I’m putting a rough stone in place on my cyber pyramid today.  I didn’t say they’d all be smooth.   If it rubs you the wrong way, add some hieroglyphics of your own.   Some people have already left their mark on my pyramid wall and it is a welcome surprise.

Today’s topic…semantics, and before I begin, let me tell you straight up that I’ve had my shoes for dinner plenty of times and I’d recommend you wear a helmet to protect yourself from the skeletons that might fall out if you yank my closet open.

All adults have skeletons.  If you don’t…you haven’t lived…and if you say you don’t you are lying.  Don’t climb up that Jacob’s Ladder…because if you say you’ve never lied…then you just did.

This isn’t about lying.  Sometimes it’s necessary.  I won’t throw that stone.  This is about life and death…compassion and empathy…indifference and disregard.  Pick one…because all of them apply when it comes to bullying.

WHY AREN’T WE PAYING ATTENTION?  It’s almost every day now… some troubled child or young adult taking their life because they were bullied…one time is too many.

There can be no more cowardly a crime than contributing to the agony of someone who finds themselves at a crossroads and chooses dying as less painful than living.  If you’ve bullied someone to death then you have murdered their soul.

In the neighborhood where I grew up, there were the haves and the have-nots.  We were the have-nots.  When I was in junior high, there was a group of “haves”…these cool girls that all hung out together.  Their ringleader lived around the corner from me.  In the summer, when they got bored, they’d show up at my house.  We had the best snacks.  I didn’t care when or why they came over…I was just glad that they did.

A new girl moved into our neighborhood and she started walking to school with us.  When the cool girls found out that she was Jewish, they didn’t want her walking with us anymore…worse, they wanted me to stop walking with her too.

I wouldn’t…I couldn’t…and I didn’t stop walking with her.  More than that…I knew that I shouldn’t.

At the time, I didn’t know what it meant to be Jewish.  It didn’t matter.  While I wasn’t one of the “haves”, I now know that I was a child of great privilege.  I was raised in a family who knew better than to behave like we were better than anyone else.  That is called class.  It has to be lived in order to be taught.

It never got any easier for my Jewish friend.  They bullied her in the worst way possible…they behaved like she had a communicable disease and they ignored her.  I have no doubt that it comes back to haunt her even now.

I didn’t go unpunished.  The cool girls retaliated and told me that the only reason they hung out with me was because I was “good for a laugh”.  I was a pretty smart kid. I knew they meant it as an insult.  It hurt my feelings, but it didn’t kill my spirit.

I am a funny girl.  Funny is the second word I always use to describe myself. Smart is the first.  Being told I was “good for a laugh” turned out to be the best thing anyone has ever said to me.  From then on, I’ve looked for humor everywhere and I’ve found it.   Laughter is my music.  And I am made of rubber.

You know that old childhood rhyme…”I’m rubber…you’re glue…whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you.”  Some of us are rubber…we can just let stuff bounce off of us.  Some of us are glue…we can’t let go of things no matter how hard we try to shake them.  Sometimes we’re a little of both.

But there are some people who can’t let things bounce off of them…they have a fragile heart.  Bullying consumes them…eats them alive and destroys their soul.  They have no strength to fight because the very thing they are being bullied for is what they struggle with…they are different.

If you accept that these people are glue then you can understand how bullying can drive someone to take their own life.  And if you stand by and watch it happen without doing anything about it, then you are just as guilty as the bullies themselves.

Of course, not everyone who is bullied takes such drastic measures.  But you don’t have to kill yourself to feel dead inside…and the scars never go away. They are branded there forever.  And sadly bullying seems to be an inherited trait…a bully produces a bully produces a bully…like Russian stacking dolls.

My son was bullied.  It started in elementary school.  I will never for the life of me figure out why.  He is the kindest kid I have known.  He was a big kid even then, and we told him that the next time these kids bothered him he should knock their teeth out.  His father and I are rubber.  We bounce back.  His struggle was heartbreaking but it was his struggle and he let us know it.

My eight year old son put us in our place.  He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Mom, if I knock his teeth out I’ll get suspended.  That will go in my school record and I won’t ever be able to be President of the United States.”

And herein lies my rub the wrong way…

Ads against bullying have popped up everywhere…all over the internet and t.v. and in magazines…bullying is an aggressive behavior that causes an imbalance of power through coercion and intimidation and we’ve got sports figures, celebrities and even politicians showing their support against it and pledging to make it stop.

Huh?  The politicians, the same folks who are using podiums like a shield, slinging mud at each other…calling each other names…digging up ancient history and using it like a scarlet letter to brand each other incompetent…this is our front line AGAINST bullying?

And I’m not just talking the GOP here either…there’s plenty of blame to go around and they all can share the guilt.

Washington would have us believe that all we can produce anymore are lemons…not to worry though…they’ll save the day and our national beverage will be lemonade.

Imbalance of power…we need to put a TIME OUT chair in the Senate, Congress and the White House.

Our Commander in Chief and his crew are campaigning around on the Goodship Lollypop while their opponents are surrounding the ship with destroyers and submarines.

In the meantime we’re all out here treading water, hoping to be rescued.

Don’t grab onto either side’s life preserver folks…because the rope is trailing in the water…they don’t care to reel any of us in as long as THEY CAN STAY IN THE BOAT.  Coercion isn’t a life raft.

Win at all costs.  We all saw how that worked out for Penn State.

Name calling is bullying.  Mud slinging is bullying.  Using scare tactics and intimidating people is bullying.  And if you go looking for dirt to use against someone,  be careful how far down you dig, because you might not be able to climb out of the hole.  That’s intimidation and bullying at it’s sneakiest.  Of course, if you have nothing to hide then WHY HIDE IT?

