Down Goes the Flag - and the Gin

What’s on my mind? There’s always a frisson of excitement in the village-that-pretends-to-be-a-town where we live. It suggests that life is somehow bolder and more risqué than in the plebeian burbs of the Big City.

Himself and I live our lives on the edge. This comes naturally. If we walked in our sleep, we could fall into the ocean. This cleverly crafted statement begs the question: “Helen, do these dopes live directly on the ocean, or what?” The answer to that is “what.” We’d have to be serious sleepwalkers to tumble into the sea, which is several blocks from our house.

Regardless, Himself has taken a fancy to gussying up our “property.” Which sounds a whole lot grander than a standard lot. 

We now have a flag suitable to our station as the owners of a 2 BR, 2 BA bungalow. Not just any old flag, but a honking huge flag on a honking huge pole. We’d formerly displayed the flag on a fence stanchion, but no-o-o-o-o! That wasn’t good enough for Himself! Our new flag pole stands about a thousand feet high and towers over the roof. I’ve seen shorter old-growth trees. 

Our flag could double as a king-sized blanket, with plenty of room left to hide asylum seekers who might squeak into the country in a criminal bid to find food, shelter, and work as they try to escape murderers and rapists. That’s the good news. 

The bad news is that if a high wind ever whips away our flag, it’ll take out the Harrises’ chimney. Mr. Harris wouldn’t like that, but Mrs. H would be ever-so-grateful because she’s sick of chopping wood. She wants one of those electric fireplaces with faux flames (ideally, purple, pink, and green) to match the couch.

Flags go up, and flags come down. It’s said that one villager (now deceased) exercised a civilized family tradition. As well as flying the flag on the sprawling lawn of her oceanfront family compound, she owned a cannon. Doesn’t everyone?

On the arrival of each summer day’s cocktail hour, the cannon boomed, the flag slid down, and so did the G&Ts (If you don’t know what a G&T is, you haven’t lived).

Lowering our flag at sunset would require major effort. Think Car Dealership Flag. With Spotlight.

Say it isn’t so, but Himself wants to light our flag at night. He says we could get away with not hiring a flag-puller if the flag were lit. I say we could get away to Palm Springs if it weren’t for that stupid flag.

Himself always says “pick your battles,” so we’ve struck a compromise. The light trained on our flag and the music Himself wants to accompany it will double as a security feature. Anytime a prowler (human, rabbit, or deer) sets foot or hoof on our lawn, Himself wants our flag to blast the national anthem at 175 decibels - louder than any cannon. 

We’d better stockpile some gin.

©  Nicole Parton, 2019

The Flicker

What’s on my mind? Ffffeefff.

My friend Deb and I went to a play, this week. Beside us sat an elderly woman with a man we correctly assumed to be her spouse. No sooner had the play begun, than we heard “FLICK! FLICK! FLICK!” 

It wasn’t occasional. It was constant. It drove me bonkers. Her hand cupped into my ear, Deb whispered her annoyance with the distracting “FLICK! FLICK! FLICK!” 

I silently mouthed: “I hear it, too!” With nods and hand signals, we guessed the woman was flicking the cover of her program, perhaps by nervous habit. “She may not realize she’s doing it,” we agreed, saying it was better to stay silent than embarrass her. 

“FLICK! FLICK! FLICK!” 

Deb shoulder-checked me, rolling her eyes. I gritted my teeth. 

“FLICK! FLICK! FLICK!” 

During the intermission, I stood up.

“Madam ...” I began. I offered her a grim little smile, as though I were about to ask if there were anything I could do to make the play more to her liking (Cozy pillow? Champagne? Full refund? Be as obsequious as I can?).

“FLICK! FLICK! FLICK!” 

The woman looked at me, smiling vacuously.

“FLICK! FLICK! FLICK!” 

“Madam ... Would you please stop making that noise!” 

Deb gave me the thumbs up.

“I’m not making any noise,” the woman said.

“FLICK! FLICK! FLICK!” 

“It’s driving me crazy! It’s driving my friend crazy!” 

Finding her courage, Deb bared her teeth: “You are, you are, you are making noise! You’re flicking your %$#@! program!” 

The woman’s husband bowed his head in embarrassment. It must be difficult for him, I thought, living with a Flicker.

“It’s me ...” he whispered.

“Tell them, Harold,” she said.

(His name wasn’t Harold. I don’t want to rob him of his dignity, but he occupied seat E5.)

“It’s m’ ffffeefff,” he said.

” Pardon? Pardon???” I asked. ” I can’t hear you when you whisper.” 

