Belle Weather

by Celia Rivenbark

  “Right. But see if I can mention the word ‘Katrina’ during every phone call, I can deduct the time I spent talking to you. Katrina.”

  “That’s sick and illegal,” said Dreema Fay.

  Perhaps to get even with me, Dreema/Katrina sent me an E-mail later that day listing all the search terms that route people to my Web site. They included: “preschool diseases,” “books about rocks,” “girls making doody” (I know, that one scares me, too), “Oprah wears a watch,” “Teri Hatcher should shut up,” and my personal favorite: “Osmond butt cheeks.”

  While I do recall writing about the Chiclet-toothed singing Mormons several years ago, I can assure you that they are, and were, too wholesome to even possess butt cheeks.

  Curiouser still was how someone landed at my site by simply typing in the words “rectal region rash.”

  And, yes, I’m trying not to take that one personally.

  Truthfully, after many tense weeks spent trying to decipher the wacky IRS rules, I’d prefer a rectal region rash to ever doing my own taxes again.

  Let someone else be Number 100 next year.

  10

  Harry Potter Bitch-slaps Nancy Drew

  While I’m all in favor of encouraging children to read, read, read, I don’t see why it always has to be Harry Potter.

  Sure, plucky welfare mom J.K. Rowling scribbled her first book in a dank Scottish coffee shop whilst her precious baby napped in a stroller beside her dreaming of a life without coal gray skies, but enough!

  And whither the baby-daddy? If J.K. Rowling had been a Southern mama, she wouldn’t have been hunched over her writing pad, trying to make enough money to never again tell the waiter, “I’ll just have the haggis.” She’d have his triflin’ ass in court, making sure that he was doing his daddy duty. On the other hand, if she’d married a proper Southern gentleman, J.K. might not have had the “wolf at the door” mentality while she wrote.

  When you’ve got a husband who works a job, like me, you tend to put off writing projects in favor of trips to the mall “just because” and maintaining your winter spray tan.

  Kids are wild about Harry and, in my daughter’s case, they don’t want to read anything else.

  Sophie can spend hours discussing all things Dumbledore, Voldemort and Syrius Black. Because I have no idea what she’s talking about, she dismisses me as a “Muggle,” which I’m fairly certain isn’t Potterspeak for “Fantastic, Perfect Mommy.”

  I just naturally assumed Soph would be reading Nancy Drew, just as I did at her age. Wrong, Hogwarts-breath. My kid is bored senseless by the wholesome adventures of the “athletic blond girl detective.” I suppose after reading about Harry and best friend Ron squaring off against ten-foot-tall furry black spiders inside a cave, the antics that ensue when you return a stolen locket to its rightful owner in the nursing home isn’t really that big a deal.

  But I still think young readers are missing a great series when they skip Nancy. Who can forget how best gal-pals George and Bess helped her solve The Secret of the Old Clock? fueled only by kindly housekeeper Hannah Gruen’s yummy lemon bars?

  Or how handsome widower father, attorney Carson Drew, encouraged Nancy to follow her detective dreams? Or how her Kendoll boyfriend, the alliterative Ned Nickerson, offered relaxing rides in his “roadster” for the gang at the end of every solved mystery? Or how everybody used “sleuthing” as a verb without cracking up?

  No, no. Sophie will have none of that, preferring instead to read about games played in the air with flying brooms and followed by the drinking of dragon’s bile.

  She speaks with great authority about Harry’s school, where magic is taught to the residents of “dorms” named Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin, hardly the kind of names one might see on the “Hello” tags at alumni fund-raisers.

  My abysmal lack of interest in Harry Potter means that while Sophie can recite the intricacies of the plots in each book, all I can come up with is a bright smile and a “That Daniel Radcliffe guy is actually pretty hot.” To which she just rolls her eyes and looks as if she’d like to turn me into a teapot or toad.

  Of course the whole world has Harry Potter fever. Although there is talk that Rowling will eventually kill our boy off, I’m pretty sure she won’t be able to walk away from the vast mounds of cash generated by this franchise, although she may tire a bit of all the dark arts stuff. We’ll know she’s getting weary when we read, sometime in 2010, Harry Potter Goes Shopping at Wal-Mart and Buys a Coat Made in Cambodia.

