Big Foot

When I was in high school, one day a friend looked down at my feet and said, "Your shoes look really sloppy like that."

"Like what?" I asked. They were new, without holes or stains, which was not always the case. I am all about comfort, so I had been (and still am) known to wear stained or torn shoes. In high school, despite being, as all adolescents are, overburdened with crushing worry about what I looked like, for months I wore a favorite pair of fabric shoes that had holes directly over my pronounced bunions. My bunions stuck out through the frayed fabric. Any time someone would point it out to me, I'd say, "They're comfortable like this." I even bleached them, so they'd look cleaner and nicer while the holes got bigger.

But the shoes this friend was talking about were very new. I could not figure out what was sloppy.

"When you wear the laces like that."

"Like what?" This was making less and less sense. The shoes were laced and tied, all very normal and neat.

She sighed. I seemed to have that affect fairly often; my friends would sigh and wonder why I was clueless.

"Here. Let me fix them." She untied my shoe, then grabbed the laces and yanked, hard.

"OW!" My feet were always pretty uncomfortable, which I blamed on the bunions, and anything squeezing them was incredibly painful. While my oldest daughter was always self conscious about her bunions, and wore shoes that hid them, with pumps and ballet flats for dress shoes, I spent years buying only dress sandals, so my bunions could poke out through the straps. Sometimes, a friend would try to talk me into pumps, and I'd say, "Closed, rigid shoes hurt!" Anything tight across the bunions could make my foot scream, and my whole leg ache.

"What?" she wanted to know.

"You're squeezing my foot!"

She reached out and grabbed the sides of my shoe, trying to get the parts where the laces go through the holes to meet.

"OW!! That HURTS!" I yanked my foot away.

"This is as tight as they go?"

"Yes! This is as tight as they go!" I rubbed my foot and retied my shoe.

"You need bigger shoes!"

"These are half a size bigger than I normally wear." I showed her how I had over an inch between the end of my toes and the end of the shoe.

"Then you need wide width!"

"These ARE wide width!"

She looked aghast. "You should be able to close them, like this." She stuck her own foot out. The only part of the tongue that was visible was the tip, sticking out of the top of her shoe. The parts where the laces went through met in the middle and touched.

"I have never in my life been able to pull them that tight."

She looked just horrified. After a few more minutes (and comments like, "That's all your foot?") she sighed and said, "I guess you'll have to wear them like that, then."

"Yes, I will."

Obviously, I still do. That's my current pair of shoes in that photo, snapped on my cell phone.

I mean, isn't the whole point of laces to adjust them to the individual, because not everyone is the same? I think so. I always have. And yes, those current shoes are wide width. Yes, I still have an inch, maybe more, between the end of my toes and the end of the shoe. My toe hits well below the line of the triangle pattern.

Of the many things that have caused me to feel self conscious, this was not one. It was another instance, though, in which I wondered if her thinking was alien, or mine was. Not that it changed anything; I still have to loosen the laces when I buy shoes, but that's why there are laces, and not zippers.

I don't quite understand a lot of conventions on human interaction (that I have been told are just instinctive and built in). That's fine. But, if I may, I will suggest a way to have that conversation that was not alienating.

Example:

Friend: "Why are your laces so wide? Are they really loose?" See, asking questions is a great way to find things out - do not start out assuming that you know everything. This is hard, but necessary.

Me: "No, they're actually pulled pretty tight. I just have really wide feet."

Friend: "Really? That wide?"

Me: "Yeah. I have a hard time even finding shoes that I can wear, even in wide width."

Friend: "I've never had that problem."

Me: "You're lucky." And we'd go on about our day, and I'd have forgotten this conversation, instead of being annoyed by it decades later. I had dozens of conversations like that over my school years, and I can only remember the details of this one.

See?

Occasionally when I tell stories like this, someone will say that this is why we all need to guard against letting other people know our thoughts, because if people know what you're thinking, they won't like you. Respectfully, no, that is not the point here. The point is how you express yourself. I am deeply aware that a significant percentage of people will find my feet to be weird, gross, or just outside of their experience. This is normal. A few others will think that I'm exaggerating, probably for attention or sympathy. This opinion, too, is normal. The fact that both of those assumptions are wrong doesn't make them any less common. Thinking them is not a problem. Saying them is not a problem. Being rude because of what you think is a problem.

Making assumptions without asking is a problem. It should not come as a surprise to anyone that there are things that every person on Earth does not know, does not understand, or has not ever encountered before. Quit assuming that if it's outside your experience, it doesn't exist. Quit assuming that you know everything. Ask, politely - "why do you" instead of announcing, "that's sloppy."

Another problem is acting on your unconfirmed assumptions, especially in a way that leads you to cause someone physical pain. If you don't know what's causing something, your chances of messing things up are pretty high!

Also, let's say that I thought that loose laces were some kind of fashion statement that made me look cool. Telling me that you don't think so is OK. Insisting that I change because you don't think so is NOT OK.

The biggest problem for me, though, is why it still annoys me after decades - the assumption that I should experience shame because someone else didn't like my body parts. This girl's entire demeanor screamed, "Eeww, gross!" - which is, again, not uncommon - but then went on to assume that I ought to be just as horrified. I ought to hide my gross feet. I ought to hope that no one notices how gross they are. I ought to avoid lace up shoes. I ought to be depressed because something about me wasn't pretty. 

This is a problem.

In general, people talk about being proud of who you are, ignoring "the haters," realizing that "you're perfect, just the way you are" - until how someone is conflicts with someone's idea of how they should be. Women are told that they have less intrinsic value if they're not pretty. Men are told that they have less intrinsic value if they're not strong. This is garbage.

Women talk about how we don't owe it to anyone to be pretty, but a lot of us are then disgusted by bodies that just aren't pretty, or women who "don't even try" to be pretty; you know, the loose clothes, no makeup, short haired women. Or, we're not disgusted, but we decide that those women are probably lesbians, because men would just never be interested in them.

I just cannot buy into that. It's inaccurate. It's damaging.

That's why I'm still annoyed. Someone thought it was better for me to experience shame than to simply accept that this is how my feet are. I was born this way. 

When I had them surgically altered - bunions removed, etc - it was so they would work better, not because of how they looked. They're still wide. They're still hairy. They're not pretty. My laces are still loose.

I am not embarrassed by my feet. At that point, in high school, I was embarrassed by my saddlebags, my rounded tummy, my receeding chin, and probably more, but I grew out of that. Because even though my body is me, it is not what gives me value.

My feet have taken me great places. My shoes are comfortable. That's good enough.