As for some of the sports figures and the celebrities…too many of them have had to sell their souls on the used fame lot.  I could go there…but why bother.  Theirs is a make-believe world.

There are those who’d like us to believe that being an American has become a cross to bare.  That is their prerogative.

But this is a wonderful country built on the belief that all human beings are created equal.  No, our streets are not paved in gold, but we have the privilege and pricelessness of freedom and in that we are covered in gilt.

As for the rest of the guilt…we are ALL responsible for it.  One nation…under God…whoever or whatever that is for you…

“For better or for worse…in sickness and in health” that should be in the Constitution.

As for for the cool girls I went to junior high with…I got the last laugh.  When we got to high school…puberty and a little Maybelline…and I was the popular girl.  Snap.

Don’t be bullied into believing things that you know are not true or good for you.  Stand up for someone who can’t stand up for themselves.

Be responsible.  Pay attention.  And wear clean underwear…because you never know when you’ll be caught with your pants down.

I’m climbing down from my pyramid perch now…I leave you with these words…it is engraved on a plaque inside the Statue of Liberty…

 

Day Three Hundred and Forty Five…we are all in this together.

Cynthia Neilson

Friggatriskaidekaphobia…the fear of Friday the 13th…an irrationality driven by superstition and urban legend.  Whether you’re superstitious or not, face it, we can’t get away from our fascination with the supernatural, the paranormal and the unexplained.  We like it weird, we like it gory, we like it odd, and we like to be scared…as long as it’s make believe and we can choose when to walk away or turn it off.

The number thirteen is in a class by itself…it’s mystery immersed in religion and myth…stories fueled by fact, fiction and a pint or two of liquid courage.

The rituals of superstition are as varied as the believer.   Athletes have their lucky underwear.  Brides have their “something old…something new…something borrowed…something blue”.  Business men have their lucky pens…their lucky ties.  When I was growing up I had a good luck troll.  I named him Bartholomew.  Someone stole him from me.  I saw him on her dresser.  I knew it was Bartholomew because my brother had drawn in the ass crack on his rear side.  I stole him back.   It was the only time I ever stole anything in my life, but it doesn’t count because technically he was mine to begin with.  I still have him.  My daughter cut his hair when she was little, so he may have lost some of his luck.  See what I mean?  Crazytown.

Interest in the paranormal is global.

I can’t say that I believe in ghosts…but I won’t say that I don’t.  I think it’s unlikely, but I have had a few experiences that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

When we first moved to Tennessee, we were building a house so we had to stay in a motel for three months.  People got so used to seeing me around the premises that they started to think I worked there.  One day I found myself helping with the motel laundry…and I decided it was time to start getting out…or get a name tag.

There is a town square near the motel with a lot of antique stores.  One rainy day I went into one of them to kill some time.  I love old people but I don’t like old things…I can’t explain it…they have a funny smell and feel to me…the things…not the people.  You know I have issues.

The store had two floors.  Upstairs there were dozens of headboards, footboards and bedframes.  As soon as I cleared the landing and stepped into the room I was overwhelmed with oppression.  It was the same shivery feeling I get when I step into a hot bath.  I call it the bath dreads.  The room seemed to get smaller and I pressed against the wall because I felt my knees buckle.  I went down the stairs with my back along the railing.  When I got to the bottom the gentleman who owned the store wanted to talk to me about John Kennedy.  I stood there for ten minutes with the blood rushing in my ears, certain something was coming down the stairs to get me.  I finally made it out of The Twilight Zone.  I have never gone into that store again.

I can’t tell you what it was…it was just an evil feeling.  Across the same square there is a store with the head of a Bigfoot in the front window.  Supposedly a couple of hunters hit it with their truck one night and brought it to a taxidermist who must have had to perform a skin graft because the fur on the face looks like rabbit to me.

I know my rabbit skins.  When I was a kid our family went camping cross-country a few times…parents, six kids, a black lab, tent, sleeping bags and luggage…we stopped a lot and it was usually at a Stuckey’s, where I developed a strange habit of buying rabbit skins.  I also remember wearing a shellacked bagel on a leather lanyard around my neck.  I told my daughter it was a fad and when I couldn’t find anything about it on the internet so I could prove it, she left me a pamphlet for a rehab center.

When people come to town I always take them to see the Bigfoot head, but I will never step into the store with the beds again…just in case.

I do wonder if there are outdoor poltergeists because I have shut the car door on my own head three times in the past two years.

There are a couple of old houses on my farm and I have a cemetery. When I first learned I had a cemetery I was a little freaked out.  But it is a very peaceful place and I don’t get an evil or scary vibe at all…although I did have an…incident….

My ex-sister-in law came with me one summer to check out the work we were having done on the farm.  I took her over to the cemetery.  The dirt on the top of one of the graves looked like it had been disturbed.  I reached down and stuck my finger under the edge of what felt like a wooden lid.

What happened next went something like this:

“The top is off the casket and it’s pushing up out of the ground!”   “Ahhhhhhh!  Ahhhhhh!”   There also might have been some shrieking and running in a circle with our hands in the air.

Bear in mind that the graves are from the late eighteen hundreds and any wooden caskets have long rotted away.

“What do we do?  Call the sheriff?”  I reluctantly brushed some more dirt away.  “Oh…wait…it’s just the edge of a flat rock.”

Thank goodness we didn’t call the sheriff.  My farm follies were already the stuff that legends are made of.  My friend Teresa at our local Co-op told me that the farmers used to look forward to hearing my latest farm fiasco…and  checking out my cleavage.

During the construction of our house I was usually at the farm by myself.  My ex-husband was always out of the country shooting a movie.  When they delivered the logs for the house, it began to rain, and the log company told me to cover them in black plastic.  They suggested I get the giant rolls that are used to cover hay.  I could find them at any Farmer’s Co-operative…a farmer’s version of a Lowe’s.  I was curious to see what that was all about.

