Local fame going to the dogs

Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat, Weekend Edition on Fri. 5/18/12.

“A local celebrity.”  That’s how I’ve heard myself described on several occasions now.  (None of these occasions involve me chanting in front of a mirror, thank you.)  It’s the way others have described me.  Each time this happens, I have to turn and check to make sure it isn’t the mayor or the school superintendent standing behind me.  When I hear someone say I’m a local celebrity, I have to laugh.  It would be flattering if it weren’t downright funny. 

People recognize me at the grocery store or at the library or a school event, or wherever my errands and my lethargic legs take me.  They act amazed; yet I don’t know why.  All I do is write some drivel about myself or some embarrassing episodes about my kids.  For this, the editor saves me a spot every week into which I slide at the last possible second.  True, there is the one nice picture of me, which is static and in good control, not packing on pounds or sprouting gray hairs the way the real, living, me is.  I don’t think we’ll change the picture just yet since people can still recognize me as “Are you the lady in the paper?”

My likeness and my words may be in this paper, but I’m no celebrity.  If you want to see a true “local celebrity” in action, drive by my neighborhood any weekday around noon.  The real celebrity is our hyperactive Jack Russell (isn’t that redundant?) terrier, pre-named Betty Lou.  She is the one tugging ahead of me.  I, your humble servant, am the one trudging behind, possibly carrying dog deposits if she has chosen to relieve herself of weighty, pressing matters.  She is groomed and beaming at the world.  I am tired and unkempt, hunched over, and scooping up canine crap into an inverted plastic bag.  Who’s the celebrity?

This dog, I am convinced, is the winner, hands (or paws) down.  She has other people making sure she is fed, groomed, and looking good.  She only goes out in public after careful preparations, chief of these would be the leash.  A leash is to a dog what a public relations manager is to a celebrity.  It keeps them in check and makes sure nothing gets released when it shouldn’t.  Betty Lou also has a personal trainer – several, in fact.  We are not yet certain of the efficacy of the training because it varies dramatically from trainer to trainer.  Some like to blame the incompetence of the trainer, while others (usually said trainer) like to blame the limited intelligence of the dog.  Our canine has no truly useful skills.  I suppose if we lived on farmland and needed her services in tracking down vermin, she might deign to be of service.  But she serves no such purpose in our home.  Basically, her value is to amuse and to entertain.  Again, I make my case that Betty Lou has all the qualifications to be a celebrity.

It is true that our dog happens to be a blogger.  She goes out daily and reads all the posts.  Some pique her interest, and she rushes deeper to get a better sniff of the topic.  These often require a second read-through.  With others, her ears express alarm or dismay at the news and she stands alert for a moment.  No matter how large or small, she always makes sure to post her own response to whatever olfactory remarks the original or previous blogger posted.  She has a set of posts that she reads daily, and she makes sure to leave comments at each of these sites.  I am sure she is well known in the community, even if she has not personally met all of her readers.

Betty Lou also has an unhealthy interest in being well liked by people.  At home, she might lie around and struggle with depression.  She might have a drinking habit (although right now it’s limited to water) that you don’t know about.  She may behave somewhat snappy when tired, or eat all the wrong sorts of foods.  (We once caught her literally walking across the top of the dining table, like some sort of a cat.  Perhaps she had planned to be dancing on the tables in our absence, but I suspect the allure was a someone’s leftovers.  My children are careful to push their chairs in now so she can’t gain access.)  She might be hiding all sorts of bad habits at home, but the moment there is another human hovering in the area, she puts on her best show.

The one thing she can’t stand is other dogs.  Some people say her dog aggression may have to do with her upbringing.  (We got her from a dog shelter.)  Others say it is something about the breed that has to be worked out of them.   In either case, I suspect it is jealousy.  She wants to be the star.  And at home, she is.

Happy Octopus Day!

Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat, Weekend Edition on Friday, May 11, 2012 

Sunday is Mother’s Day, and if you have the fortune of having your mother around, show her a little love and appreciation, no matter your age.  I’m sure you think you are that perfect offspring, one whose very existence makes motherhood meaningful.  Don’t flatter yourself.  Get her a few flowers – handpicked ones, even little wildflowers, are fine.

