“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars..." Jack Kerouac
I remember when my daughter was young. She had a friend who lived up the little hill past the stone wall. Laura and my daughter were as thick as thieves. (and just how thick is that, I ask?) The two of them were as opposite as any two could be. J's dark ponytail and chocolate-brown eyes stood out bold against Laura's white-blond curls and blue eyes. J was quick with her words and quicker with her wit. Laura was faster than a bunny rabbit when she dashed across the lawn. J wrote poetry and played a guitar. Laura jumped higher than anyone on the trampoline.
Still they were best friends. They ran themselves ragged as they climbed the cherry tree. Celebrated un-birthdays. Built forts. Rode bikes. Did the things that kids do. They picked blueberries and tried to sell them to the neighbors. They mixed lemonade and sold it one warm cup at a time to anyone who happened by. There were times in my kitchen they made cookies that only a mother could eat. They were inseparable except...
When they played, J always was in charge until Laura wanted to go home. Laura was not shy about playing the "I am going home" card to her advantage. With the utterance of those four words, Laura tipped the power in her direction every time. With Laura's deliberate steps toward the door, J began to offer anything to make her stay. I remember watching J follow Laura out the door and up the road negotiating all the way: "I will give you one Barbie...okay, if you turn around now, I will give you two Barbies."
I stopped her. I had to. It was her lesson, her relationship, but I couldn't bear to see her bend over so far that she lost herself. Her dignity. It was too raw. Too real. I might have been a good mother that day when I held her back. Or I might not have been, but I wouldn't let her give herself away all the way back to Laura's house.
I guess the human need to hang onto that which we deem valuable plants its roots in the playground of our youth. The friendships. The approvals. The confirmations. The affirmations. And the fear of losing them all. We still reach for those in our own way even if we are adults. Yet the neediness is as transparent and painful as the pleading child offering her toys to keep the friend who is walking away.
Before "Google" became a verb, I admit that I poured over the pages of medical dictionaries with some degree of regularity. I traced my symptoms through the glossy photos and definitions until I was convinced that I was the carrier of some genetic disorder that manifests itself only in the second born of tenth generation rice farmers in the far most corner of Indonesia. Never mind that it was as improbable as Mother Teresa giving birth to Mike Tyson. I could convince myself in a nanosecond that I had it, and I was going to die.
You might assume that the advent of the Internet and its powerful search engines eased my worries. Instead with that much medical information at my fingertips, I have been able to detect signs of scurvy, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, diabetes, and a host of other potentially life threatening illness lurking in the ache of my joints and behind the itch in my eyes.
I found that not only am I a knucklehead, but I am an alphabetically deficient knucklehead.
Trust me. One hates to be deficient in any letter of the alphabet on any day of the week. My deficiency happens to fall in the letter B. More specifically--vitamin B.
Consumption of sugar, white flour products, processed foods (lack nutrients and may contain many additives), conventionally grown produce (lack nutrients and are contaminated with toxins such as pesticides), alcohol, and stress contribute to a vitamin B deficiency.
What does this say about my coffee roll and road rage and me?
Symptoms include:
hypochondria (now THERE is a surprise)
mild to severe depression
vague fears, apprehension, suspicions (who is reading this??)
restlessness (who wants to go to Alaska before dinner?)
fatigue, stomach pains
decreased or increased appetite
craving for sweets
heart palpitations, chest pains
muscular soreness
pain, tingling or achiness
soreness of the mouth
burning or itching eyes
difficulty swallowing, sore throat
headaches, insomnia or sleep disturbances
Of course, this list reminds me of Bill Murray in "What About Bob?" itemizing his maladies to Dr. Leo Marvin: cold sweats, hot sweats, numb lips, fingernail sensitivity, pelvic discomfort...
So my question is: Does the need to eat wheat germ mean that I am getting old? Or could it be I am not the twenty-four year old who once thought that a "Coke and a smile" doth a complete breakfast make?
I have realized that my journal entries may read more like laundry lists than the words of a literary laureate. I don't suppose that anyone will take the time to tell me this. No one cares about my blog, you know.
Wait, no one cares about YOUR blog. YOUR blog.
True to myself, I shall list the blog types (not to be confused with the blood types):
There are those bloggers who are too witty for their own good. I need to ask someone to 'splain them to me. Someone who is patient to sound out the big words and draw pictures for the parts I can't understand.
Then there are those bloggers who can't choose the perfect word, so they use them all for good measure. You know the one in search of the perfect, idyllic, concise, precise, exact, special combination of words.
I would be remiss not to mention the GROSS bloggers. The bodily function folks. I don't even try to decipher them. I can't. I am too busy bleaching my eyeballs.
My favorites are the bloggers who can take a very ordinary event, put it in pigtails and call it a party. I like it when someone tears a hole in the corner of their world just big enough for me to recognize a bit of myself on the other side. I am just narcissistic enough to enjoy the PING.
I am my least favorite type of blogger though. I am a list maker. A test taker. A code breaker, and I like mine poached with flies. It is the horse sense of it all.
Dear Dr. Blog:
A small part of me wants to join the bloggers who swim in the deep end of the alphabet pool. I want to practice my backstroke with the hardcore, post every 3.9 minutes bloggers who maintain multiple blog sites and spreadsheets to track their responses.
I do want to splash my consonants and vowels around like nobody's business. I really do. I want to cavort and canoodle with the full power of the English language. I want my words to say a little about a lot and a lot about very little.
I want to be a Blog Queen. I want to drive the pink verbmobile. Gyrate my gerunds. Dangle my modifiers. Reveal my past participles. And, proposition with my prepositions. A contender, darnit, I want to be a contender.
Instead I sit in front of my little flat screen. I type and backspace. Backspace and type. And, then I close the whole entry without posting. I just can't seem to commit.
Can you help me figure out why I am squeamish about brave blogging?
