My Friend Jenn

My friend Jenn at her job at the middle school.

Having grown up in the Bay Area of Northern California, and lived there all of my life, in 2005 I packed up two bouncy boy children, a two month-old baby, a pet mouse, two hysterical cats, and the man with whom my life had become inextricably joined, to move to Los Alamos, New Mexico. On the way, the mouse succumbed to the heat of Death Valley and was dead by the time it arrived in Arizona. My life in New Mexico would be mouse-free, which is something that I cannot ultimately regret.

I left behind Earth flags, hipsters and Puerto Rican food to alight in a place where, to my chagrin, everything closed at 8 P.M. and people talked comfortably about Jesus in mixed company. Bidding farewell to the land of peace and justice centers, community gardens and the birthplace of such earthshaking phenomena as Starhawk, Metallica and U.C. Berkeley, I moved into a cozy nest under the wing of the National Laboratory which gave the world nuclear warfare. (Ironically, my maternal grandfather's admonishment against the celebration of the mushroom cloud image graces our local Historical Museum.)

The thing, though, that I ended up missing most was my friendships. In California, I had been lucky enough to be invited to attend a group of people who gathered for periodic meetings known as Almond Roca Senior Socials. The moniker of Almond Rocas came not from the menu but from the general topic, which was the nature of being human, summed up as this: You know how when a cat takes a shit in a litter pan and then covers it up, afterwards with the litter pebbled all over the exterior of the turd, it strongly resembles an Almond Roca? This is how humans are about everything–trying to disguise shit as candy. These conversations were far more interesting than I am making them sound. My point is that I had a community which was intellectually involving, and which also was knit together by the exposure of raw feelings and pained hopes–candy revealed to all of us together as crap, which restored the crap to a kind of value.

At the center of my life there was my friend Amy. She deserves her own essay, so I won't write it here. Suffice it to say, she was my closest friend, present at the births of two of my children, and the only person with whom I have never had sex who would pull her car over to the side of the road in order to try and hold onto cell reception, so that she could talk to me a little longer, because I needed talking to, or listening to. Amy definitely does not live in Los Alamos, New Mexico. She is as much a part of Northern California as manzanita or Coast Redwood. After almost seven years here, my soul is still sick with missing her.

However, after I had lived here two years and went to work at Mountain Elementary School, I met Jenn, who was our school counselor. Jenn is the most refreshingly honest person, besides Amy, that I have ever met. She is honest even when it would be far better not to be. She cares deeply about the people in her life and can be counted on to be an unshakable friend, going further for people than the bounds of friendship dictate or demand, which is what extraordinarily kind people do normally. Because I sensed all this about her, she was the first person in Los Alamos I dared bare any real part of my soul to, and she has proved more than worthy of that trust. For all these things, I treasure her. But even more so, I treasure her Facebook profile.

This status update captures the essence of what I–and I think many others–love about Jenn:

This morning I found a fortune cookie fortune in my purse that says "Investigate the new opportunity that will soon become an option." So, I booked myself on an 8-day cruise with my friends.  

My life is full of task boxes set up up neatly at the start of my day, whereas Jenn seems to be a helium balloon lofting from rooftop to rooftop and alighting long enough to share joy with people. Somehow, despite this, her house is always lovely and mine is always messy. Recently, I had a long conversation with Jenn, who, in her extraordinary way, manages to be a great friend to both my mother and to me–which makes a kind of sense, since my mother is a great friend of mine. On this occasion, though, I had turned to her to help me bring the perspective of the mother of an adult woman to bear on my experience. My mother and I both were muddling through the difficulty of my still being ill and how this might affect both of us. Jenn decided we should all three have dinner and talk. A few days later, when I hadn't heard from her about cementing plans, I texted her to confirm and got this response:

I don't know anything about this. Did I forget? Do you mean to be texting someone else? Did we have a conversation after I took Ambien?

