Like Licking A %*&#! Ashtray...

"Do you kiss your mama with that mouth?"

I had been stymied -yet again- by some random inanimate object that had decided to hate me and in my frustration muttered "Sonofabitch!" to myself. The gentleman who overheard me was looking very stern and sad to be so young. I tried to make the situation better.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. You know? When it comes to people I have all the patience in the world, but get me around the simplest mechanical thing and I go bugfuh- never mind."

Never mind indeed. This is actually sadly ironic because I was as much a late bloomer to swearing as I have been to everything else in my life. My first exposure to the F-word didn't happen until I was in the fourth grade and then it didn't take. A classmate had been beaten pretty soundly by one of the deaf students. (There was a mini-school for the deaf situated right next to the grade 4 classrooms.) The principal went around to every class and lectured us about teasing the deaf kids. She ended her talk by telling us to never make the following sign to them and made a circle with her right thumb and index finger and then pushed the left finger in and out of the circle rapidly.

"What does that mean?" someone asked.

"Uh. It means...chase me. So don't do it!" The principal was ushered out by my teacher, who gave her a few comforting pats on the arm before closing the door.

"'Chase me!' will get you beaten up?" I asked.

Someone threw a paper airplane at me and told me to shut up, so I spent the rest of the school year and part of the next thinking that particular hand gesture meant "Chase me!" I was finally disabused of this misunderstanding by my mother after I got cocky during a church league softball game and used the gesture while taking a leisurely lope between second and third base.

I had finally gotten the hang of stand-alone obscenity when I was thrown yet another curveball at the tender age of thirteen. We, meaning my family, had taken a road trip through West Texas. For some reason the odd town names amused my dad and he loved being able to say he'd been to Happy, Muleshoe, Whiteface and so on. We were taking a break in Earth, Texas. I walked down the street to get a picure of the "Shop Scenic Earth!" sign and noticed a handpainted placard taped to the front window of an old variety-type store. It said:

Come on in!
We're the friendliest store in Earth!

Underneath that someone had taken a marker and written:

My ass!

What? His ass is the friendliest store in Earth, Texas? He has a friendly ass? His ass is friendlier than their ass? For the life of me I couldn't parse it out and was a little afraid of asking my parents what it meant. I finally figured that one out a month later when I asked my new best friend, Terri, who had three older brothers, chewed tobacco and swore like an Aggie cadet.

Later that year my father allowed me to watch Monty Python's Flying Circus. So you'd think... No.

My sheer cussed ignorance of the linguistic red light district came into play again when I was in high school band. Our director was an officious man who did his own version of parade dress and inspection before every football game. He had a son who was studying music education at Middle Tennessee State and he allowed him to "practice" on certain less loved sections of the band. One particularly bad night after the guys in percussion had spent the afternoon being roundly spanked by the director, he decided to send Little Officious over to inspect us. A mere breath after Little Officious demanded that we stand at attention, someone, probably one of the bass drum guys, called him a dildo.

Now, I thought I'd heard this word before but I wan't sure. There was much snickering as Little Officious turned beet red and walked away very quickly. The whole thing had me confused. Why would someone get so upset over being called a Hobbit? Maybe it was time to check out Tolkien.

Dr. Officious stalked over to the drum line. He was so mad he was trembling.

"Does someone want to tell me what happened here?"

Everyone looked straight ahead, not breathing, hoping to become invisible. Everyone, that is, except for me. I had no clue what had happened. I wasn't getting what the big deal was.

"Jas!" Dr. Officious barked, "What happened here?"

"Well," I said, trying to play by the rules when I wasn't sure of the game, "Little Officious was doing parade inspection."

"And?"

"And..." I looked straight at Dr. Officious and said, "Someone called him a dildo."

There was a collective gasp from the rest of the drum line. I had no idea, none, what I had just said.

"A what?" Dr Officious said, nearly choking.

"A dildo, sir. Someone called Little Officious a dildo."

Dr. Officious squinted at me, pulled at his face, walked a few paces a away, came back and squinted at me some more while I looked back at him, gormless and confused. He sighed deeply, started to walk away again and whirled around, pointed to my section mates and snarled, "DON'T!" before stalking off to make the color guard cry.

Some time during my sophomore year of college, a classmate had a catalogue in her smut collection and I made the connection. So there you go. Some people go to college to complete their training and preparation for professional life. Me? I rounded out my vocabulary of inappropriate words and have been happily swearing ever since.

copyright 2008 Jas Faulkner

Gone (My Own Special Kind of Crazy)

Some people respond to stress by exercising or escaping into a favorite book or movie. Me? I have two ways of dealing with stress. Sometimes I'll get out my girlie fiberglass recurve bow and shoot an end or two. An end can mean a set number of arrows (usually six) shot in a round to determine the winner in a scored event. For me it means everything in my quiver. So anyway, I'm sitting here feeling very stupid and at the same time stupidly proud of the fact that I have peeled about an inch of skin -off of the side of my left index finger because I neglected to wear my shooting glove this morning. Go me.

The other thing is considerably less voluntary. When the going gets tough, I get weird and end up having lunch with my father. Why is this weird? Dad died in 1995. I could go into an explanation about how its part of my heritage or how this is actually a function of wishful thinking or that it's some kind of cerebral dump. Does it matter? Not really. The fact is, when I am emotionally and/or physically stressed out, the next time I go to sleep I find myself sitting at a table having hot and sour soup and crab rangoon with Dad. It feels very real and I'm not just talking about the soup or the table or the Brubeck that's usually playing in the background.

You know how you feel when you talk to someone you love? Maybe you haven't seen them for a long time and then when you talk to them again there's no weirdness or ramping up. You're right back to where you were the last time you saw each other. And, oh hell, I already sound crazy so I'm going to jump in with both feet. If they're dear to you, it seems like there's something intangible that they leave on you and maybe you leave on them that stays with you and makes you feel you're loved by them. I always feel like I did when I was little and would watch Dad draw or paint. He had huge hands and sometimes he'd stop what he was doing put a thumbprint in charcoal or ink right in the middle of my palm. It was just something we did when I was five and now I feel like I have a thumbprint when I wake up from one of those dreams.

So. Last Friday was just weird. I had almost scared myself out of being a playwright and was considering seeing if I could reactivate my admission to law school "so I could actually do some good for goodness sake!" By five o'clock that evening, I'd mentally finished my JD and was preparing to enroll in the Agricultural Law Double L program at UALR so I could save farms from Monsanto. I went to sleep that night hoping for something deep, dark and seamless. Ah, no.

"What are you doing?" Dad was shaking his head and adding sliced green onions to his soup.

He offered me a bowl and I shook my head.

"You need tea more than soup anyway." He poured me a cup of from the teapot and then settled back in his chair and looked at me.

"I don't care how good your LSAT scores were or how thrilled anybody back home is going to be, you know you don't want to be a lawyer. So I'm asking again, what are you doing?"

"I don't even know how to answer that," I said. "I just don't. But I know I need to do something."

"Sister, you are doing something."

"I feel so stuck. I've completely stalled out. Dad, this is not how I pictured my life."

"Does anybody have the life they pictured? By the way, I've been talking to your husband..."

"Dad, I am not going to get married..."

"Hush."

"How are you...? I'm not married."

He shrugged and chuckled. "Same way I talk to you. Anyway, he thinks I'm Fidel Castro and I'm not going to correct him. Why are you looking like that?"

"Like what?"

"Horrified. It's me in his dream, sometimes I get a little hammy and put on fatigues and a hat and a cigar, but that's all. It's not like your Tia Marcella has turned into a dybbuk and hovers around pinching his ass."

"Daddy!"

"Incidentally, she says 'hi'. Punkin, life is too short to be unhappy. Go back to where it's safe and familiar and you'll find a niche but you'll always feel sad and diminished and less than you could have been. That would break my heart."

"Dad..."

"Sleep on it and let me know how you feel. You'll know how."

Then it seemed like everything was covered in the heavy velvet curtain I had been hoping for and the next day I woke up feeling the thumbprint.


copyright 2008 Jas Faulkner

The Rest of the Story

So we finally got settled in and I made some progress on the play and no progress on the ethnology project. Between you and me, I'm sick of the ethnology project. I can't really come to any conclusions beyond "Mah people? They usedta eat squirrels uhcause they hadta. Now they don't haveta, but for some reason, it's fun ta eat 'em, so they do." This is embarrassing. I usedta, excuse me, used to be able to create entire taxonomies of the minutia of human behavior. Now I'm blanking on modern squirrel consumption in the Southeastern US? I suck. I need to crawl into a hollowed out log and die before my anthro teachers, my friends and my former classmates figure out how far I've fallen.

Okay, dying in a hollowed out log might be an extreme alternative. But as an alternative to what? Writing out recipes for fried squirrel and dumplings? Finishing a play about the personal angst of federal appellate lawyers? The hollowed out log does offer the option of feeding what little wild fauna is left in Middle Tennessee and maybe creating some really good compost so that somewhere a hippie is spared the ignonomy of meth production by the discovery that my remains could fertilize some really great pot.

But I digress. Sorry about that. The last day of my stay at the monastery, Keefer and Stuart came up to visit me. Both of them are chefs, absolute suckers for a pretty kitchen garden and are unable to pass up a chance to talk shop or cook. We put off leaving so they could get together with some of the kitchen monks and figure out how to make a gratin from various greens. In the meantime, TardDawg and I were cooling our heels, walking and talking with friends, well, I was walking and talking with friends. Snoot was given the run of the place and had managed to eat his weight in home-baked crackers and chicken during our stay. (The monks had lost their two elderly German Shepherds within a couple of weeks of each other earlier this year so Snoot was getting a lot of doggie love. More digression. Sorry.)

