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I generally don't go to Graeter's because, like Cold Stone Creamery, the place doesn't give me a good vibe. And, while my residual feeling about Cold Stone Creamery is left over from a mildly unpleasant experience I had in one of their stores 14 years ago, my feeling about Graeter's is a residual of a much more unpleasant experience another woman had at the Gahanna Graeter's around the same time. Back in July of 2000 a black woman walked into the Gahanna Graeter's, ordered a cone, then pulled from her purse a handful of $1 gift coupons (that was back in the day when you could buy paper gift coupons in $1 denominations) and peeled off a few of them to pay for the cone. Now it happened that this Graeter's had been burglarized the night before and cash and gift coupons had been stolen. Then the following day this black woman shows up with a handful of gift coupons. Must be the stolen ones, right? So the clerk took down the woman's license plate number and called the police. The next day the police went to the woman's house and grilled her over the gift coupons. Turned out that a mistake had been made. The coupons were a gift from a friend. Turned out the black woman, Nanette Reynolds, was from New Albany, owned a business, had a masters degree in music, was on the board of the YWCA and was married to a prominent orthopedic surgeon. And the coupons were a gift from a friend.  Nanette Reynolds' New Albany neighborhood
But when the Graeter's clerk saw a black woman with a bunch of coupons and all he saw was a thief. And that's about the whole story. It happened a long time ago, but I wonder if Ms. Reynolds still burns over it? I certainly don't burn over having been dissed in the Cold Stone Creamery all those years ago. I just don't go there. Or to Graeter's. Unless someone else is paying. Or I have a gift card. 8)
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Now I feel the need to point out that in dedicating yesterday's blog to the Dairy Queen on Granville Street, I in no way meant to downplay the other 13 frozen confection establishments within our 3-by-4 mile city that provide us Gahanna residents with our ice cream fix. In truth, when not hanging around the Dairy Queen I do patronize most of the others once in a while, depending on my craving du jour. Though for me, if I'm not doing Dairy Queen then it's a pretty good bet I'llbe doing be Rita's, the gelati stand also on Granville Street, just down the block from the DQ and also within walking distance of my house. I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that Rita's and DQ are competitors, since their products are of two such different genres; you either feel like a Dairy Queen or you feel like a Rita's. But Rita's sure packs a crowd from the day it opens every April 'til the day it closes every October: Rita's last Sunday afternoon  I really like Rita's gelati, which has the density of ununoctium (the heaviest element of the periodic table), and it has a commensurate number of calories: 392 in a small. That's almost twice the calories of a small DQ cone at 230. This knowledge makes me not want to eat the gelati even when I'm craving one. So I usually end up compromise by having a Rita's water ice instead because I always assumed that the water ice had fewer calories than a gelati or a DQ, (I mean, it does have the word water in it, right? ) But then I just looked it up: It turns out that a small Rita's ice has a whopping 284 calories!
