The Lost Art of Dining, American-Style

Having embarked on the Good Ship Shopping-Go-Round where I revisit the same stores over and over in my Amnesiac Final Race to Christmas, I decided to change things up.  To get through the next Eight Days of Christmas, I fashioned for myself a jolly behavior-modification reward.  Or maybe delayed-gratification.  I’m not sure. 

But it involved FINISHING my shopping, then rewarding me by eating restaurant food with actual other people.  Their names are Susan and Terese. 

Just like me, neither are done shopping nor currently teach.

“Guys, let’s make a vow, “ I said via conference call.  “No matter what state of Loose End our Christmas shopping is in, tomorrow night at 6:00, let’s stop, drop and roll; and I don’t mean sushi or egg.  I want a bromated white-bread hot buttered roll smeared with gravy and meatloaf.  With gravy as a beverage.”

They were in.  

Susan even knew of this quaint place a few towns over that specialized in New England fare:  a ‘true grit’ kind of place with a name like Ye Olde Yankee Hearth-Stone Taverne Port O’Call that John Wayne himself was said to have patronized for their strapping shanks of pot roast  -- and popovers the size of a Buick.

When we sat down, each of us lurched toward the menus already swiping at drool, power-scanning for gritty fare.

What was our surprise to instead find delicate, smarmy foods.  They sounded like they needed pre-treating:  Sashini Morselettes, Seed O’ Sesame Fusion Cubes, Crème de Blanc A La Tete.  Stuff you know would arch its back and dart off the instant you sat it near ketchup.

 Clearly Americans need more restaurants that feature our country’s native specialties.

 So that night, our group of natives trollop’d through the countryside in search of our culinary roots, to find a restaurant that spoke to our purple mountain’s majesty, the amber waves of grain.

We found two such establishments the next town over.

Not a group to skimp during the holidays, we opted to patronize both and compare them, hopefully discerning for our nation the one true restaurant that best caters to Americana.

OUR DECISION

To be fair, we ordered identical menu items at each restaurant and after much deliberation, we discovered the cheeseburger meal at Burger King beat Ronald’s Happy Meal, two-to-one.

My friend Susan still points excitedly to where the flame-broiled after-burn left its special impression.

Noting the health-consciousness of contemporary consumers in our age-demographic, we ordered plastic cups of sliced onions because studies have found that they reduce serum cholesterol.

Plastic cups do not, however, contain enough of the calcium women need. Or fiber.  So we ordered super large milk shakes, then ate our BK bags (made from recyclable cellulose flakes that RACE to the colon like Lady-Lax).

Susan chose to eat the onions in her cup, and discovered they self-drape on a burger better than the minced onion spread from McDonald’s. They also burned especially well with that lasting flame-broiled impression.

But the best thing to do with BK onions is play our favorite American Travel Game, High Speed Ring Toss.  Terese was the high-scorer when she nailed the antenna of a ‘75 T-Bird doing 83 MPH.

BK french fries are a drier variety than McDonald’s and have a tendency to cool down faster.  As some of us hadn’t eaten since Sunday, this was an important french fry feature.

The accelerated cool-down rate probably defies some law of physics, but I think Burger King uses special fast-cooling potatoes, via root-vegetable genetics, as a promotional device.

If you ask for ketchup, Burger King will actually hand you the exact number you ask for.

McDonald’s gives you a fistful which is approximately nine pouches from the average employee hand and that is just plain too much ketchup.  Several packets drop to my car mats where they explode on sunny days.

The Burger King vanilla milk shake was more crystalline than dairy drinks at McD’s, which, on our Chewable Beverage Scale, rated a big 8.5!

An American Hamburger Drive-Thru Meal cannot be rated unless you consider the plastic toy inside the bag. 

As a team of ex-professional educators, we were pretty impressed with the BK Crown Activity Box “with inspiring, fun activities.”  Although Terese and Susan fought over the Kidz-Bop CD Collectibles.  (Terese wanted Number 4 and Susan refused to trade it for Terese’s Number 2.)

Speaking of number 2, the revival of the Teenage Mutant Action Figures in Ronald’s Happy Meal gave me cramps.

The last time I’d had to look at those weaponized ninjas, I was winding up my newborn’s pink puffy-cloud mobile, when, what to my unfocused eyes should appear, but Raphael,  Donatello and Two Mutant Deer, spinning ‘round to Braham’s Lullaby, causing the baby and me to scream.

Her brothers had fastened multiple mutant-figures to the mobile  -- each locked in a death grip to a pink cirrus or lavender cumulonimbus by miniature metallic nunchucks.

Not only was it violent and horrific, Amphibious-Green in no way blended with lavender or pink.

