Category Archives: Childhood Traumas

January 21, 2012 · 0:00

What’s in a Meme?

It’s more of a disease than anything. Think Contagion. Think Outbreak. Think the combined scourges of tuberculosis, bubonic plague and flatulence with the Love Boat Theme playing in the background, with no mute button.

Yes, that’s how I describe the “meme” I got from Lori at Sunny Side Up.

A meme, according to Wikipedia, my bible, is:

an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures.

Yes, it’s a chain letter.

But, as I am a girl who can’t say no, here goes.

1. Describe yourself in 7 words:

Irreverent
Snarky
Chatty
Storyteller-at-any-opportunity
Smart
Curly
~~Liar~~ Literary-license-taker

2. What keeps you up at night?

The fear that some perve is going to want to know what I’m wearing right now.

3. Who would I like to be?

The Queen

4. What am I wearing right now?

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

5. What scares me?

Repeating myself. Repeating myself. See Nos 2 and 4.

6. The best and worst of blogging:

Having an outlet to write and be appreciated

Falling into the black hole of posting, reading posts and comments, where there is no other reality and where no serious writing projects get done because blogging is just too damn much fun

Having things you wrote appear in weird boxes like this even when you don’t want them to.

7. The last website I visited:

I did medical research just now here: http://www.theslanket.com/

8. What is the one thing I would change about myself:

My liposuction appointment is on Wednesday, so I’m working on that one.

9. Slankets…yes or no?

Absolutely. How can I possibly resist something that will keep me warm AND fed while I fulfill my duty as a couch potato?

"Nicks Lunch" (no apostrophe) available for $29.99 at TheSlanket.com

10. Tell us something about the person who tagged you:

Lori of Sunny Side Up likes to give me stuff. She gave me my first award, the Liebster , which is for blogs with fewer than 100 followers. (I have dubbed it “The Award for Blogs Nobody Reads.” But that caption has NOT caught on.)

But Lori is unfailingly happy, optimistic, sunny. And I thought the world of her until she was Fresh Pressed and I wasn’t.

Seriously Lori. Don’t try that FP trick again. Cause I’m watchin’ you.

Now, according to the chain letter, meme tradition, I am supposed to name folks who can carry on this chain letter tradition. But I am a non-traditionalist, so I figure I’ll give an open invitation to anyone who wants to tell about themselves, who needs a list to do it with, and who has strong feelings about slankets.

Go For It!

********

Sometimes blogging is an enriching, uplifting experience. Sometimes, in researching a post, I learn strange and wonderful things. But today I realized something frightening. If a meme is “a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices,” our culture is doomed. And all because of blogs. Remember the Slankets. And be afraid. Because the fall of civilization and society always follows when a society forgets how to dress nicely.

You too can decrease the surplus population -- and for only $29.99 at http://shop.theslanket.com

48 Comments

Filed under Awards, Childhood Traumas, Climate Change, Global Warming, Humor, Word Press

Tagged as Awards, Blogging, Crap, Humor, Packaging

January 17, 2012 · 0:00

People My Age

Well, it’s my birthday. And I have a problem.

You might have noticed it yourself. You may even have asked me about it. Or wondered in stoic silence. “Whatever will she do?” you asked yourself. I am sure it has been weighing on you — heavily. As well it should.

“FiftyFourAndAHalf,” that’s the problem. It’s right up there at the top of the page. Yup, the blog’s name. I called it that in a fit of pique at the GOP who were going to take Medicare away from everyone under 55. Starting with me. It seemed grossly unfair when I was younger. Like, you know, six months ago.

But, ummmm. I’m not FiftyFourAndAHalf anymore. I’m not even FiftyFourAndThreeQuarters, either — the name my son, Jacob, has been calling me. Because my 55th birthday is here. I tried to stop it, but, well, I failed. My bad.

I didn’t know what to do. I thought of taking a poll:

I must admit I was afraid of your answers. More importantly, I was afraid that I had more poll questions than readers.

