Spring is the prettiest time of the year in Tennessee.  Everything is blooming and the edges are soft purple, pink, white and green.  Even the dirt smells different…clean and damp…it smells alive.

The green is really green and it’s so sharp against the blue sky that you have to squint your eyes…it’s like biting into a visual lemon.  Things are growing and waking up.  The grass grows inches overnight and when I run in the woods now I’ll have to keep an eye out for things crawling by.

The wildlife on my farm and I have an…understanding…I don’t kill them unless they are trying to kill me or I catch them chewing on my clothes and using my good shoes as outhouses.

I’m not a farmer by birth, so all of the lessons that I have learned have been at my own expense.  I am constantly being tutored by my mistakes.

The ad for this farm read:  Completely surrounded by creeks…turkey and deer abound.

Abound is one of those distracting words…it has a lively lilt…I picture the person saying it holding a cup of tea and a crumpet.

I met up with one of those “abounding” deer in a well-intended rescue mission.  I was on the deck trying to hang a hummingbird feeder.  Hummingbirds are little…but they’re scrappy and very pushy.  Two of them were impatiently buzzing around me like giant bumblebees waiting for the red liquid potion to drip out of the yellow and red flowered feeder.  I wasn’t moving fast enough and they were circling my head and complaining.

I heard a bleating noise from across the field and my dogs raced toward it.  I saw a fawn crawling under the fence with the dogs right behind it.  I was screaming for them to stop and get back to the house.  I knew if they got to the baby deer before I did there would be nothing I could do to stop them from attacking it.  I yelled to my daughter to get the plastic baseball bat and I headed into the woods after the dogs.

I heard running behind me and I looked over my shoulder.  The mother deer was right on my tail…and she did NOT look happy.  You know those old cartoons where steam comes out of the animals noses when they’re really really mad?  It really really happens.

She chased me in a giant circle, in and out of the trees.  On one of my turns out of the woods I saw my daughter standing and laughing, tapping the plastic baseball bat on her knee.  The deer stopped at the same time and we both stared at my daughter for a nano second and then continued running back into and out of the woods in that giant circle.  Trees….Cynthia…trees…Mama Deer…trees…Cynthia….trees…Mama Deer….

The whole time I was yelling “I’m not after your baby…it’s the dogs…go after them…go.” I was waving my hands toward the fence like she could read sign language.

At some point either I slowed down or she did and it seemed like I was chasing her.  The baby bleated again and she turned sharply and raced toward the sound.  I hung on to a tree gasping for breath.  My daughter was laughing hysterically.  I heard one of the dogs yelp and the four of them came crashing through the woods, almost knocking me over as they raced back to the house.

I headed back through the tall grass to my deck to finish hanging the hummingbird feeder.  I had left it sitting on the table and the two attack hummingbirds had already bellied up to the bar and were hovering above the plastic flower feeders helping themselves to the red slippery beverage.  Another one buzzed just above them waiting his turn.

The dogs were laying on the deck with their eyes squeezed tightly shut like they had been there sleeping all along.  Bunch of phonies…one of them even threw in a yawn for effect.

My daughter handed me the plastic bat.

“Hey…I could have been killed.”

“I wish I had a camera…that would have won America’s Funniest Home Videos.”  She was still laughing as she headed into the house.

That was the most the dogs had ever run.  They slept for two days.

I was covered in chiggers and spent the next week trying every backwoods remedy I could get my hands on.  Chiggers and ticks are the insect version of the Hatfields and the McCoys.  I’ve deemed them the official Tennessee pests.  Lye soap works pretty well…and the scars from the burn marks fade after a year or two.  A martini isn’t bad either…taken orally…for medicinal purposes of course.

I am caviar to a tick.  They don’t even phase me anymore.  When I first started venturing out again as a single person, I was in line at Walmart and noticed a really cute guy checking me out.  Wow.

I was just about to give him my best “tuck the hair behind my ear and grin” when he leaned over and told me a tick was crawling up my neck.  Great…just great.

I don’t remember ticks as a kid…and we lived near the woods and spent a lot of time in them even though we weren’t supposed to.  Ticks might be aliens…hey…you never know…

This past Sunday I got up early to go for my trail run.  It was still cool and when I started the car I turned the heater on.  I thought I heard something move inside the dashboard…and just as the noise registered in my brain the heater fan started grinding…rrrrrrrrrrrrrr….uh oh.

