The tissue story

When I was in junior high I went to my Auntie Martha’s after school. She lived across the street from campus.

Auntie Martha was one of my grama’s older sisters.

I would snack on the Frosted Flakes she kept hidden in the bottom cabinet and watch General Hospital on her little black-and-white kitchen TV. After that I would push the chairs aside and jump on the Linoleum under Richard Simmons’ guidance.

Auntie Martha watched Guiding Light and then Phil Donohue in the den.

After my workout I went in where Auntie was. We would play gin or backgammon. She taught me to sew.

Then in the evening my dad would pick me up. Sometimes he would sit on the patio and have a beer with Uncle Phil before we left.

One afternoon I went in the living room and she was pulling wadded balls of pretty paper out of a new gym bag and ironing it.

The bag had come stuffed. My mom had just bought a bag like this. I was fascinated by the whole scene.

“This will make nice wrapping paper.” She was making a pile of the ironed. Each sheet was different.

I couldn’t get past that she was ironing wrapping paper.

My dad showed up just as she told me that she also irons her tissues and reuses them.

Dad was in a hurry.

This was too much. We went back and forth with ‘You really do?’ ‘I really do’ as he dragged me out.

I never knew Auntie Martha to be cheap, and that was disgusting. My incredulity was consuming.

The next afternoon it was the first thing I wanted to talk about.

“Auntie, I want to buy you clean tissues. I think it’s gross you iron and reuse them, all full of mocos.”

I wish I hadna said that.

I’m sure you’ve deduced she meant tissues for gift wrapping, not Kleenex. I’ve been teased it about it these past 28 years. This kind of embarrassment spreads fast through my family.

And 28 years later, I’m still using the wrapping paper I went home and pulled out of my mom’s new gym bag and ironed.

Another punny headline

This post is by request. Be careful, Unca Rob. I have a million of these.

I once edited a story about a rodeo program for beginners.

It provided participants’ guidance on a bull — actually, they started on sheep — learning how to stay in the saddle.

My headline: The buck starts here.

English is a bitch

I had a semantics professor in college who had immigrated from Yugoslavia.

He told a sad story about getting in trouble with his own teacher when he was a college student. He was still learning English at the time.

The professor said some confusing things, and my prof-to-be raised his hand. “I understand.”

“Good.” He went on.

My prof raised his hand again. “I understand.”

“Sir, it is not appropriate for you to take class time after every point to tell me you understand. Many people understand. Keep it to yourself.”

My teacher failed the class.

He later learned that the prefix “un-” did not always negate the root. What he thought he had been saying was “I don’t understand.”

If he had only once told his professor he derstood, there may have been a revelation.

A new expression

When I was a kid, we would say, “Oooh. You got burned!”

When my kids were little, they would say “You got told!”

About a month ago my son said, “Oh! He took your five dollars.”

I thought I knew the root of this, but it couldn’t be. It’s too obscure.

It is. He remembered it, and coined an expression.

Many years ago I told him a joke I am embarrassed to tell you I told him.

Two deaf guys were sitting around. One signed to the other, “What will we do tonight?”

This joke is really better with the visual aid of hand signing, which I do poorly, but which makes the joke better nonetheless. Please imagine signing with this.

“Let’s pick up some chicks and park at the point.” And that’s what they did.

The deaf guy in the back seat tapped the one in the front. With his hands, he indicated a problem — no condoms.

“No problem,” signed the one guy. “I’ll drive us over to 7-Eleven.”

The back seat guy goes in the store. A few minutes later he taps on the front window.

“There’s a problem,” he signs. “The condoms are behind the counter, and I can’t get the guy to understand what I want.”

“Just put $5 on the counter and pull out your penis.”

A few minutes later, tap tap tap.

“Did you get the condoms?”

Shaking no.

Then, with hands: Here’s what happened. I put the money on the counter, just like you told me. Then I pulled out my penis. He put $5 on the counter. He pulled out his penis. His was bigger. He took my five dollars.”

I hope I didn’t offend any deaf people. Blogging blind jokes is probably safer.

The near suicide

I had a friend who called me one day. “My husband left me. I’m not OK.”

I went to get her, her baby and lots of her stuff, so they could stay with us for a few days.

She was a wreck.

After a few days, she returned home. Two days I didn’t hear from her.

Then she showed up one morning with a relaxed, but dazed face — like a zombie. “It’s all going to be fine now. I’ve got everything taken care of.”

Oh, big alarms here.

She handed me the baby. “This is the last thing. I just needed to bring you my baby.”

Frantically I searched my mental archive for dos and don’ts I’ve heard about. The pointer settled on this item: You can tell if a person is serious about suicide by asking about plans. The serious ones have thought out the details.

