Rhymes with Zaby Zoomer

Of all the names I've ever been called, my favorite so far is 'Mama.'  In the early sixties I had a doll that called me that when given a two-handed squeeze under her rib cage.  Her head finally popped off after one too many Heimlich-induced endearments (which, thinking back, actually sounded more like "RAW-CRAW.")

I loved that doll.

Luckily for my daughter Abi, I noticed differences in the delivery room that made me hesitate before I squeezed:  her eyelids closed even when she wasn't tipped upside down, and the perfectly round hole where you put the milk was more like a moving ("talking") target.

During the first week of kindergarten, her teacher called to inform me of a little tidbit Abi had announced during 'Show and Tell' one morning.  (Anyone who has ever had a child in their home for more than 30 minutes - a child who knows how to put two words together - is cringing right about now, but it turned out okay.)

She had told her classmates, "My Mama is a Olderly Woman."

I *gasped* because (grammar be damned!) I'd never had a prouder moment.  The teacher *gasped* and informed me no cash prize went along with this distinction.  I assumed she thought Abi should skip a couple of grades, but she had apparently called to reassure me that I was still young.  I was so confused.  Besides the fact that I have no qualms about getting older, I was thrilled that Abi had made up a new word.

Plus, I was 34 - next stop ancient to a five-year-old.

At what age is it okay to be called Olderly?  Or how about just plain, old OLD?

I know some people who are headed for three digits on their age odometers.  They can laugh along with the neighborhood when an entire fire brigade shows up to extinguish their birthday cake bonfire, but do not - anybody - ever, ever call them 'old.'

'Old' is not a defect.  It's just a thing.  I'm not crazy about analogies involving the aging properties of fine wine and special cheese because old people have something more fine and special than fermentation:  they can flail their arms and sing.  Food products cannot.

A friend of mine lived to 85, and every time I saw her during those last few years she said, "Oh, child, you do not want to get old."

"Um.  Yes," I would answer, "I do."

"Oh, no, child.  You don't!"

"Um.  Yes, damn it.  I do!"

And so on, until I finally gave up disagreeing because I realized I don't want to be whatever 'old' felt like to her.  Instead, I want to say, "Yeah - wow - this is some crazy gray hair, and these are my speckledy arms, and - oops, hold on, these are still my dad's legs - but this is apparently my neck, and these must be secret places to store snacks under my eyes, and look how OLD everything is!"  The kind of fun you can't have in your youth.

(Possibly a fitting analogy:  The time a well-meaning friend tried convincing me I had not been fat while I was pregnant.  I had gained over 60 pounds.  Trust me - I was fat.  The person insisted I was not - as if my disagreeing insulted her personally - but I just kept repeating the truth:  "I was fat.  I was not even as big as a barn.  I WAS the barn - the whole barn - and I wallowed in my barn-ness.")

Recently, I had to stop and re-read a sentence in a news article after stumbling on the term 'successful aging.'  Doesn't that just mean 'still breathing?'  Or do you have to be able to breathe and chew gum in order to be a successful ager?

I believe biology dictates certain milestones that I do not believe should be added to our resumes.  Otherwise, a newborn might claim the title of 'successful emerger,' be praised in childhood as a 'successful seventh-grade survivor,' and muddle through middle age crises as a 'successful screw-up' before grabbing that 'successful ager' crown.

She's Olderly.

And what about those people who die way too young?  Are they Loser Agers?  Failure Agers?  FAILGERS?  Of course not.  But I'm choosing a name for them because they are precisely the ones we should hold close when deciding on labels.

Let's call them Real Lifers.  The Real Lifers remind Youngerlies that life doesn't go on forever, and help Olderlies see that we are not heroes just because we wake up every day and breathe.  We are nothing more than lucky Olderlies, which is more than enough.  We may be involved in heroic things in our lives, but if wallow we must, let's wallow in our fortunate-ness.

So, let's synchronize our playbooks here.  We have the Young Youngerlies (YY - birth to sense of humor development), the Youngerlies (Y - still figuring out how to give meaningful compliments), the Old Youngerlies (OY - fresh memories of Fraternity Row), the Young Olderlies (YO - middle age is headed for the rearview mirror), the Olderlies (O - careful - this does not guarantee superhero-ness), and the Old Olderlies (OO - no awards on the mantel for this one, either, but still the luckiest place to be).

