Arizona

Things I Learned This Week in No Order

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I strive to learn something new every day, however, this week I learned so much I could bore you to a winter’s nap. Thus, I’ve culled my list for your entertainment. And I’m bold enough to say, I bet you’re going to learn something also.

  1. President Woodrow Wilson’s breakfast consisted of two raw eggs stirred in a glass of grape juice.

2. The US Map and perhaps, the World Map is changing. Lake Ontario and New Mexico, Greenland, Iceland, and even Canada are slated to become part of America. Even the Pledge of Allegiance may undergo some alteration as to whom we pledge allegiance.

3. There’s a dearth of non-stop flights to Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

4. Yesterday, I paid $2.00 for one, small can of Campbell’s soup. Don’t ask how much I paid to fill up my car’s gas tank.

5. The government’s going to send me a DOGE check, a tariff check, and another $5,000 after the November election. (Yes, I learned that. Do I believe it? I think I’ve a better chance of winning the lottery.)

6. There’s a smoldering desire to end public libraries because with a library card, anyone can borrow any book. Including banned books. God forbid, a parent would allow their child to read To Kill a Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, Huckleberry Finn, Of Mice and Men, Handmaid’s Tale, etc. A total of 23,000 books have been banned from public schools to date. Curiously, though, only 3% of those banned were requested by parents. A whopping 97% came from coalitions like Moms for Liberty, Americans for Prosperity, right-wing evangelical groups.

7. Septolescent is the new word in my vocabulary. Obviously, this is a blend of septuagenarian and adolescent, or an old person who refuses to accept old age in the conventional sense. Instead they ignore the calendar and face life with purpose, enthusiasm and zest. Leo Tin Boon, a founding pilot of Singapore’s Air Force and bestselling author, coined the term septolescent to describe those who realize aging is inevitable, but mental and spiritual decline is a choice. Thanks to science life expectancy has increased dramatically, and septolescents choose to embrace it by staying active and socially connected. They keep exploring and setting new goals or having new projects. They are optimistic; they smile often; and they find joy and humor in small things. They practice gratitude and kindness and seek opportunities to help others. Finally, a word that aptly describes me! I have lots of scars and wrinkles, but the sense of humor of Dirty Johnny. I can no longer run the 100-yard dash, but I can mow the lawn when it’s over 100 degrees. I play trivia once a week at my ‘hood bar, I’m currently at work on my fifth novel, and I adore being a “Gamma” to my newborn and three-year-old grandsons.

I choose to be a septolescent and am excited to see what I’m going to learn tomorrow.

The Bus Driver

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Once upon a time, there was a bus driver. He was the ceremonial driver; his chauffeur was did the actual driving. The bus driver boss just gave the orders as to where to go and whom to pick up.”Head downtown to the news station. I got people there waiting.”

Thankfully, there was a clearly marked City Bus Stop, right in front of WLMN where a long line of potential passengers waited. The chauffeur opened both doors, and over thirty people found their assigned seats.”Where to now, boss?”

“Duh, I told you before! The Financial District. You know where my name’s on every building.” After that stop, only one seat remained.

“We’re full up now, sir.”

“No, I’ve got one seat left. We’ve got to go my airport, Terminal 3.”

“Excuse me, sir, but I promised my kids I’d take them to the movies this weekend. I’m not driving this bus all the way to Florida.”

“Not that airport. The one on the East Side. I changed its name by Executive Order at one o’clock this morning. I love renaming things and building monuments to glorify my accomplishments. I deserve it. Now drive. He’s due in from Hollywood in a half hour.”

When the last passenger boarded his assigned seat, the chauffeur greeted him. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Doctor.” The bus erupted in laughter.

“He’s not a doctor!”

“Yeah, just like I’m not a military expert.

“And I don’t know anything about public education; my kids went to elite schools. They keep the riff-raff out.”

“Well, at least I played a judge on a TV show.”

The chauffeur shook his head and muttered under his breath, “Not only are these folks in the wrong seats, they shouldn’t even be on the bus.”

Do you agree?

The Kid House

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A mother approached me the other day and asked, “What’s your best advice to parents?”

Wow? I wonder if she wants three hours of advice? Doubtful. “Hmm. That’s a most interesting question, and I have to think about it. When I have an answer, you’ll be the first to know.” For several days, I relived my memories of my daughters’ childhood. I was flooded with the highs, the middles, and the lows because certainly parenthood is fluid. Just when my former husband and I thought we had it figured out, an antic, an illness, or an action caused us to change direction. And if someone asked our children about our parenting, they’d probably have a variety of opinions.