“Come in,” I said, taking the baby, “and tell me what you’ve planned.”

There were details. She not only had it all worked out how she was going to run her engine in a closed garage, she’d been up all night clearing out a spot for the car, getting important documents laid out on the kitchen table and packing the baby’s things.

She couldn’t tell me the last time she’d slept or eaten, but tried to ensure me she felt at peace since she found this solution.

I strained to hide my panic.

I felt like I might say exactly the wrong thing and crack the ice under her feet. Surely there are words that are exactly right. I didn’t know them.

I tried reason: What about your son?

She dismissed me: He’s got his dad and stepmom.

What about the baby?

That’s why I’m here. The main thing stopping me was the idea she’d end up as a foster child. I wanted to choose who raised her. I thought about taking her with me.

Well that upped my panic. I was getting dizzy and couldn’t think clearly anymore. I was going to screw this up.

I grabbed at one last idea, ”Have you said goodbye to your father?”

She looked suprised. “No. I should.”

While she was on her cell phone, I was in the kitchen sneaking a call to my mom’s minister — not because either of us is spiritual, but because she did her thesis on suicides. She said to call the police.

I hadn’t mentioned my friend’s considering taking the baby with her. I was sure if the law got involved she would lose her baby. What a mess.

I went back into the living room. My friend was crying. That was a good sign. She was nodding, “OK, Daddy. OK.”

She flipped her phone closed and looked at me, all red and puffy. “He said no.”

No? The exactly right thing to say was no?

I kept the baby for a week while she got a room at a recovery center.

A few weeks later, her husband came back.

Whew.

An unfortunate acronym

When I lived in Boulder, it used to tickle me that the firefighter uniforms said BFD on the backs.

The Superman speech

Today I was a guest speaker at a high school. The 11th grade English students came, three classes at a time, to hear me talk about my job.

I gave basically the same assembly five times in a row.

It’s my Superman speech.

I showed up in boots, cape and chest S to tell them being a journalist is the same as being Superman, because journalists protect truth, justice and the American way.

Here is an abridged and non-interactive version of the Superman speech.

Truth is king. A good journalist makes sure every point made in print can be substantiated. We look up what we can. We cite our sources. We don’t say ‘Lance robbed a bank.’ We say ‘Police suspect Lance robbed a bank.’ This is based in the superheroic service to the public’s right to know what’s going on.

Justice is always a consideration. We must present both sides of any issue with balance and sensitivity. We must weigh the benefit of reporting something against how invasive it is to the subject and his family.

The American way is my favorite. Look at the Bill of Rights. Exclude the right to a free press, and consider that everything else is guaranteed by the presence of the media. I contend that every freedom we enjoy as Americans is thanks to the watchdog industry I’m a proud part of.

Serving the public’s right to know, offering a forum for ideas and opinions, and tattling on people with power make us each Superman.

I’m just waiting for the day I hear ‘Look! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s an editor!’

A celebrity sighting

One afternoon a co-worker friend and I went to Los Angeles for thermal imaging.

My friend had had a mass show up on a mammogram, and I’m just plain freaked out about breast cancer, so we were going to have infrared photos taken of our chests.

This is an exciting technology, I think. Cancerous tumors give off heat, and heat photos don’t expose a patient to radiation, like mammograms do, adding to the breast cancer risk.

Also, we didn’t have to wait for results. We got our photos right then.

There were also downsides. Each of us during our individual appointments had to strip from the waist up and sit with our arms above our heads. This was to cool the body heat in the armpit area, which would show up red on the photo and hide a tumor.

It was also embarrassing. The guy, who may have been a doctor, I don’t remember, made conversation with me as if we were at the corner coffee house, only with my breasts a-dangle.

The worst factor was the doctor guy’s eyes were whack. They didn’t point in the same direction. He was very like Cookie Monster.

This would have made me uncomfortable under normal circumstances, but sitting there topless with my arms over my head wondering if one of his eyes was looking at my nipples was more than unsettling.

After we had each had our turn, Shannon, who had lived in Santa Monica before she started working at The Press, took me to her favorite restaurant. It was a take-it-home-and-bake-it pizza bistro that sold by the slice to walk-in eaters. It shared a wall with Blockbuster.

We sat on high stools, appreciating having covered breasts, and talked about all the celebrities she used to see when she lived in the neighborhood.

She used to see Meg Ryan running in the morning, for instance. Mel Gibson was more than once in line with her at the grocery store.

She listed so many I can’t remember them all. By the time we were tossing our plates and napkins into the trash, I was dying to see a famous guy.

Shannon poked her head out the door, “Well, Sting is about to go into the Blockbuster next door.”