I was really hoping that putting two and two together would NOT compute.  I kept sniffing the inside of the car…but it didn’t seem odd…or did it?  You know how that goes…

I’m still trying to make a runner out of my friend Demetra and I swung by to pick her up.  “Listen to this.”  I turned the fan on.  Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“Ya think?  Do you think it smells funny in here?”

“It doesn’t smell good…I don’t know what it smells like.”

I drove home with the windows open and hoped for the best.  That hope was dashed Monday afternoon when I got in the car with my daughter to head into town.

We opened the door…she immediately backed up…”Wow…that smells bad.”

“Yep…a mouse must have died in the air vent…and listen to the fan.”  Before she could stop me I cranked up the air conditioner…

And “Eau de Dead Mouse” wafted out of the vents and into my face and hair.

I’m familiar with that cologne…you might recall the “Great Mouse Wars” that I have written about previously.

This morning I took it to my mechanic Charles…his shop is about fifteen miles from me.  I drove with my head hanging out of the window, pulling it in to keep the snot from freezing on my face…trying to breathe through my mouth just long enough until I could stick my head out of the window again.

I screeched into the lot and jumped out gasping for fresh air.  Charles and another guy came out of the garage, stopping short of the open door of my Jeep.  Both of them put their hands over their mouths and noses.

They sent me off to get some breakfast.  It wasn’t to spare me…it was to spare them.  I didn’t argue.  I had absorbed Eau de Dead Mouse into my skin and hair, and I had a…fragrance.

When I returned he met me outside.  “Wasn’t a mouse after all. It was a rat.”

Oh…that is so much better.

He showed me the little carcass.  He was missing some chunks of hair and I cringed.

“I hope he didn’t suffer.”

Charles stared at me.  “It’s a rat.”

“Even so…I feel badly.”  He didn’t say a word…just handed me my keys.  He had done his best to de-smell my Jeep…he sprayed Pine Sol in all of the vents and I now had my own personal forest of pine tree shaped fresheners placed throughout.

I drove straight home and set off an air freshener bomb inside the car.  After a couple of hours I took it to the car wash to shampoo the carpets and Febreeze the seats.

Under the driver’s seat I found a gnawed up cough drop and a potato chip with tiny little bite marks out of it.  He was a nibbler…his last meal…I felt a pang of guilt as I hit the area with another cloud of Febreeze.

The inside of my Jeep now smells like a tropical forest with a hint of pine and vanilla…a chaser of apples and cinnamon and a touch of clean linen…

and dead rat.

I can’t add any more smells to that stink free stew.  Anything else and it might explode.

I have no more hair follicles in my nose and my taste buds have been seared off.  I’m surprised I still have eyelashes.

I went through the drive-thru at McDonalds to get a Diet Coke…and an invisible cloud of flowery sweet spicy rat stink irradiated out of the window when I rolled it down…like Pig Pen in the Charlie Brown cartoons.

I’ve left the Jeep parked outside with the windows cracked and all the vents open.  I don’t think there is a living thing within ten miles that would want to spend any time inside it…so I am pretty confident there won’t be another guest for a while.

I’ve showered and washed my hair twice.  I’m headed in for another one.  Maybe the third time is the charm.

Day Two Hundred and Sixty Nine…I’m gonna wash that rat right out of my hair…

Cynthia Neilson

I’ve been inducted into a club.  Wish I could say it was Publisher’s Clearinghouse or Book of the Month.  It all started with a “finding” on my yearly mammogram and a call back to take a closer look.

My breast defied physics and allowed itself to be mashed to about an inch thick and the closer look triggered a needle biopsy.  I took a look at the digital shot of my nemesis.  I have micro calcifications…scientific jargon for “your tits are getting up there old girl”.

Ordinarily these teeny tiny dots are observed unless they decide to dance together.  Mine chose to do so…and here is a Cynthia irony…in the shape of a miniature Nike swoosh.

