Author Archives: dreaminofobx

My parents are going to say, “We told you modeling would ruin your life.”

From the tender age of 5, I practiced my catwalk poses in front of Grammie’s cheval mirror. As a teen, I imagined myself strutting down the fashion runways of Milan, draped in the latest designs by Missoni and Valentino. My parents, with their conservative Midwest values assaulted by the daring design fads of the 70s, refused to even consider submitting head shots to an agency, much less traveling into the big city for an open casting call. Modeling recruiters don’t often find their way down back-country roads like ours, so my high-fashion dreams gathered dust while I finished school with quiet resentment. When I finally broke free of the small-town stranglehold and signed with Ford Models Chicago in the 80s, I knew I was being cast as a “sophisticated modern woman,” which is industry-speak for “pretty, but past her prime.”  At 25, I knew my chances of being the next Cheryl Tiegs were long past, but when Clairol called, my heart soared. I would be the face of the newest haircolor trend; on the streets, mousy-haired housewives would recognize me as the girl on the box of the same “Extra Light Silver Blonde” they’d just stashed under the bathroom sink, and their husbands’ covetous stares as I passed would spur hundreds of underappreciated homemakers to test for themselves whether blondes really did have more fun.

I didn’t count on one of those goggle-eyed husbands being a raging lunatic. I’m not sure when he began stalking me, but it seems he quickly learned my routine, and knew I jogged alone in the calm quiet of the pre-dawn hours. The unexpected attack occurred between the pink-orange pools of sodium light on the park’s deserted path, and was so violently brutal that it would have ended any chances of a normal life had I survived. It was quite a shock for the elderly man whose little terrier found my cold, broken body in the park’s bushes later that morning, but he recovered admirably when the reporters showed up with their camera crews to get his eyewitness account. In the edited video that ran on the evening news, he and his little dog enjoyed their fifteen minutes of fame while Chicago’s finest futilely scoured the park in the background for clues to my identity and the coroner zipped up my stiff black body bag.

Now tagged as a Jane Doe, I was shocked by how little effort the police put into identifying my ravaged corpse. Not that they had any shortage of murders to solve, but I vainly thought that being a young attractive woman would garner some extra attention for my case. The coroner took some new head shots, a model’s dream, but they were too disturbing to release to the papers for publication. My parents didn’t file a missing persons report because they had no idea I was missing; we didn’t communicate often since they steadfastly believed I had abandoned both them and my Midwestern morals in favor of a depraved life as a model in the Windy City. I didn’t even have a dog who would bark his displeasure when I didn’t come back to the apartment to feed him, so I’m not sure how long it took for my absentee landlord to realize I was no longer paying rent. The authorities remained apathetic about the mystery of my identity, and I became a cold case. After years of taking up space in the morgue’s freezer, my unclaimed, nameless body was finally signed over to a cadaver supply company.

Ironically, my dream of going to Italy came true at long last, though sadly my lithe model body, battered as it was, was not destined to be part of the journey. The cadaver company was contracted to ship 18 human heads to a research facility in Rome, where we’d be used by aspiring plastic surgeons learning the delicate art of facial reconstruction. My teenage vision of being hustled toward the catwalk while a passionate mob of Italian makeup artists dabbed finishing touches to my lipstick and dusted my décolletage was replaced by the harsh reality of being plunked down on a frigid stainless steel operating table and coldly regarded by a couple of emotionally detached medical students. Instead of my face being caressed by a flurry of sable-haired brushes and silky powder puffs, it was attacked unceremoniously with clumsily guided scalpels and tightly clamped forceps. Amateurish, uneven sutures appeared where only the highest quality cosmetics should have been. Having been victimized by these trainees, I can’t see why a model would voluntarily go under the knife in an attempt to prolong her career—I say embrace the crows’ feet and go out gracefully when your time comes.

When the indignity of this medical experimentation reached its conclusion, I was hoping to quietly return to Chicago with my 17 other body-less companions for proper cremation as required by the cadaver company’s contract. Unfortunately, a customs officer at O’Hare, assigned to scan the monitor for unusual results in routine x-rays of incoming cargo, nearly choked on his latte when he saw the 18 of us staring back at him from our crate. Per Murphy’s law, the accompanying paperwork that shows we’re flying into the country legitimately is nowhere to be found, and we are now in custody at the medical examiner’s office until further investigations are conducted. As luck would have it, when all we long for is ashes to ashes and dust to dust, we have finally found authorities who are anxious to solve a mystery. Who are we? Where are we from? Where are we going? Why aren’t we attached to our bodies? If I’d gotten this much attention when I’d been murdered, maybe I’d be resting quietly, still firmly attached to the rest of my slender model figure, amidst the other oak-shaded granite markers in my parents’ small-town Midwest churchyard.

This work is a response to yesterday’s FFF (Friday Flash Fiction) prompt on oneminutewriter.blogspot.co.uk  The prompt was to create a fictional story from the point of view of one of the many unidentified heads that have been found around the world this week.

Photo credits go to my husband, Jim.