...which made me burst into a fit of giggles. Perhaps this sort of thing happens to everyone and they merely cover it up. Perhaps it only happens to Jenn. Either way, I find it completely charming. After the dinner, when Mom and I were sitting in the living room of my house chatting with my husband, Jenn called and told me she had been stopped by a cop. She was sober, but he had her get out the car and examined her. While she was out in the howling wind by the side of a main drag, a wholesome-looking family rode by on their bikes and clearly saw the now middle school social worker undergoing a field sobriety test. Later, she posted all the details to her Facebook profile.

I just got stopped by a cop. He made me get out and he made me follow his pen with my eyes. It was mortifying! This was after a dinner of tilapia, baked potato, AND ICED TEA!!!! He said I was on the center line going around a curve. I couldn't explain to him that I just needed to use the bathroom! But, he knew from the eye test that I hadn't been drinking so he didn't give me a ticket. But, SHIT! I know people who know me saw the whole thing! It was SO EMBARRASSING! He didn't realize that I am just am oblivious driver! No alcohol!

I didn't have a problem with doing the tests because I knew I hadn't done anything wrong but it made me SO DISCOMBOBULATED that I first pulled out my Visa card and tried to hand it to him! Then I told him that I hadn't been drinking and I was the middle school counselor and I'd just eaten tilapia. I was all over the place. It's amazing he didn't arrest me just for how I was behaving. And, since he didn't know me personally, he had no idea that THIS IS HOW I ALWAYS AM!

Perhaps, if Jenn gets to suddenly and without forethought, book an eight day cruise with friends and I do not, she also is the unfortunate soul who will suffer the indignity of a public inquisition of her virtue. These two things, I believe, are linked.  In the end, I believe that she would deem the field sobriety test a fair price to pay for the spontaneous trip, and I would not, and that—I suppose–explains our lives. I don't want to suffer the indignity that comes with a life of weightless spontaneity and yet that is what I love Jenn for, and I am sometimes extremely jealous of the lightness of spirit she brings to the same potluck where I come with a casserole made of lists and analysis.

Jenn is good people. Really good people. She has a blog where she is journalling her weight loss journey, and, whether or not you relate to or care about weight loss, she is a delight to read. She brings to it all the humanity that makes all of her communications ring out like a sounding bell from the ordinary falsetto drones of small talk. It is about scraping off the outer coating of what looked like candy to find a cat turd. It is about laughing hysterically. It is about loving oneself, everyone else, and the world and still daring to want more for all of them.

Because of Jenn and Kristine and Kimberly and a litany of others like them, I think it is O.K. to live in Los Alamos. Mountains have not supplanted oceans in my heart, but have finally won a place next to them. After all these years, I have planted gardens as if I finally know I am staying here.

Home, in the end, is wherever your friends are.

I just drove 548 miles with an unpaid stand-up comedian, a maharajah, a mustachioed brigand and a Christian-phobe.

I just drove 548 miles with an unpaid stand-up comedian, a teenage maharajah, a mustachioed brigand and a Christian-phobic person who is trying to tour the U.S. by way of leaving his personal belongings in as many different cities as possible.

We all went out of town this Thanksgiving, to be present at the eight months belated memorial of my 101 year old grandfather and to be with my extended family for the holiday. We had to get up early and drive to Tucson on Saturday morning the 19th.

So I spent several days before, busily scurrying around and gathering items to bring with us, fussing loudly and trailing various lists in my wake: Lists of items to go in the cooler in the morning. Lists of things to do at the last minute. Lists of clothes to bring. Lists of general agenda items. Lists of which lists to refer to. That kind of thing.

My husband, Mike, sat on the couch, tired from working all day, and tried to ignore me while I thrust various bulletins at him. Then we got in a fight about how I do all the list-making work, while he just waits and throws everything in a bag and then does all the driving while I sleep fucks everything up.

And so on.

Then, on Friday night, I was so tired from making all of these lists, and choosing which scarves to pack with which socks, that we had to go out to eat. We brought my mom with us, who was going to be doing the unpaid labor of running our insane asylum for ducks house sitting for us for a couple of days, until she left for her Thanksgiving trip to Maryland.

My mom had brought prints of a photo she had taken of our kids and our canine-donkey hybrid dog that she wanted to show us, to the restaurant. Some were in color and others were in sepia tones. Obviously I have never heard anyone actually say "sepia" before, because when she said it, I told her she was saying it wrong.

