Hand-Outs for the Tithe-Payers?

I was chatting with my mom on the phone tonight. She mentioned that one of my uncles was experiencing a little financial difficulty, and he called my dad to ask for a donation to his cause. Historically, my dad has always forked over money whenever the relatives requested it. For one thing, he said, they always make themselves scarce when they're indebted to him, so it's money well spent. I assumed my mom would tell me he wrote out another check.

It came as something of a shock when she continued with the saga, saying that Dad asked him if he gave 10% of his income to the Church this month, and if he planned to do the same next month. I have to give my uncle credit for honesty, at least in regard to this matter if not in all areas. (This IS the uncle who stole all our toothpaste last year.) My dad told my uncle that the [incredibly wealthy]Church to whom he had faithfully paid tithes and other contributions for all these years should be the first to help him out in his time of need, if only to waive his tithes and other offerings until his financial situation improves.

If that fails, my dad told my uncle, he should ask my grandparents for a loan. My father's parents have a reasonably large bank account. They'll never be able to spend all of it before their days on this planet are complete. Their daughters' husbands, however, are almost universally reticient about hitting my grandparents up for cash in hard times. It's as though they don't want to admit to my grandfather that they ARE having hard times, so they come to the heathens (my branch of the family) for help in their times of need.

I am so incredibly proud of my dad for not caving in to a relative's pleas this once. After all, my parents now have two children in college, and our educations are  covered by scholarships, but law or medical schools won't necessarily be. We're not exactly rolling in extra cash. If we have extra money that my parents haven't told me about, I can think of dozens of ways for us to spend it that don't involve handing any of it over to my uncle.

I Don't Really Like the Way Streisand Sings

Every now and then my mom puts a Barbara Streisand CD on the stereo. Each time she does this, I secretly cringe. I don't care for Barbara Streisand's singing.

I typically keep my feelings about this matter to myself. I know that women over forty-five almost universally LOVE Ms. Streisand's music. Who is to say that my taste is any more valid than theirs? But there is something about her voice -- the way she hits a note softly, then attacks it with vehemence after the initial strike -- that simply does not resonate with me. I know that, as a trained vocalist, my mother has to find some of what she hears from Ms. Streisand flawed in a technical sense. It doesn't seem to matter to my mom, though. She likes the music Ms. Streisand sings despite whatever cognitive dissonance exists between what she hears on her stereo and what she has been taught about the technically correct way to sing.

My dad has a similar issue with the music of Johnny Cash, which he can only listen to on anything but his Ipod when my mom is not present. She may force Streisand on the rest of us, but NO ONE is going to force Johhny Cash on her. My dad's love for Johnny Cash is probably the total picture: the man in black, the message of his someimes slightly seedy songs, the obvious absence of anything resembling a great voice, the guitar-playing that is better than the singing but still not sufficient to stand on its own. I think Johnny Cash is the bad side of my dad's inner self. This paragraph alone is sufficient evidence that I've spent far too much time in psychobabble-laden settings.

Generally, my parents have exposed my brother and me to the classics in music: classics, as in Bach, Beethoven, Hadyn, and Mozart from my mom, and classic rock and roll from my dad. Most of what we've been forced to hear has been the very best of its genre. My parents, like anyone else, have their secret indulgences, though. Just like a registered dietician might occasionally serve bacon to her family, or at least eat it on the sly herself, my parents have on occasion poisoned our ears, our minds, and our souls with less than the best that music has to offer.

My father said it's about exposing us to the real world. Everyone in the real world does not have absolute pitch, nor does everyone play or sing with flawless technique. It's all a part of our socialization, Dad says, so that we don't grow up to be snobs in a cultural sense, but I don't think there was ever any real danger of that happening.

To have, or not to have a baby?

How can a compromise be reached if one party in a relationship desires to have another child, while the other party is equally opposed to doing so?

This question is entirely hypothetical. It does not pertain to my own long-distance relationship in any way for a myriad of reasons. For one, I'm not yet fertile. For another, I'm not yet sexually active. For another, the distances involved in my relationship are such that conception would involve special delivery of test tubes packed in dry ice. Even if I wanted to rock the parents' world just a bit, I don't think I could involve anything so technical in doing so.

In most cases, this quandary is faced by married couples. Perhaps they had agreed never to have kids, but one party changed his or her mind. Perhaps they've already had a child (or two, or three, or four, or five, or six -- I'm thinking of some of my LDS relatives and acquaintances here) but one half of the couple can't quite give up on the idea of just one more baby. Perhaps there was never a firm decision between one or two kids; the couple just assumed they'd have a meeting of the minds when the time came.

First of all, the couple is in a better position to be debating the proposition before the all-important conception has taken place. It would indeed be sad to hash it all out once the baby is already on its way. Depending upon ow strongly either party might feel, abortion or adoption might be a consideration. While there are plenty of things worse than the latter of the two options, nine months is a long time to carry around anything or anyone a person doesn't plan to keep, so if the decision is being made before the fact, congratulations to all those involved for their self-control and foresightedness.

Can a compromise be reached? Of course! A compromise is ALWAYS an option! You have half a baby instead of a full one. This could be accomplished by giving birth to a baby that exists only from the waist up. The upside to this solution is that the pesky matter of diapers is eliminated. If crying is an issue for you, have a baby that exists only from the waist down. Or perhaps have a really timy baby, like I was at two pounds, two ounces. (The problems with this version are that A) maybe the baby won't survive; B) perhaps it will survive, but with physical or cognitive problems; or C) perhaps the baby will grow up into a regular person -- maybe even a real pai in the butt like me -- in which case you get more than the half-baby for which you bargained.

Some people might consider a pet a compromise to having an additional child. I consider such people very silly. That beautiful tropical fish may look scintillating in the aquarium, but it's no substitute for a living, breathing teenager keeping you awake because he's missed curfew by three hours, and you forgot to have a GPS installed on the car that you allow him to drive.

In a more open society, the party who wished to have an additional child might just go out and find another partner with whom to produce the other child. It wouldn't necessari;y even signify and end to the original marriage. It would be merely an addendum of sorts. That, however, is not how we do things in most civilized populations. Decisions as to whether or not to reproduce have been known to strain or even to break unions, but one does not usually produce an extracurricular child as a solution to the original disagreement.

A person I know who shall remain nameless solved the "you can't have half a baby" crisis in her own unique way. She wanted a third child. Her husband did not. She secretly went off contraceptives for two months. If she conceived in those two contraceptive-free months, she would've had a third child. She said she would have explained it by saying that birth control isn't always effective. (That's especially true if you don't even use it.) If she didn't, she wouldn't. She didn't conceive; she went back on contraceptives and considered it to be perfectly fair. She said that it would have bothered her not to have had a third child without those two months of reproductive roulette, but because she had them and pregnancy didn't happen, it never bothered her to have stopped at two children.

Every couple, or even every individual, must face this decision. In the cases of stable adults who can provide for another child, there's no right or wrong answer. All things considered, it's possibly best not to have the additional child if both parties do not agree to it. If it is the woman who does not want the additional child,such is all the more the case; until medical science has advanced to the point that men can sustain pregnancies, she has to have veto power. Still, there are no easy answers. One one hand, the Earth has too many bodies inhabiting it already, yet on the other hand, our society has too few functional families producing children, and far too many dysfunctional families picking up that slack. This means that when we're all in old folks' homes, if we live that long, there will be some truly scary people handing out our Milk o Magnesia and emptying our bedpans. Anyone ready for a round or two of reproductive roulette?

A Serious Question

In the grand scheme of things, whether one believes in a evolutionary origin to the world. a God-created universe, or something in between, one question has been plaguing me: why are mosquitoes needed?

I despise mosquitoes. I depise ants, but I recognize that they provide a major dietary source of formic acid for the bear population. While ants are bad, bears - in their natural habitat, far aways from me -- are good. I'll deal with the unpleasantries of ants invading my territory if their continued existence ultimately preserves the health of protected species.

To mosquitoes, on the other hand, I grant no such "live and let live" attitude. If the proliferation of mosquitoes is key to the survival of koalas or some similar charming species, please inform me of such. I'd be happy to allow mosquitoes to exist peacefully in Australia if such is the case. Otherwise, I will continue to wonder about the need for ants and to pray for their eradication.

In a Fog Pit

Many people despise fog. For those living in California's Central Valley, fog, especially the dreaded Tule fog that blankets much of the San Joaquin valley for many consecutive days between November and March, is an unwelcome visitor of each year. It causes serious traffic accidents and depression in those who are prone to Seasonal Affective Disorder. This type of fog - while it does not bother me persoanlly unless I have to drive in it, can be a nuisance or worse.

On the other hand, the house where I am currently staying -- the PseudoRelatives' new residence -- is in an area directly over which clouds form most mornings and evenings. In the late mornings, the fog burns off and it is sunny. After the sun goes down, the clouds return, and the place is again enshrouded in fog.

Some would consider this a drawback. My PseudoRaltives did not and do not. Moist coastal air is a boon to almost anyone with chronic breathing issues. My breathing issues are far from chronic; if I happen to develop an upper respiratory infection of any type, it usually morphs into croup. PseudoAunt's lung problems are of a more chronic and serious nature. On a good day she has respiratory issues. A minor cold can quickly turn into pneumonia for her.