I won’t go into the decorative Mutant Stickers that wouldn’t peel off the sheet ... or the Michelangelo figure in his Turtle-Mobile wedged sideways inside his Shell Garage who couldn’t drive outta that sucker if he were set on fire with a childproof cigarette lighter.  We tried.

Finally, we found the caliber of car exhaust to be especially high quality at the BK drive-thru line.

The McDonald’s drive-thru line was so thick with blue oil and diesel, we couldn’t see if we were shouting our order into a speaker or an ornamental shrub.

Bored with American Cuisine, Terese, Susan and I are paying tribute to Italy on New Year’s Eve by comparing Papa Gino’s with Pizza Hut.

Buon appetito et Buon Natale!  

CHOOSING YOUR CLASSES FOR NEXT SEMESTER -- (AKA: Fine Arts Are So Fine!) For Russell and Lisa

After six hours of Christmas shopping Saturday, I staggered into Walmart for some festive anti-myeloma kale, ho ho ho, and what was my surprise to find a favorite college friend, Russell, with his lovely wife Lisa, actually shopping – for FOOD -- right there in the dairy aisle. 

Russell was pretty rock star back in the day, as I’m certain Lisa was, since she is a licensed salon instructor teaching protégés to style the hair of actual rock stars!

Discovering Lisa and Russell doing everyday grocery-style things -- squeezing eggs, thumping milk -- like normal people???  Arrrgh!!!  It was like Christmas, early!

We quickly caught ourselves up on decades of news – babies had grown into college students – I forced Russell to enter my blog-URL in his phone – we discovered we’ve all over the years enjoyed gainful employment within fields roughly linked to some of our second and third college majors!

But mostly, I was riveted by how little Russell had changed:  those same soulful eyes and a spirit exuding a warmth I’d always believed had been jetison’d to earth from above, via celestial soul-chute:  like a vacuum tube at the bank that ‘blows’ instead of ‘sucks.’

Moreover, it was palpable and refreshing, the devotion and joy Lisa and Russell shared in what was clearly a happy marriage.

I drove home in a serene cloud with college-flashbacks and dairy products dancing in my head.

That was when my college-daughter phoned.  Ah, I thought:  there are no coincidences.

In fact, her best college-friend Hannah had just invited me for sushi the day before (thank heaven for folks reading my blog or I’d never get out of the house) and I caught Abby up on All Things Hannah. Then I excitedly shared how I’d just run into a college friend of MINE.  She was THRILLED I had one of my own – then before you can say Buzz Kill, I spontaneously meta-morphed into Super Mom From Hell. “By the way, how’s that study-group working out, for your Monday 8 AM Final? And remind me: did you or did you NOT set your course-schedule for spring?”

Turns out she only called to tell me she “just bought that video game we discussed for Jake, so I didn’t want you to buy one, too.” 

And like that:  she had laundry.

SO much advice, so little audience.  Un-rendered advice is, for me, like un-digested tofu. Perfectly innocuous and non-offensive, once diffused.  So, allow me . . .

DEAR ALL OF MY EX-STUDENTS (from AMSA-Past, College-Present and SOKCS Future ):   You are The Malox To My Bean Curd so as a holiday gift, here is Mrs. Given’s Advice.

For your sophomore autumn semester in college, whenever/wherever this takes place, for the love of God, take Photography:  it is a religious experience, like the loaves and the fishes.

It’s a fine art, but it’s technical;  kinesthetic, yet visual; formulaic but expressive. It’s a Three-Credit Learning Style.

In fairness, it's easy for me to discuss photography now.  It’s been nearly twenty years.  This distancing provides objectivity.  Because, had I written this while taking photography??

Well how could I?  You can’t write from a Dark Room.

Now, I can’t tell you which instructor is best.  Collectively you all represent more than 150 institutions of higher tuition across the planet.  I can suggest, however, that you find an entertaining professor.  That is because, in the beginning, there are brief but pedestrian segments in which students must dissect their cameras and memorize all the anatomical parts.

There are many, many anatomical parts, but you will never realize this as you are busy learning them one part at a time.

Entertaining professors are brilliant at tricking students into learning HUMONGOUS gobs of stuff without their actual awareness.  One day, students wake up speaking Fluent Camera.

Once you can say things like “shutter speed” and “aperture” without spitting on your lens, you’ll be ready to cross over to the Dark Side (or The Photo Lab).  Here your professor, before your eyes, will don a Lab Coat that makes him talk like Doctor Who.  You will adjust.

After forming a human chain, your instructor will lead the class into the mouth of the Print Room.

