So maybe this month long bout of relentless coughin' won't lead to an actual coffin after all--at least according to all the experts I saw with their high fees and varied opinions on how to tame this mother of a case of Unreasonable Allergy Symptom.
I am high as a kite from all the meds but at least I can leave the house. enough to be inspired to blog about irreverent, blasphemous things, which face it, is why some people read my blogs..to be offended.
We finally could see a movie in a fuller theater at NIGHT and we picked a great one, "Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret?"
This makes two gems in a row--our last movie seen in the theater was about an angst ridden teenage boy in Ray Romano's terrific "Somewhere in Queens" and this movie was about an angst ridden pre-teen girl, growing up in New Jersey and questioning.. pretty much everything.
Judy Blume came after my time as a young reader, but I would have loved this book, especially since the protagonist was only two years my junior. I remember being a counselor in 1975 at an overnight camp where my pre-teen campers were devouring this novel.
I can so relate to Margaret and her crowd. My friends, too, lied about their first visit from Aunt Flo as well as their bra sizes.
Was there actually a time when we WANTED periods and to have to wear uncomfortable bras?
My crowd, like the girls in the film, couldn't wait to grow up and buy sanitary napkins. We'd do that chant heard in the film's trailer, 'though we added a verse as shouted with passion, "we MUST..we MUST..we MUST improve out BUST..(the bigger the better..the tighter the sweater)..we MUST improve our bust!"
What would the chant be for us in the post menopause crowd??
I'm thinking something like:
We MUST
We MUST
We MUST not let 'em sag..!!!
We all gotta figure out some kind of trigger
to puff 'em like..an air bag??
I didn't officially become a woman 'til I was thirteen, and my Mom did what all Jewish mother did back then..she slapped me. It was actually the second time she slapped me, after wrongly thinking I "got it" after my dog either threw up or had a bloody looking late night snack in my bed..I'm thinking she was just looking for an excuse to slap me. Maybe I made an inappropriate joke about the sequel to "G.I. Jane?"
Those days were awful, having to strap on garter belts like a stripper, but I bet that book would have helped me through my anxiety. I wish I had read it, just like I wish teenage girls in Florida could still read it, but I'm betting they cannot.
My mother was terrified I'd get my first visit from Aunt Flo during my bat mitzvah, where we'd both die of embarrassment if I stained my white robe, but that didn't happen.
Nothing much happened at my bat mitzvah in 1969--boys asked me to dance, finally, because I bribed them by inviting their kid sisters to the party. The rabbi didn't bring up the times I was caught smoking in the girls' room.
I willingly smoked three cigarettes in my life, all in the bathroom at the temple, just to be cool like the bad girls in "To Sir With Love", although by the sound of this undying cough, you'd think I smoke three cigarettes an hour and have been doing so my whole life.
I also remember be given the wrong Haftorah portion to read, a mere days before the event. The rabbi blasted the cantor for screwing up and they decided( to appease the old men) to say that they were trying something "new" with me, because I was such a good student who only smoked three cigarettes, and that was to "let me choose my own portion to chant on the bima."
I don't recall what I sang in Hebrew, but if I had actually been able to recite my own biblical passage, it would have gone something like this:
"Look..does anyone else besides my snarky thirteen year old self think this is a lot of nonsense penned by old wrote men who know nothing about girls like me? Isn't it filled with misogyny and violence? I mean, I liked SOME parts of this book..the part that tells me not to steal and the part that tells me what kind of locusts I should be eating, but really..what gives here?"
OK..that didn't happen..but it could have.
To someone like Margaret Simon.
To someone like me.
I embrace a lot of my heritage, like Margaret. I love the music; the camaraderie among the people; the Jewish humor, the brisket and matzoh ball soup that puts a smile on the faces of everyone at my table.
But nobody besides a young/middle aged/old female should be telling a young female how her body works.
Remember that at the voting booth in the next election.
And go see this wonderful film.
Kathy Bates gives a performance that will have us all shouting "mazel tov!" when she collects her Oscar next spring.
