how the hell did i end up here?

False Identity

etomczyk — Thu, 16 May 2013 17:11:46 +0000

Do you know what I’ve discovered after attending a funeral last week of someone who died before her time (she was two years younger than I, and believe you me, I am not ready to exit stage left just yet)? After meditating at great length on the premature death of my co-worker, I discovered that Shakespeare was right: “To thine own self be true!” Doing otherwise will just fuck with your mind and your life.

Because I’m always thinking of what spiritual legacy WW and I can implant in our grandson before we kick the bucket, I was mulling over the concept of how to convey recognizing one’s “True Self” vs. the “False Self” we often get imprisoned in by the opinions of others to a four-year-old. But Little-Dude beat me to it. The other day the phone rang and my daughter (Boo)—choked with laughter—started to rattle off one of Baby-boy’s latest adventures.

BOO: “Mom, you are never going to believe what Baby-boy did to Mama-Mama (Baby-boy’s paternal grandmother)!”

Baby-Boy (a.k.a. Pumbaa Impersonator Extraordinaire)

ME: “Oh, whatever it is, I’m sure it is going to be a hoot and totally blog worthy.”

BOO: “Well, I don’t know how blog worthy it is, but Mama-Mama and Baby-boy stopped by the grocery store for a hot minute and before you could say, ‘stay put wiggle-worm,’ your grandson wandered off to another aisle. The next thing Mama-Mama heard was Baby-boy shouting at someone:

‘Are you talkin’ to me? Are YOU talkin’ TO ME??

‘So, you want a piece of me? YOU want a PIECE of ME??’

BOO: “Mama-Mama almost had a heart attack thinking that her worst fears had come to fruition, and Baby-boy was being kidnapped and dragged out of the store. But when Mama-Mama ran around the corner, nobody was there but your grandson looking at her like the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland. Mama-Mama asked Baby-boy who he was talking to and he answered her in that sly way of his that makes you think you’re going crazy: ‘Nobody.’ After scolding him to stay close to her, the two got in the check-out line and were almost finished when all of a sudden, Baby-boy started his ‘Are you talkin’ to me?’ spiel again while staring directly at Mama-Mama’s butt as if he and the butt were having a tussle (she did say, ‘stay close to me’). While his grandmother hustled our little giggling terrorist out of the grocery store, she told me that all the customers were staring at her with the kind of looks that say: ‘Should we or should we not call the Child Abuse Hotline?”

ME: “Well, it’s obvious that our darling boy picked this phrase up from something he watched on TV, and he was either channeling Al Pacino’s “Scarface” (in which case a phone call to the abuse hotline might be in order) or he was imitating Pumbaa’s speech from The Lion King. How did Baby-boy end the speech? Did he say: ‘AND THEY CALL ME, MR. PIG?’ Because that is definitely a Pumbaa line!”

Pumbaa from “The Lion King”/Disney

BOO: “Maybe, but Mama-Mama swears she has no idea where he picked that dialogue up. She thinks it might have come from his pre-school (“The Our Lady of Goodness and Grace Holy Child of the Heavenly Jesus Loves You School”). But it gets worse, Mom. On Sunday we went out to dinner with one of the deacons at the church. I told Baby-boy he needed to be on his best behavior and at first he was a total angel—showing off my parenting as if he had never done a bratty thing in his life. The waiter came over to take our orders and after finishing with the adults the server asked me what Baby-boy would like to eat. Before I could say, ‘Oh, he’ll have his usual—chicken nuggets with fries and chocolate soy milk’—your grandson reared back in his seat with a ‘high noon at the O.K. Corral shoot-out’ look and said to the waiter: ‘Are you talkin’ to me? Are YOU talkin’ TO ME?? You want a piece of me? Do YOU want a PIECE of ME??’ Mom—he’s only four-years-old! Can I send him to live with you until he’s eighteen or he’s out of his Al Pacino phase—whichever comes first? My nerves can’t take much more of this!”

ME: “No. I’m not raising anymore babies, thank you very much. Besides, it sounds like Baby-boy is just trying on identities like a new set of clothes—trying to figure out what persona he wants to be. Maybe since winning ‘Student of the Month’ in pre-school last month, he’s having issues with his street cred. Ha! Maybe there’s a four-year-old gang that’s messin’ with him on the playground. (By the way, what do you have to do to become ‘Student of the Month’ out of all the four-year-old classes in a school—not pee your pants before lunch is served?)”

Calvin and Hobbes | Cartoonist Bill Watterson

BOO: “Mom, this is not funny! The child is embarrassing me and his New York City grandmother. Would you please work with me here and take this seriously? I called you for advice—do I have a gangsta in the making?”

ME: “Fine. There is nothing to worry about. Baby-boy will grow out of it because trying on identities at four years old is like playing dress-up. Just be glad he’s no longer practicing his Chipette impersonation while channeling Beyoncé and Willow Smith when he was three years old. Remember how we couldn’t stop Baby-boy from breaking into his Beyoncé/Willow medley no matter where we were? With one hand on hip, the other hand in the air—he’d burst into song and out booty-pop anything Beyoncé could do as he burst into his three-year-old rendition of ‘All the Single Ladies.’ And in true Chipette style (because, obviously, Chipettes have no hair), Baby-boy would segue into (without missing a beat): ‘I whip my TAIL back and forth; I whip my TAIL back and forth. . .’”

ME: “Just be glad Baby-boy is channeling the spirit of Pumbaa, the farting warthog!” At least the other four-year-olds can all relate to farts and it makes them laugh. The Beyonce-Willow-Chipette medley might have gotten his butt kicked at his little inner-city Catholic School—Jesus or no Jesus—because those people know how to rumble. Remember West Side Story? All Catholics! Besides, the ages you have to worry about are the middle school years and up. That’s when Baby-boy will try on different identities that just might be false, and if they stick they could affect his life-choices rendering irreversible circumstances to his journey.

“What you have to be on the look-out for are people like that asshole, Mike Jeffries, CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch, who has been in the news the last few days for the unabashed way he sells “false selves” while trampling all over the psyches of young people without so much as a ‘by your leave.’ Allegedly, Mike Jefferies said his brand-killing quotes about ‘only wanting beautiful people to wear his brand’ in an interview seven years ago, but the interview has resurfaced—to much more backlash than before (IMP. NOTE: Nothing ever goes away on the Internet, Mr. Jeffries). Keep in mind that he doesn’t allow his stores to carry any girls’ jeans larger than a size 10 which are really a size 6—I know, because I checked them out when you were in high school and A&F was the divining rod of who was “in” and who was “out”! The CEO of A&F only allows larger sizes for guys because athletes are usually buff and sexy and need a larger size (his words—not mine).

“He (Mike Jeffries) doesn’t want larger people shopping in his store, he wants thin and beautiful people,” Lewis said. “He doesn’t want his core customers to see people who aren’t as hot as them wearing his clothing. People who wear his clothing should feel like they’re one of the ‘cool kids.’”— Robin Lewis, author of The New Rules of Retail as told to Business Insider*

“In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids . . . Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. . .”—Mike Jeffries to Salon.com by Sean Levinson*

Mike Jeffries, CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch

ME: “When Baby-boy reaches the age when creeps like Mike Jeffries can mess with his mind and cause him to think he is not “good enough” because he can’t squeeze his ass into a pair of A&F’s jeans, then we’ll have trouble on our hands. Even if A&F is out of business by then (please, God, please), there will be others to take its place. If Baby-boy or his friends start starving themselves to become the false selves that Jeffries or others like him are selling or he starts labeling himself as the ‘cool kid’ and the others the ‘losers,’ then you’ll know that you need to grab the family, far and wide, to do an intervention before his soul gets sucked right out of his body and we lose him to a false God and a false identity. Show Baby-boy that his worth comes from the inside out—that he’s spirit, soul, and body, and that nothing anyone says about him is his true self unless he answers to it and makes it his own.

“In the meantime, I’ve got to go and alert all the mothers and grandmothers I know through my blog and Facebook page to this latest assault on our children’s psyches. I even have an idea for a picket sign. What do you think?”

“…because if you are, Jeffries: Talk to the hand, Mofo!”

I am discovering that just as snowflakes (no two being identical) are formed with yesterday’s moisture and today’s arctic air, so it is with people. We form our identity with a little bit of this from our past and a little bit of that from the present—elements from our family environment and the world around us. Just as each snowflake must own its individuality to develop into the snowball, the snowman, the snow mound that never existed before but makes all the difference in the world, so must we as humans. To fit in with the rest of the snowflakes is great in order to build something constructive, but we must never forget that we are all unique and it is that uniqueness that makes the world a fabulous place. To settle for less is to live a less than excellent life, and it allows others to undermine our destiny, our credibility, and our “True Selves.”

I am also discovering that we can bring smug-ass Jeffries to his knees in a heartbeat by helping our children see that even though they may be able to fit into A&F’s clothes, for the “common good” of their “uncool” sisters and brothers, cousins and nieces, friends and acquaintances, the poor and disenfranchised, they should not spend another dime in this man’s stores. And in the meantime, they can do like the Los Angeles filmmaker, Greg Karber,** and collect Abercrombie and Fitch brands from thrift stores and friends who’ve outgrown Mr. Arrogant-ass’ rags and give them to the homeless. Let’s see how Jeffries “cool” brand looks on the “ugly” street-bound chic!

AMEN, AND AMEN!

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”― Oscar Wilde

“Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life, but define yourself.”― Harvey Fierstein

* http://elitedaily.com/news/world/abercrombie-fitch-ceo-explains-why-he-hates-fat-chicks/

** http://www.kpho.com/story/22259490/la-man-doles-out-abercrombie-fitch-clothing-to-homeless

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eleanor Tomczyk and “How the Hell Did I End Up Here?” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

My Crazy-Ass Mother

etomczyk — Sat, 04 May 2013 16:49:42 +0000

Do you know what I’ve discovered? I could really do without Mother’s Day. In fact, I pretty much hate the celebration. It is not my fault—it’s God’s. He could have arranged for me to be born as Michelle Obama and have her delightful mother and her life, or God could have delayed my birth and let me be one of Michelle and Barack’s kids. I’d be so cute, rich, and smart right now, and man, my upper arms would be on the road to becoming spectacular like my mother’s instead of flapping in the breeze like the morning wash hung out to dry. But noooooo! God had to let me be born to a crazy woman who thought if she, ever so sweetly, ignored me (except when she was trying to kill me), that maybe somehow my sister and I would disappear before anybody noticed we belonged to her.

I suspect my mother was paranoid-schizophrenic long before I was born, but she kept it well hidden until the hormones of menopausal, illegitimate pregnancies produced offspring who demanded to have a mother. Children are self-centered like that. They don’t give a shit what is going on in your life, if you’re their mother, then you better damn well show up and do your job:

“Feed me, change me, hold me, love me, discipline me, goddamnit, or I’m going down to the nearest ne’er-do-well office and fill out an application to become the local (fill in the blank____________) thief, drug-addict, ‘ho, gangsta, self-centered brat—you name it. Forewarned is forearmed, Mommie Dearest.”

