Caffeinated Ponderings

Never, ever, ever... say never

I have always been one of those people who got on her high horse about women who choose to undergo plastic surgery. The only problem is that my horse got so high I can no longer even mount it.

I can just hear the haunting replay of my old musings…

“Oh. My. Gosh. That woman has turned her lips into those of a duck-billed platypus.”

“Do it at your own risk, honey, knowing that someone may try to hire you as a puppet at Happy Hallow.”

“Is she trying to look like a Dr. Seuss character? Oh, how the doctor’s hook makes her look like a freak in a book.”

Ah, yes, the smugness of it all.

Wouldn’t you know that the darned horse of mine started his growth spurt when I was still in my 30s, when there was so much natural collagen, so little time to criticize those who had lost it.

I’ve had a few birthdays since my tirades began, but must confess that I delivered what will likely be remembered as my last, just three weeks ago, when a friend whispered her wishes of nipping and tucking the effects of Father Time. If she truly was considering the procedure, I am sure that whatever sagged and bagged her was not buoyed by the donkey loads of scorn I stuffed into it.

But, fear not—I got my just desserts. And they tasted decidedly like crow with a hint of horse patty.

Just a few days later, you see, I stopped at Safeway to do some shopping and picked up a few pieces of poster board for my daughter’s school project. As the young and perky clerk started scanning my items, she chirped: “It looks like someone is doing a grandparent project.”

Did I say the clerk “chirped”? I meant “stabbed.”

It became one of those “Shining” moments (with the upper case “S” as a reference to the movie) when you have to mask the horror you feel within while someone stabs away at your psyche.

When I got to the car and asked my brain to act like crime stopper surveillance equipment and replay the footage, I tried my darndest to hear the clerk say ““It looks like someone is doing THE grandparent project.” You know, the project all the young families are doing to present to their grandparents on National Grandparents’ Day.

In the interest of full disclosure, I actually went home and Googled the date of Grandparents’ Day, praying as I typed that it was just days away, only to discover that there would be 320 days of opportunity to buy poster board for this lovely occasion intended to honor what I now have to embrace as “my people.”

The ordeal made me realize a couple of things:

1- You know you’re in a bad place when you are clinging desperately to the nuances of difference between a definite and an indefinite article, or “the” versus “a.”

2- You also discover that all the thought about such articles makes you not just old, but nerdy to boot.

3- When you handle these public, denial-shattering moments so poorly, plastic surgery is not just your destiny—it’s the making of an investment fund.

Lest you find me too melodramatic, let me remind you that a woman doesn’t change her standards on a dime. I prefer to think I’ve changed mine on a silver dollar after years of genuine questions and comments directed at my youth that have shaken me “like a Polaroid picture.” (Please note that a grandma wouldn’t make a reference to an Outkast song.)

The echoes of disses past come streaming in: “Wait, are you Shana or Shana’s mom?” “What beautiful girls—are they yours?” (Insert incredulous tone.) And the silent shrug and expression of “Meh” from a guy who checked me out, reacting the same way I did to my first bite of eggplant.

The only question now is what to do with all of this high horse I no longer have a use for. Do you happen to know if makes for a viable source of collagen?

Revenge of the Parents

I adore my children with every cell of my being. Yep, even with those dratted cells whose sole mission is to cultivate cellulite. And if that isn’t a testament to love at its most unconditional, I don’t know what is.

I show this love in a physical way by sneaking up behind my daughters and wrapping my arms around them tightly enough to feel their hearts beat. It is a feeling that warms me even more than that of a professionally prepared hot latte on a brisk fall morning.

 

Emotionally speaking, when their young hearts feel joy, I feel it, too—well, unless we’re running late to school and their active displays of joy become my prospective aneurism.

 

When they experience sadness, I feel a sympathetic pit in my stomach that could cinch me a win with a peach in the annual pumpkin growing contest.

 

And yet – lest love look one dimensional – there are times that I would consider leaving the two of them out for curbside pick-up.

 

Alas, it is true that no one ever said that raising a child was easy. What they ought to add to that truism, however, is that raising pre-teens and teens can be downright impossible.

