Religion: Part Two

This one requires a bit of a back story, here, so bear with me.

When I was 5, my mother's younger sister committed suicide.  That's a story unto itself, which I won't bore you with, but sufficeth to say my mother did not take it well.  No one outside the family knew Mary Jayne killed herself, they told everyone (including me, actually) that she had had an aneurysm.  The hallmark of Lace Curtain Irish is that no one ever knows anything bad about you and yours, your lives are always Perfect to the outside world.  So, keeping this bottled up inside, my mother took out her anger/sorrow on those around her, mainly my sister and me. One of her favorite threats was, "When I drop dead like your Aunt Mary Jayne and your father marries the young sexy blonde, SHE'LL make you clean up your room!"  I remember writing notes to God (asking Him to send Aunt Mary Jayne back so Mommy wouldn't be mean any more)  and leaving them on my nightstand for an angel to take to Heaven.  It didn't work.

Also, I was a difficult child.  I was constantly being compared to my older sister, ("the good one") which made me even more defiant.  I refused to eat (I'm still not a big fan of food),  refused to go to bed on time and constantly talked back to my mother.  My life was kind of like a Eugene O'Neil play, if he had written childen's stories.

Back to Religion.  Remember Sister Mary Elizabeth?  Well, after the you-are-going-to-hell-for-saying-the-Hail-Mary-wrong incident, her very presence in the classroom scared the shit out of me.  But it was one of her Ten Commandment lessons that pushed me over the edge.  She was discussing the "Obey thy mother and thy father" one, which is pretty much the only commandment six-year-olds can relate to.  This is how she condensed it:

"If you talk back to your mother in the morning, when you come home from school, they'll be carrying her out on a stretcher, dead."

Since, to me, this eerily echoed my mother's constant admonition, and, in my mind, that had actually happened with Aunt Mary Jayne, I became terrified to come home from school every day.  It didn't stop me from back-talking my mother, you understand, because I am a Card Carrying, Tried-and-True Smartass, and that ain't never gonna change.  Also, I started having nightmares every night, and woke up at 4:00 a.m. screaming like an Irish Banshee.  My mother would come into my room and ask me what was wrong and I was afraid to tell her.  This went on for about three weeks, with none of us getting any sleep, until one night I finally broke down and told my mother what Sister M.E. had said, expecting my mom to completely jump my ass.

To my amazement she just hugged me.  The next Sunday, she walked in with me to CCH class and in front of anyone read Sister Mary Elilzabeth the riot act, accusing her of scarring and scaring young children, possibly ruining their love of The Church (too late), etc., etc.  When my mother yelled at you, you never, ever forgot it.  If she had been around in the Garden of Evil, she would have had Eve puke up that apple in a heartbeat, kick Adam in the balls and walk off into the sunset with my mother, neither of them ever looking back.

Sister Mary Elizabeth retired from teaching after that year.

Thus endeth today's lesson.

An uber-geeky Theatre Post

If you're not into theatre, or  think theatre people are weird (we are) don't feel like you have to read this.

Here's the thing.  I LOVE tech week.  It's kind of like being in labor.  It's exhausting.  It takes over your life.  It is at times painful.  You sometimes feel like it will never be over.  You sometimes feel like it will kill you.  But in the end, you push out this beautiful, incredible new entity, that will change your life forever.  And then in three weeks (or however long your run is) it moves away from home and you're alone again.  But I wouldn't have it any other way.  

Parenting Part I

There are two things I am passionate about.  (Okay, there's a third, but I never get any, so it's a moot point.)   Anyway, those two things are theatre and parenting.  I guess my title kind of gives away which one this treatise will cover.

I went to pay my rent today.  My landlord's office is a little hole-in-the-wall located in a storefront downtown.  As I'm leaving the office, there is a mother and her two small children (2-3 years old) waiting in the hallway.  The little boy (around 3-ish) has his back turned to me and is blocking the hallway.  His mother can see this, so I just wait for a minute or so for the mom to ask  her son to move so I can get by.  She just sits there and stares at us.  So, after a couple minutes I gently put my hand on the little boy's shoulder and say, "Excuse me, sweetie."  He moves.  As I'm walking down the  hall, the mother starts cussing (literally) at the little boy, saying she will bust his ass, etc., etc., I guess for not having eyes in the back of his head so he could see that I was there.

