The two questions that were posed were as follows, and the relationship roles are gender specific here only because everyone in the conversation happened to be a woman currently in a relationship with a man. Substitute the male pronouns with female if that floats your boat, and it’s still the same question.

1.      If you could talk to your current boyfriend/husband/fiance’s ex flame, on neutral turf, with just the two of you in the room, what would you say to her?

2.      If you could talk to your ex-boyfriend/husband/fiance’s current flame, on neutral turf, with just the two of you in the room, what would you say to her?

Both of these questions seemed really easy to answer, until I actually opened my mouth and started to answer them, at which point I completely changed my mind about what I’d actually say, given the opportunity.

The first question was the easiest. Jeremy and I have a pretty solid understanding about past relationships. They’re over and there’s not really any need to re-live them in any sense of the word. It’s not like there is a Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell policy around our house – on the contrary, we’ve both spilled the beans on previous relationships as part of getting to know each other. There were things that when I first met him were still emotional sore spots for me, and he needed to know about those things in order to be the fantastic boyfriend and soon-to-be-husband that he is.   Beyond all that, it’s probably better not to go into details. I don’t need to know their inside jokes or favorite songs or the story of their first kiss. Neither Jeremy nor I has ever had any kind of weird jealousy regarding each other’s exes. We’re both really confident in our relationship and each other, so what’s the point? From what little I know, they all seem decent enough. They don’t bother us and we don’t think about them.

So I guess I’d probably just say “Thanks for dumping him! I win!”

The second question was the hardest for ALL of us to answer, even those who had been happily married for a decade or more.  All of us admitted that we’d thought about it before, although in most cases it was years ago. One person admitted that she had confronted the current girlfriend of her philandering ex-boyfriend. Balls of steel. Seriously.

It was easy to view my ex as the enemy – a weak man who always saw the grass as being greener on the other side, and although his current girlfriend was the other woman, I tried not to view her as the enemy as well. I absolutely hate it when women turn on each other when the man is actually the one to blame, where is the sisterhood in that? I mean, I wasn’t dating her. She had no allegiance to me, he did. He was the one who made the promises and talked about our future even as he planned his escape.

As miserable as I was, I didn’t want company. I figured that she either knew about the way he treated me during and after the breakup (sordid details of which I won’t go into here- suffice to say there were a lot of broken promises, lies, and general spinelessness…) and didn’t care, or she was completely unaware of how everything went down, in which case it wasn’t my place to tell her. If he was happy with her and she was happy with him, then what was there to say after all? I knew who she was, it wouldn’t have been all that hard to contact her, had I truly wanted to. It wouldn’t have been hard to tell her things he’d said to me years later that might have completely destroyed their relationship. But I never wanted that.  I just figured that if you enter into a relationship with a man, knowing that he had to completely trample all over another person’s life to be with you, then you’d better hope that he’s completely changed and will treat you better than the person he left, or you should just be prepared that it will inevitably happen to you at some point down the road.

And what would I say to her now? Nothing. It’s been a long time, and I’m a forgiving person, and I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that maybe he’s changed. It felt awful having so much negative energy pent up inside for so long and at a certain point I just let it all go. I didn’t realize I was doing it, but one day something made him cross my mind for the first time in a year and I didn’t feel angry. Maybe he grew up, maybe he became the person that I once thought he was. We haven’t spoken in years, so anything is possible. I highly doubt it, but who knows? And if they’re happy, they’re happy.

I’m getting married in three weeks to a fantastic guy, so to say that he did me a favor would be an understatement. The point being, I think I did the right thing by never saying anything, and if you’ll listen to a small piece of unsolicited advice, I’d highly recommend it to anyone elsethat may find themselves in my situation. The universe usually rights itself without us interfering.

I’ve come to the conclusion that being stress free in the weeks leading up to your wedding is a nearly impossible feat. As far as I know, my head hasn’t started spinning as I screamed things like “I TOLD YOU I WANTED WHITE LINENS!” or “THIS IS NOT THE FONT WE AGREED ON FOR THE PROGRAM!” but there have been times where I had to remind myself to take a deep breath because everything would work out in time.

