Tag Archives: nonfiction

Memorial Day Weekend Breakdown

by

anger

I lost my mind in holiday traffic.

Leaving Long Island is an expensive hassle, so all of our departures  are optimized to their greatest potential. On Memorial Day Weekend, Phil and I planned another getaway where, in a span of 50 hours, we tried to spend time with everyone we’ve ever met.  In this next trick, the great Dillon-Lombardo duo will attempt to be in four different places at once.

Our first appointment was lunch at 12:30pm. The drive should take 1.5 hours, so we left at 10:15. Plenty of time, right? Obviously not, or I wouldn’t have had a meltdown in the passenger’s seat, and this would be the end of a pretty lame story.

We opted to take the Merritt Parkway to avoid inevitable congestion on I95, the Northeast’s coastal highway. But, of course, we eventually arrived at a sea of red brake lights, and slowed to a halt in New Rochelle.

Although neither of us have smart phones, we do have a GPS with traffic updates, which informed us of 12 miles of traffic on the Merritt and only 6 miles on I95. Afraid the 12 miles of traffic on the Merritt would make us late, we took a risk, got off the next exit, and crossed the town through residential streets to arrive at I95.

We gloated about our clever thinking for approximately four miles. Then we passed a highway notification sign reading, “Delay 20 miles.”

“Does that mean delay for 20 miles or delay in 20 miles?” I asked, trying to keep my panic down.

“In,” Phil said, although his confidence was hollow. “In.”

Not five minutes later, Phil’s foot lifted off the accelerator, and we joined the crawl.

“I don’t think it’s been 20 miles,” I said.

It’s 11:45. You still have plenty of time. No need to worry. You’ll make it. Just relax. Listen to the music.

That worked for the first mile. 19 more to go.

“Man, I hate traffic,” I said, trying to seem charming and upbeat, but it sounded deranged, even to my ears.

“Yup, but what can you do?” Phil said.

Mile 2.

“You think it’s really backed up for 20 miles? That’d be crazy, wouldn’t it?” I was beginning to sweat.

“Probably not. It’s gotta clear up.”

Mile 3.

I groaned, and then laughed as if my groan was a joke. Good one.

Mile 4.

Twenty minutes had passed and our car was rolling along, slowly approaching the Connecticut border. I could feel the frustration simmering in my stomach acid. I clenched my teeth.

Mile 5.

I stretched out my back and tried to coax the increasing agitation into relaxation. People are late all the time, and they don’t seem to let it bother them. I can be late for once. It wouldn’t be a big deal. Nobody will care. Plus, like Phil said, there isn’t anything I can do about it, so I might as well just go with it.

Mile 6.

“Oh my gosh, this is so annoying!” I said and groaned again. Louder this time, and without the follow-up laugh.

Mile 7.

Deep, exasperated sigh.

Mile 8.

“If it keeps up like this, we could be an hour late,” I said, now clearly disgruntled.

Mile 9.

I glanced down at the GPS, whose traffic indicator flashed green. It reported smooth sailing. No traffic. According to the GPS, we should have been cruising along, and I’d still get to lunch on time. I looked up at the infinite line of automobiles, at the obstacles in my way, moving at the pace of a carwash conveyer belt, and I decided that everything that was wrong with my life– living far from family and friends, unpublished books, the cost of health insurance, weight gain– was the fault of this very traffic.

“I hate traffic!” I yelled and slapped my leg. The rage inside me fought its way to the surface and was clawing at my skin, desperate to get out. If I released it, I knew I’d transform into a savage ape, grabbing the door handles on either end of the car, and rocking it side to side until I tipped the whole thing over. The glass would shatter and I’d swing out the window, hurtle from car roof to car roof, smashing every vehicle and passenger on my route, until finally arriving at the lunch rendezvous point, only five or ten minutes late. It took great concentration to keep this wrath repressed. I panted to maintain control.

Phil’s eyes darted over to me, startled, uncertain. Then they returned to the road. Avoiding eye contact seemed best.

Mile 10.

It was now 12:30pm– the time we were supposed to meet for lunch– and we’d only made it halfway through the traffic. The restaurant was a mere 15 or so miles away, but mileage itself no longer mattered. I had no control over my destiny; I would be 45 minutes late. And since my friend had to leave at 2pm, I would see him for half the time. It was prudent to accept that.

I gazed despondently at my future ahead. I felt hope deflate like the air from my tires from sitting on the highway for so damn long.

I started to cry.

Phil did a cartoon double take. I’m not a frequent crier. It’d been months since my last cry. Plus, I was crying over traffic of all things.

“Do you really think they’ll even care that we’re late?” he asked gently, but in a way that implied the answer was obvious and maybe, just maybe, I was overreacting.

But reason could not stop me. My meltdown had to follow its course: mild annoyance, aggravation, anger, Hulkish fury, despair, apathy. We were in the final stages.

“I just really hate traffic when I have somewhere to be,” I said between sobs. In my misery, I contemplated all of life’s little injustices: slowing metabolisms; the negative correlation between price and quality of airport food; NBC canceling Awake even though it was decent enough; patroning a restaurant without realizing they just posted a Groupon; teenagers securing book deals; and, of course, being late despite having allowed yourself plenty of time. I mourned these wrongs for a few moments, wrung out my lower lids to prevent puffiness, sniffled, swallowed and stopped.

Then I shifted into the last gear of meltdown.

