Aselin

I live a pretty great life. I’ve had many wonderful experiences, and many experiences I’ve tried to turn into wonderful despite how they initially happened. I woke up this morning to one of those ‘get to know you’ questionnaires that circulate freely through cyberspace. I suppose in the recesses of my mind I’m flattered someone would want to know me better, but the arrival of one of these questionnaires always brings a bout of anxiety.

Usually the form asks questions to which I’m not really comfortable telling the truth. Details like “What are you wearing right now.” This is always dangerous with me. I’m the Trifecta of Fashion Disasters. When you combine unbelievably bad fashion sense, extreme cheapness and a sassy streak, it’s really safer never to ask that question. Did you know that you can make some pretty nice underwear out of Saran Wrap, aluminum foil and napkins?

Other invasive interrogations like “Six names you go by.” I have to say, if you have my e-mail address then you know what people call me. Six names is excessive. Coming up with six different names moves us outside polite conversation. I’ve been called lots of things that nice people don’t say, by those same nice people. It’s a gift I have. I seem to have a way about me.

Today though, I’m smiling at the opportunity to answer “What did you do last night?” Usually answering this question would incriminate me, but this morning I’m eager to answer.

Sitting under the stars with the waters of the Caribbean lapping nearby I learned how hard it is for a dolphin to hydroplane a big man with its nose. Last night during karaoke, I learned that there is a woman named Roxanne who is even more fearless than I, and that she is way more talented. Her alter ego “Sarah” would never belie the powerhouse of skill in that tiny body - but in the space of fifteen minutes she performed the worm, spoke fluent gibberish and sang one of the best versions of Patsy Cline’s “Crazy”, I’ve ever heard. People were throwing their room keys at her, men rushed to carry her across the stage all as our little group watched in fully entertained awe.

Last night I watched a unicyclist named “Slinky”, a Jamaican opera singer and some contortionists that would give the Chinese a run for their money. You can’t make this stuff up. Then, being called up on stage I, with three of my fellow resort goers, was asked to stand atop a board spiked with 1,000 steel nails. Whoever came up with the ‘bed of nails’ idea is really sick. Asking me to jump atop the flat side of one, on the other hand, was quite entertaining.

Yesterday I attended church in a small chapel about the size of my living/dining room. I love church, and as we drove to the small second floor room in a strip mall I anticipated what it would be like. Directed by our cab driver, we hiked some narrow stairs and formed a single line in the anteroom. I certainly felt like I was in Jamaica.

The air was heavy with humidity and the walls were painted a vibrant yellow with a brightness I didn’t know was possible in such volume - sunglasses were required. Our little group was heartily welcomed by Brother Jackson, and as we entered the small room I quickly realized we would more than double the congregation.

Scott and I walked to the front where I was seated in a broken chair that reclined into the lap of the man behind me. “Gina” the vibrantly dressed shy woman next to me giggled as I tried, rather unsuccessfully to find a graceful balance. Skewed on the seat with one leg extended in the air and a hand on Scott’s chair to steady me I started up a conversation. Gina was a relatively new convert. Her eyes were dimmed from the effects of diabetes but her smile was bright and she was a wealth of information on the other members of the congregation.

Gina shared that she ran a little shop that sold fried chicken, candy, soda and papers. I didn’t want to reveal how culturally stupid I was so I didn’t ask for more information about the papers. I did wonder about the papers - were they newspapers? Notebook papers? Toilet papers? All of these papers have a market and I would certainly purchase each of them.

During the meeting the energy and sincerity of the Jamaican people was infectious. I loved the Sunday School teacher’s style as she raised a finger and emphatically said “Question” with a pause for effect before she revealed the actual question. To my overly competitive self it felt a little like a trivia game - and I was still on the edge of my broken seat, although my leg was getting a little tired.