Even the Old Olderlies may carry the 'Real Lifer' title after death if they have aged in a way not meant to frighten the Youngerlies coming up behind them.

Sample conversation the new way:

Olderly:  "You are really going to like being old."

Youngerly:  "Really?  I kind of like being young."

Olderly:  "Perfect!  That means you get it.  Stand by for better-and-better-ness."

Youngerly:  "I love a good neologism."

See how that works?  Even if it's just on a subconscious level, Youngerlies look to Olderlies to gauge events they've not yet experienced.  If we find ourselves disappointed at any stage of life and start issuing spoiler alerts that those further back on the age train are in for a bad time - well - it just kind of makes everybody sad.

So, help me out here, fellow Olderlies:  If I ever seem a little bummed, go ahead and say, "YO, Mama!  Nice legs!"

You know I'll do the same for you.

(Why is it often so hard to find the right word?  Usually because that word was taken off the roster years ago and is not even welcome on the bench. Next week we'll discuss the importance of leaving certain phrases on the Permanently Disabled List - where they belong.)

I've Got Me Under My Skin

My first Grown Adult Epiphany happened at age 18 in the übergigantic Metrocenter Mall in Phoenix.  I loved that place.  It was a 45-minute trip from Tempe and, though my VW could not resist blowing tires on the freeway, I made that drive most days after class - just to stand in the middle of more people than resided in the whole state of Wyoming.

Plus, it had an indoor ice skating rink.

The epiphany came to me courtesy of Brenda, another Manzanita Hall dorm dweller who accompanied me occasionally.  She was from Nebraska, so she shared the thrill of riding those escalators and staring at the cart that sold pretzels as big as our heads.

As we wandered by a shop offering free ear piercing with the purchase of really pointy earrings, I stopped suddenly and decided to do it.

Brenda was aghast.  "But ... your ears are already pierced!"

I knew this information.  I had kind of pierced them myself in sixth grade with "self-piercers."  Simple, right?  Position sharp metal hoops on each lobe and give a little squeeze every day for several weeks until they had no choice, but to pop through.  Except that I faked it and pretended to push.  Hey, those things hurt!

Mom's self-piercers worked like a dream, popping through in the first week.  But she'd already lived through more than one real labor and delivery scenario, so what's the big deal about nails in your ear lobes?  (No irony is lost on the fact that, years later, I also pretended to push during my only real labor and delivery scenario when I had Abi.  The nurse finally put a gun to my head.)

When my sixth-grade ears were FULLY infected, the wires came out so a professional with an earring cannon could finish the job.  In our little town, this unfortunately turned out to be the same doctor who delivered babies, removed gallbladders, and pronounced people dead at the Old Folk's Home.  I mean, nothing noteworthy ever got by this guy.

"I know that, Brenda," I offered nonchalantly, "I pierced them myself."

The look on her face gave me all the impetus I needed for the next line.

"I just think it's high time I got another set of studs."  I hoped my eyebrows hopping up and down might detract from the sweat dripping off my palms onto the shiny tile floor.

Brenda almost started to cry.  "But ... just think," she whined, "how will it look if you're ever a GRANDMOTHER?!"

Cue the epiphany.  It occurred, as epiphanies often do, with a *gasp*.  (I know, I know, there is a lot of *gasping* in this life.  Someday I'll write The Shocking History of the *Gasp*.)

"Brenda!" I shrieked *gaspily*, "Life is not a contest!  Exactly zero prizes are awarded for dying with intact ear skin!  If my grandchildren ever think they'd love me just a little more if I had shunned a second set of ear holes back in 1976, then I have let the whole human race down on several very important levels!"

I sprinted in to get the pointy earrings.

Brenda agreed with the high points of my rant; however, she did not get anything pierced that day.  But she may have had her own epiphany, because I overheard her tell one of the anorexic girls that showed up in the TV room on our floor every day at 2:00 pm to watch Days of Our Lives, "No, it's really good to have a little skin resting on your lap when you sit down - otherwise, you'll tear when you stand up."

