Over the Hill or Just Under the Weather?

With all the recent advances in medical technology, we’re going to be living longer than ever. Great. This means we’ll have twice as many cranky old people to deal with. Don’t get me wrong, I have the greatest respect for the elderly, in fact I think they are one of this country’s most underutilized resources, but boy, they’re not half grumpy sometimes.

My husband just turned 50. Now I realize that 50 is hardly geriatric, but lets face it, it’s one foot in the social security line and the other on a banana peel. And he’s already in practice for waving his cane at the neighborhood kids and yelling, “Get the hell off my lawn, ya dern varmints!”

Out of fear of his impending sulk, I respected his request to not throw an extravagant surprise party complete with full mariachi and a roast. Instead, to celebrate this milestone, we drove around the neighborhood at 20 miles per hour with the left turn signal on. It would have been a perfect night out for him, had it not been Halloween weekend and the local police had not chosen our street to set up their semi-annual sobriety checkpoint. I was driving, so I slowed the car and rolled down my window ready to convince the officer that we were clean and sober. We had both had a glass of wine with dinner some five hours earlier, before seeing Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and then going grocery shopping – another wild Saturday night out. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. They took one look at my husband’s salt and pepper hair and waved us on. In hindsight, perhaps it wasn’t the hair that convinced them that we were of little threat to anyone’s safety. Perhaps it was the beaten, downtrodden, “Oh, shit, I’m almost dead” look my husband has adopted since he reached the half-century mark. Since his birthday, my beloved has developed the following symptoms: delicate stomach, chronic headache, tingling in two fingers of his left hand, insomnia and general muscle and joint pain. He also appears to have shrunk be at least an inch and a half. Psychosomatic? Surely not!

As if he wasn’t feeling sorry enough for himself, he received a very real reminder of his continued demise--a letter from the AARP. This wasn’t his first--the AARP marketing dept are way ahead of the game—but this one offered him a free desktop calculator with big color-coded buttons “so you don’t punch in a wrong number and mess up your checkbook!” He tossed the letter on the kitchen floor and stomped on it, thus reducing his mental age by a factor of 10.

Needless to say, he was feeling pretty down in the dumps about the whole thing. To cheer him up, I pointed out that in only five more birthdays we would be able to eat at Denny’s for half the price. For some strange reason, he wasn’t amused.

Welcome to America...Now Bugger off Home!

I first came to this country in the summer of 1990 and it’s a miracle I didn’t turn around and go right back home. It wasn’t because of the people I met on the plane and it certainly wasn’t because of the kind shuttle van driver and the Disneyland Hotel employees who helped me find the hotel I was actually supposed to be staying at—some off-the-beaten-path hole-in-the-wall. No, my first impression of the United States--and the one that almost got me back on the plane—came from the folks in airport immigration.

Picture this: you’re young, free and single, living the carefree, but ultimately unfulfilling life of the singleton, when one day, you meet the person of your dreams. They’re adventurous and fun-loving, they’re wealthy and gregarious; they’re the most popular person around and everyone wants to be them or be around them. Perfect. So, you take the plunge. Then they say, “I want to take you home to meet my folks.” No problem, you think. So, you pull up outside your prospective in-laws’ beautiful home and you think, wow, this is the life for me, but then, out they come. They’re stony-faced and appear to be in foul moods and you can already tell they’re not going to like you. But, you put on your best smile to make sure they understand what a good, kind person you are and you eagerly await being welcomed into their home as one of the family, so they can get to know you and realize what a perfect match you are for their beloved offspring. But instead, they keep you out on the sidewalk and begin their interrogation.

“Why do you want to date my son?”
“How long do you plan on dating him?”
“How do you plan to spend your time with him?”
“Do you have any contagious diseases?”
“Do you have any plants, snails or other living things?”

And all through the interrogation, they fix you with a steely gaze, just waiting for that twitch of the eye that tells them you’re lying, just looking for a reason to say, “No. We don’t think you’re suitable for our son. Go back to your life of misery.”

