Small Kindnesses

I'm at my childhood home in Indiana, and we have a white Christmas this year.  This doesn't happen nearly as often as a lot of people in New York seem to think it does ("Don't you always have a white Christmas there?" people ask me when the subject of going home for Christmas comes up around those native New Yorkers whose view of the Midwest is largely shaped by Hallmark Christmas movies.)  When it does happen, I always announce that I love it.  My dad disagrees.  This is largely because we have a very long, hilly driveway that made summers playing in the front yard blissfully free and private but makes shoveling snow hellish.  For me, though, I still see the lawn and driveway through the eyes of a child.  The snow smooths everything over, erasing the moss between the bricks on the pathway to the front door, the plethora of patched cracks in the driveway's asphalt, and the sad little half-bush that's all that remains of the once healthy and robust plant at the base of our now netless, sunbleached basketball hoop....  In their place is a glistening, soft, bright cover that blurs all the harsh edges and hints at magic and fun to be had, of a fresh start and new tracks to be made.  Children come out to sled and make snowmen, laughter can be heard up and down the street, and everyone seems a little happier, a little gentler, a little more prone to small acts of kindness.  I love small acts of kindness.

So today I'm going to share a couple of my favorite small acts of kindness from this past year.  I spent several months at the beginning of the year as core background on a large film.  Every morning at work I spent at least an hour in hair and makeup, as did the other background ladies.  Then when we got on set, there was a team of hair and makeup artists specifically dedicated to retouching the background actors between takes.  Another team of hair and makeup artists were dedicated to the principal actors, while, as is usual on a film this size, the film had one man who was dedicated exclusively to retouching the A-list movie star at the helm of this film and making sure he never had a hair out of place, no matter how many takes he did or how much he ran around or what the wind was doing.  Most of the time, when I see movie stars get retouched between every take, it gets to be such a routine act for them that they cease to acknowledge the crew member doing the retouching.  They'll carry on a conversation with someone else or be lost in their phone, never acknowledging the person dabbing away sweat or combing their hair.  That was never true of this actor, who always said "thank you" and was never on his phone.  (In fact, when addressing any crew member, he frequently threw in the crew member's name -- something which you only realize is all too rare once you hear someone do it -- and a pat on the arm or back, a habit which charmingly rubbed off on the little girl playing one of his onscreen young daughters.)  This actor was always aware of his surroundings, always watching people and fully engaged, never aloof, never treating crew members as if they worked beneath him, even if they were assigned exclusively to him.

Though most of the film was shot indoors, there were a fair number of days we shot outdoors, in the very cold, very windy final days of winter.  On those days, the hair and  makeup artists dedicated to the background actors were frequently nowhere to be found for large chunks at a time, wisely electing to stay indoors just off set most of the time rather than freeze as they walked around to check on us.  In fact, we background actors were surprised that A-list Movie Star stayed outdoors between takes and shot setups, just hanging out in frigid weather chatting with people when he could easily have sought the warm shelter of either a heating tent or the heated building feet away.  But by staying out with us, he kept a hundred background actors (and background actors are notorious complainers) from complaining about the weather.  Instead, we were laughing and having fun.  If it wasn't a big deal to him, how could it be a big deal to us? At one point, when the camera guys asked the star if he would "mind taking off your coat and standing here so we can see the shot, since you're already out here," he jumped up from his chair with a grin on his face and a twinkle in his eye and, shrugging off his coat, said, "I'd love to! I was getting a bit overheated...  Aaaahh, that's better" as a vicious wind blew in his face.  Everyone within ear shot laughed, and if it weren't for his attitude and the feeling that he was in this with us, morale on that cold set -- where we were all under-dressed and stuffed with hand warmers and body warmers and feet warmers and as much long underwear as would fit under our costumes -- would probably have plummeted.

Most of the ladies (and by "most" I mean I believe every single lady except for one other and me) had the benefit of wearing a hat on these outdoor days.  I wasn't so lucky.  And the hairstyle they'd given me had lots of face-framing ringlets.  Ringlets look pretty and all, but when the wind is blowing and you're standing outside for hours, hair blows in your eyes and makes your eyes water and you can't keep the hair out of your face and then your eyes get all stingy and red and you keep trying to figure out what the best angle is to stand so that the hair doesn't get into your eyes and you try to hold that position until the last possible second....

I successfully made it through one day like this without too much trouble, but on the second day, the wind was much worse, and I was suffering through stingy eyes and in quite a lot of pain.  Not long after A-List Movie Star came on set that day, when I was placed about 20 feet from him, in between takes as I was trying to flip the hair out of my eyes we made eye contact, and I realized he was watching my struggle with a look of concern.  I looked away, but I saw him motion to his dedicated stylist to come over to him, and he said something to the stylist.  Twenty seconds later, as cameras were rolling and the take was about to start, I felt someone swoosh up behind me and start changing my hairdo.  "We saw you struggling over here.  This is not a wind-friendly style.  I'm just going to fix this," the star's stylist said, quickly and expertly sweeping my ringlets up into a new style.  "That should be better," he said with a smile, swooshing off as I said a surprised "thank you" and the take started.

The stylist checked in with me later to make sure it was working for me.  It was.  I had no more hair in my eyes, no more stinging, no more moments of blindness where I had to shut my eyes and try to toss the hair away.

It was a small kindness to send his personal stylist over to fix my hair, but it made all the difference for me that day (and the days going forward, since the look without face-framing ringlets was now established on camera).  It was small but meaningful, it was unexpected, and it was done knowing he'd never hear a thanks from me.  And that's my favorite kind of small kindness.  That star did similar acts for other people.  On one shot with many performers and very complicated blocking, right as the 1st AD shouted, "Rolling!"  the star noticed one performer was choking down a cough.  She was prepared to go for the shot, and she was far too "unimportant" on set to hold up the take.  She didn't see the star notice her struggling, but as soon as he did, he held up his hand and told the director he needed a moment, making some business until he saw she was good to go, at which point he told the director he was good.  No one knew the take had been held for someone else (aside from eyes like mine that see everything).  From then on for that shot, he got in the habit of looking at every other performer when the crew announced they were rolling, methodically registering that every other performer was good to go, too, before he got in a position that allowed the take to start.  Most people never knew he was doing that, but they felt the effects of his thoughtfulness, whether they knew it or not.

So as the snow comes down and lays the way for new paths and new tracks and new directions, I hope everyone's 2018 is full of small kindnesses, done not to hear a "thank you" but just to make someone's day a little better.  Giving and getting those kindnesses makes life a little easier and a little brighter.  Happy New Year.

Neighbors

I'm trying to write.  You see, I'm 140 pages into a novel I'm writing, and I generally only get good blocks of hours to write it on Mondays and Wednesdays.  Today's a Monday, so it's a writing day.

Unfortunately for me, my neighbors' smoke detector is doing that horrible obnoxious beep every 15 seconds to indicate the battery is low.  Also unfortunately for me, these neighbors have no clue how to turn it off.  Replacing the battery doesn't seem to be an option for them.  I know this from experience.  So I would like to barge into their apartment and channel Phoebe from Friends and do this to it:

We used to have neighbors who were kind of mysterious.  As in the husband seemed to have a wife and a girlfriend who both lived there at alternate times of the day mysterious.  Those neighbors have been replaced by neighbors whom I have to admit I don't much care for as neighbors.  It's a large multi-generational family living in a small apartment, and when one or both of the very tiny children has a temper tantrum, their grandma takes them out of the apartment and into the hallway so they can scream for the whole hallway to hear rather than just for their own family to enjoy.  Several times when this has happened, my fiancé and I have gone out to the hallway and tried (as politely as possible) to tell the grandma that the walls are very thin and that when she does that it's as if they're in our apartment (and to make things worse, the hallway has a couch that sits against the wall to our apartment -- and our own couch is on the other side of that wall.  So when they sit there, we're two feet from a screaming baby).  We quickly discovered that the grandma does not speak English though, so communication is futile.  So now we're resigned to baby temper tantrums and just crank up the TV and remember that we used to live next to train tracks, and at least a baby screaming is better than this:

Not long after they moved in, I panicked when I smelled a sewer smell coming from their apartment.  I was worried no one was home and that their toilet broke and all sorts of nasty stuff was spreading all over the floors and I was breathing in toxic waste.  We mentioned it to the super and he said yeah he knows the smell -- it's their cooking.

