Gen X Retro Flashback- "Mr. Roboto" -Styx

This is for my sister Erin. Whenever I hear this song, I wish we could wind back the clock to 1983, lace up some roller skates and make absolute fools of ourselves.

Oh, and of course, grab a few Jolly Ranchers or an Atomic Fire Ball or two to snack on...

Enter The Dragon (Lady)

A new temp started at Non-Company yesterday.

They never take someone around the first day and introduce them to 'the gang'; I guess it's because some temps never make it past lunchtime.

So today after said temp returned for the second day and apparently made it through the first day lunch period without sprinting to her car and re-enacting the OJ Car Chase-circa 1994, they decided 'What the heck?' and began the Non-Company tour of the factory floor, the conference rooms where she will soon attend her first bewildering Justice League Meeting, her first safety training where she will view what I like to call the, 'Reel of Horror' which basically comprises clips of former Non-Company unfortunates who were maimed or crippled for failing to observe safety precautions. If she's lucky she will view it before lunch, unlike some of us other unfortunates, who have never been quite the same since then when viewing the chili dogs on offer in Non-Company vending machines. Then they take her around and introduce her to the various departments.

Her guide on this tour is a semi-nemesis of mine, who flatly seems to disapprove of me, for reasons I've never been quite able to ascertain. Once again, I feel myself called upon to explain things in MASH terminology (I watched ALOT of MASH in my youth, if Pierce Brosnan as Remington Steele and Michael Weatherly as Tony DiNozzo were film savants, I am a MASH savant), in Non-Company parlance apparently I'm the Margaret Houlihan, the dragon lady, old 'Iron Drawers'. For Semi-Nemesis, instead of introducing me with a smile as we exchange friendly banter like she did with the rest of the Non-Com minions, says, "This is Jill, she keeps these guys in line and runs the department, all of your requests go through her first", although in print it seems to come across a lot warmer than it was said. All of the sudden, I picture myself clad in a prison matron's uniform, wearing combat boots, my hair cropped in a crew cut and for some reason a night stick, which I repeatedly strike across my right palm. Which is so far from the reality of me, who has fluffy bobbed blonde hair and wears lots of jewelry and artfully (I hope) applied cosmetics. I can actually see Newbie Temp shrink from me in much the same way she will a few weeks from now, when she views the 'Reel of Horror'. I try to smile warmly, but for some reason it falls flat. Done with me, they move on to the relative safety of my co-workers. Part of me wants to run after them, wailing, "Really, please give me another chance. I...I love puppies, kittens, sunsets, unicorns, ummm...Justin Bieber...okay, actually I loathe the 'Biebs', but I didn't totally hate that 'Baby, Baby..Oh' song...okay I did, but....please, please...."

I go on to spend a great deal of my lunch hour pondering what it is about me, that creates this alter-ego, this Thatcher-esque 'Iron Lady'. Full disclosure is, I am the only female in my department. It's me and seven other dudes (and no they ARE not dwarves!) I've had to develop a tough skin, a fondness for racy jokes, frat humor, to try to stay elevated just enough above the double-entredes so that I keep my ladylike manner but not be a prig either. I bake them cupcakes for birthdays, keep the candy jar filled, get greeting cards signed on all the appropriate occasions, at the same time, I have to be able to judiciously officiate the occasional infighting, while trying to maintain my reports, my own workload, the extra 'secretarial' duties, arranging lunch for meetings, arranging housing for long-term business trips, scheduling meetings, reminding them about said meetings, and that means I don't have time for the office politics crap. I don't sit on committees, and I don't come in sharing all the gory details of my weekends, because here's the thing, while to women drama is mother's milk, guys don't like it so much. I tend to spend my lunch hours away from the office, away from the lunch room gossip, because I so desperately need those 30-50 mins to myself to maintain my sanity, to read, make phone calls, restore my equilibrium. I guess to them that means I'm stuck-up, but for me it's the difference between cracking up and being a sane and functioning human being.

