Can I Get an Amen?

Are religious services supposed to be somber, serious affairs or fun for the whole family? People should enjoy themselves when they go to church or temple, but more like a good time at an interesting lecture and less like at a drunken frat party. It’s tough for my family to find an appropriate balance.  One thing I know for sure, though, is that you should not distract the rabbi from doing his job.

My twelve year old daughter, E,  is rapidly approaching thirteen, and the date of her bat mitzvah looms over my head like one of those cartoon rainclouds. She has been learning Hebrew since she was eight, but now it’s crunch time, and with one month to go, she is eating, drinking, sleeping, and generally obsessing over her big day. One of the things I do to help her prepare is to take her to Friday night services on a pretty regular basis so she can be very familiar and comfortable with everything.

It’s not easy to go every Friday night; I like to do things on Friday nights, and going to sit for an hour and half to pray in a language I don’t speak isn’t usually high on the list. I have told our rabbi before that if we could switch services to Sunday morning, more people would want to go, but he just laughs like he is pretending that’s funny. Since we have been going regularly, however, my daughter and I have made it fun. It’s nice to spend some time alone with each other, no phones, no television, no iPads. We sit calmly and sing along for about the first five minutes, but after that, we lose interest and get slap happy.

It usually starts with us finding bad words in the Hebrew-to-English transliterations. There’s a “tush” in there and a “shit” or two, although they are pronounced like “sheet.” And since our cat’s name is Moshe, a good Hebrew name, we enjoy the many references to him. Whenever the rabbi strums his guitar, one of us will lean over to the other one and whisper, “I feel a song coming on” or “I didn’t realize this was a musical.” Then we get the giggles. It doesn’t matter if whatever we laugh at is even funny. It could be the way someone’s pants are tucked in their crack or a seriously unusual singing voice booming behind us. Whatever it is, funny or not, we start that silent laughter that involves lots of body shaking and tear streaming.

Recently, we attended Friday night services together on a night that a local college group came to observe, like they were on a field trip to the zoo. We generally try to be very welcoming and, there’s that word again, appropriate, so they can study us Jews in our religious habitat. The rabbi took a little extra time to explain parts of the service, but overall, it was the typical Friday night worship scenario.

Friday night services follow a general pattern. We start with a call to worship, then some we are so happy to be here together praying and singing, followed by the Thank God It’s Friday blessings. We take some time to honor the past, pray for peace, and remember the sick. After that, the rabbi reminds us to take a moment for silent prayer.

While the congregation meditates, the rabbi usually drinks from a water bottle he has tucked away in the podium, because all that singing and praying can really parch one’s throat. But that night E and I were there along with the college group, the rabbi choked on his water during the silent prayer. This wasn’t one of those little coughs; it was full blown violent gagging and choking with no breathing.  E and I immediately started cracking up, not because the rabbi was dying in front of us but rather because of the irony of loud choking during the silent prayer. I covered my face with my Gates of Prayer book so he couldn’t see me laughing, although if he looked at my daughter, he would have known. I have no doubt the whole pew shook from our laughter.

We knew he saw us laughing because he began laughing too, laughing and choking. I raised my hands up in the air, since I am of the belief that raising your hands while choking is the best way to make it stop. The rabbi was then choking and laughing with his hands in the air.

“Touchdown!” I whispered to E. At least I hope it was a whisper.

“Raise the roof!” she said back to me. I laughed.

When he regained his composure, he continued services as though nothing happened, making his way through the Torah portion and the sermon with relative ease, punctuated by a small cough or two.

Usually at the end of services before we have refreshments in the social hall, the rabbi offers a priestly blessing over the congregation. He raises his hands overhead and forms the Hebrew letter “shin” with his fingers while reciting a prayer. You know what that looks like if you’ve ever watched Star Trek. Remember Spock and his Vulcan salute, with his four fingers held in a V, two fingers and two fingers? Well, that’s a Jew thing. The rabbi does the Vulcan salute/priestly blessing every week, and whenever we are there, my daughter and I too raise our hands in salute, mostly because it hurts a little between the middle and ring finger, and because it’s funny.

When the rabbi’s hands went up, so did ours. And for the second time that night, the rabbi could not continue because he couldn’t stop giggling. Yes, giggling. He would start again and then have to stop, a little Hebrew, a little laughing, while we were sitting in the pew, laughing along at this inside joke while the other people in the temple tried to figure out what had gotten into their spiritual leader. There was a lot of turning around in seats to see what was so funny, and it was us.

