Gary, now a famous playwright/critic, who spends most of his days on a plane, as opposed to by a plate, always wants to hear about what Nana has cooked, created, invented, resurrected from her kitchen shelves.

Nana’s kind of magical that way.

And she has become something of folklore in my social circles, and many of my friends eagerly await for my Sunday dinner details. (I can think of one person who eagerly awaits for an invitation, patiently, week in and week out…I promise to make that happen, Maddy, I promise).

But, for those who have made the trek to the countryside of eastern Winston County, seemingly at the very line where the red clay becomes true dirt, well, those few can give honest testimony to the validity of her culinary talents.

Talents Gary had me bragging about in under fifteen minutes.

He was waiting in the airport for a return trip to NYC, and hadn’t had a “decent, damn meal in days.” Gary, though a southerner by birth, has since adopted the native tongue of the New Yorker.

“Tell me, tell me good, in long details, what she made today.”

So, I did.

And he told me I was a fool if I didn’t sit still long enough to right this all down. Which I then started to do. I do have an old church cookbook that has some of these recipes in them, already, but his point, fervent and directed at me specifically, made me think of how blessed I’ve been in the world of food.

I mean, I think I can honestly say I don’t come from sinners in the kitchen.

I come from saints.

No sooner had I started rattling off the menu: homemade potato salad (as in we grew the potatoes); pork barbecue ribs bathing in Nana’s secret sauce; yeast rolls, Moon biscuits and gravy, zipper peas (a favorite of mine!), freshly shelled butterbeans, apple pie…excuse me—

—my hand started to cramp from the weight of those delicious words—

Suffice it to say, Gary’s response was prophetic in its simplicity.

“Don’t ever think she didn’t love you. Mean people don’t cook like that.”

I’m inclined to agree, and since so much of my upbringing revolved around food (whose doesn’t, really?), and since so many of my blogs end up in some talk of the table, I thought what better way to honor the Nanas (and the U.L.s –don’t get me started on his coconut cake) of this world than by passing along a few of our secret family recipes, but nothing fancy, mind you…

I still want to be remembered at Christmas…

(Maybe you just don’t tell anybody I did this, OK?)

Ok.

Tigi’s Green Tomato Pickles

                1 gal. sliced green tomatoes

                8 medium onions, sliced

                3 green bell peppers, sliced

                3 c. vinegar

                5 c. sugar

                1 tsp. ground cloves

                2 Tbsp. mustard seed

                1 Tbsp. turmeric

Cover the first three ingredients with and ice and ½ salt. Soak 3 hours or overnight. Bring the remaining ingredients to a boil.  Add drained vegetables to this and cook until they turn color or comes to a good boil. Pack into sterilized jars and seal.

Cornbread Salad

                1 pan cornbread, cooked and crumbled

                2 lg. tomatoes, chopped

                1/3 c cooked bacon, crumbled

                2 boiled eggs, chopped

                1/3 c. sweet pickle juice

                1/3 c. sweet pickles, chopped

                1/3 c. onions, chopped

                ½ c. good quality mayonnaise like Blue Plate

                salt and pepper to taste

Crumble cornbread and add all other ingredients, then the mayonnaise. Mix well. Serve immediately, or for better taste, let it set overnight in the refrigerator.

Biscuit Pudding

                6 to 8 left over biscuits

                6 eggs

                1 tsp lemon (or vanilla) extract

                2 c. milk

Butter left over biscuits, place them in oven to crisp a bit. Mix remaining ingredients and pour over the biscuits, in a deep iron skillet. Bake at 350 until firm. You may want to add cinnamon to the top.

Chocolate Cobbler

                2 stick of butter

                1 ½ c. self-rising flour

                1 ½ c. sugar

                ¾ c. milk

                1 c. sugar

                6 Tbsp good cocoa

                ¾ c. hot water

                another ¾ c. milk, set aside

Melt the butter in a 9×13 pan. Mix flour, 1 ½ cups of sugar and ¾ cup of milk. Combine 1 cup of sugar and the cocoa; sprinkle over flour mixture. Combine hot water and the other ¾ cup of milk; pour over the sugar mixture. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.  After the cobbler cools, you might sprinkle a little powdered sugar and cocoa over the top. 

Trust me, there’s more than one cookbook’s worth of deliciousness in the collective heads of my family. Of course, when they find out I’m passing along the contents of their “secret cabinets,” I might be impeached.

In the meantime, try them out. Ask me for more. See what you think.

Personally, I’m shooting for the chocolate cobbler, for the first time, on my own, for a little party I’m attending this weekend. 

My goal? To get it to at least look like Nana’s.  

The taste part only comes with age.

Related Posts:

• Yes, Virginia, I am a vegetarian.
• The Dollar Bill Incentive, Or, Being Good For Nothing.
• Five foods that made me who I am.
• That’s how we bring up all children in our family: by ear.
• Phenergan’s Wake

That is an absolute lie.

I have no record of good days versus bad days. I just try to get through them, either way. Like the rest of the herd.

I was reared by a bona fide cynic. I got it honest. Our world view was as follows: Bad day…well, at least, it’s only got 24 hours to live. A good day…well, same deal.  So, wipe the smile off your face and a) get back to work, or b) quit slouching in the pew and sing out.

Sounds drab and pitiful, doesn’t it.

But, of course, this is what Memory does to the average, plain moments of our pasts. What I call the day-fillers. You know, those parts that at the time we live through them we don’t really give much credo to them until one day, someone reminds us of a “moment” and all of a sudden, as we sift through those “moments” searching for a thread of recognition, we notice that we’ve rolled them all into this big, cerebral, massive chunk that we’ve labeled the “good old days?”

For some reason that changed this week for me. Because I noticed that each chunk, when broken back into its respective pieces was really the life I thought I was missing. Those weren’t just days filled with aimlessness and detritus of ennui and structure.

Those day-fillers, they were, and are, the real memories. The Full Life.

And guess what? That Life, those memories, both are completely at our mercy, at the feet of each and random whim that crosses our minds.

I’ll try to unpack that a little.

I used to have such angst or dread, and worry and stress, and fear and disregard for mornings, and evenings, and work, and…you know, that crappy substance that is day-filler, those aggravations, second helpings of cake, family photo albums, funerals, boring conversations and grocery store encounters, traffic jams, looming deadlines, burnt suppers, and egg hunts we all experience but seem to forget until some fine spring morning bursts onto the scene and we spend half the day rubbernecking about the “way it was.”

Last week, I found out that before it “was,” it’s the “way it is.”

(God, this kind of cheese is better suited for a piece of toast, but work with me…I’m new at this sort of self-discovery).

Because I swear it never really occurred to me that I was like the CEO of my Conscience, and in charge of my Memories.

What a simple, yet startling revelation.

All this time, I faced each day with headache and reality-wrestling because those days were inevitable. And how on earth do you fight what can’t be changed, right?

Well, here’s how: you remind yourself that each day has more than one hour, and each hour can be its own.

