Bargains by the Pound

I don’t like shopping, I like scrounging, and there’s a big difference.  Shopping happens at a store, or worse yet, a mall. It features nice lighting, helpful attendants, piped-in music and shopping bags. Feh. 

Scrounging, a much more adventurous experience, involves heaps and bins and random assortments of what might be crud or might be kinda sorta useful. It takes place in furtive curbside stops, at garage sales and, blessedly, at my new spiritual home, the Goodwill Outlet on University Avenue in St. Paul.  

I don’t know how I managed to survive so many years before uncovering this Shangri-La right in my own city, but from the moment I walked in the door, I knew I had found the Real Deal. The harsh, overhead lighting. The bored security guard leaning against the cement block wall. The diverse customer base that left me, the white lady, in the minority. The heaps of bizarrely unrelated merchandise, with conveyer belts pushing buckets of randomness along. And, the best part -- the fabulous By the Pound pricing system, a truly genius plan. Who could resist an experience in which everything you buy will cost $1.49 a pound? Clearly, not me.

The first time I happened upon this wonderland, I was with Mary Katherine, a vintage-friendly gal, and her overly hygienic friend Olivia. Mary Katherine dove in quickly, searching for treasure in her trademark “pony in here somewhere” style. Olivia stood back, aghast, once again. This was not the first time I’d horrified the poor thing, and would not, I fear, be the last.

But I had bins to sort through, so I got right to work. From the first heap, I pulled out a man’s XXL sweatshirt (I had thought it was a bedspread), followed by a newborn onesie, complete with formula stains. Next, a couple of bedraggled prom dresses that, could they talk, might have some juicy tales to tell. Then a quick succession of regrettable '80s fashion choices – blouses with button covers, holiday-themed vests and a “power suit” (remember those?  I wore them constantly and never attained a smidgen of power), complete with football-worthy shoulder pads.  Finally, one lone espadrille. Now we were getting somewhere, I thought happily, anticipating that the next bin over would surely be the one that yielded a treasure – and yes, I’m aware that this pattern of cogitation is not unlike that of chronic slot machine players, but without the free drinks.

I sensed a shadow crossing my newest heap. Mary Katherine and Olivia were standing across from me, faces tight with that “about to die of boredom” look that teens manage so well. Mary’s pony-somewhere spirit seemed to have soured. Olivia looked like she wanted to go home and take a bath, possibly a Full Silkwood. I begged for five more minutes and then gave in, taking my small pile to the scale … a red cardigan for Mary Katherine, a couple summer tops for Emma (it’s getting hot in Beijing, she tells me) and a pillowcase with cherries on it because, well, I like things with cherries on them. Total sale: $5.25. No bag. Go home.

I’ve been back once already, this time without the teens, wearing comfortable shoes, and with an MP3 player to drown out the execrable music.  I was in heaven, just rooting around and thinking of all the stories that went with all this junk. I suppose I could have spent a nice day at the mall, sipping a smoothie and strolling through the cologne-scented aisles, but really, why would I want to?  There aren’t any stories associated with anything there, and here, I had nothing but questions. What happened to that other pink rain boot? Did the sleeves on that plaid jacket get cut off by a chainsaw, or eaten by a bear? Did someone actually wear this, and how long ago, and how sorry were they afterwards?

Give me stories, and give me bins, and most of all, give me by-the-pound pricing for my scrounging adventures. I'm sure I'll find just what I'm looking for, the next heap over.

LinkedInSanity

I’ve had just enough whining about pixels being inferior to print. I love to hold a musty old book in my hand as much as the next wine-swilling book clubber, but there is one way that pixels beat the page every time, and that time is when you’re standing by the printing press at  2 a.m., and you notice a typo just as the last of your 10,000-quantity-run, four-color brochures comes shooting off the line.

Pixels can be changed, and that, for anyone who has ever had to call the client and explain why their name was misspelled on the cover of the prospectus, is a very good thing.