Calorie charts are such a buzz-kill. But there are some days I'll just thumb my nose at the calories and get whatever 'cream I feel like getting, whether it's a frozen custard, a frozen yogurt, a DQ, a gelati, a scoop, or the quick cheap thrill of a McDonald's cone. The only ice cream stores in Gahanna that I will not set foot in unless somebody else is paying are Cold Stone Creamery and Graeter's. Cold Stone Creamery because about 14 years ago I was in a Cold Stone Creamery in Boston and the teen-aged server, who obviously longed to be doing anything else besides scooping ice cream, copped me an attitude. I still can't pass a CSC without feeling hostile vibes. As to why I won't spring for a Graeter's, well, I'll go into that tomorrow... How do I love Gahanna? Let me count the ways. Which I will definitely do in an upcoming blog. Because I really do love living here in Gahanna, Ohio. For one thing, if you happen to be in our fair town and find yourself with a hankering for ice cream, you needn't travel very far in any direction; because within our 3-by-4 mile town of 33,000 people we have Whit's Frozen Custard, Petey's Ice Cream, 2 United Dairy Farmers, Cold Stone Creamery, Baskin and Robbins, Greater's, the Purple Cow at Meijer's and, of course the cone machine at each of the the 3 McDonald's; for frozen yogurt we've got Menchie's; if you're craving a gelato, which is ice cream on steroids, we've got Rita's. (I haven't included the various and sundry Gahanna fast-food restaurants that offer shakes but not ice cream, since the list would then go on to kingdom come). But if you're in Gahanna on a Saturday night and it's a 'cream you're craving, odds are you're going to wanna be where the people are, which is the Dairy Queen on Granville Street. The Gahanna Dairy Queen last Saturday night, 9:00 pm.  Dairy Queen is where the coach takes the team after a big win. It's where you take your kid after their dance recital. It's where you go when when you're jonesing for what you can't get at any of the other ice cream places. Because, let's face it, there's just this je ne sais quoi about a Dairy queen cone: the taste, the density-to softness ratio as you lick your way 'round the ice cream, the curl on top.... there's just this nanocosmic distinction that makes all the difference. And, of course, if you want a Blizzard, you want a Blizzard, right? I've eaten manys the Dairy Queen cones in my day (and hope to eat manys the more before I leave the planet) at manys the various locations around this great country of ours. But I'm putting it out there that our Gahanna Dairy Queen is the best of them all. It's spacious and roomy, and no matter how crowded it is you can always find a place to sit. And a parking spot (though we almost always walk from our house to the DQ, as we did last night). And there are rest rooms. And the servers, though running around like crazy, are always cheerful and friendly. And it doesn't even seem to matter to anyone that the state of the ice cream assembly area behind the counter always tends to look a little, um, well, sticky....Oh, well, maybe the servers are just so busy being nice and helpful that they don't always have time to grab a wet rag... or a broom for the floor. But that's okay, we all seem be able to look past that issue. I guess it's because the Dairy Queen is sort of like family, so you'll be indulgent. Though as far as I know the Gahanna Dairy Queen on Granville Street has always been owned by the same family, I don't actually know how long it's been here. But it's been here as long as we have, though of course having lived here a mere 27 years makes us still sort of Gahanna arrivistes. However whenever I ask one of the Gahanna born-and-raised folks of my generation they say, "The Dairy Queen? Oh, it's just been there forever." And as long as there are Saturday nights in Gahanna, I guess it always will be. Tom, at "our" table.  Tom, at "our" table.
So I have the dress.  Now for the shoes. Shoes are a perennial problem for me. Part of the problem is that I take a 10 1/2, a size that doesn't exists in the realm of women's foot wear. In women's shoes you can find a size 10 or an 11, even a 12. But you can't find a 10 1/2. Or and 11 1/2 or a 12 1/2. You can find a 9 1/2, an 8 1/2, a 7 1/2, etc, right on down the line. But when you're going up the line, the half-sizes stop at 9 1/2. It's true. Ask any gal for whom a 10 is too small but an 11 is too big. We're out there. And our shoes don't fit. I've pondered this question as to why shoe makers stop the half-sizes at 9 1/2, and I can only conclude that it must be because they figure any woman whose foot is bigger than size 10 can just wear any old thing, who cares? It kind of hurts my feelings. But not a whole lot. Because I discovered that a pair of size 11 Asics sneakers lined with a Spenco insert actually fit great, so that's what I wear all the time. And I love my Asics, which is why back when I was planning on wearing my black blouse-jacket-fancy pants ensemble to Claire's wedding I was thinking of trying to customize a pair of Asics with some glued-on bling to make them look wedding-worthy and maybe kick off a fashion trend of formal sneakerwear. But even I can see that my dress cries out not for sneakers, but for sandals. (Or maybe heels, but of course that's never gonna happen). And by luckiest of chance I've also discovered: Earth Spirit Sandals  Earth Spirit sandals are the best-kept secret in the shoe kingdom and the most comfortable sandal on the planet. The uppers are of leather so they never wear out, and the soles are built like a good tennis shoe, thick and oh, so cushiony under your feet. They offer a ton of support and the back strap keeps your foot from slipping, which is probably why I can rock a size 11 in an Earth Spirit.
