Daze of Penitence

Sometimes it's difficult to tell the difference between indigestion and introspection. The two often go hand in hand, particularly for some of us this time of year.

We are in the throes of the "Days of Awe," those ten days beginning with Rosh Hashanah and ending with Yom Kippur, when we Jews are supposed to reflect on our sins and repent. Penitence is easy, at least before there's time to put our promises to the test; reflection can be a bitch. It's no wonder so many of us feel such a nagging discomfort in the pit of our bellies this week, an uneasiness that just doesn't seem to quit. Or could it simply be too many matzoh balls, too many helpings of brisket?

To be on the safe side, I reflect, I introspect, and I try to sort through the items in my self-critique to determine what's valid and what's maybe a bit too harsh. If everyone ended up with a list like the one I start out with, the Book of Life would have a lot of empty pages. As it is, too many folks have died this year way ahead of their time, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. I'm not quite sure religion -- mine or anyone else's -- can offer up a satisfactory explanation.

Which is why I can't help but be skeptical about the whole cause and effect theory linking a week of introspection and penitence to another full year of life. It just doesn't add up, not when within a period of six months in my neck of the woods alone a fifteen year old, a forty-five year old, and several fifty-somethings have been here one minute and gone the next. Talk about indigestion.

Of course, a little introspection and penitence can be good for all of us, whether it lands us on a page in that mysterious book or not. I just don't think we need to get our stomachs all upset about our inescapable and uniquely human failings, especially when decisions about life and death seem so random. I think the best we can do is acknowledge our sins, vow to do better, and move forward.

And if the discomfort persists, next year go easy on the kugel.

Incontinents of the World

Gone are the days when girls got their noses done because of a (wink, wink) deviated septum. No excuses necessary. We've moved on to botox injections for (wink, wink) overactive bladders. I suddenly feel like I have to pee.

After all, what's a little botulism when it can save you a few trips to the bathroom. And if it ends up smoothing out a few wrinkles, well, that's just a little extra bang for your buck. I'm considering going in for a little bladder touch up as I venture back out into the work force. Heck, my daughter just got out there and she has to work side by side every day with a former Miss Virginia. A real one. Next to me, everybody is going to look like a friggin former Miss Virginia. Life is demoralizing enough these days.

I'm so excited about this new procedure I'm going to ask the vet if it's available for dogs. Manny has a bit of an overactive bladder these days; he prefers to simply pee in the house rather than wait for me to let him out. And, well, you've all seen the pictures. A little wrinkle treatment might do him a world of good, lift his spirits a bit. I can only imagine what it feels like to live in a neighborhood full of schnoodles and shihpoos and maltipoos and labradoodles and all those other designer mutts concocted in puppy labs. (Okay, truth be told, Manny was conceived in a petri dish as well, but I think Dr. Frankenstein was on call that day.)

Face it. The pressure to look good crosses species lines. You'd think with the ever increasing popularity of cosmetic surgery Manny and I wouldn't need an excuse to go in for a little wrinkle plumping. But we'll never hear the end of it from those who know us best.

So we'll just flaunt our Depends, and once we're certain we've aired our cases for excessive urination, it's off to the bladder specialist to tighten things up a bit.

Good Enough Housekeeping

I panicked the other day when I noticed there was a missed call from my son. For the past month, he has gone underground, always sounding annoyed when I finally attempt to break the silence and call. I had taken to texting an occasional "hi sweetie," and have contented myself with the occasional and equally uninspiring one word response. "Hi." Sometimes you just have to aim low.

A missed call, dammit. I leave my phone in the car for ten minutes while I run into the grocery store -- two unlikely events at once! -- and come out to see he has reentered the universe -- my universe, at any rate -- and attempted to reach me and, oh, bad mommy hell here I come again, I wasn't there for him. I immediately tried to call him back, to no avail.

So I called his older sister. She, too, had missed a call from him. Now we were both concerned. Only some dire circumstance could have compelled him to call each of us on a random Saturday afternoon. As we worried together about what may have gone wrong, he beeped in. "Gotta go, he's calling," I snapped at the child who keeps in touch, who would never think of disappearing and always wants to know what's going on. Isn't that always the way?

As it turns out, he was just doing a bit of "housekeeping," which, along with cleaning his room, included calling both his sisters and his mom. Housekeeping! I wonder where we were on the list, whether we ranked higher than cleaning the toilet.

The truth is it doesn't really matter. It was good to hear his voice. September can be a weird month, half summer, half fall, the days shortening and cooling to help us adjust to the pressures that accompany the change of season. Some of us need more help than others.

Come to think of it, I did a bit of housekeeping this week too. Overcame a bit of inertia, tossed out some garbage, made some space. By October I might actually be ready to hunker down and accept summer's abrupt departure.

Maybe I'll even call my mom.

Dance Lessons

The hemlines creep up every year. The shoes get so high they make Barbie look like she's wearing flats. If it weren't for the sweet little boutonnieres and corsages, homecoming weekend at the high school would be downright frightening.

The other day, I tried to explain homecoming to my Canadian friend, who is trying desperately to understand all of those "strange American rituals."

"It's the weekend the football team returns for a home game," I explained.

"Oh. So every time the football team comes back home, it's 'homecoming.'" Friggin foreigners. You'd think I was describing the equivalent of an Incan human sacrifice.

"No. Just the first time." The guy probably played way too much hockey as a kid, suffered too many whacks to the head. I was exhausted by the thought of explaining to him that the whole homecoming thing, as it turns out, has very little to do with football at all.

