In my life I have come across many interesting people, and many more who are memorable because they have been given interesting names. I am gifted with a friend named Lucky. Yes. It is her real name.
Lucky’s mother is Chinese and her father is of German decent, however, they were both raised in Calgary Alberta. Lucky calls her mom Lila the Chinese cowgirl and usually follows it with a YEEHAW! All this to say that I don’t think background had any thing to do with her name. Upon her arrival into the world her father who already had a son was so delighted to have a daughter to round out his family he just plain felt lucky.
An early endowment by the boob fairy cursed Lucky. She did her best to hide her bumps but with the end of grade school fast approaching Lucky was determined not to begin high school with three reasons to draw attention to herself. Somehow she knew she did not want the attention her boobs and her name could possibly bring her way. With foresight beyond her young years Lucky was determined she was going to have nothing to do with taking ownership of the “Getting’ Lucky” lines cruel teenaged boys would inevitably shout at her and so she decided to adopt a safer moniker. She slid under the radar of high school known only as Lisa.
Lisa is a storyteller as am I. We have found a common thread in our friendship regaling stories from our past to one another. She always gets tripped up dissolving into fits of cackling laughter at the names of the characters who make up my childhood. This has become a game. She tells me her father new a guy named RUSTY NAIL and a girl named MARY CHRISTMAS.
I lived up the block from twins whose last names were REAKES. I spent grade 8 in Junior high with an unfortunate boy who sold his dad’s home made moonshine out of his school locker who’s name was ROLLY DERBY. His sister Louise tried failingly to get us to call him Rolland in an effort to stop the teasing. I entered high school with a boy name MONSIOUR MONSIOUR but his nickname was meatball – I don’t know what name is worse. I babysat the DINGLEDINE kids and shared a paper route with a boy whose last name was FREAKE. Lisa will always be counted on to bring up one or another of these names on a regular basis asking me to tell her the stories again and again.
At the age of 35 Lisa had had a particularly tough year. In a moment that could only be symbolized as rebirth she announced to me over dinner that she was going to reclaim her given name. And so she began to go by Lucky for the first time since she was 13.
I don’t know why a girl with such a fitting and unique name finds all the people I talk about with equally unusual names so funny. It made me think I should call her up this afternoon to tell her about a girl I once knew named ANNE TIQUE.
Just so I can pull her leg a little.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Collector Ship
As a Canadian, recently transplanted to the United States, I am settling into life in the Carolinas very well. I have always thought of Canadians as having a similar culture to our American cousins. Although, I am beginning to experience some culture shock.... over the weirdest of things too.
In Toronto, we have an amazing recycling program. Every week we compost kitchen scraps, recycle plastic, paper and tin and every other week one bag of garbage per household and our yard waste are picked up. These rules are strictly enforced.
By he end of April I would anxiously look forward to spring, when winter would take it’s snow coat off the lawn so I could get outside to rake up the remaining fall leaves, unveil the crocus and daffodils and restore order to the yard.
Leaves are raked up and placed in oversize brown paper bags to go curbside for pickup. All the Canadian lawn and garden centers carry these bags, each store branding the sides of the bags with their name and logo for advertising value. Yard waste is only picked up if it is placed in these biodegradable bags. If they are in plastic they will not be collected and will sit on the curb to become compost.
This February, only days after moving into our new house, the warm Carolina sun shone down with all the heat of an Ontario May, beckoning me outside. I couldn’t resist.
Happily, I raked leaves into neat piles. I had a few Home Depot brown paper lawn bags in the garage with my gardening tools from back home. Carefully, I put the yard waste into the giant paper bags. Everyone knows the joys of a soggy bottomed paper bag, so, I placed the full bags under the overhang on my front porch so they would not get wet if it rained to await pick up day.
My neighbor walked by a few days later and said; "I am dying to know. What's in those bags?"
I said; "Yard waste, leaves, tree branches and stuff."
"Oh!" she says; "I wondered what you had moved here and why were you letting it die in it's bag?"
Meanwhile, I ran out of giant paper lawn bags, so, I have been to Home Depot, Lowes and Walmart asking in the garden center for brown paper lawn bags. Drawing a blank from each sales person I have encountered, I am told it must be too early in the year for stocking this item. I proceed to use black garbage lawn bags...very much to my environmentalist's chagrin.