The thing about planning a wedding is that at certain points along the way, you discover things about yourself that you never really knew.  One moment you’re deciding whether or not you want Asiago or Muenster cheese in your asparagus puff appetizer and the next moment you’re engrossed in a major existential thought that leads to all sorts of self discovery. And I’m not just talking about what kind of cheese you prefer.

One of the first, and probably most important things I learned is that I am much better at compromise than I ever thought I could be. I can be sort of a firecracker- very steadfast in my resolves and often very stubborn when it comes to doing things someone else’s way. I never imagined myself getting married in a church. I’ve never been particularly religious –I didn’t grow up as such and it never factored into my life until I met Jeremy, who was raised with a religious background. From the get-go, he said he wanted to be married in a church, and for someone who never asks for much of anything, you can bet it must be important to him. I couldn’t shake the thought of our wedding day being anything less than either one of us imagined, but it seemed like we were heading down that path. How could our wedding be in a church, yet be secular enough to suit my tastes as well?

That was when I discovered my alter ego, Ms. Surprise Compromise. We’re in this thing together, for the rest of our lives, so why should our wedding day be the Jessica Show?  We looked into our options, and found a fantastic Episcopal priest at a church with a perfect location downtown. He was willing to work with the two of us to make sure we were comfortable with the whole day. We were allowed to select readings from Song of Solomon that read like poems, we got rid of the out-dated “Who gives this woman away” jazz, and he’s letting us replace the traditional organ hymns with Beatles songs played by a string quartet. (In case you’re curious: Grow Old With Me, When I’m 64, and Imaginewill be played pre-ceremony, If I Fell is the wedding party processional, I walk down the aisle to I Will, Blackbird will be played in between readings, and our recessional will be, of course, All You Need Is Love.) How rad is this priest?

Somewhere along the way I also discovered that I’m slightly more traditional that I thought I was. Don’t get all excited. I said slightly. We’re still opting for the cute little cupcakes shaped like bird’s nests instead of a cake, we’re still going to have our infamous Midnight Snack table for guests to load up little satchels of candy, and snacks on their way out, and I’m really excited about the tattoo to commemorate our wedding that I ’m getting on our honeymoon (sorry Mom!) Still, I didn’t want to be making decisions just because they were non-traditional. I didn’t want to be like one of those 14 year old kids that hang out in the mall at Hot Topic and wear striped socks pulled up to their knees or dog collars around their necks because it’s so different. For example, It’s okay that I always thought I’d waltz down the aisle wearing my something blue on my feet, only to search for months for the right kicks, completely in vain. Then one day, completely by accident, I stumbled across the perfect pair of vintage peep toes in – gasp… white. Yeah, all brides wear white shoes. I. Don’t. Care.

Although I initially thought I would ditch the head table for the more modern sweetheart tables with the bridal party in rounds nearby, it didn’t seem to work with our venue. The room is much longer than it is wide, and there was no feasible way for us to design the floor plan to make it look the way we wanted. I really stomped my feet over this one, because to me head tables are a throwback to 1983. I envisioned gaggles of puffy sleeved bridesmaids with wall bangs and white tuxedo clad groomsmen and rat tails sitting at a big long table with an ice sculpture at one end and a five tiered wedding cake decorated with those awful plastic bridges and topped with teddy bears dressed as bride and groom.

When I finally accepted defeat and realized that we’d be going with the head table after all, it was sort of a blow to me for a solid couple of days. Then I thought about it some more and realized that our wedding party were made up out of the people we hold closest in our lives – our best friends, our siblings, the first people to congratulate us on our engagement and the people we wanted standing up there with us as we became husband and wife. We should all be sitting together. We’ll have a blast, modern weddings be damned, I’m going to sit in the middle of that big old head table and be proud. But I’m totally not having an ice sculpture.

I also didn’t think I wanted to throw a bouquet, go through all the rigmarole with the garter, have people stand in line to pay us for dances, or do anything resembling an Electric Slide. I’ve changed my mind on a lot of that, because I realized that it’ s fun. Our guests are going to have four solid hours of dancing, it’s kind of nice to break up the monotony with a single woman free-for-all over flowers. We’re still not doing the garter thing, and there is no way in hell the Chicken Dance is getting played, but I’ve put myself in my guests shoes and realized it’s okay to let loose and be slightly ridiculous. Traditional and lame can be mutually exclusive. 

