Girl Friday

A Basket of Hugs

I had the office to myself last Friday afternoon, and I celebrated by listening to NPR.  During "Science Friday," they played the recently-discovered oldest recording of a human voice.  It's a man singing "Au Clair de la Lune" from 1860. 

I'd heard the clip a few times before that, but it doesn't cease to amaze me.  There's something so familiar about it.  I couldn't pinpoint what it was, but I love the audacity that something from 1860 could seem familiar in 2008.

18-friggin'-60 - to think that technology existed to capture Abraham Lincoln's voice.  Or that of the last surviving veteran of the American Revolution, who died in 1869.  Not that I think those recordings are going to be unearthed in someone's attic - just that it was possible.  Just that we're that much closer to the past.  It sends chills up my spine. 

As the radio host introduced the recording, I hoped the phone wouldn't ring so I could listen to it again.  Then, as the haunting, disembodied voice filled my office - it hit me.

"Au Clair de la Lune?"  Is the same little ditty that evil Rhoda Penmark kept banging out on the piano in The Bad Seed!

It just doesn't get more spookifying than that, folks.

I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand...

Girl Friday

Hi.  My name is Katherine.

I work for a small, independent newspaper in St. Louis.  Not the kind of independent newspaper that runs "Savage Love" and quirky hipster comics - no, our paper serves the suburban area, the split-level and SUV set.  Boy Scouts make the front page, and the police blotter is mercifully brief (usually).  We are square as square can be, but we are a big part of what makes the community special.

Although I'm low on the foodchain of the office (hence the name of this blog), I love my job.  There is a real family dynamic amongst the staff members, most of whom have worked for the paper for at least a decade.  I am just beginning my second year.

The Christmas party last month was held at the local train station, a beautiful century-old gray stone building on the Missouri Pacific line.  Although there was a snowstorm raging, I could only count a handful of employees who stayed home.  The place was packed, both with the office staff I see daily - as well as the freelancers, stringers, and carriers upon whom I had never laid eyes until that evening.  There was a wonderful dinner catered by a local restaurant, and an open bar of which I took full advantage.

We were each handed a raffle ticket at the beginning of the evening, and near the end, my boss (the publisher) began calling the numbers.  There were cash prizes as well as gift cards ranging from $25 to $200 to local businesses (advertisers, of course), and as the winners stepped forward, he announced their name and department: "This is Molly, she's in sales" and "Here's George, one of our interns."

Everyone at my table had their numbers called, so between that and my literal life-long losing streak, you can imagine my surprise when I turned out to have a winning ticket, too!  I squealed and scrambled to the front of the station, but stopped short when I heard my boss announce, "And here's our newest employee, Kathleen!"

Kathleen.

KathLEEN.

KATHLEEN.

I was raised to never correct my teachers, and as I've grown older and teachers have turned into bosses, I've certainly showed them the same regard.  But I had a Long Island iced tea, a Jack & Coke, and two vodka tonics flowing through my veins, providing me enough nerve to offer up a meek, "Um, actually it's Katherine."

Everyone chuckled, and when I sat back down ($50 richer), a freelancer beside me smiled and said, "So I guess you're new?"

Ah, the unrequited love between a girl and her job.

Do they make an ornament for Employee's First Work-Mandated Ornament Exchange?

I picked up this beautiful blown-glass ornament for tomorrow's office ornament exchange.  Oh, how tempting it is to keep it for myself and pick up some tacky thing at the Hallmark store to bring to the party instead...

When everything was sepia

Recently, I purchased a new scanner/printer/copier combo.  It's a humdinger.  This is a picture of my great-great grandfather, taken around 1860.  It's badly faded, and I was never able to make out his eyes until I scanned it just now.

Oh, the times my new scanner and I will have!

Put the blame on Chickadee

My mother is in California, visiting her sister's family.  It's the first time she's met my cousin's new husband, Derek.

Derek is a country boy, and my very West Coast relations have been a bit befuddled by some of his more backward ways.  His vegetables of choice are corn and potatoes, and his hair has never known the taint of "product."  The general consensus seems to be that my cousin could have done better.  In pure jest - as I have many a backward way myself - I began referring to the poor fellow as "Durwood," ala the disapproving mother-in-law, Endora in "Bewitched."  My mother was shocked at first - but the name caught on.  It's not like we called him Durwood to his face.

Last night, she called me from the beach house.  She was giggly and frantic.  "You'll never guess what just happened," she whispered.  "Oh, it was awful.  I'm so embarrassed."

Her tone wasn't right for something truly humiliating to have happened, but clearly she was upset.  "Let me guess," I said, trying to ease her distress.  "You called Derek 'Durwood?'"

There was silence on the line.  Finally, she said, "I blame you entirely." 