Garbage day arrived. I put the brown paper Home Depot yard waste bags, the black garbage bags full of leaves along with my other garbage and recycling on the curb. I could hear the garbage truck idling out front for an unusually long time so I went to the window to see what was going on.
The yard waste guys were picking up my paper yard waste bags flipping them up side down DUMPING the contents into the back of their truck then carefully replacing the bags back on the lawn for me to reuse!
I couldn’t believe my eyes! Wow! Now that is taking recycling to the extreme!
After a little while it occurs to me. The garden centers don't have brown paper leaf bags in NC at all. Apparently, the NC folk sweep the leaves to the gutter and a devoted yard waste truck sucks them up with a big vacuum hose into the truck. This does seem very practical.... no bags…. how ridiculous my yard bags must have looked.
Culture shock. Maybe?
Next week I will try collards.
LADY SHIP At Sweet 16?
“But I told daddy I wanted a band like 6 months ago!” whined a 15 year old in anticipation and planning of her sweet sixteen birthday party somewhere in the vicinity of Beverly Hills California.
Her sweet sixteen unfolds with Daddy’s roll of 100’s. Cars, male models, painted pink poodles, multiple party outfit changes including trips to Paris for dress fittings; these are but some of the episode’s content. Household name bands are hired to perform. Invitations worth more than my last 16 birthday gifts combined are hand delivered to the birthday girl’s select few hundred guests.
I sit mouth breathing pointing at the TV willing the commercials to end so I can continue on with my new infatuation. A little part of me is waiting for the bottom of this spoiled princess’ fairytale birthday party to fall out or at least one teen could find a run in her panty hose with no back up pair in her purse.
My emotions shift and with the curve of my now up-toured lip. I find myself gunning for the spoiled brat as she launches herself from a helicopter landing on the tarmac below to make a grand entrance into her “Super Sweet Sixteen” party. “Everyone is going to know who I am and be so jealous” she squeals.
I have no idea what has come over me but I am addicted to MTV’s My Super Sweet Sixteen. Every Wednesday I set the timer on the TV and get ready to hunker down for two back to back episodes of train wreck.
I do have better things to do, I agree. But I can’t help myself. The collision of spoiled hormonal teens and money has me enthralled. So for the sake of this blog I will try to justify my obsession and theorize on why I have let myself get sucked in.
There is no one on this earth more repulsive than the 16 year old girl. I recall my own sweet sixteen. It was anything but “super”.
I thought I was so grown up and mature for my age. I spent a lot of time back talking my mother, eyeball rolling was as mainstay and testing my boundaries was my new found pastime. As mature as those actions might have seemed, after a few only a few episodes of My Super Sweet Sixteen I see it is par for the course. I was female and I was 15.
As my 16th birthday approached I asked my parents if I could host a mixed party. My parents who generally thought little of the crowd I hung with had to be convinced to have my posse in their beautiful new home. I hung out with an eclectic group of friends, most of them were a year or two my senior, they all came from dysfunctional homes with very little parental involvement or supervision. Hooligans let loose in the unfinished basement of the new subdivision house-farm model home while the parents were one floor above might get a little out of control. (Please note the 16 year old’s sarcasm in the last sentence.) But it was MY sweet sixteen and I was their eldest – so how could they say no?
I was allowed 16 friends. One for each year I was on this great earth. I was stoked! Okay back then I would have said; “Ohmigawd so excited!” I hoped all the people I had invited would come even though my parents were going to be home to supervise.
Don’t you remember being at the age where admitting you had parents was more embarrassing than it would be to show up wearing granny panties under nude panty hose without a skirt to work today?
I awoke on the day of my sweet sixteen – feeling like a bag of smashed assholes.
This was my big day and I was sick! I spent the day in bed determined to feel better. By mid afternoon after begging my mother not to call my ”whopping” guest list and cancel my party I emerged from my bedroom to begin the ritual of showering and primping for my big night. No stylists arrived, no makeup artist, I didn’t screech for “Daddy to get me my Gucci’s from Mummy’s shoe closet” – I was alone. Likely in too pissy a 16 year old mood to be joined by anyone I was related to.
