“Jesus Christ is a name, not a swear word.”

This fat-stacked headline was red-lettered boldly on the back of the semi that I cannot help but assume was trying to introduce me to the aforementioned Christ Himself in person, by way of steamrolling my puny convertible to smithereens as I was being forced onto the California Freeway last week.

Perhaps the publicly reproachful driver felt, as he muttered words of encouragement to himself, foiled in his efforts to separate my soul from my body, that perhaps I was a pro-choice supporter, and he could feel sure that another in The Crusade might tag me later – and I’d plummet downward, instead.

“Jesus! That was close!” I said to my beautiful assistant, Lacey, my passenger.

Although the driver could not hear – he was, by then, far ahead of me, blowing the doors off California’s law against truckers driving faster than 55 mph – it DID give me some satisfaction to say it.

The trucker DOES make a point, however, that I’ll wager he himself is too ignorant to know he’s making.

Words – particularly names – have enormous power.

Take my own. You might as well. There are an awful lot of Elizabeths out there.

So many, in fact, Elizabeth Stone wrote a Lives column in the New York Times Magazine about an online gathering of Elizabeths in May, 1999 – an article which obviously caught my eye – and I, obviously not being shy, wrote the New York Times to tell them, and they, obviously tickled by my response, even published it.*

[READ THE LETTER AT THE END OF THIS POST.]

(So: on my tombstone, or in my obituary, someone PLEASE mention that I was at least ONE time published in The Grey Lady?** Thank you. Much obliged.)

To carry on:

Unlike the many Liz, Lizzie, Bess, Libby, Bitsy, Bette, Betsy (the Elizabeth who birthed me is one), Belle, Beth, Bettina, Eliza, Lisa, Liza, Tibby, and the list goes on ad infinitum, I myself prefer: “Elizabeth,” the anglicized form of the original Hebrew name “Elisheva,” meaning “my G-d is an oath.”

What “my G-d is an oath” means, though, I’m not sure.

People, when I introduce myself, nearly always try to be kind of smooth, and say: “So… do you go by ‘Elizabeth,’ or…” Then they trail off, sort of expecting me to fill in one of the above nicknames.

(Sometimes, though, they just insert the horrid “Liz.” Which is not horrid, of course, on some people. Just horrid on ME.)

Which means I have to jump in quickly with: “Yes, ‘Elizabeth.’ It’s a few more syllables, but I’m worth it.”

(Actually? My good friends, and even my oldest daughter, call me “Tish,” a nickname I got dubbed with by someone whom I love with all my heart – but that’s another story.)

I’d often heard rumors that medics, in efforts to revive someone, will call their name, but I’d dismissed it until I’d reluctantly found myself headed to the Emergency Room with yet ANOTHER concussion (I’ve been told that if I were a pro athlete, I’d be forced into retirement.)

Promptly, and to the extreme embarrassment of everyone – except, of course, me – I dropped like a stone, right at the nurses’ check-in station, galvanizing everyone into action.

Although I recall little of the actual dive downward, I DO remember two things:

A sharp pain in my chest where a cruel nurse helpfully twisted my skin sharply to revive me – which, although it certainly focused my attention, even THAT didn’t pull me out of the fog I was in – until I heard the nurse ask one of my kids: “What’s her name?”

Naturally, in standard kid-fashion, I heard the kids go: “What?”

As if the nurse has asked instead:

“What is the cosine derivative of x minus the square root of pi?”

“Her NAME,” the nurse asked again. “What is her NAME?”

“Oh,” they said. “Elizabeth.”

In their defense, I think they had to stop for a moment and remember my name isn’t actually MOM.

When the nurse started barking “Elizabeth! Elizabeth!” in that demanding sort of way, it really DID pull me back. Sort of the same way your own grownups do when you’re a kid and you get the call from your bed: “Get up! The bus will be here any minute.”

Calling my name brought me back from Neverland in the oddest sort of way that confirmed the rumor: it turned out to be a sort of Dr. Jekyll experiment on my own self that left me with a “Dang! It’s TRUE!” feeling, wondering what ELSE I’d heard that might ALSO be true.

Jesus Christ! There’s a whole world of weirdness out there to discover!

Hopefully, though, I won’t have to get concussed or run over to find them all out.

# # #

* Where Everybody Knew My Name

Published: Sunday, May 30, 1999

Elizabeth Stone’s Lives column (May 9) on the on-line gathering of Elizabeths reflected perfectly the trend for small groups to coalesce on the Internet based on hobbies, interests or random commonalities like names. The Internet, vast as it is, seems to spark a small-town quilting-bee longing in many users.

