Son of Coincidence

So remember that whole ‘coincidence’ post from a couple of months ago? The one where weird names kept coming up in clumps after an absence of thirty-some years? Or an author I learn about for the first time then presents himself in an e-mail from a totally unrelated third party? And I recognize that an actress I see on tv must be the daughter of Meryl Streep, because of the uncanny resemblance, and almost simultaneously the girl is being quoted in a magazine article I was reading during the commercials… Yeah—those coincidences.

Get ready. It’s happened again. And again.

A few weeks ago, my husband, the Center of the Universe (CoTU) and I were watching an episode of American Pickers. If you’re not familiar with it, let me say that two guys from Iowa (Mike and Frank) drive around in a big van, looking for the ultimate yard sale. Actually, most of the time they find people who’ve been collecting stuff for years, and have buildings just chock full of old collectibles. Mike and Frank buy the stuff to sell in their shop, or to customers they’ve developed over the years. Back at the shop, Danielle finds them leads, and manages to hold the fort while the guys are on the road.

 

CoTU and I get a big charge out of seeing what they find, and watching them arrive at a deal with the sellers. CoTU didn’t want to watch it at first, probably because we are both such pack rats, and this hits a little close to home. Hey, at least we’re not on Hoarders. I had to persuade him that since the show is on The History Channel, it must be vaguely educational. Anyhoo…

On this particular day, Mike and Frank were on the road, and Danielle was actually taking a little vacation to New York. The guys had convinced her to take something with her that they bought on an earlier ‘pick’. It’s a papier-mâché model of a cat from the Alice in Wonderland sculpture in Central Park.  Ultimately, Dani (like we’re BFFs now) meets with the widow of the sculptor (he was Jose de Cleeft, she is Lorrie Goulet) and arranges to have the cat displayed in a New York museum, where there’s a current show of Goulet’s work. This was all so very cool. Dani meets artist, artist sees cat, cat vacations on display. Nice.

But back to my story. So I may be a little old Midwesterner, but I’ve been to New York numerous times, and have also been to Central Park many times. I have never, let me repeat that for emphasis (why else would I repeat it?), NEVER seen or heard of the Alice in Wonderland sculpture. Don’t know why. I’m sure that if my relatives really did love me they would have taken me to see it when I visited them in New York. But alas, I was quite surprised to learn of its existence.

 

The very next day (cue the Twilight Zone theme music) I was reading a book that I had heard about on (what else) NPR. Fresh Air, to be exact. It’s called “What Happened to Sophie Wilder”, by Christopher Beha. On page 118, Sophie and her husband are walking in Central Park, and stop at the Alice in Wonderland sculpture. They have a major heart-to-heart there. “Hmm,” I thought. “That’s funny, coming just a day after I first heard about the sculpture.”

Fast forward less than a week. Done with “Sophie Wilder”, on to “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn. (Amazing, by the way.) Yep. Page nineteen! I’ve barely cracked the spine of the book, and Nick is growling about Amy expecting him to remember that it’s a favorite of hers since childhood.

 

 

This is all pretty ‘woo-woo’ if you ask me. Three slaps in the face with the same reference within a single week. I’m not sure I believe in coincidence, but I do believe in Alice. At least now I do. I keep dreaming of tea parties and going down the rabbit hole. Or maybe that was the political conventions…

Secrets of a Happy Marriage

I learned a great lesson on how to keep a marriage happy from the French master chef Jacques Pepin. He was on the radio on Thanksgiving Day (on NPR, of course—you know me!) talking about cooking for the holiday with Lynne Rosetto Kasper of The Splendid Table. She does a turkey day program every year called Turkey Confidential. Listeners can call in and ask all manner of questions regarding the preparation, cooking and serving of virtually anything you can imagine. It’s quite informative, and lots of fun to listen to if you happen to be alone in the kitchen on that day!

Lynne Rosetto Kasper

 

One of her guests was the aforementioned Jacques Pepin. He’s very amusing and entertaining, and being a Frenchman of the old school, I must say that he is also charming. In the midst of all the discussion of how to choose your ingredients, how to clean, slice, and dice them, how to safely cook them and how to beautifully serve them, Monsieur Pepin slipped in the most valuable nugget of info of the decade. I will share it with you. Perhaps many, many marriages and other relationships can be saved.

Jacques Pepin

Jacques Pepin noted almost offhandedly that there was a point on which he and his wife disagreed. They therefore did what she wanted, as their plan is that when they differ, they do what she wants. At the same time, when they agree on things, they do what he wants. This, he avers, is completely fair. I agree. It just ain’t never gonna happen in this marriage. You recall that I am married to the Center of the Universe, so we handle things differently.

In our marriage, CoTU handles all the small decisions, and I handle all the big decisions. We’re just so lucky that in all these years we’ve never had to make a big decision.

National Day of Listening

So for once I seem to have heard about a National Day of Something before it actually happened. You may recall that earlier this year I was late to the party when it came to National Coffee Day and National Punctuation Day. I still haven’t recovered from those shocking realizations. And since I didn’t r.s.v.p., I probably won’t be invited next year, either! So you can imagine how delighted I am to have heard of the National Day of Listening in time to participate!


Yes, the National Day of Listening will be Friday, November 26th. That’s the day after Thanksgiving, so if you’re not out shopping, snapping up the bargains you’re seeking for your holiday celebrations, consider taking part. Husbands, typically handicapped in the realm of listening, need not apply.

This project falls under the umbrella of the StoryCorps, whose vignettes you may have heard on NPR. They are usually brief interviews conducted by one family member of another, or the two participants may be friends, neighbors or co-workers. I’ve heard many of them broadcast over the years, and am always affected by them. Some are poignant and touch my heart. Some amaze me with their insights and perspectives. I’ve never turned the radio off in the middle of one.

It may seem obvious, but I mostly end up wishing I could interview one of my parents, or grandparents. Maybe my lovely Aunt Sadie. Someone I’ve lost, and wish I knew more about. Someone who meant the world to me, whose secrets might bring me a clearer understanding of who they were, and what they wanted for me. Or what they would think of how I turned out, how wonderfully my kids turned out, and how fabulous my grandkids are.

I’d like to have that time machine, but I know it is not possible. What is possible, though, is taping interviews with my kids (we’ll be in D.C. with the newlyweds) to see what’s in their hearts, that they might not expose in our day-to-day interactions. And maybe we’ll disclose something of ourselves in the process. I envision all of us getting to know each other in a slightly new way. Doesn’t that sound like a good idea? If they have questions for us, and I imagine they can come up with plenty—after all they are both former newspaper reporters—perhaps one day they won’t have the same regrets I have. Sure, they’ll have some regrets—who doesn’t? But at least they’ll be different, and possibly less substantial.

Interviews done for this project can be uploaded to the “Wall of Listening” at the StoryCorps website www.nationaldayoflistening.org. You can also upload them to Facebook, or post them on your own site to share with your loved ones.

So on November 26th, think about taking out a tape recorder, and asking some questions of someone important to you. And keep it nice—this post-Thanksgiving experience should be about positive things, and possibly difficult things, but not anything likely to cause hurt feelings, or a rift between people. I’m just saying… And then think about uploading that interview (or those interviews) to the Wall of Listening. You may touch hearts all over the world.

By listening closely to one another, we can help illuminate the true character of this nation reminding us all just how precious each day can be and how great it is to be alive.



Dave Isay
Founder & President, StoryCorps

In Memoriam: Sex and Daniel Schorr, reposted

In memory of the great newsman who passed away Friday, July 23, here's a re-posting of an earlier entry.

Sex and Daniel Schorr


For the final couple of years of its original run, my husband and I were regular viewers of Sex and the City. We got to know the characters, and enjoyed laughing, tsk-ing, and looking askance at their actions, choices and decisions. Until recently, I thought we both viewed these people in much the same way.



The other night we were watching one of their reruns. Carrie Bradshaw was writing her eponymous newspaper column. This is actually the program’s device to enable the central character to lay the groundwork for the plot of the evening’s episode. In this particular case, after musing about the differences between women and men, she wonders (voicing as she types) “Could it be that women are just like men”?

My husband observed, “You know, she’s just like Daniel Schorr. She asks questions, puts them out there, but never actually answers them.” Floored, at first, by his ability to correlate this enormously sexy, petite, blond hottie with that gruff, ponderous, 80-something intellectual, I was rendered temporarily speechless. But after a moment’s consideration, I nodded in agreement. I concurred, saying, “Well, sure, honey. No doubt at this very minute people all over the country are comparing Sarah Jessica Parker to Daniel Schorr. In fact, it’s entirely likely that you have just identified how the character hersexyself was conceived.

Picture a Hollywood conference room. Plenty of fresh fruit, organic juices, and imported, bottled water. Two men in open-necked shirts and Armani slacks are brainstorming new shows. “Let’s do a show about Daniel Schorr,” one writer says to the other. . “Only let’s make him a young woman with a killer body.” “Yeah,” the other one adds, “and she’s got to have a funky wardrobe, and be completely obsessed with men and shoes.” Thus an Emmy-winning series is conceived.



“And we’ll give him friends—buddies that he hangs out with,” Writer One posits. “Pals to have overpriced meals with, go shopping with, and yak on the phone with. They’ll visit one chic restaurant after another. Of course, I guess there’ll have to be gorgeous women, too, if we’re going to get viewers.”



Writer Two adds, “Now they can’t talk about politics or national security, or education. Nothing about the social security system. This will just be about their personal lives. Their jobs, their relationships, their seeming ability to purchase an endless array of designer clothes and accessories with no regard for cost or the moral question of overacquisitiveness. But I guess we should stick with meeting men, dating them, and breaking up with them as the main theme.”



Honestly, I always thought that one of the reasons he enjoyed this particular program was that it is rather titillating at times. It deals with topics not addressed on network television, and there is a fair amount of explicit talk, coupled (and I do mean coupled) with some incredibly suggestive scenes. In other words, I figured it appealed to his horny-slash-sexual side.



Now it turns out that he has been thinking of Carrie as Daniel Schorr, a political observer and commentator for longer than we have been alive. Don’t get me wrong, I respect Daniel Schorr. I enjoy hearing his opinions and analyses on NPR, but neither his name, nor voice, nor image has ever come to mind during “Sex and The City”. What else have I been missing?



If the raspy and hoarse Mr. Schorr was indeed the prototype for Carrie, what about the rest of the cast? Perhaps Charlotte, the perpetually romantic good girl, was patterned after Tom Brokaw. Has there ever been a cleaner-cut, more trusted all-American boy? His highly-respected books about the men and women who fought in World War II have only enhanced his “good guy” image. Miranda may have been based on the avuncular and reflective Mike Wallace. Mm, no… Not cynical and disillusioned enough. More likely it was the late Tim Russert of Meet the Press. He was the master of the skeptical head-shake, frequently combined with a soft chuckle, clearly communicating disbelief in the idealists around him. And surely Samantha, the promiscuous, self-involved gadfly would have to have sprung from the model of Geraldo Rivera. Like Samantha, he makes his own news where there is none, and just can’t wait to be “in your face” about it. Oh yeah, Samantha is definitely the Geraldo of the stiletto-heeled man-junkies.



Yes, my husband has really nailed this one down. He was able to see past the glitter and glamour, the carnal nature of the cast, and the Manolo Blahnik shoes. Getting right to the heart of the show, with an insight and perception so rare in middle-aged men. Yep, he’s a real Barbara Walters.



So the next time you tune in to “Sex and The City”, think of it as a political round-table, with no need to offer equal time for opposing views. Try to look past the long legs, the plunging necklines, and the push-up bras. You just have to be able to fantasize.

A Kiss is Still a Kiss...

My favorite local radio station is currently getting sponsorship from a local law firm. Normally I would just say that I heard an ad on the radio, but when you’re talking about a local NPR affiliate, I guess they can’t call them ads. So their programs are underwritten by certain companies, and they get mentioned in return for that. No problem. Even public radio has bills to pay, and mouths to feed, so to speak.


But I heard one the other day that informed me (and thousands of other listeners) that this law firm offers domestic agreements, “such as marriage or dissolution.”

Dissolution? Newspeak for divorce? In this brave new world are we about to find that our census forms, job applications, and other membership papers will offer us the following:

• single

• married

• dissolute

I’m just asking!

Sticks and Stones...

Reality check… A couple of days ago I heard the strangest thing on NPR. It was a report on a public vote in Israel to establish new Hebrew language names for the planets Neptune and Uranus. It seems that while the other planets have official Hebrew language names, these two had all along just been known as Planet One and Planet Other One. Okay, maybe not, but it’s hard not to get all cynical sometimes. Stay with me…

Jupiter

So a discussion ensued about how science teachers in Israel spearheaded the effort to involve the public in naming these planets, in part because of their dismay at the small percentage of students who could name all the planets. Fine. I get that, and I’m okay with that. Of course, my grandson, who just turned three, has known all the planets’ names for many months, because his Montessori daycare teaches the kids a song about the planets. Can’t they do that in Israel? I’m just saying…

So. The top vote-getting entries were revealed and meanings were explained, and so on and so forth.

Urbleep

Then. At the end. The host, Renee Montagne asks the reporter, Steve Estrin, if they can’t do something about the English name for the planet Uranus. (What? We’re all still 9-year olds on the playground and can’t say Uranus without a giggle or a titter??) He commiserates, and together they lament the name of the seventh rock from the sun, to coin a phrase. He signs off: Steve Estrin. HELLO?????? Estrin???? And you’re mocking the name of a planet named for the Greek god of the sky? You, my friend, should ask yourself why your grandfather, father, or you have not modified the name Estrin to make you sound a little less like Steve Ovarian-Output. Again—I’m just sayin’…

es⋅trone

   ˈɛs troʊnShow Spelled Pronunciation [es-trohn] Show IPA

–noun


1. Biochemistry. an estrogenic hormone, C18H22O2, produced by the ovarian follicles and found during pregnancy in urine and placental tissue.


2. Pharmacology. a commercial form of this compound, obtained from the urine of pregnant women or synthesized from ergosterol, used in the treatment of estrogen deficiency and certain menopausal and postmenopausal conditions.


Also, estrin.

Attention, Steve:  Cast not the first stone!

Year Lingo - How Do YOU Say 2010?

A couple of weeks ago (good thing I found this scribbled note I stuck in my purse, and yes, I know I misspelled 'Siegel' in my note... Who knew?) I heard a feature story on NPR’s All Things Considered that really made me scowl. Permit me to vent.

The discussion was about whether next year should be called “two-thousand ten” or “twenty-ten”. BFD, right? But still…

Robert Siegel is the host of the program, and he interviewed four people: the secretary of state of Iowa, a man who runs a mail order planner/calendar business, a spokesman for the U.S. Olympic Committee, and the art director of an ad agency in Portland, Oregon. Among them they presented both sides of the argument.

Now before I launch into my spiel about my thinking on this, is anyone else wondering why it’s more important to consider next year, than it would have been to ask whether this year should have been “twenty-oh-nine” versus “two-thousand nine”? I’m just asking…

So here’s the thing. Although both concepts had support, the gist of their interviewees’ opinions seemed to indicate that only “two-thousand ten” offers the dignity that we should accord this upcoming year, and that “twenty-ten” is basically too casual to be considered proper. I respectfully disagree.

Think of the most respected and esteemed years in our nation’s history. Columbus discovered America in_______. Class? Right—1492. Always “fourteen ninety-two”, never “one thousand four hundred ninety-two.” The year of our founding? Bueller? Exactly—1776. “Seventeen seventy-six.” No disrespect implied; we say it with pride and respect. And our last example: Party like it’s ________. Anyone? Of course—1999 “Nineteen ninety-nine.” Respect is front and center in all of those years, and the ones before and since. It has been our custom and our convention to name our years this way. What’s the big deal?

So where’s the real problem here? Yes, the ‘experts’ invoked both the movie “2001- A Space Odyssey” and the incredibly stupid song from the ‘70s, “In the Year 2525” as competing reasons for which way to go on this urgent and pressing issue of the day. But let’s decide soon—there are only twenty-two days left before the new year. Or should I say three weeks and a day? Or should I say 11/15 of a month? Or should I say 528 (five-hundred twenty-eight) hours? Or should I … Nope. I’m done.

On the Road Again--Pittsburgh!

So I’ll be posting from the road for a day or two because I’m going to be visiting my son and his fiancé in Pittsburgh. I love Pittsburgh, but I adore my son and his fiancé more. I love being able to call her his fiancé now—after five years of thinking ‘girlfriend’ sounded too much like a high school relationship. I had come to think of her as my ‘de facto daughter-in-law’, and since I tend to make everything into an acronym (the blog is FITNY to me) I viewed her as my daffodil. (I was, however, savvy enough to keep this to myself.)

This was cool (and nerdy, I know—DUH! How many times must I tell you?) for several reasons.

1. I love daffodils. They are harbingers of spring. They are beautiful and graceful and bright. They represent happiness and hope.

2. I love this young woman. Yes, she is lovely and smart and sweet and caring. She is hard-working, accomplished, respected and highly principled. She has a social conscience and acts on it. And beyond all that, she adores my son, who adores her just as much, and she makes him happy. Which is really all a momma could want for her son. At least this momma.

3. I like playing dopey little word games. They amuse me. I love the Will Shortz puzzle segment on NPR Weekend Edition Sunday. Check it out.

Back to the subject: Wedding coming up in May 2010! Be there or be square—or in my case, be both. I’ll be the happiest mother of the groom (MOG) you ever saw!

Tuesdays With Dorie

Remember how good “Tuesdays With Morrie” made you feel? Remember how it nourished your soul and your spirit and made you think about how you wanted to live your life and what mattered and how to handle run-on sentences? Me neither. Oh wait—no, I really do remember, and not just because I heard Mitch Albom speak here in St. Louis last week. (He has a new book out: Have a Little Faith. We’ll talk about that in a couple of days.)

So the only thing that could be better than all of the above, it seems to me, is Tuesdays With Dorie! Dorie Greenspan is a fabulous cook and baker extraordinaire! You may have heard her on The Splendid Table, an NPR show “for people who love to eat” hosted by Lynn Rosetto-Casper. Dorie’s latest book is called “Baking From My Home to Yours”.

If you still doubt the value of Twitter, let me just say that I would not have known about the Tuesdays With Dorie phenomenon if not for yesterday’s tweet by Scott Simon (“NPRScottSimon” on Twitter) – yes, let us never forget that I am the world’s biggest (and shortest) nerd—about Dorie’s “World Peace Cookies”. Now seriously, can you even read that sentence and not follow the link and plan to bake cookies called World Peace Cookies? I didn’t think so. Here’s what happened.

Yesterday Scott (yep, he’s my bud, I call him by his first name—um… don’t mention that to him if you see him) Tweeted about Dorie’s cookies, said they were the world’s best cookies, and insisted (all within his allotted 140 characters) that that was NOT hyperbole.
From Dorie’s website, here’s the précis on how they got their name!

I was given the recipe in 2000 by Pierre Herme, who had created the cookie for a restaurant in Paris called Korova and so, when I included the recipe in Paris Sweets: Great Desserts From the City's Best Pastry Shops, I naturally dubbed the sables Korova Cookies. I don't have the stats to prove it, but my guess is that those cookies were the most frequently made recipe in the book.
Because the cookies had become such a hit -- and because I was making batches of them at least once a week -- I wanted to reprise the recipe in Baking From My Home to Yours and had it all written and ready to go when I ran into my neighbor, Richard Gold, who couldn't stop talking about how much he loved the Korovas and how much everyone he'd ever made them for loved them too. "In fact," he said, "in our house, we call them World Peace Cookies, because we're convinced that a daily dose of the cookies is all that's needed to ensure planetary peace and happiness."
How could I not rename them World Peace Cookies!



I don’t know about you, but I’m baking today! Here’s to World Peace Cookies, and to World Peace! Hmmm… Why do I suddenly have the urge to watch the movie “Groundhog Day”?

Odds and Ends

What's on my mind...

If God were using e-mail, would your inbox show a message waiting from “G. Almighty”? If s/he had a telephone, would the caller ID read “Almighty, God”?

Is it okay to mock the guy who posts on Facebook calling someone a “bafoon”? How about the Ultimate Irony Award for that one?

Is it all right to mock the guest on “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” who, in playing the Listener Limerick Challenge, needed to come up with the name of a bird to rhyme with ‘craven’ and ‘graven’, and stumbled, finally coming up with ‘pigeon’? I mean, you don’t have to have memorized umpteen stanzas of the Poe poem, but seriously? -- pigeon???

Is it acceptable to mock myself for having so much difficulty controlling my desire to mock others for their petty (but sometimes unbelievable) mistakes?

Memo to self: When ironing your favorite white cotton blouse, and listening to the above-mentioned “Wait, Wait”, do not, repeat DO NOT drink coffee. When the contestant offered “Pigeon?” I sprayed coffee out of my mouth like something out of a ‘50s comedy sketch. White blouse—rushed to the sink to flood in cold water. Do not do this again.

This week’s “Bull Durham Award” for the most clichés in a single sentence goes to Jim Docheff, the Colorado farmer interviewed this morning on NPR’s Weekend Edition. He’s a fourth-generation dairy man, who was hit hard by the recession and had to declare bankruptcy last spring. Now don’t get me wrong—I have nothing but admiration for the work that all farmers do. It’s unbelievably hard work, and not terribly rewarding financially. This guy in particular sounded like a terrific human being, with solid values and a good head on his shoulders. Still, if I ever pull this kind of linguistic bunk, I expect to be called out on it, so here goes.

The host of the program, Liane Hansen was wrapping up the interview and said something like, It sounds like you’re out of the woods now. Jim’s response was (verbatim) “Well, you’re never out of the woods, but we’re almost to the top of the hill, and just a few more months we’ll be over the hump.” Ta-da! A trifecta! (I’m calling it the Bull Durham Award, because the baseball players in that movie said ‘you just gotta get your clichés down.’ They did several riffs on that theme throughout the movie, and it has stuck with me.)

Juggling, Multi-Tasking, and What Might Have Been

So I was listening to NPR a couple of days ago, and heard about an interesting study. The program was Science Friday, and the guest was reporting on new research about multi-tasking. At least I think that’s what was happening—I was sort of e-mailing my brother, filing my nails, and paying bills at the same time.

Stanford University professor Clifford Nass says that so-called "heavy multi-taskers" have trouble tuning out distractions and switching tasks, compared with those who multitask less. Well, I was sort of seeing that in myself recently anyway. Of course, I am hoping that this is a normal change that comes with a-, aa-, aging (that’s getting harder to say), and not a sign of the dreaded ‘Big A’ disease (only whisper it, now—Alzheimer’s.) Nass’ research makes it a little more universal, and a little less scary.

Actually, the research found that people who think they are good at multi-tasking are actually bad at it. I know this is hard to believe, but Dr. Nass says that not only are they not accomplishing what they think they are, but they are also losing cognitive function.

That got my attention for real. I put down the nail file, the checkbook (how 20th century of me anyway), and blew my brother off. Cognitive decline due to multi-tasking? Say it ain’t so, I’m begging you.

The research identified three areas of thinking ability: the ability to filter out the stuff you don’t need, the ability to manage your working memory (the mental filing cabinet) and the ability to switch from one task to another. Results: all three suffered for multi-taskers.

The host brought up the common practice of keeping multiple windows open on the computer, often while we’re texting or checking a BlackBerry. Apparently, we’re not fully doing anything well under those circumstances. The only thing, according to this Stanford study that didn’t detract from performance is listening to instrumental music. But even music that has lyrics leads to impairment in performance and thinking.

His bottom line was that we should all cut way back on multi-tasking, because it not only is ineffective, but it dramatically affects the way the brain operates. Yikes.

Wow. Maybe all this time I’ve been wasting doing several things at once has made a real difference in my life. Maybe I’ve done nothing well. Maybe I’ve been kidding myself. Maybe I coulda been a contendah… If only I’d kept the radio on. And paid attention.

Paula Poundstone and Me

You know, some things that are just fine in the privacy of one’s own home should not be done in public places. I’m usually pretty tuned in to the proprieties of basic good manners and common sense. But in the past few days I’ve succumbed to some social pressure (I’ll explain in a moment) and I’ve been doing it in the customer lounge at my car dealer (just an oil change, thanks for asking), and in the waiting room at my dermatologist’s office. (Just a check-up; thanks for your concern.) What am I doing? I’m reading Paula Poundstone’s very funny book, “There’s Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say”. The pressure?—it’s due back at the library tomorrow. The problem?—I can’t control my laughter.

Now there was a time when I didn’t find Paula Poundstone funny at all. But in the past few years, hearing her on “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me”, ‘the NPR news quiz’, I have developed a full appreciation of her humor. I look forward to her appearances, and she never fails to crack me up. I’ve pretty much learned to time my coffee sips to avoid her input, so as to keep from squirting coffee out my nose. Ouch. Please don’t laugh—it’s happened more than once. Okay, more than twice.

Now I’m reading this book, and I can’t renew it because it’s on hold by another (probably selfish) patron, so I’ve taken it with me to the oil change and the skin screening. I can tell you that several customers of my car dealer moved to the other side of the room when I: 1. couldn’t control my laughter, and 2. I was continually doubled over, clutching my sides. Now, I was able to keep silent, so maybe they thought I was sobbing to myself, but I guess it wasn’t pretty. It rarely is. Anyway, they were sure to establish distance.

In the doctor’s office, there were only a couple of other people, both older-looking men, both dressed casually, and both successfully ignoring me. Or perhaps they feared that I was some psychopath about to burst into a hellish rage, and felt that their best hope for safety was to feign ignorance. Well, feign away, boys, I may be crazy, but I don’t act on it. I’m just laughing with (not at) Paula.

I’m not sure where she gets these thoughts, but I’m pretty sure they’re not normal. But then again, maybe ‘normal’ is just a setting on your dryer. In any case, I’d love to know what makes her tick. She finds a funny way to look at life’s ordinary events, and is able to ask questions we wouldn’t have thought of on our own. With her to guide us, we learn about the Civil War, Helen Keller, Charles Dickens, the Wright Brothers, Joan of Arc and more. Yes, she explores all of these topics (and more!) in her book, and you wouldn’t believe some of the great (and questionable) stuff you’ll learn.

The real lesson, though, is to keep the hilarity at home. It’s much safer there. And then you won’t have to wonder why the dermatologist put you in restraints.