Yes, that is straw. We are wanna-be farmers. That's just how we roll.

Me: "I think it's "SEH-pee-UH."

Mom: "I'm pretty sure it's "SEE-pee-UH."

Me: "That sounds like a condition. Like something potentially fatal. 'I'm afraid you have SEE-pee-UH, ma'am.' (turning) Mike..."

Mike: "What?"

Me: "Do you say "SEH-pee-UH" or "SEE-pee-UH?"

Mike: (pauses) "No."

So, we ended up sending my eldest Rowan over to my friend Jenn's table to find out how it was really pronounced, and it turned out I was wrong. Meanwhile, Mike kept telling everyone that the correct term was "chromatic".

Rowan somehow ended up with a coloring book of biblical stories to entertain him while we waited for our food. This made me nervous. I don't want to end up being known as the family of heathens whose teenager defaced sacred coloring books at the Hill Diner. Nevertheless, since I obviously am incapable of substituting good judgement for a desire to amuse myself, I found myself suggesting that he tarnish a page full of archangels.

The page had four angels on it and said "Which one of these angels is different?" One of them had no wings, so the answer was gratuitously obvious. I couldn't help thinking it would be more interesting if one of the angels had horns and fangs, for instance. Having said that, I then had to insist that no one actually disfigure any heavenly creatures.

Which is what good parenting is all about.

"Which one of these did Jesus give to people to eat, Mom?" Rowan showed me a page with a puffy loaf of bread, a weird plant that looked like it might be part sea anemone and a broadly smiling fish that looked like a cuddly stuffed animal. Meanwhile, my mother and husband lapsed into discussing theology. This is normal for them.

Mom: "I read about one guy who claimed that he believes in what he calls 'prosperity Christianity' and says the justification for this is that the wise men brought the baby Jesus gold, frankincense and myrrh and that he accepted them."

Me: (disgustedly) "He accepted them???"

Mike: (making wide, adorable eyes and holding open his arms with infant-like excitement) "Gold! Ga ga goo goo! Myrrh! Ba ba boo boo!"

The thought of a Capitalist Baby Jesus caused all of us to laugh uncontrollably and, for no apparent reason, in the middle of a crowded restaurant, for most of an hour. I can hardly wait to have another baby so I can put frankincense and myrrh on my gift registry.

Idiosyncratic behavior also characterized the next day's car trip to Tucson.

He is...the most interesting man in the world.

At the half-way point, in Socorro, Mikalh, who is six, bought a mustache he could stick on his face like a sticker and wore it all day. We forced Rowan to make a phone call about his church service project, which almost lead to a public full-bore family rift when he threatened to walk out of the restaurant before relenting. Devin, my sixth grader, turned out to have lost the biography he was supposed to be reading at the restaurant we ate at.

Rowan's tombstone will probably just say: "What?"

We kept driving.

"Let's tell jokes!", said the newly mustachioed Mikalh. "What is a vampire's favorite food?"

"What?" said everyone.

"BROCCOLI!!" he announced happily.

(silence.)

"I think it'd at least be...red meat," Rowan offered delicately.

"BROCCOLI!" Mikalh insisted, becoming increasingly angry. An argument ensued and was quelled. The jokes continued.

Mikalh: "What is the finger's greatest enemy?"

Everyone: "What?"

Mikalh: "The GALAXY!"

(silence.)

Me: "WHY?"

Mikalh: "BECAUSE he doesn't like it."

And so on.

By the time, we hit Tucson, everyone was weak with hunger and desperate to find a place to eat. The kids were enlisted to do a visual scan for suitable restaurants. The guidelines were that we needed to ID places likely to have lots of vegetables available, and options other than pasta and cheese.

Devin, nervously contemplating the Fast Food Inquisition.

At some point, we drove past a Church's Fried Chicken, and Devin declared his disapproval with a voice full of dread.

Devin: "We can't eat THERE. I went there with the Smythes and it's a CHRISTIAN restaurant."

Me: "What do you MEAN by that?"