The world beyond my window is blanketed in four inches of cleansing, shushing, calming white powder. Having no commitments today that required me to bundle up and shovel out, I indulged in some quiet contemplation of the week’s events, which ultimately led to deeper scrutiny of my more distant past, as I watched the drifting flakes become malleable piles to be sculpted by the wind’s icy gusts.

I took on two new English students this week who both have a pretty good grasp of vocabulary and grammar, but would like some practice with listening and speaking. In our first meeting, the conversation naturally centered around getting to know each other, and the topic of childhood was discussed. One of the women, about my mom’s age, credited growing up with a strict father for her inability, even to this day, to speak her mind. As a girl, she was so apprehensive about his potential reaction that she learned to keep all her thoughts to herself, not to disagree, not to cause conflict. I heard echoes of my own childhood in her description—I was extremely quiet and reserved in my youth, though, thankfully, not out of fear of my parents.

I was painfully shy—I wouldn’t say “Boo” to my own shadow—and lacked any amount of self-confidence. Although there were a multitude of thoughts and opinions swirling in my head, I didn’t place much value on them, and didn’t relish the idea of having to expand upon or defend them. Combined with the fact that I didn’t particularly enjoy hearing the sound of my own voice or drawing unnecessary attention to myself, I rarely gave my two cents worth to anyone. Even as late as high school, I was withholding any opposing viewpoints from my mother and ducking down alternate aisles in the grocery store to avoid saying “Bonjour” to my French teacher.

By senior year of high school, I was beginning to find my voice, thanks to the English teacher who appointed me editor of the school newspaper.  I was forced by that responsibility to manage a team, which meant not only giving my opinion and talking to people I didn’t know well, but sometimes doing so assertively.  The experience proved invaluable to me in college, where I found myself well and truly alone for the first time in my life, with no one to speak on my behalf.  If that senior year of high school hadn’t been an injection of confidence to my ability to speak up for myself—to ask questions in class, to get directions in town, to befriend roommates and dorm mates—four years of campus life would have been unbearable.

Since college, I’ve occasionally been jealous of classmates who went directly into their chosen careers after graduation, and as a result have logged eighteen years in their respective professions. While it’s hard not to envy their certainty about the direction they needed to take (and their retirement funds), I can’t say I regret the winding road of my own work-life, for each job I’ve held while trying to find my true calling has exposed me to new situations that have intensified my voice. As a veterinary technician, a picture framer, a retail manager, a tutor, and a teacher, I’ve learned to speak with empathy, authority, humor, patience, sincerity, restraint, and clarity. Unlike my new English student, I am no longer reluctant to speak what’s on my mind. I will always have some residual shyness, and I often prefer to listen and reflect rather than contribute verbally to the conversation, but I know when it’s important to open my mouth and let my voice be heard.

Thursday is produce day. After two disastrous attempts at one-stop shopping, I learned that most of the fruit and veggies stocked by the commissary are rubbish. The pre-chopped lettuce is already turning brown and slimy in the bag, and there’s no point bringing home the deceptively beautiful yellow bananas, because tomorrow their skins will be black and the insides will be mush. Decent produce must be purchased on the economy, and the nearest town to our village just happens to have a farmer’s market each Thursday.

Unfortunately, my schedule today was abnormally hectic for a Thursday, and didn’t put me in town until late afternoon. As I walked through light flurries down the winding brick lane toward the small plaza where the market is normally set up, I was dismayed not to hear the sing-song come-ons of the vendors echoing off the centuries-old storefronts:  “Bananas, pound a bowl!” Sure enough, when I rounded the final bend, the only signs of the market were a table laden with discount sudoku books, a tent full of sweaters, the display rack of high-vis jackets, and a couple depressing stacks of empty banana boxes.

My next best choice for good produce is the nearby Tesco supermarket, so I retraced my steps to the car and joined the heavy stream of traffic headed in that direction. The parking lot didn’t seem noticeably fuller than usual for late afternoon—loads of locals stop on their way home to get last minute fixings for the evening’s meal. But as I approached the store entrance, I didn’t see the usual number of shopping trolleys in the cart corral; in fact, there were only about ten. Uh oh.

It appears that Americans are not the only ones who make a run on the supermarket when the weatherman says the S-word! Bread, milk, and toilet paper were flying off the shelves as if the Brits were preparing for Armageddon.  Aisles were absolutely packed with shoppers trying to steer over-loaded carts (no easy feat, since there is no fixed rear axle and all four wheels move independently, rarely on the course you desire) around lolly-gaggers who’d run into friends and neighbors and had settled in for a good old chin-wag about the impending snow storm…and the horse-contaminated beef burgers…and the kids…and the price of milk…and last weekend’s Premier League final scores….

Unlike in the States, where displeasure would be voiced loudly and rudely, only faint and exceedingly polite rumblings of discontent could be heard in the checkout lines as queuing patrons noted that three tills were unmanned. The cashiers seated resignedly behind each of the open registers were unhurried as they scanned a month’s worth of provisions for each customer, and unperturbed by the fact that two more heaping carts joined the queue for each one that left. I felt bad for them, for I envisioned a manager ensconced safely in the office, far from the madding crowd, purposefully scratching out dinner breaks.