So now we're resigned to that.

Then there's the mysterious spraying sound.  Between 4:30 and 7:30 pm I routinely hear what sounds like a large spray hose in their apartment, spraying either a high-powered liquid or gas.  It goes in bursts of up to 30 seconds, off and on for maybe five minutes.  It drives me crazy because I can't imagine what the sound could possibly be.  Do they power-wash their entire apartment with a fire hose?  That seems unlikely.  Do they spray insecticide over their apartment regularly?  Also unlikely.  My fiancé isn't bothered in the least by this, which drives me even more crazy.  Yesterday we were watching a TV show and he was just leaning back against the couch without a care in the world while I was flipping out about what the sound is and how it doesn't bother him that he doesn't know and there are no rational explanations.  WHAT IS THE SOUND???

And then there's the smoke detector.  It first went off a few weeks ago.  Beep...... Beep..... Beep..... Beep.  The smoke detector violently persisted in alerting the residents that it needed a new battery.  I could tell there were people home in the apartment, and I didn't understand how it could not be bothering them.  Beep.... Beep.... Beep.... Beep.   Still, I could hear them shuffling dishes and going about business as usual.  Did they not know what the sound was?  No, impossible.  Everyone knows what that sound is.  And we have a superintendent who is readily available and super friendly and could instantly deal with it.

Hours later, the beeping suddenly stopped.  Then I heard a man curse.  Then I heard a baby scream.  Then I heard the door to their apartment open and the dad of the house stepped out and called our superintendent on his cell phone.  And he explained to the super how he had tried to make the smoke detector stop by cutting a wire, and that had blown a fuse and now the lights were out in the apartment.

...Excuse me, what??  He tried to stop it by cutting a wire?!  WHO DOES THAT????!

Sigh.

It's three weeks later, and I guess they just got the smoke detector hooked up again.

And they still won't just change the stupid battery.

So now this is me:

Channeling Greta Garbo (as a six-year-old)

This is one of the first images that shows up when I do a Google search for "1920s straight line dress actress":

img source: https://vintagedancer.com/1920s/what-to-wear-roaring-twenties/

This is Greta Garbo:

img source: https://waveparade.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/greta-garbo-8.jpeg

And this is the illustration that accompanies a short story I found in my bedroom over Thanskgiving titled "Kaliphan, Goddess of Sparkles":

The story doesn't have a date on it, but it was sometime before I learned that "really" has an "a" in it but after I learned to draw elbows, so I estimate it's from the first grade.  The story itself is fine, as far as 142-word stories that leave an entire village starving and homeless but nevertheless end with "and no one was ever sad again" go....  But what I really got a kick out of was that Goddess Kaliphan is rocking some serious Greta Garbo style here.  She's got the angle, the posture, the popped knee, the dress, the major attitude....  All she's missing is a cigarette holder... which I think is clearly just out of frame.

Yep, six-year-old me was apparently well versed in styles and postures of 1920s Hollywood.

Morning school drill

My morning today started with a school lockdown drill while my team was auditioning third graders at a New York City public school. When the alarm sounded, someone quickly informed us this was essentially a drill for a school shooter.  When I was a kid, we had tornado drills and fire drills, but never school shooter drills. The kids calmly explained to us that we had to turn off the lights, lock the door, and hide out of view from windows and doors so it would "look to any shooter like the room is empty."  While hiding, the kids were giggling and whispering excitedly, delighting in shushing each other so no intruder in the hallway could hear them.  We visiting adults looked at each other wide-eyed with amazement at how nonchalant the kids were about a drill for something so horrific.

Just life as a child in 2017.

In which I share some songs that in my entirely subjective opinion are just really bad.

Today I learned about the existence of two songs I had blessedly never heard before.  As I waited for my train this morning, I was treated to the musical stylings of a local man who might or might not have been drunk and might or might not be homeless, but either way he likes to hang out at the station and sing on a bench there (entirely on key, and in a better voice than a lot of people who do it for money, which he does not).  He always reminds me of this guy from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride:

Despite his pleasant enough voice and his ability to hit notes with his eyes closed and his head tilted back and the impression that he's only semi-conscious, his one weakness (or perhaps his greatest strength) is his inability to stay on the same song for more than a few seconds.  The man is the ultimate mashup machine. His song today as I approached the train tracks (sung in a voice that's one part James Taylor, one part Johnny Cash, and one part Jon Bon Jovi on a bad day) was the following:

There's more pretty girls than one
Yeah there's more pretty girls than one
Oh there's more pretty girls than one
Because the answer my friend
is blowing in the wind.

You big fat woman get your fat leg off of me
You big fat woman get your fat leg off of me
When she moves, she sets, she sets, she sets the city on fire

like a boiled egg

Yeah there's moo-oore pretty gii-iiirls..... than oooooone.

I got the Dylan and crappy Gavin DeGraw songs in there, but I had to look up the "pretty girls" and "fat woman" songs.  So now I know that out in the world there's a song that compares the way a woman moves to a boiled egg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XelrCQSaJYg (sung by -- and arguably written by, depending on whom on the internet you trust -- one of my favorite singer-songwriters), and this little ditty, which I hadn't decided was bad until the female singer warbled the misguided girl power-but-wait-that's-incestuous lyric "Sister's gonna kiss my red ruby lips; I don't need no man" (which I suspect comes across slightly differently today than when it was written): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo0MCQd7274

And now you do, too.

You're welcome.

A good Thanksgiving, a bad TSA agent, and a revisit to a long-ago interview

I had a great Thanksgiving holiday.  My holiday spanned two states plus a brief crossing into Canada. During that time, among other fun experiences, I saw a solo concert by my favorite dancing rock pianist (not quite as "dancing" due to recent knee surgery, but I discovered he's got a brother who plays bass and who is now my favorite dancing bassist); I visited my college campus for the first time since graduating and finally got to go to THE bar hangout spot that I'd heard about for years, which is pretty much a rite of passage for Indiana University students (even my parents hung out there, since they both worked at the university), but which I was never old enough to go to during my time in college (and I even got my hand stamped after I was carded! Woohoo! So finally I can say I'm a true Indiana University alum); I learned from explaining the "I wasn't old enough to go to bars until the summer I graduated when no one was left on campus, and I never had a fake ID, so I never went to the main bar" bit to my fiancé's family at Thanksgiving breakfast that my fiancé's mom did have a fake ID (this is on par with learning that Mrs. Cleaver from Leave It to Beaver had a fake ID), which my fiancé now refuses to acknowledge; I got to celebrate my mom's birthday early so I could be home for it; and I found a cat sitter for Christmas for my little crazy energy fluff ball of a cat so we don't have to put him in a kennel again (this incredible cat will be getting his own blog post in the not-too-distant future).

But I also had a horrible experience at the airport being groped by a TSA employee. I always opt out and get the pat-down, so I'm very familiar with the procedure and what constitutes an appropriate pat-down.  This was not that.  My fiancé saw it, and while it was happening, as his jaw dropped, I said over the TSA agent's head to him, half-jokingly, "I think I'm being molested," and he replied, "Hashtag metoo -- by a female TSA employee."  As she went along, she continued to focus on one particular area very inappropriately and repeatedly, and several times my fiancé and I communicated over her head about the inappropriateness of what she was doing.  She ignored us, and when she finished, she said, "You guys have a good holiday" -- to which my fiancé replied, "Yeah, looks like you just got yours early."  To make things worse, she had begun the whole thing by saying, "Oo, fun for me" when told by another agent that she'd be doing my pat-down.  My fiancé and I made fun of her in front of her male coworkers after she'd finished and walked off, but I was in so much shock, I didn't think to get her name so I could file a complaint (which I know would go nowhere) until I'd already left and was telling the story to my mom over the phone.  What the agent did was bad enough that if I did have her name, I would consider filing a police report, especially since my fiancé backed up that what he saw was way past any line of what was appropriate and normal and okay for her to do.

