When I was eleven I wanted to be a drug dealer

One bright and sunny summer day I was at my grandmother's house, writing or drawing or something of the sort at her mahogany dining table, the same table that currently sits in my dining room, chatting with my grandmother about this and that, when she asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. A perfectly reasonable question for an eleven year old child. A thousand things ran through my mind; cop, ballerina, stunt woman, rock star, fire fighter, secret agent. All sounded like wonderful choices, offering a life of adventure and excitement, when it occurred to me that what I really wanted was money, guns, and planes. Looking back I realize that this was probably fueled by, romanticized and glamorized by, watching the Friday night adventures of Crocket and Tubbs. But at that moment, when my mind was racing between daredevil or smoke jumper, contortionist or trapeze artist, I had a vision of myself in the future, or maybe a memory that hadn't happened yet. As clearly as anything I had ever seen, but just for a brief instant, I saw myself hanging out of the door of a small airplane, sub-compact machine gun tucked against my left hip, warm and chattering out bullets toward an unseen enemy on a dirt runway as the plane strained and sped toward the azure sky over the brilliantly green trees. All of this I saw and I knew exactly what it all meant, so I took a deep breath and answered my grandmother earnestly. "I'm going to be a drug dealer."

She paused in her lunch preparations, an eternity she stood at the stove, frozen in time while she digested this disturbing news from her oldest grandchild. Chicken burned in the pan while she processed this bit of information and I was fascinated by her lack of response. Had it occurred to me that this would be the reaction my announcement received I would have done it on purpose, but at eleven I was just learning about shock value and the beauty of a perfectly manipulated reaction. She finally came back to herself and turned the chicken a fraction of a second before it was ruined and said, "Really? A drug dealer? How do you see that working out for you?"

"I figure as long as I can not get arrested it will work out pretty well."

This she found amusing so she started asking me more questions. What kind of drugs would I sell, how would I get them, who would I sell them to, and how is it that I planned to avoid incarceration? The basic questions that any career plan needs to answer. I think she planned to trip me up, point out a flaw in my scheme, but (other than the obvious) she couldn't find one. For every question she asked I had a complete and comprehensive answer. I would eventually focus on marijuana, which I would grow on a farm in South America, but to build cash reserves and a solid reputation I would start out with cocaine. I would sell only to late-teens and adults because they knew what choices they were making, (Also, I couldn't believe anyone my age would mess around with drugs - I mean, duh! everyone knows they're evil.) and I would build a network of bribe-able officials and good lawyers in order to avoid doing any jail time.

The questioning went on through our lunch of buttered chicken and rice but I had an answer for everything, and I had them fast. Even if she asked something I hadn't really thought of it only took me moment to come up with something reasonable. When we were done eating and she was finished interrogating me she picked up the dishes and said, "that was some story Kelly, you should consider writing. It's a much less dangerous job."

I've considered this advice several times throughout my life and never really been able to pull it together enough to actually set pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and write something. Until recently. Grandma would be proud, I'm finally writing it down.

Necrotizing Fasciitis

Flesh-eating bacteria. Do you know how difficult it is to get this horrific disease? Well, neither do I. I do know that it has never come up in conversation with anyone I know. Not once have I told the story of the German Shepherd-shaped scar on my back (caused by shingles) and had someone chime in with, "yeah, that's kinda messed up, but did I tell you about when I had..." Not then, and not in any of the other thousand conversational situations (including the bizarre questions I occasionally ask) where "I've had a flesh-eating bacteria" might come up. I've never even heard "I have this friend..."

This shit is not easy to get.

And when it is contracted the appropriate medical authorities are notified and it's cause is meticulously tracked to make sure the public is safe. Unfortunately that does nothing to quell hysteria. And by hysteria I mean the random emails I periodically receive that promise just such a horror for doing something mundane. Usually wearing (not just trying on) unwashed new clothing.

