Nothing to Wear

I generally don’t wear words. When I did time in the Preppy Handbook hell they call an all-girls academy, this was largely in opposition to the initial-ridden handbags that had just become popular, as well as Benetton sweaters knit with a giant ‘B’. Ah, the ‘80s. Why would I want a wallet with someone else’s initials stamped all over it? Reluctantly, I put away my “I’d rather be watching General Hospital” baseball shirt with the lavender sleeves and matching, braided headband.

In young adulthood, I took to heart the words of Fran Lebowitz: “If people don’t want to listen to you, what makes you think they want to hear from your sweater?” A worthy question, I think. By now the ban is mostly left over habit, though I can’t think what I would have the urge to say to each and every passerby, nor am I likely to find such a communiqué printed on a T-shirt.

I’m also allergic to animal prints. I grew up prejudiced against them the same way I was against tattoos. It simply isn’t done, insists the voice in my head snottily. My friend Scarlett is the first person I ever saw who made an animal print look classy and fabulous, in a Jackie O sort of way. I still admire her for it. There’s no chance I could pull it off; I just look like trailer trash, and the cheetah-print leggings are not helping.

These days there are more quotes, sayings and words as tattoos than ever before, which triggers an exaggerated form of my dissatisfaction with T-shirt slogans. Tattoos are for truck drivers and tramps, my mother told me. And Popeye. That’s clearly no longer the case. Still, I don’t have the courage for that kind of commitment. I imagine, though, if forced to choose I’d have “DNR” tattooed over my heart. It seems like the right mix of practical and amusing.

I don’t wear socks (except with sneakers and snow boots), and haven’t for decades. I know this because I’ve had the same five or six pairs of socks in all that time. Let’s chalk that one up to an affinity for Miami Vice. Plus my feet like to breathe. Worse, I can’t wear hats, though I very much wish I could. I have a preternaturally large head. I also have friends who take me to hat stores purposely to perch the things on my prodigious pate and giggle at the result.

With all these rules and prohibitions related to clothing, you’d think what I have left to wear wouldn’t be all that complicated. Indeed I thought of myself as having a low-risk wardrobe – right up until the day I picked up the keys to my new apartment. There I was, chatting among new neighbors and other blameless bystanders, when an important safety pin gave up the ghost and my skirt fell to the floor.

If you’re going to drop trou’ in public, I say shoot for Manhattan during rush hour: go big or go home. The leasing office for Stuyvesant Town / Peter Cooper Village is housed in one of the few strip-malls in the city, complete with wide, sunny plate glass windows which maximize the opportunity for public humiliation in a swirl of fabric and spring fashion colors.

What does one say in such circumstances? There must be proper etiquette when one’s trousers are suddenly, unexpectedly, publicly around one’s ankles. I never got that far. I panicked and was in little control of what came out of my mouth. And what came out of my mouth, as I crouched down to pick up the bottom half of my suit, was:

Goodness GRACIOUS!

Telling, isn’t it? If I’m honest, it’s not what I expected. I’d figured myself for a swearer. But there you have it – in the heat of a stressful moment I sound just like Nonnie, my grandmother.

I’ve decided that’s not such a bad thing. It’s also clear to me now that one cannot, in reality, die of embarrassment. More’s the pity, really, as I expect my tattoo would come in handy in the event.

Confessions of a Little Sister

My first memory of my brother is of him breaking me out of jail. (When you’re old enough to walk, cribs count as prison.) Having dropped the side of the crib to the floor, he would hug me and fall backwards; I tumbled out of the crib on top of him and we went off to eat M&M and Smartie sandwiches and then to pit my Snoopy-on-wheels against his latest wind-up racecar.

It’s always been Moose’s job to look after me. Perhaps shockingly, he has lived up to the responsibility with earnestness and hard work so long and so well I sometimes forget to be scared of life. THAT’s how much I take him for granted.