And last, but not least, I realized that I rather like myself just the way I am. I didn’t go on a crazy crash diet to morph into a body that I’ve never had, and probably will never again have in my life. I didn’t go tanning to become a weird shade that I’ll probably never again be in my life. I didn’t get hair extentions, fake nails, or zoom whitening for my chompers. No, this is one girl that people will recognize when she walks down the aisle. And those people? Well, they like me just the way I am, and I do too.

So this wedding planning thing has been fun, and in a way I don’t want it to end. I could definitely live with the pampering, presents, and cupcake tastings for a few more months, but it’s time. I’m ready to walk down that aisle in a couple of weeks and become a spouse, now more sure of who I am than ever before.

Although I watch what I eat now because I want to fit into a wedding dress smaller than a parachute come April, in a perfect world I would eat pretty much everything. I could probably list, on a single sheet of paper, foods that I don’t like. Everything else is fair game. Milk is out. American cheese, bologna, mustard, and raw onions revolt me. Mayonnaise will never go on my sandwich but it’s okay as a binder. I’ve never tried liver and don’t think I want to, and if that means I’m missing out on something wonderful so be it. Every other kind of food is generally okay by me. I’ve tried some really crazy recipes, cuisines, and food type items in the name of culinary expiration. I’m pretty much up for anything. As long as it’s not near, on, or past the expiration date.

My fiance will eat bread a week past the expiration as long as it’s not moldy. He’ll eat yogurt as long as it doesn’t smell bad. I insist that he brushes his teeth and thoroughly gargles before I kiss him after he consumes said foods. When I met him in 2005, he had a cupboard full of cereal boxes, all of which had been expired at least a year and a half. A year and a half! I wanted to wear gloves just throwing it out. God only knows what kind of insane bacteria were lurking in every nook and cranny of those Golden Grahams. Now, he likes to point out that these dates printed on the labels aren’t the date that the food goes bad, but just the date that the manufacturer suggests you buy or consume it by in order to enjoy optimal taste. I, on the other hand, will throw out a gallon of juice or a bottle of vitamins a full two days before it hits the expiration just so that I don’t risk accidentally consuming it after that dreaded date. I look at expiration and sell by dates while I’m at the grocery store, and goddammit I will search an entire shelf of Starkist just to find that one can that expires in April of 2008. Take that, tuna that’s only good until March! Of course, that tuna will more than likely be consumed within a week of my purchasing it, but it makes me feel better to know that in case of nuclear attack, where I need to hold on to all my canned goods in order to survive, I just may make it a month longer than the other fools who bought their tuna at Acme that day.

I’ll admit it, I’m afraid of it. I’m afraid of getting botulism or E-coli or beri beri or whatever other food borne illnesses are out there. I’m afraid of spending hours on the toilet and of biting into a big hunk of hairy green mold. If Jeremy had his way, things would stay in the fridge until they became science projects. Still, it’s terrible to waste food. I know it’s terrible to waste food and I make every effort not to. I try not to buy anything I know we won’t finish in a reasonable amount of time. Personally I can’t afford to throw away things we haven’t eaten and I can’t deal with the guilt I feel as I picture starving Sudanese refugees as the 2 days-past-expiration Maraschino cherries, the ones that I bought to make sundaes with but only used once, slide into my trashcan. Waste not, want not, I know. But I cannot bring myself to do it. Those dates are there for a reason, people, and that reason just may be to save my digestive system from ruin. Maybe one day I’ll outgrow this annoying and expensive quirk, but for now if that cheddar expired yesterday, it is not going on my broccoli today.