Pandemic Problems

 So, it's been almost exactly a year since the world shut down for COVID 19. I was on a cruise ship when that happened, with spotty internet and no real idea what the rest of the world looked like while I planned my days around trivia quizzes, lectures and movies. We came home to a very different world than the one we'd left.

We all remember, I think, the last time things were "normal" before they changed. It's a shared experience; we all understand it.

As is usual, though, I find that I don't really understand how some other people reacted to the new reality. I mean, on an intellectual level, I can tell you how they feel, and why. I just do not emotionally relate to it.

Some people, when I'd post photos from my own back yard online, would say, "You went outside!?! Why? It's dangerous outside!" Well, look, being exposed to other people was potentially dangerous, but there's nobody in my back yard except me, and maybe someone who lives in my house with me. I didn't understand the extreme fear of simply existing in the world.

I went anywhere in public only once in that first month, to get groceries. There's three of us in my house, so in the first three months, each of us went to the store once. Maybe if I had a job outside my home - I don't - I would have been a bit more prepared for this, but when I finally went somewhere in mid to late April, I could not get over how many people were on the road. It looked like any other ordinary day. "Where are all these people going?" I wondered. 

After a month at home, I went driving to a lake just outside of town, hoping for fresh air and the chance to take photos; those are two of my preferred ways to relax. And all across town, the streets were full. When we got to the lake, the parking lot was almost full. Luckily, most of the people were out on the lake, wind surfing, so we were all distanced, and I got great photos. Still, I was a bit surprised by how many people were out and about. And how one of them wanted to walk RIGHT UP TO me to talk; hey, I don't even like that when I'm not worried about germs.

Which brings me to the other people that I don't understand, the people who experienced fear and anger and pain in being home all the time. I started to see all kinds of things online about how "humans aren't meant to live like this!" and predictions that violence and suicide would increase - and they did! This was a surprise to me.

Because I was, sincerely, happy as a clam. I woke up every day, especially in the first three or four months, thinking, "Yay!" I had no schedule, no expectations, no obligations, and it was delightful. For most of my life, I rarely watched TV during the day, but now, I had no problem with sitting down in my jammies and watching TV any time I felt like it. I read books, I painted, I stayed up late (for me, anyway) and slept in. I'd look online and see that people were taking online classes, cooking from scratch and making sourdough, and FaceTiming daily, and it just sounded exhausting. I was not organizing my closets and deep cleaning. I was rewatching old TV series - hello, Stargate Atlantis; I'm always going to gloat a bit that I knew how cool Jason Momoa was years before everybody else figured it out. I should have done more cleaning, really, but it felt like vacation, and who deep cleans on vacation? Not me. Everybody likes vacation - how were they not as happy as I was? Really, I was puzzled; I am puzzled.

But, because I was puzzled, I thought about it, I read about it, I talked to people, and I tried to figure out what people were thinking. I feel the need to repeat here that I don't look at differences as being an intrinsic case of, "who's wrong, who's right?" Right and wrong are for moral issues and the laws of physics, not for the fact that the world contains infinite variety, especially in humans. I'm also deeply puzzled any time someone sees that they're out of step, and immediately agonizes that they're wrong, or judges that everyone else is wrong and probably stupid. Some flowers are yellow, and some are red. Some dogs are small, and some are large. Some people prefer things that make me miserable, and vice versa. The point is to understand, not to relegate everything to two little boxes.

I also need to be clear that I am not speaking about about families or individuals who were experiencing job loss, illness, death of a loved one, lack of food, or anything else that is actually tragic. Those people deserve every bit of help and love and empathy that we have, and more. Their pain should, always, be our own. I also understand that most people were having some kind of empathy response, feeling for those who were experiencing these things. I'm speaking from my place of incredible privilege, about people whose homes looked a lot like mine - plenty of food (and TP), income, secure housing, good health, and loved ones who are mostly in that same boat, people whose lives are physically comfortable, but who now had to deal with being home (in comfort) almost all of the time, and were feeling uncomfortable about it.

The things that didn't resonate with me were things like, "How many times can you organize your sock drawer?" or actual angst, like the woman who said to me, "Was I always this friendless, and I just didn't notice?" I had to roll that around in my brain for a while, because it made no sense to me. How can you have fewer friends, just because you're at home, not out and about?

I think I've figured that out; it has to do with who we perceive as a friend. My definition is very broad and encompassing. If I like you, if I have positive thoughts about you or feelings for you, you are my friend. Unless I specifically dislike you, you're my friend. That means that you, personally, are in luck if we've ever met; I would be hard pressed to name more people than I can count on one hand as being people that I just do not like. Even then, even counting the very few people on the planet whose presence I avoid, I don't wish harm or misery on any of them. I hope they're happy and healthy, just not in my presence. If they were to be in my presence, I would be polite, unless pushed pretty aggressively.

Sure, I understand the concept of "close" and "casual" friends, but it's become fairly clear to me that I don't categorize the same way some other people do. There are people who have never been in my home, who have never hosted me in their home (despite living in my community), whose numbers are not stored in my phone, who are absolutely my close friends. Some I've known for decades. 

A few years ago at a funeral, I saw someone with whom I hadn't been in contact for over 20 years. But we were kids together, we understand a lot of each other's backstory, they could have my organs if they ever need them, so the first words out of my mouth were, "I love you!" accompanied by a hug. And they said, "I love you too! How have you been?"

I'm often sincerely puzzled by people who see each other several days a week. I don't understand that; I don't do that. My parents didn't do that. My parents had family, neighbors, friends that they liked, that they did things with, but there were no weekly bridge games or girls/guys nights. There were no daily, or almost daily, phone calls. I'm the same way. Seeing someone 3 or 4 times a year feels "often" to me.

I also sincerely cannot make sense of the idea, "Well, I did like you, I thought you were fun, but then we didn't see each other for a while, so now we're not friends anymore." When I talk to people who only feel close to someone if they see each other all the time, it feels artificial and needy. I can be outside of your presence and still feel that you're my friend. One of my close friends, who I've known since we were kids, described it this way: "I don't need to see people every day to know who my friends are."

Other people have called me and my relatives like me "anti social." I prefer the wording of a professional counselor that I once saw - "You just function with a very high degree of autonomy. Most people don't." I'm not afraid or unhappy, I'm just self contained, and I can't imagine why that would be a bad thing.

I remember being puzzled when I was a newlywed moving to a new town. I'd be hundreds of miles from the only city I'd ever lived in, moving to a city in which I knew no one but my husband. Someone who truly was concerned about me said something about how hard it would be, because "you won't have any friends!" I replied, "I'll have the same friends that I have right now."

