All posts by Janet Coburn

High School (Reunion) Memories

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The last time I even contemplated going to my high school reunion (Fairmont East) was the 25th iteration.

I was terrified.

I went to a high school friend (Mary McCarty) for advice. She was quite helpful. She also wrote about my panic in the local paper (Dayton Daily News).

Here’s what I told her: “Over the last quarter century I’ve confronted and dealt with a number of pieces of my past and tried to make my peace with them. High school, however, is not one of those things.”

Mary did note that “Janet … had more reason than most to be apprehensive. She had been one of those kids too brainy, too head-in-the-clouds, to comprehend how to navigate the social firmament.”

Spot on.

I got my hair done for the event and told my stylist to make me look “successful and sane.” She replied, “Oh, no, here comes the wish list.” “At least I didn’t ask for young and thin,” I pointed out.

I went, taking along my husband and telling him and my dear friend Kathy, who had flown in from the West Coast, not to leave my side. I’m sure the husband came as a surprise to most people there, proof that I had at least managed to navigate that particular social firmament.

I survived it all. My big insight: “Not everyone hated me.”

Mary was much more philosophical: “In adolescence our images are refracted through so many distorted lights – the way we see ourselves, the way everyone else sees us, the way we fancy everyone else sees us. What mattered was that we could all talk face to face, as adults, as equals, as friends.”

It is now approaching time for our 40th reunion. Do you think I am any calmer this time around?

Well, maybe. I don’t have the energy or the attention span to get all worked up about it.

Will I go? Probably not. It’s like the Tower of Terror at DisneyWorld – I did it once and I’m glad I did, but I have no desire to do it again.

Besides, the people from high school that I want to be in touch with – like Mary and Kathy – I still am in touch with, in person or via Facebook.

At this point I have nothing to prove.

What’s in a Name?

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I’m an obsessive, insatiable reader, and have been since I was four years old. But lately, there’s a trend in books that annoys me mightily.

It’s the names.

I understand that authors want their books to stand out, but I want characters that are memorable for their dialogue, actions, and thoughts. Not a bunch of stupid names.

I’ve got a little list. (And they’d surely not be missed.)

First, let me say that I’m not including science fiction and fantasy books in this rant. Those authors can make up names all day long. (Though the wizard named Alanon made it impossible for me to read that series.)

Digression: Has anyone else noticed that new prescription names sound like alien overlords? Xeljanz. Vioxx. Or damsels in distress? Lunesta. Levitra.

Romance novels may be the worst offenders, though off-putting names can occur in any genre. I think the worst I’ve seen was a couple whose names were Ben Heat and Rebecca Sweet. Ick. Just ick.

Then there was a couple named Faith and Royal. (Royal’s last name was Baxter. I couldn’t help myself. I kept thinking Royal Bastard.)

Last names that are meant to define character are irritating too: Knight, Savage. Another notable was Lexy Baker who was, well, a baker. Like the readers couldn’t figure that out.

First names too: Taffeta (nickname: Taffy), Bliss.

The ones that really annoy me are the cross-gender names. I know this is a trend in real life, not just in books, and we’ll just have to live with little girls named Taylor and Jordan and Madison. Thank you so much, Splash!

But this is getting ridiculous. Here are some actual names of female characters I’ve seen:

Clyde

Josiah

Noa

Dallas

Sloane

I don’t know why those characters aren’t in therapy.

And while we’re on the subject, puns for book titles have gone over the top. I mean, Maui Widow Waltz? Come on. Really?

 

 

 

The Mars Look

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Apparently I am out of sync with much of the world when it comes to humor. I often find find things funny when no one else does. Sometimes this is understandable, as when my martial arts group went to a Jackie Chan movie. The rest of the audience laughed at the funny lines and we laughed at the martial arts.

I also had the opposite experience when I went to the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy. The rest of the audience laughed at what to me were inexplicable times. My theory was that they all had been in the Peace Corps and this was the Jackie Chan thing in reverse.

Sometimes people laugh when I say things that to me seem simple and obvious. Once I wanted to leave a business meeting gracefully and said, “I think we’ve reached that point at which I cease to be helpful.” Hilarity ensued.

But those instances aren’t really examples of The Mars Look. That’s the one when, after I make a statement, silence descends and everyone looks at me as though I’m a two-headed Martian in a sequined Elvis jumpsuit. Crickets chirp. A tumbleweed rolls by.

For example:

I wonder if there are beech trees around here?

Me: Probably. This area is known for truffles, and they only grow around certain trees, including the beech.