So why, then, if corrections are infinitely available, do errors so significantly abound? Forget the creative spelling and punctuation excursions of the hairy-eared and frothing online commenters, and just consider a place where you’d think accuracy would be of the highest importance – one’s own LinkedIn profile page. I wrote last summer about my quest to make better use of LinkedIn. In the months since, I’ve seen a lot of profiles. And a lot of mistakes. In the interest of providing a cautionary tale and sending us all to our pages for one more quick read-through, I am presenting these examples from actual profiles I've stumbled upon in the last few months.

These are not arcane little flubs or niggles about semicolon use. They are really dumb mistakes, and many are made in the first two lines of someone’s profile. Really? You don’t have the stamina to do a two-line quality check? You’re clearly CEO material – will $10 million a year be enough as a starting salary?

I’ll start with an easy one, a mistake we’ve all made. Wouldn’t you think LinkedIn could have a spell check that would catch this one?  I mean, how many actual manger manufacturers can there be, outside of the greater Bethlehem metro area, and couldn’t they get an override that would allow the rest of us to stop doing what dear Regenia A. has done:

Regenia A.

Program Manger at Best Buy

Sometimes people just get key happy. Here’s one which leaves me wondering if  the "junior" person is a better speller ...

Andrea J.

Seniior Policy Aide at City of Minneapolis

And here’s a guy who really, really needs help: 

Chris S.

Chemicle Depecdency Tecnician at Endeavor Place

When I saw this next one, I actually stopped and thought, "Wait, what's a "roject" manager?"  I thought it was some high-tech thing I had missed the boat on.  Sadly, this guy was out of my network area, so I'll never know what rojects he's managing these days.  Or rejects, for that matter. 

 

John T.

roject Manager at LHB

Perhaps I've got it all wrong, and he actually works with Mystery Inc.'s gang of meddling kids and their dog, Scooby Doo.  "Roh Roh!  A new Roject! Call John T!"

Some people seem to have some issues with LinkedIn's most basic entry requests, such as correctly inputting one’s first and last name. One day, I got an email that said, “Learn about Weinfurtner, your new connection.” I thought, “Who in the world would name their child Weinfurtner?” Turns out this lady had it mixed up, unless her last name is somehow Tammie. Here’s how it was listed in her profile:

Weinfurtner Tammie

Sometimes people don’t want to settle for a mere two names. I really think, for example, that these two should get together ... together.

 

Jim Splinter Splinter 

Jody Jody Finkenaur 

And, for that matter,  they might enjoy spending time with

Ilana Ilana

Independent Food & Beverages Professional

After seeing this sort of personal screwing up, I wondered if it extended to corporate entities, as well.  I tried an old eBay trick, the “shandahleer run-around.” Turns out there’s an entire group of shoppers who take advantage of eBay’s lack of spell checking to search for all the misinformed ways someone might spell something they’re posting – say, a chandelier that might be languishing unsold by a seller who doesn’t understand why their perfectly nice shandahleer hasn’t been snapped up yet.

I entered some misspelled names in LinkedIn’s search engine, and what I found was either laughable or sobering, depending on how much you care about the future of the English language and the species in general. I found 28 companies who spelled their company name "Assocaites," including law firms, civil engineers and CPAs.

And there are even a few who can’t get past a second-grade Spelling Bee word like “company.”

Of course, we all make mistakes, especially digital ones, but since they’re so incredibly editable, I’d urge everyone to make a quick resume and profile check, just to make sure they haven’t listed themselves as a “manger” at a terrific “copmany.” If you decide to head to my LinkedIn profile page for some competitive proofreading, and find a typo, please tell me, for God’s sake. (Plus, I just put it in there to see if you were really looking.)

And if you happen to know one of these characters who got LinkedOut today, please, tell them, too.  They need all the friends they can get.

The Bag in the Other Mom’s Minivan: What I’ve Learned as a Semi-Professional Teen Transporter

I drive a lot of teenagers, and I drive them many places. I do all this without benefit of space (I drive a Beetle) or ability (I favor the “crazy old granny in the slow lane” school of driving). What I do have are a flexible schedule and an open heart, so my services, such as they are, are frequently requested. Sometimes I think that my most cherished charasteristic as a mother is my ability to keep my schedule clear of pressing appointments between three and five p.m., when everyone needs to get to rehearsal.