Now, even if you do pass the test and they allow you in to their home, do you really want to go after all that? What if the whole family’s that way? What if your fabulous boyfriend, Mr. Wonderful himself, turns out to be the same kind of unpleasant xenophobe as his parents? Hmm, perhaps there’s a reason he’s single after all. So, you turn and run back to your home.

At 20 years old, my Mr. Wonderful was a country 6,000 miles away from my home. It had everything I was looking for--opportunity, a carefree spirit, and lots and lots of sunshine--but my own person in-laws-from-hell, the INS inquisitors, were terrifying. Now, I’m a fine upstanding citizen and while I admit that I’m not exactly saving lives and changing the world here, I think I’m a valuable addition to society as a whole. I can hold a conversation using words of more than two syllables, I work hard and pay my taxes—on time, even; I’m kind to children and small animals and help old ladies across the street—well, what I mean is that I don’t actually aim for them, which by Los Angeles’ standards is the same thing--so why wouldn’t they want me here?

You never get a second chance to make a first impression and my first impression was grim. Thankfully, I stuck it out long enough to learn that most of the people in my newly adopted family were much more pleasant. So, come on INS, what does a smile or a kind word really cost? Foreigners are people, too, you know. And you never know, you might be scaring away the next great brain surgeon, the next budding California Governor, or even your very own Ms. Wonderful.

Barbarism Takes a Holiday

Remember, remember, the fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot.

November 5th is Guy Fawkes Night, or Bonfire Night as we called it. It’s a cross between Thanksgiving and 4th of July, in which we Brits--in order to show our gratitude for our Government not being blown to smithereens by a bunch of 17th century ne’er-do-gooders--stuff our faces, set off fireworks and burn the traitors in effigy. After Christmas, it was my favorite holiday of the year.

The month of October would be spent gathering bits of wood, old furniture, sticks, and piles of newspaper for my Dad to use in the construction of the Bonfire. Mum had started baking several days beforehand, so by the evening of the 5th we would have a small mountain of parkin—a kind of oaty ginger cake—and a large tray of dark, chewy Bonfire toffee. Made from brown sugar, black treacle (molasses) and butter, it was more of a weapon than a confection and could simultaneously clog an artery and gum your mouth shut with one utterly delicious morsel. There would be roasted chestnuts to throw from hand to hand until they were cool enough to peel and eat; and there would be potatoes, wrapped in foil to be put in the middle of the fire to bake and eat with butter and salt at the end of the night.

My role in the preparations was to make the “Guy”. This involved acquiring a pair of my Dad’s old work pants and one of my brother’s threadbare sweatshirts—assuming my Mum could persuade the old miser to part with it—and stuffing them with newspaper to make a man-sized doll. Add a paper bag head and a pair of old socks and voila—a source of income. Tradition requires kids to sit their Guy out on the street and hit up passing neighbors with “Penny for the Guy” requests. We seldom got much, but the more resourceful kids would invest two pence in the bus fare into town where they could make a small fortune out on the High Street. Once the Guy had earned his keep, his final role was to sit on top of the bonfire, like the angel on a Christmas tree and wait until the flames licked high enough to melt his nylon trousers and burn slowly through his newspaper stuffing. We’re a sadistic lot, we Brits.

When Bonfire Night finally arrived, I would anxiously wait for my Dad to get home, wondering if I’d been good enough this year to get any fireworks. For the entire previous month I had been eyeing the selection boxes of fireworks in the local newsagent’s store. Rockets, Roman Candles, Bangers, Catherine Wheels and sparklers all crammed into bright yellow boxes. I was pretty much always good enough for a basic box and a couple of packets of sparklers. Fireworks aren’t illegal in the U.K., in fact the British encourage their children to nail Catherine Wheels to the fence post in a 10 foot square back yard, or shoot rockets out of old milk bottles in a neighborhood with at least a couple of dozen other houses within a 100 foot radius. It keeps the local hospitals in business.

So, what is this Guy Fawkes Night all about, really?

