True Romance

My parents had their 60 year wedding anniversary today. That is not a typo. Sixty.

They celebrated by going out to barbecue chicken wings at KFC. That's my folks - not fancy, but they enjoy themselves. (The chicken wing thing is supposed to be a secret, so don't tell them that I told you).

They eloped in 1946, just after my dad came home from three years in the Army in Europe during World War II. He was, and is, tough - at 87 he could probably STILL kick some Nazi butt.

They met before the war - my mom must have been 15 - and married within 8 months of his return. And they are still married.

How do they do it? I dunno - you're asking someone who isn’t exactly stellar at relationships.

And if you ask them, they won’t be able to tell you, either. I think they got in the habit of being married and never got out of it.

The only time I think they - by which I mean my mom - considered calling it quits was for a few months in the 70s when everyone was all of a sudden getting divorced, my mom was going through menopause, and everything seemed like it was going to hell. It was a weird, bad time for almost everyone.

In spite of all that, she stuck it out. So did Dad. And now, a mere 30 years later, they still share the same roof, though not the same bed.

"We visit," Mom explains, though she knows it squeams me out to hear it. "Not exactly wearing a path in the carpet, but we have our times."

Dad is skinny and legally blind, but still walks the dog a mile-and-a-half every day. Mom is fat and can barely walk, but hobbles around with a cane enough to keep the house tidy and food on the table, especially since she recently discovered - and is delighted by - microwave meals.

Their one hobby is to argue like maniacs, point by point, so having them tell you a five-minute story can take half an hour with all the disagreements, corrections, backtracking and explanations.

They roll their eyes behind each others backs, toss their hands up in the air, mutter under their breath as the other leaves the room.

But somehow it still works.

If I had one observation about their relationship, it would be that they always, always put the other person first. I don’t know if modern psychologists would agree that is the most self-actualized thing to do, but then again, most marriage counselors haven’t been married for 60 years, either.

I'm immensely proud of them for sticking it out, having six kids, eight grandkids and thirteen great-grandkids so far. God bless them!

Pickup line

I was walking the dog down the Avenue, the nearest big street by my house, after work, in the dark.

This guy yelled something about "dog" to me and I made the mistake of thinking it was the same guy I had had an inane conversation about dogs with a few nights before, so I slowed up. Wrong.

This dog guy was extremely drunk and weaving.

"I just been at the Bikini Bar drinking and looking at women..." he said.

"Yes, I can tell - your face is all covered with glitter," I said helpfully.

I tried to sidestep him but he was just drunk enough to completely block my path and fall into step with me.

"Are you married?" he asked.

"Yes!" I chirped, lying my ass off.

"Happily?" he asked, weaving and slurring, yet hopeful.

"AB-solutely," I grinned, jamming my left hand in my pocket, hoping he hadn't noticed the lack of diamond thereupon.

"I never been married," he said. "I'm a virgin."

"I kind of doubt that, considering the glitter and all," I said.

"I can't remember where I parked my car," he said. "I been there all afternoon."

"Well, sir," I said. "I think under the circumstances, you might want to call a taxi. You don't want to get a DUI."

"Hell no," he said. "I already got SEVEN of those."

I cut off down a side street, trying to get away as fast as possible.

"Hey," he said. "You're cute!"

Ah, my little glitter man. You really know how to talk to a lady.

I can have as much as I want

My college nutrition teacher was skinny. I think it is a requirement that dieticians be skinny in order to keep their credential up to date (ok, probably not, but it SEEMS like it ought to be).

But she really went overboard with the skinny thing. I mean, aggressively skinny, "I will slice and dice you with my razor-sharp hipbones" skinny. She wore these clingy skirts of thin material that would have looked tragic on anyone with more than 10 percent body fat. She would lean up against the chalkboard with her knee bent and one foot on the wall behind her, hipbones sticking out in front of the rest of her body. The class would just sit there in stunned silence, feeling fat beyond belief.

She told us we could earn extra credit, an almost-certain "A" grade, by following her diet plan for the duration of the class and reporting to the class about our weight loss. I figured that standing up in front of fifty 19-year-olds would definitely inspire me to lose weight in a way that nothing else would, and I was right.

I followed her diet plan - small portions of food, except for vast quantities of green vegetables - and exercise plan, and I lost weight, I think 17 pounds over 18 weeks. Not bad. I had to completely obsess about food the whole time and count everything that went into my mouth and exercise like a fiend, but I was willing to do it for the A and to not humiliate myself in front of the class.

But midway through the semester, we were discussing my diet plan, which was complicated by the fact that I am a vegetarian. Someone asked about cheese pizza and she totted up the calories in a slice of pizza, then said brightly, "See? She can have a slice."