Devin: "They close on Sundays. And they asked us if we wanted the Christian chicken."

Me: "How can you even tell if a chicken is Christian?"

Mike: "It's simple. The chicken has accepted Jesus Christ as its lord and savior."

Me: "Or is it like a choice they offer: 'Do you want the Original Recipe, Christian, or Extra Christian Chicken?'"

Devin: "I'm not kidding, Mom."

Rowan: "I see an Italian restaurant!"

Me: "Too much pasta and cheese."

Devin: "What's wrong with pasta and cheese?"

Me: "Mike and I can't eat dairy or flour, still."

Mikalh:  (confidentially) "Milk makes me FART."

We ended up at a Teppanyaki grill, which was really good, and, through pure force of will, I made Rowan order a real Japanese dish instead of the fucking chicken fingers. The chef expertly tossed cooked shrimp into my boys' open mouths, and everyone had great fun. We even had enough vegetables. (Mike and I each have to eat twelve ounces of vegetables at lunch and dinner. Don't ask.)

Devin: "Mom, why didn't the guy toss you any shrimp? He tossed some to the other grown-ups over there."

Me: (sighing) "Because I'm uptight and he can just tell. He can tell, even though I'm wearing double pony tails and a tee shirt that says "Little Miss Sunshine", that it would be a bad idea to throw shrimp at me."

And then I got depressed.

But, after the landlord was done being mad at us for arriving so late, and Mike had come back from racing off  and leaving his Teppanyaki meal getting cold to go and get the key, we were happy because our rental was beautiful. And the week had just begun.

February.

February.

The light is not yet spring yet not merely winter. A golden brightness casts the mountains in shades of promise, slashed with sheets of snow.

Northern New Mexico hangs onto winter forever, like a child who won't let go of an outgrown toy. Snow flurries cancel May picnics and high school graduations are suffered in freezing winds. Children change from tank tops to snow pants to shorts to jackets. Fruit trees bloom and are killed by frost. Winds blow the new growth down, as if challenging only the strong to remain.

But this mid-February day, I can feel spring coming, though I know it lies yet months away in its arrival.

So You Want to Know About Flavored Condoms?: Parenting is a Very Weird Job

Photo Credit: Flickr

Three years or so ago, when my oldest son was in fifth grade, I went to his elementary school to collect him from an afternoon Homework Club. He had finished his work, but needed to look for a misplaced hoodie, so we wandered the quiet halls for some time while he tried to locate it. As we gave up and were returning to the entrance, past classroom doors where dedicated teachers still labored over tomorrow's lesson plans and yesterday's papers to be graded, he asked me, with a curious voice loud and clear as a bell,

"Is it true that there are flavored condoms?"

To this I quickly replied that I would prefer that we discuss the matter after leaving his school, and he assented without embarrassment.

Later, I cajoled my husband into speaking with him about flavored condoms, homosexuality and a number of other topics which required some re-education, after the initial tutelage of classmates with incompatible religious views or odd ideas of human sexuality.

No, sex does not hurt. Or at least, it shouldn't.
No, the purpose of Sex Ed. in the schools is not to instruct humans in how to have sex lest they fail to undertake this activity and cause the sudden extinction of the entire race.
Yes, people do actually do that. No, it's not as gross as it sounds.

Et cetera. Et cetera.

One thing a future parent does not particularly imagine for oneself when fantasizing about their future lifetime with their growing child is their role as a sex educator. If we did imagine this, it would really put a damper on the baby-making, I think. It's kind of a gross thought.

I am lucky in that our religious denomination does offer a course for middle schoolers on the subject, which is oddly called OWL (Our Whole Lives), so at least some of the particulars of in-depth sexual education are taken off my hands.

But, by fifth grade, in my experience, normal boys are curious enough to have Googled 'hot chicks" on the family computer, inquired about flavored prophylactics and garnered a host of bizarre information about sex from their dealings with other sexually inexperienced males of their own age. So, you really can't get out of it.

I have not yet ventured into the world of parenting a potentially sexually active child, since my older ones are still in the process of going through puberty, but there are things that deeply worry me about this.

When I was a teenager, the thing to do was to buy condoms from machines that had been installed in bathrooms at colleges and cafes. This was completely discreet, if somewhat more expensive. Word spread around about where these could be found and kids knew where to get birth control on the fly. This probably prevented any number of children from being born, who would now be twenty year-old nervous wrecks.

I have not checked out the various bathrooms at gas stations in my small town, since I am a married woman of thirty-six with a desire not to even touch a gas station bathroom, but I hope that they have condom machines. Because the alternative is too horrific even to describe.

I live in a town of 12,000 people. We have one grocery store in our town, and it is like the town square. You can't go in there to get a quart of milk or a box of decongestants without running into five people to whom it would be rude not to say hello, and fifteen more that you recognize on sight and know by name. I am never buying anything nefarious since my life has for years been given over to the acquisition of copious produce, lactose-free beverages and children's toothpastes, so there is no need to feel embarrassed, but I would hate to have to purchase any intimate products locally.

The condoms and lubricants at Smith's are situated directly opposite the check-out lines, in plain view of God and everyone. You have to stand next to them in rather an uncomfortable way to get your prescriptions at the pharmacy. This is particularly entertaining when some poor woman is there with her sick toddler, waiting behind a sluggish line five people deep, while attempting to contain her child either in a stroller, or in her arms. Given the arrangement created by the narrow aisle with condoms to the right, cigarettes to the rear and tables of discounted vitamins to the left, it is impossible to place a stroller such that a child who can sit up and reach will not be able to grab hold of whatever catches their fancy. At eye level to a stroller are the lubricants, which are packaged in hues of vibrant electric purple, ravishing red and glossy pink. Without fail, children go for these items.

"Mommy, I want this!," the child will exclaim with delight and anticipation.

The mother, upon realizing the situation, with a look of blushing pink horror, then snatches the libidinous liquid from her child, and tries desperately to interest the toddler in a bottle of vitamins to hold while the long wait continues, all without attracting undue notice. All four other people in line watch with total amusement.

"I don't want this! I want that, Mommy!"

And a tantrum ensues.

I could no more imagine purchasing condoms or lubricant from this place than I could conceive of bumming smokes from a nun. Especially if I was a teenager. The clerks know who everyone is, to whom everyone is related and what health conditions we all have.

Privacy, I think, is something you sacrifice to live in cozy places.

So, I guess time will tell whether I will become the sort of parent who places all my bets on the hope that my boys will be abstinent throughout high school, or the kind who leaves condoms hidden all over the house for them to find, in a desperate hedge against the possibility of becoming an extremely young grandmother.

Parenting is a very weird job.

The Poetry of My Last Twenty-four Hours: Words that Cut to the Bone of Truth

I invite you to re-visit this post from last December as part of A Writer Weaves a Tale's Old-Post Resurrection Hop. Check Sandra out. She's a brilliant writer and her blog a way-station for talent.

Words that cut to the bone of truth, sawing away muscle and fat, leaving bare the skeleton of what it means to be human, in all its starkly bloody glory.

Words that take me to the heart of who I am and what I feel.

Photo by Mark

The Poetry of My Last Twenty-four Hours

5 AM. The pain of my fibromyalgia has woken me up to send ripples of flame that spread down my forearms and lick the web between each finger, bringing me moment by moment further from the sleep my body desperately needs. A deeper, hotter fire pours down the column of my spine and fills my sacrum, making it a vessel of aching cramp. A persistent nausea pulls at my insides. 

In the war between discomfort and exhaustion, discomfort has won. I will get up. I will write.

Photo by Jilly

2 PM. The baby that my arms still remember, who smelled of a fresh sweetness as bafflingly ambrosial as a morning bakery, the boy whose soft possibility touches the core of my longing to want good in the world, that boy is sobbing on my couch, having been physically and mentally wounded in his daily battle with Life. 

His cries feel like jagged glass, like punches to my stomach.

At this moment in time, his soul is a crushed tin can beneath the foot of the world. His body curls inward, protecting himself. He is a fetal image again, a sprouting bean, or something bent-maybe not yet broken. I catch my breath, and beg myself for the capacity to remember that this is just a moment in time that can pass. 

If I let myself live inside that strangled sob, inside that inward-bent body, I may soon be crushed again myself, as I was when I had to pass through Scylla and Charybdis to become a grown woman myself. But I will not let him pass through alone, if he could know someone is with him and that he is loved. 

Something is always torn and bloody when a child is birthed. New tears rend me as they grow and I let myself feel the disquiet of Life as it shapes the men they will become. Sometimes all I have to offer these children is an outstretched hand.

Photo by Jenny Downing

6 PM. My church community has gathered in the darkness of December around an elaborate double spiral of pine boughs in our icy church parking lot, to usher in the winter solstice. 

The planning for this has been halting, filled with confusion, miscommunication, and emotional exhaustion. Leading up to this moment, I have felt more than once like stepping away from the project. 

Community is never what you think it is. It is always unkempt, filled with unintended power struggles and accidental slights; with the tireless wars we launch daily in the practice of attempting to live together.

Chanting begins, led by teenagers with a chant they have learned at a youth con, "Spiraling into the center, the center of the web, we are the weavers, we are the woven ones, we are the dreamers, we are the dream..." The background is punctuated by the sounds of the reverse signal of a backhoe that is moving snow nearby into great useless dunes by the roadside. 

Our community-elders, young children, teenagers, adults are moving into the center of a spiral, holding tiny pine cones to drop into a fire as an act of letting go. Upon reaching the center, they receive a candle and place it where they wish among the boughs on the arm of the spiral leading out. I am directing a child on crutches in an icy parking lot, listening to a persistent beeping, but, more-so, I am enveloped by the intention of the ritual. 

I desperately need to let go. I need to leave the self I thought I was in the light of summer in that fire and walk out with a new self, strong enough to meet the challenges Life has chosen, in its dazzling randomness, for me to face. I will do this, even if I must do it while prodding a crippled child whom, unbeknownst to me, I will later learn has already fallen with his crutches on the ice and suffered a concussion.

Photo by Kristine Coblentz

"Return again. Return again. Return again. Return to the home of your soul. Return to who you are. Return to what you are. Return to where you are. Born and reborn again. Return again..."

The comfort of the truth of these words washes over me. Where sweet encouragement to cheer me would sour in my ears, the beauty of darkness juxtaposed with light, the Truth of Nature and of being human holds me like a child in a mother's arms, comforting me with reality.

Litany. In the greatest darkness. Response: The light is reborn. Out of winter's cold. The light is reborn. From our deepest fears. The light is reborn. When we most despair. The light is reborn.  The light is reborn. The light is reborn. 

To end the ritual is my part. I lead the crowd inside, where seven children, fourth grade to ninth, guide us all competently, confidently, and gorgeously in the act of welcoming in the four directions and putting the ritual to rest. 

They say, finally, these words that I have written for them:

"The wheel of the year spins inward toward dark and quiet, outward toward light and creation. Again and again, it spins, and our lives spin with it, through happy times and sad, new inspirations and times of letting go.

Our lives mirror the beauty of the turning of the wheel.

We hope you will stay with us for cider and social time and that you will take with you the collective light of this community into the dark places you must go this coming year, and use it to germinate your dreams." 

I am bursting with pride in my community. We are raising bold children who know beauty, who can lead, who can think. We have wisdom among our elders in Los Alamos that would be the envy of any convocation of sages. Our families are vibrant, seeking, and strong.

In this moment, it is worth it to be human in a community, to suffer through emails that I don't understand, to bake a dozen cookies while getting ready for work, to attend meetings at the end of exhausting days, to struggle with how to live in beloved community.

I think that it is worth it to love the poetry of dark and light, to love the shadows that play around the edges of our lives, for the depth that they add to living.

If I live with more pain because I take the time to see them, I say I live, too, with more beauty.

Photo by Patrick Kelly

 This song makes me catch my breath and remember.

Notes on photos: The first three photos are creative-commons licensed searchable images that I found on Flickr. The fourth is a photo taken by my incredible, inspiring friend Kristine Coblentz at the Solstice ritual last night. She should also be credited with taking a huge leadership role in creating that ritual and having it be what it is. Her vision inspires me. The fifth photo was taken by me of my son Devin at our church's UU Nativity Pageant last Sunday, when he was a sheepishly smiling Caesar Augustus. The last photo is used with permission by my talented friend Patrick Kelly, whose gorgeous photographs can be found at http://photos.pmkelly.com/. Go look at them.

Somehow I out-geeked myself in Geekland, U.S.A.

I actually am not really a geek. Or, at least, I have never thought of myself as one until pretty recently.

I wasn't a geek in high school.

WELL, freshman year, I was a theater person and something of what is now called a goth, but I gave that up to become a ''rocker" sophomore year. Rockers are not generally accepted as geeks, I think. Or at least, I don't think we were then. At any rate, I definitely wasn't watching Star Wars over and over again and collecting medieval weaponry. I was traipsing through the drainage system of Marin County with bottles of stolen liquor and hanging out at Day on the Green.

Geeks, I would argue, were smart and got good grades. Rockers wore ripped Megadeth t-shirts and smoked Camel straights in the girls' bathroom instead of going to Biology. Rockers ended up at the continuation high school writing poetry about self-hate and making demon-shaped ashtrays in art class.

O.K. I confess. I'm not really sure how this works. "Geek" was not part of the Redwood High School vernacular. You were a Prep, a Rocker, a Rapper, a Mod, a Hippie, a Poser, a Skater, a Jock or a Loser. Or maybe I just don't know. I spent most of my high school career at Redwood hiding out at a couch in the woods by Heatherwood Park. It is possible I may have missed some important information.

Anyway, the upshot is that somehow I have nevertheless managed to distinguish myself during my thirties as being incredibly geeky, in a community where this should not be remotely possible.

For my readers who don't live in Los Alamos, I will simply provide a simple bulleted list of proofs of the implausible level of gaugeable geekiness my current municipality.

• There are more PhDs per capita here than in any other city in the U.S.

• A couple of months ago, my eldest son and I were driving to Smith's when we passed a wizard and two knights having a battle by Ashley Pond. Rowan made me turn back and circle round so he could see it himself, and it wasn't a hallucination. They were really there.

• There is a pond in Los Alamos named after a man called Ashley Pond. So the full name is Ashley Pond Pond. Really.

• March 14 is practically a national holiday here. (Pi Day.) All the local schools make a big deal out of it, and everyone posts "Happy Pi Day!' as their Facebook status. (I keep my head down and try to pretend this isn't happening, since I can't figure out how to relate to it meaningfully, which is the same strategy I use for Ash Wednesday and Superbowl Sunday.)

• There is more than one adult in this town who regularly rides a unicycle to work. One of them also juggles.

• There is a popular brass band composed of adults who walk in parades with hats shaped like birds and other animals.

• There is more than one adult man in this town who, at all times, wears a gas mask. One of them also wears underwear while watering his front lawn.

Photo by Bill Bradford

Anyhow, I have been threatening to show up as truly geeky for a while now, somehow, despite all this. I credit this mainly to the fact that I work at a school, which, believe it or not, is not exactly a haven for Geekhood. Teachers, I have concluded, were not the school geeks growing up. Those were the people who went on to become scientists and computer technicians  Teachers were the officious, motherly girls in your class that kept telling you what to do, who got A's and B's and weren't so good at Math. 

So nobody laughs at my Mental Floss t-shirts, and people wonder why I wear knee socks and double pony tails. But whatever. I'm used to being the subject of quiet scorn.

Why? Well, before I became the teenager who your mother wanted you to stay away from, I was that weird girl who sat in the corner of the elementary school class reading and creating elaborate fantasy worlds while I was supposed to be doing a math sheet. So, yeah, I guess I was once a geek. I have a geekish background. 

I submit:

• I played Dungeons and Dragons with my rocker friends, and I still have an emotional attachment to the elvish character I created during those years.

• At one point, I had memorized all those things the audience is supposed to shout at live re-enactments of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's still hard to hear "The Time Warp" without breaking into song.

