Lion and Magic Boy

Yes, I do believe it’s time for a little levity.

Did you bring some? It was your turn, wasn’t it?

What? Me?

Oh.

[riffling through a stack of papers]

[I could actually keep this in some sort of file (in the computer! that I'm sitting 14 inches away from!), but why do that when a stack of random post-its works just fine?]

Here, then, some some things culled from Google Search. Words people are using to find Lion and Magic Boy.

1. “little boy enema”, “rectal exam”, “boy enema“, and my personal favorite, “enema, ignoring whining and complaining“.

I so do not want to know the person who submitted that last one. Or any of them, really.

2. “lion-faced boy” and “lion slobber“.

They let just about anybody use Google Search, don’t they?

3. “purple eyeshadow”

For that retro 70′s look.

4. “happy happy joy joy for itunes”

For the Ren and Stimpy in all of us.

5. “turkey whole foods”

Does turkey cover ALL the whole foods? “Whole” implies, well, whole. Doesn’t it? So why limit yourself to just turkey?

6. “carried limp boy”

Who ARE these people? Clearly this one must have gotten past the “whining and complaining” stage.

7. “croup waldorf school closed”

Nathaniel and Serena’s dream come true. Except the croup part.

8. “funny kid’s story about teeth”

You can Google this stuff?

9. “phillipine cuisine”

Yeah, this is where I’d look.

10. “numerous comments for complaining neighbors”

What, to arm yourself with in case your neighbors come to your door one night in a lynching mood?

What about you? What brings you here? (Please don’t say “enemas”)

[tags] google search terms, google, enemas, rectal [/tags]

Here I’ve been racking my brain for the past couple of days for something interesting to write about, and I’ve not done well. In fact, it’s been pretty lame.

Why, you ask?

Why, TV, of course. Television. The Vast Wasteland.

“But Karen,” you say, “You don’t watch TV.”

Ordinarily, that would be right. But an unfortunate combination of ABC Family’s “25 Days of Christmas” (who can resist Rankin & Bass? You gotta love that Burgermeister Meisterburger!) and the malaise that seems to go hand-in-hand with tonight’s conjunction of Pluto over the Galactic Center (whatever that is) have reduced my available thought processes to nil.

I could talk about the kittens, how they’re shredding my fine new Ikea draperies, but how they cutely conk out every day at about 3 pm, sleeping until I go to bed so they can pounce on my under-the-covers-toes and chase each other in circles under the bed until I toss them out and close the door.

But no.

Or I could talk about the children, how they came home today practically comatose from 48 sugar-laden hours with their father, apparently about 10 hours of which were actually engaged in sleep. But no. (Wait. Could I just say how, uh, interesting I thought it was that even though The Ex bought Christmas gifts for each of his new girlfriend’s – the upgrade model – three children, he didn’t get any for his own? Not a one? Nothing? Nada? Nil?)

But no.

Nope.

I’m brain dead.

Yesterday was a 6-hour marathon on Bravo of the new-to-me (but I think a rerun from last year) show “Top Chef”. OMG! I love this show! Conflict! Food! Drama! Cooking!

It’s like my life.

I interspersed that with 2 back-to-back showings of “Never Been Kissed”, with Drew Barrymore. Have you seen this? Geek Girl Turns Cool And Realizes Life Isn’t High School.

Oh so clever.

I wish I had seen this years ago, would have saved me a LOT of trouble.

And tonight?

“Scrubs”. Probably also a rerun, as the Super Bowl was mentioned, and didn’t they have that already? (That’s football, right?)

But Oh.So.Wise.

Like when the Regular Zach Braff Guy says to the Sardonic Somewhat-Older Doctor Guy how he was always seeing S.S.O. Doctor Guy as a superdoctor, who was always there to say the right thing, to help him out, to be the Super Guy, when in reality he was just a guy. No super.

Oh. So…..wisdom. From TV.

Which is why I couldn’t think of anything to write.

Brain cells. Gone. Sucked clean.

I wonder what’s on now?

It would seem that I have not yet learned a lesson about consumer-crazed traffic despite my last trip down into the Mall Zone, so today I once again took my life into my hands and went to Trader Joe’s to stock up on bagels and organic free-range chicken stock (I still don’t get why this is funny), Whole Foods for cage-free organic eggs (are those funny too?), and to Petsmart for this attractive addition to our household decor.

