Category Archives: etc.

Bad Stuff I Learned in College

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I went to a classy university—one so classy that they could (and did) boast about the vegetation that climbed their walls. There you could learn all kinds of useful stuff, such as how to be an engineer, a business maven, or a lawyer. So naturally, I went there to study poetry.

My education wasn’t wasted, however. I learned things that the university didn’t advertise as being part of the curriculum. Here are just a few of them.

Naughty Poetry

One of the more interesting poems I encountered was one by e. e. cummings (the poet who lost his Shift key). He wrote a poem that was considered so filthy that his publisher would only include it in his collected works on an onionskin paper insert in nine copies, handwritten by the author (and cummings had terrible handwriting). But that was in 1935. (The title is “the boys i mean are not refined,” and now you can find it on the internet (if you’re not easily offended, that is). (You just looked it up, didn’t you?) But I digress.)

Bad Wine

I took a class in my junior year called Wine Tasting for Non-Majors. The class met on Wednesday afternoons in an auditorium, and we sampled various wines. We passed bottles of wine and small plastic cups down the row like we were in church, only without the collection baskets. There was a spit bucket at the end of each row for those who didn’t drink (very few) or those who hated a particular wine.

There was lots to hate. We sampled the candy wines. (I was actually fond of Pear Ripple, which I don’t think you can get nowadays. But I digress some more.) We sampled wines that had gone bad in various ways so that we knew what to say to snooty wine stewards: “This wine is foxy,” for example, or “musty” or “oxidized.” That was where the spit bucket came into play.

(The university had, in addition to the usual schools of Arts and Sciences, Engineering, Agriculture, and the like, a Hotel School. Hotel majors had a very different wine class, the sort in which you took a sip and had to identify the country, the variety, and the name of the woman who stomped the grapes. It was not a jolly passing of bottles. It did not enliven Wednesday afternoons. But I digress even more.)

Smelly Animals

Carl Sagan taught us to avoid cow farts. (Yes, that Carl Sagan, the famous astronomer, also noted for appearing on the Johnny Carson show and the catchy phrase “billyuns and billyuns.” But I digress still more.)

So, how did cow farts get into Astronomy 102? Sagan, like me, was fond of digressions. He occasionally got onto topics such as greenhouse gases, which is where the cow farts (and burps) come in (or go out, really). He told us that greenhouse gases were produced in large quantities by “the rumen of ungulates,” which is delicate science-speak for cow farts.

How does that work, exactly? It all goes back to methane, a notoriously stinky gas. Human farts are largely nitrogen with just a soupçon of methane. Cow farts, on the other hand, produce enough methane per year to do the same greenhouse damage as four tons of carbon dioxide. We first-year students thought this was hilarious. That’s one hell of a lot of cow farts.

There were other things to learn at the university, only some of which I got around to sampling: sheep wrestling, bee dissection, and archery. (I took that twice, wearing a forest green cape and hat, because I was fixated on Robin Hood, setting me up for a later fixation on Katniss Everdeen. But I digress yet again.)

I could have spent far more than four years there, sampling the good and the bad. Sometimes, I wish I had. Not that I’m in shape to wrestle sheep these days.

Down the Rabbit Hole

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Almost five years ago, I wrote a post about how memories from my (and likely your) childhood were being repurposed for political statements and propaganda.

This time I’m writing about a classic piece of literature being rewritten for other purposes. (Largely unobjectionable ones, it’s true, but it’s the principle of the thing. But I digress.)

The work in question is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (more often known as Alice in Wonderland). It’s one of my favorite pieces of literature and I have returned to it many times since I first read it (murfle) decades ago.

(I have a friend who despises Alice. He finds it to be nonsense (which it obviously is) and incomprehensible. This despite the fact that he has returned to it frequently to see if it makes any more sense. (He ought to like at least part of it because he’s a mathematician, like the author, Lewis Carroll. I recommended The Annotated Alice (edited by Martin Gardner), which explains the jokes, Briticisms, and outdated expressions. (It also includes “Jabberwocky” in French, German, and IIRC, Latin.) But I digress, pedantically and at length.)

The “quotations” in question are not political but psychological or philosophical. I’m not saying they’re invalid—merely that they are misquoted, misattributed, or completely made up.

One of the most common misquotes is attributed to the Cheshire Cat:

“You’re mad, bonkers, off your head. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are.”

