A Friend Indeed

My mother once told me that I couldn’t go outside to play because it was too dark outside. Nighttime was the only opportunity I had to collect fireflies, so her admonition made no sense to me. I plaintively said, “Mary Lou’s mother lets her play outside when it’s dark.” Whereupon my mother replied, “If your friend, Mary Lou jumped off a bridge, would you jump after her?” I thought about it, and then said, “No, but I’d miss her a lot!

Of course, as the years passed, I lost track of adventuresome, Mary Lou. But I’ve managed to form other friendships along the way, and happily now I can play outside any time I want---with or without fireflies.

Americans use the term, “friend,” very freely. Just sit next to someone on a long flight to Timbuktu, and by the time you land, you will have become best buddies.

A few years ago, I was invited to give a talk to a group in Florida. The woman who introduced me did a credible job, but ended her introduction by saying, “Now I am pleased to present my good friend, Esther.” That was warm and folksy, however I still have no idea who she was.

When my second play, UNDER MIDWESTERN STARS was accepted for production at the Kansas City Repertory Theatre in 2007, the Producing Artistic Director, Peter Altman, came to Tucson to meet me and discuss the play. Before we parted company, he asked me a strange question. He said, “Do your friends think of you as a playwright?” I thought about it and replied, “No, my friends think of me as a friend.”  It took a long time for me to understand why he had asked me that question. I think he was asking, “How do you consider yourself in relationship to others?” Peter is a very clever man, and now I am sure that he was really asking, “How big is your ego?”

The rise of social networking websites has diluted the traditional meaning of “friend.” Now all you have to do is to get on “The List.” You don’t even have to know the other people.

Here’s how I define a friend:

  1.   Someone who steals a book from your library, and returns it six months later because he needs his lawnmower.

2.    Someone who isn’t related to you by birth but relates in ways that really count.

3.    Someone who realizes that a conversation takes more than one person.

4.    Someone who knows when to be there and when to back off, and

5.    Someone who laughs with me---not at me.

 George Carlin said it best: “One good reason to only maintain a small circle of friends is that three out of four murders are committed by people who knew the victim.” 

 Women need their women friends and a telephone. Men are different. As Jeff Foxworthy so aptly put it: “Once we become friends with another man, we may never say another word to him, unless it’s valuable information that needs to be exchanged. Things like, ‘Hey, Jim, your shirt’s on fire.”’

 Of course, men and women can be friends. You don’t always have to be on the same wavelength, you just have to develop selective hearing and give a knowing nod. Just be careful when you are asked a direct question such as, “Do these jeans make me look fat?” It’s always good to answer, “Oh My God! I’ve got something in my eye,” and then lock yourself in the bathroom until the next day.

 Esther Blumenfeld (I have no old friends---just friends of long standing)

Trick Or Treat

With a tongue-in-cheek disaster preparedness message, Homeland Security recently warned us that, “The Zombies Are Coming!” At first, I thought they meant that Congress was going back into session, but soon realized that they are urging emergency planners to better prepare local communities for calamities. So what’s with the zombies?

Naturally, this piqued my interest in the popularity of ghouls in the 21^st Century. In my research, I discovered that teenaged girls find blood sucking vampires and hairy werewolves much sexier than zombies, so I wanted to find out why.

There are three kinds of zombies:

1. Hollywood zombies who are dead but “re-animated”.

2. Haitian zombies made that way by magical potions, and

3. Philosophical zombies, who have a “lack of conscious experience, but are identical to normal people”.

 I’ve seen Hollywood zombies on Rodeo Drive, never been to Haiti, but am sure that some of the philosophical ones were in my college classes, because they slept with their eyes open.

From everything I read, I think that teenagers don’t love zombies, because they are “emotionally unavailable.” Besides, their diet consists of human flesh, (which is gross!). They rattle and groan, drag one of their legs behind them, have bad breath, and are covered with rotting skin and pustules. Maybe teens could identify with the pustules part, but the rest is seriously disgusting.

On the other hand, many teenaged girls want to marry a vampire. If you can overlook the “drinking blood” part (no one’s perfect), vampires are handsome; they can seduce any girl on the block; get rid of bullies; never get old (just like Peter Pan) and can party all night.