There is an old adage that women end up emulating their mothers which scared the bejesus out of my sister, Pee-wee, and me. We were always looking over our shoulders to see if the crazies were going to catch up with us. We’re both in our sixties now and we’ve managed not to go insane (knock on wood), but we did so by tip-toeing past the graveyard of Mother’s Days lost and putting each other through a sanity check once or twice a year.

Cartoon by Dan Piraro | www.bizzaro.com

Pee-wee and I would take each other’s mental temperature with questions about scenarios that once plagued our mother’s daily existence:

“Are you talking to the wall, yet?” (No, only to myself, but I try not to answer me or to talk to myself more than once a day!)

“Are you sewing extraneous pockets inside your sweaters and coats and stuffing them with stolen Saltine crackers, sugar packets, salt and pepper shakers, and anything not nailed down at the lunch counter of the Woolworths 5 and 10 to prepare for Armageddon?” (No, but I must confess that I take home the little bottles of shampoo and conditioner from fancy hotels. Does that count?)

“Do you make up conspiracy theories about the Russians trying to take control of your mind through radio waves?” (No, although I must admit that I am starting to believe a conspiracy theory that the Tea Party has hypnotized some of my ex-friends who are evangelical Christians, and the Baggers have syphoned the love of Christ, their goodwill, and the intelligence out of their hearts and brains. Given the troll bullying from the Baggers that I get regarding my blog, I think they may be after my soul next. I’m paranoid that I may turn into an idiot like Palin, Bachmann, or Cruz.)

“Do you fantasize about killing your children in order to protect them from the “Russians” and white people”? (No, but I did have copious dreams for years about me killing our mother after that time I invited her to the Girls’ Ensemble concert I was conducting at a church. It was my last ditch effort to reestablish a relationship with Mama after cutting her out of my life for years. Mommie Dearest hadn’t been in the concert for more than fifteen minutes before she got “agitated from being surrounded by too many white people” she said, and decided to accompany the Negro spiritual I was conducting (“God’s Gonna Rain Down Fire”) with her personal pyrotechnics. She couldn’t understand why I didn’t understand that she was aiding God and me with the lighted matches she was throwing with trancelike abandonment into the audience’s hair. I can still hear the curses of those poor white folks as they scattered like roaches swatting their heads while security tried to subdue our crazy-ass mother. Did I ever tell you how I kept conducting the choir as if nothing crazy was happening, and as if I didn’t know that woman? I was too horrified to turn around and face the audience. All I could do was sob like a hot mess while never missing a beat with my baton, hope the audience thought the crazy woman was related to the only other black person in the choir, and beg God to open up the ground and yank our mother down into the deepest hole in Hell.

Cartoon by Peter Broelman | www.broelman.com.au

Every year, Pee-wee and I have passed our own litmus tests, and we didn’t become paranoid-schizophrenic like our mother—thank God. But one doesn’t rub elbows with that type of mother and come out unscathed. Children of alcoholics, drug addicts, or crazy people usually become like their parents or become the polar opposite. With all due respect, my sister Pee-wee is a control-freak and never had children. I overcompensated for my mother’s mental and physical abandonment by trying to be the perfect mom who was always up in my children’s grill, which almost drove my kids and me insane. All children make mistakes and have to find their own way in life, no matter how inept or how great the mother. Every stumble, every rebellion, and every mistake my children have made, I took it as a personal rejection of my “shoddy” parenting, and I would just try harder. My kids weren’t allowed to fuck up in life and that is a pressure no child can withstand, even if their hearts are in the right place to do the right thing. They love me dearly, and I them, but I’ve always felt that I could have done better by them by providing more clear-thinking advice about the pitfalls of life. I have nightmares about the things I never had a chance to teach them before they flew the coop. My secret horror is that they will be confronted with something in life and not have the life skills with which to overcome, and that lack, in turn, will fling them into the insanity of their grandmother. When asked what keeps me awake at night—this is it.

Cartoon by Nick Galifiakis | www.nickandzuzu.com

I am discovering that I am cautiously falling in love with the memory of my crazy-ass mother and coming to the adult realization that she did the best she could, given her circumstances. Mama has been dead for thirty-two years now (died in her sleep on an Easter morning after singing in the church choir), and I’m just beginning to see her through the prism of a life destroyed by intrinsic racism, sexual abuse, and poverty. As I interview people from my past to chronicle my mother’s all-consuming insanity for my memoirs, I am beginning to see a woman who was not too different from me in her aspirations, dreams, and talents. The difference in my sanity and my mother’s insanity is that I found the true love of a man (she was summarily abandoned by my father and left to perish in poverty with two babies). The winds of history blew open the doors at just the right time for my intelligent mind to be educated and my talent to be cultivated beyond the aspirations of scrubbing somebody’s toilet (Mama was never allowed to go past high school and spent much of her life as a maid rather than an opera singer which was her dream). I have traveled the world and lived extremely well (wasting more money on Broadway shows, travel, and gourmet meals than my mother made in her entire life as a servant).

Am I sane because I escaped ignorance and want? Can I “get over” in life because I don’t have to live under an apartheid system as my mother did in the US? Were my babies safe from my descent into madness because I had hope for tomorrow and didn’t have to worry about my children’s next meal? Only God knows. But one thing is for sure—I no longer judge my mother for the pain I endured as a child. Besides, it has made me who I am and given me a riotous sense of humor. I am truly coming to love and understand the woman who gave me life. From the conversations I’ve had recently with my grown children, it seems as if they are affording me the same grace.

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY, MAMA!

“Mothers are all slightly insane.”—J. D. Salinger

“Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we’ve ever met.”― Marguerite Duras

“When your mother asks, ‘Do you want a piece of advice?’ it’s a mere formality. It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to get it anyway.”― Erma Bombeck

“Through the blur, I wondered if I was alone or if other parents felt the same way I did—that everything involving our children was painful in some way. The emotions, whether they were joy, sorrow, love or pride, were so deep and sharp that in the end they left you raw, exposed and yes, in pain. The human heart was not designed to beat outside the human body and yet, each child represented just that—a parent’s heart bared, beating forever outside its chest.”― Debra Ginsberg

Cartoon by Dan Piraro | www.bizarro.com

Celebrate, Good Times—Come On!

etomczyk — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 22:05:00 +0000

Do you know what I’ve discovered? People like me—they really like me, and I’m gonna do what Cool and the Gang have exhorted me to do: “Celebrate, Good Times!” As of this moment (more by the time this blog is posted), my blog has received 100,321 hits. 593 hits happened on my best day for the review of Skyfall in November (note to self: do more movie reviews), and I’ve been spammed 8,625 times. I am spam worthy, y’all!

Google 100,000 Meme

This 100,000 hits and counting is all so ironic because I never wanted to write a blog, had never read a blog before writing one of my own, and didn’t think I had anything to say that anyone wanted to hear. I got into this gig as so many others do because I wrote a book and arrogantly thought I’d get a literary agent on try #5 (actually I did get a nibble but she rejected me in the end) and a publisher at try #20. (I did get a nibble from a small imprint publisher who wanted to feature my book as part of their African–American section, but after months of holding my manuscript, he decided they were going in a different direction.) When I got my 236^th rejection, various literary agents confirmed that it was generally due to the fact that I was a “nobody” with no followers (code for: “Nobody wants to read a ‘nobody memoir’—become notorious and we’ll talk.”) One of my published author friends counseled me to start a blog to get my style of writing and name out there, and when I balked and asked him what I should write about, he said: “Anything and everything—it doesn’t matter, just write.”

For weeks I pondered what a chubby-ass, post-menopausal black woman would post on a blog and in what format? I had recently gone rogue and had taken back my belief in God after thirty years from it being hijacked in the clutches of right-wing conservatism, and I had a lot to say about being duped in life. And then I got a revelation: make ‘em laugh, sista’—make ‘em laugh at you and them. I’ve always been a storyteller so I started writing stories about the absurdities in life because I’m old, and just about everything I’ve seen and done in the past can be laid waste by the magic wand of absurdity. I can be absurd, you can be absurd, our neighbors can be absurd, sex can be absurd, politics is definitely absurd, religions at their worst are absurd, and the world at large is absurd because we all take ourselves much too seriously and do great damage in the wake of that absurdity. I figured if I could make people laugh at themselves, maybe they (we) would take a look at the truth of the matter and change any of their (our) ways that were hurting themselves or our world.

At first the stories were low-hanging fruit and easy to come by because I am a pratfalling, Lucille Ball-type of character who tries to pretend that I’ve got my shit together in real life. But once those stories were all used up, I started looking to my family who immediately rushed forward to tell me what I could not write about:

ME: “Hey, Babe, can I write about our sex life?”

HUSBAND: “No!”

ME: “Why not? Sex is funny at any age and when you’re old, it’s hilarious. What about that time we were doing the ‘wild thing’ and I fell asleep?”

HUSBAND: (Total silence, which is how my husband responds to me when he has had enough of my shenanigans and doesn’t see the funny in what I see as funny.)

Then I started using stories about my kids when they were little or my grandson as he makes his way through life, but I’ve noticed over the last few family get-togethers that qualifiers are being placed on stories that my urchins share with me about their lives or the lives of their friends: “This is not blog fodder, Mother!”

Politics made for great blog ingredients for a while, but I was glad when the presidential campaign season ended. Tea Baggers, so-called Patriots, and folks who claim to be Born-again Christians dedicated to saving our country from Socialists and white-people-hating bloggers like me (one troll’s frothing response to my Black History piece) have absolutely no sense of humor. These folks can be quite rabid when you poke fun at them or their media darlings, and they come after you with guns a blazing—morphing into “trolls” that definitely made me realize that getting everyone’s approval is not what makes a successful blogger.

Mimi and Eunice |www.mimiandeunice.com

Pretty soon I couldn’t encounter a person or a situation without wondering whether they or it was a potential blog story. I never exist in the moment anymore (not that I ever did) because I’m either thinking about writing a blog, actually writing the blog, or I’m editing a blog. Like the time I went to a gorgeous spa for a quick get-away with my husband to have a romantic weekend and be rested enough so I didn’t repeat the faux pas of falling asleep (oops!), and while getting a quick mani-pedi, the nail technician began to regale me with her stories:

NAIL LADY: “So you’re a blogger, huh? What types of things do you blog about?”

ME: “Oh, anything and everything—whatever makes me laugh and has an underlying life-lesson.”

NAIL LADY: “People tell me that I should write a book or something because you won’t believe some of the stories I hear sitting in this chair. People tell me everything.”

ME: “I bet you have some juicy stories to tell. But I warn you, anything you tell me could and probably will be used in an upcoming blog.” (At this point, I woke up from my laid-back state of mind and turned on my inner tape recorder as I mentally took notes for what I could “smell” would be delicious comedic blog fodder for weeks to come.)