I decided to give him the short version. There's a dance. The girls spend all day Saturday running around with their moms, getting manicures, pedicures, up-dos, and professional makeup applications. Then, they go home, dress like sluts, and all the parents, the boys, and the girls show up at some generous soul's house so everybody can have hundreds of pictures memorializing the event. The girls can't walk in their shoes, they can't bend in their dresses, and they can't move their heads for fear they will ruin their hair. The boys look terrified.

"A dance," said the Canuck. "That's nice."

What an idiot. "They don't really go to the dance, silly." Those long winters clearly cause brain damage. "Not for more than an hour, anyway."

"If they don't go to the dance, what do they do?"

I was starting to think Canada must be a third world country. "They pile into a party bus -- an intimate group of about forty -- head downtown for an expensive dinner, then pile back into the party bus and return to some other generous and masochistic soul's house to hang out all night. And of course they don't drink. And, by morning, at least half of the girls have cried, hardly anyone is speaking to anyone else, and the kids spend Sunday acting as if they have just been subjected to the worst kind of torture."

"Sounds awful."

Oy. Hopelessly primitive. Why did I even bother to explain.

While Someone's Guitar Gently Weeps

Can someone explain to me why anyone out there gives a shit about the Salahis?

Let's review. She's a tall hot blond. He's a short chubby guy. They achieved notoriety by crashing a state dinner at the White House. And their lives, as far as we know, are a perennial script in progress for reality TV. Just your average couple in the split level down the street, the kind of folks you run into at the corner grocery store. Except now he's shopping solo, since she ran off with a rock star. Shocking.

Tareq was on television shedding crocodile tears. It almost made me want to run over to his house with a casserole. Naturally, he's devastated. Without Michaela on his arm, he's just a short chubby middle aged guy. We all remember her red dress from the state dinner, but does anyone have a clue as to what he was wearing? The best he'll do on his own on the reality TV circuit is a spot on The Biggest Loser. I'd be crying too.

It's just that I can think of countless other scenarios that would be a tad more newsworthy than a self aggrandizing publicity hound running off with a rock star. Like say, a potato-esque broad being whisked away from her double wide by, well, anybody. And not even at gunpoint. Now that would be something to write home about.

Maybe I'm just bitter, jealous that nobody pays me much attention. (Negative attention doesn't count.) My therapist tells me to stop obsessing about things I cannot control and to focus on that which I can. I think I'm gonna pitch my own reality show -- Real Housewives of the Trailer Park. I'll clean up real nice -- get that missing tooth replaced -- and before you know it I'll be gettin' engraved invitations to just about everywhere.

The Fairest One of All?

We each create our own narrative. Two people can live through the same set of circumstances and come up with wildly different versions of what happened. Our own narratives -- it's how we protect ourselves.

I sat in court yesterday, listening to stories. The woman who claimed her husband grabbed and restrained her, the man who claimed his wife had been unfaithful. Neither the grabbing husband nor the unfaithful wife was present, and I could not help but wonder what their versions would look like. It's not that I doubted the truth of the allegations (the speakers did, after all, swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth); I just assumed someone else might very well take the same nuggets of truth and spin quite a different tale.

There will no doubt be an outcome of some kind in all of these cases -- including my own, I've been assured -- but the separate narratives will never be reconciled. The same set of facts will forever be distorted into two fun house mirror images that bear little resemblance to each other. And the story tellers will go their separate ways, some more convinced than others that their particular spin is airtight.

Eventually, it just won't matter. Or it shouldn't. After all, nobody stays in the fun house forever, and certainly nobody stares too long at the distorted reflections gazing out from the mirrors. Heck, ya gotta leave some time for more roller coaster rides, more tempestuous teacups, more cotton candy. Life's too short to stay stuck in one place.

Yes, the world outside the fun house can be scary. There are steep climbs and precipitous falls, dizzying ordeals, and evil temptations. Challenging and exhilarating at the same time. The stuff of life.

I Want Candy!

I received an email notification from one of the dating sites yesterday, inviting me to some upcoming event. "You'll feel like a kid in a candy store," the email promised. Great. Isn't that the place where everything is bad for you?

Another site -- which won't give me access until I resubscribe and pay up -- keeps teasing me with "wink alerts" and an alleged inbox full of emails. There's always a tantalizing photo alongside the tease, a portion of a really good looking male face, handsome in an ageless sort of way. A little eye candy. My guess is that guy has neither winked nor emailed. Just a hunch.

When I was in elementary school, there was a candy store across the street named Mawdy and Eddie's. Actually, I think it was called Mortie and Eddie's, but this was Brooklyn in the sixties, long before I discovered that an "r" in the middle of a word is not silent and a word ending in "a" does not end with a phantom "r." Anyway, during our lunch hour, we would always leave time for a trip across Coney Island Avenue to Mawdy and Eddie's so we could stock our desks with junk to help us survive the afternoon.

The appeal was never so much the candy as it was the illicitness of it all. Back before the age of the ubiquitous water bottle, it was perfectly permissible for eight and nine year olds to roam around busy city streets, but god help you if you were caught with a snack or a beverage in the classroom. For us, the more daring the better. The most challenging items -- and naturally the most satisfying -- were the one cent individually wrapped pieces of Bazooka bubble gum. Not only did you have to be clever about the chewing and the occasional bubble, but you had to risk getting called on while you took the time to read the little Bazooka Joe comic.

Come to think of it, I often do feel like a kid in a candy store these days. Except I'm not a kid, and the candy isn't all bad for me. I can eat what I want, whenever I want, blow bubbles to my heart's content. I'll pass on the upcoming dating event and the mysterious emails, but I'll feel free to help myself to the good stuff. The world is my Snickers bar.