second grade when I graduated from being a Brownie Scout to a full-fledged Girl Scout. There, in the cafeteria of Rocky Elementary, I took several joyous steps over the cardboard bridge that symbolized my journey. While that sounds really cool and has undoubtedly created veomous envy in you, Gentle Reader, I haven't yet sprung the big part: the bridge was covered with tinfoil and looked like real, live, breathing silver. And my feet touched that glamourous stuff.

**The day my sister and I had to go to Boulder Elementary and get some vaccinations, and she cried and gnashed and wailed the whole time, from the car to the nurse's office and back into the car again, while I welded my mouth shut, grittily sucked up the dosages, and calmly stroked the welt on my arm during the ride home. My bravery was such that Clint Eastwood was tempted to call me that afternoon to pass on his hearty congratulations.

Except he was too busy filming Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.

But otherwise, he would have called, and that made for a killer great day.

**At this point in my memory-mining, things go silent for a few years. It was junior high, after all. There were no unexpected moments of glory. Oh, wait, there was the time my Earth Science teacher put my name on the board and announced to all his classes that I had the highest score that semester of any of his students. Then big, dumb David Zimdars came back from being sick (should've gotten his vaccinations) and took a make-up test, which meant the Earth Science teacher had to find his eraser. Ultimately, these were the medal-free years.

**In high school, though, I had a few zingy days, particularly the first time I entered a forensics competition (that's "speech" to the non-oratorial, unextemporaneous layperson), and, as a complete novice, I won the thing. I believe I was wearing clogs. Yet my words overcame all questionable sartorial choices, and I won the thing. I still thrill at the memory. But whenever I mentally review that day, I always shod my feet in these Betsey Johnson heels, instead, thus upping the frisson.

**I felt more than a frisson when, during my senior year of high school, I tromped to the mailbox one day in December and discovered there a thick envelope of admission from my first-choice college, a fairly competitive place. With great clarity, I recall ripping through the white paper, heart in throat, and reading the hoped-for words. Even with a second-place score in 8th grade Earth Science, I had made the cut! (big, dumb rat bastard David Zimdars went on to Stanford, where I'm pretty sure he failed their freshman-level Earth Science course).

**More great days in life came during college, days full of reggae and Russian lit and martini shakers and frisbees and The Cure and "Physics for Poets" (during which a solid foundation in Earth Science provided not one whit of aid) and sledding on cafeteria trays and watching the sun rise before bed. Those four years were sheer Phelpicannia.

**Beyond college came life in Minneapolis and Thursday evenings dancing at a The Saloon, just me, my galpal, and 45 of our favorite gay couples. Each Thursday's sweat session ended with a 1 a.m. trip through the Wendy's drive-thru for excessively good chicken nuggets (appeal enhanced by the coating of vodka on our tongues).

**Life Olympics went marathon during graduate school, years when my spine wasn't tingling but rather slumped over books and papers. There was, however, a solo road trip during that time where my car's alternator died, and a kind, bearded samaritan with bare feet managed--at 7 o'clock on a Sunday night, when all other mechanics were off duty--to jerry-rig a solution for the waning battery by using the pop top from a soda can. His MacGuyverish efforts caused in me whole-body jubilation.

**For the rest of my twenties and into my early thirties, pedantic days were uplifted by travel (particularly a warm chocolate croissant I licked dry in a train station in Budapest on an impossibly early morning), by hiking up mountainsides, and by unexpected pick-up lines (one man claimed himself "smitten," which caused even my toes to flush; another--a musician--simply stopped by my table between sets and casusally tossed off a "Don't go anywhere now").