NAIL LADY: “No problem. Just don’t mention my name or the resort’s name and you can use anything you want. Anyway, the funniest thing I ever had happen sitting in this chair was when a really young woman with tons of money came into the salon to get a mani-pedi. You know the type: blond, fake triple D tits, spray tan, and an engagement ring the size of Mt. Rushmore. Miss “Got Rocks” immediately started telling me that she had recently married a man much, much older than herself, and they had come to the resort for a romantic weekend because, due to his age, they had been having trouble getting it on—or should I say, getting it up. I had just finished her manicure and put her feet in the pedicure bath to soak when her cell phone rang. At first she ignored it, mouthing (‘it’s my old man’), but he kept ringing her over and over until she picked up the phone. She immediately became agitated and started screaming at him: ‘I can’t come back to the room now—I’m just starting my pedicure. What? You took the pill already? But you knew I had this mani-pedi appointment, and I’d be here for a while. Why did you take the pill so early? Well, doesn’t the damn thing last for four hours? What do you mean, that’s if something goes wrong? Oh, fuck! All right, I’ll come back to the room now—oh, for God’s sake!’ I try to tune out to my customer’s phone calls, but there’s not much you can do when you’re squatting near the floor scrubbing somebody’s feet. Finally with a huge sigh of frustration, she told me that her ‘old man’ had taken his Cialis pill thirty minutes ago, and it looked as if his fun stick was beginning to droop at half-mast and he was in a panic. He needed her to get back to the room ASAP before he was left aimlessly swinging in the breeze like a mourning flag at half-mast.”

ME: “Well, what did you do?”

NAIL TECH: “The only thing I could do. I suggested we reschedule her pedicure because if I polished her toes they would surely be destroyed in the morning’s ‘aerobic exercise’ with her husband. She never returned.”

ME: “So I guess falling asleep while doing the wild thing isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a couple, right?”

NAIL LADY: “Huh, what?”

ME: “Ah, never mind!”

http://www.funnytimes.com

When I first started my blog, I could hardly wait to get comments. The first comments were from friends and family, but comments from other bloggers took a while until I established myself by consistently posting stories and leaving comments on their blogs. It was as though credible bloggers were waiting to see if I was worth their time. I learned to be patient, write quality pieces that would attract readers (make ‘em laugh, baby), and make as few mistakes as possible. (Apparently, spelling and grammatical errors can get you run out of blogosphere town on a rail.)

Soon people (usually ones that I wished had passed me by) started finding my blog through search lines in Google that were beyond bizarre. Some of them (they show up in the daily data script of the blog) I could read and laugh about, but some of them were just sick. (I’ve often wondered what I could have written that would link my blog to the sicko searches that show up in my stats until another blogger who just posts gorgeous pictures of flowers once wrote a blog on the perverse search lines that bring people to her artistic site.) Here are some of the searches that led people to my blog over the last year:

Tea Party fishing hats

Fat-ass chicks in flesh colored tights

WHEN DID THAT BITCH ELEANOR TOMCZYK LEAVE MY CHURCH?!

Little Ni**er Babies

Axolotls

Ms piggy

Brother’s keeper tattoos designs

Rihanna hands

Who the fuck is Eleanor Tomczyk?

Amy farrah fowler

How the hell did steven

Fat girl on a zipline

Katie Holmes journey

(PLUS, UNMENTIONABLE GOOGLE SEARCHES THAT ARE NOT WORTHY OF REPRINTING—JUST KNOW THAT THEY WERE HORRIBLE AND DESPICABLE—I NEEDED SOAP TO WASH OUT MY BRAIN!)

***

I am discovering that blogging has strengthened my relationship with my family (my kids discovered I was cool and smart because their friends read my blog and like it), and it’s given me something I never expected: community. As my writing has more clearly defined who I really am—as I have become freer to be me—it has not been without consequences here and there in relationships that I thought would go the distance. My blog became a winnowing rod. People who thought they knew me, didn’t, and people who should have known me and journeyed with me in my growth, refused, even though I had walked similar journeys with them. But as some people from my past peeled away (“c’est la vie”), almost seamlessly, a community of amazing people wandered in from various walks of life (thanks Sondra, Maxine, Greg, Joanne, WW (my editor and husband), CDT and KLT and their multitudinous co-workers and friends, Kirsten, Deb, Peter, Sarah, Patty, Jean, Pam, Kathy, Lakeisha, Jeffrey, Susannah and a host of fans that I left behind at work) and the blogosphere. They all liked the “me” they saw, and stayed to lend encouragement and support.

I am also discovering that the bloggers who encouraged me are people I’d love to gather together for wine and cheese on my deck on any given Sunday afternoon and celebrate their generosity to me. I would keep my mouth shut and just listen to them talk amongst themselves as they spoke about what they most eloquently blog about—living, loving, beauty, and grace. I love their writings, photos, and music, and they have given me constant encouragement to keep on keepin’ on with my journey as a writer. I owe the following bloggers a great debt of gratitude for following, reading, linking to me, and in many cases listing me as one of their favorite blogs. The fact that they return week after week and leave such delicious comments is sweetness personified. Here’s a shout-out to some of the best bloggers in the sphere: TDashfield at http://imagesbytdashfield.wordpress.com/ , Elyse at http://fiftyfourandahalf.com/, Frank at http://afrankangle.wordpress.com/, Lynn Purse at http://composerinthegarden.com/ , Dawn G at http://talesfromthemotherland.me/ , Momsheib at http://momshieb.wordpress.com/ , Val at http://valentinelogar.com/ , Nonnie 9999 at http://mikk2.wordpress.com/ , Hudson Howl at www.beyondplumcreek.com, Karyn at http://anobservantmind.com/ , Miss Vixiev at http://eurobrat.wordpress.com/ , Tina at http://daysift.com/, Ronnie at http://morristownmemos.wordpress.com/ , Heather D at http://becomingcliche.wordpress.com/ , Nancy at http://notquiteold.wordpress.com/, George at http://georgefloreswrite.com/ , and Lindy Lee at http://poeticlicensee.wordpress.com/. Thank you, all! (If I forgot anyone, please don’t hate me—my brain is not what it used to be!)

“I don’t want to go viral, I want to set hearts on fire.”― Coco J. Ginger

“My blog is a collection of answers people don’t want to hear to questions they didn’t ask.”― Sebastyne Young

“If you’re going to fall out of love with public approval, something interesting will happen: people will be deeply attracted to your work.”― Jeff Goins

“I finished the [blog] post reflecting on the fact that, despite all the changes in my life, maybe I wasn’t so different after all. If I typed it, maybe I could believe it, too.”― Stephanie Nielson

The Arrogance of Ignorance

etomczyk — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 05:00:18 +0000

Do you know what I’ve discovered? The President is correct: this has been one hell of a week! I’ve been so stressed out worrying and praying for my fellow Americans that all I could do was eat and pray—pray and eat (my way of dealing with stress which seems to make me fatter, albeit, not any holier).

Garfield by cartoonist Jim Davis

This “hell of a week” started out with the colossal moral failure of four Democrats (4 votes if you don’t count Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s “procedural ‘no’ vote”—WTF??): Sens. Max Baucus, Mark Begich, Heidi Heitkamp and Mark Pryor, voting “no” against universal background checks for gun purchases because of their lily-livered fear of the NRA. The fact that the majority of the Republican Senators voted against the bill didn’t come as a surprise (kudos to the courageous Republicans who showed moral fortitude in voting “yes”), but the Democrats who betrayed the 20 innocent children slaughtered in Newtown and the thousands of others across our land since then made me madder than Hell and sent me straight to the gluten-free cheesecake.

Cartoonist: Steve Sack/Chicago Star Tribune

What brought me to my knees, crying out to a God for help who I am confident exists but sometimes seems to be on an extended holiday, was the nightmare we’ve all just woken up from: Boston under siege. Even my dreams reflected my fears. The night of the Boston Marathon bombing I dreamt that my husband (WW) and I were being chased by rabid paparazzi as if we were Hollywood stars. My white husband (WW), who is always pitch perfect in tone and dress, wore a sharp black pin-striped suit with a patriotic tie (in real life he looks like a Presbyterian minister or president of the RNC, so this outfit is de rigueur for him). I, the chocolate Lucille Ball of my family who often makes missteps in my fashion choices (I once wore a stunning white suit with matching hat and veil to a wedding—don’t ask!), walked beside WW in a two-piece skimpy bikini (seriously, demon-dream tormentors, did you lose your minds?). Feeling particularly vulnerable with my exposed, pudgy body, I kept crying out for some type of “grace” to provide me a swimsuit covering to escape the tormenting laughter of the paparazzi who were chasing after me to get pictures of my fluffy-nutter midriff. I kept asking WW why someone with “power” didn’t show up to rescue me from my shabby wardrobe faux pas—where was a helper when you really needed one?

Fortunately, I woke up from my naked dream, and I turned on the news to see what progress had been made in capturing the Boston Marathon terrorists. I heard an interview with a retired FBI agent who said something that will stick with me for the rest of my life. When questioned by the interviewer if we’d ever catch the perpetrators, the very wise FBI profiler said something tantamount to this: “Oh, we’ll catch them—one way or the other—today or another day—we’ll catch them, because these terrorists don’t know what they don’t know. In other words, they are arrogant of their ignorance.” The profiler went on to explain that no matter how meticulous a plan is to commit a crime, there is always something that the perpetrators are blind to or unaware of that will eventually trip him or her up. It was right then and there that I realized the Boston terrorists had planned everything “perfectly,” but in their arrogance they were ignorant to God’s grace appearing on the scene masquerading as ordinary helpers and undermining the bad guys’ ability to escape.

GOD’S “HELPERS”

The surveillance camera on a Lord & Taylor store, across where the second bomb exploded, provided video of the area and captured the first grainy images of the terrorists.

Carlos Arredondo (a peace activist): the man in the white cowboy hat who had come to the race to honor his two dead sons (one died in Iraq and the other committed suicide in response to his brother’s death), who ran toward the explosion, put tourniquets on Jeff Bauman who lost both legs from one of the bombs, rushed Jeff to the first ambulance to arrive, and reassured the young man that he would be okay.

Jeff Bauman: the amputee (saved by Carlos Arredondo) who demanded a pen and piece of paper as soon as he came out of surgery while he was still groggy, because he wanted to let the police know that he had seen the bomber put down a backpack—had made eye contact with the man—and could describe him (“Bag. Saw the guy, looked right at me,” Jeff Bauman wrote.).

Heroes Carlos Arredondo and Jeff Bauman | Charles Krupa—AP Photo

Bob Leonard: a Boston Marathon veteran, who always stood in the same place year after year, snapped 10 – 20 photos a minute of the crowd and the winners as they approached the finish line. His photos of the two terrorists were the first crystal-clear images of the men and gave law enforcement their first breakthrough in the case and ultimately led to the demise of suspect #1 (Black Cap).