And on top of all that, they are, as you can see, cute. They also come in black and white, and in the past I've seen them in light blue and I once owned a pair of sage green. There are a couple different equally cute and comfy styles also in different colors, but for my daughter's desert wedding with my aqua dress I'll be wearing the desert-colored back-strap style - all the better to dance in. Earth Spirit Sandals, the best sandals on the planet, are sold at Walmart for $19.99. Have a wonderful weekend! My daughter Claire's wedding is now la week and two days away and I guess things are as together as they can be two weeks before a wedding, which gave me time to return to the question of what am I actually going to wear to the wedding? I hadn't given the question too much thought since I tongue-in-cheekily came up with this combo (which my daughter Theresa loved) a couple of months ago:  Since then the notion had been hanging around in some back closet of my mind that I would wear some variation on the above theme, like maybe the top with some black fancy pants instead of the gray jeans, and, well, maybe I would just go ahead and glue some sparkles onto a pair of black sneakers. All the better to dance in, right? Claire had actually given me the okay. "Wear whatever you want," she breezily assured me, "even sneakers and jeans." Claire's kind of like me. For us the purpose of putting on clothes every day is usually just to avoid going around naked. So I guess technically the above would have fit the bill. Except that there are exceptions. Like a wedding. Now, it's not that I wasn't fully aware when I bought the above blouse-jacket set that Claire and Miguel's wedding was going to take place in Wickenburg, Arizona, a desert town where the temperature soars to the mid-90's by the beginning of May; but it was February and freezing in Columbus when I bought the set and, I don't know, it looked like a wedding outfit. Or part of a wedding outfit. I guess I figured the blouse and jacket were at least a start. However, as the wedding date has been approaching one of those helpful but annoying little voices in my ear has been reminding me that I really ought to figure out what I'm ultimately going to wear. "Wear what you want," Claire reiterated when I broached the subject again last week, "but if you wear that black jacket and fancy-pants outfit, just remember it's going to be really hot." Right. I knew then what I'd known all along, that the black jacket and fancy-pants outfit wasn't going to cut it for this desert wedding. So, what to wear, what to wear? Or, more practically, what to buy? And where to buy it? But then Tom and I went to see this movie called "The Lunchbox," an Indian comedy set in Mumbai about, well, a lunchbox. (It was really good flick, by the way, a good-hearted little comedy that fortunately didn't break out big, at least hadn't yet at the time we saw it, so I didn't have to endure the too-loud-forced laughers. If you don't know what I'm talking about see the day-before-yesterday's blog). In the movie the main character, a woman, wears these beautiful, light, gauzy Indian dresses over loose, flowy pants:   I loved the dresses she wore. Then the wheels started turning....I loved those dresses....The weather is Mumbai is hot like Arizona, so the dresses must be suitable for hot weather....Bing! Now all I had to do was find a place in Columbus that sold Indian dresses. So I Yahooed the subject and found the name of a store at Eastland Mall called Deb Shops. I went to Eastland Mall and found the store but I'm sorry to say that Yahoo was lying through its teeth when it told me that I could find Indian dresses at Deb Shops. I scoured that shop and there wasn't one item in the whole place that I'm not 45 years too old to wear. None of it was Indian, either. But as long as I was at the Mall I figured I might as well make the rounds. And there it was, on a mannequin at JC Penney's! Then a few minutes later it was on me:  A nice fellow shopper took the photo in the JC Penney's dressing room.
Anyway, while it's not the Indian dress of my dreams, it's aqua, spaghetti-strapped and flowy, and I found the sheer white shrug to go over it. Claire assures me that if I get too hot while cutting a rug on the dance floor I may throw off the shrug and go ahead and rock the spaghetti straps. But now what about the sparkly sneakers? Now, I know that just yesterday I sort of gave a raspberry to "The Grand Budapest Hotel" because I couldn't figure out what it was supposed to be about, but in truth that movie did have one wonderfully astute line.