So fast forward... We had eaten lunch, which unbeknownst to me contained chard, which I cannot eat without getting very sick. I was trying to get home to meet with a friend who is in Nashville for a conference. Snoot was pouting. I threw up and passed out. I woke up to find that someone (Keefer? Stuart? Brother Andrew? Brother Toby? TardDawg? Doc? Sleepy? Happy? Grumpy?) had carried me to my bed and taken off my shoes.

"We need to go," I mumbled as I struggled to sit up.

"Not so fast, Missy! I think - we think..."

"YOU think..." Stuart snapped and rolled his eyes.

"What do you think, Keefer?" I reached for my shoes. Keefer scooted them out of my reach with his foot. I made a grab for them, slipped them on my feet and lurched out of the front door of my cabin with Keefer and Stuart in tow.

"You really scared us. It might not be a bad idea to go to the hospital."

Stuart rolled his eyes again. "Mister Kay also might not know what the hell you're talking about, either."

"Gentlmen!" I hissed, "We are at a monastery. Exercise a little decorum, please."

They mumbled and looked chastened.

"I still think you should go to the doctor just to be safe," said Keefer.

"That's very sweet but I really want to get to Nashville by two so I can give Michelle a call and see if she wants me to take her for drinks or Neely's BBQ."

They looked at each other and then Stuart shook his head.

"Sweetie?" he said gently, "It's 3:42."

"Oh, shit!" I barked and then looked around to see two monks giving me a bemused look as they walked by.

The guys trundled me back to Nashville. I gave them both a kiss on the cheek and crawled into bed for the next two days. Snoot the TardDawg is fine, but he does miss his chicken and crackers. I can just tell from looking at him that he's enacting his version of the old Celebrity Cruise Line commercials: "I was a PRINCE. I was wined, dined, massaged...One day...One day..."

As for me, it's time to get to bed. One of two things will happen. I'll either dream about ragey squirrels piling up Erskine Caldwell paperbacks for a bonfire, or the dog will learn to pull open the freezer drawer and get his own darned chicken. I'll let you know which actually happens.


Bon soir!
Jas

copyright 2008 Jas Faulkner

Life is a Highway...

Somewhere, Loki the Calendar Trickster is laughing his bushy tail off. He's been preparing for this week for a while and I swear I didn't see it coming.

Where do I start? A very witty, very nice lady from an online community is coming to Nashville and wants to meet for drinks. Yay! She's coming this week. Boo!

A gaggle of older relatives want to see the magnificence that is Dollywood. The most available cousin has offered to take them. They hate her. They love me. They decided this week would be the perfect time to get their 'billy on. They let me know last week. DAMN it.

Back in April, Stuart and Keefer phoned me all breathy and giggly to tell me that one of the men whom I thought would cause me to stop breathing if he never loved me back is now a monk. In Kentucky. And he has read my blog and wants to get in touch. Do monks read blogs? Not being RC flavored, I'm still a little confused when I see nuns driving. (Yeah yeah yeah, too much Sister Bertrille, too little cultural literacy.) I did and he invited me up to spend some time in one of the monastery cabins to write and relax. I took him up on it and planned to spend some time feeling all holy and shit while I finish a play and get my squirrel-eater study ready to roll. Those plans were for- Wait for it!- this week.

Hold it. I'm not done.

Monday, Livy called to tell me she had a very sweet gig and wanted me to come along. She didn't fool me. It's June, so the sweet gig can't be Beale Street. It's Bonnaroo, which I have managed to avoid lo these many years.

I sent her footage of Lewis Black getting beaned with a bottle at Bonnaroo.

She countered with a demand for proof that it happened in Manchester.

I referred her to the fact that Black asked if he was the only Jew there.

She shot back that one need not assume that there is only one Jew or any Jews in any given venue in Tennessee.

"Yeah," I huffed. "Sometimes it's HALF a Jew."

"Well, it's the wrong half, which makes you a gentile bastard. With a tail. Lets go to Bonnaroo." She paused and I could tell she was lighting up, (something that she had resolved to quit last NYE, LIVY!) "Anyway, I frickin' hate Lewis Black. If he's there this year, I'll throw a bottle at him."

"How can you hate Lewis Black? It's not like he's Carrot Top."

"You like him because he reminds you of your Grandmother. Seriously, if he spoke Spanish and ranted about cats, I could close my eyes and not be able to tell the difference."

I offered to let her take my relatives to Dollywood if I went to Bonnaroo. She declined. I went to Kentucky and found out that the Monks of Our Lady of Purpetual Chagrin use a place in Nashville when their computers die. Don't they have misfit monks who love to tinker? Maybe I'm getting that mixed up with Santa's Workshop. Never mind. So, I trundled back home and waited and tomorrow I will trundle somewhere else, much to the vexation of the dog, who was enjoying something very like what the Cowardly Lion experienced in the Emerald City. Forget boning up on my French. There is the fine art of doggy massage to be learned.

There is also an email from my boss, who wants to know if I think I'm funny. I am pretty sure this is a rhetorical question. What she really wants to know is why I corrected someone from DCS when they complained about hearing one of the social workers singing a Guns n Roses song with a client during a session. I guess I wasn't supposed to tell her it was actually recorded by Pearl Jam. Offering the information that I'd used my knowledge of the lyrics to "Funky Cold Medina" for clincal purposes probably didn't help. I'll just pretend I didn't see the letter.

Oh, well. There's always Dollywood.


copyright 2008 Jas Faulkner

Chest Hair, Beanie Weenies and Attila the Possum

So I'm trying to finish a play and two things keep tripping me up.

1.) My macros keep erasing themselves. What I'm doing is creating macros for each character, action, etc. and then making buttons for them on my toolbar. Every time I close out document or leave it open too long, it "restores" itself and I lose my frickin' buttons. Last night I had reached the point where I got my cute little tea cannister with Ganesh on it (made in Kenner, Louisiana, the most obvious provenance for black tea with Hindu gods on the label) and threatened my CPU. No dice. And please, please, as well intentioned as you might be in suggesting Word or Open Office, please know that both programs do this. I've also tried hitting save every few minutes to no avail. Argh. Just effin' argh.

2.) Three friends have lost their flippin' minds.

It all started with the best of intentions. Stanley is a sweet old guy some of us either know from art school (he was a teacher) or simply by osmosis from having friends who went to art school. He's retired, is living very simply and kinda hanging out at his house and making beautiful art. We all love him. Anyway, some neighbor got upset about the shed/workshop thingy in his back yard and sicced metro codes on him and he was given x amount of days to tear it down. Let's face it, some people suck. So Handsome Jeffrey drew up some plans for a newer, better, prettier workshop, got them approved and then enlisted Kevin, Keefer and Stuart to help with demolition and rebuilding and me and Alice to be support, whatever that means. So far, so good.

Then, Jeff started referring to the thing "Project Phoenix". Um, okay. Then he mentioned that The Men would bivouac in Stanley's backyard for the duration of the project. At that point, Keefer bowed out, pleading being low man on the totem pole at his newish sous chef position. Stanley, who would be visiting family in Monteagle, offered to let them stay in his house. Jeff wouldn't hear of it. This was a chance for the men of the tribe to pay homage to a respected elder. He then instructed The Men to meet him at Stanley's that weekend to get the job done.

I called Kevin.

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Sorry Boo, I've already tried to get out of it. Looks like I'm off for a few days of Robert Bly fun."

"Just tell him no. I love Jeff, but that's crazy."

"I tried no. I also told him that you had agreed to give me a baby and this week was bad for camping out because you were ovulating."

"Kevin! This is how rumors get started."

"You know, that would make a great Mother's Day present for next year..."

"NO!"

"Well, I guess I'm stuck camping out because you won't give me a baster baby."

"I can live with that. Do you want me to come check on y'all?"

"As often as possible!"

Here is my journal of what followed...


DAY ONE

I offered to pick up Alice so she could check on her husband. She stated that she was fine with seeing him when he got back and got it all out of his system. I dodn't ask her what that meant. I really didn't want to know.

Jeff reported via email that Stanley, being the sweet guy that he is, had already cleared out all of his art supplies and the little bit of furniture that was in the work shed. This put the guys a day ahead of schedule. according to Jeff, there was much jubilation and "a sense of our own precious Man-ness as we picked up our tools and prepared to work".

Having read that email, it was no small relief when I arrived at the compound just shy of six o'clock that evening to see that everyone was a bit bristly from having avoided shaving, but they all seemed be clothed and, well, not feral.

There was a small pile of lumber left over from what had evidently been carted off earlier. I offered to help them load it up so they could have the yard completely clean for tomorrow. Jeff shook his head.

Kevin put an arm around my shoulder and ushered me away from the wood. "We're going to burn some of that to scare away animals in the night."

"What animals?" I asked, "You're in a suburb that is surrounded by other suburbs."

There was no response. They all got very eerie poker faces. I took a step towards the kindling pile and they all lined up to block my way.

"You're scared I'm going to get girl cooties on your wood, aren't you?"

"No!" barked Stuart.

I took one more step towards the pile and they tensed up. I sighed and plopped a bag of Beanie Weenies, Pringles and Mountain Dew at their feet and walked back to my car.

My cell rang just as I got to the main drag.

"How are they?" asked Alice.

"Don't ask," I replied. "At least they aren't naked and chanting."

"That's probably on the agenda for Wednesday. You do know he has an agenda drawn out in his dayrunner for this week..."

The whole thing made my head hurt.