Living in a fog bank, even temporarily, is good for me, as I'm coming out of a fairly nasty case of croup. For PseudoAunt, the fog provides a daily supply of cool and moist air, which is highly therapeutic and restorative to her lung function.

Fog can be your friend.

Running Up the Score: At What Point Does Enough Equal Too Much ?

In sports, it's often considered gamesmanship, or at least poor sportsmaship, to outscore an opponent to the degree that it humiliates the opponent. Most would agree with this concept. The debate comes in terms of determining what constitutes the degree that humiliates one's opponent.

Young children's baseball and softball, as in both Little League, Bobby Sox,ASA, and their counterparts by other names (Cal Ripken League, etc.) often operate with a "mercy rule" of either eight or ten runs. Sometimes a given number of innings must be played before the rule comes into play. By that time, the gap between teams could easily be thirty runs. So much for the mercy rule in such cases. In the very lowest levels of these leagues, limits may exist as to how many times the complete lineup may bat before a side of an inning is retired, which is helpful for those times when a team has run out of pitching, and the poor pitcher left standing on the mound cannot buy a strike. Ideally no one is taking any outcomes too seriously in any of these games; perhaps after a particularly one-sided loss is the best time for a team to be taken out for pizza or ice cram, rather than after a stellar victory.

My uncle coaches both interscholasctic baseball and recreational youth baseball. My uncle says that the first year that kids play on a full-sized baseball diamond, usually at the age of thirteen, with the distance from the pitcher's mound to home plate being equal to that which high school, college, and professional baseball players face, can produce dismal pitching results and can result in games that are painful even to watch, much less to coach or actually play. Adding to the agony of it all, my uncle says, is that by this time, even in the recreational leagues, winning is usually foremost among the objectives of the program at least in the players' minds. (While it may not be either "everything" or "the only thing," still it is something, and is the reason most of the players are on the field on a given day.) Furthermore, while running up the score is not considered good form, virtually no lead is a safe lead that first year of play on a full-sized diamond. Just as one team's pitching goes bust, seeing one batter after another advance to first and eventually around the bases as batters are either walked or hit by pitches, the very next inning may bring about the very same thing for the opposing team. Hence, no lead is truly safe, because it ain't over until the fat lady hath completed the final embellishment on her aria and waddled off the field.

In that thirteen-year-old level of youth baseball, one may just have to accept that it's going to be a bit ugly at times. Perhaps umpires could widen the strike zones (for both sides) a bit when walks seem to be getting out of hand, not so much that players are having to swing at pitches over their heads to avoid being called out on strikes, but just enough to give the poor pitchers a chance. The batter already has the advantage anyway just with the mere possibility of getting to first base without doing anything but stand next to the plate and observe pitches going over his head, rolling past his feet, or being thrown behind him.

Baseball's a sport that's very much in the gray area in this regard. Football, basketball, soccer, hockey, and water polo are bounded by time limits. A game goes on for X number of minutes, after which it's declared over, and one team wins by virtue of having scored more points than the other. If a football team has its quarterback continuing to throw passes for touchdowns, or keeps its first string in the game, all the way through the fourth quarter when it has a sixty-point lead, observers may conclude that the victorious team ran the score up. Likewise if a basketball team is continuing the fast break and the full-court press with a commanding lead in the final seconds of the fourth quarter (or second half in intercollegiate play) the allegation of running up the score again may be hurled.

In other sports, such as swimming or track, no such unwritten rules of propriety exist. A runner or swimmer isn't expected to move more slowly or jump less high or dive more sloppily (or even with less complexity) because the competition isn't as keen on a given day.

The truest gray areas can be found possibly in the sports of volleyball and tennis. A player or a team must reach, depending upon the sport, a given number of points, sets, games, or matches to be declared the winner. No matter how much a team has dominated early in a match, tables can turn, and again, it's not over until it's over. No time limit exists. So is it poor sportsmanship not to allow the opposition to win a game or even a point?

In a social setting of any sort, if a tennis player fails to allow an opponent the benefit of even a single point, bad feelings will occur. For that matter, even failure to allow an opponent to walk away with at least a single game in the set or two played will more than likely result in a bit of a grudge unless it's by previous arrangement that all players should play to maximum capacity for thr sake of sport.

In a competitive setting -- whether in tournament play or in a dual-match setting of interscholastic or other team play -- is it poor sportsmanship for one player to win every point he or she is able to win
without regard to the feelings of an opponent? Opinion is divided.

My opinion is that a tennis player should not attempt to humiliate an opponent by repeatedly acing him or her, or by regularly returning serves for outright winners, or by otherwise overpowering said opponent, when the issue of victory is never in doubt. On the other hand, in a sport such as tennis where a fluke injury on the part of an opponent can result in a victory by default for the player who is one point away from loss, it is perfectly acceptable to keep the ball in play until an opponent makes an error, or to hit occasional outright winners even when far ahead of one's opponent if it's a situation where the outcome of the match counts for something, whether it be for a point in a team victory or for advancement to the next round in tournament play. In theory, the one point in a tennis match deliberately given away to one's opponent can cause the match to go one point longer than it would otherwise have, resulting in the player who should have been the victor sustaining a match-ending injury on what should have been a match-point in favor of him or her. Had the earlier point not been given up eliberately, the previously-played point would have been the ending point of the match, the injury would not have occurred, and the player would have won rather than defaulted, resulting in either the loss of the win for his or her team or the failure to advance to the next round of the tournament.

For this reason, it is my belief that, in a competitive (tournament or team) setting, it is perfectly acceptable for a player to win a tennis match without ever letting the opposition win as much as a single point.Will doing so result in hard feelings? Most likely. Do all, or even most tennis players possess the mental toughness necessary to win every point of a match? It is highly unlikely. Are players usually mismatched in competitive pairings to the extent that it is even possible for one player to win all of the points in a match? Not usually. Still, in a competitive situation, if winning of every point played can be accomplished, it should be, and no apologies should be deemed necessary for having done so.

Note #1: My assumption is that, for the sake of argument, each point won or lost was won or lost fairly. This was not an attempt to discuss the impact of bad line calls or foot-faults.

Note #2: This has been written in rebuttal to an argument with my PseudoUncle, who has never played tennis competitively, and who believes that failing to allow an opponent in a competitive tennis match to win a single point is the equivalent to a basketball team defeating its opposing team by a score of one hundred to zero. I obviously think PseudoUncle's analogy does not apply.

The Don Quixote of Piano Tuning

My dad carries piano-tuning tools with him in the trunk of his car. The trunk of his car is rather jammed by the time he fits his suitcase, his tennis racquets, his golf bag with clubs and irons, any medical equipment he needs, his emergency road tool kit, and his piano-tuning tools. There would be positively no extra room in there for a dead body or anything else were it not for the fact that his baby --whichever Martin guitar with which he is traveling at the moment -- takes up the center of the rear seats. The car could be filled to capacity with passengers and the guitar would still have to have the safest spot and its own seat belt. That's where my dad's priorities lie.

The reason my dad carries piano tuning tools with him is that he cannot stand the sound of an out-of-tune piano. I'm the first to agree that a piano that has not been properly tuned is unpleasant to the ear. My way of handling the situation, though, is the way a normal person with a sensitive ear would handle it: A) I don't play out of tune piano; B)If someone else does, I leave. I don't dismantle a piano that belongs to someone else with no authorization whatsoever to do so.

My dad learned to tune pianos because my mom and I both have sensitive ears as well, and my mom was having her concert grand tuned every month or so. At roughly one hundred bucks a pop, this added up very quickly into a sizable wad of cash that could presumably be used for something much more practical. (Clothing for his adolescent daughter would have been my choice method of disposing of his unneeded or unwanted cash, but not his, apparently. He's content to have me be seen in public looking like the child of someone whose unemployment benefits expired just before she outgrew her wardrobe.)

When it was just my mom's piano he was tuning, I didn't give a great deal of thought to the matter. It was her piano, and if he screwed it up, she would probably have bought another piano of equal or greater value and had it delivered to our home the very next day. Now there are two pianos in our home. I have a Kawai ebony baby grand. As baby grands go, it's actually a bit large; the model is sometimes referred to as a "parlour grand."

I should explain a bit about piano makes and models at the upper end. The very finest pianos are made by the Steinway and Bosendorfer corporations; they're considered the Lamborghinis and Ferraris of the piano world. Other companies, including Bechstein, Estonia, Faziolo, Feurian, and Grotrian, likewise consider themselves among the ranks of the elite. While they're all high-quality instruments, and I certainly wouldn't turn anyone down who tried to sell me one for a few bucks in some back alley deal, by and large the other mentioned piano makers are the Rick Santorums, Michele Bachmans, and Ron Pauls in the Great Piano Race. The major competition, the one that takes place after the mere hopefuls and wannabe contenders have been vetted and exposed for their single-issue agendas, lack of substance, and Tea Party/Birther connections, as well as for the skeletons in their closets, in all likelihood will continue to exist in the forseeable future between Steinway and Bosendorfer.

