FOLLOW ME!

I've spent more than half a century perfecting the Art of the Mistake.  Not to brag, but I have single-handedly redefined the concept of 'screwing up' in certain parts of Europe.  Outside one particularly complicated bank entryway in Toulouse, for example, and over a deli counter that for some insane reason sold fish-shaped cheese in Perpignan, my work is known as "L'Art de BooBoo Magnifique en Francaise."

Thanks to that old adage, "We learn from our mistakes," I can take comfort in being one of the smartest people on the planet.  But that realization dragged along with it great responsibility in the form of an urge to help others make fools of themselves less often.

How?

By teaching shortcuts to help avoid the mistake itself, as well as the pain that comes right after your bug-eyed friends scream, "Oh, man, we could NOT believe it when you..."  (Fill in the blank.  "...popped that clutch."  "...lost that ski."  "...married that guy.")

I am able to detect a mistake's approach from a mile away.  If ignored expertly enough, the little mistakes will get bored and wander off in search of a novice.  These mistakes include the 'tiny-ripple-effect-until-dinnertime' variety, such as joining in with my co-workers at lunch when the chorus of "Can you believe how fat our boss is?" begins.

But if a mistake is accompanied by one of its buddies from the Huge Problem family, I have learned to run the other way.  An example of this 'giant-ripple-effect-for-years' specimen would be the decision to quit my job after a margarita at that same lunch because, well, our boss just doesn't understand creative, sensitive types.

It has been a whole year since Sponge Brain Stretch Pants came to be, and six months since her last post.  I have spent five of those six months trying to figure out why I suspended my search for the perfect post-retirement hobby.  Some class notes still languish in cyberspace - I even skipped classes that I'd already registered and paid for.

What - no Raw Vegan Foods in my future?  Why not How to Be at Peace With Your Body, followed the very next day by Penny Pinching Pretty?  When did I decide I didn't need to Learn to Speak Hawai'ian, or master the art of The Rollicking Sea Chantey?

Could I tell beforehand that Dabbling With Finger Paints would not be a fulfilling post-career pastime?  That it would be a waste of time to Learn to Be a Librarian - or - Create a 48-Hour Film?  It seems freakishly obvious to me now that I really should have shown up for Strategic Thinking.  Then I might not have scheduled Kick Your Sugar Habit so close to Christmas.  (Um - the holiday where even the organic tofu is dipped in fudge?  That Christmas?)  The possibility of anything kicking my sugar habit was wrapped and stamped for the dog food factory before it even got out of the gate.

I think I've figured it out.

I believe I was mixed up about the right reasons for learning all those new things.  I made a brand new kind of mistake!

Those classes were not filled with young minds seeking Universal Truths.  Huh-uh!  They were populated with other post-half-centenarians, scrambling to find out what had happened during the precious hours we'd whittled away by talking about our supervisors at lunch.

Taking more classes would be like tossing partially inflated life rafts into an ocean of fully grown adults engaged in the same parallel play we practiced back in toddlerhood - outlining our lips with neon finger paints and singing only our favorite parts of the sea chantey (loud enough to drown out the 'stupid' singers).

Finding the perfect post-retirement hobby would only benefit me, and that is not how I plan to spend my next half-century.

No.

I want to pass on lessons learned by sifting through old mistakes instead of learning how to make a bunch of new ones.  I'm confident that I have at least a six-month supply of helpful hints for new mistake-makers.

So, then, that's it.  I shall pound pitons deep into the Sheer Granite Face of Life for all the young adventurers who are just starting to climb!

Maybe I'll be a drama teacher.

But even more important than pounding pitons (since the young climbers will undoubtedly figure out safer, faster routes after studying the placement of my own personal mistakes for approximately two seconds), will be blazing a trail down the other side of the mountain for my fellow Olderlings.

We'll abandon our parallel play and show those Youngerlings what real cooperation looks like!