This past weekend, I hit a point where I fully became aware of the approaching upheaval I not only designed and created, but invited into my life. I have no idea what all is about to happen to me, in the next few months. I’m walking away from comfort, stability, and completely throwing myself into the spotlight of a final curtain call. (Aaaaaaaaaand, scene).

But, like any natural disaster, the following day when the sun comes back up and apologizes, there’s nothing to do but the doing, left. I’m leaving home, leaving Starkville (again), leaving, period. However, this time, I’m moving with purpose (that old theatrical adage), and I’m actually going to take time to stop when it feels too heavy, too overwhelming, and smell the roses.

Or, in my case, the wisteria. (Is this making any sense? My editor is gone this week…)

In my weekend clean-up of an, as of late, neglected house, I collected many items such as clothes, trinket-things, alarm clocks, candlesticks, etc. and instead of finding some other unnecessary place to put them, decided to donate them. (In this case, to the 50-some-odd victims of the terrible Crossgates fires, out on Highway 82). And unlike a typical donation, I gave away things I still wanted, still used, and you know what, it felt great.

I wasn’t expecting that.  But…

…doing good things really works.

And I can do a little good, everyday.

I can make “good” a part of the typical routine of conducting the “business” of myself. That’s a memory I can make for myself, and I can do it right-out, upfront, on any given day, regardless of the traitorous time-stealer than any job becomes.

Whether it’s donating things, smiling back, saying thank you, wishing someone well, sending positive thoughts, or, dragging the wicker chair off the front porch and putting it under the wisteria in the front yard and reading a book. (Thus, the above comment about wisteria).

Did you know: Until this past Sunday afternoon, I had no real idea how many people walked right by my house. Amanda and I are so often too tired to appreciate the yard, after working all day (even though we plant our own vegetables and herbs and flowers, each season). It’s as if we just reserve a little energy for that one long, backbreaking Saturday and plant everything at once…to be done with it.

That’s the problem, I’ve realized.

And I have a feeling that’s about to change. Now that I’ve figured out that time really is a gift, a privilege, not a task-master.  

I had no less than six people stop to say Hello, as I sat under my wisteria, facing the magnolia (our house really couldn’t be more Southern). They had such nice things to say about the yard, though it’s in progress, and some asked what all I’d be planting this year. One man even offered to finish raking for me; I’d started that process earlier that morning. (Of course, I realized his offer was only partly in my favor).  

They all, however, gave me a deeper sense of satisfaction about the amount of time I’d spent on the yard, even though I’d done that out of guilt and responsibility. But, the way their comments settled on my mind spilled a little downward, to my heart, and I didn’t feel burdensome, anymore.

I felt invigorated.

It wasn’t a chore; it was a choice.

And that’s my motto for this spring, with its cheesiness and all. There’s a lot I can’t change, but my goodness, there’s so very very much I can. So much so, that I had to ask myself: Why the hell haven’t I been?

My answer: I hadn’t read Epictetus yet.

So, whether it’s a shovel, a gift card, a pat on the back, whistling a tune, prayer, an email, words of encouragement, or continuing to read an irregularly written blog like this one, it’s not hard to do good, for others.

Being good…well that’s a different story.

Let’s just shoot for doing good, for now, shall we?

Related Posts:

• I don’t have to use a walker to pump my gas.
• Yes, Virginia, I am a vegetarian.
• I couldn’t see the title of the book so it must have been about Scientology.
• Nothing but the blood: GamVa.
• You can go home again…it's just frustrating.

And I don’t just mean having to look it up in a dictionary. Since, I come before the mandatory use of home computers.

I had a personal encounter with the word.

It’s surprising, though, what one’s personal history of fads says about oneself. For me, in retrospect, my string of passing fancies was equivalent to that annoying solid beep of an emergency broadcast—“ in the event of an actual emergency, contact information will be provided.”

That second part there, that never happened.

Some of my “interests” were rather unique to me and me alone. Aside from the veritable sexual deviant scream of my addiction to jelly bracelets, in third grade, and the cheerleader-look of a Scrunchie bunched up on the top of my hip, right or left, holding a wad of a paint-splattered or tie-died T-shirt, I also went through a phase of wearing bells knotted at the end of various widths of ribbon necklaces.

Just because, I guess…

God, the praying my family must have done behind my Bugle Boy button-up back.

It got worse, though.

I wanted charms for my bracelets; I rarely left any day of the school week during the early 90s without a tight-roll to my blue jeans; and I believed with my whole heart in color coordinating my swatch watch with my slouch socks or, on fun days, with any of my enviable collection of Hypercolor shirts.

My fads were cries for help. Loud, in-your-face, gossip-creating cries. I see that now.

Granted, I never did fall for the love-you-and-leave-you lure of a fanny pack, but really, is that any consolation, considering the above-mentioned atrocities?

I suppose, looking back, one could argue that I was merely trying to bridge the brokenness in the wake of having no parental influence from either of the two people who, having come together after some football game, “worked together” in giving me life.

I think I was just secretly a greedy child. I liked attention.

Even if it came at the expense of name calling, as it did that confusing afternoon in which a young boy said something along the lines of “You’re a blah blah blah, and a something else yadda, yadda, yadda, fad.” Or, so, that’s what I thought he was referencing.

It turns out that it wasn’t.

What’s the point, here, you ask?

Last night, while channel surfing, I came across a National Geographic special on intersexed children. It’s much more of a biological occurrence than you might at first think.

I found it both difficult to watch and too engaging not to.

I think I found this to be the case because it’s such a grossly misunderstood occurrence, and not just for intersexed children—for any that are different, be it from Nature or Nurture. My heart bleeds a lot for the infirm, unfortunate, and overlooked. It doesn’t take much to get me “on your side.”

Keeping me there, though, usually involves a free meal, and/or a bottle of Marco Negri.

What disturbed me the most, though, and thus has led me to this discussion of fads, was the story I saw last night of a young seven-year-old boy who told his parents that he was supposed to be a “girl.”

Instead of arguing with him, they said, Fine, OK, you’re a girl. And, living in Japan—they’re an American  military family, no less—they have allowed their son to become their daughter. The child is happy, thoughtful, mannered, and despite the unbearable amount of verbal abuse this child has put himself through at school, seemingly well-rounded.

Perhaps that last comment has you perplexed.

I speak, though, from a place that knows. Because for many, many years of my life my whole purpose of being, my every prayer, was predicated on the off-chance I might go to sleep one night and wake up the next morning, a girl. It reached such a pinnacle of anxiety and self-hatred that two things emerged: a very, very uncomfortable confrontation involving U.L., Salathiel, the late Uncle Jerry, a young Hispanic man named Gabriel, and Uncle Jerry’s unsuspecting next-door neighbors in Pocatello, Idaho; and, an admission to myself of a real truth: I was unhappy in my own skin…and felt very alone.

I used to also pray at night for cancer, instead, because at least that could be removed. Or treated.

Nothing floats with quite the same consistency as truth. It, more than almost anything else in the world, will always rise to the surface, and when it does, it’s about as heavy as a paper plate.