For example, in the early years I wasn’t allowed to cross the street alone, but that’s where our cousins lived. He’d be over there playing and I would scream and scream for him until he came to get me. (That’s how I first learned to be loud.) He responded well to “Moosie, draw me an angoo” in the time before I could draw my own triangle. I made him rescue me when my car ran out of gas late at night, and he had to get out of bed to do it. In college I once drunkenly picked a fight with a hotel manager, and left Moose to finish it. (His parting shot was “one day, buddy, you’re gonna mow my lawn,” which I find riotously funny even today.) He’s still the person most likely to change the oil in my car.

It can’t be easy to be an older sibling, what with all the learning-to-share required. As a toddler, I wanted whatever Moose had and to do whatever he did. He was, after all, the coolest thing moving – capable of feats of magic like riding a Big Wheels or crossing the road without holding a big person’s hand. I could throw a fit and my mother would make him give me whatever toy of his I coveted.

Such generosity was true punishment – when I was eight I drove his brand new go-cart into the stone wall of our house only days after Christmas. I also toppled his prized possession – his moped – on more than one occasion (once when it wasn’t even moving). I don’t usually drive his cars, but with my track record who could blame him? The first time I visited his fantastic new house, he said he could hardly believe it was his: “I keep expecting Dad to say, ‘OK, give your sister a turn.’” How’s that for deep-seated psychological trauma?

Moose received this sisterly abuse with equanimity. I used to throw everything in my playpen at him – including the mattress. He would calmly roll out of the way, then roll back to continue watching his TV show. Indeed, unflappable tolerance is one of my brother’s defining characteristics. He’s got a live and let live policy some say stems from not giving a shit about others. He is a self-styled “fastidious prick,” which does an admirable job of encompassing in one tidy package his nearly compulsive distaste for messes and his tendency to make smart-ass remarks.

Despite its usefulness, I’m not a fan of the term. To me it just seems like a mean way to describe both his skill in ironing a perfect shirt and the promise that he can make me giggle at the most inappropriate times. More importantly it does no good at all at exposing him as an excellent caretaker (not just of me but of pools, lawns, guests, etc.) and a sucker for family.

I believe my brother would respond to even the most heart-rending personal confession with something along the lines of “OK… Want a beer?” This not because he wasn’t listening but because you’re still the same person, and if he were you in this situation he’d want a beer. It’s his own brand of sympathy, surely, but it works (unless, presumably, you’re telling him you’re an alcoholic).

And although he occasionally ran me over with his bike or threw me on the floor so hard I got a rug burn on my face, I was usually allowed to tag along to whatever fun was being had. When he left me behind to start school I had no idea what to do with myself; eventually I started doing his homework. I followed him from school to school – even to boarding school and college. And everywhere I went people were thrilled to have another Bramhall around, though I was never quite what they expected.

Growing up, we split responsibilities. In theory, I was the smart one and he the funny one. In truth, not only could he sucker his baby sister into giving him half my candy, he went on to graduate from Princeton without breaking a sweat and built an amphibious vehicle while he was at it. He was the outgoing one everyone on campus knew and loved; I was… an above average speller.

I believed my big brother could do anything (except, perhaps, grasp that what you do to one side of an algebraic equation you have to do to the other). At various points in his youth he played football, baseball, lacrosse, and rowed on a crew team. He played the saxophone and designed lights for the theater. At boarding school he was president of his class, editor of the yearbook, and head of the largest organization on campus. In his spare time he could whistle, golf, or wax a car within an inch of its life. He’s the best driver I’ve ever been in a car with. He even sorted out algebra and wound up an engineer.

Despite the ridiculous name he was saddled with before birth, Moose is refreshingly normal – married to his college sweetheart with two delightful children. He’s close to both his family and his wife’s, is still friends with buddies from high school and college. He has the right job, and the right house, and the right tie, and the right hair. I, of course, have the wrong hair. Together we are a John Hughes movie (He’s more Judd Nelson in St. Elmo’s Fire; I’m more Ducky from Pretty in Pink).

He’s intimidatingly successful in just about every way you can measure such things. I haven't the slightest idea how he does it. I suppose I should be jealous if I weren’t so busy cheering for his team.