Somehow the afflicted area is always a breast. According to several sites I found through the wonders of Google, NF requires a break in the skin. Do the people who make this shit up think breast wounds are common? (Yes, I'm aware that the reason it's always the breast has much more to do with Freud than it does with logic) And the email is always accompanied by a terrifying photo or two.

Once I found this obviously doctored photo in my inbox along with roughly the same story as reported on Snopes. ("Breast Rash")

But only once for that one, and technically it didn't claim to be NF. Instead this one is supposedly caused by a larvae of unknown origin or species. Either way it's disgusting and somehow specific to the breast.

Several times though I've found this series of photos in my inbox. (EXTREMELY DISTURBING!!! ... don't say I didn't warn you. By the way, Snopes has no conclusive evidence of the origins of the photos, but they appear to be the advanced stages of breast cancer.) They always claim to be a necrotizing fasciitis and they all claim to have contracted it from new and unwashed clothing. Sometimes the warning is that this was passed on by a previous customer who tried on the clothing. As if fashion is a top priority when you have a terrible and, by these accounts, insanely contagious disease. Other times it is attributed to a factory worker who should have called in sick and instead infects your clothing... in Asia or South America, by the way; a long way for a disease to travel with no living host. Whatever the reason given it's all bullshit. An updated "old wives tale" that is designed to scare the crap out of you.

There are two very good reasons I wash my clothes before wearing them, and neither has anything to do with disease. The first of formaldehyde. If your clothing was imported from a third world country, and odds are it was, then it had to pass through customs. If it doesn't pass quickly then it needs to be kept free from insects and rodents, so it usually gets a light spraying of formaldehyde. (That's also what makes new carpet reek.) I prefer to wash that out of my clothes before wearing them as the smell gives me a headache. The second reason is colorfastness. I hate when colors bleed all over each other and a quarter cup of vinegar in the first wash usually stops that.

What really kills me about these email is that they almost always come from the same person. An otherwise intelligent person. And they're never prefaced with anything but an echo of the scary message instead of the "can you believe people buy this???" that I would preface them with. I think she may actually believe them, like this is some sort of epidemic that no one is talking about. It doesn't occur to her that we live in a world that thinks Purell is a good idea and that if even one person got anything so disgusting from something done by thousands of people every day it would be all over the news. CNN would send Wolf Blitzer, a medical analyst, and fifteen camera people. Ann Coulter would be yammering on about how this is somehow the fault of the liberal medical system and only the GOP can save you. In about a week it would be illegal to try on or return clothing. It simply doesn't make sense. I do not understand this kind of fear.

So I roll my eyes, remind myself that even smart people fall for dumb crap, and hit delete.

Namaste Motherfucker

A long time ago I smoked a fair amount of pot, did quite a bit of yoga, ate a lot of sprouts and refused to acknowledge the validity of western medicine. I danced naked under the full moon and painted myself with herbs and minerals to increase body temperature and oxygen flow. I walked barefoot through the forest, trusting my "oneness" with nature to keep my feet safe, and sat for hours listening feeling being the wind in the trees. I've lost months to meditation, stood on picket lines, and spent endless hours discussing the evils of the establishment. And the universe supported me in this by surrounding me with people who shared my lifestyle. Then one day that wasn't who I was anymore, the truth of my being slid a little bit. And that was OK too.

I, who had taken pride in never being the first owner of anything and wanted little, somehow just accepted a sudden need for new stuff and a savings account and even a couple credit cards. So I packed up my prayer flags fortune telling cards and moved to the city. I took a regular 9-5 job (my first and still my only) at a major corporation and threw myself into my new life. I stopped walking barefoot and learned how to strut in spike heels. I traded the pure light of the moon for the smokey neon of dive bars. I forgot about fresh fruit and organic meat and embraced the drive through and the deep fryer. And the universe supported this too. I met wonderful people who guided me through this change. Girls who taught me about eyebrow waxing and navigating the mall and how to have career goals (I never really got the hang of that one). Girls who taught me about four dollar coffee and how it's somehow better than what you can make at home. All these things I learned and lived and was happy with because they were the truth of who I was at the moment.

