Get That Little Man Away From Me!

There are stories that become part of who you are in a family.  In my extended family I am perpetually a toddler as that was the last era of my life of which The Aunts have intimate knowledge .  Even in my forties I am still announcing parental bedroom activities at family dinners, hug torturing small pets and screeching at GI Joe.

I was absent from a family gathering last weekend.  I received the above photo from my Dad with the caption "Get that little man away from me!". This is a story that has been told to me over and over.  There are two official versions to the story.  I find a naked GI Joe in the toy box and scream "get that naked man away from me".  I find GI Joe in the toy box and scream "get that little man away from me". 

Judging by the picture, and this is just pure speculation on my part, but I'm just guessing one of the above versions occured on one occasion, after that it became pure entertainment for some (or all) of the adolescent girls in the house to present GI Joe to me just to hear me holler "Get that man away from me!"  If you were a "naughty" teenage girl, who conceivably have the same dna and raising that provided me with my sense of humor, you might actually find a female toddler screaming "get that man away from me!" as a) ironic, knowing that it was not a situation that would persist in into adolescence and  b) hilarious that a child could be provoked into screaming by the viewing of a plastic naked doll. (Neither the dna nor the raising having contributed to a good sense of empathy or child rearing but only to a vastly warped sense of humor).

I wonder - how handy would it have been to have maintained my terror of naked and little men?  I could have just kept Joe in my purse. In retrospect I find that there could have been multiple occasions when it may have behooved me to peek into my handbag and screech "Get that naked man away from me!"

I'm honored to still be relevant in my toddler form at family gatherings forty years later although I'm wondering why did Joe get invited and I didn't?  I think they like that little man...

"Stop Breaking Up With Me. It's Ruining Our Relationship."

         What's the best thing a man has ever said to you?  Do you need to think it over?  Do you have a few good ones you need to sift through and rank in order of importance?  How do you do it?  Does a particular man get priority, or is it the words?

        The best thing a man ever said to me was......well, he was drunk.  So drunk in fact that he could not possibly remember saying it, but it was complex enough that he must have thought it out once or twice in a clearer frame of mind, based on how well it came out of the lubricated version.  No one else but me was there to hear it.  It was sweet and flattering and romantic.  I've been sweet-talked and flattered and romanced a little bit over the years, but this was something else.  The thing that made it the best thing, was that it couldn't have been about anybody else but me and him.

        Let me tell you what it was not.  Not "I do," which I have heard more than once but has not done much for me.  Not a simple "I love you," which can fix a lot of things, but also comes easier and can mean little.  Not even "It's benign."

        You want to know what he said?  Look, I think I have to keep this one to myself.  He probably doesn't even know what he said, he was that drunk.  I'm not going to tell it and risk having it denied or qualified or taken away.

        It was not: "Stop breaking up with me.  It's ruining our relationship," but that is the funniest thing I've heard a man say all week, bar none.  Poor thing.

And it's getting more and more absurd....

Always seems to me that sorry seems to be the hardest word.  That's not true.  It's easy, too easy.  The song is stuck in my head though.  It is too easy to blabber out the wrong thing and it's too easy to say "I'm sorry".  It fixes absolutely nothing.

I'm a secret prayer.  I pray outloud every morning in the shower.  Blasphemous?  Probably - but I'm pretty sure whatever higher power is out there is not concerned with my state of affairs. Heaven knows that the last person I care about seeing me naked is God.  I also pray in the car.  Wherever there is silence, I am probably saying a prayer.  I am probably saying "I need peace" or "God help those people" or "Please help "it" be okay".  Occasionally, I confront the universal powerhouse "What are you thinking?!!!" 

Our relationship is based on my blurting into the universe whatever random thing I think needs attention followed by "Thanks for listening".  I do not expect action from the Universal Director.  I hope that he finds me mildly entertaining on occasion and recognizes that I am just putting stuff into the outloud to get it off my heart. I have it and then I give it to him.

Today, in the car, on the way to see my kids, after painful discussion number 10 for the week,  I said one that I absolutely never say.  I hate the powerlessness of it.  "Dear God, Thy will be done".  I said this outloud and clearly. And then I secretly and silently prayed that his will was mine as I'm not certain I am ready to deal with the consequences of his will.  He's probably going to strike me down for being duplicitous if nothing else.

Ok - so back to "Sorry" and the root cause of this prayer where I admit that I'm powerless and then pretend to pray that I'm smart enough to want what God wants.  On not one, but on three occasions in the last week, I said three separate things to someone I love with the intent of conveying information and ease and without intent to cause pain, the end result of which was misinformation, unease, and pain. I of course realize that this makes me an idiot. (In my own defense, the other party was not communicating well either.) The end result of this long running discussion is ongoing confusion and hurt by both parties followed by "I'm sorry" that doesn't seem to resolve the ongoing issue or rectify the pain inflicted.  My response to this (in my head) is "What the hell?!!" 

The only answer I can find is a pubescent "Whatever" to a higher power in the form of "Thy will be done".  I think he would take away my car keys if it wasn't the only place I've recently admitted to being powerless.

Tomato Whore Manifesto

I would appreciate it if everyone would stop referring to me as the Tomato Whore. It was a time of great change for me; the farmers' markets had all just closed down for the season and I thought I would never have access to farm grown tomatoes again at this late stage in life. I understand now that there are many legitimate, and morally appropriate ways to obtain tomatoes, and I plan to employ such means exclusively going forward.

Yes we know....

So yes - we know it's mispelled.  It's a clue, and a joke, and quite possibly a commentary on who we think we are and how we are bonded.  I don't believe, and I'm sure my cohort will agree, that we are "wicked" neither in the Merriam-Websters sense nor in the contemporary vernacular that would gauge our "cool".

We know that as forty-somethings our last bit of cool is slipping away even as we are embracing some of the best years of our lives.  It is slipping away and I don't think we care.  Cool is relative though.  Cool breezing down the road with the sunroof open and the mojo cd in (we're still making mix tapes just on i-tunes now) blaring Cake's "Let Me Go" and going just a little too fast.  Cool new chair.  Cool vacation.  Cool haircuts. Cool boots. The occasional cool article of clothing. These are pieces of cool that we relish far more than we appreciated any cool we had in our youth. Fifteen years ago we were owed cool.  My how the worm turns...

We're occasionally impressed with the stories we tell and the way in which we tell them.  It might be the best kind of cool we have left.  It isn't that our stories have gotten more interesting over time, it's that the sort of dryness and cutting humor that ages and cures with every little heart scar and every deepening fear and every leap of confidence and faith has made those stories so much more full and twisted that we enjoy them more.

Two defunct writers turned lawyer and accountant who learned to text at forty something could surely write a blog...Couldn't they?

Yes we know...