When the steam cleared the mirror after one of my notoriously scorching showers I stared hard into the face of the “Birthday Girl” to see what miraculous change 16 brought about. I didn’t feel any different than when I was 15 but I sure as hell looked different! There staring back at me were two of the most uninvited, unsightly guests any girl on her sweet sixteen could have ever had a night terror over.
Two HUGE boils graced my face. Un hunh, fever blisters. Each boil about one centimeter in diameter staring back at me in the mirror from the right side of my cheek. Not only was I was mortified but I had yet to meet my best friend, the keeper of bad skin secrets known only as M.A.C cosmetics. ( I only met M..A.C after adult Acne joined me after my 26th Birthday). Vainly, I styled my hair to the side a la Veronica Lake in hopes I could hide the party crashers. I only hoped my mother would not notice there were now 18 guests at my party.
My super sweet sixteen was okay – my younger sister and father decorated the basement in balloons and paper streamers, the friends arrived, I received a magazine with Carre’ Otis on the cover which I coveted for years after. My parents gave me a synthetic leather football, paid for half my Driver’s Ed. classes, and gave me a pair of orange tab Levi’s when red tabs were the “in” thing. I was not gifted with a sports car or a luxury SUV, like the parents dole out on my new favorite TV series.
My party likely cost my folks a hundred dollars in food, party decorations and a gift, as opposed to the lavish one hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand dollar parties thrown by the parents of the kids on My Super Sweet 16.
There is no comparison to the two parties, but, there is a similarity to the coming of age story. No matter where a gal comes from or where she is going, how rich or working class her folks are; there is a universal hype given over to a young woman’s coming of age. I will justify my obsession with watching this series as research therapy to get over the deep rooted guilt I have been harboring for being the most rotten mid teen to grace earth.
Over the past few weeks I have come to realize that teen girls are all pretty much the same. They are trying to exercise independence from the folks, while still so obviously attached to their parent’s umbilical cords and purse strings. Sixteen-year-old girls are just that -girls. They are ridiculously worried about what others might think, they are dying to fit in, they make no move to stand out unless it’s for having or owning the best or newest material good, they are rude, uneducated, unappreciative of their parents efforts - no matter what class, status or education. The only real thing a sweet sixteen wants is to be accepted by peers. My anxiety over my teen years subsides with this realization. The other big discovery is this: A girl does not come of age at 16! Well at least she hasn’t since the 50’s.
So in my opinion – the real emphasis on a girl becoming a woman – the real coming of age should be somewhere after the mid 20’s. Say, celebrate 26 as the new sweet sixteen. Mid to late 20’s is when the reality check sets in on who we are, where we are going hopefully the enlightened will have gained an appreciation for how hard our parents worked to give us what we have to help us grow into the women we are today. Our 20’s are an age when we can actually accept and appreciated our roots and with this acknowledgement move forward into “womanhood.” But it is definitely not an age that would make for fantastic reality TV!
Each week as I watch the different birthday parties unfold on TV, each one more lavish and ridiculous than the next - I see a common thread that is the universal language of “sweet sixteen.” My satisfaction lies in knowing I was not the only horrid mid teen. I am eternally grateful my sixteenth birthday came before the birth of reality television when only Molly Ringwald movies and Judy Blume books revealed the true essence of sixteen ... at least I can look back on my own sweet sixteen and believe it, too, was a work of fiction.
Her sweet sixteen unfolds with Daddy’s roll of 100’s. Cars, male models, painted pink poodles, multiple party outfit changes including trips to Paris for dress fittings; these are but some of the episode’s content. Household name bands are hired to perform. Invitations worth more than my last 16 birthday gifts combined are hand delivered to the birthday girl’s select few hundred guests.
I sit mouth breathing pointing at the TV willing the commercials to end so I can continue on with my new infatuation. A little part of me is waiting for the bottom of this spoiled princess’ fairytale birthday party to fall out or at least one teen could find a run in her panty hose with no back up pair in her purse.
My emotions shift and with the curve of my now up-toured lip. I find myself gunning for the spoiled brat as she launches herself from a helicopter landing on the tarmac below to make a grand entrance into her “Super Sweet Sixteen” party. “Everyone is going to know who I am and be so jealous” she squeals.
I have no idea what has come over me but I am addicted to MTV’s My Super Sweet Sixteen. Every Wednesday I set the timer on the TV and get ready to hunker down for two back to back episodes of train wreck.