DAY TWO

I stopped by that morning to see the three of them huddled around a campfire. Kevin looked like the front of his hair had been singed and all of them had swirls and paw prints drawn on their chests with ash. No one had shaved. Thank goodness they were still wearing pants.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw something flutter and realized that the tent looked like something had clawed at it.

"Cat?" I asked?

"Possum," said Stuart.

"His name is Atilla," added Kevin.

"We have him contained," Jeffery cleared his throat and stirred the fire. "He got trapped in our tent and clawed his way out."

"He couldn't have run out the front?" I asked

"Well, we weren't really sure what to do, so we zipped him in."

"You zipped him in?"

"He was attracted by the campfire. He's clearly insane."

I bit my tongue, called a friend who works in state wildlife management and loaded the bumping, snarling trashcan full of mad possum into my trunk and arranged to meet my ranger buddy at the nearest Shoney's to get poor Atilla released somewhere away from the crazy people.

While I was waiting in the parking lot, the phone rang. It was Alice.

"How are they?" she asked.

"I'm waiting to give a bungeed-closed trashcan full of mad possum to a state wildlife ranger."

There was a pause and then a sigh. "The sitcom just writes itself, doesn't it?"


DAY THREE

This morning Stuart met me at the end of the driveway looking very perturbed.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"I hope you brought food. This morning I woke up and heard Jeffery and Kevin discussing who they would eat first if civilization broke down."

"And you're the first to go."

"I really don't want to talk about it." He sighed and played with a pocket snap on his cargo shorts.

I pulled on into the driveway and saw Kevin and Jeffrey hunkered over the fire. They had gone from looking like middle-aged Nashville suburbanites to cro-magnons in the space of 72 hours. Their hair seemed to shoot from their scalps in clumps and no one had shaved. However, there was hope: they were still wearing pants.

Stewart and I joined them at the fire. They looked up and grunted.

"Were y'all talking about eating Stuart?" I asked. (Yes, my brain was absolutely screaming about he absurdity of the conversation.)

"No!"

"Of course not!"

"We love Stuart. We wouldn't eat him!" Jeffrey kicked at a dirt clod and grimaced. "At least not as long as we avoid living in a post-petroleum economy."

My temples were starting to throb. "You know, you could eat crickets. They're the best bet for protein if things ever get...that way."

Kevin gagged. "Crickets! That's disgusting!"

"Wait a minute!" I snapped. "You would eat Stuart, but crickets make you gag? What is wro- What are you thinking? Why am I even arguing this? Stuart, they're not going to eat you. Even if it came down to eating someone, Jeffery has much denser musculature."

"Oh, I brought that up," said Stuart. "They said I would be better because of the marbling."

"What?"

Kevin shook his head. "You are so judgmental. How did you ever get through anthropology school?"

Jeffrey tut-tutted. "No wonder you're still single."

"Okay, I said, I've heard enough. Here's a care package. I'm leaving."

I strode out to the car and went away, all the while torn between being ticked off about the old maid crack and scared that they might think I was nicely marbled and eat me.


DAY FOUR

The smell is now overpowering. If they don't bathe soon, as in today, I'm going to taser them and hose them down. When I got there, they were all lying on their backs, heads together, humming. I stepped over them and looked at the house they were building for Stanley. It was beautiful. It was finished. I strode back out.

"That's IT!" I shouted. "Game over. The shed is finished. It's time to clean up all the caveman stuff and go home!" Jeffery started to say something. "I'll tell Alice," I said. Do not push your luck with me. This local production of "Quest for Fire" is closing. I have three Egg McMuffins in my car. Now scoot!"

Stewart yelped happily, stripped naked and climbed into the back seat of my car. I'm afraid re-entry into the twenty-first century may be problematic.

copyright 2008 Jas Faulkner

Romantic Seeks Dog-Faced Boy For Friendship, Possibly More...

It was a dark and stormy night...

Beautiful Alice's husband, Handsome Jeffrey, was in Indianapolis at the beck and call of his employers. Her two adorable littles were being stuffed with fruit pies at Gramma's and something was skulking around her bushes.

"In this weather?" I said. "I'll bet it's a cat or a dog or something trying to get some cover from the rain."

"Cats and dogs don't bother me." Alice replied. "It's the 'or something' that has me worried."

I sighed.

"What? What?"

"Alice, this is the first time you've had the house to yourself in nearly a year. You're supposed to be reveling in this. If I were you, I'd be running around the house naked except for a hat."

"I don't have a hat. I don't really have a hat head..."

"Okay. Not a hat. The centerpiece from your dining room table. I've always wanted to put it on my head and pretend I was in a Botticelli painting."

"You're so weird."

"Me? I'm not the one seeing monsters in my shrubbery."

"They're not monsters!" Alice protested. "For all you know it could be a crazed psychopath with a big knife."

"A big knife? Paging Dr. Freud! Do you want me to come over?"

"Bring your popcorn popper."

"What are we watching?"

"You'll find out when you get here. Oh, wait. There's someone on the other line."

There was a click and then a moment later she came back on.

"That was Kevin. He's coming, too and he's promised me there will be no Keanu"

"I'll believe that when I see it."

A half hour later the three of us were planted in Alice and Jeffrey's bigass sofa, clicking through the previews. First in the player was Cocteau's 1946 film, "La Belle et la bete". It's easy to see this movie strictly as a piece of lovely eye candy, but some of the themes about sexual attraction and relationships were a little surprising. I've always assumed that Beauty and the Beast was all about the calming power of love. Nope. Belle is one kinky lady. In Cocteau's version, Belle is at first frightened and repulsed by the benighted prince. However, she does a quick turnaround and soon it's pretty apparent that the girl can't help it, she's a freak for bears. By the final scene, where one might expect maybe a flicker of disappointment when the beast turns into a rather dandified man, Josette Day's face registers something along the lines of "Merde! Serait-il trop pour te demander de ne pas raser pour une semaine ou trois ??" (translation: Well, gosh darn it! I was expecting maybe a little more evidence of testosterone?) And then tra la la la happy ending kiss kiss the film was over and we loaded up the 1991 Disney Beauty and the Beast. It was more of the same, really, only it was kind of teenagey and had better music. I would love to see Bruce Campbell play Gaston just to hear him sing "Me".

Glutted on all of that eye candy and fairy tale magic, we grasped the romance on an intellectual level but none of us could personally see the attraction to such fixer-uppers. Then, because nobody was in the mood for sleep, we decided to watch one more movie, "Fur - An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus". Nicole Kidman does an outstanding job as Arbus, who, in this movieverse, is the bored, repressed wife of a portrait photographer. While venturing out on her own, she is spotted and pursued by Lionel, a former circus freak and artist of sorts who has whatever disorder it is that causes people to be incredibly hirsute. (Yes, I should look it up, but I'm also feeling lazy. Sorry.) Underneath all of that hair is Robert Downey, Jr., but the only way you really know it's him is because of his eyes and the voice. Fine, that's all we need. I mean, that's we needed to know it was RDJ. Okay. Forty minutes in, we wanted to have his babies. Maybe it was leftover buzz from Iron Man, but lordy, he was compelling.

Until Nicole Kidman shaved him. I yelped, Alice barked, "Oh HELL no!" and Kevin looked stunned and asked us if we were gay.

"What is wrong with you? That's Robert Downey, Jr's ass!"

Alice started reading a copy of Western Horseman that was sitting on the coffee table I took the remote and tried to find the button that would show me how much movie was left so I would know if I had time to make some popcorn. Kevin wrestled the remote away and sat on me for the duration of the sex scene. Just so you know, I saw more of Kevin's ass than I did of anyones' in the movie. Thanks, Kevin.

And then Lionel died and Kevin got sniffly and Diane went to the nudist colony and it was over.

We looked guiltily at each other and realized that we finally got it, it being what would make Belle want the Beast but settle for the prince.

Alice went to the kitchen and came back with three plastic novelty Halloween glasses full of cherry cider and passed them around.

"We will not speak of this to anyone." she intoned. We all nodded and took a sip of the magic cider while it thundered and monsters lurked in Alice's holly bushes.

copyright 2008 Jas Faulkner

The Diary of Ashley Miller., 6th Grade, Andrew J. Rosenberg Middle School

April 4th, 2008


Today our choices were taco salad, fish sticks or a peach half with a scoop of cottage cheese and some carrots and raisins in it. Grose! Thank GOD for Rice Crispy Bars and Raspberry Snapple or I would starve to death!

We had another assembly and I wanted to just crawl into the girls room and die because I figured it would be another hour of Coach Denise talking about everyone getting a stomach ache and then finding a flower in their panties. People? It's called MENSTRUATION and that stuff is BLOOD. Sometimes I just want to stick a pencil into each eye and lay down in the middle of the football field and die because special classes for girls are SO STUPID!

It wasn't all bad. I got to sit next to Barry in Earth Science. He's soooo cute and smart. I know his girlfriend could kick my butt and she's already been a teen board model but that's okay. He's so cool and smart that you just want him to be your friend when you meet him.

Well, everybody except Hillary. Hillary HATES him. Every time he gets an answer right or somebody says something nice to him, she looks just like that crazy chick with the big nostrils from that movie where Ferris Bueller is all old and wants to stop her from being student body president. The other day I saw her sitting in McDonalds with this high school dude named John and some of his friends and they were talking about blowing up stuff and she seemed so happy. My friend Beth goes to church with her and said she told their Sunday school teacher she was shot at by Crips at the Lone Oak Mall when she was at Wet Seal. There were some other guys there, too named Dick and George. We all know who Dick is because he drove his Dad's truck to school and had to go home because it had a rifle rack in the back window. Beth says she bets Hillary lets Dick slip her the tongue. Grose!