CBS (Dr. Clarinda Burton-Shannon) is my gynecologist.  She is also my dear friend. I like to say she knows me inside out and loves me anyway.  She tolerates my “crazy” and has been entertained many times with my learned medical opinions.   After all, I did graduate with honors from WebMD.

She sent me to the doctor she would go to, and this one has real credentials…I know…because I checked them out, especially when I found out the doctor’s name is Robin Williams…

Dr. Robin Williams turned out to be a gorgeous woman with a wide smile and a cool quiet confidence.  She performed my needle biopsy, which was no worse than getting a Botox injection…not that I have any experience with that…

A few days later I found myself sitting in one of those medical “gowns” wishing I had my Bedazzler…and the door opened and Doc Robin walked in and quietly told me that I have breast cancer.  It is small and low grade…but there is no getting around it.  It is what it is.

The air went out of the room and I looked at a face in a poster on the wall of breast cancer club members and thought…wow…I’m one of them now.  I need to remember to smile.

That day was long and slow.  I laid awake that night staring at the ceiling.  It is a lonely place to be.  There is no “why me” or “poor me”…that’s a silly waste of time.  In truth, I have had a wonderfully chaotic privileged life.  And while I can’t always say I love all the roads I go down…I really wouldn’t go back and miss a step of it.

I have laughed harder and loved harder and lived harder than most.  Best of all…there’s the exquisitely aching privilege of having the two best children on the face of the earth…yep…sorry all you wishful wannabe’s…I’ve got them.

And because I intend on exercising the Mom Principle…getting to embarrass, annoy and irritate them until we’re all hard of hearing and wearing bottle thick glasses…I’ve decided to confront the situation the way I do with most things that get in my way.  I am running at it hard and fast…and getting it gone.

I am lucky.  From all appearances, including an MRI, it is a Stage 1 cancer.  Of course the pathology after surgery and the Sentinel node biopsy will be the bottom line.

In a “take no prisoners” approach…I am having a bilateral mastectomy with immediate reconstruction.  I am comfortable with the knowledge that, though there is no guarantee it won’t come back, I will have eliminated a lot of the playing field.  And I’m getting a boob job.

When I met with the plastic surgeon…Dr. Roosevelt Peebles of Phase4 Plastic Surgery, he asked me if I was going for a mature look or a youthful look.  I said, “Seriously?  Come on now…I’m single…let’s make some lemonade. I want the tits I had when I was 25.”

He told Michele…his surgical right hand…to mark in my chart that I probably won’t listen to instructions.  He totally gets me.  It didn’t hurt either when he told me I was TOO THIN for him to use any of my stomach tissue for reconstruction.  Now I’m too thin?  Now?  My timing has always had an uneven beat.

They are a wonderfully confident addition to my team and I could not have chosen wiser…though I drew the line at the press on nipples…I’m pretty sure that would be cause for permanent erectile dysfunction.  Picture my Prince Charming finally showing up and pulling one of those babies off in the heat of the moment.  Deal breaker…hands down.

Or worse..I could be out running around the track and having one of the little accessories pulling loose and ending up stuck to my neck.

I’ve told my doctors that I’ve named the cancer Karen W. after the woman my ex-husband left me for years ago.  Even he thought it was funny.  Karen W. is getting evicted on Monday…exit only…one way out…no return.

I wanted to have a photograph taken before my surgery and asked Nancy Lee Andrews to  do me the favor.  Besides being a well known and extraordinary celebrity photographer…she has walked barefoot a few miles herself on unpaved streets and knows how to find the beauty in ugliness and confidence in the face of fear.  She is a friend that I came to know in the past few years.  Sometimes the best things happen later on in the game.

I find hilarious irony in the fact that she is the last person who saw my tits the way they were.  Ain’t that a kick in the pants.  I’ve really got to work on my love life.  Hey..my abs looked great.

Tomorrow morning when I enter the arena and raise my sword,  I am doing so with the knowledge that I have an army in front of me, beside me, and behind me.  I feel all the power and love and confidence that everyone is sending my way and it is giving me strength and courage.  My surgical team is phenomenal.  I am in good hands.

By the time many of you read this, I will be awake and cancer-free.  I intend to be a total pain in the butt and very demanding…in fact, I’ve heard talk that the Queen may be sending a tiara…hey…I’ve got friends in high places.

