Fun and Games

It all started with Word Challenge. My fiancé Preppy found a Facebook application that’s sort of like what would happen if Boggle and Scrabble had a baby, and within a week it was consuming every free moment. He was delighted. I’d sit by him on the sofa and help him find words, but spend half that time arguing with it about words it refused to recognize. Despite what that know-nothing Word Challenge will tell you, “indices” is a word. I looked it up to prove my point. But it’s a hollow victory when one manages to outsmart something that isn’t actually, you know, ALIVE.
Anyhoo, eventually I signed myself up for Word Challenge, and my sister Shannon quickly followed suit. That’s when things turned ugly. My sister is a college graduate who spends all day feeding her insatiably hungry newborn. She beat Preppy’s and my high scores within two days. This roused the competitor in me. Emerging as the Word Challenge champion became an obsession. We would have hour-long conversations about strategy.
Not coincidentally, around this time my fiancé lost all interest in the game. Apparently my sister and I had raised the stakes beyond his ability to enjoy it. We have a tendency to do this in my family. My mother’s mother, Memama, would play remarkably contentious Scrabble games with my Uncle Paul. The games would last entire afternoons, and none of us would be allowed in the room while the death match was being held. So we’d sit by the door and listen, since the language was much more colorful than anything on TV.
“God…Dammit, Shirley! That is NOT a goddamn word.”
“Go ahead and look it up, Paul, if you’re willing to risk the points. You were wrong about ‘striven,’ but maybe you’ll be right about this one.”
“God…DAMMIT, Shirley!”
Then we’d hear her delighted little chuckle.
“Alright, so that’s a triple-word score…”
Memama was a teensy slip of a woman from Arkansas without much education, up against the 300-pound Shell Oil executive who’d married her daughter. In any other scenario imaginable, he’d have the obvious upper hand. But Memama had one hell of a vocabulary, and on the battlefield of Scrabble, she was a formidable opponent who could knock your highfalutin’ ass down a few pegs, ‘til she could look you in the eye.
She taught her grandkids that simply by sharpening a few well-chosen skills, you could take down any opponent. The trick was always making sure you were playing your game, not theirs. It was a life lesson that served us all very well.
Leaving my sister and I to battle it out over Word Challenge, Preppy moved on to a new Facebook game called Pet Society. It’s a benign little enterprise where you create a big-eyed cartoon animal which you can play Frisbee with and dress in little outfits. You can also earn coins to purchase home furnishings for your pet by visiting strangers and washing or feeding their animals. Once my Shannon and I discovered this, the game was once again on.
“I’ve neglected my own children all morning while I sat online bathing strangers and feeding them pineapples,” says Shannon on the phone. “But I got four hundred coins and bought a chandelier!”
“Preppy says we’re ruining another game,” I say, brushing a random rabbit and stocking up on coins.
“He’s just saying that because we’re winning. If you’re that worried, buy him a present.”
So, sitting in my hotel room hundreds of miles away from my man, I send my pet over to his pet’s house. Preppy was a few beers in when he created his animal and accidentally misspelled its name, which apparently one cannot change, so he’s stuck with a cat named “Butterscotche.” I spend the coins I was saving for a new sofa and buy a bunch of presents for Butterscotche. This may all sound insane to the uninitiated, but it’s a significant choice in Pet Society: I’m not winning anymore.
But the next time he opens the game, instead of seeing how high I’ve managed to push my score, he’ll find a room full of gift boxes. It’s not the same as me being home with him, but it’ll do, and it’s another good life lesson for me. Sometimes, when you lose, you win.

I Can See Clearly Now

For the last two years, my fiancé Preppy and I have had a little game. Okay, he might call it something different, but to me it was a little game. Whenever we went to a restaurant, I would ask him to read the words on signs or television screens across the room. He’d crane his neck and squint his eyes, straining to make out the words.