However, I think the best thing we did as parents was to build a kid house–a house where kids were always welcomed…and supervised. Our daughters’ bedrooms were on the second floor; I referred to that arrangement as “out of sight, out of mind.” I didn’t care how messy their rooms and bathroom were. I didn’t fret about unmade beds, streaky mirrors, or dirty towels. Of course, I insisted they throw their dirty clothes downstairs to the laundry, and several times a week I’d go upstairs and tidy up the mess. I also made it clear that those rooms were not their sole property and therefore were subject to my scrutiny. Yes, on several occasions, I did find some questionable things, like a lighter, a pack of cigarettes, and an airplane-size bottle of vodka.

However, their bedrooms were off-limits to visitors of the opposite sex by the time they went to middle school. We enlarged a room off the family room/ kitchen replete with a TV, cd player, Nintendo, and lots of board games. Twenty years before it became a rage, we installed a pickleball court with a basketball hoop, and like almost every house in Phoenix, there was a swimming pool in our backyard. We built it, and they came! At least one night of most weekends. Given that we’d known most of their parents since they were in elementary school, our rules were clear: no smoking, no drinking, no making out, no being a jerk, or I’ll call you mom and have her come and get you.

Of course, I always made sure we had food and drinks on hand. But the kids were so comfortable here they didn’t hesitate to say, “Mama Skid, you’re almost out of fruit snacks.” Or, “Can you make two lasagnas next weekend? Joey ate a whole one tonight.”

When they all went off to college, they still congregated during the holidays at the kid house. But now, they’re all in their late thirties and early forties now, many of them are married, some of them have kids, and others have long since moved away. Yesterday, I went upstairs in search of something. I opened each bedroom door. Pristine. Beds tightly made. Everything order. I walked into the bathroom. Towels neatly displayed, clutterless counter top, sparkling clean mirror. Hmm. I closed the lid on the ivory toilet and sat. Then, a tear escaped. “Oh dear God, I miss the mess! I miss my kids! I miss a house full of their friends.”

So my best advice to you, my friend, is build a kid house. It doesn’t need a pool, nor a trampoline. It simply needs to be a place where kids can go, have fun, and feel safe. Where kids can express their opinions and are treated with respect. But–where kids have rules, expectations, and consequences for their behavior. Trust me, your kids and their friends will thank you for it.

The Twilight Zone of Censorship

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Imagine if you will, an upscale, suburban school district embroiled in conflict over three books on a middle school suggested reading list. One: Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, An American Slave by Fredrick Douglass. Two: A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. Three: Summer of the Mariposas by Guadalupe G. McCall. Oh, and the fourth. A picture book: On the Top of the World–Climbing Mount Everest by not reading sections about harm or death on Mount Everest. According to some members of its school board, these aforementioned selections violate instructional protocols for the prohibition of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.)

As a former high school and college English teacher, and as an adjunct professor in American Educational History, I am not a fan of banning books, unless they’re pornographic trash. Allow me to digress and make an analogy. I grew up in an ethnically-diverse city in a WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) family, and by virtue of birth, qualified for membership in the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution.) I was a monolingual, minority in a vast melting pot of Italians, Greeks, Czechoslovakians, Hungarians, and Irish, who could all converse with their grandparents in another language. Of course, there were Blacks and Hispanics too.

Our elementary school had no cafeteria; it was just a lunch room where everyone brought a lunch box and a thermos. And it was there that my eyes and my taste buds were forever changed! I tasted pizza, Mexican wedding cookies, strudel, kolachi, cabbage rolls, and wiener schnitzel. I ate baklava, pierogi, tacos, and chow mein. Foods that my mother certainly couldn’t cook; foods that my grandmothers found objectionable. As a college student, I worked at a resident Camp Fire Girls camp, where the Black cook taught me to barbeque chicken and ribs on a wood fire. I became such an expert my grandmother insisted I take over the Sunday menu when it called for barbeque. Indeed, I would have grown up with a limited, insular palate had it not been for my experience.

For politicians to force the removal of books and other educational materials from schools based on DEI is not only irresponsible, but ludicrous. In this high-tech age of information, do they not realize students can explore the world from their cell phone or laptop? Are they so naive to think they can rewrite history by just removing Douglass’ autobiography or mention of the Navajo Code Talkers from the history books? Since the current leadership is anti-science, do they think they can ignore and simply erase the harsh realities of scaling Mount Everest?

Your attempts to suppress history and ban Mark Twain, Harper Lee, J.D. Salinger, and Dr. Seuss are unconscionable and ignorant. Now, while you may deny and/or justify your motives as “protecting children,” that’s absurd. You know, without a doubt, who openly mocked a disabled American, who makes disparaging remarks to women news reporters, who has turned the White House into a gilded slum, and who’s in the Epstein Files. And it’s not Edmund Hillary. It’s The Twilight Zone!