"But there won't be anybody to hang around with, day to day!"

"I don't hang out with my friends much now." I was 20, only two years out of high school, but I considered frequent contact to be something that kids with a lot of free time did. Several of my best friends had moved away, others were in school full time, some were like me and working two jobs. There was not a lot of time or money for hanging out, and our schedules were no longer similar, nor did we all live in the same neighborhood anymore. Getting together was a 'special occasion" kind of thing. I thought that was normal; I still do. I liked them, they liked me, I still wrote long, newsy letters, but now I put stamps on them instead of handing them off between classes. I didn't feel the need to audition people for Frequent Contact Buddy, because I wasn't lonely without one.

And yes, sometimes being with other people feels very much like an audition. They're trying to figure out if they want to spend time with you. Sometimes, the answer is no; sometimes, that's a good thing. Not too long ago, a dear friend - someone else I've known since we were kids - told me about someone who phoned them and said, "I'm sorry, it just takes too much work to be your friend, and I can't do it." The reason? An invitation was extended, the answer was, "Let me check with the rest of my family, and see what the work schedules look like," and that took until the next day to accomplish. That sounds so very normal to me. My husband's in bed at 6 PM, and works 12 hour shifts; if it's not an emergency, I may not discuss it with him for about 24 hours, because I won't see him for about 24 hours. Apparently, the Invitation Extender felt that things can, and should, be determined quickly, and arranged via text almost immediately. Having to wait overnight stressed them out.

I have to say, if that's the case, then I couldn't really fit into their circle, which means that "we can't be friends," since their definition of "friend" looks different than mine. Theirs sounds exactly like "too much work" to me. I tell people, truthfully, that I don't often carry my phone, especially at home. Calls, texts, or emails are usually answered within 24 hours. If that doesn't work for you, then no hard feelings, but we should not plan on doing things together.

So, the pandemic doesn't feel all that different to me. In fact, I often see or speak to people more than I did before quarantine. I spent weeks taking Porch Portraits, because people were home and available, and I love to have subjects to photograph (and I could stand out on the sidewalk, no close contact). I took the first family photos for friends with a newborn. I took "first home" photos for young couples. I learned how to Zoom. People occasionally call just out of the blue, to see if we're OK. I do not feel ignored at all.

Do you know what has happened? I hate driving. I sincerely hate driving. I have been on the freeway only once in about 9 months, and I hated every second. It takes 15 minutes on the freeway to get to our favorite pizza place; I drive through town, taking 30 minutes. The first time I drove out of town since quarantine began, I had a little panic attack on the highway. It was a familiar road - I've driven it since I was a teen, and I was only going an hour away. I've driven it twice in a day before. Now, I just came unglued. That was ten months ago. I haven't driven on the highway since.

I've never been really comfortable with traffic or high speeds. Even as a kid, I was not a speed demon. I grew up during a time when 55 was the national speed limit, and I drove a clunky, slow VW van, and I really resent being asked to drive 75 now. It feels dangerous. It always has. So does traffic. My husband and I have always had a deal: on road trips, I will drive for hours through open country and small towns. He will drive in cities. I once had to drive home through LA when he was sick, and I spent at least an hour yelling at other cars and saying, "YOU OWE ME!" to my sick husband.

My brother lives about 10 hours away by car (at or near the speed limit). It's a familiar road; I've been on it, as a passenger and a driver, since I was a kid. Most of it is flat, straight, wide open road like you see in car commercials, where your visibility is 50 miles. But there are two mountain passes, steep and curving, that I hate. I'd be OK if I could drive them at 45 or 55, but I'm told that I can't, that someone will hit me from behind, so I cringe every second I'm there. I'm going too fast, other people are going WAY too fast, there's little visibility, there's no margin for error. I hate it - and that's on a good, normal day. I hate being a passenger there, too. Now, I do not know when I might ever be able to face that again. Certainly not now.

And I hate talking to people about it. I say, "I'd be fine if there were no other cars. I could mosey at 45, and everything would be fine." Then other people say, "What are you talking about? If there were no other cars, you could cruise at 120, and do 150 on the straightaways!" That just sounds like death. Speed is dangerous, speed turns small rocks into something that will spin you out or puncture your tire, it makes you likely to lose control, it will send you hurtling over edges and off of curves and tumbling down the mountain until you explosde. I hate speed. As a teen, I once got up to 65 downhill, and it felt like the Daytona 500 and a very bad idea. That means that other people do not "get" me.

Still, I coped well. Only a few years ago, I drove, by myself, on a 6+ hour round trip, on the highway, just to get photos for a niece's school Flat Stanley project. I left town headed north, and hours later, returned to town from the south. I had fun; the solo driving was a kind of meditation time. Now, I cannot muster up the courage to drive 10 minutes outside of town to take photos of the wild horses. Oh, I'll go one direction, on the old highway, because the new highway bypasses it, meaning there's almost no traffic on the old highway. But I will not get on the interstate.

Six months ago, I gritted my teeth, and was a passenger while my husband drove us an hour away, on smaller, state roads, for a tiny vacation. I didn't worry too much about the virus, but I worried A LOT about traffic. It felt as if I nearly had a stroke when he passed a highway department vehicle on a downhill curve. The drive was misery.

You're supposed to visualize doing things that you want to do, or get better at. I want to eventually drive on the freeway, and leave town on the highway, so I visualize it. I'm fine and calm until I visualize other drivers on the road. Then I freak out. I don't like other cars. They're deadly weapons, driven by impatient, distracted people. They could kill me.

Doing something frequently smooths out the edges of the anxiety, desensitizes you to it, so it becomes more doable. During this quarantine, I have lost all of my desensitization to traffic and speed and curves. I am a raw nerve ending.

I want to fix it. I eventually will fix it. But when people talk about what makes them sad right now, it's being home, and what makes them happy is leaving. I'm happy at home, and leaving makes me sad. Then people feel compelled to tell me that I'm "not normal," and need to work at being normal, because normal is a life goal. That's misery, too. "Normal" and "average" are just math. And I'm entitled to feel however I feel.

But in a society that considers sameness to be a bonding experience, I'm outside of the loop.

A Piece of the Puzzle

 Our church runs a week-long camp for girls ages 12 and up. After your first 4 years, you can be junior staff members, helping the younger girls. I went for 6 years, and loved it. I planned to come back at 18, but had to be out of state that week.

