All the Japanese People Were Wearing Pants

"All the Japanese people were wearing pants!"

The outrage in my oldest daughter's voice carried all the way over the line, clear as a bell despite the hundreds of miles inbetween us. She was a newlywed, unpacking in her first home with her husband. She'd finally taken most of the stuff from her room at our house (even though she hadn't lived there for 5 years), and was looking through her photos. She'd come across one from Sea Life Park in Hawaii.

We'd taken the trip to Oahu when she was 11, Terry was 10 and Alex was three. We'd tried to sign up for a dolphin encounter at the park; the highlight was getting into the dolphin pool. There was only one opening, so we signed Lana up. She's always loved the ocean and dolphins in particular, so it was obvious which of us would enjoy the encounter the most.

Aside from mainlanders, Japanese vacationers made up most of the tourists we saw. Every other member of her dolphin encounter was Japanese, and most were adults.

Lana wore her swimming suit under her clothes all day. When the time came for the dolphin program and they were ushered into the briefing room, Lana started taking her clothes off. "Honey, we don't get into the pool until the end," one of the dolphin trainers said. "You can change then."

"No, I'm OK," she said, neatly folding her shirt and shorts.

Before they got into the pool, a group photo was taken. Since Lana was one of the shortest ones, she was in front. The other participants hadn't changed yet; no one thought anything of it at the time. She'd been in her suit for half an hour or so at that point.

Each participant also got a photo of themselves and a dolphin while they were in the pool - that's one of my favorite photos from that trip.

Now, years later, Lana was beyond scandalized by the group picture. "I'm wearing a swim suit, socks and sneakers! I look ridiculous! Everybody else has pants on! Why didn't you make me wear pants?" Neither her dad or I could see anything to get worked up about, which made her even more upset. "My husband laughed! He says he's going to send it in to awkwardfamilyphotos.com!"

For the last few years, she's brought the subject of what I should, and should not, have let her wear up several times - "How could you let me wear that?" The thing is, we're not talking about photos of her as a toddler in a tutu and cowboy boots (which, admittedly, would have been fine with me). Most of the time, her age is well into double digits, and the clothes in question were favorites of hers. Sure, they might be out of style years later, but they weren't then. I point out that she has never liked my taste in clothes - she spent most of her life trying to dress me. I remind her that she would have argued bitterly. "Did you want me to spend every day hitting my head against a brick wall? We would have both been miserable." She still insists, "You should have!"

Until she hit puberty and realized that jeans were fashionable, she hated them. "They're stiff, they're hot and they make me sweat." Even at camp, she wore knit stretch pants. In her late teens, this just mortified her. "WHY didn't you take away all my stretch pants and only buy me jeans?"

"Because. You. Hated. Them!"

When I did very rarely put my foot down, she'd had meltdowns. In junior high, she'd tried to wear dirty pants to school. You'd think someone meticulous about appearances would never consider such a thing, but in her mind, it was better than wearing what was still in her closet. After I insisted that she change, she hauled another pair of jeans out of the hamper and I had to be very specific - "You will not just change, you will put on something clean."

"But all my pants are dirty!"

"Then wear a skirt or dress."

"To school?" She loved her dresses, and she owned - I am not making this up, 26 of them at the time - but not to wear to school.

I insisted. She complained. I dropped off a very angry girl in a dress just before the bell rang.

When I picked her up after school, she flumped onto the seat and slouched down, announcing, "I knew it. Everyone said I looked ridiculous."

Sigh. "Lana," I said, "I know you. You walked into class this morning, and the first thing out of your mouth was, 'I feel ridiculous. I didn't want to wear this, but my mother made me.' " She stared at me with that deer-in-the-headlights look. "Honey, I know what you're hoping when you say things like that is that your friends will say, 'Oh, no, you look great! I love that outfit!' but what they're actually going to say is, 'You're right. You look awful. I can't believe you left the house looking like that.' You cannot get angry with people for agreeing with you." She said nothing on the ride home.

At 16, she'd once had to stay home from a dance after having a shrieking fit and throwing her shoes across the living room. (We had guests, too; great.) She always arranged her clothes into Outfits, deciding that a particular top ONLY went with particular bottoms. In this case, it was a denim skirt, white top and white canvas shoes. When the shoes were new, they looked great. They were now far from new; she'd actually used them for creek walking at camp the previous summer, and it was now December. Her teacher at church had actually requested that she not wear them to church any more. After she wore them to church again, her teacher was deeply puzzled - "I mean, I know she has nice shoes. I've seen her wear them." But, in her mind, ONLY those shoes went with the denim skirt. One night, she tried to wear them to a dance, and I'd had the audacity to tell her to put on another pair of shoes. She owned quite a few. After the shoes sailed across the room, accompanied by angry yelling, her dad and I had simultaneously said, "OK, you can stay home," and she burst into tears, wailing, "Dances are the only thing in my life I have to look forward to!"

And now I was getting lectures on how I should have argued with her MORE often? To what end?

The thing is, I naively believed that at some point, my kids would appreciate a mom who hadn't micromanaged their wardrobes. I've actually had to reshoot a senior portrait session, because the girl showed up to the shoot alone and her mother hated what she was wearing in the photos. She wasn't dressed scantily, or in anything dirty or controversial, but she was (gasp) wearing pants, and her mother wanted her photographed in a dress. "And she didn't even DO anything with her hair!" the mother told me in outrage, intimating that I should have refused to photograph a girl who showed up looking the way she did every day. I never put my kids through that.

The thing is, my oldest still hates my taste. Not six months before the conversation about the Japanese people and their pants, she had literally been in tears over the shirt we bought her. We took a family trip, and on one day we all planned to wear matching shirts, so we bought all of us one. She hated hers, convinced it was too big and too baggy and she "looked ridiculous." All five of us assured her that she looked fine, but she only consented to wear it under a jacket that she kept zipped up. And this is an adult! How in the world would it make sense to have had those conversations every day?

(I wrote this in 2003. We will obviously never be on the same page about this.

My daughter loves me anyway.

But, I do fear that she'll destroy childhood photos.)

No, Not Cereal...

In our weekly Rotary Club meetings, our club president usually offers raffle tickets to club members who can answer trivia questions. He also generally does a "This Day in History" feature. Sometimes, the questions will relate to the history he shares.

One night, he offered a ticket to anyone who could provide a name: "Today in history, the first known female serial killer in American history was executed in Florida. What was her name?" I looked around the room, waiting for someone who'd seen Charlize Theron's Academy Award winning performance in Monster. (I didn't see it; I avoid R rated movies until they're on TV or I can buy them in edited form.) No hands went up, so I raised mine and offered, "Eileen Wuornos."

I was right; several club members were surprised. "It's kind of creepy that you know that," one said. I went home and related that comment to my family. My 16 year old laughed.

"Have they met you?" he asked.

Indeed, my family is quite aware that I have all sorts of information about unsavory criminals, especially serial killers, in my head. I could have answered questions about Wuornos's childhood, victims, girlfriend, nickname and jail time. I know things not just about the well known individuals - the Son of Sam, the Boston Strangler - but people like Arthur Shawcross and Joel Rifkin. Often, I've watched interviews with them, so I can describe the things they did in their own words.

This is not, apparently, what people expect of a religious, middle aged mom with prudish taste in entertainment. I don't even watch horror films. What gives?

As with many things, the explanation lies, I think, in my growing up years. For one thing, I don't think of this information as entertainment - not at all. I tend to think of it as reconnaisance - scoping out the enemy.

I can trace this back to 1979, the year that I was 13. That year, a girl I knew from church and her best friend disappeared. They were 13 and 14.

Brenda Judd was never in my class at church, but I knew who she was. Her family was prominent in our congregation, and Brenda was pretty, popular and talented. I'd never met her friend Sandra Colley, but I can see, in my head, her face in the school photo her family provided to the newspaper, even more than 30 years later.

They disappeared from the Nevada State Fair. Having someone I knew disappear from a familiar place was shocking. I stared at their photos on the front page, and I wondered. When the time came for our church's summer camp, we wondered aloud to each other. Brenda should have been at camp; where was she? What happened?

Gerald Gallego and his commonlaw wife Charlene Williams happened. They killed at least three people in Sacramento, drove 2 1/2 hours over the Sierras to Reno, took Brenda and Sandra, killed them, and buried them somewhere about two hours east of their homes. (Their bodies weren't found until 1999.)

It was horrifying. Safety and security are hotbutton issues for me, and to have the feeling that terrible things could and did happen to someone in our own community shook me in a way that I don't think it's possible to fully recover from.