**Some of you might remind me, right about here, that I've had children, and wouldn't the days of their birth qualify as unusually stellar? Hell no. You are twelve kinds a fool if you think I'm going to claim that passing a tetherball, including its rope and pole, out of my body in one ripping bowel movement was an instance of delectation. I will concede, however, that a visit to the Hemherroid Doctor a year after my daughter's birth, during which he and I became intimately acquainted, and I looked up at him with beseeching eyes, silently begging him just to lance the goiter that grew from me as a tail, resulted in a moment of exuberance. The large Jamaican physician gave me a good probe and then said, to our collective relief, "Why, it had gotten so bad on its own that it went ahead and burst! What you have here is already completely deflated." That, my cringeing friends, is what I call an unexpected bonanza.


Admittedly, though, each of these moments of remarkability pales in comparison to one twinkle that sparkled above all others.

Once a-pime, newly into dating a fella, I lay in his bed, leafing through a book, rubbing my foot over my calf, feeling content. The fella had hopped across the hall for a quick trip to the bathroom.

As he re-entered the room, he announced, "Brrrr. My feet are cold."

Absently, I responded, "Why's that?"

"Because you. knocked. my. socks. off. Ever since our first date, my feet have been coooooooold."
-------------------------------------

Some time later, when I recovered from my swoon,

I adopted Niblet's attitude towards Michael Phelps:

Naturally, I had to marry someone so capable of turning my dross into gold.

"My Mom's Visiting from California, and I'm Busy Chauffeuring Her and the Kids Around Town to Clang in the the Trolley, Toot in the Train, Bob in the Lake, Strike (Out) in the Bowling Alley, and Gnosh on Sweet Treats, So I Haven't a Breaf in My Body Left for the Blogging I Really Want to Do--All of Which, In Sum, Means I'm Quickly Tossing Out a Poem I Love, One That Captures My Current August Zing"


Indeed, this poem has a summertime feeling for me--bright and cornucopial and ticking along.

I'd like to fancy myself the woman in this poem, but the truth is I'm more the lucky fool.



















THE RED PORSCHE By Charles Bukowski

it feels good
to be driven about in a red
porsche
by a woman better-
read than I
am.
it feels good
to be driven about in a red
porsche
by a woman who can explain
things about
classical
music to
me.

it feels good
to be driven about in a red
porsche
by a woman who buys
things for my refrigerator
and my
kitchen:
cherries, plums, lettuce, celery,
green onions, brown onions,
eggs, muffins, long
chilis, brown sugar,
Italian seasoning, oregano, white
wine vinegar, pompeian olive oil
and red
radishes.

I like being driven about
in a red porsche
while I smoke cigarettes in
gentle languor.

I'm lucky. I've always been
lucky:
even when I was starving to death
the bands were playing for
me.
but the red porsche is very nice
and she is
too, and I've learned to feel good when
I feel good.

it's better to be driven around in a
red porsche
than to own
one. the luck of the fool is
inviolate.

"Feeling All Oogie Inside, With Nary An Assist From Mr. Daniels, Mr. Jack Daniels"

It's a little sobering to realize that my advancing age means I get as excited about flowers and gardens as I used to get about a Long Island Iced Tea. The bliss formerly proffered by a glass containing shots of tequila, rum, gin, triple sec, vodka, and a widdle splash of Cocoa-Cola is now matched, shot for shot, by nasturtiums, shasta daisies, black-eyed Susans, salvia, and zinneas.

I've always been a cheap date, but it seems I've downgraded to a status fondly known amongst empty-walleted Johns as "free."

But check it, Zeppo:


We put in this garden a couple of summers ago, and now it owns me. I hover around this garden like Perez Hilton around Zac Efron--all hepped up and fawning in a way that exceeds anything rational. But look, honeys: those tall purple salvia in the front? We started them from seeds last April. Now look how they've grown up and are taking care of us in our dotage. Plus, for fun, we can call them "salivas." Now that's a flower that gives and then gives some more.


Garden Zac is just as attractive in the sideview, eh? You know you rather want those scarlet snapdragons (also started from seed) to reach out and nip you in the privates.

