Snippet — [Thelmese] a good name for a pet grooming business
Attack Skirts and Other Stories…Living in a sitcom…
Lucy and Ethel,…what can I say?
Not that I’m paranoid, but I live in a world where skirts are devious creatures, trees are aggressive, and chairs conspire to trap me. Embarrassing moments abound!
We’ll start with skirts…and come back to skirts.
If they’re long and flowing (some of my ill-advised favorites), skirts will, at the very least, trip you on stairs. But there’s more…. At my husband’s high school reunion, I wore a lovely 2-piece outfit with a wide flowing skirt. So elegant! As I stood to the side of the dance floor, a kind and gentle fellow I had never met tapped me on the shoulder to alert me that the bottom of the back of my skirt was tucked into my waistband and I might want to pull it out. (I had come just come from, guess where, the restroom!) Years later, I again felt oh-so-elegant in a long flowing skirt when I attended at workshop at the university. I left the workshop, chatted with the instructor, made a comfort stop, walked to my car, drove to a coffee shop where I would be meeting a friend — all the usual. Somehow I kept feeling rather drafty. As I toted my belongings into the cafe, that feeling became even more pronounced. I went to smooth my skirt to sit and realized with horror that it was not there…behind my legs…where it was supposed to be!!! Yikes!!! Slithered as surreptitiously as possible to the ladies’ room where I (again) had to untuck the skirt bottom from the waistband. (Sigh…) I have no idea how long it had been that way. As I said skirts are devious creatures. Short skirts can be embarrassing in soooo many ways (apply imagination). My skirt issues began when I was quite young. At the age of five, I had the most lovely white organdy dress with a wide hoop skirt. I could not understand, at that tender age, why my mother would not allow me to create a wonderful arc with that hoop by sitting on the back of it while riding home from church on the bus. Predating that, another church story actually, was the Bible School 3-year old class’s performance in which we were all singing “The B I B L E, oh that’s the book for me”. Clad in my cute little red plaid pleated skirt with jumper straps over a charming white blouse, I became very nervous and began rolling the skirt up to the waistband as we sang (front row, of course), with my poor mother trying to signal me from the third row to put it down. (The worst case skirt scenario will be described later on in this blog…)
Moving on to trees. Be very careful because trees can attack. Case in point — Christmas Eve a year ago. While my husband was running a last-minute errand, I was fiddling with the decorations on our real live dead tree which was perched, in its water-container base, on the library table by our front window. One decoration too many on the front side, and the tree, twinkling in glee, lurched at me! What to do??!! I could not let it topple, so I grabbed the trunk and held on…for 45 minutes until my husband got home. My arm was not long enough or strong enough to push the tree upright. My phone was, of course, in the other room. I yelled as loud as I could, thinking the neighbors would hear. And they did! They thought my TV volume was turned up very loud and that I was watching a program wherein a woman was yelling for help. For a long long time. Regarding aggressive trees, we have also had two of our 50-plus-foot oaks fall on our house during a storm, and twenty years later had a neighbors’s 50-footer fall in our yard due to saturated ground. (Don’t want to say much about this, as just yesterday, a huge tree fell over — the saturation phenomena again — a couple of blocks away. So shhhhhhh…..I don’t want the trees to know I’m talking about them….)
Chairs are next. During a speech tournament awhile back, when I was judging, I was called upon to judge a semi-final round of Duo Interpretation, an event where two students portray one or more characters each in a 10-minute cutting from a play or novel. Because it was semi-final round featuring six of the twelve top Duo teams, it was held in a huge study hall room so that the competitors who had been eliminated could sit in as spectators. Because Duo is great entertainment, by the time the other judge and I arrived at the room, all except two seats had been taken, and students were even standing around the walls and sitting on the floor. So we had the choice of the two quite small combination desk-and-chair units that were left. I am not a small person, but I had to sit. And, being a role model for the students, I had to somehow manage this gracefully. So I inhaled deeply and wedged myself into the larger of the two options. Not large enough! Pain! And, to complicate matters further, I was the “starred” judge, which meant that I was the one designated to introduce the competitors and call them up to speak…which, given the crowded conditions of the room, would require standing for each speaker. Not a chance!! So the other judge, my friend Sam, bless his heart, realized my predicament and volunteered to do the honors. Had to wait for the crowd to disperse afterward for me to be able to pry myself out of the desk and resume breathing! Whew!
