Move Over Modern Family

If only my family and friends would let me tell the truth, I am pretty sure we could have our own TV show.  But sadly, they are all so mean and have recently begun to refuse to allow me to use them as fodder for my own fun and amusement in my writing.  For some reason, they seem to think that the things I write about are humiliating.

Selfish?  I should say so!

Here is the recent exchange between me and my sister Lucy as we sat talking about my daughter, CeCe's debutante dress.  (If this was not the EXACT conversation, it was a close as I could remember it...)

Lucy (looking  at a picture of CeCe in her dress):  "Hey, I bet it was hard to go to the bathroom in that.
Me: "Yea.  You should have seen her yelling at me to hurry up and finish undoing all the buttons on the back so she could pee."
Lucy: "I just thought of something brilliant.  We could invent Debutante Depends.  The girls could wear them under their dresses and then drink as much as they want and not worry about having to pee." 
Me: "We could even get my Bedazzler and put monograms and decorations on them and stuff."
Lucy:  "Yea, and then in their later years as they are reliving their glory days of being a Deb they will be looking through their memory box and pull out the good old Debutante Depends and remember that special evening."
Me: " I bet you could even do some for Brides and maybe those Toddlers in Tiaras and shit.   We could make a lot of money."
Lucy: "Hey! Don't steal that for your blog.  You are always taking the good ideas I have and putting them in your blog."
Me:  "Well yea, but that's because you won't put them in yours."
Lucy:  "That's because I don't have a Blog."
Me: "See? So that's why I put it in mine.  Well, that and because it makes me look funnier."
Lucy: "I don't want other people to know things about me. That's why I don't put all that stuff like you do on Facebook.  Don't you ever get embarassed telling everyone all that stupid stuff? I am not like you.  I like my privacy."
Me: "Then why do you care if I steal all your good ideas and put them in my Blog and pretend like they are mine?"
Lucy: "Because I want people to know that I am the one that is funny.  If you were really funny, you would be the one who comes up with Debutante Depends."
Me: "But no one would even know you were funny because you wouldn't put it on Facebook or in your Blog and stuff because you would be all like "OHHH.  I'm soooo private. I don't want anyone to know about me." 
Lucy: "That's right.  I don't like people all up in my bidness."
Me: "So that is why I am doing you a favor.  I am stealing all your stuff and making sure that the world gets exposed to people.   I mean seriously.  People think some of the stupidist shit our family does is really funny..."
Lucy: "But wait.  It's not always you who is so clever.  You steal my good stuff sometimes. "
Me:  "Yea, but you don't want anyone to know you might be talking about something as UNCLASSY as Debutante Depends, so you won't even put it on your Facebook or your non-existent Blog or Twitter, so I have to."
Lucy:  "That's right.   I don't like people to know we talk about stuff like Debutantes peeing in diapers.  That makes us look bad.  I mean we should really have more important things to talk about than how hard it is to pee in a big white, puffy, long dress." 
Me:  "Even though it is really humorous?"
Lucy:  " It is funny, but I just don't want people to know I say things like that.  So don't put that in your Blog."
Me:  "Ok,  I won't."

No Hanky Panky For This Girl or Hanky Panky Makes Me Cranky

One of my recent Facebook postings that generated a lot of comments got me to thinking. The posting said: “Spanx is just a newfangled marketing word for a glorified girdle.”

Who wants to wear a GIRDLE? But on the other hand, what’s a girl to do about those unsightly bulges – especially around the middle? Just the sound of the word girdle conjures up something unappealing. What woman in her right mind would say to her man, “Just a minute let me step out of this GIRDLE?! But try that this way, “Just a minute honey let me step out of my Spanx” well that is a whole other deal there.

Underwear. (un der war), n. clothing worn next to the skin under outer clothes. This is the definition found in Webster’s Dictionary for underwear. Recent events have caused me to do a lot of serious thinking concerning underwear.

A few weeks ago I got an email from my friend Kristi letting me know that Hanky Panky’s were on sale so I should rush out and buy some. Another friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, is still trying to live down the recent showing of her skivvies at a party. Several of my friends also extol the virtues of the Hanky Panky. Did I mention, that most them are over 40, married with children, and would be considered, shall we say, conservative?

