charlotte harris

The interesting thing about listening to Bill Cosby last night is that I didn’t relate to any of his jokes, yet I got them all.  He joked about old age, marriage, having kids, having grandkids (little people, he called them), being a man, being a man whose wife is always right. 

Bill and I have absolutely nothing in common.  Yet, he was able to find the humor in his everyday situations, extract it, and share it in a way that I could understand. 

I suppose it’s because I have seen old people forget names before.  I’ve watched a woman put her hand on her hip, raise her brow, and pierce her husband with a look that says “you are wrong simply because you are a man.”  I have witnessed a small kid slip right off a toilet seat and I have heard the rumors about the lasting side effects of V!agr@. 

He didn’t make that famous pudding face but once, and he didn’t joke about chocolate cake.  Bill Cosby is about to turn 70 next month, but his humor still transcends age.  And gender and race and education and marital status.  He is an old family man with a lot of stories I don’t share, but nevertheless, he sure did have me laughing out loud for three straight hours.   He joked about being human, and that I understand.

On a warm summer evening, I settled into a bed of plush green grass, reclined on a soft blanket, book in hand, snacked on a crisp apple with slices of cheddar, some roasted almonds and a small chocolate treat, and washed it all down with some light wine.  Denyce Graves’ voice prickled my skin (in the good way) and I happily hummed along with the familiar score. 

Or at least that’s how I had envisioned my Thursday night might be.  I was almost there.  In reality, I sat on my couch in my PJ’s, snacking on the same apples and cheddar, nuts and chocolate.  No wine.  No music.  I skipped out on Carmen last night.  After all the waiting, after I had gotten online and ordered my ticket for this show the very second they went on sale.  A lawn seat. 

I returned from a long run, rejuvenated.  The weatherman promised thunderstorms but I could see only clear skies for miles.  I was going to the opera!  At home, I showered and dressed in an adorably comfy cargo skirt and yellow tank top.  I was going to the opera!  I pulled my wet hair back and only swept mascara on my lashes, my cheeks still flushed from my workout.  I was going to the opera!  I gathered my picnic blanket, book, snacks, and ticket and bolted out the front door at 7:45.

It was pouring out.  When did this happen?  I stood there studying the sky.  Was this just one big raincloud blowing through quickly?  Maybe by the time I drive to Wolf Trap, this will have passed.

BOOM!  CRASH!  CRACK!  OK, maybe not.  I turned around and went back inside.  I settled into the couch, turned on the TV,  and started eating my apples and cheese.  Still hopeful, I sat carefully in my cute outfit, muting the set every 15 minutes or so to listen for the storm.  Still raining.   At 9pm, it was still coming down hard, so I accepted defeat and change into my PJ’s.  I was not going to the opera! 

I should have learned my lesson about lawn seats and thunderstorms.  I’ve sat/stood through numerous shows in a rubber raincoat or under a tarp.   I’ve had a c’est la vie attitude every time; I’m not going to let a little rain ruin a good day.  But Carmen is not the Grateful Dead or Toby Keith.  It’s really not the kind of show where I could stand there in the pouring rain, dancing a little in the mud at my feet, and knock back a few beers with my friends to dull the annoying-ness of it all.  

Or was it?  I searched online for reviews this morning, and found none.  Did everybody stay home in the rain??   For now I’ll stick with… It was the opera and it deserved to be only as I pictured it. 

I stumbled upon this very cool strange maps blog when surfing around WordPress.  I’ve always liked looking at maps.   As a small girl, I used to stand on a chair in my Gramma’s kitchen, my face inches away from a huge illustration of the world which was tacked up on the wall.  I was just memorizing whatever I could.  Once I grabbed some scrap paper and a pen, and wrote a list with the name of every sea I could find in the entire map.  I remember: Caspian Sea, Aral Sea, Black Sea.  Why did I hone in on that part of the world?

My first job out of college was at an environmental risk imaging company.  We reported on and mapped environmental hazards based on address or lat/long, and I spent a fair number of hours on the microfilm, studying aerial photos, marking the study sites.  

One of my occasional job duties was to drive over to the USGS campus in Reston and replenish our supply of 7.5 minute topo maps.  The people in the map store knew us and trusted us enough to leave us alone to open drawers, climb stepstools, move the shelves, and pull quads.  I was a regular.

