Who Are You Trying To Fool?

 

Let’s face it, we all have our insecurities. It’s just that some people are better at covering it up than others. And some of us wear it like an ill-fitting suit of clothes.

 You wonder if Donald Trump, for all his bluster, plastering his moniker on all kinds of national treasures and insulting anyone who dares doubt his omniscience, has his private doubts. I’d love to have surveillance gear in his gold-plated White House bathroom, to capture those personal moments before he hits the sack in his gold-plated bed. Exhausted from his regular late-night routine of posting several dozen racist and childish memes to his Truth Social account, what would he tell himself while washing the orange spray tan off his face?

        “President of the U.S.A.? Leader of the free world? You’re a joke, big guy. A chubby, blathering bozo who nobody really respects. The late-night comedians are right-on-the-money. Who are you kidding?”

        Anyone who performs for a living, be it actor, singer, dancer, ventriloquist or politician can tell you that you live with the constant fear of being exposed. I spent more than 40 years as a radio personality and I know I got up each morning and went to work, fully expecting someone to present compelling evidence that I was a fraud. My primary emotion when I retired was “whew, I got away with it.” After all, I only got into the broadcasting business because it was a way to make a paycheck without breaking a sweat or having to do any deep thinking. Mission accomplished. But to this day, I fully expect to run into someone who listened to me and takes great pleasure in sharing his/her review of my talents.

        “Man, you really sucked pond water!”

Well, yeah. But there were people silly enough to pay me well to suck pond-water. And pond-water is an acquired taste. 

        These days, my self-doubt centers on getting old. Grey hair? Memory lapses? Constipation? Who knew life would fly by so fast? And what, exactly is an aneurysm anyway?

My self-scolding these days centers on things I meant to accomplish but never got around to. Selling a novel to a major publisher. Seeing my screenplay made into a movie. Pitching in the deciding game of the World Series. Losing 20 pounds. (Oh, okay 50 pounds) and dancing with the Chippendales. After all, I wouldn’t look that bad in a Speedo.

But I can be excused for my underachieving. I had other pressing priorities. Golf. Binge watching British mysteries on Teevee. And I’m fairly certain that computer cribbage game on my phone wasn’t going to play itself.

Name That Car

 

Carolyn J. Rose

When I was a kid, the family vehicles had no names. They were referred to in

generic terms. “The truck.” “The Ford.” “The blue car.” “That piece of crap

_____ (insert make and model of your choice).”

When driving up a steep hill or in snow, my father sometimes used terms of

endearment. “Come on, baby, you can do it.” “That’s it, honey.”

If a vehicle failed to start, sputtered to a stop, or slid into a ditch, he used

colorfully descriptive profanity picked up in World War II. #$?!#

 (And, no, I won’t provide examples of the nouns and adjectives.)

In retrospect, I owned several cars that cried out for names—humorous,

flattering, or unfortunate. But the VW bug with fading salmon paint, the

Datsun F-10, and the Ford Escort remained nameless until they went to the

wrecking yard or on to other owners.

And then I met a man with a Monte Carlo he’d named Yvonne Dee (Remember

Lily on The Munsters?) 

The mental door of imagination opened. I married him. And

from then on my cars had names. Moby Grape. Inkspot. Windfall. Big Red

(now named Rosalita by new owners who, as you may have guessed, are

huge Springsteen fans).

When I admitted to friends that I name my cars, I was often met with scoffing

disbelief. But sometimes I found kindred spirits. A friend named her car

Bluebaru. Others ride around in cars named Buckey and Poppy. My sister-in-

law takes her canines to their favorite haunts driving Dog Car. My husband’s

Leaf is named Erikson.

My favorite, though, is the name given to a car owned by parents of a friend

decades ago: Leapin’ Lena. She (and, yes, I tend to assign genders to cars)

earned the name because too much sudden pressure on the gas pedal resulted

​in a leap and a lean. I think she would have been a terrific car to convey a

dozen clowns to the center ring at a circus.

The Dreaded Afternoon Nap of Childhood

 Carolyn J. Rose

 

As a child I loathed naps. In the first place, a nap was never my idea. Napping was a concept foisted on me by adults. The take-a-nap command came at inconvenient times, often in the middle of a game or an argument. Naps involved washing grimy feet or taking off shoes that needed to be tied again. Naps often took place atop a chenille bedspread that created telltale facial indentations. And finally a no-more-backtalk-from-you nap involved close-contact supervision.

 

Usually that meant lying beside my grandmother. She was a world-class napper. Once she removed her dentures, loosened her corset, and slid off the black shoes that were standard grandmother footwear in the early 1950s, she’d fall asleep before I could recite the alphabet. If I had breath to do that while caught in a grip stronger than a junkyard mechanical claw. Escape—without gnawing off body parts—was impossible. And, believe me, I considered gnawing. Especially when the snoring began.

 

My grandmother was a big believer in modesty and what I now call “ladylike-itude.” Consequently, she would never admit to the sound effects she created while asleep. But, trust me, their variety and volume never failed to amaze. Had we lived near the ocean, she could have stood in for a malfunctioning fog horn.

 

Trapped, I’d lie there counting flowers on the wallpaper or finding birds in the plaster swirls on the ceiling. And I’d constantly remind myself of the reward for serving time in nap prison—milk and cookies.

 

But, let’s flash forward seven decades. Now it’s my aging body creating a symphony of sounds, including snoring. I own it. I admit to it. But I still hesitate—if only for a few seconds—to sleep during daylight hours when my husband is awake to hear. Never mind that he could snore for the USA in Olympic competition, I can’t escape my early training in modesty and denial.

 

But my aging body insists on rest periods—a few minutes to slow down, sit, or maybe snatch a nap. So I shrug embarrassment aside and head for the loveseat. After much trial and error, I’ve established the optimum sleep-inducing position and accrued nap-enchancing accessories. Those include a fluffy blanket to cover my feet, a not-too fluffy pillow for my head, and a size-too-large hoodie. Pulling the hood down over my eyes means there’s no need to pull the shades and make neighbors wonder what I’m up to.

 

I quickly cataloged types of naps: the doze, the snooze, sleep surfing, out like a light, and down for the count. What took longer was learning how to tell when a nap was over. Aside from a pressing call of nature, ringing phone, pinging text, whining dog, or a knock at the door, there was often no reason to rise. Then, with a prompt from my stomach, I recalled that time-honored, nap-concluding reward—milk and cookies.