As far as Steinway and Bosendorfer go, both are equisite instruments. Bosendorfer has more than 88 keys on some of its models, with the extra keys going to the extreme bass range. Ironically, Steinway features greater clarity in its deepest tones. Bosendorfer is known for a more mellow tone, and its strengths are probably best displayed in the playing of more subtle and nuanced musical works. Steinway shows its forte in a firmer sound, and, of course, the amazing clarity of the deep tones, which often, on other makes of pianos, sound more like loud and percussive noises than like actual musical notes.

The subject of my father tuning our pianos became more of an issue when my Godparents bought a "parlour grand" (large baby grand) Kawai piano for me. The Godparents' choice of the Kawai brand for me was not a coincidence. My Godparents wanted me to have a good-quality instrument of my own on which to practice while the other piano was in use, yet didn't necessarily want to drop the 100K for a Bosendorfer, or even the minimum 45K for a new Steinwsy. Their choice in piano makes for me was well-advised. It's thought by many people who know about such things that for any given amount of money, one will get a better instrument from the Kawai corporation than from any other. This is not to say that Kawai pianos are the finest on the planet, but if a person is going to drop twenty-thousand dollars for a piano, he will get a higher quality Kawai than any other make of piano. Thus, while my piano is not the Steinway that my mom owns, it is a beautiful-sounding and -looking piano. I don't wish to have just any Tom, Dick, or Harry wander in off the street to take it apart and put it back together again purely in the interest of science. This was initially a source of conflict between myself and my father, as I detest the sound of a piano that has digressed from A=440 and the relative auditory distantces between pitches of keys. I wanted my piano in tune every bit as much as my mom wanted hers to be; I just thought shelling out about a hundred bucks every month was a suitable alternative to having Andy Amateur mess with such a valuable and sensitive instrument, especially since no one was necessarily volunteering to replace my piano when dad inevitably screwed it up beyond repair.

The compromise we reached was that my dad would take a week-long refresher course for people already familiar with the art and science of piano tuning. Following this course, he received certification as a piano tuner. Even following successful completion of training, it initially gave me a slight urge to pluck strands of hair from my head a handful at a time on each occasion that he approached my Kawai with his tools. (This is how a person might feel about watching his or her only child's heart being transplanted by a second-year surgical resident.) I've since grown accustomed to it, due in more than a small part to the fact that I have enough money in the bank to replace my Kawai were my dad to kill it with the slip of a tuning fork or whatever tool he happened to have in his hand.

Now, for me anyway, the issue is one of embarrassment. If my dad hears patrons playing a poorly-tuned piano in a lobby of a hotel in which we're staying, he puts on a white lab coat, excuses himself to the person playing it, and proceeds to open the thing up and make the needed adjustments and repairs on the spot. What is amazing to me is that he has never been stopped at this "tipping his hat to windmills" sort of behavior when it comes to pianos. He goes about his business (which is, in a technical as well s a practical sense, not really his business at all) with an air that implies he's doing exactly what he should be doing. As he leaves, the attending hotel, restaurant or even school employee, will typically bring up the payment arrangement, or lack of one. My dad will just dismiss the topic with a wave of his hand, saying that he'll send the bill at the end of the month. He won't, of course, because it's questionable at best to even perform a service that was neither requested nor authorized, much less to charge for it.

The interesting thing will happen if my dad ever screws up beyond repair an expensive piano. He has lots of medical malpractice insurance, but it, of course, doesn't cover the doctoring he does on pianos. I can console myself with the idea that it will probably never happen, but still, the idea of losing my inheritance to a botched Bosendorfer or Steinway job is never totally out of the back of my mind.

The Queen of Croup

I'm not sure why, unless it has something to do with my having been a premature infant, but almost anytime I develop any respiratory ailment, it turns into croup. Anyone who lives within a hundred yards of me can forget about getting a decent night's sleep when I have croup. Once when my mom had to take me to the hospital because my dad was out of town when I came down with the dreaded croup, a doctor pushed back the curtain of my little cubicle in the ER and was stunned to find a small eleven-year-old girl inside. He said my cough sounded like it was coming from a two-hundred-fifty-pound linebacker. I've always felt that if a person is going to have an illness that makes him or her feel generally lousy, one may as well make everyone around him or her just as miserable.

Last night my lips turned blue during a particularly violent croup attack. My dad was here, so he injected me with steroids and took me out into the fog for a few minutes. (He had his stethoscope, cell phone, and car keys with him, so he could have taken me to the hospital or called 911 if I got worse. I didn't.)

My Aunt Jillian's brother Tim put his humidifier (we're all sick except my dad) in my room along with mine to make the air even foggier when I came back inside. It was almost like what I imagine a Scottish moor is like. I had to feel my way to my bed.

I'm a little croupy tonight, but not one-tenth as bad as I was last night. I always wonder if an attack of croup will be my last one, either because it kills me or because maybe my lungs will finally mature. My dad knows a guy with a recording studio near here. Next time I have croup, I'm going to arrange to record myself so I'll always remember how great I sounded if I never get croup again, not that I'd really mind not getting croup again.

Truly Stupid Childhood Misconceptions

Most of us, if we think hard enough, can come up with a few truly stupid things we believed as young children. My brother believed more stupid things than I did, though he doesn't remember most of them. I'll help him to remember. Matthew believed that all cats were female and all dogs were male. I'm not sure if he figured the truth to that one out on his own or if he had to wait until high school biology to learn the scoop. My brother also believed that the only parent who was a child's biological relative was the mother. (I should note that my brother does and always did bear an incredible physical resemblance to my father. He must've thought it strange when people commented on it.) My brother also thought the 4-1-1 operator could come through the telephone and attack you. He totally freaked out anytime he knew someone was calling directory assistance. My brother also believed that if a toilet were flushed when a person was sitting on it, the person would be sucked down through the pipes and into the sewer. I terrorized my brother with this irrational belief for the better part of two years until my mother finally put an end to it by sitting me on the toilet fully clothed, and flushing, so Matthew could see that his fear was without foundation. I was a bit irritated at my mom for ending it all so abruptly. I might have had another year or two to torment Matthew had she not intervened.

I had a couple of strange beliefs myself. I thought that when a couple divorced, it was a formal ceremony, just like a wedding -- with music, flowers, and maybe even a reception -- except instead of vowing to love and honor, etc, the divorcees aired their grievances about the spouses they were divorcing. I imagined songs such as "All my Exes Live in Texa," "You Don't bring me flowers, or "She's Out of My Life." Both my parents frequently performed at weddings. I asked my mom if she'd ever played or sung at a divorce. She just laughed. I think she thought I was trying to be funny. One day I saw an earlier incarnation of the TV show "Divorce Court" and realized that I had it all wrong. (When I made this discovery, my brother was still fearing the directory assistance operator and thoroughly entrenched in the belief that all cats were female and all dogs were male. I share this with you merely to give you perspective.)

I also believed that one of my uncles-by-marriage on my dad's side was Lee Harvey Oswald. My mother went through a major Kennedy obsession as a child, and her library still features hundreds of books on the Kennedy family. When I was in timeout, I was usually sent to my parents' den. The most interesting thing to read was the books about the Kennedys. I noticed a striking resemblance between the late Lee Harvey Oswald and my uncle. At first I thought maybe the two were brothers, but my uncle's name was Lee. Why would a family name two sons Lee? (This was before I knew about george Foreman and his habit of naming his sons after him.) In my little mind, I realized that Uncle Lee WAS Lee Harvey Oswald -- that the telvised shooting of him by Jack Ruby was either a fake or he survivied it, and rather than filling the public in on what really happened to him, and possibly having a trial for the shooting of President Kennedy, they essentially put him in the "Criminal's Protection Program" or something like that. I always thought it rsther strange that they didn't bother to change his first name.

For obvious reasons, I avoided this uncle in the way I would avoid snakes or outhouses. (Note: I have never in my life been inside an outhouse and don't intend to change that status anytime soon.) I made my stupid belief known to the family and endured years of humiliation when, at a family gathering during which I was about four years of age, for some reason the adults were discussing Russia. They were arguing about Russian currency. I don't remember the specifics. I finally had enough of what I saw as a rather silly argument when we had an expert sitting right in our midst. I pointed my finger at the man and blurted out, "Why don't we just ask him? He lived  in Russia."

"I did?" my Uncle Lee replied in a quizzical manner.

"Yes, you did,' I clarified. "It was before you shot President Kennedy. I know who you really are."

I suppose the resemblance hadn't been lost on the rest of the family, because the entire group burst into loud laughter at my proclamation. I ran from the room immediately, but not before hearing my Uncle Lee accuse my dad of telling me that he, Uncle Lee, was Lee Harvey Oswald. My dad replied something to the effect that he's never once discussed President Kennedy, Oswald, or Uncle Lee's resemblance to the alleged assassin with me.

As you can see, my brother's stupid misconceptions far outnumbered mine, though we both were guilty of major stupidity. I suspect that other kids I knew believed dumb things as well, but I never learned of them.