In the expanded profile, you can see how we, in a step towards de-Clampettification, had the house painted this summer. Gone is the lead-laden paint of 1934. Me brane radder mees it.


Just as good is the crazy shade garden that is lush with moistness, thriving sans sunlight, much like Dita Von Teese.


Remember my old pal and favorite tool--no, not Andrew Dice Clay--but the mattock? I dug and I dug and I dug, and then I laid down and cried, and then I squared my shoulders and dug some more, and then I played Freecell, and then I dug until a single cow came home, and then I slaughtered and butchered and grilled it, all while still digging. Oh, Poopsie, didn't I dig. Eventually, I had made a gloriously large trench out back, one that awaited Groom's overlay of pavers. Last week, when the family was staying down in St. Paul for the week, His Groomitude took the bus back to Duluth a couple of days early, just so he could pave for two days straight. But now we have a red brick road, which makes me want to dance down it with Diana Ross, each of us in search of a heart.


Near the new pathway, sunflowers flourish, amidst zinneas that are 2.5 feet tall. Hey, all of you urban types? If, next time you're shooting the breeze with your co-workers in those painful five minutes before the meeting starts, you want to sound well-versed in subjects beyond how hot the city gets in August, try bringing up the fact that you once saw a 2.5-foot tall zinnea. It's awe-inspiring enough to stop that blowhard Cavendish short, just as he's launching into another tale of "my amazing sub par 18-holes last weekend." Here's the plan: the second you hear him mention the golf course, you start sputtering about gargantuan zinnias. At the very least, everyone in the room will be so bewildered, they'll shut the hey up for once.

Increasing my bliss is the development of new gardens (the spot featured here is where the tree that blew down in a huge windstorm last year used to be rooted; we had a pile of woodchips that needed moving and a ton of compost and trench-remnant dirt to spread, and Little Mound here has pitched in with the effort). This gardeninal development was only made possible by my sainted aunt and uncle, who have these past few days kindly included our kids in their annual Camp Grandma and Grandpa Too week at their lake home. While the kids make tie-dyed pillowcases and eat one-too-many Little Smokies, Groom and I have been savoring the rare and wondrous phenomenon known as Being Alone in the House. Before knuckling down on the toting around of dirt and compost, we took a day for an extended date (not so free), during which, and do read into this as much as you like, GutterHeads, I ate all sorts of beef tips.

All that broken-up former sidewalk that we sledge-hammered to make room for the new pavers? They've become garden castle walls, ready to shelter new shade perennials. By the way, if anything on my blog ever offends you, I urge you to be the first to cast a stone; we always need more to ring the forts of flowers. Huck away, Sawyer.



With edible flowers growing on the deck, any salad is just a clipping away from pizazz. So says Gordon Ramsey. Except he says, "Fuck all of you idiotic fuckers if you don't know to put a fucking nasturtium on a fucking even-an-idiot-could-do-it dinner salad."

With gardens built, and Groomeo off at his slushy "I need a job outside of the house to go to occasionally, lest I stab the children" retail gig, I've admired the flowers again before heading inside to download new tunes, work on getting Fall term classes ready, and, in general, squeeze every last bit of succulence out of

a free date with myself.

(yea, GutterHeads, I hear ya).

"Self Actualization for the Kindergarten Set"

Many of us, even those who have been tracking Amy Winehouse's adventures at the crack pipe, might be unaware of a certain famous Creature of the Pit.

However, if you are a 37-year-old white male, I wager you're well aware of the beast called the rancor, he who spiced up RETURN OF THE JEDI, one of a little-known series of films linked under the overarching title of STAR BARS. Whoops, I mean STAR CARS. Er, WARS.

For those of us who were otherwise diverted in 1983 with viewing FLASHDANCE or THE BIG CHILL, the idea of "the rancor" is a foreign one, as far from our experience as the revolutionary idea, floated in 1983 by a maverick company named Apple, of a thing called a "touch screen." As if such a thing would ever replace good, old-fashioned face-to-faceishness. No wonder nothing became of that upstart company and its 24th-century inventions.

