A Romeo Among Swordsmen
I was a weird kid in my middle school years. I didn't fit neatly into any cookie cutter categories.
I played Dungeons and Dragons with smart, socially awkward boys in the 6th grade. Boys with pallor that stood out among southern California tan. Boys who read incredibly thick fantasy books and practiced speaking Elvish to one another. They did not have girlfriends despite their insistent claims of possessing +18 charisma.
Unlike these friends, I did have a girlfriend in the 6th grade. Our relationship lasted 20 minutes.
Our family moved to another city in the middle of my 6th grade school year for my father's new job. After a few months at the new school, I noticed a shy blond girl staring at me repeatedly during English class.
She'd avert her gaze and blush whenever I met her stare. Her friends, a pair of brunette identical twins, began informing me that the shy blond girl liked me, and started badgering me to ask her out. My fantasy life at that stage was spent daydreaming about swords and hobbits instead of twins - a missed opportunity, in retrospect.
Finally, one day before PE, the twins came up to badger me once more and I relented:
Sure, tell her I ask her out!
The twins ran giggling to where she was standing a short distance away. She looked up at me, blushed, and her eyelids fluttered. The twins returned with enthusiasm:
She says yes! You are going out!
Alas, our romance was not meant to be. After kickball, a now sullen pair of twins made a beeline toward me.
She wants to break up with you. She says she doesn't know you well enough to go out.
I Secretly Relate To Middle-Aged Suburban Housewives
My romantic antics were not the only way that I felt different.
While we remained amicable, I grew apart from the paladins and sorcerers of my D&D crowd and fell in with a new set of peers in the 7th grade, sports guys who knew the starting lineups of multiple teams as well as their individual stats.
They were bright and fared well academically, yet dreaded writing. The books they favored, by Clive Cussler and John LeCarre, portrayed spies and international conspiracies and sex scenes (!). They were action-packed and good fun, but they seldom breached the three syllable barrier.
Me? I found I could relate to Erma Bombeck, who specialized in the trials and tribulations of suburban housewives. There was something about feeling undervalued in a provincial community that spoke deeply to me as a 7th grade boy.
Erma and I had talents that were beyond those of the one-horse towns of our current existence. Erma and I knew there was a big, exciting world out there and we yearned to be more than we were in the moment. Erma and I knew the value of humor as a coping mechanism for constriction and narrow-mindedness.
The gateway book for me was, If Life Is A Bowl Of Cherries, What Am I Doing In The Pits? I stumbled across the title in our public library and was immediately charmed by the self-effacing humor of a talented writer trapped in an absurd soccer mom suburbia, one who could channel her brilliance through comedy an anrrative.
This led me to relish a series of books with the sort of slapstick, outlandish situations that populated afternoon TV shows from my 1980s childhood. Erma knew how to choose a snappy title. I laughed aloud as I read through her shelf in the library:
- Family - The Ties That Bind...And Gag!
- I Lost Everything In The Post Natal Depression
- The Grass Is Always Greener Over The Septic Tank
- Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession
My humor has evolved since I was 13 years old, but my connection to Erma Bombeck remains deep. I still appreciate a talented writer cranking out humorous essays on motherhood and the challenges of being a woman.
Which is how I found myself reading Nora Ephron's, I Feel Bad About My Neck And Other Thoughts On Being A Woman earlier this week.
Ephron, who died in 2012, was a wealthier, more urbane writing counterpart to Erma Bombeck. We 'd picked up the book at a Friends of the Library sale a few weeks ago, and it called out to the buck-toothed 7th grade misfit in me who felt out of place and destined for greater things to come.
It's weird, I know, but I felt that old thrill reading it.
I'm grateful to have my Ya-Ya Sisterhood of talented female comedy writers to fall back on for their delight in the ridiculous, their insights into the feminine mystique, and their delicious turns of phrase.
I'd like to think reading them makes me a better husband to my wife and a more understanding father to my daughter.
These days, it's wise to soak up guilty pleasures wherever you can get them.