Crazy

Don't call me crazy.

I've studied crazy as it gimped through Grand Central Station wearing one broken heel and one flip flop in the dead of winter, pulling all its belongings behind it on a sheet of indeterminable color, gesturing wildly and spinning a tale only it could comprehend. 

Don't call me crazy.

I've looked crazy in the eye on a Paris subway platform as it held itself on full display, slinging masturbatory glee while screaming about what it wanted, needed, me to do to it, raining smut and spittle down on the tracks in a Romance language better served for poets and docents. 

Don't call me crazy.

I've sat with crazy on park benches, nodding at tales about how the world is ending, how Satan walks among us, how the pirate life is the noblest profession and how it was the most heralded rap superstar before Tupac and Biggie conspired to steal all its art. 

I offer up petty cash to crazy. I extend crazy some compassion. I feed crazy when it needs dinner. I sacrifice my time for crazy because crazy was a child once, too. But some days I give crazy a wide fucking berth depending on how many hairs stand up on the back of my neck when crazy runs me down, recalling my face and my typical cheerful consolation. 

I'm not naive. Crazy can be horrifying. 

I've helplessly watched crazy pummel someone's face at a level of depravity not seen up close before or since.

I've stayed laser focused on crazy as it slunk around a campus dive bar gauging the reachability of the drinks ordered by girls with the thinnest wrists and wobbliest limbs.

I've primitively danced with crazy at an outdoor festival before it changed into a hobbit, tore into my unsuspecting shoulder with its teeth, and shambled off into the crowd, shrieking with glee.

I've been in touch with and around crazy all my life. 

It is not me. 

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A Mortal Tonic

Life is a drink.

It is effervescent spring water, full of anticipated deliciousness.

The drink sits until I am ready for it. 

Raising it to my lips I see it has taken on a milky cast, the murky creep of a fog; the chalky eye of a shark. Pebbled remnants of medicine, dropped in my plain water, struggle to swirl about but are weighted in place by the sludge of too much. 

Too much remedy and not enough river. 

This curative reeks of salt and of the storage cabinet where it was kept too long, decades past expiry.

Unused and stagnant in this state, it has become deadly. 

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Rightly Drowned

I should have flown 

out over the salty surf into the milky threads of clouds 

chasing the siren song of the dolphins,

enshrined in the scattery splash of the osprey's shallow dive.

I should have waltzed with fate

fluttering conspicuously close to the flinty eye of the shark

watching jaws dangling open for the fishy prize of her watery sprint.

But I remained on the shore

harbored

contented

in the halo of golden grains.

And where I thought was stillness and safety, 

a grenade churned from the heavens and earth 

and blew onto the beach.

It overcame me.

Cantaloupe over poppyseed.

Carnelian over obsidian.

House-a-fire over hot charred ashes.

And I rightly drowned. 

#mushroomtumbler

Day 22/24 : Things I Won't Be Buying Today

Well, it's August 1st and that means Halloween candy has officially taken over the seasonal aisle at the local grocery store. 

All the 'Beach, Please' and 'It's 5 O'Clock Somewhere' parrot and palm tree'd koozies are 75% off and smushed together unforgivingly into a dirty looking plastic box at the end of the aisle. They've been orphaned in favor of Fall. 

Because, you know, it's only 97 degrees today and my drink definitely won't be sweating, or requiring a koozie or anything. 

So, seriously. Candy and pails for candy collection on Halloween night are everywhere. Also, Halloween Peeps...shaped like pumpkins...which shouldn't even be a "thing". 

A PEEP is a BIRD SOUND, people, not a PUMPKIN SOUND. 

However, those folks who prefer their Peeps STALE A.F. will be thrilled to glimpse them this early on the shelves. By October they'll be bicuspid-breaking rocks. Here's a hint. Just say no to that stupid bird-name flat-assed marshmallow dunked in glittery orange sugar put upon the shelf today and pick up the 75 percent off marshmallows on the opposite end of the row, near the Hershey bars and the graham crackers - part of the summer clearance s'more sale. 

'Cause, ya know, it's AUGUST and I guess S'MORES are COMPLETELY DONE.

Even if I bought the Reeses Franken-Cups which caught my eye with their Swamp Thing-esque green bottoms they'd be a petri dish of muck in the back of my hatch by the time I got them home; gooing themselves all over my lawn chair and pool float that I haven't taken out of car and put away... 

BECAUSE IT'S SUMMER. 

SUMMMM 

MMMMMER.