In fact, for me--a bit older than 37, lacking a penis ('tho I briefly cradled John Bobbitt's before it was reattached to his body...and, all together now, EWWWW), but undeniably white in that particular fashion of pasty-yet-freckled--the notion of "the rancor" has remained outside my ken until quite recently. Last week, in fact. My acquaintance with this George Lucas-inspired character came from der Wee Niblet (named thusly for purposes of this blog, but who, earlier this year, then decided his real-life name should be Dinko, which lasted a few months, until he had exactly a day of wanting to be called Fruit Leather before deciding the ring of Paco suits him best--that is, until he about-faced on his feelings for tacos a few weeks ago and realized his most-bestest name is actually Taco, but we are still allowed to call him Paco, too, since it strikes him vaguely as being the sound made by beef in a crunchy tortilla shell). My Niblet is 5 right now, but he's already achieved the status of male and white, and he shows all signs of one day reaching 37. In short, he's raw STAR WARS material, ready for the shaping.

At this juncture, Niblet's understanding of STAR WARS is limited but passionate. A few years ago, he watched the Ewok scenes in RETURN OF THE JEDI. Plus, he lives in a neighborhood with three eight-year-old boys, whose job it has been to equip him with an arsenal of movie jargon, such as "Millenium Falcon" and "Death Star." He doesn't quite know what these terms mean, per se, but he knows they are really cool, to the point that, before a road trip last week, when he was given the chance to choose a book for the ride (an amuse bouche for the car seat), he selected a STAR WARS sticker book.

That book was a steal at $3.99.

Even by Mile 64 of the trip, we'd gotten at least $4.36 worth of entertainment out of it; and, mind you, I fully intend to send the publishing company that extra 37 cents. The lad poured through the book's pages, neither peeling nor applying a single sticker, but rather monologuing about each character, about which he knew a smidgeon. His fascination, of course, was most snagged by the rancor.

When he first, announced that he weally, weally liked this creature, I didn't quite understand that it was a movie beast. Rather, I felt a moment of communion, of knowing, of kindred spiriting, of shouting out, "YES, you, too, now understand the rancor! I have felt it daily in adulthood, whether I'm watching weathermen trying to be cute or my country's president trying to govern!! YES, Sweet Child of Mine, we can come together on this rancor issue!!! Let's light up a smoke and tipple from the bottle of gin as we bash about in unrelenting bitterness..."

Oh, wait. Seems I'd jumped ahead.

As my sails deflated, I noticed he was pointing at the page, where some toothy cinema monster glared out at him. Oh. the rancor.

never mind.

Niblet's attention was caught. He wanted some explanation, some fleshing out, of this new crush. I had nothing--nussing...until I later had a chance to delve into the InterWebs, which coughed up this bio off starwars.com:

"The rancor was a terrible creature hidden in a shadowy chamber beneath Jabba the Hutt's throne room. A five-meter tall towering hulk of muscle and reptilian flesh, the rancor walked on two stubby legs and had disproportionately long arms to capture prey. Dominating its flat face was a salivating tooth-filled maw. Its armored skin was so tough that the beast could slough off blaster bolts as little more than annoyances.

The rancor served the dual purpose of not only amusing Jabba, but also disposing of unwanted servants, musicians, or anyone else the Hutt would want to get rid of. With a shout of "Boska!" Jabba would activate a secret trap door in front of his throne. The victim would tumble into the underground chamber as a viewing grate opened to allow Jabba and his depraved audience a glimpse of the gruesome proceedings. A creaky retaining gate would unleash the beast. The rancor would make short work of any unfortunate soul dropped into the pit.