What the Cheshire Cat actually really said is much more complex. Here’s the context:

“But I don’t want to go among mad people’” Alice remarked.

“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” 

“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.

“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.” 

One quotation supposedly from the Mad Hatter is:

The secret, Alice, is to surround yourself with people who make your heart smile. It’s then, only then, that you’ll find Wonderland.

Unobjectionable if sappy, but not from the book. The same with this one:

But, said Alice, if the world has absolutely no sense, who’s stopping us from inventing one?

The most annoying fake dialogue is this one, between Alice and the White Rabbit.

“Do you love me?” Alice asked.

“No, I don’t love you!” replied the White Rabbit.

Alice frowned and clasped her hands together as she did whenever she felt hurt.

“See?” replied the White Rabbit. “Now you’re going to start asking yourself what makes you so imperfect and what did you do wrong so that I can’t love you at least a little. You know, that’s why I can’t love you. You will not always be loved Alice, there will be days when others will be tired and bored with life, will have their heads in the clouds, and will hurt you. Because people are like that, they somehow always end up hurting each other’s feelings, whether through carelessness, misunderstanding, or conflicts with themselves. If you don’t love yourself, at least a little, if you don’t create an armor of self-love and happiness around your heart, the feeble annoyances caused by others will become lethal and will destroy you. The first time I saw you I made a pact with myself: ‘I will avoid loving you until you learn to love yourself.’”

The White Rabbit was late to play croquet with the Queen of Hearts. He wouldn’t have had time to discourse on self-love.

Alice has been in the public domain since 1907, so one can misquote or invent all they want. (The Disney movie version only came out in 1951, The book was in the public domain, but the movie isn’t. I think we can expect a live-action film. I hope they lose the repellent pink-and-purple Cheshire Cat, though I doubt they will. But I digress again.)

Surely no one would do this kind of thing to The Wizard of Oz…or would they? [squints suspiciously]

New Love Languages

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Noted author Gary Chapman has written that there are five “Love Languages.”

They are physical touch, quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service, and gift-giving. Others have suggested that there are seven love languages that add emotional support and intellectual sharing to the total. (These all sound just fine, but trouble arises when a couple speak different languages. If one offers physical touch and the other longs for quality time, they’re destined to clash. But I digress.)

I would like to suggest two more: baton twirling and cake decorating.

In general, I don’t care for cheerleaders, especially the ones for professional sports, who wear the skimpiest of outfits and do the lewdest of dances. That’s the stereotype, at least. I understand that nowadays, cheerleaders perform acrobatic moves and build themselves into complex pyramids. (Evidently, I need to rethink my prejudice regarding cheerleaders. But I digress again.)

Baton twirlers, on the other hand, I hold in higher esteem. They have a talent to show that involves a piece of equipment and dexterity. (Not completely unlike the tuba player in the marching band, who never gets the credit they deserve. But I digress some more.)

However, I discovered something when I talked to a coworker. Her daughter was a baton twirler, and Mom watched her practice in their yard, offered tips from her own twirling days, and came to every game she twirled at. What I realized was that it was her mother’s way of speaking love. If you define it in terms of the seven love languages, the eighth one (baton-twirling) could also be called consistency.

Consistency comes in any number of ways. The key element is being there. Someone who gives consistent attention is someone you can rely on. They’ll read your novel drafts (every time you rewrite them) and accompany you to all your dreadful office parties. You just know that when you need them, they’ll be there, whether that’s to remove a tick or (to choose an example not totally at random) open a letter from the IRS. Or watch you throw a stick in the air and catch it.

The other love language I learned about (cake decorating, in case you’ve lost track) was also inspired by a coworker. Every year, she created a cake for her son and decorated it in honor of one of his interests—cartoon or comic book character, motocross, whatever he happened to care about that year. These were elaborate decorations, not just a toy motorcycle popped on top of a bakery cake or something similar. They were elaborate, decorative, inspired, and personal. I’ve seen the pictures.

(It should be noted that this was in the days before everyone learned how to make buttercream roses, tempered chocolate, Swiss meringue, macarons, gelees, mousselines, molecular gastronomy, and all the other spiffy elements you can learn on YouTube or Food Network. But I digress yet again.)