I wish I could go back and get her name and file a harassment charge. I'm mad that I wasn't thinking clearly enough to do what I should have done. And that reminded me of a past instance that I wish I had handled differently....

A couple years ago, I posted a "from the archives" post about my first professional job interview. It was with the high-profile former head of a major theatre organization who was striking out on his own with a (no longer in existence) theater/film production company.  He's a Tony Award-winning producer who since then has also served as president of a major theatre company (a position from which he was asked to resign after it was revealed female employees were uncomfortable with his "sweeties" and "honeys" and that he had a relationship with an employee he promoted twice).

With all the dominoes falling in the entertainment industry amid sexual harrassment accusations and revelations, my curious "interview" with him has popped into my thoughts several times recently -- particularly the ice cream part of it, which I blew off at the time as weird and pushy on his part, but upon reflection as a wiser and more experienced adult, comes across to me as something far more skin-crawlingly disturbing and sinister.  He wanted to start the interview (after I got in his black SUV on the corner of two streets just off campus) by buying me ice cream. I repeatedly said I didn't want ice cream, but he insisted on it, saying he wanted ice cream and it wouldn't be very nice of me not to get ice cream with him, and assuring me he was paying for it. He gave me some line about how he had to get along with his executive assistant, and that meant he should be able to eat ice cream with his assistant. He asked me my favorite flavor, informing me he WAS going to buy me ice cream. I vaguely remember there being some weird business about the flavor I said was my favorite (vanilla -- specifically because I didn't want to have a conversation about it) -- he wanted to talk about why it was my favorite, and I was already thinking this wasn't going well.  I caved and let him buy me the stupid ice cream, which I really didn't want -- because I DID want the job and wasn't sure how to handle it.

Upon reading Lupita Nyong'o's account of her experiences with Harvey Weinstein, it struck me that Weinstein's insistence on buying her alcohol when she repeatedly said she didn't want it served the same purpose as this producer's insistence on buying me ice cream -- It was an assertion of power, a test to see how willing I was to give in to that power, and a grooming mechanism.  Though I reluctantly did give in to the ice cream demand, it made me shift "out" for the rest of the bizarre encounter, which could hardly be called a job interview by any professional standards.  (And when I e-mailed him a professional thank you after the interview, eight of his fifteen words in response were "after all we have had ice cream together."  I wasn't sure then what it meant, and I'm still not sure, but it gave me the creeps and it cemented my decision not to contact him when I got to New York as he'd suggested I do.)

Since that interview, every time I think of it, I wish current-me could inhabit 21-year-old-me and handle it differently.  On the phone when he told me where to meet him, I'd say, "Actually, I would prefer to meet at a coffee shop or one of the many areas of the student union suited for job interviews."  If he said he wanted to buy me ice cream, I would say, "I don't want any, but thank you for the offer," and wouldn't budge on the subject.  And I certainly wouldn't get in his car, and at some point in there I would have said, "I'm sorry, I was expecting a professional job interview, and that's clearly not what you have in mind, so let's not waste each other's time any more."

So I'm posting that annotated journal entry again now.  Because no one should find themselves having this experience as a "job interview."  Because no young woman should meet a stranger for an interview by hopping into his car on a street corner, no matter now many Tonys he's won or how powerful he is.  Because no one should be forced to eat ice cream, or drink alcohol, or do anything else completely unrelated to the job that they don't want to do in an interview.

And never go to a cemetery on a job interview.  That one should just be a given.

But seriously, adult me would never put up with a single part of this encounter, and neither should any 20 or 21 year old.  And don't put up with a TSA agent groping you, either.

"The Annotated Story of My First-Ever Job Interview": http://www.behindtheseen.me/2015/04/the-annotated-story-of-my-first-ever.html

Storytime, Jessica style

11:30 PM, as I settle down on the couch next to my fiancé (who is watching a TV show I'm not, which tends to mean that I interrupt him a lot to tell stories about my day that I'm sure he's going to find fascinating) with a bedtime bowl of cereal, which on this particular night is a bowl of bran flakes to which I've added a scoop of powdered chocolate peanut butter and then smothered in vanilla almond milk:

Me, after tasting a spoonful of my concoction:  Hey, can I tell you a story?

My fiancé sighs and pauses the TV and turns to me, eyebrows raised.

Me: So when I was little, I had this craft kit that let me make paper flowers.  You'd pick a stem, and a petal pattern, and which color paper you want, and how many layers of paper you want, and which color center plastic pollen thing you want to hold it together, and different centers and colors had different scents, so you could choose from jasmine and tulip and rose and probably some others, and make endless combinations of differently scented, differently colored, differently shaped flowers. 

My fiancé: This is a good story so far.  Lots of conflict.

Me: So anyway, my bran cereal with the powdered peanut butter tastes like the tulip scent in that kit smelled.

My fiancé stares at me a couple beats and then turns back to the TV and presses play.

Me: Was that not a good story?

My fiancé: .....Well, it was a story only you would tell.

E as in Apple

At work, trying to get the spelling of someone's name to fill out a form (and talking in person to someone other than the woman whose name I was trying to get. And just to be clear, I was talking to an American-born English speaker with no speech impediments.)

Me: What's her name?
Woman: Mrcnfrmnra.
Me:  Sorry, what?
Woman: Mrcnfrmnra.
Me: Sorry, can you can spell that?
Woman: M-E, no I think, M-C.
Me [after writing M-C and waiting 5 seconds for her to go on]: Yes?  What comes after M-C?
Woman: N-E.
[I write N-E, then look up expectantly at her.  She smiles blankly back at me.]
Me:  What's next?
Woman: N-E.
Me: Another N-E?
Woman: N-E.
Me:  Right, I have one N-E -- is there another N-E?
Woman: N-E.
Me: Okay, so another N-E. [I write another N-E, bringing the total to MCNENE, which doesn't look like any last name I've seen before, but whatever]
Woman, shaking her head: No. N-E.
Me: I already have N-E.
Woman: N-E.
Me: There's a THIRD N-E? Mcnenene?
Woman E. E. As in Apple.
Me: E as in Apple?
Woman: Yes, N, E, as in apple.
Me:  A?
Woman: No, E.
Me  [erasing what I've written and replacing it with M-C-N-A, and then showing it to her]: Is this right?

[she nods]

Me: Great, so what's next?

Woman: N-E.
Me: Can you just say the whole name for me again?
Woman: Mrcnfrmnra.
Me, sighing.  Okay, so there's another N-E as in apple?
Woman: Yes. No. Wait.  M. M-E.

[I write M-E and she looks over my shoulder]

Woman: No, E as in apple.  They're all Es as in Apple.
Me: Gotcha. All Es as in apple. So M-C-N-A-M-A.....  Oh, is her name McNamara?
Woman: Yes.
Me:..... Great.

You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone

I've found a rift in the space-time continuum, and it's in my local smoothie shop.

I should back up. 

On Saturday, June 17th, my fiancé and I went for a walk and stopped in at a fruit and smoothie shop.  The date is important.  I remember it was Saturday, June 17th, because it was the day before Father's Day, and the shop was busy handling orders for fruit basket deliveries for the following day.  In fact, the shop was so busy that they were a bit overwhelmed. The manager came out from the back with a new hire whom she was training, and she walked the woman through the steps of making our smoothies.  The new hire had never made a smoothie before, wasn't a quick learner, and was having trouble figuring out how to follow the directions for the smoothies that are all printed on index cards in a flip book behind the counter.  The manager talked her through which measuring scoop and spoon were which, which cup was a small vs. a kiddie size vs. a medium, how to use the blender, etc. 