Crossing everything that this is just a blip on my radar…praying that you ask your mother or your daughter or your sister or your aunt or your neighbor or your friend if they’ve had their yearly mammogram.  I am proof of just how important they are.

Day Two Hundred and Thirty Six…today is the best day…tomorrow will be even better.

Cynthia Neilson

I’ve been neglecting my cyberpyramid.  I logged on and there it stood…abandoned like a bankrupt building site…tattered Tyvek building wrap flapping in the breeze.

I’ve been distracted.  Life threw me a curve ball and I’ve had to wait for a better pitch.  I am 26 days away from the last treatment which will close the chapter on my brush with breast cancer.  Can’t come fast enough, as I am anxious to put Humpty back together again.

Everything has always come easily to me.  So when I was served this slice of humble pie with a side of irony, it didn’t go down easily.

The week after my surgery was rough.  I was trussed up like a crown roast and my arms were useless.  Thanks to the thousands of squats and lunges I have done in the past few years I was able to get up and down just by using my legs…but it wasn’t pretty.

In the middle of the third night after I came home from the hospital, I woke and sat up too fast.  The pain was off the charts and I called for my sister even though she was laying two feet away from me.  I went down the hall to the bathroom and turned on the light.

I stared in the mirror and a thin little girl with slicked back hair stared back.  She looked scared.  I had never seen myself looking frightened.

Was this the same Cynthia who sat on the floor of Woolworth’s when she was 12 years old and refused to leave until they called the police because she caught the manager using a sign to brutally squash the little white mice that had escaped from the pet section…even though she volunteered to catch them and put them back.

Or the teenage Cynthia who threw her popularity under the bus when she insisted on walking to school with the girl no one wanted to be associated with simply because she was Jewish…

There was the Cynthia who moved to Manhattan with $250 dollars in her pocket determined to work in the movies….

The same Cynthia who became a stuntwoman, getting set on fire and hit by cars and would stand at the top of the stairs, wait for “action” and tumble down them backwards landing in the exact spot for the camera to get the shot.

The Cynthia that I know I am would never let this little girl in the mirror be afraid…and I knew at that moment that I was going to be just fine.

My sister dosed me with some Oxycodone to ease the pain.  Turns out oxy and I don’t really get along.  It makes me paranoid and…blunt.

I made several phone calls in the middle of the night to warn people that my sister intended to steal my gall bladder and was trying to choke me by giving me food that had pointy edges.  I wouldn’t eat Saltine crackers because they were square, but Oyster crackers were all right…see what I mean?

I don’t remember much.  I do recall getting up in the middle of the night and wandering around outside looking for some permanent markers to draw a mustache on my daughter while she slept.

I figured it was time to start cutting back the dosage, especially after I told my sister, who I had taken to calling Baby Jane, that she had a fat ass and the pockets on the back off her jeans were the size of backpacks.

Putting Humpty back together again has not moved along as fast as I would like.  Because I had a Stage 1 cancer with no lymph node involvement, the pathology was sent for the Oncotype DX test to determine the likelihood of recurrence.  The scale is 0-100.  If you get a score of 0-17 you are in a low risk category and chemotherapy is not necessary.  Irony always seems to be part of my “mettle” and in true form, mine came back 18.

My oncologist, Dr. Karl Rogers, or Dr. Yummypants, as I call him (for obvious reasons if you got a look at him) recommended a short course of chemo just to make certain I never have to deal with this monster again.  I kicked and screamed…and reported to chemo camp.

I am in good hands.  I have weathered the side effects well and try to keep my whining to a minimum.  Mostly I am tired, and for me that has been the worst of it.  I keep my running shoes by the door…ready to go as soon as I can get my engine revved.

My reconstructive surgeon, Dr. Roosevelt Peebles, continues with the sculpture of my “Frankenboobs”.  He and his surgical assistant Michele are awesome.  He is not easily rattled and didn’t even blink an eye when I pointed out that he must have missed the class in raising and lowering surgical chairs…a comment I quickly retracted since I don’t want to end up looking like a Picasso portrait.

Nothing moves as fast I would like it to.  I am a patient who lacks patience and it has been frustrating.

