Your Way, Right Away

	Mmm... Juicy!

One morning last winter, walking to the train just a few blocks from my apartment, I became aware that people walking on the other side of the street were all sooner or later becoming transfixed by something on my side of the street. Whatever it was, it lay in front of me. As I approached the corner, it came within view. In front of a car parked a few yards ahead of me was the blackened, shrunken, charred husk of what was — until very recently — someone's car.

The fire must have burned very hot, because across the sidewalk the bush against the apartment building was brittle and leafless. The screen in the window of the ground-floor apartment was burned away. The sidewalk near the wreckage was black. The asphalt around the car was covered with melted bits and pieces and something that looked like black-and-gray foam. Where the tires were the day before were now masses of something looking more like lava rock.

This is not something you see every day in my neighborhood. Understandably, it will draw some attention. It must have stunk to heaven. It must have lit the whole block. I wondered if the the gas tank exploded, if anyone was hurt. Was it revenge, a stray cigarette, insurance fraud, an unfortunately positioned magnifying glass on a sunny day?

The situation became more tragic when I noticed something more.

There was no car parked in front of the burned heap, but the car parked directly behind it ... well, from the front seat forward, it looked remarkably similar. The paint was gone; the seats were good and melted; the dashboard was half missing; shattered glass lie all around.

I wonder what's worse: owning the car that was completely consumed in flames, or owning the car that, by the luck of the draw, was parked behind it and consumed only half-way in flames? What is worth more: A half-destroyed car or a completely destroyed car?

Life Change

Though we often feel like helpless puppets in the manipulative world around us, I think we can often take some small comfort in the ability to make changes in ourselves, however minor, just to prove that we have some control over something.

I don't remember when it was or what prompted it, but I do remember that there was a precise moment when I decided to write my nines like upside-down sixes in one counter-clockwise motion from the top down, my eights as two circles rather than starting them like an S and crossing back to the original point, and my twos as they appear in print, with a sharp point where the arc meets the baseline rather than that loop many people use.

A friend of mine in high school wrote her nines like a lowercase G. I always appreciated her attempt to restore the curve to the descending half of the numeral, but ... well, it looked like a "g." I fancied that my version represented a slight improvement.

Similarly, I didn't care for the sharp point in the northeast corner of the shorthand eight. And, when written quickly, it looked like it had a couple loose threads that could get caught on a passing descendor and unravel the whole thing. The shorthand two looked sloppy and lazy to me, too. So, I sharpened my twos and rounded my eights.

Notably, perhaps, I did not opt to draw dashes through my sevens. That would have just been European and pretentious.

I began practicing my new twos and eights and nines immediately, secretly hoping someone would notice and comment on them. I thought they looked masculine and deliberate. Solid. Strong. Not loopy and soft. I found a new zeal for balancing my checkbook. I copied page numbers during college research assignments with glee.

For a time, I tried to extend this to punctuation. I tried to make apostrophes and quotation marks like little "sixes" and "nines" — out of a sense of correctness and a temporary aversion to hash marks and ditto marks — but that didn't hold for long. Who has time to fill in the little holes?

How does this demonstrate control? I guess it's just something little, a miniature reinvention. If only I could apply the same energy to, say, how much I drink every week — or how often I go to the gym.

Kitty Liberation Day

	The unwilling captive

November 24 henceforth shall be known as Kitty Liberation Day. We expect Bloomberg any day now to issue his proclamation stating words to this effect.

One of nine friends we had invited for Thanksgiving is allergic to our cat, Mukau. And she's a big girl. There's a lot to be allergic to! So we knew we had to do something drastic. On Tuesday evening, I thoroughly swept and vacuumed the bedroom and invited Mukau in. While she lay comfortably on the bed, I moved her food and water dishes and her litter box into the bedroom. She quietly regarded my bizarre activity. I left the room, and closed the door behind me.

"Forgive me, kitty," I said.

She was my prisoner.

I put a fan in the open living room window to blow out as many allergens as possible while I moved the furniture and swept the floors and vacuumed the rugs and vacuumed the furniture. Then I washed the floors. The place was gorgeous. It smelled disinfected. Surely, there would be no allergic reactions from anyone.

Naturally, five minutes after his arrival, our friend was popping Benadryl. So much for that.

Every time we went into the bedroom Tuesday night, all day Wednesday, all day Thursday, the cat tried to get out. The moment she heard our footsteps, she'd run to the door and spring toward our feet to attempt escape every time we opened it. She got more and more crafty, and her senses are far better than ours in every respect, but she always hesitated just enough for us to be quicker than she was.