We did offer our apologies after services, and the rabbi seemed cool with it, like he usually does. He knows us, so it’s not like our cutting up is a surprise. The only surprising part was that he didn’t tune us out. “It’s his job to be the rabbi, for Christ’s sake,” I told E. “We have to make more of an effort to control ourselves. We can’t be making the rabbi laugh while he’s up there doing his thang.”Our rabbi has assured me that he is glad we have a good time at services. He’s probably just glad to have some live bodies paying attention, even if we are paying attention to the wrong things.

Taco Night

Remember when people had names you could recognize? Now they have names you can’t even pronounce. How many of these unusual names are a result of poor spelling instead of individualism and creativity? There might not be much creativity when it comes to naming your Catholic child, but at least you are familiar with William and John and Mary and Catherine.

While at the grocery store today, I noticed my cashier’s name tag as he scanned my groceries. “Hello, my name is Cornious,” it said. Cornious? What? Cornelius is an unusual name enough, but Cornious? Do you pronounce it the way you think you would? Is his nickname Corny? Instead of expressing my curiosity, I just concentrated on swiping my credit card and bagging my own groceries.

I got in my car and texted my friend MJ. “My cashier’s name at the grocery store is Cornious.”

She replied with what I was thinking, “Corn holeyooo!!” That’s why we’re friends.

Then she called me and said she had a horrible story from the other day. MJ is in the process of having a fence installed in the backyard of her new house. Like most things that involve home maintenance, this fence has been a pain in her ass. Her neighbors wouldn’t respond to their request to adjoin the new fence to their existing fence on one side of their property. The covenants and by-laws of their community are very rigid when it comes to things like fences, involving pages of paperwork and committee approval and the same bullshit that goes into anything that should be simple like a fucking fence. But they need one. Between the toddler and the two dogs, MJ’s life needs something with clearly defined parameters. She jumped through all the hoops and dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s and the stars had aligned just so, and it was fence go time.

At five o’clock in the afternoon, on this other day, the men came to install her new fence. The main guy was a small gentleman of Latino descent, of Hispanic heritage, possibly Mexican. He spoke English with a heavy Spanish accent, and his uniform had the name “Tacho” embroidered above the shirt pocket. When MJ asked him if he had all the approved paperwork for the fence, he either didn’t know what she was talking about or didn’t understand her. After a rudimentary exchange, which I am sure involved pantomime and speaking too loudly (as if talking louder makes English easier to understand), the man got started on the fence.

A short while later, there was a knock on MJ’s door. “Ma’am,” The man said when she opened the door, “do not panic.”

No good news ever began with that sentence.

“Do you have sprinkler?” he asked her.

“No, no sprinkler, we don’t have a sprinkler system,” she answered. Behind her the dogs barked and the baby cried.

“Sprinkler? Next door?” he tried again.

“No, none of us. No sprinkler system,” she replied.

“Lots of water,” he trailed off.

MJ rushed outside and indeed there was a lot of water, gushing out of a pipe that did not belong to a sprinkler system, but rather was the water to the neighbor’s house. The dogs ran after her.

“The big dog, I am not scared of, “the man said. “It is the little dog what I fear.”

MJ got the dogs back inside, along with the screaming baby, and tried again to survey the damage.

In his defense, how was the man to know that the water line to the neighboring house would be on MJ’s property? MJ was just as surprised as he was. In a panic, she called another neighbor over to ask what to do.

“I’m freaking out,” MJ said to her neighbor. “Taco just punched a hole through the neighbor’s water line and now my yard’s flooded.”

“MJ,” her neighbor said. “His name is pronounced Ta Cho.  Cha, like chugging or change.”

“Oh my God, I just called that man taco. I thought it was pronounced taco. I fucking thought his name was Taco?” MJ was mortified.

She was even more mortified that he was standing behind her when she said it.

He finished the job without any further incidents, despite being called a taco. And eventually the neighbors had their water line repaired, which really should not have been on MJ’s property to begin with. Hopefully everything will work out okay and MJ won’t have to have Tacho come back for any fence touch ups.

 Good fences might make for good neighbors, but it’s never a good idea to piss off your laborers.

