Swimming Pools and Me

Me as a teen in my childhood home swimming pool

When I was eight years old, my dad and I sat together in our backyard and watched the workmen dig our grass and dirt to put in a new above-the-ground swimming pool. My mom referred to our pool as a "15 Round" which meant that it measured fifteen feet in diameter.  The outside was blue, and it had straight white panels going down each side with the words "Esther Williams" printed on them. My grandmother told me that Esther Williams was a very famous swimmer who starred in Hollywood movies many years ago.   

Every summer, my best friend, Ania, and I spent most of our time in my pool.  Even though she had an oval, above-the-ground swimming pool in her own backyard, we were always in mine.  A few times, we stayed in so long that our lips turned blue!  We loved being in my swimming pool so much that we never realized we were cold - probably because we were always moving and jumping up and down.  One summer, I spent so much time doing handstands and cartwheels underwater that I came down with an ear infection.  I had to take ear drops and wear earplugs every summer after that.  Sometimes, I pretended I was a mermaid and that my swimming pool was a big tank I lived in while on land. Nothing felt better than being in my swimming pool.

But then I grew up and left home for college in Boston.  While I was away, my mom sold the house.  For many years after that, I had a recurring dream that I returned to my childhood home, and the water in my swimming pool turned green.  I was distraught that the pool was unusable. I figured I dreamed this because shortly before I had left home, our pool water really did turn green.  I hadn't been very good at keeping up with putting in the scoops of chlorine and running the filter.  My dad was the one in charge of our pool, but he passed away when I was fifteen.  In my dreams, as soon as I saw that the water was green, I went on a desperate quest for chlorine. Sometimes, I'd look in my shed and other times I'd try to find a store somewhere, hoping it was still open in the middle of the night.  Eventually, I'd find one, and I'd spend the rest of the dream measuring out the chlorine.  

Illustration from Instagram

I've never had my own pool as an adult, but I always enjoy them whenever I get to swim.  One of my favorites is this wave pool in Pennsylvania.  I didn't know one existed until I went in.  It was the best of both worlds, as my other favorite place in the world is the ocean.  One time, I was staying at a hotel in Nevada, near Las Vegas, and the hotel pool was an inground pool that had the pool water streaming right up onto the concrete floor at your feet as you approached it. I was only in Nevada for a couple of days and had a jam-packed schedule with family who live there so I didn't make time to go into the pool.  Ever since that day,  I STILL regret that I didn't go in, and I swear I will one day go back to that same hotel so I can get into that particular swimming pool! 

Over the years, the swimming pool water in my recurring dreams began to appear clearer and less green. I haven't had one of those dreams in a while.  Sometimes, I miss having a swimming pool to call my own.  I can't have one in my backyard now because my small yard is on a slanted hill which is nearly all rock.  But I guess it would be possible to put in a pool if I hired an expert to check the yard out. I mean, if I can find a store to buy chlorine  in the middle of the night, then I suppose anything is possible!

Esther Williams in 1953 (cinemasips.com)

Iggy's New York (and my dream about a Middle-Eastern taxi driver)

The idea for this blog post came to me in a dream I had this morning:  I am in a taxi with a good-looking Middle-Eastern man who won't tell me which country he's from. He's been my driver for the past few days, and I sit in the front seat with him. I realize I'm wearing two different earrings today. One is a silver treble clef and the other is a triangular-shaped earring with an original drawing of Alice in Wonderland pasted onto it. They're both real earrings I have, but I never wear them mismatched. I tell him that the Alice earring is handmade and that I bought it years ago in Greenwich Village at an outdoor flea market back when New York City was cool. I tell him that the New York City he lives in is not the same one that existed when I used to shop at the outdoor flea markets. I say that my best friend, Ania, and I used to take the subway to the Village every Saturday and that New York City was gritty and dangerous back then. There were needles in the streets. That there were many places Ania and I would not go to even during the day.  I say that there are pockets of New York City that are dangerous these days, but back then, the pockets were everywhere. But I say that even with the danger, I still prefer the New York City of years ago. Everything was alive in those days. There was passion on the streets:  people break-dancing, playing music through their boom boxes, and no one was afraid to shout and speak their own minds.  I say that is the character that came out from the boroughs. I tell him that nowadays, New Yorkers are from Texas, Alabama, Europe, and the Middle East. I don't want to insult him, but I also want to be honest. He just listens and watches me without saying a word.

When I wake up, I realize I miss that New York. It's the same Greenwich Village I've written about in my upcoming "Iggy Gorgess" novel.  Iggy's New York takes place in the late 1980's. He hangs out with the homeless in Washington Square Park. He works at a punk clothing store where postcards of Bauhaus and all the great 1980's punk bands are displayed. He eats hot dogs on the street and doesn't care how dirty the carts are that he gets them from. That's how Manhattan was back then. People just let loose and didn't care. There was more crime back then, sure. But most of the time, people bonded together in the struggle. You didn't get reprimanded by a bystander if your voice was too loud while walking down the street. You didn't complain when you had to walk 20 blocks before you could find a public restroom. And if you were lucky enough to find one, you didn't care that it was so filthy you couldn't graze your hand against the walls or the seat.  You were just happy enough you finally found one and didn't have to hold it in on the graffiti-filled subway on the way home. You didn't expect New York to comply with your demands and to bend for you. It was New York, and you adapted to the City's ways.

Maybe that's what my dream is trying to tell me: To go with the flow of my life and grab what I can from it rather than waiting around for life to fall into place according to my particular demands and expectations.  Or maybe it's telling me that my "Iggy" novel would best be marketed to Middle Eastern taxi drivers.

"Iggy" Novel Coming This Winter!

Iggy was bored so he moved to New York.  Before there was Felicity -- the lead character of my "Bliss, Bliss, Bliss" novel -- there was Iggy.  In fact, if there hadn't been an Iggy, there would have never been a Felicity.

When my best childhood friend, Ania, and I were teenagers, we loved taking the subway on Saturday afternoons to Greenwich Village in Manhattan. We saw people with dyed black or blue hair, mohawks, and black leather clothes with silver studs and safety pins on them when we went to the Village.  We shopped at the stores "Flip" and "Butterfly," which sold black leggings and punk clothing.  Butterfly also had jewelry and postcards.  It was a Bauhaus postcard that gave me the idea for Iggy's look.  That dyed black, punk hairstyle spiked up high, and black eyeliner always stayed in my mind.  That was a real punk.

Years later, while living in Canada, I enrolled in a Women's Writer's Workshop at the local college and wrote several short stories with female lead characters, but I never liked them.  They didn't speak for me, and I couldn't find a female voice I could relate to.  One night, while flipping the TV channels, I stumbled upon a 1970's movie starring Jon Voight called "The Odessa File."  Something about the mood of the scene captivated me.  It is about an American man living in Germany with his German go-go dancer girlfriend.  He spends many hours one evening reading a manuscript when his girlfriend suddenly enters the living room and says she's trying to get a taxi for work.  He says, "Don't I always take you?"  They both seem aloof and moody, and the scene just drew me in.  Suddenly, Iggy was born.

I immediately wrote a short story called "Iggy's Dailies."  It was about a moody male character who I put into a scene similar to that evening in Germany in "The Odessa File" movie, but I made him live in Greenwich Village, NYC. I remembered that Bauhaus postcard I'd seen in the punk shop those years ago. I made him look like that.  There was still the problem of what to name him.  I had such a hard time coming up with one, so I told myself that I was just going to look down at the magazines on my coffee table, and I'd choose the first name I looked at.  The first thing my eyes caught focus of was a tiny picture of Iggy Pop.  Iggy.  I couldn't come up with any other names, so I decided to just call him Iggy.

I brought "Iggy's Dailies" into my Women's Writer's Workshop.  They didn't like the title and told me it was not a "slice of life" story, as I'd called it. At the time, I took their word for it, but looking back, I think Iggy is a slice of life story.  It is a sample of Iggy's life.  It's him hanging around in his living room, reading his manuscript.  It's Iggy. Simply Iggy.  It's a depiction of Iggy's everyday reality.  The only difference between my novel and a typical "slice of life" story is that I developed Iggy's character.  He's not just a bit part in a story that's front and center. 

I took Iggy with me to my Novel Writing course and began writing Iggy in chapter form. Next semester, I took a Screenwriting class and adapted the first 10 pages of my Iggy novel-in-progress as a screenplay.  Our final assignment was to choose a few people from our class to act out the dialog in the screenplay.  I chose someone named Joel to play Iggy. He was an actual actor who I'd seen in a Canadian beer commercial where he said "Hi, I'm Joel, and this is my beer commercial."  He played Iggy and told me afterward that he really enjoyed it.  I got encouraged.

When I moved back to New York City, I submitted a few chapters to "Antimatters Magazine," a magazine that published articles about the musicians who performed at a very popular East Village Antifolk Music Club called "Sidewalk Café."  Iggy seemed to be a good fit for the magazine because he lived in Greenwich Village, and he had a musician's look and hairstyle. "Antimatters" published excerpts of Iggy in four of their issues. 

Now, I'm preparing to publish Iggy in complete form as an E-Book and limited paperback.  I will be pinning to his "My E-Book Iggy Gorgess" Board on Pinterest, tweeting about him and running contests on my Facebook Author Page, and I've got a first line for his introduction into the social media world too:  Iggy wanted to meet you all, so he decided to join Facebook.

I Wish I Were A Weeki Wachee Mermaid

Weeki Watchee, Florida is "The Only City of Live Mermaids."  When I was little, my parents took me there to the underwater theater to see the live mermaid show.  I watched the mermaids in awe as they stayed underwater, breathing through hoses while they swam and acted out an action story.  Outside the theater, there was a machine to put coins into to create your own mermaid figurine.  When it popped out, it felt like wax.  Mine was a blue mermaid riding on a seahorse.  I kept it all the way into adulthood, but one day, I threw it away along with my dreams of becoming a mermaid myself.

My fascination with mermaids began even before my Weeki Wachee visit when I came across a record in my parents' collection called "The Lonely Mermaid."  It had a light blue and white label, and when I played it on my portable orange record player that had a white cover that closed and a handle for carrying, it sounded so sad.  I pictured one mermaid sitting on a huge rock in the middle of the ocean as she listened to that sad song.

A few summers later, we got a 4-foot, round swimming pool installed in our backyard.  I remember sitting with my dad in our screen porch, both of us fascinated while we watched the men dig and dig to put up our Esther Williams swimming pool.  I learned to swim in that pool and discovered I enjoyed being under the water even more than above.  I often pretended I was a mermaid in captivity, living in my own 4-foot deep, contained water tank.  But I spent too much time underwater, and one of my ears began to hurt.  The doctor said I had "Swimmer's Ear," and I needed to take drops and wear earplugs from that point on.  Turns out I wasn't really an actual mermaid.

But to keep my dream alive, I began collecting mermaids. When I went away to college, I brought my few mermaid dolls and two really cool ceramic mermaids along with me.  But on one of my return visits, I discovered that my best friend, Ania, had started her own mermaid collection, and hers was way better than mine!  Her new friends were world travelers, and they always remembered to pick up some rare, handcrafted piece for her that they had bought from some place exotic.  Soon after, I abandoned my own collection because my Disney Ariels just couldn't compete with Ania's new beauties!

So, I couldn't become a mermaid, and I couldn't surround myself with mermaids, but I still had the ocean.  The ocean brings me home.  When I stand at the edge of the ocean and breathe in the salty air, I feel like I'm where I'm supposed to be.  When I swim in the ocean, I like to float on top of the water.  My favorite time to float is right after a big wave comes to shore and it's followed by a small, yet wide wave that is calm.  When I jump with it, it pushes me up gently, and I'm floating and soaring.  These days, I'm content with the jump, although I used to swim a lot more.  Instead of staying put when that big wave came, and waiting for the smaller one, I used to turn around and swim back to shore along with the big wave.  Sometimes, the wave was so huge, it whipped me roughly back to shore, knocking me down, in a rocky landing. During those times, I wished I were a real mermaid because as a mermaid, I'd have no problem staying afloat with my fishtail! 

Even though I can never be a mermaid, it doesn't mean that mermaids don't exist.  After all, the oceans' depths have not been completely explored by humans, so I'll never know for sure if there really IS a lonely mermaid sitting on a huge rock in a hidden section of the ocean somewhere, just like the one I pictured in that sad song.

The Cicadas Are Coming!! But Why Am I Happy About This?

The cicadas are coming back to New York City after 17 years, and most of the people talking about it are completely freaked out! We're going to see them here on Staten Island more than on the other 4 boroughs, and word is that the streets will be covered with them, and that at night, they will sing so loudly outside, it will sound like a thousand lawn mowers.  People are really agonizing over their arrival, asking: Will they jump on us as we walk down the street? Will they follow us into our houses in swarms? Normally, I'd be in on the anxiety.  I know what it's like to anticipate things and worry about them needlessly.  A few years ago, I worried every time a piano gig was coming up.  Had I practiced enough? Would I remember how to play the music once I got up there onstage?  Or worse still, I'd flood my mind with questions like: How is it that the mind can even remember how to play the music? What sends the signals from my brain to my fingers? And will my brain send the signals fast enough?  That is definitely overthinking it, but worry has always been my middle name.  But these ugly, red-eyed swarms of bugs? I don't feel any trepidation about the reappearance of them at all.

One of my favorite summers was when I was 10 years old and the cicadas crawled their way into my hometown neighborhood.  Although they never did come into our house, I did see them everywhere outside.  By the end of the summer, they were still strewn dead all over the street. They really were everywhere.  Every morning, my dad and I would watch TV in the living room, he on the couch and I in my favorite chair, and we could hear them very loudly from outside.  I don't know if they lived in our Sycamore tree right outside our second floor window or just outside in the bushes and grass, but we could hear their unusual buzzing, even over the volume of our TV. We heard their singing the entire morning. I remember drinking my glass of Strawberry PDQ Milk while we'd watch game shows. Then, after morning TV with my dad, I'd go outside and play with all my neighborhood friends.  There was my best friend, Ania, who lived on the corner, and all the boys who lived on her street.  We'd play Kick the Can or swim in each other's pools. There were other summers like that but only a handful.  So when I think of that year the cicadas came out, I associate them with one of those precious and few summers.  Same thing goes with spending time with my father.  He died when I was 15, so the summer when I was 10 was a precious and extraordinary summer too. 

Overall, I don't like bugs, except for illustrated versions of them made to look cute with big eyes and long eyelashes. When I was a teenager, I liked this song called "Hey There Little Insect" which was poppy and catchy.  I found out it was by a not very popular but very original singer named Jonathan Richman.  The song got me to reading about the symbolism of bugs. I read that if you like bugs, you have a negative ego, and if you dream of bugs, it means you are worried or annoyed about something or that there is a part of yourself or a situation in your life that you don't want to face, some kind of truth.  Having a negative ego will consume you with worry and anxiety. If I liked all bugs, maybe I'd be onto something.

But logically, cicadas are really nothing to worry about because they don't actually bother you.  They don't sting or bite or come into the house so there really is no need for anxiety, they are just something to look at.  That's another reason why I prefer to have a positive ego when it comes to  cicadas.  Besides, I have other things to worry about -- like a mosquito giving me West Nile Virus, or getting a dangerous allergic reaction to a bee sting, or termites eating my house, just to name a few.

I Dream Of Brooklyn

Last Sunday's episode of HBO "Girls" had everyone confused.  It was a dreamlike episode, unfolding surreally.  We saw Hannah as we never had before.  She wasn't eating Cool Whip out of the container in her small Brooklyn apartment, complaining about her horrible love life.  Instead, she spent two days with a handsome doctor, barbecuing steaks on the patio of his brownstone and taking a sauna in his giant bathroom.  The episode was like a fantasy of what Hannah's life could be in the future if she stopped struggling and earning $40 a day at "Grumpy's Cafe" and instead lived the lavish lifestyle of a doctor's wife in an expensive Brooklyn brownstone.  Hannah was awake, but she was dreaming.

Not too long ago, I had an actual nighttime dream about Brooklyn.  I dreamed that it was an early Saturday morning, and I called up my best childhood friend, Ania, and told her that there was nothing I wanted more in this world than to go to her condo in Brooklyn really early in the morning and hang out together.  The desire in the dream was so strong.

From the time I was 8 until 18, Ania and I were inseparable.  We spent almost every single day together.  She lived on the corner across from my street, so I would call her up and we'd meet outside and hang out all day.  She was always just a phone call away.

The next day after the dream, I e-mailed Ania and asked, "Can we set a date to get together? Like at your house?"  She wrote back, pleased.  "You want to come to Brooklyn? I'd love that."  So we set a date for breakfast.

On the scheduled Saturday morning, my family set out for Brooklyn to have breakfast with Ania's family.  Her husband cooked eggs with salsa and Mexican cheese.  Ania made vodka breakfast cocktails.  My daughter and her son took turns riding his scooter back and forth on the hardwood floors while the rest of us sat on stools and talked all morning.

Last spring, Ania said that she'd often come home from work to find the HBO "Girls" film crew sitting on the front steps of her condo.  They were filming the second season in her neighborhood right in front of her house.  And now Hannah and I were both fantasizing about alternate lives.  Hannah imagined what it would be like to have the material things and lifestyle the doctor had. I fantasized about what it would be like if I could revisit my childhood -- the constant daily steadiness with Ania, playing Connect Four on her front steps at 9:00 in the morning when no one else in our neighborhood was outdoors yet.  This is the fantasy of my alternate life.

But Hannah doesn't really want to go into the future and be settled yet. She'd lose her edge, her writer's restlessness and her need to, in her words, "Feel it all."  I don't really want to go back to my childhood, all that uncertainty and second-guessing.  I finally feel secure with a fierce sense of responsibility.  But sometimes, it's nice to dream with the background setting of a really nice condo or brownstone in Brooklyn.

Why I'm Old School

Recently, I had a flashback.  It happened while teaching my daughter to play backgammon.  As I explained the mechanics of the game, I suddenly flashed back to my nine-year-old self learning to play with my best friend, Ania, whose dad taught us after giving her a set for her seventh birthday.  She had been so disappointed to find a little brown suitcase after the wrapping paper came off, but we learned the game, and we were forever hooked.  Ania's aunt and uncle had a blue leather backgammon set with blue swirl and white chips. As soon as I saw it, I told Ania that when I grew up, I was going to get one just like it.

We played constantly, and didn't even play competitively.  Half the time, we never knocked each other's chips off the board, even when they were left single and vulnerable.  It was so relaxing to just move the pieces, hear and feel the sound of the dice rolling in the cup, and just talk about other things while our hands focused on moving our chips, closer and closer to home. 

I prefer old school games to computer ones or X-Box.  At Chuck E. Cheese's, I go straight to the skeeball and would have no trouble staying there the entire time.  The constant movement of my right arm tossing the ball, getting better and better with each throw, having to get the gentle tug of my arm just right to get the ball into those little circles at the top.  Maybe they are 1,000 points, but I don't even know because I don't play to get tickets, I like to stand there and think of other things while my arm tosses the ball as second nature. 

This love of the tangible is similar to people saying they love the feel of a book and smell of its pages rather than using the Kindle.  Or those who have said the sound of the grooves of a vinyl album and its wear and tear transports them back to the first time they heard the songs. But more than the tangible, for me it's that zoned-out relaxed feeling that I love when I play backgammon.  I can't imagine getting  that feeling while staring at bright lights on a laptop version of the game.  Being zoned out, then having my laptop freeze or crash, forcing me back into reality.  That can't happen while I'm playing the board game.

Backgammon is zen to me, which is defined as "absorption or a meditative state."  While playing backgammon, you're cleaning out your mind because you are focusing on moving the pieces on the board, your thoughts have emptied.  You have redirected your focus.

After I taught my daughter backgammon, we immediately turned on my laptop.  We didn't do it to play a virtual board game or for social networking or FarmVille.  We did it so we could do a Google search in hopes of finding a blue leather, blue and white swirl chip backgammon set.

Yes, You SHOULD Remember Those "Auld" Friends This New Year!

For some reason, my husband and I have always made friends with people older than us.  A LOT older than us.  Back when we were newlyweds (in our early twenties), our two best friends were a couple in their early sixties. My husband was a grad student then, and he met Nadia and Julian every single morning at "Galaxy Donuts," for coffee and hour-long conversations.  Julian was Polish and Nadia was German and, although Christians, they were both in work camps during World War II. They eventually immigrated to Canada and had a lot of stories to tell.

Mostly they talked politics or world history.  My husband nicknamed them "The Prophets" because they often watched TV shows of the apocalypse! Sometimes we'd rent old black and white movies and watch them at each other's apartments.  Or we'd have Polish food at Polonez, our favorite neighborhood restaurant.  But four years later, my husband and I moved to a different part of town, far away from the Polish area, and since none of us had driver's licenses or cars (you didn't need them in the "big city"), we never saw The Prophets again.

I'd like to think that Nadia and Julian are still kicking around somewhere, healthy and happy, together in the "old folks home."  When you don't know what happened to someone you once knew, it's best to imagine them as they were when you knew them, and of course, to never forget them.

My other "old" friend was my former piano teacher, Helen.  I'd known her my whole life.  She was my next door neighbor who began giving me lessons when I was six.  Every Tuesday, for the next ten years, I sat in the first floor sitting room outside the small room she gave lessons in, as I waited for her to finish with the student who studied before I did.  I never had to ring the doorbell.  Because I was her friend, I could just let myself in and wait for my lesson to start.

I never lost touch with Helen and had even spoken to her on the phone a week before she passed away peacefully at the age of 86.  Some of my favorite memories as a child were the nights before our annual weekend of piano recitals when Helen would invite my best friend, Ania, and I to sample some of the cookies that Helen baked every year for the recitals.  My favorites were the delicious powdered sugar and walnut crescent ones. Ania and I would be bubbling with anticipation.  We were nervous and excited at the same time for our weekend's performances where we played solos but also duets together.  Right up until the year that Helen passed away, she still lamented at how one of her biggest regrets was that she never got Ania and me on videotape playing at the recitals.  She had gotten her later students, but she hadn't been tech-savvy enough to have a video camera during Ania's and my heyday.  She was a dear and caring woman and, to this day, still one of the best friends I've ever had.

New Year's is a time to remember all our dear friends, and to cherish the ones we are still blessed with. Happy New Year to all my friends, both old, young and in-between!

I Should Have Gone to the Fame School

It seems like every teenager wants to be an entertainer these days.  Some are happy just chasing fame, but others want to do it the right way by actually learning how to sing, dance, act or play an instrument.  When I was a teen, my passion was singing and songwriting. There was no "New Directions Glee Club" at my high school, and even though I grew up in New York City, it never occurred to me to audition for the "High School for Performing Arts," made famous by the "Fame" movie and TV show, both popular at that time.  Though it would have been nice to have had a bunch of friends I could feel connected to who also wanted to be performers, I thought the only option for me was to go it alone.

First, I enrolled in group singing lessons in a building that also housed our local DMV.  There, we practiced the most bizarre vocal exercises I'd ever encountered in my life (both before and since).  There were "Ya-EEs" and "EE-Yeh-EE's."  One girl's voice was so high and screechy that as she went higher and higher up the vocal register, it was hard not to plug our ears.  I can't even write the syllables "Ya-EE" without thinking of her!  The next year, I quit the "Ya-EE" group and joined a singing workshop for adults.  I was the youngest member since I was only 16, and the man who ran the group promptly distributed his original 45-record to us.  It was enclosed inside of a sleeve that had a picture of him where he looked just like Tom Jones -- curly-headed, shirt open, gold chain, holding the microphone in full Tom Jones stance!

Needless to say, I was getting frustrated. At the rate I was going, not only was I not learning how to sing,  I also had no hope of getting the handful of pop songs I had just written recorded on my own 45-record or at least onto a taped demo! My dad's best friend, Hans, who was working as a playwright/filmmaker at the time, told me that if I was really serious about singing, I should answer an ad in "Back Stage" magazine which was THE magazine for out-of-work actors and musicians in New York City in the '80's.  I found an ad where you could work with both a vocal teacher AND with a record producer, kind of like a "two for the price of one" deal. I quickly called the phone number on the ad, and a man with an Italian accent answered.  He said his name was Victor, and I told him I was interested in taking singing lessons with the teacher and also in working with the producer on my original songs.  He said that we could start with singing lessons and later make some rough sheet music arrangements to give to the producer so that I could record my demo.  He gave me directions to his studio in Manhattan.  "Right next to The Gustino," he said.

Being a cautious 16 year-old girl, there was NO WAY I was taking the subway and going to some strange man's studio in 1980's New York City, so I dragged my forever indefatigable best friend, Ania, to come along.  When we got off the subway at Columbus Circle/59th Street, we looked for a building labeled "The Gustino," but we couldn't find one.  "Maybe," Ania began, "he meant the grocery store, D'Agostino.  There's one right over there."  "Yes, that's it."  We found the address and took the the elevator up, but when we got off of our floor, it looked like a regular apartment hallway where people lived.  There was no large door that opened up to a studio!  We found the door to his "studio," and I almost ditched the whole idea.  "Should we knock or just go?"  I asked Ania.  "No," she said.  "Let's try it out." Indefatigable or insane? You decide.  A gray-haired man who looked like he was in his sixties opened the door and introduced himself.  "You can call me Victor," he said.

I studied singing with Victor every Saturday for several weeks.  He accompanied me on vocal exercises that were not nearly as crazy as the ones from my group lessons with the screechy singer.  He let me bring in whatever songs I wanted to learn, mostly by singers like Sheena Easton or by groups like the Bangles and whoever else was popular at the time.  Victor LOVED to talk, and as I became more familiar to him, he'd often stop playing, mid-song, and turn to me and tell me all the things that were on his mind, i.e., "This song was obviously copied from the Beatles.  But you know, the Beatles didn't write their own music anyway. No, not at all.  Their producer, George Martin, wrote all their songs for them.  Bet you didn't know that, huh?"  Another time I brought in "Live To Tell" by Madonna, and Victor again took his hands off the piano keys, turned to me while I was in mid "singing" sentence, and said,  "You know, Madonna, she's really popular now.  But she's not going to be around in another few years.  Yeah, that's right.  A few years from now, no one is even going to remember Madonna!"

But still, I always tried to be polite.  One time, Victor wore two pairs of eyeglasses stuck on top of each other, both hanging down the bridge of his nose, scotch taped heavily.  He began the lesson and played the piano as I practiced my vocal exercises, only to suddenly stop playing and start laughing uproariously.  "You didn't notice!" he exclaimed.  "I broke my bifocals!  I had to do SOMETHING so I could see during your lesson!" 

It was around this time that I thought I should mention the record producer.  "Oh, yes, the producer," Victor said.  "Let's get your best three songs written out on sheet music, and then you can set up a meeting with Mike to see if he'll record those songs for you in his studio."  Finally, I thought.  The three songs we chose were "Lemon Meringue," "Rainbow Ice," and "Cinnamon Wishes," -- remember, this was the 80's!  Once Victor got the three songs arranged on paper, he played them for me and I sang along.  I sounded like Cyndi Lauper being accompanied by Liberace, but still, I felt I was ready to meet the producer.

Judging by my experience with Victor, I should have known that Mike the Producer would probably turn out to be somewhat similar to Victor since they both advertised in "Back Stage" as a pair.  Sure enough, when my mom and I sat down in the studio to have our meeting with Mike, he was also gray-haired, in his 60's, and was more interested in telling us all about this new girl he was recording than discussing the arrangements of the songs I'd brought him.  He told us that she was a teenager around my age who sang country-western music. He played us the demo he had just recorded for her that he was trying to shop around to record companies.   "I don't know what to do," he said.  "She's a really talented singer, and I know her music could sell. It's just a matter of getting her to the RIGHT record company."  I know the feeling, I thought to myself.  It's also just a matter of getting me to the RIGHT vocal teacher!  I should have gone to the Fame School!

Why I Love Social Networking

When I was a kid, my grandfather had an AM/FM radio that had a button you could turn in order to tune in with actual CB radio frequencies.  You couldn't send any signals to CB radios yourself, but you could listen in on truck drivers or anyone who was communicating with someone else through CB radios.  My friends and I would often sit at the picnic table in my backyard and listen in on whatever conversations we could actually tap into.  It was hard to get the frequency, and most of the time, you could only get bits and pieces of peoples' conversations and hardly anything cohesive.

One hot summer afternoon, we actually hit upon a teenage girl and a couple of teenage boys who were planning to meet each other at the synagogue that was up the street from us.  She described herself to them, saying, "I'll be wearing a Bugs Bunny T-Shirt."  Of course, since the synagogue was just up the street from us, my friends and I decided to walk to the synagogue and hide in some bushes to see if what we had just heard could really transpire!  Seconds later, we did see the girl with the Bugs Bunny T-Shirt and two teenage boys.  We couldn't believe our eyes, but we chickened out and didn't stay hidden in the bushes for fear that they would see us! We were so innocent, we had no idea why they were planning to meet.  Now, in my jaded adulthood, I'll bet they were dealing drugs.  Smart of us to not stick around.

When I wasn't tuning into my grandfather's CB radio receiver, I was sitting on the top of my swing set, which enabled me to have a clear view of at least three backyards across from ours.  One time, I saw a preteen girl around my age get thrown into her friend's pool!  She was fully dressed, but didn't seem to mind the joke. For some reason, this horrified me, and I worried that my grandfather's brother whom I'd never met before but was coming to visit us that weekend would do the same thing to me! My mom assured me that Uncle Petie just wasn't that type.  It makes me laugh now how I could ever imagine that mild-mannered old man pushing me into our swimming pool for no reason!  Another time, I was swimming in my pool with my best friend, Ania, and something about the neighbors swimming in their kidney-shaped pool got my attention.  I don't remember why it was I was looking at them.  They were young adult women, and Ania and I were preteens, and the next thing I knew, one of the women said, "Why don't you stop watching us and look in your OWN pool!"  I turned around quickly and didn't say a word, but I was shaken to the bone.  I was horrified, and I felt that I was being yelled at.  I felt I had done something really wrong.  All of my "spying" had finally caught up with me.  I felt that my spying days may be coming to an end.

That evening, I told my mom what my neighbor had said and to this day, I believe my mom's reaction is what determined whether I would continue to spy or whether I would from now on just continue to "look into my own pool."  She said, "Well, how could she even know you were watching her if she wasn't watching you too?"  Yes, I thought.  It's true!  I wasn't a bad person.  She had been spying on me too!

This is why I love social networking.  Because I have always been interested in what other people are thinking and doing and what they are saying to each other.  Social networking makes spying OK.  Everyone who shares a networking site is interested in what you're thinking, doing and saying too.  And if they don't want to know your business, they don't have to be part of a social networking site.  They may as well just get themselves out of the pool!