My Calling

I have always wanted to be a Great Actor - but I'm not keen on being famous, having my every nervous breakdown chronicled in the tabloid press, signing autographs (I'm embarrassed about my handwriting), being accosted on the street by fawning admirers (I even hate it when salesmen use my first name over and over and over again - who teaches them to do that?  It's like being slapped in the face continually).  I had seen Carol Burnett doing "Once Upon a Mattress" on tv and thought, I want to do that.  One of my friends in college was in that show and I burned with envy.  Eventually I "did" that show myself, playing Winifred to Garry Moore's King.  Other than that, it was a ghastly experience.  Not as bad as "Kiss Me, Kate" where the director tried to kill the leading man with a wrecking bar and I burst into tears because he missed.   Or "Big River" where the rehearsals were so badly organized that I showed up at 8pm and waited four hours for my scene only to have the director break for "dinner."  I laid down on the stage and tried to make myself One With the Universe.

I would also like to be a Great Director ... having only directed once, and that was a show I hated to begin with and now cringe when anyone mentions it.  I liked what we did with it, trying to inject meaning into it, updating it (but only a few decades, not like Peter Sellars, the director).  But doing that only made me want to do everything: sets, costumes, acting, directing ... and that's what I do now.

I have the Best Job in the World. I am a Children's Librarian.

I can do all of that. I take stories from books and convert them to dramatic form. I choose the characters/puppets, make any costumes necessary, arrange for all the props, record all the voices and sound effects (although my husband does the mixing and burning to cd), and perform. I do storytimes, using all the skills I have acquired in theatre as well as my craft hobbies. I find crafts to do with the children. On top of all that, I have a German background and I just love organization. Oh, and reading.

It took about 20 years, but I finally found a career that uses my talents to the fullest. Not everyone is so lucky. And not everyone can afford to do everything they love best at this salary.

Into the Century of the Fruit Bat

Recently, my husband and I got new cell phones. We had old, old flip phones that barely held a charge for more than a couple of textings. Forget phone calls! While Bob used his more frequently, I only turned mine on when I thought I'd be using it:

• Expecting a call from Bob
• Arranging to meet someone for lunch
• Emergencies.

The phone did nothing but send and receive calls and text messages. It made me feel more secure when I was out on the road. It was an umbilical link to Bob.

We are now in utter future shock. Bob picked out the iPhone5 and we now have everything at our fingertips. We spent two days just playing with the phones trying to get things set up and explore. But it doesn't turn off. It only goes to sleep. It wakes up if someone calls and if I want to stop that, I have to put it on Do Not Disturb or something. [Had to have a 10 year old explain things to me.] Then there's Facetime. Bob and I can look at each other when we chat. Oh nooo! How can I play spider solitaire while we talk if he can see me? But then again, I can show him the kitties loving me up in his place.

Siri is my new best friend. "Call my husband!" "What time is it in Hong Kong?" "I'm home now." "I'm at work." I may adopt her. Mo makes fun of me; she's had an iPhone for a few months longer. She had been sending me little (very little - postage stamp size) photos to my flip phone. Show off! I tried taking photos of my cats and accidentally video'd one of them. Probably the most boring cat video ever: Cat looking at floor ... looks up ... looks back down at floor. Why do camera photos look better than photos I take with my actual camera? It's just not fair.

Last night as we waited for a table at our favorite Thai Fusion restaurant, I managed to relay information to Bob about texting that he didn't know. That's because I went to the website and read up on some tips. I was complaining about the stock market app only being set companies (Google, Yahoo, duhhh) while I would want to see just my own holdings when I accidentally called mine up through the internet. Oh, yeah - just what I need: the ability to obsess over my stocks at any time.

We've barely had time to get used to the phones when we received a message from our provider, which has been bought out by another one. We will have to pick out new phones - equal or better.

I'm too old for this.

Don't Ever Call Me Stupid

Otto is not, I repeat, not stupid.