Well, in 1605, a group of young men conspired to blow up the Houses of Parliament and Mr. Guy Fawkes was their fearless leader. Unfortunately for them, they were caught and Fawkes was charged with treason and sentenced to death. The favored method of execution at the time, of course, was to be hung, drawn and quartered—a most unpleasant way to go.
Although, as a kid, I understood the reason for the commemoration of the event, it wasn’t until years later that I fully understood the significance of the celebration and its traditions. In fact, it wasn’t until I first explained it to one of my American friends that it dawned on me what a barbaric holiday it really is. There we were burning this “Guy” in effigy, dancing round the fire like the pagans we all are at heart, stuffing our faces and risking life and limb setting off fireworks.

It’s a cruel celebration of a man’s brutal death – but it’s still my second favorite holiday.

Bah, Pumpkin!

For the first time in a long time, we were home for Halloween and actually living in a place that gets trick-or-treaters. We had the usual array of fairies, superheroes and unidentifiable creatures. We also had a boy dressed as a golf course and a dog dressed as Zorro. The nice children took one piece of candy and said “Thank you,” while the rest took great handfuls and trudged on to their next unsuspecting victim in silence. The Halloween equivalent of Scrooge who resides within me was tempted to call the bluff of some of the visitors by requesting a “trick” rather than just handing over the “treats”. But I feared the eggs and toilet paper and anyway, that’s just one step away from sitting on the porch with a shotgun yelling, “Get the hell off my lawn, ya damn varmints!” and I really don’t want to go there.

Instead, that same Scrooge sat on the couch and bemoaned the commercialism of the whole thing and grumbled about how “very American” it is to go door-to-door expecting to be given something and how when I was a kid you dressed up as one of two potentially scary things, a ghost (holes cut into the least flowery bed sheet you could find), or a witch (black cardboard pointy hat and whatever black clothes you could find). If you went trick or treating it was for pocket change, not candy and you could expect to be sent packing from most homes. Still, you’d better have a couple of good tricks up your sleeve because there was always someone who would go for the trick option. As it turns out, the whole trick-or-treating thing has its roots in the good old UK.

In Celtic times the poor would go door-to-door begging for “Soul cakes” to eat in return for prayers for the safe passage of the souls of the donors’ loved ones. October being the Celtic New Year, it was thought that the souls of the dead roamed the earth looking for living bodies to possess and the Celts dressed in ghoulish costumes to ward away these evil spirits (something a fairy, a golf course, or a purple dinosaur is unlikely to do—well, the purple dinosaur, maybe). Likewise the carved lanterns stemmed from the legend of a man named Jack who tricked the devil up a tree and was thus denied access to either heaven or hell. He was however given a single ember to light his way, which for some unexplained reason, he kept in a turnip and hence, our childhood Jack-o-lanterns were carved from turnips. No battery operated plastic pumpkins for us.

If you’ve ever tried to cook turnip (I can recommend it mashed together with potatoes and butter) you know how hard the damn things are to cut. Try carving one! To hollow out a turnip, you have to start with a very sharp and dangerous knife. Of course, we did them ourselves, I mean, whose parent has the time to sit and carve a turnip? We would work down in layers of about ¾ inch, by cutting a circular disc, then carving it into squares and cutting the squares out one at a time. We would proceed like this until our turnips were largely hollow, assuming your arm could hold up for that long. Then came the actual carving bit. There was no room for elaborate designs on a turnip. Just cutting out anything that remotely resembled triangular eyeholes was a feat. Still, the glorious reward of turnip carving was the smell of slow-roasting turnip as your candle burnt down to the bottom.

And that’s the spirit of Halloween (no pun intended) that I’m mourning the death of. It’s that no-stress, no expectations commemoration of an ancient tradition. It’s not the competition to get the most elaborate costume; it’s not trying to outdo all your neighbors with the giant animatronic spiders and realistic life-size witches; it’s not even competing with friends to get the biggest quantity or most sought-after candy. It’s about throwing on a sheet and being allowed out after dark. It’s about risking losing a finger carving a turnip and burning the stump on a real candle. It’s about overlooking the fact that ghosts, in general, seldom come with tiny roses printed on them.

Perhaps next year the Halloween Scrooge should just lock the door, turn out the lights and pretend to not be home.

Bah, Humbug!