Barbara Venkataraman's Blog: A Trip on the Mobius Strip - Posts Tagged "anecdote"

She and I used to be so close, it seemed like we could read each other's thoughts. We knew all the same people, had the same hobbies, and enjoyed the same books--even our politics lined up. But that was before. When I saw her recently, she felt like a stranger. My first thought was, "Oh my God, you look so old!" I didn't say anything, of course, but she knew what I was thinking, it was all over my face. She looked so unhappy, too. I tried to smile and cheer her up, but she wasn't buying it.

Then, I decided to give her a pep talk about the good things in her life that had only come with the passage of time: the long friendships, the deep appreciation for nature, the poignancy of life itself. And how, when she was young, she couldn't understand the connectedness of everything, and how we are here for a higher purpose--to care for each other and lift each other up, to embrace a philosophy of loving kindness and compassion.

I explained that age isn't important at all, it's wisdom, knowledge and experience that matter.

I really thought I was getting through to her, making her see what life was all about, but then she spoke. She looked me right in the eye, those eyes with crow's feet imprinted on them, with an age spot on the left cheek, and said, "If you don't get me some Botox and a laser peel, sister, you'd better just cover all the mirrors in the house."

So I covered all the mirrors.

Deciding which insect I would be is a daunting task, considering there are over 900,000 types of insects in the world, so I have narrowed it down to a few choices. One option is the cicada. Cicadas have been hibernating underground for seventeen years and are about to awaken to swarm by the billions. I would make a great cicada because I love to sleep and I’m very sociable-I would enjoy hanging out with billions of friends-but, then, I decided against it. There’s way too much competition for everything AND, on top of that, cicadas are everyone’s favorite meal.I'd have to spend all my time hiding from squirrels, birds, wasps and people.Besides, if I slept for 17 years, I’d never catch up on my favorite TV shows.

My next choice was an ant. It would be great to be an ant because they can lift 50 times their body weight. That would be like me lifting 7,500 pounds! My friends at the gym would be so impressed (if I actually went to the gym).But if I were an ant, my friends would be ants and they could all lift that much, so what’s the point? Ants are really organized and believe in teamwork, but the life of an ant is just work, work, work, so I think I'll pass.

Bees are great, too--they really enjoy the outdoors and produce honey, one of my favorite things. But they're having a hard time lately with so many dying from "Colony Collapse Disorder,” so I will have to pass again.

Being a butterfly is appealing because they get to live two lives, one as a caterpillar crawling around and then as a beautiful butterfly,but when I learned some butterflies only live a week, I knew it was time to rethink my decision.

When I read that termites have a soldier caste, I thought I’d found my favorite insect, but then I learned that they are usually blind and like to commit suicide, so that was definitely out.

Then I found my favorite insect, the cockroach: it’s nocturnal, like I am; it can live anywhere, but prefers warm temperatures, like I do; it loves sugar, definitely me; and it's really hardy and who doesn’t want to be hardy? I could be the insect everyone loves to hate. Although cockroaches and people have been locked in battle forever, we cockroaches know we're winning!

It all started with a loud sneeze. One minute I was chatting on the phone, and the next I was down on all fours, chanting “ow ow ow OW!” I had never thrown my back out before and I wondered if I would ever get off the floor. From this new perspective, I realized that I could now “keep my ear to the ground” and my “nose to the grindstone” with no effort at all. Eventually, the spasm subsided and I crawled to the bathtub to take a hot bath.

A few days later, a physical therapist recommended back exercises for me. Her favorite was “wall-sitting.” Wall-sitting is simply standing with your back to the wall and then bending your knees until you resemble a human chair. Then you stay that way as long as you can. She also recommended a half hour of Pilates. I vowed to wake up early every day to fit all of that in.


The next week I went to the dentist for a check-up. He told me that, at my age, I should brush twice daily, floss, use a Water Pik (like a pressure cleaner for your teeth) at night and then stimulate my gums with a rubber-tip between each tooth, front and back. I vowed to stay awake a half hour later every night so I could fit all of that in.


The next week I went for my annual check-up. My doctor told me that, at my age, I should be doing 30 minutes of aerobic exercise three times a week and also working out with weights to keep up my bone density. He added that if I wanted to remain flexible, I should start doing Yoga. I decided to give up my lunch hour and also wake up an hour earlier on the weekends so I could fit all of that in.


The next week, I went to the dermatologist for a check-up. She told me that, at my age, I should stay out of the sun at all costs and slather myself with sunscreen any time I saw the light of day. So, I bought a case of sunscreen and vowed to spend an extra fifteen minutes getting ready every morning so I could fit that in as well.