 

I liken the experience to suffering a storm in the days before there was a weather channel. Those primitive people had to be shocked beyond belief to be sitting on the beach enjoying a gentle breeze and the sound of the gently crashing waves, just to nod off and then wake-up to the reality that their umbrella had become a double-threat weapon that would serve to impale or electrocute them.

 

For us, the funnel clouds whip up right around our dinner table, which is supposed to be the beacon of sanity in our hurried and stress-filled world. We always start out civilized and seemingly grateful to sit down together, yet wind up devolving into a contest of bad manners and one-upmanship.

 

I swear I’d flee to the cellar with a ration of pork-n-beans and a flashlight if I thought the drama would blow over quickly, without any intervention on my part.

Since I can’t beat them (literally or figuratively, I’m afraid), I often embody the old refrain and join them in their histrionics. Before you can say duck and cover, we’re all screaming mature accusations of “You started it!” and “You always side with her!”

 

When all the fight is out of me, I bow my head in desperation and do my best Rodney King impression with “Can’t we all just get along?”

 

This pattern upsets me to no end. I politely point out that the girls alternate between the roles of provoker and over-reactor in every one of these blow-ups, but analysis doesn’t seem to get us far.

 

Since I can’t seem to solve the problems, I find my own way of coping with them. Coffee seems to help for the early morning rounds and chardonnay does a lovely job of taking the edge off the evening ones, but I have discovered that the real way through it is with a perverse sense of humor.

 

I do realize that the little games I play are likely to put me behind Britney on the long list of candidates for “Mother of the Year,” but it is a price I am willing to pay.

 

My sick pleasure, you see, is invading their language and making it my own in a way that takes what is cool and makes it as lukewarm as soup on simmer.

 

The discovery came to me when I was a high school teacher and my students started using the expression “Oh, snap.” I was intrigued by its meaning because I noticed they were using it in two different ways. One was as a replacement for an expression that would get them in trouble and the other was to say something to the effect of “gotcha.”

 

The horror and disgust I encountered by having asked the question let me know I was on to something big. This led to my trying out the expression and asking earnestly “Did I use it correctly?”

 

Before you could say “Copa Cabana,” my act had evolved into “Samba snap!” complete with the perky visual aide of my dancing hand. They rolled their eyes; I laughed maniacally and forgot my woes. It was perfect.

 

Without realizing it at the time, I was being trained for the up-and-coming teens I would soon have in my own house. For obvious reasons, they have never been interested in “oh, snap,” but they have started adding a new suffix, “uh,” to the end of words when they are annoyed. Do they not realize who they are playing with-uh?

 

To a trained and ornery ear like mine, this means the word “no” starts to sound an awful lot like “Noah.” And wouldn’t you know, that reminds me of the preschool song that goes “Who built the arc? Noah, Noah.”

 

How much do you want to bet that I can eradicate that suffix in a Samba snap?

 

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Shana McLean Moore is a resident of Almaden Valley. She is a motivational speaker, author and community organizer. She can be contacted through her website: www.sunnysidecommunications.com

Confessions from an Opraholic

Late at night, when my husband’s breathing patterns signal a deep enough sleep that I can extract the remote control from his gender-entitled grasp, I tune in to recorded episodes of the Oprah show.

That’s right—I’m not afraid to admit that I am neither too busy nor too evolved to hang on Oprah’s words of wisdom.

I say this knowing full well that, for some of you, the rolling of your eyes is now interfering with your ability to read my column, which does little for a writer dreaming of an Oprah-like following of her own.

From what I gather, those of you who mock are either so far evolved that her Ah-ha moments feel more like No-Duh declarations of the obvious, or you’re so far off the grid of self-improvement that your Must-See-TV hours are better spent at Cartoon Network. To you I say “Namaste.” And if that greeting is met with a vacant stare, I can always make small talk about Shaggy and The Scoob.

While I would personally prefer to watch the Oprah show live, it happens to air when I am wading through the most perilous part of my job description. You see, having a mom tune in to the Oprah show at 4:00 is sort of like asking an accountant to take an early-April trip to Tuscan; inviting a doctor to book a getaway during flu season; or encouraging a firefighter to take a lunch break as soon as a siren sounds.