When it was my turn, I’d hurriedly go through my list of maps, pulling them off the shelves, then take some extra time to browse around, opening drawers of maps I really wanted to look at.  Quadrant maps of towns I had lived in previously or of areas where I knew friends and family.   I studied map catalogs in advance so that I’d know what cool maps or images to look for on my next visit.  I loved the aerial photos of airport runways.  I even took home every free pamphlet available to me, trying to give myself a mini crash course in geography. 

Sadly, not much of it has since stuck.  But when my dad casually mentioned that he wanted a crisp new copy of the quadrant map depicting his little corner of Vermont, I threw myself at him.  “Oh, Dad, pleeeeease let me go to USGS and get it for you!”  Later that week I found myself back in the map store.  Not much has changed there, except it’s a new era with regards to security, and this time I had to pass through a metal detector and get my purse searched.   Once inside though, I knew exactly where to look, how to slide the shelves apart, where to find the stepstool, how to carefully pull my map and then roll it up and rubber-band it.

My dad took his spankin’ new map over to my Grampa’s house to compare it to an historical topo he’s had hanging on his own kitchen wall for many years.  The landscape is changing fast.  Metal detectors purse searches.  And on the map, Cemetery Road and my Grampa’s manmade pond. 

“Who’d you hit?”  Thanks for jumping to that conclusion. 

“I didn’t hit anybody.  Somebody hit me!”

In fact, when it happened, I wasn’t immediately sure there’d even been an accident.  I wondered, was that jarring feeling merely the backlash of my sudden braking or was it the impact of a fender bender?

I had already been cautiously creeping along with my foot on the brake, simply because I was in a busy parking lot.   I was not in one of the parking aisles, but rather safely (or so I thought) on a little road that bisects the lot, with curbs on both sides and nowhere for someone to back out of a spot and into me.   But somehow I managed to get hit.  Head on by some dude who was driving straight towards me, but looking over his left shoulder instead.  He veered hard left and directly into my front bumper. 

I watched the scene unfold in slow motion.   I saw a car coming at me, the driver quite obviously not paying attention, so I braked harder and leaned on my horn.  My vehicle rocked to a stop and so did his.  I stayed put and let him back out from in front of me.  That’s when I saw the damage on his vehicle.  Have I mentioned my badass Rubicon?  His plastic front bumper crumpled beneath my front bumper of steel (say that aloud in a booming movie-theater-preview-guy voice) and left me with only a bent-under license plate.  I didn’t even hop out to assess the damage.  I just knew I would find none. 

Instead, I reprimanded him from right there in my drivers’ seat.  I had the windows and top off, so I leaned out and gave him a stern lecture about how he should think about looking where he is going when he’s driving.  He apologized and, as I like to put it, “I let him off with a warning!”

My next thought was “I can’t wait to tell Sis.”  Years ago, she predicted an accident waiting to happen in this same Giant parking lot.  This strip mall and lot were probably right-sized when the area was first developed, but this place has since grown extremely chaotic.   I’ve gotten door dings and witnessed other crashes.  One quick trip to that shopping center several years back, and Sis refused to come back. Predicting certain turns of events has always been Sis’ party trick.  She knew it was only a matter of time before this happened to me. 

“Now that I know you’re OK, I can say ‘Don’t say I never warned ya,’” she joked, after I told her the story and we had a good chuckle.  Makes me wonder how this same story gets told from the POV of the guy who hit me?  Probably doesn’t end with a laugh, because I doubt he has a sister who can predict the future and I know he didn’t have the front bumper of steel!

“Do you see those people in there on the elliptical machines and treadmills?  Take a good look at them.  A year from now they’re going to look exactly the same!”

I sat just around the corner on the bench with my head down, pretending like I wasn’t eavesdropping, but really, how could I not.  The big oaf we all refer to as “triathlon guy” was at it again.  Loudly mocking everyone in the gym he deemed not to be working hard enough.

“They need to get outside.  They’re not pushing themselves hard enough.  You see, that’s why you need to come run with me,”  he lectured a trio of ladies with whom I work out regularly.  He’s wasting his time.  His reputation has preceded him and they are not going to be playing with him today.

He’s been trying to recruit me since last summer, even after I politely told him that his format is not what motivates me.

“Well what does motivate you?”

“I like being in an encouraging and supportive environment with like-minded people.” 

That was my thinly veiled insult to his leadership style, which I once witnessed firsthand when I dropped in to work out with his ”run, ride, row” group.  He used a laser to measure the heat generated by our spin bike wheels and announced to the group who was working hard and who was hardly working.   I was relieved to be one of the cyclists “working hard” but when we followed that ride with a 1.8 mile run, he made sure to call me out with “you’re slow!”  I never went back.

