My Mom - a MODEL Parent

My mom used to go to a lot of functions when I was younger, and I’d watch her work her closet to find something appropriate to wear. The parties changed, but her method of selecting apparel never did: She’d squint her eyes, rotate her head left then right, never breaking eye contact with herself in the mirror; suck in her gut, tuck in her chin – and lastly and most important – crook her elbow at waist level and let her hand dangle from her wrist.. Houston, all systems are GO. Let’s Par-Tay.


I remember it like it was yesterday. Oh. Wait. It WAS yesterday, because I DO THE SAME THING MYSELF today.!!! And while I’m doing laps in my mom’s genetic pool of postures and poses, I wonder would it have been better had I gotten her going-to-college-at-age-16-and being-exempt-from-all-her- exams DNA!!


Oh, well, I’m confident I’ll look decent at the next party I go to. I hope they have cake. Until then , I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille . . . . .

Cake Comments:


“Small But Talls aren’t just cakes – they’re Designer cakes!” enthused on fan.

“Look at the camera, baby. Love the camera. The camera is a Small But Tall. Devour the camera, baby!”

“Small But Tall, Scene 7, Act 3. Plate. Fork. Action!”



Cake Facts:

One Small But Tall will feed 15 stars or 12 Actors!

PARENTING: "BOO" NOT . . . LEST YE BE BOO'D!!!

KEEPING your kids safe – that’s good parenting. But making your kids FEEL safe – that’s great parenting.


I didn’t appreciate the distinction while I was actually IN the swamp, wrastling the alligators, but I’ve heard my children’s spin on what spooked them, and some therapist is going to conclude that it’s scary how much of it occurred on MY watch.


So maybe it wasn’t the swuftest idea to check out a copy of Stephen King’s Pet Cemetery at the video store for my second grader and his friends. He never did look at Fluffy the same way again!


Equally ill advised was choosing to “augment” the National Weather Service’s alert by yelling “TORNADO! TORNADO! TAKE COVER IN THE BASEMENT – NOW!” when visiting relatives in Kansas! Keeping them safe? You bet I was. Did they feel secure; any shrink would say, “I think not.”


I’m still waiting for the Department of Social Services to visit our home on some anonymous “tip” about the time I draped a blanket over my head and encouraged our baby to pull it off – only to reveal a horrifying Cyclops mask over my face. Cry??? The child’s wail could have raised the dead!


We didn’t seem to have many issues with the middle child. I guess she just remained ‘above the ‘fraid.’


Well, I won’t make the same mistakes again with my grandkids – if they’re allowed to visit us. I’ll ply them with cookies and cakes and they’ll yearn to see their grammie, who’ll read stories to them at bedtime, sometimes Goodnight Moon and sometimes one of my favorites, the one that starts out “Johnny, I’m on the first step. Johnny, I’m on the second step. Johnny . . ..”

CAKE COMMENTS:

“My mother’s a Monster! She won’t buy me a Small But Tall,” moaned one fan.

“You’ve never tried a Small But Tall? What are you – an ALIEN?” asked an enthusiast.

“The day I stop liking Small But Talls is the day the earth stands still,” shrilled another fan.



CAKE FACTS:

One Small But Tall will feed 15 pigmy gremlins or 12 of THEM ants!

BORN FUNNY IN SERIOUS TIMES!

Swine flu pandemic! Economic crisis and financial collapse! Our relationships with foreign countries in the toilet! Gulp! Quick, Lassie, go for Jim. Tell him to find all the smart people he can to help solve these dilemmas and get us out of this quagmire!

What’s that, Lassie? What is it, girl? Will I be helping? Oh, no. How I wish I could, but – damn this infirmity - I WAS BORN FUNNY IN SERIOUS TIMES!

Not funny as in ha-ha. But funny as in peculiar. Or, as my father insisted, acting like I had my head lodged firmly up my butt. A little harsh? Yeah, I thought so, too. A kinder, less crass parent would just say I was "chronically off-task."

For instance, I probably kissed a career as diplomatic attaché goodbye in my senior year world history class. Mr. Lambeth had just gotten braces that year! Who pays attention to a class syllabus when you’re simultaneously dodging teacher spittle and charting its projectile patterns?

Mrs. Whilmer’s economic class, - riveting, riveting stuff: FIFO, LIFO, GNP. The ONLY thing that kept me awake was the fact that I sat behind Dee Wallace, the school’s IT girl. Dee spent the entire period examining the ends of her honey blond hair and I appointed myself her wing-man and daily conducted search and destroy missions for split ends. Ba-by enrollment in the Wharton School of Business.

Chemistry class? Don’t start with me. I’ll deny to the end that I was the first one who ran out of fifth period yelling "Chromium? I hardly know ‘im!"