We got our smoothies eventually, they were delicious, and time moved on -- four and a half months of time, if you're counting, which I am here.

Then on Friday this week, I posted the following on Facebook:

So when your whole team at work is waiting on the street for one person who's late, and you call to ask for an ETA and they tell you they're just one block away, and then five minutes later you all SEE the person finally one block away, my question is this: Does that person think you're all blind, or did they wake up thinking, "THIS is the day I will warp the space-time continuum"?

My cousin jokingly commented on my post with "If you don't start your day with believing you can warp the space time continuum you certainly won't succeed at it. And, really, are you telling me that everyone doesn't start each day with that thought?"

And another friend added, "There are eddies on the time-space continuum. Possibly a few blocks inserted themselves as the person went along. I noticed that happened often as I was going home--I'd think 'I'm a block away from home' and then, another block would appear out of nowhere and make me a block further away..."

I smiled at their joking comments and went along with my day.

But then today... today I found it.

On my way back from the library, I stopped in at the smoothie shop for the first time in four and a half months.  The woman who was a new hire and being trained last time I was there was behind the counter again.  I ordered a smoothie from the menu over the counter.  She said, "Oh, I don't know how to make that, actually. Let me go get help," and returned with the manager from last time, who immediately smiled upon seeing me and said, "Oh, you were just here the other day!"

I hadn't been there in four and a half months, but I smiled and said, "Well... a while ago," and she replied, "Yeah, yeah I remember you."

And then she proceeded to train the woman, WHO DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE A SMOOTHIE AND WAS A NEW HIRE BEING TRAINED, on how to make a smoothie. The manager talked her through which measuring scoop and spoon were which, which cup was a small vs. a kiddie size vs. a medium, and how to use the blender..... again.

But it was the same woman from four and a half months ago.  She wasn't a new hire.  But she was.  She had been making smoothies for four and a half months now.  But she hadn't.  I had last been there on June 17th.  But the manager said I'd been there "just the other day."

As I walked away, munching on my smoothie (I say munching because the woman being trained never did learn how to use the blender properly, so there were lots of ice chips and almond chunks in my smoothie), I tried to think of an explanation, but I could think of none.  I'm flummoxed.  What has time been like in this shop?  What has the "new" employee been doing every day at work for the last four and a half months, since it clearly hasn't been making smoothies?  Who has come into the shop since June 17th?  Why does time seem to be condensed to only a few days for them when it's been months for me?

Then this evening, I got an alert on my computer that I had a new Google Hangouts message from my brother.  I clicked on the green alert and his new message popped up.  His "new" message is dated from May 5th of this year (a date he confirmed when I asked him about it).  And it's about how he just met someone named Jessica who looks like me, who did dancing, acting, and film production, who lives in Queens (he met this woman in Michigan), and whose mother's maiden name is Pollack.

I have no idea what any of this means.  All I could come away with was this:  I hope when I go back to the smoothie shop in five months, that employee will have learned how to use the blender.

Early lessons in manipulation

This afternoon after work as I headed for the stairs down to the subway, I realized that there was a major traffic jam.  People were coming up the stairs, but no one was going down.  As I tried to get a view of what the problem was, I saw a young mother who could clearly use a little assistance but was making a valiant effort at getting her two little children home by herself without going crazy.  Though she let out a few big sighs with the pep-talking subtext of "I can do this, I can do this, I can do this," she kept a smile on her face and a pleasant tone with her younger child, her daughter, who was causing the massive traffic jam for everyone trying to get on the L train at the busy station.  The little girl had apparently decided she was done walking.  Much like a dog being taken for a walk who just decides to sit on a corner, the little girl sat down on the stairs and started crying.  Her face turned red, tears streamed, and she wailed that she didn't want to walk anymore.  Her mom was already grappling with the little girl's stroller to get it down the steps while simultaneously trying to guide the girl's brother down the steps, too, so she was out of hands to carry the little girl.  Looking up the stairs and seeing the stagnated line of increasingly frustrated pedestrians backing up, the mom heaved a big sigh and said, "Okay, you're done walking, it's okay," and magically maneuvered pushing/ pulling/ dragging the stroller, keeping track of the brother, and carrying the little girl.  By the time the girl was heaved up into the mother's arms and had wrapped her little legs as far as they would go around the mom's back, everyone in the line in front of me had squished around the trio, leaving me face to face with the little girl.  And at that instant, as she hugged her arms around her mom's neck, she locked eyes with me, instantly stopped crying, gave me a big grin, and announced to me gleefully in a proud voice full of joy, "I got TWO rides today! I got TWO!" and then giggled.

If that mom thinks her hands are full now, she should just wait until that girl's a teen.  Something tells me that she'll be a handful then, too....

Preparing for the day

I've been thinking about New York City recently -- what I like about it, what I don't.  I moved here because it's where the entertainment industry is, but if I could live anywhere in the world, I think I'd live in a coastal town where I can smell the fresh breeze and the leaves and where I hear seagulls and waves rather than delivery trucks and car horns.  I hate crowds and I hate loud noises, to the point that I always have earplugs in my purse, and when I'm in a crowd I can't escape, I have to internally retreat in my mind and try to block out my surroundings.  This doesn't make New York City an ideal fit for me.  But at the same time, I recognize that all those people give me ideas about which to write, inspire thought and creativity, and give me a better understanding of the vast variety of human quirks and personalities that exist in the world.  I can get story ideas while just waiting for my train at Penn Station or walking down the street, watching people and imagining their conversations and motivations.  No place else could I get such a variety of characters in such a concentrated space.

And perhaps no place is better for people watching and listening than the New York City subway system.  I was reminded of this today while riding the subway to work.  This morning on the subway train, a woman and a man sat down next to me.  The man was thin, wearing a jacket too thick for the day's temperature and sporting a short, unkempt beard.  His female companion's hair looked like she'd either loaded it with mousse as she blow-dried it to within an inch of its life or she hadn't touched it in days.  Tattoos adorned her arms, fake nails were carefully pressed in place on her fingertips, and a giant faux-leather purse rested on her lap, the thin leather-like covering broken over the underlying fabric in many places as the purse's contents stretched it to its maximum space potential.

The couple settled into their seats, and without saying a word, the woman opened her purse, took out a package, and carefully removed a brand new electric razor from its plastic box, opening the packaging with a tool so that she was careful not to rip the plastic.  She silently handed the razor to the man, who proceeded to shave himself on the train.  The buzzing hum of the razor was the only human-generated sound in a car filled with people still waiting for their caffeine to kick in, and heads immediately started twitching, looking for the source of the sound.  Soon everyone was staring, some people were laughing, some were shaking their heads, some were muttering....   The couple didn't care.  Subway grooming was apparently just business as usual to them.  Eventually, the woman took the razor from the man and started shaving his neck for him.  When she finally finished, satisfied that her companion was sufficiently groomed and presentable for whatever the day held in store, she re-opened the plastic package from which the razor had come, fit the razor neatly back in just the way it had been, pressed the edges of the packaging together to seal it back up, got the receipt out of her purse, and put the package with the razor in a plastic bag.

"I'll return it this afternoon," she told the man.

Then she took out a bottle of pills, popped a few, and told the man to hold out his hand, into which she sprinkled a few pills, which he immediately took.

Before long, both of them were leaning at strange angles, eyes mostly closed, mouths hanging open, comfortably vacant.

But at least he had a good shave.