I do have better things to do, I agree. But I can’t help myself. The collision of spoiled hormonal teens and money has me enthralled. So for the sake of this blog I will try to justify my obsession and theorize on why I have let myself get sucked in.
There is no one on this earth more repulsive than the 16 year old girl. I recall my own sweet sixteen. It was anything but “super”.
I thought I was so grown up and mature for my age. I spent a lot of time back talking my mother, eyeball rolling was as mainstay and testing my boundaries was my new found pastime. As mature as those actions might have seemed, after a few only a few episodes of My Super Sweet Sixteen I see it is par for the course. I was female and I was 15.
As my 16th birthday approached I asked my parents if I could host a mixed party. My parents who generally thought little of the crowd I hung with had to be convinced to have my posse in their beautiful new home. I hung out with an eclectic group of friends, most of them were a year or two my senior, they all came from dysfunctional homes with very little parental involvement or supervision. Hooligans let loose in the unfinished basement of the new subdivision house-farm model home while the parents were one floor above might get a little out of control. (Please note the 16 year old’s sarcasm in the last sentence.) But it was MY sweet sixteen and I was their eldest – so how could they say no?
I was allowed 16 friends. One for each year I was on this great earth. I was stoked! Okay back then I would have said; “Ohmigawd so excited!” I hoped all the people I had invited would come even though my parents were going to be home to supervise.
Don’t you remember being at the age where admitting you had parents was more embarrassing than it would be to show up wearing granny panties under nude panty hose without a skirt to work today?
I awoke on the day of my sweet sixteen – feeling like a bag of smashed assholes.
This was my big day and I was sick! I spent the day in bed determined to feel better. By mid afternoon after begging my mother not to call my ”whopping” guest list and cancel my party I emerged from my bedroom to begin the ritual of showering and primping for my big night. No stylists arrived, no makeup artist, I didn’t screech for “Daddy to get me my Gucci’s from Mummy’s shoe closet” – I was alone. Likely in too pissy a 16 year old mood to be joined by anyone I was related to.
When the steam cleared the mirror after one of my notoriously scorching showers I stared hard into the face of the “Birthday Girl” to see what miraculous change 16 brought about. I didn’t feel any different than when I was 15 but I sure as hell looked different! There staring back at me were two of the most uninvited, unsightly guests any girl on her sweet sixteen could have ever had a night terror over.
Two HUGE boils graced my face. Un hunh, fever blisters. Each boil about one centimeter in diameter staring back at me in the mirror from the right side of my cheek. Not only was I was mortified but I had yet to meet my best friend, the keeper of bad skin secrets known only as M.A.C cosmetics. ( I only met M..A.C after adult Acne joined me after my 26th Birthday). Vainly, I styled my hair to the side a la Veronica Lake in hopes I could hide the party crashers. I only hoped my mother would not notice there were now 18 guests at my party.
My super sweet sixteen was okay – my younger sister and father decorated the basement in balloons and paper streamers, the friends arrived, I received a magazine with Carre’ Otis on the cover which I coveted for years after. My parents gave me a synthetic leather football, paid for half my Driver’s Ed. classes, and gave me a pair of orange tab Levi’s when red tabs were the “in” thing. I was not gifted with a sports car or a luxury SUV, like the parents dole out on my new favorite TV series.
My party likely cost my folks a hundred dollars in food, party decorations and a gift, as opposed to the lavish one hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand dollar parties thrown by the parents of the kids on My Super Sweet 16.
There is no comparison to the two parties, but, there is a similarity to the coming of age story. No matter where a gal comes from or where she is going, how rich or working class her folks are; there is a universal hype given over to a young woman’s coming of age. I will justify my obsession with watching this series as research therapy to get over the deep rooted guilt I have been harboring for being the most rotten mid teen to grace earth.
Over the past few weeks I have come to realize that teen girls are all pretty much the same. They are trying to exercise independence from the folks, while still so obviously attached to their parent’s umbilical cords and purse strings. Sixteen-year-old girls are just that -girls. They are ridiculously worried about what others might think, they are dying to fit in, they make no move to stand out unless it’s for having or owning the best or newest material good, they are rude, uneducated, unappreciative of their parents efforts - no matter what class, status or education. The only real thing a sweet sixteen wants is to be accepted by peers. My anxiety over my teen years subsides with this realization. The other big discovery is this: A girl does not come of age at 16! Well at least she hasn’t since the 50’s.
