Beware Of The Child In You

My friend, Joanna is a beautiful, brilliant retired computer wizard. She was the only woman executive working for a large international company, and was in charge of the creative geniuses, whose innovative work made them what regular people would call, “other worldly folks.”

No one in her department showed up for work before 2 p.m. For them, “Dawn” was the name of a dishwashing detergent, not a time of day. None of these computer nerds were morning people. So, when the Head of Human Resources sent a memo requiring Joanna and her department to attend a motivational workshop at 7a.m., her creative staff spent the afternoon developing imaginative excuses as to why they would be absent. Unfortunately, since she was the Department Head, Joanna felt arm twistingly obliged to make an appearance.

Business people attend many meetings, and motivational speakers are hired to “energize the team”---whatever that means. Here is where I am obliged to reveal that since my co-author Lynne Alpern and I taught a course called, “Adding Humor to Your Life,” and had written the book Humor at Work, we were invited to entertain at different venues around the country. However, we never claimed to “create contagious leadership skills.” Our simple aim was to make people laugh and sell some books.

A motivational speaker differs from an inspirational speaker. Inspirational speakers usually tell the audience about overcoming a Sisyphean obstacle, while motivational speakers try to energize and influence workers to pull together and move them to action. At 7a.m., the only movement Joanna wanted was toward the coffee pot.

The speaker began by shouting, “My aim is to expose the child in you!” He began by asking the audience to jump up and down, and shout out, “Let’s have some fun.” No way was Joanna going to risk breaking a heel on her designer shoes, nor did she think this was going to be any fun, so she stood up and quietly developed the mantra, “If he knows what’s good for him, he will keep away from me.”

After a few more childish exercises, the speaker said, “Now that you all have recaptured the child inside, I want to find out, “What was the best advice you remember getting when you were very small?”

“You,” he said, pointing at Joanna. “You, tell us the best advice you ever received as a little girl.” The room fell silent. None of her colleagues thought Joanna was ever a “little girl.” Joanna took a sip of coffee, patted her coiffure with her manicured fingers and replied, “Don’t eat the yellow snow.” She was allowed to leave early.

Esther Blumenfeld (ask and ye shall receive)

And Then There Are Cats

I was recently invited to a party where the host’s little French bulldog greeted me at the door with a few enthusiastic yips and the wagging of her little behind.  Although throughout the evening, she barked at some other guests, it was the last time she vocalized at me. Rather, she spent much of the evening sitting near me on the sofa, or on my feet under the dining room table. For some unfathomable reason, I seem to have a calming effect on animals. I don’t soak my feet in beef bullion, nor do I wear chicken liver eau de cologne.

Another friend has an old, part-chow-part-imagination, dog with a ferocious growl, but she too, only wags her tail when she sees me, and invariably sits near me throughout the evening.

When I hike in the mountains, the deer glance my way, and then continue to nibble on plants while I sing to them. I can get close enough to touch them, should I so choose, but I must admit that the music lovers tend to distance themselves.

One day a Road Runner (bird) ran over my foot on his way to a lizard lunch, but he wasn’t afraid of me. Bull feathers! He didn’t even know I was there--- my Rodney Dangerfield moment.  My favorite bird encounter was with the little “What’s It”, who sat in a tree and chirped without pause. When he spied me, he flew to a branch close to my head and kept right on singing. I finally walked away when he began to sound too much like my teakettle.

Cats, of course, either accept you, or they don’t. It took awhile for my son’s cat, Radar to welcome me into the family. When I first met him, he ran behind the sofa and peeked out from time to time---giving me the once over. Soon, he discovered my black coat, which I had tossed on a chair, and it became both his property and cat hair depository.

The first time I was left alone with that cat, he looked at me, ran around the apartment, climbed and jumped on everything he wasn’t supposed to, and finally took a running leap, skid across the dining room table, tumbled off, taking the tablecloth with him. He untangled himself and meowed, “Now, I guess you know who’s boss around here,” as he rubbed against my leg.

