The Thelmian Chronicles

Christmas brings thoughts of years gone by. As I was an only child and had lost my dad when I was just a toddler, my mom and I would almost always visit one or another of her siblings over the holidays.

My mom’s two older brothers and her sister had large families, so we would take turns joining their celebrations.

Uncle “Bun” (Bernard) had four kids who each had their own kids (since my mom was second youngest of seven, I was the baby cousin of my generation). That group would gather in the living room of my maternal grandfather’s homestead, fire roaring in the beautiful blue and white ceramic fireplace, and Santa Claus (who looked suspiciously like my cousin Dot’s husband) would enter through the window with his bag of gifts (obviously to avoid said roaring fire). The presents would be handed out, and I invariably would receive some sort of plaid dress while the other kids got cool toys. (Although, when we would get back home to the city, I would find that Santa had brought my good stuff there!) Playing with my second cousins was always fun. We were a rowdy bunch, and that was tolerated to a point. The kids were relegated to a kids’ table for dinner so we didn’t intrude on the grown-up conversation. When the weather was warm enough, we played outside….usually “cowboys and Indians”. I always wanted to be Roy Rogers, but second cousin Sonny always seemed to get that role (being a boy and all), so I’d be Dale Evans (who was not my top role model…but would do in a pinch). Sonny’s older sisters, Marcy and Delores, were always the bad guys. During warmer seasons, I recall playing a lot with Gloria Jean. (Her younger sibs, Karen, Larry, and Terri were not quite old enough for pretend play.) We would sneak in and out of the various out-buildings, and try climbing up into the hayloft….although I was a klutz, so…..(Fortunately. I never got seriously hurt, although I did manage to fall off a bicycle riding down the hill in the lane and got cinders in my knees. Wow, was that ever painful!) I also remember, at about age 5 or 6, going for a walk through a pasture with Uncle Bernard and my mom and trying to cross a small stream on the shiny rocks that went across…only to find that one of the rocks was NOT a rock at all. I found my beautiful little white baby doll shoe (I was the prissy city kid, remember?) up to my ankle in cow dung! Ugh!!! Serious trauma here. Despite my mom’s scrubbing my shoe until all visible trace were gone, I refused to put it back on my foot until my mom had the shoemaker dye it oxblood red. (Could not really afford to replace shoes back in the day.)

Visiting my Uncle “Dutch” (Carl) was a bit different as his four kids, although all older than me, did not have their own children until a bit later. (Many more stories there!) So, when I was little, my mom and I would get to stay in Bea and Carole’s room, so we had access to their wonderful books. I especially remember “Little Women” and “The Five Little Peppers”. And we would play board games and cards. I remember an old game called “Peggedy” which used a pegboard and pegs of different colors. Players took turns placing a peg of their color on the board. Winning the game involved being able to sneak five pegs in a row before anyone ese noticed. The game was a precursor to “The Game of 99” and “Five Straight”. I also remember a card game called “King’s Corners” I learned there and brought back to the city to share with my friends in high school.

On other years, we’d visit my Aunt Leora (don’t recall a nickname for her, although my mom was “Toots”.) I especially loved playing with cousin Fran’s little stove and watching cousin Roger’s electric train. I always wanted an electric train, but Santa apparently was sexist enough to deny that request. And when Rog was young enough to set up the train, I was too young to mess with it. When I was old enough to treat it properly, Roger was too old….off to college, etc. Fran introduced me to some favorite books, Max Schulman’s “I Was a Teenage Dwarf” and “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis”. And I have a particular memory of Rog’s sense of humor when I (circa age 4 or 5), while enjoying a piece of roasted chicken, inadvertently had it poking up a nostril. Rog thoroughly embarrassed me by pointing out that his cousin was eating “boogered chicken”. Yeesh!

Many more memories of “down home” are bouncing around in my brain. I hope to get them recorded in the not-too-distant future.

Ahhhh, the good old days!!

a serenity of the soul

     makes me old

          and sorry.

to find peace so soon,

     lose the moon,

          gain the sun,

               never run

                     again

makes me one

     who lives together

          and alone,

              but dies

                    too soon.

Why me, huh?… Just… why?

Sooo…has anyone else ever visited the bathroom in the middle of the night, glanced down between your knees and noticed a spider (a sizable spider) on your underwear?

Mmhmmm… I thought not.

And then, after frantically beating, shedding, flinging, and stomping on said underwear, you can find no trace of said spider? So you lose twenty more minutes of sleep searching through your nightclothes and bedroom slippers to be sure said spider has not taken refuge there plotting revenge?

And then you finally return to bed, unable to sleep because a) you don’t where the beast went and b) – worse yet – you can’t figure out how it got there in the first place?