Of course, there was another reason Stone’s column caught my attention. I’m also an Elizabeth. Maybe I’ll send her an E-mail.

Elizabeth Bushey
Middletown, N.Y.

** “The Grey Lady” is the nickname journalists have for the prestigious, much-revered New York Times.

Welcome to California.

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco

If all your contact with the outside world is mass media, or, say, you’re an alien from space, seeking information about earth, and your research dart on the globe hit the USA, and you began, sensibly enough, with mass media –you would surely presume the only places IN America were…

New York, and California.

Because EVERYTHING on television, in movies, etc., is located in: you guessed it. NY or CA.

Naturally, when the opportunity flung itself like a blob of goo to head west with my two daughters to the flipside of mainland America, I figured: hmm? Why not see life as the extraterrestrials – I mean, Californians – do?

I kid, I KID.

Actually, this time I DO kid, because if you happen to be reading this…

WAIT.

Don’t you just HATE when writers write: “If you happen to be reading this?”

Talk about “author intrusion,”* which, of course, I’m doing now in a MAJOR way, but for some reason, I am egomaniacal enough – or feel strongly enough about this point – to have the nerve to think I can get away with it.

Duh. Of COURSE you happen to be reading this; if you WEREN’T reading this, you wouldn’t be READING this: the author’s SENTENCE that says, so very stupidly, “if you happen to be reading this.”

Why THANK you, Captain OBVIOUS.

(How do you spell “AAUGHHH?”)

I can’t STAND it when people don’t give other people the credit for the most BASIC intelligence. Or when they refuse to exhibit the most basic intelligence of their own, and simply swallow and regurgitate clichés.

Sorry. That’s just not thinking “out of the box.”

(That’s a joke. I am SO hoping you all got that….)

::-::-::

Anyway, tirade over, now that I’ve “intruded,” my job as a writer now is to suck you so hard back into the work that you forget about me again. So: forget me, move on without me, save yourselves….

To get back to Californians: if you’ve been wondering where all the nice people in the world have gone; if you’ve lost your faith in humanity, you’ve been betrayed, you can’t seem to find a kind soul in a cold-hearted world, no matter where you look…

<can you hear the swelling orchestral strings…?>

Get your ass to northern California.

Someone, I don’t know who – Invader Zim?

…has scooped them all up in a giant net and deposited them HERE.

Of course, the New Yorker in me wants to warn you: I’ve only been here a few weeks, so they COULD be putting on an devastatingly good show (California, Hollywood, Oscar…), and I SHOULD keep checking my back for knives…

But honestly, if these folks aren’t genuinely nice, then I’ve landed where Ira Levin got his idea for The Stepford Wives, because everybody – and I do mean everybody – walks around with a light step, a friendly smile, and an open outlook.

This is either the Cosmic Galactic Nexus of Benevolence, or these folks are gobsmackingly realistic test robots for Disneyland’s newest animatronic attraction.

They’re cheerful and concerned for others in a state with a bigger unemployment problem and more housing foreclosures than New York.

And, unlike New York – and particularly unlike, say…oooh, I dunno, GEORGIA, they are warm and inviting to strangers. Even strangers who come from scary and disreputable places like New York. No one here has prejudged us at all.

Oscar Wilde

(At least not to our faces, where it counts. As far as I’m concerned, I’m with Oscar Wilde. Let people say whatever they want behind my back; I’ll worry when they STOP talking.)

These folks are even charming and positive in an area located less than – well, my guess would be, less then twelve inches from the Sun.

I can’t seem to figure it out. We aren’t any closer to the equator (although maybe we’re WAYYYY higher. As in, we’re astronauts. Californunauts.)

When they say “sunny California,” they aren’t just whistling Dixie.

(Side note: having made a side trip on the way to visit family in Rocky Plains, Georgia, I know what I’m talking about when I say “Dixie,” too.)

The sun is so strong here I carry a bottle of water around with me nearly everywhere I go, wishing I could haul a tank around, like someone on oxygen. I never realized what a deliciously humid state New York actually was.

Someone PLEASE let me know what moisturizing cream I need. I’m going to look about 45 years old in about 45 minutes. In another 45, I’ll look 90. As it is, the jar that used to last me six months is half gone.

In fact, Californians are SO friendly, that in a recent trip to a music store (I was rescuing a guitar I’d discovered that had been criminally abused) I got to joking with the owner, who began to tease me – and then somehow, things got a little weird.

Now, if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ve probably caught on: I’m not someone you want to DARE.

