Christmas Spirit

It happened again, predictably. I found myself thinking, on December 24, "Wait! It can't be over! It can't be Christmas yet!" I said something to my family, and got back, "It's not over yet. You still have tomorrow." They didn't understand; I didn't want another day, I wanted another month.

The Christmas season is too short for me. It's not about having time to shop – I aim to be done by Thanksgiving. Some years (hello, 2011) I don't make my deadline, but I try.

It's about the decorations, the carols, every single store and restaurant decked out in finery. I don't care if it's cheap plastic; I love it.

I climbed into the car on December 26, and was depressed that the radio station that plays carols all month between Thanksgiving and Christmas had stopped. I need it to last at least until New Year's Day! This year, they started a week early, and I writhed with joy. I'm not prepared to go cold turkey!

This is despite the fact that they massively overplay "Santa Baby," a whiny song that I deeply dislike, and the fact that I didn't hear my favorite, "Silent Night," all month long.

I've been told before that my love of Christmas must stem from unremittingly happy Christmas memories from my childhood. I have always loved Christmas, but I respectfully disagree with that sentiment. My childhood was hardly picture perfect, holidays included. My father was difficult, unhappy and possessed an explosive temper. Our family of six was supported by pension checks and a 20 hour a week secretarial job – money was tight during the rest of the year, but it practically squeaked in protest at the holidays.

I never understood the idea that the "traditional" concept of, "If you're good, and you tell him what you want, Santa will deliver fabulous gifts to every child on the planet" was supposedly the embodiment of holiday magic and joy. I did what any kid, especially a kid in a financially strapped family would do – I hoped Santa would bring the stuff that my parents could not afford. After all, he obviously had no money issues, not with the ability to deliver millions of wrapped gifts all over the world. He never quite came through, leaving me puzzled and hurt. The only two choices I could see were that Santa was prejudiced against people with little money, just like everyone else, or Santa thought I hadn't been good enough. Being good was very important to me, and I tried very hard, so to have a beloved figure decide that I wasn't was painful. Of course, so was deciding that he was an income bigot.

It was especially infuriating when some snot of a kid at school, the kind who swore and cheated and hit other kids and took their stuff was lavished with gifts from Santa. My mother tried to explain to me that the kid's parents had bought all that stuff, and just said it was from Santa, but this didn't help. I still didn't get what I wanted, and now some other kid's parents were lying to him, and other adults were OK with this because it spared his feelings! Maybe he needed to know that he was so naughty that Santa skipped him and his parents had to buy stuff and lie to him!

Charity drives were deeply puzzling to me. Why were people collecting toys? If those kids were good, Santa would bring them lots of toys! If they weren't good, and Santa didn't think they deserved anything, why should I? My mom again tried to distract me by pointing out that the kids in question had parents who couldn't buy them things, but that seemed to be completely beside the point.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to notice that every "Santa" you met looked and sounded different, and never remembered you or anything about you, even if you just saw him yesterday. I also hated the explanation that Santas in malls and stores were "Santa's helpers," there so small children could get the thrill of meeting him, while the real Santa was hard at work on gifts. Why was it OK to lie to small children? "So they'll enjoy it" made NO sense to me.

Yes, I was That Kid – the one with bad hygiene and ill-fitting clothes, having philosophical discussions with the adults even though I was only in kindergarten. Imagine how endearing all the other kids found me to be. Or not.

When I was 8 years old, I figured the whole Santa thing out, and suddenly the world made more sense.  Everything now fell into place, except for one thing – why in heaven's name were all the adults lying to the kids? They claimed it was so the kids would enjoy the holiday, but it did exactly the opposite! Why couldn't they see that? They could have saved me years of agonizing if they'd just been straight with me!

And how about the idea that it was OK to lie to other people, especially your own kids? Whoa, what a can of worms THAT idea opened. Did we even want to go there?

We kept the fact that I was now clued in from my dad for at least three more years, because he was one of those people who was depressed by the idea of kids no longer believing in Santa. I was the youngest, so he took it very hard. He spent my teenage years telling me how all the magic was now gone from the season. It was all I could do not to roll my eyes.

I've also been told that I must love Christmas because I can now redo everything that disappointed me as a kid, and create the perfect holiday.

Well, yes and no. My holiday never looks perfect. It sometimes takes me 3 days just to get the tree up and decorated, and we have an artificial tree. I can't remember the last time I even unpacked all the boxes of decorations. I'd love to be one of those people whose entire house is decked out to the nines, with even the bathrooms done up, but it's never going to happen. I can't find the time. Or the room – in order to deck out every shelf and tabletop, I'd have to pack up the stuff that's there now, and then where would it go? Or I could layer stuff in front of all my books, but then I couldn't get to the books, and that's just an undesirable outcome.

And there's always the time factor; I don't know why, but I always seem to be busy. Holiday baking at my house means boxed mixes and Rice Krispie Treats. They're yummy, we get to experience the whole ritual of baking for neighbors and friends, but who has time to do cut out cookies with piped icing and dragees? Not me. My oldest daughter always felt so let down when she'd say, "Let's make cookies" and I did chocolate chip or peanut butter cookies. One year, when she was only 4, I was so sick the week before Christmas that I did no baking at all, and she marched up to my bedside and announced, very peeved, "We didn't make cookies! We're SUPPOSED to make cookies!"

Poor kid.

My husband frequently has to work on both Christmas Day and Christmas Eve as well. That's usually meant that he'd get home at 3:30 on Christmas Eve, and we'd have 2 ½ hours to eat dinner, drive around to see the Christmas lights and anything else we wanted to do before he had to be in bed at 6.

It also meant that, on Christmas Day, he had to be to work at 3 a.m., so we'd have to wait until he got home (from his 12 hour shift) at 3:30 p.m. to open gifts. Then we'd scarf Christmas dinner before, yep, he had to be to bed at 6. I've had people ask why we didn't get up at midnight, not realizing that that would mean 6 hours of sleep for Dad, or why we didn't open gifts on Christmas Eve, not realizing that the same time constraints applied. Long story short, folks – twelve hour shifts mean very little available time. You do what you can with what you have.

And yes, it was important to wait for Dad. It's always important to be together, in my opinion. Plus, my husband has spent his life feeling left out and overlooked, and I'm not about to say, "We're celebrating without you."

Telling kids that you have to wait most of the day for Dad can be a hard sell. They always did it – they didn't rip into gifts unsupervised – but there was much wailing and whining. I explained over and over that we'd also wait if one of them couldn't be home, or if I couldn't be home, but I was never sure they internalized that until my youngest was one and hospitalized the week before Christmas. Our twelve year old, the one who was always very vocal about how unfair it was that we had to wait for Dad on Christmas Day said, "If Hallie's not home on Christmas, we just won't have Christmas until she's home again." Luckily, she was released on the 23^rd, but it was nice to know that the celebration would have waited for her.

On the one hand, I feel that we go all out in our celebrating, but that usually does not mean extravagant, expensive gifts. I've always been shocked when I hear that other kids have $300 and $400 items on their wish lists. I nearly choked the year my nephews got $2500 go karts for Christmas. We probably didn't spend $2500 on all our holiday shopping combined. Occasionally, we've gotten pointed comments from relatives about the perceived "cheapness" of our gifts. Then, feelings are hurt on both sides. I can't believe that the sentiment, "I'm thinking about you, and care about you" is perceived to come with a price tag attached, and they can't believe that we got them something small when we "can afford better." That's unpleasant, but I'm not going to be emotionally blackmailed into spending money. The only time I've ever even gotten my own children something expensive is when I'm sending them on a trip (I will spend far more on experiences than on stuff).

I did do something about the Santa dilemma, though. No way was I putting my kids through the kind of angst I went through.