Yeah….I thought not.

Why me, huh?… Just…why?

Ah, bathroom humor! Hard to get away from it. So…we’ll just go with it!

Once upon a time back in the dark ages, as a poor undergraduate social work student, I was employed part-time in the university’s sociology department to finance my education. My job was to assist the sociology graduate students with their research projects.

The old sociology building had originally been built to accommodate engineering students who, incidentally, back in those good old days before women’s lib, were all male. So the building was constructed four stories high with four men’s bathrooms and zero – yes, zero – women’s bathrooms. When the sociology department was created, the university decided to convert two of those bathrooms (every other floor) to women’s. In a budget-conscious environment, this meant that the changes were quite basic. On the women’s floors, the stenciled “MEN” sign on the door was covered by a nailed-on wooden WOMEN placard. Inside the newly-created women’s domains, new “necessary equipment” dispensers were installed so that the ladies would not be stranded without supplies in case of a surprise “visit”. And all four restrooms continued to have a row of urinals beyond the individual stalls, back-to-back with the sinks

Soooo…the graduate students were bored one day and decided to begin new research. The task was to determine statistically whether, in an emergency situation, people tend to base their decision-making on “past experience” or their “present stimulus field”. Hence, as the sociology lab was on a designated women’s restroom floor, the “researchers” removed the wooden WOMEN placard from over the MEN stencil on the door and stood in the hall outside the sociology lab. Waiting for subjects.

Well, it was summer, and the sociology building had little traffic, so the grad students were beginning to get a bit bored….when, all of a sudden, a young lady came down the hall and turned directly into the women’s restroom. Aha! So they waited some more. And, lo and behold, very shortly thereafter, a fellow came charging down the hall with a rather urgent look on his face, started to pass the door to the ladies’ room, glanced left, did a double-take at the door that said MEN, and made a sharp left into the bathroom. Yep! Pay dirt! Almost immediately the door burst open and the very red-faced young man lunged into the hall and zoomed for the staircase at the other end of the hall.

Before the young lady could exit, the “researchers”, stifling guffaws and giggles, hustled back into the soc lab and decided to conclude their research and abandon the project before they were thrown out of grad school. The results: 50% of the subjects relied upon past experience and 50% relied upon their present stimulus field in decision-making.

A note: we social workers are a compassionate lot and would not have put our subjects in such a compromising position. Sociologists, however, have different objectives.

A couple of additional rather unique bathroom humor stories remain to be recounted that were loosely connected to the university sociology department. One of the “extra” jobs that came my way working for the grad students (and the department in general) involved bringing lunch back for workers who had difficulty getting away but didn’t like packing lunches. About half a block from the building was Schroeder’s Pub, which happened to serve microwaved ham and cheese sandwiches which were amazingly quite tasty. So off I would go to fetch food a couple of times a week. Schroeder’s happened to be the oldest bar in the city and tended to be rather popular around noon with all the seats surrounding the bar occupied by the locals. What was eventually pointed out to me by someone was that Schroeder’s, as the city’s oldest bar, had been around since the really old olden days when apparently only men frequented the bar. A key historic feature of Schroeder’s was that the wooden bar had a trough around the bottom of it so that the men on the barstools would not have to leave their seats if the need for a restroom should arise. (So far as I know, they had installed actual restrooms in the place by the time I was on lunch duty. Thank goodness!)

An additional rather unique feature of my connection to the soc department, was that my first child, Kong (a one and a half-pound squirrel monkey) had to come to school and work with me for awhile because he had started crying when I would leave the apartment causing my neighbors and landlord to object). So Kong, who sported a cat-collar belt and lightweight leash to keep him out of trouble, would hang out, tethered to the leg of a chair in the sociology lab, when I had to leave the building. The secretary and grad students loved him, and the professors were amazingly tolerant. (Needless to say, certain health laws were not yet in place to preclude his presence.) One day, I returned from class to find open windows, no secretary, no grad students, no Kong, and open screenless windows. Panic!!! My baby is is swinging through the trees on campus never to be seen again. Aaaaaarrrrgggghh!! So I took off madly, to search the building in case he had strayed inside somewhere. As I reached the next floor, I saw one of the professors (a burly, booming man who terrified me) walking down the hall with what appeared to be a tail down his back. So I cautiously approached, and the prof turned around. Sure enough, Kong was riding on his arm, and there were dirty little foot and hand prints up and down the nice white shirt. Whew! The prof looked at me and said, “Well, the secretary had Kong on my desk for awhile, and when he did a number on a memo from the president of the university, I felt he was an incredibly intelligent monkey and should be befriended.” So Kong became a teacher’s pet, so to speak. Later in the year, when I discovered I was pregnant with my second child (a human), the prof would ask me whether I had prepared Kong for sibling rivalry yet. And months later, the daily question was, “How’s Kong’s little brother.”