Play chicken with me? You’re pretty much guaranteed two totaled cars.

So when I jokingly said: “Well, then, I’ll just have to get one big, fat, sloppy kiss,” never in a million years thinking he would take me up on it – for no one in their right mind in New York would take that phrase as ANYTHING but, er, symbolic, when the music store owner said something along the lines of me not having the nerve…

… Well, what could I do? Apparently, he was calling my bluff – or thought I was bluffing. I had my entire state’s reputation to defend.

It was only later, perusing my copy of The Secret, Closely-Guarded Girl Manual, that I remembered that those of us with a little too much tomboy in them have to be wary of dares and the like, and that boys will steal kisses when they can, particularly from impulsive redheads.

So I called his bluff back, and dashed over boldly right behind his workspace, again, never dreaming his own oncoming car would not swerve.

Yet swerve he did NOT, and put his arms around me, and kissed me like Bogart kissed Bergman in Casablanca.

Yipes.

Careful to keep my New York cool, I then shook his hand and said:

“How do you do? I’m Elizabeth. And your name is?”

“Larry,” he said. “Welcome to California.”

::-::-::-::-::-::

Author Intrusion (also sometimes called, literarily, “authorial intrusion” – I don’t know why they like the extra two syllables, but professors sometimes do…) is explained nicely here, at about.com:

Have you ever read a book where the author suddenly jolted you out of the storyline with a comment that just doesn’t flow with the rest of the work? That’s an authorial intrusion. Sometimes it works, but only when it’s done by a master storyteller/writer.

Authorial intrusions are of substantial length (not just a brief aside in a novel) and they are addressed to you (the reader).

I’m visiting my family in the deepest heart of rural northern Georgia, a place where the wildest action happening is watching the kudzu overtake the pines lining Route 20 to Atlanta – that is, on the extremely rare occasions we load up my sister’s seven children, ranging in age from 18 months to 18 years in the giant grey commercial vehicle her family uses for transport.

There are no chain stores here. No 7-11s, no Outback Steakhouses, no Galleria Malls. The biggest cluster of stores is located at a lonely intersection of country roads only locals travel, consisting of The Rocky Plains Community Store, Nancy’s Cuttin’ Up Salon, The Baptist Church, and while there are two new gas pumps, you can still set yourself up with dyed diesel and dyed kerosene from old-fashioned pumps that look like something out of the 1950s.

No one has yet to be able to explain to me what, exactly, dyed diesel or dyed kerosene is used for, nor why it is dyed, but they are politely apologetic as they forlornly explain to me that they do not know, as if they are announcing the funeral of a long-lost friend, and they ALWAYS call me ma’am when they do so.

This throws me, living as long as I have in New York. I still think of myself as a “miss.”

Nevertheless, as strange as dyed diesel, dyed kerosene, and sheets of relentless zudzu plants as intent on overtaking the entire state as horror movie triffids might seem? Michigan has Georgia beat, hands down.

Here’s the latest news from the Wolverine State – and some insight, perhaps, as to why Michigan acquired that toothy nickname:

According to Associated Press reports, in Muskegon, this week, a man was sentenced to 45 days in jail for biting his girlfriend’s five-year-old son in the face.

In the FACE.

Why did he do it?

Because the little boy bit him first, of course.

Duh – gotcha back.

The boy’s mother defended the boyfriend, explaining that the man was merely trying to discipline the boy – after all, said boyfriend was trying to get the kid to brush his teeth when the kid bit the man in the face.

Perhaps the man was trying to demonstrate the value and strength of a good, healthy set of chompers. Why, I wonder, were their mouths and faces so close together in the first place? Were they sharing toothbrushes?

Interestingly, the mother didn’t turn the guy in – school officials, noticing the bite marks on the child’s face, alerted Child Protective Services.

I don’t know about any of you, but I can NOT think of an excusable reason for ANYONE to bite my kids. Were anyone to attempt such a foolhardy thing, I can honestly say they would begin to know the true meaning of wolverine.

In Mount Clemens, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, a 33-year-old mother was sentenced to six to 20 years in prison. Her crime? She settled her 10-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son down for some soothing hot chocolate – laced with sedatives – then set fire to the house and expected them all to sit quietly with her and, well… die.

The judge basically decided she’d forfeited her status as “mommy” from now on.

Luckily, the kids shook off the wooziness and escaped the house in time.  Mom had taken the kids out of school early, too.

Big disappointment, huh? Usually when mom takes you out of school early, it’s a good thing.

Writing straight-like-that they are “scarred for life,” the kids have my sympathy – but so does the mom, to tell you the truth.

