If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? (9 page)

Instead of an edict, the bulletin would have read something like this:

Memo to: School Children Re: Nutritional Lunches

1. Carrots are illegal on school premises. Children bringing them from home will need a note from a parent giving permission to have them, or they will be confiscated by the office and held until dismissal time.

2. Locker inspection for thermoses containing hot vegetable soup or other nutritious dishes will be held periodically without warning. At that time, students are instructed to go to their lockers and stand at attention. DO NOT UNLOCK YOUR LOCKER UNTIL A TEACHER INSTRUCTS YOU TO DO SO. Thermoses will be destroyed by the custodian.

3. Because of student demand, we are selling fresh fruit by the door in the cafeteria. This is on a trial basis. If we find this is all students are having for lunch it will be discontinued. Remember, the fruit contains sugar and Billy Tooth is watching you. To avoid congestion at fruit counter, please have correct change.

4. Teachers have reported to the office that raisin boxes and milk cartons have been found on the school grounds. We know there are students who have been sneaking nutritious foods on the premises and for this reason students have been posted and are instructed to “take names.”

5. Your principal will be patrolling the lunchroom where he wants to see potato chips, candy bars, tortilla chips, soft drinks and ice cream. Remember, junk foods build soft bones, soft teeth and make you sleep a lot.

Trust me, it will work.

The Right to Declare War

I read the other day where a body that was believed to be dead was recovered from Lake Michigan. When it warmed up considerably, thaw set in and the person was alive.

Big deal.

Thanks to well-meaning merchants who set their refrigeration at wax museum temperatures, I am in a solidified state from May to September. No one even notices.

I go to a movie carrying a coat over my arm. I go to the supermarket and spend half my time warming my hands on the rotisserie. I drive my car on the wrong side of the street just to get a patch of sun on my arm. The other night at an intimate little restaurant, I said to my husband halfway through dinner, “Would you put your arm around me?”

“You wanta make love or you wanta eat?” he asked, buttering a piece of garlic bread.

“It's nothing personal,” I said. “I'm freezing to death. Can you see anyone around us?”

“Not too well,” he said, squinting into the darkness. “Why?”

“If everyone else is hanging from hooks, maybe we got into the food locker by mistake.”

“I'm perfectly comfortable,” he said, snuggling into his wool sport coat. “Maybe you're anemic or something. You should go to a doctor if you're cold all the time.”

In the doctor's office, the nurse smiled and said, “Hello.”

“That's easy for you to say,” I grumbled, “you're wearing a sweater.”

She showed me into a room where she instructed me, “Take off your clothes and slip into this.” I put on a paper gown with a back exit big enough to drive a truck through and slid onto the cold metal table. A blower from over the door blew my chart right off the table. I was shivering uncontrollably when the doctor came in, took a stethoscope out of the refrigerator, and placed it on my chest. I blew on my hands and coughed.

He stood up slowly, removed the stethoscope from around his neck and walked slowly to his desk. “If I didn't know better, I'd think you were dead.”

“What gave me away?” I asked.

“The tear in your eye when my breathing steamed up your glasses.”

Register Camera Nuts

You will understand me when as a woman who is married to an amateur camera freak, I respectfully suggest that some kind of legislation be passed requiring a permit to carry a loaded camera.

I don't mean to overreact, but I live in fear that someday my husband will point that thing at me, forget he has taken off the lens cap, and click click! I'll end up another statistic at Fotomat.

I have been photographed walking out of a public bathhouse in a Michigan campground wearing a nightgown, curlers, and rain slicker... fishing around in my mouth with my fingers trying to remove a fishbone... and there are thirty prints floating around somewhere of me on my side in a bathing suit that I would give up my next unborn child to get the negatives of.

The other day my husband was flipping the camera around carelessly when I said irritably, “Is that thing loaded?”

“Look,” he said, “how many accidents have I had with this camera?”

“There was the time you snapped Fred at the office Christmas party trying to Xerox Miss Frampton. He threatened to rearrange your nose. Then, there was the time exposure when you nearly broke your leg trying to get back into the picture... and the birthday party where...”

