Head in the Sand ... and other unpopular positions

by Linda M Au

  I came away from this experience with an odd fascination about how the tables work: the lengthy list of rules, the plethora of “eye in the sky” cameras that watch everyone’s moves all the time, and how very different each casino is in atmosphere and type of person frequenting it.

  The tables change dealers every hour or so, and every time a dealer leaves your table or arrives, he/she has to show both hands, palms up and then down, to the camera. I thought this was just a neat little gesture of hello or goodbye until Wayne explained that it was to show that the dealer wasn’t filching a chip or two out of the tray. Dishonest people in Las Vegas? Who knew? Once you place your bet, you’re not allowed to touch your chips. At most casinos, you never touch the cards. You can tip a dealer outright if you wish, or you can “ride” a tip with your bet and the dealer can then end up doubling the tip (or the house gets it if your hand loses).

  It seems to be a nice gesture to tip a dealer if you are dealt a blackjack or two, and tips are usually a $1 coin/token. I don’t understand this gesture, since the casino insists that the dealer isn’t cheating and isn’t handing you that blackjack on purpose, and yet most people tip dealers for those blackjacks after the fact. Superstition runs rampant in this town, even among civilized, intelligent people. Sitting in an oddly lit casino, with no windows and no clocks, for hours on end must change a person. You do silly things like tip supposedly impartial dealers for giving you cards they have no control over.

  There were enough things to notice in these places to keep me fascinated for ages. We met people from all over the country, and the dealers are from all over the world. We saw nametags such as:

  “Hi, I’m Anna, from Russia.”

  “Hi, I’m Joe, from Chicago.”

  “Hi, I’m Wei, from China.”

  “Hi, I’m Feng, from Taiwan.”

  “Hi, I’m Amy, from Las Vegas.”

  Hi, we’re Wayne and Linda, from Pittsburgh. Didn’t have quite the same ring to it.

  I have a strange feeling there are a few short stories buried in this week’s experiences. It’s another world in there, and seeing the Strip at night is something one never forgets. (Fifteen thousand miles of neon tubing isn’t easily missed.)

  Well, Gracie just came in from using her grandpa’s push broom to sweep the eternal desert dust off the driveway. Apparently this type of ritualistic sweeping is done throughout the house all the time. The kitchen can get swept up to three times a day on breezier days, even with a good screen door.

  We’re going to visit with my folks now. We’ll be leaving for McCarran Airport in a little while. Did you know that a jet dumps more suckers … I mean, people … into this town every two-and-a-half minutes? The thought of all those unsuspecting people descending on the Strip day and night, 24/7, is sobering. We certainly don’t have people rushing into Pittsburgh like that. (Hey, once we have two new stadiums, though, who knows?)

  We leave the west (and the nice weather and majestic mountains) behind, and return to the end of autumn’s colors and roads that actually curve and go uphill and down once in a while. We will be happy to be home, but a little sad that the week has gone by so quickly. As the wind whips through our tousled hair …

  Oh, wait—that’s from the trashy novel I bought to read on the plane. Never mind.

  Close Encounters with Mark Spitz

  It happens to every girl at some point—some are younger, some older, but all of us succumb to it eventually. Yes, of course, I’m talking about puberty. That once-in-a-lifetime event that is exciting and glorious for about six or seven minutes and then becomes a colossal hassle for the next forty years.

  In my particular case, I was thirteen when I entered the wonderful world of womanhood (not to be confused with the Wonderful World of Disney, which I also entered when I was thirteen, but that was a family vacation to Florida and not related to this in the slightest). After all the hubbub created by my nursing-school-trained mother when I was ten (complete with medical textbooks and graphs and charts and the ensuing panic at the obvious grotesque lies she was telling me about where babies come from), the actual event that summer day was anticlimactic. Some pad company had recently come out with the newfangled “mini-pad” (which my mother deemed “cute!” when she first saw them), and we were already stocked up and prepared. And, once I got her to stop brooding and clucking over me like a mother hen, everything was fine—and even boring compared to the earlier hype.

  It was, though, summertime, and at our house that meant daily treks to the local community swimming pool from about noon till four p.m. Despite the recent developments, I tagged along that day, not wanting to miss the socializing, even if I would have to miss the swimming. I hadn’t realized just how much of a typical pool day was taken up by actual swimming, though, until we got there and within fifteen minutes I was bored of hanging out near our towels on our spot on the grass.

  A little while later, I offered to trek up the hill to the snack bar, and, laden with coinage, I broke out of my towel-sitting boredom and made the voyage, expecting to return laden with gifts of fried food and cold soda. The lines at the snack bar were always long, so I figured this would kill a fair amount of time. And boy, was I right.

  As I inched up the line slowly, the July heat began to beat down on me, even under the canopy roof over the snack bar area. To this day, I don’t know if it was the heat, the humidity, or the bodily events to which I was not yet accustomed, but when I was finally going to be the next customer waited upon, everything in my field of vision began to look strangely like a photo negative. Colors were turned inside out, and if I hadn’t known myself to be a naive, thirteen-year-old total goody-two-shoes from suburbia, I’d have thought I was high on something psychedelic.