Apparently, she suffers from a mental illness which affects six million Americans – 5,999,999 of whom did NOT attempt to kill ANYONE today, FYI, although thank YOU, “fair and balanced” Fox News, for making darn SURE that’s the first “fair and balanced” item you mention in your “fair and balanced” report on this “fair and balanced” news day.

Way-to-go, perpetuating that old-fashioned “fair and balanced” stigma against mental illness.

Odd, isn’t it, Fox has to keep reminding us that they’re “fair and balanced?” How come The New York Times never has to defensive – I mean, defend – itself all the time like that?

While we’re at it, why do all crime news reports describe men who commit them like this:

Carpenter/Architect/Professor/Janitor Massacres Many….

NEVER ONCE MENTIONING whether or NOT the male of the species has even propagated the species?

But if a WOMAN commits a crime, her status as mother FAR OUTWEIGHS any other accomplishment she might otherwise have earned?

For instance:

Mother of Two Embezzles Funds…

It will only be in the last paragraph that we may or may not learn she’s also received the Pulitzer, a Grammy Award, AND the MacArthur Genius Grant.

Sigh.

Etiquette: Useful. Nice is only a side benefit.

Oldest daughter, exasperated, from backseat, to me: “Mom? MUST you narrate EVERYTHING you see? As if it’s your business in the first place?”

Me, non-plussed by this surly teenaged dismissal: “Why, yes. Yes, I do.”

Oldest: “You’re the only one who can even SEE them.”

Youngest, cheerfully, having had the foresight to pipe up earlier: “I call shotgun,” and therefore sitting in the catbird seat, immediately to my right, now pipes up: “I can see FINE.”

No words are necessary. The heat alone from the backseat is enough.

Words come, anyway.

Oldest: “Why do you even CARE about them, anyway?”

Me: “Because it SUCKS to be the girl on the left.”

Youngest: “I don’t know what you’re talking about at all.”

Oldest (still furious, about my car-to-car meddling, and the whole shotgun thing in general, since she knows quite well she’d completely understand what I was talking about if SHE COULD JUST SEE FOR HER OWN DAMN SELF): “ohKAY, why does it suck to be the girl on the left?

I grin, happy at last: my chance to give a short lecture on the nature of awkward situations. (It has to be short, the girls know, because we are headed for the bank, which is coming up just a few turns away.)

The car in front of me has three people in the back seat: on the left, there is one brunette ponytail. In the middle, there is a blonde ponytail, who is being bear-hugged, and generally molested by, a burly boy – probably a footballer – on the far right.

This jock is so into his blonde ponytail that he keeps nuzzling his squeeze – and is ending up squeezing the girl on the left ever-over, ever-closer to the left-side passenger door. She doesn’t turn her head, not once, not ever. She is graciously bearing this indignity; why, I do not know.

I myself would have given them a good shove back, and suggested they find a room or something. Well, maybe not “find a room,” since that’s pretty cliché.

Perhaps instead I would “accidentally” drop my purse, lunging forward towards that endlessly annoying hump in the middle, knocking them BOTH toward the RIGHT side passenger door. When they both responded: “HEY!” – as if “how dare you interrupt our foreplay?” I’d smile apologetically, while at the same time planting my ass just a little further to the right, with my big fat backpack/purse/knapsack, or what have you tucked to my left, in between the passenger’s side door and myself.

Cozy but effective strategy for flipping the awkwardness back over onto THEM. My, aren’t we ALL awfully close now? Still want to kiss her, quarterback, now that I’m practically on her lap?

If THAT didn’t send the intended message across, I’d wait till the next big smooch, break out my math homework, and tap the blonde ponytail on the shoulder right in the middle of tonguing it.

“Hey, Brittany, did you understand what Mrs. Meyer was talking about when she ran through that binomial theorem today, because I’m TOTALLY lost? Mind taking a look at my notes for a sec, and seeing if they make ANY sense to you, because I’m about to have an EPIC FAIL here.”

Then hold aforementioned binder right up to yon spit-covered face, with innocent smile.

Basically, you get the strategy: incredibly annoying politeness until the people you’re being annoyingly polite to either catch on that they’re being ludicrously rude, and stop, or just stop out of sheer annoyance. Either way, what can they say to you? You’re being incredibly polite.

The beauty of politeness. Don’t let anyone tell you that politeness, etiquette, good manners, is to make other people feel BETTER. That’s just a side benefit.