For the next 9 miles of traffic, I experienced no emotion. I was a hollow shell. A vegetable along for the ride. Every car was a given. Every mile was no surprise. Even when it cleared in Norwalk, after the full 20 promised miles, and there was no accident to explain the backup, no construction work, no dead moose on the side of the road to justify rubbernecking, I felt nothing. I wasn’t outraged by having experienced what I did for nothing; I didn’t rejoice that the ordeal was over. It just was. Things just were. The damage was done.

The rest of the weekend, including lunch, went smoothly. As expected, my friends didn’t care I was late. In fact, they might give me a harder time now, knowing I punched things, cried, and then turned comatose.

But even a week later, I still believe sitting in that traffic was a version of hell fit for, if not the scum of humanity, then the assholes of humanity. I’d wish it on very few people.

I do have one in mind, however, inspired by a song that came on the radio while we were in traffic. To whoever wrote, “Barbie Girl”…. an eternity of I95 on a holiday weekend is waiting for you. And I hope you’ve got somewhere to be.

A Muggle’s Mistake

by

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I thought Allstate Insurance signed their commercials off with the slogan: That’s Allstate, Stan. I wasn’t sure who Stan was, or why Allstate’s spokesperson, Dennis Haysbert, was so determined to explain company policy to him, but I accepted it without question. And each time the commercial faded in and then faded out, I thought, “Well, Stan? Do you get it? Do you get it now?”

Then one day, I was imitating Dennis Haysbert’s deep bass voice (at the time he was also playing President David Palmer on 24, RIP), and Phil, not too gently, showed me the error of my understanding.

We all have these examples of mishearing and living satisfied with that inaccurate interpretation. My friend thought the woman in Pearl Jam’s song couldn’t find a “Butter Man.” In Bruce’s “Blinded by the Light,” I believed another runner in the night was “wrapped up like a douche”– perhaps I assumed feminine hygiene products were a secret trick of the nighttime jogger. And of course in Alanis’s “You Oughta Know,” I wrongly figured that her ex-lover was some twisted animal Indian giver, now denying the poor girl of the cross-eyed bear he previously bestowed. I wasn’t sure why he presented his partner with an optically challenged mammal in the first place but, Alanis seems like a wacky gal, so who was I to judge?

These gaffes are acceptable for the common civilian. They are not, however, acceptable for those who should know better. For instance, Stevie Van Zandt, or even the average Bruce Springsteen groupie, should know that the correct lyrics are, “cut loose like a deuce,” which, by the way, makes about as much sense as, “wrapped up like a douche.”

I bring this all up because I’ve recently made an unacceptable blunder.

Last week, I came across the word diadem, as if for the first time.

“What the heck is a diadem?” I asked.

“A crown,” Phil said, simply. And when I returned his answer with a blank stare, he continued,”As in Rowena Ravenclaw’s lost diadem?” I continued to stare. “From Harry Potter?”

The gears in my brain rotated. Grind, grind, grind. Finally, something clicked.

I said, “You mean Rowena Ravenclaw’s lost item?”

Some quick background: I began reading each of the Harry Potter books the day they were released, and did nothing else besides eat and sleep until I finished. I saw all of the movies in the theater at least once, bought the DVD set, and have seen them all on DVD at least 4 times each. But, who hasn’t?

Aside from my extensive exposure to the word diadem, what is more condemnable was my lack of common sense. Why oh why, after dedicating so much energy and imagination to creating this vast realm of the wizarding world, after writing eight books with a total of 1.1 MILLION words, including over 100 spells and 6 other successfully identified horcruxes, would JK Rowling stop her efforts just short of specifying what exactly Rowena’s “item” was? Did I picture the author sitting at her desk, smacking her forehead with her palm, saying, “What could it be? Think, JK, think!” And then, when she couldn’t dream up a particular possession for the founder of Ravenclaw House, she just sighed and shook her head, relenting to leave it ambiguous, saying, “Screw it, I’ll just call it her misplaced object. No, I’ve got it! Her lost item!”

If that were the case, a whole new layer of complexity would be added to the movie scripts:

Luna: Well, there’s Rowena Ravenclaw’s lost item.

Ron: Oh bloody hell, here we go. (Where were they going? No one was sure.)

Luna: The lost item of Ravenclaw? Hasn’t anyone ever heard of it? It’s quite famous. (Surprisingly famous for something unnamed.)

Cho Chang: Yes. But Luna, it’s lost. For centuries now. There isn’t a person alive today who’s seen it (or even knows what it is).

What can be done to recover from my goof? I just don’t know. As Toto said in their song, “Africa,” “There’s nothing that a hundred men on Mars could ever do.”

It’ll just take time. Time heals all moods.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Getting to the Festival His Own Damn Self

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The hitchhiker sat in my backseat and, staring back at him, I couldn’t make sense of how he got there.

I was sixteen, new to SAT prep, reported income, and the driver’s seat of a car. What I wasn’t new to was Fairfield, Connecticut—my hometown. And yet I found myself lost, roaming the windy, startlingly unfamiliar streets, no more than five miles from my house.

My friend and I were on our way to the Dogwood Festival, an annual fair at which area vendors gathered on a church green to sell homemade soaps, potted chrysanthemums, and organic dog treats. It doesn’t sound like the most stimulating weekend activity for a couple of teenagers, but this was a town whose young people frequently convened in empty fields to stare at one another and drink cheap beer, so at least that day’s field would have crafts to admire, and less puddles of vomit to sidestep.

The trick, it turned out, was getting there. I’d left the house assuming I knew the way. How could I not? What human of moderate intelligence couldn’t retrace a route taken at least a dozen times before? Even rats managed to navigate a maze if it yielded a cheese reward, and that’s regular store-bought Kraft cheddar. The Dogwood Festival hosted cheese artisans—I’m talking fresh chevre! But there I was, driving in circles.

