A foreigner in a sea of white hair

Last night my parents and I went to see a great musical revue called "In the Mood." It was a celebration of all things big band, and a buffet of nostalgia for the 40s.

Still somewhat pining for my days in high school jazz band, I enjoyed the evening immensely - even if it was sponsored by Brookdale Living Communities, known for their spectacular Alzheimer's care units. Music is an undeniable connection to our past lives. Its ability to transport us back in time is quite amazing. That being said, could the Brookdale Alzheimer's community sponsor a more dangerous event? Perhaps a monster truck rally, letting Aunt Bessie have one last go-round with the car keys?

At intermission, the lights came up, revealing a sea of white. White hair, interspersed with no hair. I felt like an interloper, a guest at a fraternity party where I was never extended an invitation to join. My dad reached into his pocket and pulled out a stick of gum, only to be promptly chastised by an usher for bringing food into the auditorium. Gum isn't food. And for pete's sake, my dad doesn't exactly look like the type to stick his gum underneath the seat when he finished with it.

The show resumed, and segued into a sing-along, some song about rolling a barrel over your girlfriend. The entire audience sang along. I couldn't even pretend to know the words - who in my generation has ever rolled a barrel over anything?

I was brought back to my first day in Catholic high school. The entire class stood at the beginning of the class time. I stood too, and faced the flag. While I began reciting "I pledge allegiance, to the flag..." I realized that that was not what the rest of the class was saying.

"...hallowed be thy name...thy kingdom come, thy will be done..."

I mumbled along until they got to the one part I knew.

"...OUR DAILY BREAD..." (I've always been a fan of carbohydrates.)

I mumbled my way through the rest of it, and made a mental note to ask Mom what they were reciting.

The classtime came to an end, as did the group sing-along.

As we left the theater, Mom asked, "So, did you enjoy it? What did you think?"

"That brought back so many memories I never had."

Usually the parking lot is a mess to get out of. Cars lined up from every side street, trying to converge onto the main highway into town. As we left the lot relatively unobstructed, we watched the older crowd amble toward their vehicles.

'Being young and fast on your feet is worth something,' I thought to myself. 'We got out of here a lot quicker than everyone else.'

We hit the highway in record time, which was good. I was probably the only person in the entire audience who had to go to work in the morning.

Maybe there is something to be said for being old after all.

Symmetries of Life

I'm not a huge fan of my grandmother. In my defense, I do feel compassion for her: I feel the same compassion I feel for all human beings, like the homeless people panhandling. I make a point to make eye contact and smile, showing that I recognize their humanness. I never give away my money, but that's because frugality trumps humanity every time. It's a scientifically proven fact. Look it up.

Grandma is a little dingy in the head. This is not something that can be attributed to old age. She has always been a little dingy. We had drop pendant lighting installed in our living room when I was younger (and thus, she was younger, negating the rationalization that she's in the "it must be dementia" demographic). The lights dropped down from a runner that was installed into the electricity wired through the ceiling.

"Those are so pretty!" Grandma said, complimenting my dad on his handwork. "How interesting! How do you get them to light?"

Instead of explaining the complexity of indoor electricity to my Grandma, Dad responded:
"Batteries."

Grandma nodded knowingly. "Oh, I see. Very pretty!"

Grandma is now 91. The other day, she demanded to know where my Mom had put her box of Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookies.

"I left them underneath my bed! By my shoes! Now I can't find them."

Mom was left wondering why someone would store their cookies by their shoes. I was left wondering why she has a box of Girl Scout cookies, an annual treat normally sold in April, underneath her bed in January.

Mom told me this story at dinner last night. After dinner, I had Trumie in one arm, my water bottle in another, and my car keys in my hand. I wanted to take home a handful of dark chocolates from the candy dish on the counter. No pockets. Dog, water bottle, no free hands...I set the dog on the counter and got my handful of candy. I bent down and stuffed them around my ankle inside of my sock.

Mom looked at me questioningly.

"It's not a long drive home," I said. "They won't melt."

"No, it's not that," she said. "I was just wondering why it is you think you're so different from your grandmother."