[chirp, chirp]

The guitar strings squeaked. I guess you can do that on purpose to annoy people.

Me: Strings squeak when they’re brand-new. After you’ve played them a while, the oil on your fingertips eliminates the squeak.

[enter tumbleweed] [exit tumbleweed]

I guess I’m not supposed to provide information unless someone asks me directly. Or something. I’m not all that good at social situations.

The best Mars Look I ever got was in church. The musicians and the choir struck up the Hallelujah Chorus. At the first note sung, I stood. I was prepared to stand there through the whole thing, even if no one else did. Even my husband gave me the Mars Look.

Behind me I heard murmurs. “I guess we’re supposed to stand.” Slowly, the people in the two or three rows behind me started to stand too. The people in the front heard the murmuring and rustling, turned and saw the people standing, and rose as well. It was like doing the wave at a ball game, only different.

At least that time, there were no crickets and tumbleweeds. Just music.

Time Flies Like an Arrow

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…and fruit flies like a banana.

But right now I have a different kind of arrows on my mind – the kind you shoot from a bow.

Thanks to Brave and The Hunger Games, archery is gaining a reputation as an acceptable pursuit for young women. And I say yay to that!

(Let’s be clear here. I’m talking about shooting arrows at non-living targets. Ted Nugent can have the bow-hunting, as far as I’m concerned.)

It would be wrong to say that archery is my favorite sport. It is, in fact, if not the only sport I like, pretty close to it.

I was introduced to archery pretty early. A man who lived down the street set up a target in front of his garage and shot at it from the end of his driveway. The neighborhood kids, including me, gathered to watch. It was way more interesting than watching someone’s dad practicing putting.

My father, being a proponent of target shooting (with firearms in his case), approved and supported my interest. In fact, he bought me a bow and some arrows.

It was a child’s bow. In point of fact, a girl-child’s bow. Pink-swirled fiberglass like a candy cane, with a red handle. And though pink was never my favorite color, I loved it.

I practiced with it and actually improved. I acquired accessories: a shooting glove and an arm guard. (The arm guard is to keep you from whanging your delicate inner arm with the bowstring. Doing this will result in intense pain, bright redness, and ice packs. And then you get an arm guard and make sure your arm is bent just a little at the elbow.)

My mother, who was given to sewing and whimsy, made me (at my request) a forest green wool cape and jaunty matching hat. No, no pictures exist.

When I got to college, I discovered that students were required to take four semesters of gym. One of them had to be swimming, which I faked my way through, but among the other offerings was Intermediate Archery. There was also Beginning, but no Advanced. So I took Intermediate. Twice.

It was lots of fun. On rainy days we stayed inside and learned to make arrows – one, a fancy kind that would fly a certain distance then suddenly turn straight down with its point embedded in the ground so you could find it easily by the colored streamer-like fletching (feathers).

If you know me, you know what came next. I had my mother send me the cape and the hat, and wore them to class. The teacher, who after two semesters was used to me, just rolled her eyes and said not a word.

But for one brief hour, I was Robin Hood.

Cats, Etc. Update: Kittycat X

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jet

A follow-up: At last it can be told! The kitty’s name is Jet (which is way better than Tarbaby).

I Hate Party Games!

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I hate sales “parties” – those occasions when friends and acquaintances invite you over and try to sell you candles or kitchen supplies or lingerie. They shouldn’t be called parties at all. It offends my sense of proper definitions.

(I dodge these on principle anyway. At one place I worked, there was a lot of “You went to Norma’s make-up party but you didn’t come to my bath products party.” If I didn’t go to any of them, everybody could get pissed off at me equally.)

I hate shower “parties” too – weddings, impending parenthood and the like. They cause me massive anxiety, especially when they involve gift giving.

I did go to one wedding shower that I enjoyed. It consisted of cake, drinks, presents, and conversation. We had fun instead of being forced to simulate fun.

Most all, I hate party games. They are boring. They are dopey. Often they are embarrassing. Once I started refusing to play the games, people stopped inviting me to those sorts of parties, which was fine with me.

It’s impossible to escape party games entirely, of course, if you work for a company that goes in for mandatory collegial jollity. I work freelance at home now. I have my own little parties for me, my husband, and the cats.

One party game I encountered at an unavoidable party simply astonished me. The hostess had hidden toothpicks around the house in various unobtrusive locations – lurking on window ledges, nestled in lamp bases, perched on baseboards – and the guests were challenged to find all of them in a certain amount of time.