It’s crazy: Amidst all the bona fide knowledge you should retain, it’s the insignificant, the trivial, that sticks. The Crimean war – yada, yada – because of the Allied Forces in – yada, yada - by the time the black plague decimated Europe’s – yada, yada . . . But do you realize that it WASN’T Marie Antoinette who uttered that famous phrase, "Let them eat cake!" Hey, speaking of cake . . . .

Cake comments:

Knock Knock. Who’s there? Small But. Small But who? No, Small But Tall."

A pie, a cookie, and a Small But Tall walk into a bar. . .

Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other Small But Tall."


Cake facts:

One Small But Tall will feed 15 comediennes but only 12 jokesters.

PEOPLE LIKE ME DON'T DESERVE TO BE 59!!

Normally by the time a person is 59 he or she has achieved a certain level of self-awareness. For instance, they know what they HAVE ( I call this "personal finance"). They know their PLACE in the world (Let’s tag this "geography). And they know WHO they are (This, we’ll slip this into an envelope marked "Emotional Maturity). Well, I just turned 59, and all I can say in my case is, Oh, WHOOPS! Call the party police! They need to pop my balloons!

How’s this for financial savvy: Whenever the money gurus toss out an expression like "one-tenth of one percent," I have to go to a dark, quiet place so I can grapple with this concept. And I can’t come out of there until I’ve envisioned 100 little squares, one of which has to be divided into ten little pieces. Applied math - oy vey! It’s exhausting. (For all you guppies not yet a half century old, this just in: A "balance transfer" does NOT mean shifting your weight from foot to foot).

Familiarity with spacial relationships vis-à-vis other countries? Just when I finally learned to stop trying to pronounce the Z in Czechoslovakia, Russia and Africa play global pick-up sticks and change the names of their villages and cities, countries and such. Thank God nobody’s tampered with actual land masses in our world and the six continents remain intact!!

The emotional maturity issue has been a tremendous stumbling block for me. I’m still sulking because Earnest McLean and the boys from my seventh grade never ONCE tried to steal my scarf and play keep-away with it while I waited for my school bus. It was always Jeanie Moulis’s scarf! Jeanie, Jeanie, Jeanie. (Honestly, she wasn’t even that pretty; but she was all we had back then).

Oh, well, as the saying goes, growing old is not for wimps! And no matter how many birthdays we celebrate, somebody’s bound to throw us a special treat of some sort, like pink plastic rollers, or a Chia pet, or dime-store Eau de Toilette called Evenin’ in Paris. And while you’re reminding yourself that it’s not the gift but it’s the thought that counts, you can swallow this idea better if your mouth is full of a huge slab of cake! Hey, speaking of cake . . .

Cake Comments:

"Store bought cake isn’t one-tenth of one percent as good as a Small But Tall," enthused one fan.

"I see London, I see France," sang one patron. "Just give me a Small But Tall, and watch me dance!" And, "You czan’t beat a great czake!!!" he added.

"I eat, therefore I am, " intoned one serious customer, clutching a boxed Small But Tall.


Cake Facts:

One Small But Tall will feed 15 Fannie Mae’s but only 12 Freddie Macks.

O, COME, ALL YE FAITHFUL!!!

If you went to Catholic school around the mid ‘60s, you’d be required to sing most Christmas carols in Latin. This wasn’t a problem for a little kid born with a gift of languages, as apparently I was. So "O, Come, All Ye Faithful" (Adeste Fideles) became to my ear " A Test Day Fee Dallas!"

Maybe our lyrics did not bear up well under scrutiny; but our voices were angelic! No. Seriously. Our school’s church was not just a church; it was a bona fide CATHEDRAL. And the acoustics in that place were magnificent. A person could hock a loogie and STILL come off sounding like they were lifting up their voice to the Lord.

In the fifth grade, our classmate, the talented Ms. Vicky, was selected as the official organist who played at ALL the weekday masses. She got a special dispensation from the Pope that allowed her to come to class LATE. . . And to bring her bagged breakfast and eat it AT HER DESK!!!

Shut up! We were absolutely apoplectic over this departure from classroom decorum. And until Vicky pinned that last Cocoa Puff against the side of her plastic bowl and then slurped down the remaining milk, no one heeded a word Sister Mary Alice Henry Claire had to say about decimals, diagramming, or what Kansas’s chief export was.

Even Chris Kane and I were not immune to Miss Vicky’s celebrity and we, too, watched her breakfast ritual – even when it meant curtailing one of our frequent dandruff wars. Our skirmishes followed this simple format: shake your head vigorously over your desktop for several seconds; swipe the surface with your index finger, capturing as many droppings as possible; and then present your finger for Frank Fenton’s inspection so he could declare the winner.

At the time, I never suspected a gender bias was afoot. But upon recent reflection, I remember Frank declaring for Christ Kane a lot more than he did for me. I wonder how you say ‘misogynist’ in Latin.