I would call this the love language of creativity—making something special with your hands for a loved one. It doesn’t have to be something edible, though of course it can be. A flower you’ve grown yourself, a bookshelf you’ve crafted, or a refurbished treasure that’s been broken or forgotten are all examples of creative love. (My husband and my mother found a rag doll of mine (Raggedy Johnny, like Raggedy Andy, only John Denver) in disrepair after a move and fixed him up. That’s the sort of thing I mean. But I digress even more.)

I don’t expect baton twirling or cake decorating to appear in the next edition of the Love Languages book. But I do think that Consistency and Creativity deserve consideration. So does Consideration. After all, at heart, aren’t all love languages Consideration?

Paczki-Palooza

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It’s Lent. So why are there three dozen paczki in my freezer?

As usual, this story begins with my husband.

(Actually, let’s start a little further back. If you’re not familiar with paczki (pronounced ponchkee, paunchkee, etc., depending on where you’re from), they’re Polish donut-like devices filled with cream, curd, or jam. They’re made and eaten in the lead-up to Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), the day before Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent. They were allegedly invented when an annoyed cook threw a ball of dough at her husband, and it landed in the fryer oil instead. I totally believe this origin story, knowing how annoying husbands can be. But I digress.)

The next thing to know is that Dan works in a store that has a bakery section. For the last few weeks, Dan has been bringing home boxes of paczki—blueberry, raspberry, lemon, and Bavarian cream.

But this week, as Lent rapidly approached, the bakery started marking down the paczki. And Dan can’t resist marked-down baked goods. He keeps me supplied with muffins (my usual breakfast). He’s the carb-peddler. He brings home French bread, Italian bread, sourdough bread, coffee cakes, apple caramel pies, and nearly anything else made with flour, eggs, and butter. (Fortunately, he doesn’t bring home game-day cookies shaped and decorated like little footballs. Or Jack-o-lantern cookies, for that matter. But I digress again.)

So, naturally, he brought home NINE boxes of paczki this week. (He did call and warn me, “I’m going to be bad,” which can mean nearly anything. But I digress some more.)

I’ve been stuffed with paczki for the last couple of weeks and couldn’t bear the sight of that many more. So we had a paczki party this week. Now, for most people, this would involve inviting over a bunch of people, making a huge pot of coffee, and chowing down.

But no. We couldn’t organize a party like that in the time it would take for the pastries to go stale. (When we do have a party (which isn’t very often), we have it at a Chinese restaurant. And paczkis would not really be welcome there. Still more digression.)

What we did have was a box of small plastic zipper bags. (We always have them on hand because Dan always takes peanut butter sandwiches to work with him, for his lunch and his breaks. I would get tired of peanut butter day after day, but he feels, as the old joke goes, “How can you ever get tired of food?” But I digress yet again.)

We sat down with our stack of paczki boxes and our box of bags and began stuffing, one paczki per bag. We licked the sugar off our fingers and stuffed all the bags in the freezer. When we get a craving for a paczki (which may not be until the run-up to next year’s Lent), we’ll just pull one out of the freezer and indulge. Or maybe Dan will take one for lunch. Or maybe I’ll give up on breakfast muffins.

I just hope there are no baked-goods-related holidays coming up for a while. I’m in sugar shock already.

Dan’s Only Friend

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The phone rang and Dan picked it up. He held it out to me. “It’s your friend,” he said.

“Which friend? I replied. “My friend Robbin?”

“No, he replied.

“My friend Beth?”

“No.”

“My friend Tom?”

“No.”

“My friend Kim?”

“No.”

“My friend Jean?”

“No.”

“My friend Peggy?”

“No.”

“My friend Leslie.”

“Yes.”

“Geez,” I said, snatching the phone. “You make it sound like I only have one friend!”

The irony was that Dan worked in a place where friends were hard to come by. His hobbies are solitary, like working in the garden, reading about archaeology, and watching old movies on streaming services. He doesn’t like sports or going out drinking. Then he went to a support group, where he made one friend, John.

Whenever John called for Dan, I was truthfully able to say, “It’s your only friend.”

John caught on and was amused. Sometimes he would call and say, “Tell Dan it’s his only friend.”

(Dan also continued the joke with me. Someone would call for me and I would ask, “Who is it?” He would say, “It’s your only friend.” I would reply, “Is it my only friend Kathy?” “No.” “Is it my only friend Mary Jo?” “No.” And so on. But I digress.)

