Let's slip away, shall we?

OK, was everything really brown then? Like it is right here?

I don't remember it being brown, but then, I was sitting in the middle of the floor sucking my fist (and come to think of it, I was probably sitting on something brown). Shadows of those early memories still pass across my neurons. They went like this: "SEE the real coffee flavor." "SMELL the real coffee flavor." "TASTE the real coffee flavor."

When I see these things again, and I just saw a slew of them on a not-very-good DVD compilation (too much repetition: do we really need 15 ads with Mr. Whipple squeezing the Charmin, or '60s color ads so degenerated you can't tell what they're selling?), it shakes something loose. I have a reaction. Maybe infantile,

I don't know.

When I saw that classic Maxwell House ad with the coffee percolator, geez, I could smell the goddamn coffee. It's probably the most brilliant ad ever made: starts with a very close shot of the top of a "coffee perc" (the only way to make it then), with that sound to represent the percolation, a sort of coconut-shell melody in irresistable intervals. The type of jingle that fries itself into your brain.

Then the voice-over telling us we WANT TO SMELL and TASTE that coffee. A shot of a very wide, round white cup on a saucer, surrounded by a lot of empty space, slowly being filled.

Then, total genius: a shot of someone picking up the cup and bringing it up to their lips, so that the steaming black coffee gradually fills the entire frame.

I won't tell you the rest. Lots of repetition. The use of circles (ask Walt Disney: that's why everyone loves Mickey Mouse). Clean, uncluttered images. Simplicity. This ad is fucking incredible, and I watched it maybe five or six times, then made my husband watch it while he shook his head at me.

Oh, and then! There were others. "Meet the Swinger, Polaroid Swinger." This was probably the first instant camera. They were "only nineteen dollars, and ninety-five". I don't know if I had one of these, or my brother did. The ad had Ali McGraw in it before she was anyone, and the camera ate her alive. I remember how you had to pull off a disgusting layer of goopy plastic film when the picture had developed, and the warnings not to get it on your skin.

Then this, oh yes: "It's new! It's now! It's flash cube!" This was an incredible invention that allowed you to take four pictures before you had to change the bulb.

Gear.

Beer tabs. This was announced as the greatest invention since the wheel. No more need for those pointy openers (all right, I know you've never seen one). You just - watch this - zip this strip off the top. The woman was left holding a 3-inch, curved, razor-sharp blade. People later reported ripping their feet open on these things. It took the industry a while to get them right. Once they were made smaller, people dropped them inside the can, then swallowed them. You can imagine.

Oh, and this was maybe my favorite. I love those old bubble-shaped cars out of the '40s, what I call Popeye and Bluto cars, bulbous and low-slung. Huge, by today's

standards.

By the '50s, cars had turned ugly. O-o-o-o-o-gg-leeee. I don't know how they ever got so ugly, and fins began to develop and gradually enlarge like mutant

appendages.

I sat through an awful lot of these ads, but the one that made me bark with disbelief was one that began, "They'll know you've arrived - when you drive up in the 1958 EDSEL!"

For those too young to know, Edsel was the white elephant of the car industry. Named after Edsel Pretzelgruber, it was considered to be a can't-fail deal.

Nobody bought it, and no wonder. This car was ugly enough to scare your mother. Enough said.

I liked this one. It was called Slip Away, and at first I thought it was sort of like Pam. It was an aerosol that you sprayed all over your frying pans to make food slide off. But something strange was going on here. You had to bake them in the oven for half an hour. Yes. Bake them. The coating would stay on "for months", though they later described it as permanent.

Well, we know why: the spray was made of Teflon. That's right. In those couple of months, your family would eat the Teflon right along with their fried Spam. This gave a whole new meaning to "permanent".

Various celebs popped up, and most of them were boring, but there were some incredible 15-second spots for Hefty Bags starring Jonathan Winters. These were weirdly funny, like Winters, but most of all they extolled the marvels and obvious virtues of plastic bags.

They were all good! And they kept the place clean and sanitary. This philosophy caught on too well, to the point that we're now having a spot of trouble keeping the planet clean.

Another fave little chuckle: in an ad for Bounty paper towels, a woman's trying to get some ketchup to come out of the traditional glass bottle, and it sprays all over the place. "Ohhhhh! I wish someone would invent ketchup that goes where you want it

to."

Well, dear, hm, yah, maybe, just maybe they've done that, but at what cost? Billions of plastic ketchup bottles sitting for centuries in landfills.

But a small price to pay for hitting that hot dog bang-on.

"AND. . they are mild"

In case you've been wondering where I've been over the past few days (for I am sure my hordes of readers will be worried about me), I've been trying to pull myself out of a funk of non-writing, based not so much on the work itself as the miserable process of trying to get it noticed.

So I'll do something else for a change! Something besides ordering Minnie Mouse panties (size 4 - they're not for me) or out-of-print books or cheap DVD sets on-line.

Ah. Cheap DVD sets. This takes me to an orgy I allowed myself to indulge in yesterday, with deep regret later: I think I watched about a billion ads on a 3 DVD set called 1001 Classic Commercials (and I haven't even looked at Disc 3).

These weren't as fascinating as I'd hoped. I love old ads - maybe it's the reason I watch Mad Men with such fervor (that, and Don Draper's magnificent body, often depicted half-nude). The reason being, this was a very sloppily-compiled set. Ads were slapped on the discs with very little care for the quality. Ironically, the '50s ads were often in pristine condition, in the kind of crisp black-and-white I enjoy in old movies.

The ads from the mid- to late '60s were atrocious, barely discernible in the blur of neon orange. You have to wonder what happens to color film over the years, if it rots or melts or what. I skipped over these very quickly. They never should have been included.

Ads are a-spose-ta tell us everything about a culture at any particular moment. Aren't they? Women all seemed to want to look like Donna Reed, her blonde puffed helmet hard enough to repel schrapnel. One hair spray ad claimed that "your hair will still feel like hair", as if that were an aberration. Men's hair products were simply disgusting, rendering a decent head of hair into a slick of oily black sludge full of comb-tracks. Supposedly, women loved this: "they'll love to run their fingers through your hair!" Eeeiiiicccccchhhhhhhhk-k-k-k.

I didn't realize before how obsessed these early ads were with proper meals, nutrition through the warped lens of the 1950s. The words "wholesome" and "nutritious" popped up everywhere. Vitamins were mentioned constantly. There were modern-day wonders like canned zucchini (hmm, what's a zucchini?) and Tropi-Kai Mixed Hawaiian Fruits (? Probably another variation on fruit cocktail. Mmmmmm, those gaudy red maraschino cherries.)