• As a child, I read the Greek Myths the way other children read comics.

• These were some of my Halloween costumes: Medusa, a stalk of asparagus, two-headed monster (with friend)...Anyway, I tended to win Most Original.

• I really like Lewis Carroll.

O.K. This is the problem:

You're saying "WHO?" 

Lewis. Fucking. Carroll.  He wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865.  But you never read it. You saw the Disney movie. And last year you saw the Tim Burton version, and you compared that with the Disney version, favorably or unfavorably. You are as interested in this particular item of classic English literature as you are in reading Beowulf, which is not at all. (Confession: I don't want to read Beowulf either. Please don't make me. In college, someone made me read Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock and it almost ruined my life. I'm afraid Beowulf might be really bad, too.)

Anyway, I didn't know all that 'til this Halloween. I read my littlest child, Mikalh, both Alice's Adventures and its sequel Through the Looking Glass this past summer, and, with enormous enthusiasm, he informed me that this Halloween, he would be the Cheshire Cat and I would be Alice. Which sounded really fun to me. Lo and behold, my mother, who loves classic literature, said she would be the Dutchess, and my husband would be the King of Hearts. Then Mike's family, who are the craftiest people alive, got involved, and the project spawned a Mad Hatter, White Rabbit and Queen of Hearts. It was like kismet.

But when, in my increasing glee, I began to tell people about our plans, I got the same kind of reaction you get when you aprise people that you are sending your teenager to Star Fleet Academy for the summer, or maybe, that your family spends Sunday evenings gathered round the television watching the Beverly Hillbillies and eating paste. 

"Ohhhh, I tried to read that once, but it was so WEIRD."

Weird? Right. Monty Python is fine with you. Celebrating Pi Day is fine with you. But Lewis Carroll somehow crosses a line.

HUMPH.

I have nothing further to say to you but this:

He thought he saw an Elephant,

That practised on a fife:

He looked again, and found it was

A letter from his wife.

'At length I realise,' he said,

'The bitterness of Life!'

He thought he saw a Buffalo

Upon the chimney-piece:

He looked again, and found it was

His Sister's Husband's Niece.

'Unless you leave this house,' he said,

'I'll send for the Police!'

He thought he saw a Rattlesnake

That questioned him in Greek:

He looked again, and found it was

The Middle of Next Week.

'The one thing I regret,' he said,

'Is that it cannot speak!'

He thought he saw a Banker's Clerk

Descending from the bus:

He looked again, and found it was

A Hippopotamus.

'If this should stay to dine,' he said,

'There won't be much for us!'

He thought he saw a Kangaroo

That worked a coffee-mill:

He looked again, and found it was

A Vegetable-Pill.

'Were I to swallow this,' he said,

'I should be very ill!'

He thought he saw a Coach-and-Four

That stood beside his bed:

He looked again, and found it was

A Bear without a Head.

'Poor thing,' he said, 'poor silly thing!

It's waiting to be fed!'

He thought he saw an Albatross

That fluttered round the lamp:

He looked again, and found it was

A Penny-Postage Stamp.

'You'd best be getting home,' he said:

'The nights are very damp!'

He thought he saw a Garden-Door

That opened with a key:

He looked again, and found it was

A Double Rule of Three:

'And all its mystery,' he said,

'Is clear as day to me!'

He thought he saw a Argument

That proved he was the Pope:

He looked again, and found it was

A Bar of Mottled Soap.

'A fact so dread,' he faintly said,

'Extinguishes all hope!'

-The Mad Gardener's Song by Lewis Carroll

If you don't think THAT'S funny,  I guess you'll just have to stick with the SCA. Look, don't be insulted. It's just that I figure if you're reading me, you're :

1. a family member (I apologize)
2. a personal friend with possibly normal interests (I really do apologize)
3. a secret member of the SCA, or at least someone who could compete well in a cut-throat bout of Lord of the Rings trivia
4. a Star Wars fan
5. a Trekkie
6. someone who likes Ninjas and watches Myth Busters

In short, you are my people. I am merely asking you to take a broader view of the Lewis Carroll thing. It's hard to feel so alone.

Jeez.