They always got 1 gift from Santa, delivered by the Big Guy in person. He comes to our extended family party ever year. The gift was usually in the $10 range. As far as Santa himself, I told them that anybody who wants to give without receiving anything (even credit) in return can be Santa. Put on the suit, and you commit your time, talent and person to the idea of giving and making people happy. A big part of our holiday has always been buying gifts for charity drives, "for Santa to take to kids whose parents can't afford gifts." Anybody can be Santa. He is very real.

He does not live at the North Pole. All those stories and movies are about how nice it would be if someone could be Santa all the time, not just at Christmas.

They're an actor's kids; the concept of putting on the costume and being someone else wasn't hard to grasp. They had no problem with this concept until other kids, and even adults, would contradict them. They'd say something like, "Santa isn't coming to our house," and others would assume that they thought they wouldn't get any gifts, or that they hadn't been "good enough" to get the gifts they wanted. "OF COURSE Santa will come to your house! I'm sure he'll bring you lots and lots of toys!" people would tell them, and they'd be confused. Even when I was standing right there, trying to get a word in edgewise and tell some well meaning adult that my kids already got their gift from Santa, last week, and plenty more gifts from us and their relatives were already under the tree, they'd keep talking about how, "I'm sure you've been good, so just wait! Santa's sure to come to your house!" Occasionally, when my kids went back to school in the early weeks of December and said, "Guess what I got from Santa!" other people would tell them that Santa hadn't come yet, even though they'd sat on his lap and gotten the gift straight from his sack.

I don't think it was any more confusing than the mixed signals every kid gets, and I'm sure it was less confusing than my childhood, but I still wonder why other people will butt in instead of, say, asking for clarification. As an adult, I've seen some kids who say heartbreaking things – "Santa's sick this year, so he won't be able to come," and, "We live too far out in the country for Santa to find us." I would never dream of telling them that they're wrong, even though I find that kind of fiction to be far worse than the "if you're good" fiction. I think everyone needs to rethink all the messages we're sending.

So, the idea that my holidays are perfect now also fails to be convincing.

Part of my love of Christmas is, I know, the fact that, as a Christian, Christmas holds far more meaning for me than the decorations, gifts, songs and candy. Either you share that belief or not, and I'm not going to debate it. You either view the birth of Jesus as miraculous fact or silly fiction, and that's up to you.

I do love, though, how the celebration of Christmas is embraced by Christians, atheists, agnostics, doubters, pagans and the religiously incurious and apathetic. All those people are among my loved ones and acquaintances, and they are just as excited about tree trimming, wrapping gifts, drinking cocoa, attending parties and singing favorite Christmas songs as I am. As much as is possible, we all agree for a month every year. That's part of the magic, too.

It doesn't really matter why I love Christmas; I just do. Everything about it – the smells, sights, sounds, the shopping, all of it, just makes me happy.

So, every year, there will never be enough time to watch all the movies (hello, George Bailey, Ebenezer Scrooge, the Grinch, Charlie Brown!), hear all the music, see all the sights, attend all the events and just soak it all up. I would love to bring back the old European tradition of celebrating the twelve days of Christmas from December 25^th through Twelfth Night, January 6, but even then, I'd feel  bereft when it was over. It never lasts long enough.

All I can do is try, like Ebenezer, to keep Christmas in my heart all the year long.

Skin Deep

I'm musing here on size and appearance. I guess a little of that is inescapable.

It's been a few years since I wrote this. My once painfully thin daughter is now much rounder. Now I hear about how I should put her on a diet. That's just as annoying as hearing that she's too thin.

Why doesn't anyone ever think that someone is, in Goldilocks terms, "just right"?

*********************

I have, hanging over my dining room table, a replica of a newspaper ad from 1891. It's for a product called, "Fat-Ten-U-Food." "Respectfully tell the ladies," the headline blares, "Use Fat-Ten-U-Food to get Plump!" The copy is a scream. It trumpets your ability to become "plump and rosy, with HONEST fleshiness of form." It makes a point of saying that the pads, bustles and such in fashion at the time were dishonest and deceitful. Both the before and after images show women in their underwear, which, granted, cover more than most modern summer clothing, but was worn under all the additional pads. "Don't be like the poor unfortunate" in the "before" image, it warns. "Shorn of her artificially inflationary pads and devices, she must, in the confines of her bedroom, through shame, try to cover her poor, thin figure from the gaze of her beloved spouse." By today's standards, the "poor unfortunate" isn't even particularly thin. The look on her face, however, tells you that she's obviously mortified. She's holding her arms in a way that shields her bosom, indicating, of course, a flat chest. But wait, the ad promises, all is not lost! When you take Fat-Ten-U Food, you can walk "confidently through your bed chambers, conscious of YOUR PERFECTION of FORM!" The "after" image shows indeed, a plump, rounded woman. She's beaming and tossing her hair back. She has an ample bosom, dimpled knees, a well rounded stomach, and padded hips and bottom. Gone is the chiseled jawline of the "before" image. She looks like me with more hair.

 All this is followed by the requisite testimonial and photo. "In four weeks Professor William's famed FAT-TEN-U FOODS increased my weight 39 pounds, gave me new womanly vigor & developed me finely," the woman writes. She's sent in a photo of herself and her two sisters, who followed her lead and now, she writes, they all receive leading roles in the Grecian dance productions in Philadelphia. They too are wearing clothes best described as lingerie – fairly scandalous in that day and age, and certainly not designed to camoflage the body. They're very round and generously proportioned. My copy doesn't quite do justice to the original, which was displayed in the shop where I bought my print. In it, you can see far more detail. Believe me, you can pinch far more than an inch.

In my bedroom, I have a print of a Botticelli painting entitled, "The Three Graces." They're wearing diaphanous robes that again, are not designed to hide anything, including pounds. They're rounded and dimpled – no worries about cellulite there!

I display these things to remind myself, and everyone else, that the current obsession with being thin is very, very new. For most of history, thin people were pitied as being weak, sickly, and probably poor. Looking back through more ads of the nineteenth century, there are similar products sold to fatten up thin babies. The wording there plays heavily on parental guilt, and hints that people are saying unkind things about your poor, scrawny child behind your back. (Another benefit of these ads is to remind us that while we jeer at snake oil salesmen of the past, we're just as susceptible to miracle product claims as our ancestors were.)

It took me many, many years to be comfortable in my own body. That's true for almost everyone, I suppose; some people never do feel comfortable.

Marilyn Monroe was 5 foot 6 and weighed 145 pounds. MARILYN MONROE. In high school, I was 5 foot 8 and weighed 155. It was the early 80s, three decades too late to be considered Marilynesque. It was widely accepted by one and all that I was just too darned fat. I wore 12s and 14s while 7s were considered as large as you should ever be. The "guides" in magazines and such identified me as being "obese," more than 10 pounds above "ideal." My best friend since third grade wore size 3.

Even people who were trying hard to be supportive would say things like, "If you'd lose some weight, do something different with your hair, buy nicer clothes and learn to put on makeup, you could be pretty." I know they meant no harm, but it left me thinking: So, if nothing about me was the same as it is now, I MIGHT be considered acceptable? Gee, thanks. I feel warm and fuzzy all over. More usual were comments like this one, courtesy of my dad: "If you keep eating like that, you're going to get big as a house."

In my favor, even at my current, much higher than high school, weight, I've always had an hourglass shape. If I'd been able to carry myself back then with confidence, I would have been much better off. I'd still have been considered fat, but people wouldn't have constantly bugged me with their ideas for improving me. Judging by some of my photos, I could have passed for pretty as long as the viewer didn't have a waif fetish.