As kids, we thrived on normalcy and constancy. Vicky gave us that every day with her brown-bagged breakfast. Imagine how unhinged we’d have become if, one day, she reached into her bag and pulled out a muffin, or a piece of fruit, or a slice of crumb cake!!! Hey, speaking of cake . . .

CAKE COMMENTS:

"Silent night, Holy night. All is Small, all is Tall," intoned one fan.

"You better watch out; you better not cry; you better not pout, I’m telling you why: I’m getting you a Small But Tall for Christmas!" enthused another.

"Then one foggy Christmas night, Santa came to say, ‘Rudolph, with our nose so bright, can’t you find me a cake tonight?’" warbled another enthusiast!

CAKE FACTS:

One Small But Tall will feed 15 wise men but only 12 merry gentlemen!

BIG LIPS AND BRAIDS!!!

August! The end of summer looms!!! Are you one of those people who have already started their Christmas shopping? Me neither. But I have taken down and dusted off my Wish List: The toppers are "the unanimous three," back by popular demand: (1) world peace; (2) global freedom from hunger; and (3) universal eradication of deadly diseases.

In a more personal vain – er, I mean vein – in a more personal vein , I’ll be asking for the same things I’ve been yearning for since I was 17 - big lips and braids!! In my mind, these two attributes form the benchmark for beauty.

There is no girl so beautiful that her comeliness won’t be enhanced by long flowing tresses that someone could plait. Myself? The longest my hair ever got was around the time I got married. When I look at my wedding pictures today, all I see is someone in a long white dress looking queerly like Prince Valiant. I had five bridesmaids; don’t you think ONE of them could have told me what a bad idea bangs were?

And as far as big lips, they speak for themselves! A plump, lush mouth is the way to go. The market is awash with products to help a girl achieve this Anderson/Jolie/Hargitay look, but you have to be careful and not apply too many of them at one time or else you’ll end up looking like the drunken Vivien Leigh in the movie, “Ship Of Fools.” Remember her applying her lipstick, lurching across her cabin, a glob of Poison Apple Red zigzagging from mid-mouth to her ear?

If you can’t afford cosmetic artifices, just do what I do: Pout. That’s right. Pouting gives you instant Duck-Lips. Sure, it's a temporary fix. That’s why it’s going to be important for you to adopt an attitude of disgruntlement and peeve. That way, you’ll find yourself pouting five, six, seven times a day.

Hankering for things year after year is exhausting and not for the faint of heart. It takes commitment and strength. Every once in a while, if I feel sort of puny, I’ll fortify myself with a little sweet snack, be it candy, cookies, cake. Hey, speaking of cake . . .


CAKE COMMENTS:

“Small But Tall cakes will make you flip your WIG!” gushed one fan.

“When you said you would get me a cake, I hope you weren’t just giving me lip service,” pouted another enthusiast.

“Feeling down in the mouth?” queried one customer, “A Small But Tall will cheer your right up!”

CAKE FACTS::

One Small But Tall will feed 15 L’Oreal patrons but only 12 Wet’N’Wild ones.

'MATO HEAD! - A Vignette From Yester Year

Remember a couple summers ago when bacteria-ridden spinach scared the health out of us? Well, guess what? THE VEGGIES ARE IN THE SOUP – AGAIN! This time it’s the tomato that’s taking it on the chin. This little red devil is linked to Salmonella food poisoning.

I’ll admit that I felt sorry for the hapless spinach and viewed it as a good food gone bad. But with the tomato, it’s quite another story . All I can say is let the S.O.B.s (sources of bacteria) rot on the vine!

Because every time a news commentator says the word “tomato,” I’m transported back to my ninth grade year and the mornings I’d board the bus to school. From the backseat came the first salvo,”Here comes ‘mato head!” and then another voice would yell out, and yet another joined in. Soon almost the whole bus was chanting, “’mato head!” “’mato head!” “’mato head!”

Why the abuse? Go figure. Maybe they were miscreants. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I had a really REALLY round face and a really REALLY bulbous hairdo. Am I suffering some false persecution complex? Maybe so. But if anyone can make “Wow, you are some hot tomato” out of “Here comes ‘mato head,” contact me immediately.

Reminiscing about our younger selves can be pretty traumatic and sometimes results in the need to comfort our inner child. I give mine something sweet, like cookies or cakes. Hey, speaking of cakes . . .

Cake Comments:

“You’re a Better Boy than I am if you can resist a Small But Tall,” raved one fan.
“Don’t be a sucker! Buy a friend a Small But Tall,” admonished another.
“This is the best cake ever, or my name isn’t German Johnson!” bragged one enthusiast.

Cake Facts:

One Small But Tall will feed 15 horticulturists or 12 garden-variety type farmers.