I'm Okay, Officer - I Just Busted a Move

Our Hip Hop instructor gave an inspiring pep talk welcoming us to class, but one particular line still haunts me:

"I can teach you all the techniques in the world - but without rhythm, the music will kill you."

Yowie.

He seemed like a nice young man, but after learning he'd recently arrived from Los Angeles, I knew his announcement was a warning.  They take their Hip Hop a lot more seriously in L. A. than we do here in the Midwest, if you catch my drift.

In an attempt to show that I was on his side without resorting to winking, I hopped up and down as he spoke.  I planned to take it very seriously as soon as I knew what to do.

He had recently left a job in L.A. teaching celebrities to follow scripts calling for disjointed limb-flailing.  But his reason for leaving could not possibly have been a Rhythm Death Threat; he proved physically unable to make any gesture - including facial - that was not in sync with the music.

He tried several times to demonstrate what we were doing wrong.  No dice.

Instead, he pointed out our mistakes while gyrating and spinning and waving his arms in a very distracting way.  I am so grateful there was not a test on anything he said.

When I signed up for this class, I implored myself:  Do not embarrass the surrounding 48-state area by succumbing to Jazz Hands.

In my adolescence I called them Traitor Hands, because they zoomed right past jazz's free-spirited FUN state and took on minds of their own.  The only perk was that they kept a five-foot perimeter cleared of other dancers.

I attended a small high school in a small town in the middle of Wyoming - a state that must have paid its highway patrolmen to scatter sharp objects that kept visitors from approaching our valley from any direction.  The same precautions also kept all teenagers inside the city limits, unless we drove something belonging to whichever kid's dad wouldn't notice four flat tires on Sunday morning.  (Here's a belated shout out to Mr. Macky!  Thanks to the super-sturdy rims on his '68 Scout, we made it halfway to Denver one weekend.)

We had exactly one radio station during my entire childhood - its playlist was exclusively country western - so I lost interest in music by age seven because every song repeated the same five words in various configurations:  Y'are, mahrrymee, m'heart, lohnsum and shooooooot. 

My musical salvation arrived on after-midnight airwaves drifting up from Oklahoma City. The Pointer Sisters became my best friends.  But when I asked the scary man at Ben Franklin to order their album, he threatened me with jail time for breaking the sacred rule:  Country Top 400 or Else.

In what still strikes me as an insanely compassionate gesture, somebody in town arranged occasional airlifts of heavy metal bands - dropped in like manna from heaven - to play loud music so we could dance.  Kind of like "Footloose," except for the mind-your-parents part.  Maybe the dads planned those weekends in leave-our-trucks-alone acts of solidarity.

Our favorite dances happened at the Catholic Church because the priest was deaf -but also real nice - and didn't care if the bad kids wandered around the cemetery out back.  Anybody with facial hair could shop at Melody Liquors without an ID, so Rhonda-the-17-year-old (her name for a whole year) kept a keg perpetually stashed by the tombstone with the GIGANTIC angel.

I always stationed myself directly in front of the refrigerator-sized speakers because the eardrum pain took my mind off the steps I couldn't convince my legs to try.  Added bonus - I couldn't hear any criticism of my performance for about five weeks.

My feet were always the first to figure out the song's secret beat.  My knees would join them, and eventually my hips would want in on the action, too.  I would be that main actress from Flashdance - Jennifer Somebody - in spite of the fact that she had not yet been born.

And then?

I'd open my eyes after an accidental face-slap by my own Traitor Hands, and the wheels flew off my performance.  The feet-knees-hips agreement dissolved and I was left with mild seizure activity, punctuated by hands that seemed desperate to stop a crime in progress.

The music in today's Hip Hop class was nice and loud.  Our teacher taught us "House Dancing," which I quickly made my own by choreographing variations:

Brick House Dancing - Here the feet stay perfectly still while the arms waft in a fluttery, curtain-like motion.

House Arrest Dancing - This involves tiny, mincing steps.  Works well if you want to play 'celebrity' and shuffle from table to table stealing drinks.

Burning Down the House Dancing - Close your eyes.  Pretty much just exactly what you'd expect.

To remedy our Midwestern Jazz Feet, the teacher suggested we think about hearing a fun song in the car.  "Your head moves in perfect rhythm, right?"

