Yeah, I know. I didn’t even start until I was 24: unfiltered Lucky Strikes. I liked imports but rarely had the money to buy them. But living in Arizona, I was introduced to Delicados, a Mexican cigarette you could pick up cheap in Nogales. Basically a harsher Lucky Strike in rose-scented paper.

I can’t for the life of me explain why I liked these, but I did.

The impact on my health was dramatic. I’d get winded and light-headed at work just pushing boxes. By the time I didn’t drink any more, I was hooked on cigarettes even though I’d only been smoking a couple years. I tried to quit a few times and failed, trying new things each time to lessen the addiction. I ended up switching to American Spirit Lights and cutting the filters in half.

Hey, it was an improvement.

Back then smoking American Spirits was a total pain in the ass. Most places didn’t carry them and pretty much no one had websites yet. By this time I was on the road, so every week I’d be in a new town having to scout around for a place that sold my brand.

If I spent all the time reading that I spent trying to find my brand of cigarettes, I would have finished Gone With the Wind, War and Peace, and everything Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon ever wrote. With comprehensive literary analyses.

I changed tours and my new show had a service truss. Translation: you climbed an 18-foot straight ladder about forty times a day when you were setting up. Believe me, your lungs felt every damn cigarette you’d ever thought about when you got to the top and collapsed on the platform. I was always afraid I’d get too light-headed and pass out while I was still on the ladder.

It was really getting old. I was only 29 for God’s sake.

When I was a little kid, my sister and I were crazy for Shaun Cassidy. We saved our allowances and bought his records. At the top of our birthday lists were Shaun Cassidy posters and T-shirts. We bought every copy of Tiger Beat that mentioned his name (which was all of them).

Shaun’s older brother David starred in The Partridge Family, but my sister and I weren’t taken with him the way we were with Shaun. Shaun was in The Hardy Boys and my sister and I fought for the seat closest to the television every week when it was on. She claimed more rights to the seat: I had the 45 of Hey Deanie but my sister had his whole album.

mine

Hers.

I had a t-shirt, but somehow she had scored the Shaun Cassidy satin jacket.

Also hers.

She never let me wear it.

Not even once.

So this tour with the service truss that was kicking my lungs’ asses on a daily basis was Aida (the Elton John musical, not the Verdi opera) and we were playing San Francisco. They often did opening night parties for us and while I generally hate parties, I loved not having to go find my own food in a new town the first night.

Our male lead was Patrick Cassidy, another Cassidy brother and an all-around good guy. One of my tasks was to put Patrick’s mic on him every night at the 15 minute call, and check it every intermission.

Standing around at the opening night party in San Francisco, one of the actors came up to me.

Him: Hey, do you have an extra cigarette for Patrick’s brother? You’re one of the only people Patrick knows who smokes.

My heart did a little flutter, and it wasn’t because of the cigarettes.

Me: Which brother? Shaun or David?

Him: Shaun.

Me: Um, let me check.

I pulled an American Spirit out of my pack, grateful that I was smoking something sort of normal now. Nobody ever wants your Lucky Strike or a Delicado.

Me: Can I give it to him myself?

He lead me through the crowd to a little cluster of people standing around Patrick which included a well- dressed, slightly older, slightly fuller Shaun Cassidy.

And so it was that I bummed a cigarette to my very first star crush.

Then called my sister to brag. Something along the lines of “Holy sh*t, Beth! I just bummed a cigarette to Shaun f-ing Cassidy!! Take that, satin jacket!”

I knew I had reached the pinnacle of my smoking career. Nothing else related to cigarettes would ever surpass this moment where I bonded with Shaun Cassidy for 1.4 seconds over an American Spirit Light with the filter cut in half. I was finally able to quit smoking.

The patch helped, but it was really Shaun Cassidy that did it for me.

He certainly does. He may also make you lose weight.

Who was your first star crush?

I originally wrote pretty much this whole post in a comment on Darla’s blog She’s a Maineac; the day I decided to write it as an actual post Darla also wrote about Shaun Cassidy, so Darla, I think he’s going to do something magical for you too.

“Look for the similarities, not the differences.”