At one time, there were friends we shared. Beth, for example. Dan met her at a job they both worked at. One evening, however, we went to a work party and Dan introduced us. We got on the topic of science fiction.

“You’ve got to meet my husband,” Beth said. “He loves Isaac Asimov. He’s read everything he’s written.”

“Oh?” I replied, without thinking, “He’s written 200 books.” (Later, he wrote even more.)

Then we talked poetry and Beth, abashed, admitted that her favorite poet was Ogden Nash. (He’s considered pretty low-brow, but I can recite several of his poems, which I enjoy for his ingenious rhymes “platinum” and “flatten’em,” for example. But I digress some more.)

Beth was intimidated. (I have that effect on a lot of people for some reason.) But we became friends anyway. Once when Dan was lamenting that he had only one friend, I pointed out that he was friends with Beth before I was. “You stole her,” he replied.

There was a chance that I would steal John as well. He and I had a lot in common, like country music and murder mysteries, which we could talk about for long enough to make Dan feel left out. But instead of one of us claiming his friendship, we ended up sharing custody.

John and Dan would go off together on occasion without me. When I asked where they went, Dan would only reply, “That place.” They would never say where it was. (I figured it wasn’t a strip bar, since Dan had gotten them out of his system in his youth.)

Then John and I started going off on our own, just the two of us. (We called them our “hot dates.” A typical one would be thrift shopping, lunch at a diner, and a shared bag of M&Ms for dessert. We never told Dan what they consisted of. But I digress again.) (Once we went to a tobacconist (John smoked a pipe) and it was all I could do not to say to the proprietor, “My hovercraft is full of eels.” Yet another digression.)

All of us were cool with this arrangement. There was no jealousy or fighting over our outings. But John passed away a number of years ago, upsetting the balance of our friendships. We both still remember him fondly.

Now, I’m Dan’s only friend.

It’s All a Blur!

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My history with eyeglasses goes way back—over 60 years, in fact. That being the fashion at the time and me being even then the opposite of a fashionista, I wore many pairs of cat-eye glasses.

My husband, Dan, was only a little older than I was when he got his first pair of glasses. Unlike me, he’s near-sighted. (I’m cross-eyed and far-sighted.) He always tells the story of how, once he had glasses, he said to his mother, “Look, Mommy. Those people on television have faces!” (Although we have different diagnoses, we both require Coke-bottle prescriptions. But I digress.)

By the time I was in high school (when I had at last graduated from cat-eye to aviator frames), all my classmates were wearing contacts, and losing them regularly. I was unable to follow suit because of being cross-eyed and, more importantly, because I can’t bear to even think about anything, including me, touching my eye. I recoil whenever there’s a commercial for a drug that requires an eye injection. (That’s true to this day—both the wireframes and the horror of anything touching my eye. But I digress again.)

When I was a child, I had an ophthalmologist, Dr. Saunders, who was the epitome of gentleness and kindness. When it was time for me to select my own eye doctor, I wanted someone with the same vibe. So of course, I went to Dr. Gary, whom I knew from being in the same martial arts class. (I figured that if he needed to touch my eye for any reason, he could at least subdue me first. But I digress yet again.) When I first visited his office, his partner glanced at me and exclaimed, “You’re a hyperope!” which is the technical term for far-sighted, I learned.

Over the years, both my husband and I have been through increasing thicknesses of eyewear and various styles of frames. After all these years, I still prefer wireframes and Dan has come around to my way of thinking. Bifocals were an eventual necessity and I opted for computer glasses as well, since I spend so much time online.

We’ve had a few eye-related emergencies over the years. Mine occurred when I set off a flea bomb in the house and accidentally bombed my face. Fortunately, my glasses offered some protection and there was a bottle of distilled water nearby. Suddenly, I wasn’t so worried about something touching my eyes as Dan held them open and poured.

Dan’s extreme eye occurrence happened when he was driving. All of a sudden, he saw a flash in his right eye, and the vision in that eye became blurry. The next day, he had small, dark pinpoints in his right eye’s field of vision.

A quick trip to Dr. Gary seemed necessary. Dan learned that he had experienced an age-related phenomenon that affects the vitreous fluid in his eye. This information gave me the willies, of course, but Dan took it all in stride. The flash didn’t return and Dan named the largest of the floating points in his eye. He called it “Freddie the Free-Floater.” (Any Red Skelton fans out there? But I digress even more.)

I’m preparing myself for the day when I also see that flash and the dark points in my vitreous fluid. I don’t think I can come up with a better name for them, though. Dan surely wins on that count.

Practical Beauty Tips

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If you want to look like a million bucks, get real! And by that, I don’t mean using all-natural charcoal slug placenta serum on your extremities. No, I’m talking about budget reality. You don’t have expendable income that would cover a single day of Angelina Jolie’s beauty regimen. What you need are practical tips like these.

How to exfoliate. Before you bathe, rub your face vigorously with a dry, rough towel. Take a hot shower. After you do, rub your face vigorously with a dry, rough towel. Your epidermis will disappear in a trice. You’ll have a luminescent pink glow just like someone who has lived through ionizing radiation, without the expense of costly fissionable materials.

How to use bath bombs. If you have a bathtub, the directions on the package will work pretty well, as long as you don’t mix up your bath bomb with the similar kind of bombs that you drop into pots of soup for seasoning. The curry and chili varieties may prove painful or leave your skin an interesting new color. But a bath with your bouillon bomb will leave you with an appealing fragrance that attracts hungry men and dogs.

If you have a shower rather than a bath, wrap the bomb in a piece of cheesecloth like a bouquet garni and hang it from the shower head. (Be careful. The bouquet garni technique may confuse you and make it more likely that you will douse yourself with a miso or onion soup bomb. But I digress.)

How to select a fragrance. Go to the perfume counter these days and you’ll think you’re in the produce section of the grocery store. Natural, vegetal scents are the current trend. Think of lemon wedges, herbs, and any vegetable that can be carved into the shape of a rose. Throw them in your blender and garnish your pulse points with them. If you want, take the leftovers from your lunch salad and whiz them up. Don’t forget to put a sprig of parsley behind one ear. Think of it as a leafy, green fascinator.

How to accessorize. Coco Chanel famously advised that when you’re ready to leave the house, remove one accessory before you go. Lose the brooch. (No one ever pronounces it properly anyway. It rhymes with “roach,” not “cooch.” But I digress again.) Or ditch the parsley fascinator. If you’re wearing earrings, the greenery will be un peu de trop.

How to get an eye-catching tattoo. Text tattoos are always popular. You can convey an important message like “No Regrets,” “Slippery When Wet,” or “FTW.” The important thing to remember is to consult a proofreader before the tattoo machine revs up. Otherwise, you might end up with a permanent message that says, “No Regerts.” (Actually, “FTW” might end up as “WTF,” which could be what you say when you see it. But I digress some more.)

(If you want a Chinese symbol, which is a perennial classic, as a tattoo, it’s even more important to hire a knowledgeable proofreader. Most tattoo artists aren’t bilingual and will happily decorate you with characters that mean “oyster sauce” or “I’m ready for the first man I meet.” Assuming that’s not what you asked for. But I continue to digress.)

Next Week! Follow me for more Practical Beauty How-Tos: Tame Your Unibrow With a Birthday Candle; Get Your Weight-Loss Game on With Turnips; and Use Spackle to Freshen Your Look!

The Good, the Bad, and the Others

books, etc., film, humor, literature,

The Wicked Witch used to be a villain. She tried to kill Dorothy and her companions. She enslaved flying monkeys. She wanted revenge for her sister’s accidental death.

Now she has her own musical and movie.

The elevation of villains is a thing now. Personally, I blame Star Wars. I was once visiting some friends who had a young son. He held up his Darth Vader action figure and said, “This is my friend.” (This was in the days before the proliferation of Star Wars movies culminated in Vader’s redemption at the last possible second. But I digress.)

My theory is that villains have power but few limits. It’s no wonder youngsters view them as positive influences. When Darth Vader is your friend and protector, you share in his power. You fear nothing.

Maybe this rise of the villain started with the rise of the anti-hero. Let me explain. And let me use Buffy the Vampire Slayer (one of my favorite TV classics) as my vehicle. (Actually, I’m going to do it whether you let me or not. So there. But I digress some more.)

Here’s the backstory, for those not familiar with the Buffyverse. Buffy’s first love was the vampire-with-a-soul Angel, and he was a Byronic hero, a type that became popular when Byron (duh) was writing poetry. Byronic heroes are tortured souls who waft around in black clothes and clouds of pain. They’re never cheerful. They don’t crack jokes. They suffer from existential angst. They have troubled pasts and isolate themselves from society. (Other Byronic heroes include Batman holed up in his Batcave, grieving over his dead parents. The Brontes knew their Byronic heroes, too. Mr. Rochester and Heathcliff are classics. But I digress yet again.)

In opposition to the Byronic hero, we have the anti-hero. They don’t behave according to the heroic model. They’re “bad boys” who manage to dominate the plot and achieve their goals despite being misunderstood or refusing to follow convention. Think Han Solo, Captain Jack Sparrow, or in the case of Buffy, Spike. He’s never going to be Buffy’s Great Love, but he has his uses in her world. (Deadpool and Robin Hood are two other examples who would never have a beer together but occupy similar literary spaces. I suppose Dexter would be the ultimate anti-hero. Still more digression.)

No, wait. Satan is the ultimate anti-hero. Take a look at Milton’s Paradise Lost. Lucifer has agency and is the more interesting character. At some level, the reader roots for him. They know God’s going to win. That’s a given. But Satan’s quest, while reprehensible, is also on some level noble. (I’m talking literary characters here, not theology. But I digress again. And as Jean Kerr said, in reference to the story of Adam and Eve, the snake has all the lines. But I continue digressing.)

So, what makes the bad guys more interesting guys? For one thing, they’re deeply misunderstood. They’ve often been victims of bullies or of an uncaring, unfair society. They touch the darkness, the “shadow self” that lives within each of us. We recognize ourselves in them, identify with them in ways we simply don’t with standard heroes. We’d like to identify with heroes, but we know they’re better than we are.

Standard heroes require supervillains to make them at all interesting. Without Lex Luthor, Superman just flies around foiling ordinary bank robbers. Without Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes is simply Columbo. (I could say that without elusive diagnoses and the looming specter of death, House is basically Doogie Howser, but I won’t. That would be ridiculous. There’s also misanthropy. But I digress some more.)

Personally, I respond more to anti-heroes than Byronic heroes. Pure villains don’t interest me, but neither do sanctimonious heroes like Galahad (“My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure.”). But when it comes to the villains and heroes in the wrestling ring, I don’t give a fig for any of them. Besides, they change places so often that you need a scorecard to tell which is which. (Don’t assume that this means I watch “pro” wrestling. I learned about their ethical switches from the New York Times. Go figure. But I have finished digressing. For this week.)

Mixed Emotions

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I know we cuss our computers with astounding regularity. I know the sound card stops working when you have a Zoom meeting or a file disappears in a cloud of mist or they suddenly, stubbornly stop working altogether. They haven’t ushered in a paperless society. They rat out your driving habits. They haven’t automated mundane tasks so that we all have the time to be creative. They blast blue light into our retinas, addict us to sites and games that actively lower our IQs, and listen to our conversations in hopes of hearing their names.

Rather than them working for us, we work for the obstreperous, silicon-infused creeps.

(I was introduced to computers in the eighth grade, when we shared time on a teletype-style computer that ate punched tape and could be made to respond to whistling. They weren’t much better then, but at least they didn’t screw up prescriptions at the pharmacy or go down when they should go up. But I digress.)

By now, you’ve decided that the headline of this post was deeply ironic. But no, I do love computers. Really. I couldn’t do without my desktop, my laptop, my tablet, and my e-reader. I plan to take them all with me to Florida when I go. (Well, obviously not my desktop. It would take up my entire luggage allowance. But I digress again.)

Mostly what I love about computers is their memory. My own memory is almost shot (and getting shotter every day) and my electronic friends pick up the miles of slack. They keep track of my appointments, bank balance, and correspondence. They allow me to send those all-important messages and memes to friends. I can like something without even nodding my head.

But what I love most about computers are Mr. Google and Mr. Wikipedia. Google provides intel (sorry, not sorry) on words that I can never remember how to spell. (Back in the day, I worked for a magazine and created a line of cover copy for a talking computer (which back then was a novelty). It was to say, “Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking.” I must have checked 20 times on the number of C’s and another 30 on the number of M’s. I still have to check that word or trust Grammarly (which isn’t all that trustworthy). But I digress some more.)