“All right, so join the camera lobby and try to get them off the market.”

All I'm saying is cameras shouldn't be made available to the man on the street... only professionals who know how to use them. The way it stands now, any child can walk right into a camera store and buy a Sunday afternoon special right off the counter... no questions asked. The next thing you know some innocent person is staring into the eye of an Instamatic.

“C'mon, you're making a big deal over nothing. I don't use the camera all that much. I just feel kind of important when I have a camera riding back there in the window of my pickup truck. Besides, it's sorta fun watching people's reactions when you point it at them.”

He grabbed the camera and trained it on my hips, which look like I'm carrying two U.S. mail pouches for the pony express. I heard the button click.

“Fooled you. The camera isn't loaded.”

One of these days he will push me too far. And there isn't a woman jury in this country who would find me guilty.

9

“
Gametime
”

The other morning I watched five game shows in a row on television. I wanted to turn them off, but I was too mesmerized by the contestants.

The first one was a frail woman who said, “I am a simple, average housewife,” then proceeded to win a toaster by humming the fight song of Bangladesh High.

The second one said she was a mother of seven, then spewed out the fuel formula for the Russian Soyuz XI space flight last year.

The third was also a “typical, suburban homemaker,” who won a year's supply of tulip bulbs by answering that the Sixth Crusade in Europe was led by Frederick II in 1228. (I thought it was Billy Graham in 1965.)

After I flipped off the TV set, I sat there stunned for a minute. Not only could I not remember what I had for breakfast three hours before, but I realized that mentally I had let myself go to pot.

I prattled on at cocktail parties about Jacqueline Onassis traveling with four silk sheets, and how David Cassidy got a hickey on prom night.

My vocabulary had dwindled to three Buckley-type words: Erudite (meaning smart), which I didn't use for years because it sounded dirty. Deciduous (to lose one's leaves), which I read off a tree at the Garden Center. And noxious, which I overheard my ten year old use to describe my casserole. (I think it means you can't get it without a prescription.)

At card club, I broached the subject, “How in the world do those women on game shows do it?”

“They fake it,” said Gloria. “Anyone can go on an intellectual crash program and change their image in five days.”

“Like how?” I asked.

"First, put copies of the London Times Literary Supplement in your bathroom. That's status. Then when you go to the beauty shop, take a stack of books along and run your fingers across the lines as fast as you can turn the pages. Everyone will think you're a graduate of Evelyn Wood's speed-reading course.

“When you're in a crowded room, look perplexed and say in a loud voice, “Archie Bunker? Who publishes him?" Confide to the town gossip that you had to buy a truss in order to carry the Sunday New York Times around.

“And above all, put together a group of one-liners for dinner parties such as, ”Isn't it incredulous that there would be fifty-seven-million, ninety-three-thousand United States dollars in circulation last year and I cannot find thirty-five-cents for a school lunch in the mornings?"

“I don't know, Gloria,” I said, “I still can't figure out how this housewife knew about Frederick II in 1228.”

“Just a lucky guess,” said Gloria.

“Look,” said Jackie, throwing in her hand, “let me give you a piece of advice. Don't get hooked on game shows. I once watched game shows every day for a week. I began with the 'Gong Show' right after breakfast and didn't stir from in front of the set until 'To Tell the Truth' went off at seven-thirty.”

"By this time I had undergone a complete personality change. I saw Nipsy Russell everywhere... I wanted a five-piece dinette set for remembering my own name. I pushed imaginary buzzers and shouted out for no apparent reason, 'I'll bet twenty dollars on the red.'

"Dinner was a challenge. I couldn't remember if it was door No. 1 (the oven) door No. 2 (the freezer) or door No. 3 (the cupboard). Also I couldn't seem to be able to concentrate on what anyone was saying. I'd just smile and mumble, 'I want to come back tomorrow and try for the car.'