Fifteen years ago someone gave me this counsel and it is perhaps the most important piece of advice I’ve ever received. Yes, even more important than don’t eat crackers in bed and don’t make out with someone immediately after eating Oreos.

When we look for the similarities between ourselves and others, we find common ground; we connect and help each other. When we seek only our differences, all we do is isolate: we make ourselves stagnant.

I’m always looking for similarities with other parents. This step-parenting thing is the hardest thing I’ve ever done; connecting with other people who also believe raising kids is a challenge– one that we can meet– helps me keep going. Especially if they also make me laugh. It’s one of the main reasons I blog.

Today I have the great pleasure of introducing you to Robin Davis, author of Recipe For Joy: A Stepmom’s Story of Finding Faith, Following Love, and Feeding a Family.

Robin is awesome. Former assistant editor at Bon Appetit, former restaurant critic and food writer for The San Francisco Chronicle, and current food editor at The Columbus Dispatch, she is also a smart and lovely lady who converted to Catholicism, has a strong and abiding faith, and is stepmom to three. In spite of her impressive credentials, she still agreed to be on my blog.

It seems that both Robin and I used to have the same list of Nevers. We were never going to get married, have children, move away from the west coast, or join an organized religion. Life, apparently, had other plans for each of us.

In Recipe For Joy Robin tells the story of feeling the pull of family drawing her back to Ohio after her father’s death. While there on sabbatical from the Chronicle she met a man named Ken at an alumni dinner, and learned he was a widower raising his three young children on his own. Despite Robin’s Nevers they  started dating. Which soon led to having to interact with his kids–something she had little experience with.

When Robin first started spending time with the children, she turned to the thing she felt most comfortable with: food.

This is a beautifully written, intensely honest book with moments that made me laugh out loud. The chapters correspond to parts of a meal, and a recipe concludes each chapter. Robin was gracious enough to give me an interview.

JM: What’s your current favorite ingredient in your cooking?

Robin: Right now, it’s probably asparagus. I love it grilled, roasted, in quiche or pasta. But in another couple of weeks, it’s going to be locally-grown strawberries. I won’t be able to get enough of them for the short season they’re here.

JM: In the book, you speak of the first meal you had together with Ken and the kids (hamburgers). Did you ever cook a meal just for him while you were dating?
Robin: Yes, often! When I first moved to Columbus, I was technically on sabbatical from the San Francisco Chronicle. I worked part time as a buyer for a local gourmet cookware store and wrote freelance for a few publications. But I had lots of time to cook. For one of our first dates, I packed us a picnic lunch with shrimp cocktail, cold poached salmon, asparagus, flourless chocolate cake. We ate it outside at a local park. So romantic!

JM: I love that you bonded with the kids through the thing you were most comfortable with: food. I’m not nearly a fraction of the cook that you are and my kids mostly hate anything that doesn’t involve sugar. What do you recommend for picky eaters?

Robin: Start with where they are and try not to make food a battlefield. The meal I described above? That was great for Ken and I, but the kids wouldn’t touch it (still wouldn’t eat the poached salmon). When I met them, Ben was 10 and the twins were 8. I first had to figure out what they liked and then see if I could expand their palates little by little. But that was my way of getting to know them, almost like a game. I couldn’t take their reactions to the food personally, which was hard for me. What I ended up doing was making sure there was always one thing on the table that they liked, that was familiar to them, even if it was just grapes or plain pasta or rice. If they wanted, they could just eat that (after they tried whatever else was on the table). And if they were still hungry, they could get a cup of yogurt out of the fridge.

JM: I had hot sauce in my eye  was moved to tears many times while reading this book, and one part that resonated very strongly with me was your phrase “It flattened me,” in regards to the basic day-to-day tasks that grow exponentially when you suddenly find yourself with a family. I thought I was the only one.

Several times in the book you refer to how stony your heart had become. Do you feel like you were shutting down in reaction to the stress of the situation, or do you feel like you were that way before and just didn’t recognize it?

Robin: For me, it took someone (my sister) pointing out that I was crying all the time because, as strange as it sounds, I didn’t think anyone could see what a mess I’d become.