Williams cut a deal, testifying against Gallego in exchange for a lighter sentence. She was released years ago; she changed her name and disappeared. Gallego was sentenced to death, but cancer took him before the state did.

Putting a name and a face to the devil wasn't the worst part of the experience; it was reading the details. It didn't matter that it was years after the girls disappeared, after Gallego and Williams were in jail. Those details blew to shreds any remaining feelings of safety.

All kids of my generation were taught things designed to keep us safe from what's now called "stranger danger." We were told: Don't talk to strange men. Always stay with a buddy. Don't go into deserted areas in public - stay with the crowd. Don't let someone give you candy, drinks, alcohol or drugs. Don't get into strange cars. Let your parents know where you are, and what time you'll be back. Go out in the daylight hours, not at night. If someone suggests something that makes you nervous, say no. Don't engage in suggestive talk with any adults, or with kids you don't know (or for that matter, with kids you do know). Brenda and Sandra had followed every one of those rules on the day they were taken, every single one. And they ended up dead.

Williams, a tiny, softspoken woman barely 5 feet tall, had approached the girls at the fair and offered them $20 to help her put flyers under the windshield wipers of the cars in the fairgrounds parking lot. According to Williams, one of the girls even expressed relief that Williams wasn't trying to "hustle" them into something unacceptable.

The girls were arguably still safe until the sliding door of the Gallegos' van opened. The amount of time between safety and oblivion was about two seconds.

No one had ever said to their kids, "Avoid small, polite women offering you a job in broad daylight in a crowded, public place." No one could imagine the need.

The idea that everything we'd been taught about staying safe, the very things I'd planned on telling my own kids, were woefully inadequate just undid me. It could have been anyone, anywhere. It could have been me and my best friend.

In 1977, eight year old Lisa Bonham disappeared from a park I'd been to many times. Her clothes were found in a trash can along the freeway; months later, hikers found her skull not far from town. I was horrified - I was only 11, after all - but I had decided that it was something that was so rare, so bizarre, that it would never happen again. Now, I could no longer think anything of the sort.

My mother repeatedly assured me that my oldest sister, a university student, was safe when a woman was killed just off campus, but I feared for her safety. The fact that it was a garden variety interpersonal dispute helped a bit - at least someone wasn't stalking every woman at the U.

In late 1980, I was a freshman in high school, and first heard the name Ted Bundy. I didn't hear anything about Bundy, that I remember, until after he'd been convicted. I'd seen brief TV coverage of the Chi Omega murders that sent him to death row, and I'd heard something vague about "a suspect in multiple homicides," but it wasn't until I read a magazine article about him that the full horror became apparent. I should have felt better - he was behind bars, sentenced to death - but I didn't. Most of his victims were about the same age as my oldest sister, but his last known victim, Kimberly Leach, was my age, almost exactly. He had an uncanny knack for choosing honor students. He had a definite "type," and we fit it, me and both of my sisters.

After I read that magazine article on Bundy, I had to walk to school on a Saturday, by myself, to build sets. Normally, I'm comfortable by myself, but I can still remember how terrified I was that day. I couldn't help thinking of the interstate freeway, only 10 or 15 minutes away, and how far away I might be before someone noticed that I was gone.

Bundy victim Georgeann Hawkins, like Brenda and Sandra, had disappeared in just moments from a crowded, public place. There was no sign of a struggle, of a runaway, of a weapon, of anything that made sense. She was only steps from her own dorm room.

Here at home, in 1983 (when I was 17) Ricky Sechrest was arrested and charged with killing 10 year old Maggie Schindler and 9 year old Carly Villa. His grandmother was Maggie's babysitter. Ricky had gone to junior high with my sister, and she was sure he was not guilty. "He protected Belinda and me from bullies. He was so sweet! He'd never hurt anyone." She even considered going to visit him in jail - until he confessed. He'd molested the girls, then killed them with shovel blows to their heads. Sometimes I think about Maggie and Carly when I'm near where they were found (another familiar spot, a place where I spent significant time as a kid).

I'm sure that, psychologically speaking, learning everything I can about these predators is my way of trying to get my innocence back. I'm trying to build a protective bubble around myself and my loved ones, trying to ensure that we never fall victim. That's not entirely a bad thing. The day that Bundy took both Denise Naslund and Janice Ott from Lake Sammamish State Park in Washington, he approached other women with the same ruse. With his arm in a sling, he asked if they would help him load or unload his boat. Those who refused, because he gave them "the willies" or because they wondered why and how a man in a sling would be sailing, lived.

And so, I can tell you why I think the prime suspect in the Zodiac killings was able to pass a polygraph test. I can tell you why I don't think that Albert DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler, and what Jack the Ripper theories I think are garbage.

I know that statistics say that people, especially women and children, are most likely to be victimized by someone they trust. I know, too, how many predators masquerade as authority figures.

They always try to appear harmless (and they're good at it). I can tell you what happened to Georgeann; a pleasant, well dressed man on crutches asked for her help carrying his things to his car. Once at his car, he hit her in the back of the head with a tire iron, then rolled her into the front of his car, where he'd removed the passenger seat. It took mere seconds.

Sometimes my sensibilities are still too tender. I had to stop reading, return a book to the library and read nothing but fluff for months after finding out that Bundy was a necrophiliac. I didn't bat an eye at finding out the same thing about Gary Ridgway. By then, I could fit that piece of the puzzle in to a number of predatory behaviors.

I devour the books written by John Douglas, an FBI profiler back when profiling was considered of about as much value as reading tea leaves. I can tell you all kinds of things that no one should ever really know about why these predators do what they do. I can point to the red flags in their childhoods. I don't subscribe to the mindset former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi does about members of the Manson Family, that they were born bad. Nobody is destined to behave this way. That's what's so frightening - that these people were, once upon a time, ordinary.

Of course, I'm also very aware that if someone is determined to cause you harm, they will, no matter how well informed you are.

My kids used to think I was kidding when they wondered out loud why I was so freaked out when they were only 10 minutes late, and I told them that I worried they'd been taken by a pedophile or a serial killer. At some point, they all figure out that I'm not kidding. (Or given to hyperbole.)

While I keep the gory details to myself, I share enough with my family that I don't think it's odd when one of my children asks, "Was it Gacy who hired his victims to work on his house?" While I want them to believe that most people are good, I want them to listen and act if someone ever gives them "the willies." I want them to know what the ploys are.

I parent differently than I thought I would, once upon a time. My kids have always had strict instructions never to go anywhere, with anyone, unless they have checked with their dad or me. That includes their grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents of best friends. It includes going just next door. It very definitely includes getting into anyone's car.

"Geez, Mom," they have said, more (much more) than once. "What do you think is going to happen?"

Dear God, I think each time, please don't let anything bad happen. Please let them live uneventful lives of security.

Prom Memories

                I've often wondered whether or not I should have asked a boy to go to the prom with me. Of course it's a moot point, and has been for years, but I'm sure I'm not alone in mulling over these useless questions. Maybe I would have had more fun with an actual date, and maybe not. I certainly would have a less interesting prom story, though.

                I was only a little bit disappointed when I didn't attend my junior prom. Somehow it seemed kind of like a practice prom. I hoped that by the time my senior prom rolled around, I'd have a date.

                Of course, the entire idea of dating was terrifying too. I had a lot of male friends, and I was very comfortable with them. Dating was different, though. Dating looked scary. Even with the guys I hoped would ask me out, I would break out in a cold sweat trying to imagine something as ordinary as a movie and pizza. What would I say? What would I do? What would he say and do? It was like trying to imagine life on Mars. I'm imaginative, but I just couldn't picture it. I just froze. When you add that to adolescent insecurity and my complete inability to read and respond to non verbal signs of interest, my chances of dating were pretty darned small.

                Besides, the guy was supposed to do the asking, wasn't he? I was sure that if I asked someone, I'd look desperate or needy or infatuated. If it had been a more ordinary event, I could undoubtedly have been comfortable saying, "I don't want to go alone. Come with me." But to the prom? There are few, if any, teenage occasions fraught with more emotional minefields.

                I had intended to skip my senior prom as well. I had no boyfriend and no real reason to go. The prom became a "must attend" occasion in the blink of an eye when I heard that my best friend had been nominated for prom queen.

                I found out before she did.

The nominees were supposed to be extremely hush hush until the formal announcement was made. To a point, though, processes like these tend to be at least fairly predictable, and there were opinions floating around the school as to who the nominees should be.