Although you can express interest in going to camp as a Tent Mom (supervising a campsite group, usually 6 to 8 girls), kitchen staff, first aid staff, or other adult, as with all jobs in our church, it's unpaid, and you are "called" by your leaders, and asked to go. I was only asked once, long after my older girls were adults, but before my youngest was old enough for camp. I thought that was slightly odd, since I'd always figured that if I went, it would be with one of my girls. Still, it wasn't too odd, and I was excited. I'd loved camp, I'd spent years as a Scout leader, and I felt prepared and enthusiastic.

Things had changed a bit since I was a kid. When I went, you didn't meet your Tent Mom or camp group until you arrived at camp. They've since changed it so that you all get together several times to meet each other, plan, get supplies, and the like. You also have two Tent Moms per group; again, having been in Scouts, I'd seen "two deep leadership" instituted, and I understood why.  We had our meetings, figured out how many tents we'd need and who had them, and otherwise made our plans.

I'm used to camping. When I was a child, my family traveled frequently, but I only remember two nights in hotel rooms. We camped. I remember my parents choosing where we could go based on gas prices. We had a great tent and sleeping bags. My parents built a wooden "grub box" with a latch, to hold the dishes, silverware and food. Everything else, including the clothes we wore while camping, were too worn out to be used every day. They were the threadbare things, the things with holes, stains, or broken handles, the things that were mismatched. A towel or a pan or shirt or something else would get to the point that we'd relegate it to the camping stuff. This was pretty normal - I spent a lot of time in campgrounds, and everybody's camping stuff looked similar to ours.

When I was planning for camp as a Tent Mom, every now and then someone would suggest buying something new, and I'd say, "No, I have an old one that we can use." Our church leaders encouraged us to use what we had, and not spend too much, so I felt prepared and obedient.

Then we got to camp. The other camp moms and I were on totally different pages. People had bought brand new, themed and color co-ordinated stuff. There were pots still in cardboard boxes. At the camp site directly across the path from me, the Tent Mom had brought brand new, pale yellow towels. Yellow! In the forest! She had also brought co-ordinating art that she put on stakes and tied to the trees. Their camp theme was cherries, bright red on sunshine yellow backgrounds. She literally had a ruffled apron that she wore while she used a (new!) broom to sweep the paths. (I wanted to yell across, "It's all dirt! You won't get down to bedrock!" But I didn't.) 

The other groups had hand decorated, personalized mailboxes for each person in their group. Our mailbox, that was for all of us in our camp, was a bucket. A non-decorated, non-personalized bucket. Yeah, I brought it. I brought the stained, used rope for our clothesline. Our one decoration was a posterboard with our group name (that year, all the groups went with cartoons for their group names). The mat in front of the tent was one that I'd bought years before on clearance for $2.54, then used at our home's door until it had balding spots. It didn't even say "WELCOME," or have a scripture printed on it; it was shaped like a fish.

I'm not exaggerating any of this. 

Let me be clear - those kinds of women - the ones with new, co-ordinating everything - are impressive in a dozen different ways, and I admire them. I will just never BE them. If all evidence wasn't to the contrary, I would have no problem believing that we are from different planets. I felt, that week at camp, as I do pretty much every day, that other people were given a different owner's manual for their lives than I had been given, but that mine was the only one that made sense.

The other Tent Mom in our group was a lovely person, but she spent most of her time with the Tent Mom in the next camp over, because they were best friends back home. The girls were fantastic, and I loved them, but I did not have effortless conversation. They were all excited because when we got back home, the new Twilight book would be out; I love books, but not *those* books.

Anyway, all of that is incidental to the story; I just want to set the scene. I never "fit in."

The girls are divided by age, so all the 12 year olds are together. That was our age group. There were other 12 year old groups, as well On the first day, just after we'd set up our tents, the "First Year" groups were asked to send a leader up to a meeting with the camp director and her staff. I went for our group. There was a girl there who needed a tent group. It was explained to all of us that she hadn't lived in the area while we were planning, so she hadn't been assigned a group, and didn't have any friends to join. They wanted to know if any of us had room for her.

The first group Mom said, "Oh, I'd love to, but we just don't have enough." They had already made personalized everything - mailboxes, sweatshirts, gifts for each girl - and she didn't want this girl to be the only one without what the others had. The second said roughly the same thing. They'd planned meticulously, bringing just enough of everything, all matching, for the girls that were already in their group. Plus, their tents were small, and pretty full. The girl looked uncomfortable.

And there was me. We had no personalized anything; even our mail just went in a bucket. Yes, I'd brought gifts to give to the girls over the week - stickers, pencils, note cards - but I'd also thrown in extra of everything, "just in case." Plus, I remembered being partnered with a girl in my first year of camp,  a girl who'd signed up late, and had no "camp buddy." It was great - we had tons of fun.

"We have plenty of room!" I said.

"Are you sure?" the leaders asked. "We don't want to put you out."

"I'm sure! No problem! We'd love to have her!" The girl smiled.

We had another girl in our group who'd come to camp without a buddy. She'd been with our group all through our preparation, but we did have an odd number. With the new girl, now we were even, and those two pretty much instantly declared each other to be their designated buddy. They were soon inseparable. All of the girls got along well, there was physical room in the tent, and we were glad to have her. Everything was great, and we all had fun. The other Tent Mom agreed with me that it was a good thing that we could add the late girl in.

And nobody griped that our stuff was old and weird and not pretty.

Those were the days before social media - imagine such a time! - and I lost track of most of "our" girls. Our camp had girls from all over the city, so we didn't even attend church in the same congregations. I was never asked to go to camp again. I assumed that either I'd taken my expected turn and all was well, or that I was just too out of step to be asked back. No hard feelings; I am out of step.

Anyway, years later, I found out that the girl who had arrived late had become so close to the girl who'd immediately become her friend that she became a frequent visitor in that girl's home. Time passed, and she actually ended up living with them, then being legally adopted by the family. And after a few more years, she got married, in the temple. (Our religion teaches that weddings outside the temple are "til death do we part," but marriages inside the temple can be forever.) I saw photos - she looked so happy, and so beautiful, and her adoptive family looked so proud.

It just really spoke to me that I'd had a teeny part in that. I certainly can't claim credit for anything in her life. It was a small camp - she would have met her sister there anyway. Because I am religious, I think that God put her in camp so that she could. What spoke to me was the idea that the weird leader, the one who was out of synch and sloppy and chaotic, the one who never fits, didn't get in the way of the plan.

And it's pure chance that I found any of this out. Nobody sought me out to tell me, personally. The girls might not even remember me.