  Rowling, with her pre-orders in the millions and her fancy midnight release parties, is hot stuff but there was a time—oh, yes sirree Bob!—when the name of Nancy Drew author Mildred Wirt Benson was on everyone’s lips. OK, not really.

  The truth is, if I don’t start reading, and liking, Harry Potter, I might as well be wearing an invisibility cloak around here. As Nancy would earnestly say, while adjusting her woolen tam, “Criminy!”

  Soph and her friends are so into Harry Potter books that they actually spend time trying to write their own little books along similar themes.

  This enthusiasm for writing at such an early age is downright shocking but, not to worry, the Scary and Over-Hyped State Writing Test for all fourth-graders should successfully quash the joy for the kids and, mercifully, book-writing can be left to the grown-ups who have, like, mortgages to pay and shit.

  Writing has become a big focus ever since President Bush decided to prevail upon Congress to pass the “It Ain’t Right to Leave No Child Behind” law, which, mercifully, Laura Bush, being a former librarian and being completely made of wax, was able to make sound more smarter.

  Before the Big Ooga Booga Scare the Pee Out of You State Writing Test, parents are told what to expect in a helpful “handout” that is sent home in their kid’s backpack, which means that it will most likely have a few moist Skittles stuck to it.

  OK, here’s the sad truth: I’ve read the Skittle-soaked handout, like, eight times and I still don’t understand it. This means that either: (A) I have the brains of hamster dander, or (B) This thing really makes no sense.

  The not-so-catchy title, “Classroom Assessment Analytic Rubric,” was the first stopper.

  I have no idea what a rubric is. Maybe it has something to do with a Rubric’s Cube, but what would an obscure toy from the ’80s have to do with writing? Yeah, I know it’s not spelled the same. So Sioux me.

  The funniest part of the handout was the notion that parents are supposed to help “coach” their kids to make sure they don’t blow it on the test by using sentence fragments, run-on sentences, or other no-nos. Or as I like to say when I’m feeling particularly writerly, no’s-no.

  Being a Southern mama, I have to tell y’all that, right away, I sniffed a geographic bias in the test and here’s why.

  This example was given for using a word the wrong way: “Pete wanted to sale the boat.”

  Well, maybe that’s wrong; maybe not. If Pete is a Southern boy, he might not want to “sail” the boat as the snooty test-writers assume. He might want to fix up that rusty-ass john boat behind Paw-Paw and Mimi’s shed and “sell” the boat. In the South, we pronounce that “sale,” so there should be some consideration of that. I think.

  It’s also important, according to the “rubric,” to use pronouns correctly on the “I Shit Myself These Questions Are So Hard” writing test.

  The example of using a pronoun incorrectly was: “John and myself went to school.” They didn’t give a reason for why this was wrong so I can only assume if a fourth-grader ever said that sentence to another fourth-grader, he’d get the crap beat out of him for being uppity, the kind of kid who would brag about getting to sale his boat for big money.

  Another frequent writing test pitfall, it turns out, is something called “incorrect formulations.”

  Who that, you say?

  The examples included words such as “hisself, theirselves and bestest.” Well, that’s just about the worstest idea I ever heard of.
I love those words. Again, I smell the faint odor of geographical snobbery.

  What right-thinking Southern child has never uttered the word “hisself,” as in “Billy Ray caught hisself on the barbed wire trying to get away from that bull”?

  There is simply no acceptable substitute.

  Because it wasn’t mentioned on the fancy-pants rubric, I’m hoping that the test will allow repeated use of another favorite Southernism: “theyselves,” which, of course, is the pluperfect plural subjunctive of the verb “they.” An example of correct usage would be: “They saw theyselves on Cops and weren’t even embarrassed about it.”

  I told Soph I’d help her study for the Test That Can Literally Stop Your Heart. But I told her to remember: If she doesn’t do well, it “won’t” my fault.

  At times, I wonder just how much you can really teach someone to write anyway.