We all agreed.  He said we just needed to keep that up and let it spread throughout our bodies after we exit the car.

Thank you!

I took his advice on the way home with a favorite song from my youth.  My head started in on cue, but I am so great at steering with my knees that my Traitor Hands joined in before I could stop the car and get out.

A concerned policeman slowed in the next lane.  I ejected the CD with my right foot and clamped my hands on the wheel at ten and two.

Logic dictates I have nothing to fear from being pulled over, but ever since that Citizen's Arrest threat from the Ben Franklin guy, I do not take chances.

I would definitely flunk the dance-a-straight-line test, and though nothing would show up on a breathalyzer, it would all be over but the handcuffing as soon as they checked my Earth, Wind & Fire levels.

I have been trying to steal those guys' identities for years.

(Remember when your weirdo uncle ran away and joined the circus?  Good news!  Next Friday I can teach you all the skills you'll need to join him!)

Techno-Savvy Garage Sale Roulette

I have a librarian living in my brain.  Her name is Filene, and her desk is squeezed into my prefrontal cortex near my left eyeball.  Filene's main jobs:  shushing me when something's important, and retrieving information stored in filing cabinets that stretch from her chair all the way back to my brain stem.

It is a cluttered mess up there.

Filene has been miffed ever since the Google guy squeezed in a little desk next to hers and flipped open a laptop, totally ignoring all those cabinets stuffed with yellowing papers.  So when I started an Internet search yesterday for the meaning of the word 'bric-a-brac,' Filene yelled, "It's what you say when you trip over junk in the basement if small children are around!"

I do not think she took time to look that up, but I'll go with it in order to preserve the peace upstairs.

When I signed up to learn about selling things on eBay, I hadn't given any thought to how long that post-retirement hobby could last.  I mean - my basement has plenty of junk, but sheesh!  I may get nervous if I start to outlive my stuff.

I imagine myself stealing from neighbors while they're at work, then hoping nobody notices the baby-crib-shaped package tied to my car as I speed away to the UPS Store.

Filene slammed that thought in a drawer labeled Please Don't Do.

As I left for my class I paused at the door to the basement and told everything huddled at the bottom of the steps:  Goodbye!  Pack your stuff - I am returning tonight with a plan!

I figured the class would be over in a jiffy - sit down, peruse a couple of handouts, watch a little slideshow, then get home before dark and start selling!

Um.  No.

It was three hours of information that emanated from a man whose voice lacked the capacity of modulation.  Filene fell asleep within 10 minutes, and I was effectively hypnotized in less than an hour.  This semi-lucid state helped me catalogue items in my home that I could get rid of that very night.

Refrigerator.

It is so Parisian to visit the grocery store every single day.  In fact, I could go full-French-farmland and buy cows on eBay - the Internet surely has instructions for butchering and milking.  Not necessarily in that order.

Someone sitting behind me asked the teacher about 'bad' experiences on eBay.  WHAT?  Was this guy planted to scare us away so the teacher could have all the good stuff for himself?

The gentleman with the odd question - I'll call him 'Santa' - explained a little thing called 'eBay Addiction.'  He said he had first experimented with the site as a way to find a certain mantle clock.

That's it!  I realized in my vulnerable state that I had never known how much I wanted a mantle clock.

Santa went on to say that he somehow ended up buying six mantle clocks.

Still under hypnosis, six made perfect sense to me - mantle clocks are such sociable creatures.  I shook Filene awake and asked for a reminder to look on eBay for a bigger mantle.

As the teacher droned on, I continued cataloging more valuables whose days were now numbered in our home.  I listed everything by size and potential downside, from Baby Grand Piano (nope - belongs to Abi) to Diamond Ring (nope - don't actually own one).

It was just before we took our last vending-machine-Cheetos break that I had an epiphany.  It was a vision, actually.  Filene had plastered it to the backs of my eyeballs in a desperate attempt to gain my attention.

It was my obituary.

Filene understood the dangers of eBay and she knew my girlfriend Joan would kill me if I sold the thing that had risen to the top of my 'valuable' list.

I ran to the drinking fountain and splashed water on my face.  I came back armed with steely resolve and Cheetos-dust mud on several fingers.