Remember that the next time that you leave a situation feeling totally out of place, wondering why you were even there, and if somebody else shouldn't be doing it, instead. Maybe you're one piece in a puzzle whose completion you will never see. Maybe you helped good things to happen because you weren't quite as perfect as everyone around you. The way you are is OK, anyway, and doesn't hurt The Grand Plan.

And maybe, sometimes, you'll get to see some of the other pieces of the puzzle fall in around you, and you can see that, hey, I do fit.

Getting the Boot

 These are currently my favorite boots.They're about 3 years old, and, as usual, I fear that they will be at their most comfortable right before they're worn out.

I have other boots; boots are my favorite footwear. No heels, though - I hate heels. Not on other people, just on me. Heels are pretty, but they hurt.

They might hurt less now; I had surgery on my feet to correct congenital bone deformations a few years ago. The receptionist asked me, as I left after getting my cast removed, "Are you going to go out and buy some great high heels now?" My answer was a resounding NO. I am all about comfort.

For most of my life, "dress shoes" meant high heeled sandals. A solid shoe had a tendency to squeeze my bunions, which was beyond painful. I bought sandals so that the bunion could stick out between the straps. Sure, it looked kind of funky, but it didn't hurt as much. My daughter did the opposite with her bunioned feet, because she was embarrassed by the bunions. No sandals, no flip flops - she wore shoes that hid her feet.

When I was in high school, these were my favorite dress shoes. (Yes, that's me wearing them.)

They were a big name brand, Candies, but I got them at a steep discount, because it was spring, and they were in fall colors. Pfft! I didn't care. I loved those shoes. But man, they HURT. If I wore them to a 2 day debate tournament, Friday and Saturday, I'd have to spend most of Sunday on my couch, off my feet. I'd limp through church, and most of that required sitting. Still, at that point, I considered it worth it, because the shoes were adorable.

At that age, I'd also deal with tight waistbands and other indignities, if I thought it looked good.

At 20, pregnancy forced me into flat shoes and clothes with stretch, and I realized that I'd been living my life all wrong. Now, if it isn't comfortable, I don't wear it, unless it's a lifesaving device.

The first time I came downstairs wearing these black boots with a dress, on my way to church, my youngest daughter informed me that I was fashionable. "That look is really hot right now, Mom! Good choice!"

That was not the response I got from my oldest daughter when I unpacked the boots at her house a couple of years ago. I'd come to attend my grandniece's naming ceremony, and was staying at my daughter's house; my nieces live about 30 minutes away from there. I'd worn sneakers through the airport, and had the boots in my luggage.

My daughter looked concerned. "Did you bring dress shoes?"

"These are my dress shoes." She looked blank, so I re-phrased. "I wear these with my dresses."

"Did you pack any church shoes?"

"These are my church shoes." Again the blank look, again the attempt to explain; "I wear these to church. (My daughter blinked.) I teach Gospel Doctrine in these shoes, every week."

"Did you bring any other shoes?"

I pointed to my sneakers. "These."

She was aghast. This is not surprising; she's despaired over my clothes, and wanted to dress me, since her age was in single digits.

She felt a bit better after we arrived at the synagogue. Another niece, the new baby's auntie, is easily the most fashionable person on that side of the family. She had on a dress and cowboy boots. My sister, the baby's grandma, is also terribly fashionable (and lovely); she had on a dress and knee high black boots.

My daughter felt better; not that she likes my boots, mind you, but because, "At least you aren't the only one." To be the only one doing anything is horrifying to her. I hope that she didn't notice that I'm the only one here in a pattern instead of a solid. Well, OK, not the only one; my niece has on a striped cardigan.

I think we all look pretty good. I certainly don't think that I look scandalous.

I am so very aware, however, that not everyone agrees with me. One of the things that frequently makes my life more difficult than it ought to be is the expectations for women's footwear, in either a business context or in a special occasion context.

My husband and I like to cruise, and cruises have formal nights. Dressing up isn't required, they won't bar you from the restaurants if you're dressed casually, but dressing up is nice. Plus, you can get great portraits on those nights. But, formal clothes are hard for me, specifically because of the shoes. I have a dress that I bought specifically for cruises. It's black and silver, from a higher end store than I usually patronize, looks good, and packs well. Yet it has never left my closet, because I can't find shoes that I'll wear and would be considered appropriate. My daughters lean on me to get ballet flats, but those are usually either too narrow or have zero arch support (or both), and as someone with collapsed arches, arch support is often a deal breaker issue.

Narrowness is also a huge issue. Go to the store, and put women's casual and dress shoes next to each other. The dress shoes will always, always be narrower. I've seen shoes marked "wide width" whose soles are an inch and a half narrower than my actual foot. With uncorrected bunions, that was easily 2 1/2 to 3 inches too narrow. I have seen too many dress shoes whose soles are less than two inches wide. Whose foot is that made for?

Men can, and often do, pair suits with casual shoes, even sneakers, and it's considered fun and fashionable and appropriate. My husband has a pair of black tennis shoes that he frequently wears with his dress clothes, because they blend, and people don't even notice. I can't do that. I've seen too many people raise their eyebrows when I wear sneakers with casual clothes, even on vacation.

When I competed in high school speech and debate, and thirty years later when I coached high school speech and debate, the students were supposed to dress up in "business" attire, to compete. The guys often just tossed on a blazer over their T-shirt, jeans and tennis shoes, and they were considered well dressed and prepared. Even if the T-shirt had a design on it, or the jeans were ripped, it could be passed off as edgy and trendy. A girl dressed the same way was seen as being inappropriately dressed, not caring about herself or the event, and unprepared. Even swapping pants for a skirt, but wearing the same top and shoes she'd worn to school, was often deemed inadequate. One of my students wore brand new, deep blue jeans with her blazer, and got "inappropriado wardrobe" written on her ballot. (We are still trying to figure out what "inappropriado" is actually supposed to mean, since it's not a real word.) Many, many girls packed slippers to wear between rounds, because their "appropriate" shoes hurt. 

Business women do the same thing. How many go out to lunch in their office suits and skirts and sneakers, because their dress shoes are just for show, like for when they clock in or meet clients?

This was a constant struggle for me over decades of taking wedding photos. I could "look appropriate," or I could wear shoes that were comfortable. Sure, men sometimes face this struggle, too. I remember cringing when I heard a woman say that she "should have known" that she'd get "terrible photos" of the wedding when her male photographer showed up in sneakers. "How much of a professional could he be, dressed like that?"