This was an age before GPS’s, and when cell phones could only be used to call, text, or bludgeon home invaders. So when I saw a man on the side of the road—a kind soul who could potentially point me in the right direction!—I was so relieved, I pulled over without minding his worn duffel bag or the fact that we were in the woods and there was no good reason to trust a man walking along the side of the road. And yet there I was, pulled up beside him, rolling down my window.

“Excuse me, sir. Do you know how to get to the Dogwood Festival?”

Now, this fair was a nice enough event, but Fairfield is a town of 60,000, and the Dogwood Festival wasn’t exactly its equivalent to New York City’s Puerto Rican Day Parade or Whoville’s Christmas. Sure, some people knew about it, and maybe a few even looked forward to it, but it’s not like a stranger taken at random would respond to my question with, “The Dogwood Festival? Golly, I surely do know the way! Let me draw you a map.” The more likely response would be, “The Dogwood Festival? Um, sounds familiar. I think my cousin’s neighbor bought his mom a plant for Mother’s Day there once.”

But this man—who in my exaggerated memory looked like a young Jerry Garcia, but in reality was likely cleaner, say an older John Lennon—looked at me and said, “Yes, that’s where I’m going.”

And then he was in my backseat, door shut behind him, and I can’t remember how he got from point A to point B.

I turned and stared back at the stranger in my car for an uncomfortable amount of time, long enough to consider many thoughts, the first being, Is this a big deal? I try to avoid being dramatic and, when you’re inside the moment, it’s often hard to measure significance. It’s only later, when you’re chained up in an unfinished basement, that you realize, Yup, that was a big deal.

I then contemplated that the man could be good: a weary traveler, journeying from a far distance—Woodstock, New York would be a safe guesstimate—to haggle with the artists of New England over one of a kind stuff to keep in his duffel bag, like say a hand painted spoon rest. Or perhaps he was a craftsman himself, eager to peddle the coasters he’d constructed from littered bottle caps. But then there were other possibilities to ponder, the least gruesome being auto theft, and after a month of driving our Chrysler Town and Country to school, I just couldn’t go back to taking the bus!

So at this point in my baffled stare, I arrived at the conclusion that I needed to remove this vagabond from my minivan. The question was, how?

An eject switch, a little red button beneath my dashboard illustrated with a stick figure flung from a vehicle, would have been the ideal solution. However, this was the year 2004, not an episode of Get Smart. Back to the drawing board. My next idea was a simple one: ask him to leave. But that felt rude, and I didn’t want to seem like some privileged white girl from the suburbs who thought she was too good to give a hobo a lift—we were going to the same place, for crying out loud! So, like I was taught to do when I didn’t want to go to a classmate’s birthday party, I told a little white lie to spare the vagrant’s feelings.

“Actually we have to stop and pick up a friend first, so you probably want to head there on your own,” I said, and sighed relief in the wake of my own socially conscious brilliance.

“Oh, I’ll come along. I don’t mind the stop,” he said.

“Oh you don’t mind the stop? That’s good, that’s good,” I said, my head bobbing as if trying to physically shake an excuse loose in my brain. “Well, here’s the thing though. We may not even go to the festival. I was just asking directions out of curiosity. But what we’re doing is stopping at a friend’s house, and then, only at that point, are we going to decide. We may go, but we may not. And the second part, the part about not going, is a strong possibility. Getting stronger by the minute, actually. So just get out of my car because out of my car you can go to the festival and be out of my car.”

God bless the drifter, he did, and he took his dingy duffel bag with him. As I peeled away, I looked into my rearview mirror; the dust from my quick exodus settled and revealed a harmless nomad, shoulders rounded with fatigue, worn by his pilgrimage, just a guy hoping for a ride.

But at least he knew where he was going.

Ice Cream Cones, And Other Small Stuff Not To Sweat Over

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I’d been waiting all winter for the weather to warm– anticipating, conceptualizing, obsessing over vanilla soft serve ice cream cones with rainbow sprinkles. All three years we’d lived in our apartment, a Carvel sat within walking distance, and I never knew. But now I knew, and the ghosts of unlicked cones haunted me. I watched the second hand tick toward Spring, and as soon as the chilled air receded into the ground I was panting at our front door like a Labrador with a full bladder.

We walked to Carvel– eh, who am I kidding? I skipped. And every piece of normally dismal looking scenery– lawn ornaments in the form of plastic deer and rusty hubcaps, houses lined up hip to hip, the crazy shirtless guy on the corner– were all buffed and burnished with a cheerful gloss. I wasn’t even that embarrassed when two children waved and I returned their salute with an enthusiastic gesture and a peppy, “Hey there!”, only to realize they were greeting the man behind me– their father– and I was just the weird neighborhood lady who cooed at strange children. Phil comforted my ego with the promise of later taunting those unfriendly runts with our Carvel delicacies.

And then I saw it: Carvel– the sugared cream mecca– trounced only by the monarchical Dairy Queen and the mythical home soft serve machine. I quickened my step and looked past the dirty storefront into the heaven within.

I recited my order to the angelic middle-aged Asian woman behind the counter wearing the blue collared Carvel t-shirt and white company visor. As she pulled ice cream from the machine, expertly rotating her cone wrist to catch the soft serve pouring forth, she looked more appealing than an Oktoberfest Fraulein at a beer tap.

The cone was perfect, the soft serve beginning wide at the base, ripples trailing round and round up to the summit, climaxing into artfully swirled pinnacle. The rainbow sprinklings speckled its face like unnaturally colored autumn leaves on a Vermont mountain.