On the yearbook staff, there were a fair number of girls from the upper echelons of high school society – the varsity cheerleaders, the drill team members. Several members of an extremely close knit group of "in" girls sat at the table right next to where I sat in the publications room. The group consisted of best friends and cousins. One of the cousins had been the fall homecoming queen, and one of the best friends had been winter homecoming queen. It was now accepted among them that all that was needed to make their senior year perfect was for another cousin to be chosen as prom queen. They were pretty sure it would happen, too.

In the publications room, members of the yearbook or newspaper staff sat at tables, grouped by their assigned sections of the publication. For the yearbook, that translated into classes, activities, organizations and the like. My junior year, I sat with the advertising/faculty section, since that's where my best buddy was. The photographers didn't have a table. They worked in the darkroom, were out on assignment, or just kept to themselves. My senior year, I couldn't sit by Ariane like I had the year before, since she wasn't in the classroom. So, I sat on top of a large desk just inside the door, right next to the teacher's desk. The only other photographer sat by himself in the back of the room, usually on the floor. A talented guy with equipment costing many times more than mine, he was aloof and intimidating. I don't think we said more than a dozen words to each other in the two years we worked together.

As far as I know, none of the yearbook staff members were on the nominating committee, but the "in" girls obviously knew someone who was. Since I was pretty much invisible to popular people, they talked as though they were alone, even though I was about 18 inches from their table. One day, I got an earful about the prom queen nominations. They had not been announced yet – they wouldn't be for another week or so – but someone had given these girls a peek at the list. They knew who all the nominees were, and they were furious to find that Girl A was not on the list. They were livid at finding that Ariane was. She had, in their eyes, STOLEN the spot DESTINED for Girl A.

They had little quarrel with most of the other nominees, but Ariane's inclusion made them furious. She was not skinny, she was not popular, and she was not a cheerleader or drill team member. "She doesn't even do anything!" was repeated over and over again. Oh, sure, I thought. She's just been freshman class president, spent 4 years on the tennis team, 4 years in the drama guild (three of those as an officer), 2 years on the Academic Olympics team and 2 years on the debate team (winning awards in both), 2 years in the Honor Society, 2 years on the yearbook staff, 4 years in the French Club… here, of course, is a girl who doesn't do anything. "You should be on there, not her," they consoled Girl A repeatedly. She waffled between distraught and furious.

After class, Ariane and I always met at a particular corner in the halls. I couldn't wait to get there and tell her. "Guess what?!" I was ecstatic. She was not.

"No! That can't be right."

"It is! It is!" I told her. Knowing that she already disliked Girl A, I told her about the reaction. "She's furious," I gloated.

"But I'm not even going to the prom!" Ariane wailed.

"You are now," I said smugly.

She tried to think of some way to refuse the nomination, but there wasn't one. Her assigned escort was a great guy, someone we'd both known for years. He managed to be both one of the smart kids and one of the jocks. She was at least OK with the idea of winning or losing with him. She needed an actual date though – her escort was going with his girlfriend. She and Joe Beard, her debate team partner and close friend, decided to go together.

That left me with the problem of who to go with. I wasn't going to go alone, and I wasn't going to tag along with the two of them, even though it wasn't a "real date." I hated it when friends took me along on their dates. It happened fairly frequently.

I planned at first to go with Lana, the third member of our little triumvirate. She'd dropped out of school, but I didn't think you needed to be a student to attend; you just needed to be with a student. She ended up not being able to go; I don't remember why. She probably had to work. So, I was again escortless.

Asking someone to go with me was an uncomfortable proposition. I'd never been on a date at all, and I didn't want to be the one doing the asking on my very first date. I especially didn't want to be asking someone out to an occasion as emotionally loaded as the prom. If it had been an awards dinner or something less intimidating, I might have felt comfortable asking a friend of either gender. To the prom, that seemed out of the question. It wasn't a buddy event. It was a date event, a romantic event. I was worried that if I asked anyone, they'd assume romantic intent, especially if I said there was none. There was an age problem, too. I'd feel most comfortable asking someone like Joe English to go with me, but he was a sophomore. I wasn't sure how much of a faux pas it would be to bring a sophomore to the senior prom, especially since we weren't dating.

Waiting for someone to ask me was more than problematic. Having never been on a date, I wasn't going to hold my breath until someone decided I was the perfect girl to ask out. I was sure – I still am – that nobody was waiting for the chance to be my prom date.

A large group of us went to see the movie "Footloose" one night shortly before the prom. We were standing in line, about a dozen of us, when I started to complain about my prom dilemma. I vaguely hoped that someone would speak up and offer to go with me. You've heard it said that you should be careful what you wish for?

Scott, a freshman, said, "I'd go with you, but I have nothing to wear." Alaina, another freshman, piped up, "We're about the same size. I have a formal you could wear." In another group, we would have snickered and the whole thing would be forgotten. In our group… in less than five minutes, the plan was made. Scott would go with me, in Alaina's white lace formal. We would tell everyone he was my cousin Sandy from, I think, Arkansas. We'd go with Joe and Ariane.

What my mother thought about this insanity, I don't know. She didn't say much. To her enormous credit, she rarely criticized any hijinks. If it wasn't immoral, illegal, hurtful or dangerous, well, OK. So her youngest child was free to attend her high school prom with a freshman in drag.

We went up to our friend Kathy's house to get ready on the day of the prom. Kathy, one of Ariane's oldest friends, was going on a traditional, romantic prom date with her boyfriend, Tim, but she was more than happy to help the three of us get ready. I have a snapshot of Kathy in her prom gown and Scott in nothing but shorts as she curls his hair. The next shot is of the two of them with Scott's hair and makeup finished, looking convincingly female from the neck up while still a shirtless male from the neck down. It was surprising that he made such a cute girl.

I don't remember if Ariane or Kathy did my hair, but I had one of them French braid a section, working a pale blue ribbon into the braid. The ribbon was from a bouquet of balloons that Tony, another best friend, had sent the cast and crew of "Arsenic and Old Lace" the previous spring, delivered onstage during our curtain call. It closely matched the blue ribbons in my dress, and was my one hint of sentiment. I hadn't even bought a new dress; I was wearing the formal I'd originally bought for the Thespian banquet when I was a freshman. I loved that dress – floor length white cotton and eyelet accented with pale blue ribbons and lacing up the bosom.

Ariane and I had bought corsages for ourselves and "Sandy," and I think we bought Joe a boutenniere. We'd taken her VW bug to the car wash to get it ready for us to ride in, but Joe had since borrowed his uncle's green sports car. It was a much more prom worthy vehicle. Joe picked us all up – three "girls" in frothy formals.

We'd decided on dinner at McDonald's. We brought along a satin tablecloth, silver candlesticks and white candles that had unfortunately wilted a bit from being next to the car's heater. Another friend, Tim Lange, walked down to McDonald's just for the kick of seeing us. We ordered the 20 piece box of McNuggets and two large fries, plus soda.

The restaurant was virtually empty, except for us. The employees had stared at us as we came in, and kept staring while Ariane fixed the table and I ordered. Someone went into the back to get the manager, who came out and stared at us. I will never forget the flabbergasted look on his face. When they called our number and I went to pick up the food, the manager told me there would be no charge. He even threw in extra food. I don't know if that came from pleasure at watching us spend our prom night there, or pity that we couldn't afford a fancy dinner, or even amazement, but it was OK with us. We all knew the employees would go home that night and start telling stories that began, "You'll never believe…"

Tim played waiter, draping a towel over his arm and offering Joe the soda so he could sniff the straw. Since he wasn't going to the prom, it was his chance to be part of the madness. There was virtually no other business in the restaurant, so the employees all stood at the counter and stared at us while we ate.

Once at the prom, we sat at a table with Tony and his fiancee, Jeanette. I believe Kathy and Tim Groves were at our table, too. I danced one dance, with Tony. I stepped on his feet at least three times. Most of the rest of the time I spent waiting rather impatiently in overly loud music to hear the announcement of the prom king and queen.

I knew Ariane was a long shot, but I was hoping that all the members of the senior class who disliked the popular kids would vote for her and Stuart. Rather predictably though, Robert Escobar and CiCi Cook won. They were both popular kids and a widely recognized Adorable Couple. At the announcement, Tony spread his arms out and snapped, "Nobody clap!" I clapped anyway, briefly and without enthusiasm.