My take

I wrote a long post over a year ago in response to an article in the Chicago Reader about sexual abuse in the theatre.  I abandoned it and left it unposted because I was worried about how I would come off in it -- if it would scare away producers from hiring me because it looked like I would be difficult.   Time went by, and I forgot about the post.  Then Harvey Weinstein happened, and the #metoo thing started on social media, and I was seeing posts by people with whom I've worked, talking about all the abuse they've faced in theatre.  I was seeing posts by actors about how they went to their stage managers to complain and their stage managers did nothing.  I find that reprehensible.  But as a stage manager myself, I don't always have an obvious person to go to if an actor is harassing me.  I thought of one particular actor on one particular show who harassed me.  He was also a producer on the show and a close friend of the director, and he stayed late one evening after rehearsal the first week and made me uncomfortable by asking numerous personal questions about myself, ending by inviting me to some event with him.  When I declined, he continued over the following weeks to harass me about hanging out with him.  He told me I wasn't "warm" enough because I didn't socialize with him outside rehearsal, told me part of my job was to make the actors comfortable, and that included socializing....  When I rebuffed him, he took his inappropriate behavior onstage -- first in fight-call (running the fight scenes before a show) and then into the show itself, even once glaring up at the booth during a performance after purposely doing something he shouldn't have onstage.  Eventually he sent me a long, inappropriate e-mail (asking me not to share the e-mail with anyone) about our "relationship," and when he didn't get the response he wanted from the e-mail, he even cornered me after a show one night when I left the theatre after everyone else, informing me he was purposely trying to "razz" me because he was failing to get a reaction from me and I wasn't being "warm" enough and my lack of warmth and friendliness towards him was making him struggle with his performance on stage.  I went to the (male) general manager, whom I remember chuckling and sighing as if the actor were an annoying child.  The GM said he'd do something if the show were running longer, but we were already set to close in a week or two by then, and the actor wasn't a member of Actors' Equity Association, so the union couldn't do anything even though I am a member.  I didn't push the issue, because I knew a lot of the work I get as a stage manager is because I'm so low-drama, and because I didn't consider the actor a serious physical threat as long as I was never alone with him.  However, I refused to interact with the actor in any way at all after that, so I figured I might as well join the GM in his attitude that we were close to closing.  I turned over running fight-call (which the actor was routinely turning into an opportunity to harass me) to my Assistant Stage Manager and stopped giving the notes that it's my job as a stage manager to give, since the actor was unable to take my notes without harassing me.  I interacted with the ladies in the show but completely avoided the men backstage.  I asked my ASM to wait for me every night so I would never have to leave the theatre and walk to the subway alone again, and I always had pepper spray in my hand as I left.

In the remaining time that the show ran and after the show closed, I told the story to friends as something to laugh over -- by laughing at the actor, I belittled him.  I shared with friends the e-mail he had sent me specifically because he had asked me not to, so it gave me a sense of power to expose him for the creep he is.  I remember passing my phone around, e-mail up on the screen, one night at a bar, enjoying that my friends were laughing at him and calling him names.  It gave me the power back and reduced him to a non-threatening laughingstock.

But both times after the show closed when he sent me e-mails about jobs, it didn't make me laugh -- it made me shudder and say "ick" when they popped up in my inbox, and I hoped he would stop e-mailing me.

So when I saw all the #metoos on Facebook and debated if I had a blog post about this subject in me, I searched my blog to see if I'd ever written about that actor and was unable to find anything... but there, sitting on my computer, was an abandoned post about the subject in general, along with notes about why I wasn't posting it and that it sounded like I was whining.  I'm still not posting it, because frankly it's not very well written and is way too long, and I couldn't even be bothered to finish rereading it myself, so I wouldn't expect anyone else to read it all the way through....   But I am posting this.  Because the problem isn't just big, powerful Harvey Weinstein.  It's the little people too. It's the little perverts; it's the people who think it doesn't matter because a show is closing soon; it's the directors who don't mind that their actors are gross people; it's the people who turn a blind eye; it's the fact that as a whole, the industry doesn't treat this profession as a job where people should treat their coworkers with the same respect with which they'd treat someone in an office.

When I first moved to New York after graduating college, I got a job as a Production Assistant on a show.  The Company Manager of that show made some vaguely inappropriate remarks to me backstage.  I don't remember what he said, only that he made me slightly uncomfortable.  One day, sitting in the lobby chatting to someone higher up on that show with whom I'd become friends, I told him about the comments -- I was talking as a friend, not as a PA complaining to someone more powerful -- and he immediately made a face and stood up, ready for a fight, asking if I wanted him to go say something for me.  I laughed and said no, it wasn't worth it.  It truly wasn't worth it -- the Company Manager was just a sad, middle-aged creepy guy trying to flirt with a 21-year-old girl, and in a perfect world guys wouldn't do that at work, but it seemed relatively harmless -- the man wasn't around more than once a week to hand out checks, and I'd experienced worse.  But my friend's response is the one I wish everyone would have.  He didn't laugh and brush it off, he didn't stop to think about the consequences of standing up for me, he didn't dismiss it as small and just business as usual, and he didn't just say, "oh, that sucks" and post his moral outrage on social media....  He knew it was wrong, and he was ready to put himself on the line for it.

We all need to be more like that.

Differing views on the purpose of theatre

Me: So are you seeing any theatre while you're here?
Him: No, not this time, but I do love seeing theatre here.  I've slept through some wonderful shows here.
Me:... I'm sorry, what?
Him: Oh yeah, I've gotten some great naps in. Opera, Broadway shows.  It's wonderful. Some great sleep. The shows here are so great.
Me: You sleep through Broadway shows?
Him: The good ones, yeah.  They're so relaxing and peaceful and calming. It's the ultimate compliment if I sleep through them.
Me: What shows do you find relaxing and peaceful and calming?
Him: Hmm. Well, Wicked. I got some great sleep in at Wicked.
Me:  Wicked's not supposed to be relaxing and peaceful and calming.
Him:  Parts of it are.
Me: They're not supposed to be.  You're not supposed to sleep through it. 
Him: No, it's a compliment. That's what I want out of theatre.
Me: But the artists who create it want the opposite.  They want you to feel heightened emotion and thought while you're engaged in it.  I don't think anyone who put work into a show would consider it a compliment that they put someone to sleep during the show.
Him: Oh yeah they would. I want to be relaxed and take a nap after being "on" all day. That's what the best theatre does to me.  It's a compliment, really. If it's really good, I'll sleep through it. That's why I go.
Me: ...That's an expensive nap.

Circle

My parents married in the summer of 1981.  Both Harry Chapin fans, they bought tickets to see him for the first time in concert on their honeymoon.  Then on July 16th, a day before their wedding, Chapin was tragically killed in a car crash (or had a heart attack that led to the car crash).  Judy Collins played that concert for Harry.

I don't remember a time in my life without Harry Chapin's music.  I think my dad played his records more than any other artist's, and, partly because of the honeymoon concert my parents never got to see, Harry Chapin more than anyone else for me held an aura of what could have been.  He has always been as much an author to me as a musician, telling elaborate stories in his songs that could make you cry or make you laugh (or sometimes both in the same song).  He could make you think, make you question, make you see the world and people around you in a new way.  He even found his way into one of my college admission essays.  Where other folk singers tended to express their opinions through generalizations, Chapin found the extraordinary in the ordinary, made every feeling achingly personal, and made the listener reach their own conclusions.  He wrote of dreams, of missed opportunities, of pain, of love, of regular people who hold all the complexities of life within themselves....  To this day, the lyrics of a song are at least as important to me as the music, and that's partly because of Chapin.  The words were never secondary to him.  They merged seamlessly with the music, each helping the other to express a thought or feeling or bring a character to life.  Who else could write a ten-minute song about the University of Texas tower shootings, working into the brain of Charles Whitman ("Sniper"), or an eight-and-a-half-minute song about a man in a diner in a small town where, as Harry put it, "I spent a week there one afternoon" ("A Better Place To Be")?   He could look at one line in a newspaper review about a concert singer and write an entire story about it ("Mr. Tanner") or write a song that rivals The Sixth Sense in its breathtaking twist ending, and which interested both Broadway and film producers ("The Mayor of Candor").