Just as annoying to me were my friends' efforts to change my hairstyle. I had long, naturally wavy, and, once upon a time, thick hair. I wore it straight down with nothing done to it for years, but by high school I was clipping back one or both sides with a barrette. That was it. Other girls, especially those with short hair, were itching to get at mine and make it over. Every now and then, at a slumber party or some such, I'd submit to having my hair done, usually to shut somebody up. I've never enjoyed that process. Anyway, most often they'd attempt to put my hair up in some fashion, because they could. I have a round face and a receding chin – if you put my hair up, I look like a senior citizen. I was a constant disappointment to girls who kept complaining, "Well, it should have worked." My favorite was the comment made after I'd had my hair French braided back: "You're right. You hair looks good by itself, but it doesn't look good on you."

Even my husband has never particularly considered me attractive. In his eyes, that's a good thing. He's always said that pretty women are conceited and high maintenance, which is why he doesn't want one. He'd also be unhappy with a wife people were hitting on behind his back. So, according to Dan, my not being pretty is good.

I finally came to the conclusion, well into adulthood and weighing much more than "ideal," that if people don't like the way I look, it's because I don't fit their taste, not because I'm flawed. Everybody's taste is different, and influenced much more by their culture than by any kind of objective standards. If I'd married a Polynesian man and moved to the islands, I'd still be considered scrawny, and they'd be trying to fatten me up. One size will never fit all.

I face the flip side of this coin with my children. You have no idea how much willpower it takes to be civil to people who say, "Don't you ever feed that kid?"

For whatever reason, I have children who have picked up the genes most apparent otherwise in my half sister and her second daughter. They're built like greyhounds. Much to my sister's, and sometimes their own, dismay, her other two daughters were built lush and curvy – more like me.

I am tired of relatives saying to my son, when he's wearing shorts, "Cover up those skinny legs!" I am tired of people telling my oldest that she doesn't eat enough. I am tired of hearing that my youngest has "a stick body." I am sick to death of body shape comments, from anyone or to anyone. I even hate it when they're positive comments. We are not cut out cookies, made by the same cookie cutter.

My youngest was fairly rounded at birth, but as she got older she thinned rather dramatically. I asked her doctor, when she was about eight or ten months old, whether I should be concerned. I wondered if, in the mess of her eating habits, she might not be getting enough to eat. His first comment was a flippant, "Oh, yeah, you've really got to watch that nursery peer pressure. It can be murder." He then told me that she was hitting all her developmental milestones and obviously happy, so not to worry. I still did, but I tried to keep it in perspective. All my children have had slight builds. If Hallie was smaller than her siblings, well, she's a different person. She's not going to be the same. Besides, I was aggravated to the point of screaming by the responses I got whenever I mentioned to someone that I was worried about her. "Oh, tall and thin – I wish I had her problems!" was typical. One friend said, "But you want little girls to be petite." We heard more variations on that theme. I was continually told how thrilled she'd be later in life. I wanted to slap people and say, "SHE'S ONE YEAR OLD!" I decided it was best to say nothing.

When she was thirteen months old, she was hospitalized with severe anemia. As soon as we arrived at the hospital, the nutritionist swooped down on us to talk about an iron rich diet. Hallie was still drinking formula at that point, because I was concerned about her, and formula has more nutrition, fat and calories than milk. Of course, one of the first things the nutritionist wanted to know was what kind of formula we'd used. I told her we were still using it, and handed her the container. She blinked and looked puzzled. "Well, this is exactly what I fed my kids," she said. After a few more questions, she was even more puzzled, so she ended up just dropping a bunch of literature on us and then leaving. We never saw her again.

After Hallie'd gotten well and been released, we were referred to a viral specialist, to see if she could confirm our doctor's hypothesis about the cause of the anemia, which he suspected to be human parvo virus. She seemed far more concerned with the baby's weight than with anything else. After the exam and review of her blood tests, she sent us on our way, telling us we wouldn't need to make a return visit. Then, she phoned our doctor and gave him an earful about how thin the baby was, and how it just wasn't right, and how she didn't think we were "concerned" enough about it. I'm sure the upshot of all this was that she thought we were unfit parents, and he had to get the baby out of our home immediately. The poor doctor spent the night awake, terrified that he'd missed something important, and called us into his office first thing the next day. His first comment when he came in to examine her was, "Well, that's just what Hallie looks like." She'd gained back a pound of the 1 ½ pounds she'd lost in the hospital, her color was back to a healthy pink, and she was cheerful and lively. Still, we put her on a new formula since she seemed to have a dairy sensitivity, and we went back and weighed her fairly frequently for the next few weeks. She gained slowly but steadily, the way she always had, and the doctor was satisfied that he hadn't missed anything. And lo and behold, she was still tiny. I don't think she ever got above the 5th percentile on the height/weight chart. He relaxed and wondered why the specialist had been so alarmed. We wondered how many other people we would run into who were sure we were lousy parents because our daughter was thin. They were as bad as the "thin is good" crowd, and quite possibly dangerous as well. A friend of mine had a miserable time sitting with a woman from Child Protective Services, trying to assure her that yes, her thin child ate as much as any other family member. The CPS woman was unconvinced, and my friend herself is built like a greyhound. I can just imagine the horror on a social worker's face when, gasp, fat parents have thin kids. You'd think with all the hysteria about childhood obesity people will be thrilled, but no.

I spend a great deal of my time telling my adolescents that they should no more expect people to have the same shape and size than they should expect them to have the same voice. My son plays sports, and we have never even hinted that he has to work harder than the burlier boys, or that the rounder kids are at a disadvantage. I won't allow anyone else to say such things to him, either. I'm fighting an uphill battle. WE SHOULD NOT ALL BE THE SAME SIZE OR SHAPE.

Come on Down! You're the Next Contestant...

This essay is six years old, but it's been on my mind lately, as the Muppets release their new movie. Right now, I'm thinking a lot about how and when I first fell in love with the Muppets.

So far this winter (where's wood to knock on?), I haven't been really sick yet. A friend has antibiotic resistant strep: there but for the grace of God go I.

One thing on my bucket list is a visit to Egypt. I've heard horror stories about infections from ancient mold in tombs shutting down people's lungs, and my kids frequently point out that West Nile virus is named after the Nile River. "You cannot go to Egypt!" they say. "You'll get sick!"

My husband is more pragmatic. "We're not going anywhere where we might be shot just for being American."

Mark my words, one day, I'm buying a plane ticket to Egypt.

Until then, I'll be glad that the Muppets are back in movie theaters.

***********************************

I have a cold again. Sometimes it feels as if I'm always sick. So many of my childhood memories involve lying on the couch in my pajamas, swaddled in a comforter. When you're looking at life through a fog of misery, it's hard to remember feeling any different. The memories that flood your brain are of fevers, headaches, sore throats, sleepless nights. I had a lot of those as a child.

Depending on what was wrong with me at the time, I'd have a tissue box and a wastebasket for my tissues, or I'd have a garbage bag lined trash can next to my head to throw up in. I might have a continually refilled glass of water, or my throat might hurt too much for me to swallow.

I came down with strep throat or tonsillitis at least once each winter. My stomach has always been fairly temperamental, and I'd get the stomach flu at the drop of a hat. Then there were all of the colds and flu that are inevitable. Still, it took me years to realize that I was sicklier than most people. If the schools would have had the attendance policy then that they had when my kids were attending, I would have failed several grades.

My dad retired when I was only a few months old. Both my parents were home with us until I was about five or six. Then, my mom took a part time office job, and worked from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. That left my dad in charge of me during the mornings when I was home sick.

Dad worried like crazy, but he wasn't very hands-on with children, especially sick ones. Even when I was very small, I could predict how the morning would go. After my mom left for work, my dad would pace around the living room for about fifteen minutes. Then, he'd say, "You OK?"