This is why my husband, also a wedding photographer, always said, "I'm dressing up even if I'm the most formally dressed person at the wedding." To me, though, that's just evidence of how men and women move through life differently. It would be difficult, and often prohibitively expensive, for me to try to be the most formally dressed person at a wedding. Other women are likely to be in gowns, silk, satin, taffeta, sequins. I'm not going to be working in those clothes. I often end up climbing on chairs or benches, or getting flat on my stomach, to get the shot I want. It irks me tremendously that wearing clothes, and especially shoes, that let me do my job well is seen as being inappropriate, not caring about myself, the clients, or the occasion. I can't do my best work if I'm in pain. I shouldn't have to.

Three of my childen are married. To two of those weddings, where I was not only the parent of the bride or groom but also taking the photos, I wore boots under my floor length skirt.

Even if I was the only one in boots.

A Rock and a Hard Place

Even though I expect it, in theory, I am still constantly surprised by how differently people view the same - or similar - circumstances.

We all do this, I think. We're sure that the facts point to a certain conclusion. Of course, there are often many valid conclusions. Life isn't so much a coin with two sides as it is a D&D die, with 20 possible sides.

Years ago, I was talking with another mother about something to do with kids being sick; maybe one of us had a sick child at that point. Then we talked about being grateful that we had medical insurance. As a young mother, I saw our medical coverage as pretty magical. For the first two decades of raising kids, a doctor's visit was $5. When people talk about "Cadillac insurance," that was what we had.

"Yeah," she said, "sometimes my parents couldn't even take us to the doctor without worrying. Or, they'd wait until we were really sick."

"Mine, too," I agreed. My parents had 4 kids, and our income was pension checks and a part time job. We never applied for any kind of assistance, either; that was for "poor people," moochers, or impending starvation. At the beginning of every school year, in the beginning of term forms, schools sent home a one page form for school district sponsored insurance. We'd get that when I was in school; it didn't help much, but it did help.

Being sick always meant waiting to see if an illness got worse or got better. If we started to feel better after two or three days, we knew it was a virus that would pass on its own. If we got worse, it meant prescription medicine, so that's when we went to the doctor. It seemed really normal to me - why panic if it was something that would just pass? My husband's father always phrased it this way - "Going to the doctor's office just exposes you to a bunch of sick people. That's where they all are. Why take your kid there unless you have to?"

The other mom started telling a story about her brother being sick, and how her parents waited to take him to the doctor, because they couldn't afford the visit. I can't remember what he had; honestly, until a certain point, this conversation wasn't really memorable, so I likely would have forgotten it entirely until it took an unexpected turn. At this point, it was all totally familiar and expected to me, like a conversation about getting dressed every day.

"By the time they went, he was so sick!" she said.

"Yeah, I remember what that's like." She'd reminded me of an illness that I'd had at 11 or 12. "Mine did the same thing."

"He could have died!" Years later, she was still upset about it.

"Me, too."

At this point, I thought we were still on the same page - we have a ridiculous medical system in this country. No other "first world" nation makes its citizens choose between medicine and food, doctor's visits or rent. No parent should be forced into that decision.

So, here I was, thinking that we both blamed the system. I was wrong. She blamed her parents. And the fact that I did not blame her parents deeply upset her. "I would do without anything for my son! I would take him to the doctor even if it meant that we'd end up homeless! No decent parent lets their child get sicker and sicker!"

Ouch; so, here, our opinions parted, because I agreed with my parents' choice, even when I was the sick child.

The illness I was thinking of started predictably. I always got sick easily and severely. It wasn't until I was in my 40s and had my thyroid removed that I could pinpoint any possible reason for that. It was just how it was. Being sick usually meant a week out of school, and often two weeks, even if it was "just a cold." I got the same illnesses every year. It was ordinary, like having to scrape your windshield.

Strep throat was one of those illnesses. I could pretty much guarantee that I'd have it at least once a winter, and often, more than once. It sometimes showed up in the warmer months, too. It just seemed to like me.

When I was in 6th or 7th grade, the winter that I turned 12, I got a case of strep that didn't respond to antibiotics. We went back to the doctor, and he prescribed stronger antibiotics, but the illness still didn't respond. It had been a couple of weeks already at this point.

I wasn't worried about schoolwork; my teachers sent it home, and I did it and sent it back, so I was maintaining good grades. (If I'd had the same attendence requirements that schools have now, I'd have failed at least three grades. Back then, they just needed you to do the work at home.) But, I was miserable. I was feverish, tired, headachy, and probably dehydrated, because it hurt to swallow even my own saliva. My mom made sure that I had juice, Jello, popsicles, and soup, but even cold, smooth food hurt, so I avoided eating or drinking too much.

When we made the decision to take me back to the doctor again, my dad insisted that we drive across town to see his doctor, instead of going back to my pediatrician. He was frustrated and angry that my doctor hadn't been able to find an effective treatment, and he wanted a second opinion. He trusted his own doctor more, he said, since mine was "failing" to help.

So, tired and grouchy, I was bundled across town to see my dad's doctor. He seemed nice, and his nurses seemed nice. They did the usual exam, and asked about symptoms - how long, how severe. He made sure to ask if I was actually taking my antibiotics, not just spitting them out when my parents weren't looking. I was mildly offended, but figured it was a fair question, since he'd never met me before and the drugs had worked in the past.

Then, he took both of my parents into his office, to have a private discussion. I was always annoyed by being excluded from conversations or decision making, especially when the decisions were about me, so I got a bit grumpier.

When they came out, they had a treatment plan. He explained that if the medications I'd already had hadn't worked, they'd have to give me something much stronger, and that meant shots. "This treatment isn't available orally," he said. I'd have to come in every single day to get shots until I improved, then taper down to every other day until I was well.

Shots never scared me or made me cry, but I've never liked them, either. Plus, I'd have to get out of my pajamas into real clothes and leave the house to go clear across town every day, which didn't sound great. But, being well again did sound great. So, OK, daily shots - let's do this.

He gave me the first shot before we left, and he and my mom discussed what time I'd come in every day. And, we went home with a plan.

It worked; after a few days, the fever was down, the pain was down, the headache was down.

The nurses tried to be cheerful, and alternated giving me the shots on the left and right sides, in this case being alternating butt cheeks. "Which side did we get yesterday?" a nurse would chirp while readying the premeasured vials of yellow liquid. I'd try not to roll my eyes. I mean, it was sweet, but there was no way to make this experience pleasant.

After a week or so, we tapered off to every other day, and that lasted another week or so. After that, I was back to school, back to normal, upset only at the quarter sized stain on my favorite jeans from an injection that bled. But, I was glad to know that there was a treatment that worked when others didn't, in case we needed it again some day.

