One year, my friend Christine had a VD party. It wasn\u2019t an anti-Valentine\u2019s 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, \u201cenmeshed\u201d is NOT spelled \u201cimmeshed,\u201d which is what I thought it was, but it wasn\u2019t. Enmeshed means entangled, trapped or ensnared. Not to talk down to you or anything.<\/p>\n
Anyway, VD Party. I didn\u2019t attend this party, and to this day I\u2019m sad I missed it. She had many games, including one that sounded quite amusing \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
What could be more fun at a party than a quiz, and one about VD, for pete\u2019s sake? <\/p>\n
Too bad I couldn\u2019t get a job taking quizzes. I like quizzes, because it\u2019s something I\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
Except for me, even fluff chemistry was hard. There were many things I couldn\u2019t comprehend. But when we had to take the tests, I just memorized everything. I didn\u2019t know exactly what was going on, but I found that if I memorized everything, somehow the stuff I\u2019d memorized would fit into the answers.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019d missed a very critical year of information.<\/p>\n
I also got A\u2019s on those tests. Every week, my roommate Lynn would give me a little tutorial called \u201cThe Meaning of Math.\u201d 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\u2019d figure it out enough to do it. All semester, learning absolutely nothing, got an A in the class. <\/p>\n
But back to Valentine\u2019s Day \u2013 it\u2019s 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\u2019m 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\u2019t BORN jaded, I assure you. I\u2019m sure I\u2019ve 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\u2019t jaded, because nobody had ever broken my heart before, to the first man that started me on my rocky path to jadedism.<\/p>\n
That doesn\u2019t look quite right. Jaded-ism, perhaps. Yes, that\u2019s better.<\/p>\n
This afternoon, a girl from the SJ-R interviewed me about being a teenager. I had told her I\u2019d probably be a bad interviewee because I have a horrible memory and I didn\u2019t 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 \u2013 he married his high school sweetheart! He got married at NINETEEN, and, now this is the real shocker \u2013 they\u2019re still married. \u201cAre they happy?\u201d I asked her. I realized this probably wasn\u2019t an appropriate question to ask a Freshman in high school. She assured me that they\u2019re happy. Amazing, truly amazing. Good for you people. Perhaps you should write a book about how you\u2019ve 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. <\/p>\n
Lately, women I know who are married, and have been married for quite a while, say to me \u201cit\u2019s not all it\u2019s cracked up to be,\u201d or \u201cbe glad to be single.\u201d Maybe I\u2019ve written about this before, but married women are talking about this topic a lot, and why don\u2019t 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\u2019s company. This is a refreshing sight. <\/p>\n
Right now I\u2019m listening to a new CD I bought, by the Ray Brown Trio. It\u2019s called \u201csome of my best friends are\u2026guitarists,\u201d and different guitarists play on the different tracks, which are quite lovely. <\/p>\n
Anyway, Valentine\u2019s Day. No, let\u2019s not talk about it, OK? Let\u2019s just not go there. I mean, if you\u2019re dying to know my thoughts on the matter, write to me and I\u2019ll be glad to tell you. <\/p>\n
I was going to write about Valentine\u2019s 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\u2019t the proper forum after all.<\/p>\n
My friend Thad just reminded me about the old cartoon, \u201cUnderdog.\u201d Do you remember it? He\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n
Whew. 364 days till next Valentine\u2019s Day. I\u2019m not saying it couldn\u2019t 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\u2019d like it to be better.<\/p>\n
I PROMISE that tomorrow I\u2019m going to post some photos of my show. I don\u2019t have a lot of them yet, but more will follow.<\/p>\n
Ok then,<\/p>\n
Grace <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One year, my friend Christine had a VD party. It wasn\u2019t an anti-Valentine\u2019s 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. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6JLYy-1g","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graceuncensored.com\/WordPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}