Don't get me wrong, of all the things I might find wrong about Non-Company, my department is not one of them, the guys I work for are gold. You'd be hard-pressed to find a harder working, more dedicated, talented crew anywhere, but it sets me apart from the rest of the company. It's almost like I can hear the whispers, "That's the girl that works in that department with all the guys, yeah, I've heard about her."...

I wonder if it carries over into the rest of my life. One of my Non-Company dudes once said to me, something to the effect of, I was all hard shell on the outside, with a soft center that rarely gets seen. I ponder what makes me like this. Is it hard-wired into my personality, a hold-over from school days where I was shunned by the other kids for wearing thick glasses and reading all the time? For being a weirdo who actually preferred being quiet and listening to music instead of going out partying and socializing. I was so super-introverted that I really never learned exactly how to socialize, to flirt, how to talk out my feelings.  I've heard it before from plenty of people, including an ex-boyfriend who stated, "I never know exactly what you are thinking, because you only share to a point."

I worry that maybe I am Margaret Houlihan, desperate to be included but unwilling to grovel,
"Did you ever once offer me a lousy cup of coffee?"

And I wonder what Newbie Temp would think if I told her how much I envy her this chance to be just that, a new person, cloaked in mystery, someone everyone wants to meet and find out about, not the dragon lady persona I am not even sure how I came to inhabit. But one whose scales I can't seem to shake.

Gen X Retro Flashback- "Goonies-R-Good Enough"- Part 1

Memorial Day Weekend in American parlance has always been synonomous with backyard BBQ, beer, and for some reason Summer Movie Box-Office.

If you mention the word,'Goonies' to most Gen X'ers', they'll probably get a goofy smile on their face, and start telling you where they saw it, and who with. 

And then they'll start talking about, 'One-Eyed Willie', the 'Truffle Shuffle', 'Sloth' and most everything Chunk and Mouth say throughout the film...

In 1985, Cyndi Lauper made a lengthy video in two parts, which are here in two videos. Look for a youngish Steven Spielberg making a cameo, as well as wrestlers Captain Lou Albano, Rowdy Roddy Piper and a very young Andre the Giant, who will forever be Fezzik from The Princess Bride to me.

But the one thing that every Gen X'er knows, is that 'Goonies Never Say Die'! You know I had to say it....

The Me I Am Trying to Be

I used to dream about being an ice-skater.  In fact, occasionally for no particular reason, I still have visions of myself twirling about in figure eight patterns, then leaping up in a perfect triple axel or triple toe loop. I think in those moments, it's as if a latent part of myself is still open to the possibilities of what might be, instead of the reality of what is.

The pragmatist says, "Are you kidding me? You live in Florida, it's not like we see a whole lot of ice down here!"

"I mean c'mon on, you are knocking on the door of 40, my friend, live in the now!"

Obviously, I think skating is a metaphor for the fact that even nearing my 40's, some part of me is still the daydream believer.

Many, many years ago, one summer day in about 1984, if my memory serves, my mother and I, after much whining and pleading on my part, entered a children's bookstore in a small strip mall in a non-descript Central Florida town. This was before the days of Books a Million, the Barnes and Noble Superstores, long before Borders was ever dreamt up to ultimately fail. The most we had was a small B. Dalton and a Waldenbooks in the mall, and I am not sure they were there at the same time.

I remember preferring B. Dalton because they had these faux wood floors that were fastened down with rivets that were the same size, color and texture of pennies. In fact as a child, I was certain they were. I used to just wander through the shop counting the 'pennies'. Because at that time, kids were not the big business they are today. There might have been a small children's section, jammed in at the end of the adult shelves. But there were no huge displays of stuffed animals from fiction, no child size chairs to sit in, no puzzles area or literature based toys. There were simply books, and as much as I grew to absolutely adore them, books were not all that attractive to me, packaged thusly, as a child.

So this children's bookstore was a dream come true. Seeing its sign up for the 'Grand Opening',  I literally could not wait to go there.  Here I sit now, nearly forty and I can even remember where it was, the shopping center. I could drive there now and point out the exact location. In fact, I'm certain that the frontage it occupied was combined with another store front and became the pub where I once spent an evening in the company of a spectacularly alcoholic Englishman.