“It’s his teeth!”  boomed his wife.

Head still bowed, he mumbled, sotto voce: “M’ ffffeefff, m’ ffffeefff …” 

“It’s his teeth!”  his wife yelled.

“It’s his teeth!” I shouted at Deb. Red-faced, she whirled away from me, as though we’d never met. That Deb sure can be touchy.

The elderly gent looked at me, emboldened. In a matter-of-fact kind of way, he said: “I like to click them.” 

Oh.

I again became obsequious, as though I were asking if there were anything I could do to make the play more to his liking (Larger teeth? Bigger tongue? Smaller seat widths?).

“No-o-o-o problem!” I said. “It doesn’t bother me at all!” 

Deb shifted in her seat, perhaps not trusting her ears.

“Really?” he said, weakly.

“Re-a-lly! Go right ahead!” 

I told myself that Deb would get over it. Eventually.

After that, he didn’t make a sound, that dear man. Mostly, he kept his head down during the rest of the play, while I felt deeply sorry to have said a word. I was to blame!  It had been the flicker-clicker’s bad luck to have nasty me as his seat mate! 

I’ve experienced worse. I once followed another elderly man so eager to take his theater seat that - as he tottered toward his destination - his pants fell down. Not just his pants, but his underpants, too. I was horrified, but said nothing when he cracked up. Or, more precisely, down. Those words, I tactfully left to his wife.

©  Nicole Parton, 2019

My Brilliant Career - or Not

What’s on my mind? This is a writer’s story about writing. I am that writer. Before I joined a Big City Newspaper, I worked for a smaller one. I was young. I needed the money.

I knew zip! about the complexities of producing a daily paper. Truthfully, I still don’t - never have, never will. All I’ve ever wanted to do was write, which I have, my whole life.

I started in the Women’s Section, where I was given a desk next to the society columnist. Pat knew everything about everyone, including the stuff the lawyers wouldn’t let her tell. I knew nothing about anyone, and found every tittle and tattle fascinating.

It was the era of typewriters, Reporter Boys, and Copy Boys. From my bird’s-eye-view in the Women’s Section, I saw how fast those Big, Brawny, Hunky, Handsome Reporter Boys typed those Big, Breaking News Stories.

I spent most of my working day staring at those Reporter Boys. Whenever Pat asked what I was doing, I’d say: “Thinking.” She could hardly suggest I stop.

Each time one of those Chesty, Muscled, Reporter Boys took a lungful and yelled something I couldn’t quite hear, a runner materialized, waiting for the Gorgeous, Intelligent, Reporter Boy to r-r-rip a piece of paper from his typewriter and hand it to him (In truth, the Reporter Boys were Reporter Men aka reporters, but as any woman might, I fondly considered them “boys.”) 

The runners were known as Copy Boys. Despite my expansive and penetrative knowledge of how newspapers worked, this little fact was lost on me. I simply thought of them as “runners.” Where and why they ran, I had no idea.  

Some of the Copy Boys (mainly the ones with sunken chests and anemia who wouldn’t know a football from a frying pan) went on to became Reporter Boys - but they were never the Reporter Boys I idolized. 

The Reporter Boys I idolized had a broad knowledge of international affairs, as evidenced by whispered rumors of Russian hands and Roman fingers. Unfortunately (or fortunately), their “broad knowledge” didn’t extend to this particular broad.   

I was fascinated by the Reporter Boys’ ease and competence in the newsroom. I asked Pat what the Reporter Boys shouted that made the Copy Boys come running, but she had a cigarette clamped between her teeth and was banging out her column and had no time to waste.

(Pat didn’t actually smoke, but - hardened as she was to the truths of the social circles she frequented - looked like one of those women who should smoke. Lifting the veil, Pat saw the tensions and pretensions under the glamorous lives she wrote about. She shared these tidbits in daily, hour-long calls to her socialite sister, who - as everyone knew - was Pat’s secret source.) 

To my question of: “Why are the Reporter Boys always shouting?” Pat mumbled something I couldn’t quite hear. I tried to read her lips, but the cloud of imaginary smoke from her imaginary cigarette was too thick, so I cobbled together a consonant and a vowel, raised one arm, and shrieked:

“COFFEE!” To my surprise, a Copy Boy sprinted to my side,  trembling with anticipation. I knew the drill, and r-r-ripped a piece of paper from my typewriter so he’d get it straight. On it, I’d typed: “2 SUGARS. 1 CREAM.” The Copy Boy’s mouth dangled open.