I asked the front desk clerk at the motel where I could find the nearest co-op.  He drew me a map and said it was just down the road a piece.

Never…ever…ask a Tennessean for directions…unless you have plenty of time on your hands and plenty of gas, because everything is just “down the road a piece”.  “A piece” is a Tennessee standard measure.  It can be ten miles or a hundred miles just depending on the arm reach of the individual giving you the directions.

I had been driving for over an hour.  The double lane paved road turned into a single lane dirt one.  Uh oh.  There wasn’t a house in sight.

I was about to turn around when I saw an elderly lady at her mailbox.  She had waist length gray hair and rosy apple cheeks.  She smiled and waved. She had no teeth…a native.  Her mailbox was in front of a little white cottage with red trim.  Next to it was a big red barn with some white cutouts over the door.  They looked like some kind of animal.  Next to that was a garden with about ten neat rows of vegetables growing.  It was a perfect little farm and looked like a movie set.

I rolled down the window and asked her if she knew where the Farmer’s Co-op was.

She smiled widely…I could see her tonsils.  “Ya wanna see my caats?”  “Cats” had three syllables.

“Excuse me?”  I wasn’t sure I had heard her correctly…Southern speak can be tricky.

“Ya wanna take yer a look at my caats?” She pointed to the red barn.

“Ohhh…your cats…well…sure.”  I didn’t feel threatened.  She was nine thousand years old and four feet tall.  I could take her.

I followed her behind the barn.  Suddenly she had a lot of pep in her step.  When we rounded the corner I saw a twelve foot tall cage built against the back of the barn.  A huge tree was laying across the center of the cage.  And sunning themselves in the branches of the tree…were four huge bobcats.

“Go on inside…they won’t hurt ya.”  She was holding the cage door and beckoning me to step in.

I’ve worked in and seen enough horror movies to know you don’t go down the cellar stairs and you certainly don’t get in a cage with wild bobcats.

I looked over my shoulder, convinced I would see a graveyard of cars and trucks belonging to other victims like in From Dusk to Dawn.

No wonder she had that sudden pep in her step.  She’d just found lunch for her caats…AND IT WAS ME.   I made my excuses and walked back to my car just slow enough not to make it look like I was running.  As I passed the barn I thought it might be entirely possible she had a Leatherface son sitting just inside gassing up the chainsaw and I ran the rest of the way to the car,  jumped in, locked the doors and zoomed away.

When I got back to the motel, I found out that the desk clerk was new and really didn’t know his way around.  The closest Co-op was just down the street in the other direction.  Oh well.

My kids had an experience in one of the old houses on my farm.  My son had a very creative drama teacher.  She assigned them a paranormal project right around Halloween.  He and his team wanted to go out to one of the old houses at night and see if they could make contact with a ghost.  I have some high end video equipment with a boom mike that we use to shoot little movies.  They planned on taking temperatures and recording audio and video.  This was going to be a top-notch production.  I sent my daughter and her friend with the three of them.

I watched the ghostbusters head across the field…it was just getting dark.  About an hour went by and I heard the dogs barking.  I looked out and all I saw was flashlights up…flashlights down…up…down…they were running and they were screaming.  I wasn’t concerned with them…I was worried about my camera equipment.

The five of them pushed past me into the house.  They were wild-eyed.  They were all talking at once…my daughter and her friend included.  They claimed that they were walking around in the house, asking if there was anyone there who wanted to make contact.  They got a sudden temperature drop and then they all heard something.

We popped the video into the t.v. and took a look.  My daughter was running the camera and her girlfriend was holding the boom.  The three boys were in the shot.   One was holding a little tape recorder. One was holding the thermometer.  He called the two others over to show them the temperature drop.

My son turned and asked, “Is there anyone here?”

I heard some kind of sound on the video…and then chaos…all of them started running and screaming.  The rest of the video was of the ground as they ran back through the field to the house.

They all stared at me.  I didn’t really hear anything.  I had a sound recognition program on my laptop.  We downloaded the audio from the little  recorder and we played it back.

My son:  “Is there anyone here?”

A chilling and startling second later, we very clearly heard:  “Get out.”

It registered on the sound wave monitor.  It was a voice.  And it didn’t come from any of the boys because they were all on camera.

It seems to me that when you see those paranormal shows, the ghosts always say “get out”.  I don’t know if there are ghosts…I don’t know if ghosts have a limited vocabulary, or maybe our subconscious makes us hear “get out” because that’s what we know we should be doing BECAUSE WE JUST HEARD A GHOST.

But I am here to tell you…that night someone or something made contact.

The other boys on the team went home.  They were certain they were all getting an “A” on the project.

After they left my kids were awfully quiet.  Uh oh.  True confessions.  My daughter pulled out a piece of paper.  It was an old letter…the edges yellowed, the creases almost see-through. She had found it under some bricks that had fallen near the fireplace in the sitting room of the house.  It was a love letter and was signed with a perfect beautiful red lipstick print.

Back in the “olden days” red lipstick was indelible.  My great-grandmother was a crabby old lady who always had chapped lips and dry skin.  One time she woke up in the middle of the night to put some chapstick on her mouth.  She spread it all over her lips and up into her nose and down her chin.  She had grabbed the Red Cherries lipstick by mistake.  It took weeks for it to wear off of her nose, chin and mouth.  It took months for us to look at her without giggling.  Her own daughter, my Grandmother, laughed too, but we got in trouble.  Her last name was Taylor.  She always ratted us out.  We called her Grandma Tattletaylor.

I told the kids we had to take the letter back.  I’m not a scarebaby, but I said we could wait until the morning.  There was NO way I was going back there in the dark.