There in the shop I browsed, looking at books that were written and illustrated just for kids. I remember feeling almost overcome at the variety, the colors, the authors, some of whose names I was familiar and some who I would come to know. It was a brand new world of sparkling vistas, which would ignite a passion within me, that would never subside, up to and until this very day. From that moment on, bookstores became magical to me. Some people find their truest selves when they first sit in front of a piano, some in front of sewing machines, others in-front of a Mac, or a drill press. I found my truest self standing that day in a bright cheerful shop filled with the smell of printed paper and glossy cardboard covers.

My mother, always raised to be frugal, has ultimately failed in her attempts to instill in me the virtues of eschewing book ownership in favor of book borrowing. I think if she were honest, or I could somehow get her to ingest copious quantities of truth serum, it would come out that she actually feels worse about that than me being unmarried at nearly forty! She is a good sport though and some years ago, bequeathed to me a bookmark that is imprinted with an original quote by Erasmus, that states, "When I get a little money, I buy books, and if I have any left I buy food and clothes!"

So it was a big leap for her, when, I pressed her to purchase for me a book of pyschological exercises (for kids mind you) entitled, "The Me I Am Trying To Be".  I think it was the 80's version of  "Free to Be You and Me" (all apologies to Marlo Thomas) and she agreed.

I dutifully read and re-read this paperbound book of riddles, morality stories, injunctions not to be a bully, and I did all the exercises, my answers scrawled in a childish hand, listing my dreams and aspirations for the future, whom I hoped to marry (he, whoever he may be, has apparently lost his way or married a supermodel instead), how to treat 'old people', not to steal, or shoplift, etc., etc. In short, completion of the book was supposed to create the 'Me I Was Meant To Be'. Somehow, occasionally, I felt that I let the book down.

And I question...am I the 'Me I Was Meant to Be'?

For years, I kept the book, returning to it as a superior adolescent, a smug teenager, a scared twenty-something, to smile at it, shake my head with rueful laughter, wonder what possessed me to write this thing or that one. In my thirties, I lost track of it. In one of my clear-outs, I probably decided to part with it for once and for all, rationalizing that I WAS 'the Me I Was Meant To Be'!

In this last appraisal though, I think that I probably found the me I was meant to be standing in the midst of all those shelves in that children's bookstore before I ever did one exercise in that book, the true self who loves nothing more than the printed word, to read it, to write it, to savor it.

Like anything good and meaningful, I think the act of becoming is something you have to work out everyday for yourself, your salvation, marriage, relationships, your occupation.

So for today, be the me you were meant to be, but never stop trying to be the me you are trying to be...

Gen X Retro Flashback- 'Major Tom' - Peter Shilling

Kids, I have to be honest and say that while I have always really liked this track, until today, I'd never seen the video! And it's a video that could ONLY have been shot in the 80's. This song, originally recorded in German, (like Nena's 99 Luftballons) is meant to be a re-telling of David Bowie's 'Space Odyssey' ("Ground Control to Major Tom..."), but for some reason, Peter Shilling spends most of his time in the video sitting in an abandoned car on a pile of other...you guessed it, abandoned cars with... even more incomprehensible...a group of derelict winos. Then for some reason, out of of nowhere appear, a whole gaggle of 60's era carhops skating around...well...space.  Perhaps, I simply am not 'getting' the symbolism!

Apparently, Peter Shilling still has quite a robust career in Germany an an 'electro-pop' artist.
Here from 1983, is, 'Major Tom'

Gen X Retro Flashback- "Countdown" Rush

Countless times I sat down in front of this PC to write about the NASA Space Shuttles. Every time so far, I have faltered trying to put into words what it meant to me. Maybe it was growing up in Florida, growing up in the 80's, I think it was different for us here.