“Chop-chop!” I said. He looked at me. He looked at the list. He looked at me, again. “Capiche?” I asked, fingers drumming the desk.

Technically, I, in my little wool suit and faux pearls, was his superior. I was a Reporter! He, in his butt-stretched, ill-fitting corduroy pants, was a lowly Coffee Boy, staring vacantly at She Who Must Be Obeyed.

Or so I thought. 

Little did I know that when the Reporter Boys yelled “Copy!” the Copy Boy’s actual job was to snatch each completed page (known as “copy”) from a Reporter Boy’s important story-in-progress, running with it to wherever the hell it was typeset, whatever the hell that means.

I screamed “COFFEE!” twice a day, every day, for the entire six years I worked for that newspaper. Although I was a lonely single mother of three lusty-lunged babies, my musings about the nature of the Copy Boy’s services never strayed beyond their caffeinated parameters. 

We of the Women’s Section operated in our own universe, critiquing and gossiping about one another’s stories, writing one another’s headlines, and, at the end of the day, handing everything over to Merv, the Managing Editor, who personally eyeballed every little thing we wrote about bazaars, bat mitzvahs, and society balls.

I never knew why Merv insisted on doing this, but he began checking our work around the time Pat attended some posh party boasting a statue newly installed in a reflecting pool. Pat headlined her column: “Ballet Beauty Mounted in Pool.”

I, too, felt the sting of embarrassment after writing a sensitive piece about a man courageous enough to reveal the pain his incurable stuttering had caused him. Helen, the big-bosomed dragon who sat across from me, headlined my story: “It’s Not F-F-F-F-Funny.” In doing so, she broke the man’s spirit and heart.

I bolted soon after, finding work at a larger newspaper, happily fetching my own coffee, and leaving the bazaars and bat mitzvahs behind.

©  Nicole Parton, 2019

Lost: The Hanging Gardens of Babylon

What’s on my mind? The recent events in the Middle East have made me consider the importance of diplomacy over bombs. 

I once had a friend named Nazi (pronounced “Naah-zee”). She came from Iran, which she (and others I’ve known from the region) preferred to call Persia. 

Principally, I’ve known Ismaili Muslims, and have had the privilege of visiting their places of worship. I remember those mosques as having beautiful windows and paintings, each created with a deliberate flaw. Do you know why that is? Because, as the Ismaili people believe, by whatever name He or She is known, only God is perfect. A good belief, I think. 

The people I knew over many years were smart and kind. I liked them, and they liked me. The Ismaili Muslims I knew believed in tithing. They worked hard. They were generous. They gave back to their adopted communities. 

A particularly generous Ismaili woman I knew frequently visited Pakistan. Women and girls were marginalized there; they were not allowed to be educated. My friend’s intent was to change that. She built a fine girls’ school with female teachers.

She was brave. She was strong. She was murdered. 

Human rights atrocities have been and are still committed in the name of God. Nonetheless, I continue to believe the majority of people hold goodness in their hearts. 

My friend Nazi? Although she had friends and family in Iran, she quit the idyllic dream that was Persia many years ago. Nazi and I eventually lost touch: I don’t know where she is today or how she’s doing. What I remember most about her was the scar across her throat, from ear to ear. I never asked the how or why; she never volunteered. 

Change can come like a stampede, red-eyed with terror and fury. Change can come like a slow horse, taking its time to arrive. Pushing and spurring the horse will only fester resentment and unpredictability. 

Kindness and understanding produce a better outcome, but with an angry horse, neither is quick or easy. Only God is perfect, as the Iranians sometimes say. 

©  Nicole Parton, 2019

A Fish Named Frankie

What’s on my mind? Buford, the dog of a woman I know only through social media, died the other day. Buford’s human companion posted his photo online. He was a beautiful dog. He had moxie. He had soulful eyes. He liked to play. I loved him from afar, as countless others did. 

This made me think about Frankie. Dear little Frankie. Perhaps, when you read about Frankie, you’ll love him from afar, too. Frankie was a betta, also known as a Siamese fighting fish. Appropriately named, these are solitary fish: Housed with another betta, they’ll rip their partner to pieces, just as some married couples do. 

I’m not quite sure how it happened, but Frankie wriggled his way into my second blog, Nicole Parton’s Favorite Recipes. You’ll find his name in the Index under F. Frankie became the Beau of the Ball, with a fan club and entries titled Frankie Joins the Witness Protection Program; Frankie Launders Money; Frankie Takes a (Disastrous) Vacation; Frankie Gets Uppity, and more. 