Eighteen years is apparently plenty of time for some of us to get this whole thing figured out.

Olderlies know how easily soft skin yields to piercing, and it is our life's mission to rein in just enough danger to keep the independent Youngerlies alive.  (Sample bit of gentle guidance from a mom who works in ICU: "You are right that it's your decision, Sweetie, but you'll get your tongue pierced over my dead, four-holes-in-the-ears body!")  (Translation:  "Many infections above the neck head straight for the brain.")

I took care of enough trauma patients to know that even the most private piercings will out themselves on x-ray, making the ER a perfect place for 'real life' checks.  Eleven earrings in one ear?  Okay.  Hoops in both nipples joined by a chain?  No biggie.  Something sharp stuck through a soft spot anywhere else?  Those things are not important in a trauma bay.  When the radiologist determines that sharp thing was there before the gunshot or knife piercings started, he'll move on to the next image.

The reason behind the piercing is more important than the placement of said decoration.  I do not personally know many Olderlies getting pierced (their money is on the real skin changers, like face lifts), so life-theory-wise, we're looking at more evidence of youthful rebellion.

When my daughter Abi wanted her belly button pierced she did not need my permission, but I went with her anyway.  Pretending to be totally on board gave me the chance to check out the sterilization procedures at Freaks on Broadway Tattoo Parlor before they touched her.  (I took pictures to prove to myself I'd been there in case I accidentally tried suing later on.)

But the part of that day that has stayed with me was when a young customer with wooden bobbins the size of soup cans through her ear lobes said, "Wow.  Cool.  If my mom had come with me the first time I probably wouldn't have all of this." Then she revealed several interesting metal constellations between her forehead and shoulder blades.

I do not believe accompanying Youngerlies is as important as listening to their reasons for wanting the eyebrow dumbbell, or the tiny nostril star, or the new set of horns somehow imbedded in their skull.

Maybe if they explain their rationale out loud to one person who would gladly take a bullet for them, those new horns might seem like something that can wait.

(Not crazy about the names the next generation has for us?  Get over it, you Successful Ager, you!  Next week we'll use our ancient imaginations to figure out what we're supposed to call them back.)

Fluffy Rainbows from the Neck Up

The easiest way to talk smack about somebody is to make fun of their hair.  Yes, we often go on to deplore their choice of leg shape, along with their kid's choice of overbite, but our hair is apparently something the rest of us have completely under control.

We don't.

When we were kids, Mom constantly wrapped our strands of stick-straight hair around her fingers in an attempt to conjure up curls.  Luckily (for her), shredded wheat breaks at some point - even the really fat strands - so she never lost even one digit due to strangulation.

We became accustomed on Saturday nights to my father's gasps whenever the Beatles, with their 'little girl hairdos,' came on The Ed Sullivan Show.  Mom responded by coaxing our shredded wheat into pin curls, apparently believing we'd be stunners on the linoleum catwalk at church the next morning.

We weren't.

We woke up like voodoo dolls with half of the bobby pins scattered in our beds, and Mom removed the other half on the way into town while steering the red station wagon with one knee.  (The ranchers in our congregation chose pews behind ours in order to contemplate more avant garde ways of stacking straw bales for their cows.)

But there was still hope for America's future because the little-girl-boys from England were always introduced by a man whose hairstyle matched that of all sane men.  My grandpa, Lew.  My grandpa, Rex.  Harry S. Truman.  That guy who played the vampire grandpa on The Munsters.

Nobody criticized the Beatles' pointy shoes - obviously meant to scoop a million American girls clear across the pond, leaving a million heartbroken, Munster-haired boys littering our own shores.

THAT HAIR!  ALMOST DOWN TO THEIR COLLARS!

Do teenagers welcome a challenge?  Yes.  Especially when adults hate their hair.  (Watch this!  Hair down to my shoulders...down to my waist...down to whatever's next!)

After years of permed, ironed, lemon-juiced, dreadlocked, I-hate-my-curfew arguments, purple hair became more than inevitable.  It became necessary for the very survival of the teen species.