I was stony first out of self-preservation. I put up walls because I was afraid the children wouldn’t like me. And then when they did like me, I worked hard at not trying to be a replacement mother because no one could ever replace their mother. For a long time, I wouldn’t say, “I love you” to them because I never wanted them to feel obligated to say it back to me if they didn’t feel it. Of course, all that really did was put up a wall between us. If I have one regret, it’s that I didn’t love them openly and with abandon, with no fear of what their reaction would be. Instead, I hoped they would see how much I loved them because I cooked and cleaned for them. That’s a recipe for failure.

JM: I’ve seen many articles lately where people tell stepmoms “You knew what you were getting into. You signed up for this”. And yet, nobody knows what it’s going to be like ahead of time. Even bio parents don’t know what parenting is going to be like. Do you feel like you were constantly redefining your role as a stepmom?

Robin: A friend who has biological as well as stepchildren tells me she thinks being a stepmom is way harder than being a biological mom. Someone else always has the trump card in any situation, and it’s not you.

Like you, I had a clear idea of what I would be going in: A perfect, never jealous, stepmother always with the right answer to every situation. I remember telling myself that I would stand firm in who I was and how I would interact with them. But I grew, and the kids changed. And of course, I learned what worked and what didn’t. What worked best was just being me and not trying to be perfect.

JM: I appreciate that you wrote a book that can help people through a rough patch. I think it’s tremendous that you put into words how hard it can be, because it will help others not feel so far off the mark when they’re not in love with their situation, and reminds us that everything changes.

*****

Anyone who enjoys exploring the connections that bind families together, who finds solace in the kitchen, or who has questions about faith should grab a copy of Recipe For Joy. But if you know a stepmom, particularly one who is having a hard time, you should get a copy for her. It is a tremendous gift to know you’re not alone.

Click this link to buy the book - get it for only $10 through May 19

Click this link for some of Robin’s other recipes.

*******

What’s your favorite food to make to connect with your family?

Cold cuts for school lunches are the one thing we don’t buy on our weekly hot date. We save that for Monday night since Monday (being our day off) is throw-money-at-the-kids-so-they-can-eat-crap-at-school day. Usually CC gets the lunchmeat, because he knows me and the deli counter, and because he’s a good man.

My grocery store has an electronic ordering thing for the deli, which is how I prefer to do it. It prevents me from completely melting down and leaving without lunchmeat. I don’t have to speak to anyone. I can browse the menu at my leisure without the line behind me getting all Jersey, without having to reveal that I am not of Italian descent and do not know the differences between salamis. But when the deli counter is slammed, they shut that system down.

Second cat from the right.

But the other night , at 8pm CC was still with #4 at the long and far away softball game (freezing his ass off, I might add) while I had earlier been at #5′s short and nearby baseball game (with blankets, because I had frozen my own ass off the night before and knew better). Unless I was going to be a complete jerk, I had to get the lunchmeat.

I walked in, saw the line at the deli counter, saw the electronic system shut down,  heaved a sigh, took a number and got on line.

Usually three people work the counter; only two were on. I realized that one of them was my least favorite employee of all time. You have one somewhere too, don’t you? The one employee you’ll go out of your way to not have to deal with? If they’re at the gas station, you will drive on fumes and pay ten cents per gallon more to avoid them; if they are at the genius bar, you will walk out and skip that appointment you booked three weeks ago because it was the first available; if they are your barista you know there’s no point in ordering what you really want and you just get black coffee.

Mine is Short-Attention-Span, Slow-Moving Woman at the deli counter. Let’s call her Debi. Because it’s all she would be able to remember were she named Deborah. I met her when CC was out of town last year and quickly learned that whenever she waits on me I end up cutting my order short and getting more expensive prepackaged crap from the aisle around the corner. I can’t take it. For a task that’s already so daunting to me, she makes it like herding cats in quicksand. Except way less amusing.

So I pull a move that makes me worthy of my New Jersey residency status. Debi calls my number and I turn to the woman next to me and tell her she can go ahead because I have a lot to order.

She’s quite surprised at my generosity. Giving up your place on line is really more of an Indiana thing than a Jersey thing. We swap our little numbers because there are still like fifteen people behind us.