When I was 14 or 15, I was talking to my mom about some illness or other - I probably had strep again - and said, "Remember when I had to go get shots every day?"

Of course she did. And, now that the danger had passed, she let me in on, as Paul Harvey would say, "the rest of the story."

That treatment plan had been a compromise between what the doctor wanted and what my family could pay for. The strep was turning into scarlet fever, and the doctor wanted me hospitalized.

Strep alone can be deadly, and often was in the days before antibiotics. There is a theory out there that Mozart died from strep. Scarlet fever can be even more deadly. In one scarlet fever outbreak in the U.S., there was a 5% fatality rate. For comparison, COVID-19 has a fatality rate up to 1%. If you read the Little House on the Prairie books, you know that Mary Ingalls went blind due to scarlet fever. The illness that took Helen Keller's sight and hearing is believed to have been scarlet fever.

When my parents said, accurately, that we could not pay for a hospital stay, they and the doctor collectively came up with this alternative. I would get shots every day. If I improved, fine, I stayed at home. If I did not improve, he would hospitalize me against my parents' wishes, and ask the state to take emergency custody of me, and therefore the state would cover the cost.

My immediate reaction was, "Thank you! I would have been so stressed in the hospital that I would have gotten so much worse!" Knowing that we'd dodged a hospital stay was the big deal for me as a teen.

Sometimes, I tell this story, and other people will say, "Oh, of course, being away from your parents would be so scary!" That's not quite what I meant. Sure, it would. But being around other people, 24 hours a day, was what sounded awful. Back then, children's wards were big open rooms with beds down both sides. It was easier for the nurses to watch over and care for multiple kids this way. You could get semi-private or private rooms if you had a lot of cash, but we (obviously) didn't. Being in a room full of other kids either meant that they'd exhaust me with chattering and interaction, or ignore me while chattering with everyone else. That was what happened every time I was in a group, especially of people I didn't know. Neither option was comfortable. Add in nurses and doctors checking on me at all hours, and it was exhausting to even imagine. I couldn't imagine getting well that way.

I still dislike being in the hospital. I do not understand people who find it restful or reassuring.

Still, my comfort was not my parents' primary concern. They didn't make their choice in order to spare me from awkwardness, even though my first inclination was to assume that they had. It's pretty easy for someone to say that "any reasonable parent" would hospitalize their child "no matter what," but there were 5 people at home. My dad was retired, with a heart condition. They simply could not prioritize me, or any one of us, over the other four, or over their continued ability to pay our bills.

It took years before I started thinking of the other side of that coin, the "emergency custody" side. To do that, the doctor would have had to allege medical neglect. I would have been a ward of the state. After I was well, my parents would have had to petition the court to regain custody of me. Now, I can see how terrifying that must have been for them. I can imagine them asking a judge to send me home, and the judge grilling them - "How do we know that this won't happen again? How do we know that she'll receive adequate care? How do we know that your other minor child is safe?" It would have been a nightmare.

The worst part of that scenario, of course, is that I absolutely was not neglected. They had taken me to the doctor, repeatedly. I was taking medication, as prescribed. They weren't hermits who refused all medical care. They were trying their hardest, but their kid was sick, and getting sicker.

Despite my friend's conviction that sleeping in the car would be a reasonable choice at that point, she was a single mom with one child. We didn't even have a car that would sleep all of us. Besides, being homeless, especially with a sick child, is likely to result in your child going into foster care. So, while I think that she's a compassionate person and a dedicated parent, I can't agree with her about this.

I think that both my parents and the doctor handled the situation properly. Defer to parents' wishes, but have a plan B in case the child's life is endangered. Everybody's rights and opinions are respected. The child gets treatment, which is the entire point of health care.

My anger is not directed at my parents, who were doing everything that they could. It is not at the doctor, who recognized the illness and its possible consequences. It is at a system that makes parents choose between hospitalizing their child and facing financial ruin for the whole family, or losing custody of their child. No parent should ever have to make that choice. Ever. The only thing worse would be being faced with that decision, and then criticized for it - which is what happens when you decide that all "good" parents will do things the same way.

Our system treats medical care the same way it treats unnecessary consumer products - the whole idea that demand will even out supply and cost. It's not a purse or a car, it's a life. They're different.

So, while I am beyond glad to have had our "Cadillac insurance" while raising my kids, I still view the system as profoundly broken. And I become more and more impressed by my parents' ability to navigate this hostile landscape.

In Traffic

When I was a kid, I read parts of the newspaper every day, but it wasn't the headlines. It was the comics, Dear Abby, and Dave Barry. (I'm still miffed that Dave Barry no longer writes regular columns.) As an adult, I also read the news, but I still love the comics. I sometimes read advice columns; I might agree with the advice, not agree, or have no basis for an opinion (like the advice columns in my husband's handyman magazines; I don't know how to wire your new whatever).

I have rarely thought that an advice columnist was farther off the mark than when they answered a query from someone who wrote in to say, "I hate it when cars drive right next to me. I feel compelled to either speed up or slow down. Is this normal?"

Let me just digress for a moment here to say, I am baffled by the sheer number of people who apparently worry about whether or not they are "normal." I only tend to worry about it in, say, terms of post-op recovery, so I know when I need to seek out the doctor - "Your body will do this or that, but don't worry, it's normal."

I'm more like my son. His sister frequently asks, "Is it weird that I like (x)?" He has no patience for this, and is likely to snap, "Who cares? So you like it. It doesn't matter if that's weird." While I think he should be less snappish about it, that's how I feel. Like it or don't. There is no reason to spend a single second wondering if you're "normal." I think this behavior is a result of people deciding that normal = desirable, which it does not.

But anyway - back to the advice.

I was positive that I knew what the columnist would say. I, too, hate having cars next to me, or too close in front or behind. I think the reasons for this are obvious, and rooted in safety. A car near you, especially at freeway speeds, has the potential to harm you. If the other driver so much as sneezes, or looks at their phone, or gets aggressive in passing, you can be seriously harmed or killed. Cars are deadly weapons. I know nothing about most drivers that I'll encounter, but I'm asked to trust them literally with my life, and the lives of my family. I am most comfortable when they are far from me, not so close that I could touch them. So yes, I hate it when they want to drive right next to me. I, too, will speed up or slow down in order to shake them off.

This is not what the columnist said. She blathered on for several paragraphs about perceived intimacy. People like to think that they are anonymous in their cars, she said, so having someone close enough to see you feels like forced intimacy, so it makes us emotionally uncomfortable.