So, continuing the chair-trap theme, I take you back to attack skirts. Let me just say that you should not allow chair traps and attack skirts to conspire with one another. It does not come out well. While at work one day, in my long flowing skirt (why did I like these so much???), I was busily moving from task to task wheeling around in my office chair as I pulled charts and paperwork from the various file cabinets around the room. I had to stand up at one point, only to realize that the hem of the rather sheer skirt material had become wrapped around the caster of the desk chair. Uh oh!! So I tried to unwind it…but it seemed to wind further around the caster. The door to the hallway was wide open, so I was hesitant to try to pull off the skirt lest someone should happen along and look in. Yikes!! What to do??!! So I tried rolling. And tugging. And no one came along, so….I figured I’d try to slip the skirt off over my hips so I could crawl under the chair to free it. No dice! The drawstring waistband had a knot in it. Oh, no. (Did it occur to me to try calling someone to come and help? Of course not! On my own, I was!) Well, then, to get at the bottom of the skirt and the caster, my next clever step was to stand up and lay the chair on its side. So…there I was, sitting on the floor by my overturned chair, stuck to it!! And along came our psychologist, Ralph. He glanced in the doorway and did a double-take. Red-faced I explained my dilemma, and the noble man came to my rescue. He finessed the hem from the caster, freed me, and was sworn to secrecy.
Watch out for trees, chairs, and skirts! They are evil!
Monkeys, Skunks, and Self-Defense…
“Anything with teeth has potential,” was my standard response when people, with outstretched hands, would pose that question in regard to my pound and a half furry kids. Just to be clear, squirrel monkeys have teeth like rows of straight pins…and you get punctured by four rather nasty canine teeth before the little ones even make contact.
So it’s interesting that people would assume that, just because they are relatively tiny, squirrel monkeys would not chomp on anyone by whom they feel threatened. Hmmmm…..
However, in monkey language there is a definite term for “Back off!! NOW!!” It is a shriek that should curdle the blood of the most fearless among men…and yet….some folks are just language-challenged, I guess.
But a little-known defense mechanism of squirrel monkeys is that, when nervous or frightened, they seem to get an immediate case of diarrhea…which has an odor that, rivalling a skunk’s scent, will surely fend off a would-be attacker. Amazing what can emanate from such a small being! I used to carry towels for my own self-defense purposes as I was the one usually carrying Kong, Mo, or Edith Anne when the impulsive people would descent. Phew!!! (And monkey “business” does not otherwise really smell bad.)
So if you have occasion to meet a squirrel monkey, first ask “Does he/she bite?” before reaching out what will likely be interpreted as a potentially threatening hand. Certainly, heed a scream, especially when accompanied by bared teeth (remember the canine/straight pin one-two punch). And, just in case, you might want to invest in a set of nose plugs!
Journey of the Steer Skull — Happy Holler, the Theatre, and Beyond…
I don’t recall ever naming it, but it was a presence in our home for quite awhile.
During one of our visits to Happy Holler, when my human son ventured to frolic in the great outdoors with the seven Donkin kids, an assortment of snakes, and a shotgun, we ended up taking home a steer skull. Rather fascinating, actually. (Reportedly, it had been discovered in a pasture and subsequently cleaned and bleached, so it was fairly attractive as steer skulls go.)
For awhile it lived in my son’s room, and it did a brief stint as part of a Halloween haunted house. My son had put jello inside the skull so that visitors could, in the dark, feel the gooshy insides.