She grew angrier each time. Once, there was a scuffle, and it got a little rough. She was getting desperate. I guess it spooked her, because she hid under the bed for a few hours afterward. We'd open the door, and she'd peek just her little head out from under the dust ruffle. A room made for our comfort and safety had become a torture chamber for her, for all she knew.

She complained loudly from behind the door. She had food and water. She had her potty. She had a west-facing view from the window. But even her little walnut brain had the capacity for enough object permanence to know that there was a world beyond that door that she was not a part of.

Every cry she uttered increased our guilty conscience. But our friend was having such fun hopped up on Benadryl and red wine.

Early this morning, not a minute after our friend left, I opened the door and stepped aside. Mukau looked up and muttered. She looked at the door. She looked at me. She started as if to hop off the bed, but she stopped. Could she trust us? Was this another nasty human trick?

Long in the Tooth

I've heard people older than me say things about aging like: "I feel like I'm the same person I was when I was younger. It's like I'm 25 inside. But I look in the mirror, and I see this old face."

Is this incongruity the same for all of us?

Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself: I'm living with my husband in a state I didn't grow up in, and I have for the last 8 years; I've graduated from college; I'm making decent money at a decent job; I can make my own decisions and determine my own road. I have to make my own decisions. What choice is there?

I suppose some people groom themselves to accept their own adulthood. And whenever it happens, they take the reins and ride off into the future. But me — I think I'm still at the bus stop sometimes, waiting for adulthood to pick me up.

Who in their right mind would allow me to just sort of take care of myself? You mean, they let me vote? They let me live on my own like this? If I wanted to buy a car or a house or open a retirement account, I can just ... do it? Who do I think I am?

I recently volunteered to speak at a career night event put on for some high school kids. I was part of a group of young professionals (professionals?) who talked about their jobs and answered questions from the attendees about skills, training, degrees, career choices. It seemed funny to me that I should be presented to these kids as a role model.

Are they kidding? My life, an example? I felt like all I could do was tell them what not to do. But I guess I've done OK, haven't I? Of course I can give some advice.

One of the first times I realized I was a grown-up — that I had truly left the nest — was in the health and beauty aids section of Target. I was buying dental floss.

Until I was 22 years old, my mom scheduled twice-yearly checkups with the dentist. Even when I was in college. I'd come home, and there'd be a dentist appointment tossed in with the obligatory visits to friends and family. And every time, the dentist gave me a toothbrush and a packet of dental floss. And because I hardly ever flossed, it was plenty to get me through the next six months before my next appointment.

Dental floss always stacked up at my house. My mom had baskets and baskets of it under the sink in the bathroom. Plain, waxed, mint waxed, cinnamon waxed, blue, green, white. I think I even used a packet of unwaxed plain once as kite string. We never wanted for dental floss at my house — ever.

Then I crossed state lines. Visits to Dr. Forrest ended. It took me a year before I got on the ball and made my own dentist appointment. And I had to buy my own dental floss. The multitude of options at Target is overwhelming.

Sometimes I still feel like the insecure teenager I was: unsure about his future but somehow not worried about it. But now I'm really just a much less insecure 30-year-old — but slightly more worried about the future. I have much less of it now. And I have the power to screw it up.

I wonder if I will ever feel my age, or will I also look in the mirror 30 years from today and wonder who the heck is looking back at me?

Getting the Feeling Again

I've had a spring in my step, humming Copacabana to myself — Her name was Lola! — all day today. Yes, it's Friday. But I've also been overdosing on Barry Manilow.

I've always had a soft spot for him. My mom had a bunch of records when I was a kid and, later, greatest-hits tapes. I used to rotate those records through my regular play list, which included Sesame Street Gold, Mickey Mouse Disco, and the E.T. soundtrack. (Turn on your heart light!)

He always made me think of New York. It was his accent. And something about his sense of style. These days, I guess he's more a figure of Las Vegas and cruise ships, but now that I live in New York, listening to him still brings it all back to mind, and it's still very New York to me. But it's an old New York. It's a faded, grainy color TV-screen, Solid Gold, polyester, white patent leather, pre-MTV, Chorus Line, afros and bell-bottoms sort of New York.

It's so delightfully old-fashioned. No one writes songs like those anymore. In our age of irony, no one can afford to be so earnest. But that's his schtick, and he can still work it. "I am music and I write the songs"? It's very hey-let's-put-on-a-show!