My daughter was upset and wished she hadn’t taken it.  It was a really sweet letter and I told her we would put it someplace in the house where no one would ever be able to find it again and take it.  We went back the next morning.  The house was quiet and not scary in the least.  We found a place for the letter and it will remain there forever, where it belongs.

My son and daughter wanted to apologize to whomever they disturbed in the house.  Though I don’t really believe in ghosts…I said a quick “I’m sorry” too…just in case.

Friday the 13th is just another day to me.

Although thirteen is my lucky number.  I used to have a fixation about the number 3…I had to repeat actions three times…loved multiples of three…and really loved the number thirteen because the one pushed up against the three made a “B” and that rhymed with three…I had issues…and a touch of obsessive compulsive disorder…potato potahto…

I also think I stunted my own growth after seeing the movie The Blob…the first version with Steve McQueen.  There is a scene where the blob goes up under the blankets at the foot of someone’s bed and absorbs them while they sleep.  From that night on for about two years I slept with my knees tucked up under my chin.  One night I tentatively stretched my legs down and finally was able to fall asleep with my feet near the foot of the bed, but those were my formative years and by then the damage was done.

If you don’t think this holds water, then you should see a picture with me and my five brothers and sisters.  They all hover around just under six feet to six and a half feet.  I am five foot four and a half if I sleep all stretched out the night before.  I am vertically challenged and had to wear my little sisters hand-me-ups and The Blob was totally to blame.

Friday the 13th occurs two more times this year after today.  If you’re feeling freaked out…just stay in tonight…

Just don’t take a shower…and whatever you do…don’t go down the cellar stairs.

Day Three Hundred and Forty Four…off to exORcise…

Cynthia Neilson

I’m in mourning.  Hostess…the makers of Wonder Bread and Twinkies…has gone belly up.  Yep…and it’s the second time in less than three years.  I don’t want to start a panic, but another attempt at reorganization doesn’t look good.  The company claims that the public lean to healthier eating created a decline in demand.  I suspect they started messing with the formula and took out too much of the artificial goodness.  Big mistake…that spelled the beginning of the end because we all know that it’s the fake stuff that makes it taste good.

I grew up on Twinkies, the spongy yellow cake with the mysterious cream filling.  It came in a two pack.  The bottom stuck a little to the cardboard, leaving a creamy cake trail as a nice surprise…like finding a few loose french fries in the bottom of a McDonald’s bag.

Twinkies are marketed as “Golden Spongecake with Creamy Filling”.  I’ve had them fried, dipped in chocolate and covered in ice-cream…but it’s that enigmatic creamy center that is the heart of its snack food goodness.  I’ve tasted home recipes that claim to replicate it, but none of them come close.  I’m certain that the creamy center is full of so many artificial additives that the FDA  can barely qualify it as a food…and yet something poly and something peptide come together in the secret bakery laboratory to create the perfect storm.

I know there is no health benefit and most likely, no real cream in the creamy center…adding a “y” or an “ish” to the end of a word doesn’t necessarily make it so.  It is just playing it safe and a total lack of commitment to the meaning.

When I was in grade school I considered it a lucky day if I opened my lunchbox and found a package of Twinkies…for a family of six kids, it was a rare treat.

And you couldn’t find a house without a polka-dotted bag of  Wonder Bread on the counter.  Unless my Mother was able to scrape together a handful of change for hot lunch, Wonder Bread and bologna and yellow mustard was the daily special.

Wonder…the bread that built “strong bodies 12 ways” was about to change that number to 13 when the FTC brought the Truth In Advertising hammer down and demanded they retract the claim that the calcium they started adding aided brain function and memory, since they had no studies to prove it.

The FTC and the FDA…those killjoys…the official watchdogs there to remind us that everything good is bad.  Of course, that only seems to apply to quality and not quantity.  If quantity was the issue, then all snacks would come with a warning label:  EATING TOO MUCH OF THIS WILL MAKE YOU FAT.

I wasn’t happy about it, but I adapted when they started packaging Twinkies as singles, a yellow sponge capsule wrapped in plastic that I came to call my medication…though I did miss licking the cake trail off the cardboard.

In a show of solidarity and in preparation for a possible world without Twinkies, and the added fact that I have to put on a bikini in a week or so, I decided to spend the weekend doing a cleanse.

Utter the word “cleanse” and the reaction is the same…a lot of questions and some serious head nodding.  A cleanse…which is a socially acceptable way of saying that I intend to spend two days pooping my insides out…totally on purpose.

I’m not endorsing cleanses.  I know they can’t be good for you and I haven’t had much success with them.  But they promise quick results and the looming week ahead in a bikini has scared me straight.

I’m trying out the lemon cleanse this weekend.  So far I can report that the lemon juice has burnt all the skin off of the insides of my cheeks and the maple syrup has found a cavity friend in one of my back teeth.  This particular cleanse promises a healthy clean supercharged feeling…the end result, an intestinal tract readjustment and a loss of bloat and weight which will propel me toward optimal health.  I’d report back to you with my results, but by the time you read this I can almost guarantee that I will have eaten the frozen meatballs in my freezer, straight out of the ziplock bag.  I’m weak that way.

While I am a fit person and exercise is a daily part of my life, so is eating badly.  I know what’s good for me to eat and a lot of the time I simply choose to ignore it.  I come from an Italian family who use food to pass the time.  If you’re celebrating…eat.  If you’re sick…eat.  If you’re tired…eat.  If you’re angry or sad…eat.  If you’re bored…eat.  If you’ve just walked through the door…eat.  If you’re leaving…take some leftovers so you’ll have something later…to eat.

I’ve tried a lot of diets.  I have the same ritual each time I start a new one.  I empty my cupboard and refrigerator of temptation.  I don’t keep much junk around.  I had to ban cake mixes from my house a long time ago.  The batter is fair game and I’ve been known to eat that frosting that comes in a can like it’s pudding.