While at Petsmart, I decided to taunt myself with the fact that I could look all I wanted at cats yet I could not, under pain of scorn and tears from children denied the pleasure of choosing “their” “own” cat(s), take one home, so I found the adoption area and made the acquaintance of several very cute and wholly adoptable cats. I did the same on Sunday, but like I said before the place was overrun with people clutching wild-eyed kittens,and I never had a chance to really get to know any of the cats, but there was a cute pair named Joey and Chandler there that I really liked. Ross and Rachel? Also very cute, but might have already been adopted. Phoebe? Nah, she just gets left out in the cold. Again. Apparently there never even WAS a Phoebe. If I were Lisa Kudrow? I’d totally be bitter right now.

NOTE TO PETSMART CAT-ADOPTION LADY: I didn’t actually notice that I had those white iPod cords still glued to my ears until after I got back in the car. Was that why you spoke so loudly? (I thought it might scare the cats, but no, they liked you. It was me who scared them, which is probably Not a Good Sign.) And I only found you just-a-little creepy. Go back to your “babies” now. (Do you sleep there too?)

Sometimes I am wholly unprepared to deal with the outside world, you know? I mean, there are situations where you expect things to go a certain way, mainly based on your previous experiences. When putting gas in your car, for instance, you don’t expect it to spurt all over your Manolo Blahniks while the guy across the way casually tosses his cigarette butt in your direction. That might put a damper on your day and would certainly affect your timely arrival to your 9 am meeting. Nor do you, while opening your mailbox, expect a seven-inch-long green male toad bearing a jeweled dagger and the key to the Emerald City to hop out of it.

So when I go into, say, Barnes & Noble, I anticipate my interaction with anyone in there with me to go pretty much according to a certain script. Today at B&N, I make my choices and wait in line for the next available clerk. Check. I am beckoned forward when it is my turn. Check. I am asked whether I am a member and am given the spiel for becoming one, which I politely decline. Check. At this point I am thinking of asking the slightly-harried olderish clerk whether he knows my dad, who up until early last spring worked at that very Barnes & Noble.

He glances at my intended purchases, which consist of the latest issue of Writer’s Digest magazine, the 2007 Writer’s Market, and several Moleskine notebooks.

“So, what are your influences?”

Influences? Oh, the writing? What tipped you off?

I am taken aback. I clearly did not expect to be quizzed by a Barnes & Noble employee. I stutter. I stammer. Finally I fall back on the old standard, cuteness (it totally worked in high school): I beam brightly at him. “Everyone,” I say pertly. I am glad to be off the hook.

A look of disgust crosses his face. I have disappointed, and mightily. “That answer wouldn’t fly in my writing workshops,” he says darkly.

So why are you working at Barnes & Noble if you’re such a writer?

I hastily try to come up with the names of some authors I don’t hate. Influences? Faugh. Just give me names here. I finally come up with two. “Well, I like Amy Tan,” I begin. I am hesitant. What am I going to say here? I’m a blogger?

“And?” His eyes glint. I do not ever want to be in his writing workshop. Ever. He has bad teeth.

“Uh, Theodore Dreiser?” I throw out the only name I can come up with besides Amalah.

“Um. Interesting. NEXT!”

I am dismissed. I failed The Test.

What’s interesting is that as I got in my car, I couldn’t help think that this somehow had been a message: I should think about what my influences are if I’m serious about being a writer.

Who are your influences?

Since it’s almost Thanksgiving, here’s list of things you might* not have found here for which you can be thankful:

1. Any mention of my menstrual cycle (although there’s a post forming in my head about that).

2. Excessive** discussions of poop.

3. Man-bashing. Or wait. Have I been doing that?

4. Uhhh. What?

5. A daily word count of the crappy novel I’m writing this month.

I think I got this idea from M. Kennedy at Fussy. Some days it’s hard to be original.

*I only say “might” because I’m too lazy to do a search. 7 months of archives, and I can’t be bothered?

**It depends, of course, on your definition of “excessive”.

A long time ago, I used to listen to the radio in the car. In fact, I remember having had cars WITHOUT radios, which means either:

a.) I’m much much older than I look, or

b.) I’ve owned some really cheap cars

Although “a” MAY be possible, the correct answer here is “b”. I mean, come ON!

But, at about the time that The Ex came on the scene, suddenly I began to require Silence In The Car. The incessant buzzing sound of the voices of Bob Edwards, Jean Cochran, and Robert Siegal were enough to cause me to swerve suddenly into a concrete abutment, or drift slowly into oncoming traffic, or, worse, MISS MY EXIT THEREFORE CAUSING ME TO HAVE TO TURN AROUND, so I declared the car a Radio Free Zone and drove afterward in blessed silence.

