Why name my blog a "show?"
Am I being presumptuous, thinking I might someday have so many followers that I'll have my own TV show? Actually, I'm pretty happy in anonymity (hence, I've left my last name off the blog for now) and don't have any great longing for fame. A little more money would be nice, but I don't see this blog's ending up with fattening my coffers. So why do this at all?
The answer is what every writer will say: because I have to. Maybe we are mental exhibitionists, eager to show off the curvaceous figures our thoughts etch in our gray matter, or maybe we simply long to connect with others in a way even we don't understand. Why do we believe perfect strangers will understand us better than the members of our family, our lovers, our friends? Yet we write, or at least I do, to strangers.
I hope, though, that if not a single stranger takes an interest in my story, this "blog" aka TV show from this kid of the 60's will be of interest to my kids when I move on to whatever comes after this. If nothing else, I hope some of it amuses them, and some of it educates them about what I went through and how they need to approach their own health care. And maybe leave another type of wisdom for them here and there.
The kids don't appear much not because I don't love them more than life itself but because I want to preserve THEIR privacy as much as I can. I wrote an article about my son's experiences with bipolar disorder. It was published, and it was well received, and I'd had his completely lucid permission to use it, but sometimes I wish I'd have at least changed his first name. Our last names are different, however, so I'd hoped to preserve his privacy that way.
Nevertheless, when I speak of them or others, I'm most likely using substitute names for that reason.
As for the name of my blog, it was coined many years ago by my big brother, who was and remains a bona fide geek, and I mean that in the nicest way. I mean, he retired as head of computer security for a large state university at the age of 50.
The day he left for college marked a terrible loss in my young life. Eight years old, I stood on the beige, linoleum floor, staring at my feet as my parents and Ray said good-byes and probably hugged, something we rarely did in our family. I knew he was going away to college, but I don't think I knew what that really meant until the moment when I turned and saw his suitcase-sized reel-to-reel tape recorder next to his bags.
If that was going, he was gone, and my eight-year-old heart broke, suddenly understanding what it meant to "go away." He rarely came home again.
You see, I'd been my big brother's "special" sibling. I was the youngest child, very cute until about age five or six, after which I developed buck teeth and then braces, stringy hair, and a tall, bony physique that led to my nickname, "Bones." And a lifelong love/hate relationship with my appearance, something all (or nearly all) women suffer through in this appearance-obsessed nation.
But all that came later. I don't remember my age when Trey started "The Mary Dell Show," but we had been doing the show for years. The taping of one interview remains a memory I can call up at will:
Trey set the tape recorder on the yellow Formica table on our screened-in porch on a warm summer evening just past dusk. Katydids chirped in the trees behind our suburban home, and yellow streaks of fireflies lit up the darkening night in a ritual dance I knew nothing--or little--of then.
Our father, an electronic engineer who could do anything, had built the porch, adding it to the brick Cape Cod my folks purchased in the 1940s and lived in until they died. Dad wired the porch so we had light--two yellow bug lights--and an outlet. Ray plugged in the recorder and turned it on. Reels as big as saucers turned, one feeding the tape through the recording sluice and onto the opposite reel.
Ray spoke into the microphone in a serious, Walter Kronkite voice: "So, tell us, Mary Dell, what is your method for catching lightning bugs?"
He held the mic to my lips. "Well," I answered, always thrilled to share my thoughts with the brother I adored (and feared, just a little). "First, you get a mayonnaise jar. Then you punch some holes in the top."
"Can you demonstrate that for us, Mary Dell?"
I took the pointy, triangular opener we used for cans of Hawaiin Punch and poked its sharp tip several times into a jar lid, while Ray held the microphone close to get the sounds.
"You need a lot of holes," I said when the mic returned to me, "because they have to breathe."
"I see," Trey said. He prompted me, and I described stuffing grass and twigs into the jar and tried to explain the proper way to catch lightning bugs--with double cupped palms, like a clamshell, so you don't squoosh them. The clamshell image did not occur to me at the time, but Ray probably filled in with an equally apt analogy. And then, I went on, you take the tickly, glowing bug to the jar and carefully cup your hands around the mouth of the jar so the insect falls inside. Quickly screw on the top with the holes.
"You have a very nice collection of lightning bugs there, Mary Dell," Trey said. "Did you catch them tonight?"