It was during a scene when a letter of instruction and encouragement from the absent manager of the hotel was being read to the staff. On the subject of handling difficult guests the manager offered this insight: "Rudeness is merely the expression of fear. People fear they won't get what they want". That line hit me like an epiphany. How true, thought I. Think about it. About those times when you call your internet provider customer support and are connected to someone in India, or when you have to call an airline company to try and change your ticket, or when you have to call your health insurance company, or your doctor's office, or the contractor who's supposed to be at your house putting your kitchen back together: can you imagine how different your tone with the person on the other end of the line would be would be if you fully believed that you would receive satisfaction every time? But that would be a different reality, right? Not that most people are rude to service providers even so. Now, me, I'm almost always polite when I have to make a problem call to a service provider. This is not because I'm especially virtuous. It's because I don't do anger or outrage well. I get all brain-tied and stuttery and blubbery. Let's just say I don't hold my own well in confrontational situations. So I do the best I can by being friendly and sympathetic to the customer support person who has to deal with my complaint. In fact, I think part of the reason that the "Grand Budapest Hotel" movie quote resonated with me is because whenever I have to make a complaint call I do, in fact, tell myself that there's no reason to be angry or upset, that my issue will be taken care of. I usually repeat this long mantra to myself until I'm sufficiently convinced of it that I can make the call in a good frame of mind. If my problem is not taken care of to my satisfaction I generally don't argue. I thank the person I talked to, hang up, and eat it. As I said, I don't do confrontation well. But here's another true thing I've leaned over the years: That being nonconfrontational has brought me no less positive outcomes in my life than are enjoyed by my fellow human beings who are of a more assertive nature. I've learned that if a service provider isn't going to give you satisfaction after you've laid out your issue in a calm and friendly tone, they won't give it to you if you scream an shout and throw your weight around. In fact, I believe that if you ask nicely the person you're dealing with will be more inclined to try and help you. Though Maybe Chris Christie would disagree with me. Last Friday night Tom and I went to see "The Grand Budapest Hotel".
It was watchable, and may even have had some point, though don't ask me what it was. Even among the film critics who loved it, what the movie is supposed to be about, or if it's even supposed to be about anything, seems to be debatable. Me, I don't have time for a movie that isn't about something. But, hey, if a movie being about something isn't crucial for you, if you can enjoy a movie just for the great acting or the brainy dialogue, or the interesting scene sets, then you'd probably like "The Grand Budapest Hotel". But unfortunately, on the night I saw it "The Grand Budapest Hotel" had another problem going on. Now, those of you who've seen "The Grand Budapest Hotel" know that it's one of those arty, independent comedies that usually run in the arty, independent movie theaters that show arty, critically acclaimed, film-festival-winning, independent or foreign films that people like me like to go see. Sometimes one of these arty movies will make it so big on the arty circuit that it will break out into the mainstream, as "The Grand Hotel Budapest" did, then lots of people will go see it. Which is beside the point. Anyway, the problem I'm talking about is when you're trying to watch one of these highly-acclaimed arty comedies and a good portion of the audience feels the need, from the opening scenes of the movie, to laugh loudly, uproariously and constantly, when most of the scenes aren't that funny. Or that kind of funny. The comedy in a movie like "The Grand Budapest Hotel" is esoteric. It's subtle. Or poignant. Or cerebral. Or dark. Or sweet. It's not Will Farrell doing fart jokes. But this crowd will crack up as if every scene is Will Farrell doing a fart joke. I believe the people who behave this way do so because they've read all the buzz about the movie and they've listened to National Public Radio and heard the film critics' rave reviews of the movie, and how it's a witty, clever, brilliant comedy. So, I believe, they force out laugh after laugh to impress upon the rest of the audience that they get it. I think they must think that if they don't laugh at every scene then somebody might think they're not getting it, or if they hear somebody else laughing then they'd better laugh, too, so that nobody thinks they're not getting it. It can spread through an audience like a virus. Do you know what