I was an adult before I realized that not everyone got as lucky as I did in the big brother sweepstakes. In fact, I’m still pretty jazzed for boys who are expecting a little sister in the family. I tell them this: “Your mother or your wife may love you more, but no one will EVER think you’re as cool as your little sister thinks you are – until you have a daughter of your own.”

Happy Birthday, Moose. Sorry about pulling your hair all those times.

I'm Just Sayin'

Most people won’t tell you the awful truth. And to be honest, I’m OK with this. Chances are I have a firmer grasp on my myriad faults than you have, and your reminder doesn’t help me go on living in spite of them, which is my chief struggle. If you don’t have anything nice to say, our mothers taught us, say it out of earshot. (What. Is that not how that goes?)

But doesn’t that practice make every qualitative statement suspect? If you weed out all the bad stuff, what am I to make of your compliment? You say you like my hair; is it safe to assume that everything else about me is an unspeakable eyesore? Because that, for the record, is what I’m assuming.

See, there’s a difference between taking compliments and believing them. I learned how to accept a compliment from a gay guy as uncomfortable in his own skin as I am. He taught me just to say “thank you.” Protesting makes it worse. Downplaying looks like you’re fishing for more. Disagreeing suggests this kind soul doesn’t have any taste. “Thank you” will do. There’s plenty of time later to review the reasons why I still suck.

So now I say “thank you”. But I suspect you may be lying – y’know, just to be polite.

Seated to the right of the purveyors of compliments are those who believe that being honest is more important than being polite. Indeed, they’re right about that in some instances. And yet they seem to conflate the two, and are astounded to discover – usually by making someone cry – the maxim: just because you’re right, doesn’t make you nice. That is, telling someone the facts may do them a favor, if only I can manage to stop there. Judgment of the merit of those facts is merely opinion.

And my opinion is that most people’s greatest strengths are also their greatest weaknesses. Pretending they’re one and not the other is just that: pretending – whether for the sake of argument or in defense of one’s self-esteem hardly matters. Or maybe we simply lack the imagination to recognize our faults. Logically though, the presence of an upside suggests there must be a downside around here somewhere (and if you’re at a loss, I’m just the girl to find it for you). If I’m known for snappy answers, you shouldn’t have to look far for someone who finds me either snide or patronizing. It’s the other side of the same coin, and I’d be naïve to think otherwise.

It’s right about here in my thinking that I resolve never to opine again, about anything ever. I’m going to be a kinder, gentler me. Somewhere on the web is a t-shirt that reads “Ask me about my vow of silence.” I’m going to need one of them. I have a lot of opinions, and some of them don’t fit on a bumper sticker.

But if there’s a drawback, aren’t I due a silver lining as well? Sure thing, and the answer is in the eye of the beholder. If your tolerance for routine is low, you’re likely to find me boring. But it’s a straight line from dull through predictable to reliable, and you’re free to think of me that way instead (c’mon; it’ll be fun!). There’s as straight a line from irresponsible to spontaneous, from interfering to insightful, or from any unfortunate extreme to a more palatable norm.

From there it’s just a matter of setting the levels where you can tolerate them, like mixing on a soundboard. For my part, I’m trying to dial down the opinions and turn up the gentleness. I’m also shooting for less nervous laughter and more lacerating self-exposure.

At least I don’t have to worry about my hair.

Larger Than Life

A few of my friends are enamored of oversized everyday objects – six foot tall pencils, or chairs in which you can swing your legs while seated. I, too, find such things amusing when I encounter them; I just never meant to buy any.

These days I shop online for just about everything – clothes, house wares, jewelry, even food that time I blew out my ankle and couldn’t walk without a cane. I’ve probably been to a mall fewer than ten times in the last ten years. (This, from a Jersey girl!) And much as I miss visiting Orange Julius and the Piercing Pagoda, online shopping suits my style. I get to browse in peace, and compare prices among stores obsessively.