What? On what planet? They have thousands of pounds of metal right next to me, and I don't know if they're careful! I don't care if they can make eye contact! I'm worried about automobile contact!

But no; the columnist wanted to carry on about intimacy issues. I found myself mentally addressing her - "Honey, I'm not dating them! I'm trying to stay alive at 75 MPH!"

Maybe you have intimacy issues. I don't care, as long as you stay in your lane.

I should probably never write an advice column (I'd end up saying, "Who cares if you're normal?" and people would sue); but I'm sure that I'm right about this.

Not Banned Books

My parents read a lot. We had lots of magazines and books around the house, and from the time we could read, none of us were forbidden to touch any of them. There were no trashy romance novels, no stashes of porn; the closest thing to inappropriate was a pile of Cosmos that a cousin had handed down (and my mom had no interest in). Plus, a lot of the thrillers and such were in Condensed Book form, so they were the equivalent of movies cut for TV. Anything graphic was edited out.

There were books we had to treat carefully, and those were on high shelves - the encyclopedias, the old family Bibles. We were expected to have clean hands, be gentle, put them away.

We had lots of storybooks, too, but if we could read something the adults owned, that was OK. Mom sometimes told us that we probably wouldn't like a book that was really dry, from a kid's point of view, or warned us that there was something we might not like (for me, that meant animals dying. I still loved Old Yeller). But if we could read the words, we could read the book (or magazine).

I remember sitting in the living room and reading a magazine while my mom sat across the room reading something. I came across a word I didn't know. I was never the kid who just skipped those; I had to find out how to say it, and what it meant. So, I asked my mom, "What are genitals?"

She looked a bit surprised, and said, "Private parts - reproductive organs. What are you reading that has that word in it?"

"Reader's Digest." She raised her eyebrows, so I elaborated - "It's an article about a bear attack. It says the man covered his during the attack." Now I understood why.

Mom said, "I'll bet he did." Then she wanted to know, "Did he survive?"

"I haven't finished the article yet, but the title has the word 'survival' in it, so I'm guessing he did."

"That's good," Mom said, and went back to reading.

That kind of parenting was perfect for me. She didn't lecture me about reading something scary and tell me that I'd have nightmares. (Books rarely scared me.) She didn't rush to reassure me that bear attacks were rare, and that we were safe when we went into the woods. (I knew that anyway, and the article had already covered that ground if I didn't.) She certainly never refused to tell me what a word meant, or made me feel bad for asking. She gave clear, factual answers, without unnecessary detail.

I was eight years old when the book Jaws came out. I remember clearly lying in the hammock in the back yard, reading in the opening pages the description of the first victim reaching down, thinking she'd caught her foot on something, and discovering that her whole leg was gone. A fly landed on my book, and in irritation I slammed the book shut, squishing it between the pages, then regretted my  impulsiveness.

I loved Brody, Hooper and Quint. I loved the way that each needed the other's expertise to get the job done. I rolled my eyes at their bickering, and was captivated by their bonding. I understood parts of each of their personalities.

At eight, though, my only experience with losing a main character was Old Yeller. I naively assumed that all of our principles would live. After all, so far, everyone who'd died had been someone we'd met for mere moments.

Then Quint died. I took it very hard; I was devastated. Decades later, I still feel it.

I did not understand the reaction that a lot of people had: "I will never go in the ocean again!" A very literal person, I could not figure out if people had never known that sharks existed. That seemed unlikely. If you knew that sharks existed, why would a book about one be surprising? Turns out, most of them had just never considered that a shark might attack them, personally.

My reaction was, "You know what in the ocean is most likely to kill you? The water." Most animals will leave you alone, most of the time. Water is relentless, and doesn't care about you. Still, people felt sure that intellect and ability would keep them safe from the actual water - just don't breathe it, right? A shark sounded much more unpredictable and frightening.

Still, I fell back on the numbers, how many people die every year from drowning vs. shark attack. Plus, Benchley called his character a "rogue" shark, over and over. The whole point was that this was not a normal shark, and not a normal summer. Plus, it was fiction. He could have made the shark talk if he wanted to; fiction is not constrained by facts.

Decades later, I'm still afraid of drowning; sharks still don't bother me a bit.

The next year, when the movie came out, kids at school kept asking each other, "Have you seen Jaws?" I kept saying, "No, but I've read the book." (One kid earned a scowl by saying, "What book?")

When I was sleeping over at a friend's house, her dad asked my mom if it was OK if I went with them to the movie. "Sure. She's read the book; she'll be fine," Mom said. And she was right; the scenes of the camera gliding over the ocean bottom at the beginning of the show felt scarier than any of the scenes with the shark.

Except when we still lost Quint. I hoped that they'd let him live this time, but no. In a way, that made me happy, because I hate it when filmmakers change the plot, but I hated losing Quint, too.

I had the same rules for my kids concerning books as my mom had had for me - clean hands, treat it right, don't leave it out, put it away when you're done. But I didn't have any books that I hid from them. If there was something not appropriate for kids - I read a lot of mysteries and histories, and people in those have a tendency to die, often in colorful ways - I put it on a high shelf. By the time you could reach the shelf, you'd be old enough to read it.

My daughter was home from college for a visit, and I said something about a crime; I forget which one. "Oh, yeah, I read about that in your book," she said.

"Which book?" I wanted to know.

She told me, then said, "Whoops. I probably shouldn't have told you that." It was a book about famous unsolved crimes - Jack the Ripper, the Black Dahlia, JonBenet Ramsey.

"Why not?"

"Because I read your book."

"Did you ruin it?"

"No."

"Did you put it back?"

"Yeah."

"Then what's the problem?"

"I figured you'd be mad if I read it."

"Let me get this straight. It's a book that I bought - not just borrowed, but spent money on. It's something that I'm interested in. And you thought that would be a problem?"

"Well, yeah. People were, like, murdered."

"So, you thought that a book that sat in plain sight, on a shelf literally right outside your bedroom, would be forbidden."

"Well, yeah." She actually looked a bit disappointed that I wasn't angry, but I thought that this was very funny. Kid, if I didn't want you to know that the book existed, I would not put it at eye level, 6 inches away from your bedroom door.

Also, if I would have said, "This is really fascinating, you should read this," I probably would have gotten, "Ew! That's gross! What is wrong with you? Why would I want to read that?"

I have only one book with pages that I don't want left where people can see them, and that's because I would have a problem. I own a big, glossy, fascinating book about the Titanic. But, the pages with photos of the wreck are paper clipped together. The kids all know that they're welcome to look, but as soon as they're done, those paper clips go back on!

Because the scariest thing in my books is still the water.