Several of my friends were on the prom planning committee, so I'd been privy to a bit of the planning. They'd been very annoyed to discover that another area high school had chosen the same theme they had. Since the other prom would be held first, our school's committee decided, amidst much griping, to change our theme. "We had it first, but everyone will think we're copying!"

Their second choice was "Somewhere Down the Road." That on its own sounds OK. In reality, it meant that the victory dance for our prom king and queen was to a song that began, "We had the right love at the wrong time." The entire song is about breaking up. It was just goofy watching this supposedly romantic, victorious moment take place to such an incongruous soundtrack. I wondered if any of the committee had considered the lyrics when they chose the song, or if they hadn't scrutinized any further than the title.

Scott – er, "Sandy," – was actually asked to dance once. His dance partner was a fairly popular guy who swore ever after that he'd known Scott was a guy in drag and he was trying to blow his cover. As far as I could tell, in the dimly lit, hormone laden environment, nobody paid much attention until one fateful moment. Scott came up to me, eyes wide, and said, "I have to use the bathroom. Which one do I use?"

Ah, what a quandry. We decided that, of course, he'd have to use the ladies' room. That meant leaving the dark, packed ballroom, walking down the bright hallway and into the brighter, crowded ladies rest room. I instructed him: "OK. I'll go in first, and you just follow me. Don't look around, don't talk to anybody, just follow me. I'll stop in front of the first empty stall." In we went.

It was almost as packed in the rest room as it was in the ballroom. With Scott in tow, I plowed through the assembled crowd.  All kinds of girls were crowded in front of the mirrors, fixing their makeup and checking their hair. All the stalls seemed to be full. Oh, crud. I kept walking straight ahead, making no eye contact with anyone lest they stop me to talk. At the far end of the enormous room – it must have held almost two dozen stalls – there was an empty one. In went Scott. I used the stall next to him, more so I'd have a purpose for being in the restroom than because of actual need.

Maybe it was the bright lighting. Maybe it was the pause while we washed our hands, or the rush in and out. Maybe it was female intuition, or just the first chance anybody'd had to see "Sandy" up close. Whatever it was, I saw realization dawning on face after face. Oops, our cover was blown! Better get out before someone screamed that there was a man in the ladies rest room!

We giggled on the way back to our table, told everyone else, and waited for someone to approach us, screaming in outrage. Nobody did. Then Scott had another idea. "Hey! Why don't we leave, I'll come back in guy clothes, and we'll tell everybody I'm Sandy's brother."

"Sandy's supposed to be my cousin! You can't be her brother! People know who you are."

"Where are you going to find a tux? You can't come back in regular clothes!" We did not immediately find this idea as brilliant as Scott did.

"Come on! They've already figured it out! Let's go!" He was antsy. "Joe English is about my size, and he has his own tux. He wears it for Youth Symphony stuff." Always up for an adventure, he was anxious for a new game to play. So, Ariane and I left, taking Scott to borrow his second formal outfit of the night.

Joe was mildly baffled at our abrupt appearance requesting his tux. I wondered if he felt left out of the whole thing. Even if he was, he gamely offered his tux and watched us all go back to the prom.

I remember watching Scott, in his gender appropriate clothes, stride back into the ballroom like he owned the place. Still, nobody walked up and said, "Hey! Weren't you just here in a dress?" Nobody of either gender asked him to dance, either.

I don't know if anybody ever said anything to Scott about the escapade. The next Monday morning, someone said something to me.

I had yearbook second period. That Monday, after a whispered conference at the table closest to me, the homecoming queen approached me. "Are you the one who took a freshman in drag to the prom?" she wanted to know. I don't think she was prepared for my response. I beamed and said, "Yes! It was!" I looked at her expectantly, as if I thought she'd ask for all the details. In reality, she rarely spoke to me at all.

She looked confused. All she said was, "Oh," before she scuttled away as though she thought I was contagious. I don't know what anyone outside the drama guild had to say about the whole thing. Nobody else ever asked me about it again.

I'm willing to bet that the four of us have the most unique prom story of any of our classmates. It was worth not having any romance that night.

OK. That's Your Problem, Right There

I'm not sure how long ago I wrote this, but I make reference to having a preschooler in the house. My youngest is going to be 13 on her next birthday, though, so it's been a while.

I'm at least reaching the age at which no one expects me to suddenly change my mind and, say, become a 3 pack a day smoker. That's nice. When I say that I don't drink or otherwise indulge, there's usually enough 12-steppers around me to say, "Me either!" and just accept it as a matter of course. When we were all teenagers or twenty-somethings, the responses were often quite different.

I like to think that my cluelessness factor has diminished. I'm sure it has, by infinitisimal degrees.

You'd think that, as a very solitary and introspective person, I would have loved being single. I didn't. I am not in any way suited to a life of dating. If my husband keels over tomorrow, I won't be as truly pathologically clueless as I was as a teenager, but it still wouldn't be pretty.

Or maybe my form of tunnel vision is a blessing.

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

I've spent a good portion of my life being told that I think differently than most people. I didn't believe it. Although I try not to, I make the same mistake most people do. I base my suppositions about other people and their behavior on the way I behave. Surely, I thought, most, or at least many, people think the way I do. Psychologically speaking, this is called "projection." It means projecting our thoughts and feelings onto others.

I still believe that many people think the way I do. I'm just starting to come to terms with the fact that I won't meet these people during my natural lifetime.

I was discussing the T.V. show "Blue's Clues" with a friend, who also has pre-schoolers in her house. For the uninitiated, "Blue's Clues" has one live action actor. The rest of the show, virtually everything and everyone he interacts with, is animated.

We were both in agreement that he probably spends most of his time in front of a "green screen," a wall that allows the animators to isolate his image from the background he was filmed on, and place his image on the animated background. We were not in agreement about how this affected him. "This guy must do some heavy duty drugs," my friend said. As a person who has never even experimented with drugs, legal or otherwise, I am tired of hearing this about entertainers who gear work toward children – Mister Rogers, Walt Disney, even Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter.

"What makes you say that? Am I the only person on the planet who doesn't think these things?" I demanded.

Her response was a resounding, "Yes!" "Think about it," she went on. "He spends all day in a bare room, talking to tennis balls on the end of broomsticks, so his eyes will be going the right direction."

"Yeah? So?" I wanted to know.

"That wouldn't creep you out? You wouldn't go crazy, having to do that every day, and be perky?" she wanted to know.

"No."

"OK," she said, "that's your problem, right there."

And here I thought it was her problem.

For the record, I was also told by a freely experimental friend, when we were both about seventeen, "You know why you don't take drugs? It's because you think that way anyway." Since this friend was effusive about the mind expanding, knowledge gathering "benefits" of drug use, the speaker meant it to be a compliment, and I took it as such.

Even as a teenager, I was simply never interested in drug experimentation. I felt no need to see what the big deal was, see what everyone else found so appealing, or try it just to say I'd tried it. I feel the same way about alcohol. It's a depressant – like we all need THAT - it makes you act ways you normally wouldn't, and overindulgence will make you sick and perhaps cause memory loss. Oh, and it's expensive and calorie laden. If that didn't make up my mind, the fact that it was illegal for someone of my age to drink it would have. Smoking? Expensive, smelly and deadly. And, have you ever watched an addict of any kind be cut off, even temporarily? "I'm sorry, sir, there's no smoking on this flight." They're miserable! I don't want to hear how relaxed they feel when they have their fix. I've seen how they feel when they don't.

I am not particularly proud of the fact that I've never tried these things, because it's taken no willpower at all. Zero. It's like my eye color, something I was born with. An alcoholic friend of mine used to tell me, "You must be the strongest person I know. You don't need any help to get through the day." I tried to explain, "It's not like I'm thinking, 'Gee, I'd love a beer' and denying myself one. I just don't want it," but he couldn't relate.

I have a friend who is convinced that if he keeps offering me booze, I'll eventually drink it, maybe just to shut him up. We look like a stale song and dance routine. One day I decided to shake him up. He'd offered me a can of beer. I exclaimed, "DAVE! You have been an instrument of enlightenment! That's what's been missing from my empty, meaningless existence! Beer! Thank you for saving me!" He stared at me with that deer-in-the-headlights look. His best friend, sitting next to him said, with beautiful comic timing, "So that would be sarcasm, then?"

I also discovered that in my perception of sexual matters, I'm usually on a different page than anyone else. This, frankly, is the same naivete that so often does me in.

When I was thirteen, the carnival came to town, like it did every year. My sister was 16, had a car, and we were old enough to go on our own, so we went.