The first time I ever saw a Hanky Panky was at Nordstrom’s with my sister who, as we were walking through the lingerie department, said “Oh, I have heard such great things about those Hanky Panky panties.” Well, I looked over and did not see a panty anywhere. All I saw was a $16.99 strip of lace connected by a string at the back – or in other words - a thong.

While on the other end of the spectrum, my 15 year-old daughter has suddenly expressed an interest in purchasing her own clothing and brought home several new pairs of “underwear.” Well, I have news for you, my daughter’s underwear and my friends of the 40 plus crowd; Hanky Pankies are not in any shape or form underwear. They are without a doubt, THONGS - and not the flip flop kind - the underwear kind!

Now, I don’t know about you, but I always thought the purpose of underwear was to protect and to serve. Kind of like the police force. I mean the protection piece is pretty obvious right? A good pair of underwear should protect you from any thing accidentally coming out or going in. As for the serve part – well, by that I mean it should serve a function of some sort. For me that function is also pretty obvious. My underwear holds in those parts of my body that seem to bulge out. Give me a sturdy pair of Spanx any day! And speaking of Spanx, the gal who thought up those babies is brilliant! “Why?” you might ask. Well, because she made wearing a girdle cool. Spanx are just reinvented girdles. And I am a girdle kind of girl.

On a side note, I actually have fond memories of girdles because wearing one nipped my life of crime in the bud. When I was about 8 years old, a neighbor girl and I were at the neighborhood drugstore and for some reason we each decided to steal an item. I think it was to show who was braver or something equally as stupid. I know I knew it was wrong and I remember I was scared to death, but I took the dare. I found an area that seemed to be out of sight of the clerk, way back in the far dark corner of the store where they placed the “private” items – you know the mysterious stuff like sanitary napkins, Midol, feminine deodorant spray and undergarments! I reached up and grabbed the first thing I could find. And guess what? It was a girdle. I swiped a girdle! And then for some unfathomable reason, I actually put it on underneath my dress- I guess it was to hide it as I guiltily left the store.

Even before I left I was eaten up with guilt and fear, but I had already done the deed and could not back out now. My friend, who was obviously far more cut out for a life of crime than me, was already outside having smuggled out a stash of candy. I found her, pulled up my dress to show her that I had indeed committed the crime and then we immediately commenced to eating up all the evidence. By that time it was late and so we set off for home. Along the way I began to feel sick. At first I thought it was because it was so hot and we were walking, and then I decided it was because I had eaten too much candy, and then it came to me. I knew it. God was punishing me. I was a criminal and now I was going to pay the price. I had been stricken with some sort of illness and would probably now die.

By the time we got to my house I was beside myself with worry and a stomach ache that I was sure would put me in the grave. I tried to avoid my mother, but her eagle eyes knew something was wrong. I could barely eat dinner and had almost nothing to say. I just knew that any minute God was going to strike me dead for my larceny. And, all the while my stomach was hurting worse and worse. Finally, I admitted that I was not feeling too good. My Mom did her usual – checked the forehead for fever, questioned me about where it hurt. When I said my tummy, she asked a few questions and then went to poke on my belly and low and behold discovered me still wearing the stolen girdle complete with the price tag on it!

After confessing the crime to her, returning to the drugstore to pay for the stolen item and having a very sore bottom instead of a sore tummy, I vowed never again to steal. So, really a girdle saved me from a life of crime.

But back to thongs. As far as I can tell the thong just does not count as underwear in any sense of the word. Let’s go back to my personal definition of underwear: to protect and serve. Take protection. What sort of protection can a piece of string approximately 3 inches wide, or less in many cases, provide a girl? It certainly can’t help protect any sensitive areas, nor would it protect you from embarrassment if say, oh you accidentally tucked your skirt into the back of your panties and were walking back to your table through the restaurant (been there, done that).

Or if you were in a serious car accident and had to be rushed to the emergency room and disrobed by hospital personnel in a room full of strangers, all of whom would suddenly lose their focus of performing those critical life saving efforts such as cracking open my chest an shouting out words like 20 cc’s of Lidocane and stuff, only to gasp in horror at the sight of your private area that is so NOT protected from prying eyes.

Personally, I grew up with a mother who constantly admonished me to wear my nice underwear in case of an accident, and I think her advice was quite sound. But I know one thing, if I was ever caught unawares in a room full of Emergency Physicians who looked like George Clooney and Patrick Dempsey ripping me down to my skivvies in order to save my life, I would much rather have on my good old Haines with the reinforced stomach panel than one of those miniscule pieces of material that let is all hang out. Because lets face it – what hangs out ain’t too pretty!