The only drawback is my lack of attention to visual detail, by which I mean I am occasionally bewildered by what arrives at my doorstep. I am quite a capable reader, I assure you, yet crucial details of online item descriptions sometimes escape me. I ordered a wooden activity cube for my niece, who was nearing two at the time. I pictured her toddling around with it, distracting herself on car rides and such. When it arrived, though, it was roughly the same size as my niece and, thus, not so portable as I had imagined.

It took two attempts to purchase a suitable wooden vase. The first arrived as a standing urn large enough for that same niece to use to rout the competition at hide-and-seek.

The moment an unexpectedly oversized purchase arrives can be a puzzling one. The doormen roll their eyes and get out the luggage cart. “What the heck did I order?” I ask myself, dragging a wardrobe-sized box into the apartment. I renew my vow to check the dimensions of things before I buy them.

For a while I’m extra careful, but then things start to slip. One Christmas I thought to gift-wrap earrings in a candy cane-striped container I saw online. In reality it serves better as a hat box. I should have saved it for the ludicrously large pair of earrings I ordered the following season -- an African tribal thing, it turned out. We live, we learn. I ordered a few little tchotchke boxes for my dresser, in which I keep buttons and pins and stray coins. Admittedly, I have an abundance of loose change in a startling array of currencies. Still, I did not intend for one of the boxes to be 7 times the size of the others. The overgrown goon now resides in the living room.

The real mystery is how, in all this unmindful online ordering, the reverse has never happened. At this writing, there have been no miniature armchairs or undersized hand tools delivered here. I have instigated other foul-ups – booking a plane flight for PM instead of AM (which got fixed quite easily), or for the wrong day altogether (which was, in the end, an expensive sort of error). Generally, though, it seems I specialize in super-sizing.

My trusty orange colander was melted in a freakish oven pre-heating incident, so I went online to replace it. A woman living alone, I am the not-so-proud owner of a shiny, 16-quart colander, suitable for an institutional kitchen. Not my kitchen anyway, as it doesn’t fit into the sink, which puts a significant dent in its usability. It’s a good thing I don’t cook.

At work, the training team wrote a case study about Gucci, and the participant with the best solution to the case won a keychain – about the only Gucci thing our prize budget could afford. You might assume I’d be safe buying from luxury retailers; that, say, the G-shaped keychain on a cord I order won’t be larger than a hood ornament, strung on rope as thick as a Twizzler. Alas, even here I’m not immune. When I resigned from the executive search firm, I was still looking for the right gangsta/consultant to reward with The Big G.

In the days before Gus the Cat and I met at New York City Animal Control, I was browsing pictures of rescued animals on shelter websites. It occurred to me that I had better show up there, or risk adopting a mountain lion.

See? I can learn.

Get Your Shoes On

Near the top of the list of things that make me bad at being a girl: I hate shoes. I don’t enjoy shopping for them and I’d just as soon not wear them. In fact I grew up in one of those houses where everyone takes her shoes off at the door. When I was a child “Kids, get your shoes on!” hollered by adults into stairwells, was synonymous with “it’s time to go.” That made it unpopular, signaling as it did the end of whatever fun was being had unshod, and the start of, more often than not, car rides and bedtime.

During my adult life, people stopped saying “get your shoes on” to me – more because I lived alone than because I was wearing shoes. It was my cousin Leigh who reminded me how much fun it could be. We were reminiscing about the first cars we owned, and his was one that refused to start in the rain. He planned to be out late in Manhattan and the forecast called for heavy rain at night, so he asked to swap cars with his dad. My uncle said no – for no good reason we can remember, but likely because his son woke him out of a sound sleep. When Leigh protested that he would have trouble with his car my uncle insisted, “no you won’t. If you do, just call me.” Fast-forward to 2:30am, when Leigh, wet and mad at the local train station, wakes his father up again – this time with no greeting save “get your shoes on!”

There’s danger in not wearing shoes, especially if you were born without an ounce of Graceful in your body. One evening when I was meant to be waiting by the phone, I had toddled off to the kitchen when my cell phone sang, and went running full speed to answer the call. Full speed into the corner of the couch, it turns out, with enough force to leave my fourth toe pointing to the right (rather than forward, which I much prefer). That day I discovered I can carry on a normal conversation only seconds after breaking a toe, and the caller will be none the wiser. This is not the type of talent one hopes to show off repeatedly.