The kids I drive are uniformly kind-hearted and grateful. The chorus of thank-you’s I receive at the end of each trip would do their parents proud. And sometimes they even forget that I’m in the car, which is when I get to hear the really good dish.

In addition to occasional gossip tidbits, I’ve picked up some other pointers along the way. These are old news to those who spend most of their time organizing herds of teens, so to all the youth directors and program planners and field trip coordinators who toil in the fields of eternal adolescence, I offer a respectful honk of my chock-full-o-teens car as I pass your minivan on the highway.

The Use of Antennae for Silent Battle Planning

I grew up with much older siblings who were teens when I was a wee tot, so perhaps that informs my paradigm that teenagers use the phone to make their plans. By this, I mean that I think they will use their actual voices with one another. And that’s what I keep expecting, even though it never, ever happens. When I was a child, our house phone was an avocado green number with a standard-length cord, so teen plans were easily overheard by anyone who happened to be in the kitchen. I always knew who was going where, and so did anyone else within earshot.

Not so these days, which is fine (I am all for quiet), except that it’s often very surprising. In the hour before we are leaving for some event, I barely notice Mary Katherine tapping away on her phone. Then, ten minutes before we need to leave, she provides the rundown of kids and addresses for which pickups are required. 

Every single time, I am dumbfounded. “How did she gain all this information without speaking?” I marvel. I imagine masses of teens rubbing their antennae together and communicating the secret location of the colony’s treasure, like very large and fashionably dressed insects. I am in awe of their stealthy ability to plan complex battle arrangements in total silence, like the Great Mime Army of Minneapolis.

The Hotel California Factor

You took the gang to the movie, or the mall, or to see a fellow actor's show. It may seem to you as if it’s all over now, everyone is tired, and it’s time to go home. You even have all seven -- where’s that short kid? Oh, there he is—eight of your charges standing by.

Not so fast. I have spent more time waiting to leave events with teenagers than I’ve spent at the events themselves. Bladders get smaller as the evening progresses. Purses have been left behind and must be frantically searched for. One girl goes missing and everyone is worried that she’s Freaking Out about seeing Chandler and Kaelynne together, whoever they are. And there is always, always a bag in some other mom’s minivan that you have to wait around to retrieve. As the Eagles more or less said, You can stand by the exit looking at your watch and sighing all you want, but you can never leave.

And that bag?  The one in the minivan you had to wait for? This will be the very same bag that gets left in your trunk 45 minutes later, a fact you will discover only after you’ve dropped everyone else at their homes and are pulling into your driveway. From the backseat, your up-to-now silent teen will provide the antennae-delivered update: “You have to turn around. Her algebra book is in that bag, and she has to have it tonight.” Put it in “R,” honey, and don’t expect to be in bed before midnight.

The Group Laugh

Everything is funnier when you’re transporting a large mass of teenagers. The guy crabwalking across the street? People will howl and hold their sides and wet their pants. The man at the bus stop, reading a book?  See him two days in a row and he becomes the stuff of hysterical legend. Plus, if nothing especially funny seems to be happening at the moment, the kids who weren’t around for the crabwalker can be filled in on the hilarious details, or Nathalie can start shouting “Mom” at puzzled passersby (gets a laugh every time, at least inside the vehicle).

So, here's what I've learned about transporting teenagers:  I never know what’s going on, I never, ever get back home at a decent hour, but I have some good really laughs about that crabwalking guy along the way.

The Clump of Hair in the Bible Book, and other Confessions from a Reading Addict

My eccentricities mount with each passing year, and I’ve just realized I can add another one to my list. It seems that I’ve started feeling sorry for books. Of course they're on the way out, especially the long-past-popular ones that never get checked out of the library. When was the last time you read a library book that still had a date stamp card inside it?  My point exactly.  These books have feelings too, you know. They can't help it that they aren't Kindles. Heck, they aren't even paperbacks, poor things.  