So in my opinion – the real emphasis on a girl becoming a woman – the real coming of age should be somewhere after the mid 20’s. Say, celebrate 26 as the new sweet sixteen. Mid to late 20’s is when the reality check sets in on who we are, where we are going hopefully the enlightened will have gained an appreciation for how hard our parents worked to give us what we have to help us grow into the women we are today. Our 20’s are an age when we can actually accept and appreciated our roots and with this acknowledgement move forward into “womanhood.” But it is definitely not an age that would make for fantastic reality TV!
Each week as I watch the different birthday parties unfold on TV, each one more lavish and ridiculous than the next - I see a common thread that is the universal language of “sweet sixteen.” My satisfaction lies in knowing I was not the only horrid mid teen. I am eternally grateful my sixteenth birthday came before the birth of reality television when only Molly Ringwald movies and Judy Blume books revealed the true essence of sixteen ... at least I can look back on my own sweet sixteen and believe it, too, was a work of fiction.
RiderShip
She awoke easily to the sounds of early morning. Sitting up slowly observing the stillness of her sleeping partner, the slight rise and fall of his chest. It would be an hour or more before he awoke.
The light was soft, spilling into the sparsely furnished bedroom. She slid out of bed careful not to disturb the dog that inevitably curled himself into the warm spot between the two bodies as they slept. Any quick movement would be sure to wake the dog sending him into an angry snarling fit. It is always amazing how she made these kinds of adjustments unconsciously.
Quietly she made her way to the bathroom to retrieve her swimsuit from the shower door where she had rinsed it out and left it to dry. She studied its fabric for a brief minute noticing how the sand had penetrated the fibers before she carefully slid into it.
With a short glance back at the clock she slipped out the door, slid into her flip flops, grabbed her surf board from it’s rack, threw it up onto her head to make her way down the driveway away from the house.
The plants were still dewy. Was it dew? It looked too heavy. Slowly she began to recall the hammering sound the rain had made, the night before, against the tin roof over head. Lying there in the dark staring at the ceiling, eyes wide, ears wider, drinking in the sounds from above. Her husband had said something to her but she could not make out all his words for the sound of the rain on the roof drowned him out. She thought about this and the fact that she had not recalled the rain or the middle of the night exchange until the visual cues gave her a reminder. Why is it that you can be so awake in the middle of the night so sure to recall its events and be so forgetful of them at daybreak? she thought.
Sturdy tanned legs carried her down the gravel road carefully dodging mud puddles the size of toddler pools. It was a familiar road and as she drew nearer her destination the roar of the ocean greeted her.
Reaching the beach she paused her movements eyes fixed on the breaking waves.
Kicking off her flip flops beside a large fallen tree, well away from the water’s edge, she placed the board on the sand beside her, knelt down, scooped up a handful of sand and began rubbing it into the wax on her board.
Methodically she attached the leash to her left ankle, picked up the board and made her move toward the ocean. The water was warm. She shuffled her feet so as not to step on a stingray as she waded deeper into the water.
The sun, not yet fully up in the sky, was reflecting a pink and orange glow over the waves and the front of her board.
She loved this time of the morning. She felt at peace. This was her magic hour.
She paddled hard against the ocean's white water until she found her place on the outside of a breaking set. Sitting up straddling the board between her legs, listening to the sound of her heart pounding in her ears in a way only a vigorous exercise can produce. Beating in time with the crashing waves. Again, her mind wandered off. This time she thought of the sounds of the city, the drone of traffic, complaints of impatient commuters, car horns, she thought of the endless list of tasks she could be lining up to complete, jotting each one down in a mental list instead of in her blackberry. How far away she was from all of that right now.
Choosing a wave carefully, she readied her self, folded over the board onto her belly and paddled hard. With the water’s help she dropped into the wave. Effortlessly, popping up onto her feet. Instantly, feeling the rush of adrenaline gust over her body.
She grinned from ear to ear.
She could not help it.
She was giddy.
Flying over the water at a break neck speed was exhilarating. This was her element.
Made even sweeter was the fact that it was first thing Monday morning, she was riding her long board not the commuter train and this surfing paradise was her Zen.
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