At first the Print Room seems evil, with its dim lighting and trays of toxic waste. Sharp amputaters sit on countertops, waiting to lop off print borders and fingers.  Behind the amputaters is a parade of medieval-looking devices with all kinds of technical attachments, like knobs and things.

They are called “enlargers.”

They can enlarge a student’s photograph to the size of a house, but most professors prefer 8X10s as they are easier to grade.

Students are usually frightened when they enter the Print Room.  Some grab onto Add-Drop forms as though they were life preservers.  Which is silly.  Add-Drop forms do not float.

When the Dark Side Tour is over, your professor will return you to the classroom.  If everyone was very good and did not touch or break anything, he or she may allow you, one by one, to walk up to the Sample Enlarger at the front of the class – and look at it.

Some students feel moved to genuflect.

It will be on this very instrument that your instructor will perform mad experiments that create photographs … from “a negative.”

BIRTH OF A NEGATIVE

Negatives are these wiggly pieces of film whose job it is to reverse shadow and light. They make humans look like zombies.

But the actual purpose of a negative is to jump off the enlarger when the student isn’t looking.

If the student can glue or thumbtack her negative onto a piece of technology called “a negative holder,” she is halfway toward making a print. (This assumes the student has used the proper camera parts to shoot subjects with visual appeal that the film holds captive until it’s yanked from the camera’s intestine and loaded by hand in the pitch dark onto a reel where it’s dropped into a cylinder holding toxins that agitate for longer than you’d believe.)

Voila!  A negative is born.

THE ENLARGER MAKES THE PRINT

Once the negative is impaled on a negative holder, the enlarger shoots laser beams and gamma rays through it, which are absorbed by Magical Paper where they stay until released by Trays of Other Toxins.

This is called “Photo Synthesis.”

When a poison called ‘Image Release’ turns the Paper into a Photograph, your institution’s Media Center will shake from students dancing with joy.

After the image is locked onto the paper with the Toxic Image Lock, the student carries it out into the Holy Light where her professor declares it shit so she may start this process all over.

The beauty of this endeavor is that you won’t be unnerved by any of it.  Professors – the truly great ones – masterfully instill confidence in their students with things called Live Demonstrations.  They make photography look easy.

They create in students a sense of optimism, nay urgency, about their turn with a Dark Side Enlarger, which they will get, precisely one school day after the Add-Drop season ends.

There is good reason for this, but I am not going to share it now. 

If there is one thing I learned from my photography instructors it is Patience, Patience, Patience. 

Also, ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,’  “One is too many and 100 aren’t enough,” and “One toke over the line, Sweet Jesus . . . one toke over the line.”

If I have made you curious to learn more about photography, you have to take this course. You won’t believe what you can do!

And don’t panic about what happens after Add-Drop.  Panic is never introduced to students until Photography II, which you will never take because you only need to finish up your distribution requirements.

If there is anything else I can do for you, as always, ask your parents.

Best wishes for a joyous holiday and artful fall semester!   XOXOXO … Carolyn

 (aka “Mrs. Given”)

Mommy's First Near-Arrest, THE PREQUEL

 After my friend Astrid finished reading about my felonious speeding ticket, I found myself in the uncomfortable position of convincing her it was true.

 “No, really, Astrid. Each part!”

“Even the costume you wore for your school’s Crazy Outfit Day?”

“Um … no.  Let me put it this way:  did you read the reviews for the film, Cloud Atlas?  ‘Visually stunning! You won’t be able to tear your eyes from the panorama. A triumph!’  My costume was more triumphant.  It induced seizures in multiple disabled students when I walked past their classrooms.”

 “And the part where you said that twenty years ago, you let your Subaru roll into a police car?”

“Technically it was 24 years ago.  And it was a police van.”

Astrid begged me to share this story with her.  But for me this exercise felt redundant.  Not only is it exactly like my charter school speeding-ticket saga:  it is plus’d up on every count.

It included a similarly disheveled appearance, only worse since this was how I dressed in real life.

The inspection sticker had not simply expired:  it was missing.

Instead of leaving my driver’s license in another purse, I did not, technically, have one. (Nor could I produce the vehicle’s registration.)

This story, indeed, ends with my unattended vehicle rolling backward of its own accord into the fender of the police van whilst the officer inside was checking my criminal history.

“I hear VERY blog-able differences,” stated Astrid flatly.

It took SIX FULL MINUTES for me to agree.  I recognized that being a redundant criminal is synonymous with being a ‘Repeat Offender’ and this was scintillating.  Blogging publicly about it was … the Clyde to my Bonnie.

But I considered that if the law enforcement industry got hold of my blog, they’d forever be on the look-out for me.  “I’ll be pulled over all the time, Astrid. It’s like being audited by the IRS.  Or eating pistachios.”