I’ve tried to lean my cuisine toward a healthier choice while weight watching.  It all comes down to two little words:  PORTION CONTROL.

I’ve got nothing against the celebs who tout the packaged meals that some of those diet companies offer.  They’re getting paid big money to sell you The Emperor’s New Clothes.  Of course you’ll lose weight…you’re eating a handful of food from a one inch by six inch box.

At least Weight Watchers encourages you to eat real food though I totally abused their points system after I figured out that eating six of those little pudding tubs at one sitting only adds up to 12 points.

I got up yesterday morning and threw out the half-eaten bag of potato chips I opened the night before as my farewell toast to junk food.   I made sure to pulverize it first so I wouldn’t pull it back out of the trash.  I can’t be trusted.

As I mixed my first dose of the lemon concoction, I reminisced about some of my past diet adventures…NONE of which I recommend.

There was Treat Week…a seven day event consisting of eating as much as I wanted of one item…each day…all day long.  Treat Week started on a Monday and ended two days later.   It culminated in a serious bout of diarrhea…so I did lose a little weight.  Of course, I’m sure my choices could have been better…instead of a day of vegetables and a day of fruit…I chose a day of M&M’s and a day of chili dogs.  Hey, I read the directions…it said “anything”.

My sister’s tried and true approach…if you can wash it, you can eat it…has some merit and appears foolproof on the surface.  I was amazed to learn that a lot of cookies can actually be washed and chocolate is totally rinseable.

I’ve tried the “Nothing White” diet.  At first I was doing great…sticking to all colorful foods. Bright red and yellow peppers and green leafy vegetables gave way to Skittles and those raspberry colored Zingers…you know the ones I mean…the mock Twinkies with the raspberry “flavored” coating covered with what I strongly suspect is just plastic shavings that they tout as coconut.

I will never be skinny.  I’m a curvy girl and proud of it.  I like feeling lean…for me.  I try not to weigh myself because I only seem to want to do it when I feel like I LOST weight.  That is very thin ice to walk out on…because you usually weigh more than you think you do.  With the older scales you used to be able to hang onto the towel rack and lower yourself onto them to get a more favorable result.  These new digital scales are like a personal lie detector.  You can drag it all over the bathroom floor and it will read the same WRONG number every time.

My weekend cleanse will be over at 12:01 a.m…not that I’m counting the minutes.

Twinkies…I’ll miss your golden creamy goodness…gone perhaps…but not forgotten.

Day Three Hundred and Forty Three and Day Three Hundred and Forty Two…goodbye Hostess…hello Dolly Madison.

Cynthia Neilson

I will never be accused of being politically correct.  I don’t aspire to stay in the witness box of the court of unpopular opinion…but I am not afraid to testify if called to the stand.  Of course, this is only my truth.  You have your own.  We are free.

Imagine the cheek of our forefathers to put…in writing…in our Constitution and the Declaration of Independence…a guarantee that in the United States of America “all men are created equal”.  That we as a people have a right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.  They thumbed their noses at the Monarchy which held them prisoner and said, “You’re not the boss of me.”

In drafting our freedom, turns out our forefathers were a little nearsighted as they left out our foremothers and the negroes and the native americans.  Before you get your tail in a knot…I’m not comparing the fight for equality for women and the right to vote to that of the fight for freedom for the slaves.  The original Constitution doesn’t say that women can’t vote…another vote was held to “readdress” that slip of the pen and the vote was taken away.  Whoops…the chicks got smart, banded together and in 1920 forced the hand of the powers to be and the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteeing our right to vote was ratified as a permanent part of our Constitution.  By getting the vote, women finally began to be recognized for their contributions and were given a voice to protect their rights as well.  It is still a journey.  Though we’re not always welcome, we’ve continued to elbow our way up to the front of the line to stand shoulder to shoulder with our male counterparts…and sometimes not in a flattering or justifiable way.  I calls ’em like I sees ’em.

Native Americans were a conundrum for our forefathers.  They were unpredictable and because of that, we held them at an arm’s length, not sure of their agenda, though ours was clear.  Better to deal with them only on an “as need” basis…the red elephant in the room.

But the negroes were different from the get-go.  They had no rights because they were not considered people…they were property…they had a monetary value.  The water always turns muddy when you mix money with morality.

There is no defense for injustice and stupidity.  When human beings are backed into a corner and they are confronted with their shortcomings they sometimes retaliate blindly with hatred and ignorance as their weapons of choice.

And sometimes they kill the messenger.

Martin Luther King Jr. would have been 83 years old yesterday.  He died a young warrior with an old soul, dauntless in his battle to bring us together as a nation, as a people, as a world.  He could see further on down the road past the roadblock of race that kept us apart.  He called us to account for what separated us.  He understood how simple it all is…we are born…we die.  It’s what we do with the part in between that defines us and we are all interconnected whether we want to be or not.

Equality is manmade…we are the only animals that seek it.  It’s a starting point from which understanding and tolerance and acceptance and freedom can grow for all of us.

It should be the ground zero of all human life.

I am…and so are you.

If we treat each other like we would like to be treated then the line between right and wrong is no longer blurred.  Sometimes we create prejudice by trying too hard to prevent it.  We overcompensate and short-circuit the intention.

Prejudice is nothing new and if you deny ever tasting it or feeding it, then you are not being honest to yourself.  That’s your burden.  Words are flesh wounds that can fester and kill slowly…if you let them.  People who fling hatred are anchored in their own shallow water…if you hold onto their anchor then you will go down with their ship.  That water is shark infested and you will constantly be swimming for your life.  Better to swim further out into deeper water where there is room for everyone.