And the skull made its way onstage when the theatre did a production of The Night Hank Williams Died and needed western decor. We like to think it was a significant factor in the Chanticleer award given to my friend John for best props that year!
Next stop was the local middle school where the skull took up residence in Mrs. Cook’s science class amongst an impressive collection of like items. My son maintained bragging rights, of course. And later on three grandsons were able to do the same as the skull moved on to the new science teacher’s room.
Oddly, I rather miss that steer skull. But we were able to have visitation during Open House!
Today’s Word…flippant
Flippant — [noun; Thelmese] a child’s game with a pair of plastic blue jeans with suspenders and a set of tiddlywink-type plastic ants to flip into the pants; also known as the Ants in the Pants game. (Does anyone remember tiddlywinks, by the way?)
Flippant — [noun; Thelmese] a parent’s sister who is also an acrobat
Today’s Word…spork
Spork — the little plastic item of cutlery that is part spoon and part fork, commonly found at Taco Bell. In case you wondered….
Today’s Word…ruse
Ruse — [noun] a trick or ploy; not to be confused with roos, cute little bouncy animals that can eviscerate you if you upset them
Theatre stories…a starter set
Backstage, onstage, from the bridge…stories from the theatre days abound!
Following are some of my favorite memories.
During a production of A Streetcar Named Desire, the actress playing Blanche Dubois breaks a bottle during a scuffle. The bottle is, of course, supposed to be a “sugar” bottle which is designed to break without injury. Unfortunately, during one performance, the bottle somehow turned out to be real glass. Breaking it resulted in severe slices in Blanche’s wrist. Because “the show must go on”, the actress reblocked herself with dramatic gestures in which she would fling that arm (fortunately covered by a bell-sleeve dressing gown) off stage through various openings in the set. At each of these opportunities, the props crew continued throughout the show to add layers of bandages to the bleeding arm. After the final curtain fell, the actress zoomed to the ER for stitches. What a trooper!! It was an impressive “save” to observe from the sound bridge.
Speaking of the bridge, a memorable learning experience for yours truly occurred during Crimes of the Heart, my first show ever working lights. Back in the old days, prior to the high tech equipment used now, the lightboard consisted of panel with two sets of controls so that lighting for two different scenes could be set. Then the lights person would cross-fade from one scene to the next by moving a lever (and then proceed to set the following scene on the dormant board). I got distracted by spotting a friend in the audience during one performance (distraction not being a good thing when you are operating equipment that affects the technical aspects of a play). The first act ended at night, and the second act took place in the morning. When I pulled the lever to bring up Act 2, lo and behold — still night!! Oops!! The stage manager panicked, of course, and insisted I cross-fade the lights. Because I had been a good student when tutored on setting the lights, I was able to point out to the stage manager that cross-fading would only bring back the “curtain warmer” from intermission so that the scene would be lit at knee-level for the actors. I assured him the sun would rise and proceeded to bring up the lights slowly so that dawn could occur as the performers went through the scene. Whew!! Crisis averted, and a huge thank-you to the technician who ensured that I knew how the equipment actually worked.
My favorite bridge memory involved another sound crew stint during a wonderful historical drama, The Last of Mrs. Lincoln. Well, it was wonderful the first couple of weeks, anyway. It was a five-week run and a three-act play. Shall we say……long. And there was only preshow and intermission music to worry about. So lo o o ts of downtime. Sound, in those “olden” days was on a reel-reel tape recorder; but there was also an 8-track tape deck which included settings such as crickets, birds chirping, thunder, rain, and toilet flush. By the third week of the run I was struggling — STRUGGLING — to restrain myself, every time an actor walked off-stage, from pushing “toilet flush”.
Today’s Word…affable
Affable — [adj., Thelmese] capable of aff (affectionate or affirmative). Aff is a good thing of which to be capable, don’t you think?
Today’s Word…paranoid
Paranoid — [noun; Thelmese] double dork