The people who populate Harry Chapin's story songs have always been as real to me as my favorite book characters, their pains and joys and worries as palpable to me as if I knew them myself. After  listening to "Dreams Go By," my imagination would go off wondering about the old lady who said she should have been a ballerina or the man who had "songs I should have sung."  What had deterred them from their dreams?  Were their lives lonely and full of regret?  Were they nearly content with an almost-forgotten yearning?  What had happened to derail them?  I would imagine the future of the couple in "Dirt Gets Under Your Fingernails" -- one of Chapin's few "dream" songs with a fully happy ending, where the characters seized their dreams in time and opened new chapters that were sure to be full of both joy and new challenges.  I also wondered about all the characters he never got to breathe life into.  Whom would I have come to know through his music that I never will?  What stories were never told?

There are relatively few videos of Chapin performing live.  As any Harry Chapin fan knows, the live versions of his songs are an entirely different experience from his studio recordings.  The emotion he poured into them is unparalleled.  He would find new layers, changing tempo, notes, rhythms, even lyrics.  He would change "But of course she let him go" to "So of course she let him go" one night, entirely changing a character's motivation.  He would growl a word instead of making it flow like butter, pause to hold the audience in suspense, and fill every song to the brim with emotion.  Fortunately, in response to fans' recognition of the difference between his studio and live performances, Chapin released two live albums, but there is still too little footage of him live, and the one bootleg tape my parents did have was ruined in a faulty VCR.

So I knew I would never see him live in person, and I took it for granted that though I knew my way around every one of his songs, they would never come to life in front of me.

And then my fiancé's work friend, who knows I'm a big Harry Chapin fan and whose own childhood was full of Chapin's music (albeit as contemporary music which she had the opportunity to see live numerous times as a teen growing up in the New York area), told him that Harry Chapin's band from all those years ago was performing a concert of his music with Harry's two younger brothers, Tom and Steve Chapin, and both Tom's and Harry's daughters.  Of course I had to go.  But I admit that partially it was just to have the experience of seeing them.  Though both brothers performed with Harry and I knew their voices from the 70s, I had no idea how they would have held up after all these years, or what the beautiful voice of bassist "Big John" Wallace would sound like 36 years after the last recording of it I had heard.

When we took our seats in the tiny auditorium, which appeared to be a converted public school (and which, true to Harry's spirit, was accepting food donations), my fiancé's friend turned to me and said, "Well, Jessica, I think it's safe to say you are by far the youngest one here!"  I told her that's normally the case with music I like, but as we looked around at the audience, I had to admit that this was a new extreme even for me.  Almost the entire audience was in their 60s or 70s.  She pointed out to me at intermission that I was coming at the concert from a very different perspective from her and everyone else there.  For them, this was a nostalgia visit, a trip back in time to one of their favorite artists from an era long gone by.  Most of these audience members had seen Harry live and the audible sniffles were a testament to the fact that this concert made them miss him even more.

But for me, the concert was something entirely different.  From the first notes of "Sunday Morning Sunshine," when Tom Chapin's voice, having descended over the years from his smooth tenor to a gravelly mirror of Harry's, sang Harry's words, I felt like I was watching the most surreal concert ever.  Most of the audience might have been transported back in time, but I was transported to an alternate reality -- to a world I had long thought closed off to me, where Harry Chapin's characters could come to life in front of me.  I saw Mr. Tanner take shape, felt his heartbreak and his joy as he lost and then regained his ownership of his passion in life; I saw the loser radio DJ of "WOLD" come to life, saw Harry himself as a taxi driver in his famous "Taxi"; and perhaps most affecting for me, I saw Tom Chapin bring to life one of my favorite of Harry's songs, "Any Old Kind of Day."  I think it's one of the most understated of his songs, and its perfection and power lie in the complete and utter ordinariness of the day depicted by its singer.  Not quite a story song, it's more like the prologue to so many of his other "dream" songs -- songs that speak of big dreams that were neglected over the years, of passions and goals not pursued....  "Any Old Kind of Day," though, shows not the effect of dreams getting abandoned over years but how those dreams have a way of slipping away one day at a time on the beautiful, cloudless, pleasant days that are "just an any old kind of day, the kind that comes and slips away" -- on days where there was no big ache, no big pain, and you think, "there's time enough for thinking come tomorrow."  As an adult, the song has become to me the saddest of Chapin's, and no other song works more to get me up off the couch and working.  It was perhaps the only time in the evening that I didn't have an incredulous smile glued to my face.

The next generation of Chapin children have picked up the mantle proudly from their fathers, still singing to change the world and make it a better, kinder place, and the evening was peppered with their songs.  There might not be as many people listening anymore -- maybe overly produced, label-generated music will rule the airwaves from now on -- but it was wonderful to hear that there are still voices with intelligent, thoughtful stories to tell and emotions to color.

And I like to think that 36 years later, maybe I've finished my parents' honeymoon for them.

I'm turning my blog over to my cat today. . .

Sometimes your day just really needs a picture of a cute cat who has a heart mark.  My cat has a heart mark. So in case you're one of the people who needs that, here ya go:

I'd like to thank . . .

I've heard some actors say that they'll find themselves composing awards acceptance speeches in the shower.  Today in the shower I found myself doing what I suppose is a writer version of that: I was absentmindedly composing a very detailed acknowledgements section of a book.  I wasn't just coming up with the names I wanted to thank -- I was composing exactly what I wanted to say about them.  And this wasn't for just any general book. This acknowledgements section was specifically tailored to a middle-grade book about a girl fighting her way through grade school and high school as she finds herself.

That would all be great -- and maybe not that weird -- except that's not the book I'm writing.  I'm writing a book about a young woman working in the city.  It has nothing to do with school.  Or kids.

So I suppose now I'll have to write a book to go with the acknowledgements section that I have so beautifully and eloquently composed.

In this hypothetical acknowledgments section, I thank a lot of teachers -- my first grade homeroom teacher for seeing me for me and telling my parents that all the other teachers at the school were wrong; my 9th and 11th grade history teacher for echoing her words in front of me 11 years later; my high school chemistry/ anatomy & kinesiology teacher for never giving me the benefit of the doubt and making me prove myself every day in class; my entire magical middle school and every teacher who walked the halls there, plus the actual hall (I said "halls" before because that's the expression, but really the middle school portion was just half of one hall) and its ratty orange carpet and the leaky trailer outside that we'd have classes in that we called the Taj Majal and which caused me to be pooped on by a bird one morning as I headed out to class there....

But there were two teachers this currently bookless acknowledgements section includes that specifically had something to do with my writing.  So I'm going to write about them here.

One was my third grade homeroom teacher, Mrs. Kemper.  In order to discuss how Mrs. Kemper was so great, I have to back up to kindergarten.  I was always the youngest one in my grade, and when I was in kindergarten, my kindergarten teacher (a horrid, vile woman whom I remember as if she were a villain from Matilda -- she's also, curiously, about ten feet tall in my memories) told my parents at a parent-teacher conference that I should repeat kindergarten.  My parents immediately bristled because they knew that would be wrong for me, and they asked her to explain why.  Was I not doing great in kindergarten?  I had friends and was doing just fine with all the activities, was I not?  Mrs. Villainess said that yes I was, but kids who are too young for their grade break down in the third grade.  "She's doing fine now, but you just wait and see.  She'll totally fall apart in the third grade."  (She also said it was because I misidentified an umbrella as a "carousel" on a test, which was actually because Mrs. Villainess had bad hearing and didn't understand I said "parasol" because I loved parasols ever since seeing them in Mary Poppins and at Disney World vendor stands, and I had my own pink parasol with frilly white trim that my mom had just bought me from a gardening store....)  So anyway, my parents assured Mrs. Villainess that A. I knew a carousel from an umbrella and had identified it as a parasol, and B. I would be bored repeating kindergarten and she was just saying that because the school had a quota they were supposed to fill of students to hold back, and since I was young I seemed like an easy target.  Mrs. Villainess got all villainy and (after insisting I couldn't know what a parasol is) said something along the lines of, "She'll fall apart in the third grade! And it will be too late then!! Don't say I didn't warn you! Just you wait and see!!" (and then in my mind she does an evil villain cackle and her cape billows behind her and her staff sparks fireballs).