We had very little "discretionary income" in the family I grew up in, so we didn't have a lot to spend on rides, and even less on games. I soon discovered that it didn't matter. Most of the carnival workers started giving us extra time on the rides, then extra rides, and finally we could just walk up, say "Hi," and get a free ride. A couple of the guys at the games started doing the same thing, letting us throw the darts for free. "It's a slow night," they'd tell us. "You're keeping us from getting bored. Plus, if you look like you're having fun, more people might stop." Aside from being frightfully naïve, I'm very literal, so I took it all at face value.

By the time we left, we were on a first name basis with several of the "carnies," and we'd been invited back "anytime," money or no money.

This was great! The next night, I brought one of my best friends. We had a ball. The two of us came back the next day, as several of the guys made it clear that they wanted us to.

The third night, I was standing in line for a ride I'd been on probably a dozen times already. The operator, while he made conversation, asked, "How old are you?"

I replied, "Thirteen."

He looked as if he'd been punched in the stomach. When we got off the ride, he wouldn't look at me. Suddenly, nobody seemed able to give free rides or free games. There were mumbled excuses that they were too busy, or that the boss, whoever that was, would get mad. They didn't look any busier to me, but nobody "had time" to make conversation, even when there was nobody in their line. Nobody even wanted to make eye contact. I left puzzled and hurt.

When I got home I asked my sister what she thought the problem was. She looked at me like I had the I.Q. of a carrot, a look she used on me often, and said, "Have you ever heard the term 'jailbait?'" I either hadn't or hadn't made the connection, because I remember her explaining to me, "It means they'll go to jail if they have sex with you."

I was absolutely appalled. "They didn't want to have sex with me!" I was already a veteran of schoolgirl crushes, and had had my first boyfriend, my best friend's brother, from whom I received my first experience hand holding, and my first kiss, but the idea of sex was absolutely alien. And with adults? How gross! What was she thinking?

She continued The Look. "Why do you think you got all those free rides?"

"Because they like me!"

"And why do you think they like you?"

"Because I'm nice!"

We continued this circular discussion until we both went away in a huff, each convinced that the other was delusional.

I was quite literally well into adulthood before I conceded that she'd been right.

I would watch movies or T.V., or read books, and wonder how in the world the characters could figure out the unspoken sexual codes and messages. What if, "Would you like to come in for a drink?" really meant come in for a drink? When did "You look lovely" change from a compliment to an invitation? Most importantly, how did everyone seem to know? I decided it was because they were characters. They did, said and thought whatever the writers decided. The writer knew when people were pursuing a relationship, so the characters did too.

I wasn't much better in real life. Once, in my sophomore year of high school, I was at a restaurant with a group of friends. Two of them were dating, and they were "playing footsies" under the table. Mid-way through the meal, I felt a foot sliding up and down my leg. I was wearing a dress at the time. So was the girlfriend at the table, who was sitting next to me. I assumed her boyfriend had the wrong leg. "Frank, that's me, not Donna," I said.

"What?"

"That leg. You've got mine, not Donna's."

"No, he doesn't," Donna said.

"Yes, he does!"

Now Donna was amused. "No, he doesn't."

I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was going on. Donna couldn't mistake my leg for Frank's, not with me in a dress. I ducked down and looked under the table to find who owned the phantom foot still caressing me. It belonged to the guy across the table. I looked up at him in wide eyed astonishment. He grinned, clearly enjoying himself.

I had no idea what to do. Was I supposed to rub back? Slap him? What did he want, anyway? He was a friend, but not a close enough friend that I could say, "What exactly are you doing?" Everyone else at the table now seemed clear on what was happening. Why was I the only one lost, when I had to decide? I was miserable.

I chose to stare down at my plate with complete concentration. In a few minutes, the foot stopped rubbing. He said nothing to me, and I said nothing to him, for the rest of the night, even after I stopped staring at my food. I thought he was angry at me, but I didn't know why or what to do about it.

Poor guy, he was fairly distant for a while after that, confusing me even more. Did he like me, or not? And, how much? Eventually, we started talking to one another fairly comfortably again, but he never repeated the mistake of touching me.

Years later – and I mean, YEARS later; I was probably already married - I decided that it had been "a pass," and he felt incredibly rejected – and publicly embarrassed – by my reaction. I had no idea at the time.

I got used to kissing hello and good-bye rather casually, and only rarely romantically. It was hard for me to figure that out, too. Once, a male friend, (who'd shown a bit of romantic interest in the past,) ended up in the classic movie situation of being over, almost laying on, me while I was lying on my back. He said nothing, I said nothing; he just sort of paused for a very long time. I thought very seriously about kissing him, but I figured either he'd be offended that I was so presumptuous, or I'd do something really awful like kiss his nose, or I'd have such terrible smelling breath that he'd be grossed out, or some other unimaginable horror, so I did nothing. He probably thought the same thing the kid with the restless foot thought – "Geez, she either hates me or she's really dense."

Really dense. Sorry, guys.

I didn't date until after I'd graduated from high school. Don't be amazed that I started late. Be amazed that I ever got the message. My date and I worked together, and he'd say vague, cryptic (to me) things like, "Food?" or "What do you like to eat?" It took weeks to figure out that he was asking me on a date.

I married him. The proposal is an entirely separate story. The point here is that even though we dated for two years after I figured out that he wanted a date, I've only dated one person, so I'm still kind of clueless as to how it all works. For the sake of everyone involved, I don't ever want to be single again. I don't "get it."

Gender Blindness

I wrote this more than a decade ago. I was writing recently about the number of other people's dates that I've been on as a 3rd wheel - yeah, I'm sure you'll end up getting to read about that, and some of you have known me long enough to remember those dates - and I remembered this essay. It was very painful and confusing for me to figure out, as a middle aged parent, things that most people probably got a handle on long about puberty. Still, in spite of the difficulty and confusion, I do think things would be better if they were the way I always thought they were.

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

I found out, years after the fact, that when I first met my husband he was intimidated by the number of male names in my conversation. It wasn't just the references to movies with Scott and Mike or lunch with Darren, it was talk of entire vacations with Tony, Guy, Joe, Andy and the like – the weekend in the Bay Area, the trips to Disneyland. No one I knew ever assumed that I was dating any of the guys attached to these names, so it never occurred to me that any one else would.

For one thing, trips were never one on one, just me and a male. It was usually large groups of us. I remember going through Disneyland confounding the ride operators by answering, "15," when they asked, "How many in your party?" For another, I've inherited a bit of my mother's habit of assuming that if I know something, so does everyone else. Mostly, though, I thought there was an invisible but unmistakable sign around my neck that forever branded me The Buddy, never ever to be confused with The Leading Lady. Growing up, my friends all seemed to see it.

Dan, on the other hand, assumed that with all kinds of men in my life, I must be fielding all kinds of offers for dates (or more.) I guess that's actually a prudent assumption to make if you're going to be asking someone out. He was sure these men were at least potential rivals.

A woman I met in adulthood still has trouble believing that I was one of the guys. She's sure none of them could have missed unmistakable signs of being female, like breasts. They all noticed that I had them, I'm sure, but I still wasn't considered a girl. I was gender neutral. The only time they thought of me as being a female is when they came to me for romantic advice, as in, "You're a girl. What do girls like?" I could never understand why they asked someone who never dated for dating advice. When I'd bring it up, though, I was always told that it was because I had access to secret girl thoughts, because girls would talk to me about guys. Girls, of course, asked me things too, but it was usually rhetorical – "Isn't he gorgeous?" My male friends wanted actual battle plans. How do I impress her? How do I ask her out? Where should we go? I wanted to snap, "How should I know?" I knew how to impress me, not anybody else.

One male friend actually overlooked the whole gender thing to the point that he actually said to me, "Don't ever get a girlfriend, Sharon. They're too expensive." When I responded, in a withering tone of voice, "I don't think that'll be a problem," he said, "Oh, you know what I mean." Well, no, I didn't, but I assumed he didn't actively mean to be either brain dead or offensive.

Dan did not grow up in a world of platonic relationships. When he heard me mention going places with someone named Tony, it would no more have occurred to him that it was platonic than he would have assumed that a sound heard in the woods was Bigfoot (in whom he does not believe). It was simply not part of his reality. In his reality, "platonic" meant either, 1. The girl you liked didn't like you back, or 2. It was part of a ruse used to get close to a girl without admitting that you were interested. Remember the speech in "When Harry Met Sally" about how she only thought she had male friends? That was pretty much how Dan felt.