I made a new list - one that included everything I could possibly remember in my basement.  I offered up a not-so-silent prayer to the eBay gods that somebody somewhere is still addicted to Beanie Babies.

Here's hoping there are people clamoring for giant, empty yogurt containers.  Also, those suitcases that were manufactured before the invention of the wheel, and my 'collection' of non-recyclable plastic travel mugs.

Why do I keep that stuff in the first place?  Throwing it in the regular trash just makes me too sad.  Instead, I allow myself to believe archeologists will dig up my basement in the year 3057 and say, "Whoa.  Yay!  Tupperware - the very stuff that fuels our planet.  We're rich!"

The buddy archeologist will chime in, "And look, Boss - a fondue pot.  We can sell this on zBay for sure!"

I drove home under the influence of a junk-be-gone high.  All I had to do in the morning was remember the teacher's instructions or leaf through the 88-page handout.

And then I fell asleep.

I dreamed about all the treasures in the basement.  The stuffed animals that crowded Abi out of her crib, truly one-of-a-kind school projects circa EGA (Elmer's Glue Age), and a meat thermometer I swear to God I didn't know I had.

In the morning I gathered neglected blankets, clothes and dishes - and delivered them to the Salvation Army experts.

Low tech.  Worthwhile.  No stamps.

I thought about getting an eBay account just to look around, but I don't trust myself, cyberly speaking.  I once drank a bottle of Hop Stoopid and went online to order four nonreturnable pairs of Levi's - that didn't fit.  At least they're hiding in my closet, as opposed to announcing poor judgment skills from a place of honor on my mantle.

Filene is scrounging around for examples of 'patience.'  She knows I'd only check eBay for the stuff I took to the Salvation Army, and neither of us wants that Tupperware back.

We know it would bring lots of friends.

(You only have until next Friday to develop your sense of rhythm.  Then we're going to learn how to HIP HOP - or die trying!)

Arrrgghh, Matey - Yer Makin' Me Skin Crawl!

Everyone involved with the medical community in any way - even if you're just hooked on one of those medical shows where the endotracheal tube is never secured right and the dying person's eyes always flutter open after two seconds of CPR - has at some dinner party or another been asked one awful question:  What does this look like to you?

The answer depends largely on your choice of beverage at said dinner party.  If that beverage is lemonade, you confess that you have no earthly idea what oozing elbow barnacles could possibly mean.

But if you have made a decent dent in a keg of beer, you tell the truth:  Scurvy.  Specifically?  Elbow Scurvy Barnicus.  You recommend fresh lime juice for eye drops and inhalation therapy.  You leave the party before they try it.

Sometimes these smart-alecky medical people get a dose of their own medicine.  Say, for example, one of them is a nurse who takes care of full-grown adults with chronic problems that brew for years before exploding.  (Coincidentally, often at dinner parties.)

Let's say that nurse has a baby.

But everyone in Labor & Delivery knows this obnoxious, wailing patient is a nurse who works somewhere else in their hospital, so they refuse to enter her room after the baby arrives.  After all, what could she possibly need?

Just, um, an example.

And let's suppose that our nurse and her tiny baby have the misfortune to meet before the birth of the Internet, which leaves the new mother to crawl to the nurse's station and beg for help.

What does this look like to you? she wails at her colleagues.

The most virginal among them glances up from a trashy novel.  Why, that's a hungry newborn, she says.  She hands over a 12-pound 5-ounce book called "The Yellow Pages" so the new mom can root out the LeLeche League for her more pressing problem - Nipple Scurvy Increduloso.

I took this class today - Lyme Disease Mystery - even though the Internet would have yielded two million symptoms from people who don't attend nearly enough dinner parties with doctors and nurses.  I wanted to keep it local.  I mean, what happens when Missouri ticks bite?

Wyoming ticks were no biggie when I was growing up.  There were exactly four weeks each year when they weren't frozen solid, so as long as we moved through the sagebrush with legs like pogo sticks, we only had a few dozen helping us take a bath that night.

But I imagined Missouri ticks would cause special, Midwestern complications - like a feverish sweat that commanded, Sit right down here on this riverbank and get yourself a big ol' fishin' stick!

That may be Mississippi ticks.