And so on... and so, the name for my blog, The Mary Dell Show, is in homage to a mostly happy but somewhat neurotic (as if any aren't) 60'and 70's childhood. The "episodes" will not likely be about fireflies, though I do find insects both fascinating and revolting (less of the latter and more of the former as I get older) today. A 60's and 70's childhood, though--there's plenty of fodder there--and it isn't all pretty. Plenty has happened since, too, more fodder for the blog. I hope you'll stay tuned!
Am I being presumptuous, thinking I might someday have so many followers that I'll have my own TV show? Actually, I'm pretty happy in anonymity (hence, I've left my last name off the blog for now) and don't have any great longing for fame. A little more money would be nice, but I don't see this blog's ending up with fattening my coffers. So why do this at all?
The answer is what every writer will say: because I have to. Maybe we are mental exhibitionists, eager to show off the curvaceous figures our thoughts etch in our gray matter, or maybe we simply long to connect with others in a way even we don't understand. Why do we believe perfect strangers will understand us better than the members of our family, our lovers, our friends? Yet we write, or at least I do, to strangers.
I hope, though, that if not a single stranger takes an interest in my story, this "blog" aka TV show from this kid of the 60's will be of interest to my kids when I move on to whatever comes after this. If nothing else, I hope some of it amuses them, and some of it educates them about what I went through and how they need to approach their own health care. And maybe leave another type of wisdom for them here and there.
The kids don't appear much not because I don't love them more than life itself but because I want to preserve THEIR privacy as much as I can. I wrote an article about my son's experiences with bipolar disorder. It was published, and it was well received, and I'd had his completely lucid permission to use it, but sometimes I wish I'd have at least changed his first name. Our last names are different, however, so I'd hoped to preserve his privacy that way.
Nevertheless, when I speak of them or others, I'm most likely using substitute names for that reason.
As for the name of my blog, it was coined many years ago by my big brother, who was and remains a bona fide geek, and I mean that in the nicest way. I mean, he retired as head of computer security for a large state university at the age of 50.
The day he left for college marked a terrible loss in my young life. Eight years old, I stood on the beige, linoleum floor, staring at my feet as my parents and Ray said good-byes and probably hugged, something we rarely did in our family. I knew he was going away to college, but I don't think I knew what that really meant until the moment when I turned and saw his suitcase-sized reel-to-reel tape recorder next to his bags.
If that was going, he was gone, and my eight-year-old heart broke, suddenly understanding what it meant to "go away." He rarely came home again.
You see, I'd been my big brother's "special" sibling. I was the youngest child, very cute until about age five or six, after which I developed buck teeth and then braces, stringy hair, and a tall, bony physique that led to my nickname, "Bones." And a lifelong love/hate relationship with my appearance, something all (or nearly all) women suffer through in this appearance-obsessed nation.
But all that came later. I don't remember my age when Trey started "The Mary Dell Show," but we had been doing the show for years. The taping of one interview remains a memory I can call up at will:
Trey set the tape recorder on the yellow Formica table on our screened-in porch on a warm summer evening just past dusk. Katydids chirped in the trees behind our suburban home, and yellow streaks of fireflies lit up the darkening night in a ritual dance I knew nothing--or little--of then.
Our father, an electronic engineer who could do anything, had built the porch, adding it to the brick Cape Cod my folks purchased in the 1940s and lived in until they died. Dad wired the porch so we had light--two yellow bug lights--and an outlet. Ray plugged in the recorder and turned it on. Reels as big as saucers turned, one feeding the tape through the recording sluice and onto the opposite reel.
Ray spoke into the microphone in a serious, Walter Kronkite voice: "So, tell us, Mary Dell, what is your method for catching lightning bugs?"
He held the mic to my lips. "Well," I answered, always thrilled to share my thoughts with the brother I adored (and feared, just a little). "First, you get a mayonnaise jar. Then you punch some holes in the top."
"Can you demonstrate that for us, Mary Dell?"
I took the pointy, triangular opener we used for cans of Hawaiin Punch and poked its sharp tip several times into a jar lid, while Ray held the microphone close to get the sounds.
"You need a lot of holes," I said when the mic returned to me, "because they have to breathe."
"I see," Trey said. He prompted me, and I described stuffing grass and twigs into the jar and tried to explain the proper way to catch lightning bugs--with double cupped palms, like a clamshell, so you don't squoosh them. The clamshell image did not occur to me at the time, but Ray probably filled in with an equally apt analogy. And then, I went on, you take the tickly, glowing bug to the jar and carefully cup your hands around the mouth of the jar so the insect falls inside. Quickly screw on the top with the holes.
"You have a very nice collection of lightning bugs there, Mary Dell," Trey said. "Did you catch them tonight?"
No comments:
Post a Comment