Using race or gender or religion or sexuality as an excuse for laziness and indifference is transparent and your agenda is clear.  That is not my reality and I won’t entertain it.  Instead, I use the variety in my life as a spice.

Here is a peek into my spice cabinet…

I have three close girlfriends who happen to be black.  I didn’t seek them out because of their color.  Life brought them to me and I am a richer person for it.  I hope they feel the same way about me.

When I first came to Tennessee from New York, I was assigned to a gynecologist by my health insurance company.  I went in to see her, armed with a folder full of personal diagnoses that I made after I got my medical degree on WebMD.  She sat quietly listening to my…opinions…nodding, she took the folder reverently from me…turned…and threw it in the trash without even opening it.  From that moment…it was on.

Dr. C is loud and brash and opinionated and overbearing and irritating.  She is also loving and giving and understanding and patient and very good at what she does…and I am pretty certain she has saved my life on more than one occasion, though she doesn’t go into details with me as she knows I go immediately from one to ten with no numbers in between.  Sometimes knowledge has to be spoon fed so it can be digested properly.

I have complete trust in her…she knows what all my private parts look like and has also been exposed to what goes on inside my head and heart and still wants to be my friend.  She knows me inside out.

I sat in her outer office once waiting to go inside for a checkup.  An elderly white woman was wheeled in.  They had brought her over from the nursing home to be looked at.  As they brought her into the office she saw that Dr. C was black and she turned to her aide and said, “I don’t want no black touching me.”

Wow.  It was a good thing that the door closed, because I have been known to lead with my mouth and the lady was old and ignorant.  I won’t say she didn’t know any better.  That is ridiculous.  I will choose to say instead that she lived a small life surrounded by suspicion and bitterness.

When it was my turn to go in, I asked Dr. C how she handled it…she laughed and said, “Once your feet are in the stirrups…you’re on my ride and I’m at the controls.”

We travel a lot together…we’re leaving shortly on a cruise.  She will want to throw me overboard a million times and I will want to do the same to her…but I don’t even need to look to see her hand outstretched to help me back up…and she doesn’t have to look to see mine.  We both know it’s there and that is good enough.

Shortly after my divorce I started working for some friends who have a catering business.  We are truly the large part of a small world and I will write more about that later.  It is there that I met my friend Deborah.  She is one of the chefs.

To be honest, I was a little leery of her when we first came in contact with each other.  She is really tall and has one of those stares that can saw you in half.  She can kill with her eyes.  She is no nonsense and understands her place…and if you are crazy enough to try and put her there…good luck…hope you can run fast.

She hasn’t said as much, but I don’t think she has had an easy life.  She is guarded.  And I am fairly certain that has come to her honestly.  Someone told me she didn’t really like white people.  They sold her short.  She doesn’t like stupid people.  All colors have equal opportunity to demonstrate their behavior in her world.  If you fall short she will let you know it.

And she will be the first to help you up when you trip.  If you are her friend…it is for good.

I went to a picnic at her house in the summer.  When I got there, I was the only white person…like Steve Martin in “The Jerk”.  I know a lot of the older black folks were wondering who the heck I was.  They are still suspect of white people.  That wound is still fresh and their flinch is from experience and instinct.  I get that and I don’t try to change their minds.  They come around because I am interested in them.  And that in turn, makes them interested in me.

When black folks make fun of each other, it is hilarious and no different then when you are sitting with a bunch of Italians or Jews or Irish.  The language of life is universal and in that we are all the same.

I like to say that from hanging with these girls, I’ve gotten what I call “blattitude”.  Deborah has threatened more than once to take it away from me if I dance in public.  I think she’s serious.

And lastly I will share an experience I had with my friend Demetra.  I call this episode:  Man With Gun.

I met Demetra while catering.  She also happens to be friends with Dr. C…it truly is a small world.

She is quiet and not easy to read.  Right off I could see that she got my sense of humor…which is an acquired taste…and that endeared her to me…much to her chagrin.

If you ever saw “The New Adventures of Old Christine” then you would understand our friendship.  In the show, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Wanda Sykes have a working and personal relationship that is the epitome of political incorrectness and it is really funny and totally works.

Demetra and I are like that.  We sealed our bond by making fun of each other.  And most of it took place on a five mile trail in the middle of the woods.

I decided to make it my mission to get her in shape.  Contrary to the stereotype, not all blacks are athletes…yeah, I said it.

I know a little part of her wanted to get in shape…but the bigger part of her…and I’m not talking her backside…just really liked hanging out with me.

Aside from her, I have yet to see another black person on this particular trail.  I wonder…out loud of course…what people think about the two of us out there together in the woods.  We argue…we sing…we dance…well…I call it dancing…we laugh and we’ve cried a few times.

We aren’t out there to solve the problems of the world, though she reminds me that I think that I can…she’s just jealous…

We have fun.  She had to have knee surgery and I am sure she blamed the whole injury on me.  I told her it was just an excuse to get out of the trail workouts.  Wait until the warm weather…I have plans.

Anyway…one morning we were out on the trail.  It was early.  We passed one of the benches that I WON’T let her sit down on for a break…eventually she stopped asking. There was a large muddy sneaker print on it.  Hmmm.

We rounded a corner and I saw a guy ahead of us in a sweatsuit with a knitted hat pulled down over his head.  It seemed to me that he slowed down a little, though he never turned around to look at us.  I pride myself on my distance vision…I have so few things left that still work properly…and I saw that he had a holster on his hip.

The trail is in a state park…no hunting…no guns.  I didn’t want him to hear me…sound carries funny in the woods.  I turned back to Demetra and out of the side of my mouth muttered…”Man with gun.”

“What man with gun are you talking about?”  She’s loud…I didn’t say she was subtle.

I kept nodding my head toward the guy.  I think he slowed down almost to a stop.