No need to Google!  The Lyme teacher had two million symptoms of her own, most of which I had always attributed to PMS.  (Bonus Nurse Tip:  The next time you feel bitchy, can't do the top button of your Levi's, or sob uncontrollably when the Army guy sneaks home on leave and wakes his parents with the smell of Folger's - go directly to the emergency room for a tick check.)

My mom Pearl enrolled, too, even though she was just visiting the Missouri ticks and was always smart enough to stay out of the sagebrush for four weeks each year in Wyoming.  She's one of those awesome octogenarians who is always up for anything.  Ice cream with friends?  Sure!  Disease discussion with total strangers?  Why not!

What I learned in class:  My post-retirement hobby won't include diagnosing certain diseases based on mysterious symptoms.  But it may very well include arguing with people who think they have certain diseases based on mysterious symptoms.

At some point, I turned Full Helper Bee and started correcting every answer the teacher offered.

Classmate One:  "Lately, I find I'm thirsty all the time and have to use the bathroom every ten minutes."

Teacher:  "That's Lyme.  You need antibiotics."

Me:  That's Sugar Scurvy Diabeticus!  Start substituting limes for candy bars!

Classmate Two:  "When I run on cement the front part of my lower legs ache."

Teacher:  "Oh, that's definitely Lyme.  You definitely need antibiotics."

Me:  That's Concrete Scurvy Shin Splintius!  Stop at Sonic for a lime slushy on your way home to elevate your feet!

And so on.

Mom nodded encouragingly during the teacher's impromptu speech about showing respect for instructors.  (Mom devotes total focus to flight attendants so they won't feel bad.  After the whole fasten-your-seatbelt-we-may-need-oxygen-if-we-find-a-body-of-water routine, she applauds.)

I was not worried about Mom being brainwashed until a classmate leaned over and asked her the dreaded question.

"What does this look like to you?"  The woman flopped her hands on Mom's desk.

Mom tilted her head, employing her signature super-concentraty eyebrow stance, before answering the lady with the flawless skin.  "Why, that is some kind of Lyme something, I think."

Mom! I said.  Snap out of it!

But the teacher was already passing out antibiotics.

My instincts faltered.  I studied my hands - and then my arms - and there on the carpet of weirdly shaped brown spots I saw all those ticks I'd found years ago during bath time.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

I have Lyme Scurvy Mysteriosis, I finally admitted to myself.

But before I could raise one diseased appendage to request some pills, Mom slid her hands onto my desk.

"What does this look like to you?"  She whispered so as not to disrespect the teacher.

Our hands and arms had the same patterns.

My voice broke with emotion.  I see a map to my future ... a way through life's twists and turns ... the promise of sunnier times, no matter what the fates shower upon-

"Nope," she said, tapping her watch.  "It looks like lunchtime."

ALREADY?  WOO HOO!

Lunchtime is easily diagnosed as one of my three most favorite times of the day, and I know where to get the best Key Lime pie.

I should also mention Mom's signature way of not letting me derail all the way into Drama Scurvy Queenius.

(Lots of extra junk in the trunk?  I mean the kind they'll not arrest you for when it's placed on the Fed Ex counter?  Goody!  Next Friday we'll learn how to sell it on eBay!)

Yes, It Looks Like a Man With Horse Legs. Now Go To Sleep.

I learned something surprising in my Beginning Astronomy class:  I am really good at celestial interpretation.  In fact, I probably could have tested out if there was a Final Exam Of The Certified Space Explorer.

I had pre-fretted needlessly about my inability to comprehend not only fiery fireball hugeness, but those distances and speeds you need to travel for a decent firsthand glimpse at a real star.

My brain shuts down with giant numbers.

It shuts down with teeny numbers, too.  A chemistry professor once mentioned out loud that nobody had ever actually seen an electron.  Pppsssshhhhht.  And I had to memorize its weight for the test?  I don't think so, Professor Weirdo.  I am ordering my brain to stop listening now!

I showed him.

But stars are so easy to figure out since they connect to form comically disproportionate characters.

I believe an impromptu constellation-naming party broke out during a cave person camping trip.  Why would cave parents take their cave children outside of the cave to camp, you ask?  For the same reason my Wyoming parents took their Wyoming children outside of our mountain range to camp.

Cheap fun.