In a nutshell, the chaos that ensues when a mom goes AWOL after school is more daunting than an IRS audit, more head-splitting than a nose full of impacted green mucous, and more heated than a four-alarm blaze.

It all boils down to the fact that the kids are just home from six hours of school, where they have tried to manage six different sets of teacher expectations while simultaneously deflecting jabs at their self-esteem from their classmates. They are tired, hungry and in need of some TLC that must be administered in a timely and delicate manner so that they will not suffer emotional distress when rushed through dinner and homework before being pushed back out the door for an evening dance class or soccer practice.

When this all runs smoothly, ours is a family portrait best painted by Norman Rockwell. When it does not? The job would be better grasped by Norman Bates.

Though I won’t be able to tune in to their words of wisdom until the kids are asleep, I can almost hear running commentary from Oprah & friends as I dash around the house trying to juggle work deadlines, plan for volunteer commitments, cook, clean and calm people down, while always seeming to rile them up more.

I swear there’s an echo from some sort of hidden Mommy Cam as the experts gather behind a one-way mirror to observe and comment upon the damage being done to mother and children alike:

From relationship expert, Dr. Phil: “So how’s that working for ya, lady?”

Health guru, Dr. Oz: “Pfft. While optimal blood pressure is 115 over 75, the average American's blood pressure is 130 over 85. And what happens to the average American? She dies of a heart attack. Prime the paddles for this one.”

Finance expert, Suze Orman: “Is family counseling a solid investment? I’d say she can’t afford not to seek it.”

Clutter consultant, Peter Walsh: “When she watched the tape last night, why did she snort with disgust when I said moms ought to make cleaning up fun for kids?”

Designer, Nate Berkus: “May I suggest that woman paint her whole house a soothing shade of sea-foam blue?”

Beloved poet, Dr. Maya Angelou: “I’ve said it a thousand times: ‘I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’ But why did this woman interrupt me with two hallelujahs and then end with an ‘Uh, Oh’?

Personal trainer, Bob Greene: “How does one even train for all of this?”

BFF, Gayle King: “I’m so glad I’m Oprah’s best friend and not hers. If we were one soul in two bodies, she’d be killing us both right now.”

I suppose my one remaining hope is that Oprah will bring back the Dog Whisperer for a second act as the Kid Whisperer. If the man can teach us to soothe our four-legged beasts, there’s got to be a way to manage the two-legged ones so we have a chance to watch our daytime TV when we need the wisdom most… when the little sanity suckers get home from school.

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Shana McLean Moore is an author, motivational speaker and community organizer who resides in Almaden Valey . She can be contacted through her blogs: www.sunnysidecommunications.com and www.caffeinatedponderings.com.

Summer Nights

I've been a sucker for summer since sometime between my 1st and 7th viewing of the movie Grease during the summer of 1978. Just 11-years old at the time, I had yet to experience the sensations of summer love that Olivia Newton John and John Travolta’s characters, Sandy and Danny, shared. But I did understand enough to swoon vicariously in my cineplex chair while jotting down a few mental notes about how I, too, could “have me a blast” with some of that summer lovin’ that “happened so fast.”

If my memory serves me correctly, the ingredients for the good time boiled down  to a suntan, a break from the academic pressures of the school year, and meeting a tall, dark and handsome boy my parents would never approve of who would rescue me if I swam by him and got a cramp. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.

In a natural progression of logic, I spent the next 10 summers being “saved” by every lifeguard along the California coast in search of a Sandyexperience of my own, and the next 20 summers after that smiling nostalgically about the couple of Dannys who bought my act hook, line and life preserver.

It all seemed like an innocent rite of passage—until this summer.

It just occurred to me, you see, that my youngest daughter is of the same age I was when I first saw Grease. This also means, of course, that I, the former “swooner,” am now raising two daughters who are well into the summer swooning demographic themselves

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And it makes me wonder: How in the name of all that is right and pure has this movie not been burned and banned by responsible parents everywhere?