If purple hair had happened in the 70s, I would have been first in line.  That is, if I'd been disowned just before that, so I may have been, like 10th or 12th - but it just makes sense.

Soon after purple hair was invented, outraged voices shot out of the crowd demanding death to purple hair. But the shouters were my age - which means they had already been exposed to their own personal grandmothers' purple hair!

When I called them on this fact, they claimed their grandmothers used 'a rinse.'

"And," I said, "it turned their hair purple."

Blue and purple rinses on pure white hair are kind of fun, but I'm not sure of their purpose - except maybe to give a different color to the head.  Call me loopy.  Maybe some of that shredded wheat grew into my brain and took over the 'perception' dials behind my eyes.

I'm caught at an age where purple won't work without appearing that I'm trying to be younger (dye) or older (rinse, which in all actuality might cause graying stalks of dried wheat to disappear completely).  So I'm doing nothing and using the au naturale copout along the way.

"I'm letting nature streak my hair," I say when somebody tells me it looks like a small nest of gray worms has claimed the crown of my head.  (My Jewish friends never mention it.)

I worked with an ICU nurse who used to say, "Life is too short NOT to color your hair!"  Then she got breast cancer and all her hair fell out.  I was so confused.  She's fine now, and her hair is back.  But she refuses dye it, and it is still more gorgeous than mine.  I am still so confused.

Today's adults (lookin' at you, almost everybody) need to stop criticizing all kinds of things about teenagers - the very least of which is their hair.  We need to find more fascination in their choices and less condemnation.

Example:  "Wow.  I am amazed by that incredibly complicated design you've shaved right down to your scalp!"

Translation:  "Thank you for not setting fire to this park.  It'll grow out."

Example:  "Sheesh.  Did it hurt when those spikes were attached at the roots in order to give your skull that Forbidden Garden appearance?"

Translation:  "Your new baby daughter is adorable.  I love the way you smile at her.  It'll grow out."

Easy peasy, once you get the hang of it.  When unexpectedly faced with what can only be described as "Hair Intended to Shock," go with it.  Plaster a huge smile on your face and you can go either way.  Full Dumbstruck is what they're hoping for, so it can't hurt to remain mute, but you also have the option to notice what they are not doing wrong (i.e. robbing a business - if, indeed, a heist is not underway), or what they are doing right (i.e. hosing out cages at the Animal Rescue Palace).

Start with any combination of these words:  Wow...  What a...  That is so...  I just love... (and so on).  It will get easier with practice.  If said something-haired person shoots back with an ultra-derogatory remark, it is only because of the last 300 awful things they've heard before your nice one.

They'll think about your nice one later.

It may be much later; in fact, it may not be until the year 2050 when they encounter a group of teenage boys with little-girl hair almost down to their collars, resulting in the most insulting thing to anyone's eyes ever witnessed in the history of this whole, entire planet!

But maybe the 17-year-old person you were nice to in 2014 will find a way to smile at the little-girl-boys in 2050 and say, "Wow...  What a...song.  That is so...peppy.  I just love...your blinding smiles."

Lookin' at you, globe.

(Our ancestors had the right idea.  Earrings won't stay on?  Drill them into your ears.  Next time we'll talk about how the Youngerlies took this idea and ran completely away with it!)

Save it for the Season Finale

An entire movie industry sprang up around the concept of the death-bed confession.  I believe this phenomenon was at its peak when I was about nine, but I'm sure we've all seen at least one variation on a thread that has woven its way into the closing scenes of grand Epic Adventures, sit-com season-enders, and every single episode of every single soap opera ever made.

It goes something like this:  The ancient, dying person sits up suddenly to a chorus of, "Dad!  Dad!  Don't sit up, you're dying!"  But Dad simply must confess that he has hated the living room drapes since the moment "those zig-zaggity-striped abominations" went up five decades earlier.  He flops back down on the pillow and dies.

The children *gasp* in unison.