I've had a craving for a while now, so I recently downloaded a bunch of stuff the other day. I look around myself on the train in the morning. He's got hip hop. She's got reggaeton. Judging by that one's thrapping fingers and expressive eyebrows, he's probably listening to some sort of emo band. And I've got string arrangements swelling as Barry waxes melancholic over and over about Mandy. If they only knew, I would so get beaten up. I love it.

My mom and I sometimes listened to her tapes while cleaning house or sitting around on vacation. Up at the cottage one summer, we were listening to "Weekend in New England," and my grandmother put down her National Enquirer, folded up her glasses and declared: "I think he's a queer. Don't you?"

I'll never forget that. I think it was the first time she had brought up the topic. She regularly had a litany of offensive pronouncements about Blacks and Asians — without ever quite understanding why they were offensive. ("It's how I was raised," was always the excuse.)

"Nah," said my mom, vaguely put off, not because she was disappointed by my grandmother's deragatory tone, but because she saw no reason to discuss the love that dare not speak its name.

"You don't think so?"

"Well, he's singing about women, Ma."

"Huh," she said. "I don't know. Just something about him, I guess." Then she picked up her glasses and began to read again.

Who Would Jesus Bribe?

I work on the third floor of a little historic building on the Lower East Side. It's technically a 19th century Federal style row house. What this means is there is no elevator and the building has a lot of character and charm. What this means is it looks like it's falling apart in some places. But at least I have a nice little office with a door that locks and a front-facing window. What this means is that I can see a parking lot and a tree or two and some old projects.

I'm usually thankful that I have a window in the front of the building. I get good light. I get a good breeze. In summer I get the music of the ice cream truck, which is cute for about a minute. I also get the floor-rattling hip-hop bass of passing car stereo systems — and the car alarms that the vibrations set off. So it's good, but it's not always good.

Lately, on Thursday afternoons, I've been hearing a new and wholly more disturbing sound through that window.

In the minutes leading up to 5:30, when the neighborhood children are walking home from their after-school programs, someone gets on a microphone with a squeaky sound system and calls out to them to gather round. She lures them with a treat. The first time I started paying attention, it was pudding.

"Every kid who comes gets two cups of pudding. This is not one cup, but two big cups of delicious chocolate pudding. Go home and bring your friends back. Tell them they get free pudding. Two cups of pudding for every kid. We're going to start in a little while. Just hang tight."

She said "pudding" so many times, the word began to sound weird and slightly embarrassing to me.

It seemed odd, but I was working late. I assumed it was a legitimate after-school thing. And it was too warm indoors to close the window, so I tried to ignore it.

Five minutes later, the voice returned. First the pudding call. Then: "We have prizes, too. Fill out these pieces of paper here, and if we draw yours, you'll win a Yankees backpack."

This was back when the Yankees had a chance.

"We're starting in about 10 minutes," she continued. "So go get your friends and bring them back here for the show."

And, of course, free pudding.

Then 5:30 hit. They started a countdown: "Five! ... Four! ... Three! ... Two! ... One!"

The next week it was pumpkins (with two cans of soda, "for you and a friend!"). The week after that, it was a "candy grab" — apparently, as much candy as the kids could stuff into their arms. Then blow pops. Then another candy grab. Every week, it's another treat.

After the countdown, a male voice and a female shout and yell in a vaguely celebratory way for a bit — "Hey! Yeah! Who wants to play a game! You want to play a game?" — before they separate the boys from the girls.

Eventually, I was curious enough to stick my head out the window to see what was going on. I saw a man and two young women bouncing around near the side of the truck facing the building. The side of the van had been folded down to create a sort of stage or platform.

Earlier that day I had seen that truck parked in front of the building. It was painted an optimistic shade of yellow with an airbrushed picture of three cartoonish bears in street clothes — they refer to their show as "Yogi Bear" — with the words "Metro Ministries" in bright, cheerful red letters.

Ministries. They're preaching to these kids. With candy. Is it just me, or is this a very cynical approach? Doesn't the word of God stand on its own?

As far as recruitment schemes go, it's a far cry from "Hell House." They tell stories about vegetables at the supermarket that are mean to other vegetables. They sing songs, badly, with karaoke tracks to popular songs in various styles — rock 'n' roll, hip hop, even army style — about about praising Jesus and worshipping God. "We want to live in you. We want to please you!"