For the record, I am a reasonable person. I have no problem with suntans—provided that my girls have come by them despite the layer of SPF 50 I have them slather on. And believe me, I’m all for the break in homework and test preparation. After all, who do you think cracks the whip during the school year to rein in those who are too young to appreciate how their choices in middle school affect the courses they are prepared to take in high school, which affects the kind of college that will accept them, which is ultimately the deciding factor as to whether or not they will become not just the first female President of the United States, but the first sister act? I assure you that my calloused hands need the summer off just as much as my daughters’ weary brains do.

But, honey, within these plans there is no room for summer lovin’ with the likes of a Danny Zuko. If that boy were to show up on my porch, I’d turn the shine on my minivan into some “Greased Lighting” of my own with the hair on his knuckle head.

Yes, I said it: the same boy who gave me chills that were “electrifyin’” when I was coming of age would be singeing me with the voltage of an electric chair if he were pursuing one of my sweet Sandra Dees.

This realization makes me wonder where Sandy’s parents were during the summer of love and the school year that followed. Were they not concerned that their daughter morphed from Polly Puritan in a poodle skirt to Lucy Libidinous in black leather?

The only way I can make sense of it as a parent is that the movie was running long and they had to edit out the role of Sandy’s mom, the lovely Mrs. Olsen. Otherwise, I’m sure we would have seen her take control of the situation. In fact, I like to think of her lurking on lane 7 as the lustful duo went bowling at the arcade. I also see her dressed in some crisp sand-colored capris as she tried to blend in with the beach landscape while shadowing them during those strolls when they drank lemonade. And with my whole heart, I also know Mrs. Olsen would have intervened sometime before 10:00 so they’d have no chance to make out under that dang dock.

Just as sure as summer leads to fall, I now understand that Sandy’s mom breathed a huge sigh of relief when it turned colder and that romance seemed to end. Because there’s just something about those su-uh-mer ni-ights that makes a mamma want to “have her a blast”… right through the barrel of her just-purchased shotgun.

A Picture Perfect Vacation

It is true that a picture captures a thousand words, but I recently discovered that many of my family snapshots are lying cheats. They’re not telling just any lies, either. I am talking about the kind of tales that would make Pinocchio’s nose reach from Giapetto’s Italian puppet shop to the Golden Gate, and then claim it only went as far as the Brooklyn Bridge.

The problem, I suppose, is that we are a family of posers. It is our unspoken mantra that candid photo taking is for the paparazzi who, thank God, have no interest in the likes of us civilized civilians. This fact, coupled with the reality that we rarely remember to charge the battery on the video camera, means that our image is only captured when we want it to be—when we’re showered, shined and have a three-second warning to turn our frown upside down for the sake of future memories.

In no time during our family history has the three-second warning been more important than during last week’s summer vacation. Sure, we have endured tougher times, but never when we were supposed to be frolicking in the sun with our extended family. Frankly, the experience can best be compared to a heat index, which explains in weather-speak why hot feels even hotter than the thermostat’s reading. The fact that our misadventures happened while we were on vacation just made our 100 degrees of sucky feel 5 degrees suckier.

The trouble started at 6:40 a.m. on the first full day of our trip when my husband tapped me on the shoulder to say that my brother, sister-in-law and their two children had spent the night turning our shared beach house rental into a vomitorium. This meant, of course, that our first day would be anything but a day at the beach as we looked to the Yellow Pages for a local urgent care clinic. Though my sister-in-law and nieces seemed to have a textbook case of a nasty flu, my brother required blood tests and IV fluids to rehydrate. The rest of us lived in fear that the evil spores were contagious and did our best to support those who were green, weak and whiny from a safe distance.

Nevertheless, as I look through the pictures now that we are all healthy and back at home, I see smiling faces with nary a sign of our true concerns: “Please don’t exhale your toxic fumes on me as we pose around the dinner table and you choke down your saltine crackers while I savor my barbecued chicken.”

By day three of the trip, when most of the misery had subsided, the six healthiest of us spent the day at Disneyland. In addition to being just plain hot outside, we had the added pleasure of having our credit card declined by our bank because the ticket prices were so high for a party of six that it triggered an early fraud alert that took us 30 minutes to resolve.