Meanwhile, the other employee, Regularly Efficient Man, goes to the back to get a hunk of turkey. He is gone a long time. There then begins a conversation between the two women currently being waited on.

Nice Jersey Lady #1: I had a good spot in front of the TV and then somebody decided he was out of ice cream!

Nice Jersey Lady #2: Oh yeah, it’s a good night tonight! I’m DVR-ing it.

{Exchange related to some TV show I’ve never watched}.

I’m thinking that being out of ice cream is a perfectly good reason to go to the store. I’m thinking in fact that it was mere hours ago that I went out just for cookies. For me. That I ate by myself in the car. It takes me a minute to realize they’re including me in the conversation. My offer to trade places has broken the ice. They mistakenly believe me altruistic when the truth is that I was trying to fix it so the other guy waits on me.

I smile blankly and stay silent.

Nice Jersey Lady #1, rolling her eyes knowingly: My husband doesn’t know the inside of a grocery store.

Nice Jersey Lady #2, in sympathy: Oh no. Never. The one time my husband went to Costco he was hungry and nearly bought the whole store out.

I smile uncomfortably again because they are staring at me and it seems to be my turn to complain about my husband.

Me: I’m lucky. My husband usually does all of this.

I gesture in the general direction of the entire grocery store.

Their mouths drop open.

Me: He’s still at the softball game, so I had to come.

Their mouths drop open further.

Meanwhile, Debi has asked the woman I let in front of me no less than four times how much of this ham she wants (3/4 of a pound. Surprisingly, the answer is the same every time). Regularly Efficient Man finally returns with the turkey. I am very, very afraid that my plan has not worked; he’s been gone a really long time.

Nice Jersey Lady #1: My God, I thought you were back there plucking the feathers off of that bird!

Even with the plucking, he still finishes before Debi. Only by seconds though. I step up to him before Debi can call my new number.

Nice Jersey Lady #2: Thank you again, so much!

Nice Jersey Lady #1: That was such a nice thing that you did, letting her go ahead. There should be more people like you.

I am quite sure that there are far more people like me than she realized.

What good turns have you done lately? Who’s the service person you go out of your way to avoid?

Don’t mind if I do.

Yes he is.

I pity the fool.

Why would somebody even want to blow people up?

Is this because of North Korea?

Does this mean we’re at war now?

Why does everybody hate us?

Did the same people attack that factory in Texas?

Elvis tried to poison the president?

And as we checked in with our friends in Boston and breathed a sigh of relief when we touched base, it was a short-lived relief and I was filled with conflicted guilt because I was happy that I didn’t have to go through the same first-hand pain as someone else, not yet. It reminded me of this post I read several months ago on Larry Hehn’s blog: Someone Whom You Don’t Know.

Politics, terrorism, and disasters are not only outside the scope of my blog, they’re barely within the scope of my parenting. I struggle for words both there, and here. But we do our best to give them answers, or at least ask them other questions.

We make it a point to tell each other when we hear a good story about someone helping someone else out. We make it a point to try and make each other laugh.

That’s truly the extent of what I can say about this week in the US. So now I’m gonna talk about Narwhals.

I just recently- like last year- learned that Narwhals are actual animals, not mythical creatures.

And I learned about it off of someone else’s blog.

My kids, however, knew. Whereas I first heard about Narwhals in the Archie McPhee catalogue (hence my confusion as to their legitimacy), my kids were taught about Narwhals in school.

That’s your tax dollars at work right there. Or at least mine.

#5 knows the Narwhal

Last week while I was reading some Harry Potter to #5, he kept interrupting me to show me the Narwhal sculpture he was making out of Silly Putty. Over and over. And over.

Here’s a link to the Narwhal song. I had never heard past the first verse until I saw this. It’s kind of hilarious (repeats after 35 seconds, so it’s also a quick view).

Speaking of dramatic sea life, do you know about the Mantis Shrimp? Click this link. Don’t let the “shrimp” fool you. It’s completely badass and terrifying. At the end of the piece are a couple of videos: one of the Mantis Shrimp breaking glass to get to a crab and one of it kicking the crap out of a different crab (think: Heavyweight Championship on Pay-Per-View).