Ah, college-level bathroom humor. Gotta love it!

Ever had a conversation with a pendulum? Fascinating. All of mine have chosen me. Spot (Dalmatian Agate) was especially excited in flagging me down on the way by. The vendor told me to ask, “Are you for me?” and Spot was very excited to answer “yes”. We also had to go through an interview of “Show me ‘yes’ ” and “Show me ‘no’ “. (All of mine speak the same language). And they befriended me first. I have Spot, and Amy, Annie, and Amanda amethyst.
In the photo, from left to right, are my pendulae: Spot, Amy, Annie, Amanda, and Chloe (who transitioned from being a cloissonne bead bookmark).

Slippy slidey slither: that is the sound of boobs sneaking around where you don’t want them to. When you’re younger, you don’t believe people when they tell you to wear support because your boobs will go south later on. (Think the 1970s when bras were burned and banished. Hahaha!!!) When you’re older, you can actually feel the boobs flatten out and leave the boundaries of the underwire. Slippy slidey slither…. Alas!

Crumb-catchers (boobs) and booby traps (bras) have a longstanding love-hate relationship history. Women want boobs to be attractive, as advertising would suggest they should be. Bras are purportedly designed to accomplish this task. However, neither boobs nor bras tend to behave the way we want them to. (There is actually a device called a “training bra”. Note: it is a flunkout course.)

Booby traps come in a variety of styles (as do boobs, but that’s another story). Of recent popularity is the molded bra. The success of this model depends on your ability to keep those pesky boobs contained in the cups. Otherwise, if slippy slidey slither occurs, you end up with a double row, the top row perched near the collarbone and the bottom two dangling near the waistline. One row of boobless bra; one row of braless boobs. Underwire bras pose similar issues when the semicircular wires meet in the midsection of a sizable woman sitting down. The belly roll pushes up, the middle of the wires push out, and — voila! a third boob!!

Way back in junior high, young male students apparently found it amusing to sneak up behind young female students and snap their bra straps (a good way to get decked, by the way). Back in those good old days, bras were made with wimpy shoulder straps that were prone to breaking unexpectedly at particularly embarrassing times…like in a crowded hallway on the way to class. Ping! And fwop!! One boob up; one boob down! (This was a precursor to the molded-bra-double-row phenomenon.)

Additional hazards of underwire booby traps include the fact that, like boobs, the underwires do not always stay where you put them. Usually this occurs in a public setting which raises the challenge of how to handle the situation. The escaping wire can dive to into the armpit, an excruciating experience which causes telltale uncontrollable squirming and grimacing on the part of the wearer. Or it can pop up in the middle and work its way out of the fabric, cobralike, so that, if one is wearing a low neckline, weird and interesting entertainment is provided for any onlooker. (Tricky to explain.) If one surreptitiously tries to remove the underwire, you revert back to the situation of the aforementioned broken strap. One up and one down. Oops! (The second wire, of course, will never part with the bra.)

Hooks, simply stated unhook. By surprise. With embarrassing results. Enough said!

And, last but not least (and if you don’t trust my information try watching one of the YouTube videos of women trying out – and then trying to get out of – this torture device) is the one-piece all-elastic garment touted as “one-size-fits-all” — NOT! This modern torture device is capable of rolling itself into a thick rubber band which can act as a garotte around your midsection. Not good! It cannot be cut off with ordinary scissors. Perhaps wire cutters (even though its selling point is that it contains no wire)?

Boobs and booby-traps. Slippy slidey slither…. And the battle goes on….

At age 1, I had the standard whale spout (as illustrated by 1-year baby photo). For summer, I usually had a pixie cut. My baby fine poker straight hair just would not cooperate with curlers, so my mom and my aunt had to work hard to make me presentable. During elementary school, my mom would sneak in the middle of the night and put pink rubber rollers in my hair while I was sleeping. In the morning I would have the right side curled up over my ear and the left side drooping to my shoulder…as evidenced by several years of school photos. (sigh….) By high school, everyone had largely given up with the whole needs-to-be-curly idea, and it just sort of hung there. When everyone else had big bubbles of helmet hair with a flip at the bottom, mine…. just hung there. I began to get comments about beatniks. Hmmm….kinda cool! And I was finally allowed to wear bangs! Yay! And then folks music came into fashion –Peter, Paul, and Mary (Mary with poker straight hair) and Joan Baez (with poker straight hair). Woohoo! We were onto something! So I wore pony tails when my family wanted me to look “presentable” (or when it was really hot and humid) and long, straight hair otherwise. A bit later, when a young Cher became a celebrity, I would sculpt the bangs around my face into diamond shapes and hearts as the whim struck. During the big-hair 80s, I managed to braid my long locks while wet and produce a wild kinky effect. Fun!! The long hair was with me for about half a century. It’s a bit shorter now. With a delightful (year, right!) COVid cut (meaning I have been chopping it off myself). But, although I had a modified duck-tail cut in 8th grade, I never had a flattop or a butch!