“Don’t be silly.  No one reads your blog.”

It's a pretty compelling story.  I drove off on an early Saturday morning in 1989 to help my mother move my Great Grand Aunt Harriet from her gorgeous antique home in Duxbury, to the assisted living complex located on the land she and my Great Grand Uncle once owned. 

My Mom and Harriet literally walked boxes and bags and clothing-on-hangers from her back porch ... through a path ... to her new home.

I only had three kids at the time: Nick was 8, Jake 6, Zach 4. They were all involved in weekend activities and no one was big enough to help with the moving process. Though we were strapped by kid / car / mortgage expenses, a road-trip could be handily covered by my new part-time job! 

Moreover, I was so happy being back in Massachusetts, after nine years as a military spouse living in Italy, Virginia and Fort Knox, that I was thrilled to volunteer to be ‘part of the family again.’ Driving from my town, deep in the Blackstone Valley, up and over to Duxbury, was the least I could do. 

Turns out, I did the least.

It had been more than a decade since I’d driven solo to Duxbury.  In that time, it seems that they had changed the terrain.  Some roads vanished completely. This was before the GPS. And dead reckoning.  LONG before the time I was medically diagnosed as Sense-Of-Direction Impaired.

When I say that I got tragically lost trying to get from Worcester county to Duxbury, it is an understatement.

I left my house at 7 AM and returned to it by 2 PM.  In between I managed to visit the majority of the entire Bay State, occasionally dipping into New Hampshire and one corner of New York.

This was also before the advent of cell phones, so I’d had to pull over at gas stations and diners and McDonalds to find pay phones and call my husband and my aunt.

No one answered their landlines.

So hopelessly lost was I that I finally bought a breakfast sandwich at one of the stops off some nameless highway -- perhaps the autobahn for Munich -- and after my pancake/ham rollup, I looked up at the McClock noting it was 11:15 AM.

I'd been driving for four hours -- although it was possible I was in a new time zone.

I asked the McWait-Staff if they knew how to get to Duxbury. 

“That’s an ocean town, right?”

“It IS!” I shouted hopefully.

“If you continue North on Route 2, you’re bound to hit the ocean.”

In retrospect, I’m fairly certain I was close to where my daughter now goes to college: Salem State on the North Shore.  Somehow, continuing ‘north’ did not feel right. Even to me.

I ordered some coffee to go, then tried to phone everyone one last time, and this time I got my mother.  She was befuddled.  Where was I?  Was I injured?  They'd already done all the heavy lifting ...

When I told her what 'route' I was on she gasped.  “How did you get on ROUTE TWO?"

"I do not know."

"Carolyn, you’ve been coming to this house your entire life!” then she launched into directions that mainly would get me from her house to Duxbury.

"Mom, I live on the border of Connecticut and Rhode Island.  Duxbury for me is North.  I guess I just … kept going.  But I think I’m close to Salem!” 

 “In which state, Carolyn?  New Hampshire?”

“Very funny, Mother.   Oh, shit.  I don’t actually know.”

Finally, I sobbed a little into the receiver and told her I was getting directions to just go home.  We said ‘I love you’ to each other.  I hung up with renewed hope.

I was almost certain I could easily describe the town I lived in, some famous historical landmarks (Fat Man's Misery at Purgatory Chasm, Worcester County Jail.)  If needed I could recite my own address... from memory.

So I drove back home with directions rendered by smiling McWait-staff who saw my McStress. She was so sweet.  She wrote everything down on paper for me. It was the most compassion I would receive all day.

It was 12:55 PM when I rolled back into my hometown, eyes puffy from sobbing, no make-up because I intended to move powerfully dusty objects from one place to another during ragweed season. Mascara  would 'itch/scratch' off.  In fact, to my right on the driver's seat was my bottle of prescription antihistamines designed to preempt impending hives without fanfare.

After seven hours driving on every New England interstate and scenic road, gravel and dirt, frost-heaved and freshly paved, plus one historic cobblestone path, I was finally... FINALLY ... pulled over by the police, back in my very own hometown.

I was less than a mile from my house.  The one on which we had thus far made just sixteen mortgage payments.

I had literally driven the equivalent of a cross-country road trip. In all that time and on all of those roadways, I had passed or been passed by countless state and local law enforcement staff, of every ilk:  biohazard containment officers, sheriffs, county court officials, animal control, the FBI, secret service, campus police.

 Only the Intrepid Five-0 in my town noticed that my Subaru’s right-front windshield-space, reserved for an Inspection Sticker, was vacant.