This is the best damn post about parenting an autistic child that you’ll read this month: Autism: It’s How We Roll…and Spin…and Rock…and Whine on “Jen” e sais quoi Also, April is Autism Awareness Month.

Here are 18 Dogs Whose Beds Were Stolen by Cats.

And, because levity is the only thing that IS within the scope of this blog, The Problem With One-Night Stands in Locked-Down Boston on Esquire.

Mr. Williams looked like a monkey. I was just beginning to piece this together from my own observations when my friend Angie T leaned over during class and whispered, “He looks like a monkey.”

He was short. During the course of the school year, most of the girls (though not the boys) surpassed him in height. He was bald, though not smoothly bald. He did not shave the random growth of wild hairs and fuzz across his whole spotted scalp, but at least he did not attempt to present it as actual hair in the form of a combover, or something worse. He always wore brown or dark olive dress pants and white, short-sleeved button-down shirts, complete with requisite pocket protector and pens befitting of a science teacher.

Mr. Williams was a yeller. Not an angry yeller, it was just his normal way of speaking. He liked to sneak in from one of the lab doors at the back of the room and begin class by shouting about what we would need for the day’s experiment. We all jumped every time class started.

Once he got going, he jumped all over the place–even on top of furniture, yelling. This is when he was most monkeylike. You’d have to spin on your seat to follow him with your eyes around the room and try to make sense of what the hell he was saying.

Now, this isn’t some heartwarming tribute to one of my favorite teachers. I do have favorite teachers, and teachers that I hated just like we all do. But Mr. Williams is pretty minor in my book; literally everything I remember about him is in this post.

I remember a Rube Goldberg project that I made that didn’t work, a hot dog cooker I made that didn’t work, and possibly an egg drop cushion that I made that didn’t work but I may have that mixed up with another class. I remember burning sugar and the smell is today permanently etched into my brainpan, but I can’t remember why we had to burn sugar.

And I remember early in the year, he asked someone to bring in a banana. He put a perfectly normal looking banana into a jar and sealed it up and said we’d come back to it. Weeks later he showed us how, even though the jar had been sealed, there were now swarms of fruit flies in with the banana, proving that fruit fly eggs are already in the banana when you eat it.

But I did learn something significant in Mr. William’s class. The first marking period, I got a D. I did not get D’s. I was pretty much an A student, and I regarded a D with as much shame as I would have had I been called out by the teacher in class for misbehaving. It was a shock to me; I was used to getting A’s just by sitting in front of Gilligan’s Island every day after school with a box of peanut butter Cap’n Crunch. I knew I was in trouble here and would have to work for it. I did as much extra credit as possible. I stayed after for help. I always did my homework. I always studied for the tests.

Mr. Williams knew I was trying. He didn’t care. No matter what, I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand the class. He gave me the grade I earned, nothing more. I later studied Biology, Botany, Physics and Electronics with much better results but the best I ever managed in seventh-grade Science was a C.

So what was the big life lesson I got out of it?

Certainly not Hard work pays off! or Those who persevere, succeed! The greater the challenge, the greater the victory! Determination is the glue that holds your moth-eaten dreams together! Nothing I ever saw on a pithy motivational poster proved true about Mr. William’s class.

No, the lesson I learned, but didn’t fully embrace until much later was this:

It’s not the end of the world to suck at something.

Oh, and that every time you eat a banana, you’re eating bugs.

What do you suck at?

Click this link to go check it out.

There’s also link there to my essay, “Reality Check” in the May issue.

I especially liked the essay on page 90. Can you please make the pulled pork now?

Happy Friday.

I have nothing against neutral as a genre.

But I enter my plea with all realtors, homeowners, and interior decorators to please not ever allow anyone to paint ALL of the walls, baseboards and ceilings the same dirty shade of off-white.

“Swiss Mocha” my ass.

Tinting white paint with a spot of brown and covering all available surfaces in it is exactly the same as rubbing your walls, baseboards, and ceilings with sponges dipped in mud puddles.

Although, this isn’t anything you notice at first. Not until you get all the boxes unpacked anyway, which takes about a year if you’re really lucky.