It was a good thing, too, because no radio is loud enough to drown out the sound of the ear-splitting wails of a determined and unhappy infant. Serena had a knack of crying at a certain pitch and volume, for seemingly hours on end while I attempted unsuccessfully to soothe her with repeated renderings of “Edelweiss”, that I was sure would one day crack the windshield.

Recently I rediscovered the car radio, and I am amazed to find that most of the stations seem stuck in 1992, playing the same songs that bored me when played incessantly on the offical Soothing Background Station at the office where I worked. I mean, hasn’t anything new happened in music since Stevie Nicks? And how many times can one hear Celine Dion belt out “My Heart Goes On” before spontaneously combusting?

But the radio is noise, and I amuse myself by constantly punching buttons, seeing which of five random stations I have programmed in (leaving the 6th button empty, sort of a radio roulette) actually:

a.) have a signal, and

b.) are playing something that doesn’t make me throw up, or

c.) are engaged in kicky patter, leaving me with something to mock

Today I was finally rewarded with This List of Things That Happened On This Date:

1. Today is America Recycles Day! Which I am incredibly grateful for, as it reminds me to take out the recycling tonight for tomorrow. It’s piled up for several weeks now.

2. And it’s I Love To Write Day! As if NaBlo and NaNo weren’t enough….

3. The first Wendy’s opened in 1969 on this date. The link is to a handy timeline of events in Wendy’s history. I especially like the entry for January 2002: Dave Thomas Passes. I liked Dave and all, but….”Passes”? You mean “Dies”? Can we not say this word, people? He’s DEAD, okay?

4. In an interesting twist of synchronicity, on the SAME DAY Wendy’s opened its doors and began selling odd square burgers, 250,000 people were busy in Washington, D.C. protesting the war in Vietnam. What does that say about our country, anyway?

5. It’s the birthday of two people who made a tremendous impact on American society:

Georgia O’Keefe, maverick New Mexico artist, and

Judge Wapner, who singlehandedly spawned hours and hours of bad daytime television, was immortalized in the movie Rain Man, and apparently dated Lana Turner. Whew! A busy guy! I’m amused that the link makes special mention of his sexual orientation. How do they really know this?

There. Aren’t you glad you’ve received your quota of Useless Factoids today?

INCIDENT #1: The other day I found myself at Target where I bought, among other things, a table very similar to this one. (Why can’t I find the same one that I bought? [shaking head] Must be from that parallel universe.) I purposely parked RIGHT NEXT to the shopping cart return corral (that word always cracked me up, when applied to shopping carts — round ‘em up!), so that I could offload my stuff into the car and stow Eric there too without having to worry about trundling the darn cart 4 miles back to the cart-place with Eric left wondering what happened to me and there he is, buckled into the car and all alone.

When I got to my car, I noticed that someone had left a cart right next to it, exactly one car-width away from the cart-return. [heavy sigh] I guess they just couldn’t manage to push the cart another whole eight feet more.

INCIDENT #2: Yesterday, it being Eric’s birthday, I naturally had a little shopping to do in preparation for the event. Our first stop was the grocery store, but on the way there he got sleepy and was asleep before we got there. Sensing that it would be his only opportunity for a nap that day, despite the fact that it wasn’t even 9 am, I decided to let him sleep awhile since I know what he’s like by, say, about 6 pm if there’s no nap. And any small boy that determined to sleep that early in the day should be allowed to.

Sleep seemed to be an awfully good idea to me at the time as well, since I’ve been spending my nights writing and refusing all offers of alcoholic beverages, and anytime I get behind the wheel of a car I’m instantly nodding off anyway, so I decided to give in to that urge despite the fact that the parking lot cameras were clearly trained on my car and my car only, ready to record for posterity the amusing sight of my head lolling about, a little drool escaping the corner of my mouth, as I sat upright yet asleep for nearly an hour.

When I awoke I was treated to the sight of an older couple returning to their vehicle with groceries, which they stashed in the trunk of their late-1970′s Cadillac (light blue). Then the wife-person pointedly ignored the cart-return corral about 3 spaces away and painstakingly wedged their cart between two concrete parking stops on the other side of their vehicle. Then they both got in the car simultaneously as if by some invisible cue (their brains are wired together, maybe? Is that what happens after 40 years of marriage? Then yay, chances are that I’ll never find out!), and I immediately thought of my Target experience and wished for karma. Before he could put the car in reverse, the shopping cart began rolling backward, turned slightly, made a three-point turn, and smashed into the Cadillac. Seemingly undeterred by this (I am guessing this happens often) and ignoring the damage to the car, the woman got out, wedged the cart into the space between two different concrete parking stops, and got back in.