"Eat well. . . but wisely," the authoratative male voice-over advises us. Right. Jell-o was nutritious, apparently, as was every kind of sugary cereal (all made in Battle Creek, Michigan - oh, how I remember sending away those box tops for a plastic fire engine!). This strange guy, a nutritionist called Euell Gibbon, told us that all sorts of bizarre things were edible (holding a cat-tail in his hand), then said he loved Grape Nuts. Did no one else see the irony?

No one knew how to pronounce "protein": it was "PRO-tee-an" (a term no doubt conflated - remember that term, boys and girls? - with "protean"). This was a whole different shoe size. What sort of yearning was lurking under the glossy surface? You judge.

Then came the creme de la creme of astonishing advertising: the cigarette commercial. All these had very catchy jingles, and mostly depicted young people running along beaches with dogs. "Kent. . . satisfies best," "Come all the way up to Kool", "Winston tastes good like a (bop-bop) cigarette should." This one has become infamous on the 'net because of a cartoon ad of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble smoking in the back yard while their wives slave away at the yard work. At the end of the show Fred lights Wilma's cigarette while he sings the jingle wildly off-key, and she takes a luxurious drag. The shot of Bedrock at night while the credits roll is overwhelmed by a giant sign that says "WINSTON". Can't hurt the little buggers, can it?

Camels brag that they send hundreds of thousands of FREE cigarettes to veteran's hospitals every year. Hospitals. Where most of the men lie dying of cancer? Denial was rife in the ads, constantly mentioning how mild and easy on the throat these sticks of dynamite were. Some were even recommended by doctors. A particularly tough and virile man (and most of the men were tough and virile, no pansy-ass fags here) claimed, "It's a treat, not a treatment."

Anyway, the cigarette ads put me in a stupor after a while, so I had to dwell on something else: the odd popping up of celebs, some of whom were not yet famous. Gene Wilder (his nebbishy voice unmistakeable) did two voice-overs, one for Alka-Selzer ("Ah! The blahs!"). Alan Arbus, the psychiatrist on M*A*S*H showed up. I swear I heard Mel Blanc's voice more than once (the Frito Bandito?).

The brilliant Buster Keaton, a man who worked constantly until his death at nearly 70, did a perilous pratfall backwards off a platform, making us wonder how he ever survived.

Jack Gilford did his charming thing ("When it comes to Crackerjack, some kids never grow up"). A very drunk Arthur Godfrey did a Lipton's Chicken Soup ad as part of his show (for in the past, hosts had to do the ads). "The chicken is there. You might not see it, but it's there."

After a while the whole thing was a blur of impressions, some of which I remembered from my childhood: "Gaylord, when you pull his leash he walkety-walkety-walks with you (arf, arf!)". "Mystery Date". Lucy and Desi, looking at each other fondly and smoking. Sugar Bear sounding like Dean Martin. A toy called the Great Garloo, some sort of remote-control robot on a long cord. And oh, Chatty Cathy. The doll from hell!

You can't see the angst and despair. But it's there.

Why did I keep this? Oh well. . .

Sometimes I'm like, I mean. I'm like, and he's like, and I'm. An icon, I mean. Iconic.

There. Now that I've got(ten) that out of my system. . . 'Jever wonder why it's so hard to throw some things out?

Like the bouquet from your wedding or something, now withered into a crumbling yellow horror with cobwebs and life forms living in it?

Hey?

So here's mine, what I can't throw out. Old columns. I started writing columns for teeny community newspapers in the mid-'80s, and soon became hooked. I kept them all. I was afraid, if I didn't, I would disappear (or at least the writing would).

I have kept everything I've ever written for publication. Over 25 years of weeklies, not to mention all the dailies and magazines, that's not just hundreds - it's thousands.

Okaysothen. So then, my best friend, the sister of my soul, the sister I never had coz my own sister is a poisonous banshee (and I hope she reads this!), the sister God sent me when I was about to fall apart, is going through a hard time about her high school reunion. She phoned me about it the other day.

Say the words "high school reunion" to the average sane person, and it will have about the same effect as the word "biopsy". It is not a good thing.

For you will see all the thrivers still thriving, or pretending to. Everyone else will have died, or won't show up.

Myself, I am sure nobody would remember me. Jeez, four years of my life! I was a cipher who drank on the weekends and attracted 35-year-old married men. A freak.

I got a whole novel out of it, Mallory (Turnstone Press - I'm afraid you'll have to get it used).

But in this crumbling old column, I played it for laughs. I can't find any other way to transcribe it except to take a quill pen and run it between my legs (oops) and write the damn thing out. But here it is, Margaret Gunning's Between the Lines, published in the Hinton Parklander on October 28, 1986.

Do you remember her?

She was the girl who sat in front of you in high school - the one with the long, straight blonde hair that always looked like something out of a shampoo commercial.

She also had a model's figure, a pert name (something like Pammie or Casey), perfect teeth, hundreds of friends, a Corvette, and a straight-A average. And oh, yes - she was head cheerleader in her spare time.

You don't remember her? Well, maybe you remember him. Roddie played the romantic lead in all the high school musical productions. (They didn't just pick him for his looks. He also had perfect pitch.) He was a pretty busy guy - captain of the football team, head of the debating club, president of Student's Council - so it was a wonder he ever found time to go out with that blonde-haired chick who sat in front of you.

But he did, every Saturday night. You'd see them together at all the dances - Pammie and Roddie, the dream couple of Everywhere High. Two perfect smiles, without the benefit of braces - and nary a zit between them.

One of my favorite activities in high school was dreaming up sadistic futures for these two. You see, I was one of those girls with a "nice personality", which meant I spent most of my time sitting by the phone and praying it would ring. It's not that I was jealous of them. Oh, no. Why should it bother me that they seemed to have every human advantage ever invented?

But sometimes I would get a little bored during science class, a little sick of staring at that perfect platinum waterfall of hair in front of me. When I wasn't devising sneaky ways to stick a wad of gum on the back of Pammie's chair (so that her fabulous tresses would get stuck the minute she leaned back), my mind would start to drift.

I'd dream that Pammie finally married Roddie, and on the first day of their honeymoon they'd discover they couldn't stand each other. Pammie would break out in a hideous red rash whenever she looked at him. And Roddie? The minute the honeymoon was over, he'd start making advances to his secretary.

From then on, things would deteriorate. Pammie's mother would move in with them and start cooking rich, greasy, fattening meals that would ruin Pammie's pert little figure within six months. Roddie would get caught up in some crooked investment scheme and be thrown in jail. They'd lose their home and have to move in with Roddie's mother (who made Pammie's mom look like Julia Child).