And the taste was just as sublime. Absolute bliss. Dairy dessert rapture. Not the icy crap that some establishments shamelessly call soft serve (ahem, Baskin Robbins). But the thick, sweet, cream I would gladly replace my saliva with if I was given three wishes. (The first two are between me and the genie.)

Sometimes when you go awhile without tasting something you enjoy, you place the experience on a pedestal, and after so much build-up, it’s ultimately a disappointment. But not that cone. That cone was everything I idealized it to be.

The Carvel woman rang up our two small cones as I floated on a cloud of euphoria.

“$9.45,” she said, and my high came crashing down, landing flat-faced on the intersection between my unsettling passion for soft serve and my frugality. It was an ugly place.

Ten bucks for two small cones? Ten freaking bucks? I didn’t remember it being that expensive. How much time had passed since the last ice cream season? A Game of Thrones winter? For the price of two small Carvel cones, I could have stocked my freezer with four 1.5 quart cartons of on-sale Edy’s– that is if my freezer wasn’t too small to hold the sheer volume of ice cream that ten dollars could buy.

A couple ice cream cones heavier and ten bucks lighter, we left the establishment. On the way out, I spotted a flyer on the window: “Soft serve ice cream sundaes: buy one get one free– today only!”

I had been so excited to get in and score my much anticipated cone, I’d rushed by a promo advertisement that would have gotten us twice the ice cream for half the cost. Oh cruel world!

Well, there’s no point stewing in it, I told myself. It’s over. Nothing you can do. Let it go and enjoy your ice cream. You sure paid enough for it. But I couldn’t shake the idea that I’d been ripped off, and that I’d missed out on a deal. I’d spent years training my eye to spot bargains. Years. You’re better than that, Dillon! I thought, and from that point on, every delicious lick was undermined by a bitter aftertaste– the flavor of loss.

I was so bummed, I didn’t even flaunt my yummy acquisition to those scuzzy little lawn brats who couldn’t bother to say hello to me.

Phil and I finished our Ice Cream For The Rich And Famous about a block from our house. I offered to take Phil’s cone wrapper because I’m a generous wife, and because I’d convinced him to let me have his last bite, and holding his trash until we reached our garbage seemed a reasonable courtesy tax.

I was beginning to mentally draft an angry missive to the corporate ice cream dictators when the wind picked up, and Phil’s paper wrapper escaped my fingertips.

It scurried down the sidewalk, flitted onto a neighbor’s lawn, and returned to the sidewalk, performing a jaunty dance like the chimney sweep in Mary Poppins. I chased after it, and I am not a graceful chaser. Just as I plodded my foot down in its vicinity, it skidded to the right and narrowly avoided my toe. It was as if the wrapper was attached to an invisible string, and a higher power mistook me for a cartoon cat, tugging it out of reach just as I was about to grab it. I stomped and failed three times before finally bearing down on my target. With the wrapper finally underfoot, I bent over to retrieve it, but lifted my shoe seconds before my fingers had secured a grip. The wrapper broke away and again fled down the street. I jogged after it, and had to increase my speed to a full on sprint to catch up. When it was again within my grasp, I lurched forward, my hand propelling ahead with vigor and determination. I punched the sidewalk. The skin on my knuckles scraped away, but I had the wrapper.

I spun around, victorious, lifting the wrapper high like a Spartan warrior brandishing an enemy’s decapitated head, (blood dripping down in both scenarios), only to find Phil buckled over, cackling. I’m talking literal knee slapping. And across the lawn to my “husband’s” right, an elderly gentleman sat on his porch in a rocking chair, also chuckling at the post-cone klutz who was nearly outwitted by a piece of paper.

Then I looked down at myself– at the woman who waited months for her ice cream cone and then fumed over its cost through the duration of its consumption. I’d taken soft serve, an Alexander Hamilton themed bill, and myself way too seriously, and ended up racing Stooge-like behind a wrapper.

And then I too got the joke, and laughed.

Yeah, I’m Just Here For The Massage….

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The chiropractor, a man so petite he’d be turned away from a roller coaster, slid a diagram of the human body across his desk. “Circle the areas that are bothering you and rate the pain on a scale from 1 to 10,” he said.

I picked up a pen, bit my lip, and eyed the diagram. I’d purchased their Groupon for a one hour massage and pain consultation. The trouble was, I wasn’t experiencing any pain. I was there for the massage, and the massage alone. I hadn’t even acknowledged the pain consultation component until I found myself sitting in a doctor’s office, a diagram of the human body under my nose. But I couldn’t tell the man with three framed medical degrees that I had no use for his chiropractic expertise, that I just wanted to relax, pure and simple. That I was wasting his time just to get someone to rub me down at the low price of $30. So I put the pen to paper and drew three random circles on the diagram. I faked the pain.

He read over my report and nodded. “What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a writer,” I said, pleased because it was the first time I used that as my answer. I don’t typically use it since I’ve only earned $800 writing over eight years of actively working at it, and an average of $100 a year just doesn’t count as a viable career.

“Interesting,” he answered, as if it wasn’t.

You’d think such a career answer would prompt the questions, “Oh really? What do you write? Anything I might’ve read?” And I was disappointed because this doctor could tell that no, I hadn’t written anything he might’ve read.

“Well, let me give you a tour of the complex,” he said.

We saw the physical therapy room, the gym, the massage therapy room, the physiological therapy room, and the treatment room. This medical facility was about a lot more than aromatherapy candles and Enya. I was in over my head.

We ended the tour in the screening room. “Before I pass you on to our massage therapist, this machine will scan your back and measure the muscle tension. We’ll see exactly what the problem areas you marked on the paper look like.”