You could probably take a vampire home to meet your father. He just might prefer a pale guy with long incisors (especially if dad is an orthodontist) to one who staggers around in a muddy suit, grunts and keeps dragging that dang leg around the house.

Then there are werewolves. I guess they appeal to girls who like dogs and are vegetarians, because werewolves don’t eat flesh or drink blood. You could split a pizza with this puppy---unless he decides to kill you for the last slice. Werewolves wear forest colors, howl, bark and hangout---kind of like a Rock Band. They are usually moody teenagers, unlike vampires who look young, but are really 300-year-old guys who enjoy sucking on the necks of young girls. Yuck!

Breaking up with a werewolf is much easier than getting rid of a vampire, because all it takes is a silver bullet. 

Dating a vampire can’t be all that much fun. They can’t go out in the sunlight, so that leaves out hiking, biking, tennis and golf. And, if you want to get rid of this guy you need to carry a stake with you wherever you go, unless you happen to have a bottle of holy water in your back pocket.

Halloween is coming and one of these monsters might ring your chimes. Before you open the door, try to avoid becoming the treat. Give the vampire a chunk of garlic. The werewolf might appreciate a flea collar, and the zombie?  Well, I suggest the name of a good dermatologist. Then slam the door shut!

Esther Blumenfeld: “No place is safe only safer” (Max Brooks, The Zombie Survival Guide).

Simple Simon

We have entered the silly season, and for the next few weeks will listen to politicians make claims such as, “My Daddy is bigger than your Daddy.”

A knowledgeable guest on NPR (National Public Radio) informed listeners that the average reading level of people in the United States is between 8^th and 9^th grade, so now political strategists have advised their clients to “dumb down” language. They suggest that candidates who have graduated from schools such as Harvard or Princeton use simple words such as “duh” when trying to convince people to vote for them.

Of course, this advice extends to political debates. Beware when a candidate says, “I am speechless!” I can promise you that he will not be at a loss for words---lots and lots and lots of words. So, in our future we will listen to political debates that will go something like this:

Candidate #1:  I started out dirt poor.

Candidate #2:  Well, I am filthy rich and proud of it, and people in this country want to end up as filthy as I am.

Candidate #1:  The cat is out of the bag. I care more about the middle class than you do.

Candidate #2:  You hurt my feelings. I like the middle class. As a matter of fact, I am head over heels in love with the middle class. You started out dirt poor, and I am filthy rich, and they are in the middle. Why wouldn’t I like people who stand between you and me?

Candidate #1:  I am concerned about the health of our citizens. They eat too much junk food.

Candidate #2:  Maybe if the Packers had a running game, they’d be more in shape.

Candidate #1:  You just lost Wisconsin. Yippee!

Candidate #2:  But I’m fit as a fiddle, so the Boston Pops will vote for me.

Candidate #1:  A little bird told me that the job market is improving. That makes me happy as a clam.

Candidate #2:  Fat chance you can make that claim. Tell that to the guy who doesn’t have a job.

Candidate # 1:  I just did.

Candidate #2:  Slim chance you are going to keep yours.

Candidate #1:  Beating you will be easy as pie. You are a bully.

Candidate #2:  That is the pot calling the kettle black.

Candidate #1: You are a racist.

Candidate #2:  I take umbrage to that assertion.

Candidate #1:  Ha! Ha! I made you use big words.

Candidate #2:  I will see you again at the next debate.

Candidate #1:  How about I send you an autographed picture instead?

Esther Blumenfeld (I approve this message)

Class Dismissed

Years later, a teacher will remember the excellent students and the trouble- makers. The rest seem to fall between the cracks. It’s the same when looking back at the teachers who have touched our lives. For some inexplicable reason, I recently took a gander at my high school yearbook. The inscriptions that classmates wrote were unanimous. In those days, I was a “swell gal.” Looking at their photographs, I remembered most of them, but not everyone---especially the girl who wrote, “Remember our year in typing.”

I fondly remember the only teacher with a Master’s Degree. Don’t know how he landed in the one public high school in my small Indiana town, but he valiantly tried to impart a love for Shakespeare and the English language to many students who could care less. But neither this fine man nor my classmates are whom I want to write about.