Naturally, Dad is forgiven for lying all those years about his wife's wretched taste in window dressings.  He's dead.  But the wife must pay for ruining his exit, and so the children tear those drapes into a zillion ziggity pieces to use as handkerchiefs for what will be a longer-than-usual mourning period, thanks to this new information.

Scenes are often very touching (like when that dying angel-saint, Melanie, somehow forgave that witch, Scarlett, for making googly eyes at her husband, even though his name was Ashley).  Other scenes are beyond shocking (dying people at the end of soap opera episodes sit up in caskets at their own funerals to make announcements).  (Sometimes twice.)

Thanks to celebrity trailblazers, we know we can say whatever we want on our way out, which guarantees that this 'special' episode in our lives is the best place to tell those stories that nobody else on the planet wants to hear.

Can't decide which story is the most 'special' offering in your collection?  Just choose one.  They're all the same anyway, and here's why:  THEY'RE ABOUT THE PAST.

It's time to rewrite the death-bed scene.  Yes, we can still pinch our cheeks to attain that feverish aura and arrange our hair just so on the pillow, but why not turn the spotlight around and make the spectators glad they came?  Ask when her baby is due, whether you can please have his shrimp scampi recipe, and find out if they like the living room drapes.

When I was little, I had those allergies that make grown-ups recoil in horror.  Even when I wasn't sneezing or trying to breathe - everyone grimaced because 'Puffs with Aloe' had not yet been invented, so the skin between my nose and mouth was perpetually aflame.

I was allergic to everything that bloomed during Wyoming's all-at-once growing season, and by first grade I was up to four allergy injections per week.  One in each arm on Tuesday, and one in each arm on Friday.

I memorized the days of the week.

I also became one of those rats in the famous 'learned helplessness' experiments, which meant if I had accidentally fallen into a bucket of mop water at the clinic, I would have just gone ahead and drowned.

My most vivid memories from 'shot days' include the nurse's words as she shuffled slowly toward me from the cabinet where glass cookie jars sat inexplicably crammed with tongue depressors.  She strained under the weight of both syringes (carrying one on each hip at my eye-level), until the 15-inch needles would reach my skinny deltoids.  On approach, she cheerfully fired off a variation on one of these questions (depending on the time of year):

"How is school?" or "What did you get for Christmas?"

I memorized seasons that way and became proficient at guessing individual months, thanks to her creative rearrangement of key words:  "When is your last day of school?"  "How do you like your new teacher?"  "What are you asking Santa for this year?"  And once in a while, she'd lob a real soft one with, "Do you have any candy left in your Easter basket?" or "What are you going to be for Halloween?"

So, even though I knew the day and month every time she opened her mouth, I quickly garnered that she never listened to my answer.  ("I'm planning be a serial killer of nurses when I grow up!")  And a follow-up question?  Did not happen.  She just stuck me with the needles and went to find my mom.

Sometimes a different nurse was there and I learned the only thing worse than not being heard was listening to somebody's stories about wishing she could have worn real shoes to school, or how her parents never let her dress up like a saloon girl, or the time her brother shot a real rabbit and stuck it in a basket of grass and told her it was You-Know-Who....

It's hard to be a six-year-old therapist for a deeply wounded person who's about to jab needles completely through the alleged fattiest parts of your arms.

Let's do something different.  Let's stop beginning each of our stories with, "I've probably already told you this, but ...," even if that technique does help separate those who love us from those who send Christmas cards with fake return addresses.  (Spoiler alert:  Anyone still living with you after more than three decades of stories loves you the most.)

Let's instead start our open-ended questions for the next generation (and each other) with, "What do you think of ..." and listen to the answer.  You'll know you've listened correctly when your next question asks about something the person you're staring at just now said back.  I know, I know.  I make it sound easy.

I've probably already told you this, but ... I'm still trying out most of my big ideas.

My thought here is that if we are interested in what the young people think, they may be more inclined to tell us the good stuff on their own.  We can finally find out where all that Easter candy went, which cool stuff Santa dropped off, and exactly what they think of their new teachers.

Better practice not looking shocked.

(What says "I have arrived!" before you even enter the room?  Purple hair, if it's long enough.  Next Friday we'll discuss strategies for chatting up a young person's head until the face shows up.)