The internal struggle of identity is beyond description, whether it involves the pressure to play sports when you’d rather read, or the precarious balance of being a boy when you really, truly think you’re not one.

I imagine puberty will be a living nightmare for this child.

And I know that psychiatry would argue against such parental white-flagging to what may appear as the misled whim of an adolescent. But, deeper still, is the fact that I believe we’re drawn, as early an age as two or three, perhaps, to the things that shape us. No matter what we do to hide them, pretend they’re Nothings, overlook them as valid, they are there as signposts, warnings, or words of encouragement.

How much easier it would be for all children, who struggle with identity and social placement, if we (as the proverbial outsiders, since it “always happens to someone else,” right?) just took that knowledge in stride. Fads are important barometers, but barometers aren’t meant to be alarming. They’re meant to gauge pressure.

I’m not saying fads force us into being the shape we appear to be born into. Rather, they let us know  what we’re capable of becoming; they’re indicators, decisions, options. And the only thing that has to pass…is the moment, if needed, or the awkwardness of realizing something’s not quite right, even when it doesn’t feel wrong.

Fads are an invitation to the party. They’re gifts of permission. Saying, OK, so you’re a boy who likes dolls. Well, go for it. Ride it out.  

And, though, it’s usually best done in the privacy of your own home; sometimes, you gotta go to Idaho.

I know this is just a theory, but it works…on me.  I just have to recall the things that I found myself most drawn to throughout my childhood to see that the picture I’ve painted for myself was an extremely colorful one, albeit with some really heavy lines and a little too Olan Mills.

It was a piece of art, all the same.

Fads are totems of Identity, our growth as a person.

For my cousin Mikey, in fifth grade, it was a bolo tie or bust.  While I snuck a cameo out of Tigi’s jewelry case and wore it over my breast pocket.  He had the entire Ewok Village; I had an Easy Bake. He collected Garbage Pail Kids cards; I framed the adoption papers of my two Cabbage Patch Kids. He preferred Aerosmith and Poison; I bought every single Amy Grant ever released, as a crossover pop-artist, as well as the one-hit wonder and brief tastemaker that was Karen White. He played in the mud and looked for worms to go fishing. I made mud pies and served them to the ants.

And my family, they had to know. One Christmas, Aunt Ruth gave him an envelope with money in it. To me, she gave a doll that she’d crocheted.

I guess they just assumed it was a phase.

As if.

But, now, it’s not like I didn’t do boy-things. I did. I loved to go fishing; I grew my own vegetables (still do), and on more than once occasion, I’ve aimed and shot a BB gun.

It’s just that as I got older, I was more inclined to buy acid-wash jeans that had BB bullets sewn down the leg in a swoop design. Remember those? That didn’t last for long.

I was an unavoidable totem, too tall and obvious, until the windbreaker made its debut. And everyone had one.

Thank god for the windbreaker, though.

Otherwise, I’d never know how much I didn’t want to fit in.

Related Posts:

• I don’t have to use a walker to pump my gas.
• “I’m the freaking boss of TV, just so you know.”
• Yes, Virginia, I am a vegetarian.
• You can go home again…it's just frustrating.
• A word about lesbians…

He and I were talking the other day and he said it’d be nice to explain who some of these people are that I keep writing about. He said it’d increase reader-interest if I described in some detail the repeated members of my sweet, dogged family I refer to so often in my memoir-esque blog.

I think that’s a great idea.  

For several reasons: first, it’ll certainly help those precious few of you who read this thing with any regularity to have some reference points, and secondly, it’ll be a good wake-up call for me to reflect on those people who have influenced me so much in my life. Those that I take after, both in blood and beatitude.

It’s a good exercise for any of us, I think. Besides, lately, I’ve been so encumbered with work and worry that I’ve been straddling that god-awful fence of Depression, again.

So, as a remedy, I’m taking Kirby’s advice, to remember those who have made me, Me, for better or for worse.

And I’m going to start with the person I most remember as the center of my thrown-together, partly-fictionalized family. (I’ll explain what I mean by “partly-fictionalized” eventually…so, don’t you worry about it).

That person would be Tigi.

Or as she was brought into this world: Tiny Gertha. She was born in August of 1898 in the Delta, and for most of her life was referred to as Miss Gertha, by the community. Or, good, old Granny. Eventually, nicknamed, Tigi, with a soft “g.”

She passed away in 1984, and never grew taller than 4’11”. I’m not sure if some Delta gypsy cursed her at birth, or if she did what any proper, Southern belle would do, and live up to (or down to, rather) her name. Either way, she was, indeed, tiny, in all things but heart and determination.

She would marry young and well…until the Depression. That didn’t stop her from giving birth to nine children, among them U.L. and Nana. Their stories come later, though.

Tigi was, despite her name, the first giant I ever knew in this world.

She was the first person to encourage my creativity, the first to cry in front of me, and the first to put a pan in my hand and point me toward the stove.  She was riddled with cancer, my entire time of knowing her, but she smiled anyway. She played the “mouth organ” as good as Little Walter Jacobs, and tickled only the black keys on the piano. But, boy could she play. Mostly roots gospel, but is there anything better, really, to play on an old upright?

A few things I’ve already mentioned to you like her cooking elan and legendary temper, but those were in her worn, later years, when experience had sharpened her to the point of exhaustion and wisdom. They were also only a part of her portrait, a few deep hues caught in the glare of a waning sun. It was her determination to walk even after the cancer denied her the use of her own legs, her refusal to stop making, in the last years, even a pitiful pone of cornbread for U.L.’s supper, stubbornly overlooking the resistance her arms and fingers gave, victims to the spreading killer, rippling beneath her skin, that made me love her, that helped me understand the stock from which I came.

She’d lift that iron skillet, if it took an hour, and never once did I hear her complain of its weight. Not once did she show anything but grace. I’d try to help her, but it wasn’t until the afternoon she fell that she finally relented and let me.

Starting in kindergarten and up through second grade, it was with Tigi that I stayed in the afternoons. She lived with U.L., and as it turned out, the house was a mere four houses away from the school I attended. It was a private, small, and extremely focused school, where, ironically, despite the distance my upbringing necessarily created between me and the Jewish side of my mother’s family, I still learned Hebrew at the age of four.

Jesus’s kind of Judaism was fine. My maternal grandmother’s was not. And oh, what a delicious story hers is.  But, later.  Later.

Tigi was never one to spoil me.  

Though she did make my favorite snack for me, each afternoon: fried dill pickles. She did this until she was no longer able to, which took me through the years of four, five, six and seven.

Up to the age of eight. That afternoon she fell.

And, for all intents and purposes, never really got back up.

She’d had to turn more and more to the walker, which she hated with a relish usually reserved for those who didn’t vote or attend church regularly. She despised having to rely on the walker, this daughter of  sharecroppers who’d on more than one occasion picked cotton until her fingers cracked and bled, this woman who had gone without electricity, and sometimes, fresh water.  Buried under twisted cartilage and arthritis, shrouded in folklore and faith, eaten up with cancer, she was still bound and determined not to lose the ability to take a step on her own terms.

