The Writing On The Stall

 Previously published in the Coastal Illustrated October 5, 2011

             I love a good book.

As one of my all-time favorite writers, Mark Twain, told a young audience in 1882, “There are many sorts of books.  But the good ones are the sort for the young to read.  Remember that. They are a great, an inestimable, an unspeakable means for improvement.  Therefore be careful in your selection, my young friends.  Be very careful.”

This could be why one of my favorite activities, besides reading, is helping the Frederica Academy first grade teachers with literature every Friday morning.  You may be asking right about now why would any sane person surround themselves by a group of sneezing, coughing, fidgety six year olds on a Friday without getting paid or at the very least, offered a medical and dental plan.  You might even ask why in the world would you teach these little ones literature in the first place since they are, after all, only six…. and well… fidgety and sneezy.  But see, there isn’t anywhere else I’d rather be.

Not only are the best books (think Tom Sawyer, Little Women, Treasure Island) perfect “for the young to read” when they’re the most receptive, but they’re also instrumental in teaching them the writing skills used to create these very masterpieces.  A child is never too young to be exposed to the beauty of a simile, the rhythmic sound of alliteration, or the punch of a “red hot” verb, as Mrs. Floyd calls them.  These children are taught not just to read, but to think like little writers.

How great is that?

So that is where I found myself last Friday, in Mrs. McCollum’s first grade class, teaching nine first grade boys the importance of using descriptive “red hot” verbs.

“Can anyone remember a great action word from the sea turtle story Mrs. Floyd just read to us,” I asked a small group of three boys at the back table, my dry eraser pen in one hand and a small white board in the other.  “The more descriptive the verb, the better.”

One of them thrusts his left arm up while supporting it with his right hand as if it weighed as much as a two ton truck loaded down with three hundred gallons of gasoline.

“Puke,” he hollered, still waving and holding up his arm.  “My baby brother puked all over the kitchen table last night.”

“That is a great action word, you’re right,” I told him as I inched back in my seat.  I had already bathed myself with a bottle of hand sanitizer and swallowed eight vitamin C tablets before sitting down, but still, one can never be too careful.  “But can we think of one from the story….like the sea turtle “scooped” the sand with his fin.”

“Oh I know, I know, I know,” another boy screamed, jumping up and down in his seat.  “Flush!  Yeah, like I just flushed my pee down the urinal.”

“That’s a good one too,” I responded.  “But how about let’s pick one from the story….like the shark “cruised” through the water.”

“What’s a urinal,” the third one asked.

“It’s that white thing you pee into in the boys’ bathroom that swishes and squirts when you flush it,” he proudly told the group before turning to me, a bright smile slowly spreads across his cute, freckled face.  “How about those red hot verbs, Ms. Laura?”

“Can I go to the bathroom,” the second one begged, his leg suddenly spasms underneath the table, knocking off a few pencils, the dry erase board, and a jar of hamster food.  “All this talk about verbs is making me have to go tinkle.”

“Me, too!” said the third.

“Can I go to the nurse,” whispered the first, looking a little green all of a sudden.  “I don’t feel so good.”

Now, you will have to agree with me that potty obsession aside, these boys really know their verbs.  That being said, we can’t really blame them for this universal fixation on all things bathroom related.  It appears we have not heeded Mr. Twain’s advice and made them that way.

Since our children could walk and somewhat talk, we have read them books titled My Potty and I, Where’s the Poop?, and The Magic Bowl over and over again, even hosting Q and A sessions at the end with a cupcake party option for “just sitting on the thing for goodness sakes.”  We have invested in fancy, designer “big girl or boy” underwear if they’ll trade up from their Elmo trainers and swim pants.  We have bought enough stickers to decorate the Sydney Lanier bridge let alone their potty “throne” that plays CCR’s “Have You Ever Heard the Rain” when they go.  

            Remember the cheers, the high fives, the dollar bills, the promised trips to Disney when they finally made it to the bathroom in time.  Is it their fault they can’t seem to think of anything else?

Sadly, as adults, it seems some of us still dwell close to the border of the bathroom obsessed as well.  This is evident in more than a few public restrooms off I-95.

“Mommy, who is Sandy,” my daughter asks me from the next stall.

“How should I know,” I answer.  I was a little distracted trying to not touch anything and juggle my sunglasses, keys, and phone all under one arm.  “Why?”

“It says to call her for a good time.”

And these little ditties aren’t just relegated to roadside truck stops.

 My 34 year old best friend has not one, but two, fart apps on her iPhone and, just last year, a friend gave me a book titled What’s Your Poo Telling You? for my 39^th birthday along with a bottle of Poo-Pourri Royal Flush toilet spray. 

All kidding aside, I guess I’ll go ahead and admit I’m not so above it all either.  Just the other night, my girls and I slipped a whoopee cushion under their father’s chair.  I don’t think I’ve laugh so hard in awhile.  In fact, as the saying goes, I laughed so hard tears almost came down my legs. 