Luke Skywalker reversed the typical fate of a rancor victim when Jabba sent the young Jedi tumbling into the monster's lair. Skywalker was able to escape the beast's clutches, and lure it back into its pen. When the rancor stood beneath the retaining gate, Luke hurled the skull of a previous victim into the control mechanism. The gate came crashing down on the rancor, killing Jabba's pet."

And there we had it. The rancor. For me, Niblet's crush fell into a Bionicle/Transformer/Pokemon class infatuation: all little boy, all robotic and furry and gadgety.

But then, hosannah on high, the crush became intensely more fun, when, at the end of our road trip, we stayed at the home of friends who own their own model of Young Boy, one who had just seen STAR WARS the week before. This boy--let's call him Trooper--was a bit more versant in all things Lucasian, but still unformed enough in the jargon...and in his verbal expression of the sound "r"...that he proved the perfect match for my own "r"-lacking lad.

They were weally, weally well matched. Consequently, they enjoyed several lengthy car trips across town, strapped next to each other in their carseats, leafing through the sticker book, monologuing about their mutual crush on

"the wanker."

Indeedy, many a mile passed with them hollering out, "No, I'M the wanker! You call ME the wanker!!" or "Wait, YOU want to be the wanker? Okay, you're the wanker."

In its many permutations, this conversation tickled the parents on board.

You see, we had long suspected, particularly when our lads were really tired and whiney and mopey and cranky and full of the suckwad, that they,

in a galaxy all too near,

were

a couple of wankers.

"Stop Being So Square, Big Daddy"

I would have made a great 1950's housewife--and not just because I can whip up a chrome-plated five-can casserole and smoke and drink like a fiend while pregnant.

Witness this exchange between The Groomeo and me, transcribed from the dictaphone in our secretary Miss Walcott's shorthand during the year 1958:

Groom: My ear still hurts. It's been feeling swollen or infected--totally weirdsville--off and on for days now. It's fine for awhile, and then it hurts up the wazoo. I'm feeling like a real party pooper.

Me: Are you thinking it's time to have the doctor spin by the pad for a housecall?

Groom: I don't know. I'm not really sure if it's bad enough to see that shuckster Dr. Kildare just yet. That square is bad news.

Me, channeling Jane Wyatt in "Father Knows Best": Maybe it would help if I hoisted my well-starched crinolines and peed in your ear?

Groom: It's not a jellyfish sting, you know. Good thing you're toting around a classy chassis, or you'd be clutched, Nerd.


Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd.....

curtain.

(off to Sardi's to check my Ooh-La-La lipstick in the bathroom mirror and await the reviews)

"More Importantly"


The sad part, for me, when I look at this photo of two immensely lovely women exchanging rings and making a life-long and public commitment to each other, is the fact that you can't see I was wearing some seriously kick-ass earrings.

"Rolling Down the Avenue to My Early Retirement"

It's official. Although I've been fighting off encroaching fine lines for several years now, and although I've been crochety for far longer than that, I've always maintained I'm still "young" (or, more recently, "young-ish").

But now, the sham has been revealed. Undeniably, I is old.

I know this for sure because, just the other day, I found myself kvetching about "kids these days" and how they have "no respect." I believe I even shook my fist at the heavens.

In short, at some point when my jowls were sinking deep into a hand of pinochle, and I asked Edna to pass me another one of those hard candies I keep in the jar in my living room ("in case the boys come 'round"), my spirit donned a pair of black knee socks and sandals and went out to mow the lawn. My chi became geriatric.

What caused my sudden heaval into John McCain's peer group? Students, of course. Or, as we call them at The Home: them bratty ingrates who wouldn't know proper treatment of their elders if it whupped them upside the head.

Case in point:

For the last few years, I've taken it upon myself to create a publication for my college's English department. The point of this publication is to celebrate student writing--to gather together a representative sampling of the best student work from the year and, after editing it so that it's actually readable, putting it out in paper (and, this year, blog) editions, with the sum effect being, "Look, random readers: some of our students are able to write in complete sentences!" What's more, some of them do it with style and intelligence.