I stared back at him and blinked. “I’m sorry, what the what now?”

“Yes, this is cutting edge technology. The machine is like a muscle x-ray so the massage therapist will know exactly what he’s working with.”

Which, in this case, was a fibber.

When I drew those circles on the human diagram, pretending I had back issues to get a cheap massage, I’d thought, What’s the harm? How will they know the pain is illegitimate? Well, here was my answer. This machine was about to scan my muscle tension. My FAKE muscle tension. They were going to hook me up to a chiropractic lie detector. I swallowed so hard I made the cartoon gulp sound.

The doctor handed me a smock and directed me to put it on, open in the back.

When he left the room, I tore off my clothing. I’m not sure what my rush was, but whenever I have to undress at a doctor’s office, I move like the doctor is going to turn around and kick the door down. Then I’m left sitting on the examination table wearing the tissue paper gown, my legs swinging. This case was no different. My clothes were strewn across the room, the gown fastened, and I was out of breath. But then I waited for the doctor’s return for so long I could’ve received HP customer support.

It gave me ample time to consider lifting the sofa, just to pull something in my back before it was too late.

The doctor entered after a gentle knock, along with a nurse and a man he introduced as my massage therapist. Great, I thought. My deceit will have an audience.

Together the four of us stood in front of a large flat screen television. One half of the monitor featured a spine with a corresponding bar graph, indicating the normal level of tension at each vertebrae. A blank spine occupied the other half. That was to be my spine. My “aggravated” spine. The nurse dipped two plastic sensors in liquid and pressed them against my top vertebrae, while the doctor stood on his tip toes and held my hair up. It was quite the hullabaloo for someone who just wanted a discount massage.

“You have right neck pain, so the bar on the right will extend well beyond the normal,” the doctor said. He smiled smugly, proud of his new toy.

I thought this was a good time to just run out of the building, but I couldn’t find my shirt.

So I stayed, frozen in place. The medical professionals and the phony watched the bar grow, grow, grow and…. stop– not one millimeter beyond the norm.

There it was, my lie measured.

“Hmm,” the doctor said, dropping back down onto his heels.

“Hmm,” the massage therapist said.

“Hmm,” the nurse said.

“Well that’s strange,” I said. Although it made the perfect amount of sense.

I worried each of the next 32 vertebrae readings would yield the same results– that I had the tension-free back of a newborn baby– and they would see my pain for the con it was. Luckily, it turned out I had muscle tension without realizing it. Unluckily, it wasn’t in any of the areas I had circled.

“Maybe muscle tension is having a ripple effect and causing pain in other areas?” I suggested, desperately.

“Maybe,” the doctor said, in a tone that implied it wasn’t possible.

After the scan was complete, I followed the massage therapist out, staring at the floor like a dog who’d made on the rug.

“Have you ever had a massage before?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, relieved to finally answer honestly.

“Well, this is just like that,” he said. “Except I’ll actually make you feel better instead of just rubbing random patterns on your back.”

And I sighed, because I was no longer the biggest ass in the room.

The Jewel Concert, In Review

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I purchased Jewel tickets with a hint of nostalgia.

Back when gas was cheap enough that you could drive around just for fun, my best friend and I sped down the residential streets of our suburb with the windows down, blasting, Foolish Games. Our hands clasped our hearts, our hair whipped in the wind, and we sang until our throats scratched, thinking, “He was fashionably sensitive but too cool to care. How did she know?” And when the song ended, we pressed the back button and let the anguish wash over us again.

I fell asleep to Break Me and woke to Standing Still. Jewel was part of my teenage soundtrack, until I found Emo and became a real, inconsolable wretch.

Now that my parents are no longer out to ruin my life and the world isn’t so unfair, Emo is an artifact of my history. I won’t touch the stuff. But Jewel? Who Will Save Your Soul? You Were Meant For Me? Hands? There’s plenty of space for her music in my present.

So I said, “Oh, by the way, Phil. We’re seeing Jewel in concert. Goodnight.”

I was a little nervous for Jewel when we arrived at the venue. Ten minutes before the show started, the place was almost empty. I worried the four time Grammy nominee would walk out onto a stage in nowhere Long Island to serenade only me, Phil, and some guy in a cowboy hat. Phil very generously offered his stomach as a blank canvas on which to draw a message of reassurance. A, “We’re here for you” or, “It’s quality, not quantity,” written in borrowed lipstick. But this wasn’t necessary because the room filled during the performance of the opener, an acoustic guitar playing country singer with long blonde hair who we suspected was Jewel herself wearing a prosthetic nose, out to catch a sneak-peak of the crowd.

When the opener finished, the stage crew emerged to set up for our headliner. They carried out a table, upon which they placed a bouquet of fresh flowers (classy touch, Jewel) and a packet of papers that Phil guessed to be a collection of lyrics. I joked, “Yeah, because she doesn’t know the words to her own songs,” and in about 25 minutes, we would learn this to be the case. I guess that’s what happens when 20 years have passed since you wrote the damn things. The men lined up three acoustic guitars and one electric, and then sanitized the microphone. Jewel can’t know who will save your soul, but she’s well aware that Purell is a friend to your immune system.

The theater was sufficiently packed when she walked out, and the crowd rose to their feet to welcome her. One not-effeminate man cupped his hands around his mouth and screamed, “I love you, Jewel!” There were tears in his eyes. These people were my kin.

Jewel parted her lips and took my breath away.