So my apologies Mr. Clemens, I guess I should be more careful in the future about what I read…oh, and write.     But wasn’t it you who said “I haven’t a particle of confidence in a man who as no redeeming petty vices whatever.” Vices, it seems, I may have in spades.  My salvation, however, is at least I resisted writing any of this on the side of a bathroom wall……

Because………………..

Happy Reading!!!!

Lessons the "Real Housewives" Have Taught Me: An Anthropological Study

Previously published in Georgia’s Coastal Illustrated Jan. 11, 2012

One of the world’s most renowned and influential anthropologists, Jane Goodall, once said simply, but yet so poignantly, that “to be fully human; we need to have meaning in our lives.”

 I couldn’t agree more, so I search daily for that “human” connection to the world that makes this one life I have been blessed with as worthy and meaningful as possible.  For me, in this moment, my “meaning” is to guide my two girls into womanhood with a healthy balance of grit, grace, and gratitude.

Like knitting a pair of socks that turn out to be the same size or making it through a Justin Bieber video without a few eye rolls, this is not as easy as you think it’ll be when you first start out.

Take for instance, their last sleep over.  I had grand plans, I really did.  Nothing too Kardashian like a backyard fireworks display and a thousand dollar designer goodie bag, but I did have a few surprises up my plushy green-grey bath robed sleeve. I’m talking glittery mani-pedis, chocolate covered popcorn, and a 3D movie marathon with extra long red Tweezler sticks.

Alas, it didn’t turn out the way I expected. As soon as I entered the living room, movies in hand, five sets of eyes stared me down as if it were high noon at the O.K. Corral, not seven thirty p.m. in a small, family suburban neighborhood.  Now, my grandmother on my father’s side taught me to play poker before I could walk, talk, and add so I can tell when someone is bluffing.  They were not.

But it's ok, really, I know when I am not wanted… or in immediate danger…..so I quickly retreated to my bedroom and shut the door.  I felt, well, just a bit like Jane Goodall herself, at first shunned by the very subjects she had set out to observe and aid then relegated to the outskirts of the tribe, on top of a hill, with only a pair of binoculars and a notebook to guide her.

However, I did not posses binoculars, or a notebook, or a hill for that matter, so I settled for the next available thing; Direct TV, a remote to mute at will, my super comfy bed, and a glass of Chardonnay behind my slightly ajar bedroom door.  Oh yeah, and a marathon rerun on Bravo of the “Real House Wives of New York” followed by “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”   

Y’all I swear, this program can make even a novice in the study of human behavior fill up their field notebooks, scratch their heads, and then redraft even the sanest of cultural assumptions and theoretical suppositions of societal norms.  Even those that have been touted as fact since man and woman were able to walk in an upright position, negotiate a fair price for bread, or hail a cab.

Before I get into my own anthropological study of modern day “domestic” women, it’s important to note here exactly what Jane Goodall did and how her forty five years of studying and interacting with the chimpanzees in Tanzania changed the way we look, not only at the early socialization of pre-hominids, but at evolution as well.

Three important discoveries were found behind those binoculars on foreign African soil.  One, she discovered that chimpanzees were, in fact, meat eaters much like early humans.  This went against the conventional thinking of her time that primates were only vegetarians.  It seems they liked to indulge in a smaller monkey or two from time to time when the inkling hit….or they were trying to impress a date, or stick to the one of those new fade paleo diets or cannibalism....whatever you called it back then, I’m not really sure.

She also noticed they were able to use “tools” to procure food; for example, using small sticks to retrieve tiny termites out of mounds in the dirt.  This challenged the theory that man was the first creator of food gathering/hunting apparatuses. I’m not so sure what is appetizing about termites but they could quite possibly have also used the sticks as early back scratchers while their mate was down the road a piece and couldn’t scratch it for them.

Lastly, Goodall discovered those cute, furry alpha females could, on a dime, turn into savage and destructive beasts.   As in kill the young of other chimps and then head up a few camp time activities like female mutilation if they felt the hold on their own turf was in question, still making sure to be home in time for dinner.

It seems to me, especially after watching my Bravo marathon that these women have evolved by leaps and bounds in some regards.  Who needs a male to scourge for food when you have a driver, two maids and a personal assistant?   But sadly, it seems that in close and influential communal quarters like New York and L.A., the alpha female doesn’t fall far from the African banana tree, if you know what I mean?

 Here are the top three things I learned NOT to do from my “study (a/k/a eight hour straight viewing)” of the “Housewives”:

1.)    Never come to a party/fundraiser/lunch/fundraising planning lunch/or any get other together LATE (especially if it involves Pinot Grigio.) This is because you will, without a doubt, be talked about in a catty way before you eventually show up.  Upon arrival, you will be showered with kisses (on both cheeks), after being told you look fabulous, then gawked at as you eat a small piece of food from a tray as if it were a mortal sin that surely involves a membership to Jenny Craig and a group intervention.

2.)    Never come to a party/fundraiser/lunch/fundraising planning lunch/or any get other together EARLY (again, especially if it involves buckets of Pinot Grigio.)  This is because you will inevitably be set up to “talk to” one of the other housewives you upset at the last party/fundraising/lunch even though you don’t know what you did to make her angry or take a valium or threaten a law suit.  Besides, a finger in the chest is never fun even if its a hundred dollar French manicured one.