The Dreaded Croup Again

My PseudoAunt and pseudoUncle, PseudoAunt's brother, and I went to a restaurant together Sunday night. My PseudoAunt's brother knew the chef, so he went to the kitchen briefly to chat with him. he mentioned that a sous shef was hacking away as though he had tuberculosis or pertussis or COPD. He's just starting his second year of medical school. One would hope that by the time he's granted MD status he knows the difference between TB, whooping cough, and COPD in terms of the sounds of the coughs they each produce, but that's neither here nor there.

The bottom line is that just under three days later, three of the four of us are sick with a respiratory illness. It wouldn't be a huge problem for me or for Tim, PseudoAunt's brother, as we're relatively healthy, but PseudoAunt has cystic fibrosis, so something as simple as a cold can cause major complications for her. She went to the doctor today. I was forced to see a doctor as well, mainly in case either we had different illnesses or the illness was one that I could reinfect her with after she had successfully fought it off. Such was not the case -- the basic diagnosis is influenza -- but PseudoAunt has bronchitis with it, while I have the lovelely childhood disease I can't quite outgrow: croup.

I'm back to drinking purple sludge cough syrup and receiving steroid injections in addition to taking antibiotics. It's a lovely way to spend my final ten days or so of freedom before full-time university enrollment. It's probably better than having croup during class and being kicked out because my barking seal coughs are louder than the voice of the lecturing professor.

The central coast of California is the perfect place to be when you have croup or bronchitis. The Pseudos and I wrapped up in blankets and sat on steps leading to a beach just to drink in the moist air. It's more effective than the use of a vaporizer. We have those in the condo as well, but the moist anf foggy ocean air is more therapeutic than the most sophisticated machine technology can create for the same purpose.

I'm hoping this is a short bout with croup, because PseudoUncle and I are already starting to but heads over how much purple sludge I need to consume. I know he's an MD and all, but it's MY body, and sometimes one just has to know when to say when. The stuff is every bit as potent as 80 proof alcohol, or so I've been told.

Feeling Not Great Tonight/ Insane Medical Theories

My stomach hurts, my throat hurts, I have a bad cough, and my body manages to be uncomfortable in any body part I think about. A very special throbbing sensation ia reserved for the frontal lobe portion of my head. It feels as though I either just underwent a lobotomy or I need one because scraping out half of the frontal lobe of my brain might make it stop throbbing so unmercifully. If the late Dr. Walter Freeman walked into here with his lobotomy tools, I'd probably volunteer to be his next candidate, just on the outside chance that it would eliminate, or at least reduce the throbbing. Then again, if I couldn't feel my head throubbing, it might cause my stomach to hurt worse. (My dad says that's the reason so many severe lower leg fractures frequently involve the tibia and the fibula. My dad says it's Mother Nature's way of making them both hurt so much that they cancel out each other's pain, leaving the patient feeling at least somewhat comfortable. I have never heard such bullshit in all my life. My dad has all sorts of great theories about things that have never happened to him. More likely, doctors making such stupid statements are Mother Nature's way of sorting the competent ones from those who ate one too many poppy seed on their muffins. I've had a compound tibia/fiblua fracture, and having both bones broken and protruding through the skin on my lower leg simultaneously did nothing to decrease the agony.

My PseudoAunt is feeling much the same as I am. This is both bad and good. It's good becuase if we're both experiencing the same symptoms, there's no reason for me to leave to avoid making her sick because it's a done deal. She either already caught whatever is causing us to feel this way from me, or I caught it from her, or both of us caught it from an unnamed third party. I'm betting on the third party, though it doesn't matter much at this point.

PseudoAunt was supposed to go to the hospital twice today to have her chest physiotherapy. She went in the late morning before lunch, but afterwards, she came back hoe and got into bed. I woke up at about the time she should have gone in for her second physiotherapy. I tried to persuade her to get up and go. She would not get out of bed. I got too tired, so I went back to bed, too.

When he walked through the door to the condo in which we're presntly staying, PseudoUncle was a bit angry that PseudoAunt had no-showed her appointment, but then he saw the reason and was no longer angry. He got her up and performed her chest physiotheerapy on her. He checked both of our temps (102.2 for me and 101.8 for her) and listened to our hearts and lungs. He concluded that not much could be done for us today, but he called her specialist and called a pediatrician for me. We're both taking meds that make us more comfortable, and we're seeing doctors tomorros.

There is absolutely no benefit to being sick when there is no school.

A Wiccan Wedding

For whatever reason, we don't talk about her much, but I have an aunt who is a Wiccan. Christelle, my father's youngest sister, converted to the practice of Wicca at some point after her first year of college. She didn't want to finish her education at BYU, so she transferred after her freshman year to a university in Massachusetts, where her parents had lived before she was born, but where she had never lived. She lived with an aunt and uncle there to keep costs low, and my parents paid her tuition, books, and other related costs.

During one of her years there, my aunt accidentally wandered into a meeting of the university's Wiccan Society. She liked what she saw, and gradually became increasingly involved. She met and fell in love with a man associated with the university's Wiccan Society. Soon after receiving her bacherlor's degree, she married the man in a Wiccan wedding.

Despite having a Wiccan aunt, I'm far from an expert on Wicca. I do know that it's related to pre-Christian Paganism practiced by Celtic populations, that it focuses heavily on nature, and that it is not associated with Satanism in any way. My parents had in their heads the idea that Wicca was just non-mainsteam enough that I might embrace the religion solely for its shock value, so they've never exposed me much either to my Aunt Christelle or to Wicca. Still, they didn't feel right sending their regrets when we were invited to the wedding of Christelle and her husband-to-be, Mendel. I was even asked to be the flower girl at the wedding.

My dad's and Christelle's parents didn't attend the wedding. My dad and my Uncle Michael were the only ones of his siblings to attend. My Uncle Steve would have attended, but his wife was great with child, and actually gave birth on the day of the wedding. My dad videotaped Uncle Steve's best wishes to the couple, which were projected onto a screen during the wedding.

The wedding itself took place in a rural wooded setting somewhere in central Massachusetts. I do remember we had a great deal of trouble finding the exact spot and very nearly missed the wedding. While my dad's parents and siblings were noticeably absent, by dad's aunts, uncles, and cousins on both sides of the family were present in full force. They may have been devoutly practicing Catholics, but they weren't about to miss out on this latest freak show from my grandparents' branch of the family.


The attire of most of the wedding party was slighly beyond the norm. The bride, groom, and attendnts wore white robes that were corded at the waist. I thought they looked like my angel costume from the last Christmas pageant I had been in. My dad thought they looked like LDS temple gowns, minus the headgear. The officiant, a friend of the couple's who obtained his ministerial cerdential online a week before the wedding so that the marriage would be considered legal, wore a red satin robe. I mentioned earlier that I was the flower girl. Aunt Christelle called my mom to get my measurements, which my mom painstakingly took and gave to her. my mom asked what I would be wearing. Aunt Christelle told her it was just a typical flower girl ensemble sort of thing. Then when we showed up for the wedding (there was no rehearsal, which would have impeded the spontaneity of the ceremony) my aunt handed me a very shiny pink leotard, shiny slippers to match, pink fairy wings, and a glittery and hollow battery-operated wand stuffed with flower petals that would blow out whenever I pressed a button. It was the coolest flower girl outfit I could ever have imagined. If my parents wouldn't absolutely kill me for doing so, I'd post a picture of myself in it. I wore the outfit for my next Halloween costume as well. Future Uncle Mendel told me not to merely walk through the aisle with people seated on either side, but to "float on air," dropping pedals as I floated by. He also told me not just to walk down the center aisle, but to walk between each horizontal row as well, dropping flower petals on everyone (mostly power-blowing the petals right into the astonished guests' faces), and taking my sweet time. My dad said I took my sweet time, all right; if I'd taken any longer, he would've had to sneak out behind a tree somewhere and take a leak. Everyone was freely imbibing before, during, and after the ceremony. I remember my mom holding her hand over her face as I did my flitting and floating act diredctly in front of her. I don't know if she was hiding her embarrassment of she was merely concerned that I might give her an extre-strong blsst with the magic want and mess up her carefully appliend makeup. For what it's worth, Uncel Mendel said I floated better than any flower girl he'd ever seen before or has ever seen since. It must've been my gymnastics training.

The officiant faced one direction and spoke about air. Then he turned and spoke about water. Then he turned again and spoke of fire. Then he turned again and spoke of the Earth. Then Aunt Christelle turned all four directions and spoke of all four elements. Then future Uncle Mendel did the same. Then Aunt Christelle told who she was - who she really was. The future Uncle Mendel told who he was -- who he really was. Then someone tied Future Uncle Mendle's right hand to Aunt Christelle's left hand, after which they told who they were -- who they really were -- as a couple. Then, tied together, they turned all four directions and addressed all four elements.

Then came the part my father had dreaded, and the reason he drank so freely before the wedding. My dad stood up as directed, walked to the front of the gathering, faced the audience, and announced in the most deadpan voice imaginable, "The Clan of Rousseau supports this union." His face was approximately equal in redness to the officiant's red satin robe.
(You know how some families have secret code words or phrases for use in the event that anyone who doesn't ordinarily pick up their children is asked to do so? Shortly after the wedding, we changed our secret passphrase to "The Clan of Rousseau supports this union" because we knew it was the one sentence none of us would ever forget.)