As Woody Allen so aptly put it, “My education was dismal. I went to a series of schools for mentally disturbed teachers.” It started in grade school, when the beautiful Miss Bowman (whom I adored) whacked one of the boys on his hands with a ruler. I heard the crack from across the room, and from then on sat on my hands and kept my mouth shut. I don’t remember any other teachers from those grade school days, but can’t forget some of odd birds from my high school.

The girls’ Physical Education teacher, Miss Barbarian wound a tight braid of hair around her head to prevent her brain from falling out when she was jumping around. Gum chewing was the worst offence in Barbarian’s class, and if she caught a culprit chewer, she’d make the hapless girl spit the gum on the floor, step on it, and then scrape it up with a spoon---a strengthening exercise for the forearm.

For me, participating in sports was an alien concept, and she tried in vain to make a jock out of me. Climbing a rope hand over hand was not my goal in life, and after getting my ankles bruised black and blue in field hockey, I volunteered to be a referee.

I then reasoned that Home Arts would be a safer class. Little Miss Leo, who wore her hair in ringlets, and washed her clothes in White Shoulders perfume, was my teacher. Between sneezes, I learned that everything you cook has to be smothered in white sauce, which, when thickened, could substitute for paste in art class. Miss Leo also taught sewing. I had trouble threading the spindle, spinning the wheel and pumping the pedal on the old sewing machine—all at the same time. I wasn’t surprised when she made me tear out the crooked stitches in the apron I had fashioned. I wasn’t upset, because the only time I planned on wearing it was to protect my dress from white sauce paste in art class.

Miss Tippler doubled as an English teacher and drama coach. She dyed her hair flaming red, and surreptitiously took sips out of a bottle, that she kept in a brown bag in her desk. She wanted to cast me as Mary in the Christmas Pageant, because she said, “You look the part.” I graciously declined, because neither of us had been in Bethlehem at the time, and consequently didn’t know what Mary really looked like. Besides, I wasn’t going to take any assignment from a teacher who was drunk as a skunk.

One of the best teachers I ever met was my son Josh’s second grade teacher, Mrs. McIntyre. Every child in her class achieved excellence to the best of his or her ability. For example, the children in her class gave “morning talks” that taught them to gather, analyze and present material in a meaningful way. 

Josh had a friend, Joey whose father was a physician. The doctor took the boys to the hospital for a tour, and while there, each of them were treated to a urine test, which they gingerly carried to Mrs. McIntyre’s class for a joint presentation. When they finished their talk, Mrs. McIntyre asked if any of the children had any questions. That’s when Sammy, in a jealous pique, said, “My Dad had a vasectomy. Can I bring him for Show and Tell?” For the first time, Mrs. McIntyre said, “No, but thank you.”

Good teaching is filled with ideas. The brain should be used for more than white sauce.

Here’s an idea for you from the author, Flannery O’Connor: “Everywhere I go, I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There may be a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”

Esther Blumenfeld (Hall Monitor. Do you have a pass?)

A Moving Experience

Last night I went to hear a trio of girl singers called Triple Threat at the Gaslight Theatre. They performed “A Century of Song,” singing melodies through the ages starting with the 1920s.

The house lights dimmed, the entertainers came on stage and began to belt out their first song, when a bug flew down my bodice and landed in my brassiere.

I was sitting near the front of the stage. I couldn’t get up to leave without the entire audience becoming aware of my exit. So, as the bug began to crawl around, I figured if it didn’t sting me, I’d be okay until intermission.

Every time the trio finished a song and the audience clapped---I beat my chest.

The bug didn’t die until the 1960s. The ‘60s was a time of the Viet Nam War, drugs, free love and now a dead bug in my bra. I shook it out in the Ladies Room at intermission, and the women in there were laughing so hard that I drew a crowd. One woman said that my act was better than the show, and I didn’t even have to sing.

For you purists out there---No, I don’t know what kind of bug it was, because it was well smushed by the time I got rid of it.

The moral of this tale: Curiosity kills more than cats.

Esther Blumenfeld (So, what’s the latest buzz?)