"Yeah, I'm OK," I would say.

"Well, I'm gonna go down to the Block S for a cup of coffee," he'd say. The Block S was a coffee shop type of business downtown. He'd meet up with his buddies there every morning, and they'd hang out, talk and drink coffee for about an hour or two. It was a very predictable routine.

"OK," I'd say, and off he'd go.

Even as a small child, I was not a boundary pusher. I wasn't going to use the time to play with matches, raid the wine or play with the guns. I'm a rule follower by nature. I never even left the couch unless I had to use the bathroom. No one ever worried about me being by myself while my dad was at the Block S, including me.

My oldest daughter always felt extraordinarily anxious if she was left alone in the house. She even felt anxious when she was babysitting her siblings. I never really understood that. She's home from college now, and if she gets home from work while the rest of us are out, it upsets her. When we came home recently, she ran from the other room to greet us crying, "People! People! Yay!" That's an improvement from her usual angry greeting of, "Where have you been? I've been here all by myself!"

As a child alone, I didn't worry about robbers breaking in, or kidnappers, or natural disasters, or fire, or anything else threatening my safety. I know now that such fears are very common. The only reason I could think of to worry was if I felt that my health would take a precipitous turn for the worse, and someone would have to be home to rush me to the doctor. Since such a thing had never happened and I felt sure it wouldn't, I felt completely comfortable being on my own.

My oldest child, one of my closest girlfriends, even my husband have always been the kind of people who equate being alone with being abandoned, unloved and in peril. I have always found it to be totally relaxing. It was the one time I knew I could relax completely. I didn't have to listen, talk, pay attention, interact or do anything else that took energy. I could just exhale and be.

I read and I watched TV – mostly game shows, never soaps. Since this was in the days before remotes, I often fell asleep with it on. That would be my day – watch, sleep, watch some more, sleep some more. I'd eat something if my stomach could take it; my mom made me lots of Jello. I'd spend all day or at least most of it lying on the couch. Then, at night, I'd go across the house and lie in bed. The thing I find most frustrating about being sick as an adult is that you have to keep up some level of functioning. You can't just sleep all day and all night. I'm sure I'd get better much faster now if I could sleep more.

I'm glad I didn't get hooked on soaps. Game shows may not be highbrow, but at least I was thinking.

I was never very good at "The Price is Right." Where do they get those prices from, anyway? I was very good at quiz shows, especially when the questions dealt with empirical data – what year did Napoleon suffer defeat at Waterloo, that sort of thing. "Family Feud" was a little iffier. Where exactly did they take their survey? Sometimes it seemed to be in a redneck bar after a few drinks, and sometimes in a corporate meeting room. Once I got a feel for what the "survey says," I could do OK.

After he got home from the Block S, my dad delighted in watching me play along with the quiz shows. I'd say my answer out loud, and even in the early elementary grades I often did better than the contestants. This pleased my dad immensely. "You should go on here!" he'd say. He thought I was some sort of amazing prodigy.

I thought it was because it had been too long since the adults went to school. They'd often be asking about things we had just discussed in school. I'd heard it weeks ago; the adults had heard it decades ago. My own kids often surprise me the same way. Just today, my seven year old saw a picture of a box kite. "Box kite! The Chinese invented those!" she informed me. How many adults would know that off the top of their heads?

Too, I didn't have a studio audience staring at me, bright lights in my face, and the pressure of millions of people watching. "I wouldn't do as well if I were there," I told my dad. He was sure I would. I disagreed, but usually silently, so he could be happy. One thing about my dad that you learned early – it didn't really pay to argue with him.

I loved reruns of the old Daniel Boone TV show. When I was about eleven, I watched the same actor, Fess Parker, play Davy Crockett in a movie aired while I was fighting strep throat again. That night I woke my mother in the middle of the night and informed her with wild eyes that, "The Indians want me to tell them where the gold is!"

She answered mildly, "Well, don't tell them, dear." Reassured, I rolled over and went back to sleep, saying, "OK." God bless my mom – she was always willing to sleep with us when we were sick, despite inconveniences like cold feet stuck under her for warmth, and feverish, delusional daughters waking her up to rant about "the gold." When I'd get thick, gluey phlegm closing off my throat, she'd rock me in the rocking chair in the dark. I didn't want conversation or entertainment; I just wanted comfort.

When I was eight years old, I discovered the Muppets. I came across Sesame Street on TV, and was delighted, even though I was years older than their intended audience. It was the beginning of a lifelong love affair with all things created by Jim Henson.

I was too old for the instruction on letter sounds and such, but I was captivated by the wittiness of the segments. Since I had a much older brother and sister and had listened to their music, when I heard a Muppet sing, "Letter B," I knew it was derived from a Beatles hit. It was charming and funny, and I felt very much "in" on a secret, since I was sure that preschoolers wouldn't know the original. Anyone who's watched any Sesame Street knows how often those moments crop up.

The musical segments were probably my favorites, but close behind came Kermit the Frog's roving reporter. As he'd show up with his news cap and microphone to report on fairy tales, something always went wrong, and he'd come unraveled. The poor hapless diner always ending up at a table served by Grover had my sympathy. And I felt for Big Bird back in the days when he was the only one of the gang to see Mr. Snuffleupagus.

The idealized neighborhood really appealed to me as well. I've always thought that reality should look something like that – everyone knew and liked everyone else (well, OK, everyone except Oscar), no one cared how old you were or what color or what species. Nobody cared about how much money you had, or what you wore or anything else superficial. And occasionally, everyone would break into a beautifully choreographed song and dance number. It was grand.

I kept watching Sesame Street whenever I was home sick, long after I left elementary school behind. I discovered I was not alone when I was a sophomore in high school. Karen, one of my best friends, was in the school choir, and let me in on one of their traditions. It was tradition in the choir for any sick member to watch Sesame Street and report back to the other members about what had happened that day. Heaven forbid that someone should forget – they'd face the collective wrath of teens denied.

When the Muppets branched out into The Muppet Show on TV and The Muppet Movie in theaters, I insisted on not only watching, but making sure my family and friends watched. Years later, it was a total delight to me to be able to introduce my kids to the Muppets.

When my kids are sick, I let them swaddle on the couch in front of the TV. Now, though, we have videos for them to watch if they don't like what's on our dozens of channels of satellite TV. It's a far cry from the remoteless days of channels 2, 4 and 8. Often they want to do something else, like sit surrounded by a stack of books or play on the computer. I insist on naps, too, since I believe firmly in the restorative power of sleep. Plus, for a little while, the discomfort goes away – how magical is that?

Not too long ago, I was home sick while the rest of the family went to church. I watched a wonderful biography of Milton Hershey, the chocolate king. Then I still had two hours to sleep before everyone else came home. It gave me a bit of that old comfort feeling of being able to check out of the real world for awhile and concentrate on existing horizontally – just me in my pjs, the couch and the TV. I'll bet I healed faster than I do otherwise. I'm not one to wish away my adulthood, pining for a childhood long gone, but boy, I do miss the ability to sleep through my sick days.

Death of a Friendship

I still feel that it's my fault that my high school endured nine years with a teaching assistant in the theater department who couldn't brace a flat and once set the lighting board on fire. It's not displaced guilt; it actually is my fault.

The longtime theater teacher left just before my freshman year. The school asked one of the English teachers to take the department in his wake, with the understanding that it would only be for a year. Then, they gave the job to a brand new teacher, barely out of college. She'd never even seen a live production, and was extremely intimidated. Still, during her first year with us I was a constant cheerleader, sure she'd read some books, loosen up, do something to make it all work. At the very least, she'd turn us loose and let us do it without her. Her first year, it worked that way. She opened and closed the doors and was the required adult presence. By my junior year, things had gone south in a dramatic and awful way.