I don’t blame her for that one bit.

But, at the age of eight, I did. At least, at first.

I came in the front door and there, somehow, in the den, she’d managed to scoot the couch up to the bar, called such because of its shape not its use, and had taken an old broomstick, missing the broom-part, and was attempting to roll it along, half of it on the back edge of the hard-ridged couch and the other half on the bar, as she guided herself along behind it.

I can’t imagine the purpose of this other than sheer rebellion. There was no definite destination in sight: your choices were either the right side of the couch or the left.

“Or,” as she said, in her typical wit and fashion (one that U.L. has inherited), “the right foot in front of the left.”

Some destinations are meant to be nothing more than the journeys in and of themselves.

I stood at the door, coming in from the carport and watched as she looked up at me; she was smiling at what she’d done, halfway down the length of the back of the couch, and then, letting go of the broomstick, took a brief, solo step and then fell forward into it, breaking the stick in half on her way down to the hard floor.

I was devastated. Terrified and frightened. It was at that moment, I believe, that the fear of Choice and Living, that fear of Striking Out On One’s Own, that is so inherent in my family’s history, took root in my own soul.  (It was also then that my own fight, consequently, began).

I ran to her, crying. All eight years of my existence in each wet drop.

She was crying, too. Smiling, but crying.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” I remember her saying to me. She hadn’t hurt anything but her pride and the broomstick. I think that’s what she was really crying about. With it broken, her shot at freedom, at independence, was also.

I helped her, as best as I could, to the arm of the couch. She sat there, perched, for a long, long time. When you admit defeat, I guess, it’s really a quiet thing. True loss is nothing but putting the memory of winning in its place. But, keeping your head held high, regardless.

That is, I believe, the very definition of dignity.

I called U.L.  He left work and came home, stayed the rest of the day with her.

I looked toward the kitchen, but there were no fried dill pickles on the table, that afternoon.

 And there never were again.

Related Posts:

• Five foods that made me who I am.
• Yes, Virginia, I am a vegetarian.
• I’d never seen a hook rug before, mind you.
• I don’t have to use a walker to pump my gas.
• Gary makes me hungry.

Which has kept me up at nights, uneasy and nauseous. I couldn’t eat much of anything yesterday; I had to practically force myself to eat the leftover cheese sticks, a bowl of soup, and half a chocolate bar (with hazelnuts).

So, I did.

But, I couldn’t bear to go another night with fitful sleep; so last night, to combat this, I took a Phenergan.  It’s a pill prescribed for upset stomachs, etc. We fear I might have IBS. (That’s quite a conversation-starter, there, is it not?)

It took a couple of hours, but it did the trick: it settled my stomach enough and made me drowsy enough to fall asleep and stay that way through most of the night. Though I fell asleep on the couch and as is the usual piper’s fee for that, I woke up with aching hips.

I also fell asleep with the heating pad on, which, the warning tag clearly indicates, is a no-no.

And the dream I had? Well…it was perfectly Joyce-ian, ironically comic and lengthy.  As most of my dreams tend to be. I was, it seems, in my own version of Finnegans Wake, one that I am rightfully going to call, Phenergan’s Wake.

I swear that pun came to me just now.

(And I don’t care if you don’t believe me).

Here’s the dream, in two parts.

PART A: “Keep it down, out there, I’m trying to drink my shower!”

I’m the age I am now, but I’m back in my hometown, and I’m running late to church. I’m supposed to help Nana with the dinner, the setup, etc.

We often would eat dinner at the church, especially if it’s during Revival.

Nana has opted to cook for everyone in the church, by herself, and I have been given the task of setting the tables. Because it is a revival, we have invited everyone in the world. I am responsible for setting what appears to be 1,000 tables. All of which require linens and freeze-dried, hand-painted rose petals.

I have overslept. The only recourse to this is to grab my clothes, which were in the microwave, warming, and to shower at the church.

So, this is what I do.

The shower at the church (a shower which does not exist in real life) is located at the back of the old Fellowship Hall, by the nursery. It is a very tiny shower. And though my body is completely covered by the small shower curtains, my head is not and I am able to talk to all the people who walk by, on their way to the new Fellowship Hall where dinner will be served.

Except, I’m not talking to these people.

I’m yelling at them to “keep it down!” I’m angry at them. They keep asking me to do things, to explain things, to answer questions. I want them to hush because I’m trying to not only take a shower, but to drink it as well from a plastic cup that appeared out of nowhere (and yet that didn’t seem odd because doesn’t everyone take a plastic cup to the shower with them?) because I realized while bathing that I was bathing in holy water.

Which, for the record, has never seen the light of day in a Baptist church.

I somehow put it together that I’m not really in a bathroom, per se, but I’m in a secondary type of Baptistery. I’m showering in a spare, if you will, in case the actual Baptistery in the sanctuary was to break.

I realize I’m shouting to distract the people, the congregation, from noticing that I’m sacrilegiously cleaning myself…with holy water that has found its way in from some Catholic tributary.

They don’t seem to notice, though, or they don’t care…either way, the big problem hasn’t occurred to me yet.

When I’m finished, it hits me: I don’t have a towel.

[NOTE: I wake up in here, somewhere, and go to the bathroom. In a rare event, when I return to the couch, as opposed to my bed because I do not think clearly at night, I continue with the same dream].

PART B: “The turkey isn’t done until the vest matches Diane’s earrings.”

We’re now in the new Fellowship Hall. All the tables are set with linens, rose petals, water glasses, forks. Everyone is in line, and they’re all very excited to eat. It’s as if they’ve not eaten in days.

And they haven’t.

I see a clock on the wall that tells me we’ve been at church for four days. Four solid days. (Of course, some revivals have been known to last even longer – though they allow you time to eat in between sermons).

Nana has truly outdone herself, here. She’s cooked everything known to man: dressing, meatloaf, fried chicken, pies, creamed corn, and for the pièce de résistance, a mammoth turkey.

It’s easily the size of a Tercel.

And it’s wearing a thick, wool vest, stark white…with three marbles for buttons.

She looks at the vest and then shakes her head.  She puts it back in the oven, which is sitting above the sink. As a matter of fact, the knob that turns on the hot water, also sets the temperature for the oven.

Everyone groans. They’re very hungry, and she’s not letting anyone fix their plate until the turkey’s done.

“You know the rule.” She says, “The turkey’s not done until its vest matches Diane’s earrings.”

Diane apologizes. She hasn’t worn any earrings today.

[And this is where I woke up].  

It’s the first dream I’ve had in a long time that I fully remembered the following morning. I’m not saying that Phenergan is the answer to my restless eyes; I have no desire to be a substance abuser…again.

Though the last time I abused any substance to the point of becoming problematic I was ten and the substance was mashed potatoes, insofar as that counts as a substance.

I loved mashed potatoes. (Potatoes in general, really). And once when I was ten, I ate so many that I vomited. Right there at the Sunday dinner table, in front of Nana.