She is the only person I know who ever had guests play that particular game. She’s the only person I know who would even think of playing that game. The mind boggles.

Even if I gave parties, I would never have stupid games. Even if I did have games, I would never have the toothpick game.That game will never be played in my house. (I bet you can guess why.)

P.S. I also hate that thing they do at business meetings where everyone has to introduce themselves and say some personally significant tidbit such as what they like about themselves. I always swear the next time that happens, I’m going to say, “I really love my peaches and I’m capable of shaking my own tree.” Just to listen to the resounding silence afterward.

 

Crowdsourcing Cat Names

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My mother-in-law has two new cats and really needs help naming them.

One is a little black male cat (with the required ten white hairs), 18 mos. old, and very affectionate. He needs a name because what she calls it is archaic, but not really a good idea in modern society, if you get my drift.

The other is another male, four years old, buff-colored with blue eyes. She calls it Buffy, which makes one think of a girl who slays vampires. It follows her around, but will not yet allow petting.

In the past, she has had cats named Frisky, Dilly Sue, and Bingo (Dan and I always called Bingo “Mr. Woo,” but that’s another story.)

Also, she also used to call our cat Matches by the name “Checkers,” which we decided was his evil twin.

Just for reference, our cats have been named Matches, Bijou, Anjou, Chelsea, Shaker, Maggie, Julia, Laurel, Garcia, Louise, Jasper, Django, and Dushenka. Plus two fosters named Joliet and The Devil Kitten From the Crawlspace of Hell, but that’s another story too. (No, not all at once; just a few at a time. I’m not that crazy. Yet.)

If I had pictures of the new kits on the block, I would post them, but so far I don’t.

So here goes my experiment in crowdsourcing cat names: Please help!

The Noble Armadillo

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A new friend asked me the other day if there’s anything I collect. Not many of my collections have been very successful. Back when I was able to travel overseas, I was working on a Beers of the World t-shirt collection. Now I can’t fit into any of them or acquire more. (Yes, you can get anything on the Internet, but I had to be where they actually sold the beer for it to count.)

Another failed collection started when a boyfriend decided that I would start collecting heart-shaped boxes, made from various materials. I know it was just so he would automatically have a go-to present whenever a gift-giving occasion came up. That collection lasted about as long as the boyfriend.

What I collect now are armadillos. I started this back in the 70s and now have armadillos made from a variety of materials: wood, stone, aventurine, concrete. Plush armadillo toys. Crocheted armadillos. Armadillo pins and earrings.

The prize of my collection is an armadillo purse. Her name is Erma. She makes me easy to identify (“My wife is joining me here. She’ll be the one with the armadillo purse.”) and is a great conversation starter (“Is that real?” “Where did you get that?” “Where I come from we call that “possum on the half-shell.'”).

(Brief digression: My mother found her in a catalog. I don’t know which one.)

At this point, you may be asking, “Why armadillos? They aren’t native to Ohio. People don’t keep them as pets. As a cat owner, why don’t you collect cat items?” (I do.)

Armadillos are fascinating creatures. You may not know this, but armadillos are one of the few animals besides humans that can catch leprosy because their body temperature is so low, so they are used in leprosy research. I can thank an armadillo that my childhood leprosy now hardly bothers me at all.

(Bazinga! I made that part up – the part about having had leprosy. The research part is true.)

But I digress. Again.

There are two main reasons that the armadillo is my SA (significant animal). The first is musical.

Back in the 70s, there was a subgenre of country music variously called progressive country, outlaw country, or redneck rock. Artists such as Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, David Allen Coe, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Waylon Jennings, and others broke from the Nashville music scene and started making records that featured their own bands instead of studio musicians, rock and folk influences, gritty or provocative lyrics, and so on. I was a big fan of this music and still am. (Now it goes by some other name – Americana, maybe, though I think of it as retro-alt-country.)

So where do the armadillos come in? The place that attracted and supported and freed these musicians was Texas, where armadillos abound. One of the main clubs was the Armadillo World Headquarters. That theme song for Austin City Limits is popularly known as “I Wanna Go Home With the Armadillo,” though its real name is “London Homesick Blues.” Austin and the musicians adopted the armadillo as their symbol.

And so did I.

The other reason I identify so strongly with the armadillo is that it has such unique defense mechanisms. The first is to roll up in its protective armored shell, like a pillbug. The other is to jump straight up in the air about two and a half feet.

The pillbug thing works pretty well and they probably ought to stick to that. But the jumping strategy has one major flaw.