Before 'safety experts' paved everything but the water coming out of Old Faithful, you could drive right up to the geyser and pitch your tent under the pine trees.

I make that sound easy - but our tent was one of those extra-thick canvas varieties, lined with brass grommets that doubled as weapons.  Atilla The Hun's parents hauled these tents over the Alps on elephants when their family headed for campout fun in Italy.

The tent weighed more than our station wagon, so our arrival was heralded by sparks as the back bumper rode in on the asphalt.  We cruised through Yellowstone Park's South Entrance and rich tourists in Airstream trailers reported a rusted rocket ship landing in slow motion.

I'll never figure out how my father put that tent up.  The pole supports had very recently been actual trees, and none of us was strong enough to help.  He'd be wrapped in diesel-fuel-oil-smelling canvas, using brute strength and Dad Magic to balance several poles inside while simultaneously pounding stakes into the ground outside.  Mom hummed and built a little campfire to boil the coffee grounds she'd sewn up in tiny cotton sacks for the trip.

Dad loved coffee.

Another thing about Yellowstone back then was that there were lots of bears.

We hoisted our food into trees at night, or stored it in a green metal cooler that was dented from being rolled around by bears.  We learned not to panic when a bear meandered through the campground - there were plenty of dumb people who forgot to secure their stuff.

One year my sister Beverly brought a friend who secretly stashed cookies under Beverly's pillow and waited for the adults to fall asleep.

The friend fell asleep.

The next morning we thanked our lucky stars that we were camped next to even dumber people than Beverly's friend, so the bears had even easier pickings.  I still shudder knowing my world was only one gingersnap-stuffed baggie away from being minus four adorable nieces.

But even after meeting Beverly's dumb friend, sleeping under the stars did not scare me early on.  My sister Jenny and I stared up through the trees and pointed out all the Big Dippers.  There were hundreds of them!  There was a massive die-off at some point, because now we only have a Big one and a Little one.

Camping Cave Dwellers stared at the night sky and named star groups depending on their own personalities.  Paranoid?  Yeah, you're right.  That looks like a poisonous scorpion.  Contented?  Oh, look!  There's a beautiful woman holding a huge jug of fresh water.  And so on.

I'll never forget the year we attended a special Park Ranger Campfire Chat.  The ranger was distressed.  Please, he begged the campers, stop dipping your children in honey to get pictures of them being licked by bears.

WHAT??  I demanded to know why our parents didn't love us enough to get super-cute pictures with bears!

The ranger whined on.  Do not line your car antenna with marshmallows for the bears and set your baby on the hood for a home movie.

I stopped listening for two reasons.

One - marshmallows were my favorite things in the world at the time and I would never have shared however many fit on a car antenna with anything, including a bear, even for a home movie.  Two - I had no idea what a home movie was.

But it was much harder to fall asleep that night.  Jenny and I saw the stars more clearly since our pupils had refused to un-dilate after the crying ranger talk.  All those Big Dippers turned into Killer Pisces and Libra Gone Bad.

We moved into the tent and let the fuel oil fumes lull us into a safer sleep.

My Beginning Astronomy teacher was intimidated by my innate knowledge.  She had never noticed how closely Capricornus resembles a bikini bottom, or that Virgo looks eerily like 'Lectronimo, the little robot dog that visited The Jetsons.

I'll offer to help teach this class if the instructor ever returns my calls, and I will give the scary stars friendlier names.  I'm not blaming the Camping Cave Families, mind you.  They had no way of knowing their prehistoric get-the-kids-to-sleep game would stick around long enough for paper and Galileo to be invented.

I shall start by changing Ophiuchus ("Coffin") to Postaralus (it's a dead ringer for a rural mailbox).  And why not change the Orion cluster to match what it exactly resembles?  The Celestial VitaMix.  It does not get less scary than that.

My dad resides in the heavens now, and I know he'll help out with a really big tent if renaming stars becomes my post-retirement hobby.

When I get the green light, I'll send Save-the-Date postcards for my class:  "Holy Hercules Dipped In Honey, Astro, There's An Ursa In The Marshmallows!"

Cheap fun.

(Nothing to do next Friday?  Wrong!  Come back and learn all about why I am quite certain you have Lyme disease.  Or something.)