This new little pet cause of mine started a few years ago, and I blame Verlyn Klinkenborg. If you don’t know who that is, really you should look him up, because he’s a writer for the New York Times who produces occasional essays that are as perfect as a miniature cupcake with sprinkles, just enough and just right, every time. It all began with his essay Life, Love and the Pleasures of Literature in Barsetshire.

In it, he discusses the novels of Angela Thirkell, who wrote 29 books between 1933 and 1961, all set in the fictional English county of Barsetshire. It’s the same location where Trollope set his books, but, like my bud Verlyn, I like Thirkell better then Trollope, and quite a lot. Here is the line from his essay that really got me going,  “If you cut only the scenes that take place during tea, half of Thirkell would be missing."

Nuff said, Verlyn; you had me at “tea,” I thought, and hastily requested the first book in the series, High Rising, published in 1933. I dug in as soon as it arrived. Is there anything better for a book addict than stumbling upon a series? It doesn’t matter how fast you gobble up a story, because the characters are waiting patiently for you in the very next book, just as soon as you can get to them. 

I loved these books.  Here's one reason why:  Klinkenborg said in his essay that half the scenes take place during tea, but I’d tack on another 25% for scenes describing who is taking which guest to the train station, and who is picking up the guests who are arriving from the city for the weekend. The main railroad line at Winter Overcotes serves Shearing Junction, Winter Underclose, and Worsted. Nearby are Lambton, Fleece, Skeynes, and Eiderdown, naturally. As much as I love the train station conversations, I’m also awfully partial to the sherry party scenes as well, and when the gin-soaked lesbians, Hampton and Bent, throw a cocktail party, then I’m really in heaven. By now I suppose it’s clear that just about nothing happens in these novels. It’s also clear, I imagine, that I very much prefer it that way.  

There were some challenges in getting through the series, though. It took the library forever to dig up the books and get them to my branch, and sometimes I’d get so impatient for one to arrive that I’d skip ahead and then double back. Sometimes my online request would be met with this message: "The only copy available is located in off-site storage. The wait time is approximately six weeks.” Fine, I’d think, find it. I need to see what Hampton and Bent are up to in 1939, and I’m happy to have my tax dollars used for a such a noble purpose.

And while I was very happy --  an expanse of books I loved stretched out before me, just waiting to be read – there were some drawbacks. On the plus side, the books smelled great when I opened them – like Pepsodent and Lucky Strikes and unvarnished, irony-free optimism.  But as much as I enjoyed opening their crackly spines and letting them get their first breaths of fresh air in 50 years, I had to admit that these books looked awful. I wondered what had happened to them in that so-called “off-site storage,” poor things.

They’d been recovered in that bumpy laminate peculiar to libraries, often repeatedly. I imagine that the bestsellers got all the nice, peppy colors. Thirkell’s recoverings tended toward what might have been beige many years ago, and was now just … ugly. 

People noticed. During the course of Project Thirkell, I was visiting a friend overnight, and she peered intently at my nighttime reading.  “What is that?” she said, squinting suspiciously. And then, with a little more skepticism than I hope was warranted, she asked, “Is that the Bible?” I examined the small, liver-colored volume in my hands and summoned up as much indignation as I could manage at ten p.m. “It happens to be Pomfret Towers, and they’re just about to have a sherry party, so Good. Night.”

But of course the slur stuck, and even I began to refer to the ratty old tomes as Bible Books. Mary Katherine and Olivia were especially horrified when I opened one volume and accidentally released a big clump of hair, circa 1960, I’d guess, which was the last time the book had been checked out, according to the antique pocket and stamped card glued in its front. Olivia still asks me if I’ve found hair in any books lately. I refuse to answer, naturally.

As must happen for all addicts, the sad day finally arrived when I’d reached the bottom of my stash. I started reading bestsellers, and things my book club recommended, books that seemed to feature a lot of colorful, slender women photographed from the neck down, I assume in the attempt to make them more Universal. Also, there were a lot of photographs of the backs of heads. I missed my liver-spotted reading material, even if it drew stares in the nicer sort of coffee shops.