As an adolescent, Dan wanted to grow up to be a swinging 70's disco god. I wanted to grow up to live on the equivalent of Sesame Street, where it not only didn't matter what color (or gender) your neighbor was, it didn't even matter if they were human. We inevitably experienced culture clash.

It didn't take him too very long to decide that I really wasn't dating any of these guys. It took a lot longer for him to formulate an opinion as to why. He was making First Contact with an alien race.

I still struggle sometimes with understanding how or why male and female friends are different. If I could talk to one about buying underwear, or childbirth, or why I hate pantyhose, why couldn't I tell the other? If I spent time on the phone, or shopping, or going to lunch with one, surely it was OK to do it with another, plumbing notwithstanding. I wasn't going to be having sex with any of them. When I was growing up, none of this was a problem. After reaching adulthood, no one seemed to understand or expect it.

Whenever I couldn't make it to some event Dan wanted to attend, I'd always call a girlfriend of mine to go with him. He won't attend any kind of event alone, and it seemed silly to call a guy friend. If he wanted a guy to go with, he could call one, right? I had no problem with this. I thought it was very funny when one of his coworkers was flustered by Dan's appearance at the company dinner with a lovely woman who was not his wife. I was extremely annoyed when I was house managing a play and an usher became quite worried when my husband and best friend showed up together. If it was a secret that they were together, they would have gone somewhere else, wouldn't they? I was just sure the intentions were obvious.

It was also alternately funny and puzzling when it was me out with a male friend because my husband could't attend the function, especially when I ran into someone I hadn't seen in a long time. They had no idea quite what to think. I remember attending a theater company dinner and introducing my escort as, "This is my friend, Tim." One woman said, nervously, "That's nice. Did I tell you that I'm getting a divorce?" I didn't understand such people. I just thought they had a very narrow view of the world.

I grew up in a church in which people are often affectionate, physically and otherwise. Men were just as likely as women to hug you, pat your shoulder or knee, kiss your cheek, walk down the hall with their arm around you or offer you any kind of help. Age and marital status were immaterial. Men could, and did, comment that it was wonderful to be surrounded by beauty when they were in the Young Women organization for 12 to 18 year olds, just as they did when they were visiting in the women's organization. They might also stand with their arm around you at a public function, even if you were both married to other folks. Nobody worried that this was inappropriate. When I was a sophomore in high school, my bishop held a co-ed youth group sleepover at his house. (In later years, when such co-ed functions were no longer allowed for church youth groups, I thought decidedly judgemental and angry thoughts about the people whose bad behavior had forced the policy change.) If the rest of the world wasn't that way, I was just unaware.

I had to change my mind after I discovered that there were actually people of both genders who misinterpreted my behavior. Aside from basic gender blindness, I was sure that my status as a very married, large, religious mother of four precluded any such misunderstanding. It was quite traumatic to find out that I was wrong.

A friend had become convinced that I was hitting on her husband. To make matters worse, her husband also thought so. He never said anything, and she waited until she was utterly furious before she brought it up. She simmered for six months or so before blowing up at me. I had to ask what, exactly, was bothering them.

The examples she gave me made no sense to me. "You always laugh at his jokes. You always sit by him even when there's other empty seats. You go talk to him when you're having problems." Well, sure. Guilty as charged. It wasn't an invitation to fall into bed. Luckily, she had been around me in various settings enough to see what I meant when I said, "I treat everybody that way." If the jokes are funny, I laugh. Sometimes I'll laugh louder if they aren't funny, to save the joke teller from that horrible, crickets chirping silence.

I was in a play at the time, and the 18 year old ingenue frequently sat on my lap while I brushed her hair. She often joked that she and I were having an affair, and the lighting tech told her every time that she had to bring in video. (I wondered whether this behavior wasn't her way of avoiding being too chummy with the single guys. She was adorable and perky and 18, and everyone noticed.) One of the men in the cast, a 19 or 20 year old college student, had a ritual with me (actors tend to be big on rituals) of my slapping his rear end with my purse before we went out for a certain scene. At work, I frequently brought in things for male co-workers – chocolate chip cookies to share with the other chocoholic in the office, for example. One man in the office called me his "favorite file clerk," even though I was the only file clerk. I never, ever imagined that any of these things would be construed as "passes," and I told my friend so.

As for telling her husband my problems, well, he'd asked. When I'd looked down or distracted, he'd wanted to know why. I'm generally a "too much information" person. There are only a few subjects I don't want to discuss. Otherwise, if you want to know, I'll tell you. Occasionally, if you don't want to know, I'll still tell you. I quite probably have too few boundaries.

I adore your husband, I told her, but I'm not looking to trade mine in. "Anything I've ever said in front of him, I'd say in front of my bishop! He's a great guy, too."

Even though she told me she found it hard to believe that I was "that naive," she did concede that, yes, indeed, I did tend to treat everyone that way. I did discover, though, that there had been other times someone thought I was making a pass, and I thought I was merely making conversation. Who knew that "I missed you," or "Wow, you look great," would be taken as expressions of sexual interest? Not me, certainly.

I have finally had to admit that I've gotten it wrong. There are differences between male and female friends. I can now intellectually explain to you why this is. I can tell you what the differences are. But, deep down, I still feel that the rest of the world just doesn't "get it." I still think there shouldn't be any difference. I've just had to realize that we shouldn't have to have locks on our homes (or cars or what have you), but we have to anyway. Maybe there shouldn't be a difference in friendships, but there is.

I became temporarily unhinged. I thought about all the times I'd scoffed at references to eye contact being a sexual signal. What if it was? How do you go through life not making eye contact, not smiling at people? I did that with everybody – people I passed in the mall, people in restaurants, people where I worked. And, I'd always assumed it was safer to have male friends who were married. That way, I was sure, no signals would get crossed. But they did! What now? And how about compliments? Who could I compliment? Who could I hug? Trying to hash it out with the women I knew wasn't entirely successful. "Some men think you're making a pass at them if you're doing nothing but breathing," one said. AAUUGGHHHH!

I've dated one person in my lifetime. One. I am not equipped to make sense of these situations.

I became terrified of saying or doing anything. My usual yardstick – does it bother me or my husband? – had proven to be worthless. My past experience had proven unreliable. What now? My desk was at the far end of the office; everyone had to pass it to get to the break room, the bathrooms or the Xerox machine, which was also a shared printer. I'd always looked up from my work, smiled at whoever went by, and made small talk if they were amenable. Now, I spent days staring straight down at my desk, looking at no one, speaking to no one. My nerves were fried.

I asked my husband, "Is it just me?" I asked my friends, "Is it just me?" They were all supportive, but I still didn't really know if it was just me.

I probably still don't know. There's a good chance I won't ever really "get it." But hey, if you're thinking that I made a pass at you any time after 1985, no matter what gender you are, you're mistaken. OK?

Maybe, Sometimes, It's You

Apologies. Truly.

I am going to gripe. I am undoubtedly going to employ a great many words to do so - it is the nature of the beast.

I am not a particularly negative person. I have been accused, frequently, of being a Pollyanna. Once I snapped at a confidant, after dealing with someone who was determined to treat me as though I had the cognitive abilities of stuffed cabbage, "WHY do people treat me like I'm an idiot?" She sighed and said, "It's because you're always so happy. People figure you can't possibly have a clue about what's going on. Happy people generally aren't very bright."

I beg to differ. Any idiot can, and usually does, find fault, complain, bicker and just generally exude negativity. Being cheerful takes hard, teeth gritting, exhaustive effort.

Yet, by some fluke of nature or nurture, I am most eloquent, and most likely to communicate, when I'm angry.

Right now, try as I might to avoid it, I am ticked off.

As much as I dislike, and in general, avoid, new technologies, I am loving Facebook. I get to see, sometimes on a daily basis, what's going on with friends who are sometimes halfway across the world. A friend had a baby today, and I saw photos while his age was still measured in hours. I don't carry a cellular phone, I have never experienced Twitter, but Facebook, I enjoy.

I have found and renewed contact with so many people from high school, college theater and other endeavors in my past. It's delightful.

Except when it isn't.

I renewed contact with one particular high school friend, and talked - OK, typed - almost daily about kids, spouses, current events and nothing in particular. I remembered this friend as quick witted and funny, but I think they've gotten quicker and funnier over the years. I would laugh out loud frequently. I remarked often to my husband that it was such a delight to be back in touch.

Sometimes, this friend would comment on my blog. Blogging is still brand new to me. Letting people "hear" what's inside my head in such an impersonal forum takes some getting used to, and it's nice to find out what my friends think. I think it's made easier by the fact that I am just generally a Too Much Information person, so I'm not fretting about privacy.

