One year, my friend Christine had a VD party. It wasn’t an anti-Valentine’s Day party, she remembers, it was more of an over-the-top celebration of the absurdity of the holiday, plus the fact that VD also stands for Venereal Disease, and how the two could easily be intertwined. Or enmeshed, as the case may be. By the way, “enmeshed” is NOT spelled “immeshed,” which is what I thought it was, but it wasn’t. Enmeshed means entangled, trapped or ensnared. Not to talk down to you or anything.
Anyway, VD Party. I didn’t attend this party, and to this day I’m sad I missed it. She had many games, including one that sounded quite amusing – she cut out paper hearts and wrote down statistics about different venereal diseases on them. Everybody was given a heart when they came in the door, and there was a quiz later to see who remembered the most things on their card.
What could be more fun at a party than a quiz, and one about VD, for pete’s sake?
Too bad I couldn’t get a job taking quizzes. I like quizzes, because it’s something I’ve mastered. Starting with spelling tests, I can do pretty well on any test, frequently even though I have NO IDEA about the subject at hand.
For example: when I was a freshman in college, I had to take chemistry. Not hard-core chemistry, but chemistry for liberal arts majors. Fluff chemistry.
Except for me, even fluff chemistry was hard. There were many things I couldn’t comprehend. But when we had to take the tests, I just memorized everything. I didn’t know exactly what was going on, but I found that if I memorized everything, somehow the stuff I’d memorized would fit into the answers.
This was actually the way it was in the college math class I had to take, now that I think of it. I had geometry in high school, and loved it because I could grasp it, which was a monumental accomplishment for me. But then I stopped, no pre-calculus or whatever you were supposed to have next.
So the college math class was the class that immediately follows the one I never had. It was the lowest-level class offered, and I had absolutely no idea of what was going on, ever, because I’d missed a very critical year of information.
I also got A’s on those tests. Every week, my roommate Lynn would give me a little tutorial called “The Meaning of Math.” We got a study guide that had the same types of questions as the ones on the actual test. Lynn would slowly explain the key concepts for each problem, and I’d figure it out enough to do it. All semester, learning absolutely nothing, got an A in the class.
But back to Valentine’s Day – it’s not to say that Christine and I are jaded about the holiday. But if we WERE jaded, either of us could quickly give you a list of the persons who made each of us that way. Yes, I’m talking to you, you know who you are and what you did to feed our jaded-ness. Heart-breaking in many different forms. We weren’t BORN jaded, I assure you. I’m sure I’ve written that I planned on marrying my first boyfriend and living happily ever after. Not jaded back then, I tell you. The funny thing is, that man went from being the reason I wasn’t jaded, because nobody had ever broken my heart before, to the first man that started me on my rocky path to jadedism.
That doesn’t look quite right. Jaded-ism, perhaps. Yes, that’s better.
This afternoon, a girl from the SJ-R interviewed me about being a teenager. I had told her I’d probably be a bad interviewee because I have a horrible memory and I didn’t do much of anything when I was a teenager. She was very nice, and only a freshman, and her dad was in my class at Springfield High School. This was slightly shocking. And even more than that – he married his high school sweetheart! He got married at NINETEEN, and, now this is the real shocker – they’re still married. “Are they happy?” I asked her. I realized this probably wasn’t an appropriate question to ask a Freshman in high school. She assured me that they’re happy. Amazing, truly amazing. Good for you people. Perhaps you should write a book about how you’ve been able to get along all these years. Or maybe you should become speakers on the topic, I bet you could make a fortune going around to different towns and having seminars on how to get along.
Lately, women I know who are married, and have been married for quite a while, say to me “it’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” or “be glad to be single.” Maybe I’ve written about this before, but married women are talking about this topic a lot, and why don’t I ever read about it? But even though maybe these women really feel this way, I have to believe that sometimes people are married and they continue to like each other. My friends Felicia and Mike in the play, they clearly enjoy each other’s company. This is a refreshing sight.
Right now I’m listening to a new CD I bought, by the Ray Brown Trio. It’s called “some of my best friends are…guitarists,” and different guitarists play on the different tracks, which are quite lovely.
Anyway, Valentine’s Day. No, let’s not talk about it, OK? Let’s just not go there. I mean, if you’re dying to know my thoughts on the matter, write to me and I’ll be glad to tell you.
I was going to write about Valentine’s Day Etiquette, particularly as it pertains to me, but I decided against it. Actually, I deleted it. I did have some very specific things I wished to address, but I decided this isn’t the proper forum after all.
My friend Thad just reminded me about the old cartoon, “Underdog.” Do you remember it? He’d take a Super Energy Pill, which would give him strength to save the day. I wonder if you can buy old episodes of Underdog anywhere. I bet you can find them online.
Whew. 364 days till next Valentine’s Day. I’m not saying it couldn’t be any worse, because I no longer utter those words. Because it most certainly could be much worse. But I can ask that please, I’d like it to be better.
I PROMISE that tomorrow I’m going to post some photos of my show. I don’t have a lot of them yet, but more will follow.
Ok then,
Grace