And then, ta da, a new source.  I read Second Read: Writers Look Back at Classic Works of Reportage, from the Columbia Journalism Review. I was enthralled by Justin Peters' essay on Brazilian Adventure, written by Ian Fleming’s older brother, Peter. In April 1932, he replied to an advertisement in the personal columns of The Times: “Exploring and sporting expedition, under experienced guidance, leaving England June to explore rivers central Brazil, if possible ascertain fate Colonel Percy Fawcett; abundant game, big and small; exceptional fishing; ROOM TWO MORE GUNS; highest references expected and given.” The expedition, organized by Richard Churchyard, traveled to São Paulo, then overland to the rivers Araguaia and Tapirapé, heading towards the likely last-known position of the Fawcett expedition. Fleming’s book was published by Scribner’s in 1934.

I couldn’t get to the computer fast enough and, hurrah, the library had one copy, and it was even in the land of the living, not the dreaded off-site storage. When it arrived, it was everything I’d hoped for – funny and witty and full of great self-deprecatory British touches. There were no sherry parties, but I imagined Peter Fleming visiting Barsetshire and being very well received. Lord and Lady Pomfret might have him to tea, or perhaps Mrs. Brandon, and he would make quite an impression. Perhaps, deliciously, there could be a discussion of which train would be best for his return to London, and who should drive him to the station.

There’s no Brazilian Adventure series, but Fleming did write other books, and I’ve requested them.  I’m hoping they’ll smell of cigars and brandy, but I’ll be satisfied if they just carry the faint aroma of tea.

Finally, may I make a plea for the continued circulation of Mrs. Thirkell's series? Request one today, any one, and I promise you won’t be disappointed. The clump of hair is long gone.  And imagine how happy that book will be to have been checked out twice in one decade.

The Worm Entrepreneurs of Harriet Avenue

I’ve written a note to myself, in among the usual long list of deadlines and commitments, that says, simply, “Quarters.” It's a reminder to myself that now that the weather seems to be truly springlike, I need to stockpile quarters in my car so that I will be ready for every lemonade stand I see.  It’s not that I am such a lover of lemonade, and, truth be told, most of the stuff I buy is tepid and watery. It’s just that I promised my mother.

In the years before she died, when she used to make trips to see me, she made me promise this:  never pass a lemonade stand without stopping. I always stop, even when I’m on my way to a meeting and I'm pretty sure that I'm about to get lost. I stop when I drank six ice teas at lunch and am racing home to the bathroom. I stop even when the children look highly strung, or their mother overly pert.

Then, yesterday, when the temperature was hovering near seventy and the leaves on the newly planted cherry tree in the front yard seemed to be growing in fast forward, right before my eyes, I saw the best stand ever.

Only it wasn’t for lemonade. It was for worms.

I was, as always, racing from one thing to another. I’d been staffing the afterschool writing help desk at Southwest High School, and then dashing home to pick up Mary Katherine and her friend Maggie, to head back across town for their rehearsal. I’d already made my five-minute warning call home, because we were running tight on time, and I had no idea what the traffic would be like on 94.

I was coasting down the Harriet hill, seconds from home, when I saw three little girls and an indulgent grownup, seated around a sign proclaiming, “Addie’s Worm Store. 5 cents.” The girls were hopping and squirming and generally doing their best wriggly worm imitations.

So of course I stopped.  I talked over the sale with them. I told them that one time, after a freak spring storm, Emma and Mary Katherine had at first tried to sell, and then give away, bags of hail.  In a land so short on irony, they had no takers.

But worms, I said, worms are better.  They agreed.

They assured me that all the worms, which were arrayed in tins that were set on – what else? – doilies, were 100% organic. I told them I wanted five extra-wriggly ones and I handed over my quarter. They picked out the best candidates, sprinkled some dirt in a snack bag, and handed over my purchase.

Yes, Mary Katherine was a little surprised when, before she got in the car, I handed her a bag and told her to free the worms right under that increasingly leafy cherry tree, where they could do the most good.  And yes, Eli, her director, called her cell phone when we were already 10 minutes late and still crawling along University Avenue.