Classy

Registration has begun for the spring semester.  While my focus has been on fiction writing, I thought I'd mix things up with a creative non-fiction class.  It sounded like a happy medium between journalism (too structured) and fiction (not structured enough), and I'd heard a lot of good things about the professor.  The blurb in the course catalogue said:  Analysis of and practice in writing essays, biographies, and travel and nature writing.

Nature writing?

Um, I'm awesome at writing essays, am ridiculously excited about the biography portion, and can muddle through a travel piece.  But nature?  Wait, let me give it a go...

Nature
by Chickadee

Nature is what is outdoors.  Nature is trees and grass and flowers.  Nature also has a lot of bugs and it is hot.  While I might like to have sex in a meadow someday, otherwise I do not care for nature.

The End

Yup, I got it covered.

I has a fish.

B is for Boyfriend

Ah, my first boyfriend.  Jeremy.  How I loved him.  How I wanted him.  How I talked endlessly about him to my friends.  How I...pretty much made him up.

In ninth grade, all my friends were completely boy-crazy.  In addition to lusting after actors and boy band members, they kept a roll of the most eligible Seniors at our school and would squeal in ecstasy whenever one was near.  Tony was their favorite, but I could never figure out exactly which one he was.

Unobtainable crushes just seemed pointless to me, but I pretended to be as head-over-heels over Brad Pitt and Invisible Tony as my friends were because I didn't want to rock the boat.  I'd thought I'd been playing along pretty well, but then one day, they confronted me.  They said that if I was a lesbian, it was okay with them, but not knowing was making them very uncomfortable.

I was horrified to say the least.  My friends were afraid I was going to hit on them? I won't even throw in a "not that there's anything wrong with that" caveat, because to me, at 15, there was something very wrong with that.  I began questioning every move I made, every word I said.  The best way to prove them wrong, I figured, was to get a boyfriend.  Unfortunately, no guys at school were interested in me.

At this time, I was involved with Children of the American Revolution (an off-shoot of the D.A.R.), and that was how I knew Jeremy.  As the oldest kids in the group, we held the offices of president and vice-president, and meetings were held at his mother's house.  He was bland, boring, and lived in a hick town outside of the city, but as my eyes met his across a platter of flag-speared cupcakes, I knew that he would be my proverbial "girlfriend who lives in Canada."  Except, you know, not a girl. 

Trying to take things slow, I first mentioned him to my friends in the most casual of fashions, then gradually stepped things up from there.  I knew I would have to be subtle to pull off such a ruse.  Pity that 15 year-old girls are never the most subtle of creatures; I could only wait a few weeks before announcing that we were going out. 

I mailed myself love letters, carefully tearing them at the postmark to hide the fact that they were mailed locally.  I bought a beautiful silver bracelet with rose quartz hearts dangling from the chain and told everyone that it was a gift.  When the C.A.R. kids got together to clean tombstones for Veteran's Day, I brought my camera to take pictures for the chapter's scrapbook, and made sure to get a picture of Jeremy and I together.  I taped it up in my locker and showed it off with glee.

I basked in the relief of being a confirmed heterosexual.  But then came the questions.  I was the first in my group to have a boyfriend, so everyone was very curious as to what it was like.  Or they were trying to catch me in my lie.  When I was asked if Jeremy and I kissed with tongues, I was sure that had to be a trap because people didn't actually do that, did they?  (I might as well have been lying to them about having been accepted to NASA.)  But I'd once read a letter in Seventeen from a girl who wanted to know if you could get pregnant by "having sex with your clothes on," and though I couldn't figure out quite how that worked, it sounded just risque enough, so I told my friends we did that.  Boom-chicka-bow-wow.

After a few months, I'd grown tired of lying, tired of my friends going out on the weekends while I pretended to be in the country, visiting Jeremy.  And, while I was parading around, telling everyone about my awesome boyfriend, I was paired up with a very sweet, smart boy in chemistry class who probably could have turned into a real awesome boyfriend if I hadn't been so wrapped up in my George Glass fantasy.  It was time for Jeremy to go.

So one day, I came to school red-eyed and told my friends that his father's job had transferred him to Madison, Tennessee.  The relief of being a confirmed heterosexual was nothing like the relief of being dumped for a place I picked randomly on the map.  Of course, there was the grieving process, the last visit where I helped him pack, and maybe one trip to Madison in my sophomore year to see if we could make a go of our long-distance relationship.  After that, I'd occasionally, I'd mention that we'd talked on the phone, smiling bravely as I told my friends how well he was doing.  After 9/11, in a burst of patriotic fervor, Jeremy joined the Air Force.  He should be in his tenth or twelfth tour of duty by now.  I'm sure he's doing well over there.

Representin'

Happy Halloween!