Meanwhile, their seven children (aged eight to fourteen) would all become juvenile delinquents.

Ah, me - the sweet fantasies of youth! Do you want to know what really happened to this golden couple, this Barbie and Ken of my teens?

I'll tell you. They've been happily married for the past 15 years, with a lovely home in a nice quiet suburb. Roddie is a corporate lawyer, and Pammie is a clinical psychologist. Their income allows them to take nice little jaunts to Europe every summer while their 2.2 children (who both have perfect teeth) stay home with their live-in nanny.

Pammie still has that long, straight blonde hair like something out of a shampoo commercial. She weighs the same as in high school, and can still fit into her cheerleader outfit. And Roddie has become even handsomer with age. Sort of like Paul Newman.

Is this fair? Of course not. But neither was high school.

So, I've decided I'm never going to go to my class reunion.

Or if I do, I might just accidentally leave a wad of well-chewed Juicy Fruit on the back of Pammie's chair. . .

A squirrel of one's own

From way back in the memory junk drawer, I recently retrieved an image (or a song, or whatever-it-was) of Martin Short playing the bizarre Jackie Rogers, Jr., a performer always on the verge of being buried by his own pretentiousness.

What sticks in my mind like a paper clip is a song he did: "Pardon me, miss, but I've never done this/With a real, live squirrel."

I remembered the original, smarmy song from the Mike
Douglas Show, one of those '60s things that sounds predatory and creepy now (a "real live girl?" As opposed to a blow-up doll?). It was like something playing in a bar on Mad Men. Well, OK then, what's the connection to me as I sit here over coffee (God, it's too strong, give me more) contemplating my "new" surroundings?

I've never had a real live office before. Never. The room I've worked in since I started writing with a computer in Year Zero isn't really an office, it's more of a utility room. There are cheap bookcases everywhere, crammed and cluttered with other people's stuff. My husband is a kind of controlled hoarder (controlled by me, I mean) who just sort of exudes or emits this stuff, little coils of wire, black plastic things, used twist ties, boxes that haven't been opened since 1972. He keeps instruction manuals for appliances that have long ago bit the dust. On top of that, one of his desks with an old obsolete computer on it was pushed against the wall, never used, just stored.

The stuff that was mine wasn't work-related: craft boxes full of felt and beads and feathers, and and and. The place had become a catch-all.

What happened was this: our usual screaming territorial battles escalated when he went into semi-retirement and spent even more time clumping back and forth between the main part of the house and the garage. This meant clumping right through my non-office, the only room with an access door, a door which had to be slammed heavily (or so he believed) every time he clumped on through.

It was getting bad, I mean, really bad. He just didn't see that there was a problem. Why was it disturbing me that he ran a power saw in the garage, when there was a whole wall between us? Why was it bothersome that he had blathering ad-infested talk radio on full-volume as he worked because he's deaf as a cucumber?

I just ground my teeth a lot and put up with it until he suggested something.

"You know the bird room."

"Yeah. The bird room."

"Upstairs."

"Yeah."

"I had this idea, but I don't think you're going to like it."

"Try me."

"What if we switched your office with the bird room? I mean, put the bird down here. This would be his bedroom. Then you'd have your own private room upstairs and I could do anything I wanted in the garage."

It was one of those idiot-simple solutions that no one had ever thought of before. Jasper is the most spoiled 3"-long bird in history, with a cage that takes up 1/4 of the room. Wouldn't he be happier downstairs where he could have his own bedroom and be part of things? Why was this so unthinkable?

When my long-grown-up kids found out about this, they looked almost offended. "Whaaaat? What are you going to do that for?"

Move something in the house? In the house?

"Sure. The bird needs a change."

This may have had something to do with the fact we're finally putting some money into the place and getting a new bathroom and new windows and stuff like that. I hate change, and my first reaction was unease, even dread, but I was absolutely gobsmacked when the change was made relatively smoothly and without mishap.

Instead of fuming and tripping all over and missing the stack of 750 padded mailers in the old place, I find I. . I. . .

I like it here.

I have a view, which I never did in the old place, unless you count a wall with a huge tacky bulletin board on it. It's all cedary, layers of feathery green which right now has a gentle drizzle sifting through. On nice days, if they ever come, I'll have sunlight. I can see birds flitting about. In 25 years here, I have never looked out this window. I never had this perspective, ever. It was wasted on a dumb bird.

The room kind of wraps around my desk (a huge desk which I love, and which was in storage for years before I realized I could be using it). These are my books in the bookcases, not frayed copies of Shell Busey's Home Ideas and How to Repair Practically Anything.

It's just. . . my stuff, my space. I feel both humbled and exalted. The energy is completely different, almost cocoon-like (when I feared it would be claustrophobic). My old amplifier from 1973 is gone, replaced by a sleek model that looks like it might have come from this century.

There are carpets, which softens the sound of everything. I like it.

I could go on and on about all that "room of one's own" stuff. And I wonder now if I'll be able to concentrate without all that clumping and slamming. Will I miss the hissing arguments, his posing as a bloody saint wronged by a heartless, selfish bitch? Well, we can still do that in Ikea when we can't agree on a lamp. (Snarling at each other in public is especially enjoyable.) And have a few Swedish meatballs with gravy in the cafeteria while we're at it.

The good fairy came (or maybe the sanity fairy), and now Pinocchio is a real boy. I never thought it would happen. And hey: what's that I see leaping from branch to branch in my stunning new view? Could it be. . . a real live squirrel?

Life's candy, and the sun's a ball of buddah

Eye on the target and wham,

One shot, one gun-shot, and BAM -

Hm. Well, it isn't Mr. Arnstein I'm after, but something infinitely more elusive and devious (and it plays a mean game of poker).

I want to get published again. I need to get published again. I have three books written, all finished and ready to go. Three. All are publishable, as far as I am concerned. But has anyone ever seen them?

That would be a big "no".

People have weird ideas about being published. "Must cost quite a lot, I'd imagine. Are you going to take out a loan?" "Is your book going to be on the bestseller list?" "Don't writers all help each other get published - I mean, kind of like one big artist's colony?" Yeah, like I'm going to tell all my sneaky colleagues how to get published so their nasty little novel can kick MY novel's ass!

It isn't at all what you think.

When my dream came true, after thirty years of pining and longing and bloody hard work, it came true the same way it does for maybe 85 or 90% of writers. There was one big popping flare of fireworks, then fast-fading embers raining down, then . . .

nothing.

It didn't matter how good the reviews were (stuff like "fiction at its finest "- no kidding). They meant nothing. I was supposed to run all over the country on my own dime and try to drum up interest. But I also learned that readings and posters and web sites and all that shit made no difference at all.