The main menace the armadillo faces is the automobile. Their leap puts them right at car bumper height. Splat. Roadkill.

And I identify with that.

Over the years I have tried or developed various coping and defense mechanism that resembled the armadillos’, and worked about as well. Using the pillbug technique, I would retreat into a shell and let the world pass me by. Which it did, but I never got to see much of it.

When I decided to abandon that strategy, to engage with the world, I encountered lots of scary things. And how I dealt with them always seemed to end with a big, messy splat.

And that’s why I keep Erma and the armadillo collection around – to remind me of the music that still sustains me, and to remind me that what I think are ways to dodge anxiety and fear and danger just might turn out to be counterproductive.

I Blame the Cats. Always.

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cuddly cat is ashamed with paw over his head

I used to live in a drafty log home on a windy hill. There were plenty of odd noises, especially at night. Now I live in a regular home in a windy valley, with lots of clutter. There are still plenty of odd noises, especially at night.

It’s been my policy to blame the cats (usually from three to five of them) for any noises – rattling, thumping, skittering, whining, tapping, crashes, howls, et endless cetera.

Even if every cat in the house is occupying my lap at the time, I still try to find a way to blame it on them.

One night, however, my husband and I were peacefully sleeping, when I thought I heard a noise in the living room.

Whispering.

Whatever else they do, cats don’t whisper. For once I couldn’t blame them. It had to be burglars, discussing what they wanted to take or which house to hit next or why we had such crappy stuff and was any of it worth anything.

I didn’t want to wake my husband, because then I’d have my N.O.W. card taken away, so I tried to remember where we put the baseball bat and extended my hearing as far as it would go. I crept closer to the bedroom door, where I could hear the sounds better.

Then I realized that there was indeed whispering, but that it was in French.

Even in my fearful, groggy state, I couldn’t believe that there were actually burglars in my house, in Ohio, speaking French.

So I tiptoed into the living room. If for some unlikely reason, there were French-speaking burglars, I could astound them with my knowledge of French, threaten to call the gendarmes, or at least ask them for directions to the library.

When I tentatively poked my head into the room, however, I found that the television was on and a foreign film was playing.

Hm. My husband won’t watch foreign films because the subtitles distract him. Besides, he was asleep in bed.

Then I realized what had happened. Someone had activated the remote and selected a film channel. With the sound very low. Although I couldn’t name the culprit, it was clearly Matches or Maggie or Chelsea or Shaker, all of whom were giving me the “Who, me?” look. There was no use dusting for paw-prints. One of them had done it, or they all cooked up the plot together.

So the one time I knew it couldn’t be the cats, it was. Now I blame them for everything. Always.

We Don’t Do That Any More, Do We?

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Here’s a story that caught my eye recently.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/08/us/mississippi-unmarked-graves/index.html?hpt=hp_bn1

It’s long, but worth reading. But for you busy people, I’ll summarize.

Two thousand unmarked graves were found on the grounds of an old hospital. Whose could they be? Civil war dead? Victims of an epidemic?

No. That section of the old hospital was an asylum, and the bodies were those of inmates. The insane. The developmentally delayed. The rebellious. Anyone the family wanted to hide and forget.

Of course, we don’t do that any more. No more locked, back wards. No more Snake Pits. No more Cuckoo’s Nests.

No, the asylums (pardon me, behavioral health residential facilities) have largely been closed and the inmates (pardon me, clients or residents or patients) released.

After their 30 days of insurance coverage run out.

To a group home that has a waiting list longer than the Mississippi.

To outpatient centers that hand out meds that may or may not have an effect or even be taken.

To the streets.

To a society that hates and fears them, lumps them all together as eyesores and NIMBYs, panhandlers, homeless and jobless, and spree killers.

Of course there are mentally ill people who are able to function in society on some level or another. They’re the ones who have likely never been in a locked ward. Those with understanding families, good insurance, nearby therapists, and a support system of friends. People who can hold a job. The ones who hardly ever shoot other people.

Still, the functional mental patients, your coworkers and neighbors and even family members are afraid to “come out” as needing help or getting help. They won’t even admit to taking Prozac, despite it’s being one of the most prescribed drugs in America.

Why is that? Because even if the asylums are gone, largely closed by lack of funding rather than obsolescence, the stigma remains. As a society, we have the impression that all people with mental disorders are psychotics or schizophrenics, lurking nearby just waiting for the chance to get their names in the papers and on TV.

We don’t lock up mental patients much any more. Now we’re humane. We give them apathy, invisibility, fear, and maybe a few drugs.

And the same old stigma.