Ariane and I had worked on a summer school production with an alumnus from our school. I'd reminded him that he'd known my sister, and we struck up a friendship. We'd invited him to see our shows, and he had. We, in turn, went to shows he was working on. He was in the final stages of earning his master's degree in theater. The lure of having an adult at our school who knew what they were doing was strong. We'd described to him some of the fiascos we faced.

Our teacher, coming across the stage direction "(beat)" was baffled. We explained to her that it was a short pause. Think of it like a beat in music, we said. You take a pause indicated by the way the dialogue is flowing – one beat, just like a beat of music. She refused to believe this explanation.

"If it meant 'pause,' it would say 'pause!' I've read scripts before. They always say, 'pause' when they want you to pause!" As if this wasn't ridiculous and alienating enough, she added, "I'm not stupid, you know." Her explanation? Everyone onstage was to simultaneously clap once. Really. It was just beyond painful to try to work with her.

She was intimidated by the kids who knew more about theater than she did; and really, that wasn't hard to do. Personal conflicts got out of hand and loomed so large they jeopardized the entire department. We were desperate for anything that would help.

"Please, K," we said to the grad student, "please come student teach at our school!" He'd been appalled by some of the stories he'd heard, and agreed with us wholeheartedly that something should be done. So, he showed up at our school. At first, I think, he was considered a community volunteer, like a parent who stuffs envelopes, but shortly he was approved by the administration to have all sorts of authority. I don't know if they ever paid him; it doesn't matter.

During the summer school production where we met, during the summer between my sophomore and junior years, K had puzzled me with some of his behavior. Theater people are, by and large, rather physically affectionate, but K seemed to constantly be in my personal space with no clear reason to be. He frequently said things like, "Want me to show you all the good make-out places in here?" He often walked with his arm around me. Every once in a while, he'd make some remark about "getting together" away from the theater. I'm fairly dense about these things, and could never quite figure out how serious he was. It was flattering and creepy at the same time. He seemed OK with the answer "no," so that was enough for me.

Occasionally I'd feel taken aback. When he came to see me play Abby and Ariane play Martha in "Arsenic and Old Lace," the first thing he said to me after the show, as he was hugging me, was, "You'd slap me if I told you what I can see through that dress." The dress in question was my Abby costume, a floor length, high necked number. I looked down self consciously.

"You can't really see through this, can you?"

"Oh, put it up under the lights and you'd be surprised," he said. I was more worried about the costume than I was in ferreting out his reason for bringing it up. If my costume, under which I wore a slip, was see through, surely someone would have noticed and told me, I decided. Nobody would want an elderly murderess character to be flashing her underwear, however demure. (And they were; I wore very plain, staid underthings.)

He'd come for our closing performance, and hung around afterward while we all cleaned and packed up. It's common knowledge that there will be some sort of party after closing night, so I figured that he might want to come to ours.

Instead, he invited me out. Just me. I turned him down, but he persisted.

"I'm going to the party at Joe's house. You're welcome to come, too. It's just a couple of blocks that way."

"Oh, come on. Half of them won't even be there." This was true. Three or four carloads of kids had already left, headed to Disneyland. That was the official cast party. My mother hadn't wanted to drive all night, even though the temperature was better, so she and I were flying down in the morning. Tony was picking us up at LAX.

"I really want to go to the party. It's our last show this year." I was nervous and talking too much, so I added, "Even though most of them are mad at me because I get to go to Disneyland tomorrow."

He pounced on that. "It'll be much more fun with me, especially since they're mad at you already."

We argued a bit back and forth as all the rest of the kids left for the party. Now K and I were the only ones in the parking lot, and the isolation was making me nervous. I wanted to be in my car, to put the car door between us. He was standing much closer than I thought was strictly necessary.

He finally, grudgingly accepted my answer, but insisted that he at least needed a good night kiss. The kiss was within acceptable bounds; he didn't push too hard. I was relieved as I watched him walk to his car. I was also worried that I'd protested too hard and hurt his feelings.

I didn't say much about it. I probably only told Ariane and Lana. Months later, I made a passing reference to Joe about having kissed K. He looked rather shocked but sensed, correctly, that I didn't want to discuss it further.

I undoubtedly should have been reluctant to have him to come to work at the school, but I wasn't. I was actually sure that it would mean he'd have to tone it all down; after all, it was a high school, he was 25 and about to be faculty and I was 17 and a student.

We were so glad he'd decided to come help us out. We had high hopes for the next year, glad that we finally had someone in authority who'd actually studied theater.

The high hopes were short lived. We found K to be picky and controlling, and we were astonished that the master's degree, which he'd now earned, hadn't given him the skills to do something simple like brace a flat. Flats are the wood and muslin constructions used to make walls onstage. He couldn't seem to get the edges lined up, or stop the wall from wobbling. The tops of the flats would tilt toward the audience, making the bottoms tilt in toward the backstage. Yet nobody was allowed to question him or redo the work; he pulled rank. We had to try and cover up the gaps with wheatpaste – the papier mache type substance used to cover the seams in the flats. We also learned not to walk too close to the walls while onstage or backstage. If we walked too close or even too fast, they swayed.

He had new procedures he wanted implemented, and we all grew increasingly tired of hearing his mantra, "Safety first!" It wasn't as if we were juggling saws. I resented hearing that our lofts, our storage, virtually everything about the theater, was a fire hazard. When I heard, after I'd graduated, that K had overloaded the lighting board and it had literally burst into flames, I was sure that the irony was lost on few of us. He was soon universally disliked, and it was a source of anxiety for me that I'd actually been the one to ask him to come.

He and the teacher were soon engaged. It was amazing how quickly he went from feeling she was incompetent and we needed rescued to feeling that we were all snotty ingrates who needed to buckle down. At least, I figured, if he's sleeping with the teacher he won't be bugging me about scoping out make-out spots.

And he wasn't. But he was still far too touchy feely. I wondered if I was reading too much into it; maybe, I thought, I'm misinterpreting things. Maybe it actually was a mistake when he brushed across my chest when picking things up.

I gave that idea up when I noticed how carefully choreographed any physical contact with me was. Almost all of it took place out of the line of sight of anyone else. Most of it was such that if I made a fuss, he could claim innocence. Back in the days before zero tolerance and Mary Kay Letorneau, even hugging or rubbing my back could have been argued to be innocent, and he didn't venture into clearly forbidden behavior. Mostly he rubbed my arm, back or neck, or gave me a hug. He still stood too close to me too frequently. I was sure, and I was sure he was sure, that if I complained I'd sound like a petulant toddler having to share the back seat with a sibling. "He's touching me! He's on my side!"

By this time, I was no longer speaking directly to the teacher, or she to me, unless it was absolutely unavoidable. There was no way I was going to tell her that her fiance couldn't keep his hands to himself. So strong was the animosity that even teachers who normally supported me were sure that I just had a blind spot or overreacted when I had a complaint about anything in the theater department. I regularly marched myself in and demanded an audience with the principal about things that bothered me – "What do you mean, the school can't afford a lousy gallon of paint? How are we supposed to paint the set?" – but I was sure he would think I was making it all up to get attention or to upset the teacher if I complained about K. More than twenty years later, I still think so.

I didn't even say too much to the other students, outside of my closest friends. Ariane heard most of the complaining. "I wish he would just keep his hands to himself!" "He's engaged, for crying out loud!" She knew, too, that it was useless to complain to the adults, so she commiserated with me. I didn't mention it to my parents. My dad would have become dangerous, and my mother hated conflict. The one time she'd been angry enough to go to the school and complain about a teacher's behavior, the principal had told her he could not interfere. She wasn't likely to make any more complaints.