They tell them, "If you don't live for God, if you live the way you want to live, you will not get to heaven. Don't look at your friend. Your friend won't save you. Only God will save you."

They collect the kids' names and addresses before every show. If they don't or they don't get the treat. And they are made to wait til the end to get the treat. They're like taskmasters — "You won't get your lollipop until the end!"

They've been doing it for a few weeks now, and I can tell they recognize most of the kids. They're familiar enough with them that they jump right into a barrage of Hallelujahs and Amens right at 5:30. They start their shows, they shout (and I mean shout) "I love Jesus! Do you love Jesus? Who here loves Jesus? Hallelujah!"

And I can't help but wonder a few things. Do these kids' parents know what they're doing on the way home? Did anyone ever tell them how to deal with strangers who offer them candy out of the side of a parked truck? Does anyone have permission to proselytize to these kids? Do the kids ever care waht they're being told, or are they just in it for the free stuff?

Shiny, Happy

Red, White and Blur

It's a good day for Democrats.

Still, I can't help but wonder if it's more due to the success of Democratic campaigns or the failures of the Republicans. I'm not sure that it matters, frankly. The next two years are going to be tough with a blue Congress and a red Administration.

I certainly hope the Democrats win the senate by gaining seats in Virginia and Montana. However, no matter what happens, I'd rather see them stay red than be mired in recounts. Despite whatever sweeping changes we think we may be seeing in this mid-term election year, VA and MT are like splashes of cold water reminding us that this country is still rather sharply and evenly divided.

Mid-term elections are more fascinating to me than presidential election years.

The People in Your Neighborhood: Election Volunteers

I think the charming lady who helped me at my polling place yesterday was the same woman who helped me on Primary day a few months ago. I wonder if she always works at the 25th district polling station.

After thanking someone in Spanish for voting, she told me that one of her many nephews is also named Eric and that he is a lawyer in California.

I love these little old ladies, sentinels of democracy, who guide voters through primary school gymnasia and church community rooms across the country, drawing back that plastic curtain, gazing hopefully up at us through heavy eyewear.

I love the gatherings of two or three neighbors, sometimes with a baby carriage, usually with a coffee, catching up on gossip and grandkids.

I love pulling that lever — clank! — flipping all the switches — fft! fft! fft! — and pulling that lever back — clunk!. The sound of voting is so satisfying. I hope we don't ever go digital in my district. How ever then would the little old ladies be able to help us?

Nothing Like Rudolph

	A Cylon centurion, c. 1978, from the original Battlestar Galactica series

When I was a kid, I had recurring dreams that the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica were after me. We'd see them approaching down the street, and my mom would wrap me in an afghan and hide me behind the couch. She'd politely let them in when they knocked at the door (yes, they knocked), and I'd hear them clunking through the house, searching for me. I was sure they'd capture me and kill me or make me into a human slave. No matter what their plans might have been, the worst part was he thought of them taking me away from my house.

After a few minutes of coming dangerously close (but not close enough!), they'd always give up and leave, promising that they would come back again some other time. I'd pop up from behind the couch, pull the blanket off myself, breathe a heavy sigh, wipe my sweaty forehead, and give my mom a big hug.

Last night, in a bizarre throwback to my childhood, I had a dream that a reindeer was trying to get me. I was my present age. It was winter. I was at my grandma's house in suburban Detroit, where reindeer usually glow with electric persistence, are made of plastic and stand in people's front yards from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day.

Looking out the kitchen window, I saw a reindeer trudging across the lawn to the front door. I couldn't tell if he was friendly or not, but he was sort of mangey and dirty, and it looked like his antlers had been sawed off.

A far friendlier-looking reindeer than the one in my dream.

As he approached the door, I opened it to meet him. He looked menacingly at me and demanded, "Let me in."

"No," I said, startled not so much by the reindeer's ability to speak as by his foul mood. "What do you want?"

"Let me in!"

I slammed the door and snapped it locked. He scratched half-heartedly at the storm door and loped away.

It occurred to me that he might try the side door and come in through the kitchen. My heart was racing. What could he want? What would he do if he got inside? I ran to the garage and got to the door just as the reindeer was charging toward me. I locked the door and leaned against it for reinforcement. He stoped short of ramming the door and put his eye up to the window. He was clearly very angry. I wondered if he had some sort of disease. And what did he want with me anyway?

"Open the door!" he demanded. "Let me in!" His breath fogged over the glass.

"No!" I shouted and ran back into the house, hoping he'd get bored and just leave me alone.