In looking up the history of underwear on the Internet (yes, there is a site that is devoted to the history of underwear) I discovered a lot about underwear. I guess technically, the first pair of undies were the fig leaves Adam and Eve wore in the Garden of Eden, but they were probably scratchy so I think they immediately invented the loin cloth, which interestingly enough were really for men – guess they wanted to make sure there were no comparisons going on.

Loin cloths were pretty popular for a long while – apparently King Tut was found buried with about 150 extras for his voyage into the underworld. I am not sure what women used, because according to the internet sites I searched, Cleopatra was not found with loin cloths, nor girdles much less a thong in her tomb.

It appears that the Middle Ages was really when underwear came about. I think they invented it because they took baths like once a year and they didn’t have many clothes so they used this new fangled underwear invention to keep their clothes from getting dirty. Over time I think undies got fancier and moved from being the plain old union suit type to briefs and jockey shorts and such. But hygiene was really the major reason for the use of undergarments. And I know for darn sure that small piece of string does not provide hygienic protection or otherwise.

Ok, so there is another purpose of underwear – the sexy kind that men like to see on women, but let’s face it, I am not really sure men really like to see Hanky Panky’s on anyone who doesn’t weigh about 100 pounds, has had some sort of breast enhancement surgery and spends at least 6 hours a day working on their abs and thighs. Yes, Victoria’s Secret models do fit that mold, but basically as far as I can tell there are only about 14 Victoria’s Secret models in the whole entire world, and since they are the only ones who really can look good in a thong, what are the other 3 Billion one hundred sixty-seven women in the world supposed to do?

Quite frankly, after wearing my first pair of Hanky Panky’s for a day, I am thinking that perhaps the reason so many women seem to be angry and short tempered these days may not really be due to factors the media keeps attributing their problems to like balancing work and career or the failing economy or even PMS. It actually may be due to the fact that they are wearing a thong that is riding up their rear and digging into their privates which is causing major discomfort. Or that they are frantically obsessing over the fact that when they disrobe that thong is just not going to look like it does on page 12 of the Victoria’s Secret Catalogue. Or better still perhaps they are bemoaning the fact that they actually paid $16.99 for a piece of underwear that serves no real purpose other than to make you want to furtively look around to see if anyone is watching before you reach your hand back and try to pull it out of your behind.

Even more likely those Hanky Panky’s are causing some sort of mass produced Post Traumatic Stress Disorder among millions of women who spent their youth trying to keep playground bullies from giving them a wedgie only now to be in the strange position of choosing with their own free will to seek out a garment that purposely recreates that childhood trauma.

This weekend, I was looking out the window and saw a bunch of clothes in the yard. Of course I thought one of the kids decided to strip down out there for some reason or another (Hey, it the Collins House, are you surprised?)and I yelled upstairs for whoever left their clothes in the backyard to come and get them. Turns out our Pomeranian, Stoli, has been snacking on every pair of underwear he can find. He is constantly digging in the laundry basket and pulling out our underwear and running off and eating the crotch out.

Just yesterday my husband complained that his underwear had a hole in it and he couldn’t figure out what had happened and I just could not bring myself to mention the fact that all our underwear had little holes in it from Stoli’s attacks. Nor have I been able to throw out the multiple pairs of $35 Girdles (oh, I mean Spanx!) that he has rendered crtochless. I am just too darn cheap- what do a few holes in the crotch matter when the stomach panel still holds in the belly?

So, even though I am as interested as the next middle aged woman in keeping up my appearances to please my man and in making sure I am hip and with it. I just can not go there. No Hanky Panky for me. No way, no how. Give me a good old fashioned girdle any day.

Pandemics, Panics and Peanut Butter

All this Swine Flu panic has made me miss my Mom so much. She died May 6, 2009 and I miss her every single day. No, she did not die of Swine Flu, but she was the world’s foremost authority on anything that might be even remotely dangerous, scary or possibly some sort of conspiracy. And my phone line would have been burning up with calls from her over this Swine Flu scare. She would have urged me to buy masks, take our temperature and worried over whether we had enough food stored up in the house just in case we needed to quarantine ourselves. She was always big on having made preparations for potential world disasters.