Now, Shannon is funny. She’s always funny, and I would have expected her to say that.

But he really was.

I didn’t want to be that idiot that calls out, but I would have loved it if he had noticed me. Suddenly I didn’t appreciate having my breasts concealed anymore.

The transfusion story

I got a call at work from my mother this morning, saying Nana was in the emergency room because of internal bleeding.

It’s a quarter to 11 p.m., and I’ve just come in the door, still in my suit and heels, because they only just got her settled into a hospital room.

She’s having a blood transfusion.

She had one before. Here’s the family’s oft told story about it.

AIDS was new and mysterious at the time. Nana was afraid to have blood from the blood bank. She wanted to select her donor by reputation.

We all volunteered and learned we weren’t pure enough.

Auntie Doreen, Nana said, was the only one she believed was truly innocent. She wanted that blood, and that’s the blood she got.

Doreen’s husband, my Uncle Punt, came in after the transfusion and shook his head at my grampa. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But now that she has Doreen’s blood, she’s going to want to go out for dinner every night.”

And you know what? She did.

The time my mom sewed

My Oldest Friend was having a parenting dilemma. It was the day before the first day of school, and her boy wanted a lunchbox that she feared the other kids would tease him for.

It was an expensive lunchbox, and she would have to pay shipping to boot, because it was available only by order.

At issue was paying for the thing, and then having him abandon it after a day because of the mean kids.

Which of course reminds me of something that happened to me as a child.

My mother, who doesn’t sew, made me an outfit.

She has a machine, and all the accouterments. She has always had a fully stocked sewing kit. One day she drove herself down to House of Fabrics — because she thought she was supposed to, I guess – and bought bobbins and a tracing wheel.

And then one day she decided to make me an outfit.

This coincided with My Oldest Friend, The Horrible Person and me putting on a home staging of “Annie.” The Horrible Person was the star, and My Oldest Friend and I were orphans.

The Horrible Person instructed us to bring orphan clothes with us on Friday.

On Wednesday I wore my new homemade outfit, because after several months’ labor, it was finished. The pants and blouse were made of the same fabric. Have you ever seen hand-made recycled paper? The fabric kind of looked like that, but in red.

My mom dropped me off in the morning, and The Horrible Person was in the kitchen. “Oh no!” she yelled in front of my mother.

“You didn’t wear that because you’re dressing as an orphan, are you?” She made a disgusting expression on her face that right now makes me want to smack her one.

My mom reacted strongly. That night she took the outfit and threw it out.

Based on this, I bade My Oldest Friend get the lunchbox.

She did. No teasing.

The nerd party story

Every Monday night my kids’ band has to show up to practice in costume. Each section has a theme. Tonight, my son’s section went as nerds.

When My Junior High Best Friend and I were in ninth grade we threw a nerd party.

I would give anything to put the invitation verbage on this post. I have one of the invitations somewhere. It was in rhyme, and it was brilliant. I’ll look for it. Check back.

Essentially it told guests to put on their polyester high waters and come on over for an evening of dancing and junk food.

We had a great turnout. We put my Hitachi turntable in the laundry room window and blared The Clash onto the deck, where all our favorite ninth-graders were getting their groove on.

It never occurred to either of us to dress up. I wore tapered jeans with a The Who final tour concert shirt.

Then a boy named Doug walked in from the driveway. He had an elaborate nerd get-up on. It was beautiful. He had too short plaid pants that came up to his nipples, and fake bucked teeth under greased-down hair.

He got up onto the deck, looked around in horror at everyone in street clothes, and ran back up the driveway.

He ran all the way home, several blocks away, and changed his clothes.

My mom was disturbed. “That poor boy is going to remember that moment for the rest of his life.”

Great, now I was disturbed.

So disturbed I remembered it for all of my life.

A peeve

Please forgive me a little whining.

There is a thing that bothers me. It shouldn’t. I am self-aware enough to know that in the grand scheme of things, it has no consequence.

It’s people’s saying “PIN number.”

I have lost my ATM card, and my son said tonight, “When you get your new one, can you get the same PIN number? I’ve memorized the other one.”

Oh, son.

“I think they give me a new personal identification number number with the new card,” I cheeked. “You’ll have to learn it before you use the automated teller machine machine.”

I’m embarrassed this gets under my skin. If I were a better person, this post would be about human trafficking or potable water waste.

The Halloween party

When I was a little girl, we were invited to my mom’s coworker’s Halloween party. I got a witch’s hat to wear.

In the late afternoon, Mom got a call. The woman’s little son had stopped breathing and turned blue. I had never heard of this before. It sounded cool.

They were at the hospital. The party was off.