David Henneberry: A man who stepped outside of his house for a smoke less than an hour after police lifted a stay-indoors order for Watertown and the surrounding area. He saw blood on the tarp of his boat in his yard, gingerly lifted a corner of the cover to discover someone in the boat, and very wisely ran back into the house and called the police. The police had combed that area for hours and were pulling out to leave, figuring that suspect #2 (White Cap) had slipped through their net. Because of the actions of the smoking resident, the 5-day reign of terror came to an end for Boston, and the country breathed a sigh of relief as Bostonians cheered the jubilant declaration: “WE GOT HIM!”

Cartoonist: Randy Bish

I am discovering that sometimes the question is not why did you let this happen, God, but it is more significant to ask: Where were you in the midst of all this chaos and pain? Bad shit happens to good people here, there, and everywhere because we are free as human souls to choose between good and evil (if I ever get a chance to create my own world, nobody will have the freedom to choose anything—I’ll guarantee you that). Being able to recognize God’s grace in the midst of evil keeps us from losing our minds, especially when we don’t understand why the bad things are happening to good people in the first place.

I am also discovering that the arrogance of evil is always ignorant of the good that is ever prevalent—ever watching and all-powerful—to defeat evil in the end. But we must be very careful not to become like those who attacked us. Within the last 48 hours, a female doctor by the name of Heba Abolaban (dressed in a hijab and carrying her baby) was attacked on a Boston street. According to the Huffington Post, the attacker hit her and shouted: “Fuck you Muslims! You are terrorists! I hate you! You are involved in the Boston explosions! Fuck you!” We all must resist the pull to allow our anger to descend into “demonic anger” (“characterized by a fury that takes over or possesses us”) as Paul Brandeis Raushenbush so eloquently described it in his article* on responding to Boston anger. Instead we must get angry—very angry—at the evil perpetrated by the terrorists, but it must be a “righteous anger” that does not forgo justice or strike out at the innocent so that we maintain what Raushenbush says makes us “people of peace, compassion and justice, that we want to be in this world.”*

Cartoonist: David Baldinger

“It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.”― Anatole France

“I see myself capable of arrogance and brutality… That’s a fierce thing, to discover within yourself that which you despise the most in others.”—George Stevens

“For all the different labels that get attached to it—terrorism, serial killing, ethnic war—much of mass violence is actually one big thing: the attempt by a small group of nihilistic and idiosyncratic individuals to murder, indiscriminately, a great many more.”—Charles King (“Every American Muslim’s Fear after the Boston Bombing”/Daily Beast)

*RESPONDING TO BOSTON ANGER: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-raushenbush/responding-to-boston-anger_b_3092758.html

Say WHAT?!

etomczyk — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 03:42:46 +0000

Do you know what I’ve discovered? I need a break! My mind is about to explode (again!). Keeping abreast of the news to stay informed as a blogger affords me more stress than my little, little brain can consistently handle, and I often need to get away—if only just in my mind. Not to mention the fact that this blogging stuff is so much harder than anyone lets on.

When a would-be writer first starts the task of telling the world her innermost feelings, she naïvely thinks the world will just be waiting with bated breath for her latest “mot juste.” Not only isn’t the world chomping at the bit to read my her crap (although, I shouldn’t complain—I’m doing better than most), it takes a lot of reading to stay informed and not sound like an idiot.

So, this week, I needed to go to a place to get fresh perspective on the inhabitants of the Earth who are coming across as mostly good-for-nothing-ne’er-do-wells as was demonstrated by the tone-deaf NRA who will probably destroy any formative gun control, a crazy North Korean who wants to nuke us and take over the world, and the alleged mass murderer, Kevin Gosnell, who operated an illegal, unregulated abortion clinic for years and committed mass murder against full-term babies and at least one mother in the most barbaric, horrific manner. (IMHO: this is not a pro-choice or pro-life issue—this is a basic human rights issue. Why have we liberals been so quiet about this evil man’s barbarism?) Humans are the custodians of the Earth and we don’t seem to be doing very well. As a blogger, I’m losing the creativity to write about human meanness in such a way that it pricks the hearts of those who stumble across my blog and brings about compassion and a desire to love one’s fellowman as one’s self.

Cartoon by David Horsey | www.latimes.com

We jumped 35 degrees and skipped from winter to summer (it is 95 degrees at this writing) in my area this week, and when I went for a walk to clear my head, I started seeing all sorts of crazy animal activity unnerved by the sudden hike in temperatures. Woodpeckers were frantically pounding away at the siding on my house trying to get in to build a nest (convinced they were behind schedule, I’m sure). Hundreds of sparrows were trying to find hiding places in foliage that hadn’t had time to make its appearance. The sparrows knew that the 17-year-cicada invasion (whose entry cue is a temperature of 65 degrees), would now arrive early before the birds had set up condos in the trees, and the squirrels just looked at me with a “Say What?! I think all the animals thought I could answer for the erratic behavior of the weather. While I walked, I meditated on the biblical character of Job who was pretty pissed off at his fellow humans at one time (I’m sure he was the Earth’s original ranting blogger, or maybe it was Jeremiah with his Lamentations, but my old age is causing these details to slip). Job was pretty hacked off about the way his friends were treating him, and the state of affairs in his hometown (marauders, mayhem, chaos, loss of his business and his entire family, giant boils on his skin, and people generally getting on his nerves telling him that all the mayhem was his fault). At one point Job lashes out at his so-called friends and tells them how they can ascertain the truth about life since they don’t believe him and can’t seem to see it with their own eyes:

“Ask the animals, and they will teach you,

Or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you,

Or speak to the Earth, and it will teach you,

Or let the fish in the sea inform you.”

Aha! I thought. I will go and speak to the animals and see what I can learn from them about the human race. I shall send my alter-ego (the Dalai Mama) to interview a sector of the animal population that can best shed light on life—our closest relatives—the primates.

Bonobo Couple | photo by Finbarr and O’Reilly/Reuters via MSN

******

INTERVIEW WITH CLAUDE AND LYDIA BONOBO

By Dalai Mama at DM-TV | Location: The Democratic Republic of the Congo

DM-TV: “Mr. and Mrs. Bonobo, how y’all doin’? I’m so glad to finally meet you. Are you ready for your Dalai Mama TV interview? Excuse my ignorance, but do you know I never heard of your kind, and I’m sure most of my audience never heard of you either. It’s not your fault; it’s just that America’s educational system isn’t the best these days. I barely knew where Cincinnati was when I was growing up in The Cleve, let alone, the Congo. But I did do some research on you recently,* and I discovered your official name is Pan paniscus—affectionately known as the pygmy chimpanzee. That’s so precious.”

LYDIA: “Actually, dear, we are a close cousin of the chimpanzee, but they are much more quarrelsome than we are, and many of them are extremely boorish and don’t play well with others—much like you humans.”

CLAUDE: “Now Lydia, don’t be rude, sweetheart.”

LYDIA: “Sorry, darling, I was just trying to point out that we Bonobos have a reputation of ‘make love, not war.’ The Google says that hippy humans tried this in the 60s but it disintegrated into drugs and chaos.”

DM-TV: “Yeah, we got the sex part kinda right, but we still kept killing each other. Is it true that you share 98 percent of our DNA, ‘cause that just boggles my mind, child.”

LYDIA: “So, we’ve been told, but we are way ahead of you humans on a few levels. Did you know that female Bonobos rule over the male Bonobos? We solved the equality issue a long time ago—we just simply declared, “Girls Rule!” The only other species that do this are the spotted hyena and the Madagascar lemur. I’m the leader of this tribe, so if you need anything, just let me know. Would you like something to eat—a banana, perhaps? I’ve heard that you humans are still wrestling with the concept of female leadership. Is it true you’ve never had a woman leader of your country?”

DM-TV: “Yeah, it’s true—maybe next time. For some reason, women continue to be a threat to the male leadership in my country as well as so many other cultures. Girl, it’s just insane! Tell me something—do y’all share your food so that no Bonobo goes hungry (this banana is delicious, by the way)? And do you provide childcare for the entire group?

LYDIA: “Yes and yes. Women are in charge of the food and we will usually share with our immediate family and those we don’t know. Every once and awhile we’ll swat a male Bonobo away from the food if the babies haven’t eaten. All Bonobo babies are provided for—no matter who the parents are. You humans don’t share your food or provide universal childcare? That seems a little primitive, don’t you think? No Bonobo dies from hunger. We’re dying out, but we’re dying because of your human wars and rumors of wars. We used to be 100,000 strong in the Congo; now we are down to a mere 5,000 Bonobos. And since we only exist in this area of the world where there’s always humans destroying the jungle and poaching our friends and relatives, we’re on the endangered species list. I’ve got to admit that our daily existence can get really stressful due to you humans. The older Bonobos are pretty Zen about it all, but the younger ones (you know teenagers; you can’t tell them anything) are furious about the whole situation and can get quite aggressive from time to time.

Cartoon by Dan Piraro | www.bizarro.com

DM-TV: “Speaking of stress, I read somewhere that Bonobos use sex as tension relief, as an expression of goodwill, and to enhance bonding. Is it also true that the Kama Sutra is required reading for all the Bonobos?”

LYDIA: “That’s an urban legend, girlfriend. Don’t believe everything you hear or read on the Internet. Unlike the crude chimpanzees, who have no creativity whatsoever when it comes to having sex, the Bonobos perform sex in every position you can possibly imagine and then some, including the missionary position which the chimpanzees have still yet to master (I told you they were crude). We Bonobos do mouth-to-mouth kissing, oral sex, penis-fencing, and G-G rubbing just to name a few of our Bonobo-like “Kama Sutra” acts. We also have homosexual Bonobos, but that is not unique to us. I read the other day on the Google that 1,500 species have homosexual couplings.”

DM-TV: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, I don’t even want to know what “penis-whatever” and “G-G (oh my God)” is!! You Bonobos sho’ know how to get yo’ freak on!” I’m way too old to be hearin’ this!

LYDIA: “He, he, heeee . . . are you blushing, dear? Look Honey, the human is embarrassed!”

CLAUDE: “Mother, stop messing with our guest; you can see she’s beet red even underneath her hairless brown body. Is there anything else, you’d like to know Mrs. Dalai?”

DM-TV: “Um . . . um . . . no, don’t you think that’s enough? I need a bar of soap to wash out my brain and my eyes as it is. Oh yeah, I did have one more question (God may this be a safe one!) How do you socialize? Do y’all play games?

LYDIA: “That’s one of our best assets, Dalai Baby! Playing together is how we engage in creativity, how we bond, how we problem-solve, and most of all, how we avoid conflict. What are you writing so furiously, dear?”