My Subaru was not sporting an expired sticker.

There was no sticker there.

Five days earlier I had just bought this vehicle, and it was some oversight at the dealership.  Probably mine.  In nearly eleven years of marriage this was our first new car and it even came with monthly payments extended out to 2001!  I was apparently too excited to drive it…to get it … you know … ‘inspected.’

It seems ridiculous I could be in this pickle twice:  once in ’89 and again in 2009, but there are noteworthy differences:

This time, my car was so new I had NO idea where the registration was.

This time... there was no computer-search to validate that I possessed a driver’s license.  Not only did this police van not come equipped with a computer as they weren't invented, I did not have a driver’s license.  I'd failed to renew it.  But only because I believed I still had "Army Wife Time." 

Traveling from country to country, state to state, for military families means you continue driving on a MILITARY driver's license.  Renewals are waived as a courtesy to those who serve our country.

I'd been driving on a 'waived' license for years, and once we exited the military, I had twelve months to acquire a civilian license. 

All twelve had lapsed that spring.

When the officer asked for my registration, and it wasn’t in my glove compartment, he huffed off to his van to run a radio check back with dispatch on both me AND my ‘alleged vehicle.’

That’s when I began running the metrics in my mind:  Carolyn Given:  no valid photo ID, no driver’s license, no vehicle registration for a brand new Subaru wagon without an inspection sticker.  I was either a spook like Jason Bourne, or a fugitive from justice.

Either way, it sounded bad.

With renewed vigor I began rooting through the vehicle to locate the registration. Fortunately, the car was in my name so I knew I’d be home free if I found it.  Instead of hunting for the soiled, flimsy tissue I was accustomed to calling a registration, I started looking for something clean.  Perhaps in a CASE.

That is how I found it:  I looked inside the Subaru Car Manual where the registration was neatly ensconced in a pleather side pocket, adorned with business cards.

SO euphoric to escape arrest and put this unpleasantness behind me, I leaped out of my vehicle waving my registration in the air and raced to the police van, with the officer still inside talking to Dispatch on his radio and--WHAM.

My brand new Subaru – of its own accord – smashed into the cop’s front fender.

Manual transmissions were new to me.  I’d left it in neutral.  Without the emergency brake.  On a slight ‘grade.’

I still recall the officer’s surprise.

His hand went directly to his unholstered weapon and his lips formed the directive – at first without sound -- "Get back in your vehicle.”

Then with full voice:  “Do it NOW.  Place BOTH hands on the wheel and DO NOT  MOVE.”

 He radio'd for two backup cruisers.  They were on-the-scene in seconds.

They all scrutinized me closely.  My eyes were red and blurry, I had an open prescription bottle leaking pills onto the passenger seat, my shirt and pants (carefully chosen Work Togs) were ragged and askew.  I was sweating and nervous.

It was clear what was happening.  I had to prove I was not a tweaking crack whore who'd just boosted a soccer mom’s wagon.

Nothin to do but use my BRAIN to find a way to avoid arrest in the town I'd come to love. A town so quaintly Rockwell-esque, I'd managed to wave at ninety per cent of its residents motoring by in the hour I was detained.

The spokesperson for the new troupe of officers at my driver’s side engaged me.  He asked for my name and my address. 

"Good afternoon, Officer.  I KNOW I failed to engage my emergency brake. I've owned this car less than a week and haven't figured out the Manual Transmission.  Plus, my dealership failed to get the inspection taken care of -- I'll be phoning them shortly. I couldn't INSTANTLY find the registration because the car is so new, no one told me it was located inside the Manual.  And yes, my Military Officer’s Driver's License expired since the medical-retirement. Time flies.

"I apologize for my appearance.  I just returned from Duxbury where I helped my mother move my 90 year-old aunt from her home to Assisted Living.  And by the way, I tried to tell the nice officer -- whose vehicle mine just 'kissed' -- that I have lived on this street for 17 months, number 92:  I am the Douglas Council On Aging Senior Center Director.  Carolyn Given.  Selectman Cheseborough can vouch for me, as can your Chief of Police.  Fred’s office, in fact, is located in the Municipal Center two doors down from my own.  Sorry about the fuss today. EXHAUSTED from moving those boxes.”

They offered, all three, to escort me back to my home less than 1,000 meters away, to ensure my safety. 

Not even a verbal warning.  For any of it.

You know, I see where Astrid was going with this:  the Subaru story’s way different.

Holiday School-Spirit Week Brings Felonious Speeding-Charge

Christmas shopping and attending holiday gatherings bring out the vehicular felon in me.  In the days leading up to Our Savior’s Jour de Naissance, I am typically pulled over at least once per Holy Season, for speeding.