Sometime shortly after we were invited for the rescheduled event. We left the witch’s hats at home. I remember I wore a pretty white blouse under a red jumper.

We were the first ones there. The place was decorated elaborately, and there was a long table covered in food.

I had never been the first ones there before. I didn’t like it. We sat on the couch — 8-year-old me and four grownups — and tried to keep a conversation going.

The hostess complimented my ensemble. I said, “You know I’d never thought of putting these together before.” The grownups laughed, and I didn’t know why that was funny.

Like an hour later, we realized noone else was coming. I was just a little girl but I understood the pressure of that. We weren’t having a good time, but we couldn’t slip out.

It was a long, painful evening for me, blanketed in the disappointment that I didn’t get to see a blue kid.

The Harvard home

A couple of summers ago the kids and I went to Cambridge, because my son had decided he wanted to go to Harvard.

My biological father went there. He, my mom and I road tripped to Massachusetts in someone’s Mustang when I was 3 days old, and moved into what my mom called a three-story walk-up in the school’s married-student housing. A little more than a year later, my mom packed me up and flew back to California. The marriage was done.

Via the Internet, I made reservations at a bed and breakfast walking distance from the campus. It was called Irving House.

We took the train east and settled into our top-floor room.

The place was heaven. It was a huge old house. The owner bought used books at yard sales to fill the rooms’ bookshelves. Guests were welcome to take a book home, and asked to leave a book if they finished one while there. I spent a whole afternoon scoping the bookshelves of every vacant room (and one I was in only because housekeeping was cleaning the bathroom, and I’m stealth) for books on my wish list.

In early evening our first night I called my mom. It occurred to me that somewhere around the Square was the only place the three of us had ever lived as a family.

She gave me the address. It was on Irving Street! Hey, I was on Irving Street.

The road was named for author Washington Irving, of Sleepy Hollow fame. I figured we were staying in his house. Turns out, no.

The kids were busy with something, so I went alone on up the few short blocks of Irving. I walked the length of it twice. The numbers didn’t go as high as the address Mom gave me. I gave up.

The next day I found it. Because it’s technically part of the campus, it has its own, nonsequential address. It was next door.

I went running over and found the entry in the garden courtyard with the right number on it. The door was old, and mostly glass.

A guy was coming out and I slipped in. I stood at the bottom of the stairway, and stories came rushing back to my memory I’d forgotten my mom had told.

I remembered that she had had to carry the pram up to the apartment, a baby under her arm, and sometimes tottering groceries or laundry. She told me my dad had bought a grand piano and disassembled it to take it up piece by piece in paper bags.

I walked over and put my hand on the rail. It made me cry. This ancient iron stair rail is the one my parents used almost 40 years ago. They gripped it with infant me in the other arm.

I went up the stairs and found the right door.

Now what?

There was music or TV on behind it. Young people were there. I didn’t want anything to do with any young people. I went back to my room.

That night I was looking out the window, and I realized our entire view was the very apartment I had gone looking for — three stories in the air, but straight across.

On the last day of our stay I went over there with my camera. I had fixed my mind to knock on the young people’s door.

Wouldn’t you know? There was no guy leaving the building, and I couldn’t get in.

All I got was a sorry photo through the glass of the bottom of the stair.

How I got my pans

At dinner my husband and I were talking about sewing machines. I made aprons for the high school marching band’s pancake breakfast, and am trying to think of the most permanent way to put the group’s name on them.

He asked doesn’t my sewing machine embroider letters? No.

I saw one of those at the store the other day. It was $5,000.

We laughed about my husband’s high school best friend, who bought his wife an Elna, which I would give my left arm for. Jon’s wife doesn’t sew.

She was furious at the gift; she wanted one like the $5K at the store. He got in the doghouse; she left the machine in the box; and I tried to figure out how to get my hands on it. Couldn’t.

Now we call this ‘pulling a Jon’s wife.’

Today’s story is about when my mom pulled a Jon’s wife.

Several Christmases ago Dad bought her an expensive set of pots and pans. She pulled them out of the box and said, “Oh no. This isn’t the right brand.”

Mom doesn’t have anything in her kitchen that she ended up with, like I have. Her tools have been researched.

I got the pots and pans.

They’re made by a company called Gourmet Standard. On the bottom they say ‘professional.’ These are magic pans. They’re stainless steel, but nothing sticks to them. They heat food evenly. The handles don’t get hot. They’re shiny.

Mom went out the next day with Dad and got the kind she wanted. They burn everything, including her hands, and the bottoms are lousy with the food she can’t scrape off.

She came over and helped me one night with a big dinner. She eyed my pans.

I was wide-eyed, nigh hysterical.