That spring, I was asked to work tech on the school's first faculty play. I was almost always in charge of props and set decorating for our department. K was the technical director, and an English teacher, Mrs. B, was asked to co-direct with the theater teacher.

All was not well in paradise. I clashed often with Mrs. B. For one scene, an actor was supposed to carry on covered trays of food and set them on the table; immediately the scene ended and the set went dark. The trays were onstage for a total of ten seconds. Mrs. B was adamant that we cook an entire turkey dinner for the scene.

"We don't need anything on the trays! They can be perfectly empty!" I told her.

She sniffed, "The audience will be able to tell."

"No, they won't. Nobody ever opens the trays!" If they need to be weighted, I told her, you stack them with books. Then the actor carries them as if they're heavy, because they are.

Mrs. B did not like being contradicted, or having her direction questioned, by a student. She treated me to a loud, ringing lecture about "shortchanging the audience" by "trying to cut corners." By golly, we would cook a turkey dinner, we would put it on china, and we would put the whole thing onto the trays that never opened. We would do all of this despite the fact that we had no refrigeration backstage for the food. "They don't have to actually eat it," she rationalized when I pointed out the spoilage factor.

Meanwhile, K and I tangled about whose job it was to hang the paintings and such. It had always been my job, and more often than not influenced by flaws or holes in the flats that we needed to hide. K was sure that he was to make all the decisions about the dressings and props, and I should just put them where he dictated – after he approved them in the first place.

The teacher in charge and I assiduously avoided any contact with one another.

I realized that in the real world, the teachers were in charge and the students aren't, but that assumed that they actually, you know, taught. Years of experience had taught us that if you wanted it done right, you did it yourself. Things ran smoother when the inmates ran the asylum.

My blood pressure hovered in the danger range, I'm sure. I spent most of my time arguing or angry. It didn't help that the administration had vetoed a student production in favor of the faculty show. The students bickered amongst themselves, too. I found myself snapping at Joe and being snapped at by Ariane.

One day during construction, I was roughly center stage saying something to K, arguing about hanging artwork. For a moment, everyone else disappeared backstage, into the rafters or out into the halls. No one could see us. K cuddled up, put his arm around my waist and started rubbing my back. He snuggled close and crooned very quietly in my ear, "I know you've been upset…"

I had one of those moments of blinding clarity. This stops, my brain hissed, right now.

I bellowed at the top of my lungs, "DON'T TOUCH ME! DON'T YOU EVER TOUCH ME AGAIN!" He leapt back, farther than he would have if I'd struck him, and stared at me. I was not even remotely finished.

"I'm assuming that you asked me to work on this show because I'm good at what I do. If you want me to leave and someone else to do it, tell me now. I'll be out of here. But if you want me to work on this show, then you and everyone else need to get out of my way and let me do my job!" Heads were popping around corners to stare at us. Several kids had emerged back onto the stage. We were now surrounded, and anyone who couldn't see me could hear me. I stood center stage, using an actor's voice trained to reach the back row of the theater without amplification, and I was on a roll.

I carried on for only a minute or two, pausing only to snap questions like, "Do you want me to work on this show or not?" K stared at me, clearly wishing the floor would open and swallow me. He answered me only in monosyllables. I barked one more instruction to leave me alone and never, ever touch me, and I was done. There. I'd put it out there, in front of everyone.

"I should have thought of this months ago!" I exulted to Ariane. K not only never touched me again, he started giving me a wide berth. He started avoiding eye contact. I no longer felt micromanaged. I don't know if it occurred to him that I was now 18, and unwanted advances were no longer criminal. I wondered how he could be worried about what I might say to his fiancee when we were not speaking. I was not, though, about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

And, while I still had to make the stupid turkey dinner, when it turned green and fuzzy we got to throw it out and weight the trays with books.

By the time I graduated K and I rarely spoke to one another, either. I went to work that summer at the huge hotel/casino where he worked. I'd forgotten that he worked there until I saw him in the employee lunch room one day. Then I remembered that he worked backstage at the huge, splashy show in the main showroom.

Back when we'd been friends, he'd told me that he'd wanted to perform in the show, but the producers didn't allow him to audition. At 5'7", he was an inch under the male height requirement. I'd gleefully ribbed him about being 5'8" myself.

After avoiding him the first time I saw him, I decided to be a bit more proactive and a lot more irritating. From then on, if I saw him in the employee hallways, I'd walk along side him and ooze saccharine sweetness. "Hi, K! How are you?" I no longer worried that I'd offend him. The sole purpose of this exercise was to revel in the fact that he clearly hated it. He avoided looking at me and answered in little more than grunts.

That same year, the year after our graduation, Ariane and I went back to the high school to see our friends perform, "Butterflies Are Free." K was the technical director again – sigh. He sat directly in front of us during the show and ignored us pointedly.

During the show, an actor went through an onstage door and shut it. Not slammed it dramatically, just shut it. The entire wall containing the door groaned and fell over. Not flat onto the ground, mind you, the way it would in a cheesy sitcom, but at a 45 degree angle, just hanging there. We could not contain ourselves and began to snicker and guffaw. Even in the dark, we could see K's ears turn red. We could almost see cartoon-style steam coming out of the top of his head. He got up and stormed out of the theater, which made us laugh even harder. We apologized to our friends afterward, in case our laughter had disturbed them, but their take was, "He deserved it."

I swore I'd send him and his fiancee a sympathy card and contraceptives for their wedding, but I didn't.

I moved away a year later and lost all track of K. Many years later I found out the he stayed at the school for nine years. I felt there was some sort of horrible penance I had to perform to make up for that. All I could think was, good heavens, this is all my fault. But then again, maybe I was being too hard on myself.

Go Ahead. Disagree With Me.

               One of my daughters tended to get into unnecessary, interminable arguments with her childhood best friend. Both bright, opinionated and stubborn, they loved each other but would occasionally butt heads with vigor. Once, my daughter came home from school furious, absolutely fuming, because they'd argued about vacations. "She won't admit that our vacation was better than hers!" my angry child informed me.

                "It's a good thing that she loved her vacation. Hers was best for her family, and ours was best for our family," I told her. My offspring did not agree; she practically snorted with derision.

                "But ours was so much better than hers! Hers was lame! She just won't admit it!"

                In spite of my repeated attempts to explain that everyone has different tastes, and that everyone should be happy with their own lives instead of being envious of others, they were both so angry that they didn't speak to each other for a couple of days, each convinced that their trip was best (and that the other girl was the stubborn one).

                Two or three years later, they got into an argument about religion. Again, my daughter came home from school fuming and angry. Both our families attended Christian churches, but, of course, there are differences in doctrine. The girls had been arguing about one of those differences.

                "A lot of churches believe that," I told her when she explained her friend's position.

                "But that's wrong!"

                "Yeah, but they think we're the ones who are wrong."

                We went around and around. I tried, repeatedly, to explain that everyone believes different things, that that's OK. Everyone needs to be polite and respectful to others whose opinions are different.

                "But I explained to her how it is, and she just kept repeating!"

                "And you kept repeating."

                "I was explaining! She wouldn't listen!"

                "And she was explaining what she believed. She listened and she understood you; she just didn't change her mind. After you each said it once, you need to stop. After once, it's not explaining any more. It's arguing. Arguing will not change people's minds. It will just make them angry. She's too good a friend to lose over a difference of opinion."

                I was frustrating my daughter almost as much as her friend was. Finally, she snapped at me, "So I'm just supposed to let people think things that are wrong?" She was apparently unprepared for my answer:

                "YES!"