She was standing with her hands on her hips and she had a disbelieving attitude.

“Don’t give me an attitude…he has a holster with a handgun on his hip.”  I had come to a complete stop.  She peered at the guy.

“That isn’t a gun…I think it’s a fannypack.”

“A fannypack…really…with his sweatsuit and his knit hat pulled down over his head.  We’re turning back…you’ll thank me when we make it out alive.”

The whole way back she wouldn’t let it go.  When we passed the bench again with the footprint, I stopped.

“Aha…evidence…he jumped over this bench so he could run ahead of us.” This time I was the one with my hands on my hips.

She just stared at me.  “You are not right.”

There are a lot of limestone sinkholes on that trail.  Instead of tossing her into one, I played Devil’s advocate.

“Okay smartass…I am just telling you this…if he decides to shoot us and toss us into a sinkhole I’m asking him to do you first so your black ass can break my fall.”  I’m Italian…my hands were flying.

“Let him try to pick up my black ass.”  She had her hands, once again, on her very opinionated hips.

We were standing having this argument about who was going to get thrown down the sinkhole first after getting shot…just as a lovely couple with their small children passed us on the trail.

There may have been some discussion about our behavior after they hurried by…possibly some therapy later on…maybe even a police report…

“Uh oh…maybe I should have warned them about the man with gun.”  I was about to go after them when she stopped me.

“No.”  She continued walking out without me and of course I had to follow her to retrace our steps…and assess the possible crime…out loud.

When we got to the parking lot, my daughter’s car was there.  She and I run the trail sometimes.  We didn’t pass her, so she must have run in from the other way.  My heart stopped.

“She’ll pass the man with the gun.  We have to go back in.”  And this is where you separate your friends from your acquaintances…

She didn’t laugh, or scoff or tell me I was crazy.  She turned with me and started back into the woods to help me find my child.

My daughter finally ran up to us.  I was relieved.  Oddly enough, she never passed the man with the gun, though if he had stayed on the trail he would have had to go right by her.

When we go into the trail now, we laugh about it, though I still insist that he was wearing a holster.  I let her tease me and then I point out the sinkhole I will toss her black self into.  Of course, it’s understood that I wouldn’t leave her there…and she wouldn’t leave me either.

How many Pollacks, Wops, Micks, or Jews does it take to put in a lightbulb?  When I was a kid, there was nothing funnier than a joke at our own expense….they were all interchangeable…because when you get right down to it , we are all the same.  We forget to laugh at ourselves because sometimes it’s hard to be the joke…but laughing is what keeps us from taking ourselves too seriously.

To those who would say to me, “It isn’t that simple.”  I would have to say to you…”Yes it is…if you want it to be.”

How many men, women, races and religions, sexual preferences, heights, weights or ages does it take to make the world go around?

ALL OF US…

And if that wasn’t your answer…then in the words of my friend Deborah:

You don’t know cat ass scratch.

And I hope Martin Luther King Jr. is watching out for us…

We need his dream to become a reality now…more than ever before.

Day Three Hundred and Forty One…peace.

Cynthia Neilson

Some rough weather moved through Tennessee last night.  I have an old barn near my house that lists dangerously to one side.  It has been that way for the all of the years I’ve lived here.  Every time a bad windstorm roars through I can hear its metal roof banging up and down.  Some of the front boards in the hayloft are gone so it looks like it is missing teeth.

The wind was blowing so hard last night, I thought there was a very real possibility it would be laid out flat in the morning.  When I woke up I looked out of my window and there it was…casually leaning to one side…like a hillbilly Tower of Pisa.

It’s tornado season in the south.  When my son was younger he made a bed in the closet and left it there for the entire spring.  I am not making light of tornadoes.  I saw one literally pass right behind my house.  It wasn’t a funnel like out of the “Wizard of Oz”…it was more like a malignant looking wall of clouds.  Before it came through the sky turned an acid amber color and the air was very still and quiet.  It was a frightening thing to behold.

I found the entire roof of someone’s barn in my field all in one piece.

With the tornado season comes the muddy season and it has been my nemesis.  The mud is like quicksand.  I am constantly jumping down off of my tractor or a fence and sinking into twelve inches of mud that sucks the shoe or boot right off of my foot.

Single shoes and boots are buried all over my farm.  One day, hundreds of years from now, they’ll excavate and find a shoe here, a boot there and wonder what kind of people we were and what this ritual was.

It’s always been my dream to live on a farm and own a lot of animals.  I am a soft touch when it comes to “all creatures great and small”.  Over the years, strays have come and gone.  Sometimes they’ve left their families behind for me to take care of.  Kumbaya.

I let a farmer run his cattle on my back fields, and I talked him into letting me adopt an orphaned calf.  I named him King Tut and bottle-fed him far longer than he needed it.  I had to stop because when he got hungry he would bang his head against me and knock me down.  Bulls can be dangerous, so I had the vet come and castrate him so I could keep him as a pet.  Tut was a handsome guy and in spite of his…limitations…he loved the ladies.  He courted the cows in the next field and found a way to get into their pasture.  At the end of the day he would bellow to me to come and let him back into my field so he could have his grain.  This went on for a while until one day he disappeared.  I’m choosing to think he ran off with the girls and lived happily ever after.

I’ve been told that true farmers don’t own animals unless they can work for them or they can eat them.  My neighbor down the road had a herding dog with a schedule. She ran up and down the holler like an executive secretary keeping track of the herds.

Her organizational skills paled in comparison to those of a dog I came across when I went in search of the world’s best molasses cookies in the Amish country in Kentucky.  My sister was with me and after about two hours of driving in one giant circle, we decided to stop and try to get directions.

We came upon a big farmhouse with sheep grazing in front of it.  We pulled into the driveway and walked up to the house.  This older gentleman came out to greet us, a big black and white border collie at his side.