Etiquette is for one main thing only: So you ALWAYS know what to do in any given situation, without being embarrassed. That’s it. It’s almost as practical as money. Which is why most people who’ve had money for a long time have good manners.

It’s not really snobbery. It’s sensible.

Best of all? YOU can do it, too. Just keep reading this blog, and I’ll learn ya.

My daughter, of course, at 13, could not rest at letting me be right.

“What if she didn’t mind?”

Me: “You think the girl on the left ENJOYED being squeezed over while the two of them sucked face?”

Oldest, grasping for straws: “Maybe she’s a lesbian.”

Me: “In that case, she’d have to be a pretty CHARITABLE lesbian; don’t you think otherwise she’d be jealous?”

Oldest: “Maybe she IS a charitable lesbian.”

It DOES take all kinds to make a world. My oldest COULD be right. The one thing I DO know? At 13, the one thing Mom isn’t, is right. About anything.

For everyone else? Take my word for it. If you ever find yourself The Girl on the Left? Try etiquette.

Ah, etiquette: the most effective way to be obnoxious and get away with it.

Actually, maybe you SHOULD read this blog. Because guess what?
There are a lot MORE of us who AREN’T bitches out there.
Ever notice that “the popular girls” always tended to hang out in tiny little groups, like, in fours, with only three other friends – while the rest of us had a MILLION friends?

Guess what? We’re all grownups, now, girls, and if YOU forgot to grow up, and stayed bitchy, then the rest of us – the nice ones – well?

WE’RE out here, counting our million friends, while you?
Actually?
We don’t care.
BEST BLOG POST I’VE READ IN, LIKE, FOREVER: READ THIS.

(Full disclosure: I don’t know how to turn on or off my own TV.)

A very popular guy, I guess.

Is it just me? Or am I the only one who wasn’t friends with Ed McMahon, isn’t friends with Jon and Kate plus eight, the Olsen twins, and that Perez guy who, for the longest time, I thought was the Paris girl* and everyone was just misspelling his – I mean her – name?

I remember a couple of years ago, when that really blonde, sort of beefy-but-attractive-to-geriatric-gazillionaires, apparently, had a baby, and at every cash register, headlines loomed: “Who’s the father?” Even my oldest, wondered aloud to me: “Who do YOU think is the father?” My daughter even knew the woman’s name, which escapes me now, for the same reason I gave my daughter then:

“She’s not my friend,” I said to my daughter, “therefore, I don’t care, honey.”

“Mean!” my daughter said.

“NOT mean,” I tried to explain. “PR machine. I don’t know this person. YOU don’t know this person. Probably only a handful of people really know this person. Why DO you care who the father of her baby is, anyway? Because you’ve heard of her? Just because she’s famous? Is that REALLY a good reason? Do you care who the father of THAT woman’s baby is?” I pointed to another pregnant woman in Eckerd.

My daughter, as usual, rolled her eyes, as she predicted another rant coming on, so I stopped.

Give me one reason to care about Ed McMahon. He’s dead. I’m sure his family is very sad, as they count their inheritance from all the cheesy-ass commercials he shilled for: Publisher’s Clearing House, that stupid rip-off “Cash For Gold” scheme, and other “your premium will never go up no matter how old you get” life insurance scams.

I’m not sad. I probably would be, if I’d known him. Maybe he was nice; maybe he did all that crappy shit and gave all the money to the poor.

I don’t KNOW, because HE WAS NOT MY FRIEND.

Another set I don’t care about? Jon and Kate. Or their eight. I mean, as humans, and regarding their basic humanity, I care. As soon-to-be children of divorce, my heart goes out to them.

That’s it, though; I’m done caring now.

The Olsen twins? I don’t even like them on reruns of Full House when my kids have it on; they’re annoying as tots, and they’re even more annoying now. Have a sandwich, and then please go away; I haven’t seen you in a decent movie … let me think… ever.

If your work becomes good, I might go see it, but otherwise, I don’t give a rat’s ass about your personal life. Call me up for advice, or to vent your issues; my public number is on my Twitter profile page. Intrude on me and MAKE me know you. Then, in pity, I might care. Otherwise? Fail.

I’m STILL not sure what the difference is between Paris Hilton and Perez Hilton; as far as I can tell, they both irritate and bother to distraction everyone I know equally, so I’m pleased to remain as ignorant as possible.

Neither Hilton produces any work of any kind as far as I can tell. They write no good books, they make no good movies or television, they don’t even perform synchronized swim routines. They seem relatively worthless, as far as I’m concerned, although presumably, their friends value them – if, indeed, they have any who care about them as people, and not for their popularity.