Back in the 80's, kids dreamed of going on Double Dare and  maybe winning a grand prize trip to Alabama to go to Space Camp, here in Florida it was a rite of passage taking a field trip to the Kennedy Space Center, we had extensive science class units on the shuttle, learning all about its bombay doors, the solid rocket boosters, the much heralded robotic arm. We always left our classrooms on shuttle days to walk out in single file lines to sports fields to catch a glimpse of Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Endeavour and Atlantis. We remember only too well the bitterly cold January day in 1986 when a usual launch day turned into a solemn day of grief.

I can honestly say that I viewed nearly every launch of the shuttle in some way.  On TV, once or twice out at KSC, in my driveway, parking lots, school football fields and I can hardly ever remember a time when I didn't get goose bumps or a little bit of a lump in my throat. I saw the first launch of the program as a child and I was there for the last as an adult woman. Full Circle.

Maybe to some, it was a hunk of metal that cost uneccessary tax dollars and didn't always perform as it should, but to me it was special. It was emblematic of the American pioneering spirit, and here in Florida, I can tell you it was absolutely magical.

Back in 2011, when the last shuttle missions were flown, I wrote the only letter I've ever sent to the White House asking for justification of ending the program that meant so much to so many in terms of employment, tourism, and national pride. It was probably the equivalent of drunk texting, except I was only drunk and maudlin on my own tears, and I am sure that it probably never saw the light of day to anyone who mattered. But those little white spacecraft meant the world to me.

In 1981, the band Rush traveled to Florida to observe a launch of the space shuttle Columbia and they wrote the song "Countdown" to express what they felt. To me, it sums up everything about what it was like to be there, to see it. And a few years ago, a fan took the song and synced it with photos of the various shuttle missions, dozens and dozens of images. It's a labor of love, and I wanted to share it with you today as the flashback. I've  included the lyrics as well. So here from 1981, is Countdown:

Lit up with anticipation
We arrive at the launching site
The sky is still dark, nearing dawn
On the Florida coastline

Circling choppers slash the night
With roving searchlight beams
This magic day when super-science
Mingles with the bright stuff of dreams
Floodlit in the hazy distance
The star of this unearthly show
Venting vapours, like the breath
Of a sleeping white dragon

Crackling speakers, voices tense
Resume the final count
All systems check, T minus nine
As the sun and the drama start to mount

The air is charged
A humid, motionless mass
The crowds and the cameras,
The cars full of spectators pass
Excitement so thick you could cut it with a knife
Technology...high, on the leading edge of life

The earth beneath us starts to tremble
With the spreading of a low black cloud
A thunderous roar shakes the air
Like the whole world exploding

Scorching blast of golden fire
As it slowly leaves the ground
Tears away with a mighty force
The air is shattered by the awesome sound

Like a pillar of cloud
The smoke lingers high in the air
In fascination
With the eyes of the world
We stare...

Allies

This past Saturday, some members of my family gathered for a Kentucky Derby dinner. It was an excuse to get together, pig out on good things like smoked chicken, and bourbon-laced pie (relax, the alcohol cooks off!) talk and of course, watch the race. Due to the circumstances of my parents' divorce in my teens, most of these family members are what I like to call 'shirt tail relatives', no less beloved or kindred, they are not blood. And my stepfather's sister brought along her mother-in-law, a lady I've only met on a couple of occasions, but whom I've always liked.

She's eighty eight and I can only hope to be as sharp and in possession of my wits as she when I am in my eighties. Impeccably groomed, her silver hair set in elegant waves, she wore a pair of tan trousers with razor sharp creases, and a matching blouse with a high neckline and the jabot had in it's center a brooch, in fact in the few instances we've met, I've never seen her without a brooch. Her feet were clad in a pair of sensible white walking shoes, but I'd bet my car that given her choice and without the inconvenience of age and a delicate hip, she'd have worn a pair of heels.