"One game, 'Break Up A Marriage,' intrigued me. You know, it's the game where a wife tries to answer the questions the way she thinks her husband will answer and vice versa. Actually, it's a shortcut to World War III. When my husband came home I had to know, 'What would you say would be the most embarrassing moment at our wedding?'"

“'When our kids showed up.'”

"'Isn't that just like you to be cute when there are His and Her Motorbikes riding on an answer?'”

"'Okay, if you want a straight answer, when your mother arrived at the wedding in a hearse, wearing a black veil.'”

“'Maybe we'd better get it all out in the open.'”

“'Yeah, well, maybe I should give you more room.'”

“That's terrible,” I said.

“It's turning out all right,” she said. “Next week we're both contestants on a new show, 'Trial Separation.'”

Despite what Gloria and Jackie said, I still have nothing but admiration for the men and women who compete on these shows. Every week the games seem to get more involved, the prizes more fabulous and the contestants more frenzied.

I have seen these poor housewife-contestants run the emotional yo-yo from hysterical to rabid. Frankly, I don't know how much longer they can continue under the strain. For example, I watched a new game show last week that was called simply “CORONARY.” It was relatively simple to follow.

A contestant was asked to select a number that corresponded to a balloon. When she broke it, a little card fell out telling her what she had won. It went something like this.

“Hang on, Bernice,” said the moderator. “Do you know what you have just won?” Bernice shakes her head numbly. “You have won one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.”

As the band plays “Happy Days Are Here Again,” Bernice jumps fifteen feet off the floor and throws her arms around the moderator's neck and begins to weep uncontrollably.

He holds up his hand for silence. “In Italian lira, Bernice. Do you know how much that is in American money? About forty-eight dollars and twelve cents. Too bad, Bernice, but wait! You are going to pick up the lira in an Italian bank. You have won three weeks in Rome!”

Bernice clutches her chest and sways dizzily as the band starts up again. She grabs the moderator's sleeve.

“That's Rome, New York.” He grins.

Bernice slumps again, emotionally drained.

“But wait! Look what you'll be wearing to New York.” The curtain opens to reveal a four-thousand-dollar mink coat. The moderator helps her put it on. Bernice manages a weak smile and a wave to the audience.

“Unfortunately, it's not your size. Too bad, Bernice, had it fit you you would have walked out of here in a four-thousand-dollar mink coat with a Swiss bank account for one hundred thousand dollars in the pocket.”

Bernice faints dead away on the floor. The moderator bends over her. “You didn't stay conscious, Bernice. Those are the rules, but since you've been a sport, no one goes away empty-handed. For your consolation prize, we have a personalized pacemaker... let's hear it for Bernice.”

The way I see it, it's only a matter of time before game-show contestants will turn pro. Naturally, they'll have to pass a complete physical indicating they are up to the pressures of competition. And they'll probably all be graduates of the Jubilance and Excitement Training schools, which will chain all over the country. Their brochure will undoubtedly go something like this.

Joe Carter's Jubilance and Excitement Seminar

WHO IS ELIGIBLE?

Persons over eighteen years of age who can pass the grueling physical requirements: (a) jumping higher than Bob Barker's head; (b) ignoring the symptoms of a coronary when you have just won a trip to Athens, Georgia, and not Greece; (c) sitting four hours under a barrage of hot lights, dressed as a battery, until called upon by Monty Hall, and still becoming hysterical.

CURRICULUM—WHIMPERING AND QUIVERING
(3 credit hours)

A “must” for contestants to employ between the time they've answered the question and the time they've found out what they've won. It includes biting your lip until it bleeds, wringing hands, listening to the audience shout obscenities and rolling eyes back in head until whites are showing.

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU'VE WON THE CAR
(5 credit hours)

An in-depth study in hysteria taught by the winner of a 1953 Chevy who won it by knowing Gentle Ben's nickname.

HUGGING AND KISSING TV GAME SHOW HOSTS NEED NOT BE FATAL
(3 credit hours)

Pressure points around the throat, cutting off breathing with your body, and lifting host off the floor are outlined.

WHAT TO DO WHEN THE CHEST PAINS COME