INCIDENT #3: The next stop was Ollie’s, a discount store filled with, supposedly, items that were discontinued or something, overstocks, etc. About half the floor space was, ironically, taken up by books, mostly the “For Dummies” collection and religious children’s fare. This was my first visit to this hillbilly magnet, and I must say I was impressed. A whole aisle dedicated to Bible Covers! And the Gourmet Food section! Pringles and Vienna Sausages, yum!

My visit was capped off by the cashier who rang up my sale, a Walking Undead pasty-white-faced woman of indeterminate age who probably hasn’t ingested a vegetable other than the potato for at least 8 years, with dark circles under her eyes that you could plant rows of corn in, and who clearly loved her job and couldn’t wait to get out of bed each and every morning to get there. This was evidenced by her smooth customer-service skills, as she invited customers to her counter by screeching, “Whoever’s Next!”, and avoiding eye contact as if I was Medusa (do follow this link, because the woman looked REMARKABLY like the picture on the link page. Except for the snakes. I’m pretty sure her hair wasn’t snakes). I felt compelled, however, to thank HER when the transaction was complete, as if I was just the luckiest person in the world to be in that place of good feeling and plaid-flanneled clientele. Her response to my reaching out, projecting myself into her world to make contact with another human being? “Uh huh. Whoever’s NEXT!”"

INCIDENT #4: Eric’s had a really good time with his physical therapist lately playing with large workout ball and a hula hoop, so I headed up the road to a likely place to find them. I was faced with Hobson’s Choice: Wal-Mart, or K-Mart? Evil Empire, or Martha Stewart? Hmm. I rather like Martha since she went to jail, so K-Mart it was. In parking, I pulled up opposite a car that still contained a passenger, an older woman who had a rather severe black eye and a large bandage on her temple, sitting morosely and staring into space. I hope the SOB who did it enjoyed his trip to Big K. The car was gone when we got back.

K-Mart only sells hula hoops “in season”, by the way.

I had gotten in line to pay, what looked to be a short line, and then remembered that we probably needed diapers, so we got them and then returned. As I neared the checkout stand, a woman wearing a Muslim headscarf ran with her cart in order to get ahead of me. Unwilling to risk jihad and possibly spoil Eric’s birthday, I decided not to make an issue of it and went to another line, contenting myself with giving the woman evil glares from time to time and wishing for a cash register malfunction.

My line, however, was dismally slow because someone apparently couldn’t understand the terms of a coupon promotion and had to have it explained by six different people, and I stood there, knowing that Headscarf Woman was going to beat me out of K-Mart and therefore ruin my entire day. One of the cashiers did attempt to procure extra assistance and run another register, her arm underhang flapping wildly as she beckoned to the fat guy pushing in a line of shopping carts from the parking lot, but eventually Coupon Woman walked away unhappily and I could pay for my goods.

I kept glancing at Headscarf Woman, who saw my glances and correctly interpreted my meaning, knowing that this was a Race To The Death, but I decided finally to let go of my hostility and just sign the credit card slip. I couldn’t resist looking back, though, as I pushed Eric in his hula hoop-less cart out of the store, and saw that Headscarf Woman was still there, hopelessly enmired in what had to be a cash register malfunction.

INCIDENT #5: At yet another store today, when Serena and Eric and I got into our car again, I looked over to the right and saw a man sitting in his pickup truck, taking a large bite out of a block of orange cheese. We’re talking the 16 oz. size, and it was about half gone. He later took a swig from a gallon jug of water. WTF???

Disclaimer: I’d like it known here and now that I have no intention of mentioning either Britney Spears or her unfortunate husband K-Something-or-Other (whom I wouldn’t recognize if he came up and rubbed his bristly scalp all over me, whom I might add has the SLOWEST and STUPIDEST web site I’ve ever visited, where I couldn’t even wait for the incessant downloading to finish, over and over, in order to find and view and mock a photo of him JUST FOR YOU, INTERNET, and I finally had to resort to Wikipedia to satisfy my morbid curiosity. Only for you, Internet, would I ever do such a thing. You need to know this.) in today’s post.