Of course she told him that she was late because her mother had stopped to buy worms.  Being a true theater kid, he didn’t skip a beat. “Just get here as soon as you can because we need to run through the opening number,” he said.   

And we did.

And the Rest of the Day to You

It wasn’t until twenty minutes into Zumba that I realized today was St. Patrick’s Day.  I noticed how many green shirts there were in class and had to cogitate on that for a few moments (to be fair, I was doing a tricky salsa step at the same time) before the light dawned.

I asked my mother, wherever she is, to forgive me.

It was not a holiday to be taken lightly in my house. I can still remember my mother giving me a shamrock-covered handkerchief, one of her best, to take with me to school on St. Patrick’s Day. “You can always tell a lady by her handkerchief,” she would say. She had a whole drawerful of handkerchiefs, all beautifully pressed and smelling of Chanel No. 5 and the sweet, pre-smoked tobacco of her Chesterfields. I don’t think I ever saw her blow her nose in anything but a Kleenex, but that was beside the point. To her, the epitome of ladylike behavior was the holiday hanky, the one that showed you were not only Irish, but classy.

I can also remember her teaching me little bits of Irish lore that she thought I could share at school. She had a misinformed idea of what happened at Buder Elementary, but I appreciated the effort. The hayseeds and crackers with whom I spent my grade school years were more interested in pinching people who weren’t wearing green than in hearing a rendition of “Harrigan” that my mother had taught me that morning,  “H-A-double R-I, G-A-N you see, it’s a name that no shame ever has been connected with, Harrigan, that’s me.”

Of even less usefulness was her insistence that I learn the proper way to greet someone on St. Patrick’s Day:  I should say “Top o’ the mornin’ to you,” and the person was to reply, “And the rest o’ the day to you.” She suggested that I try this ethnic charm on my teacher, who year-to-year, was a harried and sour child-hater just slightly above the cracker class herself, one who gave wide berth and the occasional fish-eye to a neurotic little twerp like me.

I never did of the things that my mother suggested.

Instead, I came home in the afternoon, hanky still pressed, song unsung, greeting undelivered. I suppose we ate corned beef and cabbage, yuck, but I don’t really remember that. My Aunt Fran was said to serve only green food on St. Patrick’s Day, including mashed potatoes. My mother thought this was disgusting, as bad as a cake with blue frosting. She trotted out the yellow food coloring to mix in her watery, Miracle Whip-y potato salad, but there was no need to get carried away. I thought green food sounded wonderful and exotic, but I never got to see it for myself.

The most enthusiastic Irish celebrant I ever knew was my godmother, Thelma Kelley (“k-e-l-l-E-y!” she would spell, showing what sort of Kelley she was, and separating her from the déclassé "y-only" crowd). There were two St. Patrick’s Day Parades in St. Louis, the product of a feud between the “true Irish” Hibernian society, whose parade was always on March 17, and the sellouts from the suburbs, who held a big parade on whatever Saturday fell before the holiday. There was a great deal of finger pointing between the two groups, and dark mutterings about IRA connections, but Thelma rose above the fray. She attended both parades, arriving early with a lawn chair, and, in later years, her walker.

As for me, I’m not fond of crowds, so I usually passed on the parade action. I think beer tastes like liquid Wonder Bread, and I’d be happy to drink whiskey instead, but I’d need to do it five feet from a place where I could lie down quietly as soon as I did. So, the holiday has waned in importance to me, especially since the values I love most in the Irish – garrulousness, eccentricity, the ability to laugh at oneself, and a willingness to look people in the eye – are all in somewhat short supply where I'm living now.

 

Still, I thought about Thelma today, and my mother, and the song. I sent out a silent “Top o’ the mornin’ to you” to both of them. And I swear, just under the salsa music, I could hear them wishing the rest of the day to me, too.

Nerves

The two things my mother always wanted to have were a suntan and a nervous breakdown. First, about the tan: she prized that peanut-buttery epidermis that, before tanning beds, required a great deal of leisure and money to acquire. “Look at that tan,” she would sigh as a woman strolled past her, and if the woman in question also had straight, blonde hair (hers was black and curly), she’d be even more envious. To Mom, a tan meant that you had the abundant leisure time to focus exclusively on yourself and your beauty, and that, clearly, was a mark of a superior sort of person.