My husband often frets about privacy. He's always tried NOT to let people know what he's thinking, because if people know what you're thinking, someone will disagree with you, and might even think less of you. He worries, sometimes, when he reads my stuff - "Do you really want to let people know that?"

Me? I remember growing up terrified that people would dislike me or disapprove of something about me. I was painfully, don't-look-at-me-don't-talk-to-me-don't-acknowledge-my-existence shy in elementary school. Having two friends at once felt like a party. As I got older, I cared less about what people in general thought of me, but still worried deeply about what my friends thought. Adulthood brought so many things - kids, at the top of the list - that truly mattered into my life, and I had less time to worry about stuff that didn't matter. Since I've been a parent for far more than half my life, well, the adolescent, overwrought worries are long gone.

Now, for better or worse, I truly don't care who agrees with me or what they think of my choices. This is good, because I think pettiness of any kind is juvenile and because so few of my friends live a life that looks anything like mine. I do not have to agree with people to love them. I can't imagine that they feel compelled to agree with me.

I'm also - and this can't be entirely good, born as it is out of ugly experiences - willing to just cut a relationship loose. If it's not working for one or both of us, if it doesn't enrich life somehow, goodbye. Generally, I'm a friend for life. I'm not going to sever contact over any little (or even big) difference, but I will if you make me (or my family) consistently miserable. Life's too short.

So. Back to this newfound old friend.

After conversing almost daily, the conversation stopped, dead in its tracks, the day after a blog post - the post that mentioned my lack of a college degree.

I've been through this before. The post even mentioned one such instance. People suddenly wonder what's wrong with them that they would find me interesting. They wonder how badly they're "slipping" that they found what I have to say relevent or funny. Or, they become convinced that I'm an egotist putting on a show, pretending to be funny and interesting, sitting here with a thesaurus next to me so I can use big, impressive words. Or they begin to fret about what a waste it is, because I used to have so much potential.

It's exhausting. It's annoying.

Don't even think about telling me that, "You can't blame people, yada yada yada." I'm in no mood. I've heard that before, too.

Of course, I could be making faulty assumptions. Maybe I said something offensive - I have very little filter on my thoughts. Maybe my friend is suddenly, incredibly busy. Maybe when I continue to respond to status updates and such, their kids are bleeding or something.

But probably not.

I can't help but think, "Really? This again?"

I don't think I've suffered the 21st century equivalent of shunning, being "un-friended" on Facebook. But I miss my friend already.

These Rooms Aren't Very Restful...

I've been on vacation; this means I've spent a lot of time in public restrooms. This also means that I've also been thinking a lot about public restrooms.

Recently, someone said something to me about being worried that a woman may have set her purse on a restroom floor, then onto a counter or table. The thing that struck me was the fear of the floor. I couldn't help thinking - let's see, how to say this without being unnecessarily graphic? My first, overiding thought was that it's silly to fear the floor. If you're a germaphobe, and the thought of all public, well trodden floors gives you the willies, OK. If not, well, if a person is of an age or ability level where keeping all the necessary excretions in the toilet is an issue, they'll have a capable helper with them. The floor shouldn't be any dirtier than the floor at a Neiman-Marcus.

This discussion, of course, does not include women who hover over the seat, creating what Dave Barry called "a wee wee waterpark" because they're afraid the seat will be dirty. That's a separate discussion entirely. In brief: Ladies! You fear a dirty seat because you create dirty seats (and floors)! Sit down, for crying out loud! Save the rest of us the aggravation!

I didn't say anything at the time I heard the floor comment, though. I've learned to gauge, with some accuracy, situations that will cause people to view me as though I just landed from another (wierder) planet. (Better late than never; I'm only 45.) I then have to weigh the importance of the situation before deciding whether or not the ensuing fracas will be worth stating my opinion. Restrooms are not that high on my scale. I said nothing.

I kept thinking about it, though. Was it just a standard germaphobic reaction to our increasingly hand sanitizer saturated culture? Was I missing some important piece of information? I didn't know, and I wasn't going to ask.

Then I saw something that turned on the little light bulb in my head.

I was at our weekly homeschool co-op, in the restroom. It was between classes, so naturally it was a bit crowded. Some of the girls, aged about 3 to 11, were changing into leotards and tights for dance class.

A mother came in to find her daughter, who was about eight years old. The daughter was already in the stall, which seemed to cause the mom a bit more concern than I thought was necessary. How closely does an 8 year old need their dressing tasks supervised?

A minute or so passed, and the mom again called in to the daughter. She got the response, "I'm getting dressed!" "Well, you need to get out of there!" the mom replied. I thought she was concerned about emptying up a stall so that someone else could use it. We still had about 10 minutes left of passing time, so it wasn't critical, but being considerate is advisable.

It only took another 15 or 20 seconds before Mom's cool really started to crack. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

"Getting dressed!"

"YOU NEED TO COME OUT OF THERE. Right now. It's filthy. How close are you?"

"I dunno." (Typical kid answer.)

Mom handled it for another 10 seconds or so, and then she just lost it. "GET OUT! GET OUT! RIGHT NOW! I'M COMING IN!" She began to shake the door. "OPEN UP! OPEN UP RIGHT NOW!" The daughter opened the door, which actually made Mom more agitated. The girl had tights in her hand, with her other clothes already off. Naturally, as she leaned down to put the tights over her foot, they dragged on the floor. Her mother pulled her, stark naked and deeply embarrassed, out of the stall, howling instructions like, "DON'T TOUCH THAT! IT'S FILTHY!" The fact that the tights were dragging on the floor almost undid Mom, as did the daughter reaching out to steady herself on the wall. Her regular clothes were discarded on the floor; I thought for a moment that her mother would advise burning them. "THAT'S FILTHY!"

Into this crowded room this naked child was thrust, clearly wishing the floor would open and swallow her. Her mother ushered her, still naked, into the room before the one with the stalls and sinks. It's one of those "mother's lounge" type rooms, with a comfy couch, a counter with tissues and art in soothing pastels. "Get dressed IN HERE," her mother insisted, heedless of the fact that the door to this room opened out into a public hallway, and the poor kid was feeling exposed enough.

Ah ha! I thought. Here is someone who's read those ridiculous studies by the scientist who named his son after the e.coli virus, the guy who memorably told us all, two decades or so ago, that when you flush the toilet, microscopic particles of feces are flung into the air. This woman clearly felt that being in the stall, or even in the room with the stalls, was the equivalent of rolling on the floor of an uncleaned dog kennel.

I'm not sure if I would - or should - have said anything if she was a close friend. I probably would have appalled her, so it's best that I keep quiet.

But, for the record, here's what I think. Relax, already!

Even the author of these studies will tell you that there's no documentable cases of harm caused by flush molecules. We are all clear on "microscopic," right? At the microscopic level, you would be horrified by the stuff you breathe, ingest and wash in every day. Most of us are clearly better off not knowing.

We have microscopic bugs, for lack of a better word, living in our eyelashes. The most fastidious housekeeper still has dust mites, and their feces, in the home.

The FDA has an actual law about how many insect parts can be in your canned and bottled food. (Let's ignore, for a moment, the fact that most of the globe views insects as food themselves, an inexpensive, easily sustainable, low fat, high protein meal or snack, while we Americans view them as one tiny step above feces.)

I'm not advocating that we lick the inside of stalls, just that we have a little perspective. Simply being in a public restroom is not hazardous. If it was, good heavens, imagine the widespread pestilence. In its absence, we really have to calm down.

And honestly, if you're worried about invisible vapor, wouldn't a blast of it be emitted into the lounge room every time the door between them opened?

Which brings me back to the whole purse thing: again, why fixate on the floor? If you're freaked out about flush vapor, you'll get it all over your purse if you hang it on the purse hook or set it on the little purse shelf, not just if you set it on the floor. If that unglues you, I can't help you, but if it doesn't, and floors in general don't freak you out, again, calm down.

Once, in Old Town San Diego, I stood in line for the one women's stall within a 30 minute walk. Naturally, the line was excruciatingly long - why does this rarely happen to men? Anyway, the two people directly in front of me were a girl of about 12 and a woman probably in her 30s. After the girl walked away, the woman entered the single occupancy restroom, and almost ran back out. After waiting in line for approximately 25 minutes, she now told me, with disgust, "I wouldn't even go in there. She didn't even flush. I can't use it. I'm going to go find another restroom." She indicated that she expected everyone in line to come with her.