                 I become more and more convinced that parents must have stopped telling their kids this at some point. So many people seem totally unclear on the fact that people have a moral, and in the U. S., a legal, right to think and say things that others find silly, superstitious, prejudiced, immoral, inaccurate and in any other way just plain wrong.

                I watch in amazement as people who consider themselves freethinking libertarians comment on something in the media by saying, "I can't even believe they're allowed to say that!" without a hint of irony.

                Quite often, the people who profess to be the most open minded will be the most scathing toward anyone who disagrees with them. Sometimes I'll have ludicrous conversations with people. They'll be going all existential, insisting things like, "There is no universal right or wrong. Everyone's path is just as valid as anyone else's," and I'll be unable to resist saying, "So, my path of choosing to follow a fairly strict, religious course is just as valid as your path." Almost invariably, that will be met by, "Well, no, because in your path, you tell other people that their course is wrong. That's not OK." So much for the concept that there is no wrong choice.

                "So you think I'm wrong."

                "Yes! And I think if you try to tell other people what to do, that's hurtful and dictatorial."

                "So it's wrong to tell people that what they're doing is wrong."

                "Yes! Exactly!"

                "So then, is it wrong of you to tell me that I'm doing things wrong? You just did. Are you being hurtful and dictatorial by telling me that I should do things differently?"

                "No! I'm trying to get you to see that everyone else should choose their own path!"

                "But you think the path I've chosen is wrong."

                "You didn't choose it! You're doing what someone else tells you to do!"

                At that point, I can either go with, "But if you tell me to do something, and I do it, that's OK," or "So an opinion is only valid if no one else agrees with it? No one ever introduced you to the things that you believe?" Either one will make the other person angry.

                Usually, it will boil down to something that looks like, "It's OK for me to do certain things because my opinion is right. It's wrong for you to do those same things because your opinion is wrong."

                So exhausting. So annoying. So erroneous.

                Frequently, it's best to just stop the discussion, because nothing productive will come of it.

                It's not just the biggies – religion, politics, child rearing – that get folks up in arms. I once had someone badger me for months because I like a particular chain restaurant's chili. ("They use the burgers that have cooked too long to sell! You're OK with paying to eat overcooked beef that they couldn't sell as burgers?" Answer: "YES. And it's a heck of a lot less wasteful than throwing it out!") When my daughter was getting married, I listened to more than one person criticize her choice to have matching attendants' dresses by saying, "Doesn't she know that matchy-matchy went out of style?" YES. Yes, she knew. She just didn't care, and it was HER wedding. Say that to certain people, and you'll get quite the reaction. Apparently, in some circles, it's more shocking to be willfully unfashionable than it is to disagree on whether or not there's a God.

                I always thought that people shared ideas so that they'd understand one another. I am never offended if you don't agree with me. I am offended if you question my intelligence or if you browbeat me with the intent to change my mind. So often, with people I know personally and people I read about or see on TV, I see shades of those two girls whose age was barely into double digits; people get increasingly angry if they can't change your mind. They've explained the error of your ways to you. If you persist in holding your opinion instead of changing to theirs, well, that's obviously a sign of low intelligence and almost criminal stubbornness. That attitude makes me angry. It always will.

                I notice, too, that many people attempt to avoid the unpleasantness of being adult enough to disagree peacefully by caving in. Faced with a loved one who is doing something that they always believed to be wrong, this type of person will think, "My loved one is intelligent, well intentioned and well informed. Therefore, if they disagree with me, I must be wrong." That's ridiculous. It is totally possible to be intelligent, well intentioned, well informed and wrong. Do you know anyone – ANYONE – with whom you haven't the slightest disagreement on ANY subject?

                We, collectively, seem to have lost the knowledge that you can truly, deeply care about someone, even love them, and consider them to be wrong at the same time.

                Sometimes, someone will attempt to show me the error of my ways by saying, ever so gently, "You know that most people disagree with you, right?" as though 1. I didn't know, and 2. I will now immediately conform to the majority simply because there are more of them. Really, folks? What's that about?

                It also ticks me off when people ask, "Aren't you aware that your opinion causes other people pain?" Yes. Yes, I am aware. Do you know what my first clue was? The fact that the opinions of other people often cause ME pain. I understand this to be a normal part of the human condition, not a reason for forced conformity.

                Think about it: according to many religious teachings, including those of my religion, certain behaviors will not necessarily cause pain in this life, but will cause eternal separation from loved ones in the next life. If you're in my life, I want you to continue to be there. It's an act of amazing restraint on my part that I don't burst into tears every time I see someone doing something that I believe to be wrong.  If I flung myself, sobbing, at the feet of every person who, say, drank alcohol in my presence, wailing, "I don't want to lose you!" people would think I was a loon, and the relationship wouldn't last long.

NOT flinging myself down sobbing doesn't mean that I agree with you. It means that certain aspects of your life are none of my business, so I stay out of them. I expect you to return the favor.

I see frequent complaints on Facebook that, "Someone un-friended me because of something I said!" Just as frequently, I see status posts that say, "If I ever offend you, or if you want to talk about (insert topic), please unfriend me!" While anyone in my life is certainly free to dump me at any time, and I will never try to keep someone in my life who doesn't want to be there, I find the idea that we can only be friends with people we agree with to be sad – and juvenile.

Someone tried to explain that to me once by saying, "I just can't be friends with someone who has opinions that I find to be morally wrong." I wonder if they thought about the fact that their opinions were offensive to me, and yet I didn't feel the need to jettison the relationship.

If they didn't, they should have.

Remembering the Loss of Darren

Sometimes, I'll have a dream about an old friend. I haven't seen him in years, and I'm always so happy to see him. As usual, he looks great. We'll be doing something, talking, and I'll start to wonder why he looks so much younger than I do. It doesn't usually dawn on me why until I wake up. He never got gray hair, or laugh lines, or middle aged spread. He's frozen in my memory, frozen in time, before he got sick. Before he died of AIDS.

He'd be glad that the automatic image my brain calls up is of him looking gorgeous.

It's rare that you end up being best friends with your first high school crush. I met Darren in the fall of 1980, when I was a freshman. He was only 3 months older than I was, but he was a sophomore. He had a part in the first play of the year, and I was an usher. He was very good, delightful to watch, and ridiculously good looking on top of being talented. I developed a raging crush on him.

We discovered that he lived right around the corner from me. I loved it when he'd pick me up and drive me to school in whatever sports car he owned at the moment; I felt incredibly cool and very special. I was jealous when he had girlfriends.

It took a while, but I discovered that I was happier being his friend than his girlfriend. Girlfriends came and went, and breaking up was never a Bruce and Demi affair in which they were best friends afterward. Sometimes, they barely spoke afterward. Darren and I, though, became closer over time. I was glad that I wouldn't be relegated to the scrap heap, so to speak, any time soon.

I'm glad that I remember his smile so vividly, because I don't think I have many photos of it. In most photos, especially school photos, he refused to smile. He didn't have an "I'm soooo cool" James Dean glower, either. In most of his school photos, he looks deeply depressed, like he's about to cry. "Smile, for crying out loud! What is that look?" I'd say. "I look stupid when I smile," he'd reply.

He had a wicked sense of humor, which was occasionally too bawdy for my taste. He was a talented artist, drawing detailed and accurate automobiles of all kinds. While I was an actor and a technician, Darren was an actor, period. He had no desire whatsoever to do any tech work. When we both joined the debate team, I did both debate and speech events, but Darren only did speech, events like Dramatic Interpretation.

We got to the point where we could usually tell what the other was thinking. We developed a signal, a hand-to-the-forehead-and-then-outward motion that meant, "Catch this thought." Most of the time, we could.