(Sample exclamations overheard on said blazed trail:  "Lordy, you missed a bunion with the sunblock!"  "Let's all help fish the flailing boss out of that waterfall!" and "Who wants Metamucicles?")

I've been keeping pretty good notes so far, and feel well-equipped to point out possible danger spots.  We'll need to stick together during those rough places on the trail where it's tempting to veer into a 'super-negative-we're-all-doomed' campsite.  That's where we refuse to budge until the younger ones send helicopters and food and give up their own blankets and s'mores to help us out.  And why might we do that?  Because we said so, that's why.  Plus, we deserve it.  We're old.

Stop that right now.

Get up.  Grab your pack.  One of the smiling Fellow Future Geezers will help adjust the straps so your clavicles don't get rubbed raw as we shuffle on down to the Last Parking Lot Ever.  There are still plenty of adventures ahead, but for this next stretch:  Gravity's actually on our side.  (And - bonus - less neck strain if we're not constantly looking back to criticize whatever's happening in the years we've already had.)

Once in a while we'll stop and listen to the sounds of the young ones coming up the other side of Life Mountain.

Singing.  Laughing.  Slipping and taking little tumbles of their own.

As one of the world's smartest people, I promise you now that Expert Trailblazing has never been more important.

(Remember drowning in embarrassment when your grandfather told his 'special' joke to your first prom date?  Yeah.  She probably remembers it, too.  Meet me back here next week - I'm hosting a refresher on Campfire Storytelling Etiquette!)

Hark! Is it the Sound of Three Hands Clapping?

My spiritual head is still spinning somewhere between my astral plane and my upper mental body after today's class, "Archangels."  I had assumed there would be an intermission at some point during the instruction.  There was not. 

The man who led the class was nice, but his syllabus lacked direction.  He started with a Spiritual Body Meditation his wife had received in a dream from Gordon, her own personal archangel, in which you imagine a set of stairs and seven "mini you"s to mentally place on these stairs.  You tell them to Stay!, which keeps your spiritual bodies aligned.

There was a handout called Activation of Kundalini Energy, which involved opening your crown chakra center (which is purple) "like a camera lens" and mixing Color Energies (they move in a counterclockwise direction) with a sexual partner until the colors ranging from Ultra-Violet to Ultra-Red become gold.  Sherwin-Williams might be wise to post warning labels under their lids.

Naturally, the thoughts that sneaked in to rescue my dehydrating eyeballs used the instructor's pseudo-religious message as a springboard.

My family tree includes serial church-surfers.  Mom wanted the five souls at her breakfast table to have a fighting chance at the Grand Buffet in the Sky, so she interviewed pastors and tried a few congregations on for size.  We tagged along and met some of the strangest people on the planet.

Anyone who has ever spent a week at any Church Camp need read no further.  In fact, we may have church-camped together if you grew up in Texas and migrated to the mountains in Wyoming every July, where it was fun to smear your accent all over the locals.

We had no idea what any of you were saying.

Except once.  The night the ninth-grader Texan girls stopped by the pre-teen cabin to chat about sinful temptations awaiting us in JUNIOR HIGH.  My cabin mates and I pretended to catch their syrupy drift by laughing our fifth-grader laughs, then cried ourselves to sleep the second they left.

My family belonged to a rogue church (not in a national chain) the year I was poised to transition from JUNIOR HIGH to sin's big leagues.  The pastor was a gentle old man whose wife was a dead ringer for Mrs. Claus.  She could simultaneously play the piano, blow her nose into a tissue, and smile at the "crowd" while she sang.

Pastor Santa wanted more members in the Youth Group, so he encouraged all four of us to invite friends into the mountains for a Jesus Festival.  This was in the early 1970s when anything with the name 'Jesus' stuck on it was terribly en vogue.  Just ask the Doobie Brothers.

So I invited Bonnie, one of the freer spirits I knew, and she accepted without hesitation.  She had just embroidered the word 'Jesus' somewhere on her Levi Big Bells, so it seemed like A SIGN.