Then you start painting the kids’ bedrooms. One per extended school break, because kids are naturally good painters and will totally bust their butts for fifty bucks. And with each gallon of paint you shake and stir, you start to dream of other colors in other rooms. Soon, every room in the house that you, personally, never spend any time in is painted. Excellent colors. Colors that fit the personalities of the people who do spend time in those rooms. Colors you would be proud to show off if said rooms weren’t otherwise so offensive.

And you start to notice Swiss Mocha.

How it makes your 1970′s suburban split-level look its age and style; how no number of pictures on the walls can prevent it from sucking your soul out little by little. How it never looks clean, no matter what you do to it (although, in Swiss Mocha’s defense, most of what you do to it is resent it and deem it unworthy of washing one more freaking time).

This was my state of mind regarding the Swiss Mocha on my walls when CC left for Denver for six weeks at the start of last summer break, leaving me in charge of a household of five kids and two puggles. It was the first of many extended trips he had scheduled for the year.

The morning he left I woke up in a blind panic, drenched in sweat, from a dream in which I was standing at the edge of a cliff with one foot in the air. I had just started to lose my balance and the adrenaline jolt woke me up. I knew that the only way we were going to make it through him being gone was to stay busy. But how? How was I going to keep five kids with no itineraries occupied all summer without myself going crazy?

Then #2 and #3 spent a Saturday helping the youth group paint a lady’s apartment and they talked about how much they enjoyed it. Now, I’m a terrible painter. I’m impatient. I can’t paint a straight line nor can I tape one. I don’t enjoy it.  Yet, at dinner that night it was out of my mouth before I could talk myself out of it.

Me: We should paint the house while your dad’s gone. You know, as a surprise.

Them: That’s crazy.

Me: Isn’t it though?

Them: Okay. Let’s do it!

We made friends with Bryan, the guy at the paint store. I brought all the kids in and we let him in on our surprise project for CC. He was fantastic.

As you can tell from these pictures, there is no greater joy in a child’s life than painting. Especially painting one’s own house during summer vacation. For free.

#2, crying out of pure joy

#3 can scarcely contain her excitement

#5 is so happy to help!

The puggles helped, too.

Ear paint.

Butt paint.

CC and I had been fighting about colors since we bought the house. He was a neutral advocate. I wanted statement walls. The longer I looked at Swiss Mocha, the greater I wanted those statements to be. The golds I chose for the main areas were tame for me, but would be a stretch for him.

When it was time to move on to the hallway, I had an idea. I was thinking: ice cream; I was thinking: sunset; I wanted something amazing in this dark hallway with no natural light; something joyful that would be the first thing we saw when we walked out of our rooms in the morning. The plan was to extend that color out to the first wall you see when you walk in the front door.

The day I went in for the paint, Bryan wasn’t there. There was another guy. Another guy who was not in on the plan, not part of the surprise, who didn’t offer me encouragement or help me make decisions. A guy who, when he looked at the close-but-not-quite-right colors I had hoped for guidance with, had an opinion.

Guy: I don’t even know why orange exists as a color.

All my confidence fell away. Maybe I should go with beige. What if CC totally hated it? What if my surprise for him just ended up being a huge waste of time and money and started a big fight? But then I had another thought.

Me: Umm, do you know when Bryan works again?

I went back the next day and Bryan helped me with the orange that CC would never have signed off on in a million years. As the kids were putting it up on the walls they kept commenting.

Navel.

#2: Oh my god.

#3: Wow!

#2: Dad’s going to divorce you.

#3: Yeah, he probably won’t like it.

#4: Oh my God. Dad’s going to divorce you.

#5: I love orange! Dad’s so going to divorce you.

#1: Holy Crap! What did you to to the wall? Dad’s going to divorce you.

But I loved it. I would literally clap my hands and jump with glee every time I looked at my orange wall.

It took the bulk of the time that he was gone to do this project. We all worked really hard. I got some form of dinner on the table  every day, wherever the table happened to be that day. We had the Summer Olympics on TV the whole time we were painting. We painted at 2am watching the replays of the female Chinese weight lifters. We taped the trim at 7am when #5 got up. Every kid got to paint a door in the downstairs hallway any way they wanted to, and #1 put a mural on one wall.