  A long time ago, I decided that I didn’t need any formal “edumacation” as my backwoods neighbor growing up called it.

  And so, based on the advice of this albino woman who smoked Salem 100’s and peed outdoors, I decided to skip college and leap into newspapering at the age of eighteen.

  So, no, I don’t have a degree and, as much as I’d like to have one, the whole notion of the work associated with it is as appealing as a Wham! comeback.

  I’ll pass on the horror of being the oldest student in a roomful of flat-stomached Ambers and guys cute enough to be on The Hills calling me “ma’am.”

  Don’t get me wrong. I have the highest regard for the non-traditional (old) students. But I’m too insecure to be the only student in the class who has to leave early, not to fetch the keg, but to rush to the Clinique counter because the moisturizer is on sale and there’s a free gift with purchase.

  Besides, although many mommies do return to college, I’m basically looking for more, not less, “me time.”

  I actually look forward to my kid’s dental appointments because it’s the only time in my life when I’m guaranteed at least thirty minutes of uninterrupted magazine reading.

  It’s possible that I never had the right stuff for college. I do, after all, have a bit of a mouth on me.

  Full disclosure: I did enroll in one college course when I was twenty-five because it was about TV’s influence on pop culture. The outline was delicious and the textbook fascinating. At the end of the semester, I ripped open my grade report and saw a “B.” I immediately told the prof that he had to be kidding.

  “I’m the queen of TV and pop culture,” I reminded him. “I know the words to every single episode of The Andy Griffith Show including the disappointing Warren-the-deputy years. I can sing the theme songs to obscure ’60s Westerns like Sugarfoot and Cheyenne.”

  Sadly, the B stood and matters weren’t helped much when I told him he was a pretentious elbow-patched asshole whom I fervently hoped would someday take a very long three-hour cruise. Again with the mouth.

  I whistled the melody to Rawhide AND Tombstone Territory on my way out of the room and into a life that would be devoid of a college degree.

  The whole thing leaves me feeling a bit hypocritical as I caution Precious that she has to study hard so she can get into a good college.

  “But you didn’t go to college and you turned out OK,” she says.

  “You call this OK?” I shriek. “I should’ve gone to college! The other night on Wheel…of…Fortune! I missed every single puzzle, even the before and after one, and I always get that one. Remember how I got ‘Shaving Cream of the Crop’?”

  “Yeah, I remember,” said Soph. “You called everybody we know to tell them. But so what? All that was left was the ‘m’ when you got it. Besides, I don’t think college is meant to help you with a game show. Maybe you should read more and watch TV less.”

  Whaaaa?!?

  I made the age-old and oddly annoying gesture people make to indicate that they’re talking on an imaginary telephone.

  “Hello. Orphanage?” I said a bit too loudly. “Yes, I have a charming fourth-grader here who might like to go live with y’all on account of there’s no frikkin way she’s related to me!”

  Soph rolled her eyes and returned to reading the latest exploits of the bespectacled junior wizard.

  At night, with thoughts of writing tests and the disappointing lack of college degree swirling through my dreams—along with an oddly erotic dream involving Ned Nickerson and me doing unspeakable things in the back of his roadster—I realized that perhaps I was overreacting out of insecurity.

  Weren’t there on-line college degrees available for people like me? People who just want the degree without the pesky homework and grading experience and inevitable encounter with the devil’s spawn, er, Young Republicans Club?

  Perhaps I needed an on-line degree. I Googled some the nation’s finer fake universities the very next day and that’s when I learned about Trinity Southern.

  A little more on-line research revealed that TSU might not be the best place to go to make my dream degree happen. Turns out a deputy attorney general, suspicious of the school’s degrees, submitted an application for a doctorate for his six-year-old housecat, “Colby,” based on the cat’s life experiences.

  TSU agreed that Colby Cat sounded like a fine candidate for a Ph.D. but was rewarded for its generous interpretation of life education with a nasty charge of fraud.

  Not to worry. I hear there’s a very qualified Pomeranian hoping to earn a TSU law degree someday soon.