“But I see you around here, and I can tell that you’re a better athlete than most of the people in the group.  Plus we have a superbowl party and a Hallowen party, and it’s a great way to mingle.  We’d really like to have you.”  Gag me.

After that the ladies started calling him my “boyfriend.” 

Oh, those ladies.  They’re what motivates me.  We see each other there every day.  Our bodies all look different then they did 14 months ago when I joined that gym and befriended these women.  We show up in every kind of weather, we skip happy hour to work out, we come even when we forget to pack our sports bras.  We make funny faces at one another and ogle cute guys and share recipes and books, but most importantly we work out hard and sweat our butts off.

If I had to run alone or with an ass like “triathlon guy” every day, I would have slowed down long ago.  But it’s my gym ladies that keep me going. 

“I’m ‘a start callin’ you popsicle!”

“Why?”

“‘Cause you’re just meltin’ away!”

“Ha ha ha ha.  Thanks for noticing!”

This blog had it’s 5000th visitor today and to celebrate, I’d like to highlight exactly how some of you have stumbled upon my ‘lil home on the web.  Tempting as it is to dog on all the Sandra Lee wannabes and Jeep haters that visit me almost daily, it’s almost too easy to call you out.  So I shall bite my tongue and refrain from snarking it up on you.  But just this once.

Apparently folks out there are desperate for some rhyming advice.  For example, this week it seems my readers want to know “what rhymes with pickup line” and “what rhymes with Charlotte” and “what rhymes with wrong.”  Well, it’s your lucky day…

Ode to My Readers

You searched for and found me
By typing some phrases
Like nun sex and tire porn
But nothing amazes

Quite like the fine students
And budding young poets
Who can’t find their rhyme yet
But know that I’ll know it

You googled politely
“So what rhymes with with wrong?”
Young Whitmans and Yeats,
Try long song or thong.

A more difficult query
Was “what rhymes with Charlotte?”
I hadn’t yet pondered
But maybe: used car lot?

Finally a young flirt
Wants to rhyme “pickup line”
Just tell your young lady
That she’s lookin’ fine!

Maybe the person searching for a “funny secret admirer note” could use the last verse of my poem too?

If you’re the reader who was looking for a “school were the fun never stops” then I recommend the Charlotte Harris Academy of Verse and Stanza.

 *******************

P.S.  To the person looking for “chips wallpaper” – please, please, please let me know if you find it. I would love to redecorate the accent wall in my kitchen a la Ponch and Jon.

In her 2-year old world, corn kernels are beans, a beach pail is a hat, little apples are cherries, and a plastic pickle is a hot dog.  Her imagination is endless. 
She’s got the important stuff straight, though.  She knows that “hug” is a gentle snuggle and “hands” is holding hands and jumping way up high together, and that “Charlotte!” is her aunt. 
 

My Dad has given a lot of practical advice over the years.  He’s also given me some advice that has stuck more because of it’s humor and shock value.  A couple of my favorite tidbits have been, ”Don’t ever date a landscaper.  They’re all murderers and rapists,” or “Don’t go on the rides at the traveling carnivals.  The guys that put those rides together are drunks and they might forget a bolt or something.” 

And I’ve never for gotten to wash those bunches of grapes before eating them because “where do you think the guys that pick the grapes go to the bathroom?  There are no bathrooms out in those fields.  If they gotta go, they might just go right there on the grapes.”

I swear I have heard every bit of wisdom my Dad has ever shared with me, even if I was playing cool and didn’t always let on that I was listening. 

More useful, however, have been my dad’s driving lessons and general automotive advice.   He patiently taught me how to drive a manual transmission.  Despite many afternoons spent with me sobbing through one failed attempt at parallel parking after another, he never let me quit, and to this day I only drive stick. 

He taught me to change a tire.  When some girlfriends and I got waylaid with a flat, I was the only one in the car who could change that thang.  Turns out my friend did not keep her spare properly inflated so I got my white canvas Tretorns all mussed up that day for no good reason.  It was a futile effort, but I digress.  Point is, I knew how to change a tire, and that’s cool, thanks to Dad.

My dad showed me one afternoon how to change the spark plugs on my old Honda.  Earlier that year he had once again patiently waited for my tears to dry as I sobbed about a shocking $500 maintenance bill, and then gave me a level headed rundown of what to maintain and when so that I am never caught by surprise and in the hole like that again.