So, enough of the 9-week Halloween preview before you cram the last three overly commercialized holidays of the year together into something we now call Hallothanksmas.  It's lunacy. 

Can you let us just enjoy summer while it's summer?

Two teachers looking over my shoulder at the candy display began making snorting noises like mating warthogs in aisle 4. They, too, apparently hate the idea of rushing summer in favor of Halloween candy, though presumably for an entirely different reason than I. The idea of flying through August at warp speed and starting school was flipping them both out. Like, flippin' FLIPping. In fact, their collective strife made one of them start yelling. 

"HALLOWEEN? It's AUGUST!" she howled. "AND I'm a teacher!!!!!!"

It'll be okay, Miss Crabtree. Just don't buy it. Instead, grab yourself an end of summer koozie on the way out. 75 percent off!

#mushroomtumbler

Day 21/24: Things I Won't Be Buying Today

I got a pop up ad for a Care Bears fanny pack cooler this morning. I have to admit, I clicked and admired it from all angles, captivated by the colorful ombre zipper and amusing rainbow print. 

My Moo Moo bought me a tan plush Care Bear with a heart on his belly when I was twelve. One of the original ten Care Bears, "Tenderheart Bear" was cute as all get out, however, I distinctly remember, upon opening him on Christmas, that I was too old for a new stuffed animal. 

I had a boyfriend. My favorite author was Stephen King. After softball practice, my friends and I would roam the woods looking for overgrown spots to squat and drink our Molson Goldens.  What was I supposed to do with a bear with a brown plastic heart for a nose?

But because my beloved Moo Moo gave him to me, (along with a Jordache purse and a mood lipstick that was Witch of the West green in the tube but changed to a beachy shade of coral on my pout) I put him on top of my pillow after I made my bed in the morning, sandwiched between Pooh and Paddington, my ratty old-time favorites.

I never saw a Care Bears television show, though I recall that being a thing. I don't remember ever doing anything particularly notable with that heart belly bear who reclined on my pillow, but every morning I'd plop him there and every night, I'd take him off and gently put him on the floor next to my yellow twin bed. 

And I'd look at that big red heart on his soft tawny belly and smile for a moment, thinking of my grandparents and how much they loved me. 

So, today the Care Bears fanny pack advertisement appealed to me like designer jeans and walking to middle school every morning with my good friend Missy from down the street and turning two from second base. The beer drinking twelve-year old me would have loved this, but pre-teen me is now getting on in years and Canadian beer tends to give me just ten minutes of pleasure followed by two hours of heartburn and the thirty dollars plus shipping that this fanny pack costs would be better spent putting gas in my tank, so I am going to pass. 

A difficult pass, it is. 

Nonetheless, if my Moo Moo were alive, and thinking of buying me a Christmas present, I would totally hope this this might be her choice for me. 

Throw a Molson in here and it'll stay cold in the dugout until we are ready.

#mushroomtumbler

Day 20/24: Things I Won't Be Buying Today

It's been a while since I wrote.

Quite obviously, I've been buying things.

Actually, I've been seriously uninspired and seriously lazy but today I had an experience which made me decide that I am not buying infant swimming lessons. 

And, I need to write about that. 

I don't have an infant but if I did, I would hold that little peanut and we'd get in a warm bathtub and we'd have soft lighting and some mellow tunes from a kinder decade. There would be supported floating and off-key singing and reassurance, along with eye contact, and head cradling. 

There would not be the boreal glow of florescent lights, the stinging bleach of chlorine, and glacial temperatures. There would not be an instructor holding my pumpkin beneath his armpits, facing him out into icy blue nothing, and submerging him without warning, his giant eyes stinging with disbelief and the tiny panicked 'o' of his mouth, upon being lifted to the surface, deafeningly breaking every mother's heart within earshot. 

This, I'm quite certain, I would not do.

There would be a gentle and careful passing of baby from me to my spouse, who would take the quiet, puckered bundle and wrap him in a fluffed up towel, patting his back and congratulating him on his brave acceptance of a few quarter cups of water purposefully poured over his little noggin. There would be a clean onesie, a heated bottle and a soft flannel blankie.

There would not be trembling limbs and breaths full of water laden with the urine of the other fifteen kids in lane one. There would not be terror so dreadfully exhausting that placing baby on the poolside cement after (ding!) fifteen minutes are up causes him to gasp like a reeled-in walleye in the bottom of a rowboat, tucking his chin and trembling for fear that eye contact with an adult might get him another round. 