A few things still stand out about that First and Last Annual Jesus Festival.

Our church didn't have a bus, so the pastor delivered us in a panel van equipped with metal folding chairs.  It was all singing and clapping as we motored up the switchbacks, until the pastor double-clutched on one huge curve and sent Bonnie flying down the "aisle."

Her super-tight Jesus jeans split right up the crotch and she hadn't brought another pair, so she spent the entire week scooting between events with a scratchy army blanket wrapped around her waist.  She tried passing herself off as Native American, but her flaming red hair cancelled out 95% of her introduction.  Everything, in fact, except the word Bonnie.

The National Outdoor Leadership School, a company specializing in survival trips for rich hippie kids from Back East, had recently moved into our tiny town.  The rich hippie kids were deposited at the top of a mountain range in June, shown which berries would kill them, then turned loose to find their way back to the valley before the snow flew.  Like Hansel and Gretel, but with rolling papers instead of breadcrumbs.

A small, ravenous band of rich hippie kids smelled our Jesus Festival hamburgers and staggered to the campfire, aiming to skew their chances of survival just a tad.  They stayed for cocoa and s'mores, singing "Kumbaya" the way domesticated animals do stupid tricks for whatever the humans are eating.  Then they rolled out sleeping bags next to our tents and were up extra early for breakfast.

But when they gave a demonstration on skinny-dipping in freezing water, Jesus, Santa, and Mrs. Claus put every one of their feet down and cast the whole bunch out.  This was probably what JUNIOR HIGH was supposed to have been like.

I'm staying away from Archangel Anything as a post-retirement hobby if these are the memories it evokes.

The Archangel Meditation we received in class has steps that include extending all four of your hands, palm-up (right hand, left hand, right astral hand, left astral hand).  But I needn't have worried about getting that far in the instructions, anyway, as I failed completely at the first line:

1.)  Ground yourself.

(Sponge Brain is taking a break!  November is National Novel Writing Month - 50,000 words in 30 days - and she has plans for an epic, sprawling, inspirational mess of an Old West, coming-of-age story.  Working title?   Go, Girl, Go!  www.nanowrimo.org.)

I Carry Butter Knives in Case There's a Food Fight

You cannot imagine my embarrassment when I realized I was the only person who brought a baseball bat to our cooking class.

The class was called "Mexican Sweets" so I naturally assumed there would be a piñata.  I knew the actual piñata ingredients would be supplied, but figured if I wanted my favorite slugger on my side....

My mouth watered all the way to class, anticipating delectable homemade fare hitting the floor instead of those American (Wal-Mart) Sweets that bounce - and taste - like plastic.

The instruction took place in a Mexican restaurant kitchen, and the diners up front were enjoying their meals until I burst in with a weapon - panting because I was five minutes late.  But I calmed the crowd by quickly turning the bat into a cane, and spent the rest of the evening remembering my right leg's new limp.  Or maybe it was my left.  It's been a few days since the class, but the 'cane' was short enough that my back still hurts.

Further showcasing poor judgment skills, I had eaten dinner on my way to the Mexican restaurant.  Other students were smart enough to arrive hungry and order from the menu, completely negating the possibility of fast food breath.

I must admit - I signed up because the class description had me at the word "Mexican."  I LOVE Mexican food, but could not think of one dessert I'd ever ordered at a Mexican restaurant.

Oh, wait.  There's flan.

Ironically, flan is the one thing you hope does not fly out of a piñata.

When the chef described the sweets we'd prepare, he talked about his grandmother, his mother, his childhood celebrations - and that's when it hit me:  Tradition can neither be purchased by, nor taught to, a bunch of salivating strangers.

My mother lived in Mexico for several years and when we visited one Thanksgiving, we had excellent Mexican Sweets.  Mom's pumpkin pies.

We were there in March for my daughter Abi's 12th birthday, and Mom made one of her legendary cobblers.  Mangoes took the place of peaches, and she used lard for the crust since the stores didn't carry Crisco - but it was so delicious, partly because it was Mom's.