Inside, the lines were long and the sun continued to blaze. As my parents and I found a shady spot to rest while my husband and the girls spent one hour in line for the Space Mountain ride, I did a quick mental survey of the people around me and started to giggle. Considering that we were in “the happiest place on earth,” why was no one smiling? After all, mine didn’t count because I was only laughing at the irony that everyone else looked so miserable.

My pictures from Disneyland do not tell this story. In fact, if I could Photoshop out all of the sweat, I could probably sell them to the theme park’s marketing department as testimony to their claims. There’s certainly no proof within the pictures that just before we said “cheese,” I performed a perfect Darth Vader voice threatening an early departure if the girls didn’t stop bickering.

By the next afternoon, believe it or not, I received a call on my cell phone from a kind neighbor at home who tracked me down to let me know that our water main had broken and water was pouring down our driveway while the meter spun around like a pinwheel on a Chicago pier.

After processing the damage and making calls to remedy it, we took the girls out for a Balboa Bar frozen treat and we crossed the ferry to Newport Beach. By now it will be no surprise that our stress-induced scowls are nowhere to be seen in the pictures from that day. Though, to be perfectly honest, it’s only because my husband did not join in our attempts at fun, spending the day, instead, pacing around between calls to the plumber and wondering how we would pay for the repair.

As I organize the pictures of our faked vacation, I’m getting a little nervous that our acting skills might be good enough for Hollywood… which means we might have to embrace those candid shots of the paparazzi after all.

Everything we need to know we learn when our kids are in kindergarten (through 5th grade)

Robert Fulghum may have earned an A+ and a cool million dollars from the lessons he learned in kindergarten and subsequently shared with us in his 1989 best-selling book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, but some of us slow learners needed to watch our own kids go through the paces before the life lessons sank in for us.

The honest among us will even admit that our newfound understanding comes as a whopping relief. I think we sensed that another round of instruction might leave us looking like some of those three-timing fifth graders with G.I. Joe biceps and stubble that hints at the makings of a ZZ Top-like beard.

While my own personal marks don’t qualify me as valedictorian of the graduating fifth grade class of parents of Los Alamitos Elementary School, I did end up with a respectable B average. In a humbling act of generosity, I thought I would share my report card with you, complete with comments from my teacher, Mr. Fulghum himself.

Because I should have mastered these life lessons either when I was in kindergarten myself or when I was raising a kindergartener, the man was generous enough to devise something of an elementary school exit exam, which allows parents like me to keep trying until our dunce caps can be traded in for a mortar board when our last child graduates from fifth grade.

Lesson 1: Share everything

“Shana consistently forked over her last $20 so that her children could have fun, fun, fun till their creditors take the T-Bird… er, Master Card away. Since no one said the sharing had to be voluntary, Mrs. Moore ranked at the top of her class for sharing/being blindly pillaged.” Final grade: A+

Lesson 2: Play fair

“Shana impressed me with her growth this year by learning to avoid making her kids cry by stealing their Monopoly properties, sneaking an extra roll of the dice in Yahtzee, or stacking the deck in Candyland so she would get Queen Frostine early in the game. She did, however, resort to tricking her kids during a Scrabble match into believing that “Qoxz” was a real word meaning “a special form of quartz rock,” which when placed on a triple-word square landed her a cool 87 points and, subsequently, lowered both my trust in her and her daughters’ love of board games.” Final grade: B

Lesson 3: Don't hit people

“Shana demonstrated a thorough understanding that today’s generation of kids knows and sees manipulative value in the Child Protective Services (CPS) organization. If not for one alleged incident involving a controversial wrist grab, this insight would have qualified Mrs. Moore for an A.” Final grade: B

Lesson 4: Put things back where you found them

“Shana excelled so greatly in this subject that she also managed to put away every cell phone, ipod, mismatched sock, text book and hair clip for every other human and canine in the household.” Final grade: A+ (despite all attempts to fail this class)

Lesson 5: Say sorry when you hurt somebody

“Mrs. Moore’s lightening speed in making amends for the wrist grabbing incident resulted in an aborted call to CPS. Extra credit points were given for her bravery for not hiding the phone during this volatile situation.” Final grade: A+