DM-TV: “A note to our President: Dear President Obama—‘Please send the legislative branch to the Congo for a teaching session by the Bonobos on game-playing as conflict resolution and team building—ASAP! I think our leaders will be able to learn from the Bonobos if they will just shut up and listen. P.S. The Bonobos are a tad X-rated.’”

Primatologist and TED Fellow Isabel Behncke Izquierdo show how a wild bonobo ape society in the Congo learns from constantly playing at Ted “Think Fun” 2011.

***

I am discovering that we still have so much to learn about the Earth and the animals that we’ve been given stewardship over—not to mention how much we need to learn and respect about one another. It seems to me that we all need to slow down, stop the madness of warring against each other and raping of the land and its inhabitants, and listen to what God’s creatures are showing us about who we are and what we need to do to become truly human (that’s a lot of “ands” but you know what I mean). I personally believe that the entire Earth and the heavens speak to who we are and to the glory of God. We are more than our politics, the limitations of our religions, and the narrow-mindedness of our experiences. Let’s all take a chill pill and go talk to the animals this week. We just might learn how to be human.

***

“Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.”–Thomas Jefferson

“I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it’s such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her.”—Ellen DeGeneres

“Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.”—William Hazlitt

“Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That’s the problem.”― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

“Talk to the Animals”: Adorable Sea Lion and Allison Williams from “Girls”| www.fw.com

REFERENCE MATERIAL

* “An exclusive Look at Bonobos: The Left Bank Ape” by David Quammen from National Geographic, March 2013

*http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/04/animal_personalities_apes_rodents_birds_dogs_cats_and_hyenas_have_animalities.html

*http://cda.morris.umn.edu/~meeklesr/bonobo.html

http://www.bonobo.org/Bonobos are an endangered species. Please check out the Bonobo Conservation website to learn more about them and how to participate in saving them from poachers, loggers, and agricultural encroachment.

BONOBOS AT PLAY | www.brown.edu | laboratory primate letter

Pooh-pooh Occurs

etomczyk — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 20:08:18 +0000

Do you know what I’ve discovered? No matter how organized a day, how strategically planned a goal, or how focused a vision—shit happens. Whether it’s on a large corporate scale of having purchased a ticket on the unsinkable Titanic or the individual mundane act of getting a flat tire on the way to work on a six-lane highway—there’s always something! (Did you read about the guy in Tampa who was in his bed sleeping when a 100ft wide and 50ft deep sinkhole opened up and swallowed him whole? Apparently, Tampa is prone to sinkholes and I just vacationed there a month or so ago.) What’s up with that? Consequently, I’ve been poking holes in and around my house ever since—checking for depressions in the soil to find any clues of a potential center of the Earth slip-n-slide to China! It doesn’t matter that I don’t live anywhere near Tampa—one can never be too careful when it comes to being obliterated.

Cartoon from www.veryfunnypics.eu

I try not to let the potential threat of mayhem get to me, but sometimes I have a suspicion that even inanimate things conspire to kick my ass by engaging in guerilla warfare against me in a very short time span, as if by attacking in a 1-2-3 punch manner, “they” or “it” will take me out for good. Even as I tell this story, my left eye is twitching like a plastic pin wheel caught up in the aftermath of a tropical storm, and I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop after the debacle of this past week.

IMP. NOTE TO BLOGGING COMMUNITY: If my husband, WW, comes home from work to find me missing one day, you must let him know that I told you this story, and he’ll know where to look for my body. The murderer will be any of my home appliances, the water heater (especially the water heater—it really hates me), the 60-year-old pipes in my post-WWII house, the toilets (I swear I heard one of them gasp in horror at the size of my ass when I sat down on it the other day), and the furnace/air-conditioner. The furnace/air-conditioner will surely be in on the plot because I suspect they are the ring leaders.

***

Everyone knows that I retired a couple of weeks ago because I arrogantly sent out announcements with a delineation of my “artiste” schedule announcing: “I’M RETIRING TO BECOME A WRITER, PEOPLE—THIS IS SERIOUS” (yes, I bolded “serious” AND underlined it)! “In the morning the Dalai Mama will be gardening, communing with God, and running errands; after lunch I will be writing my “Memoirs of a Nobody” and will be in complete isolation so that my creative juices can flow, because that’s how we writers roll. I will not answer the phone (take your damn drama elsewhere), respond to text messages, or read emails.” (Did I ever tell you that one of my favorite lines of poetry comes from a 1785 Scottish poem by Robert Burns that Hemingway stole?

The best laid schemes of mice and men

Go often awry,

And leave us nothing but grief and pain,

For promised joy!)

At exactly 12:01 on the third day of the writer-at-work hermitage (the first two days I spent farting around reading various books waiting for inspiration to strike, roaming the Internet, and playing Solitaire), as I cracked my inverted finger joints and typed my first profound opening line . . . the doorbell rang.

Snoopy, the Writer|A Charles Schulz Creation

INTERRUPTION #1: “Hi Mrs. Tomczyk. I’m here for your yearly termite inspection on your 60-year-old house which could be prone to these insidious invaders, given all the mature trees that surround your property and the age of your post-WWII home. I won’t take long—I hope. Did you know we’re getting another cicada invasion this year which could destroy that lovely Dwarf Japanese Cherry Tree in your front yard unless you tent it before they arrive? That’s just one of our services as your friendly neighborhood inspection company.”

I did not remember making this appointment with the termite company. I’m sure it was on my electronic calendar at my old job, but when I retired, I lost use of my company calendar. The problem is if you don’t let these service people do their job during the mutually agreed upon appointment time, they will charge you a fee anyway (what balls!), so what was I to do but let him in and follow him around (I never let strange people wander around in my house unattended—that’s a “you’ve been burgled” blog story in the making).

The termite man checked here, there, and everywhere spending most of his time in the basement shining his flashlight on every ceiling beam and corner as he checked for signs of moisture and termite tunnels. After giving my sweet old house a clean bill of health (45 minutes later), he bid me adieu and went on his way, and I went back to my writing.

At 1:00 p.m. on the same day, I was interrupted by another doorbell ring clanging to introduce the annual heating inspector.

INTERRUPTION #2: “Hi Mrs. Tomczyk. Your husband set up this appointment” (in answer to my query of why he was at my house unscheduled) “when we called him to let him know that there had been a mix-up in our data base and none of our contract customer’s furnaces had been serviced. This is the last day we can facilitate such a servicing before your contract runs out, and you’ve already paid for it. Your husband said it would be okay to drop by since you were retired and would be home, anyway.”

Down to the basement we headed as I folded clothes, keeping one eye on the heater man and another on the taped insanity of a thrice-married Steve Harvey giving bullshit marital tidbits to vulnerable audience members (all women) worshipping at his feet and actually taking his lame-ass advice like he was the next black pope (America—are we really that gullible?). As I clicked off the TV in total disgust, I heard the beginning of a colossal rain storm and shouted to the repairman in the next room:

“I didn’t know it was going to rain today. Was it raining when you came in?”

HEATER MAN: “What you talking about, lady. It’s not raining. I’m standing by your basement window across from the furnace, and the sun is streaming in like nobody’s business—it’s a glorious day.”

As I gingerly moved toward a windowed bedroom in the opposite corner of the basement where the sound was most prominent, I looked up as an avalanche of water poured out of a ceiling vent onto my head as if it were an upside down Vesuvius celebrating its right to explode and applauding its timing on having obviously bestowed upon me a little grace by waiting until the termite man had made his exit.

The heater man came running to my screeched exclamation of “WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS!”—I’m supposed to be writing”—while we both grabbed buckets and towels and tried to collect the explosive aqua as I shut off the water and frantically dialed the plumber.

HEATER MAN: “This is probably not a good time to tell you this, but although your furnace is in great shape, I checked out your water heater just as a courtesy, and it is about to blow any minute due to its age and sediment encrustation (shelf life for a WH is 10 years; you’ve had yours for 15), and no amount of insurance money will put this basement back to the level of quality that you’ve built after the destruction of a WH blow. The water pouring through your ceiling is bad enough but the gallons of water that will flow from an exploded water tank (probably when you’re on vacation, as is usually the case) will be beyond repair!”

Three days later of non-stop people in and out of my house, two major holes in the wall hacked into by the plumber looking for the source of the leak (took three hours to find), one new water heater at the tune of $1400 dollars (“and you get a 20% discount for being such a loyal customer!”), one dry-waller and painter, my Dolly Parton acrylic nails bitten down to the core, and a stack of repair bills that came close to giving me a heart attack, all I could do was stare at my blank memoir page which was the culmination of my first week as a retired writer, and the only thing I could hear were the parting words of the Heater Man:

“You and your hubby better save your pennies, because as a courtesy, I checked out your air-conditioner, and its got about 6 – 12 months before it conks out on you. That will cost you a cool $5,000. What can I tell you, Lady:

“Shit happens!”

***

I am discovering that no one gets a pass on mayhem in life—daily or otherwise. Oh, we get respites if we’re lucky, but not only does “shit happen” but “shit always returns.” Which makes me wonder how do people get through life with their sanity intact without belief in a higher power? Who do they go to when they need peace in the midst of chaos and disappointment? But then again, it is amazing how in some of the circles of religious friends where I used to frequent, if the outcome of your personal “mayhemic attack” (an Eleanor term, for sure) was good or landed in your favor, then it was God’s answer to prayer, and “Jesus saved your behind,” but if the mayhemic attack happened to your enemy (one of those nasty liberals, of course) than it too was God’s will and his judgment on their sorry-asses. (This is one of the reasons poor God gets such a bad rap.)

Fortunately, I‘ve disassociated myself from such a self-centered misguided viewpoint and see my own “mayhemic” nightmares as well as everyone else’s as the result of having been born in what JR Ward calls the “Survivor’s Club,” whether we want to have membership in it or not. I just finished reading the book and watching the movie of an ultimate survivor’s tale, The Life of Pi by Yann Martel (the coming-of-age story about an Indian boy who overcomes all the mayhem thrown at him while lost at sea for seven months in the company of an adult Bengal tiger who turns to God, tames the tiger, and survives the sea with all its rage and destructive forces). The older I get, the less I know, but I am coming to understand that as surely as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, “poo-pooh” occurs in every life from the most insignificant, irritating mishaps to the most cataclysmic events, and we either survive them or we don’t, we either learn from them or we won’t, and we either rise up to find God in the face of the tiger sharing our life’s vessel or we shut our eyes and close our ears to the better people that God beckons us to become by learning from our suffering and having our “best laid plans” interrupted.

NOTE TO SELF: Chill out! You have your plans, but God has his. Next week make your “to do” lists but expect the unexpected. In that space you just might see the face of God and thus your creative, humorous impetus needed to write a good story.