Lassoing Babies at the Food Truck Rodeo

If you think it’s easy to feed a baby dinner in a parking lot, think again. Babies don’t understand how parking lots work. They don’t get the inherent danger in running free amongst two- to three-ton instruments of death. They don’t care much about table manners in general, so the idea of enforcing manners when there isn’t even a table is, well, you get the idea.

My friend MJ came to visit me a couple of weeks ago, and like a good mother should, she brought along her baby, KS, for the ride. KS is technically a toddler now. He is about thirty pounds of pure wide open boy, and neither MJ nor I have any idea how to control such a creature. She has another child, a twelve year old daughter, whose innate peace and femininity did nothing to prepare MJ for mothering the little cyclone she has swirling around her. No child proof door knobs can deter him. No baby gate can contain him. No stroller can subdue him. He has to explore everything he can see, reach, smell, or find, and he will find a way, no matter what obstacles the world puts in his way, damn it. He approaches life on tippy toes and upstretched arms.

We spent  the first part of our day shopping with an angry baby strapped in a stroller, trying to limit his access to fragile items on low shelves and high end garments on flimsy hangers. The second part we spent hoping he would nap while visiting a friend. KS was able to occupy himself by throwing fistfuls of dog food at our friend’s pooch, who was confused by the unusual method of feeding, but since he was not one to question such an opportunity,he went along with it. By the time dinner rolled around, we were too tired to think clearly. Babies take a lot of energy. I know young moms can handle it, but MJ and I are hardly that. I am now wondering how grandparents do it.

We were too tired to cook. We were too tired to go out. We didn’t feel like picking up. Then we remembered that neither of us had tried the new food truck in town, and immediately got excited. We looked online to find out where it was parked and to scan the menu. I quickly made a turkey and cheese sandwich for KS, grabbed him something to drink, and threw it all in a bag while MJ wrestled him into his shorts and shoes. Babies don’t like shoes and shorts. They like the barefoot bottomless look, which allows for freestyle bathroom habits and easy hose downs. We were trying for civilized, though, so KS lost the battle and howled his frustration from his POW car seat behind us as we drove in search of the food truck.

We found it parked conveniently in the lot of one of those local tap rooms, the kind where you bring your growler jugs back for refills, not exactly what you would call young child friendly.  MJ and I were excited to try the deep fried Brussels sprouts, the schnitzel sandwich, the banh mi, whatever had yet to sell out, so we left common sense in the car and got in line with KS, who immediately demanded to be put down so he could take off running across the parking lot. MJ ran after him and I ordered and paid for our food.

The modern day food truck craze is all about culinary creativity with low overhead; the food is great if you can overlook the ambiance of oil leak stains on parking spaces and car exhaust. Food trucks have been around forever (remember the Good Humor man?) but only recently have they come into their own as a source of really unique food.  If you are looking for a kid’s menu and some free packs of crackers to entertain your young progeny, however, you are probably better off at a national chain. We got our food and moseyed over to a patch of sidewalk, where we proceeded to dine out of our environmentally friendly takeout containers while keeping KS entertained with food so he wouldn’t run away again.

He had no interest in the sprouts. I guess he wasn’t a fan of the cider vinegar gastrique. He didn't care about the sandwiches. He did enjoy his sandwich and milk, and then he enjoyed open mouthing my water bottle and allowing his precious particles of food to float inside.

While MJ and I fought over the last Brussels sprout, KS took off to introduce himself to the puppy on the other side of the parking lot. And much to our surprise, a car came barreling out of nowhere to fly across the lot, right in the direction of the baby. Okay, that’s probably not how it went down, but it sure felt that way. Time stood still, but MJ demonstrated supermother reflexes and snatched him up before any harm could come to him, either from the canine or the car. She earned that last sprout.

The food was great. The baby wrangling was a bit of a downer. Next time, if there is indeed a next time, we will have to strongly consider eating in the car, like all the other hipster parents who had created a den atmosphere in the backs of their SUVs, movies playing on the built in DVD’s, organic cotton blankets on the floors. It was almost like a modern day drive in, only everyone was watching their own movie, and no one was dry humping.

Dinner in the parking lot was exhausting. Both MJ and her baby were out cold about a minute after we got home. Who can blame her, really? You try shoving food in your pie hole and corralling a toddler in a parking space at the same time.

Those Brussels sprouts were totally worth it.