I'm talking about? It's kind of annoying. Other examples of movies that I can think of that have elicited the laughing-too-much-when-it's -not-that-kind-of-funny syndrome are "The Full Monty", "Life is Beautiful", "Death At A Funeral", and "Reefer Madness" which wasn't a comedy, but a serious but misinformed cautionary film made in the 1930's to warn parents about the evils of marijuana. People laughed so much at "Reefer Madness" that I wondered if half the audience had come into the theater stoned. Oh well. The only fortunate thing about these over-laughers is that they never keep it up for the whole movie. After about an hour in they've all quieted down. I figure it's because they've tired themselves out from all the forced laughing. Then from that point the rest of us can finally enjoy the movie. Or not enjoy the movie. But we can do it in peace. The 4/21/14 post from my blog, www.ailantha.com   Easter has come and gone, and all those Peeps-permeated weeks are thankfully behind me. No more having to steel myself every time I step into a store then avert my eyes and hurry past those ubiquitious Peeps displays without a glance, trying to freeze out of my mind the sensation of biting into that soft chick or bunny, the sugary marshmallow texture, the rush of hyper-sweetness. Before the first package hit the shelves I made a promise to myself not to eat a single Easter Peeps this year. Because the truth is that I can’t eat a single Peeps; if I eat one Peeps I have to eat at least six or eight. I could easily eat the whole package. I have eaten a whole package of Peeps at once, and not just one time. So for me it’s a matter of either avoiding Peeps altogether or eating ‘way too many of them. So this year I decided to avoid them altogether. I likewise took the pledge not to eat any jelly beans or any other form of Easter candy, as for me any kind of Easter candy is just the gateway to Peeps. But it was hard. Nor did it help that every day for past month prior to Easter my siblings, their children and my children had been exchanging peeps jokes via email with photos of Peeps doing funny things. But the absolute worst was having to gaze upon this photo of my brother Joe, a retired podiatrist who has found a second career as a baker at Dunkin Donuts (he has to be at work at 4:30 am and appears to be thoroughly enjoying himself, as you can see from the photo below), holding this tray of fresh Peeps-topped donuts (a Dunkin Donuts Easter special item). My brother Joe the baker standing proudly with a tray of Peepsnuts he made himself  This photo was the worst for me because my doughnut addiction is right up there with my Peeps addiction. The whole Peepsnut concept took my craving to a completely new level. As I said, it hasn’t been easy. But did I succeed in my quest to be, the day after Easter, clean and Peeps-free? Was there not a molecule of sugar-coated marshmallow or even a trace amount of pink, yellow, blue, turquoise or green in my blood? The truth is...almost. I almost made it across the finish line. And here's the grand irony to this whole story: Last Friday afternoon, wanting to get a head start on today's blog, I started writing about how I'd made it through this Peeps season without succumbing to my Peepsaholism. I wrote until I got as far as the photo of my brother holding the tray of Peepsnuts. That was the moment when all this writing about Peeps and doughnuts, all this thinking about Peeps and doughnuts started getting to me. Then my craving for a Peeps and/or a doughnut really started getting to me! Still, I think I would have gotten through it, the craving would have passed, if only it hadn't been necessary for me to go to Krogers to buy ingredients for my contribution to the Liszkay family Easter dinner taking place the next day at Tom's sister Mary Jane's house in Amherst, Ohio. One last time I had to go into the supermarket and face down those little chick and bunny faces in all those tantalizing colors. But this time there was a sugary little voice in my head whispering to my brain: "What's the harm in one or two little Peeps?" "They taste soooo good!" it reminded me. "This is your last chance for Peeps!" it warned, "YOUR LAST CHANCE!" I stared down at my little marshmallow demons and they stared back with their sweet little chick and bunny expressions.   This time the Peeps won. I tossed a package into my cart. Then another one. Then another one. Then one more, so I'd have one of every color in the store. And by some perversity of fate, one of the only existing Dunkin Donuts in the Columbus area is about a mile from my house and I had to pass it on my way home from Krogers. Three guesses what happened next. These two little Peepsnuts, though considerably less attractive than the ones on Joe's tray, were soon staring up at me from my kitchen table. Like Eve with the apple, I'd bought two Peeps in order to entice Tom into sharing my nutritional transgression. It worked.  Were the Peepnuts delicious? Oh, yes. They were. Despite their off-putting appearance, these bad boys really were delicious, and so satisfying that they actually quenched the fire of my craving for any more Peeps at that moment. Which was a good thing, right? I mean, eating one Peeps-topped doughnut had to be better than eating four boxes of Peeps, right? In any case, the four boxes of Peeps sat on my kitchen counter for the rest of the night. The next morning, Saturday morning, there was little time to think about the Peeps on the counter as Tom and I with Tommy and our nephew Kevin had to leave Columbus by 10am for Amherst for our family Easter Saturday dinner. A fine time was had: Durinig dinner, 
