Fashion Statement

I have never really been a risk-taker.  In fact, I have a funny (I think) anecdote about just how cautious I can be:

One night in my early 30s I was asleep in my bed, when suddenly I realized “Hey! I’m dreaming!”  The revelation had come when I noticed that one entire wall in my bedroom was solid brick instead of the floor-to-ceiling windows I knew it actually was.  “That wall shouldn’t be brick,” my sleeping brain thought.  “I must be having one of those lucid dreams I’ve heard people talk about!”  Those people had also said that when you realize you are in the middle of a lucid dream you should take control, do something you’ve always wanted to do but can’t because of the laws of physics, time, space, and reality in general.

I will interject here something else about my dreams up to that point.  You see, despite evidence that flying dreams are quite common, I had never had one.  Whenever the conversation turned to dreams, invariably someone would ask, rhetorically, “Oh, who hasn’t had a flying dream?” and my hand would go up.  The next comment would usually be along the lines of “Oh my God, flying dreams are the best!  I've never felt so free and alive!  You have no idea what you are missing."  That never failed to make me feel happy... for them.

Breathtaking... and scary -- Pt. 1

So back to my dream.

There I was, in the middle of a dream in which I was fully aware I now had the power to change my flightless ways.  And what did I do?  Did I spread my arms, will the brick-wall-that-wasn’t-brick-in-real-life to dissolve and ascend through the clouds toward aerial vistas unimaginable to those shackled by gravity?  Did I break the bonds of Earth and behold the mysteries of the universe up close and personal?  Did I do a third thing, I ask (sticking to the comedy law of three)?

No.  No I did not.  But what I did do was far worse and more telling than simply choosing not to fly.  When I had my big opportunity to soar, what I did instead was gingerly lift my feet off the floor, one at a time, and proceed to hover around my West LA apartment like a seahorse.  “Wheeeee!  Look how different everything looks from six inches higher!”

That is what a coward I can be.  Always playing it safe, even when I'm asleep.  And that’s why, too often, I chicken out of wearing my fringed jacket or my sequined scarf.

And you thought I wasn’t going to bring this around to being about fashion.

Breathtaking... and scary -- Pt. 2

Over My Dead Body... Please

You’ve got to really feel for Mick Jagger.  I mean, for over 50 years he’s been singing “what a drag it is getting old.”  That’s a long time to be bummed.  Although, watching him these days I’m not sure he’s the go-to guy for empathy when it comes to aging.

Beth, as she became, but not as she was.

As for me, I’ve done a pretty good job of living in denial of the inevitable.  But lately that mindset has been seriously undermined.  They say, “what you resist persists,” so I guess that’s why these days it I’m being confronted with reminders of my advancing age at every turn.  It also explains why for a while there I could not for the life of me escape Ed Sheeran’s “The Shape of You.”

I think the first dent in my Peter Pan armor came two years ago at a Hollywood Vampires concert.  (For those of you seriously un-hip fogies, that’s a cover band comprised of Alice Cooper, Joe Perry and Johnny Depp.)  It had been an amazing evening, full of oldies and goldies.  I was feeling pretty proud of myself for being so full of fearless, youthful energy that I had not only attended the concert alone but had driven myself the 20 miles to the venue even though it meant being out past 10pm!  So, when Alice came out for an encore and performed “School’s Out,” I was immediately on my feet, dancing and singing.  Feeling every bit like the 16 year-old I was when the song was released on my last day of eleventh grade.  And I wasn’t alone.  Everyone around me was dancing and singing, too.  My first thought was, “Wow, all those old people sure look silly shouting ‘school’s out!’.”  My second thought was, “Oh, fuck!”

I recovered.  However, lately, the reminders are coming faster and furiouser, and it’s getting harder to ignore.  These days it is television that’s the primary offender.  Is it too much to ask for a 3-hour Hayes/Maddow/O’Donnell block uninterrupted by not-at-all-subtle hints that the day is approaching when I’m going to need to install a door in my bathtub?  (Actually, once upon a time, a six-year old me would have thought that was the coolest thing ever.)  And can we please repeal the law that says a certain amount of ad time has to be sold to local businesses?  I know I live in a city with a large senior population, but for Christ’s sake, you'd think the only local businesses are retirement communities where people less than a decade older than I am seem to be having the time of their lives working out in a “fitness center” while fully dressed in street clothes.

And while I’m on the subject of assisted living facilities, can there possibly be a worse name for a service that helps you find one than “A Place For Mom?”  My mom is gone.  That means when someone on tv starts talking about “mom,” they mean me!  You know what, Joan Lunden?  I’ve got a place I might suggest for you.

Okay, look.  I don’t have a solution to this really, really annoying fact of life.  Acceptance is sporadic and not always easily achieved.  But I guess I’ll get there.  I never want to be a burden to my kids and will do everything I can to spare them any painful decisions, like whether to install a roller coaster on my stairway (again, Beth-At-Six loves that idea), or, you know, sending me off to Granny Acres.  I could launch into a discussion here about taking matters into my own hands when the time comes, but that’s a topic for a different and hilarious post.  But for now, I am going to live my life one day at a time and pray that when the day comes that my children need to consult each other about the best place to put mom, the options will either be on the bookshelf or on the mantle… next to dad.

23 and WHO?

We are living in a time of scientific wonders.  Advancements our forefathers couldn’t dream of are commonplace.  Taken for granted, even.  Computers that respond to our voice, a device that pumps a gas into your wine bottle so you don’t have to uncork it to drink it, the Silpat baking sheet.  But the newest craze of the modern age is the one that takes us back in time.  I’m talking about the DNA home test kit.  And nobody appreciates a future filled with exploring the past more than I do.

Dutta, Me, My Mom, and Ma

As a young child I used to spend weekends at my maternal grandmother's house, where she lived with her mother, my great-grandmother.  I never knew my maternal grandfather.  He had died shortly before I was born.  I suppose his absence from the household may have been a factor in my overwhelming identification with all things Norwegian.  You see, my grandmother was born in Norway.  And her mother, as one can rightly infer from her having been present at the birth, also called Norway home.  And I’m not talking Oslo.  No big city, cosmopolitan, cultural melting pot in my background.  No, my grandparents migrated to America from a small island called Grindøya, which is situated in the middle of a fjord, which is located in Tromsø, which is inside the Arctic Circle.  One Arctic Circle and two 'o's with a slash through them.  That’s how Norwegian they were!

Norwegian Beth

Thanks to my grandmother, I grew up eating something called lefse (a kind of Norwegian flatbread), with gjetost (a kind of Norwegian cheese).  Every Christmas we put out the julenissen dolls (Norwegian elves) and made fattigmann (a traditional Norwegian cookie.)  One Halloween my costume was actually “Norwegian Girl.” A platter on my grandmother’s kitchen wall beckoned visitors to “be so good as to drink and eat,” in Norwegian.  And although I never learned the language – beyond being able to say “be so good as to drink and eat,” that is – I heard plenty of it because when Ma and Dutta (our nicknames for them) didn’t want me to understand what they were saying, they would say it in Norwegian.  Having arrived in the United States at the age of eight, Ma spoke English perfectly, without the slightest trace of an accent.  Meanwhile, Dutta spoke in broken English and struggled her whole life to be able to pronounce the letter ‘J’.  She was never successful.

I am told my maternal grandfather came from Ohio.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that my sense of self is deeply anchored in my Norwegian heritage.  My connection to that country is a source of pride for me.  For chrissake, I named my first daughter Freya, after the Norse god.  I bought her the Norwegian Barbie doll when it came out.  (Yes, I bought it for her… the one I bought for myself is still MIB.)  I even own my own fattigmann cutter!

So this Christmas, when my husband bought a DNA kit for each member of our family, I was eager to jump on the bandwagon.  As we all gathered around a table in a corner of our local Starbucks and discreetly spit into our respective tiny glass tubes, I was already growing impatient for the results.  Soon, I would have scientific evidence that the blood of Vikings coursed through my veins…

Raise your hand if you know where this is going.

But first, a word about my husband’s results.

My teutonic husband at "16 going on 17."

My husband’s ancestors, as far as we knew, were German.  He can make a pretty good case in support of this by mentioning any number of castles in Germany that bear the surname Falkenstein.  Also, just by showing his face.  When he was younger, if he had walked into a casting session for a production of The Sound of Music, all other aspiring Rolf Grubers would have known to throw in the towel – even before hearing him sing.  In fact, the only hesitation the family had in claiming 100% Western European heritage was due to the fact that one grandparent was the product of… an adoption. (What did you think I was going to say?)

So how is it, I ask you, that when our DNA results finally came back, not only was it determined that my husband was more than twice as Scandinavian as I was (18% to my 6%), but so were both of my daughters?  I confess, I felt a little dizzy at the revelation.  I felt a little like that Polaroid picture Marty McFly keeps consulting in Back to the Future.  I was disappearing, becoming see-through.  If I wasn’t mostly Norwegian, did I even exist anymore?  And don’t talk to me about Polaroid pictures not having feelings.  The imagery is apt!

Apparently, my experience is not unique as evidenced by the very detailed explanation of this conundrom that AncestryDNA.com felt was necessary to include in their FAQ section.  Put in easy-to-understand non-technical terms for the science-challenged-over-hyphenated-weekend-geneologist: our genes are like beads on a necklace, with each parent randomly passing on half of their beads to their children.  In other words, I inherited my maternal grandfather’s jewelry.  (By the way, I believe they make lovely jewelry in Ohio.)

It’s a little less simple to understand how my children scored higher than me on the “So You Think You’re Norwegian” scale.  It’s not like I could chalk it up to my husband cheating on me.  Turning back to the jewelry metaphor, I guess I gave them my only pair of Nordic stud earrings, which my “German” husband promptly augmented with a matching choker, bracelet, ring and brooch.

Okay, whatever, I’m not bitter.  I mean, I get that my cultural heritage can be different from my biological heritage.  And I’ve made peace with what this means for me.  My identity is what I say it is, and I identify as Norwegian.  My pronouns are hun, henne and hennes.  It’s not like people I meet are going to say, “Bullshit, you’re 48% European Jew.  It’s written all over your blood.”  (Note to Mattel: Consider releasing a European Jew Barbie.)  Besides, just because some of my ancestors were Russian, or Polish, or English, or Welsh doesn’t mean some weren’t fucking Vikings…

… It just means they didn’t fuck enough Vikings.

I Want a New Drug

I want to become a pot-smoker.

I know this may be a laugh line for anyone who knew me in high school or college, because they probably think I already was.  But I wasn’t.  I only bought the stuff once in my life (from my dad! – but that’s another story), and if you totaled up every time I got stoned back then, the number probably wouldn’t hit triple digits.  In fact, I think the last time I took a hit off a joint was 1980.  I was either with my brother and Christie McVie in a recording studio at the Record Plant in LA, or it was just REALLY strong weed.

Also, let it be known that I’m not looking to go all Cheech, Chong, or Spicoli.  I’m just trying to keep up with the times.  Find a new way to take the edge off… with less sugar.

From everything I’m reading about the benefits of cannabis, it’s the way to go vis a vis mood and pain management.  Not that the few aches I have these days are a problem, but I can tell you that ever since completing the change-of-life-I-never-asked-for-but-had-to-go-through-anyway, my moods have been in the crapper.  My optimism and sense of wonder have taken a powder, along with a large chunk of my libido.  Granted, a certain politician I like to call Cadet Bone Spurs (© 2018 Tammy Duckworth) has had a lot to do with my attitude these days, but so does getting older and the paucity of estrogen coursing through my glands.

And by the way, if I’m concerned about my sugar intake, you can imagine how I feel about estrogen supplements – so let’s not even go there.

Here’s the problem: unlike what seemed like 99% of every other human on the planet, I didn’t calm down when I lit up.  I didn’t sleep, I cleaned my apartment.  I didn’t get mellow, I got manic.  For every flash of insight I had about the relationship between music and color, or the representation of rape in William Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” I had twelve about how my fat thighs were proof I didn’t deserve love and that the key to happiness was a neatly written to-do list.

In short, I’m afraid of how I will react.  Especially since at 61 there is soooo much more to worry about than there was at 16.  Global warming.  Terrorism.  Failing schools.  The fact that every moderate Democrat is really what we used to call a Republican.  Or, if I want to obsess on a micro level there are these gems lurking:  If my hearing loss gets any worse, I won’t wake up when a killer breaks into my house in the middle of the night.  As a parent I rank somewhere between Joan Crawford and Tonya Harding’s mother.  Or how about, I’m an empty-nester in search of new meaning in her life, which is more than half over!

Re-reading that last paragraph, it’s a miracle I’m not an alcoholic.  All the more reason to turn to THC.

“But now we know how to separate the strains,” says the salesman at my local Weed ‘N’ Things. (God bless Oregon, where neighbors now bring each other baggies from their private grows like they used to bring zucchinis).  Apparently, it was the effects of Sativa that caused me to bum out, and I need to give Indica a shot.  Or maybe it’s the other way around.  But what if it’s me and not the weed that’s the problem?  Then I’ll be stuck for hours in the private hell that is my obsessive brain.  And not only that, I am told that pot today compared to pot back in the day is like the difference between Bill Bixby’s Hulk and Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk (apologies to Lou Ferrigno and Edward Norton).

But as the saying goes: a journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step.  I guess for me that noble step looks a lot like sitting on my couch with a pipe in one hand and a match in the other.  Wish me luck; or, at the very least, a nice trip.

I Googled Therefore I Was

There's a saying that a little Google is a dangerous thing.  And if not, then let me just say, "A little Google is a dangerous thing." (copyright, Beth Falkenstein, 2015).  Otherwise, how can you explain all the nut jobs out there screaming on Twitter that the KKK is filled with Democrats?  And then there was the time I was sued by a woman who had gotten all her knowledge about partnership law by typing the words "partnership law" into her search engine (she lost).

But a lot of Google?  That's a different story.  In fact, I credit Google for proving I exist... or at least I existed.

For example, in 1964, when I was 7,  my family took a trip to visit my grandmother in New York, via the Finger Lakes.  For years afterward there have been aspects of that trip I had always wondered if they were real.  That we went to New York was never in question for me -- and I am proud to say I never for an instant doubted the existence of my grandmother (see Exhibit 1, below). 

Exhibit 1. Grandma Charlotte & Me

But for years I kind of thought that maybe I had made up that part about the Finger Lakes.  I don't mean I was wrong about the route we took, I mean I thought I had actually made up the name "The Finger Lakes."  Who else but a seven year-old would name something after their fingers?  It wasn't until years later, when I finally thought to look it up on a map that I was able to reconcile the reality of that detail with my memory.  (Although, I suppose it is still possible the region was named by a seven year-old.)

But there were other aspects of that vacation on which I was less clear.  The fact that yes, while we were in New York we took side trips to Coney Island and the World's Fair was corroborated over the years through family discussions, and more recently through a cache of slides I uncovered.  But beyond that, I was on my own.  The smattering of any specifics that I retained only exist as images filtered through the very cloudy, imperfect lens of my own memory -- like blurry home movies and fading Polaroids -- and were therefore beyond any family member's ability to confirm.

For instance, I'm confident that my memory of going on the Cyclone with my father is pretty accurate because I remember they made him take his glasses off so they wouldn't fly off his head.  That meant I spent the entirety of my very first roller coaster ride cowering next to a man who could no longer see ten feet in front of his face and who, rather than comforting me, insisted on yelling "Wheeee!" on every death-defying downward swoop.  Terror and cruelty of that sort will indelibly sear any memory into a child's brain in technicolor clarity.  On the other hand, my memory of the Steeplechase "racetrack" ride was far less vivid.  I always thought my mother may have taken me on one of the wooden horses with her but to be honest, I wasn't certain.  Would they have let two people ride together?  In fact, the only evidence I had to go on that I went on the ride at all was because I somehow knew that the secret to going faster was to lean forward.

Enter Google (no, I hadn't forgotten my opening paragraph).  Type in Steeplechase Park.  Search images.  Yep, they let two people ride.  Search Steeplechase ride.  Yep, in fact, the horses were designed for two riders.  And what is more, after some further search and research, I learned that the entire ride operated on the laws of gravity.

"The rider's horses, drawn up a cable to an elevation of 22 feet at the start of the race, suddenly dropped downward along a 15% grade wooden track to gain speed. The riders then plunged across a miniature lake, while their momentum carried them upwards again to a height of 16 feet beyond the beach. The riders then descended through a tunnel and raced upwards over a series of dips representing hurdles until they reached the finish line far ahead. While heavier riders had the advantage, usually the horse on the inside rail won, especially on the shorter course."  (http://www.westland.net/coneyisland/articles/steeplechase2.htm)

Mystery solved.  Memory verified.  Sanity confirmed.  Thanks, Google!

So, what I'm leading up to here is a memory from this time about another side trip with my family to an amusement park called Freedomland.  It was not so much the place itself I seemed to remember as it was something that happened there.  Or, at least I think it happened.  Because when I finally brought it up years later, not a single member of my family remembered the event.  What is more, not a single member of my family remembered ever having heard of Freedomland, much less visited it.  Cue Rod Serling, and submitted for your approval:

Scary Emmet Kelly

Picture, if you will, an old-timey Main Street, very much like the one in Disneyland (although in 1964, having never been to Disneyland, I could not have made that connection).  This was the setting of my Freedomland odyssey.  I assume there were also characters playing old-timey pedestrians that mixed in with the crowd on that old-timey street, but I say "assume" because there was only one character of which I had any specific memory: a hobo-clown, a la Emmet Kelly.  And, as with my ride on the Cyclone, I remember this hobo-clown distinctly because I was terrified of him.  Another reason it is safe to assume that the place was crowded is because at some point my brother, Geoffrey, and I discovered we had become separated from our parents.

At this point, my memory takes a jump cut -- maybe the panic of being lost was too much for me? -- because the next thing I remember is Geoffrey and I, still alone, watching a silent film inside one of the storefronts along Main Street.  It was the Keystone Cops. I imagine, that Geoffrey, being older, had wisely suggested we stay close to the last place we saw our parents.  I don't know exactly how long we stayed there, but it felt like forever, probably because we watched the movie repeat on a loop so many times that I eventually had the scene sequence memorized.  Finally, I guess the monotony of the film drove us out onto the street again (and to this day, I cannot watch the Keystone Cops without immediately getting a sick headache).  Not only were our parents still nowhere to be seen, but even if they were, we couldn't have seen them over the crush of humanity that now filled the sidewalks.  It was our bad luck that at that moment there was a parade going down the middle of Main Street and everyone had been herded onto the sidewalks, effectively blocking our sightlines.  So Geoffrey and I made our way to the curb to watch the parade, at which point I, tired, lost, and probably hungry, started to cry...

It isn't hard to guess that we were eventually reunited with our parents, and you'd think I'd have some sort of recollection of that grand moment.  But I don't.  Instead, what I remember was standing there on the curb, watching the parade and sobbing, when suddenly, to my utter horror, who should spot me in my misery and make a bee-line straight for me?  It was Hobo The Clown!  And he was coming at me!  I froze.  There was literally no where for me to run. 

Dramatization

Closer and closer he came -- it's a wonder I didn't wet my pants -- until he was right in front of me.  He knelt down and asked me why I was crying.  I suppose I told him, but after that?...

There is only one final moment I remember of my day at Freedomland and that was when my worst nightmare handed me a business card and said "This is so you'll never cry again."  I'm pretty sure it worked and I stopped crying.  Because at that point I recall having a thought, something akin to a seven year-old's equivalent of "How the fuck is a business card supposed to stop me from crying?"

So, did it happen?  Was Freedomland real, or did it only exist for me like St. Elsewhere in Tommy Westphall's snow globe?  Surreal as it all seemed to me I really wanted to believe it did.  So I took to Google to help put the pieces together, even though those pieces were grainy and faded images that jumped around in my mind like a blurry home movie.  And Google came through big time. (Note: please watch this video all the way through to the end, as I found it only after writing all of the above, and it sincerely blew my mind):

Case closed.

Carpe Diem This!

A funny thing happened around the time I turned fifty; and by funny I mean maddening and "not funny." Suddenly, the most ubiquitous piece of self-help advice was carpe diem, the admonition to live life to the fullest today because, Lord knows, our tomorrows are numbered.  This is very much like the time I decided I liked crumbled-up cookies in my ice cream and caused a revolution in the dairy industry, only with the added reminder that death is unavoidable thrown in.  Maybe I have the causality screwy -- I do seem to recall a popular musician of my youth inviting me to imagine all the people living for today -- but you have to admit that everywhere you look these days someone with a name like Shaktari Doprah is promoting a blog extolling the virtues of living in the moment.

They are right, of course.  The philosophy makes perfect sense, seeing as how we are completely powerless to change the past, and mostly unable to predict the future.  (I qualified that last statement because I think we all know Donald Trump is not going to be the 45th President of the United States.) So any amount of time, a limited resource, spent fretting over either the past or the future is wasted.  Personally, the aphorism that always resonated with me on this topic is "If you have one foot in yesterday and the other in tomorrow, then you're pissing on today."  There's just one problem with this whole carpe diem movement: it's literally not possible.

No, you can't seize the day any more than you can squash that drop of mercury or describe Lady Gaga's features.  How exactly are you supposed to do that?  In fact, every time I hear the phrase carpe diem it feels like I have a drill sergeant standing over my shoulder, commanding me to do it better, harder, faster.  "See that sunset?  ENJOY IT!  See your daughters?  HUG THEM!  TIGHTER!  Did you just waste that minute?  Well, did you, maggot?  I CAN'T HEAR YOU!  Drop and give me ten.  Speaking of which, did you work out today?"

I would like to take a moment here to clarify that I am not talking about the equally ubiquitous trend of mindfulness.  Mindfulness is not a drill sergeant pointing out your failings.  Mindfulness is your mother gently reminding you to "Pay attention, dear."  Mindfulness is what enables me to actually leave the house on a daily basis, confident that yes, I have remembered to turn off the burners on the stove and made sure that none of the cats is locked in the closet.

But I believe I may have found the real secret to living in the moment.  Ironically it came to me in a moment when I wasn't.

My husband and I were exploring a campsite on a day trip in Northern California.  Absolutely everything about the place caused a flood of sense memories from fifty, thirty... even ten years ago.  Sense memories are not to be confused with regular memories.  Regular memories are like looking through a picture album where images are familiar, but static and removed.  Sense memories are like spontaneous hallucinations where you not only recall the visuals of a time and place, but also your state of mind when you were there.  It's almost like reliving an experience.  Actors are trained to use personal sense memories to more realistically create the characters they portray; which kind of makes you wonder about Al Pacino.

As I wandered through the campsite, I indulged every sensation that washed over me.  I didn't only remember what it was like to be eight, eighteen, twenty-eight, I was eight, eighteen, twenty-eight.  And to my utter amazement, I felt... happy.  Contented.  This wasn't melancholy nostalgia.  This was unmitigated gratitude to be standing in the sunlight, surrounded by redwoods, listening to the rush of the river nearby.

And then the drill sergeant woke up.

"There you go again, scumbag!  Thinkin' about the past and pissin' all over the present." he commanded, dropping every 'g' he could.  "Be HERE!  Be here NOW!"

And before all those warm fuzzies evaporated completely, I had a flash of understanding.  I had been carpe-ing my diem quite well, thank you.  And the only thing that made that effort suddenly inadequate was forcing myself to acknowledge that I might never pass this way again (boy, maybe this trend has been around longer than I thought).  Only moments before I had been in a near state of bliss precisely because I was recalling an iteration of myself that either couldn't conceive of or never thought about my own mortality.

In other words, maybe the way to fully appreciate today is to take tomorrow for granted... like we used to yesterday.

Fearlessness: What's It Like?

If I could change one thing about myself, I would like to be more fearless.  If I could change two things, I'd like to be a fearless person with really great hair.

The truth is, I am a World-Class Worrier.  As far as I'm concerned the question "What's the worst that can happen?" is never, ever rhetorical.

My husband (pictured, left, in an artist's rendering) is one of those types that never doubts that the Universe has only good things in store for him. He is constantly pointing out to me that things generally work out okay; that occasional rough periods and the usual loss that comes with living and loving aside, to date my life has been primarily filled with good fortune.  What I hear when he says that: I'm long overdue for for catastrophe to strike!

Not only that, but who's to say that the relative lack of disaster in my life isn't due to my impressive ability to anticipate and avoid it?  Here is my checklist for keeping myself and my family out of harm's way:

1) Ask self if something bad could happen,
2) Don't do whatever I was thinking of doing.

I'm sure there are many others who would challenge me for the title of Champion of Caution, after all there are whole industries built around helping people overcome anxiety.  And those of you who know me probably think I project a certain degree of strength and self-confidence.  Let me just say that being a smartass can cover up a shitpile of cowardice.  And in case you don't believe me, let me tell you a little story about myself that will erase all doubt that I am, indeed, the Mayor of Scaredy-Cat Town.

We all know what a flying dream is, it's where the dreamer soars high above cities and oceans, literally on top of the world.  According to people who study this sort of thing, flying dreams symbolize a person's sense that he/she is undefeatable and the ability to control his/her flight represents the dreamer's personal sense of power.  Supposedly these dreams are quite common, and most people experience them at some time in their lives.

I never had a flying dream.

Well, that's not quite true.  I had one flying dream.  And no, that's not the end of my story.

My one flying dream didn't happen until I was in my mid-thirties.  It came not long after I had watched a TV special -- 20/20 or 48 Hours, or one of those evening "news" programs -- about dreams.  In the special, the host -- let's call him "John Stossel" -- talked about something called lucid dreams, where you are aware you are dreaming and can often control what happens without waking up.  "John Stossel" went on to suggest that it would be spectacular to be having a lucid dream where you flew.  You could go anywhere!  That sounded cool to me.

So you can imagine how thrilled I was when only a short time later I rolled over in my bed and saw a wall where a window should be.  I realized I was dreaming!  This was it, my big chance to finally have my flying dream!  All that I needed to do was actually start flying.  So I very tentatively lifted my right foot off the floor and then lifted my left foot.  I was airborn!  Granted, I was only two feet above ground, but it was a start.  I had successfully broken the laws of gravity.  The next step was to take advantage of my newfound powers, to embark on some spectacular adventure previously unavailable to me in my Earthbound reality.

Did I swoop over the majestic vistas of Yosemite?  Did I climb above the clouds to explore the vastness of the Universe?  Did I even take a quick trip across town to visit friends? No, no and no.  I hovered around my apartment, floating from room to room inches off the floor like a seahorse.  Then I woke up, probably out of sheer boredom.

So you see, even in my dreams I'm too afraid to take risks!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I want to be Evel Knievel (pictured, right, in an artist's rendering).  But I would very much like to be a lot more like one of my biggest heroes of fiction, Maude from the movie Harold and Maude, and not only because at 79 she bagged a 20 year-old.  I firmly believe every word in her philosophy of living:  "L-I-V-E, live!  Otherwise you've got nothing to talk about in the locker room."  The problem is, it seems that the older I get the further away I am from that ideal.

And so I hereby resolve to start moving in a more Maude-ly direction.  One tiny baby step at a time -- because apparently, that's the way I need to do things.  And maybe one day, if I live long enough, I'll have plenty to talk about in the locker room.

I realize that the image of a 100 year-old in a locker room -- free spirit or not -- is hardly a pleasant one.  But maybe if I had a glorious head of hair...?