At that point, my bladder could not have taken the walk across the square searching for another restroom (and hoping it didn't have a line), but I don't think I would have done anything differently if the need had been less urgent. I walked into the restroom, flushed, and used it.

I know that the woman in front of me was probably thinking that if the girl was a non-flusher, her hygeine was so bad that it would adversely affect anyone who came after her. My theory is that if the toilet needs flushed, you flush it. It takes a fraction of a second and a single finger. It's not a huge deal. It doesn't matter if you do it, or the person before you does it, or if the custodian does it. How many times, in your own house, do your family members walk away without flushing? It's not the Apocalypse. I often flush unflushed toilets in public restrooms. My theory on seat drizzle is pretty much the same. Wipe it off, set down a seat protector and do your thing.

I know. I do. I can tell you the exact names of friends and relatives who are now making the same sound the Wicked Witch of the West made when Dorothy hit her with the bucket of water. They're getting ready to tell me that I'll get irreversible Nether Region Rot and die a horrible death, that my family will have to spoonfeed me, but from a distance so that they don't catch anything dire.

If those things do freak you out, you and I will never see eye to eye, and it's in everyone's best interest that we not discuss it. Ever.

But now, if you're still with me, I have to share my two favorite public restroom stories. One involves the mens room and one, the ladies: I believe in equality.

My friend Mike is phobic about two things: homosexuals and public restrooms. Normally, it's eccentric, and amusing in a "watch him squirm" kind of way. However, Mike is an actor and a wonderful storyteller, so his story had me in absolute tears of laughter when he related it.

Years ago, Mike was Christmas shopping near his home. He was at the mall when he realized that he would not make it home before he simply HAD to relieve himself. He considered every alternative, and finally chose the most expensive store in the mall, figuring that its restrooms would be better maintained and altogether "safer." Even this part of the story is funny when you hear Mike tell it. "I wondered how I'd explain to my mom that I couldn't fly home for Christmas if I was arrested for indecent exposure after pulling over on the way home to go in a bush."

He gritted his teeth and walked into the restroom and was relieved to see no one else. He chose a stall and sat down to conduct his business. Trying to deal with his nervousness, he noticed something written on the back of the door. I'm going to repeat it here, as it's necessary to the story, but

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

it's a bit graphic. You might want to shield yourself or small children at this point.

Written on the back of the stall door was, "For a blow job, tap your foot." Below that was a day and time. The day, Mike realized in horror, was the current date. The time was ten minutes previous.

In Mike's words, "My sphincter muscles instantly froze, then contracted. Every muscle in my body froze. There was no way I was going to be able to go." He looked down under the wall of the stall and discovered that in the next stall, he could see a pair of shoes, shoes that were on the feet of another restroom occupant.

There is no way possible to do this story justice, especially from here on out, unless you are Mike. Most of the rest of the story is best told with the accompanying visuals. Mike told how he leapt up, nearly falling over as he yanked up his pants. "I was terrified to take a single step, lest he think I was tapping my foot, but I had to get out of there immediately." Now, imagine someone like Steve Martin or Jim Carrey, a master of physical comedy. Only they could recreate the image of Mike demonstrating how he ran out of the bathroom, arms flailing in the air, without ever lifting either of his feet off the floor. It's like watching a demented, posessed skier. The physical needs that had needed tending so urgently just a moment before disappeared as he lurched, terrified, out of the restroom and fled the mall.

Mike feels that this incident ably demonstrates why his fear of both gay men and public restrooms are totally justified. I think it's fabulous entertainment.

Years after hearing Mike's story, I came home from an evening out and told my husband, "I have finally discovered why women bring a friend with them when they go to the restroom." I never understood that. Why do you need company? Do you need help? A bodyguard? Someone to sacrifice to the ghosts/attackers/rift in the space/time continuum? Are you unable to be alone, ever? Then, thanks to my friend Jami, I was witness to why, exactly, a lady might want a friend with her.

Jami's another actor. We were out with the cast of the show she was in at the time. I'd ushered the performance in order to see it for free. Frequently, after a show, the cast, crew and friends will go out - often to a bar, since they're open late. Since I don't drink and occasions like this are the only time I'm ever in bars, I haven't observed much stereotypical bar behavior. We arrive in a pack, we leave in a pack - I don't generally see anyone flirting or getting hit on. For some reason, though, that night more than one man approached our table to hit on Jami.

They weren't lewd about it, and backed down easily, but it still unnerved her. Jami's like me, married since she was barely out of her teens, so she wasn't looking to be hit on.

She's also tiny - about 5'2" or 5'3" and barely breaking three digits in weight. After she'd had two drinks, she mentioned that she'd had nothing to eat that day. It was 11 or so at night, and the mommy in me came out and I scolded her. "I ordered food. It'll be here soon," she said. She did recognize that she was already feeling lightheaded, which was not a good sign. Jami's sweet and talented, but can be a bit loopy, as well as naive. Intoxication did not seem like a good plan. (It never is.)

When she had to use the restroom, she asked me to go with her. She provided a reason, though, unlike the usual "come with me" request. One of the men who'd hit on her was still staring at her, as were two other men directly between us and the restroom. She wanted someone to run blocker for her. This I can do - I don't even care if I hurt someone's feelings. She took my hand and dragged me through the room as though I was a shield or bodyguard, which, I suppose, I was.

The restroom was small, with two stalls and a single sink. I waited while Jami went into a stall. She didn't take very long to accomplish her purposes, but then she couldn't figure out how to get out of the stall. Those drinks on an empty stomach had addled her brain.

At first, she was quiet and calm. "How do you open this thing?" she wondered out loud. It had one of those bars that you grip between your index finger and thumb and turn.

"You just take ahold of the latch and turn it. I forget which way. If one way doesn't work, try the other way." I honestly thought that would be the end of it. I, too, am sometimes tragically naive.

"It doesn't work! It won't open!" Jami began to stress. I couldn't tell if she was actually turning the knob, just that the door was rattling as she became more frantic. "It won't work! I can't get out!"

I moved closer and closer to the door as I instructed in my best mommy voice, "TURN it. You have to turn it. Take hold and turn it." Poor Jami was becoming shrill and terrified.

I tried to take hold of the little circle on my side of the door that was the back of the latch. Any parent has had to turn the knob from the outside before, in order to get their kid out, but I don't have long nails, so it was difficult. It wasn't working. By now, Jami was beating on the door and crying.

Then, she gave up dealing with the latch at all. She gripped the top of the door and began to shake it fiercely, screaming. Occasionally, the shrieking would form a word - "HELP!" - but a lot of it was just howls of anguish as she attemped to beat the door off its hinges. I knew what had to happen.

"JAMI. Stand back. Go all the way to the back of the stall. I'm coming in."

The wailing subsided to sniffles, and she let go of the top of the door. "All the way to the back wall, OK, Jami? I need room."

WARNING!!!! WARNING!!!! WARNING!!!!!!

If you are a germaphobe, if contact with public surfaces freaks you out, if anything I have said so far makes your skin crawl, DO NOT read any further. Trust me. I don't want your sleepless nights on my conscience.

I lay down on the floor and started to Army crawl under the stall door.

Keep in mind, I am not small. I'm a good 6 inches taller than Jami and twice her weight. I had a C cup bra in high school, and things have only gotten bigger since then. I was not sure I'd even fit under the stall door.

Behind me, I heard the restroom door open when I was about halfway under. I was now trying not to hit my head on the toilet, while the newcomer was greeted by the sight of my large bottom and legs hanging out from under the door. Whoever she was, whatever she needed to do, whatever kinkiness she imagined was happening, she chose not to enter the room's empty stall, said nothing and quietly closed the door as she left.

I finally wiggled under enough to stand up, turn around and unlatch the door. Jami was exultant. "You saved me! You saved me!" She flung her arms around me and hugged with all her might. Then she bolted out of the stall, as though the door might slam shut at any second and once again imprison her.

"You saved me," she repeated, reverently this time. "I would still be trapped if it weren't for you. I don't know what I would have done if you weren't here." We both washed up at the single sink (me, all the way up my arms) and she hugged me again. "I don't know what I would have done without you. I'd still be trapped," she repeated.

Later, when she sobered up a bit, Jami asked me not to tell anyone. "It's so embarrassing." The next night at the show, though (I was ushering all weekend) she said, "I told my husband. And everybody else. You can tell people, the people who don't already know." Then, a bit indignantly, "They laughed at me! I was stuck."

Maybe it's best that I don't ask you to accompany me to public restrooms, isn't it?