 Until the desserts were brought out and I saw:  I swear I wanted to pull the Peeps off every cupcake and eat them all! But I didn't. I ate only one, the one on top of my own cupcake (moist carrot cake cupcakes iced with creamy cream cheese frosting, oh, so yummy!) then compensated by stuffing myself with the remaining non-chocolate dessert options: Vanilla lamb cake, fruit salad, strawberry cream-cheese cake. For the chocophiles (in whose number I still am not) there were chocolate-chip cookies, and chocolate-chip cream-cheese bars, as well as those little tiny foil-wrapped milk chocolate eggs, none of which tempted me.  But then my niece Stacy took one of the Peepscakes, removed the Peeps, bit off the head, then proclaimed that she hated Peeps. Appalled, I asked her why she was eating it, then. Stacy shrugged and said she didn't know what else to do with it. I then told her that I liked Peeps so much that I'd eat that Peeps she was holding in her hand, even with the bite out of it. She proffered me her headless Peeps. I ate it. That's the kind of thing a Peepsaholic does. It always amazes me that there are people out there who don't like Peeps. But, in fact, I know there are many who don't. In fact, I believe that more people hate Peeps than love them. Three of my four children hate Peeps. The fouth inherited my Peeps addiction. In any case, though the Peepscakes were much admired, only about half of them were consumed at the dinner, so Mary Jane offered me to take a couple home, which I didn't want to do, but, of course, did anyway.  On Easter morning I woke up with a promise to myself that I'd eat one, only one, of the Peepscakes, which wouldn't be a problem because I knew I could count on Tom to eat the other one for me. And I'd toss out the four packages of Peeps still sitting on the counter. I promised myself I'd toss them as soon as I got back from church, from whence I knew I'd return home feeling renewed and fortified in spirit. But at the beginning of the sermon our Pastor was making a point and as a prop he pulled out a box of :  See the little yellow box?! See the little yellow box?! That little yellow box wouldn't stop staring at me for the rest of the service. So of course, I had to rush home after church and eat lunch so that I could lay into my Peeps-topped cupcake! Which, fortunately, like the Peepsnut from two days before, had the effect of calming my need for more Peeps. Then at that moment when I was Peeps-satiated, that one moment when I could easily have pulled those those Peeps out of those wrappers and tossed them into the trash can, I choked. Instead of tossing them out I ran them down to the basement and put them on a high shelf. And, except for one box that Tommy offered to take into work - he didn't want to take more than one, he said they once had a discussion on the subject and most of his co-workers are of the Peeps-hating persuasion - on that basement shelf is where they sit right now. So what do I do now with all those Peeps? Keep them down on that basement shelf as an exercise in resistance and self-discipline until the moment I crack and tear into the cellophane wrapper and eat a whole pack? Throw them away? Give them away? Does anybody want to come over to my house and take them away for me? If you do I'll throw in two boxes of Girl Scout cookies stashed away on the same shelf for the same reason.  As it turned out, my mother did not enjoy being in second grade in the public school as well as she had enjoyed being in second grade in the Catholic school. Here's why: In second grade at St. Patrick's, Sister had seated her in the last seat of the back row in the back corner of the classroom, right next to the wide glass back door of the room that led to the outside and was always open when the weather was nice. My mother often felt bored during school, and one day when Sister had her back turned my mother slipped out the open back door of the classroom and out of the school. Not sure at first what to do with herself for the rest of the day, she came up with the idea of going to the movies. Of course she was only 7 years old and had no money, but that turned out not to be a problem because at that time her Aunt Mary, her father's sister, worked at the box office of the movie theater so my mother knew everyone who worked at the