So I spend each academic year urging my colleagues to gather the best of their students' writing (with their signed consent) and submit it to me; at the end of the academic year, when I lay breathless and heaving from grading and reading and administering final exams for my own students, I gather a small committee to read all the submissions and select the best of the pretty-good. We end up with about 150 pages of text, which I then, to signal the start of my "summer vacation," edit and format. This takes me weeks. I am a sucka that way. Eventually, I send the final proof to the print shop, where we run a couple hundred copies; this year, I also put together a blog site of this publication.

The whole point is to honor students' efforts, right? That's what my youthful spirit used to tell me.

This summer, though.

Well.

There's this student--not one of mine. I've never seen or met her. It can stay that way. Chosen for inclusion in the final publication, her essay was written in our department's advanced composition class, which is generally devoted to the finer points of research writing and citation style. However, some instructors also include other modes of essays, in this case a personal interview. So this student--let's call her Krusty--wrote up a report of an interview she did. It was an interesting read, on a topic that tapped into a modern-day issue of widespread importance. For the purposes of this post, let's pretend that issue is Prejudice Against Clowns and that she interviewed someone with a bulbous red nose, in full make-up (not Amy Winehouse, interestingly enough).

For me, her essay was simply one of 30 that made the cut...until the trickle of emails began, picked up here midstream:


From: >>> "Krusty" 06/06/08 8:05 AM >>>
is the student web publication out yet?


From: Jocelyn [mailto:happy jocelyn@faculty.edu]
Sent: Fri 6/6/2008 9:25 PM
To: Krusty
Subject: RE: Essay Submission

Yes. I sent out the link to the entire campus (students, employees,
and faculty) a few days ago. Here it is again:

http://neveragain.ingratitudetaxesmylastnerve.edu

Congrats!

jocelyn
________________________________

From: >>> "Krusty" 06/08/08 6:30 PM >>>
why was the title of my paper changed


From: Jocelyn [mailto: slightly-bewildered jocelyn@faculty.edu]
Sent: Sun 6/8/2008 9:03 PM
To: Krusty
Subject: RE: Essay Submission


Okay, I just looked at your paper again to see what you meant. Yea, we added the colon plus the words "An Interview" because it was the only submission from Comp II that wasn't a research paper, and readers of the Comp II work would be expecting a research paper, so to avoid their confusion, we clarified with stating it was an interview. Basically, your paper was different from the others in that section,and we wanted people to know that; that's why the title now reads "Sending in the Clowns: An Interview" instead of "Sending in the Clowns."

jocelyn

________________________________

From: >>> "Krusty" 06/13/08 9:21 AM >>>
well i really dont like the title... can you change it to "sending in the clowns" an interview by Krusty ?


From: Jocelyn [mailto: just here to accommodate you jocelyn@faculty.edu]
Sent: Fri 6/13/2008 2:24 PM
To: Krusty
Subject: RE: Essay Submission

I can change it on the blog, but it's too late on the paper copy, which has already gone to the printers.

--------------------------
From: >>> "Krusty" 06/14/08 7:45 AM >>>
i am very angry that the title was changed without my consent


From: Jocelyn [mailto: are we serious here? jocelyn@faculty.edu]
Sent: Sat 6/14/2008 10:22 PM
To: Krusty
Subject: RE: Essay Submission


We were simply trying to honor you with including your work. Editorial changes are part of any publication. I already changed the title to what you suggested (which, basically, consisted of getting rid of a colon and hitting return) on the blog; I'll be glad to take your paper off the site entirely, if that makes you feel better. It's too late on the print copies, but if the title is too distressing, you have the choice of not sharing the paper publication with people you know, at least.