A few months ago, all of that started to slide again though. Like the first rock skipping down the hillside, oblivious to the avalanche it will start, came a friend who is the master of the material life wearing a shirt that said "Namaste Motherfucker". I began to see a longing for what I had put away in other people, and to meet people who were on the path home. I started to miss my prayer flags and second-hand gypsy skirts. I could feel it all coming back to me and I began to remember the language of nature and how good it felt to honor my body with delicious food. I've slowly been working my way back to my natural self (in spirit, anyway) when the final push came. I met a woman who never really left, and just by being who she is she's simultaneously made me homesick and shown me how to get home.

In honor of the new moon today, the moon of new beginnings, the first moon I've consciously acknowledged in years, we did 108 sun salutations. I'm still riding the high of the constant movement of the body's prayer and revelling in the quiet symphony of muscles coming awake. I feel much more in tune than I have in years, on the road home and even though I'm trying to enjoy the journey there's a part of me that's like a barn-sour nag and can't wait to get there.

Namaste, motherfucker.

I wish I were crazy

Not Charles Manson or Jeffery Dahmer crazy, but cute crazy like Jeremy Sisto in "The Movie Hero". Charming crazy. Adorable crazy. Just sane enough to have friends and drive around and live on your own, but just crazy enough to not have to have a job or be expected to wear pants in public. At least not all of the time. Just crazy enough that my family gives me a monthly stipend to live on and I don't care. Ideally I don't even think about it. Is that crazy, or just selfish? Or is it only selfish if you become aware, and acceptably crazy if you remain blissfully ignorant of the sacrifices of others?

Interesting questions, to be sure, but not interesting enough to hold my attention just now.

The more interesting question has to do with the movie "The Movie Hero" itself. It poses the question: How much better would we be as people if we each thought we were the hero in our own movie? That an audience sees and responds to our every move? The secondary question then becomes: What's the difference between your audience and god? As children in Sunday school we're taught that god watches over everything we do, rather like an audience. (Those few kids who, like me, were raised by agnostic Catholics - or just plain agnostics, or atheists - learned similar lessons of being watched over. Those lessons just weren't couched as "godly" to us. It was much more likely for my mom to take credit as the constant watcher, making me question at times if she actually was psychic. Either way it amounts to the same thing as mother is god in the eyes of a child.)

The difference, I believe, is that even though somewhere between 60 and 90 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christian - depending on which poll you check - Americans are more likely to respond favorably to an audience. The notion of god watching over you is backed by stories of swift retribution and the hinted promise of reward at the end of this life. Apparently great motivation to drag your sorry ass to a pew of your choice once in a while, but not so good at the day-to-day stuff. Plus it is very difficult to wrap the human mind around the concept of "god is everywhere at all times". We tend to think of god as more human, and therefore only aware of one thing at a time.

But an audience... An audience is personal. An audience is there for you and you alone. An audience applauds when you make the right decision and boos when you make the wrong one. Immediate feedback. Instant gratification. The cornerstone of American society - at least in its current form. Your audience allows you to be the hero of your own life. How much better would your life be if you truly believed you were the star?

Not to get off onto a preachy tangent here, but so many of us allow ourselves to be antagonists and sidekicks and even cameos in our own stories. Stop it. Stop it right now. If you aren't interested in yourself enough to be the star in your own life then how do you expect to get anything accomplished? Does anyone really care about the adorable Aasif Mandvi in "Music and Lyrics"? No. We don't care if he is gay or straight, childless or the father of ten, goes to night school to finish a medical degree or has a tail hidden in his tailored slacks. None of that matters. We only really care about Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore overcoming their respective pasts and making a run at a relationship together. Don't be the character that no one really cares about because you'll discover that that's exactly what you've become. Be your own hero. But be worthy of being the hero. Make your audience proud.