I’m not bothered. I got my week’s worth of fresh fruits and vegetables, and a carton of milk just in case, so let it snow!

(The photo today is a winter stockpile of peat in County Kerry, Ireland.)

If you’ve ever seen a movie set in England, you know there’s fog here every now and again. When it rolls in, it’s usually thick as the proverbial pea soup, and I just resign myself to a bad hair day and a slow drive to work. I never gave much thought to what happens if there’s fog when the air temperature is below 0°C, as it was all day today. Noted in meteorological observations as FZFG, freezing fog has the ability to coat anything and everything in dainty white crystals, turning the entire countryside into a dreamscape. One advantage to living in a rural area is that I’m not going to hold up traffic or cause an accident if I stop in the middle of the road and snap some photos over the hedge!

Spaghetti-limbed Pete be the bloke.

A pirate so fierce, not a joke.

Robbing ships on the seas

Of Parmesan cheese

Since plain pasta sauce made him choke.

Spaghetti-Limbed Pete sculpture created at the Mill Arts Center by people with learning disabilities working with artist David Gosling, April 2007.

Did you know that today, the second Monday in January, is National Clean Off Your Desk Day? It’s one of those obscure unofficial “holidays” that often escapes the notice of the mainstream public since it doesn’t really lend itself to a Hallmark sentiment. I, for one, think Staples and Office Depot are missing out on a huge marketing opportunity during January’s normal post-holiday sales slump—with some creative advertising, they could have been selling the daylights out of organizing paraphernalia these past three weeks since Christmas.

My husband, a workspace neat-nick, doesn’t need this holiday to remind him to clean his desk—it’s in a perpetual state of organized bliss, and is even dusted regularly! Rather, his joy in the day comes when he can walk into the office and not have to suffer the disaster zone that normally passes for my half of the room. When I was teaching elementary school, time to put things in their place was a luxury I just did not have, and I became accustomed to working amongst tottering piles of papers, books, file folders, magazines, and other assorted crap. The piles multiplied and migrated from the desktop to cover an arm’s-length radius around my desk chair, making the approach to the desk an avalanche waiting to happen. Since I could still instantly locate almost anything I needed from those piles, that dysfunctional work habit became deeply ingrained, and was hard to break even when I stopped teaching full-time.

Two years ago, I was shamed into adding Clean Off Your Desk Day to my personal calendar. In early March, Jim and I had left Japan for a few days’ visit to Hong Kong, leaving our friend Patrick to pop in on his way home from work each day to check on our kitty, Alina. Unfortunately, on March 11, Japan was rocked by a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami. Well south of the most devastated regions, our town nevertheless got a good shake. As soon as it was safe to drive, Patrick made his way to check on Alina and assess the damage at our house. The cat was seemingly oblivious to the drama, purring happily to have some company. The two made their way through the house, noting only a few crooked pictures on the walls and a decapitated Willow Tree angel that had shaken loose from her perch on the bookcase. When Patrick popped his head into our office, though, he was stunned by the devastation he perceived on and around my desk. The desktop could barely be seen under the haphazardly piled detritus of my English classes, which also buried a fair amount of the floor around the desk. He truly thought the earthquake had toppled formerly neat stacks, and was frantically trying to determine how to restore order when he happened to glance to his left. Jim’s desk seemed remarkably untouched by the vicious tremors, even boasting a towering stack of 20-yen coins balanced on the narrow lip of a square wooden sake box. He concluded that the state of my desk had nothing at all to do with any natural disaster, and was solely due to my horrendous housekeeping.

Humiliated by the glee Patrick and Jim have found in the countless retellings of that story, I’ve made a concerted effort to keep my desk in better order year-round, and to completely clear and organize it on the second Monday each January. This year’s result is just too good not to share, although the lack of a “before” photo severely diminishes the magnitude of my accomplishment. Ironically, in our current house, Jim and I are not sharing an office for the first time, so even he misses out on the full benefit of my observance of this little-known holiday. But if you’re in doubt about what a stunning turnaround this is, just ask Patrick.

I guess he was my class clown that year. He was happy and fun-loving and everyone’s friend, but he was always too busy doing something other than the academic tasks that I’d assigned. He didn’t turn in classwork. He didn’t complete (or even start) homework. He didn’t read the textbooks or take notes or study for tests. In my gradebook, any spaces by his name that weren’t empty were filled with Ds and Fs. He wasn’t inherently booksmart like some kids, but with a small investment of time and effort on his part, he could have been just as successful as his classmates. His total apathy towards schoolwork infuriated me.

Unfortunately, I let him see my frustration and my anger in rolling eyes, hands on hips, harsh words, and raised voice. I am ashamed at the lack of patience and restraint I displayed not just to him, but in front of his classmates and other teachers as well. I should have invested more of my time and effort in trying to find ways to channel his enthusiasm and boundless energy without stomping on his carefree spirit with such blatant disrespect. Although I use the experience to guide my actions in a more favorable direction now, all of my mistakes with that smiling, impish, lovable little third grader will forever haunt my memory—I can only hope that they don’t haunt his as well.

Today’s post was inspired by January 2nd’s writing prompt on oneminutewriter.blogspot.co.uk