Then came the recessional. An oboist played "Flight of the Bumblebee" as the wedding party proceeded down the center aisle, followed by me, doing a series of jetes and temps levé sauté (again, thank God for gymnastics training, as the only dance instruction I had ever received was at the gym; I hate to even think of how disappointed Uncle Mendel would've been if I had just stared blankly at him when he told me to perform jetes and temps levé sauté in the recessional). It practically would have ruined the wedding for him.

Not only have I been to a Wiccan wedding; I've been in one. If you ever need advice on how Wiccan weddings are done, just contact me here. I'll be happy to share my expertise.

Toddlers and Tiaras

On the surface, I would appear to lack the qualifications to write about TLC's "Toddlers and Tiaras." I've seen very few episodes of the show. I'm almost never alone at home -- either my own home or the Pseudos' home -- and if I turn the program on, someone bigger than I changes the channel or turns the TV off and tells me I cannot afford to fill my mind with such garbage. Once we tried to watch a marathon of "Toddlers and Tiaras" episodes when I was still being treated as an inpatient for PTSD. We had sort of a standoff with the staff, which ended in Chairman Mao announcing to us all over the speaker phone that if he had to leave his home at 10:00 p.m. to take care of the problem, he would cut the cable to every TV in the wing for an entire month. Nevertheless, there seems to be so little variation between one episode and the next of "Toddlers and Tiaras" that after watching one or two episodes, a person knows as much as he or she will ever know about the show.

In general, I dislike reality TV because it isn't real and it messes up the lives of those who agree to be filmed. One could argue that those appearing entered into a contract to be filmed with what should have been full disclosure if they had even half of a functioning brain. The uncontrolled variable is probably the assumption that the person who entered into the contract was in possession of half of a functioning brain. I've never seen one parent on "Toddlers and Tiaras" who appeared in possession of sufficient mental capacity to open an Otter Pop without injuring herself or someone else.

One of the things I detest most about the editing is when the program shows Kid A strutting his or (more frequently)her stuff, usually during a talent routine. Then the camera pans to the parent of Kid B. If Kid A is tearing up the stage, doing a first-rate version of his or her talent portion, parent of Kid B invariably has a death scowl on his or her (usually her) face. If Kid A is standing motionless on the stage, sucking her thumb while her mother is facing the stage, going through a highly animated version of all the motions of the asinine routine as Kid A should be doing it, the camera pans to mother of Kid b with a hueg shit-eating grin. These mothers are blood-thirsty.

In not all cases, but in most cases I've seen, the mothers are decidedly in the sub-average department in terms of appearance. People age differently, but in most cases, it's hard to imagine that the mothers were ever beauty pagenat material at any stage of their development. Then the mothers went on to produce children, usually daughters, who ranged somewhere from bona fide cute to not-too-far-below-average, at which point a lightbulb must have illuminated the mothers' minds: here was a second chance at beauty pageant stardom!

Between the costs of dresses and other costumes, entry fees, costs of tutoring in talent and the "pageant wave," hairstylists' fees, traveling costs, and other incidental expenses, the families of the children featured in "Toddlers and Tiaras" typically spend tens of thousands of dollars annually on their hobby/obsession. An occasional middle class family is featured, but more often, the family appears to be roughly one spray tan fee away from their electricity being cut off. My parents both had jobs, but if I had suggested entering just one of those pageants as a child, the answer most likely would have been a non-negotiable no. If, however, I'd found my parents in a particularly weak moment and managed to negotiate, I would've had to give up Christmas and birthday gifts, allowance for a year, a substantial portion of my share of the inheritance, and would've had to collect cans by the highway every weekend for at least six months. These families take the costs in their strides, as though every parent goes without deodorant, toothpaste, or health insurance so that her daughter can appear as a painted-up hussy on a twelve-inch stage at the age of four or five.

I suspect that if I watched more than three episodes of "Toddlers and Tiaras," I would quickly become practically comatose with the whole concept. To make it more interesting to the viewing public, I propose a few changes. First and foremost, the judges need to be people who are just as disgusted by the whole scene as we all are and who would therefore be thoroughly snarky. I would propose as judges Judith Scheindlin (the strident and apparently clairvoyant Judge Judy of TV syndication fame), Dr. Drew Pinsky (who would analyze things to death), the professionally angry talking head Nancy Grace (I cannot recall where I first read the "professionally angry" description of her, but if fits well), Hugh Hefner (who obviously likes women young),Hugh Laurie of TV's "House," with the assumption that he would bring with him some of his TV character's trademark snark, and Chelsea Handler to add class and refinement to the festivities (if you understand that the festivities are so unrefined and lacking in class that Chelsea Handler's inclusion would actually add class and refinement rather than subtract them, you're getting a true picture of what goes on at these pageants). Additionally, Kate Gosselin should be required to bring at least one of her children to compete each week. Ms. Gosselin is enough of a fame whore that only the tawdry glitz of the setting should bother her; she otherwise glams onto any opportunity to shove her face in front of a camera.

One addition to the cast of my proposed "New and Improved Toddlers and Tiaras" is Alex Ferrer. He should be the Master of Ceremonies. The under-three crowd would take one look at his hulking frame, even minus the black robe, and go screaming off the stage, therefore allowing each episode to finish in its allotted time. He wasn't chosen to be on the upcoming season's "Dancing with the Stars," so he presumably needs a replacement gig.

If my proposed changes are made, we can laugh with the producers of this debacle, rather than at them, as we presently do.

Plastic Tampon Applicators as Toothbrush Holders, Etc: More Loony Relative Stories

In my dad's family, there is a tradition among the women: they marry men who are batshit crazy. This occurs almost without exception. Sometimes the women who marry the batshit crazy men are also missing more than a few marbles. In other cases, they lose those marbles after marrying the men who are sanity- or reality-challenged. Either way, almost any child born to any of these couples ends up with two psychos for parents.

My dad's niece, who would therefore be my cousin, married a man who by many accounts was sane until at some point in his mission, when he started embracing aspects of the LDS gospel a bit too literally. We're all lucky he didn't become a polygamist, I suppose. What he does, instead of marrying women at will, is to communicate with God through Blogspot. I would love to post a link, but my mother says it's not kind to have fun at the expense of the mentally ill. All I can do instead is describe it to you.

My cousin's husband has a Blogspot site where he posts his prayers. I'm not supposed to visit it because some of his prayers are too intimate and too graphic for someone too young to watch R-rated movies to read. His blogged prayers describe every aspect of his life, every single desire, and every fantasy. His fantasies aren't as pure as what most would detail in a prayer.

An odd byproduct of my cousin's husband's blogspot fixation is that he believes that God communicates back to him through the blog. Anonymous messages left to him are either "divine" or "of the devil." He reserves the right to decide which ones belong to which categories.

One of the funniest facets of his blogspot fixation is, to me at least, his belief that the Lord speaks to him through the text one has to type to verify that one is not a spammer. He faithfully keeps each one in one of those black-and-white printed cardboard-covered notebooks. He records each as it comes, then prays over it later, attempting to determine its significance. His three children are nakmed Extila, Rewarm, and Fniatl courtesy of Blogspot's anti-spam feature.

I personally don't think this behavior is significantly more lucid than wearing an aluminim foil hat to protect one's brain from thought invasion. If we exchange Christmas gifts with this family this year, I'll send them a set of specially-handcrafted foi hats, then take bets as to whether or not they'll wear them. The sad thing is the hats would be more practical and worth more than anything anyone in their extended family would ever give to my family, unless you count the crocheted toothbrush holder with [presumably unused] plastic tampon applicators that we were supposed to nail to the bathroom wall that had space for just three toothbrushes. We have four people in our family. I wonder which member of our family they meant to skip. Hmmmm. Could it be . . . . . . Alexis? Which is fine with me, as I'm perfectly happy not to hang my toothbrush in a plastic tampon applicator, even if it is unused.

My Family's Close Encounter With Child Protective Services, Part Two

Fast forward to three days later. I was at school, doing something i very rarely did, which was using a school restroom. I knew of kids who left class to hang out in there for extended periods of time. I never quite understood the allure. The girls' bathrooms were odorous and gave the appearance of being cleaned only when the custodians had time to kill. I hated to speculate about the state of cleanliness of the boys' room. I typically withheld whatever call of nature that beckoned me until I got home. As a sufferer of irritable bowel syndrome, this was sometimes a tricky proposition, but in the instances the chronic condition crept up during the school day, I usually pled sick. This allowed me to use the nurse's office bathroom while I waited to be picked up. While the nurse's office facilities probably wouldn't have met the standards of anyone with even a mild case of OCD, I usually didn't feel as though I might have contracted syphilis just from breathing the air inside the room.

That day my friend had brought a 12-ounce Hawaiian Punch in her lunch. Hawaiian Punch was a treat I rarely got, so I gladly traded away my entire lunch for that one can of red sugary stuff that probably didn't contain a single ingredient indigenous to Hawaii. I quickly downed the twelve ounces of fluid, and soon realized that my bladder wasn't going to hold until I could make it home at the end of the day. I considered claiming to be sick just to use the nurse's restroom, but if anyone in the office insisted on calling one of my parents to pick me up because I had claimed to have been sick, I would have been busted. Either of my parents could spot a malingerer a mile away. I braced myself and entered the dreaded girls' room, wondering if could possibly hold my breath for the duration of my time in there.