But my dad knows me well enough to know that it was just a matter of time before I wrote in this blog about the best car advice he ever gave me, ever.  EVER.  He imparted this wisdom to me during one of my manual transmission driving lessons.  He was behind the wheel and I was his studious passenger.  I watched the rhythm of his feet and the timing of each shift. 

We pulled into the driveway where he concluded his lesson… “make sure you either put the car in neutral OR shut off the engine before you take your foot off the clutch.  If you don’t, the car will lurch forward and stall.  Here, let me show you.”  The car was running and first gear engaged.  He took his foot off the clutch and exactly as he sad it would, the car lurched forward.

Forward, and straight into the garage, knocking one corner off it’s foundation!  I guess he really wanted to drive home the point of “what not to do!”

In all seriousness, my Dad has given plenty of non-humorous advice and life lessons, and I know it’s laregly his influence when I “do the right thing” all on my own.  In certain situations, he IS the “angel on my shoulder” when I make a smart decision.  It’s not always intuition, rather it’s often the part of my Dad that is inside of me. 

And I know if my brakes ever fail, I will just keep downshifting until I slow to a stop. 

Last Friday night, I saw Second City Comedy Troupe perform sketch and improv at the Arlington Cinema Drafthouse.  In one sketch two comedians portrayed clueless new hipster parents who hadn’t yet named their baby.  They joked about giving the child an “Indian name” like “Smells like dirty diaper” or “I believe the public school system is deeply flawed.”

In another sketch, we heard “God makes mistakes.  Just look at the platypus.  Or Michael Jackson.”

But my favorite was a scene set in a shower.  A man sneaks in on his woman as she bathes, hoping to turn her shower into an intimate encounter.  Watching them onstage was like watching a replay of nearly every shower I have ever taken with a man before.  I was howling. 

She’s happy, sudsing up under the warm water, when he steps in, taking her place under the faucet.  She’s forced to step aside and stand there at the cold end of the tub while he gets all the hot water.  They do the little “dance” trying to take turns under the water.  The soap drops, she bends over to pick it up.  He bends too, trying to get sexy, and she ends up nailing him in the chin with her head as she stands back up.  They slip and nearly fall in the soapy tub, hanging on to each other in what ends up being a very un-sexy embrace.

They didn’t need to write a single line of stage direction for this sketch.  Because in real-life, every comedian onstage and every single adult sitting in the audience that night has taken “that shower” before too. 

I pondered the show that night and decided my Indian name should be “locks the bathroom door.”  God makes mistakes - just look at the co-ed shower.

“Want me to bring you anything from Long Island?” she kidded me via IM.  My mom is heading back there this weekend to watch the kids at her old school graduate.  We typed back and forth about her bringing me a bagel or a slice from Martino’s, our old neighborhood pizza parlor.  In jest, of course, since she won’t be reeturning to Vermont by way of Virginia.

What would I want from Long Island?  Pizza and Bagels, yes.  I want a butcher shop like Mr. Popp’s and a deli like Oak Neck.  Bakeries!  I want a chocolate danish from Wilhelm’s and a cannoli from Longo’s. 

I want to stand in the kitchen with my Dad and laugh and eat gorilla boogers* from Gemelli’s.  I want to meet my girlfriends at the Delphi diner for fries with gravy and then head over to Schooner’s to spy on our old teachers as they get their drink on. 

I want to stroll on the beach after dinner, down at Robert Moses Field 5.   I want to hop on my bike and ride 12 miles without ever leaving the residential streets.  I want to walk into the video store and have them know that I am Charlotte Harris and my customer number is 1024. 

I want to ride the ferry across the bay to work while sipping on a “coffee, regular” and ride it back home sipping beer out of a paper bag.  I want fried clams from the joint where Sis used to sling fish and after dinner to park down by the dock and watch boats pulling in and out of the canals.  

I want to slather aloe on my pink, sunburned and freckled, clean skin every night and position myself in the middle of the living room with all the windows open where a breeze can catch me and cool me, no matter what direction the wind is blowing.  I want to fill a bowl with Carvel and eat it in silence on the side porch while a thunderstorm pours just a few feet away. 

I want to dry my sheets on a clothesline and snip some fresh chives on my baked potato.  I want to fall asleep with the window open, wearing a soft, big t-shirt.  I want to chill on the front stoop with my mom, fingering the leaves on the azalea.  I want all my friends to live within a five mile radius, and everything else I need in life within ten. 

Mom can’t bring me any of these things from Long Island this weekend, but her asking me sure did make me think of everything I miss, and made me wish it were that easy! 

* Dad’s hilarious name for marinated roasted red peppers.