I am treading water right now…but it won’t be long before I swim for shore again.  As for my cyberpyramid, there is not enough done and so much more to say…

I leave you for now with one of my favorite quotes by an unknown author…

“Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over…it became a butterfly.”

Day one hundred and sixty three…humble pie has a really dry crust.

Cynthia Neilson

Having cancer is like serving a life sentence for a crime you didn’t commit.  You know you don’t deserve it.  It is all a mistake and you don’t want to be there, but you are.  You fight with the belief that one day you will be paroled and walk away freely.  At night you stare at the ceiling trying to keep your mind from opening doors that you pray will stay closed.  You wake up hoping it was a dream, and then you gear up to start slaying the dragon again.

I’ve ignored my cyberpyramid.  Partially because I physically couldn’t do it…mostly because I was depressed and simply didn’t want to do it.  I’ve discovered that holding a brave front, nonstop, is not the healthiest thing to do.  It takes a lot of energy to make everyone else around you feel better about what you are going through.  I was draining what little strength I had and couldn’t give away any more.  I was embarrassed that I was disappointing people.  I had always been the problem solver and the wall that they could lean against.  It was humiliating.

I was lucky that my cancer was small and a stage 0 and stage 1, with no node involvement and clear margins.  My test for risk of recurrence was 18…one point outside of the 1-17 low risk category.  Ain’t that a kick in the pants.  I had four doses of chemotherapy as a prophylactic treatment just to make sure none of the enemy set up camp anywhere else.

The first two doses were uneventful.  The third dose started to take a toll and there were a few days where I wished for the end of the day more than I looked forward to the beginning of one.  I thought about the children that go through years of it and felt embarrassed that I wasn’t doing better.

The chemo took a toll on my skin.  It turned brown like a coconut.  I had blisters down my backside the size of pancakes.  My palms looked sunburnt.

My hair, which was down to my waist, fell out and when my eyebrows did as well, I took on the appearance of Gollum from Lord of the Rings…minus the fangs and mouth foaming.

What they don’t tell you about chemotherapy is that it is designed to bring you to the brink of death.  It kills the fast growing cells in your body…the bad ones…and unfortunately the good ones too.  My fourth and final dose almost did me in.

I knew something had gone pear-shaped when I had to hang onto the walls to walk about three days after my treatment.  I figured I could tough it out, but my mouth and throat were filled with sores and I couldn’t swallow even a sip of water.  My daughter dragged me to my old nemesis, the scale, and made me stand on it.  I had lost ten pounds in a handful of days.

She literally picked me up and stuffed me into the car to rush me to my doctor.  Carly is a certified Crossfit trainer and an Olympic certified weight trainer, so there was no arguing with her.  If she was afraid, I never saw it.  When we got to the doctor the office was packed.  I could barely sit up in the chair.  To picture what happened next, you would need to visualize my daughter.  She looks like Gidget, with a quick wide smile and a friendly open personality.  Gidget calmly walked up to the counter and went postal.  She banged her hands and said, “My mother is really sick.  She needs help now.  NOW!”

They brought out a wheelchair immediately.  I remember catching a glimpse of myself in a window as they wheeled me by.  I looked like one of those Mexican Day of the Dead Dolls. I was in trouble.

We sat in one of those little rooms…you know the ones I mean…where they close the door and you wait for the doctor.  Up to this point, I was disgustingly healthy my entire life, but even so, I have always felt trapped in that little room.

I couldn’t sit up any longer and told my daughter I wanted to lay down on the floor.  She picked me up and put me on the examining table.

The doctor walked in and his jaw dropped.  They had all been used to me arriving like a tornado, joking and laughing.  I couldn’t even pick up my head.  He called over to the hospital and told them to get a bed ready for me immediately…no time for admitting…do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.

They wheeled me across the skywalk and I looked out the windows at the gorgeous blue sky and I wondered for the first time since this all happened if that might be the last sky I would see.  I was glad it was blue.  My daughter was quiet.  Her face was white.

When we got to the admitting desk they already had a bracelet for me.  The nurse that wheeled me over had always been all business and wasn’t particularly friendly.  She leaned down and put her arms around me and hugged me tightly.  I could barely reach up to touch her hand.  It was shaking.  I will never forget her kindness, because I was close to losing it and I didn’t want to do that in front of my child.

