I’m sorry, Anne Marie.
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Mourning Song
Author: Pamela Ross
Potty Mouth
I learned something new tonight on Jeopardy. It only took me, er, multiple decades to realize what I’ve been singing since 1972.
The category was about replacing one vowel to give the correct two words in the answer. I don’t remember the precise clue but they were looking for “puddle” and “piddle” in the right answer. Host Ken Jennings quipped sometimes his dog does both and it’s the same term of art to euphemistically refer to a dog going to the bathroom.
Our beloved sixth-grade teacher, Mr. Devinoff, put on a world-class show for the school. We performed “1776” after seeing it on Broadway in its early run on stage. This class play was and ever shall be one of the highlights of my tender young life. Older life, too.
One of the first songs has Abigail and John Adams singing together about the frustrations of Congress and Philadelphia. John notes nothing ever gets done. (He should only be a fly on the wall today to kvetch and vent about the job not being done now. He’d fit right into the foul, filthy, fuming scene of our current state of the union.)
John Adams tells his beloved Abigail all Congress does is “piddle, twiddle, and resolve.”
Not one damn thing’s ever solved!
I have known these words like I know my name and blood type.
But it never occurred to me to think about what words I was singing.
“Piddle”?! Piddle?! Piiiiiiiiidle???!
Was John being polite? Was he saying Congress was good for… pppiiiiii…. urinating on the floor?!
Metaphorically, I’m sure. Or… perhaps not. Maybe that’s the stench Adams sings about. Where were the out houses at Independence Hall? I have visited that site a few times and it’s bothering me the tour guide never pointed out the site of -those- historic rooms. I love the public room with the desks but also show me the good, private stuff while I’m there.
Was it fashionable then to say one needed to piddle?
Can’t you see how piddle progressed to… rhymes with p… bliss? Was John Adams in need of a good… bliss? 😳
Tonight’s brainstorm brought to you by John Adams, the game show Jeopardy, Weird Al Yankovich, and my insatiable urge to know everything there is to know about everything.
You never know what you’re going to need to know.
One answer down. 78,956 answers more to go.
Share knowledge as much as possible. Don’t hold it in. 🥸
Or, as Ben Franklin would likely say: “Go fly a kite, kid!”
You’ve Got to be In it to Win It
If your heart and soul
do not set fire to the page,
you’ve typed a collection of words,
left to fade like old ink
into your finger tips.
Or as a famous writer put it:
Steinbeck’s Malory II: The Writing of “The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights”
In awe. Excellent analysis written by Lucy Pollard-Gott. See
https://fictional100.wordpress.com
“This is destined to be the largest and I hope the most important work I have ever undertaken.” ~John Steinbeck, from a letter to Elizabeth Otis, …
Steinbeck’s Malory II: The Writing of “The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights”
That 70s Show
My childhood-into-lifelong friend Alice (thank you, Facebook) is a keeper of the flame of old photos. She initially found a photo of our girl gang and of course I was hiding in the back row, ashamed to be seen because of, what else, teen insecurities. Weight. Hair. Pimples. The usual suspects.
Alice was able to secure this follow-up picture from another friend from our group when I noted I was curious to see the dress I wore that junior high school graduation day from a thousand years ago. I was not expecting my wish to be granted. Despite the anxiety accompanying a peek into our past, I was rewarded with this photo, cropped here to protect the online, public image of my friends.
I looked at the girl I was and I cried. That was me? That’s what I was hiding? Where is the chubby girl with chubby cheeks and ill-timed acne? I want to hug that girl and tell her I love her, I miss her, and I’m proud of who and what she has become. Why did I want her to always be in the shadows? Why did I secretly want to be the life of the party but fail to follow that dream?
I know. I know. I think I know.
I knew I was someone I liked on the inside, alone in thoughts, alone in my head, alone in a roomful of people.
The girl I showed the world, in my own naïveté and stupidity, was not worthy of attention or admiration or the spotlight. I saw the darkness. The wrong hair, weight, skin, smile, clothing. The wrong everything. The teen magazines telling us how to transform into the perfect person if only I did this, this, and this were made for me.
I bought into this propaganda like an obedient lady-in-waiting of the court.
And now, there is light. Snap snap snap. I can see you now.
You are not watching The Others in all their glory in the center of the circle.
Step forward, younger me. Take that shame and doubt out of the picture.
I know I’m not alone. A pity we dwell for decades thinking we are the worst this or that. What a waste of time only to see the person we were not.
I’m talking to you, 1970s Me. Snap snap snap out of it.
Very 1975 au courant. Check out the groovy, clashing corsage on my wrist. Who picked -that- out?!
An Introvert who Likes the Spotlight when I Write
Am I a paradox? I want to be alone. I like to be alone. I often yearn to be alone.
Unless I’m writing.
Curtain up. Light the lights. Start the show. Starring … Who? Me?
It’s Gypsy’s Turn to bare all. And I like it.
I am Tommy. The Pinball Wizard.
See me. Read me. Hear me. Like me.
You Are Here. You Were Here.
Sheepshead Bay. Brighton Beach. Coney Island.
That was my Brooklyn while growing up.
No one drove. We walked. We took the bus. Maybe the train into the city.
I never thought of Brooklyn as a collection of neighborhoods. You lived, played, dined, shopped, went to school, went to the mall, went to the beach in the sweet section you called home.
Going out of the neighborhood was a big deal. Stepping into foreign territory. Different cultures dotted the map but mixing and matching just wasn’t a thing.
Your Brooklyn was the only one that mattered.
Skin in the Game
Objects in the mirror
are closer than they appear
I avoid what I know is there, those lines, those holes, those hairs, those bumps.
Time has found a place to live on my face.
I am its host.
Aging is the guest that will not leave without demand. Pay the bill. Move on. Move out.
Death is the last room we see. I pray I am not alone in there when the last breath is due.
And why would you want to see how close death is to your flesh?
I don’t want to see it coming. But I do want to leave time for a proper farewell.
I don’t end conversations. They drift off until words have reached the end of the rope, until the air is stale with talk and dust and the cold stench of sweat.
Don’t show me what I look like.
I don’t want to know.
Don’t look at that image, the one you would never recognize, the old face you gained while life made cuts into the layers of cells your eyes will never see.
Cancer is spreading, not the malignant kind, the metaphorical kind,
and as close to killing you as you could imagine,
if you could imagine that pimple will be the reason they bury you into the soil and turn your skin into stone.
New Game Show: “I’ve Got a Headache!”
I don’t know how people get things done when it feels like your eyes are popping out of your face and your forehead is tight and rigid with unceasing pain.
I am here to get things done.
Not kvetch.
It is not going to be easy but feeling sorry for myself is not the answer.
Do I win the Showdown Showcase for my woes?
Johnny. Tell me what I’ve won!
“Here’s your brand new bottle of Excedrin!”
(Better than asking for “my Covid,” and not my receipt, at a moment of mixed distraction during yesterday’s shopping excursion.)
PAMELA ROSS WRITES 