It pissed me off.  I didn't do anything about it, because I'm about to open a show and I sort of have to/want to be there alive, but what the fuck?  It was the MOTHER'S JOB to ask  her kid to move, not mine.  I already did my time telling my kids to behave in public, I've clocked out.

Here's the thing:  Parenting is a Job.  The most wonderful, frustrating, rewarding ,terrifying, exciting, monotonous, invigorating, exhausting job you will ever have; not to mention the most important.   Ever.  Some days you will do well.  Some days you will fuck up.  Some days you will wonder why you ever wanted kids and some days you will wish you  had a dozen.  Okay, that last part isn't real, but my point is:  It   is   a   job.  So do it.  Tell your kid how to behave in public because, unlike puking on the expensive carpet and shoving peas up their nose, kids do not come hotwired with how to do that.  You have to teach them.  That is your job.  Also, while sometimes it might be your job to yell at your kids, this should not be at the core of your curriculum.  (I know I'm mixing metaphors, shut up!)

Now I'm sure there will be absolutely no permanent repercussions from that Awful Woman not doing her job and swearing at her kid, he'll probably grow up to be a fine, upstanding axe murderer. But come on, people. 

These are not pieces of equipment, these are pieces of you, that reach up and take your hand and give you sticky kisses and hugs  and call you mommy/daddy and break your heart every day, because you love them so goddamned much it hurts.  Do your fucking job.

Religion: Part One

I am fascinated by religion.  Only because I have such trouble believing in most of the doctrine I hear that it's hard for me to fathom that anyone else does.  Also, as stated previously, I am not a fan of reality, and religion seems pretty far from it to me, so I'm fascinated by it, even if I don't believe it. I am a Mass of Contradictions, don't judge me.

So, I will, from time to time, wax lyrically (hopefully) about some random thoughts about religion.  Here's Number One.

When I was a little bitty thing (chronologically speaking, I mean- I still ain't no giant) I was adorable.  This pretty much faded by the time I started school, but my first 5 years, I was rockin' the adorability meter.  

Every night at bedtime, my mother knelt down with me beside my bed to hear my prayers.  This was the 50's, after all, and yes, she was usually wearing a Donna Reed dress with pearls.  The first prayer was:

"God bless Mommy and Daddy and Aidy and Nana and Uncle Paul and Mam Mam and Pap Pap and all my aunts and uncles and cousins."  Then I'd say a Hail Mary, Debbie Style.  The last part was the same, but the first part went:   "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.  Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of the loom, Jesus."  My mother never corrected me, due, I'm guessing, to my High Adorability Factor.  That was the only way the prayer made sense to me, because I didn't know what the fuck a womb was, how could I?  And I sure as shit knew Fruit of the Loom, because I wore it. 

When I started CCD Classes (the Catholic equivalent of Sunday School) the Nazi Nun who was my first grade teacher (Sister Mary Elizabeth *shudder*) quickly read me the riot act for my heresy, stating the old IRS favorite that "ignorance was no excuse for breaking the law" and promising me that if I kept it up I would be burning in hell next to my Protestant daddy when my time came.  I felt my Adorability slip away from me like a pair of oversized Fruit of the Looms.  

Thus endeth the reading for today.

I've Fallen and I Can't, etc., etc.

You know that feeling  you get when you start to fall and everything switches to slow motion and the first thought you have is not, "I hope I don't get hurt", but "Oh, Lord, please don't let anyone see me!!!"? 

Yeah, well that's kind of how I view my life.  I seem to be continually hurtling through space (Query:  Is it possible to hurtle through anything other than time and/or space?  Discuss.) into one quagmire (the thing, not the character) from another and keep hoping no one will notice, but they always do.  So, I brush it off, ("Yeah, well, you know, it's Debbie.") and inwardly wince for a day and a half.  I think less of me every time this happens, so I fully expect my friends/loved ones to think less of me, as well.  But now I'm trying a new experimental procedure that will hopefully cure that feeling.

It's called Faith. 

I've always admired people who have it (with the exception of George Michael) but I have never been good at it.  (I want to point out here that I am not talking about religious/spiritual faith at this time.  That is a whole other can of worms so huge Ronco hasn't invented a can opener big enough to open it yet.)  No, I am speaking of faith in yourself/fellow man.  Due to a Series of Unfortunate(like) Events, I have a Self-Esteem Rating of -.03%.  This means I believe everyone else in the (i.e. my) universe to be almost God-like in their sense of self.  Which, with few exceptions, (BR, Alec Harvey) is not true.  So, I plan to start viewing myself and all my acquaintances on a level playing field, one in which we are all equally fucked-up.  (I'll work my way up to us all being okay.)  See?  Done--problem solved!