I also have to use my Google-fu to look up songs for my husband. It’s like a game. He gives me a single line from an obscure song and notes how long it takes me to discover what the song is, who sang it, who wrote it, who has covered it, what album it’s from, and the name of the drummer. Then I find a video of the song and play it for him.

Another game we play is “What else has she been in?” He points out a performer and I get to find out what her name is, who she’s married to, and whether she’s had any other roles in shows Dan might have seen. I also find pictures of her, what she’s done lately, and who she’s co-starred with that Dan might know. This requires not just Google and Wikipedia, but also IMDB, which I highly recommend. (I also like The Urban Dictionary for when I come across an unfamiliar word or phrase like “rizz” or “no cap.” But I digress even more.)

But there’s one thing I wish my computer would do for me. I wish that pressing Control-Z would correct my errors in meatspace as well as in cyberspace. Add too much paprika to the stew? Control-Z! Forget to add soap to the laundry? Control-Z! Take a wrong turn trying to get to my newest doctor’s appointment? That’s right—Control-Z!

But stubbornly, it won’t. Maybe on next year’s model…

P.S. Don’t even get me started on printers!

Learning From Mistakes (Or Not)

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When I was young, I was supposed to learn from mistakes. Other people’s mistakes, not my own. My parents were devotés of the “No one is so worthless that they can’t serve as a bad example” school of thought. (This, combined with the Girl Scout Law, produced fodder for my innumerable therapy sessions. I thought that only bad people (like my cousin Callie Jo) had to learn from their many mistakes or serve as bad examples. I wasn’t supposed to make mistakes to learn from. Did this make me a Goody Two-Shoes? Yes. Yes, it did. But I digress.)

Since then, I’ve learned through years of psychological treatment that this school of thought is BS. The only way that anyone, good or bad, learns is by making mistakes. Now that I’ve learned that, though, I’ve made some whoppers. I’ve taken up with the wrong boyfriends. (Including one who my parents said proved their point about no one being so useless that they couldn’t serve as a bad example. He was a tow truck driver and knew all the secluded spots where people had run off the road. That wasn’t useless. It proved handy for al fresco entertaining, which my parents didn’t know about. But I digress again.)

Marrying my husband, however, was not a mistake. But, I must admit, I’ve learned from Dan’s mistakes. Sometimes I’ve learned that I’m right, even on subjects that he’s supposed to be better at, like spatial reasoning. When there’s a piece of furniture or a mattress that needs to be transported from one place to another, he continues to rotate it on every axis several times and shove it into the car, while I watch and say, “That’s never going to fit.” When I prove correct, he says, “Well, I had to try.” I reply, “No, you didn’t. You could have listened to me.”

Another time I had to bail him out was when he was fixing to put cement in a hole in the lawn destined to hold something decorative in place. He had to mix several cups of water with the cement. Unfortunately, he used a coffee carafe to measure the cups. I pointed out that those weren’t the same kind of cups that a measuring cup measures. He was flummoxed. I had to do some quick math (including a visit to my study for computer consultation) to determine how many ounces Mr. Coffee thought was a cup and how it compared to a regulation cup. Then I had to figure out how many actual cups of water he needed to add to what he had already put into the hardening cement.

Not that he’s the only one who makes mistakes. In addition to the boyfriends one, I’ve forgotten that we asked the contractor to put in an extra half-step leading up to the front door because the sill is too high for my increasingly unreliable legs. Just the other day, though, I forgot all about it and stumbled over my own feet, only narrowly averting potentially bloody disaster by catching myself on the railing we also insisted they install. (The half-step was necessitated by a fall I suffered during the construction, which I wrote about in “Gravity Is Not My Friend,” a post from 2020. But, being a mensch, Dan didn’t rub my nose in my awkwardness. He said, “Be careful, honey,” (I don’t know why people only tell you to be careful after you’ve taken a fall. But I digress some more.))

But the topic (way back there somewhere) was learning from mistakes. So, what should we have learned? Well, in Dan’s case, it should be: Listen to Janet. (Though I’m afraid that will never truly sink in.) For me, it’s: Avoid complicated men (or so my shrink said). And watch your step. (I’m afraid that hasn’t sunk in either.)

But there are plenty of fresh mistakes to be made, and I’m sure we’ll make our share of them. Or more, more likely.