Mostly through the mid 2000’s, until about 2010.

Perhaps working at all those charter schools made me spiritually accelerate toward religion-inspired days-off.  I do know that my first charter school was indirectly involved in my worst criminal ‘pull-over’ back in 2009, definitely a holiday-season. 

Moreover, it was a time of fiscal crisis for our state. 

Frankly, I believe our governor had it in for charter school teachers. His left-wing policies purposefully dispatched state police to my own personal Mass-Pike exit, on missions to increase revenue by pulling over and giving citations to stressed, accelerated civil-servants-of-education, en route to collect their little disabled daughter, abandoned at her public school which I supported with my tax dollars, even though there was no after-school late bus (due to local deficits) to cart her home after her mandatory senior project (okay, she wasn’t little … or disabled: she had a speech disorder in third grade) where she was teaching improvisation in order to graduate due to right-wing conservatives’ graduation requirements which conspired to stress me out more than left-wing governors.

One Hundred And Eighty Dollars.

For going 73 in a 55. 

Or maybe 50.  

Who can think with things moving that fast?

All I did … was attempt to safely glide into the mandatory left lane on 146, after the Off-Then-On-Ramp from the Mass Pike.  This is where things tend to bottleneck, so the entering folks accelerate to avoid death from swift-moving side-swipers.

73 in a 55.  

Pffft.

I’d been doing 90 in a 65 each day without incident for years.

But this was the Holy Season.

And for the record? 

No one can survive this Off-Again On-Again Ramp without merging with adequate speed, because a mandatory right lane exit-only-law delivers motorists to 65 MPH traffic less than 200 meters ahead.

In my case, I'd prudently applied pedal-to-the-metal so as not to be rear-ended by vehicular terrorists.

That is the precise spot the state cop held religious vigil  -- with radar guns, not candles.  And a wicked mean face.

It was traumatic.  I car-pooled to work the next four months.

In fairness, I had noticed up ahead this clot of car-metal off to the right that looked state-cop suspicious. But I didn’t hit the brakes as I normally do when I spot police.  This clot looked like a big accident.

But I SLOWED DOWN anyway.  

It was too late.  The speed trap I believe was illegal had already ensnared me.  As well as three other innocent vehicularists.  They were the ones ‘parked’ there, off to the right, in that  ‘clot.’

In fact, all of those pulled-over vehicles made it dangerous for me to join the tangle and avoid striking state cop personnel, now standing in the actual highway, while at the same time not forcing said personnel to walk more than a mile to get to my pulled-over car.

I meant to slow down more efficiently.  But the moment I saw the car-clot, my cell phone rang.  It was my teaching colleague ‘M’ and as a professional educator, I had to take the call.

Now I am usually an expert multi-tasker.  But I somehow did not engage the brake as I normally would (by using my foot) because I had to reach into my filthy purse amongst vermin and contaminants to root around for my sticky cell phone.

By the time I opened the phone to answer, the state cop had thrown his body into oncoming traffic, aimed his radar gun at me with deadly force, and screamed, “PULL OVAH!”

Even 'M' heard him and shouted from the other end, “HANG UP, QUICK.”

I was a rag when he ambled toward my passenger window.  This was a non-pull-over area:  far too small to allow egress for his ten gallon hat and riding boots and weapon-slinging jodhpurs to approach the driver’s side safely.

“License and registration,” he growled from the comfort of his pussy-passenger locale.

My face flushed and I could hardly think with all the adrenaline molecules infecting my brain.  “Licorice and Regurgitation? What?”

Meanwhile my right hand robotically rooted amongst the botulism that is my purse to find my wallet.

Which wasn’t there.

I discovered this at the exact time I noted my state police personnel was studying my windshield and the floor of that passenger side … which was filled with dozens of Public Speaking Rubrics and mostly-clean tissues and fifteen empty Polar Seltzer cans.

That is when I began praying.

 “Oh, For the Love of Lord God Jesus, Amen, do NOT let this cop make me get out of my vehicle on my charter school’s Crazy Outfit Day.”

To count down to the winter holiday, our school enjoyed a Festive Spirit Week and that day was Crazy Outfit Day, which, typically, for me, was every day.

But on Crazy Outfit Day, I made an effort.

I’d purposefully matted my hair to arrange it into glue’d tangles, contained by a Santa Cap defiled by a fake CSI pin.  Below my head was a Hawaiian moo moo sucked in by a plaid belt, above polka-dot Capri pants rolled up to different heights on each leg, both of which were adorned by red tights bespeckled in butterflies.  My right foot was enshrouded by a soccer sock I'd stenciled with blue balloons, all ending in a Birkenstock Sandal. My left foot was ensconced in a knee sock with Christmas mice peering from a stocking, which no one saw due to the Black Army Boot. (I'd wrapped it like a gift … tied off with a jingle bell.)