I am NOT a friend to either of them, so… I don’t care.

Do I sound jealous? I’m not. I have well-known friends, whom, out of respect, I will not mention here. Being famous is not all it’s cracked up to be.

I myself am relatively famous, actually, but only if you’re about five or six. (See InklessTales.com) I’m a former newspaper columnist, and now a performer – I give concerts all over – but I seriously enjoy my privacy. As, I’m sure, do most famous people.

Ever notice I’ve NEVER mentioned my kids by name here?

I get the feeling it must SUCK OUT LOUD to be a celebrity on the vast scale. Who, going through a divorce, or having just had a baby, or hell – just having made a movie – done their job, after all – wants the indignity of no longer being able to enter a drugstore, a mall, a regular street, without being hassled, subjected to stupid, inaccurate headlines, freakish curiosity on a circus sideshow scale, and otherwise normal human beings completely losing their minds at the mere sight of them?

You think YOU’RE embarrassed on a bad hair day? Imagine if there were twenty photographers outside your door, eagerly salivating to get pictures of your bad hair? What about the day after you polished off that Ben and Jerry’s, and you’re using the ponytail holder to keep your jeans shut? You REALLY want the whole world watching?

How would YOU like to be professionally THIN? AND have the whole world thinking they have the “right to know” your weight?

Remember, people: if a celebrity is not your friend – THEY’RE NOT YOUR FRIEND.

Just because someone appears on your TELEVISION in your living room every week, it doesn’t mean they are ACTUALLY IN YOUR LIVING ROOM every week.

Having personally experienced the odd, off-putting feeling of having people recognize and greet you whom YOU DON’T KNOW, let me tell you: the first couple of times, it IS kinda cool.

After that: it gets a little weird.

I can only imagine what it does to you when it starts locking you in your house, and forcing you to interact only with other celebrities, also locked in that world of weirdness.

Maybe we should just leave them the hell alone – and start paying attention to our real, live friends.

::-::-::-::

* Speaking of weirdness on a vast scale, the first Google result for Paris Hilton that came up was the EARTH-SHATTERING news that the woman had switched her Blackberry for an Ericsson phone. If you Google me, you get almost 10 pages, but in none of them will you find news of when I myself switched my Blackberry for my indestructible G’Zone phone. You know why?

Because from the looks of it, this is the biggest accomplishment this poor wretch of a girl has managed recently. Sad, really. So very sad.

I certainly could be in better shape, I suppose.

If, say, the Head Gladiator were to hand me a scroll and tell me yon Ancient Roman Battle depended on how fast I could run 26 miles from Sparta to Marathon, I’d be looking up at him, skeptically, as I lighted my Marlboro, casually tossing the dead match onto the dirt.

“Yes, really,” he’d say, imperiously to my stunned question. “Our fate lies in the swiftness of your journey.”

“Um,” I’d begin, dragging a toe of these AMAZING silver ballerina flats I just got on sale two weeks ago – comfy AND cute. Not TOO silver, either; they work GREAT with jeans. Which is what I’m usually wearing, making the prospect of a 26-mile run even less appealing, and the idea of a successful 26-mile “Beat the Clock” touchdown? Less and less realistic by the second.

“Um, you want me to RUN?”

The Amazing Silver Ballerina Flats

“Run, as fleet-footed as the gods permit,” Head Gladiator would intone. (Somehow, I picture him “intoning,” whatever that actually means Like when writers say “he SPAT the words” How does someone “spit” words?)

“And you’re not setting, say, DOGS, or dingos, or big cats to CHASE me, right?”

Head Gladiator shakes his head. No,of course not, you’re our last hope.

Me: Big, fat, internal sigh of despair for these metal-plated folk. No chariots? Poor sods. 

“Give it my best shot,” I’d say, but I can imagine the by-standing, iron-masked Roman battalions peeking awkwardly at their leader: Are you kidding? Really, I mean, are you kidding? We’re SO doomed. Get my papyrus, I’m writing my will.

Off I’d saunter, giving them a jog or two, just to show I had the old Roman spirit, but once over the nearest hill, I’d go for that good old New York City fast-paced stride.

That’s about all I’m good for.

That, and stopping to light cigarettes, if the wind from walking makes it too hard to light one on the go. Don’t you HATE it when the lighter keeps going out? Or just lights a tantalizing tip of the cigarette, and you end up hotboxing the filter to try to get the end lit all the way? (It’s always the LITTLE things, like your cigarette won’t light, or you’ll NEVER make it to Marathon in time…)

Today is National Running Day, where all the wonderful winged-heel specimens of superior cardio-vascular good health celebrate their hobby of running without anyone chasing them.