Normal people go to the doctor – or perhaps the emergency room – under similar circumstances. I have an aversion to doctors, by which I mean the last time I went to one was 1994. After a bit of painful dragging of my toe into a forward facing position, I taped it to my middle toe and went on with my life. Nonetheless, this unfortunate incident halved my shoe-wearing capacity, at least for the period the swelling lasted.

I brought two shoes on my brief trip to Norway that weekend – one on my good foot and one in my suitcase, with an orthopedic boot on what I had come to call “my broke-ass toe.” In fact, my broke-ass toe did not appreciate gassing and braking around central Norway in my rental car, but I was having too much fun driving in the taxi lane and flying over Bergen’s imitation of a speed bump to worry about it. I find driving in countries where you don’t understand the signs to be liberating. I doubt I can say the same for my passengers.

Giddy at the prospect of reuniting with good friends, I wore two shoes to the evening’s entertainment, and left The Boot in the boot, as the English say. Sadly, the short walk from car to concert venue left me near tears, so when a friend went back for an umbrella, I asked her to bring me The Boot, so I could enjoy the show in comfort. I considered dropping off my extra shoe at the coat check, but rejected the idea as too ridiculous even for me.

Some time after the show I realized I was no longer carrying around a single shoe. It remains unclear when and where the footwear went astray. I like to think it has since led a full and interesting life in Norway. My friends insist it was simply too scared to get back in the car with me.

Late that evening, I could be found ensconced in a hotel room, putting the world to rights – or at least American politics. It was early 2008 and Obama had just started to galvanize liberal thinkers and tell the Bush regime to get its shoes on; the Democratic primary had yet to be decided. I told my friends I believed Obama would be President but, if it weren’t for the groundswell of support he was gaining, I would have told you it wasn’t his time yet. I had him pegged for 2012 or 2016, as I feared we weren’t quite ready for his brand of change. “But if everybody’s ready, count me in. I’m ready right now. I’ve got my shoe on.”

Fabulous, As Usual

I was born and bred a cynic, but I’ve been hanging with the up-with-people crowd for a number of years now. You know the ones. They have great big smiles and wear clothing that declares themselves optimists in love with love. They engage in daily affirmations, and believe that most arguments can be resolved with a hug. I was raised in what I thought of as the “real world” to think these happy folks were aliens from another land (most likely California).

That called for a visit.

The truth is I got in the door on fake credentials, because my standard answer to the formality of “how are you” is “fabulous, as usual.” I had been looking for a snappy answer since I heard George Carlin profess to be “moderately neato;” it’s merely coincidence I didn’t wind up stealing Steven Wright’s answer “medium”, which surely would have unearthed me as (at best) a realist. I am, of course, feeling conspicuous here in the Optimists’ Oasis. But once you’re inside, most people are far too hopeful about your potential to ask you to leave.

People – especially delightful ones – rub off on me, as they do most people. Before you know it everything is “excellent” and “fantastic”. I swear less and say “I love you” more. I’ve never been much of a high-fiver, but I get a ton more hugs than I used to. I’ve taken to telling people what it is I like about them, and to saying “Yay!” in conversation without irony. There might have been some skipping. Things are out of control.

Worse, once immersed in the cult of Shiny Happy People, you’re unfit for the rest of society. I visited my parents for a few days between packing up life in New York and moving to (shiny, happy) Colorado and was shocked to realize how much of our habitual conversation falls under the category of “bitching and moaning.” Somehow, I’m losing my taste for it. These days I spend my emotional energy finding the best in people and putting aside all but the most offensive wrongs. Folks in these parts find me refreshingly up-tempo. When did I become such a pansy? Have I strayed so far from my fellow Ironics as to have traded sarcasm for earnestness?