And then something happened that made me reach inside and find some more strength.  Call it divine intervention, or just timing.  The day of my first surgery, my mastectomies, an aide named Tony walked me up.  For every procedure I had after that, he was the one that walked me up.  He is funny, bright and up up up.  He became my touchstone in that hospital.  Everyone knows Tony…walking up with him was like walking with the Mayor of Nashville.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up.  It was Tony, there to wheel me up to my room, like he had so many times before.   This is a huge hospital with hundreds coming and going.  Timing?  Maybe.  Luck?  Well then lucky me.  I saw his big grin and I started to cry…not tears of fear…tears of relief because I knew that somehow I was going to be okay.

We insulted each other along the way, just as we had before.  He brought me to my room and helped me to my bed.  “You got this.”  He smiled.  “Yep…piece of cake.”  And I knew that I did.

I settled into my hospital bed where I would remain for a week.  Across the street, outside my window like a dangling carrot, stood Krispi Kreme doughnuts.  The red light was on…the doughnuts were hot.  No food for me until they figured out what was going on.  You can taste the “iron” in irony when it is staring across the street at you and thumbing its nose.

My white blood cell count was below zero.  I had very little red blood cells.  In another day I would have had a heart attack.  They pumped me full of bags of stuff, but I wasn’t doing much better.  The two residents, whom I referred to as the Wondertwins…two Ken dolls who looked like they had just started to shave…came in and told me my oncologist had ordered a blood transfusion.

I was reluctant to get one.  While they take every precaution to make sure it is clean, they cannot totally guarantee it.  The protocol for dispersing blood is a little daunting…they need two nurses to confirm the serial numbers.  They sit with you to make sure you don’t have a reaction.  They assured me that I would notice the difference immediately.

The first pint didn’t do much and I asked them to make sure the next one was top shelf and not any of that I-40 road kill.  The second one came in the middle of the night.

It was like rocket fuel.  In a vampire state, I was up wandering the halls.  I was reborn.

I went home a couple of days later.  I was told I would feel better and the effects of the chemo would dissipate.  It didn’t.  I looked like I had radiation burns and my whole body began to peel.  My immune system had been so seriously compromised, that the delicate reconstruction my plastic surgeon held onto for me for over seven months began to fall apart.  My skin just wouldn’t heal.  The tissue expanders that were put in to stretch what skin was left after surgery had been compromised and needed to be removed.   Drains were put in again, leaving me like a walking science experiment.  It was disheartening, but I was so tired of not feeling well that it really didn’t matter that much.

I have always tried to take care of my body…never smoked, and drink very little.  The day that I found out my mammogram was bad, I had just finished a six mile trail run with my daughter.  My body was ticked off at me and it retaliated by attacking itself.

When they took the left expander out, they found an infection that had gone on undetected…blimey.  I was on IV antibiotics for two weeks and all kinds of bug fighting pills.

I woke up one morning and felt pretty good.  I laced up my running shoes and stepped outside.  I live on a large farm with a mile long road.  I walked a few steps and took off running.  It was glorious.  I was running away from seven months of uncertainty and pain and disappointment.  It was raggedy and not really pretty…but I was running.

My strength has returned.  On Friday I will have surgery to remove the port in my chest that they accessed for the chemotherapy.  Friday night I will have a glass of wine to toast myself.  I had cancer…I don’t have it anymore.  It is over and I am past it.

I’ve become an eating machine.  I hope I can turn it off.  My weight, which plummeted even more while I was in the hospital, has returned.  Gee thanks.

I can tell you that my full body exfoliation is done, and my skin looks fabulous.  In a quirky turn, any cellulite that I had on my legs is also gone, and not from losing weight.  Had to be the chemo, because any chick will tell you…losing weight does not destroy all cellulite.

A genetic hiccup made my hair turn white before I was 30, and I have colored it since then.  It has started to grow back…a steely grey with black strands…wonderful.  Ugh.  It has taken on the appearance of a chenille robe or one of those sculptured shag rugs from the 70’s…close to my head and sticking out every which way.  I have Frankenstein scars where my reconstruction used to be.  I will try to build me some boobs again in a few months.

For now, I am happy to be where I am.  I’ve read that a lot of people say cancer makes them appreciate their life more.  Though it was rough around the edges at times, I loved the life I had before my diagnosis, so for me, the experience is a little different.

I’ve decided not to be afraid of anything ever again.  I’ve chosen mind…over what doesn’t matter anymore.  Any dragons that step in my path will be slain.  No looking back…or down.  I am back out on the tightrope of my life…stepping ahead.

Two weeks ago I met my girlfriend Pat at the track.  If I asked her to jump off of a bridge with me,  she would already have one leg over the rail.  She is that kind of friend.  We ran and did a workout with weights.  Neither one of us talked much while we rounded the track.  She had as many tears on her face as I did.  We can run again, together.

Day 339…simple victories are the sweetest.

Cynthia Neilson…the great and powerful.

A Tale of Two Cities:  Sophia Rose and Gracie…and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

It was a little over a year ago when talk show host Ellen DeGeneres introduced two little English girls, Sophia Rose and Gracie.  They skipped out on stage, wearing little tutus and crowns, and proceeded to bring the house down with their charm, enthusiasm and good manners. Sophia Rose proved to be a little firecracker, belting out a Nicki Minaj tune like a tiny Ethel Merman.  Her sidekick, Gracie didn’t offer much in the way of singing, but she danced next to her friend, not in her shadow, but as support, a total team effort.

Ellen, knowing a good thing when she sees one, procured them to do red carpet interviews at music award shows.  They’ve delivered in a big way, garnering their own following in the performers themselves.  They are joyful and excited, asking questions only their adorable faces can get away with.  Watching Sophia Grace sing the songs that each performer made famous, back to them, is priceless.  That is called hutzpah and she brings it home.  These two little girls are contagious in their delight and enthusiasm.  Even the rudest performers acknowledge them on the red carpet and stop by to say hello.  I’m sure there are seasoned interviewers who stand there with their mouths open as their microphones are passed by to get to the pint sized reporters.

There is never a moment when you feel like these two little girls are being exploited.  They are so appreciative and well behaved, still believing in fairies and hoping one day to be ghost hunters, though Gracie doesn’t seem real enthusiastic about that.

Their collective parents stay on the sidelines.  Ellen always has little surprises for them, and each one is accepted with a squeal of delight.  They are little girls who are still amazed at their good fortune and notoriety.  I don’t have a crystal ball, but I feel pretty confident in predicting that they will stay that way.  They were raised well.  There is something to be said for good old fashioned English breeding.

And then we have The Learning Channel’s entry…”Here Comes Honey Boo Boo”…a reality show based on Georgia born beauty contestant Alana Thompson…a child and her family whose behavior was so over the top on “Toddlers and Tiaras” that it bred a spin-off that is now revolving out of control.  The LEARNING Channel?  What can these people possibly teach us?

I am going to tread carefully here.  Alana is a child and her life has been orchestrated for her.  She is simply performing to the tune they want her to dance to.  Not all dancers are talented.

Ellen doesn’t interview Sophia Rose and Gracie…she simply guides them in a direction and lets them talk.  It is worth YouTubing to watch their observations.  One of the best ones was Sophia Rose explaining to Ellen how she and Gracie were going to chase ghosts for a living once they were done with the tutus.

Cut to Honey Boo Boo…delivering one of her Boo Booisms at the end of the show.  She delivers her ism, some of which you would need an interpreter to understand.  Her finale on a recent show consisted of her turning on all fours, her rear end to the camera so she could deliver her exclamation point…a fart.

Who can forget her delightful turn with Billy Bush, when she began hitting him with a Barbie doll, or when she pretended to be asleep on Dr. Drew and complained about the “fans” who bother her, as mommanger June looked on beaming as her little bread basket earned another “dollah”.

Reality television has made rude entertaining.   It is cheap to produce and market and has become a cash cow for the companies that grind it out.

They’ve dumbed us down to soundbites, with no investment of our time or focus, we don’t even stop to think that we are being manipulated and exploited too.

Are we really that gullible, or are we just lazy and so bored with our own lives that we find fun in rudeness, meanness and false representation?