As Frankie’s online life expanded, I dubbed him “my personal secretary and chauffeur.” He went surfing on a nail file. He developed an emotional attachment to the fictitious Sadie, an Advice to the Lovelorn columnist. 

Frankie was fun to write about and fun to observe. We even took him with us on vacation. And then, not quite four years ago, he died. 

The death of a little fish can’t compare to the death of a dog, but we still felt sad, particularly because it was our misplaced kindness that did him in. When we first got Frankie, a pet store clerk said he needed only one pellet of fish food every second day. Frankie was smart and manipulative: He soon learned to link our hovering over his bowl with the appearance of food. 

He begged; he cajoled; he wanted more. One pellet every second day soon became two a day. He rose to the surface to flip his tail, all the while staring at us. He wrapped us around his little fin. 

Two pellets soon became three … four … five. Still, he wanted more. Frankie’s tiny head began to swell ... big, bigger, monstrously. He sank to the bottom of his bowl, fins flipping lethargically. We were shocked. He stopped pooping. We tried online remedies. Nothing worked. 

Frankie’s online persona was fictional, of course. He didn’t bake cookies; he wasn’t my chauffeur, but he did drive us to love him. Frankie didn’t recover from our overfeeding; with teary-eyed goodbyes, we euthanized him. He was a real fish who captivated our hearts; Frankie now lives on in my blog. 

Was Frankie important to our daily lives? Yes. Would we buy another betta? Perhaps: We’ve kept his little bowl. 

It’s never easy to quantify love, but in our own curious way, we loved him and like to think he loved us. RIP, Frankie. And RIP, dear Buford. If there’s a heaven for beloved pets, may your paths cross. 

©  Nicole Parton, 2019

The Unforgivable Sin of Growing Old

What’s on my mind? Insensitive restaurant servers.

“And what are we having to drink, today?” Ignoring my dining companion, the server addressed me and only me. My hackles rose. Was I being overly sensitive? I was furious. 

“We are not deciding. I would like water. My friend will tell you what she wants.”

Few people are sharper than Shirley, my friend of many years. Shirley could have run rings around this vacant-eyed twit, yet the server continued to treat her like someone lacking the smarts to order a drink.  

After Shirley and I had studied the menu, the same server asked me and only me what we’d like for lunch. Having noted our choices, she again turned to me to ask: “Will that be everything?” It was as though Shirley weren’t even there.  

I’ve seen this dynamic before. It’s prevalent when a nurse addresses the person pushing the wheelchair, rather than its occupant. When a man and woman stand side-by-side, the person “in charge” often speaks only to the man. When one person is louder than the other, the squeaky wheel usually gets the grease.

Shirley will be 84, next month. She’s in perfect health and has literally never had a cold. With the only clues to her age being white hair and a bum hip, she’s committed one major crime: She’s old. Old = infirm = decrepit = invisible.

Quietly seething that the 20-something server had ignored Shirley, I didn’t want to “make a scene.” I considered rising for a quiet word with the manager, but didn’t. I anticipated hearing the usual platitudes while the manager quietly thought: “The server’s done nothing wrong; this old crock’s angling for a free lunch.” 

I also anticipated that if the manager were 35 or younger (which today’s eager-beavers on management teams so often are), s/he Simply. Wouldn’t. Get. It. 

Everyone deserves dignity and respect - all ages, all ethnicities, all gender preferences and identities, all levels of intellect and social standing. 

I’m going to drop this post on the restaurant manager’s desk. This blog is read around the world. If you feel the same, I suggest you do the same, in whatever place you call home.

©  Nicole Parton, 2019

A Coward in Sheep-a-Doodle’s Clothing

What’s on my mind? Why, thank you! Yes, I am Nicole Parton! How kind of you to notice! Pardon? A book? Yes, I have written a book! It’s called The Butterfly Box. Terrified? Yes, I am a little (a lot) terrified to submit it to agents. Why? Because a trusted reader said it was too long. It needs to be what’s called a “standard length” for its genre. 

This sea of sweat? That’s nothing. I’m preparing for my afternoon swimming lesson! (Yikes! They’re on to me ...) 

I recently came across some poor sot’s plea for tips on how to shorten her book to a more marketable length. I was that sot. Still am. 

After each day of trying, I left my laptop for a little scotch and a big cry. I’ve been doing this for the past three months. So I skipped over trying to condense the description of my 94,000-word novel (soon to be an 88,000-word novel) into the one or two paragraphs necessary for the inside of a dust jacket.  