That’s what I thought, at least, that it was the fault of the mashed potatoes.

The truth was that I was in the process of getting the stomach flu. As you might imagine I assumed it was due to the excessive influx of mashed potatoes I’d consumed that caused the illness. The doctor assured me it was not the mashed potatoes.

I think in lieu of a traditional upbringing, rooted as such in the normal definition of a family with a Father, Mother, and 2.5 children, that familial love was sublimated by food and food preparation. I think it’s the reason for my love/hate relationship with cooking to this day.

Or, maybe I was just an ignorant, greedy child.

I couldn’t look at a potato for months without blushing.

***

Though, as you know, that is certainly not the case today.

Not with potatoes…and not, I pray, with the Phenergan.

Related Posts:

• That’s how we bring up all children in our family: by ear.
• Gary makes me hungry.
• Yes, Virginia, I am a vegetarian.
• I don’t have to use a walker to pump my gas.
• "I hope you're not wadding," she said.

I don’t think so. No.

I. Don’t. Think. So.

I am, personally, mad-dog in love with the potato log. I look upon its tasty goodness as a drowning man would a life raft.  (I wrote that and then had this visual of being a drowning man and seeing a life raft and then, in that life raft I saw, like,  hundreds of potato logs and my heart started beating really fast and I almost had to take half a Xanax).

So, you know…I really like a potato log. It has taken a place of supreme necessity in my life, the potato log.

It has become—a reward.

For what, you ask? Why, for driving to work each morning.

Still confused?

Here, let me explain:  See, I hit this same halfway point (of melodramatic ennui) every morning.  This halfway point is roughly next to that strange Mexican restaurant that might also be a hotel at the second four-way stop-that’s-really-a-six-way-stop between Brooksville and Macon.

For some reason, each morning when I pull up to this engineering near-failure of the MDOT, I’m tempted to call it quits, throw in the towel, or turn the car around and go back (something I never do). And each morning, I have to force myself to take a large-down-to-my-heels breath and say, “Kris, you can’t get a potato log if you don’t get to Scooba. That’s where the potato logs are, Kris. Scooba. So, get it together and drive on.”

It’s a successful piece of motivation if for this one reason only: I’ve tried the potato logs at every other available gas station between here and Scooba (even the pitiful, dilapidated one that, at first glance, would appear to be a prime locale for those in search of the White Rabbit, but is indeed a usable gas station. The sign practically yells it at you, “Yes! We are open! Yes!” They did not, however, have potato logs).

And I did not stay there after realizing that fact.

Truth is, they just seem to fry a potato log better in whatever the oil is at Gas Station #3, also known as Scooba Junction, with its little train logo on the building.

And no…I don’t want to know what’s in the oil.

I just know that if I want a potato log the way God intended, I have no choice but to go all the way to Scooba. (Well, that and also I work in Scooba).

Sigh.

Today was one of those days that nearly won out over my want of a paycheck. Today hurt. I have never wanted to get in my car less than I did this morning, and that’s counting days I’ve driven through tornado watches, fog advisories, and goats.

I wasn’t sick, I wasn’t unhappy, I was simply done. That’s what I realized this morning.

I was simply done.

I couldn’t fathom another hour and some such minutes behind the wheel of my car having to share the road…or share, period. I’m through with it, mentally. Why my body continues to go and drive to my office every day is beyond me.

I’m worn out with being a “roadie.” I’m tired of all the truck drivers; I’m tired of Miss Jesus Is My Co-Pilot who absolutely must drink her coffee while applying eye shadow at 83 MPH, and smoke. I’m tired of nose pickers, cell phone talkers, motor-mouth singers, speed demons, omni-blinkers, and the elderly.

I’m tired of all of them. All of these people who, I can only assume, wait every morning just for me, before pulling out from their respective driveways and back roads for the sole purpose of getting in my way.

As I slung my own car, Tigi, onto Highway 45, bright and early this morning, I slowed a teensy bit as I came up to the first (and last) exit that would allow me to easily wind my way back home, but I didn’t because a) I’m not independently wealthy so I have to work, and b) I was starving and I knew of only one thing that could satisfy it: potato logs.

So, I suckered myself into the drive.

Maybe I was hungrier than I thought, maybe I was eating out of anger and frustration, or maybe I’m really just a big, fat lovable porcine extra in Charlotte’s Web, but I bought six potato logs, each roughly the size of a firm banana.

I added to that order a Coke Zero, or if you prefer, Joke Zero, and three small plastic tubs of ranch dressing…and one of honey mustard.

I am not one ounce ashamed, nor do I have even a gram of guilt about it, either.

Instead, I savored each hot morsel of that salty tuber flesh, licked the tips of my mystery- greasy fingers, and for several long seconds, when I’d eaten all of them, sat back in my chair and wore the crumbs like a well-deserved Purple Heart.

Because teaching is hell, and war is hell, and if this were a valid and logical syllogism, then you could say that teaching is war.

And you have to fight a war in order to get a Purple Heart. Even if you’re wounding yourself by gorging on a sack full of what’s floating in a gas station’s back room Fry Daddy.

It’s a fitting metaphor, trust me. Around here, the battleground never flattens out; new trenches are dug every day, and the troops stay primed for ambush.

And me? I stand out like the sore thumb of a sitting duck trying desperately to teach them about Sophocles and pageant wagons.

Maybe by the end of the week we’ll at least be able to spell Sophocle.

I mean, Sophocles.

See what I’m saying?

You’d eat your way to a Purple Heart, too, I imagine.

Related Posts:

• Yes, Virginia, I am a vegetarian.
• Five foods that made me who I am.
• I guess Boston has everything.
• I don’t have to use a walker to pump my gas.
• I couldn’t see the title of the book so it must have been about Scientology.

You know what’s harder than that? Trying to explain yoga to your precious family of aging Southern Baptists.

Because if it’s not explicitly typed in the King James version of the Holy Bible then it’s most likely of the devil, who probably created yoga to trick Christians into performing exercises that would get them into positions they couldn’t get out of, thus holding them in place so he could catch them.

But, yoga is a later issue.

First, we have to address a more pressing item, though there are several items overall, not the least of which is the fact that my hair has suddenly gone from brown to a bronze-red, due to a slight miscalculation of coloring when I tried to turn it fully blonde. For me to get bored, you see, is a dangerous mistake.

One my family, specifically U.L., prays constantly about.

So, last Sunday, U.L. asked me how I’d been doing, all the while staring at my mane of flame. I did a fair amount of traveling over this past holiday and hadn’t been “at home” as much as I usually am.

Some of that, though, was by choice. We’re still rebuilding the burned bridge from several months back when I finally had to break down and confess to my family that I was indeed a vegetarian.

And that’s what I’m writing about today: vegetarianism.

To say that I was a vegetarian was as shocking a statement to make as saying, “I’m gay,” or worse yet, “I’m moving my letter to the Episcopal church.”

I plead the fifth on both, for the time being because they pale in comparison to what I actually said, which was, “Yes, Virginia, I am a Vegetarian.” (Virginia is GamVa’s real name, by the way).