I protected one with my body and said, “Mine, mine, all mine, not yours.”

I forwent my right to complain about being treated like a 13-year-old, but I kept the pans.

The audition story

My kids are watching South Park. I can hear they’re parodying A Chorus Line.

The song people call “Tits and Ass” from this musical is my signature song. When I was younger I could sing the hell out of it. I usually use it as my audition piece when I go out for musicals.

Once I was auditioning for The Music Man. I stood there in my bright orange sundress and tights covered in photos of fruit — my high school drama teacher advised us to wear something memorable — and started in, voice a-tremble.

I get nervous.

At that point I had sung that song maybe a thousand times, but all of the auditioners were in the room staring at me, and I was reliant on the sheet music.

This is bad. I wanted to make eye contact and move around.

I looked up.

Bam. I forgot the words.

“Sorry,” that’s what directors like to hear, excuses. “I’m nervous.”

I turned to the pianist. “Can we take it from ‘tits’?”

Laughter. Whoops.

“That’s it!” said the director. Crap. “You’re in!”

That was easy.

Letters to my children

When I was starting out in the newsroom I edited obituaries.

It skewed my perspective on mortality. A good number more than you’d think are young people.

People my age died everyday. They died on the freeway, and they died of heart disease. One woman who went to high school with me died of AIDS. Another had an unexpected seizure. They left behind babies.

I was not yet 30.

It began to occur to me that my chances of survival on any given day could be good, could be bad.

I stopped taking the freeway to work.

I filled out my own obit form with my history and favorite charity. I wrote down the song I wanted played at my service.

Then I wrote letters to my children, just in case. They offered comfort, love and acceptance. They revealed what I saw in them that was good.

It wasn’t enough. I wrote more letters.

I wrote letters to be opened on their wedding days.

It wasn’t enough.

By the time I was through, there were stacks of letters for each child. They included graduation, first home purchase and first baby. Then I had to write letters for  in case one of them didn’t graduate, get married or have a baby. There were some to be opened in the event of unexpected pregnancy or in case they were gay.

I went completely round the bend thinking of circumstances I should lend a voice to.

I was writing to sophisticated people I didn’t even know. During this frenzy, my kids were 3 and 5.

Now they’re almost 15 and 17. I can throw most of the letters out. They know I would support whatever they decided to do about a pregnancy. They know I don’t care if they’re gay. They know I’m proud of the people they’ve become, and they have the strength and confidence to choose futures that make them happy.

They’ve had the benefit of witnessing my values as far as marriage, parenting, drinking and humor. I’ve taught them both how to cook, sew and play poker.

Thanks to this blog, they even have all the family stories.

I’m not ready to die, but tonight I’ve decided something close. I’m ready to relax.

The engagement ring story

You don’t want my daughter in on your secret.

We were in the car this week, looking for the new high school, and my daughter said to my son, “Remember you drove there before? Myles was with us.”

My son made a low growl at her.

“You drove Myles when you had the car?” I was shocked.

A louder growl, with a dirty look at sis.

In California, a newly-licensed 16-year-old cannot drive a non-sibling teen to band practice.

I’m not as strict about this rule as I am about talking to non-siblings’ moms before I allow my son to drive them anywhere. I had not yet talked to Myles’ mom.

I was more surprised than anything. I thought my son was perfect.

But this story is about my daughter and her loose tongue.

I had been a pregnant college student when I got married.

We had no kind of money, and I had no kind of engagement ring.

For our fifth anniversary we planned a weekend alone in the mountains.

A few days before the occasion, I had worked late. This was during my husband’s two-year turn as the stay-at-home parent.

After dinner I dragged myself into the bathroom to brush teeth. My daughter followed me in. She was 3 1/2.

My son, then 5 1/2, was trying to drag her off to get jammies on.

They were both acting strange.

I pulled out the lotion box I kept my jewelry in to drop in my earrings. She snatched it away and rummaged through it.

“Come on,” said my son

“Wait.”

“Let’s go.” Pulling on her arm.

“Wait! I wanna see the diamond ring Daddy bought today.”

I froze. My son pulled his own hair. My daughter said, “What?”

I begged her not to tell Daddy she blew the secret, but she is who she is.

She ran into the kitchen and tattled on her own self.

More headlines

I wrote the other day about how headline-writing can be difficult when a story begs a punchline.

Copy editors are told to resist them. Sometimes we don’t resist them.

I remember Wes‘ editing a story about some people who didn’t want a hot dog restaurant in their neighborhood. I saw him chuckling next to me.

He was typing ‘Neighborhood fears the wurst.’

In Chicago, when O.J. wrote his first book, “I Want to Tell You,” a Tribune editor breached ethics and wrote “O.J. takes a stab at writing.”