After a month of my new routine, I was so sleep-deprived that I started combining things so I could stay in bed longer. I became the “Queen of Efficiency.” I flossed my teeth while I practiced being a human chair; I rubbed sunscreen on while I jogged in place and I stimulated my gums with a rubber pick while holding a Yoga pose of a tree. Instead of lifting weights, I juggled the cans of beans as I was making dinner and carried the dog out of the kitchen. Finally, after I started doing deep knee bends while I brushed my teeth, I found I didn’t have to wake up early anymore. This getting older stuff is totally manageable; I don’t know why everyone complains about it. Excuse me, I feel a sneeze coming on…

My mom used to say I had "candy radar." She was right, of course, I do, but I can't take credit for it. I was born this way, it's my unique superpower. No other superhero can claim it--and I'm not sure they'd want to. No matter where I am, no matter what else is going on, I can always sense the presence of candy. I'm not kidding. Even if I was in a burning building, and a fireman threw me over his shoulder to carry me to safety, I'd be wailing: "Who's going back for the jar of jelly beans?"

It's not like I go looking for candy, you know. Well okay, I do, but most of the time it just appears in my line of vision, with no effort on my part. But, before you recommend a twelve step program for my sugar addiction, you need to hang on a sec. I said I had candy radar--I never said I ate all the candy I came across. Think of me more as a divining rod, a candy psychic as it were. I'm a Tootsie Pop cop, a Baby Ruth sleuth and a gumdrop gumshoe all rolled into one, ha ha.

That doesn't mean I don't eat candy. Au contraire! There's nothing like the burn of an Atomic Fireball rolling around your mouth, or the mouth-puckering sourness of a Lemonhead on the tip of your tongue. And nothing compares to the perfect piece of dark chocolate, melting like butter in your mouth and sending happy thoughts to your brain. Of course, I have gone overboard once or twice. I'm not proud of this, but I once ate a half pound of Jelly Bellies while working at the register in my college book store (you can't really call it an "impulse buy" if you've been eyeing it for three hours). But those days are over. My teeth and my waistline now insist on moderation.

Also, I need to set a good example for my kids. My oldest son doesn't care much for candy, but the younger one is another story. If I buy a pack a Sweet Tarts and stash it in my glove compartment, Josh will find it (and eat some). But it wasn't until the day that I took him to my office and he went straight for the dark office in the corner, opened the desk drawer and found a large bag of candy that had been placed there only hours before, that I knew. He had candy radar, too.

Perhaps one day the world will need people like us for some higher purpose. After all, they can train pigs to sniff out truffles and they're even training dogs to sniff out cancer. Surely, they can use people who sniff out candy. I only hope they use our superpower for good and not evil!

Even if you are the most well-adjusted person alive today, somewhere buried deep in your psyche lives an annoying little kid who looks a lot like you and has an irrational fear of….something. Who knows how it started? Maybe you read a scary story once, or maybe you were hurt or almost hurt doing something, but now it is forever imprinted in your brain…to be afraid.

My own fear of lightning (Keraunophobia) is just one of my mother’s many fears, handed down at a susceptible point in my childhood. I know for a fact that my mother was never struck by lightning, nor did she know anyone who even came close, but the minute she heard thunder, she tore out of the house, stopped our game of “kick the can” (even if we were winning!) and herded us into the house so fast we didn’t know how we got there.
And she was “the lightning police” for the entire neighborhood. One day, the kids across the street were swimming in their above-ground pool while their parents weren’t home (!) and it started thundering. With nary a thought for her own safety, my mother dashed over there and made them get out of the pool NOW. While she did not enjoy other people’s misfortune, quite the contrary in fact, she still felt compelled to tell you whenever some unfortunate soul, often on a golf course or a baseball field, had been struck dead by lightning, usually out of the clear blue sky.

Living in Florida, the lightning capital of the country, helps to keep my fear alive and well and I’m quite sure I’ll never shake that one off. I am also afraid of bears but it’s only a problem when we visit a National Park where they happen to live, so that fear doesn’t limit me so much. But, as I grow older, I am developing some new fears including: Catoptrophobia (fear of mirrors), Barophobia (fear of gravity) and Geniophobia (a fear of chins).

My friend’s mother was afraid of riding in elevators, (a combination of acrophobia and claustrophobia) which was quite a manageable fear, and my younger son was afraid of clowns (Coulrophobia) for quite a while after seeing the movie “It.” As long as he never joins the circus, he should be alright. My older son suffered from Lachanophobia (a fear of vegetables), but he is slowly outgrowing it.