Except I don't know how to do that.  Tellling someone to "Have faith!"  is kind of like saying "Grow tall!"  it feels like an impossible task.  Yet, I know people do it. (Have faith, I mean, I've never seen anyone other than the Fantastic Four grow tall on command, and if you try to make a dirty joke out of that you are worse than I am and that's saying something.)

This is not to say that I am unhappy.  Far from it.  I get to act and do improv comedy, which feeds my soul,  I have the bestest friends ever in the whole universe, and the Two Most Amazing Children in the Whole Cosmos, so I am very lucky and loved, and I know that.   I just would rather not live with the nagging feeling that I'll wake up one day and they will have all left me cryptic notes telling me to fuck off.  Which I guess really isn't so cryptic, is it?

So if anyone out there (assuming there is anyone out there reading this, but I don't believe there is) knows the Secret Meeska, Mooska, Mousekateer Password for learning to believe in people and/or my ownself, pass it on.  But spare me the George Michael impersonation, please.

Friends

Friends are awesome.  Wow, there's a banal statement for you.  But, it's true--kind of like "All You Need is Love" sounds like an oversimplification, but it's true.  What they don't tell you (and don't ask me, "Who's they, because I have no idea) is that love is really, really, really hard.  It's not all rainbows and unicorns and free beer, it's a lot of patience and understanding and intense pain--and those are the good parts.  But, I digress, I am on my current soapbox to talk about friends.

There was a time in my life where I had no friends.  It was just me and the hubby and the 2.3, and we had vague interactions with people, but no friends.  Now that seems odd, but at the time it was perfectly normal.  Then the 2.3 left the nest, and the hubby kicked me out of the nest and I really wasn't (am still not) in the market for another hubby or 2.3 and in stepped my friends.  It was like discovering a brownie with ice cream and hot fudge sauce for the first time.  Emotionally orgastic.

I have some of the same friends I had then and some new ones now.  That is the nature of  friendship, especially in the theatre community where people are constantly pulling a Kaiser Sosze, and I'm sure I didn't spell that right.  When I was in college I had theatre friends and my mother and sister couldn't stand them.  They thought they were always gushing how much they loved each other and reeked of phoniness.  Well, here's the thing--that's not phoniness, that's truth.  We DO love each other, in a deep-down, I'm-there-for-you kind of a way.  And we know that it feels good for your friends to say, "love you".  We don't give a shit what people think of us. . . .we're actors, people are always going to think we're weird.  And people are right.

But my friends are awesomer than yours.

Put Up Your Nukes

I tend to anthropomorphize stuff  (I swear that's spelled right, I used spellchecker).  It makes life seem more like a kid's book and, as we all remember from one of our previous lessons, I don't care for reality.  Kid's books are usually much more fun.  (Except that one about pooping.  Potty training was not my favorite part of child rearing.)

Well, in my kitchen, the coffee maker and the microwave share one plug.  And lately, I've been using the coffee maker a lot more than the microwave.  So now the microwave is copping an attitude.  First the "zero" stopped working.  Fine. I can add a second or two on and never miss a particle of radiation.  But today the "start" button refused to work.  "Oh, yeah, you want to defrost this bacon, egg and cheese biscuit, bitch?  Well, Sharp Carousel ain't gonna let ya.  Suck my plug."

I am not apologizing to the microwave.  The Bad Boyfriend used to accuse me of apologizing to everybody for everything ("Here, Steve, take all my money.  I'm sorry."), but I have learned my lesson.  I will not apologize for the  increased-intake-of-caffeine-and-sort-of-never-eating-anymore phase I'm going though.  It will pass and I will once again become a decaffeinated pig.  But I expect my household appliances to have the same patience with me that I have with them.  (Except vacuum cleaners, that's an Israeli-Palestinian issue there.)

So, bring it, Mr. Carousel.  Not only do I have opposable thumbs and a possible window in my 2014 budget to buy a new microwave, but I remember how to use a stove.

Hey!  Whachyou lookin' at, hair dryer???