3.)    Never take three Xanax and then drink a bottle of champagne and two mojitos….ever…. even if you hate to fly and particularly if you plan to wear a bathing suit made out of three crochet men’s pocket squares.  Trust me.  It’s just not smart, especially if the other women’s husbands are around.

I could go on and on but chances are you have already seen all the episodes anyway (not to mention Atlanta, Orange County, D.C., etc.). At least that’s what my girl friends tell me seeing as I was the last one of us to jump on the “Real Housewife” bandwagon (or town car so to speak).  There is something strangely addictive about it: the realization and then requisite relief you feel knowing your life may not be as “fabulous” but is just fine without all the drama and self-absorption.  You don’t need fame, money, expensive clothes, cars and boats to have class or, like I want to teach my girls: grit, grace, and gratitude. 

The opposite is actually true.  It’s the search for meaning, as Jane would tell you, that make us human, not all the other superficial stuff.

I am probably being way too critical or over analytical.  The “housewives” are just people after all and who I am to be a voyeur into their world, while judging them all the same?  Because  maybe, just maybe, there is a little bit of Jane in all of us, poised on top of a hill, looking down from a distance, trying to make sense of something that puzzles, perturbs, and excites us all at once. 

As Ms. Goodall also said, “Every individual matters.  Every individual has a role to play.  Every individual makes a difference.”

Whether you agree or not with our expert, it’s hard to argue that these alpha females really don't make for some pretty, great T.V.

The Heart of the Matter

previously published in Coastal Illustrated Feb. 8, 2012

“Go to your bosom; knock there, and ask what your heart doth know.” – William Shakespeare

I don’t know about y’all, but I love to read a great love story.  Real, imagined, immortalized, tragic, you name it, and I will immerse myself in one at any given time, especially if it involves a warm bath and a good pinot.  I don’t care if “real” love will ever match up to that of Romeo and Juliet, Catherine and Heathcliff, or Sir Lancelot and Guinevere.  It will not deter me that a modern day love story will hardly play out like the love affairs of Tristan and Isolde, or Anthony and Cleopatra.

I am in love with love in all its tortured forms.  Now, I will tell you it’s not really a good idea to fall on your own sword -if you have one- or have an asp bite you- if you knew where to find one- in case something goes wretchedly wrong.  I just love the notion that there is the kind of love out there that people have abdicate thrones, waged war, and built a seventh wonder of the world for, just to be together in this world or the next. 

I will never give up thinking that true love does exist, even if people tell me it can only be found in fiction and folk lore.  See, I know it is real because of the very real love story of Gordon and Norma and what happens when it comes down to the simple matters of the heart.

Gordon Yeager, 94, and his wife Norma, 90, from Iowa, had been married 72 years last October when they left home in their car for a trip into town.  They had been teenage sweethearts and rarely, if ever, left each other's side since they were married a mere12 hours after Norma graduated high school in 1939.  That fall day was no different, except Gordon accidently pulled out in front of an oncoming car, which resulted in a collision that sent them both to the hospital in critical condition.  When the doctors realized there was nothing they could do, they moved Gordon and Norma into a room together where they held hands across their hospital beds.    

But that day didn’t turn out much differently than all their other days. They were still together till the end. 

When Gordon died at 3:38 PM that afternoon, Norma was still there, holding his hand. But even though he had passed, his heart was still beating through the heart monitor.  Norma’s heart was literally beating through his.

“Dad used to say that a woman is always worth waiting for,” Dennis Yeager, their son said.  “Dad waited an hour for her and held the door for her.”

On that day in October, Norma did not keep him waiting long.  She died at 4:48PM, precisely one hour later.

Since Aristotle and the early Greeks, the heart was believed to be the main organ that controlled all emotions including, and most importantly, love.  Because of this conviction, some of the greatest love stories, sonnets, and plays were written.  The heart wasn’t simply an organ though, but a vessel of expression, passion, heartbreak and pain.  That is why, to this day, we still wear our wedding bands on the fourth finger of our left hands- over the vena amoris.  This vein was believed to be the single one that ran directly to the heart.

We now know that all of our veins in all of fingers lead to the heart, just as we know our brain is in charge of the central nervous system and likes to tell our bodies, including our heart, what to do. 

But the brain, as logical as it may be, has no nerves- it doesn’t feel.  It might send the signals to tell the body what it is experiencing, but our hearts carry the load.

My heart, not my brain, beat faster when I met my husband for the first time.

My heart, just my heart, literally swelled when I stared into both of my children eyes after I gave birth.

My heart felt empty when I lost my friend, Bert, a few months ago.  It still does.

It has constricted and seized and grown every day since it was given to me.

If I had to pick my heart versus my head, I think I would pull for my heart every time.

And I don’t know about y’all, but when it comes to love, I hope mine turns out to be more like the love of Norma and Gordon- that it’s an eternal, flowing kind of love that can only be measured and understood by the beatings of both hearts; together, forever and always.