My Dad still bears the scars from the time during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1964 when my mom was pregnant with my brother and she became convinced that there was going to be Nuclear War and she needed to store up food and water. She made Daddy go out and buy a bunch of those huge water bottles - the 100 pound kind that go on water coolers – and he threw his back out and crushed vertebrae in his neck and had to have emergency surgery. He says he may have made sure they were prepared to make through a food and water shortage but Mom’s extensive preparations kept him from being able to help her out with any childcare duties for her 7 year old, 4 year old and newborn for the next six months while he was recovering from his surgery! Not that he would have been much help any way, this was the 1960’s after all. But it still makes a good story.

When the big SARS scare occurred in 2003 I very distinctly remember her calling me up at work one day, telling me I had to come over right away to check out this package they had received from China. She left a message for me that went something like this “Reenie, I need you to come over to the house right away. Your Daddy got that painting he ordered from China today and we are worried that it might have that SARS thing so we left it out on the front porch and we need you to come on over here and check to make sure if it is safe for us to bring in the house…”

"Right. Uhmm well, let me see, I can use my super powers and x-ray vision to check out that package and certify it to be SARS free. Oh, yea and never mind the fact that Mom does not want to touch it in case she contracts SARS, let me go ahead and open it up to make sure it is safe!” Have I mentioned before that my family is just slightly insane?

My Mother earned her degree from The University of Texas around 1945 and I think she majored in Worry with a minor in Paranoia and probably did her dissertation on Identifying Suspicious Persons. I honestly can not remember a time period of my life that she was not obsessing over something. Because worrying was a part of her genetic DNA, she unfortunately passed that along to her children – well three of her four children - I have refused to succumb to the constant temptation of potential danger lurking in every corner. My siblings on the other hand, well, let’s just say each of them has their own struggles with this worrisome gene that seems to have been passed down by Mom’s side of the family.

I remember growing up and hearing all kinds of helpful warnings and advice. Things like, “Watch out for people who drive around in cars with tinted windows. Those kind of people are up to no good.” “Never put a cat around a baby. It will suck their breath right out of their mouth.” My personal favorite was not exactly a particular warning; it was the way my Mom would take little notes on suspicious people she saw around the neighborhood just in case she found out later some sort of crime had been committed so she could turn in her notes to the police!

Now here’s a handy little tip I learned from my childhood - never put your arm out of an open window when driving around in a car. There might be a wreck and the car could tip over and land on the side that had the open window your arm was hanging out of and your arm would be cut off! According to my Mom, she saw that very thing happen so all throughout my childhood whenever one of us would hang our arm out of the window she would tell us that story. Personally, I think she made that one up because she thought it looked tacky to drive around with your arms hanging out of the window.

I can’t even begin to remember the number of times she would call me to tell me about some horrible disease or accident that had happened to the second cousin of a friend of a friend's ex-wife or some such and how I needed to now add whatever calamity that had befallen to them to my long list of things to be on the lookout for. I am pretty sure my Mom is probably personally responsible for at least several dozen of the Urban Legends currently floating around the Internet.

All of this came from the same woman who one time I found scraping mold off of some bread as she was making sandwhiches and when I asked her if she was actually going to eat the bread, she said that a little mold never hurt anyone and didn’t I know penicillin came from mold? There was really no way to understand the convoluted way her brain worked, but it made sense to her.

My mother, who when she died at 83 was still called Puddin by everyone she knew, did not like to turn left when I was growing up. Whenever possible, she preferred to take multiple right hand turns until she was headed in the direction she wanted to go. Why? Well, that was easy. Because it was dangerous! Same thing with driving on the freeway. Dangerous! There is a legendary story among some of my childhood friends about the time my mother accidentally got on I-H35 (imagine that last word being said in a horrified voice!)- I-H35. She had a car load of 14 year old girls all going down town to Town Lake to enjoy the Battle of the Bands Night at the local Aqua Festival. Well, somehow, and to this day we still don’t know how such a mishap could have occurred, somehow Puddin got onto THE FREEWAY by accident. My friends still imitate her saying “Girls. Girls. Be quiet. Did I just get on I-H35? Is this THE FREEWAY?” “Yes, Ma'am.” Next thing you know we were not only on the freeway, but we had somehow been diverted to the UPPER LEVEL of I-H35. Suddenly, she was explaining to my friends that she just could not drive on I-H35. It made her too nervous. So, she just pulls over to the side of the road near a police car that happened to be stationed there to direct the traffic flow and says, “Girls, Girls. Get out of the car now. I have to get off this freeway. You just go on over to that policeman and get in his car and tell him to drop you off at Aqua Festival.” So we did. And he did. And she got off.