So what does make a difference? Something called "buzz". If a novel is "buzzy", it automatically has tons of readers right out of the starting gate.

Buzz is like sex. No one tells you what it's all about, or how to get it. You just sort of fumble around, and fail most of the time. And when the novel fails to sell, guess who gets the blame? Mr. Agent? Ms. Publisher? Don't make me laugh!

I can't stop writing, which I guess means something, good or bad. I have kept writing and kept writing through the most hideous, soul-destroying crises of my life. I now have two novels and a book of poems, all of which I feel deserve publication. I WANT SOMEONE TO READ THEM, GODDAMN IT!

In many people's minds, this is sheer ego. "Oh, isn't writing its own reward? Can't you just do it for self-expression?" (Or, worse, "leave it for your children").

No one expects a concert pianist (or a gymnast, for that matter) to play in an empty hall, but we writers are seen as crass and egotistical if we want someone to look at what we've slaved over for years. Stories must be TOLD, not chucked into a drawer. An untold story isn't even a story.

So, Mr. Arnstein, you big galoot, you mustachio'd rat fink, I'm pursuing you once again. Like Barbra Streisand in that ridiculous sailor suit , it's one roll for the whole shebang.

Hey, all you agents, pundits, arbiters of literary taste - get ready for me, love, 'cause I'm a comer - so even if this fantasy-trip is a bummer -

NOBODY

No, NOBODY
Is gonna

rain

on

myyyyy

paaaaaa

(rrrrrrrr)

rrrAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYD-UH!

The Red Shoes

Hello, boys 'n girls. I have a treat for you today.

Here they are, the feet that everyone dreams of.

This is what Cinderella's feet looked like at 52.
After jamming her pink pieds into too-small glass stilettos for 35 years.

These are the feet of some Italian peasant woman who has stomped grapes for so many years, her feet have become marinated and ready for the grill.

The feet of a Chinese princess, agonizingly wrapped in tight bandages until the toes turned under and broke under the strain of trying to walk.

If you prance around on stilts for decades, no matter how chic you may look, something awful happens to the feet. They are squished into a pencil point shape, the arches forced into a line parallel to the ankle.

I've seen something called ballet stilettos, which are the ultimate fetish shoe (or at least I think they are - maybe there will be worse ones where women can't walk at all). Literally, you walk on the ends of your toes, the heels jacking up the feet to the point that the top of the foot buckles forward. Oooooooh, sexy.

I don't know what it is with women and feet. They have to be ow-y to be sexy, I guess. Me, I went into ecstasy when I found a pair of gold-and-white high-top Skechers on sale at Winner's for $20. I have one pair of chunky heels, maybe 3 or 4" high, but I always fall off them, and suffer cramped calves the next day. Yes, they make your legs look longer, leaner, sexier, and etc. etc. But look at Sarah Jessica Parker, balanced on skyscrapers that look like extensions of her twiglike, painfully bowlegged thighs. Sexy? You be the judge.

So, OK, I'm coming to it now: whose feet are these, do you think? One hint. Of the four gals from Manhattan, you know, the ones in that new movie, she's been crushing them the longest, which maybe explains their painful array of blisters, corns, bunions, calluses and other hideous pustulating deformities.

She did it voluntarily, of course. There is a price to be paid for beauty. But when she stands up, I'll bet she walks around on tiptoe.

Conflate, inflate, deflate, he-flate, she-flate

I looked it up in Wikipedia, that unassailable source of truth, and it said something like "to bring together, mold or fuse." This isn't the kind of word you use every day in polite company ("Let's conflate our wedding plans, shall we, dear?"), but it crops up once in a while, and I just enjoyed a particularly interesting (to me, anyway) example of it.

The internet long ago molded or fused with my hazy memory of old book titles, things so out of print you used to have to dredge them up in rare book stores for hundreds of dollars. Now they're lying around in Amazon for one cent (I'm not kidding - I guess they're in a warehouse somewhere and they just want to get rid of them). I buy most of my used books this way, paying only the shipping and handling.

As long as they hold together, they're OK by me. When they come, I get to smell that musty butter/bug/shelf smell of yellowed, slightly crumbly paper again, the Book Smell that will very soon become obsolete (not that anybody cares). I get to read books that in the 30 years since I've read them have mysteriously turned to

dust.

The only down side is that sometimes I only remember part of a title, or part of an author's name, or assign the wrong author to a title. This necessitates a tangle of detective work that would be impossible without the net.

The other night I was propped up in bed reading the Oprah bio by Kitty Kelley - a nice, fishy dish of Meow Mix that makes perfect bedtime reading as a slice of modern-day mythology. Kelley kept referring to an author named Gloria Naylor, who had written The Women of Brewster Place (later made into an Oprah TV

miniseries).

I kept thinking: Naylor. Naylor. Naylor.

Naylor was the name of an author I used to read, oh, eons ago! Didn't she write a book called Psyche, all about a little girl who had been abducted? I tried to find it. Naylor, Naylor, Psyche. You can imagine what I found under "psyche": a host of bafflegab about the human "mind", "soul" or whatever it is that floats in the air around us, completely independent of the brain. There must've been thousands of entries about "the psyche", but no mention of Naylor.

Then: pay dirt! On my millionth try, I found the name Phyllis Brett Young, and her hundredth book, written in the '60s, was called Psyche. Nothing at all to do with Naylor, for sure, but at least I had her name and knew I wasn't imagining the book.

But another title kept nagging at me, and I was sure it had been written by the same author.

It was called Revelations, a well-written novel about a young woman growing up in a rural Fundamentalist family who has a secret affair with a phony evangelical preacher. I remember a couple of things about it: one, that the main character's nasty older sister at one point exclaimed, "There's hay on her back!", and two, it said on the cover, "Soon to be a major motion picture starring Sally Field!"

Hot on the trail of Phyllis Brett Young, I googled Revelations, and found even more stuff that wasn't relevant at all. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of books called Revelations, including the book of Revelations. I was lost in the world of defunct novels, at a dead end.

Then I thought back. Gloria Naylor. Phyllis Brett Young. Was it possible that I had, well, not quite conflated but somehow de-conflated the two? In muddling around the 'net, I came across a name that finally rang the bell: Phyllis Reynolds Naylor.

Yes, there was a Phyllis, and a Naylor, and they belonged

together!

Phyllis Naylor turned out to be an incredibly prolific children's/young adult author who had somehow popped out this novel during her spare time. It was listed under used books in a million places (and I ordered one, lusting after that musty antique smell), but when I found lists of all the things she'd written (over 200),

Revelations wasn't there.

At the same time, I know it was the same Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. I think the busted movie deal must've caused her to want to bury the book. It's too bad, because though it's simply written, it has a heart, exploring a delayed awakening of sexuality in an honest, compassionate way.

I wonder what got in the way of the movie. Sally Field would've been around 30 or 35, the perfect age for the "spinster" who stayed at home to look after Grandpa after his stroke. Sally Field doesn't get enough play these days except in Boniva commercials (you know, for menopausal women whose bones are crumbling away to dust). I remember her ferocity in Norma Rae, jumping on her desk with that piece of cardboard that said, "Strike!".

Sam Shepard could have played the preacher, natch. It would have worked. Do they do that in Hollywood: blare it around before anything is signed? Or WAS it signed, and fell through? I wonder how many sure things fall

through in Tinseltown.

Anyway, from Gloria Naylor, to Phyllis Brett Young, to Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. This sounds like six degrees of separation. But I like conflation better, with its sense of blowing up some vast balloon or iridescent bubble of the imagination.

Everyone knows it's slinky

So what's the connection between the image on the left, a coiled spring, an insufferable racket, and bad popcorn?

I'll tell you.

When I'm in the mood for a bad movie, there's no stopping me, so paying about $25 at my local cineplex (named Scotiabank, after the bank that took it over from Paramount) wasn't quite the horror I thought it would be. I wanted some sparkling entertainment, some sleazy laughs. I wanted to see The Girls again.

I did watch Sex and the City. I DO watch it once in a while, '90s relic that it is. The highly improbable sexual frolickings of Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha were usually good for a guffaw, and once in a while you'd even see a flash of nudity.

But now the franchise has moved on to big box movies. They should've stayed on that other box, the smaller one, but never mind. This has very little to do with a pretty bad movie that went on far too long (2 1/2 hours, when a comedy should clock in at about 90 minutes, tops).

For an early matinee, the place was unusually crowded, and I had to climb like a mountain goat to find a seat, popcorn and drink smashed against each other so I wouldn't lose my purse, dripping umbrella (this is Vancouver) and 5000 napkins to keep my jeans from being saturated with grease.

Finally found a seat up in the gods, top row, with a young couple entwined just on my left. I mean entwined, like those photos you see of mating snakes.

And then.

Bom, bom, bom. . .

What walks downstairs, without a care, and makes a slinkety sound?

I swear! I could hear that theme song as a bizarre noise sank into the left side of my head.

Shhhhhhhhh, shhhhhhhh, shhhhhhhh, shhhhhhhhh.

Shhhhhhhhh, shhhhhhhh, shhhhhhhh, shhhhhhhhh.

This sounded for all the world like the metallic shoop-shoop of an ancient Slinky. But the thing is, it went on and on. And on. And on. And on And Andandnadndndnndd

I had to peek, to see what the hell was producing that sound. The guy was sitting on the left, with his bare forearm on the seat rest.

The girl was rubbing his arm.

And rubbing his arm.

And rubbing

And rubbing

And rubbing

Swoosh, swoosh. Shoop, shoop. Shhhhhhhhh, shhhhhhhhh. Shhhhhhhhh,

shhhhhhhhh.

Now I've sat beside or behind some humdingers, mucus-snorters, knuckle-crackers, popcorn-macerators, but - never this. A "rubber".

It might have been OK, well, more or less, if she'd stopped at some point. But she didn't. She rubbed his forearm all through the previews. She rubbed his forearm all during the opening credits.

SHE RUBBED HIS FOREARM ALL DURING THE GODDAMN FUCKING MOVIE.

The same patch of forearm. Her clothes were some sort of noisy nylon that shhhh-shhhh-ed when she moved, and every few minutes she squirmed around in her seat like a two-year-old being forced to sit still.

I tried everything: shooting them poisonous glances (they probably just thought I was nuts). Eating my popcorn really loud, except that there was someone on the other side eating hers even louder.

An hour went by. Shhhhhhhhh, shhhhhhhhhh, shhhhhhhhhh, shhhhhhhhh.

An hour and a half. The Girls went to Abu Dhabi or Timbuktu or somewhere, to get laid. It wasn't funny.

How could this guy have any skin left on his forearm? Why was his forearm suddenly an erogenous zone? Was this just a promise of another kind of rubbing that would happen after the movie? What the fuck was wrong with these people?

At about the two-hour-and-fifteen-minute mark, I was hearing the Slinky jingle in my head and couldn't shut it down:

"It's Slinky, it's Slinky, for fun it's the best of the toys

It's Slinky, it's Slinky, the favorite of girls and boys. . . "

This was preposterous, it was just unendurable, not to mention bizarre. I had to stop it. There had to be a law against public rubbing. I kept thinking how I would phrase my complaint. Excuse me, miss, but you're rubbing your boy friend too loudly in public. Excuse me, people, but you're acting like total weirdos.

I tried to focus on the movie, which was essentially inane and a waste of money (with only one good line: during their Middle East adventure, Samantha spies a desert hunk and exclaims, "It's Lawrence of My Labia!"). It was nothing more than a parade of Pravda and them other guys, who knows who they are.

But the endless, irritating, bizarre shoop-shoop-shoop-shoop-shoop-shoop-shoop-shoop-shoop-shoop-shoop-shoop-shoop-shoop-shoop-shoop-shoop-shoop went on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and. . .

I wonder why reality is so full of tortures like this, at least for me. Someone with less sensitive hearing might have ignored it. They were sitting on my left, next to the ear which is constantly attuned.

Finally I said to myself, that's it, this is ruining my $15 movie, I HAVE to do something. I can't just sit here and play victim to a whole lot of obscene shoosh-shoosh while Boyfriend gets a 2 1/2-hour hard-on. So I took a deep breath, and took action.

I got up and moved.

Sex and the endless summer

Wouldn't it be nice if we were older

Then we wouldn't have to wait so long

And wouldn't it be nice to live together

In the kind of world where we belong

Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true (run, run, run)

Baby then there wouldn't be a single thing we couldn't do

We could be married (we could be married)

And then we'd be happy (then we'd be happy)

good night my baby

sleep tight my baby

good night my baby

sleep tight my baby

good night my baby

sleep tight my baby

good night my baby

sleep tight my baby

Well, wouldn't it? Be nice?

Those things we thought were nice, those things we were SURE would be nice, have somehow changed radically over the years. That "wouldn't it be nice if we were older" sure turned around violently at some point.

The only reason this whole mess is repeating in an endless loop in my head is that TLC is using it to promote their summer season. Not that I ever watch TLC. No sir. No Cake Boss, no Hoarders, no Intervention, no Ten Ton Man or women giving birth on the tracks in a subway tunnel, none of that stuff.

I hadn't heard that Beach Boys tune in a long time, and it's mesmerizing, surfer dude music taken to the height of Mozart. It's meant to (and does) call up summer and smoke and sand (and sex), bathing suits straining, salty douses with sea water, steaming hot dogs, and etc. (Hey, it's early in the morning and I've only given myself half an hour to finish this because I want to go into town to see Sex and the City.)

What are the things that would be "nice" now? If my beloved granddaughter no longer had Type 1 diabetes. If my husband and I no longer faced an uncertain financial future. If I felt I had a place in the community (long-shattered by a mammoth health crisis in 2005). If, if, if.

I am profoundly ambivalent about my work now. Actually it's not the work, which has been going better than I could have dreamed. I want to publish again, but now I KNOW what it is to be published. People have such absurd notions about what it will mean for them. Civilians say things like, "But you were published before. Doesn't that mean the same outfit will publish your work for the rest of your life?"

In their minds, there are two levels: Stephen King/J. K. Rowling, and zero.

I know this is a refrain I fall back into too often, and I know I shouldn't. I remember seeing something printed on the wall in Ikea (where we go for the food), a quote from Sven Svendsvendsvendensen or whoever it was that founded the outfit (by getting up at 1:00 in the morning and not having sex, I mean ever), about how the only time you don't make mistakes is when you're asleep.

Me, I've made plenty of mistakes while I was asleep! But it's when I wake up that I find I've honed it to an art form. My experience tells me that mistakes are not only embarrassing, they are very, very costly and can follow you around for years, if not for the rest of your life.

If a person does nine exemplary things and on the tenth time slips on a banana peel and falls on their ass with 5000 people watching, GUESS WHAT THEY WILL REMEMBER? And probably forever.

Oh, that guy who. . .you know, the one who. . .

Oh.

That explains why movie stars and authors and politicians kind of drop out of sight and don't come back. They've made some sort of fatal mistake. Or maybe even a garden variety mistake.

Don't make mistakes. It'll cost you. Bad. Now I'm off to see the movie.

OK, so. Here is my dream car

OK, it was something like this. But really, not even close.

It was like something out of a Popeye cartoon of the '40s, the really old ones, I mean the Fleischer, good ones. (I'll write about them later.) Cars already looked like cartoons then, like giant bubbles, bulbous.

And huge.

As I sit here slurping down a giant mug of Red Rose tea and eating McVitie's Digestive Biscuits (can you tell I'm Canadian?), I'm trying to piece together just what happened. This was an Event such as I only experience a couple of times a year. A sighting of beauty so sighful, it felt it almost like an affliction until I had told my husband all about it.

I was standing at a bus stop, bored, not expecting anything, vaguely aware of traffic whizzing by. But behind me was a leisurely lane leading (like the alliteration?) to the shopping area: Safeway, Canadian Tire, and other stuff.

I don't know why I turned around. As the Beatles song says, "Had it been another day, I might have looked the other way". But I did turn around, and was assailed by a vision in burgundy and cream.

Burgundy, cream, and chrome. Remember chrome? This vision had a mouth, a rather fierce grille with teeth. There followed a slipstream of shape. A little aggressive at the front, almost like a nose; bulby around the front tires; high roof with absurdly small windows, then. . . a taper.

A waterfall of car, a cascading, almost down to a point. There appeared to be no back wheels at all. The rear of the car sank right down into the pavement.

The colour must've been custom, as I'd never seen anything like it before, the two tones divided by a bar of (more) chrome. This lordly vision slowly drove past me, then turned off into the shopping area. A young guy (I barely saw him - he could've been George Clooney and I wouldn't have seen him) got out and went into the bank.

I stared.

I don't even drive. I hate cars. They belch out poisons. I fear them. I've been almost run over 100 times. What was this thing? Some sort of vintage, obviously, maybe on its way to one of them-thar car shows I never seem to get to. It appeared to sail forth like a giant boat supported by massive pontoons.

The guy came out of the bank, got back into the car and drove verrrry sloooowly over to the Canadian Tire lot, about 50 feet away. I mean, he didn't see me (I'm 56, remember, and thus invisible), but maybe he saw me seeing him (or rather, his car).

He drove away equally slowly. A float in a parade. I felt faint. I didn't want him to go. I wanted to hop in, to tootle around town with him, watching all those dials 'n' things that old cars have (and creaky old leather).

As soon as my senses would hold together, I rummaged out a pen and notebook and tried to draw it. It was hopeless. I tried eight times, then lost my pen on the bus.

My husband can tell, at a glance, the year and make of every car ever made. I am not kidding. I have never stumped him. Sometimes I check it against the internet, but I really don't have to. I described this car to him. I showed him my miserable drawings,

which looked like a car a 2-year-old would play with in the bathtub.

He didn't know what it was.

That was when I began to believe that what I had seen was an apparition. It floated into my consciousness when I least expected it, swanned past me in splendour, then disappeared into the vapour of unreality from which it had come. It un-was, or un-did itself, or something.

Well, we all die, don't we? Why wasn't this lovely thing thrown on the scrapheap in 1941? My only clue was handwritten in chrome on the rear bumper: Mercury.

"Oh, so it was a Ford," my husband said. "Probably 1940. Called a Westerbrook or something like that. Maybe a custom."

Oh, don't burst my bubble. It was a dream.

Cheezus!

Every time I do this, I have good intent-(bangbangbang - oops, that's the guys putting in the new windows, just igbangbangbangnore them). I mean, I renounce things. Not sex or anything (praise God!), but foods.

Certain foods become Franken for me. Not frankfurters (a furtive Frank, for sure). No. But I mean, what could be a more insidious Frankenfood than Gummi Bears? Made of nothing but sugar and goo and artificial this 'n' that, (and forget about that "made with real fruit juice" garbage, it's a corporate lie so mothers can plug their kids' mouths with a gob of high fructose corn syrup without guilt), they can be easily inhaled, first one at a time, then three or four, then - . After a while the head spins, the eyes unfocus, and the entire body

succumbs to sugar coma.

Right. I gave those up, gave 'em up when I suddenly realized that I liked the queasy feeling of skyrocketing glucose. So I self-righteously swore them off and started eating. . . something healthier. Much healthier. Pretzels! Not just any pretzels but Rold Gold Pretzel Sticks, crisply varnished

and crusted with salt.

I have a history with Rold Gold. I used to buy them as a child for five cents ("Fi' cents," Mr. Mardling of Mardling's Groceteria use-da say), in a little box wrapped in cellophane. I don't mean a normal snack box. I mean a flat little box less than an inch deep, shaped sort of like a pack of cigarettes. It was wrapped so that you could see the pretzels lying there in a neat little row, just waiting to

be devoured.

Rold Gold. Pretzel Sticks. These had no fat in them, none whatever, so I could insert them into my mouth one after the other while watching Hoarding: Buried Alive until I looked down and realized that half the bag

was gone.

I don't know what happened with the pretzels, but one day I just didn't want to eat them any more. I began to lose weight, then more weight. I began to eat like a human being. It was amazing. Maybe my binge days were over.

So when did the Nips come along?

I've always had a thing about cheese, you know, orange cheese. I don't know if it goes back to my mother, who was a walking refrigerator emotionally (at least to me - she loved my sister without reservation), but baked

extremely well.

After making one of her impossibly delectable pies, Mackintosh apple or sour cherry (from the tree in the back yard, the one that leaned against the white picket fence so I could neatly vault over into our neighbor's yard and feed the pigeons) or maybe even rhubarb which stripped the enamel off your teeth, there would always be some pastry left over, the trimmed-off bits.

Sometimes she rolled these out again, sprinkled the surface with grated orange cheese, rolled it up, folded it over and rolled it out again. She then cut them into strips and baked them: cheese straws. This method created flaky striations of cheddar that melted in the mouth. The pastry sort of puffed up and formed crusty, crunchable browned bubbles.

Dear God.

I can't fool myself that Cheese Nips are anything like that. They aren't. But every once in a while I get a box that's a little more browned than usual, probably some minor mistake in the factory. And Oh God. I have been Nipped again!

I imagine the postage-sized squares with the cute little hole in them are cubes of cheese pastry magically conjured from my childhood, pulled out of time and plunked down in front of me.

Before I know it I'm 2/3 through the goddamn box. And I feel guilty as hell,

because I've done so well with my weight loss lately

and it could all come back to me just like that.

And probably will.

Too much informa. . .tion

Sometimes I think the human race gets together to have huge meetings (excluding me, of course - I'm either late or don't know where the building is) to decide what's in and what's out - what's unacceptable, and what's warm-and-fuzzy-and-admirable-no-matter-what-it-is-or-who's-doing-it.

Lately we've seen the phenomenon of public confession, of celebrities mounting the podium to announce their "sins": violence, adultery, mental illness, and (especially) addiction. While it's still not exactly considered noble to proclaim these formerly-private and oft-disturbing phenomena, the culture still laps it up, telling themselves that confession is good for the soul and provides "healing" and positive examples for others.

Yeah, right - but how 'bout if you're one of the best-known children's writers in the world, a beloved figure who has entertained millions of kids with his "manic" (the buzzword in media) retelling of his often-surreal tales?

This guy is famous-famous in this country. His name is Robert Munsch, and he has always given me the creeps. He makes faces and screams and yells and jumps up and down, and sells millions of copies of oddball books like The Paper Bag Princesses and the much-overrated Love You Forever.

Love You Forever is all about how children who have been unconditionally loved by their parents grow up to be adults who unconditionally love their ageing parents. This involves various things being thrown down the toilet, not to mention adults crawling along the floor on their hands and knees, a bizarre detail that no one seems to notice. It's not a particularly good book, but it exploits certain tender spots in the human psyche and makes people bawl their eyes out.

OK, let's get to the point here (since it's 7:20 a.m. and the workmen putting the new windows in will arrive soon - still time for another coffee??): Munsch just came out a few days ago to tell the world that he is an alcoholic and a cocaine addict who partook of these substances to "try to deal with mental illness": specifically, bipolar disorder. To help him with his struggle for sobriety, he says he has been attending meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous.

Munsch has barely four months sober, and recently suffered a stroke which has affected his speech and no doubt his thinking. He freely and openly violates the 12-step confidentiality rule which states that members must maintain "personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, film and TV".

Does he think he's above that rule? That the rule is silly and unnecessary? Or hasn't he gone to enough meetings to know why it needs to be there?

It galls me when celebrities step up to the microphone to announce a sobriety which balances on such shaky legs. It galls me further when this celebrity begins to soften or even justify the hard facts of his addiction by saying things like, "I was a French-style drunk, who is quietly immersed in alcohol all the time. I didn't have binges. I was just having a morning drink." He goes on to say he "never drank when he was writing or performing or looking after his children."

But hey: with someone as "manic" and work-obsessed as Munsch, how much time is left over after writing, performing and looking after his children? This is a blatant contradiction no one has picked up on. Not only that: he claims, "When I was drinking, I would sometimes drink too much and do stupid things. And one of the stupid things I did was use cocaine."

So much for the "French-style" drunk. Did he snort the coke while wearing a striped jersey and a beret?

According to recent news articles, there has been a flood of sympathy for this guy, an outpouring of praise for his honesty, humility, etc. But I wonder. A stroke might just impair his ability to write and perform at his usual "manic" level. But this kind of announcement is guaranteed to keep him in the limelight. We LOVE hearing about other people's pain: it's called schadenfreude, literally meaning shameful joy. (Alternate meaning: Entertainment Tonight.) And we love that peculiar mixture of admiration and pity that these dark secrets call forth.

It weirds me out that a kids' performer has come out as a cocaine addict. It's disturbing and creepy. I have to admit, Munsch creeped me out to begin with. It's something about those bizarre crazy faces and the way kids scream in response.

Though supposedly 99% of his readers have come out in warm support, part of me is still thinking, "Wait a minute. Kids' entertainer. Cocaine addict?" Can you imagine Mr. Rogers lying in a gutter with an empty 40-pounder under his arm? Captain Kangaroo smoking crack? Bob from Sesame Street sticking needles into his. . . oh, you get the picture.

More than that, can you imagine these guys getting up in front of the media to "confess" their habit, confident that the revelations will only unleash a flood of warm support? I guess I'm just an old biddy, but I thought kids' entertainers were supposed to set an example of how to grow up, how to live.

Are you a fan of Munsch? Fine. But answer me this. Would you want your kids' Grade Two teacher to be an alcoholic cocaine addict? How about their Sunday School teacher, their gymnastics coach? What if you found a stash of cocaine in the coach's locker? Would that be OK?

I guess I'm just sayin' that this is too much, way too much information at the wrong time. I wish Munsch had at least waited more than "about" four months (probably considerably less) to come out with these revelations. Is there such a thing as dealing with your "issues" privately in this day and age? Apparently not.

After all this, I predict that Munsch will become even more of a beloved figure, more warm and fuzzy than ever before. His book sales have spiked already. I guess a man that famous can do no wrong. The rich get richer. But I can't help but wonder. . . what if I came out with similar revelations (not that anyone would be interested)? I think what little career success I've had would permanently tank. I'd disappear without a ripple.

My advice to Munsch is to go away for a while and seek some real recovery. Find out just what the word "anonymous" means. You'll see that the principle is there for a very good, even crucial reason, to protect ALL members and to prevent celebrity-itis (famous people convincing the public that they are AA "leaders", then relapsing again and again).

Four months may seem like a long time to you: but how long did you drink? Four months? Four years? Four decades?

Cereal monogamy

This blog was originally going to be about the Writer's Life, until I realized there were already approximately one billion blogs called the Writer's Life, so to hell with that idea! I do however like the image of the tightrope walker (a picture of great-uncle Howard in 1906) and its implications of an endless struggle for balance.

That's a long way of saying I can write about anything I bloody want to, and probably will. The last blog I tried to keep, which eventually crashed in flames, was far too creative (hmph!) and eventually harassed into an early demise.

Or at least that's how it seemed to me.

This one, well, I'm barely keeping a foothold as I struggle with details that are probably ridiculously simple for anyone else. So I just bash away at it, wondering what all those little dragonflies are and why I can't post a photo in the middle of my post. Oh foo, someone will attack me soon anyway.

So what's this about? Cornflakes, I guess, and the way a certain man eats them (every day for 37 years, and perhaps more). Do I represent the cornflakes of his life? In any case, that's how long we've been together.

People wax romantic (or at least wax their cars) when they find out that we've been together for such a jaw-dropping amount of time. I was, of course, ten when I married him. Bill is a good guy, but he drives me crazy. He's irritating. He has gone deaf and won't admit it. And God, he looks old. If he's my mirror, then I am in big trouble.

But nothing could ever take the place of so much shared experience, grief, elation, and the boring trudge of everyday existence. The cornflakes of life. There are still times when I wonder if I can stand this, but I know no one else could live with me, with my permanent tendency to ricochet when things go wrong or I get pissed off.

He's a good guy, like I said, a very smart guy, a professionial (environmental expert, which is direly needed these days), but most of all a man who protects his family and loves them without reservation. His Dad lived to be 93 and towards the end, ANYTHING would make him cry. It was irritating, but what's even more irritating is that Bill is moving inexorably in the same direction. As my daughter once put it, "He cried when the hamster died."

There's a neat saying that sums it all up: "The rocks in his head fit the holes in mine." I'm supposed to be the crazy one, but maybe we're meeting in the middle (or I've driven him crazy, whatever). I don't get it, the unutterable part of it, the thing I can't explain: maybe it's like that old Jerome Kern song, Bill.

"And I can't explain, it's surely not his brain

That makes me thrill

I love him, because he's -

I don't know,

Because he's just. . . my. . . Bill."

Oh yah.

Fly, ladybug, fly!

God, it's Monday again - hardly seems possible after the social whirl of the weekend. Oh all right, I went to one party. But it was a humdinger. Nothing can equal a granddaughter's birthday for sheer shrieking fun.

The only thing more heart-touching than seeing a sweet little blondie, just turned five, flying on a swing set with her honeyed hair in a blur behind her is seeing her sister, not quite three, taking a violent header down a slide, landing hard on her bum, standing up, brushing her hands together and calmly walking on to the next activity.

That's Lauren. When a child has a serious illness, parents like to say things like, "It was meant to happen" - not that the child was meant to be sick, of course, but that they were especially chosen to be the recipients of a peculiar sort of daily blessing, one that sometimes relegates them to the outer fringes of so-called normalcy.

This little Lauren was diagnosed with juvenile onset diabetes at age 15 1/2 months. Her parents knew something was terribly wrong with her, but the doctors kept insisting it was flu. By the grace of God, Mom kept putting her foot down and saying, "No. No. It's something more serious, and you'd better find out what it is NOW."

When they finally found out, they rushed her to Children's Hospital in Vancouver post-haste, and admitted her. A baby with this disease is in mortal peril, and when my son phoned me with a shaky voice and said, "She'll have this for the rest of her life," nobody knew exactly what that conclusion was going to mean.

Let me quote a statement her Mom wrote to promote the 2010 Walk to Cure Diabetes in June: "Lauren is a trooper; she receives insulin needles every day and has her fingers poked by a lancet 5 to 9 times daily to test her blood sugar levels. She eats food that is calculated so the food carbohydrates match her insulin dose at set times of the day. This is necessary to keep her blood sugar levels in check to prevent dangerous highs and lows. This is everyday life when living with this disease."

We're never unaware of diabetes when Lauren comes to our house; she needs to be "checked" at least a couple of times, and fed according to her levels. But by the same token, we're never unaware of her spirit, her bust-out laugh and merry blue eyes and sparkly smile, and her incredible steadiness in the face of something that might emotionally flatten a child with a whiny disposition or even an adult.

I know I wouldn't be this gracious about it; in fact I'd probably be complaining loudly, or slowly turning bitter. Of course, one can say that she's still too young to really know what is going on. Next month she'll turn three, and she won't be able to eat her own birthday cake. Her parents aren't sure how they will handle issues like that in the future. One step, one day at a time.

She will be using an insulin pump in the next few months, but contrary to popular belief, that doesn't automatically take care of the problem. Myself, I don't trust technology and wonder if it isn't better to monitor this thing by hand. But then, she's not my child. She is my beloved, my irreplaceable grandchild, yes. But I don't make the major decisions (which is probably just as well).

When we go on the walk, we'll do it as a family at the Greater Vancouver Zoo. This will be our second year. Lauren's team is called the Ladybugs, and I've already made ladybug pompoms (Lauren loves what she calls "bum-bums"!) for the occasion. Last year the event was beyond fun: it gave us a sort of glow, quite indescribable. All these walks for this and that, which sometimes seemed a little extreme, suddenly made sense to us.

Nobody expects serious illness to invade their family, least of all in a child. But if it has to happen, one couldn't do better than to see this plucky little girl, a girl who literally seems to bounce when she falls down and almost never cries, courageously living with a difficult, scary condition.

She'll never really be able to eat with total pleasure and abandon. She'll have to keep track of her "levels" and pay a lot of attention to how she feels. For the rest of her life. Meantime, she has made more than a good start, and inspired all of us with her valour, her good humour and her joy in living.

She has always reminded me of those Disney cherubs in Fantasia. Like bumblebees, there's just no way they could fly with wings that tiny. But they do it. They do it because no one told them that they couldn't.