 “Is there a problem, Ma'am?”

SO many, I thought.

“Well, sir.  The problem seems to be that my wallet with my license . . . is in my other purse.”

“I see. Well.  Do you HAVE a legal and current license?”

“Oh, I DO, yes, yes. I have that.”

“Could you produce the vehicle’s registration?”

“I am almost sure I can.”

I had no idea if I could.

My glove box is like a Jack-In-The-Box.

POP goes the weasel and out pops a dead weasel, and there I am, on my car hood, legs splayed, hands cuffed, in my Charter School Crazy Outfit … off to Death Row.

Guess what popped out of my Jack-In-The-Glove-Box?

My current registration.

Rocky Horror Police: “Do you own this vehicle?”

Horrified Me In Crazy Outfit: “I do. I really do, it's mine. I don’t even make payments because of the year that—“

He was gone to run a check on the vehicle.

He returned moments later asking, “Ma'am.  Are you aware that this vehicle has an expired inspection sticker, from April?  Of 2008?”

I looked at the sticker and peed right there in the driver’s seat.  It was 20 months overdue.

“I certainly was NOT.  I don’t know how that happened but I am ASHAMED and all I can think is—“

“Having a vehicle with an expired inspection sticker and not being in possession of your driver’s license are serious violations, Ma'am, are you aware of that?”

“I am… I am SO very aware of this, Sir, and GAWD how sorry I am becau—“

“Where are you coming from?”

“Teaching.  I teach.  At a school.  It’s in Marlborough where I teach.  We get out late. We’re a charter.  We get out at—“

“Where were you going TO?”

“Picking up my daughter where I was late picking her up … cuz of the lateness and Crazy OUTFIT Day which I’m sure you must have … --anyway, I was late and she had just called to tell me HOW late and JUST THEN you appeared with your gun and that voice and—“

“I saw you were on your cell phone.”

“Yes, my little girl –– the baby of four – I was assuring her she wouldn’t have to wait much longer since she’d been wai—“

“Ma'am.  What I’m going to do now. . .”

I am wiping sweat from my face and pee from the Sebring’s lumbar support.

“. . . is explain to you the multiple violations and potential citations you’ve warranted here today.  Do you KNOW the consequences for not possessing your driver’s license AND for driving a vehicle with an expired inspection sticker for MORE than one full YEAR?”

I was certain it was death, but he did not wait for an answer.  

(Meanwhile my silent prayer droned on, “Lord, seriously, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCE let me exit this vehicle. Let him assassinate me.  But do not let me exit this vehicle in what I am wearing.”)

 “Let's just say," he continued, "the consequences are ... significant. But I am willing to give you a verbal warning for failure to have in your possession your valid driver’s license, and a verbal warning for failure to have a valid inspection sticker … and driving a vehicle without a valid inspection sticker … for more than ONE YEAR.”

“And also a warning for SPEEDING,” I offered helpfully.

“Do you even KNOW how fast you were going?”

“I do not know how fast I was going.”

“SEVENTY…THREE… MILES…PER…HOUR.”

“Oh... My…GAWD.”

“Do you know what the speed limit is?”

“I dare not venture a gue—“

“Fifty-FIVE.”

“No way. I am SO, SO sorry, Sir.  I’ve been driving on this road for NINETEEN YEA-“

“So I am giving you a citation for speeding.  Here you go.”

“Oh, THANK YOU… but especially for not making me get out of this car since I am dressed for our school’s CRAZY OUTFIT DAY.  Just LOOK at my plaid belt.  PHEW, right?”

“Ma'am.  There was no need to have you leave your vehicle.  You can appeal this citation and request a hearing or pay the fine within twenty days.  Be careful as you merge with oncoming traffic.”

Oh I was careful.

“Merging” is what got me that ticket in the first place.

 I sat there for two hours until rush hour was over.  A neighbor picked up my daughter.

It was stunning sitting there reading the number next to my fine.  One Hundred Eighty Dollars.  Part of it was a $50 Head Injury Surcharge. 

Whose bright idea was that?  (Yeah-yeah, someone with a head injury.) 

It was a bad year, 2009.   The economy tanked, trashing our retirement portfolio and we were weirdly in a new tax bracket from some promotion my spouse received.   $180 was not in that year’s Christmas budget.  Plus I hadn't received a moving violation I couldn't talk my way out of in eighteen years.  