 

The Land of Milk and Honey Boo Boo

I have a confession to make. I have become a regular viewer of TLC’s newest abomination, “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” which unfortunately airs on Wednesday evenings following “Toddlers and Tiaras,” another show I am ashamed to admit I watch regularly. “Toddlers and Tiaras” is a reality show about the world of children’s pageants, and oh, what a world it is. Most of us first learned of that world following the murder of Jon Benet Ramsey in 1996, and rightly so, most of us were shocked that such a world existed. At the same time we were apathetically expressing our outrage, another smaller group of people thought, aww, look at them cute little girls all tarted up to look like women, let’s see if our little Jennifer/Tammy/Britney can do that too. 

One of those pageant girls is Alana, or “Honey Boo Boo Child,” as she is known to her family and now to the rest of us as well. She was on “Toddlers and Tiaras” a few times, and while she didn’t win a title, she did win America’s heart.  And TLC, which used to be The Learning Channel but somehow lost its way, has given her and her family their own show. They also have shows about primordial dwarfs and conjoined twins, so if you are a little off in some way, TLC might be contacting you soon.  Watching it is like visiting a carnival side show, only without the corn dog smell and crack smoking barkers.

Anyway, back to Honey Boo Boo. She lives in a small house with her family near the train tracks in the middle of nowhere, Georgia. She has three sisters, none of which have the same father, a morbidly obese mother who is also an extreme couponing fanatic, and a father who is never without a ball cap and a wad of chewing tobacco. One of her sisters is pregnant. The other two also have weight problems. Her parents are not married. Her mother has an old toe injury that the whole family calls her “forklift foot.” How can I not get hooked on this?

The first time I watched the show, I felt really sad. The whole show was sad. They live in a tiny house, half of which is filled with discount toilet paper. They buy their groceries at a food salvage auction. The sheriff calls them when there is road kill so they can have the meat.  Their idea of fun is hopping on their four wheelers to rummage through the dumpsters at the town landfill, to which they refer as the department store. The show uses subtitles when they speak, and they are speaking English. Every bit of the show exploits this family’s poverty and ignorance, and by watching it, am I not engaging in a bit too much schadenfreude?

But then I thought, what would Honey Boo Boo do? Does she care that her mother farts all the time? Hell no! Is she embarrassed that her 17 year old sister is going to have a baby and the whole family discusses it coming out of her “biscuit” on national television? Of course not!  Does she want to hide her head in public because her parents’ idea of date night is eating at the local country buffet? I doubt it! Is she ashamed that it takes five of them to put together one pack n play, or that the pack n play isn’t for a human baby but rather a pig baby? Probably not!

Her family is getting paid for showing us how the other half lives, and while not they are certainly not making as much as they should, they are definitely making more than they would without all that attention. I read that they earn roughly $4,000 an episode, or per week, if you think about it that way. They sure as shit couldn’t get that working for P. T. Barnum. That’s a whole lotta pork rinds. Good for them. So what if they toilet paper their own house? They can afford two ply, can’t they?

As I have watched the show, I realize one very important thing about Honey Boo Boo and her family. They love each other, unconditionally. That mother might need to be referred to child protective services time and again, but at the end of the day, she isn’t trying to hurt her children. She loves them. She wants them happy. She provides them with food and shelter. She gives them experiences, maybe not the same kind you give your children, but she does the best with what she has, which isn’t a lot, folks. She accepts them for who they are. She encourages them. In her own bizarre way, she is a good mother. And her daughters, well, they love her too, or they appear to, based on the editing. The dad, Sugar Bear, doesn’t seem all that capable of expression, but he does tear up as often as John Boehner, so he feels something for his family as well. It’s gosh darned touching.

So while I would never mix a tub of butter substitute and a bottle of ketchup together, heat it, and use it as a sauce for my spaghetti noodles, I shouldn’t judge Honey Boo Boo for enjoying it along with her family. Her mother made that meal with love. We can’t all be eating organic kale chips and quinoa, can we?

 

 

 

A River Runs Through It

Remember that Saturday Night Live skit, The Whiners? Now would be the time I would mention Joe Piscopo, and you would say who, and then you would realize you don’t remember that skit. Well, it’s about this couple who whines a lot and eats nothing but mac and cheese due to their digestive problems. My youngest daughter, S, could be their offspring. She too is an aficionado of macaroni and cheese, but good luck if you try dressing it up with, say, gruyere or smoked Gouda. And while most of the time she is sweet and funny and helpful and a joy to have around, every once in a while she can show her ass in a way that is suspiciously dramatic, as if she is peri-menopausal or possessed by demons. That was the version of S we had on a recent family outing in North Carolina.

