MUSIC AND SOOTHING SAVAGE BEASTS

I was born into a very musical family. My father wooed my mother by playing the violin beneath her window. He played well enough that she married him, and happily they didn’t end up like Romeo and Juliet.

My mother had a beautiful singing voice (better than the one she used when she chased me around the dining room table, with her slipper, shouting, “Act like a lady!”)  And, her father (my grandfather) was a concert-trained pianist, whose father had told him that he would disown him if he sought a musical career.

My little brother didn’t inherit much of the musical gene, but he enjoyed sliding down the banister, and jumping on the piano keys on his way to the floor. However, in middle school, he did play the bag bass drum in the marching band, which was bigger than he was.  The school couldn’t afford summer uniforms, so he marched in the summer parade in his winter uniform. All we could see was a big loud drum coming down the street behind two flatulent horses.

Unfortunately, a talent for music was not to be one of my gifts. My parents paid dearly for my piano lessons, but I wore out three teachers before they admitted that their daughter was a total failure as a pianist. I had a problem coordinating the keys with the foot pedals. It didn’t help much when after a ten-minute practice, my musical mother would yell from the kitchen, “That’s enough!  Go out and play.”

So, to help me develop an appreciation for classical music, my parents took me to symphonic concerts when I was a very little girl. I liked the “pretty music” but usually fell asleep before the concert was over. As a child, I felt like Woody Allen who said, “I just can’t listen to anymore Wagner, you know…I’m starting to get the urge to conquer Poland.”

When I was a pre-teen, I heard that there was going to be a local scheduled singing contest for children on the radio. I wanted to enter singing a simple popular song, “In My Little Alice Blue Gown.” Instead, my stern grandfather insisted that I sing “Habanera”, the most popular aria from Bizet’s opera, CARMEN.

No practice had been scheduled at the radio station. When I handed the pianist music from the aria, he just looked at me and dropped ashes from his cigarette onto the piano keys. When it was my turn, the piano player and I started the musical experience together, and we mercifully ended the song together---but we hadn’t done too well in-between. When I got home, it was the first time I ever saw my strict grandfather smile---or maybe it was a grimace. To this day, I will never know.

I have always enjoyed music---all kinds of music. I enjoy Beethoven, Bach and Mozart, and I love jazz even though Frank Zappa said, “Jazz isn’t dead. It just smells funny.” I like country music, because I can make up some funny lyrics along the way, and I love going to the simulcasts of the Metropolitan operas, even though my tuchas (look it up) still can’t manage 8 hours of Wagner.

I occasionally sing songs in Hebrew to herds of deer in the mountains. I’m not sure they feel soothed, but they do pause, raise their heads, and give me soulful looks that seem to say, “You can keep it up, Lady, just don’t eat our food.”

Esther Blumenfeld (“For those of you in the cheap seats, I’d like ya to clap your hands to this one; the rest of you can just rattle your jewelry.”) John Lennon

RING-A-DING

“The bathtub was invented in 1850 and the telephone in 1875. In other words, if you had been living in 1850, you could have sat in the bathtub for 25 years without having to answer the phone.” (Bill Dewitt)

I have always had a love/hate relationship with my telephone, but it does have its advantages.  Fran Lebowitz said, “The telephone is a good way to talk to people without having to offer them a drink.” Happily, Caller I.D. makes it much easier to ignore unfamiliar phone numbers, and I figure if it’s important, the caller will leave a message.

This is generally true, but sometimes the message on my answering machine is not for me, because someone has dialed a wrong number. When that happens, I often feel obligated to call the person and let him or her know that the nurse called the wrong patient, that I haven’t scheduled a plumber, or that someone’s date is probably at the restaurant waiting for her.

I don’t know if I’ve been helpful, but I do know that people who dial wrong numbers have always managed to find mine. Not wanting to be interrupted (no matter what he was doing) my husband religiously refused to answer a ringing telephone. He never bothered to balance a checkbook either, but that’s another story. So before the advent of cell phones and Caller I.D., it was part of my job description to answer the phone.  

When we lived in Atlanta, The Atlanta Constitution was the large daily paper. However, there also were several small weekly newspapers. One of these weekly publications had an advertising section for alternative life styles, and also included phone numbers for Gay bathhouses.