(My sister Debby and I have a problem with cut edges not being totally EVEN on certain baked goods.  The night of Abi's rooftop party, Debby and I kept sneaking downstairs to 'trim' that mango cobbler.  We eventually evened up the entire thing, and as we swallowed the last bites - the birthday girl herself showed up for a slice.  Her total confusion prompted us to demonstrate how the burglar had shimmied up a large tree outside and squeezed in through the kitchen shutters.  It might have worked if bits of mango spit hadn't punctuated our performance.)

The night of our class I was distracted from a large chunk of instruction because a kitchen worker placed this thing of beauty near my right shoulder:

I had to keep repeating THAT is not a piñata.

Then a huge container of gargantuan cinnamon sticks appeared.  Holy cow!  They resembled freakishly large cigars.  They refused to sit for a photo and I was understandably afraid to insist.

I'm used to those teeny cinnamon sticks, all the same predicable size, each staying in their assigned space in the little glass jar.  So there would be nothing specifically comforting in this class.  Tasty?  Oh, yes.  Familiar?  Um, no.

This will not be a viable option for my post-retirement hobby, but may be a way to help fellow diners decipher a Mexican restaurant's dessert menu.

Man, it sure would have been a terrific way to WOW Abi's third-grade class on International Culture day - if I had dug that note out of the backpack earlier.  Instead, I drove around town at 6:00 a.m. looking for a gas station mini-mart that sold fortune cookies.

But here's a fun thought:  What if I break the mold when I have grandchildren, and prepare Mexican sweets every Columbus Day?  I'll make my own fortune cookies to serve at birthday parties - but they'll be shaped like pilgrim hats!

Every Valentine's Day we'll have German noodle kugel, and some terribly fussy French pastries on the Fourth of July....  The little ones can wear Halloween costumes in Easter parades -

Oh, wait.

Those kids probably won't bat an eye.

When Abi was five she had a Halloween party and the game I planned was "Decorating Halloween Eggs."  It's weird to have your child's five-year-old friends stare at you like you have two heads - even for two minutes - how had they become so opinionated in so few years?  But as soon as the eggs splashed into the dye, their confusion turned into unbridled "fun."

The Mexican Sweets turned into something not even the Mexicans recognized:

These are sweet tamales.

Maybe it's best to leave certain traditions alone.  After all, my grandchildren might need someone to show them which gas stations have the most international flair.

(Not sure where the word 'archangel' came from?  Here's a hint:  No St. Louis landmarks are involved.  Learn the rest of it right here next Friday!)

Fuzzy Stuff Over Yonder - Who Wants Seconds?

There are times my brain goes so far afield that it can't hear me whistling when it's time to go home.  After thinking all day about work, reminiscing about people I've known, wondering about people I've never met, then rethinking about work - my mind begs for a little off-leash time.  It convinces me that the elusive what's-for-dinner is hiding just over the closest hill.

Fine, I say, but don't be gone long.

My mind fully intends to come right back when it scampers away, but something fuzzy, dressed in a celebrity-news-flash outfit, inevitably pops up on a distant hill - and the chase is on.  Soon I'm trying in vain to remember the approximate direction it first bolted, and whistling madly to myself.

There are two sure-fire ways of coaxing my thoughts back into my head:  I can sleep (even the most garden variety idea cannot resist an empty dream field), or I can write.  Those thoughts that were so far away - sniffing out two-ingredient recipes - zoom back to criticize my story arcs every single time.

In this week's class, Making a Mala, I discovered a third way to bring them back.

A mala is a string of 109 beads used for sending good vibes into the world.  Kind of like prayer flags, but without the frostbitten sherpas.  It works great to corral your thoughts by distracting them from that fuzzy whatever peeking over the next hill.