So the assembly? It was about student council elections for next year. It's going to be Barry against Hillary. Barry got up and gave a speech and it was very nice and then he sat down. Then Hillary got up and as she was climbing the steps, Jon and Stephen started making "bah-boom-dah" noises like they do in the old movies when Marilyn Monroe walks on the screen. Everybody laughed and Hillary got mad and ran back off the steps and grabbed Stephen by the neck pulled him out of his seat and started beating his head against Jon's legs. Then the principal grabbed her and started to carry her out of the auditorium and yelled at us for laughing. It was awesome. We could hear the principal telling Hillary to pull it together outside in the hallway and then Stephen got up and stood on his chair and everybody cheered.
Then Jon put his sweater in his shirt and started saying he was Hillary and this eight grader named Bill yelled that Hillary didn't have any boobies. It was so cool.

Then Barry walked up to the stage and told us we should all be ashamed of ourselves and people started booing and someone threw a pair of socks at him and he sat down.

I got an A in Spanish. Muy bien! Everything on TheN was a rerun. Beth said her sister has boobies and has to sleep on her back so she won't push them back in. I want boobies.

Until tomorrow! Stay sweet!
Ashley!

copyright 2008 Jas Faulkner

What's your Function?

We all have titles that we use to define ourselves as friends, co-workers, family, or significant others. We can spell out relationships using this simple tool of social taxonomy without a huge expenditure of tears and fuss. Slightly trickier are the assignations we give ourselves and each other when it comes to our jobs as friends, co-workers, family or significant others.

With me? No? Let me give you some examples: The latest object of my affection can be depended upon at least once a day to express his amazement that I am from Tennessee and yet I wear shoes, have all of my teeth and can read and write. We're working on this. Alice is my go-to person for all things gracious and traditional. While we were both raised right by genteel Belle mamas, it took far better on Alice than it ever did on me. Big Gay Kevin is still teaching me how to like boys/men/those funny acting things with penises. I've never been very good at the whole relationship-romance-flirty thing and he is there to keep me from punching men on the arm and patiently explaining to them using the farthest limits of my Buddha nature that Bobby Orr is the greatest person to ever pick up a stick, not that Gretzky person. So what is my job?

It's not a huge, important function, but it does make things a little easier in a pinch. I have finally figured out that I am here to supply all of my loved ones with bon mots when they're at a loss for words. I discovered this when I was on the phone with Big Gay Kevin and I asked him if he'd ever seen a Joe Gage movie and would he think it might be more fun to watch one of his movies than the usual fare (Keanu for him, anime or martial arts or something with lots of magical realism for me -or as BGK calls them: "movies we have to freakin' read"). Sorry. Getting back on track...

I asked Kev about Joe Gage and he gasped and got quiet.

"What's wrong" I asked.

"WHERE did you hear about that? Have you ever actually SEEN a Joe Gage movie?"

"Ah, no. What's wrong?"

"Well. They're movies for men. Whooo...like men. And they're not really the kind of movies I'd expect you to know about. I'm a little shocked."

"Really?"

"It's disorienting to hear you talk about Joe Gage. I'm not sure how to put this..."

Now, here's where I would normally plug in some clever turn of phrase that would make them say, "Yes! That's it!" The thing is, I have to think of one for myself. Dang.

"This is a bit like watching a toddler swear and flip the bird, isn't it?"

"Yes! That's it!"

My work here is done.

copyright 2008 Jas Faulkner

Oops!

This morning Beautiful Alice came by and hung out for a bit. She made us both a cup of tea and scooched the dog over so she could sit on the sofa.

"I saw your blog. Nice work! It was funny and Aunt Sylvia was really tickled. The thing is..."

"Yeah?"

"Jas, did you notice anything unusual about the theater or the people there?"

"Not really." I said.

"Sweetie, you're a trained anthropologist..."
javascript:void(0)
"I'm sorry. I was fighting the urge to run."

"The movie you reviewed? It doesn't open until tomorrow."

"Oh, crap. It was so long ago and I've been mixing up dates all month. So um, how screwed are you?"

Alice sat back against the dog. There was a deep sigh and I wasn't sure if it was her or the pooch.

"Does anybody read this blog? I mean other than your family."

"I'm not sure. Maybe a few friends. Chances are, no one even read that far."

Alice sighed.

"Actually, there were a few people at the paper who read you pretty regularly. I linked them in when you wrote the alternate ending to 'Ole Yeller'."

"That was good wasn't it?"

"Focus, Jas. I'm sorry. They did talk me down. You do spare me having to deal with too much of the Keanu thing and for that, I'm grateful."

"Well, uh, yeah. Yeah! You should be grateful. Who took your aunt to see 'The Lake House'? Hunh? Yeah? It goes both ways."

"You're pushing it, Jas"

"Okay. I do fell bad about this. Really. Seriously and for true. I promise. How can I make this up to you?"

Alice didn't bat an eye. She didn't hesitate. Her delivery of what the proper reparations would be was swift.

"Baked goods."

"Baked goods?"

Yes, baked goods. And make them cute. Maybe even...churchworthy."

"You've got coffee klatch at St. Tabitha's this Sunday."

"YES!" Alice collapsed into a teary puddle of person against O'Neill's furry side.

"Vanilla cupcakes with candied violets?"

"YES!"

I'm sure there's a lesson here somewhere, although the only thing I can take from this tonight is that I should keep better track of my day runner thingie and that there's little in this world that can't be fixed with a good homemade cupcake.

Namaste'
Jas

copyright 2008 Jas Faulkner

An Open Letter To Teachers On Behalf Of The Token Artistic Kid(s) In Your Class

It's getting to be that time of the year and two things have more than likely occurred:

1.) Your budget for schoolroom decorations has not gone as far as it should have and the stuff you bought earlier to hang on the walls and bulletin boards seems a little skimpy.

2.) You now know which kids in your class can draw or paint fairly well.

It is probably very tempting to see Number Two on the list as a solution to the problem presented by Number One. This would also be a good time to realize that resisting temptation is not just the right thing to do, it will possibly firm up those upper arms and give you strong nails and a glossy, bouncy hair. Okay, I'm lying about the last part; but really, try not to turn the need for a pretty bulletin board into an Americanized version of the in-betweener sweatshops in Asia that draw all those animation cells for The Simpsons.

Of course, you're probably thinking that this can't possibly apply to you. Oh no! That snooty Ms Reese down the hall should take a gander at this, but you? No no no no no no no. Hmmm. Let's take a look at some of the myths associated with The Classroom Artist.

1.) They LOVE doing this! What they love is doing this when they know it will lead to a good grade, something they can take home to Mom or Dad and the rush that comes from normal classroom competition that they can win. When they're trying to do what you asked and you are standing behind them, framing their work in your fingers like a Spielberg manque and muttering that you're just not feeling it; keep in mind that they aren't either, and the next thing they will be drawing is a cartoon of you being eaten by a velociraptor while they and their friends cheer.

2.) They love making something that other kids will see and enjoy now and in years to come. I'm going to speak from personal experience. Here's the situation: We've all had fun making the really great collages that you've asked us to make. In fact, everyone was anxious to take them home so their parents could see them. Everyone but me. Was I ashamed of my collage? Are my parents the type of people who would make fun of my creative efforts? Did I neglect to finish my collage? No, no and no. My collage was whisked from my desk and sent to the lamination shop. A day later, it reappeared in the glass showcase in the front hallway of the school, where it would languish for a month until the Thanksgiving decorations went up. I would visit it the way some of my classmates would later visit their boyfriends in the county lockup. For weeks I asked my teacher when I could have my collage. She finally snapped that she laminated it so it was hers now and to quit asking about it. The next collage I made was a depiction of my teacher being eaten by Idi Amin while my friends and I cheered.

And the ugliest myth of all...

3.) Making art for the class creates a sense of accomplishment and gives that withdrawn little mouse with a Marks-A-Lot some social capital. Face it, I'm doing them a favor. Where do I start with this one? Here's the thing: You are not doing that student a favor. You are asking for a personal favor. You're asking them to expend their time, talent and more often than not their own supplies to help you on a professional level. Do you work for free? Okay then. As for social capital, most of us already have that. We mousy types are communal voiders who hang with other mousy types when you're not torturing us in an effort to get us to exhibit some self esteem in class. Push us to create dioramas of the pilgrims laying the groundwork for genocide and the next thing we will create will be a picture of you being eaten by Ron Jeremy while my friends and I giggle like fiends.

The bottom line? Be nice about it. Ask, don't demand. Don't loan us out to other teachers like we're equipment that you own. For goodness' sake, don't throw a pair of dull, right-handed childrens' scissors, a black chisel-tip marker and two pieces of dented, dirty poster board in the hallway floor and expect Guernica by the time the bell rings. On second thought, Guernica is probably exactly what you will get. You've been warned.

copyright 2007 Jas Faulkner

There's Always Room For The Obligatory Pictorial Essay Making Fun of Vintage Cookbooks

Everyone else is doing them, why shouldn't I? Maybe because everyone else is doing them? If everyone decided to strip down to their underwear and jump into the Cumberland River, would I do it, too?

The cruel fact is that not only am I caving in to peer pressure, but I am doing so because I am once again my alter-ego, Phlegm Grrl, and cinema-therapy isn't doing the trick. Over the past three days I've wept copiously over "Finding Neverland" ("Kate...Kate...You find happiness with Johnny Depp and drop dead? Where is the satisfaction in that?!?!?!"), "Omhide Poro Poro" ("Taeko...Taeko...You won't be happy until you ditch the cubicle job in Tokyo and stay on the organic soy farm with Hiro. Where is your head? See? They're playing "The Rose" and all the cute little characters are scampering around your feet. It's a sign, Taeko. Go back to Soy Boy!") and the baby penguin that got eaten and his keening parents in the Antarctica section of "Winged Migration"("Bad raptor! You suck! You suck, mean bird!").