Many might be skeptical right about now. Some, like the three male friends I saw over the weekend who apparently are the authorities on musical talent (yeah, I’m talking to YOU), might maintain that Phil should have sent me alone. But I maintain that, if you were there, no matter your tastes, you would have been impressed.

Here’s what makes her such a special performer. Inside the span of one song, nay, one line, her vocals metamorphose into very distinct, very separate sounds. There’s the whispery resonance, the Mariah Carey-esque belt, the nasal blend, the sweet song, the yodel, and the reverberation– where she wields enough control to sound as if her microphone is echoing inside a coliseum. It’s as if she’s possessed by the spirits of six singers, blessed with Multiple PersTonality Disorder. The audience gets a handful of artists for the price of one. It’s quite a deal.

As I gawked at her talents, I couldn’t ignore a buzz in my ear.

Two girls at my left shoulder were chatting at great, animated length, as if the concert was the site for their much-anticipated reunion. Perhaps they were twin sisters separated at birth, meeting for the first time, with everything to learn about one another. It’s a tender story, and I was happy for them, but take it outside, ladies. I shot them a couple of intentional looks, not necessarily expressing a high level of animosity, because I’m not confrontational, but we made eye contact– enough that, if the tables were turned, it would have registered with me that another concert attendee looked me in the eye while an iconic singer was standing on stage, and since “I” ain’t no showstopper, it must be because “I” couldn’t SHUT MY DAMN MOUTH. They didn’t get the point.

Just as my blood began to boil, the girl closest to me leaned over and actually spoke into MY ear.

“Isn’t she amazing??” she asked.

How would you know? I thought, but nodded absently, limiting my response to drive the point that I was not there to socialize.

“I was disappointed it was standing room only, but she’s so amazing I don’t mind standing,” she said. And when I didn’t reply, she prompted me with, “Do you know what I mean?”

I rarely hope that somebody has a mental problem. But in that case, her continual interruption of my experience was so infuriating, I could only forgive her if she was cognitively handicapped.

“Can you save our spots?” she asked then. “We have to go to the bathroom and don’t want to lose our spot. We’re two people.”

I turned toward her, and then looked behind us to confirm that, yes, we still stood at the back of the room, in front of a six square foot empty pocket. There was no need for saving space.

At this point in the show, Jewel had three times asked the audience, in her very cute and funny way, to shut the hell up. I was afraid the pop star might spot Chatty Cathy and me and assume we were together, that I too was disobeying her repeated requests. This would spoil my chance of one day being best buds with Jewel Kilcher, or as I, her best friend, will call her, JK. In order to get the insistent woman out of my ear, I took a dramatic step to the left to indicate their spots were safe with me.

Then I caught a stale fruity whiff; the undeniable fragrance of cigarettes and hair product. I confirmed this fragrance with another sniff— yes, the woman in front of me was a smoker, and I’m allergic to cigarette smoke. I tried to talk myself off the reaction ledge. You’re fine. This isn’t going to affect you because it’s diffused in this big open space. But the roof of my mouth began to itch, and I felt the tingling compulsion to thrust my tongue against it, a motion that produces a throaty quack, a habit my family refers to as “clucking.” Sexy, I know.

I was about to ask Phil if we could relocate when Jewel began to sing, “Break Me.”

This song is so fragile, so delicate, a pin dropped in the room could shatter it. I hardly allowed myself to breathe, never mind address the irritation inside my mouth. I simply froze. So you can imagine my rage when the man in front of me whispered a joke to his lady, and she responded with an uninhibited snort.

Between the two chatterboxes, the smoker, and the snorter, I’d just about had it with people. I wanted to whisper to Phil, “Duck,” and take all my neighbors out with an unforgiving, well-deserved, spinning kick. Only then could I return to appreciate the concert.

Luckily for my peers, I swallowed this impulse. But after Jewel sang the final note of her ballad, I tugged Phil’s sleeve and we slid around to a new grouping… where we found Jewel’s biggest fan, and that adjective describes both this person’s avidity and her size. She was built like a linebacker. She could have worked Jewel’s security detail.

Every time this woman cheered Jewel on, which was often, I jumped. Her voice was so startlingly loud, so sudden and blatant, it was like an air horn. I turned to survey Phil’s reaction, and his eyes, too, were widened in fear. We’re going to hear her yell, “Yeah, girl!” in our nightmares.

The next song was Jewel’s hit, “You Were Meant For Me,” which we immediately learned was Big Girl’s favorite. She belted along, loud and clear, to the entire song, mistakenly thinking that I paid $50 per ticket to hear her sing. Granted, Big Girl’s voice was surprisingly pleasant, but still. This wasn’t a rock concert. At a folk concert in a small arena, a bellow from a crowd member with this woman’s lung capacity was disruptive. I had trouble listening to Jewel over her, and Jewel had a sound system. But I would never have said anything to Big Girl. She could have hammered my head with her fist and pounded me into the ground like in a caveman cartoon.

We left that night with renewed respect for Jewel: for her abilities, her poetic lyrics, her humor, her past (she grew up in a log cabin in Alaska where they survived off the land, and as a teenager lived in her car in CA) and the fact that she is 39 but still looks like a just-discovered 18 year old.

We also left wondering, is it Long Island people that are obnoxious, or is it just people people? We’ve been here so long, I don’t remember.

Jewel yodeled at the end of the concert, and it was the first time I ever heard yodeling in real life. Phil and I tried it on our way home, as I imagine half the crowd did. We were, well, not great.