I know many people who suffer from Ergophobia (a fear of work), Phronemophobia (a fear of thinking) and Gnosiophobia (a fear of knowledge), but they don’t find it debilitating in the least. Thankfully, I don’t know anyone who suffers from Ablutophobia (fear of washing or bathing) and I personally could never associate with people who had Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia (a fear of long words, of course).

Luckily, people with Paraskavedekatriaphobia (fear of Friday the 13th) only have to freak out three times a year, at most, and sometimes only once a year, but the ones I feel most sorry for are those who suffer from Panophobia (fear of everything) and Phobophobia (fear of fear). Is that what FDR meant when he said: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”?

Even if your particular fear doesn’t have an official name, don’t feel bad, I’m sure there is someone who feels the same way you do. You could probably even find a support group online, unless of course you suffer from Cyberphobia (a fear of computers) or Anthropophobia (a fear of meeting new people). Then maybe you should just go lie down until you feel better, but don’t look under the bed, just in case.

By no stretch of the imagination could you call me a perfectionist. I'm more like an "imperfectionist" in that I'd rather do several projects that are "good enough" than spend hours getting one thing just right. It's a system that works for me. But last night was an exception…

Every so often, the stars line up and I have a clean house, a well-manicured lawn and a well-stocked fridge all at the same time. It's a Martha Stewart moment for me and I relish it, walking around my house as it radiates with Feng Shui. I was in this Zen-like state last night when a disturbing thought shook me out of my reverie. We had nothing to eat. Oh sure, there were lots of ingredients, but nothing you could call a meal. As much as I hated to mess up my clean kitchen, I knew there was no way out of it, I had to cook--especially since our boys were home from college, they were always hungry.

Since I'd have to clean the kitchen anyway, I decided to make several dishes at once: a vegetable curry for dinner, mini corn muffins for breakfast, and a spinach quiche for whenever. I mixed the muffin ingredients together and spooned the batter into four muffin pans. While I waited for the oven to heat up, I defrosted the frozen spinach in the microwave and started chopping vegetables for the curry.

I have to clear something up at this point. Although my last name is "Venkataraman," you shouldn't assume that I'm Indian. The name came with the guy. And, while I have visited India, I didn't go there to take cooking lessons. Nevertheless, I do enjoy a good curry and can usually follow a recipe.

After I cleaned and chopped my vegetables and shoved all the peels, stems, etc. into the garbage disposal, I lined up my beautiful rainbow of onions, peppers, eggplant, cauliflower and potatoes. Just then, the oven beeped its readiness and I crammed all four muffin pans in at once. The muffins wouldn't take long and soon started to smell delicious. Our two dogs, Abby and Phoebe, were already camped out by the kitchen door, hoping for a sample. They were dreaming if they thought I was going to give them any.

As I heated the oil in the pan for my curry, I poured myself a glass of Merlot--I was sure Martha would've done the same. Then, following my recipe, I poured a tablespoon of mustard seeds into the hot oil and waited for them to pop. I didn't have to wait long before they started popping like popcorn and then hurtling themselves all over the kitchen! I felt hot oil pinging me everywhere at once. I tried to shove the pan to a back burner to make it stop (splashing hot oil in the process), but it was no use. The mini-grenades kept coming at me while I yelled, "Ow! Stop!" as if they cared. Just then, the timer went off for the muffins. Reluctantly, I put down the towel I'd been using to shield my face and sure enough, as I pulled out the first tray of muffins, a hot mustard seed flew into my eye--all the way from the back burner! The sudden shock made me drop the muffins which scattered all over the floor. That was all the invitation Abby and Phoebe needed. They raced into the kitchen like they were in the home stretch of the Kentucky Derby and started slurping up the hot muffins while covering the floor in dog slobber.

I was so busy yelling at the dogs that I didn't see the fire raging on the stove where I had spilled the oil. In a panic, I looked for the fire extinguisher. Was it under the sink or in the garage? The hot mustard seeds were still coming at me as I ducked under the sink. Grabbing the extinguisher, I pulled the pin and swung around, knocking over my glass of merlot and splashing it all over my shirt. After the fire was contained, I took the rest of the muffins out of the oven. They were so burnt, even the dogs wouldn't eat them.

I took a deep breath. What would Martha do? She would try to salvage her shirt, I thought. I turned on the water in the sink to wet the sponge and water started to fill the sink. I flipped on the garbage disposal but, instead of the water draining out, food started shooting up! Apparently, I had overloaded the disposal. I turned off the disposal and walked over to the fridge. I knew there was a bottle of club soda in there somewhere. As I reached inside, I knocked it over. Not thinking, I opened the bottle and club soda sprayed everywhere, like a scene from The Three Stooges. Soaking wet, I sat down on the kitchen floor and started laughing. I heard the front door open and my oldest son came into the kitchen to ask, "What's for dinner, Mom?"