Cartoon by Jems

“Or, God, maybe this was just life. For everyone on the planet. Maybe the Survivor’s Club wasn’t something you ‘earned,’ but simply what you were born into when you came out of your mother’s womb. Your heartbeat put you on the roster and then the rest of it was just a question of vocabulary: the nouns and verbs used to describe the events that rocked your foundation and sent you flailing were not always the same as other people’s, but the random cruelties of disease and accident, and the malicious focus of evil men and nasty deeds, and the heartbreak of loss with all its stinging whips and rattling chains… At the core, it was all the same.”― J.R. Ward, Lover Mine

Mammals Gone Wild—an Easter Tale

etomczyk — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 23:49:09 +0000

Do you know what I’ve discovered? People are stone crazy and God must be on a soon-to-be stranded Carnival cruise off the coast of Mars because humans aren’t getting any better and he seems to be really detached about the whole thing: can you say, “teenager shoots baby in the face while robbing Mom on a morning walk, and God seems to be nowhere around to stop this madness”—WTF? I mean I loves me some Jesus, but I’m beginning to agree with my atheist and agnostic brothers and sisters that the mayhem, murder, and chaos is REALLY getting out-of-hand, and if there is a God, how can he just sit back and let it all happen? What good is being all-powerful if you won’t put a stop to bad shit?

Sunday is another Easter that has me thinking about my doubting faith and the bat-shit craziness of man (some call it the sin of man). But as I was contemplating the insanity of humans everywhere (there is not a corner of the Earth where people aren’t doing something horrific), I came across a journal I’d never seen before on the Internet listing the recent nasty behavior of animals. (Animals: don’t I have enough to worry about trying to outrun the rapists, murderers, robbers, and friends turned haters without having to throw animals into the mix?) In the journal titled: Top Secret Animal Attack Files (Animal Attack News from Around the World) by Igor Eximel, a sampling of the first six months of 2012 was an animal vs. human whup-ass fest and the animals won the day every time.

“A B.C. woman was attacked on her sofa by a starving cougar that strolled into her house in search of a meal
“Australian mom says kangaroo stalked her for 2 days then attacked
“Horror as baby attacked by 2-foot pet PYTHON that slipped into the crib and tried to EAT his foot
“’Killer’ swan attacks Illinois caretaker until he drowns
“Tigers attack tourist bus in China
“Angry Sea Lion Attacks the singer Shakira in S. Africa . . .”

(Seriously, God—really—isn’t it bad enough that I have to exist on the same planet as Wayne LaPierre who wants to arm us to the teeth against a zombie attack, demanding we shoot first and ask questions later, without having to worry about rogue animals?) I was agitated as “all get out” after reading the endless pages of animals attacking humans any which way but Sunday in Igor Eximel’s journal, that all I could do to calm down was knock back a bottle of Riesling with my husband, WW, as he tried to talk me off the ledge. As WW soothed my troubled soul by rubbing my throbbing back and temples, I gradually fell asleep and drifted into a dystopian dream scene that looked much like the kitchen from The Matrix (I) where Neo and the Oracle meet and she tells him he’s not “The One.” Only instead of Keanu Reeves, the main character was a pissed off anthropomorphic rabbit by the name of “Silly Rabbit”, and instead of Gloria Foster as the Oracle, I, Dalai Mama, was the Dalai Oracle. Dun, dun, dun. . .

SILLY RABBIT: “That’s it—I’ve had it; I quit!” (The Easter Bunny walks into the 1960’s kitchen on two hind legs, standing straight up like a human being and slumps down in a plastic-covered kitchen chair where the Oracle is munching a cookie from an overflowing plate of freshly-baked cookies on the kitchen table. Dalai Oracle is calmly sipping her tea as only Oracles can do in times of crises.)

D. ORACLE: “What’s that baby? You quit—you quit what?”

SILLY RABBIT: “I quit this whole damn sham of a life.”

D. ORACLE: “Oh, sweetie-pie, seems like you do that every year about this same time. You’re just a little frustrated due to the season and being overworked. You probably need some rest, my little fluffy-nutter—how about a jelly-bean cookie and a spot of Earl Grey tea while we chat?”

SILLY RABBIT: “Gerrr . . . I’m in no mood for cookies and tea! I didn’t come here because I need a grandmother and a chat; I came here because I need some answers—someone to predict the future. I want to know if this is the year I get to come out of the closet and live like an authentic bunny rabbit, shredding people’s gardens of carrots and shit, instead of hopping around acting like a furry Pez dispenser of colored eggs, jelly beans, and Cadbury diabetic orbs. I came here to ask if I’m “The One”—the one courageous rabbit that will finally break out the other Easter bunnies from having to play the role of resurrection imposters? I am who I am and nothing else, even though sugar crazed humans have tried to supplant me as the raison d’être for Easter for longer than I can remember. I’m telling you Dalai Oracle: I’m ready to spill the beans.

D. ORACLE: “Beans, as in ‘jelly beans?’ Pun intended?”

SILLY RABBIT: “Jokes?! You’re making jokes? Have you seen the news? Phil let his anthropomorphic charade go on too long and he blew it. Now he’s a wanted rodent and the Ohio prosecutor is seeking the death penalty for lying about seeing his shadow and predicting an early spring. There have been so many snow storms and sub-freezing temps across the country since his erroneous prediction that Punxsy Phil has gone into hiding and no one knows where he is—not even his mother. My Mama always told me that lies have a way of catching up with its owners and doing them in. Punxsutawney Phil’s Facebook page has been dormant for weeks with only a simple declaration to the world that he should have made years ago:

D. ORACLE: “Didn’t the Ohio prosecutor exonerate Punxsy? And why was an Ohio prosecutor passing judgment on a Pennsylvania rodent? It just doesn’t make sense!”

SILLY RABBIT: “And a rodent predicting the advent of spring does? The prosecutor and his lawsuit is not the point, Dalai—work with me here, please. I’m thinking of posting a similar FP declaration as Phil’s: ‘I AM A RABBIT, PEOPLE, NOT THE RISEN CHRIST! I SHOULDN’T BE DOING HIS JOB ON EASTER. BUT AM I NOT WARM-BLOODED AND DON’T I BLEED RED LIKE ALL YOU OTHER MAMMALS? DON’T I DESERVE TO LIVE MY LIFE AS A RABBIT, NOT AS A DAMN CANDY AND HARD-BOILED EGG CARRIER?’ So tell me oh, wise Oracle: Am I “The One” to start the bunny revolution to bust all Easter bunnies out of the closet?”

D. ORACLE: “You know I can’t tell you if you’re “The One.” Didn’t you see The Matrix? Your freewill is involved. You’re the one who acquiesced to the role of Easter imposter, now you’re the one who is going to have to choose freedom from the lie, and only you know whether you have the courage to make that choice or not.”

SILLY RABBIT: “If I do this—if I come out like this, do you know how many people will kick me out of their lives and off their lawns? Do you have any idea how many people will gossip about me behind the scenes on Facebook, and how many people will “unfriend” me on Facebook and “unfollow” me on Twitter if I try to live an authentic life that makes me happy?”

D. ORACLE: “Silly Rabbit! What do you care? Have you ever thought that “How others judge you is none of your business?” (I think LL Cool J coined that phrase, either him or Martha Beck.) Your haters’ judgments are their problems—not yours—for the simple fact that you can’t control what other people do. Have you ever thought that one of the definitions of Easter is letting your fear of the opinions of others get crucified and buried (left in the grave), while you get to boldly march out of the tomb along with Jesus, sporting a resurrected courageous heart to go on and live a joyful, unfettered life? Hum? How about some cookies for the road with that bit of priceless Oracle wisdom, baby?”

I am discovering that in spite of animals going wild, people continuously going crazy, and naysayers denying the existence of God, I still believe in Easter because it’s really about hope in the midst of darkness, resurrection rising out of death, and spring flowering after the deadly cold and snow of winter. I believe in the validity of Easter, in part, because my life is a consummate example of resurrection (poor black Negro child born in the ghetto proves Ayn Rand wrong—OORAH!), and even when it seems as if God is detached from all the mayhem, murder, and chaos on Earth, I sense that he is not nonchalant, and that the God of the universe will someday have the final word—just like spring does over winter.

I am also discovering that I’ve never met a real gardener or a farmer who didn’t believe in resurrection, because no one who tries to grow things in the dirt can truly behold the cataclysmic devastation of death brought on by winter and not be spiritually transformed by the resurrection of the Earth in spring infused with life in greens, yellows, reds, lavenders, blues, purples—and not celebrate the splendor of another chance at living and living well. Easter morning declares that it only took Christ one morning to make his point to the world about the necessity of death and resurrection, but spring teaches us that in order to reach our full potential as individuals—fulfill our true authentic selves without being afraid of the opinions of others—it takes multiple seasons of going dormant in winter and rising up to bloom gloriously in the spring.

“Each time I’ve chosen to live more authentically, I’ve been roundly rejected by my “Everybody Committees” (people who try and mold us to their agenda and sabotage our dreams—quotation marks and parenthesis mine). There’s my old Religious Committee, who will gladly tell you I‘m going straight to Hell; the Intellectual Committee, who believe I’m a delusional moron; and the Classy Materialist Committee, who cannot believe I wear a plastic watch from Target in publicity photos. All these folks are still alive and kicking (kicking people who don’t share their values), yet every cell of me knows that what they think of me is none of my business.”—Martha Beck’s “You’re Doing Just Fine” from The Oprah Magazine/Nov. 2013

“Thank God for Jesus or I would have gone to my grave thinking that all I was meant to be as a poor black child was road kill to the likes of the Ayn Rand’s of the world; instead one glorious resurrection morning some two thousand years ago, ‘Love’ walked out of a tomb and proclaimed that his death had set me free to be me.”—Eleanor Tomczyk

“A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.”—Mahatma Gandhi

“The symbolic language of the crucifixion is the death of the old paradigm; resurrection is a leap into a whole new way of thinking.”—Deepak Chopra

POST SCRIPT: After Silly Rabbit came out and started living his best authentic life, he got married, had a huge family as rabbits are wont to do; he fought to change the laws, and helped set his other Easter bunnies free from the bondage of fear. S. Rabbit has been seen here and there enjoying life—getting into mischief with Br’er Rabbit, Peter R. and a whole host of friends who used to jam with Uncle Remus. Silly Rabbit has never regretted leaving his old, inauthentic life behind and letting the Christ do his thing at Easter without S. Rabbit and his cohorts confusing the issue.

Ship of Fools

etomczyk — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 20:20:31 +0000

Do you know what I discovered? April fool’s Day is almost upon us and to my chagrin, the older I get the more patently aware I am of having played the fool in my youth and having almost derailed my fragile life.

“FLY, YOU FOOL—FLY!”