I needed some relief. I needed a cheap laugh. So I started looking through the cookbook shelf in the kitchen. All of them had some entertainment value, but the dessert books made some of the biggest leaps from kind of sublimely cool to ridiculous. Here, let me show you what I mean:

This first image is from a 1982 cookbook by Judith Olney called "The Joy of Chocolate".



It's actually a cake with chocolate leaves that were cast from real cabbage. Pretty neat, hunh? Then I flipped through and found this:



Okay, the bag itself, which is made of chocolate cast from a paper bag, is very cool and the fruit looks tasty. Maybe I'm off-base with this, but it seems like the pudding, which looks a tad lumpy and well, poo-shaped, is a bad choice. It turns the whole thing into something a young Jacques Torres might have left on the front porch of a cranky neighbor before ringing the bell and running.

Another example, one that will probably insure that you will never again take anything I write seriously, can be found in the 1983 "Farm Journal's Complete Cake Decorating Book". Actually, there's a lot to love about this book because it's all about pretty, tasty desserts that can be made without having to take months of decorating classes. We're not talking about the stuff you see coming from Texas Culinary Bronwen or Collette. These are the kinds of cakes that would make your mama very happy at the Mother's Day brunch at church.



Then, I moved on a few pages and my evil inner ten-year-old giggled like a fiend over this cake:





I'm sorry. I really am.

No I'm not. It's funny. The only thing that would have made this funnier would be if I'd found it in "Favorite Desserts of Presbyterian Women of Northern Alabama" I've already promised Big Gay Kevin that I'll make one for his bachelor party if he's ever allowed to legally marry.


Of course you know I'm saving the best for last and here it is:





It looks cute and Bradylicious and all, but I have serious doubts that anyone in the General Foods test kitchens really cared whether kids in the late 70s' would want "Amazing Magical Jell-o Desserts". In fact, I think there was a lot of toking and giggling going in in that test kitchen and the result was a book intended for stoners who love to cook when they get the munchies.

Take a look at this:




Would you even think of making this, much less eating it if you weren't in some way impaired?

And this?




It screams, "We were out of spray cheese and Fritos and we ate it and hey, maybe your kid will think it's ice cream and eat it." Come on. Those cones are grounds for a visit from the TBI and Children's Services.


Not everything in this book is bad, but I suspect that the stuff that is fairly decent was probably cannibalized from "General Foods' Presents School Cafeteria Treats For Boys and Girls".

Here is "Ship Ahoy".




And Dr. Cosby is right. You can't go wrong with "Puddin' Pops"!



But what are we to make of this?



Where is ice this color? Love Canal? Chernobyl? Planet Zarquon?

and then there's this:



In the cookbook, it's called a "Banana Wobbler". It looks exactly like one of the things that Stewart From College brought to Beautiful Alice's bachelorette party that caused him to have to write a letter of apology to the groom's mother. But that could be my inner ten-year-old working in overdrive again.

And the holiday recipes in this book...They're the stuff of kiddie nightmares, especially the Easter dishes.



These are not eggs, they're "eggs". That's right, someone at the GF testing kitchen actually cast cloudy gelatin in real eggshells and made those things. Imagine being the kid who finds those at the Annual Easter Egg Hunt. Honestly, if Easter makes you feel this mean, just skip this step and give your kid balut. (Warning: not for the squeamish!)

There was also HeckBunny:



You just know there's some demented Sunday School teacher from Lubbock doing hard time after a suckerware box of those was intercepted by the deacons.

Speaking of evil handiwork, there is a running theme in this book which looks like someone came up with a bright idea and everyone just ran with it. I imagine that person's name was probably Nathan. Nathan had always been the slacker of the GF Test Kitchen Crew. He was nice enough and he always shared the wealth whenever he was holding. As a chef? Well, let's just say that his parents thought a year of culinary school would scare some sense into him after he got kicked out of MIT for earning the nickname "Anything That Moves" and causing his room mate to gibber and drool during Fall midterms.

So here's the scenario: One of the more Type A chefs, we'll call her Denise, approached Nathan and said something to the effect of, "Look, you've been here three years and you haven't come up with anything original. This is easy. It's a gimme. Kids and Jell-o products. Give me something, anything I can use."

So Nathan sighed heavily, disappeared into the walk-in freezer for three hours and came out with this:



To which Denise said, "What the-?"

"It's food and it has a face. Kids love food with faces on it. See? Choo choo! Here comes the jell-o with the face!"

There was a long pause as they thought about this. Then they realized that it was late and it made sense, sort of. So there were lots and lots of foods with faces added to the book:









And there was much rejoicing until everyone remembered that NASA Dave, the government wonk who was there to make food tubes for astronauts, had totally missed the discussion. So they presented him with this:


"Cute face" he said.

"What face?" they all deadpanned and then NASA Dave muttered something about things just not being the same since Nixon stepped down and went home.

And with that, I'm signing off. I want some Jell-o. Their strawberry-kiwi and raspberry flavors are like buttah!


copyright 2007 Jas Faulkner

First Comes The Yard Sale, Then Comes The Delousing...

A few years ago, I found myself possessed of way too much stuff. I made an attempt to deliver it to the local GoodIntentions and was greeted frostily by a drop-off manager who had just been snookered into taking fifteen liquor boxes of garbage from some yuppie in an Escalade. Not nice. But still, my boxes and bags were full of clothes, shoes, books, records, and all kinds of household sundry-type stuff that people dig at the GoodIntentions. The Drop-Off Brahmin sniffed at my boxes and bags, declared the two he'd looked through acceptable and then snapped his fingers so two of his eunuchs could carry them into the store. Cheered by the approval, I started to unload the rest of my stuff.

"Wait just a minute, Missy! I have to look through those, too."

"Every one of them?" I was incredulous.

He stared at me and didn't so much as twitch when a fly landed on top of his forehead. Now, that was zen. It was also very unfortunate because I had to be somewhere very soon and had no time for each bag to be inspected and approved. I offered to leave everything there and they could throw away what they didn't want. No dice. So, I went back home with everything minus the two bags of stuff they'd taken in and got on with my day.

When Big Gay Kevin suggested a garage sale, it seemed like a good idea. People would get to dig for cheap thrills and I could pick up a little money. It sounded like a plan to me and settled on the following Saturday.

The Friday before, I made some signs and went to the intersections closest to my house to put them up. As I was putting up my last sign, an older man pulled up to read it. A lot of people had been doing that and then pulling away, sometimes shouting a cheery "See ya tomorrow!" so I didn't think much of it.

"You got computers?" he asked.

"No," I said, "It's mostly clothes, books, some movies and music and small household stuff."

"Well, lemme go see what you got."

I was taken by surprise by this. "You mean right now?"

He chuffed and said, "Well, yeah. I'll follow you home and check out your stuff."

Two things came to mind: everything to be sold was in a box or a bag to be put out tomorrow and this guy gave me the creeps.

"Ah no." I said "Thanks, but I've got some stuff to do so it isn't a good time. You're welcome to come tomorrow when I've got everything out."

"I won't come tomorrow." He said in an odd challenging way that I couldn't place at first, but realized that it was the same tone my nephew used when he would tell me I was no longer the coolest aunt ever for not getting him a Slurpee AND Angry Angry Beavers Bubblegum Cards.

"Oh, well." I said and gathered my tools and got into my car and drove away.

The hours on the sign said the sale lasted from 8 to 2. At Kevin's behest, I added "No Earlybirds Please!".

At a quarter to six the next morning, I went out to get my paper and saw a van with Indiana tags parked in my driveway. A short, sparkplug-shaped woman wearing an "I Heart eBay" shirt was trying to force open my garage door.

"May I help you?" I asked. For those of you not familiar with Tennessee manners and mores, "May I help you?" means "I don't know you, you're scaring me, and I'm about to get my big strappin' male cousins to escort you out of my personal space."

"You need to let me in so I can look at your stuff."

I was a hardened pro by now.

"No can do!" I said breezily, "The sale starts at eight. You're welcome to come back then."

"I won't come back!" she snapped. I shrugged and went back to my porch.

She glared at me and bellowed at the van, "Beverly! Start the van! We're leaving NOW!"

I saw the van lurch to the right as the sparkplug climbed into the van and poor, put upon Beverly, who was saddled the double challenges of marriage to the sparkplug and being given a woman's name, pulled away. Sparkplug rolled down her window and barked, "I'm not coming baaaaack!" as they rolled down the street.

Oh, but she did come back. And so did the creepy guy from the day before. And so did a number of other very original souls who I had no idea lived in my part of the state. I also got to know my neighbors better, made a little money and got the phone number of a man who wanted to be called if my neutered male dog ever had puppies.


copyright 2006 Jas Faulkner

Welcome to my Organ Recital

This is yet another post about woman stuff, so if you're male and reading this, you might want to stop right now and find something else to read. Why not take a look at Keith Olbermann's Countdown site ? Trust me, you'll be glad you did.

Okay, here's the thing. I went to Dr. Al Gore for my annual checkup. His real name isn't Al Gore, but he looks so much like our former Vice President that I've wondered if they're kin. To his credit, he has never rolled his eyes and sighed at me. This is no mean feat since he's been my doctor since 1986. He also managed not to make a locked box joke during my first pelvic exam, for which he deserves credit. But I'm digressing...