Every year on the last day of school, she would tell me, “Why don’t you get a tan this summer?” Um, no. The only place in my unairconditioned St. Louis home that would have been more depressing than the basement (where the snowy black and white television got moved every June 1), would have the weed-choked backyard, where I’d be lying on a beach towel, gazing at the chain link fence and listening to “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo” on my AM transistor radio.

And as to the other item:  ah, how her voice would lilt when she described how someone she knew had suffered “a complete nervous breakdown.” (No one ever, in her telling, suffered a partial one.) For an Irish woman who adored all talk of illness, tragedy and misery, the CNB was the tops.

And now, according to the Wall Street Journal, they’re making a comeback, just like cooking your own food and saving money. In the article, “Time for a Good Old-Fashioned Nervous Breakdown?” Melinda Beck says that the term was never an official diagnosis, just a popular euphemism and convenient catch-all for the inability to function due to psychological stress. Clearly, she never met Katherine Clifford Kendrick, for whom “nerves” were a highly prized diagnosis. Whether it was her dipsomaniacal, narcissistic sister Loretto or my food-addled and raging father, she had an elegant explanation: nerves. In that one word, she managed to convey the idea that the behavior in question wasn’t really the fault of the jackass who’d done it.  They were suffering, she implied, from something marvelously exotic.

Bullshit, I thought, just about as soon as I could form a thought. But no one asked me, and even the slightest display of emotion in our household would be met with the hysterical offer to “rush you to the hospital” for your oncoming CNB. I never got rushed, so I wasn’t sure what exactly would have happened when we got there. As poor as we were, I’m sure I would have been sent home. Aunt Loretto had enough money to fund several stays in the local asylum, and my father was allowed to drop into bed for a week or so whenever his n-word got too bad, but I never tested my ability to drop out, and, like my mother, I’ve continued to solider on, while secretly, sometimes, wishing I could collapse.

Mom's schedule was always too busy to be able to pull off a CNB. Instead, she favored the havoc that being “high strung” could wreak on the human body. She would often proudly tell of the time when she had picked a big rut into the top of her skull. This discussion was always accompanied by a discussion of how the rut was as big as her thumb, with a wave of the thumb in question. (Health-related matters in my family always had a measurement, usually food-related. Tumors as big as grapefruits and black eyes as big as plums are two descriptions that I still, sadly, remember.) As soon as she’d displayed the thumb, she’d sit back in her chair and discuss how the woman at the beauty parlor had been so worried when she’d found that rut.  “And I told her,” my victim-mother would say with a little flourish, “it’s there because of … nerves.” That rut was one of her proudest accomplishments, the tangible proof that the world had mistreated her, and she was mistreating herself.

There was another thing she was proud of, and that was the year she got a tan. She spoke of how she’d scrupulously “sunbathed” every day, religiously applied baby oil and looked, well -- wonderful. Then my father lost his job that September, and she went to work as a secretary in an office. For the rest of her life, she looked, as she always complained, “as if I’d been dipped in a flour barrel.”

And me? No suntan. I fidget too much. And no CNB, either.  Like my mother, I can’t seem to find a way to fit it into my schedule. Not that the thought doesn’t seem tempting. Fourteen years ago, my mother died in my arms, on my front lawn, after mentioning that she wasn’t feeling so hot. I came back from the emergency room to a three-year-old, a nine-month old and a strong desire to crawl under the covers, Jack Kendrick style. Instead, I changed diapers, got up at two a.m. for bottles (Mary Katherine still wasn’t sleeping through the night), and answered Emma’s endless loop of questions about why she had watched her grandmother fall down, why no one let her save grandma because she could have done it, why, why, why, why.  

I confessed to my best friend, who was single and childless, that I was ready for a nice CNB.  “I’ve done that already,” she said, “and it really doesn’t make things any better. Plus, you get pillow prints on your cheek after a while. Just move on,” she said wisely. “Make lunch. Make the bed.” And so I did. And so I do.