By the way? I know I said I wouldn’t talk about this, but at the website? No, no, never mind, I said I wouldn’t talk about it. I have no interest. Let the people get on with their lives.

So. You were saying?

Oh. I was saying? Oh. Yes. That.

[Insert masterful segue here]

Lately I’ve noticed a change in my vision. Nope, not a need for, ulp, reading glasses, NOT. YET. ANYWAY., but something else: I think I have Word Juxtaposition Disorder (WJD). The other day, for instance, I was driving past a church with one of those churchly billboards that always seem to be missing a letter or two but attempting to boast a pithy and pious quip designed to make some poor athiestic slob slam on the brakes and suddenly swerve into the parking lot and run inside to breathlessly tell the High Priestess or Preacher Man or whatever they’ve got in those places, “I’ve been meaning to Get Saved one day. Might as well be today. Must’ve been that pithy quote on that thar sign that did it. Thank ewe Jeezus! And prayze the Lawd!”.

The message on this particular billboard read, as I drove past:

Blessed are the Pancakes

I swear! And I was thinking, yes, pancakes, they are a slice of heaven, aren’t they? Let’s bless them! All syruped up, maybe a little butter, and oh, a side of bacon (mmm, bacon…..), yep, pancakes!

And then I noticed, a slight doubletake, that it actually read:

Blessed Are The Peacemakers.

Oh. Pancakes. Peacemakers. Oh so similar, and oh so easy to confuse!

This happens all the time. Usually I just shake my head with a slight rueful grin, oh-so-self-deprecatingly, and move on.

Or…..here’s my alternate explanation. See, we’re all living in parallel universes, but simultaneously! And The Great Oz or someone else with an authority complex (Hey! You got to play god yesterday, it’s my turn!) decides to play little tricks on us once in awhile, and switches the letters around. But really fast, so we don’t see. So those weird phrases really exist, somewhere, or should I say…..[insert ominous music here] some-when.

Ha. I bet that’s it.

It so can’t be my eyes, and I definitely don’t need glasses. No way.

Today I was pulling out of my driveway and I saw one of my neighbors unloading their standard-issue SUV into their garage. The vehicle was stuffed to the gills with Christmas stuff: reams of red-print wrapping paper, colorful bags of every size and shape, and an enormous, green, obviously faux wreath. All this crap caught my eye because of the garish color, but then I got to thinking:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the start of the Maniacal Compulsive Consumer-Driven Holiday Shopping Season sometime in November? I had to check my calendar — yep, still October. Halloween? Not yet. Pumpkins? Still on display. Check.

So I was headed for the fabric store, where I splurged and bought 6 whole yards of unbleached muslin at $0.99 per yard. It was a splurge because I’m unlikely to need more than 2 yards for my project, which is to make Nathaniel a tunic for his Halloween costume. Lucky me, MY children attend a school that REQUIRES a Halloween costume, one that lock-steps with the children’s curriculum for their particular grade. Great idea, you say? But what child in their right mind would want to be, say, an Old Testament character on Halloween night when they go begging from house to house for candy they are not allowed to eat but instead leave out one night for the Sugar Fairy who replaces all that nasty candy with some wholesome wooden toy?

Ding-dong.

Yes?

Trick-or-treat!

Okay! One for the ghost, and one for the clown, and one for the cute wedge of cheese (yells to to mother standing on curb, Did you make that costume, it’s really cute!), and one for the…..uh…..WHO are you?

Shem.

Okay (brightly, a little too brightly), one for the, uh, Shem*. (under breath) Right.

So Nathaniel is studying ancient India (and Greece and Persia, but they don’t count for some reason for this exercise) this year as part of his curriculum, so guess from what country his costume must be?

Serena has Fairy Tales, being in 1st grade, which leaves a lot of margin for error and allows her to be the Unicorn I made last year, or even the Lion I made years ago for Nathaniel, still doing service and hopefully going to last through Eric. Like I said before, I sew once a year.

So after my major fabric purchase, I proceeded to the grocery store, where I noticed an obviously homeless man, identifiable from his resemblance to Reverend Jim from the old TV show “Taxi”, accosting customers. As I silently willed myself invisible (did you not know I had this talent? Of invisibility?), I remembered the other obviously homeless people I “knew” (from sight, of course, as I never wanted to blow their cover) in this area when I lived here before.

One was a tiny wrinkled and disheveled woman who wheeled an empty shopping cart around in one particular grocery store nearly every day that I frequented it. Once in awhile there’d be something in the cart, and I always wondered whether it was just for show and she later put it back on the shelf. Certainly I never spoke to her to find out; she was clearly in her own world, but at least she was warm in winter.