I didn’t tell anyone about his antics, because I was afraid he’d take out a contract on my life. That’s one big cat! We’ve been friends ever since.  Occasionally, he will sniff my hair to check out if I washed it with catnip. I guess it’s a guy thing.

Esther Blumenfeld (“A cat always leaves a mark upon a friend”) Spanish proverb.

There's A Stranger In Town

In a survey by Hilton Worldwide, and the American Happiness Association, Tucson is first among “the happiest U.S. cities to travel to during the winter months.”

When my husband and I made Tucson our home, we were cautioned that we would get calls in the winter, from people we hardly knew, wanting to stay with us. Naturally, we delighted in hosting numerous friends, but when a woman who was, “the friend-of-a friend-of a friend,” called to inform me that, “We are coming to Tucson.” I replied, “How lovely, and where are you staying?” I don’t know if they ever arrived, because I never heard from her again.

Every winter thousands of tourists arrive from every state in the Union including Florida. After all, ours is a “dry heat.” Sometimes when I’m hiking, I will encounter a visitor who will ask me a question such as, “Will you please take my picture.” I am usually happy to oblige unless they start shouting directions, “Be sure to get the cactus, and the mountains, and my son---without his finger in his nose---in the picture.” The other day, a woman approached me in the desert, and asked, “How far do I have to hike to find a lake?” I answered, “Minnesota!”

A couple sitting at a picnic table told me they were from Wasilla, Alaska.  I asked them, “Do you know Sarah Palin?” “She lives seven houses down from us,” answered the man. “Can you see Russia from your house?” I asked. “Sure,” he replied, “Every school child knows Russia is only 2 miles away.” His answer was only fair, because I also tease people when they are clueless about the West. Friends from New Jersey were excited when I suggested they ride the stagecoach to my house from the airport. They were disappointed to find out that is the moniker of the limousine service.

I have been a tourist many times in my life, and have found out the hard way that it is prudent to learn some customs, such as, “haggling is encouraged.” I don’t like to haggle. When I say, “No,” I mean, “No”. But when a vendor chased me onto my tour bus in Morocco, I bought a coat, that smelled like a camel, for $5.00 just to get rid of him. Also, I learned in Mexico not to hand my camera to the man with the burro, because after he took my picture, he wouldn’t return my camera until I gave him some pesos.

Language can also be a problem. When a customs agent asked a couple from India, “What is your purpose for being in the United States?” The man said “tourism.” The agent thought he said, “terrorism.”  Whoops.  I learned that if you know no other word in a foreign language, “toilet” is essential! I had to get my request across with charades in Viet Nam.

So, I have an affinity for visitors who come to my city. One morning, when I hiked to the top of my mountain, the clouds began to lift, and, as I came over the ridge, the sun’s rays shone on the white hair and long beard of an old rabbi who was reciting his morning prayers. For a moment, I thought, “Oh, My God! It’s Moses. But then, I realized that was impossible, because this frail old man couldn’t lug two tablets of stone down the mountain, and, besides that, people haven’t yet learned the lessons from the second set (Moses broke the first ones).

When he was finished with his prayers, I said, “Shalom” (Peace), and he “Shalomed” me back. I asked him where he was from, and he said, “New York.” Now I was certain he wasn’t Moses, because New York isn’t in Egypt. Boy, was I relieved. I wouldn’t have to help him carry those heavy tablets down the mountain after all.

Esther Blumenfeld (come up and see me sometime)

Not A Whole Lot of Sowing Going On

Most children have a favorite book. Mine was The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. What enchanted me was the beautiful garden hidden inside a stone wall. It reminded me of the Garden of Eden--- without the snake or naked people.