Having two clarifying words added to an essay seems to be overwhelming any good feelings you might have about this honor. I'm very sorry such a small thing has become the focus of your thoughts; I hope at some point you can appreciate that your work was even selected.

jocelyn

________________________________

From: >>> "Krusty" 06/20/08 9:08 AM >>>

You are a very rude woman. And yes, the title does bother me because the title i gave my work had meaning. and it is too bad that you cant take feelings into consideration without writing an insulting letter. I am not stupid and i do understand why you changed it. But there was a better way to have done it and kept more of the original title. But i suppose i can not expect someone who doesnt deal with being a clown to understand how much the title means to myself and others to have.


From: Jocelyn [mailto: it's all I can do to keep from throttling you jocelyn@faculty.edu]
Sent: Fri 6/20/2008 11:11 AM
To: Krusty
Subject: RE: Essay Submission

Krusty, I'm extremely confused. Extremely. I just reread what I wrote and can't see what's striking you as rude there. I was serious--not sarcastic--about being willing to remove the paper from the site, if it's distressing you. I also was serious that I'm very, very sorry you're not feeling honored or getting enjoyment out of your paper being selected.

Tone very often gets lost in email, as yours have felt quite aggressive and overly-strong to me, but I've been trying to read them as though you're simply trying communicate your feelings and not attack someone who was putting together a project intended to promote and celebrate
student work. That I've become a lightning rod for your reaction continues to surprise me.

As a sidenote, since you don't know me, it is presumptuous for you to assume you know anything about what clown training I might have participated in or have undergone in my life, by the way. And I don't mean for that to sound rude but rather corrective of an overstepping of bounds.

As I step back and try to review your concerns objectively, I find myself still stymied as to why you feel the title change impacted its effect. Your paper was titled by you as "Sending in the Clowns." The title in the publication was "Sending in the Clowns: An Interview." I guess where we're butting opinions is that I just don't see--nor does anyone I've asked during this exchange of emails--how adding "An Interview" compromises the meaning or impact of the title. And after you expressed your unhappiness with that title, I changed it immediately on the Web site so that it reads "Sending in the Clowns" An Interview by Krusty. I did what you had asked, yet you're even more angry.

I can own the fact that I did something that made you angry. But you're the one who's in charge of her own reactions beyond that. Truly, I'm not trying to be rude, but I'm also really trying not to let your reaction take over something that was meant very innocently and that I've rectified to the best of my ability.

jocelyn

________________________________
From: >>> "Krusty" 06/21/08 7:47 AM >>>
the paper is a profile... not an interview.


From: Jocelyn [mailto: I can't tell you how done I am here jocelyn@faculty.edu]
Sent: Fri 6/21/2008 2:34 PM
To: Krusty
Subject: RE: Essay Submission


Oh. I asked your instructor, before putting together the publication, what genre the paper should be labeled, and she said it was "an interview." I'll change it on the Website, if you want, to "a profile."

Hugs--
jocelyn

________________________________

That has been the last I've heard of her ('til she stumbles across this post, and I'm forced to hire Kevin Costner to be My Bodyguard). I'm choosing to take her radio silence as a sign that she ultimately was awed and amazed by my continued calmness in the face of her obsessive and over-zealous pursuit of this issue. At this moment, she is doubtlessly holed up in a wood-paneled basement, below Mom and Dad's den, scribbling furiously in her journal about the deep regret and shame she feels for the way she dared to communicate with a perfect stranger, one who is, even more, instructor at the college she attends.

Yea. That's the ticket. She's terribly sorry that she turned me into an aged harpie who goes around croaking about "those bobby soxers and their dangerous long-haired music."

Were hers the only example, I could put the story to bed and muse on it there, as I rub Ben-Gay into my aching joints. But the truth is, she's one of many. College teachers are regularly receiving inappropriate communication like this...all...the...I-spent-how-many-years-in-graduate-school-and-now-put-in-50-hours-a-week-holding-nervous-hands-and-being-supportive-of-students-who-complain-when-they-receive-a-9/10-on-an-assignment-just-to-have-you-crap-on-me-like-this? time.