During this visit, I asked him about the absolute lowest age someone could reasonably expect to start menopause. (You see why I sent the guys over to Olbermann's site? They should be thanking me.) There's a good reason for this. I was sure I was going through menopause in 2000. I had a job where I had to do mulitple things like run a bitchy meme and come up with five to six fresh political jokes five days a week and was also told that the gig would run through the end of the election. Well, we all know how that worked out. Sometime around September, I stopped menstruating. I also stopped eating regularly and sleep became a hobby to be revisited whenever I could remember it. I thought it was due to me running out of eggs. Dr. Gore thought it was the stress of slipping into a persona that just wasn't me to entertain the masses and trying to find something funny about an election season that could have been scripted by Mencken on crank. When I when I went back to working with shelter kids at the first of the year and started merrily cycling, eating and sleeping again, we concluded that he was right. Score points for him for not being insufferable about it. Digressing again...

So I asked him about the Big M for real this time and he told me it was still a way off but that I needed to consider kegeling because the continual seasonal coughing thing I do this time of the year could cause the muscles that hold my stuff in to weaken. What? WHAT? I mean, I've joked about coughing up a lung or leaning over and feeling one of my eyes pop out, but now there's the very real possibility that I could cough and push out my uterus? What the...? Oh, that's just gross.

He then wrote down a URL for me to get instructions on how to kegel and blithely moved on to other topics while my mind was racing about what would happen if I dropped my freaking uterus. I was imagining waking up to find a collection of internal organs I had kicked to the foot of the bed in the night or worse, being in line at the bank or post office, coughing hard and getting a pantsfull of what should have remained inside of my body.

I let this anxiety get to me for about a week and finally called him to ask if there was anything else I could do to keep those muscles toned.

"It's not a big deal. You're getting a little older and it's time you paid more attention to details like that. Did you think your bladder was going to shoot out the next time you coughed?" he chuckled. He. CHUCKLED!

I wanted to say, "Yes, Dr. Gore, it has worried me for some time and when I got up to let the dog out to pee, my uterus just fell right the heck out. I've got it sitting here on a salad plate. Should I put it in a baggie of milk and bring it to you?"

What I said was, "Oh, no. That's just silly. Ha ha! Just doing a follow up."

"Well, good. Say hi to your mom for me!"

So that was that.

I'm not going to squeeze everything out like a cannoli in a kid's fist and life is good. Now I'm going to go see what Keith Olbermann has to say.

Peace,

Jas


copyright 2006 Jas Faulkner

Yeah, I'm the Freakin' Lorax...Siddown!

Most of the time I've really loved living in Nashville, mainly because it's a green, pretty city. To be accurate, I actually live in what used to be a small burb just outside of Davidson County whose main drag consisted of an Eisenhower-era Rexall, Nadine's Taxidermy and a family-owned hardware store that looked like a set piece from a community production of "The Music Man". Then the population started booming and quite frankly, a newcomer would be hard pressed to tell my once-little town from Franklin or Gallatin or Murfreesboro. Don't get me wrong, I think change and growth can be good things, but I am concerned about the effect this is having on indigenous flora and fauna.

Critters used to be abundant and there was a sort of respect and forebearance between the animals who called this part of Tennessee home and the bipeds who demanded to drive on it. It wasn't uncommon to see foxes, raccoons, muskrats and possums wandering around Gallatin Road when I came home after a long, late working night at the Opry. Herds of deer roamed the farms and could be seen running through the trees at the Army C of E Dam and Marina. Now those are rare sights. Even rarer are some of the plants that used to grow by the bushel in the forests and fields around here.

I'm starting to think that the credo for Tennessee has gone from "The Volunteer State" to "Ooh lookie! A tree! Let's kill it!"

This is going to sound really dumb, but one of the things that has bothered me the most about the building boom is how it is affecting the turtles and tortoises around here. There used to be more wetlands and there were plenty of snappers and loggerheads paddling their way through the cattails. They're interesting to watch and good for keeping the insect population in check. I'm sure there are still some around, but fewer wetlands mean fewer turtles and that's a shame.

Tortoises are a different story. There seem to be plenty of them, at least for now, but they have no place to go. When the weather changes you can see many of them squashed on the road as they wander around looking for food. The thing about tortoises is that they tend to stay on the same square acre or so their whole lives. When they get a mind to go in a direction, they keep going every time you set one down no matter how many times you interrupt his progress. So if a tortie thinks there's food across the street, he's gonna go and there's really nothing you can do unless you want to pick him up, carry him on across the street and hope he doesn't get confused and walk back into traffic. You can't relocate a tortoise to a new, quieter place and expect him to be happy. If he can, he'll meander back home. I know this from way too much firsthand experience. I've also lost a few perfectly good shoes that landed in the beds of pickup trucks driven by rednecks who swerved to hit the tortoise I'd just tried to keep out of traffic. I'm not proud of that.

I'm also not proud of the fact that I once attempted to use tears to keep a Metro Nashville police officer from writing me a ticket when I was stopped in the median just past a busier part of Gallatin Road to assist a tortoise. Mama didn't raise me to act that way, but at the time, I didn't have a choice.

I saw the tortie, pulled into the median and picked it up. Okay, I took a minute to pet it and talk to it. It was enough time for me to get careless about how long I was there and the next thing I knew, flashing blue lights. It was Metro. Crap. The cop strode around my car and started to tell me I needed to put my hood up. Then he saw the tortoise.

"Lady?" he said

Oh crap oh crap oh crap. I could not afford a ticket. I worked up a quiver in my voice and said, "I'm really really sorry. I'll move my car. I was driving by and he was starting to go across the street and turtles are really nice and they don't hurt anybody. See?"

I held up the tortoise for him to see and it responded to my call to bond with nature by hissing, pulling into its shell and peeing down my arm. (There has been some argument as to whether tortoises pee. This one did. Or if it wasn't pee, I don't want to know what it was...)

The policeman sighed, told me to take my turtle and please move my car or I would be towed. I thanked him profusely, offered to let him pet the tortoise (he declined) and drove to the shoulder so I could release him into the field next to the road and watch to see that he didn't wander back into traffic and get smashed.

So, where ever you are Mister Tortoise, I hope you had a good life and thank you Mister Metro Police Officer for either being nice enough to let me move the tortoise or afraid enough of the crazy hippie lady to let me do my thing.

Peace,

A Shame-Faced Jas

copyright 2006 Jas Faulkner

Studies Show That Southern Women Really Are As Mean As Snakes

There's this misapprehension everyone seems to have that Southern Women are docile creatures with big hair and Daddy issues who need nothing more than an endless diet of frou frou and a fainting couch. Did I mention that we all grew up wanting to marry our horses or Atticus Finch? Well.

I will cop to having big hair and quite frankly, I've always looked for the same qualities in a man that I could find in my late, much beloved horse. But a fainting couch? Frou frou? Most of us are more like Ellie Mae Clampett in spirit than Scarlett O'Hara. Think about it. Ellie Mae got to climb trees and hang out with all those cool critters by the cee-ment pond. What did Scarlett O'Hara ever do other than throw hissy fits, tease those pitifully inbed Tarleton twins and pine after that meally-mouthed Ashley Wilkes? I would go so far as to say - Gentlemen, would y'all please go into the other room and see what's on ESPN? Thank you. - I would go so far as to say that Ms. Scarlett was stuck in pre-sexual adolescence and was probably deathly afraid of orgasms, bless her heart.

Beautiful Alice would probably disagree on the grounds that she loves Scarlett. In fact when we were in college, there was a job announcement that got passed around asking for candidates to assist the docents at the Margaret Mitchell house for the summer. The flyer mentioned that the docents were actors who dressed as characters from "Gone With the Wind."

"So that means that someone down there is pretending to be Scarlett?" Alice stared incredulously at the flyer.

"I guess so," I said.

"But I'm Scarlett." she said in a deadly quiet tone that made one of our more Indiana Jonesish classmates scoot away from her.

"Honey," I said, "You're Alice and you're here in Kentucky. That girl was probably born and raised in Georgia."

"Hunh." She said. "Well, I'm just going to have to go to Atlanta and jerk somebody baldheaded."

I have to admit that I don't get that way unless someone wants to mess with my dog, my family, my friends or anybody whose work I like.

One of my ex-boyfriends will attest to the last item on that list. We were at The Beale Street Blues Festival when some intoxicated yuppies started screaming "You're fat!" at Etta James. ExBoyfriend Who Looked Like Liev Schriber pinned my arms and shushed me until a retinue of bikers a couple of rows ahead of us made their way back to the yuppies in an outreach effort towards peace, understanding and enhanced music appreciation.

The bottom line is that we're aware of our humanistic connections with each other and we're not afraid to use them. Say Tom Stoppard is a linguistic arriviste and I'll get my big, strappin' boy cousins after you. Make fun of my dog or Kevin or Alice and we're going to strip to the waist and duke it out in the parking lot. Did you say "Your Mama"? Do you see this Mephistophelean death stare? And we don't end our sentences with prepositions, Bitch.

copyright 2006 Jas Faulkner

Bunkered in on De Debbil's Night

It drizzled rain all night, so trick or treaters were sparse. I called upon my rights as a Phlegmsponge-American to pass on the fun this year. We kept the lights off in the front of the house and basked it the blue glow of scary movies.

I figured it would be a quiet evening and nobody was really missing out, so the guilt I'd experienced that morning for not setting up The Punkin Patch* pretty much went away. Around 6:45, O'Neill went a little bonkers. I knew the preteen across the street was going all out and figured he could hear them. When he kept barking I peeked out the front window to see two sets of parents and about five kids standing in my driveway. The parents were carrying those heavy-duty lanterns most people use for camping or power outages. I shrugged and went back into the living room, assuming they would eventually figure out that we weren't participating this year and move on to houses that were lit, decorated and had people standing on the porch with bowls of goodies.