We banded together and we stayed as busy as possible, which lessened our awareness of the very noticeable absence in our midst. We all knew that over-noticing that absence would be our downfall.

He was blown away when he got home– mostly grateful that he didn’t have to do any of the painting.

He liked the orange wall. He said, “It looks a lot less crazy on the wall than it did in your head.”

Welcome home. To Crazy Town.

And that, Guy Who Is Not Bryan, is why orange exists as a color.

Have you ever planned a surprise for someone you weren’t sure they would like? What’s the boldest thing you’ve ever put on your walls?

Good thing I’m not claustrophobic or I’d be totally freaking out in here.

Hmm. If I did completely freak, how would I get out? Like, there’s not even enough room to bend my knees to skootch myself down the tube.

Is this more, or less, room than I would have in a coffin?

Ooh, bad thought. Better not think about coffins. Better close my eyes and pretend like I’m in final savasana at the end of Bikram class. Savasana. . . translates to Dead Body Pose. Dammit!

If I have glitter on me anywhere, is it going to ignite? 

I wonder if my feet are sticking out of the tube. I can’t tell how far out they are.

This headphone cable is cutting into my carotid artery. I think it’s doing it on purpose. Maybe my headphones are possessed. They remind me of the headphones in the language lab in high school. We always made a mad dash to claim  the least disgusting set of headphones. The ones without Dippity Do or Jheri Curl all over them. Wow. I totally just dated myself there.

Oh no, not Freebird. Wasn’t I hearing Alicia Keys a minute ago? Did they change the station? God I hope so. Otherwise I’ve completely lost it.

I haven’t listened to Freebird in its entirety in so freaking long. Nobody ever sits through this entire song on purpose. I can remember exactly two times in my life I have listened to this whole song.

There was that time in our driveway in Bloomington, me and K out of our minds and for some reason sitting in the car listening to the radio. We could have gotten out any time we wanted to, but by then we were thinking how good a song it was. Stockholm Syndrome. This song is long enough to give that to you.

You know what? MRI stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging, which is kind of misleading. It’s very accurate in terms of the test itself and the visual aspect, but in my world “resonance” has a somewhat pleasant connotation and very specifically refers to sounds. Nowhere in the name of this test is implied the sound of a jackhammer, and really, it should be stated outright.

The other time I heard all of Freebird was working the Laughlin River Run with Milk and Genevieve when the new Skynyrd was headlining. We had a morning free so Genevieve and I went shopping at the flea market in the parking lot and picked up leather biker chick halter tops. I had to have Milk alter mine by shortening the halter a couple of inches with a piece of tie-line because it was made for someone with much bigger. . .attitude than me. We wore them for the gig and when we did the band changeover Genevieve and I got applause, which was sort of embarrassing, but sort of cool. Though I don’t remember hearing all of Freebird then either. I think I may have gone to the bathroom when they played it. Which is probably what the DJ is doing right now.

You always need a bathroom song when you’re a DJ, the song you can put on and have time to run down the hall to the bathroom and come back before it’s over. I worked on the high school radio station for two years. Our bathroom song was Metallica’s One (seven minutes, twenty-four seconds).

Why do I keep thinking about high school?

This is quite possibly the longest guitar solo ever in the history of guitar solos. This song has been playing for the majority of the time I have been in this jackhammer tube. Tapping? How did I not ever know there’s a tapping section in this solo? Oh right, because I never listen to this song all the way through. Because nobody listens to this song all the way through. I don’t have anything against the band. Given the choice, I could easily have picked three Syknyrd songs that I like in place of this one.

Three songs that would be over by now.

If I ever get out of here, I’m going to ask everyone if they’ve ever listened to this entire song on purpose. All the way through. I’m going to ask everybody if they understand that there’s a tapping section in the guitar solo. I bet nobody will believe me.

I hope I’ve been holding still enough.

I wonder what they’re going to find.

I wonder if I ever get buried alive, if I’m gonna have Freebird stuck in my head because of this. If I have a choice, I’m gonna pick something else. Like maybe all of 2112. 

When is the last time you listened to Freebird all the way through?

If you got to choose, what song would you pick to have stuck in your head if you got buried alive?

Hummingbird by beccapuglisi via WANA commons, Flickr