Can you imagine a policeman today seeing a group of five or six teenage girls walking up to his car parked on 35 and having them explain that they just needed a ride on over to the festival area because "Mrs. Harwood gets too nervous to drive on the freeway" and agreeing to take them like it was nothing out of the ordinary? Somehow I just can't see that going over too well today, but I guess in 1974 it must not have caused much of a stir because he did drop us right off at the front gate!

You should have been with us the first few years MoPac (the freeway that was built in Austin in the early 1970’s) was built. I had to suffer the humiliation of her driving across town using only the feeder roads. THE Mopac, as she called it, just went too fast. But hey, she loved us and was determined to keep us safe, right?

She also gave me helpful advice like whenever you are traveling out of town and someone you meet in that new city asks you where you are from, you always say “Dallas.” Never say Austin. “Why?” you might ask. Well that’s simple. If you tell a stranger you are from Austin they might figure out your, name, address and phone number and send someone to rob you while you are out of town. Or even worse, travel back to your hometown later and murder you in your sleep! I will never forget the time when I was right out of college and we were in New Orleans and this darling guy I had met at our hotel asked me where we were from. Just as I was about to open my mouth and say “Austin, Texas” in my cutest little Texas Drawl, my mother shot me The Look, stood lightly on my toe and said “Dallas” in her haughtiest voice. You all know The Look. It’s the one that all mothers can shoot to their children across a room that immediately and telepathically imports into their minds words like DON’T. STOP. JUST WAIT UNTIL WE GET TO THE CAR… So there I was probably missing the opportunity to meet my future husband, all because this boy might, just could perhaps, possibly, maybe, track me down to Austin, Texas ("Please God", I prayed!)and do who knows what.

Then there was the time during my high school years when I seemed to have been involved in quite a few accidents in a short period of time and my mother and her sisters got together to discuss my many calamities. Shortly thereafter, it was determined that I had begun wearing some opal jewelry recently and that "everyone" knew that wearing opals was bad luck unless they were your birthstone. So off came my two opal rings and my opal necklace. And sure enough, all that bad luck that had been the cause of my misfortune just stopped. I ran across that jewelry the other day in my parent’s safety deposit box and thought they would make a wonderful gift for my 14-year old daughter, CeCe, but I just couldn’t quite bring myself to give them to her. She was born in June.

So what does all this have to do with Swine Flu? Well all this panic over the potenial pandemic, got me to remembering last year when the Salmonella outbreak happened with peanut butter. It was all over the TV News just like this Swine Flu thing and of course my mother called to tell me about it because she knew my kids ate a lot of peanut butter. She had very carefully written down the lot numbers of the bad jars and gave them to me over the phone. Because by this time she was in the nursing home and really very,very sick and I knew that writing down those numbers must have been excruciatingly hard for her, I decided to humor her. I actually wrote them down too instead of just saying "uh, uh" and pretending that I was going to follow up like I ususally did.

Since the peanut butter in question was Peter Pan brand and Peter Pan Peanut Butter is the kind my kids eat, and since I had actually written down the serial numbers she gave me, I figured I might finally be able to put to use that ability to be on the constant lookout for possible danger that my mother so graciously passed along to me and my siblings. I decided I really would take that slip of paper downstairs and check out the Peanut Butter.

Amazingly, I remembered to take the slip of paper with me when I went downstairs to go to work, and then I actually remembered to look in our pantry, pull out the peanut butter and peruse the top to see if my jar was one of the polluted ones. I could not believe my eyes. Right there right in front of me was Potential Peril! Looming Danger! Advancing Doom! My Peter Pan Peanut Butter actually had the recalled serial numbers on it.

Finally! After 47 years of vigilance I had actually averted danger. I was so excited I even took a picture of the jar so that I could show everyone how heroic I had been. I could not wait to tell my mother how all her paranoia had finally paid off.

I then left the jar on the counter and raced out to work feeling like such a great mother for having saved my children from sure death or worse.

Later that day as I rushed back in the door to start dinner I saw Tye, our 7-year old, sitting happily at the kitchen table eating his afternoon snack complete with a huge spoon, some crackers and the jar of Peter Pan Peanut Butter.