The dog stood on his hind legs and OPENED THE GATE.  After we were through it…he stood back up and CLOSED IT.  I can’t get my kids to close the door.  This dog stood at attention next to the gate like a furry little butler.

What?!?  The man asked if we would like to see what else the dog could do.  Uh…YEAH.

He herded sheep like Mary Poppins and put them into a pen…all on hand signals.  Then the man told him to bring one of the sheep out by name.  The dog opened the gate to the pen, singled out the sheep and brought him out of the gate, closing it behind him.  The sheep had on a collar with a name written in black marker…they all did…and unless this dog could read, then he knew each one of them by name.

It was really hot that day and we were standing in the blazing sun.  I could feel the skin beginning to sizzle and peel up on my nose, but I was planted…totally mesmerized by this dog.

His owner asked us if we wanted a soda. He had a machine filled with Coke and Mountain Dew…the official beverages of Tennessee…we both said we’d take a Coke and he told the dog to go and get them.

I know it was blistering hot, but I was not hallucinating.  This dog stood on his hind legs…pressed the proper button for Coke and when the can dropped, he BROUGHT IT TO ME.  Then he went back, without prompting, and got one for my sister too.

I  thought it ironic that my children had me trained the same way.  I also remember thinking that I could really use one of those dogs.

We ended up spending the entire afternoon there.  The man waved to us as we drove away, his dog sitting at the gate, eagerly waiting to open it for him.

I don’t have any gate opening, soda serving animals.  But I have had the privilege of some incredible creatures passing through my life.

One morning on my way to the post office I came upon a dead opossum in the middle of the road.  She had babies with her and three of them were still alive and wandering around her body.

I couldn’t just leave them on the road.   I got some gloves out of my car, picked the babies up and put them in my glove compartment so they wouldn’t crawl around in the car while I was driving.

I took them home and made a bed for them in the cage that I had built for the thirteen kittens two cat squatters had left for me as a thanks for my hospitality.

I hadn’t put much thought into how I was going to feed them.  Possums carry rabies, so I put my gloves on and tried to bottle feed them with kitten formula.  They weren’t having it…their tiny ugly faces scrunched up like  babies tasting lemons.

Taking them to a vet would have been a death sentence.  As a last resort, I put some blackberry yogurt into the lid of a jar and put it down in the cage.  The three of them cautiously walked up to it and sniffed.  They LOVED IT…they dove in…snouts and front feet.

I didn’t give them names because I knew I would have to release them back into the wild.  I had no idea how I would accomplish that, but I’d do some research and work it out.

After a couple of weeks I was able to handle them.  They would stand on their little hind legs and poke their noses through the mesh of the cage when they saw me coming.  I know it was the blackberry yogurt, but I’d like to think we had our own special bond.

Everyone thought I went off of the deep end.  “You know that’s a cousin to a rat.  You’re just fattening up future roadkill.”

I went out to feed them one morning and found the cage tipped over. Two of them were gone and one was lying dead.  He had been chewed on.

None of the cats would look me in the eye.  I had my suspicions.

My porch was home to a giant white rooster named Yeti and an elderly tomcat named Otis.  Yeti and Otis had their own relationship.  In the summer they ignored each other, even though Yeti roosted on the porch rail a few feet from Otis.

One winter day I came home and saw white feathers sticking out of Otis’s cat house.  Yeti was nowhere to be found.

“Oh no.  Otis ate Yeti.”  I leaned over to look inside.

Yeti and Otis were huddled together keeping each other warm.  They both gave me dirty looks and went back to sleep.  They lived like that all winter long.  When spring came, they went their separate ways, ignoring each other until the cold weather rolled around again.

Yeti was a cool rooster.  He let me carry him around under my arm and followed me like a feathered general bobbing his head and flapping his wings like he had something to say.

I was moving bales of hay in my barn one afternoon.  Yeti was sitting on the fence above my shoulder supervising.  I pulled a bale back and he swooped down past me.  There was a rattlesnake coiled in the stall. He pecked it and harassed it until it slithered away.

A rooster saved my life.  Not too long after that I found Yeti laying on his side in the chicken coup.  He had been mauled and was barely alive.  He must have been defending his ladies against some varmint.  All of this tail feathers and most of his back feathers were torn out.  His spine was completely exposed.  The maggots had already claimed him as territory.  It doesn’t take long in the heat of the summer.

I was beside myself.  I called my friends Phil and Teri, my farm gurus.  Phil suggested I spray Yeti with WD-40 to kill the maggots.

I failed to ask how much to use.  DETAILS.

Yeti lay perfectly still while I sprayed his back and his tail.  I knew I’d sprayed too much when his eyes rolled back into his head…and so did mine.

I sat on the ground and waited for the dizzy spell to pass.  We both struggled to our feet at the same time.  I put him in a tub of warm water and washed his wounds.  He never pecked at me.

I wrapped him in a towel and sat on the hammock holding him.  The kids and I made a bed for him in the hay and said our goodbyes.  I figured we’d be having a funeral the next day.

But when I got up the next morning…there he was…sitting on my porch rail at attention, just like he had every other morning.

All that time that Yeti had spent with Otis paid off.  He was an honorary cat.  He had nine lives.  He recovered from his assault but he was never able to fly again.

I ran over him once by accident with my pickup truck.  I jumped out.  He was laying there staring up at me with disgust.

He got up, took inventory of himself and stomped off, clucking at me over his shoulder in outrage.

Yeti died of old age.  We buried him with honors in our pet cemetery beside our beloved golden retriever Thomas.

Yeti…you were a proper bird.  I will remember you.

Day Three Hundred and Forty…tall “tails” and hot chocolate…

Cynthia Neilson