But then I saw this:

John Gorka, singing “People My Age”

It helped me make my decision. It stiffened my resolve. I wish I had thought of it sooner. Like 20 years ago. But back then, I didn’t know that people my age had started looking gross.

So I’m not going on to FiftyFive. I don’t want to be my age, because people my age have started looking gross.

I’m sticking with FiftyFourAndAHalf.

Man! I look better already.

107 Comments

Filed under Childhood Traumas, Climate Change, Elections, Family, Humor, Music, Science, Stupidity

Tagged as Aging, Bad days, Crap, Humor, Medicare, Middle-Aging

December 27, 2011 · 0:00

Door Number Two!

The thing about dreams is that the crushing, the squelching, the termination of them is so much better in retrospect than when it actually happens.

At 17, I just knew I was going to be an actress. A stage actress (because, don’t cha know, film work is not true acting. ) And I made that choice even before I realized that the camera brings out the psycho in me.

Now, I was very serious about this dream. Of course I took my high school’s acting classes. And, all snark aside, they were really good. The Players were renown throughout the area for the professional quality of its high school actors. And the accolades were well deserved.

Me? Was I the star? Was I the ingénue lead in all the productions during my high school years? Was there a reason for my hubris? Did my classmates look at me, remember my face and say to each other “someday we will remember when the very highly talented Miss Elyse went sledding outside our Algebra class (with that other fab actress, Ray) when she was supposed to be writing her math problems on the blackboard – because now,” sigh, “she’s a STAR.” Oops, no, I mean they’d think “because now she is a highly successful stage ACTress.”

Uh, no they didn’t. I was invariably an extra in those acclaimed productions. At best I got a line or two.

But I had heart. And in the theatRE, that’s all you need, right? “There are no small parts, only small actors.” Well, I was NOT a small actor. I just got small parts. And I was short and thin. So I was small. Shit.

But I DID get an audition.

Yup! I had an audition in April of 1974, the spring of my senior year, for the Central School of Speech and Drama, an acting school in London. Now, I was an hour outside of New York, and that might have been a wee bit easier to manage. But hey, this was a dream, remember. And I wanted London: The Globe, The West End, Masterpiece TheatRE (even if it was done on film, it didn’t seem like it).

I was ready to take the first step in my path.

My audition was held in a building at Yale University. I performed my comedy bit first, a monologue from a comedy so obscure that I have blotted it totally from my brain.

I sang “Adelaide’s Lament” under the guidance of my friend Sue, who actually played Adelaide in our school’s production of Guys and Dolls. She was good. So was I. Well, not quite as good, but who’d notice?

I delivered my Juliet speech – hey, what do you want, Lady Macbeth? I was 17!!! I chose one that is rarely performed, the one where Juliet is about to take the sleeping potion and is seeing her cousin Tybalt’s ghost:

O, look! methinks I see my cousin’s ghost
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body
Upon a rapier’s point: stay, Tybalt, stay! (I loved that line)
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.

I drank the potion, collapsed on the floor in the best Juliet evah.

I thanked the three faculty judges, repeated my name, made sure they had my completed application and my picture (although how could they forget me?) I turned and walked to the door to leave. Only there were two doors.

I opened the one on the right, walked through it and closed the door behind me.

It was a broom closet.

What do I do now, I wondered. There was no script. No stage directions. No help of any kind. I considered staying in the closet, but knew that eventually I had to come out. After a minute that lasted forever, I re-opened the door and slunk out, saying a line I haven’t heard in too many successful plays:

“Ummm, that’s the broom closet.”

I opened the other door and left the room, closing my dream back in the room with the judges.

I know that if I’d just gone out singing and dancing, well, this chapter would be the opening scene of my life story.

Maybe it still is. Cause it hasn’t been at all bad.

*****************

My thanks to MJ Monaghan, who posted a great piece today: A Letter to my Guidance Counsellor. Naturally I felt compelled to copy it.

Damn those copyright laws.