When I was a child, my mom insisted I behave like a young lady, so certain words referring to bodily functions were no-nos. (For example, if one absolutely had to mention “expelling gas”, no four letter rhyming with “smart” could be used.) And heaven forbid the body of a young lady could ever actually perform said (or unsaid) function! I somehow learned to squelch burps and those other no-nos and spent some periods of my life teetering on the brink of explosion, yet always remaining a young lady. So I was appalled when, at age ten, I learned that boy people do not follow the same rules. Case in point –while in the car on the way to a swimming outing with a male friend and his mom, I heard a loud popping noise which was followed by an overwhelming odor. Young lady that I was, I was appalled that this boy person received only an admonishment (his mom snapping his name crossly).

And, apparently, males do not outgrow this.

I was so well indoctrinated that I don’t think I have ever, in 3/4 of a century, uttered the _art word. Ever.

Fast forward to, say, the 1980’s. I had remarried a wonderful gentleman I had met at the theatre. Good manners. Kind. Loving. And this lucky fellow had the dubious privilege of sleeping in the bedroom where Schultzie (the white boxer with the black ring around his eye) spent the night. Keeping Schultz in the bedroom with the door closed was the only way I could help the poor dog manage his affliction of colitis and IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome…or, more accurately, Indescribable Boxer Smells. If Schultzie had issues in the middle of the night, he would throw his body against the bed to jar me awake so I could race him to the door for an emergency outing. While I was quite familiar with this long-standing routine, my husband was not. Sooo….not long after my husband had moved in, suddenly in the wee hours of the morning, there was that popping noise and odor as Schultzie fired his warning shots. Before I could get up, my husband leapt from the bed, yelled “Take this!” and fired back!!! I was literally caught in the crossfire!!!

I could kinda forgive the dog….

Opening night, and the critic is in the audience. What could go wrong? Right?

During his college days, my husband (the engineer) pursued his artistic self on the Showboat Majestic in Cincinnati. A favorite story (a historic event, actually) involved the production of “Little Mary Sunshine” (a musical parody) in which he was cast as the villain, an Indian (or Native American, or whatever the designation-of-the-day might be), complete with war paint (makeup shade “Texas Mud”), a headdress, a knife, and a tomahawk.

At the end of Act 1, Yellow Feather’s job was to climb behind the scenery and pop up emitting a wolf cry “to wake everyone up”. On a riverboat, with barges creating a wake in their passing, this could be a bit of a challenge. With a bit of listing and clinging, my husband survived that (Whew!)

Yellow Feather, as the villain, became a prominent character as the show went on. One scene involved his chasing the settlers and brandishing a makeshift tomahawk. Chase to stage right — swipe! Chase to stage left — swipe! Chase to — oops!— one good swipe and Yellow Feather was wielding a short stick as the top half of the tomahawk (makeshift, remember?) flew across the stage! Of course, the music (choreographed) didn’t stop, but Yellow Feather now needed to somehow retrieve the head of the weapon. A few steps left — lurch! — and the music went on without him. A few steps right — lurch! — foiled again! After an embarrassing series of missed musical cues and floundering about the stage, the scene finally, mercifully, came to an end.

Just to carry on the fun and frolic, the following scene called for Yellow Feather to capture and tie up the heroine, after which the hero would show up and a fight would ensue with the hero and Yellow Feather trading flips back and forth. A sight gag was for Yellow Feather to threaten the hero by wiggling said knife so its rubberness was obvious and comical. In keeping with the evening’s events, when the hero flipped Yellow Feather over (perhaps in sync with the boat rocking from a passing barge), the villain lost his grip, and the knife bounced off the stage and into the surprised front row of the audience. So Yellow Feather had to resort to stabbing the hero with a feather from his headdress. (If my husband was red-faced at that point, it was masked by Texas Mud. He could, however, see the director in the balcony ripping his hair out!)

In summary, my husband reports that he was forced to show up for the curtain call because Yellow Feather had to carry the flag out. The critic, of course, noted that “things did not go well” at the end. And, in the absence of the critic, the entire remainder of the show’s run went on without a hitch. And the choreographer even commended my husband for executing his part correctly.

Ah….another opening, another show….