  11

  Rugby-Playing Lesbians Torpedo Beach Day

  As the parent of a young child, you have to be prepared to handle a variety of situations in life, everything from explaining why the kid can’t just sit around all day eating Marshmallow Fluff and watching cartoons (“It’s good enough for Daddy”) to why Bad Things Happen to Good People to one that’s, uh, perhaps a little more unusual. Naturally, I’m speaking of how one handles a gaggle of naked lesbian rugby players making out on a public beach in broad daylight.

  What? This hasn’t happened to you? Well, aren’t you the lucky frikkin’ duck. Duh-hubby and I had taken the Princess and her little friend to the beach for the afternoon and just as we were settling in for a remarkably wholesome afternoon at our favorite spot, we couldn’t help but notice a reenactment that had nothing to do with the usual ones we get in our small Southern city. No, no. This wasn’t the usual pack of obsessed Civil War reenactors who whine if someone shows up in polyster, instead of a 100-percent wool uniform, or didn’t make their own eyeglasses by hand.

  No, no. This was a reenactment of a familiar scene in the surf in From Here to Eternity where lovers grope and fondle and kiss in the breaking surf. It’s pretty hot, for an old movie starring dead people.

  Apparently the rugby-playing lesbians had seen it a few times and were determined to bring it to a family beach in the middle of a Sunday afternoon.

  Now I have nothing against rugby or lesbians. In fact, had it been heterosexual tennis players cavorting mere feet from our SpongeBob beach towels I would have been equally freaked out.

  “Mommy, why are those girls kissing?” I heard at my elbow.

  “Oh, they’re just happy to see one another,” I said, looking helplessly to hubby who, by this time, had done what any right-thinking American male would do and pulled his beach chair closer and proceeded to stare, trancelike.

  The romping in the surf kicked up a notch as one of the lesbian rugby players emerged without her bathing suit bottom, giggling and sprinting about as if she thought this was Club Med instead of possibly the most uptight Republican beach in seven states.

  My jaw dropped, y’all. But I had no idea what to do.

  Thank God for a good vacationing Yankee grandma. There are just times when the soft-spoken, magnolia-mouthed approach to uncivilized public behavior just isn’t going to get the job done.

  The Yankee grandma jumped up, knotted her gray hair into a quick ponytail, lit a cigarette, and stormed into the surf to boldly confront the bottomless lesbians.
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  “Hey, you guys!” she hollered, each syllable clipped and loud enough to be heard over the noisy waves. “I got my grandkids out here for crap’s sake. Knock that nasty shit off before I call the cops uh-ready.”

  Whoa. That sure trumped the half-formed plan in my noggin, namely bribing them to stop and get dressed in exchange for the thirteen-by-nine-inch Pyrex dish full of luscious homemade banana pudding in my cooler.

  Southern women generally despise confrontation, particularly with very large, toned women who could snap their necks like a Captain’s wafer and laugh at the bloody stump.

  And then something amazing happened.

  The girls hung their heads and apologized. One of them placed her hands over her bidness and said, “My bad.”

  Well, yes, your bad, missy. And, no offense, but get to a hair removal expert pronto. That thing’s gonna block out the sun, bless your heart.

  Part of the reason we don’t know how to handle things like this in the South is that we’re bred to be sweet. We send our children to cotillion classes so that they will know how to behave in society but nobody ever tells us how to confront naked lesbians on a public beach.

  Cotillion classes are a big deal in the South. The Princess announced that she wanted to take them a while back but I haven’t enrolled her yet.

  The truth is, they don’t seem all that relevant anymore. There was just something kind of odd about the goals of the cotillion classes being held at our local snootiest country club.

  By the end of the six weeks, each child would learn restaurant manners, school etiquette, proper use of silverware, and line dancing.

  That’s right. Line dancing.

  Apparently these days, it is just as important to know how to execute an impeccable electric slide as it is to write a pretend thank-you note to “Peanuts the Polite Elephant.”

  I hate to quibble here but the elephants I’ve seen at the circus and in the zoo are anything but polite. They roll around in the mud and stuff straw up their noses.