One thing that has always been incomprehensible to me is that there are other children who did not share my distaste for school restrooms. One of these off-kilter creatures was a girl I'll call Shelly Bleidermuth , which is neither her actual first nor last name, but very close on both counts. One of Shelly Bleidermuth's hobbies was climbing atop the partitions between the individual stalls to spy on girls who were in the stalls. That day I was wearing a pair of pink twill overalls, necessitating my removal of them further than if they had been mere pants. As I stood to pull up my overalls and underwear, unaware that Shelly had a full view of me and of the Mardi Gras bead-induced welts and bruises, which now ranged in color from red to purple to blue and even yellow, I was startled when she shreiked, "Alexis's got shingles." She ran from the bathroom, shrieking her news to anyone and everyone who would listen, all the way to the office. Why she thought they were shingles, or why she'd even heard of shingles, was a complete enigma.

One would think an office staff at a busy elementary school would have better things to do than to listen to and investigate the claims of an obviously disturbed and perverted fifth-grade bully who used her recess time to peak at whatever nine- and ten-year-old nudity she could find. At the very least, the staff should have been more concerned with Shelly's actions than with whatever skin abnormality I may have possessed. It must have been a slow day in the office. Apparently no one had been caught flooding toilets, trying to sneak off campus, or trying to peak into the staff lounge.

The half-wits in the office called me in. They demanded a view of my nude body, which I refused to grant them. Had the school nurse been there, I probably would have conceded, but our school shared a nurse with several campuses, and I wasn't about to undress in front of a secretary or whatever other school employee who insisted on it. Eventually the school vice-principal tried to call my mother, who was at in court because of some sort of special-education litigation related to her job at the time. The only parent available was my father. He was working that day at a hospital roughly ninety minutes away. It was almost two-thirty by the time he arrived. He told the secretary that he would check the situation out, but that he didn't see any reason I should have to expose private body parts to virtual strangers when I had already been traumatized enough by the fifth-grade bully. He took me home. On the way home, he asked me what was going on. I copped to the crime of having hidden Matthew's Mardi Gras beads under me during the trip from las Vegas to the San Joaquin Valley. He took a look at the bruises when we got home. The skin wasn't broken, so he didn't think any treatment was necessary. He said he might have considered whacking me, but he really couldn't when I'd already hurt my bottom far more than he would ever hurt it. I didn't have any homework, so he let me watch TV. He called the school with his conclusions, and he told my mom when she got home at about 5:30. We thought nothing more of it.

The next morning, as my mom was getting into her car and my dad was pushing us out the door to get into his car, a woman and a man showed up on our doorstep. My mom couldn't see their badges from the driveway and though they were Jehovah's Witnesses; she was grateful to have a legitimate excuse to escape and to force my dad to deal with them, as she was scheduled for the witness stand that day and might have been found in contempt of court had she been late.

My dad answered the door, looked at the badges the man and woman displayed, and let them into our house. They informed him that they were investigating claims that a child who lived at the residence named Alexis had been subjected to abuse recently. My dad looked at the ceiling and sighed. I tried to run out the back door, but my dad caught me by the shoulder. "This is Alexis," he told them.

The man asked me why I had started to run. I told him it was because I was afraid of having to take my clothes off in front of them. The man and woman wanted to question me away from the presence of my dad. I was afraid that they would take my clothes off of me once they got me away from him, so I said no and held tightly to the banister at the bottom of the stairs. My dad pried my hands from the banister and carried me upstairs to the den, inviting them in. He walked out of the den and closed the door, leaving me inside with them.

The lady asked me about the marks on my bottom and how they had gotten there. I told them all about the trip from Las Vegas, leaving out the part about my mother using swear words. The man said, "You actually expect us to believe that you got those marks from sitting on beads."

I said yes, that was how it had happened.

The lady said I needed to find the beads to show them to her. She accompained me as I went into Matthew's room and retrieved the beads. (The day before, when I confessed everything, my dad had made me produce the beads and give them to Matthew.) The woman looked at the beads and said that they would still need to see the marks on my skin. I hollered for my dad at the top of my lungs. A compromise was reached that the lady would look at the marks with my dad present. Under heavy protest, I took my leggings off. The lady examined the marks on my legs, then held the beads next to them. it was clearly a direct match. Then she said she needed to see the marks on my bottom as well. I held tightly to my underwear. my dad offered me money to cooperate. I said no. He offered me more money and said it was going to happen with or without my cooperation, so I took the money and relented. The lady agreed that those marks as well were a match with the beads.

Then the man and woman asked my dad how they could know for certain that I hadn't been hit with the beads as opposed to merely sitting on them. One of my dad's undergraduate majors was physics. He explained that if I had been struck with the chains, the loop pattern on my thighs would likely have had a different shape, and that the person holding the chain of beads would've held one end, so I would not have had loop marks from each end of the chain, one on each thigh and another on each side of my bottom. He pointed out that the slight blurring of bead marks on my skin was more consistent with my squirming while seated on the uncomfortable beads than with being hit multiple times, He also pointed out that the two chains had different sized beads, giving me different-sized bruises on my left and right sides. It would have been unlikely that a person would hit me on one side with one strand of beads, then hit me on the other side with another strand. The man and woman thought momentarily, then seemed to buy his explanation.

They left their cards with him in the event that he needed to contact them. I'm not sure why they thought he would want to contact them.

It was almost 10:00 by the time the CPS workers finished their investigation and departed. My dad had called to say he wouldn't be at work that day. My brother and I got into Dad's car. We were surprised when my dad stopped and parked directly in front of a video store. He said that we probably wouldn't be able to concentrate on school work anyway, so he let us each choose a video. We ordered pizza for lunch, and he even let us drink soda with it.

When my mom came home, she was upset - not so much at the school for reporting us, as she herself was and still is a mandated reporter and understands that the school is under heavy obligation to report anything suspicious at all in terms of possible child abuse. Her irritation was more in the direction of how thoroughly they investigated my case, and how often they won't even check out real cases of physical or sexual abuse of a child when evidence is far more compelling than the evidence against my parents. She said that the problem is susally that CPS workers wouldn't get off their butts if they knew a child's life were in danger at that precise second if it happened to be coffee break time.

I assume my CPS case must have been closed. We never ever heard from them again, except for once when the man who had been at our house called to ask my dad's expertise as to whther a skin wound could have been inflicted in the way a child said it had. My dad looked at the photos and the evidence and said that in his opinion, according to the laws of physics, the wound could not possibly have happened in the way the child said.
My dad heard through the grapevine that the parents were never even contacted by CPS. My mom said that's the way it usually works.

My Family's Close Encounter With Child Protective Services, Part One

Sometimes when I'm typing a blog, I'll touch lightly upon something at least mildly interesting to me that has happened about which I had essentially forgotten. Such was the case when I veered recently onto the topic of the time CPS paid a visit to my family at our home.

It all began on a Sunday afternoon in February after my immediate family had spent a weekend with my mom's side of the family celebrating what would have been both of my maternal grandparents' birthdays had they still been alive. (Both passed away before my parents were married, long before my brother and I were born.) My father had driven with us on the previous Thursday from our northern California home to Las Vegas for this family reunion. He didn't return with us, though, because he needed to be in Los Angeles for work reasons the following morning, and it made more sense for him to fly directly from Las Vegas to Los Angeles than to drive all the way back home with us to take a flight of much greater distance. The problem was that his absence left my mother attempting to transport two nine-year-olds who were incapable of sharing a backseat without terrorizing each other. We weren't going directly home. We planned to spend a night in the southern San Joaquin Valley with my mom's close friend, so we took a shorter but even less scenic route than we had taken from our home to Las Vegas.

The early part of the drive was merely monotonous. The freeway (I-15, I think) leads from Vegas down through even more barren parts of Nevada and California than we had experienced previously. The most exciting things we saw were a giant thermometer in Baker, California, and a former train car that had been converted into a McDonald's. We of course saw the train car from a distance. Despite our pleas, my mother wasn't about to supply us with fast food that she considered and still considers practically akin to poison. (An hour or so later, my mom probably wished she'd given in and poisoned us with the greasy chemical-laden fast fare to which the McDonald's corporation euphemistically refers as food.) At Barstow, we switched to another highway that took us through part of the Mohave Desert and across the Tehachapi Mountains. It was February, and signs warning of inclement weather were flashing. I heard my mom curse under her breath each time another sign warning us of high winds, icy roads, precipitation at below-freezing temperatures, and the possible requirement of tire chains, came into view.