  Sadly, I would have been mistaken about that, but it might have had a less embarrassing ending. Instead, the person working the counter asked me what I wanted, and I do not remember answering. I remember someone else asking me if I was all right, while everyone swam in a sea of inverted color and sound became muffled as if underwater. I vaguely remember falling backwards and thinking about the concrete floor on which I was standing at the time. You see, I had this way of ending up in the hospital every single summer with stitches in my head. Would this be the day for the summer of 1974?

  Apparently not, as I next found myself calmly and safely staring up at the canopy roof, lying flat on the hard concrete, with no pain and with colors where they should be. Someone behind me in the long line must have caught me as I fell backwards. Someone else was telling everyone that I was coming around, and I managed to sit up on my own. Kind of.

  The next thing I remember was lying flat on my back again, this time in a smaller, cooler room, on a small cot. My mother was next to me—I could hear her voice. When I opened my eyes fully and focused them, I gazed upon the gorgeous face of what had to be Mark Spitz. He was tan, with sleek black hair, wearing only a small bathing suit, and had a whistle around his neck, and he was hovering just a few inches from my face, peering into my eyes with curiosity and concern.

  “Are you all right?” he breathed, taking my hand in his and expressing genuine care even through his perfect eyebrows and thick black mustache. “I’m the pool manager. You fainted.”

  I sighed. Of course I fainted. And I felt as if I might faint again! If this was what womanhood was like, no wonder they kept giving us pamphlets about it in school to prepare us. No one could have prepared me for this, not even my mother and her medical charts. Especially not the medical charts.

  I batted my eyelashes a few times and let “Mark” help me sit up on the cot, my mother still hovering nearby like a traffic helicopter at rush hour. Mother, don’t you have a fifteen-minute-adult-swim to get to?

  And, just as I was about to breathe my heartfelt thanks to Mark and bat my eyelashes some more, my mother—helpful to a fault—blurted out behind him: “She’ll be fine. She just got her first period today, and she must have felt a little lightheaded.”

  And with
those simple words, my foray into womanhood ended and I was pushed back into childhood for a little while longer. Mark Spitz was going to have to wait.

  O Sing of Spring! (a poem written in adulthood)

  The song is sung

  That Spring has sprung …

  And yet I have my doubt.

  I’ll hold my tongue

  While Spring is young

  While others sing and shout.

  As bells are rung

  And streamers hung

  I sit alone and pout.

  And I, high-strung,

  My arms outflung,

  Would rather not sit out.

  Why fill a lung

  With air that’s wrung

  With pollen that’ll sprout?

  The vines that clung

  Their arms among

  The sidewalk’s stony grout

  Have long since brung

  Their curls hamstrung

  While reaching up and out.

  And farmer’s dung

  On pitchfork swung

  Leaves odors all about.

  And bees that stung!

  And cows’ bluetongue!

  Well … I’m just not that devout.

  –—

  And so I’ll spout

  That Spring’s a lout

  And leave your Spring unsung.

  Dead Ringer

  I was minding my own business, spending a glorious weekend with girlfriends from high school at a lovely cottage in Maryland, when an ominous thing happened. I felt a pinch at the base of one of the fingers of my left hand—a sharp little pain any time I bent a finger. One glance at my hand, one twist of my wedding ring revealed a split in the gold—all the way through the ring—and the angled edge of the metal caused by the rift was now pinching my finger. The thing looked like someone had snipped it with a pair of scissors.

  My wedding ring was broken.

  I was dumbfounded that the gold could just, well, break. Especially without my catching it on anything or hooking it on a knob or a handle or something. Did I just not know my own strength?

  Despite the fact that my husband and I had brought six children from our previous marriages into our own marriage ten years earlier, and had therefore been ridiculously frugal about the money we spent getting married, it was time to start regretting the pennypinching decision to purchase our matching simple wedding bands at Walmart. Either that or God was punishing me for that getaway weekend with three women I’d gone through puberty with thirty-five years earlier. Nah, that couldn’t be it.

  Upon returning home, I took the ring to a jeweler, who soldered it for fifteen bucks—a figure I balked at only because it was fifty percent of the original cost of the ring. But, once I got the ring back, a week after our tenth anniversary, I was happy to be able to wear it and bend my fingers without puncture wounds or severe chafing and weeping and gnashing of teeth …

  … until it happened again a month later. Either the jeweler used substandard solder (honestly, though, how substandard would it have to be to be worse than the Walmart ring itself?), or I had some pretty strong joints on my left hand. Or, God really was punishing me for something. I tried not to think about that pack of Twinkies I’d had last night … or the forty-two pairs of shoes in my closet. After all, what good would finger-pointing do now?

  I had a decision to make: One option was to take the ring to a different jeweler to have it soldered again without having to explain why I was back. But if this kept happening, I’d quickly run out of jewelers. Plus, who knew if these people talked amongst themselves about their customers—at some sort of solderers convention or something? I couldn’t take the chance.

