The Laugh's on Me

Yesterday I went for a routine doctor’s visit. The nurse wore bright pink scrubs. Cheerful pink. She directed me to the scale. I put my purse and coat on a hook.

I said, “I could take my boots off.” 

She said, “Naa, I’ll just take off a pound off your weight.”

 

“I’ll take off my shirt and pants,” I said, going for a laugh. 

No response, just a look. Bored? Uninspired? I couldn’t quite assess the look.

 

So, I said, “I was joking.”

 

No response.

 

I think I’ve mentioned before that I like to make people laugh. At least a smile. It’s my job. The pay sucks, by the way.

 

When I saw the Doc, she did laugh about something I said, so the day wasn’t a complete failure. The colonoscopy and endoscopy are scheduled for May. Both ends of me on the same visit. As Biden would say, “No Joke.”

 

I wrangled to get out of the butt check using my elder creds with the Doc. But no deal. She said, “Don’t worry, It’ll probably be the last one you’ll need.”

Okay, so was she suggesting that I’ll croak before five years. They enjoy looking up “there” every five years? Or maybe you just don’t need it done after a CERTAIN age? Hmm.

 

Then driving home, it hit me…a conclusion (not a truck). That nurse who weighed me, she saw my wrinkled face, she knew I was old, and she probably figured I was a bit demented. She didn’t laugh. I bet she was tolerating an old lady. Or maybe she was terrified that I was actually going to strip right there. Then she’d have to see the awesome power gravity has on a person's body. Damn. 

 

And this—Am I wanting to have it both ways? Use my old age to avoid stuff (which didn’t work), but at the same time not wanting anyone to see me as old?

Okay, so now I’m going to weigh my boots.

 

Maybe I should use the kitchen scale?

Be Someone

I was a freshman at Ferndale High School in Michigan, when we (Mom, stepfather Tom, and four-year-old Kathy) drove across the country to Palo Alto, California in March of 1959. Our one bedroom furnished apartment there had a dropdown bed in the living room when Mom and Tom slept. Kathy and I shared the double bed in the bedroom. She kicked. I had no friends at the new school, and I was homesick. When summer came, I babysat every weekday for two diapered young  boys who lived in an apartment across the street. By the end of summer, I had saved enough money for small presents for everyone, and a plane ticket back to Michigan. Mom let me go.

 

I expected to move back to Ferndale where I’d be in the same school district I had been in before we moved. I thought I’d get to stay with my Aunt Katie and her gang, but no…my family had other ideas. I would be living with my grandparents, Nan and Papa in Beverly Hills.

 Here's my grandmother posing for a Christmas card.

So, for the 10^th and 11^th grades I was in my third high school––Birmingham Groves. I now lived in a house filled with my grandparents’ tasteful combination of antiques and 50s modern furniture, where I had my own bedroom full of heavy maple furniture with a double bed just for me.

One girl at the school was given a brand-new pink Cadillac convertible for her sixteenth birthday. A boy got a new black Thunderbird. Very different from the kids in Ferndale, who, if they had a car, it was a beater that they fixed up themselves with the help of a mechanic dad. Bonus! I did make great new friends...Pat Burke, 60 years later is still my friend.

 

During those years, what I heard most often from Nan was, “Be Someone.” 

 

I took it as an insult. Wasn’t I “someone” already? 

 

And where did this come from? 

 

I knew her story. She was the youngest of ten kids. They lived in a big house in a rich neighborhood in Bay City. They needed the big house for their big family. Her father and older brothers worked in the coal mines to support the family. Nan’s friends were wealthy girls. Her three older sisters sewed her fashionable outfits, so she’d fit in with her friends.

 

Then she met Ted Sexton, who had been raised (after his parents’ death) by his mother’s brother––George P. Codd. Nan couldn’t check Wikipedia, but this is what they say now:

George P. Codd, mayor of Detroit from 1905-1906, Regent of the University of Michigan from 1910-1911, circuit court judge of Wayne County from 1911-1921 and 1924-1927, and a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1921-1923.

He was SOMEONE.

 

My grandmother married a man who had been raised by “SOMEONE”. But, to her great disappointment, my grandfather wanted nothing to do with his uncle. He and his brother Brad were treated so cruelly that he always cried over TV shows with orphans, and never shared details of his boyhood.

 

But Nan wanted me to be someone. What did she mean? Should I be a star, a senator, heroic, notorious? 

 

Or did she mean I should marry “someone” important, famous, rich? Women of her generation didn’t have many other choices.

 

I still don’t know. I can’t ask her. But, irrelevant of what she meant…I am, and always have been someone.

 

I have six grandchildren. If I were to tell any of them to “be someone”, I’d add a word that my grandfather would applaud. 

 

Be Someone Kind.