Man cannot live by peppers alone...entirely. He will also need tomatoes.

To admit that I was no longer eating meat was tantamount to saying I only read the short chapters in the Bible, or that I think the Flood was really God’s tears about the danger of having termites on board the Ark.

My family is rather self-sufficient. We grow (and certainly used to, back in the day) most, if not all, our own vegetables. We have a good bit of land, and we share what we grow with our neighbors, because that’s in the Bible, and we can what’s left over so we have homegrown vegetables in the winter, etc. etc.

On top of this, we also have our own private cattle farm. Which means fresh, organic meat. And when various hunting seasons start, we send out our gentle menfolk to kill for the sake of eating. We keep in stock fresh deer meat, and have been known to wrangle up a real, bona fide turkey for Thanksgiving.

All of which I, for many years, enjoyed. I do not deny this: I grew up with meat, and I liked it.

But, then, I had a horrible, disgusting dream about eating meat which was so pervasive that it forced me into becoming a vegetarian, and to this day, I honor it. I will actually celebrate my tenth month anniversary (which is almost as long as any relationship I’ve ever had) as a veg-head, next Sunday.

I don’t have anything big planned, other than an argument.

Because that’s what it’s become. Every Sunday. An argument.

Is this what lifelong veg-heads have had to endure? Every week, I have to defend the fact that I choose not to eat meat to my family. I have never known such judgment as I’ve encountered since becoming 100% veggie-friendly.

I have been castigated about everything, and not just by my family. They’re biggest gripe really is the meat part, if you will. Because Nana cooks so much of it, each week.  Very meat-centric.

Ok, now, blow.

Now, every sniffle I have, every little bitty cough, and their immediate diagnosis is, “Well, if you ate meat…”

I had no idea that meat was such a cure-all. The next time U.L. gets the flu, I’ll see to it that he gets a nice hot bowl of chicken fried steak.

I mean, it’s not that I disagree entirely: I think all food is cyclically healthy, in its own way, but there are substitutions…good, FDA-approved substitutions.

And, my god, the way we eat, each week, I’m surprised none of us are dead, yet.

But, the judgment from others, is what’s staggering. I’ve been looked up and down and chastised for my “vegetarianism” while I seem to have no trouble “wearing leather gloves.”

They were a gift, by the way.

People have joked about what shoes I’m wearing, what materials my clothes are made of, and it’s not just animal-based products either. There is no end in sight to the scope of judgment I’ve shouldered, all in good humor: plastics, woods, and…well, OK, my list has an end, but that’s just because I have no political agenda about the “cause.” So, I don’t keep a tally of what’s “in” and “out” where “green” is concerned.

It has, still, however, brought a lot to light.

Am I just caving into a trend with my dietary habits? Am I really a true vegetarian? (I know I can’t be vegan because I could never do without cheese, and though tapioca is a fun substitute, it just doesn’t do it for me).

Or is doing even a little good, just not good enough? Now, I’m starting to question everything I touch, buy, or put in my mouth, on my face, on my body, near an elbow, you name it…I worry about it.

I recently returned from NYC, and I made sure that every purchase of mine was animal-, environment-, and judgment-free. From my shoes, to my shirts, to the foods I ate. And at quite a cost.

The (insert noun here)-free world is not a cheap one. Which sometimes smells a little like a conspiracy, doesn’t it?

What started out as such a simple way to make the world a little bit better has quickly escalated into an addiction, and one with a price tag.

Which brings me to two points: 1) We must be doing something wrong in this country because hundreds of other countries live this way and don’t go broke doing it, and 2) U.L.’s argument that what I’m doing is somehow “wrong” is testament to what this current culture has become: Lost.

Because in a sense, the way I’m living now, the way I’m eating and thinking about eating is no different than the way U.L. grew up (or me, for the most part). They farmed everything themselves, they grew fresh vegetables, they milked cows, they created their own health.

Cow, sheep, goat, soy, or rice. God loves us all the same.

And took pride in it.

But, somehow, because what “was” has now fallen into the hands  of what “is” (meaning people who use words like yoga as well as people who are part of the corporate-farming network), it has become a dirty thing, a nasty deed, practically ungodly.

However, I hold firm because I still believe that a journey of a thousand miles begins with just one step…and what matters is that you take that step, either way: whether you’re vegetarian, pescatarian, or Presbyterian.

So…you know, just hush up and start walking, already.

A thousand miles is a long, long way to go.

Related Posts:

• Five foods that made me who I am.
• I don’t have to use a walker to pump my gas.
• Gary makes me hungry.
• So, you know…I really like a potato log.
• I’ve never had a mullet, and other Things I Can Brag About [...]*

I like to think I’m savvy and a smooth operator, most of the time, but I had a bit of a bitter pill to swallow yesterday, when, on my way back from Scooba (perish the thought!), I had to stop and get gas.

This is hardly a new thing for me, but unlike my usual stop-and-gos at the Scooba Junction gas station, I had neglected to look at my gas gauge until I was in Brooksville, about twenty minutes north. I had no choice but to pull in at the only other gas station on Highway 45 between Starkville and Scooba.

I can’t remember the feebly-attempted witty name it had (Kountry Korner, or some other god-awful collective rape of the alphabet), so I shall refer to it as a vortex of evil. But, that’s as far as I’ll go because, oddly enough, I’m not here to talk about the gas station itself, other than this last thing: they overprice Every Thing.

No, what I’m here to talk about is the elderly black man with his walker pumping his own gas, which he somehow did by propping the pump itself in between the upper and lower handles of his walker. He left it there, and got back in his car. 

I swear I need to get a digital camera.

I had finished pumping my gas, at this point, and as I drove away, he looked up at me.

So, I smiled the same smile I’ve been giving all people-I-don’t-know-but-I-want-to-appear-like-a-decent-human-being for years. He returned my smile with a look that was, if I do say so myself, dismissive and impolite.

I need to frame the rest of the story first, though.

No snake eyes for me.

I have a tendency to turn the rearview mirror onto myself when I drive. It’s silly and a bit narcissistic, but it also makes me feel less alone when I’m on the road. I’m not much in the way of this world, but I can be a fun traveling companion.

Also, I like looking at myself.

And, I’m not one bit ashamed to admit it.

I’m not gorgeous, it’s not that, I just like to see someone I respect looking back at me on my sojourns.

I say that to say this (a lovely phrase for so many cliched reasons), when I offered my smile to this man, I was actually able to catch my own reflection of said smile, in the process.

I’d never noticed this before, but as I drove past him, mulling over his look of disapproval, I, for the first time in my entire life, actually saw the smile that I gave him. The same smile I have given to thousands.

And boy was I in for a shock.

What I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles (but only the King James’ ones) was a sweet, how-do-you-do smile was in fact, a smirk.

I saw it, myself. A bona fide, certified smirk.

To be honest, the big one on the bottom scares me.