Just as we ascended to meet our first snow flurries of the trip, my brother noticed the absence of a couple of strands of Mardi Gras beads that had been handed out at various places on the Las Vegas Strip in anticipation of an upcoming Mardi Gras parade. As he was looking for them, I quietly slipped the beads, which I had picked up from a nightstand in our Vegas hotel room where my brother had left them as we were making our final exit, and moved them from my sweatshirt pocket, where I knew my brother would look for them, to the carseat, directly under my body. I had to arranged them so that I would be sitting on just one layer's thickness of the beads. Otherwise, the discomfort of the beads under my practically meatless legs and bottom would have been unbearable for any length of time. As it was, the carefully arranged beads were far from comfortable. I would discover the next morning that my bottom and legs sported chains of bead-shaped red welts and deep purple bruises.

Matthew was moaning about the absence of his beads and telling my mother that we needed to go back to the hotel to get them. By this time we were roughly three hours away from the hotel, and perhaps halfway across the
stormy passageway through thr Tehachapis. If my mom had left her wedding ring, or even one of us, at the hotel, odds would have been against her driving back to retrieve the missing item or child. She told him that there was no way in hell she would turn around and travel all the way back to Vegas for few damned strings of Mardi Gras beads. This was a clear indication of my mother's stress level. My brother and I had been exposed by that time to all the routine swear words, minus the F-bomb, by my father's rather colorful vocabulary when he watched sporting events at home on TV. We heard the words from Dad, but we knew wew were never to use those words ourselves, and, as a rule, our mother never used them, either. Even she had her breaking point, though, and driving through a snowstorm in the Tehachapis with a nine-year-old boy carrying on about his missing Mardi Gras beads as though he was an older and more hormone-driven boy who would get to ride on a Mardi Gras float in a parade and throw the beads to receive the usual anticipated reward was my mother's breaking point.

My mom launched into a tirade, the basic point of which was that we were all going to be killed when she drove over an icy cliff because she couldn't see though the snow and couldn't control the vehicle because it was too hard to concentrate with two shrieking banshees in the back seat fighting over $%&&*#-@^*%#ed Mardi Gras beads. The particular expletive she chose actually broke one of the ten commandments; I couldn't wait to tell my dad. Then she sighed and said, "Alexis, why don't you just give Matt the beads that you have? I'll gladly pay you for them when we stop."

I hadn't been given any Mardi Gras beads on the strip. Matthew knew this. "Alexis doesn't have any Mardi Gras beads," he told my mom.

"What about the ones I saw you carrying out of the hotel room?" my mom asked in response.

"Were those Mardi Gras beads?" I asked, feigning innocence. "I tossed them into the wastebasket because I didn't want to leave a mess for the maid. I though they were trash," I lied. It was typical of me at that age to be highly concerned with my mother having broken one of the Ten Commandments but totally oblivious to my having done the same.

"You tossed my Mardi Gras beads in the trash?!?!?" my brother shouted. "Just for that, I'm going to toss your doll right out the window!" At nine, I was mostly past playing with dolls, but I still owned each doll I had ever possessed, and usually took a small one in the car with me on long trips. The doll passenger on the Vegas trip was Skipper, Barbie's younger cousin, whom I saw for the very last time as my brother quickly lowered the window and threw her out.

It was then my turn to wail and beg my mother to stop so that we could find Skipper. "Alexis, we couldn't find that doll if we had a search party with bloodhounds." My mother made no attempt to conceal her exasperation. "She's probably a thousand feet below us by now." Her words did little to pacify me. I continued to cry and plead. By this time, my mother, too, was crying. "If I stop this car," she said through her tears, "it will not be to look for a doll, and it will not be to turn around and go back to Las Vegas for some stupid plastic beads. If I stop the car, it will be to spank both of you." Matthew and I immediately stopped all protestations, although I continued to sniffle quietly. "At least use a tissue," my mom said, thrusting a Kleenex box into the back seat.

We eventually reached our south valley destination. My mother, ordinarily not much of a drinker, exited the car, not even waiting for us. She rang her friend's doorbell as we scrambled out of the car after her (with me hurriedly stashing the disputed beads under the car seat), afraid we'd be left outside to fend for ourselves in the cold all night. Her friend's husband let us in, commenting that my mother didn't look well. Her only explanation was, "I need a drink. Now."

TO BE CONTINUED

Message from Scott to Becca

Note: Two posts to Rebecca from Scott have been lost in cyberspace. I am graciously allowing Scott to post his message here on my blog. After it has been posted, we'll attempt again to post it as a response to Rebecca's blog, but at least she'll get to read the immortal words of my Uncle Scott either way.

Note from Scott: In this third attempt to post a message to Rebecca, I'll try to remember what I wrote the first two times, but I'll undoubtedly omit something. I hope that the basic essence of my message remains.

Dear Becca,
You have officially entered your senior year of high school. Some people will tell you that this year is the greatest year of your life, and that you should enjoy it because you'll never get it back. I agree that one's senior year is a year to be enjoyed and remembered. On the other hand, the greatest year of your life? I certainly hope it isn't. A few souls among us may have peaked at the age of seventeen, only to watch everything go steadily downhill from there. I'm confident such will never be the case for you. While you will have life-long memories from this year, life continues to get better for anyone who keeps an open mind and who goes onto learn and to seek new experiences throughout her life.

You're nearing that magical age of eighteen -- the official entry to adulthood. For most of us, the association with the age of eighteen and adulthood is nominal. Few young people have the resources to be 100% finacially independent at the age of eighteen, which is actually juat as well, because even fewer people at that age possess the emotional maturity to be the sole controllers of their lives at that point. As you approach the legal onset of adulthood, keep in mind that your parents have had your best interests at heart for a long time, and that won't stop the day you turn eighteen or the day you graduate from high school. Continue to benefit from their experience and wisdom. True independence will come much more quickly and easily if you do not demand it the first day you're legally entitled to it. Beyond that, you'll grow up all too quickly anyway. Enjoy your youth and relative freedom from serious responsibility for as long as you can.

This final portion of my letter to you isn't closely related to the rest of the message, yet I think it's important that I include it. In a communication with Alexis, you wrote of concerns about the insurance carrier covering both you and your young cousin Maria. You wrote that while it is bothersome that diagnotstic procedures and treatments are denied to you or debated at great length before eventually being provided amidst yards of red tape, it upsets you even more to see a young child with a spinal injury being denied or being provided under heavy protest routine care that falls under the category of a no-brainer. While I share your concern for the well-being of your eight-year-old cousin, I am equally concerned about the headaches and frustrations insurance carrier personnel have given you and your family on a regular basis. YOU ARE ENTITLED TO QUALITY MEDICAL CARE. The fact that your present insurance is provided through a government program should have no bearing whatsoever on the quality of care you receive or on the way hospital personnel treat you while you are receiving or arranging for diagnostic or treatment procedures. You have hard-working parents who are taxpayers, but even if that were not the case, you still shouldn't be made to feel as though you are any less than worthy of the very best in care that current medical research and technology can provide. A society cannot call itself civilized if it fails to take care of the most vulnerable in its population, whch would be its oldest and youngest inhabitants. Such is a sacred obligation of society in general and of the medical profession in particular. It causes me pain to have to claim association by profession with doctors or other workers within the medical community who would treat some patients differently than others by virtue of their insurance carriers.

Enjoy this year, but look forward to much greater years ahead. You and others like you ARE the future, and the world depends upon you.

With fondness, respect, and admiration,
Alexis' PseudoUncle, Dr. Scott

Judge Alex Doesn't Bring Me Flowers Anymore *

*nor did her ever; the title is a metaphor as well as a literary allusion

I've never initiated a break-up of any relationship, whether boyfriend/girlfriend, friend/friend, pet/master, or even doll/owner. I still own every doll I've ever possessed except for the Skipper doll that my brother Matthew threw out the rear passenger window of our car somewhere between Barstow and Bakersfiield because I was sitting on his Mardi Gras beads and told him we'd left them at the hotel in Las Vegas. This all went down during a snowstorm in the Tehachapis, and my mother was going totally Kate Gosselin on us and telling us that we were going to make her drive over a cliff and that Matthew and I would be dead at the ripe old age of nine. (Probably the most memorable part of that whole thing was when CPS showed on our doorstep because a pervert girl who had been peeking over a school bathroom partition told a teacher that I had chains of peculiar round marks all over my upper legs and bottom. The teacher assumed that my parents must have beaten me with a strange and sadistic whip. It took some explaining to convince the CPS investigator that the marks were just from my brother's Mardi Gras beads that I had sat on for almost five hours. The investigator, who obviously had never been a nine-year-old girl with a twin brother, found it virtually impossible to believe that a child would sit on obviously uncomfortable Mardi Gras beads for the better part of five hours just to spite her twin brother.) Every pet we've ever owned has lived with us until it concluded that cohabitating with our nutcase family was simply too difficult a proposition, and chose death as opposed to continued life with us. I'm currently in a not-too-serious boy-girl relationship, but the only one I'd ever been in before was ended abruptly by the boy when he announced in the school cafeteria after my freak track and field accident that he refused to be seen at the prom with a cripple -- me, temporarily, after my freak track and field accident. Any regular friend who is no longer a friend is someone with whom I've lost touch after either she or I moved. There was never any ill will as far as I knew.

It's fitting, then, that even in a Twitter relationshhip, I would be the object of the breakup. I would be the one to be dumped. At this stage of my life, or always, maybe, my destiny is to be the one other people break up with, and not vice versa. Judge Alex Ferrer is breaking up with me.

