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Barbie had better luck driving that RV than I did this weekend…

Subtract twenty two years from my age and you’ve got my mental outlook this Saturday as I was driving and pulled into a parking space (er, perhaps the more realistic description would be “turned right, straddled two parking spaces and stalled the car”) and promptly burst into tears and wailed that I would never, ever learn to drive a stick shift. Ever. In a million trillion years. Then I got the hiccups. Yes, folks, a gen-u-ine tantrum. And here I thought I’d grown out of that sort of thing in 1974. Happily by Sunday afternoon I had grown out of it and after listening very carefully to Todd’s description of how to downshift in preparation for stopping (not in fifth gear, sweetie) at a stoplight I drove all the way to the grocery store and back with nary a mistake, merging on and off two highways in the rain no less. To say I was beaming with pride would not be an understatement.

From the silliness file:

Todd: Um, that was a stop sign back there…
Sage: Oops! I didn’t see it, sorry about that.
Todd: You might want to find somewhere else to park, ’cause this isn’t a parking space.
Sage: (giggling) Why are you so mean?
Todd: (giggling too) I’m just stating facts, honest.

On Friday I was sitting on the futon, working on a crocheted blanket, when what I thought was going to be the third video in the story “The Buccaneers” which I’d borrowed from the library turned out to be a mini-biography of Edith Wharton. One of the people being interviewed about her life talked about how difficult it was for her to shake societal mores, “A lady does not write,” being among them, and publish a book of short stories. It sold a grand total of three thousand copies. And I thought, “Gad, here I am with opportunities that Edith Wharton probably wouldn’t even believe were possible were she to come back to life today, and what am I doing? Sitting here on the futon crocheting a blanket, not writing short stories, not writing a novel, not even writing essays.” When Todd got home I talked to him about it and he said, “It seems silly to me that you’re feeling bad about wasting opportunities; whatever creative outlet you’re using is valuable to me — but if you feel like you want to write, then write. Don’t talk about how you should and then crochet instead, know what I mean?” which made perfect sense and I’ve resolved to take his advice. So — thanks, Edith. I owe you one. (Yes, there’s internet access in heaven. In fact, there’s internet access in hell too, you just have to use AOL and a 2600 baud modem.)

We pouted around for awhile on Friday night, trying to figure out how we wanted to spend the evening, and finally decided on bowling. I haven’t been bowling since third grade when — well, this requires a bit of explanation. My father and I lived in the back yard of his co-worker’s house in Santa Barbara for awhile. Her name was Nora, she was divorced and had three children: Stephanie, Lisa, and Jeff. She had a storage shed in her backyard which my father rented from her, painted white and put carpet in, and I suppose we must have used their bathroom and kitchen, though I don’t remember doing so. Stephanie was only a few years older than me and we played with her Barbie dolls and huge collection of model horses when we weren’t visiting the real horse she kept at a nearby stable. I was never interested in horses, but the models made a nice prop when it came to Barbie scenarios, especially since she owned the Barbie RV, ideal for road trips across the living room to horse jumping competitions. Lisa was my hero, she was in high school and wore glasses and had black frizzy hair and was extremely smart. Not to mention nice even when she had a third grader trailing after her trying to imitate her every move. Jeff had almost graduated high school by the time I met him, so was of no interest. I was actually at Nora’s house visiting for a week many years later when I got my first period, something of a relief since my father (who cooks, sews, writes, draws, and is generally a Paul to the first degree) would have had absolutely no idea how to handle it. I called Nora a few years ago because I was curious to see how she and her children were doing, and it was one of the most awkward, bizarre phone conversations I’ve ever had in my life. I hung up the phone wondering quite seriously if she wasn’t on some kind of painkiller, drunk, or recently recovering from a stroke, because none of her thoughts were complete, none of her sentences made sense. She sounded so eager to be off the phone that I wondered if the time my father and I lived there hadn’t been as trouble-free as I’d thought, or if there’d been some bad blood between them that I didn’t know about. In any case, the last time I’d been bowling was with Nora and her children and though I was about as accomplished at hitting the pins as I am when playing gin, I had great fun.

However, I also carried away an impression of bowling alleys as filled with cigarette smoke and drunk people ready for a fight. So Todd and I were both a little nervous when we walked into the first bowling alley we tried, which was filled not with crabby people smoking like chimneys screaming at each other and their little kids, but happy cheerful people over fifty and teenagers looking relieved to have something to do besides wander around looking cool on street corners. In fact, the place was so busy that they didn’t have any lanes open, ditto the second place we tried, and we ended up deciding to come back Saturday morning which was billed as “smoke-free”. Unfortunately we didn’t see that it was actually “smoke-free kids day” and felt awfully silly when we arrived realized we were older than most of the parents watching their children play (this is where a rent-a-kid company would come in handy)… Onward and forward to yet another bowling alley, which featured smoke-free Saturday as well, where we proceeded to play four games and have the time of our lives, even if I did have to use a pink ball because the other ones were too heavy. The automatic scoring required the players to put their names in, so I was able to put real names to the faces around us: Carol and Keith were on our right, they were about as bad as we were, and Carol pouted for awhile about not hitting the pins but cheered up once she began to get a little better. To the far right was a group of teenage boys, who made us roll our eyes at each other when they first walked in because we expected them to be so busy looking cool that they didn’t have any fun at all, but they turned out to be a really sweet group, geeky (that word is a positive one in my vocabulary) and there to hang out with each other, not to show each other who had the bigger penis. To the left were Ron Senior, Ron Junior, Edward, Gene, and a few other very big men who didn’t speak to each other beyond a “good job” or “nicely done” and proceeded to out-bowl our total game scores within their first two turns. Ron Junior scored a 300, I never saw him bowl anything but a strike the entire time we were there. Edward was an extremely intimidating guy who I originally thought was a bouncer until he got up to play, and he turned out to be not very good at all which made me feel better about my own ineptitude for some reason. End scores: 49 to 64 (in Todd’s favor), 79 to 79, 59 to 95 (in Todd’s favor) and 56 to 83 (in Todd’s favor) which means that we were getting worse as time went on — and no, we don’t drink! Tee hee.

Hey! I know, let’s put the stove in the kitchen!

I’m different! I’m different!