We joined my friend JH and her family for a day of river tubing near Asheville on the French Broad River, which I refer to as the Old French Whore River, also an obscure SNL reference from a skit that wasn’t all that funny. We have never been river tubing before, but it was the end of summer and we wanted to try something new while enjoying some quality family time. If this all sounds like a recipe for disaster, well, you’re mostly wrong.

River tubing is what the lazy river at a water park aspires to be. Each person gets a fancy tube, what used to be an inner tube before tubing became a commercial enterprise, and floats downstream on the river from one location to another. If done right, river tubing can be relaxing and kind of fun. There is the possibility of a small rapid or two, and with a cooler and some beer, you can have yourself a pleasant little Saturday afternoon. This particular river is barely more than a backyard stream. At almost any point along the way, we were never more than knee deep in water, and never more than a mile away from a major road. I was more concerned about finding a bloated corpse than capsizing my tube.

JH and her husband had planned well for the day. A bag full of snacks, a cooler full of drinks, each family member in their waterproof Keens, and they were good to go. My less adventurous family donned dirty old sneakers and ill-fitting clothing over our bathing suits, garments that could easily be thrown away rather than cleaned if it came to that.  We paid our money and all boarded the van to the drop off point on the river, which was oddly in the middle of a tomato field which I am pretty sure was a cover for a meth lab. We were each given our inner tubes and our ill-fitting life jackets and a paddle, and lumbered down to the river. The trick was to squat and sort of fall into the tube, then adjust before using the paddle to help move along on the water, since there was no breeze and therefore no current. We had straps to link our tubes together, creating a massive family tube island, not unlike refugees fleeing Haiti.

Sounds like the potential for fun exists, huh? Well, back to S. My child was recovering from an elbow contusion from a fall over a month ago, and she wasn’t looking forward to new experiences, the logic being that one can’t reinjure an elbow if safely seated on a couch in front of the television. Plus she had never been river tubing. She has been tubing on a lake, when you get dragged behind a boat, and figured if it was anything like that, it would hurt her arm. My husband and I tried to explain to her, over and over, that it was more lazy river than speedboat, and that she liked lazy rivers, and they were called lazy for a reason. But never mind, once she was convinced that it was an avenue to pain, she was not going to cooperate.

She acted like she couldn’t climb in and out of the van. She pretended like she didn’t know how to use a life jacket. She refused to carry her own inner tube. Forget about the part where she had to drop her ass in it and push off from the bank. If I could have left her there I would have, but I couldn’t do that, nor than I could push her in. Instead, I had to try to remain positive and upbeat because if she is one of those moods and I lost my temper with her, she would bypass whining and go straight to tantrum of catastrophic proportions.  I suspect that would have been even more unpleasant.
The minute we all hooked up our rafts, S decided she was ready for a snack, which meant we had to rearrange ourselves to get her closer to some food. We took turns tossing goldfish crackers and tiny little cheesy rice cakes at each other, hoping she would see the fun of a food fight on the river. Instead, she chastised us for being wasteful and held onto any snack bag that made its way into her hands.

We continued our slow path down the water. First she was so cold she couldn’t put her feet in the water. Then the sun warmed her and she was burning up. JH and I split a beer while trying to encourage her to look for birds or study the trees. We hit our first rapid, which isn’t so rapid with 8 inner tubes connected together. One of the tubes got stuck on a rock and we just sat there trying to push ourselves off and back along the current.

When the beer ran out and the whining ramped up, JH and I unhooked our tubes, linked them back together, and took off with our paddles on our own. Neither of us could stand listening to the sighing and complaining. I didn’t want to get into it, and she was too polite to say anything, so we just sort of floated away.  By and by, the older kids joined us, hooking up their tubes, leaving the dads to deal with the aftermath, which worked out well, since they had more beer in them, plus everyone knows men don’t hear whining.

We enjoyed a brief respite in whining, which was replaced by thunder. Now, normally when you hear thunder, you seek shelter, you know, away from water. What do you do on a river in a tube? My tween, who had caught up with us by that point, says, “Start paddling. I hear banjos.”

“You can’t make that reference. You don’t even know what it means,” I said to her.

We paddled quickly, until we saw the American flag hanging over the river, the only sign of where the car was parked.  We had made it back alive, with all the members of our family, after two and a half hours of floating downstream.