Fortunately, 84% of the other students redeem the lot and give me faith that there's something to this slagging away in the Inspiring Minds Mines. However, when it's 2 a.m., and I'm up leafing through my albums of WWII (the good old days), I start to think

that

early retirement can never be overrated.

There's a bit of a rub, of course, since I'm our household's breadwinner. Someone needs to eat the sh** so we can eat the bacon, right?

Behold this joyful noise, though:

Inspired by my grumblings about ruff-necked performers who cram into VW's and have Internet access, Groom has determined to up his unicycle training and infiltrate the circus...







...where he will not only earn us a glittery paycheck,

but where

he'll also be perfectly positioned

to

roll some serious treadmarks onto the clowns.

"Ah-ight"

My marriage succeeds on many levels. Groom lets me sleep big many muches, when I need it. Groom cooks me food and sets out large plates. Groom laughs hard when I'm mean and small and petty.

Even better, Groom and I have spent many-an-easy hour making lists of "Famous People Jocelyn Gets to Sleep With If She Ever Encounters Them in the Febreze Aisle at the Target, and They Happen to Proposition Her There." I know many marriages have this List; such Lists can provide mental comfort--an emotional escape hatch--to those who feel that commitment somehow closed doors, snipped options, and dug the first foot of the grave.

For me, I don't think The List is about that, though, as every inch of Groom's 6' 3" frame is hot and tasty, like a Wendy's Double Classic Burger without Pickles. I'm completed by my commitment to him.

Yet.

Don't I maybe need something new to talk about at family gatherings, when we all meet year- after-endless year, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with our glasses of lemonade, staring at the lake, whiffling on about the weather? Wouldn't it make for a memorable holiday reunion with Great-Aunt Ruthie if I could announce that, thanks to Groom dropping me off at the talk show host's condo in Santa Monica, I shared afternoon delight with Jon Stewart? Wouldn't that put some stuffing into yet another limp family Thanksgiving?

Truly, my List of Possible Celebrity Bangs doesn't reach so high. I get nothing from mainstream hotties like Brad Pitt, save a small annoyance at his slanted Oklahoman vowels, one that leaves me wondering, "Is he really talking about a pin, or did he mean a pen?" Sit up straighter, Bradley, and speak righter. And stop wearing those silly newsboy hats.

No, I go for a more off-beat, quirky, intelligent, full-voweled kind of appeal. Give me crooner Lyle Lovett or producer Don Was or interviewer Charlie Rose over leading man Shia LeBeouf and his wispy faux-brooding any day.

But more than anyone? I would like to have Michael Kenneth Williams "meet me by the Febreze" at--how do you say it?--exactly this very minute, pulling behind him a fold-away bed and a cart full of candles and perhaps Cesaria Evora in the flesh (except she is required to turn away and examine the paper towels as she serenades us, for she has a mug so scary that it could suck the oxygen right out of a conflagration even as searing as mine and Michael's).

If you have never seen HBO's The Wire and basked in the multi-faceted brilliance of my Michael's turn as Omar, Killer with a Code, then you have not only missed out on "One of the Ten Reasons to Still Love Television," but you have missed out on previewing my next date, and how else can you seal your approval onto the man who will be plying me with a 2002 cabernet just beyond the hand brooms and bleach?

That he plays a homosexual on The Wire is irrelevant to my attraction; just ask either of my Prom dates in high school, both of whom have since gone on to post-Jocelyn loves named Scott and Jason. I like to think I helped define their course.

But my Michael? Groom agrees: he's already coursing.


When Evora's final note dies away, and the candles sputter their last, and the shelf-stockers stop their blushing, I'll aright myself, hitch up my garters, run one last tender finger over Michael's scar, and tromp off to meet Groom over by the clearance grills.

Although I'll have mopped up what I can with the available dryer sheets, a clean-up will most definitely be needed on Aisle 12.