During the course of conversation, the topic of cooking came up and she matter of factly stated that she wasn't much of a cook, 'I was too busy being a businesswoman' she said. I wondered about that, and after the race was run and the ladies had adjourned to the living room for chat, I drew her out and asked what she meant by being 'busy as a business woman' and this elegant petite lady told me of the businesses she'd run, a salon and as a women's clothier. It was interesting that, as so many people do, she had stayed mostly quiet during dinner, etc, but when asked about her business, all at once she became quite animated, her true passion unmasked, as if she'd just been waiting for someone to ask her about it. She told me that her first trip by herself ever was to New York as a buyer for her clothing store. I thought of this young woman traveling by herself on business in a time where it just wasn't done and the courage that must have taken. Although in truth I've never been much of a feminist, all the same I thought about the strides she taken for women, etc. I just admired her pluck.

Then all at once, the tenor of the conversation changed and she began to reminisce about her husband, an air force pilot during WWII, who flew the 'hump' (China, Burma, India) on dangerous bombing raids, an all but forgotten arena of the war now. And it was then that I realised, she wasn't really alone on those trips, making the businesses work, it wasn't about feminist independence, it was about the reality of trying to make a life for her husband to come back to. And that if he might not have been there in person, he was with her in spirit, an ally, a person to make a life with. What she did wasn't for her, it was for them.

Earlier on in the day, my mother and I looked at a photo of our extended family that I'd seen several times before. With grief now more in the rear window, we were able to look at Uncle Bob again without tears, enjoy his goofy childish grin as he sat on my Grandpa's lap. My mother related to me the fact that, although she had looked at the photo countless times before, there were things she hadn't seen before. For one, she'd never before noticed the date of the photo, but looking at the faces of her brother and cousins, she began trying to work out what it might have been. To confirm it, hoping that there might be a scrawl on the back to confirm her suspicions, she prized the photo from its frame, and there it was, 1945. She noted Christmas decorations in the photo, meagre but there. She saw as never before how thin and angular her parents faces appeared, no doubt due to the rationing, the strain of casualty lists inscribed with the names of friends and acquaintances who would never return home, the worry about being bombed, how to feed their new and growing family,  about my aunt who worked as a WAC at Walter Reed Hospital.  So on this day in 1945, we see a family re-united, together, intact, whole, celebrating not only the holiday but no doubt the end of a World War. To the left of this family tableau is my Great-Grandmother, surveying her children, her grandchildren and looking to her husband, to the right is my Great-Grandfather surveying his children, his grandchildren, looking to his wife.  Their expressions say, "We made it through, we're all still here" Husband and Wife, allies...

Throughout my long and protracted and ultimately unsucessful search for the ideal mate, I had never before considered this. The intangible benefits of being with a person who is truly united with you in something that is bigger than mere human attraction. What Match.com, E-Harmony, Zoosk, Christian Mingle, etc. never tell you is, that while you might find in someone's profile their vital statistics, their predilections for certain types of foods, bands, books and pets, that what you really need to know about that person is if they are going to be your friend, are they going to be an ally, are they going to be (in the current venacular), someone who 'has your back',  someone you can count on in the hard times, in the lean times, in short someone who'll turn their life inside out to make a life with you. Somehow, my great-grandparents knew that, and my shirt-tale relative business-lady. They figured out that while looks fade, attraction fades, that there is no substitute for substance.

A few years back, in an emotional valley, I listened to a woman on Oprah (I know, I know...don't judge me,) tell us how we didn't have the man we wanted, because we didn't know what we really wanted, what our 'mandate' was, and so on her advice, I crafted a 3-legal-size-page list of my 'must have' characteristics in a mate. She insisted that we be specific down to the hair and eye color.  Looking back at that list now, what I see is a man with the mashed up features of Richard Armitage, Toby Stephens, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, with a dash of Johnny Lee Miller, Phil Mickleson's cute grin and somewhere in there, attributes of both Bruce Willis and Andre Agassi... So a balding handsome ginger-haired yet broodingly dark Englishman American with the sense of humor of Jerry Seinfeld, the intellect of an Oxford Don, the spirtual characteristics of Billy Graham, the altruism of Albert Schweitzer who loves the Beatles, the color blue and would never criticize me for anything!

Tonight, I unearthed that list from the recesses of my closet, I tore it up into tiny shreds and thought, maybe I'll follow the advice of the greatest generation. Maybe it just might be... that what I really need is an ally.