The word “fool” is not a popular word now—at least it isn’t as potent as it was in my youth and in the way only older Black folks could use it in the day:

“You old fool!” (when referencing an older person—usually a man—who never let go of his childish ways—specifically chasing after young girls or trying some foolish get-rich quick scheme)
“Go on fool, Hell ain’t half full yet!” (when chastising a driver with a lead foot, or a womanizer, or a ‘ho’)
“Damn fool!” (anybody who was held in judgment by the speaker—the speaker usually being your mother or grandmother)
“Shut up, fool; I ain’t talkin’ to you!” (directed toward anybody that got on the speaker’s nerves)

DEFINITION OF A FOOL ACCORDING TO TODAY’S DICTIONARY:

Noun—a person who acts unwisely or imprudently; a silly person: “what a fool I was to do this” (simpleton – dolt – tomfool – ninny – nincompoop).

Adjective—foolish or silly (foolish – daft – goofy – fatuous – idiotic – asinine)

Foolish Prank||image from motleynews.net

The most foolish thing I’ve ever done (that almost cost me my future and my life) was after winning a four-year scholarship out of the ghetto and a string of foster homes and orphanages to a college about 20 minutes or so from Kent State University, I let some guy I hardly knew talk me into participating in an attempted take-over of my college’s administration buildings shortly after the Kent State Massacre. I believed the asshole when he said there would be no guns, and we’d be protesting racism on the campus and not the Viet Nam War. Not only did we get caught (the organizer of the coup tipped the “po-po”in the hopes there would be a shoot-out), but we were almost killed by state cops already on edge from the Kent State debacle. Most of my peeps were thrown out of school. It was determined that since I wasn’t carrying any weapons, and my responsibilities only included providing the catering and entertainment for the revolution (God help my foolish sorry-ass!), and that I was on the Dean’s list to boot, I would not be kicked out of school, so long as I kept my nose clean and out of trouble until I graduated the following year. The entire scenario turned out to be a loosely tagged-team scheme tied to the Kent State mayhem in order to manipulate a race war that would add to a SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) nationwide, anarchist upheaval. I almost got killed for fried chicken, manipulated by people I didn’t know, who didn’t give two shits about me. God, what a fool I was!

In case you are one of the few who have never been a fool but fear your time might be drawing nigh, here are a few examples of modern-day fools to help steer you clear of the fool abyss:

DENNIS RODMAN

“Rodman visited the reclusive North Korean leader (Kim Jong Un—parenthesis mine) at the end of February. At the conclusion of the trip, the basketball star spoke glowingly of Kim to members of the media. ‘I love him,’ Rodman said. ‘The guy’s really awesome.’” By Ryan Grenoble for Huff Post World

Dennis Rodman and North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un

****

PEOPLE WHO TEXT WHILE WALKING

“While there’s little current data about the number of people injured while texting, more than 1,000 pedestrians visited emergency rooms in 2008 after they were injured while using a cellphone to talk or text. That had doubled each year since 2006, according to a study conducted by Ohio State University.”—By Casey Neistat for The New York Times

****

PEOPLE WHO TEXT WHILE DRIVING

“It took six months for Chance Bothe, 21, to recover after flipping his truck into a ravine while texting and driving. He broke nearly every bone in his body.”—By Charlie Wells for New York Daily News

****

NRA SPOKESMAN WAYNE LAPIERRE

“Earlier this week, Wayne LaPierre wrote a giddily batshit insane column opining that what we need around here is more guns, all the time, everywhere, because you never know when the zombie apocalypse is going to wander off the nearest bus and where will your government be then, hmm? As partial defense of his premise, he used Hurricane Sandy as an example of a situation where people really, really ought to have hauled off and shot some folks.” By Hunter for Daily Kos

I am discovering that you can start out your adulthood trying not to make a fool of yourself and hoping to make a difference in the world with the most heartfelt naiveté. But then you can screw up your life by thinking you’re only going to a “sit-in” with a bucket of chicken but it’s really two steps to your potential death. Being a fool is costly but you don’t know how costly sometimes until many years later.

I am convinced that the foolish things we do in our teens will have consequences in our twenties, the foolish choices we make in our twenties will have us paying the cost throughout our forties, and the stupid things we do in our thirties will haunt us to our grave. I aligned myself with doctrines and dogmas (both left and right wing) in my youth of foolishness that cause me to shutter sitting from a perch of wisdom in my old age. This is why the young so desperately need the old as mentors on their journey of life. Too bad the young are usually too foolish to listen.

“Mr. T”

“It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.”— Proverbs 17:28, Bible

“Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.”—Elbert Hubbard

“It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own.”—Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet.”—African Proverb

WHEN FOOLS COLLIDE

No Longer Workin’ for the Man

etomczyk — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 00:47:17 +0000

Do you know what I’ve discovered? It only took me 24 hours to determine the answer to the most repeated question from everyone I see: Do you think you’ll like being retired? Well, the verdict is in:

Yes, Bitches, I love that I’m no longer “workin’ for the man”!

I am officially retired as of last week, had all the parties, and received the gold watch (not really—damn aftermath of the recession has affected everything), and I am doing a dance of unmitigated joy. Don’t get me wrong, I really liked my job and I’m going to miss the Benjamins (it was a great gig as jobs go), but it was still a job working for someone else, following someone else’s commands, and multi-tasking to the beat of someone else’s drum.

Image from studiohelper.com

Besides, because I was born a poor black child, I’ve been working ever since I was five years old, and the concept of work for work’s sake lost its novelty around age six. Contrary to nasty-ass Newt Gingrinch’s campaign idea of abolishing child labor laws and making poor kids work as janitors in their schools to give them a sense of purpose, other Ayn Randians tried that 60 years ago on me, and it didn’t make me any more purposeful—it just made me fucking exhausted.

The other day a twenty-something college journalist, who is the daughter of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of mine, dropped by my “Ask Dalai Mama” Show (formerly “Ask Big Mama” Show) and interviewed me for her college newspaper. She was fascinated with the concept that I was doing the “Newt Gingrich Dream Act for Poor Children” long before he thought of it—just when he was only eleven years old in Georgia and having newly escaped poverty, fatherly abandonment, and his god-awful christened name: Newton Leroy McPherson. The young reporter noted that the thing that seemingly kept Newt from my child labor fate, and thus ever thinking that his future sorry-ass concept would be a good campaign idea 60 years later, was the appearance of a stepfather who adopted him and the color white that saved him. Had he walked a mile in my shoes, the pathetic child labor idea would have never crossed his mind as an adult.

REPORTER: “Dalai Mama, I am so excited about interviewing someone who has reportedly been working since she was five years old. What job could you have possibly gotten at that age?”

DALAI MAMA: “Baby, I had two jobs. A five-year old could get any job in the inner city of Cleveland that they could master by standing on a crate so that they could reach the bench, the table, or in my case the washing machine or the ironing board to do their jobs. My mother, my baby sister, and I ended up homeless in the dead of winter in 1953, and a woman who owned a boarding house in East Cleveland had pity on us and took us in. It just so happened that there were several cottage industries operating under the roof of that boarding house: a kitchen beauty shop, a laundry, a neighborhood pick-up site for illegal numbers runners (the legal game we now call Lotto), and the selling of stolen goods. My two jobs in that house of horrors were as a two-step laundry assistant. In the first job where I was responsible for wringing dry the shirts from a barrel washing machine, I would stand on a wooden crate in the basement, pull out the wet white shirts and insert them into the wooden ringers on top of the washer. Because I had to lean into the machine to reach the shirts at the bottom (forcing my feet off the crate and suspending my legs in mid-air on the edge of the washing machine), I would almost always get my chubby little fingers caught in the wringer with the shirts as I fell against the rollers. It’s a wonder I still have use of my hands. I believe I learned and utilized my first swear words at the age of five:

“Somebody help da po’ child! Dis fuckin’ monsta is eatin’ my fingas like dey was chicken bones!”

Image from myauctionfinds.com

REPORTER: “Oh my God, I can’t even imagine that torture. I had a hissy fit when my mother tried to get me to clean my room on Saturdays and make my bed. She never did win that battle. Wasn’t the electric wringer invented by an African-American woman in the 1800s?”

DALAI MAMA: “Yes girl—go on with your bad self! Her name was Ellen F. Eglin and she was from Washington, DC, but she never patented her invention and sold it for $18 to a white man who made a considerable fortune. Ain’t that a pip? Ellen Eglin once said that she thought white women wouldn’t use the machine if they knew a black woman had invented it. Personally, I hated that machine and wished it had never been invented. I’d like to have a little chat with her when I see her on the other side and tell her how her stupid wringers were known for catching hair, clothing, and fingers (a four-year old reportedly choked to death from one), and almost dismembered me several times as a child laborer.”

REPORTER: “What was your other job as a five-year old?”

DALAI MAMA: “One that was equally as dangerous: I had to stand on a wooden crate and press stiffly starched shirts with flat irons that were heated on the stove. They were so heavy that it took both my hands to lift the irons whose handles were wrapped in towels (one was heated on the stove while the other was simultaneously used to press the garment), and I always ended up burning the easily scorched shirts because I would get tired and couldn’t lift the iron fast enough. But I didn’t keep that job very long. Once I discovered that starch burned quickly, one day in a fit of anger, I staged the youngest labor strike in the history of man and performed scorch art all over the paying customers’ white shirts. We lost the business, and I lost the skin off my ass for many months from endless beatings; but it was worth it, because I never, ever had to do that job again. To this day I hate to iron clothes. If the cleaners in town didn’t iron my husband’s shirts, he’d have to go to work looking like he slept in his clothes.”

REPORTER: “Didn’t you tell me in our pre-interview that you once worked for the Mafia when you were a child?”

DALAI MAMA: “Yes. Talk about working for the man! Yep, after I lost my ironing job, the landlady’s aunt (ostensibly my babysitter) decided I would make a great “bag-girl” to carry the numbers bets from the boarding house to a drop-off point which was a store that sold peanuts and cheese. Numbers runners were constantly being killed by heroin addicts or other numbers runners or they were being shaken down by the “po-po” (police) when they transferred the money to their contact further upstream. What better decoy could they use than a six-year old with numbers slips and cash pinned inside her overalls or winnings hidden under peanuts in a bag on the return trip home. Other residents in the house said that the numbers game in my neighborhood was ruled over by “Don (The Kid) King,” who, for the last four decades or so, has gone “legit” as the fighting promoter of people like Mohammad Ali, Mike Tyson, and Evander Holyfield to name just a few. I never met him because he was too high up the food chain, and I doubt if he ever knew who transferred the money from my boarding house to the peanut/cheese man, but the year I almost lost my life and most definitely almost lost my mind was the year I worked for his operation as a bag girl. It was also the year “Don (The Kid) King” killed a man in his house for stealing his numbers stash and got away with it because it was considered self-defense in the then strongly Mafia-run Cleveland. But you can find out all that well-documented information from The Life and Crimes of Don King by Jack Newfield or watch the movie, “Only in America”—a phrase I think the infamous gambling lord coined about himself when he went legit and became world-renowned.

Don King with Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie by his side, King speaks at a 2004 victory celebration for newly re-elected President George W. Bush||cnn.com Getty Image

REPORTER: “Wait a minute. You brushed over something intriguing when you said you ‘almost lost your mind’ while working for the man—Don King. I’d like to explore that some more.”