I romanticized the idea of gardening, not realizing that it involves sore muscles and dirt under the fingernails. Some people have a gift for enhancing nature. I can look at a plant and it will wilt. My mother planted a garden of miniature vegetables, but they weren’t supposed to be that way. Maybe it’s genetic---me not the vegetables. I have a friend, who has such a green thumb, that she told me, “I couldn’t get to the tomatoes. It was like a jungle out there.”

When my husband and I moved into our first home in Atlanta, we discovered that the previous owners were horticulturists. They had labeled all of the plants and trees in Latin and English, and our 4-year-old son ran through the yard, filled his little bucket with the labels, and presented them to us as a housewarming gift.

I was not totally ignorant. I knew the difference between a dogwood and a pine, and recognized magnolias. However, some of the plants closer to the ground were puzzlement. I called in a professional gardener to help with my education, but first I pulled some weeds around a beautiful plant with shiny leaves. When the man arrived, he looked at me and said, “Lady, do you feel okay?” “Yes,” I replied. “Why do you ask?” “Well,” he said. “Maybe you should go inside and take a Benadryl. You’ve been nurturing a patch of poison ivy.”

Now that I live in the desert Southwest, I have learned that planting a garden involves a jackhammer to break up caliche (sedimentary rock). Journalist, Clay Thompson says, “God put this hard deposit of calcium carbonate under the surface of arid soils to keep overly ambitious do-it-yourself types from digging post holes when they should be indoors out of the sun.”

My Secret Garden now consists of strange plants and trees that have thorns to keep me from picking their flowers and fruits.  And what of that little boy who pulled the labels off of those trees and plants in Atlanta? Well, I never asked him what he did with his little bucket, but years later he wrote a thesis at the University of Wisconsin. It was titled, “The Development of Vegetation Theory in the United States.” I guess that those Latin and English labels came in handy after all.

Esther Blumenfeld (“A weed is a flower in disguise”--- James Russell Lowell)

Get Reel

Last week I went to the cheap movie house to see a French film. The projector broke so the theatre manager announced that those attending could get their money back, or attend the Muppet movie that had just started in the other theatre. I opted for the Muppets, because the puppeteer, Peter Linz, who has been my son’s friend since high school, created the new character, “Walter”.

The surprisingly entertaining plot involved a human actor and the puppet, “Walter” who were brothers. At the end of the movie, the man brother remained a human being, and the puppet (manipulated by Peter Linz) came out of the closet and realized he was a Muppet. The audience could have clued him in at the beginning of the movie, but it was a sweet illusion.

Several years ago, when I was in New York, my son and I visited Peter at the television studio and watched the show. The puppeteers were dressed in black, stood in a hole in the floor and stuck their hands up as they worked the puppets. The director shouted orders at their hands such as, “ Twitter, show more emotion!”  He forgot that there were people standing in that hole, and the puppet illusion became his reality.

Movies give us pleasure, but some people never see the man behind the puppet, or actors as real people. Consequently, illusion sometimes knocks heads with reality.

In the movies: A speeding car goes 100mph around mountain curves. In real life, people find out that cars don’t fly.

In the movies: A man gets shot, jumps on a galloping horse, saves a drowning calf, carries his woman’s laundry basket into the house---all before she puts a bandage on his wound. In real life, a paper cut really hurts!

In the movies: Alien creatures invade a home and are beaten back by a child who can blow fire out of his nose. In real life, the IRS will perform an audit, because flaming nostrils are not a legitimate deduction.

Imagination and “Let’s pretend” are what makes life fun. Movies make us laugh and cry. Movies can make us think or escape thoughts for a short while, but movies aren’t close to real---unless you are Woody Allen.

In The Purple Rose of Cairo, a movie idol jumps off the screen and into real life. Allen’s brilliance causes illusion and reality to collide. However, I promise, if you take it upon yourself, to jump from your theatre seat into an actual movie, you will tear the screen, and find a lawyer waiting for you on the other side. That is why movies are called “flights of fancy”---not flights of bodies.

Esther Blumenfeld (swinging on a star)