I once edited a story about a library literacy program that was merging with Alcoholics Anonymous. I did not write ‘Gin and phonics.’

And for a story about the annual rodeo’s being canceled, because the middle school built an audio/visual center in the lot the city used, I did not write ‘Video killed the rodeo star.’

On my last of work as a copy editor at The Press, I edited a story about a guy who ran what he called ‘The Disneyland of cemeteries.’ He had little concrete forest creatures,  benches, wishing wells. There was even merry music piped about.

My final headline before I turned in my key to the newsroom for a five-year stint as a stay-at-home mom: The happiest place in earth.

I couldn’t resist.

I punched a guy

When my grandparents took me to Mexico, I got groped a couple times.

I learned something about myself. I’m slightly violent.

The first time, the guy brushed my chi chis too close and too long to be an accident.

Without thinking first I slapped his face, con fuerza.

He just kept smiling.

Two days later we were boarding a crowded bus for an open air art market. A Donny Osmond-looking passenger motioned me go first and said, “Pasa-le.”

I gave him a nod-smile with a ‘gracias’ and squeezed by. My eyes were ahead, but I felt a grope, in front, down low.

In a split second I had Donny sucking wind from my fist in his gut.

I saw my grandparents go through three rapid reactions — surprised, concerned, amused.

It wasn’t until we were at the market that we could recap. They shook their heads at me.

“Why did you punch that guy?”

“He touched me.”

“I don’t think so.”

They said he was sincerely shocked, confused even.

Down went the Welcome-to-Mexico sign.

I punched the wrong guy.

Reader participation

I am lying on the couch for the third day, waiting for my fever to break. It was down to the low 99s this afternoon, but right now it’s at 101.4.

I have stories yet to tell, but I am drugged with groggy goodness and am afraid to muck them up. I don’t have spell check.

Instead, I’m putting forth a challenge and asking everybody to play along.

On the radio, which I listened to while I had a hot bath this morning, there was discussion about constructing the perfect band. People were calling in.

Some applied the rule that you couldn’t use dead guys, which I applied to myself until I decided I need Ray Charles on keys. Another rule is that you can’t use two people from the same band in different categories, which is why — for those who know me well and are in shock — I didn’t put Nikki Sixx or Joe Perry as my rhythm guitarist.

While lying in wait of sleep or worse, I stewed on this challenge. My drummer, bassist and lyricist came to me first. No brainers — they’re the best there is, I say. 

Ultimately I came up with this wunderband:

• Lead vocals, Rob Thomas and P!nk
• Lead guitar, Rick Nielsen
• Rhythm guitar, Joni Mitchell
• Bass, Mick Mars
• Keyboard, Ray Charles
• Drums, Nigel Olsson
• Background vocals, Clare Torry
• Mandolin and fiddle, Cyndi Lauper (this broad is a mean musician no matter what she’s on.)
• Sitar, Justin Hayward
• Lyricist and harmonica, Steven Tyler
• Songwriters, Bob Bryar, Frank Iero, Raymond Toro, Gerard Arthur Way and Michael James Way (The My Chemical Romance team)
• Tambourine, Lori Partridge (cuz she’s just that much better than Davy Jones)

OK readers, your turn.

My husband’s student’s death

My husband teaches in a high poverty, high crime high school in Southern California.

He’s told me stories about the kids’ not having toilet paper, hunting dinner out of dumpsters, raising siblings.

There’s also a lot of gang activity. One afternoon he called me upset, because one of his students — a 14-year-old boy — had been shot in both knees. The counselor had sent an e-mail to excuse tardiness. The child’s walking was slow.

Another day he was calling me on his cell phone, telling me it was slow getting off campus. “Oh here’s the problem, a child has been stabbed.”

I pictured him stepping over the body with his Razr to his ear and briefcase in hand, but it probably wasn’t like that.

I don’t think a year has gone by when his roll sheet hasn’t decreased because of a shooting.

But this story isn’t about a gang killing. This is about a teacher killing a kid.

A few years ago the basketball coach took her team for a hazing exercise. She tried to drop the girls in a bad neighborhood in the middle of night and have them find their way back to her house during a sleepover.

This would help them bond.

One player didn’t want to get out of the back of the van. She was afraid.

The teacher drove forward and back, slamming the brakes, until the child fell out. She landed on the back of her head on the street.

Coach waited an untoward while before calling for help.

This was the second time in my husband’s then 15-year teaching career he planned to go to one of his best students’ funerals.

He took this one hard, and needed to tell me all about it.

This would lead to some trouble for us.

He told me that this teacher would have lost her job the year before for violent behavior in class (I think she broke a clipboard in a rage or something), but her aunt was a member of the school board, and vouched for her.

The staff had been told not to talk to the media. I pictured them looking at him when they said this. They knew he was married to media. The administration was trying to control the story.

I was in a bad spot.

This is exactly the kind of news the public has a right to know. People send their children to school trusting there is some core concern for providing safe supervision.

Tattling on people abusing power is our job. Protecting the community is why many of us are in the business. I couldn’t not report this. I couldn’t be an accomplice.

I called it in. He felt betrayed.

The parents pulled the plug on the girl Sunday. The injury happened on Friday.

By then, it was a big story without my help. Likely the girl’s family had a thing or two to shout, school reputation be damned.

My husband gave a eulogy at the service, and was on the TV news saying what a promising future the girl had.

Our marriage survived the conflict of loyalties, and the coach was fired.

If anything like this has happened since, I wouldn’t know.

The hemorrhage story

My grama tells this story all the time.

It’s basically about guilt.

When Unca Rob was a little boy, Nana had some kind of small surgery on her uterus. Then she went to his spelling bee.

While she was sitting in the audience, something inside her snapped, and she hemorrhaged all over herself. Grampa had to carry her out of the elementary auditorium.

Unfortunately, this happened when Rob spelled his word wrong.

She found out after he became a man that he spent his lifetime thinking  it was cause and effect.

I’m sure he lived with the guilt of his misconception better than she’s living with the guilt of giving it to him.

This would have been a better story if the word he missed had been ‘hemorrhage.’

Yet another phrase of our own

My Unca Rob is flying in for a visit today. I pick him up at dentist appointment time.

If you live at my house, you know this means he lands at tooth hurty.

I tell time in tired old riddles.

If you ask me to do anything at 6 a.m., I will write it down as pig’s tail time. . . ,

. . . because it’s twirly.

Headlines

My friend Kevin from Boulder sent me this e-mail after my post about Peter Bonerz. It appears to be the cover of a sports section from June of 2001 in the Orange County Register.

It’s about Angels player Bartolo Colon.

The headline reads “Colon takes another pounding.”

I rooted around and learned they did it again in 2004, using the word ‘absorbs’ instead of ‘takes,’ and WSOC TV ran this 2007 teaser: Royals to get a taste of Angels’ Colon.

As a headline writer, I know how hard it is to put the gist of a story into a short sentence with landmines like double-entendre names.

We used to have a local politician in Boulder name of Hyman. He was busted one night in the back seat with a prostitute.

I tried not to write a funny headline. We all tried.

Migraines

I woke up in the dark hours of this morning with a migraine.

Somehow I made it to the bedroom doorway, but couldn’t get farther. My husband woke up and got me an Excedrin Migraine pill and some water.

Let me give a free ad to this product. You’re about to read what my migraines are like. Nothing else works. Since it was invented I’ve kept a bottle in the car, my purse, and several places in the house. It’s made a big difference in my life.

I was 17 when I got my first attack. I had come home from work with just a bad headache, but by the time I had gotten upstairs it was so bad I couldn’t get to my bedroom. I lay in the hallway, thinking there was no way I could survive another 10 seconds of that pain, as it went on for minute after minute.

The second one started while I was playing Trivial Pursuit at my family reunion, which you read about in Sonnets. It rained that day, and the whole fam damily was packed in Auntie Barbara’s great room, which I ended up lying in the middle of with my arms pressed over my eyes before my boyfriend peeled me up and drove me to the hotel. I was 20.

My third struck when I was 24, and my fourth when I was 27. But the summer I turned 28 I had a bunch of them. I ended up in a CAT scan machine.

Over the years, my husband has found me on the kitchen floor, the front lawn; once I got one while I was driving home from the grocery store. I was around the corner from home when it got bad enough I had to pull over. I had toddlers strapped in th back seat wondering what was going on.

This morning’s was one of the worst I’ve ever had. My husband gave me a pill and some water, and I waited, chewing that familiar dread of an in surmountable few more seconds of pain. I tried to come up with ways to cope until the medicine broke through. That’s what it’s like, a balloon bursting. Excedrin is the cavalry, ride in to save.

I tried to think about lying on a beach, watching football, being hit on.

It didn’t come. Twenty-six minutes went by, and the relief didn’t come. I sent my husband to get me another pill.

Sitting up to swallow makes it worse for a little while. I’m a rational woman, but while I waited for the second one to work I was thinking about having my husband take me to the hospital to have me put down.

Then it washed it over me — freedom from pain. It brought its buddy, the will to live.

And here I am, woke to blog another day.

Jersey number humor

Last night we went to our kids’ homecoming game.