DALAI MAMA: “No can do, darlin’. I’ve got to save something for my memoir.”

REPORTER: “Well, surely you didn’t work through all of your childhood. Didn’t you catch a break at some point?”

DALAI MAMA: “Nope. Because I was considered a “Ward of the Court”—no parents sane enough or alive enough to take care of me—I drifted in and out of a group of foster homes that always saw me as cash flow in their pockets and a maid and nanny in their homes. I’d go for a preliminary visit with my very naive social worker all throughout my teenage years—usually a young lady about your age who had good intentions but had never seen the underbelly of Cleveland’s inner city. The foster-mother and father would be all, ‘Welcome to our humble abode. We’re such good Christians and Christ has led us to open our homes as a respite to these abandoned chilren—our home is your home, you po’ sweet motherless child.’ But as soon as the social worker would leave, the smiles would fade from the foster parents’ faces faster than a roach fleeing an airborne fly swatter, and they’d let the true boss-man or boss-lady emerge: ‘Get your fat ass off my good plastic-covered furniture (I better not ever catch you in here again or your ass is grass). You ain’t here for no vacation—you here to work and learn some responsibility. Go on and get that mop and bucket and start cleaning the bathroom and moppin’ the kitchen flo’—and don’t take all day if you want to eat! Fried chicken and biscuits is being made for my real chilren but you gets bologna sandwiches and milk if you scrubs these floors so spotless that I’ll be able to eat off ‘em. If you don’t make this place spotless, you’ll be going to bed hungry—I promise yo’ sorry-ass that much.’ Newt Gingrich would have been very proud that his idea of child labor had been instituted in the ghetto before his time with such demoralizing success that it helped turn me into a productive citizen.”

I am discovering that everything I’ve done throughout the last 60 years were “jobs” to pay the bills or help me and mine survive the suffering of the outrageous slings and arrows of life’s misfortunes. I’ve been a secretary too many times to count, a music school teacher, an actress, a singer, a voice-over talent, a maid (not a very good one), and a nanny (also not very good). I am not ungrateful for those opportunities, it’s just that there is so much more to me, and had I been born a Kennedy instead of a poor black child, I probably would have fulfilled that potential. Most people go through life only working at jobs—a small percentage pursue careers—but only a blessed handful of people become artists. Ever since I could first dream, I always wanted to become an artist—to be consumed by art without any interference from having to leave my art and go “work for the man.” Well, now is my chance. I want to exit stage left (to die) as an artist. I want the epitaph on my tombstone to read: Here lies Eleanor Tomczyk. She started working for the man when she was five years old and had to tarry in that field until she was sixty-five years old. But when she died, she died an artist.

“A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist”—Louis Nizer

Exit Stage Left

etomczyk — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 02:44:08 +0000

Do you know what I’ve discovered? There are 7 major transitions in life, barring a religious conversion, barring any unforeseen mayhem such as war or the world coming to an end, or barring Jesus coming back sporting a T-shirt that says: “Listen up everybody—I’m back and I’m majorly pissed!” IMHO there is:

Birth
Marriage/divorce
Having children
Menopause/male mid-life crisis
Becoming empty nesters
Retirement
Death

I’ve completed the first five transitions, and I have two more weeks to go before I exit stage left and enter transition #6 from my job of 14 years that I really enjoy. It has been interesting watching the reaction of my co-workers to my retirement announcement:

“Listen up, everybody, I’m blowin’ this Popsicle stand, and I’m going to become an entity!”

Each person starts with the same opening line: “Gosh, you’re so lucky, and I’m so jealous—I’ve always wanted to become an ‘entity.’ What exactly is an entity?” They go on to ask: “Are you excited?” Then I watch their eyes widen and the inside voice of their thought-bubble say to their souls: “I sure hope she knows what the fuck she’s doing, because she’ll never get another job like this. She can’t possibly have enough money to retire at such a young age; what in the hell will she do in the future—work at Wal-Mart?” Their outside voice says: “Anyway, you can always get a job somewhere if the writing thingie doesn’t work out.” Their personal fear of the unknown is palpable.

To resist being pummeled by their fear, I remembered two things:

I’m younger looking than I really am (thank God, Black don’t crack!), so I don’t have as long on this Earth as they think. In other words, time is of the essence.
Transitions—from birth to death—are only for the learning, not the be-all or end-all of the journey. I know this because I’ve been through five other transitions—none of them was the destination—all of them were my personal journey of spiritual growth.

So I go to my happy place which is usually repeating the courageous lyrics of some well-worn spiritual (“Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel—then he will deliver poor-ass me”) or a country music tune (Donald Alan “Don” Schlitz, Jr’s “The Gambler,”), and I try to propel my spirit away from their anxious auras:

“You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em,

Know when to walk away, know when to run.

You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table,

There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done.”

But being asked the same question in the same manner, day after day, will start to wear down the nerves of Jesus, and before you know it, fear begins to seep in—other people’s fear. Consequently, I started thinking about all the rejection notices I’ve already received for my manuscript, how the publishing industry is dying, how even if you get published your book will most likely languish on the shelves, how there is already a plethora of opinionated black women on the scene dispensing “Mother-Earth” advice to the culture (Oprah, Whoopi, Wendy, Iyanla), and the Supreme Court has ruled that we can only have four such black women like this flooding the airwaves with their opinions at any given time. (Just kidding, trolls; save your hate mail!) All these realities make me want to run back into the comforting arms of my employer and beg to be kept on until I’m 102 doing anything, even if my soul shriveled up in the process. That would be safe; that would be predictable.

And when I am awash in the worries of others, I become a cast member in my own “Amazing Race” episode, and I start to dream. Two nights ago I dreamt that WW (my husband) and I were stranded in the hinterlands of Alaska (if you knew me, you’d know that being stranded in Alaska would be my definition of Hell—especially if Sarah P. was anywhere within 100 miles of me). We were told by some amorphous voice, which sounded suspiciously like Sarah Palin’s, that the only way to get to our next destination was to pilot our own plane out of there. There was only one problem: neither one of us had ever flown a plane before. Also, the rules stated that we could not both fly in the same plane—each person had to pilot their own aircraft. After much consternation, a retired old WWII pilot volunteered to help WW fly his plane since it was bigger and more complicated (a 12-seater that was won by a coin toss that could make it all the way to New York City). I was given a 7-seater plane (all they had left) that could just make it to Seattle, but if I lived I could hop on a commercial flight to New York. WW’s plane took off first and after a lot of spinning around on the tarmac like a dog chasing its tail, I managed to get my plane aloft. I watched WW’s plane scale the high mountain in front of us, but no matter what I did, no matter how I maneuvered, no matter how much I cried and prayed, I couldn’t pull my plane up high enough to fly over the mountain. To say I lost the nightmare game would be an understatement.*

Shaken, but not deterred, I went to work the next day determined to shake off the fear-fest that I kept running into. After all, I knew that the remarks from my co-workers were made out of genuine concern for me as well as the thought of what they too would someday have to face. All my “counselors” could hear the voices of their mothers and fathers decades ago saying to them as they went off to college: “Pick something to study and an occupation that you can make money from, not something that tickles your fancy. Tickling your fancy won’t pay the bills, young lady.”

But that night, I dreamt again. This time it was about Death. I had skipped retirement completely and was now headed to the great beyond—whether Heaven or Hell, I could not tell.

ME: Excuse me, please, where am I?

DEATH: For lack of a better word: Purgatory.

ME: How can that be? I’m not Catholic. I don’t believe in Purgatory. In my belief system, I go straight to the top.

DEATH: Seriously? Did you ever think you might be wrong?

ME: Hell, no! What’s the point in having a religion if you might be wrong?

DEATH: Oh, this is sweet! This will be a good one for my blog titled, “Another one bites the dust and is surprised to find out she didn’t have all the correct answers”!

ME: You have a blog? Does the whole damn world AND the underworld have bloggers?

DEATH: Does a bear shit in the woods?

ME: Fine, Mr. Smart-Ass! Can you at least tell me what I’m doing here? I had no warning, and I don’t even remember going through transition 6: retirement.

DEATH: Warning? Your entire life was a warning that I’d be dropping by at some point. You knew transition #7 was coming—it waits for no man. My orders were to pick up a mouthy, slightly chunky, blinged-out diva who was retiring in a couple of weeks, but whose time had come to an end.

ME: That’s the point. My time didn’t come to an end. I never got to retire. I didn’t get my book published, and I didn’t become a humorous, joy-spewing, life-enforcing motivational speaker. Look at all the millions of people I didn’t get to encourage in their life’s journey. You interfered, you S.O.B!

DEATH: Hey, hey, hey—don’t blame me. From what little I could see, you got all wrapped up in other people’s fears and “what ifs,” and you got frozen in place due to fear of the unknown and the naysayers. You thought you could take protected incremental steps rather than leaping with full abandonment into the great unknown to explore the rest of your pathetic little life. You assumed you had more time than you did—big mistake—huge!

ME: You mean I should have exited the stage when first given the opportunity?

DEATH: Yep, stage left no less.

ME: Would I have reached my goals?

DEATH: How the fuck would I know? My name’s Death, not God Almighty. Speaking of which, you’re being summoned to give an account of your life. Get that spirit moving, because its best not to keep the powers that be waiting.

I am discovering that I’ve always known when to “exit stage left” at any given point in life—most people do, but not everybody listens to that still small voice in their inner being. And the couple times that I have ignored that instinct and overstayed my welcome, those times have been my most regrettable mistakes and time wasted that I’d love to take back again. It takes a lot of courage to move on to the next level and walk into the unknown, but refusing to do so is not living—its treading water, and once you’re tired, the end result is that you drown. All I know is that there is never enough time, never enough money, and never enough daylight to do everything we want to do. But because I am fully aware that it is later than I could possibly imagine, I must take a giant leap into that wild abyss and explore what lies ahead.

Calvin and Hobbes||Cartoonist Bill Watterson

***

“Now ev’ry gambler knows that the secret to survivin’

Is knowin’ what to throw away and knowin’ what to keep.

‘Cause ev’ry hand’s a winner and ev’ry hand’s a loser,

And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep.”

Songwriter: Donald Alan “Don” Schlitz, Jr.

“There are two ways you can live: you can devote your life to staying in your comfort zone, or you can work on your freedom.” –Michael A. Singer

“It is truly a great cosmic paradox that one of the best teachers in all of life turns out to be death. No person or situation could ever teach you as much as death has to teach you. While someone could tell you that you are not your body, death shows you. While someone could remind you of the insignificance of the things that you cling to, death takes them all away in a second. While people can teach you that men and women of all races are equal and that there is no difference between the rich and the poor, death instantly makes us all the same.” — Michael A. Singer from The Untethered Soul

*The dream about the airplanes was an actual dream that happened a couple nights ago. The discussions with Death were not—praise God!