All this time, all these years, I thought I was giving a kind, acceptable and welcoming smile and instead, what was coming across my face was a holier-than-thou-even-if-there-could-be-a-week-of-Easter-Sundays grimace of sorts.

I looked as if I were a snooty man whose sole purpose was to drive through evil gas stations and through nothing but the sheer force of my facial expression alone moderate comeuppance to others.

I couldn’t believe it. I hated that look on my face, and above all, certainly because I wasn’t snooty.

Or, was I?

Because the little niggling doubt in the back of my mind is that I have a somewhat solid foothold in the belief that there’s a direct line of truthful communication between your subconscious and your face…even your head.

The Japanese hold to a belief that the head will always tell the truth, no matter what the voice is saying, that’s what Makoto told me.

So, I tried it, and it worked. Try it, yourself. Next time you ask someone a question, like, Do you think I look fat in this? Watch their heads. They may say No, but their heads will nod yes. Afterwards, jump down their throats for not telling you the truth.

Time and again, U.L. has said, Be mindful of your face. It’ll often say what you won’t. Head, face, it doesn’t matter. I need to get better acquainted with them both.

The horror is I think I was doing just what U.L. said, yesterday. God knows, I don’t mean half the things I must subconsciously think, but it’s hard to escape an upbringing. It’s hard to get away from your “home culture.” And part of our “home culture” in the Deep South is thinking, to some degree, that we’re a little bit better than other people. At least, those people at the end of the street, right?

And, who knows, maybe I was thinking that yesterday, without realizing it. Offering what I believed was a smile, saying, in effect, Hey, sir, we both get gas at the same place; we’re not so different, after all. But, my mind was apparently saying, I don’t have to use a walker to pump my gas. Ha, ha.

Thus, the smirk.

Would you trust this man?

I’m a bit upset by this. But, my only alternative would be to show my pearly-whites from now ’til kingdom come, and that just won’t do.

I’d look like an idiot.

That’s what I said to Siciliana.

She came back with, ”Yeah, but at least you’d be an honest one.”

Can’t argue with that.

Related Posts:

• Yes, Virginia, I am a vegetarian.
• I’ve never had a mullet, and other Things I Can Brag About [...]*
• How on earth do you wash a Fedora? [and other random thoughts]…
• This is a sappy blog, and it was well overdue.
• Excuse me, did you just call me a fad?

There’s a reason people get sick—the attention. But, I’ve discovered as of this morning, there’s a reason good friends drive their sick friends to the doctor and then spend the next two hours in the waiting room having their patience tested—the neighborhood.

Of course, this requires explanation.

It’s 10:03 AM, and I’ve brought Amanda to the Student Health Center. She’s been very sick to her stomach, and I felt she needed better attention than my telling her to “take it to the toilet” every hour or so.

Little did I know the call to action that I was unwittingly engaging myself in.

I found a seat, in the corner, and began my determined sit. I flipped through all the magazines twice. I checked my Twitter, my Facebook, my email.

Thirty minutes pass, and still—no Amanda.

I drew the line at Highlights.

After nearly forty minutes of pretending to re-read Diabetes Living and Prevention, I was left with my nothing to occupy me but my old standby: the Imagination.

That is, until other patients started wandering through the automatic double doors.

Everyone carefully chose their seats, and unpacked their belongings. Sort of like setting up their respective houses: jackets came off, laptops pulled out, backpacks emptied. And that’s when it hit me. I wasn’t in a waiting room.

I was in a neighborhood.

The rows of seats, were roads and streets. The people in their chairs, homes of single-parent households and displaced migrant workers.

What I was witnessing was a community in the making. The birth of a neighborhood.

Communities, I think, are made every day in thousands of small ways. Some last a long time; but most are temporary. Like this morning’s community. This one was built entirely on stress, and was destined to become a community in constant danger of eviction.

And this neighborhood, like anywhere else, had as much to like as dislike.

I appreciated, for instance, the severe economy of conversation on my particular street. A Hello here and there, a respect for personal space, and then that’s it. No more. I turned to my neighbor on the right to ask him where he got his shoes.

I wanted a pair; I really liked them.

“Don’t know.” He never even looked up from his iPhone.

No filigree, no dragging it out. No pretense.

More neighborhoods should be like this, I think.

And even though you might argue that it borders on the rude, I should remind you that despite the fact that most communities are driven by what I would term “self-interest,” at least in this community, we were given the option of a Suggestion Box.

It’s also a very clean neighborhood.

And to top it all off, most of us get validated parking and pills, when it’s time to “move on.”

II

It’s 11:36 AM and eight new people have moved onto my street. I should say three, since one is a family of five. If I were having to guess, out right, I would say that I think at least three of them are here to be surgically removed from their cell phones.

Or, perhaps, to discuss the cost of having smiles sewn back onto their faces, and, if there’s enough money left over, an extra neck muscle that would act as a reflex to force you to make eye contact.

Two of the new neighbors are children. What joy.

They immediately engage themselves in a contest of who is the best jumper; their shoes skid from tile to tile, between the sitting area and the water fountain.

They whisper, how well-trained,  until the boy decides he’s the winner. The girl then hits her head on the water fountain and begins to cry.

Gutsy move on her part.

The mother takes all the children with her as she bravely crosses to the “wrong side of the tracks.” In other words, the doors that stand directly behind a large free-standing sign that reads, “No cell phone usage past this point.”

Connecting you everywhere except Bangladesh and Nova Scotia.

Who would ever want to go to that side of town? The whole point of having a cell phone is to keep connected to the world around you without having to be connected to the world around you.

The father stays at home…three seats down from me. This is, I imagine, equivalent to his being on vacation.

How well-trained.

III
Returning from the bathroom, I see that my nicely shoed friend has moved. Disappeared. It was inevitable, I know, but I was hoping to ease him back into a conversation, enticing him to offer me at least three shoe store options for my own research.

I really wanted a pair of those shoes.

In his house now, sits a young woman, blonde and covered in what I would assume was every sweatshirt she owned.  She was patiently sitting, reading a book. I couldn’t see the title of the book and so therefore, it must have been a book about Scientology.

I was mentally preparing her a Welcome to the Neighborhood casserole when she began to cough without covering her mouth.

A nurse pops out from behind the No Cell Phone Usage sign and calls, “Emily?”

The blonde girl closes her book and coughs her way over to the nurse and slips behind the wooden doors.

The nerve.

It was going to be a really good casserole, too.

IV

12:00.

I feel fairly certain than Amanda has, at this point, decided to give her body to science. I’m going over What Steps To Take Next, in bringing this to the attention of her family when a rogue wheelchair carrying, magically, a large woman in it comes hurtling around the corner, down my street.

Closely behind it, lumber two equally large children hollering that they were “sorry, Momma! But Chelsea wouldn’t hold my Coke!”

I don’t know how that adds up to a runaway heavyweight, but it did.

I only stopped laughing because an emergency then occurred: a young man had been hit by a car, while making a left turn on his bicycle and didn’t know who he was, or where he was. He all but crawled up onto the receptionist’s desk while he waited to be admitted.