I reflected on church at home. We had more people, more room and OK, I’ll say it, better chairs. Our decor is more sedate and we’re a bit more formal but the Spirit is the same, the smiles are the same and as a man who was investigating the church came through to introduce himself to each of us, Scott and I smiled knowingly at each other. He was decked out in a gold sequined shirt with a hot pink tank top, knock-off rhinestone encrusted Dolce Gabbana sunglasses and a feathered hat - we had never met him, but we certainly knew him. Every congregation has someone desperate to be noticed.

Gina elbowed me to make sure I saw “Huggy Bear”. You couldn’t help but see him. She then started explaining he comes every now and then and wants to tell everyone what he’s read, what he knows. My problem is when I spoke to him I couldn’t understand a single word he said - except ‘ja know mon’. His thick Jamaican accent made every word unintelligible. Then a light went on in my tiny brain... Gina didn’t sell papers. Gina sells chicken, candy, soda and PEPPERS!

Just give me a little time, eventually I might figure it all out. Maybe.

We’ve worked so very hard as a society to create an emotionally safe environment for everyone. Problem is with this plan, is as we try to squish ourselves into this definition of tolerance and love we actually become less tolerant and certainly less loving.

While working with a group of fourth graders today, out of the blue one of them asks me who I voted for. I’m really impressed with the political discussion my kid’s fourth grade teacher has led. These kids know way more about the political process that I did even when I started voting.

So as this kid asks me, other kids at the table chime in about who they voted for. (The class held their own election). All this is fine and dandy until they start fighting with each other. The premise of the kid who initiated the discussion was, if you didn’t vote for Obama then you’re a racist. Whoa!

She was clear and concise and defended her position when I tried to intervene.

This is why the Attorney General can stand up and give an inane speech calling Americans racial “cowards”. And I completely agree. I was scared to death trying to handle the insults being slung by this vehement fourth grader. In an offensive assault she called her non-Obama supporting classmates racists, bigoted, close minded... who wouldn’t be beaten down by this mudslinging?

I know in my soul I am not a racist. This being said, I don’t like some of the behavior of certain groups. If you’ve got the waistband of your pants riding around your thighs, your hat on backwards, tattoos and piercings and happen to have dark skin - I’m not comfortable getting in an elevator with you. But in all fairness, your name could be Sven and you could be an albino and if you’re dressed like that, I’m still waiting for the next elevator.

But no Swede has ever claimed oppression from the ‘man’. The Canadians don’t have an Al Sharpton picketing every 5 minutes loudly pointing out instances of racial oppression.

I abhor unwarranted prejudice directed at anyone, especially me. Calling me a racist makes me cringe, even cower in fear. I find it painful that this illegal Latino fourth grader that I volunteer for hours each week, can look me straight in the eye and call me a racist because I didn’t vote for someone.

I’m not saying there is no racism. I am saying we would do ourselves better if we quit finding it where it doesn’t exist.

Something is wrong with me. (At least try and look surprised.) I’m pretty sure I have both X chromosomes, and that I’m a true bona fide girl. But there is something not right deep in my female soul. I don’t like shopping. Not even a little bit. I think there are too many choices, everything costs too much, I don’t look that great in most of it. I only endure the process because despite our social movement toward total immorality we still frown on public nudity. I’ve tried very hard to bring back the 3’s Company Mrs. Roper caftain, to no avail.

So I’m watching this new shopping movie with my kid thinking - everything in the main character’s life is a waste. Waste of time, waste of money, waste of talent. The message at the end was nice, but how sad to have to wait until the end. Up until the end the poor girl was desperately trying to fill some empty void with shopping. Here’s where I digress from many of my sisters... I don’t get it.

Anything outside jeans and a white t-shirt and I’m treading on thin ice. I can’t accessorize. I’ve stood at the belt kiosks, jewelry racks and kitch counters looking like I’ve been dropped in the middle of the rainforest with a tribe of cannibals.

I still wear clothes I owned in high school. And, if you’ve read earlier posts, they weren’t in style back then either. I don’t own a single thing that qualifies as a “label”, and this doesn’t bother me in the least. Recently a friend was excited about a recent shopping find. Sharing her blissful news with me, she noticed I had a bit of a blank stare. I confessed I had never heard of the label she was referring to, exposing the secret that I do in fact live under a rock. She no longer invites me shopping.

It’s sad really, to be this different, this weird. People don’t ask my opinion on their outfits. No one ever tries to borrow my stuff. I recently stood in a room with a group of women working industriously together to try and coordinate an outfit. They were like a swarm of ants adding to, taking from; it was a flurry of fashion and the final outcome was spectacular. During the whole event I sat in the corner eating a burrito. I have nothing to contribute.

I’ve tried to get one of my friends to shop for me - we’re about same size and coloring. Multiple times I’ve requested that she just purchase two of everything she buys for herself. She won’t do it. I think she likes that I look silly most of the time. Makes her feel good.

The worst thing about my handicap is I fear, it’s being passed on to my children. Sitting in the kitchen eating my breakfast one morning out comes my eldest - wearing my jeans. Look mom! Oh no... this can’t be good for her.

Recently our smoke alarms went off at about 3 in the morning. With a groggy mix of panic and disdain I punched my earplug wearing spouse so he could go put out the fire. When he didn’t spring to life with the same urgency, well with any urgency, of course I had to go save the family.

While the rescue mission quickly became a production of keystone cops I actually wished there were a real fire. It would have been easier to stand out in the street in our underwear and watch the thing burn. OK, not really, but as we were stumbling around the house trying not to bang the walls with the extension ladder as the piercing screech of the alarm disoriented us I was living some sort of Abu Grabesque torture. We had all the elements - underwear, sleep deprivation, auditory bombardment.

I gave up.

Leaving Scott high on a ladder ripping detector after detector out of the wall I waddled off to get earplugs. Around this time kids started to emerge. The time delay was quite unsettling. They really can sleep through anything.

Scott found and silenced the offending detector, likely triggered by a build up of dust. (I don’t get out the extension ladder for general cleaning). The whole experience has left me with a burning question (pun intended).

Why the @#$ does the alarm not sound at NOON, when normal people are awake, coherent and usually dressed. I have set them off with my cooking, but that’s to be expected. All my other alarms have sounded in the wee hours, usually the night before a big test or meeting. Reflecting on this inconvenient fact I think there is some sort of cosmic agreement between smoke detectors. In my many years of living with them the chirping to signal a dying battery only happens at night.

I wonder, is it that they feel taken for granted. We do entrust our lives to them, and most of us do little to actually care for them. This smoke detector relationship mirrors some human relationships. For the most part, our closest relationships go along just fine. And then, some seemingly small trigger causes mind numbing explosions. With just a little regular dusting, that requires a little more effort, these alarms would cease to blindside us.

Unless, of course, you’re smart enough to always wear earplugs.

Valentines Day scares me. The older I get the more I recognize I haven’t changed as much as one would expect in the time I’ve been allotted. While Valentine's Day should be a celebration of those who mean the most to us, what it really is, in reality is a contrived holiday where the less secure of us merely plead they will be acknowledged.

Valentines Day started to go bad for me in the second grade. I was new to the school and many of these kids had gone to school together since they could remember. Which for a second grader is two years. I had filled out my carefully selected, platitude-filled, tokens for the rest of my classmates. As a class we had each made a lovely shoebox to receive the outpouring we would expect. Mine was a stunning collage of poorly cut hearts, torn paper doilies and glitter. It was spectacular.

As the class began to pass out our valentines, my heart was racing and my sweaty palms were making the ink run. Wandering through the desks delivering each of my notes I worried - would Timmy think this was too forward? What would Joey think? I don’t love, love him but he might get the wrong idea from the chalky sugar hearts I included. Would Sally know that I wanted to be her best friend since I chose the prettiest valentine of the bunch for her? I was a seven year old mess.

I rushed back to my mailbox to open my notes. I checked and checked, Sally didn’t even give me a valentine and Timmy, gave me one that had my name scribbled out, someone else’s name written in and then scribbled out. It’s painful not to matter to the people you want to matter to.

Over the years Valentine's Day passed pretty much like that - me filled with hopes of some sort of ardent declaration while my homemade mailbox remained painfully empty.

In high school I decided to take matters into my own hands. Enough of this not being noticed I would take the Cupid by the arrow and create my own destiny. I had a terrible crush on a boy a couple of years older than me, Gary Clark. Student Council raised funds by selling carnations they would deliver to other students for a dollar each. You could select from three degrees of amour - white for friends, pink for sweethearts and red for burning passion. I paid for a pink carnation and carefully crafted my message. It was something copied off another valentine, but there was no mistaking my sweetheart sentiment. I signed it Az - my nickname for as long as I can remember. Everyone called me Az.

The big delivery day came, and went. I saw Gary in the halls, in the cafeteria, on the soccer field. He didn’t even make eye contact with me. I saw him at church on Sundays, youth activities, football games - I was even in his home a number of times. Nothing. The rejection was crushing.

I resolved I would never be a pink carnation fool ever again.

A year or so after I graduated from High School and Gary was in college I was visiting his home for a church function. I garnered the courage and asked him about the carnation and why he never even said ‘thanks’. He looked at me quizzically, trying to place the event when his face lit with recognition. He went to his room and returned with the pink heart. While my crush was long extinguished, I was flattered he had kept the little note.

“Is this the heart?” he asked. Blushing I acknowledged my note. He started to laugh and said “I never knew this was from you.”

Somehow this did not let me down easier. I had spent a whole dollar for Pete’s sake, and come on, how many “Azs” does one person know?

“I thought it was from Andrea Alstot - and the signature was ‘A2’ - A squared.”

Well this was awkward. Here I was, a pink carnation fool all over again.

While I have long outgrown the unrealistic expectations I still feel a bit of worry over Valentine’s Day. The reality is, I think we all just want to be noticed. This year, my mailbox was plenty full.

Recently I got an unsettling e-mail making me further question my sanity.

The e-mail posed questions to ask yourself... If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, speak to your doctor about getting a neurological evaluation.

Have you ever gotten lost when you drive home?

Define “lost”. If this means I have driven past my street while yelling/lecturing my kids about not leaving half eaten burritos in the back seat then my answer is yes. If it also means sitting blocks away from my house listening to the radio because it’s the only adult conversation I’ll have for the afternoon, then my answer again is yes. If a possible definition is wandering around the parking lot clicking my key fob hoping my cookie-cutter mini van will honk at me to let me know it’s not been stolen, then again, yes.

Have you forgotten being at major appointments or events? Forgetting names of people you met at a recent party is not cause for concern, but forgetting that you attended the party could signal a possible memory problem.

This one is tricky. I’ve endured a number of social events so painful that the only mental survival strategy I could employ was to block them out. For instance, we have photos of an office party where my husband was dressed in a skin-tight tye-dye polyester jumpsuit complete with a giant afro wig. Were it not for the photos I would not recollect his very public karaoke performance of “You Light Up My Life.” Then there’s my senior prom. Sitting all dressed up waiting for my date to arrive I answered the phone to discover that “his mom wouldn’t let him go”. I’ve been dumped, ignored, even stood up before, but this one was pretty bad. I’ve tried to block all of it out.

Has anyone around you complained that you tend to repeat the same questions four or five times?

Well duh. I’m a mom.

Have you stopped any of your hobbies or routines because of memory problems?

Does forgetting to clean out the fridge count? This should be a routine, and once was, but as I have aged so have the items in my fridge. This question really asks the definition of hobby. B.C. (before children) I would have considered showering a necessity, but now there are days it falls clearly in the hobby activity category and I’ve become quite nostalgic for the good 'ole days of general hygiene. The same goes for finishing a book. In the rare instance I am left alone long enough to read the side of a cereal box I consider getting through all four sides a major achievement.

Finally,
Have you reduced your work responsibilities or hours mainly due to poor memory?

If only!