  The only other option was to buy myself another ring—one I could use as an “everyday” ring, saving the original for special occasions—but none of the Walmarts in the area had that ring in my size anymore. And besides, I had visions of this happening to a new ring all over again in a few years. No, Walmart was out, and so were K-Mart and Aldi’s and Dollar General. I was going to have to spend some serious cash this time. My thirty-year class reunion was coming up in a week, so for that one night I purchased a cheapie metal-looking ring set (which came with a gargantuan “engagement ring”) for nine bucks. Coupled with the fake plastic wedding band, I wore my real diamond (which was more sturdily built and was not purchased at a Walmart or a thrift store or through the Pennysaver), and no one at the reunion was the wiser.

  After the reunion, I purchased a sturdy wedding band—one that will stand the test of time, which is far more lovely a symbol for our love and marriage than the idea of a ring that splits up every time you get too close.

  This new ring cost me twice what the original ring cost, and I admit I got it on Amazon.com—but it’s doing the job nicely so far. Not a nick or scratch on it, and certainly no gaping holes. There’s a good reason for this durability, though: The thing weighs a ton and is made of tungsten carbide, which, according to the Amazon seller, is four times stronger than titanium.

  I’ve learned some valuable lessons in this situation:

  • The ring’s heavy, sturdy weight on my finger means I’ll never forget it’s there and accidentally catch it on whatever broke the first one (like, a stiff wind or something). However, my ring finger now has six-pack abs from the added weight it’s carrying around.

  • If Wayne and I have a serious, horrible, nasty, vindictive fight, and I’m losing, I can threaten to bonk him on the head with the ring. That’ll get his attention.

  • New Valentine’s Day slogan: “Nothing says love like tungsten carbide!”

  • And last, what God—and the local jeweler—have joined together, let no man put asunder …

  Random Things I Notice

  Part of my job as a writer is to notice stuff. Stuff you just don’t have the time or inclination to notice yourself. I care about you so much, dear reader, that I carry around a little black notebook so I can jot things down as I see them—so I won’t forget them later. (And, at my age, forgetting them later means in about five minutes, when I get distracted by something major like the phone ringing or a piece of lint in my pants pocket.)

  I dug out the little black notebook today and now realize that the list of random crap has gotten a little unwieldy. That can only mean that it’s time to offload it from the notebook into the real book. (For those of you in public school, that means this book.) For your reading pleasure, of course. It’s an important service I provide, and I’m only too happy to help you out as you struggle to remember this stuff buried in your busy days.

  List #1: General Do’s and Don’ts

  (Mostly Don’ts):

  • Don’t say “I’ll have what she’s having” unless you are absolutely sure you know what she’s having.

  • Don’t fall in love with an ax murderer. And, as a helpful hint here: This starts by ignoring any communications containing the words “prison” and “penpal.” This is a good place to start. After that, you’re on your own.

  • Don’t let a husband with no sense of time start a major remodeling project. You know, one that involves items such as drywall or insulation. Or even a hammer. And this “don’t” includes, in no uncertain terms, a husband with no sense of humor. Or one with no sense of danger. Or aesthetics. Or even one whose personal motto is, “It was on clearance.” Trust me. I know what I’m talking about.

  • Don’t keep using the hot sauce if your ears start sweating.

  • Don’t irk a friend when she’s majorly pregnant. She’s busy growing a whole ‘nother human being, and it apparently takes up a lot of brain space. She’ll get that brain space back in a few decades, so be patient.

  Like Sands Through the Hourglass …

  When I think back now on my mom watching Days of Our Lives when I was a child, I wonder why she ever had the show on. It’s not her style to be that frivolous with her viewing time (although now she watches Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives and Meerkat Manor and some show where dog catchers break into people
’s houses with big sticks and find cockroaches everywhere every single time—you know, shows for the high-IQed among us). And she’s never been one for drama in real life, let alone in her TV-viewing life. So, what was the appeal for a reasonably sane woman such as my mother?

  When I was in college, I noticed that everyone watched soap operas—you know, when they should have been in class or studying or both. (This is the most likely explanation for my sudden dip from A’s in high school to C’s in my freshman year at Carnegie-Mellon. Well, this, and the fact that I’m a night owl and scheduled early morning lectures on the signifance of ancient history on modern teenagers—lectures where attendance was never taken. Lesson learned.)

  Again, what was the appeal? There aren’t many of these dinosaur series left (Days of Our Lives remains one of the stalwart holdouts, with the occasional visit by matriarch Alice Horton on the Christmas shows every year), and yet the popularity of these shows was enormous at the time. And Days of Our Lives has been around since 1965—a whopping forty-five years as of this writing.

  But again, why so long? Why the popularity? I now put forth the premise that the popularity of these outrageous shows (and their present-day counterparts) is because they are precisely so far removed from the reality of our everyday lives. Let’s face it: When a character on one of these shows is facing a brain-lung-heart transplant and has double-amnesia and a husband who’s sleeping with her evil twin, it’s bound to make your own life look a little better by comparison. That flat tire on the freeway just doesn’t hold the same kind of drama (unless you’re on Facebook Mobile).

  Let’s take a small peek into the days of their lives, through the medium of ridiculously rhetorical questions. Remember, there are no right or wrong answers. (That’s why they’re rhetorical.)