The creators of such programming are short-sighted.  How far will they go to keep our attention?  I can only hope that they underestimate their audience as they under-stimulate us with artificially created moments for ratings, brought on by greed and the almighty dollar, regardless of the consequences, preying on our universal Attention Deficit Disorder.

Honey Boo Boo’s mommanger, self-proclaimed Redneck June Thompson is the hillbilly answer to Kris Jenner.  The Thompsons are like a Kardashian X-ray.  The parallels between the two families cannot be denied.

While the Kardashians don’t live in a house fifty feet from a train track, they bring their own West Coast hillbilly to the screen, with their own brand of overindulged, obnoxious and reckless behavior. We are all invited to revel in their beauty and opulent lifestyle, often outside by the “cement pond”, fronted by Kris Jenner’s three oldest daughters, with a Marie Antoinette “Let them eat cake” attitude.

Their farts and burps don’t stink unless they are making them money.

West Coast hillbilly Bruce Jenner, a star once himself, wanders through the show like a deer caught in the headlights, constantly getting beaten up emotionally and mentally, like a feeble broken down old man…banished to the garage to play with his model airplanes…only after he asks Kris for the credit card.  Seriously?  Come on.

The East Coast hillbillies refer to Alana’s father Mike Thompson, as Sugar Bear.  His daughter is the spitting image of him, no pun intended, as he is mostly seen with a huge wad of chew in his cheek and always looks confused and teary eyed like he had sand kicked in his face.

June’s three daughters by other various suitors are also featured on the show.  Theirs is more a “Let US eat cake” attitude as all of them struggle with weight issues, including Honey Boo Boo herself.  All parents think their children are beautiful, and entering Honey Boo Boo in beauty pageants probably started out innocently enough.  Sadly, she is fighting a genetic map which will place her outside the boundary of what beauty pageants expect.  We all like the underdog, but it is hard to cheer for her when she displays such a bad attitude and is allowed to behave the way she does, the star chimp in her family circus.

The Kardashians have a chimp of their own…the undeniably beautiful Kim, whose sex tape catapulted her to infamy.  It wouldn’t surprise me if they all have a cash register ring for the ringtone on their phones.

Of course, they are all getting rich, and there is a part of me that won’t fault them for it.  If I told you that I had a lame horse that was worth a million dollars and you were stupid enough to pay me for it, then I would have sold a horse worth a million dollars and you would have a lame horse.

No doubt June and Kris love their children.  We’ve been privy to those moments when the kids tease their Moms…June with her neck crust and “fork-lift” toe…and Kris, stealing style from Kim and stalking Bruce while he is golfing with another woman, all the while emailing the man she left her first husband for.  June seems a little less intent on being a star herself.  Kris struggles with the fact that her last name is Jenner and not Kardashian, the brand name she has carefully cultivated.

I’ve heard the excuse that production companies can’t afford to make sitcoms or dramas anymore.  They are cost prohibitive and the actors demand salaries that are too high for them to meet.

Yet the reality shows seem to be making tremendous profits…and their break-out stars are getting rich as well.  Snooki, falling down drunk, showing her ass literally and figuratively, commanded $150,000 per show and gets $50,000 and up for personal appearances.

The Housewives franchise, a virus of Marie Antoinettes, has spread across the country making the rich and the nouveau riche stars household names.

If you believe there is any “reality” in reality television, then it would be prudent for you to get a life.  Living vicariously through ill behavior, sprinkled with moments of humanity to make it more palpable, is a hangover in the making.

Barbara Walters just named Honey Boo Boo one of the ten most fascinating people of 2012.  You’ve lost it Babs…time to retire.  That is an insult to the millions of other choices you could have made.  How about Sophia Rose and Gracie?  They would be delighted, most likely, overjoyed…and none of your viewership would feel like they were being fooled or manipulated or uneasy about seeing them on the screen truly enjoying their moment.

I’ve heard reality shows called guilty pleasures.  Somewhere while we gawked at and glorified these “guilty pleasures” we didn’t even notice that we’ve lost our innocence.

There is no innocence in ignorance.

And when did the fart become the new laugh track?

Day 341…send in the clowns…don’t bother they’re here.

Cynthia Neilson