My parents didn't want any of their kids getting a driver's license before they were 18, but when I was 15 my dad bought a VW van that became, by default, the car I learned to drive in, and subsequently became "my" car. My mom made Darren his own key, at least 2 years before I had one, so he could drive me places in my car. We called it "bussing," since we were in a VW "micro bus," and we'd go together or in groups to the mall, to the movies or out to eat. He loved the magic and joke shop. Once, we bought Groucho Marx glasses and went to McDonald's wearing them. Another time, we drove the van backwards through the drive through, and ordered out of the sunroof.

I don't remember exactly when, or how or with whom, he started smoking pot. I was such a total straight arrow, uninterested in chemical escape and unable to imagine either rebellion or conformity as a means of bonding, that it caused me literally physical pain. I was devastated, every day. He knew I didn't approve, but I don't think the depth of my reaction was entirely clear or would have made any sense to him. (With certain people, I spent my time waiting for them to grow out of various behaviors, while they undoubtedly spent their time waiting for me to get with the program and act like a "normal" kid.)

"Look at my pupils," he'd say, or, "Smell my shirt," to point out to me during school hours what he'd been doing between classes. He'd giggle when I scolded him. He moved on to other assorted intoxicants, and was soon dealing.

He had a part time job at McDonald's, but made far more money selling drugs. He always figured that he hid this fact rather well, but come on, what 16 and 17 year old kid buys a sports car with cash? "I could have saved that from my job," he said when I pointed this out. Not in this universe, I thought, but his parents seemed oblivious, so who knows?

My mom always knew who was doing what among my friends; either I'd tell her, or they would. Darren didn't drive me or my car while intoxicated, and never offered me anything – in fact, forbid others to – so she didn't worry about me, just about his own safety.

We were still in our teens when he told me that he was gay. He made no real secret of it to anybody. I was a total mother hen – my friends frequently called me "Mom" – so my worry about him increased. It was the early 80s, and AIDS was brand new. The CDC had identified three high risk groups – gay men, intravenous drug users and hemophiliacs – and Darren was in two of those groups, and cavalier. "Be careful!" I'd say, over and over. I was terrified that something would happen to him.

He did not share my worry.

He came home from a weekend trip to Las Vegas and told me, rather gleefully, "I was really sleazy this weekend." I was beside myself. "Are you insane? Do you want to get sick? Do you want to die? You CANNOT be sleazy in Vegas!"

He laughed. "That's exactly why you go to Vegas!" he said. Over and over, if I panicked he'd shrug and say, "If I'm going to get it, I'm going to get it. I'm not going to worry." I tried not to make myself frantic.

When he was diagnosed as HIV+, just a year or two later, I never again criticized his behavior.

I read every news story about treatments, hoping for a cure.

Darren did my makeup for my engagement portraits; I knew he'd do a better job than I would.

After I got married and moved to a small town hours away, Darren sent me a stack of photos from Reno, "so you won't be so homesick." One of my favorites was a shot of the sign outside of a business that I used to pass daily while I was at work, "The Hitchin' Post Wedding Chapel." It was one of the tackiest things I'd ever seen, and he knew it. Another favorite was a shot of a man walking toward the dumpster in Darren's apartment complex. On the back Darren had written, "This bum goes through my garbage every day." I laughed out loud; I still laugh at that.

He moved to Hollywood, where he kept a coffin in his living room ("This is the guest bed,") and once hung his Christmas tree upside down. He became fascinated by vampire stories. (Now that vampires are mainstream, I wonder what he would have thought about the whole "Twilight" thing.) One of the last photos he sent me before he got very sick is the photo that still hangs on my wall. He's sitting, in sunglasses and impeccable clothes, on the beach in Santa Monica.

Once when we were both visiting our parents at the same time, he walked around the corner to see my family. My older daughters were probably 3 and 4 at the time, and fascinated by his left arm. He had a bat tattoo that extended the entire length, with the bat's body in the crook of his elbow and the outstretched wings going from wrist to shoulder. My girls had never seen anything like it, and they trailed their fingers over the drawing. "What is that?" "How did you do that?" "Does it come off?" they wanted to know. His concise answer: "With needles. It hurts. Don't do it." Is there a better way for an honorary uncle to explain body art to preschoolers? I don't think so.

He never said so, but I think he appreciated the fact that we weren't reactionary and paranoid about getting sick ourselves. In the late 80s, some people were still saying things like, "How do we know for sure the virus can't be airborne?" We hugged him; my kids sat on his lap. He was no danger to us.

When he got so sick that he could no longer live alone, he called to arrange to stop by my house on his drive from California to Pennsylvania with his mother, moving from his Hollywood home to hers outside of Philadelphia. My husband was at work and my kids were at school when they came through, and they only had about half an hour to spend, but it was nice having him almost to myself one more time. He was starting to look, and feel, a little too thin, but if you passed him on the street you wouldn't have known that he was ill. I got to hug him twice more before we were separated by thousands of miles.

"I need to see Darren one more time when it gets really bad," I told my husband.  He didn't even hesitate; Darren was family. Another dear friend, whom he'd called "Little Sister" for years, talked with me and decided that she, too, would fly out if we sensed that he was slipping away.

Darren took up sewing. In the last two photos he sent to me, he's modeling a coat he made and holding up a quilt he'd crafted. He finally looked sick, even though the only part of his body you can see clearly is his face. He was far too thin, and his skin was grayish. I bought a plane ticket to Philadelphia.

He phoned me, surprised by the news. "Have you booked a hotel? Don't book a hotel without checking with me! Parts of Philadelphia are really scary; you don't want to go there alone!"

His voice was starting to sound hoarse, and he slurred slightly. He was on an enormous amount of medication, including painkillers.

He phoned a week or so later, and said, "I hope that ticket was refundable. I really don't want you to see me like this. I can't go anywhere or do anything with you anyway." I started to protest, to insist that I didn't care, but he asked, in no uncertain terms, "Please don't come. I don't want you to see me like this. I don't want anybody to see me like this. I want you to remember the way I used to be."

"Is your ticket refundable?" It wasn't, and it cost slightly more than my monthly mortgage payment. "No problem. It's totally refundable," I lied.

I should have made the trip months earlier.

Darren died in 1995; we were both 29. Our friend Sue called to tell me when he passed away. His mother planned a memorial service in California, just 2 hours from me, so that his West Coast friends could attend. I left my girls, now 7 and 8, at home, but brought my infant son, whom Darren had never met. He sat on my lap in his sailor suit, one of three people in the room that I knew, Darren's mom and another high school best friend being the other two.

It was the second time in less than a year that I lost a very dear 20-something friend to disease. No matter how much time you have to "prepare," you're never prepared. I felt decades too young for my friends to be sick enough to die. Accidents I could have understood. Illness seemed somehow wrong.

Professional modeling photos from his time in LA sat in frames in the middle of the room, and the mourners sat in a circle. His aunt read a poem, some formal words were said, and then the time was opened to the rest of us for remarks. Everyone sat in silence; his friends from LA sat across from me looking uncomfortable.

Nobody wants to go first, I realized. OK, I'll go.

I told stories. I talked about the rubber noses, the ever changing array of cars, the things we'd done while growing up. I don't remember a fraction of what I said, but when most of his family laughed at something, I knew it was OK. And after the ice was broken, then others felt comfortable getting up and speaking.

After the service was over, his friends from LA came over to talk to me. "Until you got up to speak, I almost thought I was at the wrong service," one of them joked. "After you spoke, I thought, 'That's the Darren I know.' "

Sometimes, in my sleep, my brain forgets that he's gone. And I never dream about him sick; he's always healthy, vibrant and grinning. I can hear that distinctive laugh, just as clearly as I ever could.

I miss you, Darren. I love you always.