As my husband was helping S out of her tube, she told him quite proudly that she had urinated in her tube several times because, and I quote, “The fish do it too so who cares?”

He pointed out to her that her tube had no hole in the bottom and thus no drainage. She finished her day knowing that she spent over two hours marinating in her own urine.

After we got home and ready for bed, S confessed to me that the reason she was so cranky was that she was scared of tubing, since she had never been before. I reminded her that I have invested quite a bit of time in keeping her alive and have yet to change my mind about that, unless she acts like that again on an outing, at which point I might reconsider. Then I gave her a kiss and a smile.

Sweet dreams, you whiner.

 

Nikes, Reebok, Asics, Adidas. It's Not That Hard.

I was in spin class, the room cave dark, the music night club loud. Class was crowded for a Wednesday, almost every spin bike taken except for the broken one turned backwards and the lone bike under the stereo. Class had begun, and we were all warming up and getting ready to sweat. CC, our instructor, regaled us in a funny story or two to loosen us up and let us all know that spin was work, but it was also fun.

And then he walked in, a good ten minutes after class began, and everyone turned and looked at him. Not because he was drop dead gorgeous. Not because he was so muscular and fit that we couldn’t look away.

Honestly, we had no idea what he looked like, because none of us could look past his get-up. He was a Clemson University fan, perhaps its biggest. He wore a bright orange Clemson ball cap, a white shirt with an orange paw print over the left breast, and orange shorts with Clemson scrolled on one leg. His outfit would have been fine for a football game. For a Wednesday morning spin class, it was overkill.

But that’s not the worst part.

He wore sunglasses, in the cave dark spin room. Sunglasses which he kept on for the entire class. I always wear contacts to class because just the idea of my regular glasses slipping on my sweat-drenched face could make my face chafe. Not to mention I could fog up my glasses walking up the stairs. I doubt I would be able to see through them after fifteen minutes on the spin bike. Did he have something to hide?

 But that was also not the worst part.

On his legs were tall black socks, pulled up almost to the knee. In case you haven’t noticed, the boys these days are quite fond of wearing black socks, mid-calf, with any kind of shoe. It makes them all look like elderly tourists, but whatever, who understands kids and their bizarre fashion sense anyway. This was no boy; this was a middle aged man, and these weren’t mid calf length socks, they were practically up to his thighs. If I had to put money on it, I would bet they were compression stockings, like those worn by diabetics or people with poor circulation who are prone to getting blood clots in their legs.

But that too was not the worst part.

On his feet were navy blue Crocs. That was the worst part.

I will admit, I am pretty anti Croc. If you are working in the garden, then fine, slip your feet in those duck-like plastic shoes and have at it. If you are an obese red haired man famous for your Italian cooking and you want your signature look to be bright orange plastic shoes, whatever, to each his own. But if you are at the gym, exercising, you might want to at least sport, sport being the key word, some appropriate footwear. Crocs make everyone look like an asshole. Crocs in a spin class, however, are enough to make twenty people question your sanity, your fitness level, and your ability to live independently. If you can afford a gym membership, you can afford some sneakers.

I went to a children’s museum recently, and they had a display of all the children’s Crocs that were eaten by the escalators. My ten year old is now scared to wear hers, and she only wore them to dance class for the easy on/easy off factor before she slips into her Pointe shoes. Grown men at the gym should know better, or at least have some dignity and self respect.

The Croc shod Clemson fan came in ten minutes late and clambered onto the one remaining bike, shoved his Crocs into the shoe cages, and began pedaling. He didn’t bother adjusting the seat or the handlebars. He didn’t have a refreshing bottle of water or an old towel with which to absorb his sweat. And he didn’t take off his sunglasses. He just rode. At one point in the class, our instructor made a comment about the first football game this weekend. The Croc shod Clemson fan shouted an enthusiastic yahoo, in case we had forgotten he was a Clemson fan, which we had not. A couple of other people might have hooted, but it was drowned out by his yell, which might be an indication of how obnoxious he would be to sit next to at the stadium.

I have seen my share of odd in spin class. There’s the frighteningly thin elderly woman who insists on wearing pearls and hot pink lipstick. There’s the older woman who wears her white sports bras as her top, even though every other woman at the gym wears a shirt. There’s the woman who insists on full make-up and cologne for a morning workout. Sunglasses and Crocs blew them all away.