It’s a hobby I do not understand, but fully respect.

Myself? I keep in shape the same way I train my dog. It’s a lifestyle thing.

Instead of carving out precious hours – and spending precious pennies on space-age “wick-away-moisture” fabric that makes people look remarkably like superheroes, except with corporate sponsors – I get exercise every day just as a matter of daily living, to wit:

• I scrub floors. I learned from my grandmother that this is a stellar exercise for your abs. It’s true. Ever see a 1950s housewife with a tummy? Nope.
• I live in a four-story house. Stair-stepping? All day, every day. “Mooom?” Three flights, at least, at any given time.
• I made a deal with myself to stop asking people: “Would you get me that?” I get up and get it myself. In the same way the Twinkies add up, so does the calorie burning. Once you make that one small decision, you’d be amazed at how many times you get up the minute your butt hits a chair.
• Folding laundry. This builds arm strength, especially if, like me, you have a lot of people in the house, and you let it build up a day or two.
• Gardening. Pull weeds and tell me YOU haven’t hit your target heart rate when you’re done.
• Mow the lawn. No, not with the motor kind. The PUSH mower. That’s what I have. Why? My mother always had a gardener, and she insisted on a push mower. “Cuts the grass nicer,” she said. I use one because (a) I’m more familiar with how one works, (b) I could use it unafraid w/ a baby strapped to my front, and (c) it’s greener. No gas. Plus: exercise.
• Build a patio. I just did. It’s not hard; the people at the local home store will tell you what you need to do. All that lifting builds muscle, and muscle burns fat faster.
• Get a dog. The best way to instill obedience in a dog is to walk him or her every day; the more you walk him, the better he is. Ever see homeless people with dogs? They’ll sit, patiently waiting for their master outside a convenient store shootout, all because they follow their homeless master, walking with him, all day long. You, in the meantime, get the same benefits as running without all the potential impact injuries.One caveat about the dog: If you have a nice, big black one like mine, it’s kind of nice to feel safe walking him at night. I always know when someone’s up to no good when they ask: “Does he bite?”My stock answer is: “Only when I tell him to.” They usually cross to the other side of the street.
   
• Park the car far away and walk. The kids hate it, but it’s usually faster, and every little bit helps.

Hey: I’m a size four, but it’s not like I’m naturally skinny. It’s not like I’m even light, as the annoying people who try to pick me up (who picks up an adult, anyway?) find out when they attempt to lift me and discover that I am very muscled, and muscle weighs more than fat.

(One reason those stupidly general BMI index calculators online can be very misleading – they go by weight alone, not by what you look like, or what jeans you fit into.) I’m practically an anvil. Dense as kryptonite, but I personally don’t give a fig anymore what the numbers say.

I could be 300 pounds, and if I can still comfortably zipper myself into my Tahari little black dress, I’m guessing there is NOT going to be a weigh-in at the gala I’m headed for.

I used to be obsessed over the numbers, and carefully watched every morsel that went into mouth – or rather, didn’t. I watched the numbers come creeping down, until my 6 and 9-year-old together weighed more than I did, and could get me into the air on the seesaw.

I fainted, I felt crappy, and I STILL felt fat all the time, and while everyone I knew, and who loved me, kept telling me to eat a sandwich for Heaven’s sweet sake, I denied I had a problem until my doctor finally threatened to put me on Cyprexa – a medication that swells you like a balloon no matter what you eat or don’t eat.

So I started eating again – this time, paying attention to actual portions – not the leviathan proportions they give you in restaurants these days, where one serving would feed my whole family for a dinner and lunch the next day.

And I started MOVING.

So simple, really: eat less, exercise more.

But the hardest thing in the world.

Some people really DO have to make it special: make it a SUPER Special National Running Day. An event, a celebration, an hour or two of their day.

But fitness, like anything else that’s good for you – hey: I’m thinking it should be part of the fabric of your life. Every minute, every day.

Honestly, though – whatever works for YOU. Different strokes, as they say. If you need to run, run.

If you need me to chase you though, you’ll have to wait till I quit the smokes. That’s next on my list.

Speaking of which, any of you runners got a light? Didn’t think so.

Good luck, everybody.

Evening in Gotham City.

No crime spree that we know of yet, but you can never call it quiet in this section of town. Darkish, yes, because here in the Batcave we’re half-underground: enough to let the daylight in, but once yon sun calls it quits, there’s no doubt about it: darkness rises.