Here's how it works:  Grasp the mala without letting your pointer finger get involved.  (Hindus call that your "ego finger" since it points out faults in others.)  Now touch each bead with your thumb as you recite your favorite mantra.  Pull the bead over your middle finger to bring up the next bead.  Repeat until you've sent out 109 bits of love.

Our teacher explained that while mala began in the Hindu tradition, there are several cultures that use strings of beads for meditation.  But unlike some groups that repeat self-flagellating phrases pertaining to death and sin, mala focuses on comforting others.

No asking for a BMW convertible.  (Just an example.)

I messed up while constructing my mala - it has an extra bead.  My mind was off chasing fuzzy playoff-season geese when the teacher gave specifics, so I missed the part about 108 similar beads joined by a different guru bead just above the tassel.  The guru bead tells you that you've reached the end of the string - time to flip the mala and start over.

We learned that guru actually means 'teacher,' but since I thought it meant 'super-smart expert,' my mind ran to rifle through my memory bank for recent thoughts on experts.  Tossing aside ancient information on Ben Bernanke and Stephen Hawking, it finally sauntered back empty-handed in time to misinform me that the mala needed 109 beads - plus the guru.

It's been wrong before.  In fact, the first thing I prayed for after tying super-tight tassel knots on my defective mala was to stop being so hard on my mind when it goofs up.  Also, to forgive my fingers - they messed up quite a few of the 110 knots I tied between beads.

My Catholic friend Anne was born the Middle Child of 13 kids.  With six older siblings and six younger, she has some real you-should-write-a-book memories.  My eyes still bug out when my mind wanders up to one of those stories.

Before that 13th child was grown, Anne's mother had burned through several rosaries.  The problem wasn't broken strings - it was the constant rubbing that had worn the little jewel thingies completely away.  The rosary gave her mind a safe place to hide in exchange for all that attention.

Anne's parents knelt by their bed and prayed for a child every night - starting with their wedding night and ending with the trip to the hospital for Mary's birth nine months later.  After the honeymoon phase, Anne's mother used that rosary for every disaster from running low on peanut butter for each school morning's 20 sandwiches (the boys got two), to those awful things that can only happen when a station wagon packed with that many people takes a 'vacation.'

Theresa smashes John's hand through the rag wringer at a gas station in Nevada?  Rosary time.  Flat tire in the heart of Mormon country?  Bust out the beads.  Anne's mother had either become a guru of focused concentration, or her mind was so far gone that her fingers just took over as teeny co-pilots until Captain Brain had revived herself enough to take the wheel.

Wow.  Where do these analogies come from?  I seems somebody's mind has been rummaging through the Suspenseful Movie Plots cabinet again....

Anne's mother was off limits when the beads were out, so the older kids became gurus at raising little ones.  I wonder if she ever went off-script, sneaking in requests that her husband develop a passionate interest in something else.  Anything else.

Like a BMW convertible, perhaps.

Our teacher practices patience by taking her mala to the DMV when she renews her driver's license, but I'm not ready for that step.  Until I get better with mala rules, I'm afraid my guru bead might teach the back of somebody's head a lesson approximately two hours into the wait.

I need to be more like Heifi, surrendering totally to the calming effect of the mala.

Lola trades her flat rabbit for the beads whenever she's super stressed.

So far, my meditation consists of trying to lose track of the bead numbers so I can be real surprised when the guru bead shows up.  I'll keep working on it because I love surprises so much, but I know I'm a hopeless 'counter.'

Maybe I should start small - with a prayer of gratitude for numbers, then move on to being thankful for words, and eventually get around to something more globally specific.  When I start with the global part, I imagine the whole planet having clean water.  That leads to thoughts of world peace, which morphs into millions of people smiling in the sun, followed by zillions of children caught up in bear hugs - and my mind is off to the races once more.

My mala sessions up to this point have involved an awful lot of whistling.

(Ever wish you could lose your sweet tooth?  No, you don't.  Come back next Friday for "Mexican Sweets" and learn about International YUM.)