theater and they knew her. On this particular afternoon the theater doorman, seeing little Romaine Fey wandering about by herself in the middle of the afternoon, let her into the theater to watch the show. Such a fine time did my mother have that afternoon that she got into the habit of slipping out of the classroom and going to the movies whenever she felt bored. She never got caught. Her mother never found out. And neither Sister nor anyone else ever said anything to her about her AWOL afternoons, something my mother wondered about from time to time years later. Why was my mother not missed? Was it because there were over 40 children in that large classroom? Was it that Sister knew she was missing a student but had no idea what to do about it? Was she relieved to have one less little charge to deal with? Who can say? In any case, the theater staff continued letting my mother in to spend the afternoon watching movies whenever she took a notion to do so. Subsequently my mother enjoyed her second grade experience at St. Patrick's and saw lots of movies. But things changed when she started her second year of second grade at the public school. She no longer sat in the back corner of the room near a door. In fact she soon found herself with a permanent spot at the front of the class because in this school the students were seated front row to back row according to their report card grades. Based on her grades my mother always sat in the first row, therefore directly in the teacher's line of vision - something not lost on my mother, who believed that from then on she didn't dare be anything less than attentive during class. Thus my mother got into an auspicious cycle that lasted for the rest of her elementary school career: she was seated in the front row because she was a good student and she had to be a good student because she was seated in the front row. And in this school the classroom doors opened not to the outdoors but into the hallway of the building, anyway. So my mother no longer got to make her escape from those long afternoons sitting at a desk and learning the things you couldn't learn from a movie screen. Who knows how things would have transpired in my mother's life if her mother had been able to continue to afford a place in the back of the classroom at St. Patrick's? Maybe, inspired by all the hours spent watching movies, my mother would have run off to Hollywood to become an actress and would have been in many glamour shots: Instead of only this single one, taken by a friend n Puerto Rico where she was an Army nurse during World War II,  ...and instead of opting to have me ( in this photo with my mom), and my 4 siblings.  Anyway, maybe this story from my mother's childhood explains why I turned out to be such an obsessive film buff. I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, right?
A few days ago when I called my mother to get my details straight for yesterday's "War of the Worlds" post, it occurred to me that, as she was born in 1920, in October of 1938 she would have been18 years old, by which age she should have already graduated from high school and started nursing school.
So what was she doing home on the night of the "War of the World's" broadcast? When I asked my mother about it she shared with me that she was still in high school at that time, a year behind where she should have been for her age, because she'd been held back in the second grade. Here's how it happened: My mother had started out her education in first grade in the local Catholic parish school, but by the end of second grade her mother could no longer afford the fifty cents per month tuition. So my mother was switched to the public school. But before she entered the public school she had to be tested. The test turned out to be an oral test administered by the second grade teacher. There was only one question: What starts with "A"? My mother gave the answer that the sisters at her Catholic school had taught her: "Angel". "No," the public school teacher told her, "apple starts with 'A'." So my mother failed her test question and had to repeat the second grade in the public school. Subsequently she was always a year behind. And so 11 years later, on the evening of Sunday, October 30, 1938, instead of being in a nursing school dorm room grinding away at her books for the next day's classes my mother was still a high school student slumming around at her friend's house and about to get the living bejimminies scared out of her by a fake Martian attack and become part of an iconic moment in American social history. So it all worked out. And how well did my mother like being the public school compared to being in the Catholic school? Tune in tomorrow for the answer! ;) |
"Tropical Depression"
by Patti Liszkay Buy it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTPN7NYY Archives
April 2025
I am a traveler just visiting this planet and reporting various and sundry observations,
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