My 30 Before 30 List

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Phil turns 30 next month. This has reminded me that, while it’s too late for him, I still have time. Time to accomplish, to embrace life, to experience. Time to carpe diem the crap out of my remaining years. So here’s a list of things I hope to do. You know, before I’m in my (gasp!) 30′s. Some items are ambitious but most, well, are not. A lot of people’s 30 before 30 list have these great big dreams, like driving cross country or losing 15 pounds. I like to keep things more realistic and, aside from a few exceptions, the following list contains mostly attainable items. Still, they are items of merit, because I really do need to satisfy them before I’m 30.

  1. Learn how to pop the hood of my car
  2. Throw away all pants whose waist I hope I’ll  fit into one day but won’t unless the world ends and I’m surviving in a post apocalyptic world where I have to wrestle my food into submission
  3. Sew closed the hole in the sweater I still wear even though there is a hole in it
  4. Understand what an IRA is
  5. Flip through the CD book in my car and toss out what should be tossed out, no strings attached (ahem)
  6. Bake bread without Phil’s help so that when we have kids, he won’t be the favorite parent just because of his sweet bread recipe (sweet, here, meaning cool. It isn’t sweet bread)
  7. Sing Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” at a karaoke night
  8. See Elton John in concert (If I see Elton John outside of concert, that too will satisfy this item)
  9. Watch Braveheart (Phil’s favorite movie)
  10. Beat Phil in Connect Four (I beat him once, but we had played ten games in a row and he was just tired and careless, so I don’t count it… I think we need some local friends)
  11. Sit in a New Orleans jazz club
  12. Rescue a puppy
  13. Buy a home (notice I did not use the word house, allowing room for flexibility ie condo, teepee, etc)
  14. Go to BB Kings for the Harlem Gospel Choir Sunday Brunch
  15. Apologize to my little brother for once convincing him that I was a vampire and reducing his five year old self to tears (Since he is a regular reader, I’ll consider this item done!)
  16. Bike around Governor’s Island
  17. Decide, once and for all, if I like cream cheese
  18. Cut bangs
  19. Grow the bangs out because they were a mistake
  20. Buy prescription aviators
  21. Secure a book deal
  22. Own a piece of furniture that isn’t a hand-me-down, didn’t require assembly, and wasn’t purchased at Salvation Army
  23. Give myself a manicure that doesn’t look as if I let my 4-year-old niece play dress up
  24. Wear my wedding gown at least once more before I outgrow it
  25. Dress up as Bellatrix Lestrange for Halloween
  26. Nail down a decent English accent (This item should come before #25 to optimize the impersonation)
  27. Sprinkle tarragon in something
  28. Memorize a summarizing sentence of what Phil researches
  29. Buy a mini torch for making creme brulee (I can save the actual making of it for my 40 before 40 list)
  30. Wear lipstick

Is This Thing On?

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If I could choose one gift off the assembly line of human talents, it would the ability to sing well.

Scratch that. It would be the ability to eat whatever I want whenever I want as much as I want while never growing beyond a size 6. Hey, if we’re dreaming, make it a size 4. But aside from that, it would be the singing thing. If I were a great singer, I would never speak, and people wouldn’t want me to. Life would be a song, and I its lead soloist.

Having a mediocre voice (at best) does not stop me from trying, although it does limit how much I try in public. Most of my unabashed belting occurs, for the good of humanity, within the confines of my Honda, windows up, radio intentionally cranked to a volume where it almost drowns me out. If I set the volume just right, hints of my voice emerge under the mask of the lead singer and I’m surprised by how good I sound. Anything louder and I can’t detect myself at all; anything softer is an unpleasant reminder, and the volume practically turns itself up.

But at the perfect settings, I am Adele. Or Jennifer Hudson. Or Freddie Mercury. I’m the woman you pull up beside at a red light and find mouth agape, head tilted back, her hand shot up as if to say, “Stop, please. This wave of emotion is just too much to bear.” But she doesn’t stop. She croons until the bridge when her eyes flutter open, and she turns to her right to find you and your passenger laughing and pointing at her. But if you knew how gut-wrenchingly magical she sounded, you wouldn’t think it was so damn funny.

Then The Eagles come on, with their tight harmony. And I’ve gotten a bit too comfortable. The easy melodies of Bruce Springsteen or Journey made me cocky and I think, Let’s crank this up. Let’s deepen the emotional complexity. Alone the melody is catchy, charming. But blended with the harmony it transforms lyrics like, “I gotta know if your sweet love is gonna save me,” from playful to urgent. You need the urgency to be soulful.

And I want to be soulful.

So I say, “Okay, Eagles. Let’s harmonize.”

I hear the stacked thirds of the harmony. I’ve identified the notes through the first couple rounds of the chorus. So I part my lips, take a deep breath running start, and leap to join in.

Take it eaaasy.

Ouch. That ain’t right.

Desperate, I choose another note.

Oof. Wrong again.

I climb the scale.

Yowza.

I outwardly wince, and somewhere a dog is whimpering.

I don’t understand it. I hear the note through my speaker and in my head, but what I produce is so far off the mark. All I have to do is match it. I’m not asking myself to do anything a parakeet can’t. Yet, it’s impossible. And although it’s just me in the car, I’m embarrassed. My performance embarrassed myself. The volume settings can’t help in these cases– it can never be loud enough to cover tone deafness.

I only manage to create harmony if the consonance is such a prominent line, it’s practically the melody, like in Journey’s “Lights.” When it comes out right, or nearly right, I think I’m Josh Groban, and bob my head like a rooster strutting, certain that I missed my calling. I shouldn’t be in this CRV. I should be on a stage somewhere.