So I went to the first grade, and I was fine.  I went to the second grade, and I was fine.  I went to the third grade, and, to absolutely no one's amazement except that horrible, vile kindergarten teacher's, I was fine.  In fact, I was better than fine.  Third grade was my favorite school year.  Third grade was a blossoming year for me, and I think I owe that in part to Mrs. Kemper.  Mrs. Kemper was everything I thought a third grade teacher should be: pretty, warm, wonderful at reading books out loud, and an excellent listener at recess when I sometimes preferred to sit on the bench and talk to her rather than play with the other children.  I'd always had a penchant for sitting on the bench with teachers at recess, and previous teachers would frequently tell me after a few polite exchanges, "You need to go play with the other kids."  I understand their motivation for that, but I was well adjusted and had plenty of friends, and sometimes I simply wanted to talk -- or even just sit on the bench quietly and watch -- rather than play, and I got miffed by being told I couldn't.  But on days when I preferred a bench in the third grade, Mrs. Kemper never told me I should leave it.  She listened to whatever I wanted to talk about -- our cat and dog, the book we were reading in class or the one I was reading at home, my summer vacation, my ballet lessons....  She also was my first teacher to give journal assignments.  She would assign a topic in class to write about in our journal, and if we didn't finish it in class we had to take it home as homework.  I had never had homework before, and I was so excited and so eager for homework that I wrote extra long journal entries to ensure that I'd have to take it home to finish it and could have my first "big-kid" homework.  Those journal entries were the first time I wrote regularly about the world around me, and those writings didn't just go into a void -- Mrs. Kemper wasn't reading just to ensure completion or to check for grammar and syntax issues; she commented on my thoughts and experiences in the margins, posed questions both of genuine interest to her and to make me think more myself, and generally made me feel like my writing was actually engaging someone rather than being just "homework."   I loved journaling in that class, and I've never stopped.  And my approach to writing a journal or blog -- to write like I'm talking to one person I know and trust rather than to an inanimate book or screen or to a group of readers out in cyberspace -- came from that class. 

Plus, I didn't fall apart in the third grade.  So Mrs. Kemper was great, and she will definitely one day be in my acknowledgements section.

The second teacher my shower-writing thanked was my sixth grade Language Arts teacher, Mrs. Powell.  Sixth grade was my first year at my new middle school after my parents pulled my brother and me from the school we'd been in for the last six years.  The longer we were at the elementary school, the worse things had gotten for us, both in terms of bullying and in terms of the school not being the right fit for us academically.  To put it succinctly, the school's academics were bad because they weren't the school's primary focus, and from third through fifth grade, my language arts teachers were horrible.  They taught irony and sarcasm with identical definitions and shut me down when I tried to have a discussion about it, just repeatedly telling me with a face full of frustration that I was wrong; they collectively once told me I was wrong in saying "none is" rather than "none are," even though I was right and find it shocking that a language arts teacher doesn't know proper grammar and wouldn't bother to look it up when I asked; my 3rd/4th grade language arts teacher wrote on my report card that I had trouble listening and following directions, when in my mind it was that I was bored and thought her directions were unclear and insufficient.  Mostly I remember them sighing with frustration at me a lot and telling me I was wrong.  Writing was not a significant part of language arts classes there.  I don't remember writing one story or journal entry, and I don't remember how we wrote ever being of interest to the teachers -- only what we wrote about.  No one since Mrs. Kemper at that school had encouraged my writing -- to the contrary, it was the language arts teachers with whom I had the most conflict -- and worse, no one had bothered to teach any grammar (not surprising from a language arts teacher who thinks "none is" is wrong).

So anyway, I arrived at my new middle school, which had an incredibly rigorous academic program, and the first day of school in language arts class, Mrs. Powell handed out a grammar pretest.  I looked at it and felt butterflies in my belly.  It was like that dream where you have a test for a class you've never been to.  I had no idea what anything I was looking at was.  I had never diagrammed a sentence in my life and couldn't name the parts of speech.  I could use them correctly, but that's not what this test was checking for -- it was asking about objects of prepositions and adverbs and infinitives and diagramming sentences, and I had no idea what I was doing.  I raised my hand after she passed out the test and very nervously told her I'd come from a school that didn't teach grammar and I had never been taught any of this, and she reassured me that the grade wouldn't count; it was just for her to know where we all were.  That didn't make the butterflies go away, and I very anxiously filled out as much as I could -- which wasn't much.

I don't remember if we received a letter grade, but I remember knowing that I did horribly on it.

But Mrs. Powell said it was no big deal.  I can't know what I haven't been taught, she said.  That's what school is for.  That's why I was there.  To learn what I didn't know.

To be completely honest, I didn't like Mrs. Powell very much at first.  She was very strict -- by far the strictest teacher I had ever had.  But that turned out to be wonderful and exactly what I needed (and she actually wasn't very strict at all -- I was just comparing her to a ridiculously lax school).  I learned my grammar and I learned to diagram, but the best part about Mrs. Powell's class was that we wrote.  We wrote a lot.  We wrote short stories, we wrote essays, we wrote reports, we wrote poems....  And Mrs. Powell, rather than sighing with frustration at me and telling me I was wrong and a bad listener and not following directions, told me I was good.

One assignment we had after reading the book Johnny Tremain was to write a new chapter to end the book after the existing last chapter.  I loved the assignment and loved making the ending I wanted to a book I had loved but whose ending wasn't entirely satisfying to me.  After Mrs. Powell read my chapter, she asked if she could read the chapter to the class.  I said yes, and when she was finished reading it, she said something that has stuck with me ever since.  After some student had said I should be a writer, Mrs. Powell, standing in the middle of the room and looking at me, nodded and said, "If she writes like this now, I can't wait to read what she writes when she grows up.  I look forward to reading it."

It was the first time anyone had said anything like that to me -- the first time a teacher had expressed that I could be a writer.  It made me wonder what I would write when I grew up.  I envisioned, years off into the future, sending my first book off to Mrs. Powell and eagerly awaiting her response, hoping it would live up to her expectations after my Johnny Tremain chapter all those years ago in the sixth grade....

The next year, Mrs. Powell got sick and died far too young.  She wasn't my teacher that year, and I remember during her brief fight thinking I had words trapped inside that I wanted to tell her, but they never formed and I never did, and she was the first person I ever knew who died.  I never told her how much it meant to me that she said she couldn't wait to read what I wrote when I grew up, that she encouraged my writing and told me I was good, but I hope she knew.  On this earth, she'll never get to read my adult writing, but I often think of her when I'm writing, picturing her sitting up there on a cloud reading my work.  I hope I make her proud.  And I thank her.