Into the great unknown

I'm going to Home Depot after work. Home Depot is actually a very confusing place for a woman to venture into. Now I'm not saying anything about women not understanding pipe fittings or monkey wrenches. Au contraire. But being the last, great bastion of "Boys Only" clubs, Home Depot is a bit of an enigma in our attempt to be a unigendered and equilateral society.

Walk into any Home Depot and you can count the number of females on one finger. Count the number of females that don't secretly wish they were male, and you would have all ten fingers free to grasp onto the safety of your purse in this unfamiliar terrain.

I need a fixture that goes on my washing machine hose. I am fairly sure the item is within the walls of Home Depot. But where? With the plumbing? With the appliances? If it's with the plumbing, is it near the utilities' plumbing items or way down by the faucet items? What if it's in the faucet items area but can be used for both washing machines and work room sinks and thus really is the item I'm looking for?

What to do, what to do. It's not like I can ask someone. Oh no. Asking a store employee is admiting feminist defeat. I am female and consequently cannot find a simple plumbing fixture. I've done what any self-respecting female would do - I've googled the fixture and looked at many pictures of it, hoping I'll recognize it when I see it.

No witnesses

Maybe it's good that I work on the weekends - two less days in the week that people are around to see me do something stupid.

I come into work this morning and unbundle, draping my parka across the back of my chair and boot up my computer. I take off my gloves, lay them beside my scanner, take my cell phone out of my pocket and set it on my desk, and set my purse on my coworker's empty desk.

I sat down to get to work. I typed in my password, and the large wallpaper picture of Susie Q, my parent's doxie, stared back at me. I moved my mouse to the program I need to open.

Nothing.

I move the mouse again. Still nothing.

What the. Just what I need. No IT people here to help, and work backing up on me already...

I tried one more time, my hand moving the mouse in broad, frustrated swipes. The mouse knocked into a stack of books next to my computer.

The obstruction made me realize that the mouse didn't feel right in my hand. I looked down.

In my hand was not my mouse, but rather my cell phone.

You just never know with some people.

I get kind of bored at my desk sometimes. I know, gasp! But there it is.

So, to help the time pass as I'm clacking away on my keyboard, I ask questions of my coworkers.

"What was your favorite halloween costume as a kid?"
"What was your worst memory of high school?"
"If you were in the witness protection program, what would you reinvent about yourself?"
"Have you ever gotten a foreign object stuck up your nose?"

"Actually, I have," answered my coworker, Annette. Annette is way old, like my mom, and she's so skinny her bones would probably break if a bird landed on her. And she's Catholic. Regardless, we're good friends.

"No way, you have to tell me this," I said, spinning in my chair away from my computer screen.

She picked up a new file to process. "When I was little I got the eraser from a pencil stuck up my nose."

The people within earshot burst out laughing. "How long was it in there?" someone asked.

"Several months," Annette said.

"Several months?"

We were incredulous. How could you go through life with an eraser shoved up your schnoz?

"I didn't actually know it was up there. It had come off the pencil, and it wasn't until it started to interfere with my hearing that I was taken to the doctor."

More unbelieving laughter. "Seriously? And then what?"

Annette stopped typing and turned to face us. "It was a quick outpatient surgery and they took it out."

"When you go to the doctor today and they ask about prior surgeries, do you fess up to that one?" I asked.

"Nooooo, it was just a small thing," she answered. What a dumb question. I'm sure her doctor wishes she'd tell him, if not for the free laugh and the "You'll never guess what my patient did" story that he could take to his next raquetball game. "They put me to sleep, I woke up, and there was the bloody little eraser."

"Oh my gosh, they showed it to you?" I said. This story keeps getting better and better.

"Well yeah. I wanted to see it."

Of course. I would want to see something that had been living inside my nose for several months. I started to make fun of her...and abruptly shut my mouth. I recalled coming out of anesthesia after getting my wisdom teeth removed.

"Here you go," the nurse said. She handed me something and bundled me into my dad's car. When I awoke from a nap later, I got out of bed to see what was in the cup sitting on my dresser.

Three bloody wisdom teeth. I dropped the cup in horror.