I was so excited all day, I had a bounce in my step and an irritating hum.

I threw on a team jersey and tossed  my husband in the car. I started yelling, ‘Go team’ while we were still in the parking lot.

The final score was 48 to 0, us.

I love school spirit. I didn’t have any when I was a student — nobody I knew did — but my kids’ school is thick with it. There’s so much pride, people cry and sway singing the Alma Mater.

So I drag my poor husband from bleacher to bleacher.

Once we were at a basketball game and one of the boys from another school had the jersey number 00.

I pointed him out, “Look honey, that kid is licensed to.”

He just frowned at me. Maybe he would enjoy these games more if I weren’t there.

The disc jockey in the sky

This morning I was listening to my iPod, which I have named iCaramba, and singing along with Question by The Moody Blues.

Parts of this song go right under my crusty exterior and force tears. I can’t prevent it.

On the plane ride home from Hawaii, ending the week of getting to know the love of my life, I plugged my rubber headphones into the armrest to discover an in-flight Moody Blues marathon.

I am the biggest Moody Blues fan you ever heard of. This was clearly some kind of supernatural message.

I closed my eyes, smiled and listened. When the chorus came –

I’m looking for someone to change my life.
I’m looking for a miracle in my life.
And if you could see what it’s done to me
To lose the the love I knew
Could safely lead me to
The land that I once knew.
To learn as we grow old
The secrets of our souls.

 

– I was a goner. To this day, I’m a goner.

But that’s not the story I’m here to tell. That’s just what brought it to mind.

There was a copy editor at The Press who had been there 50 years. She took her job seriously, and, like me, was proud of what we did. She was in her 70s.

We were close.

One summer day there was a posting for employees. Helen’s daughter died unexpectedly while on vacation in Hawaii. She was 50.

Lots of us went to the funeral.

Helen’s surviving daughter gave the eulogy. She had received a postcard from Hawaii the morning of the service. It said, “It’s so beautiful. I never want to leave.”

She said when they were little girls they would sing “Sisters,” the Rosemary Clooney-Vera Ellen duet from the movie “White Christmas.” That was their song.

They were close.

She broke down as she described flying to Hawaii to collect the body.

And putting the armrest headphones in her ear.

And hearing “Sisters.”

You can impact global warming without sacrifice — Blog Action Day, 2009

I am participating in Blog Action Day today, joining more than 9,000 bloggers writing about climate change.

I’m a section editor for Los Angeles Newspaper Group. Last month I wrote a cover story about a nationwide movement to reduce energy use.

Here’s the short version:
Getting your home insulation changed from batt to foam will reduce your electric bills by 50 percent, improve your health, make a major reduction in your contribution to global warming and make you more comfortable in terms of indoor temperature.

• Buildings kick out 43 percent of the carbon emissions in the United States, primarily from keeping indoors hot and cold.
• Batt insulation cannot be installed without leaving spaces. A 5 percent space will reduce the insulations effectiveness by 60 percent.
• I guarantee your air conditioner is at least twice as big and working twice as hard as it needs to be, because ductwork and walls aren’t insulated thoroughly. An eight-ton air conditioner with no insulation is the same as a two-ton air conditioner with insulation in terms of the coolness of a home, but not in terms of health or carbon emissions or dollars spent.
• If you finance the work, you will save more per month than you pay on the debt.
• There are tax incentives and government rebates for those who make energy efficiency improvements as well.

I have arranged for a member of the Department of Energy Task Force to give a free presentation on this Nov. 4 at 168 Bellevue Ave. in Redlands, Calif. from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Everyone is welcome. Tell your friends.

Lets save the world, our money and our health, and be comfortable in the bargain.

For more information or to reserve a spot, call HartmanBaldwin at (909) 670-1344 or e-mail info@hartmanbaldwin.com 

www.hartmanbaldwin.com

These parents have balls

I’m spending a lot of time commuting in my new job.

In fact, I’ve spent so many hours in my car, I’m tired of every song in the world.

I have also had enough of news radio.

So I piled up all the gift certificates I got for my birthday and bought ’70s TV series on DVD. Now the hours fly by as I listen to episodes of Taxi, The Muppet Show and Mary Tyler Moore.

Today I was stopped in traffic for more than an hour. I reclined my seat and watched two offerings of The Bob Newhart Show.

As it turns out, I was missing the funniest part. During the end credits, they show the cast members with their names across the screen.

The orthodonist, Jerry Robinson, is played by Peter Bonerz.

I’m loving that some lady was pregnant, and said, “What do you think, honey? What first name goes nicely with Bonerz?”

Hmmm. What would be the perfect thing to call their family’s newest member?