Instead, I thought about myself – you know, the stuff where authors write third-person descriptions of their glamorous lives. Example: Suzy Schmerringer and Bo, her cocker-doodle-schnitzel-terrier (crossed with a sheep-a-doodle) divide their time between homes in San Francisco and Nantucket, where Suzy enjoys long walks on deserted beaches and Bo diddles and doodles. Woo-hoo! 38 words.

Then I thought: Gee … Maybe a literary agent would still find this too wordy. So I eliminated the part about Bo (who, to be honest, died 16 years ago and never set foot on a beach because of a teensy-weensy bowel problem I won’t get into here, but ask your vet about parasites in cocker-doodle-schnitzel-terriers crossed with sheep-a-doodles).

And then I thought: Gee, again … Maybe 38 words to describe myself and more words to describe my book and the  b-i-g problem with the length of the book is just too many words altogether.  So I polished and pared and perfected my book’s length, its title, and its dust-jacket description to just one word: The.

My sister, who is one of my book’s test readers and sometime-editors, approves the changes. “Nice to see the book so much shorter,” she said. “Also nice to see the new title end with a dot. That makes it a four-letter word.”

©  Nicole Parton, 2019

Desperado, No Longer!

What’s on my mind? A few days ago, I wrote a post about how to bag a bloke (Advice to the Lovelorn: How to Meet a Man; Aug, 30, 2019). As the (shall we say?) femme d’un certaine âge that I am, I have more to say. 

Listen up, women readers! You want to capture a man (or another woman)? The trick is to wear shoes. Yes, shoes! The right kind of shoes! The uncomfortable kind that are impossible to walk in! 

I was once single and desperate. The single part was okay. The desperate part was not. Men shy away from women who are desperate. It was only when I morphed into a still-single woman happy within herself and by herself that men started clustering ’round. What had I done? What was the secret? 

Putting the shoe on the other foot, I did my best to think like a man while conducting a sociological experiment. I found the answer in my footwear. 

Stripping my headshot and interests from my dating site, I created a deliberately bland, generic listing of interests: “I enjoy trying new recipes … My dog Woofy is my very best friend … I love to walk on a beach at sunset …” And so on. 

After which I posted a shot of a single, high-heeled red stiletto shoe. I didn’t show any photos of myself - only that one red shoe. The men who saw that shoe imagined more than they read. An overwhelming number of responses flooded in. That little experiment told me that what a man doesn’t see is often more tantalizing than what he does.

I then posted the same listing of interests beside the image of a single hiking boot. I had no replies. And that little experiment told me that even if an older man can no longer march up a mountain, he likes to think his battery still has a charge as he removes that sexy shoe.

©  Nicole Parton, 2019

What the Tourist Brochures Never Tell You

What’s on my mind? Remember that scene in Lawrence of Arabia in which the murderer sinks to his death after getting stuck in quicksand? Nor do I, but something similar happened to me, a non-murderer, the other day. 

Tra-lee, tra-la ... Innocently traversing a muddy beach at low tide, I began sinking. I mean really sinking, as in dangerously. 

“Or-rence! Or-rence!” I screamed. “Help! Help!” 

Himself tried to pull me out, but couldn’t. 

“I’ll bring a sheet of plywood!” yelled a construction worker who was transforming a $400,000 beach house into a $4.5 million gem. 

I was going down like a porn star. Plunging like a broken elevator. Sinking faster than the stock market on a mouthy Trump day. Although my life didn’t flash before my eyes, I felt relieved not to have wasted it on something stupid like sit-ups. 

Himself forced me to try my best to get on all fours. Not in a doggie-style sort of way, but in a let’s-save-your-life sort of way. It was very, very difficult to do that. My chest was heavy with mud. And then Himself pulled - HARD! The sand kept sucking me down. HARDER! He made a little progress. HARDER, HARDER! 

(I did say not in a doggie-style sort of way, didn’t I?)

The construction worker who’d offered the sheet of plywood was now reluctant, probably envisioning lost profits. Instead, he stood there yammering about some guy who was nearly killed in the deceptively calm waters beyond the sand. A whirlpool grabbed him and he went in circles for 30 minutes until some Tarzan-type swam to his rescue. 

This is the sort of thing the tourist brochures omit.

Himself managed to yank me out. I lost a shoe, but not my life. With skill, cunning, and bravery, Himself dug my shoe from the mud. All’s well that ends well.

Himself says his only regret is that he didn’t pause to film the scene. But then I might have been in even greater peril. And the construction worker might have lost a perfectly good sheet of plywood.

©  Nicole Parton, 2019