Even twenty years ago I’d managed to get just a warning when I failed to engage the emergency brake in my manual Subaru, unwittingly causing my unmanned vehicle to roll backward into a police van.

Having just received this jolly 146 On/Off/On Ramp ticket, I fondled it, then whipped out my calculator to see how much my new insurance premiums and ticket and lost time at school due to appearing at a hearing might be. 

Once I saw the total, I decided to host a charter school Dress Like A Ho Day as a fundraiser and declare myself the cause.  (Bake sales had been banned that year by the state’s left-wing nutrition guidelines.)

Well, that is all behind me. 

Fortunately, Christmas of 2012 will be Pull-Over Free because, as you know, I have nowhere to rush to, or from.  These days, I can roll with leisure from my unemployed bed then dress like a vagabond or Santa’s Sassy Slattern, and putter about in my Sebring, fearlessly, joyfully, well under the speed-limit … like other retirees.  Ho Ho Ho.

[Happy Holidays, Linda!  xoxo  C]

Sewing Up Tangential Family E-Threads

Stardate:  December 11, 2012

FROM MOM:  Dear Nick, Jake, Zach, Abby, Dad, blah blah blah etc.,

Guess what!!??  Abby, Dad and I loved our December 7^th UMass Lowell Tsongas Center event, A Conversation with Stephen King, also touted as the “First Annual Chancellor’s Speaker Series.” 

I especially loved how UMass did not employ some oxymoronic redundancy: “Our Premier Very-First Yearly Inaugural Annual Chancellor’s Speaker Series-Debut.” 

Of course, the event was sponsored by the English Department.

In fact, it was moderated by an actual UMass Lowell English Professor, the famous Andre Dubus III, who was additionally three important things (unrelated to the III after his name, which was coincidence):

1.    Dubus III is the son of his famous father and author, Dubus II, who was friends with Stephen King, leading to Dubus III’s current Kingian friendship; 2. Dubus III is the author of many NY Times bestsellers including House of Sand and Fog made into the Academy-Award nominated film starring Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly; and 3. He is a native of Massachusetts with a cool local accent rivaled only by King’s more downeast diction, making Andre and Steve’s conversation through the evening MAH-KID-LY entertaining.

Speaking of English Departments, King donated more than $100,00 from ticket sales to scholarships for UMass Lowell’s English students (listen to my heart sing! which is personification).

We also got to hear Stephen read aloud a just-penned short story: what a treat live, with King’s inflection on key phrases and a magical donning of protagonist and antagonist-voice.

Well.  So inspired were we from our full-on two hours of Stephen King Live, I recklessly baked over the weekend. Scary stuff without a recipe.

Abby and I worked fluently using raw adrenaline from King’s horror to test-drive a Christmas Cranberry Pie, with crust built from scratch -- kneaded with filthy hands.

We took mutantly giant cranberries clearly infused with testosterone by the ocean spraying folks, and cut them into quarters barely small enough to fit a human mouth.

We added cranberry juice, sugar, some flour to thicken.

 Voila.

A red, runny fuck mess. 

The perfect tribute to Stephen King.  He not only used the F-word a lot in his conversations with Andre Dubus III, but the pie was a culinary homage. Remember his novel, Thinner? Great fun, but the film version was pretty horrific, and not in the way Stephen intended.

In the end, a red pie is involved and it resembled our cranberry pie. The special effects folks didn’t need to lift a finger as long as they used our recipe.  It’s supposed to contain human blood, disguised by the red, fruity runoff.

At one point someone cuts into the pie with a horror-movie knife that makes a sword sound ‘shwing’ and –

Well.  My pie’s liquidy center was exactly like the blood pie in Stephen’s movie. 

Mmmm… blood pie. 

Sort of thematic for Christmas. 

Or maybe Easter. 

Nativity scenes, crucifix … it’s all religious to me. 

Speaking of which, can't wait to see you all at Christmas! 

Love, Mom

ABBY:  I feel like we're either going straight to hell... or the top notch of heaven.... depending what branch of Christianity we're on.

DAD: We’re on the Low Hanging branch. Or on one of Dante’s rings.  That horror pie was delicious!  BTW, I am going to re-kindle the neighborhood rumors and wear a yarmulke at Christmas.

JAKE:  "Now nobody gets to go to Heaven."

ZACH:  Alright, Jake!  Aqua Teen Hunger Force reference!

DAD:  “Who wants a latte? Oh I'm sorry was that me who knocked that right out of your hand?”  *We may have to plug in ATHF for the holidays!

ABBY:  I'm sitting in Dunk’s... face in my palm... We are all scorned by God ...

MOM:  ANYWAY … Stephen King was awesome and--

FAMILY:    -- zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz --