If I Hadn't Been So Focused on Becoming the First Taylor Swift, I Might Have Invented the Internet

When I was 13 and firmly in the clutches of that ultimate mean girl, puberty, I discovered poetry. Months were spent producing emo ballads exploring my obsessive crushes on various high school seniors, pop stars, and, bewilderingly, MacGyver.  It eventually occurred to me, probably during a lucid dream also involving a Maxfield Parrish painting and a unicorn, that these poems should be set to music and shared with the world.  That's how good they were.

But how to do that? How does one reach out to the Titans of the Music Industry when one does not know who those Titans might be, nor their mailing addresses?

If only I had focused on that problem and invented the internet, this tale might be very different.  For one thing, I would be writing it from a much warmer locale while my good friend, Richard Branson, orders another round of tropical rum beverages with a mere twitch of one blond hairy eyebrow.

I decided to shelve the accessibility issue for the time being and set myself immediately to writing a hit song,  The  lyrics roughly matched the rhythm and word structure of, "Leaving on a Jet Plane".  This  song was, to me, the ultimate in romantic sophistication.  In my imagination I was at times the leaver and at times the left, depending on my erratic emotional state.  Mostly I was the leaver because I had never flown in an airplane and badly wanted to, plus I liked the idea of someone keening over me, for a change; someone handsome, resourceful and mature who always had an extra stick of gum to share.

After a few late nights, fueled by root beer and Hershey bars, I finished my masterpiece. My song focused on a lover reminiscing over trips to the zoo and holding hands on the train.  How could that once colorful love-filled world have become this barren, lonely landscape with only one sad-eyed gorilla and some screeching monkeys to bear witness to his brokenness, asked my MacGyver, as he walked along singing softly to himself while a solitary tear rolled down his stubbly cheek and into his popcorn.

And here we have yet another shining example of how the right focus-connecting music to video-could have landed me in an exclusive gated community saying things into my phone like, "Get me Bono!", instead of the more pedestrian, "Yes, half cheese, half pepperoni, please.  Yes.  I'll hold."

Now that my  hit song was ready for delivery, I began my search for Titans.   I remembered that in the back of my mother's True Confessions magazines there were ads inviting people to get rich submitting their stories for publication.  I pilfered an old copy and found what I was looking for; a company looking for people who wrote lyrics, music or both.  I submitted my song and waited.

Now, you might be thinking, "Oh God, how good could it have been?  The kid was thirteen!", and I wouldn't blame you, although I might remind you that Taylor Swift got her start at around the same age.  A few weeks after I sent out my inquiry I received a response from Nashville.  They wanted to publish my song!  Truth be told, I was a little surprised. I didn't know things worked that fast in Nashville. You can't blame me for assuming that they must really be in a hurry to sign me on.  There was just one teeny problem-Nashville needed a hundred dollars in up front money.  There were logistics, you see.  They needed to find someone to write the music, find a top notch vocalist to record it, and circulate copies to all the radio stations to get the word out.  If I would just send them $100, they would take care of all this for me and then forward a copy of my record for personal use.  Once the radio stations started playing my record, the dough would  start rolling in and we would have to move to Nashville, probably, so that I could be closer to my people.

I'm not sure exactly how this happened-I believe there may have been a lot of back room negotiations to which I was not privy-but my step mom and father actually pulled together $100 dollars and sent it to Nashville on my behalf.

Thankfully, my parents were not taken advantage of and just one month later my record arrived in the mail. We put it on the record player in the living room and listened.  I was disappointed in the music.  It wasn't what I would have chosen. The clarity seemed a little off, too. Maybe they actually recorded it at the zoo for authenticity?

Once I heard my song, or Nashville's version of it, rather, my ever objective inner voice said, "No one is going to pay for this record except your mother", so I gave Vi my copy to save her the expense and decided to become an artist.  I began creating complicated wall-size murals, copying the style of Maxfield Parrish but adding unicorns.

It wasn't the first time my parents supported one of my dreams nor would it be the last.  I may not have become the first Taylor Swift or the inventor of the internet but I have been lucky in love.

MacGyver aside.

Chicken out

A real hit song:  Little Feat singing Dixie Chicken

Vi Chronicles: The Portland Strangler

Vi went out and left Bonnie in charge of Victor and me.  I would not have left Bonnie in charge of a pet rock.  If my mother had said to me, "Chicken, I'm going out.  Do you think Bonnie would make a good babysitter?", I would have replied, "Hell no, woman, are you mad?" but she never asked me.  She just ordered us a pizza and left.

I wanted to play Monopoly but Bonnie and Victor wanted to watch the 8:00 p.m. movie.  Did you ever see the "Boston Strangler"?  I did.  I don't remember it, of course, because I've suppressed it.  Occasionally one of the other personalities I developed that evening will bring it up.

About three quarters of the way through the movie, when victims were still piling up, the papers were having a field day, and the police chief was looking foolish (or so I imagine) Bonnie and Victor got hungry.  They asked me if  I wanted ice cream.  I allowed as how I could probably choke down some ice cream.

"Wouldn't you know it", Victor said, "We're all out. One of us will have to walk to the store."

I was too young to be out on the streets alone so late at night, and Bonnie was the babysitter, me being the baby in question, so it only seemed logical that Victor, a bona fide teenager, should go.

Logic not being the available muse that evening, we drew straws. I drew the shortest one.  I waited a couple of seconds for someone to come to her bloody senses, but Bonnie handed me a fiver and turned back to the movie.  "Get me a Pepsi, too, k?"

The closest store was at the end of our block. It was where the bad boys hung out at night, smoking cigarettes, selling joints and harassing women.  I walked  fast down the sidewalk, sticking to the shadows.  When I got to the store I put my head down and scurried past the hooligans, trying not to draw attention. Inside I gathered our ice cream, the Pepsi and a bag of barbecue chips for my trouble.  I paid and headed back home, my heart pounding.  I was almost there.  Just five houses to go. Now four. Sweet Jesus, I was going to make it.

I sensed movement to my left.  I looked over and caught a glimpse of shadow moving fast between the last two houses.  I started to run but before I could get into full stride, the Portland Strangler jumped out of the shadows.  He ran at me, screaming, "Where's my ice cream!!!!!"

And that's when Mary Catherine was born.  Mary Catherine is a young girl who talks with a cute lisp and carries her stuffed donkey everywhere she goes.  No one would ever hurt Mary Catherine or send her to a store alone at night.   If they tried she would make them burst into flames with her eyes.

Bonnie sat on the back steps of our house laughing her ass off.  "Poor Bonnie", thought Mary Catherine. "Her lookth cold."

Chicken out

Photo borrowed from Funny Chill.com
No  moronic babysitters were actually harmed in the writing of this post or ever

Bus Stop Love

I live next to a neighborhood bus stop.  There are three people who have, for years, taken the 8:15 a.m. bus into Providence. The guy who lives down the street is as friendly and curious as a puppy.  He has an artsy/geeky vibe about him.  I almost ran over him one day as I backed out of my drive too fast. He didn't take it personally which says a lot about his character.  His house is the old Victorian with the wild flowers and ferns growing every which way in the yard.  That house used to be owned by a nice couple with three little blond girls. The parents got divorced and sold the house.  I always thought of it as the "sad house" until he and his partner bought it and planted the wildflowers.  It has taken awhile, but now it is the artsy/geeky house.  It's not sad at all.  He and I smile and wave every day, twice on the days when I try and run him over.

A very straight forward appearing woman also takes the bus every morning.  I imagine her as the friend you call for good advice. She always looks both ways before crossing the road and if it's a close call, she errs on the side of caution.  I'd  want her in my corner.  She is a good bus stop mate for the geeky guy.  They seem find things to  talk about. There are a number of universities in our area that give free bus passes to employees and I imagine that these two might work at one of them.  

Finally, there's trench coat guy.  He might also work at the university, but in a basement somewhere, with lab animals, dangerous chemicals or complicated algorithms. He walks with his head down. There's no catching his eye.  He wears a trench coat tied tight at the waist, always; spring, summer, fall, winter, the trench coat persists.   He keeps himself at a safe distance from the other bus stop inhabitants.  I suspect that he sometimes takes an earlier bus to avoid the obligatory morning greetings. 

The earlier bus leaves at 7:45 a.m.  Recently, Material Girl has been showing up for the 7:45.  She has arrived, seemingly, via the East River Ferry that connects Brooklyn to Manhattan.  The stilettos, cigarette, black leggings and teased blond hair are all accounted for.  I, for one, am delighted to see her.

Oh look, here comes our trench coated friend.  He walks straight up the sidewalk, stops, makes a military turn to the left, looks both ways without, somehow, looking up, and crosses the street.  He positions himself several feet away from Material Girl and turns his body sideways to discourage any possible conversation. This leaves him with his back to the street and staring at the bush in the corner of my yard. I leave for work smiling.

A week later I am blatantly spying on them as I pretend to warm up our car for my own morning commute. I watch, breathlessly, as she makes her move, stepping towards him with a smile.  It's about bloody time.  He backs away.  She steps in, persisting. He is forced into a conversation.

Darn it.  I'm late for work.

 The next day I pause, key half way to ignition, not believing what I'm seeing.  Trench coat guy appears and (dramatic pause) he is not wearing the trench coat.  Where is the trench coat? Instead, he models a trench coat-colored windbreaker.  He is obviously freezing.  I am amazed by the changes Material Girl has wrought in a couple weeks.  They chat as I leave for work.  I wave, but they do not notice.  His hands are shoved deep in his pockets and his shoulders tremble; from cold or nerves, I can't tell. She smiles and looks up at him, stamping out her cigarette butt with the toe of her tiny pointy boot.  I can't wait for tomorrow.

The next day I am disappointed by their absence, but my imagination has taken flight.  They've fallen in love, right?  They must have done.  Unless they chipped in on a car.  Or moved to a different bus stop away from the chicken's prying eyes. Have they eloped?  Wait...has it all been an elaborate unintentional hoax?  Perhaps they were a couple all along and she, sensing her nerdy genius had become preoccupied with a certain brilliant lab assistant, devised a sexy bus stop game to reel him back in.  I will never know, but that's okay.  I don't mind filling in the blanks. Truth is arbitrary.  I sure will miss those two love birds.

Chicken out