"Oh my gosh, why did they give me my teeth?" I shrieked to my dad. "That is so gross!"

"You wanted to see them," he said. "You made a big deal after they woke you up that you wanted your teeth back. I think the nurse said you wanted to make earrings out of them."

I guess it takes a weirdo to know a weirdo.

The gift that keeps on giving

I made my first payment on $17,000 worth of student loans today. Slipping the envelope into the mailbox gave me a sense of accomplishment. Not only did I make it through school, but I am paying for it all by myself, too. I inhaled the beautiful scent of self-reliance.

I stopped mid-sniff: I will be paying for this self-reliance for the next ten years.

For ten years, until I am thirty-seven, this monthly mailing out of my hard-earned money will become a familiar ritual. I will watch my nest egg dwindle as I tarry away at a job that was below my intellect before I got the masters degree.

Actually, student loans aren't completely unlike herpes. You do something stupid like continue your education, or sleep with a sleazy guy, and you're exactly where you would have been anyway (in a boring job or painfully single), minus the extra few hundred dollars a month. In return, you get saddled with the gift that keeps on giving. Assuming the herpes doesn't manifest as facial canker sores, no one can see your affliction. Just like they can't see your masters degree.

So, next time you think about doing something to better yourself or to increase your station in life, remember this: herpes don't cost $17,000.

Detecting a Dummy...beep beep beep.

I find myself in need of a metal detector. I've always thought the people who scoured beaches wearing a headset, waving the stick with a disc on the end of it back and forth, back and forth, over the sand, were dorks at best. What do you think you'll find? An old bottle cap? Not exactly adequate payment for hours of scavenging work. And what do you hope to find? Some poor woman's lost engagement ring? I find that crass, the same way I find crassness in engagement rings on display in pawnshop windows. Somewhere out there is a woman who has a naked finger in order to feed her family. She hopes to rebuy her ring someday, but noooo, some cheapskate goes and buys it out from under her. A pawnshop engagement ring is not a good foundation on which to build a marriage.

Anyway, back to my need of a metal detector. In a supreme display of self-reliance, I put up my own outdoor Christmas display. My dad offered some advice.

"You know the large metal Snoopys? Don't just shove the stakes into the ground. They'll snap. Poke a hole in the ground first with a screwdriver or something."

At least I think he said screwdriver. I found the screwdriver in the toolbox that I didn't even know I had. (Disclaimer: I really shouldn't be writing about this. My dad is a faithful reader of my blog and when he reads this, he'll wonder yet again how it was I managed to get a masters degree.)

So I take the screwdriver out to the front yard. The screwdriver is a really nice one, with interchangeable screw tip thingies.

I plot where I want my hole, and I poke.

I withdraw the screwdriver, and admire my hole. I insert one of the metal Snoopy legs, and go to poke the next hole. There's nothing but dirt on the end of the screwdriver. I must've pushed the tip up into the handle. I pulled off the base of the screw driver and flipped it around, reattaching it. There's the tip.

I poke a new hole, and insert the other Snoopy leg. I tie rope around the back of the yard display, and attach it to a cinderblock. How cool is that. I officially have a cinderblock in my yard.

I go to poke a hole for the next Snoopy display. Again, no screwdriver tip, only caked dirt. 'Well, shit. I must've pushed both ends up into the base of the screwdriver.' I set it aside and planned to take it in later and rinse out the dirt. I got out my yard digger-awl thing and used that to finish my decorating.

Back inside, I let the warm water run over my hands as I picked the dirt from inside the screwdriver shaft. I held the shaft up to the light.

Water dripped onto my face. I wiped that away.

Why can I see the light through the shaft?

The screwdriver attachments were gone. Where'd they...?

I visualized my yard. The Snoopy stakes, and below them lie two poor, unsuspecting screwdriver tips, shivering and freezing in abandoned cold.

I briefly contemplated searching Craigslist for a metal detector, but that's a site where child predators frequent, so I decided against it.

So, if you know of anyone who has a metal detector collecting dust in their attic, I would like to borrow it for five minutes. Thank you.