A SLICE? I CAN have a slice? That sentence just made my blood boil. Just the way she said "can" like she was granting all the fat people in the world this wonderful blessing of a slice of pizza.

Maybe it bugged me so bad because "She can have a slice" is just one letter off from "She can't have a slice" and I hate to be told CAN'T. It is almost a primal feeling that rushes up when I am faced with deprivation.

"Tell me what to do!" I thought. As soon as I got off the diet I began to eat like mad and that really hasn't subsided. I am fatter than ever. I know I am thinking about this all wrong. If I figure out how to eat much less joyfully, I will let you know how I did it.

But tonight, in honor of my nutrition teacher and her hipbones, I am sitting here eating 3 slices of frozen pizza, some broccoli (WITH mayo, not the reduced-fat kind either) and a glass of red wine.

Long live pizza. Long live my fat booty. I hope it doesn't hurt her too much to sit down on her anorexic butt.

Why must they mess with me?

I try to be clear with hairstylists. When I go in, I say that I am not the kind of person who wants to mess with my hair. To blow-dry my hair into a certain shape. To put "product" (whatever that is) into my hair.

But time after time, they ignore me and take matters into their own hands, blowing and torturing and shaping with wax and glue and gels...after I leave, the first thing I do is to take my hands and muss up their creation lest I look too plastic. The second thing I do is go home and take a shower and wash all the goop out.

Today the stylist tortured my hair to look like Marlo Thomas in "That Girl" It doesn't seem like that big a deal but my hair is naturally curly and it took major construction to get it so straight and poofy.

In case you are too young or have forgotten:


I almost wanted to go out and show the weirdness off, but I couldn't think of an appropriate place. I needed an early 70's Manhattan cocktail party.

In other news, ants have invaded.

Fear is all around*

(My homage to the Mary Tyler Moore Show theme "Love is all around")

I'm always complaining that, in the United States, people constantly want you to be afraid of something. The TV news always has teasers like: "Are chemicals in your microwave hurting your family? Find out at 11 p.m."

You can buy stuff to protect you from anything. Kids can't ride bikes without helmets. Supermarket cashiers wear latex gloves (gloves are cleaner than hands?) It's basically a fear-based economy.

I bought a small desk lamp the other day that had FOUR warning labels stuck round its cord. Things like "Do not use in the bath or shower..." The main danger with the lamp was that I might have sliced my hand whilst trying to cut the warning labels off.

All this fearmongering works incredibly well. My mom chastized me for leaving my purse in my locked car for 5 minutes in her very, very safe neighborhood where everyone knows and watches out for each other.

Our bathroom at work has a pile of crumpled paper towels on the floor next to the exit door. Everyone is so frightened of germs that they won't touch the handle with their bare hand (yet they are apparently unaffected by the social stigma of being found out as the kind of person who throws trash on the floor in an office).

When I was in Mexico, I found the blithe approach to possible danger alarming, yet funny and refreshing. People get hurt, people die, life is dangerous. Why clutter up the place with a bunch of warning signs and protective devices? Rusty rebar just at the height to poke your eye out jutted from the sides of buildings. Sidewalks were interrupted by gaping holes just in case you were in the mood to break an ankle. Buses squealed along with almost non-existent brakes. That was just life.

I knew when I moved out of white suburbia to the poor, densely populated side of town, I would encounter more danger. Did I worry? Yeah, but I know myself. If I wasn't worried about crime, I would be worried about something else, like global warming - that's just my nature - so it really wasn't a net gain of fretting time in my brain.

So here's my daily jolt of fear. This morning at 2:18 a.m. I awoke wondering "Gunfire, or fireworks?"

It had to be gunfire. It lacked that big BOOM BOOM BOOM quality of the high-powered firecrackers that people set off around here.

I heard about 3 or 4 shots. The dog did too. She cowered on the floor next to me, trembling. She would NOT make a good hunting dog.

I was wondering if I should call the cops. What would I say? "I heard shots. I don't know from where or why...?"

Then I heard six shots in a row, very even. Pow-pow-pow-pow-pow-pow. I got my cell phone and called the police and said "This is kind of unspecific, but I just heard a bunch of gunfire."

The dispatcher sounded flustered and excited. She said that they had been getting a bunch of calls. I didn't hear anything else until some sirens about 5 a.m. The dog cowered the whole time, which is unusual because she is always sleeping next to me on the bed.

But it's morning now, and we're ok. I'll go back to worrying about global warming any minute now, especially since my dad called to warn me that the river, which is right across the road, may flood any time, and that I should have my car packed just in case I have to evacuate.