But god forbid I’m feeling whimsical and I try to create my own harmony line. It’s hard enough when I have backup singers to mimic. When I try to develop my own brand of harmony, I sound like the nun choir before Whoopi Goldberg’s character intervenes and changes their lives forever. The results cause me to hate myself, and I abandon whatever song inspired me to improvise. I skip the CD until I land on a tune to match my disparaged mood. Alanis Morissette tends to be the best fit. That way, if my vocals sound crude, it only helps the message.

You, you, you, oughta know!

Professor L And The Dastardly Drift

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When I turned around, he was already down, slid onto his side like a runner into home plate. But he wasn’t a runner, and this wasn’t home plate. He was a math professor wearing dress pants, and we were on a sidewalk in downtown Babylon, New York. There were mounds of slushy snow everywhere; it was bound to happen to one of us. I’m just glad it wasn’t me.

People fall on ice. It isn’t an unusual occurrence. Not normally one worth writing about. But the strange thing was this: inside my next blink, he was up, standing erect on the sidewalk, as if nothing had ever happened. Before I could ask if he was all right or decide if this was funny or not, he was off the floor, casually dropping a quarter into the meter. There was no transitional position. No bent knee straightening, no hands pushing himself to his feet. No groan or curse. One second he was down, and the next he was, miraculously, up, as if my brain skipped like a scratched record, and jumped over the in between image of Phil scrambling. I watched him poised upright, and while I was befuddled, he seemed cool as a cucumber. The only proof that he had ever been on the ground was a streak of dirty snow up his pant leg, and the honk of a passing car, the driver of which must have seen the wipe out too, and was doing us the courtesy of blaring witness.

I blinked once. Twice. Then I asked, “Are we just going to pretend that never happened?”

Phil turned to me, his face blank. “There are only two acceptable ways to handle a fall,” he said. “One, you climb up and yell at whatever caused you to lose your footing. Two, you act like it never happened.” Then he began to walk in the direction we were heading. A non-confrontational person by nature, he was choosing the latter approach.

By then, I’d processed the scenario. It had sat on my tongue. I tasted it, chewed it, swallowed and digested it. I’d decided. Yes, I was certain. The fall was funny.

I hurried, carefully, to catch up to Phil. A laughed rumbled up my throat, and I tried to suppress it, but admittedly not very hard because, after all, the man wasn’t hurt.

“How did you recover so quickly?” I asked finally, because his seamless rebound was really astounding. He’d snapped back up like a bungee cord. It wasn’t human. It was superhuman. Most likely a mutant power he’d accidentally let me discover. He’d been threatened and responded by instinct, unwittingly revealing abilities that for years had remained under his control.

But he kept his eyes fixed ahead, determined that the fall never happened. And I was beginning to think his denial was not for the sake of his dignity, but for the sake of his secret.

When Elephants Samba

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Fun fact about Brazilians: They don’t have bones.

This characteristic has made it a challenge for me, an individual burdened with a skeleton, to keep up with a certain Brazilian dance workout DVD. Samba marries intricate footwork with mind-blowing hip action, as it was developed by women walking barefoot across concrete roads scorched by the Brazilian sun– their feet burned, so they moved quickly while still trying to look sexy enough to attract eligible neighbors.

That’s my guess, anyway.

The woman on my screen (whose abs I can see through her spandex) moves like Gumby and, as I struggle to follow her, I move more like a first grader dressed up as Gumby for Halloween.  She zigs. I zag. She swirls. I seize. She bounces like a jello square. I bounce like I have to pee.

But, I do sweat, so I guess that makes it a successful workout.

Unless, of course, the workout is interrupted by a doorbell.

I pause the DVD, wipe my dripping, flushed face with the inside of my t shirt neck, and open my apartment door. At the bottom of the staircase (we live on the second floor) stands my landlord, a middle aged paunchy man who patches his retirement together with the rental, guitar lessons, and a business called Rock and Roll Amps, which on outgoing packages reads Rockandrollamps. At first I read this as Rock and Roll Lamps, and was intrigued by the idea that he is an eccentric artist who fashions light fixtures with over-sized Mick Jagger bobble heads.

“I just wanted to make sure everything was okay up there,” he says. “It sounds like an elephant stampede.”

It sounds like an elephant stampede.

Elephants. Just the animal that an exercising woman wants to be compared to. And I don’t just sound like one mammal renowned for its sheer size. I sound like herd of them, fleeing in distress.

I already felt inadequate compared to the DVD’s agile dance master, a woman who would probably be assigned to some graceful animal like a gazelle instead of my animal look alike. An ELEPHANT. It was bad enough that I fumbled the moves and that my hip cracked with every rotation, serving as an additional reminder of the qualities I shared with The Tin Man. I was already down on myself because when the super-sambista told me to loosen up my upper body by getting my shoulders and elbows into the move, I punched myself in the face. I literally punched myself. In the face. Not hard. I didn’t give myself a bloody nose or anything. But you don’t have to punch yourself in the face with much power for it to be humiliating. And now this guy, who would benefit from a squat or two himself, has to inform me that what I hoped were limber hops were actually mini earthquakes caused by feet that might have 12,000 pounds of weight behind them. I imagine my landlord was downstairs at his kitchen table polishing a bronze bust of Eric Clapton when his chandelier began to rattle, the ceiling plaster fell in dust, and he suddenly felt as if he was a character in Jumanji.

Well, if I am an elephant, Mr. Landlord, their infrasound hearing capability would explain why the electric guitar playing that we “would never hear” is actually our nightly lullaby.

Okay, I’ll have to work on a zingier comeback.

On the bright side, samba and elephants both have roots in Africa. So at least my performance shares the same continent as the dance I’m unsuccessfully trying to imitate.