You know what happens when people assume. A minute after I sat back down, everyone in the room jumped out of their skin as bright lights flashed into the living room windows and multiple fists banged on the locked storm door as all five of those kids screamed "Trick or Treat!" over and over. A quick straw poll by the BFF, his boyfriend and co-BFF, my mother and the dog concluded that since I was the sickest, sounded like Regan from "The Exorcist" and looked like Binkley from Bloom County, I was the best choice to go to the door.

I opened the wooden door, not wanting to open the glass door and thus spread my flu-cooties and the munchkins began pawing and clamoring. One of the dads pointed to the handle of the storm door and urged me to open it. I shook my head.

"I have the flu." I croaked. The fact is, I could have told him I was a pomegranate or that I was Inigo Montoya. It wouldn't have mattered. When you can't talk, people just parse whatever you struggle to utter into whatever it is they want to hear and move on.

"Aren't you going to decorate?" he bellowed at the door. We always take pictures of our kids here." He stared expectantly as the fruit of his loins and their little friends continued to mill around his legs and squeak their palms against the glass in vain hope that I would feed them.

I meant to tell him that I was really sorry, but I had the flu and given the wet, nasty state of things, it just wasn't happening this year. What he probably heard was: "Hello! My name is Inigo Montoya! You killed my father. Prepare to die!"

"Whut?" he bellowed.

"I'm sorry, I really need to go," I croaked.

"WHUT?" he bellowed again.

One of the smaller kids started licking the storm door where my dog's nose was pressed against it on the opposite side.

"Dude. When was the last time you fed your kids?"

"WHUT?"

I finally mimed and croaked, "I'm sorry. Cough cough sick here. Bye bye." and shut the door as a couple of kids hollered "Bye bye sick lady!"

They trooped away as Big Gay Kevin and my Mom helpfully sang "You're a Mean One, Mister Grinch".

I sank gratefully onto the couch and watched what was left of the movie. Thirty minutes later there was another knock at the door. It was a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses. I thanked them through the storm door and told them I was pretty happy with my own set of beliefs, but thanks for dropping by. One of the ladies leaned forward.

"Did you say you were Inigo Montoya?"

I sighed, waved bye and headed back to the couch. Before I could even sit down there was another knock at the door. It was someone from the local Seventh Day Adventist outreach group. They were canvassing the neighborhood to let everyone know about their open house/vegan workshop and taste-in. I thanked them and closed the door.

"There had better not be anyone else on this porch tonight", I said as I closed the door, forgetting to turn off the porch light. Unbeknownst to me, the porch stayed lit and not another soul knocked.



*The Punkin Patch is a tradition I've kept for quite a few years. I have approximately 55 of those fiberglass fake jack-o-lanterns that I've rescued from trash heaps, garage sales, thrift stores and the like and a number of other cute, tot-friendly decorations. My entire front yard is then covered in strings of green lights, jack-o-lanterns and other cute stuff. It was intended as a non-scary place for little kids to get bottles of bubble stuff and enjoy halloween. That way, parents could bypass the more nightmare-inducing yards featuring Jason, Freddy Krueger, etc and the older kids could have their fun with each other and everybody would be happy. Or something like that.


copyright 2006 Jas Faulkner

Think Pink!

I'm trying to find a delicate way to talk about this and words are failing me.

Oh, what the hell.

This is a blog post about tits. Gentlemen, I love you dearly and you gladden my black little heart and all, but hey, you're excused for the remainder of this post.

Really.

Go see if ESPN Classic has a good movie on. (And for goodness' sake, don't watch "Ole Yeller"!)

Now, where was I? Tits. Okay, we all have two of them. Well, most of us have two of them. And a lot of the time, especially if we're not particularly touchy feelie with ourselves or someone else, it's easy for stuff to go undetected.

That's why I wanted to talk to you about mammograms and the BSE or Breast Self Exam. If you are 40 or over, you need to be getting a mammogram once every one to two years. The BSE is something we need to be doing at least once a month. You can download and print an instruction card from the Susan G. Komen website here. It's easy! You can even do it in the privacy of your own shower. Hey, how often is it that the key to your peace of mind about anything is right there in your hand?

Okay, while we're on the subject of getting to second base with ourselves...well, yeah, your husband or boyfriend or girlfriend could help you, but they need to read the card you're going to print out so they know what they're doing. Speaking of boyfriends and husbands, it's much a rarer thing, but they can get breast cancer, too.

The scary thing about male breast cancer is that with the exception of Fabio's, most moobs (man-boobs, Mom) are going to be much smaller than our boobs; so cancer can spread to the chest wall more quickly. Early detection is pretty important for them, too. Note any changes in the chest area including lumps, skin dimpling, puckering or nipple changes. (Why do men even have nipples?)

Want to learn more? Visit The Komen Foundation's website at http://www.komen.org . You'll find all kinds of useful information about breast cancer dectection and treatment. There is also a wealth of information about ways to support agencies that are working to eradicate Breast Cancer.

And by the way...October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. You might have noticed that some of your favorite retailers and products are sporting pink ribbon logos or pink packaging right now. Those aren't Easter leftovers. They're special products indicating that a portion of the proceeds from the sale of that item will go toward funding for breast cancer research and awareness education. So if you're deciding which item to buy, the choice is easy. For the month of October, do the right thing and Think Pink!

Peace!

Jas

copyright 2006 Jas Faulkner

Curbed Service

Please bear with me because I'm going to get on my soapbox for a paragraph. Summer is nearly over and many regions in the US are experiencing slightly cooler weather. It's very tempting to load your best four-legged friends into the car when you head out for errands. What a lot of people don't realize is that it's still pretty warm and your pup could get mighty uncomfortable waiting for you as the sun hits those windows and windshields and heats up the inside of your car. So please think twice and leave your bud at home and maybe bring them a nice organic biscuit or something.

Now, having said that, I've been subjected to two instances of well-intentioned people who just wanted to be sure that I wasn't leaving some creature in my car to roast. Fortunately, it wasn't the case either time, but they were not to be deterred. I salute them and offer their acts of heroism up for your amusement.

The first happened many years ago. My nephew, SproutBoy, was just a tot and had a stuffed platypus that he adored because it was colored just like the shih tzu who owned me at the time. PlattyBooger's permanent place soon became the place next to Sproutie's car seat. I would often forget it was back there until someone asked me about the gray and white fuzz ball in the back seat.

So it's late spring and it's kind of warm. I'm in a hurry to get two boxes of juice pops for the kids we would be subjecting to adventure-based therapy, so I was trying to get out of the car and sprint into the store when the woman loading her groceries in the car next to mine stopped me before I could get too far.

"Don't you think you should at least crack your windows open a little?" she asked.

"Oh, I'm only going to be in there for a minute." I gave a goofy sweeping gesture with my hands that I hoped she would take to mean that I wanted her to let me by.

She took a deep breath and then her lips disappeared.

"It's hot in that car." she barked at me.

"I really appreciate your concern but my windshield isn't going to crack. We're just barely into th 80s tempwise."

She strode to my car and tapped on the back driver's side window.

"What about this?" she snapped.

"What?" I leaned over to see what was upsetting her and it dawned on me that she thought Plattybooger was a live animal.

"Oh! It won't feel a thing!" I chuckled and started to walk away.

She drew a quivering breath and shouted at me "HOW can you be so heartless?"

"Ma'am," I said, "Look. It's not alive" I leaned over and tapped the glass. Platty didn't move.

"It's DEAD!" She began to cry.

A bag boy walked up to see if everything was okay.

"It's dead!" She said again, glaring at me accusingly.

"It's polyester!" I said. I opened the door and took Plattybooger and held it up for her to see, wiggling his pink felt beak and feet at her.

The bag boy blinked at me. "You mean to tell me you're leaving a stuffed platypus in your car with no water and the windows rolled up in 80 degree weather?"

The woman shook her head. "I keep trying to tell her..."

I'd had enough. "I'm going in. The two of you can sort this out any way you want to."

It wouldn't have surprised me in the least if I'd come back to find the woman had opened a carton of milk and a bag of Oreos and was having morning snacks with the bagboy and Plattybooger. She was gone. No one had smashed in a window, but I must have forgotten to lock the back door because Platty was sitting upright with a bottle of water between his front flippers. That'll teach me.

Okay, so what are the odds of coming across similarly inclined but well-intentioned loonies? It was almost ten years later. I had retrieved my dog, a large Old English Sheepdog mix, from his spa day at the groomer's and stopped at a Mexican place to pick up the dinner order I'd called in.

Because I knew it would only take me a few steps and as many minutes to get dinner, I turned up the AC, cracked one back wondow about six inches so he could poke out his snoot and sniff around, clipped off the door key and locked the doors. I was in there maybe three to five minutes when the couple who had been ahead of me in line came back to inform me my dog was shut in a car in the heat. I assured them that it was much cooler in the car than it was in the restaurant and stayed where I was. They left in a huff and then returned madder a couple of minutes later while the counter guy was ringing me up.

"He growled at us! We were trying to help him and he growled at us." The girl looked very angry and a bit shaken.

It wasn't like him to growl at anybody. Then the boy spoke and cleared everything up.

"And he took our tacos."

What? I went outside to find O'Neill still in air conditioned comfort, happily tearing into a bag of tacos.

"Every time we reach in, he growls at us." The girl complained.

"He thinks you're going to take his tacos." I said.