 

You might be cute and you might be sweet, but you should realize that birthing you probably involved some level of pain.  Even if you were adopted, and have no contact with your birth mother, your adoptive mother probably endured pain too, though it might have been more emotional or bureaucratic than physical in nature.  The pain associated with acquiring you, in whatever manner, would have rapidly paled in comparison to the pain that arose from your maintenance and upkeep.  And look at yourself now.  You have been nurtured to a point where you are a decent and caring person who is intelligent enough to read this column.  Get her a card or make one.   That would validate the decent and caring part of my theory about you.

When I think of mothers, I think of the octopus.  On so many levels, mothers have to be like the amazing octopus.   You might think that’s because the octopus has eight arms, and so often, mothers seem to need them all to juggle the demands of the brood.  If an arm is lost, it can grow back later.  I view this as an analogy for women who make sacrifices for their young.  For some, it might be their careers.  For others, it might be their figures.  For a sad few of us, it is both.

Hopefully you did not think to yourself that the octopus, being an invertebrate, has no backbone, and therefore the analogy shows your mother to be some sort of soft and spineless individual.  Never forget that the octopus has a hard beak for dealing with prey (and possibly rude children like you), and is capable of injecting poison.   Rather, you should realize that the soft-bodied cephalopod is consummately flexible.  This means you can keep tossing things onto its to-do list, and somehow, your trusty octopus, will juggle it in.  Like many modern women, the octopus is able to get into and out of tight spaces, with some exceptions made for parallel parking SUVs in Old Town.

The octopus, like your mother, is highly intelligent.  In laboratories, it (the octopus, not your mom) can find its way in mazes, (think of driving and directions) and can unscrew jars to get to a snack.   While the advent of the GPS seems to have suppressed my intuitive sense of direction on the road, I can still find, and get to, the snacks.

The octopus can be playful and changes colors to indicate its mood.  The octopus is a master of camouflage, adapting itself to not only the coloring of its surroundings, but also to patterns and movements of other creatures.  In other words, the octopus can figure out how to get along in differing environs.   Also, the octopus tends to fortify and decorate its lair with shells.

The octopus can jet around quite fast.  Have you seen the speed at which your mother can/could move when expecting company?  How about when behind the wheel?  One of those arms is attending to the steering while another is wiping up a stain on the seat beside it. A third arm is sending a snack to the backseat, while the fourth arm has just confiscated the toy is being fought over.  Arm five is adeptly handling the cell phone, while arm six is adjusting the music in the car to suit everyone’s taste, except the mother, because she is just used to making sacrifices like that.  Arm seven is able to wield a hairbrush and makeup for a quick touchup before arrival and arm eight of course, is suctioned around that omnipresent coffee-cup.  

You’re thinking this image is ridiculous because nobody’s listening to the radio anymore; the kids are listening to music individually or watching a DVD back there.  Or maybe you’re wondering why the hairless octopus needs a hairbrush when just the lipstick will do.  Or maybe you know that the octopus is deaf.  And that’s not due to the noisy children.  Another breakdown in the analogy: the real octopus is a solitary creature.  I haven’t known many women who were like that.  Or maybe I don’t know them because they are solitary.

I started thinking of the octopus several years ago, when we got a book called Nico’s Octopus by Caroline Pitcher.  (http://www.amazon.com/Nicos-Octopus-Caroline-Pitcher/dp/1566564832.)   It’s a beautifully illustrated, touching story of a little boy (Nico) who finds an octopus and keeps it for a pet.  Nico learns much about the octopus, but the most heartrending is in her transformation to motherhood. 

The mother octopus lays around two hundred-thousand eggs and hangs strings of them from the ceiling of her lair.  She guards and fans these eggs to keep them oxygenated.  For the entire month or two, she does not hunt and does not eat.  Shortly after the babies emerge, the mother dies of starvation.  In humans, the decline is not as rapid, thankfully.

Make sure you thank your octopus this weekend.