Defensive, I hasten to shore up my reputation as a hard-eyed misanthrope. Do years spent in deep depression qualify? Shall I ply you with Dorothy Parker and Fran Lebowitz? I have references available – friends and family who will tell you I don’t really like people. I am a first class grudge-holder, with a history of culled friends to show for it. Perhaps if I just return to making trenchant remarks or hating myself out loud…

Not only am I a pessimist by brain chemistry, I’m part of Generation X, who inherited the lemons of negativity from Baby Boomers and made nihilism our lemonade. We grew up in an era where no institution was respected, much less sacred, so we ignored them. Children in the ‘70s watched adults sledgehammer the corroded walls of 1950s establishment and came of age amid the rubble. Existing rules and laws were for suckers, and we were too busy surviving post-disillusionment to be institution-builders ourselves.

As if that wasn’t enough, I was groomed at private academies, boarding school and an ivy-league college to be a hole-poker – trained in dissection, analysis and criticism. I evaluate things by their difference from some Platonic ideal. Does this result in unrelenting negativity? Sure thing! On the other hand, having counted every molecule that’s missing, I can assert with confidence that the glass is 96.2% full. See, now, how it just seems negative? We’re nearly there!

I’m not the only poser in The Land of Peace and Love, I’ve realized. I found another one (during a routine but thorough study of Bravo TV’s primetime programming) on The Real Housewives of New York City. Cast member Kelly says she lives purposely with rose-colored glasses on (and does cartwheels!); indeed she seems both shiny and happy. But faced with the disdain of her cast mates, she finally gives in and tells them off. I sympathize, Kelly. It’s not easy to maintain a sunny disposition around the negativity crowd; we revert to form and join right in the title fight. Perhaps a move to LA-LA land is in order.

So we’re not all experts. Some of us are just beginners, and gratitude and forgiveness are seeds you plant in patience and water with practice. I like that about this community, and I might as well. Whenever I find something I truly hate about someone else, it turns out I’m guilty of the same crime. (This enables a vicarious self-loathing – my superego’s guilty pleasure.)

As time goes on, I’m feeling more at home with these fine folks, and I think I might stay awhile. I’m working on fixing those things in myself – the ones I dislike in others. In the meantime, can’t we all just try to find them charming?

That would be fabulous.

Rebel Without a Clause

“What’s another word for ‘thesaurus’?” – Steven Wright

Why would someone buy me a book only to laugh at me for reading it?

Once upon a Christmas, my parents gave me a paperback thesaurus. Truth is, they gave me a gigantic pile of toys, clothes and whatever else a girl aged in single digits could ask for. What I remember best is the thesaurus, its companion dictionary – and an illustrated book of Aesop’s fables.

I thought the thesaurus was the coolest thing I’d ever seen – even the word was thrillingly Paleozoic, and sported one of those extravagant Latin plurals. I suspect I’d only recently learned about synonyms and antonyms in English class. I carried my new treasure everywhere in the days after Christmas, wandering purposefully from “spend” to “squander” to “waste” to “lavish”, getting lost among shades of meaning.

Until I got caught, that is.

I didn’t know that reading the thesaurus was a source of shame and ridicule. It seemed perfectly normal to me, and there was no warning on the cover – I checked. Still, my family found it riotously funny – the kind of story with which you regale your friends at the country club. I resolved never to embarrass myself that way again.

But I loved it so! What would I do without access to words like autochthonous (aw-TOCK-thin-us), which is both fun to say and fancy for “indigenous”, which in turn is fiddly for “from around here”? How else will I discover the most hidebound, prim word for “stuffy”, or select the synonym for “silly” with the right balance of juvenile and inane? And why am I the only one who finds this fun?

I know: I’ll pretend to read Aesop’s fables whenever someone comes in the room…

It’s probably best this happened well before personal computing took root. I can still lose an afternoon to the online thesaurus in Microsoft Word, and using it still feels forbidden and daring after all this time. Years ago a friend gave me a Random House dictionary on CD-ROM that pronounces words for you. I was in nerd heaven. For about a week, an official-sounding pronounceticator hailed innocent visitors to my office as “DUNDERHEAD!”

Now that’s a good time.