Lesson 6: Wash your hands before you eat

“Shana is a woman who appears to know precisely where her hands have been (i.e., in the hamper, toilet bowl and dog dish) and has a perfect record for washing them before consoling herself with cookies and milk, which, according to my research with kindergarteners, are good for you, yet appear to do little for Mrs. Moore’s ability to zip her pants.” Final grade: A+

Lesson 7: Take a nap every afternoon

“Shana doesn’t actually know she takes naps, so this grade will come as a surprise to her. She believes that her third cup of coffee sustains her throughout the day’s activity, but she is actually sleepwalking as she sorts laundry, battles soap scum, feeds the dog… and, yes, washes her hands with enough frequency for an endorsement from the obsessive-compulsive society.” Final grade: A+

Lesson 8: Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some

“Shana tried to convince me that driving other people so that they might have these opportunities gave her a vicarious experience or “contact high” in this subject matter. Her grade was raised slightly because of her expressed desire to be sent to a 60-day summer sleepover camp to get back up to grade level.” Final grade: D

“It was a delight to have Mrs. Moore in the class of life lessons over these past 35 years. I have every confidence that her mastery of our coursework has prepared her for a bright future as a middle school parent, where she will be well equipped to cope with a more grade appropriate amount of GI Joe arms and ZZ Top beards.”

At the Check-Out

Sometimes the cost of a check-out is pricier than a cart brimming with fillets and Silver Oak Cabernet.
(Please click the arrow in the blue bar to listen, or scroll below to read it yourself.)

I just got checked out, and I wasn’t even at the grocery store.

It should have been a banner moment for all thirty-eight years of me. After all, the only thing fuller than my grocery bags these days is the luggage I’m carting under my withered eyes. Sigh. I’m resigned to having passed that baton to my tweenage daughter. In fact, I thumped her on the head with it on the transfer.

Think what you will, my friends, but aging gracefully is overrated.

Perhaps this is why I took the following incident as well as I did. There I was, stopped at a red light, passing the time by looking at the cars around me. After a quick glance to my right, I did a double take as I noticed a guy actually check me out. But before I could even consider sitting taller in my minivan captain’s chair, he followed up with a dramatic post-stroke face and shoulder shrug that said “Eeh.”

Good God. Had it really come to that? This, after all, is the same reaction I had to my first bite of eggplant. One squinted eye, a half smirk, as if to say “So, what’s all the hype about? It’s not repulsive enough for a spit-take, but I’m not about to devour it, either.”

With that, any fantasies I’d held onto about being considered an “American Pie” M.I.L.F. were obliterated. Unless, of course, this young man defined the acronym as a “Mother I’d Like to Find at least one car length away.”

It could have been worse, though. No? He didn’t retch, or even bark, or moo.

When you take into consideration that this moment coincided with my very first non-beach, public debut of my arms, which I not so affectionately refer to as “tharms” (thigh arms), I nearly honked my horn and waved in appreciation. But that would have sent the arms a flapping… the very thing that had me doubt my skimpy clothing selection on this hot summer day.

The outfit choice was a bold move for someone who had no business tempting karma. I’d already fulfilled half my destiny by becoming a high school Spanish teacher. And now that the tharms and the man were involved, the universe was ripe for a payback.

You see, the debt was incurred twenty-six years ago when I had my first Spanish class with Señora Améndola. While the kind woman surely taught me irregular verb forms in a way that made me love the language enough to want to teach it when I grew up, I have only one real memory of her class: Each and every time that poor woman wrote on the chalkboard, any and all learning stopped as I giggled and snickered about how her arms wagged like my dog’s tail on steak night.

I had built-in insurance that my students would never have the same memories of me. Long sleeves pretty much guaranteed it. I must admit, however, that this approach once led a student to proclaim to the class that he pictured me sweating on my upcoming wedding day. He was right, of course, and was part of the reason I dared to brave ¾ sleeves, and squelched all fantasies of transferring to a Catholic school and dressing as a nun. Sweat and public ridicule can do that to a girl.