The other was the Library Guy. He always sat, wearing dark glasses, reading alone at a table usually filled with giggling high school students pretending to be doing research on a term paper but instead planning tomorrow’s crank phone calls to their crushes or comparing belly rings or maybe planning their next crack purchases (I just found out that Doylestown, PA is the Crack-Sales Capitol of the Country.  Nice designation, huh?  Great place to have a judge insist I raise my children.). His clothes seemed a bit…..crusty, which was the only tipoff (that and the fact that he was. always. there.) that he might be homeless. I decided that if I was ever homeless, I’d be like him and hang out in a library, hopefully a big enough one where I wouldn’t run out of reading material too quickly. I always wondered what he did after closing time.

So. (masterful segue coming up) What are YOU going to be for Halloween?

*Shem is, of course, one of Noah’s sons, and is thought to have been the father of the Semites. In case you didn’t know. Which I didn’t.

A couple of nights ago, I lay awake in my bed trying to get warm and noticed I had been hearing a strange sound for quite awhile that began to sink deeper and deeper into my consciousness.  It seemed to come from outside.  It also seemed to be some sort of animal.  It sounded a little like mourning doves, but this was nighttime, and what would a pair of doves be doing making all that noise at night?  Oh.  You think they were doing that?

Nah.   Couldn’t have been doves.

But there seemed to be more than one of them, and they were moving, slowly.  Coo, coo.  Sort of.  Weird, though.  Moaning raccoons?  A dying deer?  Oh damn, that f*cking hunter shot me, and it huuuuurts, it huuuuurts……ow.  (Yep, I’m a, uh, bleeding-heart liberal right smack in Blue-State PA, land of hunters and pickup trucks and plaid coats and Rick Santorum .)  An all-night possum party?  What?

It reminded me of what has got to be the very strangest nighttime noise — coyotes.  Living as we did on the edge of the prairie in Colorado, we were treated once in awhile to the raucous drunken stylings of a group of apparently teenaged coyotes as they yipped and brayed through the neighborhood, waking the dogs and terrorizing the cats and spraying graffiti on everyone’s trash cans.  It’s a sound I’ll never forget.

This morning, for some reason, I remembered my love affair with Ray Orrock.

Ray is a columnist for the Oakland Tribune, and was my best friend while growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Ray knew what I liked, knew what I thought was funny. He knew the real me, somehow.

At least, that’s how I saw him.

Ray wrote a column for I think a different Bay Area newspaper at the time, but daily I read about his exploits and the funny little things in his life. Like the time his odometer was about to read 123,456 and he drove around the block a few times just so he could see it turn over. I so would do that, I thought. He knows me.

So I wrote to Ray. This was a letter chock-full of 12-year-old angst, and I poured my heart out to the demi-god who clearly KNEW WHAT I WAS THINKING.

A couple of months later, when I had forgotten all about the letter, I received his reply:

Thank you for your kind letter. Yes, I do eat bagels outside sometimes, how kind of you to ask. And as for your offer to run away with me and live on an island forever, well, I will just tell you that when you’re a little older, you’ll see that you were actually happier going to college and having a life with someone other than a two-bit columnist.

Good luck with the writing thing.

(Okay, he didn’t actually write this.)

But what he did write was just as mortifying. Maybe more. I know I professed my love for him. (This was even before sending an “anonymous” letter to a guy I heard that liked the Rolling Stones and signing it “Ruby Tuesday”. I am so pathetic.) I could see clearly after having heard from him that I had actually been in the throes of a pre-alcoholic depression, DO NOT PRESS “SEND” AT ANY TIME UNDER PAIN OF DEATH, while at the same time filled up way past my limit with the 12-year old angst of a lonely skinny junior-high girl. Who thought this guy Really Knew Me.

So fast-forward maybe 20 years and I’m in the guest room of my friend Paula in San Antonio, perusing the reading choices. “Columns of Ray Orrock”. ARE YOU SERIOUS???! HE’S LIKE THIS DEMI-GOD GUY, OH HE SO KNEW ME WHEN I WAS 12!!

Looked at the book. Read a few columns.

What’s up with this? This guy isn’t funny, he’s totally lame! And he’s OLD! He must be, like, past 70 by now! Why’s he writing about his cat? What’s this about some baseball team? WHERE’S MY DEMI-GOD?

Turns out? This guy? Nothing but a blogger. Before there were bloggers.