Here today watching Sir Paul McCartney

I first knew "Eleanor Rigby" as a Joan Baez song.  Baez, along with the Kingston Trio, Harry Chapin, Chris DeBurgh, Simon & Garfunkel, The Four Seasons, the Top Gun soundtrack, 60s folk music compilations, Elton John, Elvis, and Peter, Paul, and Mary, made up the tapestry of music that was the soundtrack to weekend car rides with my dad and evenings after dinner in the family room with our record player.  My parents have a good collection of records from the 60s and 70s, and my dad would bring one down sometimes in the evening to play it.  I loved everything by Chris DeBurgh, disliked Bob Dylan, choreographed to the Kingston Trio, laughed at what I considered the ridiculously high and comical voice of Frankie Valli...  But remarkably, despite the collection that I later learned included two Meet the Beatles albums (one from each parent), the Hey Jude album, Sgt. Pepper, and The White Album, when I was little I didn't particularly know the Beatles beyond them being a cultural phenomenon.  I couldn't have named the band's members and didn't know their music other than what I encountered of it incidentally.  When my brother got a keyboard that came with a basic sheet music Beatles book, it included "Eleanor Rigby" and "Yesterday."  That was when I learned Baez didn't write "Rigby," the song I had loved for so long and found achingly sad and beautiful about a lonely girl who lives and dies without notice (but was she friends with Father McKenzie? I always wondered about that... And if not, why not?...).   I plunked out "Yesterday" on the piano and loved it, but we owned neither Revolver nor Help!, so I still didn't know those songs as Beatles songs.  I didn't even know what the band's members looked like besides the iconic suits and haircuts.

That all changed in the sixth grade.  My music history teacher was a huge Beatles fan, and towards the end of the year we got to a unit on the Beatles.  We listened, we analyzed, we discussed.  We talked about what made Beatles music sound like "Beatles" music, how they and their music evolved in such a short time, how they influenced music videos, how they both reflected culture and influenced it, how they changed music forever.  We had an assignment to pick a post-Beatles song and write a paper on how it was influenced by them musically, and I used that as an opportunity to listen to all three Beatles Anthology double discs.  Before long I'd rented all the Beatles Anthology video tapes, and we bought all the albums on CD that my parents didn't already own on vinyl (ya know, back when CDs were still a thing).  I would listen after dinner with headphones to Beatles outtakes and early versions in the Anthology albums, noting the differences between the early takes and the final versions, how just in a day the music evolved and matured.  I'd laugh at their banter, listen to the frustration in their voices in their arguments, feel like I was getting to know them....

I was hooked.   

Also, the more I listened, the more my favorite Beatle shifted from John to Paul.  With my mom, I got my dad Paul McCartney's solo album Flaming Pie for his next birthday, but I'm pretty sure I listened to it at least as much as my dad did.  When we had to make a music video in music class to any song of our choosing, I chose "Little Willow" off that album, and for years it was my calming song before any big test in school.

My love for the Beatles also widened my music knowledge in general.  I would spend time in the dark den upstairs in front of my parents' record collection selecting other albums of theirs, introducing myself to Fleetwood Mac and Billy Joel and Carol King....

Eventually, I owned almost every McCartney solo album and Wings album, a handful of Harrison albums, and a couple Lennon albums.

Somewhere in the middle of my falling in love with Beatles music, when I was still in middle school, my dad had the opportunity through work to get tickets to a Paul McCartney concert.  He asked if I wanted to go.  I very much did, but it was on a school night, and at my middle school I had an enormous amount of homework to do in what usually seemed like too little time, especially with my ballet schedule.  After much internal debate, and after initially saying yes, I told my dad I couldn't go because of my homework.  He asked me if I was absolutely sure (yeah, I have awesome parents like that -- they're the ones who tried to get me to go to rock concerts on school nights rather than telling me I couldn't).  I wasn't absolutely sure, but I had to make a decision, and I think I had a science test that week, so I stuck to my "no."

I've regretted that decision ever since.  It was freakin' SIR PAUL MCCARTNEY.  I'm sure I got an A on that science test, but I don't remember it.  I would have remembered seeing Paul McCartney, though.  I'm not saying I advocate ditching school or making a habit out of late night adventures on school nights, but... PAUL MCCARTNEY!!

Since I moved to New York, he's come here several times on tour, but his concerts are always ridiculously expensive and I'd have to pay too much to see him from too far back.  But this time around, when my fiancé asked if I wanted to see the upcoming McCartney concert, I decided I wasn't waiting any more.  I'd regret it if I never saw my favorite musician live, even if seeing him live meant sitting so high I'd get a nose bleed from the altitude.  So I said yes.

And so all these years later, I finally got to see Paul McCartney sing "Eleanor Rigby" live (through binoculars... really, really, high).  And "Yesterday."  And "All My Loving."  And "Here Today."  "Here Today" made me cry.  It's about not waiting when you want to say something, because eventually it will be too late.  The same applies to doing things.  I'm glad I stopped waiting to see Paul McCartney.  I just wish I'd made that decision back in middle school.  But hey, I'm here today.

Just smile and say it sweetly

Guy behind me repeatedly walks into my backpack as we slowly move forward in crowded Long Island Rail Road train car aisle at 1AM, trying to shove me along, despite the fact there are people in front of me and I can't go anywhere.  I've had a 14.5-hour work day on set, most of which was spent on my feet in 3-inch heels outside dressed in winter wear in 80-degree sunny weather.  So I'm cranky, thirsty, overheated, tired, and in no mood for disrespectful jerks:

Me, turning around to him after he walked into me again: I can't go anywhere.

Him: That's okay.

Me, sweetly: Oh, you misunderstand.  I'm not apologizing.  I'm saying back off and stop shoving me.

He did.

The cat who watches sunsets

This is Carlos the cat (well, as represented by a cell phone pic of my watercolor painting on still-water-warped paper).  Carlos can also be seen in one of the photos in my last post.  When I first saw this cat perched on the large rock in this picture, watching the beautiful sunset on the beach on my summer vacation, I named him Lenny, after a pig at Happily Ever Esther Farm Animal Sanctuary who likes to go out after dinner and sit on a hill and watch the sunset.  On three separate evenings, I saw the cat I later learned was actually named Carlos watching the sunset, once from this rock and twice from the boardwalk.  I never saw him during the day -- only when the sun was setting, and I learned weeks later from the town's Facebook page that he lives at a local motel and walks several blocks every night to the beach.

Though I've never stopped being a fan of crayons, I haven't picked up watercolors since middle school, but the beauty in that town and Carlos the cat inspired me -- because I think Carlos is a wise cat, and I think we should all make time to watch the sunset and seek out all the beauty and color in life we can find.

Trials, tribulations, and sunshine

While my fiancé is out of town, I've been dealing with a cat who picked this week to develop a new habit -- he's decided that covering his business with litter isn't enough, so every time he goes, which is about five times a day because he's a super-cat, he completely covers his litter with his liner by pulling in the corners.  I'll leave the problems this can cause if I don't fix it before he has to go again up to my readers' imaginations rather than spell them out here. 

So today our cat woke me up at 6:00 AM with a litter emergency, and by 10 AM I'd dealt with litter problems twice.  The smell of cat poop was already permanently ingrained in my nose, and I was at my wits' end as to how to stop the behavior.  So, figuring a person can only deal with so much adulting on their own in one day, I called my parents and asked for their help.  Armed with the suggestion of a different kind of litter box liner which he couldn't pull in, I walked the 30 minutes to the nearest big grocery store... where they didn't stock the liner.  So I walked back the 30 minutes and at their suggestion dumped all the litter out. (This might seem as easy as picking it up and pouring it into the trash, but the box of litter is too heavy for me to lift, so I had to scoop it out cup by cup -- which of course was great for my respiratory issues. And smelled delightful.)  After dragging the garbage bag of litter to the trash room like I was hauling a body out, I put the whole box in a garbage bag so he couldn't pull corners in and filled it up... but I ran out of litter.  So I had to walk 15 minutes to the nearest store that carries his litter (which, in a change of fortune, had it in stock).  But the box is actually too heavy for me to carry more than a couple blocks.  So it took me twice as long to get home because I had to take five breaks along the way.  On one of those breaks I texted my fiancé to tell him he should start thinking of where he's going to take me to dinner when he gets back.  On another break, I sent him a text that showed him, a cat, and three lines of poop emojis -- ya know, to make it clear he'll be dealing with the litter for a while when he gets back.

I tell this story to explain why I needed some pretty in my day.  So here's some pretty (from my summer vacation), with a small side dose of cheerfully cheeky, to start the week... and to erase all the images of cat litter in my mind....