This, I'm quite certain, I would not do.

There would be bonding. There would be toothy smiles and exuberant praise and an opportunity to learn words like "tub" and "water" and "it's okay, baby, you're safe, you're safe."

There would not be a black-masked instructor, devoid of half her face due to pandemic protocol, dipping baby backward into an unfamiliar place as he tensed and arched and wailed. 

This, I'm quite certain, I would never do.

 

 

Author's Note:

The swim instructor was following a safe protocol which, I believe, she has used for years to introduce tiny babies to water. She is a kind teacher and never, ever, were these children in any danger. 

My personal feelings about swim lessons are informed by years of my own, sometimes rough, experiences at a tender age learning to feel comfortable in water; ironically, in the exact same community pool. 

The concerned and helpless faces of the young mothers on deck today combined with the shrieks of their babies echoing off the dingy tiled walls brought out a lot of emotion for me. I tend to release emotion by writing.

I've always believed that swim lessons, for a lot of families, are an excellent way to achieve greater water safety but, the overall vibe I picked up from those little ones made me reconsider my feelings on the subject, particularly for babies so small. 

This piece isn't meant to invoke criticism of the program nor the instructor. These are simply emotions, which bubbled to the surface and overflowed for me, the casual onlooker. 

#mushroomtumbler

Day 19/24: Things I Won't Be Buying Today

 

One of the less physical things we had to do in order to earn a merit badge in Girl Scouts was to "begin a collection". Now, this was the 1970s and some of my troopmates already had collections. They collected neon-haired troll dolls, Barbies, Lincoln wheat pennies, comic books, and miniature football helmets. One friend even collected unusual soda cans and she had them glued on to a tall shelf, made by her father, expressly for said purpose. She had a grape Nehi, cemented front and center, that I adored.

Me? I began collecting frogs. Not living and breathing frogs, of course, but little frogs made of ceramic and clay and glass. Frogs with crowns balanced upon their heads were special favorites. A family I babysat for gifted me their frog collection so that my own shelf grew from three to fifty frogs overnight, sort of like when tadpoles hatch in the early summer. 

My frog collection currently lives in my basement in an old banana box strewn with yellowed newspaper. I haven't looked through the box in thirty eight years. I don't want to get rid of them but I don't want to display them either. That's sort of how old stuff is.

As a teenager, I began collecting Laurel Burch goldtone and silvertone artfully enameled earrings. Laurel began selling her designs in the 1970s and finally caught on in my small town in the early 1980s, quickly becoming a sort of status symbol for the waspy and well-heeled in our community. I received my first pair as a gift and was immediately smitten. I loved everything about them; the colors, the weight, the sturdiness. My second pair, which I spent four weeks of hard earned babysitting money on, was stolen from my gym locker the very first day I wore them to school, and the girl who (I think) stole them wore them repeatedly, flaunting them beneath her Jane Wiedlin-style pixie cut as she sat, alphabetically, two seats over from me throughout all of our classes together. 

During the pandemic, I started looking for more pairs to supplement my small but distinctive collection. Every pair I owned held a merry story. Laurel uses a lot of nature, birds and cats. I find solace in nature, birds and cats and I found plenty of solace available on eBay and other resale sites. After selling a few things to justify my spending, I bought some vintage pairs and now have over a dozen. I do imagine that's enough, though, and have since pumped the brakes.

A week ago, a friend on Facebook, during a moment of nostalgia, asked where everyone bought Laurel Burch earrings back in the day. I was about to grab the ceramic box I store mine in, snap an exceptional photo and reply with great gusto until someone else replied and referred to them as "crap". Crap? Oh my gosh. My special collectible earrings? This crap is symbolic of my adolescence, almost as much as bonfires, football games, summertime at the lake and weaving daisy chains on the porch. When I wear them (which is a lot) I'm happy. I'm young. And when I catch my reflection and see a violet-hued bluebird hanging festively from my lobe, I exhale gladness, recalling a time before everything got crazy and depersonalized and tinged with snarky hostility. 

I will not be buying any Laurel Burch earrings, but I did select and retrieve ones shaped like doves within a heart from their safekeeping today. They happen to be pink and green, our preptastic color scheme of the '80s. I will wear them and love them and when complimented on them, as I so often am, I will use them as a jumping off point for conversation with a like-minded stranger about a time when they symbolized the height of what we thought of as middle class opulence.

 #mushroomtumbler