Smoke rises, too, and all but one of us does, so the two windows – screenless, natch – are open a crack, whether the weather, so bring thou a sweater (or grab one of the skull-adorned hoodies tossed all over the place) and so, too, the studio tends to have a few more visitors: of the genus Insecta.

Tonight we tried to get Takeshi to summon his Japanese Ninja Warrior Side and decimate a 3-inch Something that strongly resembled a Flying Dragon, but he was deeply involved in summoning his Japanese Zen Peaceful Monk Side, instead.

Also, Takeshi has a new laptop, and the password to my wireless network, so there’s a strong possibility that he was summoning his Japanese Pokémon Cheat Hack side, too. I didn’t look, so I can’t say for sure. As the Zen parable, “The Farmer’s Luck” goes: “Maybe. Maybe not.”

Aris and Psycho Cherry are currently sharing a MacBook, and were therefore IM-ing and DJ-ing at the same time, which was terrific for me, since when they AREN’T here, I’m usually too focused on what I’m doing to remember even to launch my iTunes, despite the icon in the dock of my own MacBookPro staring me right smack in the face.

Really.

No, really.

That peppy little CD with the blue music notes on it, just leers at me, going: “Uh, hello? Musician? Tunes?” Then shakes its digital little head at me, as if I am hopeless.

But when Aris and Psycho Cherry are here, the ambiance changes radically from a simple one-human digital sweatshop to a working party of discussion and delight. My daughters – who refer reverently to my posse as “The Cool People” – love it. Everyone gets magically fed, watered, intellectually stimulated, and entertained.

Those who grace my studio cherish my daughters, too, as mutually as my daughters cherish them: this past week, when my youngest’s much-beloved, much-too-young cat died suddenly, my daughter overheard them laughing in the Batcave as she and I were upstairs, preparing for the backyard funeral.

“Tell them they don’t have to come,” my 10-year-old said, fighting the most recent round of tears. “They sound so happy. I don’t want to make them come to a sad funeral.”

At that point, my own throat started to close.

Of my two daughters, the oldest, would throw herself in front of a train for you if ever you needed it, but from her manner, her bearing and her Dorothy Parker wit, you’d never know it.

My youngest? Her devastating but selfish charm would allow her to skip lightly over your bleeding body and make you want to thank her for it.

Ergo, lump in my throat.

Down with message went I to Batcave.

Up I returned: No way. All for one, one for all.

The ragged gypsy band of us lined up at the back fence grave, my youngest as “chief mourner,” asking only for a moment of silence in Toufou’s honor.

We all took turns trying to console the little one, especially Aris and myself, who have each suffered private losses recently; losses the little one could not yet understand, yet still our freshly-wounded hearts bled for her, our own scars only just beginning to form.

We resonated like tuning forks for her, grief upon grief, vibrations that we knew would lessen with time. Could the little one be made to understand? That time, and thankfulness, were all that ever help, in the end?

Time.

And gratitude.

“Gratitude?” My youngest was totally confused.

“Look around you,” I whispered into her silken, golden brown hair, as she wept into my lap. “Look at all the people who love you. Be thankful, even though right now you can’t be happy.”

“But I want Toufou,” she protested.

“You’ll have Toufou as long as you love and remember her,” I said.

“I can’t see her. I can’t talk to her. I can’t touch her. It’s not enough,” she said.

“Not now,” I said. “But eventually, it will be.”

It will have to be, I thought, my own heart quickening a bit.

“Eventually doesn’t come soon enough.”

“It never does, darling,” I said, “but that’s what Gotham City is here for.”

We fell asleep together for the next few nights on the futon in the Batcave, hanging on to each other, each, alternately mourning, alternately celebrating, the love of each other, basking in the glory of our friendships, the sunshine, the comfort of darkness, and the hope of time.

The Farmer’s Luck

A Zen Parable

Once there was a farmer whose horse ran away.

All the village came to him: “What terrible luck!” they said.

The farmer calmly said: “Maybe. Maybe not.”

The next day, the horse returned — with another horse.

All the village came to him: “What wonderful luck!” they said.

The farmer calmly said: “Maybe. Maybe not.”

The farmer’s son tried to ride the second horse — and broke his leg.

All the village came to him: “What terrible luck!” they said.

The farmer calmly said: “Maybe. Maybe not.”

The country was at war, and the next day, the army came to collect young men to fight: all but the farmer’s son — whose leg was broken.

All the village came to him: “What wonderful luck!” they said.

The farmer calmly said: “Maybe. Maybe not.”

Follow me on Twitter: I’m @inklesstales.