73 Comments

Filed under Childhood Traumas, Humor, Music, Stupidity

Tagged as Bad days, Humor

October 9, 2011 · 0:00

… comes around

A friend of mine told me that this weekend was her 20^th high school reunion. Immediately, I was transported back to mine, back to one of the best nights of my life, back to when someone who had bullied me showed everyone else his true colors.

My hometown was a wealthy suburb, a place where rich, well-schooled, successful folks go to raise their families. A town filled to the brim with liberals who mostly commute to New York City, just a short train ride away. A town of folks that raise their kids to be liberals too.

My classmates and I were at the tail end of the Baby Boomers, old enough to protest the Vietnam war but not old enough to serve. Old enough to remember and mourn the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Jr., to have seen the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. We participated in protests, celebrated the Women’s Movement, went braless through high school, and believed that all you need is love.

My family landed in town when my father bought a run-down Victorian house, sight unseen, in 1963. Kids in the neighborhood thought it was haunted; we moved in on Halloween. My two brothers, two sisters and I started school the following Monday.

Within a week, I had ruined my life.

You see, in 2nd grade, every Friday at my new school, we had Show and Tell. I bet you did too. But I bet you didn’t, well, show and tell quite like I did that very first week.

You remember Show and Tell, I’m sure. Everyone gathers together on the floor and everybody raises their hand to perform; three or four kids are chosen every week. They sing songs, tell jokes, juggle. That first week I anxiously raised my hand, but the teacher didn’t call on me. I performed anyway. There in the middle of the circle, I wet my pants.

I do not recommend “showing” in this manner if your goal is to one day be voted “Most Popular.”

I don’t remember what happened for the rest of the afternoon. I don’t know if I went home early, if my classmates got wet and ran screaming from me. I have buried that memory. I do know that it started four years of hell.

Tommy was the lead bully. He dubbed me “Weenie Girl” and teased and tormented me through 6^th grade. He was truly cruel, and tried to keep others from being my friend. I hated him. I saw him less as we got older, but he was still a classmate when we both graduated in 1974.

But by the time of my 20^th reunion, I had more or less gotten over my shame over the incident. And I did it with a very public therapy session. One night, when I had had way too much to drink at a bar, I climbed onto a table and told everyone in the bar my hilariously funny/sad story – how I ruined my own childhood during Show and Tell. I had always feared that someone would find out and ridicule me. Instead, there I stood, making the room love me, as I showed them the humor and the pain.

It had taken me years, but I had to admit it was funny. I mean after all, I didn’t do it during naptime. I didn’t do it during storytime. I didn’t pee while learning long division. I wet my pants during Show and Tell! Why hasn’t anyone put that scene into a sit com?

So on the night of my 20^th reunion, when I saw lead bully Tommy heading towards me to say hello, I had forgiven him. Completely. And although I thought of all the things I could say to the nasty bully, I smiled politely, chatted amiably to him and his wife, and moved on with my life. It was a proud moment.

But the night got better. Much, much better.

You see, Tommy was the MC of the evening. It was his job to introduce particularly successful classmates, tell who was living in exotic places, and what surprising career choices had been made by a few. He showed pictures of us when we all still had hair, when we were thin, when we were young.

And Tommy did a good job speaking to that extremely liberal crowd of editors and publishers, doctors, public interest lawyers. People who still wanted to save the world. Good people, people with heart and soul. Liberals.

And then it happened. Towards the end of the evening, Tommy stood up on the dias and started to wind things down. And he said to my extremely PC friends and classmates:

“My wife told me not to tell jokes tonight. But I’m just going to tell the one.”

“Why is a man like a linoleum floor?”

Tommy paused for effect.

“Lay him right the first time;

walk all over him from then on.”

The room went silent, as one by one, each head turned towards the dias and each person either thought or said aloud:

“What an asshole.”

And after realizing that everybody agreed on that one point, I cracked up.

“Hell, I’ve known he was an asshole since 2^nd Grade!” I said.

I’m pretty sure that when I am taking in my last breath, I will still be smiling about that night, knowing that in this life what goes around really does come around; sometimes it just takes a while.