Somehow, instead of the appropriate phone number, our home number was printed in one of these ads. So, naturally, I informed the editor of their mistake and he promised to rectify it in the next edition. In the meantime, I received lots of calls from prospective customers. The minute the men heard my voice, they knew they had the wrong number and were always polite and apologetic---but pleased when I gave them the correct number.

The next week, the number was put right in the paper, and all was quiet on the home front, until I received a call from the bathhouse proprietor who thanked me profusely for all the referrals.

Some of you will be pleased and some heartily disillusioned to learn that I volunteer every Tuesday morning at Democratic Headquarters, but it is a fact of life, so live with it!  Since I sit at the front desk, one of my duties is to answer the phone.

Last week, I answered the phone and a man said, “I have a strange request.” I said, “I have worked here for a long time. Believe me I’m used to some strange requests.  How can I help you?” He said, “I’m a Republican, and I can’t find the phone number of Republican Headquarters. By any chance, do you have that number?”  “Sure,” I replied. “Hang on, I’ll get it for you.” And, I gave him the number.

Ten minutes later, the phone rang again. It was the same man. He said, “They are so rude!” I can’t believe how rude they were to me.” “And,” he added. “You were so nice.” I said, “I’m sorry you had such a bad experience, but I hope you learned that Democrats are really nice people.”

In a previous column I mentioned that a woman called and wanted to talk to my husband, “the urologist” because her doctor had given her our number.  I told her that my husband was not a urologist, but she insisted that he was.  Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and said, “Lady, my husband can’t even fix a leaking faucet.” She hung up.

Another lady, dialed my number several times, and she finally believed me that    no one named Gladys lived at my house. However, she called one more time to tell me, “You are the nicest wrong number I have ever called.”

Happily, because of modern technology, obscene phone calls are a thing of the past---unless you count political pollsters. 

Esther Blumenfeld (“How come wrong numbers are never busy?”) anonymous

BE MINDFUL

On May 3, 2016, I turned 80, and I will never be that young again. When I said to a friend, “80 sounds pretty old.” She lovingly replied, “That’s because 80 is old.” “But,” she added, “Attitude is everything!”

Invariably, when I tell someone, “I’m 80.” She will say, “You don’t look 80.” And then I reply, “What does 80 look like?” So far, I haven’t received a satisfactory answer. Consequently, I tried an experiment. Yesterday, when chatting with a young fellow on the hiking trail, I told him that “Tomorrow is my birthday.”  He said, “How old will you be?” and I replied, “I will be 90 years old.” “Wow!” he said.  “You don’t look any older than 70.”  So, instead of earning 10 youthful years, I gained 20.  Good trick!

I had a friend, of blessed memory, who was a good driver into her early 90s. Her motto, before getting behind the wheel of her car, was, “Be mindful!” She was a former librarian. I used to say, “You know everything.” And she would reply, “No, I don’t know everything, but I know how to find almost everything. As long as I can still find most everything, I feel lucky.”

When I was a child, my Father would buy me little picture books, that, when I flipped the pages, would make the drawn characters look as if they were moving quickly. It was a trick of the eye.  Turning 80 is much like flipping those pages, and visualizing the good times and not so good times in my past years as they move quickly by---not a trick of the eye---but a trick of time.

So what have I learned? My life has had its ups and downs, but it has been quite rewarding thus far.  I have learned that life is not fair, and that no one leads a charmed life. Yes, I am blessed with good genes, but even good genes have a shelf life.

So, I plan to count my blessings, and try to learn at least one new thing each day.

Today, I saw a man hiking on my rugged mountain trail. He was dressed in a bathing suit, carrying a backpack, and trudging along the rocky (sometimes snake infested) trail barefoot. He probably had taken a wrong turn and thought he was in San Diego.  So, what did I learn from this encounter? I learned that: “A person can only be young once---but you can be a stupid jackass forever!”

Esther Blumenfeld (“If you survive long enough, you’re revered—rather like an old building.”) Katherine Hepburn

BACK IN TEN MINUTES

One hundred years ago, Albert Einstein had a theory about the relationship between space and time. As I understand it, he theorized that a cataclysmic event in space, affects time. In 2016, scientists have now discovered that his theory is correct, and according to Einstein, “Time is an illusion.”  I guess it’s all relative. If you want a better explanation, just go ask your neighborhood physicist.

My friend Fay had no problems understanding Einstein’s theory, because when she turned 86, she said, “I don’t like being on the dark side of 85.” So let’s take a look at how we treat time.