Summer vacation recently arrived and inspired me to get braver still. I decided to tackle an afternoon of yard work while wearing a bright orange fitted tank top. In the privacy of my own yard, my superficial thoughts became secondary to my deep-tissue issues as I stooped, yanked and hauled the afternoon away. That is until my hungry family declared a craving for Chinese takeout. I was exhausted enough to rationalize the indecent exposure of my tharms, and hop in the car. After all, odds were good that I wouldn’t need to wave excitedly or give any high-fives while picking up our order.

Once the exchange was completed, I left the restaurant with nary a condemning glance and re-entered the safety of my minivan. Not so bad at all. I might just dare to bare again someday. Then, not one mile down the road, along came the reluctant “Eeh” of approval to remind me of my needs for growth in some areas, and a lot more restraint in others. I love it when the gods go easy on me.

Now pass me the egg rolls…

Points of Light

If the teen magazine quizzes from your youth have spoiled any chance of your appreciating the work of Thomas Kinkade, "The Painter of Light," this is sure to tickle your funny bone... or prompt you to keep that next appointment with your therapist.

(If you would like to listen to this as an audio file, please click the arrow in the blue bar. If you prefer to read it yourself, please scroll down.)

Why IS it that… there’s no light at the end of some tunnels?

While faces and names tend to fade as we age, there are moments in our youth that are as pan seared as an ahi fillet in our memory banks.

One of mine that will always carry the stench of burning flesh came about when Michelle, one of my best friends in junior high, gathered the girls around to plant a disturbing little seed in our heads. You know, the kind of seed that would allow you to intentionally grow crabgrass or dandelions— if you wanted to promote terrorism through gardening.

Now, after 27 years of germination, this seed has spawned the size of a weed-infested vacant lot for me, and for the other girls who would’ve preferred to keep their self-esteem as pure as some freshly laid sod.

You see, Michelle lined us up for an enlightening presentation. She stood before us in her P.E. shorts, her exposed legs and pointer finger serving as an effective visual aide as she made her declaration. “When you put your ankles together like this, you’re supposed to have, like, three points where light shows through,” she proclaimed with all the conviction of a lifetime subscriber to Seventeen magazine.

According to Michelle, one ray shines between the ankles and calves, another beams between the calves and knees, and the other would apparently radiate between the knees and thighs. I say would because I have never experienced this type of sunburst. In fact, for me, there is such black-out darkness in that region that I’m surprised I haven’t sprouted mushrooms to harvest and sell at a roadside stand.

Did I mention that Michelle was bow legged? Yeah. This means you’d need to wear sunglasses to give her poles a peer-thru. So it’s no coincidence that she was the one to educate us, the chafing masses, about this apparent truism. The rest of us would have held the floor with something safer, like the latest scoop on Rick Springfield or the teen-zine’s guide to applying blue eye shadow.

Nevertheless, we mechanically brought our ankles together; many of us sensing that we’d fail this test worse than we did the one Mr. Frisch just handed back in science class. And we did, so much so that if there had been a remedial thigh class, we’d have been transferred instantly.

It should come as no surprise that once we realized we’d have to hand out night-vision glasses to complete our inspections, the deal was sealed that our cover-ups would get more play than our swimsuits that summer. And every summer since.

The “lesson” still haunts me today. It shows in my abnormal fascination with fall, which has little to do with ghouls and gourds and a whole lot to do with the return of full-coverage pants. And as strange as this may sound, it also shows in my interest in the paintings of Thomas Kinkade.

While the rest of the world celebrates Mr. Kinkade as a neo-Norman Rockwell slice of Americana, my interest is a little less conventional. Don’t get me wrong, Victorian mansions and quaint cottages are charming, indeed. But I’m far more captivated by the whole “Painter of Light” thing: The glow he captures in the way a candle illuminates a dark corner of the room; the way the moon glistens on the ripples of a river; how the sun sets over rolling hills—this man can find light in a cave. Is it too much to hope for that with a little help from a NASA laser and a stretch in my stride, he might be able to spot some on me?

Until Thomas comes knocking with palette, paintbrush and retina-searing light in hand, I’ll be spending my time with the weed whacker. While I’ll never get control over every blade of crabgrass that clutters my memory, I’ll be sure to get the ones that look bow legged.