Thanks to Stephen Fry on Twitter, I read Alec Baldwin's Final Word on being a homophobe. This is based, apparently, on what he shouted at people who annoyed him. He relates, convincingly, how much harder it is to be a celebrity in the age of technology. Anyone can take a photo and paste it up on the internet for everyone to see. Even New York City has changed. Celebrities could walk down the street, eat at restaurants, go about their daily routines without being bothered, or bothered much. I saw this myself as a newcomer when the entire cosmetic section of Bloomingdale's emptied out so that Yoko Ono (and her enormous bodyguard) could walk through in peace.

And, let's face it, when has Alec Baldwin ever given the impression that he was a pussycat?

Then I started thinking about what we call people when we are angry with them. I'm not the sort that resorts to namecalling when angry, but I'm sure I think bad thoughts about someone. All that does is keep them from hearing the name, if I have one for them. More than likely, what has annoyed me is someone being stupid. I know only too well that this is my own greatest fear: being stupid. So, "stupid" is the worst generic thing I could come up with.

I get the impression that when we call people names, we use whatever we fear most. I have a framed print-out over my desk of Protagoras and Yehudi Menuhin on this subject. "One of the principles I have learned in life is that when people speak of others, 99 times out of 100 they are describing themselves ... I have found so often that people that people describe others as they would have to describe themselves if they were really honest and self-aware, that I have almost accepted it as axiomatic." So they also project themselves onto others.

Also other young people trying to be more "adult" have tried lashing out with new vocabulary. There's probably a learned habit where you use language that your peers bandy about. When I was in college, "slut" and "bitch" were names we used on each other playfully and only on people we knew and liked really well - both male and female. It was part of that showing independence and peri-adulthood bravado. Being well brought up, I had to practice saying "shit" quietly while walking in order to be able to wield it proficiently in context. If only I'd worked as hard for class ... But I can see where the vocabulary specific to a social group becomes ingrained. It's difficult, in fact, for those within a group to not fall into that group specific vocabulary. I was involved with a community theatre that latched onto an example of idiolect by one member and repeated it endlessly. Because this was a conspiracy to mock that member, I tried to refrain from using it, which took considerable effort.

I have been called names, mostly by my sister, which I've tried not to analyze. "Squirt" was one, varied by creative adjectives and adverbs. And there were many alliterative variations on "The Modest Maiden" because I wanted to pee without someone bursting into the bathroom to comb her hair or would rather not hear about sexual escapades I was too young for. Why I should be harassed for perpetual virginity in my teens is something I will never understand and it totally put me off any experimentation.

As an adult, I was called "The Yankee"* one too many times by another teacher at an in-service day and I was at a total loss of what to call him back. I gave it some long, hard thought until I remembered a particularly local epithet related to the ubiquitous textile industry. "They used to call us 'lint-heads,'" someone told me - with a certain amount of surprising pride. So I rolled it out the next time my colleague suggested that "The Yankee" do something. I felt really awkward about it, but it actually worked. He stopped calling me "The Yankee."

So we  have three possibilities of why a person uses a particular name to express their anger: fear, projection, and peer pressure. Are there more? This isn't excusing anything or offering extenuating circumstances, but if Alec Baldwin really wants to get past this, maybe he needs to ask himself where he first heard the words he uses.

Oh, and I just remembered that a friend's brother called me a "faggot" for reasons neither I nor his sister could figure out. Now, however, I have some possible leads.

"I offer a complete and utter retraction ..."

*I suppose down here in the south, "Yankee" is a bad word. I would think "carpetbagger" would be worse, but there you are. It grated on me because I am from a mid-Atlantic state, not New England. What's more, I've lived in the south more than half my life. When I head back north, they think I sound southern: "Marf must be talking to her parents; she's got her southern accent on!" I also find this annoying. My mother would have been horrified if she heard me commit some southernism ... other than calling all women "Ma'am."** She threatened to send me back to New York just for saying it was "a quarter till" instead of "a quarter of."


**A tour guide told us about how she preferred being in France, where everyone called her madame, to her home in Switzerland, where she was called mademoiselle. I immediately understood the notion of demotion in the difference. Vive la différence?