When I was invited to talk to a group of 15-year-old students, I gave a folded piece of paper to one of the boys in the front row, and asked him to hold it for me. On it, I had written “9:00am”. At 9:30am, I said, “I’d like to have that back, please.” He handed me the note. I looked at it, handed it back to him and said, “This is not what I want. I’d like to have it back, please.” Again, he tried to hand me the note, which I refused. By this time, the whole class knew what I had written on the note, and finally someone said, “She doesn’t want the note. She wants the time back.” I made my point.  9a.m was gone forever (as are the moments you took to begin to read this story).

It’s pretty obvious that there’s no time like the present, and when someone says, “I don’t have time for this,” he obviously means, “I don’t want to do it.” A small child cannot be expected to have any concept of time. When she’s hungry, it’s time to eat. When she’s sad, it’s time to cry, and when she’s tired it’s naptime. However, naughty means, “Time Out!” That is, of course, as imprecise as a mechanical phone voice that says, “Your call is important to us. Someone will be with you shortly.”

When my son was away at college, I ran into his nursery school teacher. She said, “I can finally tell you about Josh’s first day at nursery school.” She told me that Josh had pulled his little chair into the middle of the room and stared at the clock waiting for me to pick him up. And that was before he had learned to tell time. However, just like Einstein, he sensed that a cataclysmic event like nursery school had to have a relationship with time.

Benjamin Franklin said, “Lost time is never found again.” One day, while strolling down Michigan Avenue in Chicago, a brash young man shouted at my husband, “Hey, You got the time?” My husband looked at his watch, and shouted back, “Yes, I do!” and we continued our little stroll.

Time can be a noun or a verb. You can save time or enjoy it. However, if you wait for the right time, you just may miss it.  According to Jean-Paul Sartre, “Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.”

Often people will tell you that time will heal a broken leg or that time will heal a broken heart.  And, Andy Rooney found that, “It’s paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn’t appeal to anyone.”

Often, time is something we want more of, but something we don’t use well. However, Steven Wright comforts with these words, “The sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to catch up.”

Esther Blumenfeld (“Be back in 10 minutes.”  But I won’t tell you from when.)

HOLD THAT THOUGHT

Okay! So yesterday I woke up with a case of laryngitis, and I sounded very much like an unhappy Bullfrog. Since I couldn’t communicate through my nose, and the Good Lord provided me with three other holes in my head, I had no choice but to use two of them for listening, and keep the other one closed until further notice.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said, “The human voice is the organ of the soul.” Well, Henry tell that to a Trappist Monk. So, for the time being, I had to shut down my voice until I could find a cure for my ailing vocal cords. Not wanting to bother my doctor with silly stuff, I decided to Google the Mayo Clinic website, and see what their physicians recommended.

The Google Mayo doctors informed me that my vocal cords were stressed, and that the best cure was to keep my mouth shut. They also warned that whispering is even worse for the ailment than speaking in a normal voice. Since I don’t own a horse, I found that to be no problem.

Other recommendations were to drink hot fluids and to try steaming my head by sticking it over a sink and inhaling the steam from running hot water. I dismissed that last suggestion. Last month, I used $25.00 worth of water and ended up with a $95.00 water bill that included fees, taxes and a penalty for not using my sewer enough. Don’t ask! I didn’t get that one either, but I am flushing my toilets as fast as I can, which comes much easier after drinking gallons of hot tea.

After drinking my fill of tea with honey and lemon, I decided to skip the lemon and add a shot of whiskey. It didn’t improve my croaking, but it did cheer me up---as did several friends whom I had e-mailed about my predicament. They called and suggested that perhaps I should take my frog act on the road. One friend suggested that faking laryngitis was an inventive way to avoid talking with people you don’t want to talk to.

Vincent Van Gogh made a suggestion that I found not helpful at all. He said, “If you hear a voice within you saying ‘You cannot paint’ then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced. Since the only voice I had was now in me, I remembered another time when I was in grade school and my inner voice had suggested that I wasn’t much of an artist. My teacher confirmed it when she looked at my painting and said, “That is the worst painting I have ever seen.” I suspect that Vincent would have turned his bad ear in her direction.

Life is not fair! Why do I have laryngitis while all those fool politicians keep right on talking? I’m sure that soon both time and whiskey-tea will take care of the problem. In the meantime, in my stead, please lend your voice to a good cause until I’m back in the saddle again.

Esther Blumenfeld---Speak softly and carry a big shtick.