Rash Decisions

The first time I heard about the Darwin Awards, named after the father of evolution, Charles Darwin, and given posthumously to people who “improve the species... by accidentally removing themselves from it,” I cackled like I was auditioning for a voiceover gig for the clown ride at the county fair.

It slowly sank in, however, that all the honorees did actually die because of their antics, so I felt a little guilty for laughing. But I was still flabbergasted that anyone more evolved than an early Homo erectus could be more concerned with packing their camera equipment than their parachute when preparing to go skydiving, or deciding the best way to avoid bee stings to the face is to encase your head in a plastic bag.

So, unless you’re an obese P.E. teacher or a doctor who smokes, you’ll appreciate the irony that I, Madam Le Smug, was recently a contender for a Darwin Award myself.

It all started when a dear friend decided I had not been appropriately acknowledged for my volunteer work at the school. But rather than present me with flowers like the other volunteers received, she knew the ideal consolation gift for a friend who seemed to like her pants just like her coffee – filled to the rim – was to give her an iced loaf cake from her favorite bakery.

It started innocently enough as I sliced off a piece (okay, a wedge) for an afternoon snack. I ate it. I may have also, possibly, let out a few sounds of ecstasy while I did so. Nothing out of the ordinary. I then went about my afternoon.

A couple of hours went by and I commented to my husband that a mosquito must have bitten me in the exact same spot on both sides of my torso. Soon after, I declared this mosquito to be the “Where’s Waldo” of his species, popping up as he was on every nook and cranny of my body.

I finally raised my shirt with the trepidation of a dedicated La Leche League mother of five at her first Mardi Gras and discovered a rash and welts so severe that I rushed to the medicine cabinet for Benadryl.

I then spent the next hour feeling like a kid’s Scratch ‘N Sniff activity book, though no one would get close enough to see if I smelled like strawberries, lest it was something contagious.

Once the medicine took hold and my condition was downgraded from epidemic to eczema-like, I pondered the cause of the reaction. And try as I did to blame the healthier items I’d eaten  – like the banana, wheat bread or chicken breast – I deduced that the cake was the only thing out of the ordinary I had consumed that day. I digested this sad fact alongside the decadent frosting and settled in for an itchy and restless night.

By 10:00 the next morning, I was itch free and in desperate pursuit of my second cup of coffee. As I headed to the coffee maker, things started to go decidedly

Darwin

on me. I spied the demon cake nearby and, somehow, convinced myself that it couldn’t have been the cause of such physical distress. The only possible explanation for this decision is that the secret ingredient in my favorite pastry is one heaping cup of devil, because I swear that cake called out to me: “Here, not-so-little girl, one bite won’t hurt you.”

In a trance-like state, I immediately convinced myself that having a second serving would be like conducting a science experiment. I simply needed a controlled sample to exclude any possible variables. (If this doesn’t make sense to you, it’s probably because I made it up as I went along.)

I now understand that real scientists would have started out with a very small bite, or would have conducted the experiment on a rat instead of themselves. This scientist? Well, I cut myself a hog’s hunk of cake, just in case it would be the last one I ever ate. I assure you I meant this in the sense that I wouldn’t be able to order this cake again—not because I would be dead.

I ate it. All of it. I was home alone and may have uttered further sounds of ecstasy, but – just like those proverbial trees that fall in the forest – because no one was home to hear them, they can’t be included in my Honorable Mention Darwin Award application. What may have to be disclosed, much to my embarrassment, is that this time the welts were on the inside as well as the outside of my body. My throat started to close up and I dove for the Benadryl.

As I waited twenty anxious minutes for the medicine to take effect, all I could think about was the fact that if I died next to a plate of these cake crumbs, my husband would have to declare my cause of death to be gluttony. All of a sudden the parachute-less skydivers and head baggers are looking pretty smart, aren’t they?

##

Award-winning writer* Shana McLean Moore is a resident of Almaden Valley in San Jose, CA.  For more information about her essays, books and podcast, visit www.caffeinatedponderings.com . (*Does Honorable Mention for a Darwin Award count?) In the spirit of misery loving company, she’d like to hear about your near misses for the trophy. 

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