MIA

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Unlike Mitch was for 50 days, I have not been missing in action and have a full cadre of witnesses to attest I’m ambulatory and cognizant. Admittedly, I am missing a few parts, like a foot of intestine, an inch of my height, and the true color of my hair. But earlier this week, I found out I was missing something else: collagen!

Duh. I need only to look in the mirror at my wrinkles and wonder who that old gal is staring back. In this case, though, it had a new twist, when I went for my appointment–at the tattoo parlor. “You must be Sue; you have an appointment at noon. Did you bring a picture of what you want done?”

I handed him a copy. “I want it done here,” I said, as I pointed to my upper arm.

He took my arm and gently rubbed it. “Hmm. You know at your age you lack collagen, so the tattoo ink might seep. You see how your other tattoo is blurry? That’s because the dermis becomes thin and loses its structure. The ink particles tend to move around or migrate.”

WTH? Migrating ink in my dermis?

“So I want you to understand your tattoo may not be as vivid and vibrant because of your age.”

Oh, ye gods, a twenty+ year-old, heavily-inked dude with a pierced nose is talking to me like he is a physician and like I am a child. “I understand; let’s do it.”

Thirty minutes later, I walked out of the parlor, sporting my 8th tat. Quite frankly, I don’t care if my new addition blurs or goes south for the winter with the Monarch butterflies. I had to get this done and am very glad I opted out of my 60th-year high school reunion yesterday. I would have been embarrassed for my classmates to see that I’d lost my collagen!

OUR Kids

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Last week, I turned two years short of eighty, which surprised me and a number of my friends! But a long time ago, I realized what’s important–and it’s not me. It’s not my children or your children; it’s OUR children. They are OUR future.

Contrary to the opinions of notable, public figures, I don’t care about whether children are black, brown, red, white, or blue. What I do care about is that they each get an equal shot at success. Thus, every July, my back-to-school supply drive for Title I public schools.

Unfortunately, our country’s leadership seems less interested in insuring our future and more interested in gilded statues of horses and their own personal bank accounts. Cases in point: funding private education at the expense of public education; reducing medical science to ridiculous, unproven nonsense that has led to an unprecedented outbreak of measles; eliminating the Drug, Part D plan which not only assists the elderly, but also the poor; and frivolous spending on never-ending, pissing contests which result in devastating budget cuts to domestic programs, not only in education, but also in research, land management, forestry, and environmental issues.

In the 1950’s, my family and I stood in line to suck a polio-vaccine-laden sugar cube in our mouths. Curiously, no one suggested that the government was inserting some voodoo device into our systems; we just knew we didn’t want to end up in an iron lung! (Even MIA Mitch wasn’t spared a debilitating after effect of the disease.) Thus, the week I was enraged by the ludicrous, six-year’s later investigation of Dr. Fauci and COVID protocols. In 2020, I was a school board member in a large, suburban district of over 30,000 students. Our entire board did not question social distancing, mask policies, or vaccinations; we acted in the best interest of children, of scientific recommendations. Yes, we did save lives of some of our fragile students. And please don’t forget that 45 spent a few days in Walter Reed Hospital taking experimental drugs to cure his COVID.

We can NO longer minimize nor disregard the importance of our most precious resource. If we lose sight of our children, if we fail to feed, educate, and protect them, who will take care of us, of our country, of our planet? Do WE care?

Looking for You

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“Sue, I’m frustrated. I can’t figure out what I want to do with my life.”

“Janey, I’m soon to be 78 years old and don’t want to know what I want to be when I grow up.”

“You? You’ve already self-actualized. You’ve done this, and this, and that. Me? What have I done? What can I do to leave my legacy?”

“What is it that you want to do?” I asked.

Jane sighed, “I don’t know. I need you to help me. I did the Mom duty, and I did the executive assistant job in my husband’s office, but things are different now. Our kids are grown, my husband is winding down his business, and all I do is read and waste my time.”

I smiled. I, too, had experienced this sense of uselessness, like I was stealing food and water from folks in need. “First, this English teacher has never considered reading as a waste of time. Now with that said, there is a vast number of organizations who need you. You just have to decide what you want to do.”

“I’m 65! What do I have to offer?”

I stifled my laugh, “Your gift of time, Janey. What you don’t realize is this world is not the world in which we grew up with the stay-at-home-parent who was the homeroom mother, the Girl Scout leader, the softball coach, the field trip chaperone. The public schools don’t have the financial resources to pay for one-on-one tutors and youth organizations are dying for lack of leaders.”