"They're OUR tacos!" The boy corrected me.

"He did leave you a couple." I said. There were a two tacos still in their wrappers on the ground next to a piece of the bag O'Neill hadn't managed to pull into the car when they were probably trying to "liberate" him.

They snatched up their tacos and went back into the restaurant. I saw them point at O'Neill and me as they talked and then I saw the counter guy laugh. Who knows? Maybe they entertained him sufficiently that he comped them some more tacos.

My point, and I do have one, is that it's always a good idea to speak up if you think an animal is in danger. However, use some common sense. The dinner (and dignity) you save may be your own.

copyright 2006 Jas Faulkner

Finding Jesus, Seeing Buddha in the Road and Getting Lost With Chet

I was sitting in the backyard with Legba. It was late and we were enjoying what was probably one of the last remaining nights of the year when everything was still lush and yet the weather wasn't unbearably hot.

A small, squat woman leaned over my gate and waved.

"Yoohoo! Hellooo!"

I waved and then turned back to Legba. He was about to tell me the truth about Robert Johnson and I didn't want to ruin the moment.

"Uh, hi! Hello? Can we talk for a minute?"

Legba rolled his eyes, sipped the lemonade I'd made for him and stared off into the distance. I sighed and got up from table.

As I approached the gate, the woman fidgeted and wiggled like a happy, fat scottie.

"Can I help you?" I asked.

"No." she said, using the same tone of voice my dentist's assistant uses just before she's about to do something she knows will hurt like a bitch. "I'm here to help YOU. Let me ask you this. Have you found Jesus?"

Legba dropped his cool act and looked genuinely startled.

"Crap." He said "You mean the Ramirez kid is missing? He's only three. Maybe we should call the police."

The lady cleared her throat loudly.

"My dear sir," she intoned, "I assure you that Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is not a small Mexican child."

Legba drained his glass and shook his head.

"Sweet Jas," he said as he got up and appraoched the gate, "Given the sudden change in the barometric pressure, the next one is gonna have to be a bit harder."

I took his glass with every intention of filling it with lemonade and a shot of Lynchburg's finest, but I also didn't want to miss a word of the exchange that was sure to follow.

"Now why is it, my dear lady, that you don't think Jesus could be a small Mexican boy? What does Jesus look like? I need something to go on if I'm going to go looking for him."

Legba cocked his head to the side and waited for the squatty woman to respond. She patted her lips with two fingers and cleared her throat.

"Well, I ah, didn't actually mean for you to go looking for Jesus."

"Why not? You asked us if we'd found him. Is he lost or not? And if he is lost, how does a grown man get that way in this day and age unless he's Chet Baker?"

"I think you might have misunderstood..."

"You're about to tell me some little white man named Jesus is lost? In Tennessee? Jas, are you listening to this?"

I smiled reassuringly at the lady. She smiled back at me, hopeful that she had an ally.

"Ma'am?" I said.

"Yes?" She was almost breathless.

"Have you checked in Rhea County?"

"Rhea County?"

"Yeah. It's in East Tennessee, at the foot of the Cumberlands. Pretty country. They had the Scopes Trial there. Now there are a hand full of churches and a Bible college and the home base of some organization that wants people to remember Tennessee's Biblical heritage, which is really kind of funny, because I've read the Bible cover to cover and I've never seen Tennessee mentioned anywhere."

Legba glared at me.

"Girl stop the stupid before you have to see a grown man cry."

"I'm just saying it makes more sense for Jesus to want to be around his people. You see what I'm saying?"

Legba muttered something I didn't quite catch and the lady reached over the fence to touch my arm.

"Are you a Christian?"

Marc Cohen might have sang "Ma'am, I am tonight." but all I could manage was a cheery "No ma'am. I'm Buddhist. I follow the teachings of Buddha. Have you seen him lately?"

"Buddha?" She looked very confused.

"I'll bite," said Legba, "What does Buddha look like?"

There are quite a few fat, cheerful bald guys wandering around. It would be a pity to have their moods ruined by this lady. So I lied.

"What does Buddha look like? Well. He looks like Keanu Reeves."

Legba spluttered and walked back to his lawn chair. The lady looked very distressed and backed away.

"I need to go," she choked out,"But thanks for the chat."

I went in and got Legba a fresh lemonade that would hopefully carry enough kick to loosen up his tongue.

"Keanu Reeves." He snorted. "That little cocksmoker doesn't look a thing like Keanu Reeves. Danny DeVito maybe. Is this strong?" He took a sip. "Oh yes it is. Now where was I?"

"Robert Johnson."

"Yeah, yeah. I met Robert Johnson one night when that little fool was trying to hitchhike to Memphis..."

copyright 2006 Jas Faulkner

Tell Me What's On Your Transcript, And I'll Bet Good Money You Didn't Go To My Alma Mater

 

Somewhere there is someone who has filled out the little slip of paper required to get a transcript, included all of the dates of attendance, name, s.s.n., d.o.b., m.o.u.s.e., included the appropriate funds and their records were shipped toot sweet to the institution of their choice and they went on their merry way and everyone was happy and there were kittens and puppies and sunshine and rainbows and they ate Cherry Garcia until they threw up.

That never happens to me.

I blame myself for a lot of this. You see, I would decide to go to college for all the wrong reasons, be incredibly miserable for a while, drop out and then go back thinking I'd surely grown up enough to get over the desire to be a cowgirl or an astronaut and just get on with my life. Being smart doesn't help. My interests and focus were all over the place and my transcipts look like someone put clothes on a bonobo, gave them a backpack full of textbooks and the keys to a dorm room and sent them school for a few months at a time. Was that really me? Alas, yes. So I can't blame anyone for losing a semester or two when they've had the sorry job of collating all of those lovingly hammered dot-matrix sheets that are supposed to represent my misspent youth. But still... That's my youth they're messing with. They could be a little more careful.

This morning, I had to straighten out a situation with Northwest Mississippi Junior College. I went there because they gave me a full ride marching band scholarship to play the cymbals. No, I'm not making this up.

The thought of dialling Senatobia made me wish I knew someone who could get me a tab of acid. Okay, that's a bit harsh. I'm a one-beer drunk (which also means I was really bad at being an Episcopalian) so maybe I should have chewed on a couple of baby aspirins and leathered up. You see, a few years ago, I was desperate to make everyone happy and applied to law school.* When I requested transcripts from Northwest Mississippi, they were convinced I wanted to go to school in Senatobia and informed me I had to either finish high school or send them proof of graduation.

"I just want my records sent to Our Lady of Perpetual Chagrin School of Law for Wayward Girls. I've sent you the information and the money already."

"But I don't see anything here about your high school..."

"You don't NEED my high school information. You're sending records OUT, not processing me IN. Please, just send my transcripts."

"Young lady, do you want to go to college?"

"Ma'am, I've been to college. I have a degree-"

"Oh, really? What's your degree in?"

"Anthropology."

"What's that?"

Oh, hell. Ask any anthropologist to define anthropology and they'll either change the subject, tell you they don't know or give you a list of definitions to pick from.

"It's monkeys and dead people," I said.

"Do your parents know you're doing that?"

"Ma'am please, please, please, I beg of you. Just send my records to Our Lady of Perpetual Chagrin School of Law for Wayward Girls."

"I'll have to check with my supervisor."

They took all of the info again and then called me back thirty minutes later to say they'd found all of me. Thank. God.

One down, three to go. The most potentially worrisome was my alma mater, Western Kentucky. It's not that I've had any real problems with them as an alumnus. It's just that the last semester before I graduated, something happened that shook my faith in their administrative staff.

Someone from the records office who does graduation review took a look at all of my transcripts and decided, two weeks shy of graduation, to call me and let me know that I needed two PE classes and a speech class before they'd let me graduate. I had majored in theatre most of the time I was at my previous school in Memphis and had tons of dance hours, stage combat and juggling as well as the aforementioned semesters in marching band. She finally relented and allowed for the prancing and crashing. But what about the speech class?

"I'm two credits shy of a theatre degree from Memphis. You mean to tell me nothing on that transcript would qualify as a speech class?"

"I don't see anything on here actually called speech. Just being in the speech and theatre department doesn't count."

I wracked my brains trying to remember what Memphis State called their speech classes for majors. I knew there was one that had the unfortunate abbreviation of anal-oral comm., but that wasn't it. Then I remembered taking a class from a very funny, smart woman who had gotten her start writing speeches for Gerald Ford. Everything came back but the actual name of the class.

"Is there anything from that department with 'political discourse' in the name?" I asked.

"No, there's nothing here I can use."

"Please look again. Is there anything listed that does not include the words 'theatre', 'acting', 'voice', 'dance' or 'tech'?"

"No. Oh, wait. Here's one, but it's not a speech class so you can't use it."

"What is it called?" I asked.

"It's a funny word."

"What is it?"

"I have no idea how this is pronounced." She was getting very tired of me.

"Would you spell it out for me?"

"Oh, all right. R-h-e-t-o-r-i-c."

"Ma'am...?"

"That's not a speech class!"

"Do you have a dictionary in your office? Go look it up. I'll wait."

I heard her set down the reciever and go ask someone what that funny word meant. She interrupted them to explain that I was demanding she count that as a speech class. Then there was a moment of silence followed by urgent sounding whispering and the tippytap of her footsteps returning.

"You're good to go! See you at Diddle Arena (no, I'm not making that up, either) in two weeks! Bye bye!"

She hung up and I went somewhere quiet and chewed on baby aspirin until it was time for my next class.



*Yes, I got in. No, I didn't go. Don't you think there are enough lawyers as it is?

copyright 2006 Jas Faulkner