He was immediately ushered away.

I was glad for that. That kind of neighbor really depreciates the value of the whole neighborhood, you know.

I checked on him. He’s going to be just fine, so there.

Do you suppose if he never remembers his name that he’ll still have to pay?

V

Fifteen minutes after twelve, and Amanda finally emerges. Diagnosis: severe stomach bug, which if I had to draw a picture of it, would have the pinschers of a praying mantis, the head of a dung beetle, and the body of a lion.

Also, a beak.

She’s going to pull through. Thank goodness.

Opinions are like...oh, you know the rest.

As I start to pack things up, Amanda traipses over to the pharmacy to wait for her medication. I pass the Comment Box on my way out and decide to leave them a suggestion myself:

With the flu season on our heels, it might behoove you to consider creating a gated community within the waiting room.

Because the sick people are really needy.

Signed, Emily.

Oh, now. Don’t look so chagrined.

Every street has an Emily.

Related Posts:

• I daisy-chained the heck out of this head cold.
• Yes, Virginia, I am a vegetarian.
• I don’t have to use a walker to pump my gas.
• A word about Free Enterprise and blood pressure monitors.
• This is a sappy blog, and it was well overdue.

They taste about the same, don't worry.

So, the other day I was in Piggly Wiggly (or as U.L. calls it, The Pig) to purchase an eggplant, and while fondling the produce, legally – i.e., all fruits and vegetables were at least 18 days or older – I overheard two people, down by the locally grown peanuts bin (the peanuts were locally grown, not the bin – it was cardboard) discussing the stupid behavior of one of their other friends…I imagined the friend was the topic of conversation as the result of some weekend revelry.

One said, “And I was like, God, this is stupid. You’re being so eighth grade about it. Grow up.”

The other said, “Yeah, she needs to grow up.”

The banter didn’t register much higher on the Good Ways to Converse Chart.  Then again, maybe they weren’t people. Maybe they were kids.

I selected my eggplant, it weighed 1.3 pounds which was good enough for my experimental ragout (this is the correct way to spell this word, FYI, not ragu). And unlike Aggy’s pronouncement, it’s way more than just plain spaghetti sauce.

As I put the eggplant in my basket, I had this thought: What the heck has happened to people that eighth grade should be so maligned? I can’t tell you how often I hear people refer to bad behavior, or misjudgment, or rudeness, and so forth and so on, as “being eighth grade” of them.

Personally, I loved eighth grade. Seventh grade (and even fourth) for me were the ones that were, for lack of a better term, stinky.

Yet, in my rather unusual circles of socialization (both from strangerous people and those I know well), time and again, I hear eighth grade used as the butt of all things petty and ridiculous. By the way, strangerous is another word I made up. Sorry.

I guess it’s because, for the majority of us, eighth grade is the peak of hormonal shifting?

I really don’t know.

So, on the drive back to my house, I thought long and hard about my eighth grade year.  Actually, eighth grade pretty much dominated my thinking right on through to what, if I do say so myself (another confusing parenthetical), was a delicious ragout. NOTE: I’d forgotten to purchase chickpeas, and so if you’re interested in knowing what I substituted for them, I’ll just go right ahead and tell you: black-eyed peas.

(They were a delicious replacement).

So, for me, eighth grade, was not a bad year. I mean, not school-wide, publicly…personally, though, I can see a resemblance between the approach to unruly behavior in eighth grade as well as those of us entering our 30s – a.k.a Real Life.

For time’s sake, let’s take advantage of the concept of Summary, here, in discussing my eighth grade year: sexually confused the entire time (that’s not really faded, yet); I’d just returned from trying to live with my father in Germany (that’s not really faded yet, either); I was playing tennis; I was not doing well in Math, though, we were still learning to write checks in class, for some reason – how obsolete; I was in T.A.G, which stood for talented and gifted – we got to skip a whole day of class each week to do smarter things like leave the school and eat at Pizza Hut, a cultural field trip of sorts; I made fun of Band People; I knew a white girl named LaShara; I had headaches constantly; started shaving for real, my whole body; wanted to be a girl, really badly; brought my lunch, almost everyday; was a librarian’s assistant which basically involved a two-voiced woman (reverse tracheotomy) who made me re-bind books and regaled me with stories of the two natural disasters she’d survived, one on the Coast and the other in Kansas; I had serious dreams like the time I dreamed a teacher’s father drowned and then he did, Firestarter, anyone?; also, my sister taught at the same school which I’m sure had a lot to do with tempering my behavior.

You can't travel the world without a good spine.

So, you see, it was an interesting time to be in school. Avoiding truancy, but still, when in the middle of statewide standardized testing, looking out the window and wishing with all your heart that you were the guy on the lawnmower, because at any minute, he could decide enough was enough and stop, and have some Gatorade or something.

Despite the relatively low-key eighth grade year that I had, one thing affected all of us (maybe it was the heat, or the lack of uniforms) – Understanding Our Bodies and Emotions.

Oh, god, I mean any little thing was magnified a 1000% during junior high, depending on when you cut through the chrysalis.

Anger was a big one for me. We’ve never been the best of friends, as it is. As a matter of fact, anger has kept me from being truly close to a lot of people, I’m afraid. And I know myself well: my kind of anger isn’t a palpable one; it’s deeply seeded and hidden behind a great deal of social politics.

And humor.

I think, sometimes, it’s a lot easier to fool people than befriend them. Because I come from a school of thought where distance is a necessity. But, it takes less effort to hide in plain view, to hide right out in public than to shut every door and window.

That reads a lot sadder than it actually is. It’s not that I hate people; I try very hard to do the right thing. I try very hard to live the Golden Rule. But, there’s not a lot of reciprocation, these days.

And so, what are you left to do but to step back, as often as you can, and take a survey. What’s really important about living, not just about Life. 

I did that recently, post-argument, with a very close friend, a best friend, even, and I was glad that after the dust settled, we realized that we’d accidentally put a lot of “Importance” on things that were, honestly, a bit on the “Petty” side.

I think people do that a lot, because, whether or not you want to believe this, the Deep South is a rather repressed society. We don’t know how to argue; we know only how to acquiesce. We worry about keeping the peace, not establishing it. Unless you’re U.L. who just worries himself right through a fairly good heart, for his age.

You know, they really ought to teach this stuff in Civics. (If they still taught Civics, that is). Or Home Ec. (Again, if it hadn’t gone the way of the abacus).

The beginning of the end.

And, I guess, though I didn’t know it then, that this is something I learned in eighth grade, and I think it’s a good thing to know, to have learned: How to Argue; How to Fight; and How to Recognize the Difference.  Those are forms of Mercy, after all.

Yeah, that and How to Write a Check, those are, like, the two things I learned in eighth grade.

And to tell the truth, I kinda miss it.

Related Posts:

• I don't believe I cared much for sixth grade.
• Excuse me, did you just call me a fad?
• A word about lesbians…
• Yes, Virginia, I am a vegetarian.
• What is it, the Internet or Prom? It’s neither; it’s Lies.