I watched Judge Alex on television regularly. If someone messed with my DVR or failed to record the program when I was too sick to press a few buttons on a remote control myself, I made life unbearable for those around me. If Judge Alex appeared as a talking head on another program, the family was subjected to that as well. On weekends, I watched old DVRed episodes of Judge Alex's show. My father thought I had gone over the edge to have some sort of full-blown obsession. My mother said that with everything that was going wrong in my life (this was in the aftermath of the break-off of my prom date and shortly after I was released from the hospital following the mean aunt and uncle leaving me to make my way down from the smoky attic and all the way outside by myself when I had multiple fractures and was unable to use crutches) if watching a few more Judge Alex episodes than would be considered healthy by normal standards kept everyone else in the house from having to listen to me sob continually, bring on Judge Alex; everyone else could wear earplugs if the need were to exist.

I tweeted Judge Alex when my Dad snuck into my room on a cold December morning at 5:00 a.m. to inject me with a flu shot while I was still asleep. Judge Alex commiserated when my parents were going to force my brother and me to double date at the prom. He listened when I complained about not being allowed to get my driver's permit when I wanted it. We made it through many rough times together. It wasn't entirely one-sided, either: I commiserated when his wife flooded their living room floor with water from the Sea World-sized aquarium in their common living area. I read of horror stories, such as when the judge's driver drove onto an expressway via the off-ramp. He shared stories of his pets' ailments, and even the unpredictable potty-training quirks, such as when his dog Stella took an Alaska-sized dump on the floor of the veterinarian's waiting room. He shared how he unleashed his R-rated vocabulary when having his hair cut, while unbeknownst to him, his hairstylist's pastor had entered the salon and was watching and listening, wide-eyed, as the TV judge let loose with one F-bomb after another.

Mrs. Ferrer, do not panic. Your husband is not, at least as far as I know, a pedophile. Judge Ferrer, put down the telephone that has the speed dial to your personal attorney. I am not accusing you of impropriety.


I've had my share of mental health issues, but I'm not totally delusional. I remember a song from one of my mom's old Carpenters' CDs about a woman who fell in love with a musician through hearing his music played over the radio, somehow getting the idea that he was singing and playing to her and her alone. ("Don't you remember you told me you loved me, baby? You said you'd be coming back this way again, baby?") I'm not THAT much of a wack job. I always knew that Judge Ferrer was a television personality, and I was a fan, and that he didn't actually know me, nor I him. Social media such as Twitter may give the false impression that a celebrity actually KNOWS his fans, but the reality is that a line must be maintained, and if it is not, problems result for those on both sides. Judge Ferrer was my Twitter friend, not my friend. No real relationship ever existed. I knew it at the time, and I certainly know it now.

Still, even with Twitter friends, there is a poignancy in ending a relationship. It's the end of an era for me. There's a sadness in knowing that Judge Ferrer is not as wise, kind, and perfect as the image I had projected onto him. It did not hit me as hard as as when I learned the truth about Santa, but still, knowing that heroes are human, with human weaknesses, is a painful part of growing up. At the same time, a certain satisfaction comes with knowing it is a sign of growing up.

Judge Ferrer may still reply to one of the Tweets I've left, and I may even answer back, but it's over.

Protocol, Spying on Me Via My Blog, and Judge Judy, Who Expects Us to Lie

My artistically brilliant but controversial plan to be photographed atop the roof of my home, where I once performed basic (level four if you consider them having been successfully executed on the equivalent to a balance beam; level three otherwise) gymnastics skills has been temporarily thwarted because I made the silly mistake of blogging about my plan in advance on this semi-private forum. Any reader who stumbles upon this space is free to read, although he or she would have virtually no insight as to my identity as the author. Still, of the relatively few people in my life who know of the blog's existence, six are presently enclosed in the house with me. Wouldn't it seem logical to ask me of my immediate upcoming plans as opposed to logging onto a computer, locate the website, and reading the blog in its entirety? The thwarter of my plans is bedded down for the night in a room containing a doorway that is no more than two steps (with the thwarter's Bigfoot-like dimensions, he probbaly could've covered the distance in a single stride) from the doorway to the room in which I am settled in for the night.

Had he asked me point-blank of my plans for the upcoming days, I can hardly guarantee that the answer I provided necessarily would have been the proverbial on-a-stack-of-Bibles truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Judge Judith Scheindlin, of "Judge Judy" fame, is fond of declaring that when a teenager's mouth is moving, he or she is lying. I've been taught by my parents that I should not contradict my elders. Judge Schendlin, as an enthusiastic if shrill promoter of Truth, Justice, and The American Way, is an elder whom I should not contradict. In order for my words not to contradict those of her, I must at least occasionally say things that are not true, I'm on shaky ground ever telling the truth, as Judge Scheindline said whenever a teenager's mouth is moving, he or she is lying, but i find it exhausting to speak only in lies. At times, I lack the energy to tell anything but the truth.

I reread the previous two paragraphs. They seem about as clear as chocolate milk and even less pertinent than they ar clear. Still, I like the way they sound, so I'm leaving them in tonight's blog.

The bottom line here is that my uncle, who was literally within easy shouring distance of me and could have asked me anything he wanted to know, chose instead to spy on me by reading my blog. Perhaps he lacks faith in the truthfullness of the answers I would have given. Has it ever occurred to him that no law of nature prevents me from lying in my blog? There's virtually no guarantee that information coming from my blog is any less heavily laden with lies than the information I would provide orally. I figure that Judge Judy's mantra must surely apply to the written words of teenagers as well as to the spoken ones. Most of what appears in my blog happens, for the record, to be mostly the Gospel Truth, but in keeping with Judge Judy's expectations that, as a teenager, when my fingers strike the keys, I'm under some degree of moral obligation at least to suggest that I lie in my blog even if I don't. To fail to do so would be an egregious violation of my parents' directive not to contradict my elders. Following my parents' policy of not contradicting my elders, I am at least a little bit obligated to throw in a few half-truths, mistruths and outright falsehoods in the name of respect and confirmation of the Honorable Judge Judith Scheindlin.

It seems that Uncle disapproves of my plan to climb a tree next to my house in order to scale thr roof and be photographed while standing atop it. This is, again, the same roof on which I successfully completed a front walkover and a cartwheel. All I plan to do for the picture is stand there and perhaps smile. My Uncle read about it in my blog. He should've just asked instead of spying on me. Out of obligation to live up to (or down to, as the case may be) Judge Scheindlin's expectations of me as teenager I probably would have needed to lie to him. At that point, however, he then he would have had justification to consult my blog.

Judge Judy says we lie all the time. Judge Judy is a Pillar of Society, in addition to being a cultural icon. Unless we wish to be deliberately rude by contradicting esteened elders, we must either fail to tell the truth, tell less than the whole truth, or include incidentals and embellishments that are not any part of the truth. If we fail to do this, we are contradicting an esteemed elder American. In previous generations, someone may very well been slapped for contrdicting an elder. It's less clear-cut now, but those of you, who, like me, concern yourselves with being on the correct side of propriety, some distortion of the truth is essential. It's slightly less essential in writing. Still, I consider it rude of my parents' houseguests to consult my blog before speaking with me personally. If they care enough to ask me personally, even if they know they have no greater than a fifty-fifty chance of receiving an answer that is not overstated, understated, embellished, or otherwise distorted, they are then ethicslly and morally in a position to consult my blog for the purpose of spyinh on me. After they've gone through the proper chnnels, i'm not offended by their intrusion.

It's all a matter of protocol. Adults expect us to learn theirs. It would behoove them to learn ours as well.

Home for One Last Visit

I arrived by plane with Pseudorelatives and my mom's best friend to an airport in the largest city near what is soon to be my former home. I didn't toss my cookies even once either at the airport or on the plane. I did take strong anti-nausea medication, but I've taken it everytime I've flown in the past nine month or so, and it hasn't stopped the emesis completely before. This is definite progress.

I have a camera with me so I can photograph pretty much every square foot of the house. It's not that I care all that much now, but I may have questions later, and the pictures may very well come in handy.

I blogged in one of my initial posts about how I once did gymnastics stunts on the roof of the house, which resulted in, among other thing, my being permanently banned from gymnastics. Just for the sake of memories, I want to have a picture of myself on the very top of the roof. My parents would never go along with this, nor would my PseudoUncle. I have to get them all out of the house in daylight hours. I don't yet have a plan. If I don't come up with a plan, I'll have to attempt it when they're all inside, which will be just a bit tricky. I weighed approximately forty-two pounds the last time I was up there, so my footsteps probably sounded as though a cat was walking on the roof. I now weigh roughly eighty-five -- not far from twice the weight I was back then -- and would not flatter myself by thinking anyone would mistake the sound of my footsteps on a roof at my present weight as being those of a cat.

I had forgotten just how perfect my bedroom is. My aunt is supposedly recreating the room in our next home, and the buyers of this home were told that the floor rugs, bedding, and accessories do not come with the house. I shouldn't worry, because if the room is half as cool as this one, it will be great.

If anyone has any great ideas for how to get three adults out of this house at the same time during daylight hours, please respond in the comments section.