It was like Morgan Freeman looking for that tombstone in “Driving Miss Daisy.”
“Try… a… marshmallow?”
“It says margarita, baby. Try a margarita. Why would the bar be selling marshmallows?”
“It could happen. Could be the name of a shot. I’d try it.”
“Don’t try to distract me. What’s the word below margarita?”
His frustration is mounting, but I have a point to make here.
“…mojito.”
“That was a lucky guess based on context clues. Being defiant will not make you any less blind.”
He knows this. All of his friends know this, as do his co-workers. Yet, he resists. I know my random eye tests in public places are straining his patience more than his eyes, but I’ve only got a few days left at home before I leave for four months. So I have to nag him as much as possible. Because while his determination and denial have reached Hillary Clinton levels, this man I love who cannot read the names of drinks on a chalkboard is driving a car. I find this alarming, and I know I will spend the next four months waiting for a late-night phone call announcing some horrible accident. I can picture the scene quite clearly. It involves police tape and Preppy on a stretcher, weakly calling my name. I can be really detailed in my nightmares. My mind always goes to the worst-case scenario first, because it makes the trip back to reality so reassuring.
Preppy says the situation is not nearly as dire as I claim, that he’s learned to cope with it. My argument is always that we’re not talking about a mysterious condition here. He doesn’t have whatever that sleepy disease was that Cher had; he just needs to get glasses.
I admit I’m being judgmental and shrewish over this whole thing. It might as well be Lynette’s B-plot on an episode of Desperate Housewives. I don’t doubt that Preppy has learned to live life like Mr. Magoo, and to him it likely all seems quite manageable. The truth is, we’ve all got something like this in their lives- an element of our existence that has been declining in quality or payoff, but we hold onto it, adjust, try to make do.
My pal Mel lost a whole bunch of weight. No, seriously, you could have built two Jonas brothers out of the weight she lost. The newly skinny Mel met a new guy who simply was not a good match. They struggled, and tried, and wrote down goals to improve their relationship. Still, they resisted the breakup long after the relationship’s natural expiration date. Part of that was because he was the first guy she’d seriously dated since she became the new her. But staying with him was preventing her from becoming the NEW new her, which was even better. Eventually she had the little light bulb moment, and did the necessary repairs on her life.
We don’t lower our standards because we’re incapable of fixing the problem, and it isn’t because we can’t see what’s deteriorating. It’s because doing the repairs requires acknowledging that something’s not working anymore. Whether it’s the wrong job, a bad relationship, an unflattering hair color, or failing eyesight, it’s just easier to lower standards than it is to cowboy up and admit things have gotta get better.
Without any warning, Preppy came home from work last night sporting brand-new spectacles. They make him look smart, and even preppier, so I’m a fan. I’m proud of him for taking care of the problem, and I choose to believe my nagging had something to do with it.
“So, is it amazing?” I ask. “All the details you’ve been missing?”
From across the room, he smiles and studies me closely.
“You really need to touch up your roots. And when’s the last time we vacuumed in here?”
Okay. I had it coming.

Travel Wear

The challenge: Packing clothing appropriate for New Jersey in winter, Ohio and Colorado in spring, then California in early summer. Make sure it all travels well, won’t wrinkle much, and doesn’t require washing after one wear. Oh, and it’s gonna need to fit in one suitcase. And they all need to be components that’ll make cute outfits.

That last edict is a self-imposed regulation, but should be considered just as important.
I’m the sort of person who brings three changes of clothes for one night of dogsitting for friends in Smyrna, on account of you just never know what the night will bring. An unexpected spill, temperature change, or dinner invite would require a wardrobe adjustment, and I wanna be prepared. For the last few weeks, I’ve been working at the Center for Puppetry Arts a few hours a day, helping seat groups of school children for matinee shows. I have come to love my morning ritual of standing in front of the armoire in my underpants with a cup of coffee in hand, deciding what to wear that day. It’s a process that requires at least half an hour of failed combos, but when I find it, it’s such a happy moment.
Somehow I have to figure out how to condense that experience into one suitcase for the next four months, while I’m back on the road with the tour of my play. And it’s not going well. I read somewhere that Albert Einstein had a wardrobe of nothing but white Oxford shirts and khakis, so he never had to waste thought on what he was going to wear on any given occasion. I have no idea if that’s true- 90% of my knowledge base is from Wikipedia and Access Hollywood- but there’s logic to the notion. I could just wear variations on the same ensemble from city to city, and the only people who’d be any the wiser would be my co-workers. It’d be fitting, since I wear the same costumes every night and all the hotel rooms eventually start to look alike.