“I hate to sign up for something and then find I don’t like it. I’d be letting people down.”

“By your own admission, you want to do something. There are a myriad of opportunities for volnteers.

The only thing missing is: U.”

A Woowoo Experience

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I’m not a believer in Karma, Tarot cards, fortune telling, or Ouija Boards, but I had very weird things happen over the last few months. It began with a phone call from my sister who lives in Texas.

“Sue, Cal is going to visit Mount Vermillion next weekend.”

Cal? Her eldest grandson who was born and raised in Houston suburbia was visiting a very small Ohio university in the winter?

“Why?”

“He’s being recruited to play football, and he knows one of the coaches there.”

Granted Mount Vermillion does have an exceptional Division I team, but a big city guy, who’s never lived in winter in a small town, may find the Midwest weather and its culture challenging.

Several months later, Cal phoned. “Aunt Sue, I’ve committed to Mount Vermillion.”

Woowoo! Fifty-six years ago, I graduated from there. Both my brother and my ex-husband went there. “Congratulations, big guy! Perhaps, I’ll come and visit you.”

This week I was dealt the ultimate woowoo. My sister texted: Cal got his room assignment. He’s going to live in Colter Hall.

WTH? Colter Hall? Where I lived as a freshman sixty years ago? Where I watched my brother jumped off the roof a couple years later after a panty raid? Ye, Gods! I texted my college roommate, who resides in Mount Vermillion’s town: Cal is going to live in Colter Hall!

Her response: On our floor?

I responded: No. He’s on the first floor. Do hope the U has remodeled those rooms in 60 years.

The next morning, she called. “Don’t worry, Sue. Our names, cigarette burns, and etchings on the restroom stalls were vanquished years ago.”

“But what about the washer that Hansen threw up in when she couldn’t find the bathroom?”

“Damn it, Sue! Stop with the memories! Have you ever heard of a 60-year-old washing machine? Are you losing it?”

No. Woowoo.

Buc-ee’s?

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The first Buc-ee’s Truck Stop is scheduled to open in Arizona this week, and I’m struggling to understand the feverish excitement. Since I’m old, I’ve been to my fair share of truck stops on turnpikes and interstates across the United States. Yes, I’ve been through Texas, too, but never stopped at Buc-ee’s. On June 22, Buc-ees will open its first west of Texas, 74,000 square foot, 120 fuel pump, restaurant, and convenience store in Goodyear. All of the surrounding hotels have been booked, and traffic patterns have been rerouted to facilitate the expected crowds. According to its news release, fans can line up at 6:00 AM, with the grand opening scheduled for 8:00 AM. With temperatures predicted to be in excess of 100 degrees, patrons are advised to bring water bottles and chairs for the anticipated long lines.

Personally, I am mystified by all this hoopla. Granted I got up at 4:00 AM on Black Friday in search of a Furby. Years later, I stood in a short line with my youngest to buy the newly-released Beanie Baby. But this septuagenarian has NO interest in renting a hotel room and the next morning standing in line at a truck stop to buy a beaver tee shirt or a bbq sandwich. And given the debacle in the Middle East, they’re certainly not giving away gas! Why bother?

Kudos and congratulations to Buc-ee’s for employing two hundred Arizonans. Kudos and congratulations to your marketing department for creating such a outstanding success. And perhaps, someday when I road trip to San Diego, I’ll make a pit stop at your establishment.

Sunday School and Easter: Who Brings the Eggs?

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A friend and I co-taught Sunday School to first and second graders for twelve years; our biggest challenge came from Easter week. Unlike the magical time of Christmas, our kids had great difficulty understanding and even believing in the crucifixion and the resurrection. One doubting Thomas announced to his classmates, “That’s not true. My goldfish, Nemo, died and didn’t come back to life.”

Another quipped, “My Mimi died, but she was real old. Too old to come back.”

One very precocious little girl announced, “Jesus is alive. He brings the eggs!” And with that comment, chaos erupted.

“He does NOT! The Easter Bunny brings the eggs!”

“Miss Sue, does the Easter Bunny hatch his own eggs or does Jesus?”

“No, Mandy, neither the Easter Bunny, nor Jesus hatch eggs. People and rabbits don’t lay eggs. Let’s think of some animals that lay eggs.” The discussion continued for a few more minutes about chickens, birds, and ducks, and then it was snack time. Thank goodness because my patience was ready to bolt from the room.

Curiously, though, years later I read that approximately 25% of Americans conduct an internet search this time of year to find out if rabbits are hatched from eggs. Hopefully, none of the inquiries came from my former kiddos.