As we all exited the room after class had ended, I commented to my spin buddies, “Well, that was different.” “What the hell?” asked one of my friends. CC, the instructor, asked, “Were those…Crocs?” And we all laughed, kind of like one of those laughs at the end of a sitcom when image freezes and the credits roll.

 If you don’t want twenty people to laugh at you, don’t wear Crocs to the gym. It might even be in the fitness club rules, and if it isn’t, it needs to be. It will be one of those rules that people will read in about five years and say, “Why is that even a rule? Oh, because some weirdo probably wore Crocs to exercise. But who would do something that stupid?”

At least twenty of us know the answer to that one.

Hold the Phone

“This is not a sales call. This information is for …Tina Bennett. If you are …Tina Bennett, please press one. If you are not …Tina Bennett, please press two.”

I pressed two.

“If you would like to find …Tina Bennett…and want to hold, please press one. If …Tina Bennett is not available, please press two. If this is not the phone number for…Tina Bennett, please press three.”

I pressed three.

“Please hold while you wait for the next available customer service representative.”

I held because I am not Tina Bennett. I do not know a Tina Bennett, nor have I ever met a Tina Bennett. But apparently,  a Tina Bennett decided to give my home phone number to all of her creditors, and they are now calling my house night and day. No sooner do I hang up from one call to Tina Bennett that the phone rings again, the caller ID showing a phone number that is either unknown or an 800 number. None of these calls is for me or any member of my house. No, they are all for Tina Bennett.

Tina Bennett has received more calls to my house than the entire family combined. Her calls have woken me up on a Sunday morning. They have interrupted my family dinners, and they have made me miss more than one Olympic moment. Tina Bennett, for the love of all things holy, pay your bills and gets these clowns to stop calling my house.

You would think by not answering the phone, it would eventually stop ringing, but no. Those bill collectors are a persistent bunch, and they are not against leaving messages for Tina Bennett. Seriously, folks, do you really think she will call you back? After daily phone calls for over eight weeks, you need to focus your energy on someone else. Tina Bennett is a lost cause.

When we moved to this house five years ago, we were given a new phone number by BellSouth. It was Becky Bowen’s old phone number, and she too was a deadbeat who didn’t pay her bills. For three years, we got weekly phone calls trying to track down Becky Bowen, including a regular follow up from some lawyer in Vancouver. After about three years, the phone calls stopped, although every once in a while an agency will take her account out of dormancy and attempt to harass her again.

For a couple of years, the house was quiet, with only an occasional call for the kids or a distant relative.Sure, the Fraternal Order of Police did their annual drive, and every so often there would be some similar annoyance, political robo calls or the like, but never as frequent as the calls for Becky Bowen had been. We all mourned the loss of the constant phone calls, as if a family member had died, or we had had a fight with our closest friends.

We contemplated getting rid of the home phone number altogether, but decided to keep it, just in case. In case of what, I have no idea, since three out of four of us have cell phones.  If the power goes out or the Rapture comes, you can still look me up in the phone book, which might as well be carved on a stone tablet, and call my house. Nothing makes you feel older than maintaining a home phone. Add twenty years to that old feeling if that phone has a coiled phone cord (all but one of ours is cordless, thank you very much).

And now, out of the blue, it’s been the summer of Tina Bennett.

I sat on hold for a phone call that wasn’t even for me, such was the level of my irritation. As if speaking to the anonymous harasser on the other end of the phone would put a stop to the daily phone calls.

“Hello, am I speaking with Tina Bennett?” a young man said to me, finally taking me off hold.

“No, this is not Tina Bennett’s phone number. You have the wrong number,” I said, almost politely.

Are you ready for the best part?

“Well, can you tell me how to get in touch with Tina Bennett?” he said.

“How would I know?” I shot back. “You’re the one calling the wrong number.”

 Hey, I’ve got an idea. Why not make up a different phone number, like Tina Bennett did, and try calling that one? Or maybe you can go back to school, earn a degree, and try for a better job. Because I am pretty sure that calling wrong numbers for a collection agency wasn’t part of your American dream.

The young man indicated he would update their records, which I doubted, and I hung up, which was mildly satisfying. At least until my tween pointed out how insane it is to sit on hold to yell at some guy for just doing his job, which is what the constant harassment and  endless ringing phone had driven me to do. I should have offered to pay Tina Bennett's bills, just to get them off my back.

Damn you, Tina Bennett.