I shook my head as club soda dripped down my face. "We're ordering pizza."
I was sure that's what Martha would have done.

Like the comedian Steven Wright, when I die, I'm leaving my body to science fiction. I feel it's the least I can do after all science fiction has done for me. While I couldn't get enough Harry Potter, I also enjoyed classical science fiction and fantasy: Asimov, Clarke, Tolkien, Herbert, Dick and so many others as a child. It's not that I have anything against reality; I just like to visit alternate worlds in my free time. Only now, as an adult, have I realized the lessons I learned along the way: be loyal to your friends; never lose sight of your goals (no matter how rough it gets); accept cultural diversity; be open to possibilities; and don't assume that if someone spits in your hand, it's an insult. That may be a respectful greeting on a desert planet.

As a native Floridian, I have yet to encounter any desert-dwellers from this or any other planet, but I know I'll be ready. Being in a culturally diverse family myself, I enjoy the cultural mix of my hometown and am at ease speaking with anyone. The ultimate test to my people skills came when I went to India to visit my husband's relatives, many of whom I'd never met before. It was the strangest place I'd ever been and I credit my science fiction background for my quick assimilation. From the food, to the languages, to the throngs of strangely-garbed people, to the monkeys and elephants in the road, India opened my eyes like no National Geographic special ever could. But I found that, whether you are on the planet Dune, in the Shire, or in India, people everywhere want the same things: respect, security, and the ability to provide for their families. And most are quite welcoming to strangers.

There also came a time when I wished I lived some place with low gravity. The day I threw out my back bending over and couldn't get off the floor, I would've paid anything to be weightless and pain-free.

Recently, I found myself in another reality when I volunteered at a low-income elementary school just a few miles away. Whereas my children had a life of comfort and ease, never missing a meal or a dental appointment, these kids lacked the basics: decent clothing, adequate food, and health care. They wanted the same things every kid does, but somehow found themselves living in this alternate reality. I vowed to do what I could to help.

And so, as much as I'd enjoy it, I'm afraid traveling to another dimension will have to wait, because there are people who need me right here.

It started with an ad for Depends that was popping up everywhere and following me all over the internet. Personally, I rarely notice advertising, whether it dances on the edge of my news articles, or wedges itself boldly between the paragraphs, or even when it hijacks the entire page and forces me to click on the 'x' to close it, but this one caught my eye. I couldn't decide if I was annoyed or amused, but I was definitely curious.

What kind of demented algorithm had determined I was a candidate for Depends?

While I was pondering that question, ads for single men in their 50's started popping up. Yes, I am in my fifties (which isn't hard to figure out, since my state sells my voting information and my birthdate is right out there in plain sight), but I'm happily married and have never given anyone cause to suspect otherwise. It made me wonder if my husband was being bombarded with ads for single women in their fifties or worse yet, given society's double standards, single women in their thirties. But when the ads for 'plus-size flirty dresses' came along, I got mad. Look, I could stand to lose ten or twelve pounds but, seriously, this was too much.

Still, I knew it wasn't personal--how could it be? After I'd researched boarding schools for a story I was writing, I was bombarded with ads asking, "Do you have a troubled teen?", and offering suggestions for where to send my problem child. And when I visited the website of a pool builder, let's call it 'Joe's Pools', ads began to pop up so frequently that I finally called them and begged them to stop hounding me. The owner was quite apologetic and explained that he had paid someone a lot of money to 'get his name out there', but that it wasn't his intention to "haunt people's dreams" as I’d put it.

I know that everyone has overhead and that advertising pays the bills, but let's get one thing straight; my biggest purchases involve buying books and dining out. In other words, valuable advertising dollars are being wasted on the likes of me. I remember reading George Orwell's "1984" in middle school and cringing at the idea of advertising so ubiquitous that there was no escaping it—even pillowcases flashed toothpaste ads. Well, I'm ready for that pillowcase now. And once I post this essay online, I'm sure ads will pop up for pillowcases--as well as linens, comforters and mattresses, in every size, color, and price range imaginable. I can hardly wait.

Since I can’t do anything to stop the deluge, I will do my best to ignore it. I am still optimistic that one day an ad will pop up for a product or service I actually need; I don’t want to be a freeloader, getting my news for free and not buying a damn thing. When that happens, I promise you I will order whatever it is immediately and without hesitation. But honestly, I hope it's not Depends…