It’d be like one day on continuous loop, which for some reason sounds like the most depressing thing I can possibly imagine.
I think that’s why I’m placing such importance on the contents of this suitcase: It’s the one tie to home I’ll have as I go from city to city. Every sweater, every t-shirt, every pair of socks has a different memory attached to it, and I crave that connection with my home life. As the clock winds down on my month-long break, I keep questioning whether I spent my time properly. I meant to put crown molding up in the bedroom, visit my sister, finish my play… most important, I’d planned on filling the last thirty days with beautiful, romantic memories with my fiancé to reflect upon while I’m gone, which could get us through the harder nights in the months ahead. But I don’t know if I pulled that off. Most of the time, we were just back in our old routine- forgetting to take out the trash, eating pizza and watching Lost, complaining about work. Granted, those are exactly the things I’ll miss, but I wish I’d done something bigger.
So I take out the trash.
While I’m outside, I note the tulip bed by the front door, planted by the previous owner. She had talked us through how to cut them down and prep the soil every winter, so they’d return healthy and happy later. We didn’t do that. Leaves and trash piled up, giving the impression that we’re greeting visitors with our compost heap. I consider this for a moment, then go inside and Google “Tulips.” Quick as a flash, I’m outside again in my grubbies with a rake, shovel, and trowel. For the next two hours, I rebuild the flower bed, and uncover the little eager sprouts under the mulch.
In a few months, while I’m a thousand miles away, my fiancé will come home and (hopefully) find tulips in full bloom. It’ll be like I gave him flowers. Speaking as someone who struggles with being romantic, I’m pretty proud of the notion. Plus, it’s somehow fitting that when I finally figure out a grand gesture, I won’t be here to see it. But you’ve got to switch your thinking and your methods while you’re away from your own life. That concept should probably apply to my wardrobe as well. So I go back inside with renewed determination to tackle that suitcase. I don’t really need twelve sweaters.

Maybe nine, at most.

Pretty as a Picture

My sister Shannon and her husband are now the proud parents of another son, named Wyatt. His father likes that their newest addition shares a name with legendary gunslinger Wyatt Earp. This doesn’t impress me all that much, so I’m pretending his namesake was actress Jane Wyatt, who played Spock’s mother on “Star Trek.” I concede that’s kinda reaching, but it makes for fun trivia.
Wyatt was adopted from the same woman who gave birth to my sister’s first child, Jack. She didn’t let them know she was pregnant again until her second trimester, so the prep time for Jack’s little brother was disconcertingly brief. But what a bonus that they got another kid from the same source, ya know?

It’s like finding out they made a sequel to your favorite movie.
“I need your help,” says my sister Shannon on the phone. “I’ve got pictures from the day Wyatt was born, and I don’t have a stitch of makeup on. Can we take a trip to Photoshop Land?”
Disney World be damned, Photoshop Land is the real happiest place on Earth. It’s the magical world of meticulously clone-stamped perfection where Faith Hill has arms the size of wrapping paper tubes and Mariah Carey looks like an oil painting. If the camera adds ten pounds, Photoshop removes fifteen. In my house, no photograph is made available for public viewing without first taking a trip through the happiest place on Earth. And now my friends know that if they tag a picture on Facebook without running it past me first, I’m gonna be pissed. Usually I’ll just swipe it from their page, make the necessary changes, and e-mail them the new version.
It’s not ENTIRELY driven by vanity. That’s only part of the rich tapestry of neuroses involved here. I see digital manipulation as no different from editing stories when you’re in mixed company. My fiancé’s friends know I would rather set myself on fire than hear stories about his ex-boyfriends, so when they reminisce in my presence, they’re kind enough to edit out any references to who he might have been dating at the time. Then I get to enjoy my carefully-constructed illusion that he spent the first twenty-six years of his life patiently waiting for me. Despite my insatiable curiosity in many other areas, I have very little interest in people sharing uncomfortable moments from their pasts, especially if the story will make me uncomfortable too. That sounds just awful. Who would want that? So I edit, and expect others to do so as well, as a courtesy. Just extract the lessons and drop the stories.

My entire family does this.
Over time, photos become the inarguable link to our histories- a trip down memory lane that gives newcomers a sense of our personal journeys. I hate that. When I look back at pictures from my birthday in 2005, there’s the ex who turned out to be such a dick. There’s that zit which of course popped up in the middle of my forehead that morning. There’s George with the red wine stain on his shirt. Well, not anymore. Photoshop Land creates an alternate reality where my skin and George’s shirt remained flawless, and that ex is replaced by a carefully-positioned potted palm tree. I don’t have to destroy the pictures, as previous generations of my family have done. Our family albums indicate which eras are open to discussion. If there are no pictures from 1967, it’s best not to ask why. But now, the visuals can match the edited stories. Empty beer bottles and overflowing ashtrays? Click. Drug paraphernalia? Click. Regrettable relationships? Click.

This software is the greatest technological advancement ever, with the possible exception of the Sham-Wow.
This has actually made me less self-conscious about pictures. It used to be impossible to get me to open my mouth in a photo, because I hate my teeth. Now I smile like I’m in a Crest commercial and let the airbrush deal with it.
As time goes by, my nephews will become curious about their own family background, and when they look at photo albums they’ll see the world as we choose to remember it. They might not remember their mother putting on full makeup every Christmas morning, but there’s the proof in the picture. If they ask why we look so horrible by comparison when viewed in person, I will tell them not to question it. It’s best to just enjoy the moment, and we’ll review the photos later.