The Bison and the Hick on the Plains of Ohio

Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat, Weekend Edition on Fri. April 27, 2012

Before we know it, SOL testing, like any other spring-time allergen, will be upon us and our children.  I remember the year we had moved to Ohio in 2001.  I was still a die-hard homeschooling mom then, so I only sent my children into school at the end of the year to take the proficiency tests alongside their public-schooled counterparts.

 My fourth-grader came home that day looking a little ruffled.  And it wasn’t the test that had ruffled her.  It was something else.  As mother, inspector, corrector, and protector, I needed to investigate.

Being an Indian mother, my greatest fear for my children, after academic failure, is the possibility that one might grow faint from hunger.  Correction: that a child of mine might even experience it.  Perhaps she was just hungry.  People who are hungry, sleepy, tired, stressed, or in pain can be a little crabby.  I think that sums up about 90% of the human condition for 90% of the population.  (Self included.)

Immediately following the debriefing on the difficulty level of the test and how well she felt she had fared, I honed in on the next burning question.  Had they been served any snacks?  “Not really,” she said.  “They just gave us some kind of a hick drink.” 

A hick drink?  What was a hick drink?  Sweetened ice tea?  An “Arnold Palmer” with its interesting blend of lemonade and sweet tea?  Besides, wherever had this child learned such language?  Surely, I had never referred to Ohio as such.  Granted, we had left gorgeous, hilly, water-clad Northern California for Central Ohio.  Central Ohio was flat.  There was a simulated beach within driving distance.  At the edge of a dam, a “beach” had been created by volumes of finely ground gravel dumped onto the shore.  The wake of the motorboats created a sort of wave action for those of us soaking in the pebbles and the sun.  Note I did not say “the sand and the sun.”

 Ohio was family-friendly, of course.  It was family- friendly in the same way that a stray mutt has to be.  It’s a matter of survival.  Ohio could never rival California in natural splendor, resources, attractions, or weather.  It was like comparing the voluptuous Marilyn Monroe to the charming Shirley Temple.  You can’t.  People always rushed to conferences in California, but no one bothered to convene in Columbus.  Still, Ohio was our new home, and I had never called it a “hick” place.

I stalled for time and probed further, “What do you mean, exactly, when you say it was ‘some kind of a hick drink’?”  Somewhat exasperated, she said it was a fruit punch of some sort.  Then it dawned on me.  She had been served a box of “Hi-C.”  I knew that it was pronounced “High C” as in, allegedly high in Vitamin C.  Among my many nutritional transgressions, which I have been guilty of, and can currently be accused of, serving boxed Hi-C drinks was not one of them. 

I remembered the TV jingle from my childhood, “They’ve got Hi – C!  They’ve got Hi – C!...”  My children were not avid or addicted watchers of children’s TV shows, so there was no exposure to the modern commercials either.  Hence, she thought “Hi-C” was pronounced as “hick.”

But that wasn’t what had miffed her.  Before the round of tests, while my daughter familiarized herself with the desk-and-attached chair, a student informed her that the teacher’s name was Mrs. Bison.  Need I mention that the teacher was unusually heavy-set? 

My daughter practiced her best manners by addressing the teacher properly and formally.   “Um, Mrs. Bison, I was wondering if I could sharpen my pencil,” she began as she presumptuously started toward the pencil sharpener.

The teacher’s sunny disposition took a mercurial U-turn.  The happy, hefty, woman suddenly bellowed, “Young lady, sit down in your chair!”

Having been homeschooled, my children were not used to being yelled at…by others, that is.  I did engage in plenty of yelling, but that was as natural in our home as running water.  It didn’t really count; it was just my natural dialect and a means of efficient communication.  Being yelled at by an outsider, though - that was something different, entirely.

Of course, you guessed it.  The woman’s last name was not Bison at all.  It was something confusing and hyphenated, like Neiler-Byce or vice versa.  (And not Versa-Vyce.)  The other student must have gotten a good laugh later, I suspect.  I am assuming a child who was naughty enough to have set my daughter up would also have been clever enough to suppress his laughter.  Like a little criminal, you know?  He probably laughed and bragged later how he had gotten the visiting student to call the teacher a Buffalo kinswoman.

I wonder if that kid is still laughing.