When Back to the Future came out, he immediately started begging my Mom for a jean jacket and a padded vest, a pair of sunglasses, and those old school white Nikes with the red stripe on the side. If memory serves me correctly, he got at least the jacket and vest for his next birthday, and although he had already moved on the imitating characters from other movies, he would still put on his get-up every time we watched the movie. He had cowboy boots and a hat to wear when it struck his fancy, and an Indian headdress and rubber tomahawk that my Grandparents brought back from a trip to a reservation years before suddenly wouldn’t leave his head once he began watching a local children’s television program hosted by Chief Halftown, a Seneca Indian who began each show with the greeting: “Ees da sa sussaway!” Although we never knew exactly what that meant, and still don’t, Mike naturally adopted it as his catch phrase for short time.

My parents always indulged our imaginations, and I give them a lot of credit for that. They never told me that in all likelihood I would not grow up to be a professional ballerina during the day and an astronaut at night. I was never discouraged from writing love letters to all the members of the New Kids on the Block and planning what Ralph Maccio and I would name our future children. Just for the record, it would have been Ralph Maccio Jr. for a boy since Ralph seemed like the type to want to pass on his legacy, and Laverne Shirley Macchio for a girl.

Although we were encouraged to dream and wish and create to our little hearts content, there were times that we clearly took it over the limit. For instance, one summer my Mom was out in the backyard hanging laundry on the clothesline to dry, when suddenly she heard giggling and scampering feet coming through the kitchen. Seconds later, the screen door leading to the backyard popped open and there stood my brother, with most of his exposed skin covered with hair. For a few moments she was unable to grasp exactly what kind of catastrophe she was witnessing, until my brother made his hands into a monster’s claw shape, howled, and exclaimed “Look Ma! I’m a werewolf!” Inspired by his recent viewing of Teen Wolf my brother had taken scissors to his head, cut off huge clumps of hair, and then pasted the hair all over himself. A buzz cut and a stern talking to later, my Mom gave us both large cardboard boxes decorated with felt and filled with various crafting items like pipe cleaners, pom-poms, buttons, and construction paper. I think she realized that if we weren’t given a proper medium for expression she was probably risking waking up one morning to find us covered in homemade tattoos that we’d inked from a ballpoint pen and sewing needle.

Still, my brother continued to be extremely effected by all forms of media, which was especially evident in the myriad of career choices that his youthful self planned for the future. One day, when he and his friend Gregory read a children’s book about a graveyard on Halloween, they decided that there was nothing they wanted more in life than to one day become grave diggers. They weren’t at all interested in dealing with the mortuary end of things – the embalming or the funeral arrangements, the soft spoken condolences to the family of the deceased. No, Greg and Mike were blue collar men. They wanted to wear coveralls and bandanas, they wanted dirt under their fingernails and calluses on their hands.

Ambitious and eager to perfect their skills at their future vocation, the two boys started digging. Starting in our sandbox, they soon realized that it lacked the depth a real grave would surely have and quickly became dissatisfied. However, using child sized shovels made out of hard plastic, it was difficult for them to break ground in our newly thawed backyard that Spring. After breaking their entire arsenal of sand shovels and Little Tykes Gardening Set instruments, my Dad reluctantly took one of his own small metal shovels and sawed down the handle to make it more appropriate for his three foot, seven inch frame. Then he took a rubber grip off of an old mop and fashioned it to the handle, and cut the fingers off of an old pair of batting gloves he had in the garage. They were still a little big on my brother, but they gave him the satisfaction of feeling like a real gravedigger. It didn’t take long for Dad to regret modifying the grave digging shuttle for Mike and Greg’s practice digs. Our backyard was soon becoming pock- marked and unsightly. Mounds of dirt full of wiggling Earthworms sat next to shallow holes, abandoned when one of the boys encountered a tree root or got tired of standing in the same place for too long. After a day or two they were ordered to fill in all the holes and relocate to a park down the street, where they spent most of their summer.

The grave digging ambition continued for some time, although the practice decreased in frequency once the boys started school. Mike would doodle headstones and grave markers on his sketch pad, trying to make designs he thought fit the personality of those near and dear to him. My mother was told that he was going to make her a pink heart for her headstone when she died, and on days when he was feeling particularly mean to me he would threaten me with a promise to forget to close my coffin during my burial so that worms could crawl inside and eat my nose. He took his chosen profession very seriously.

My brother is now 24 years old, and he’s had some difficulty deciding on a career. After graduating college a year and a half ago with a degree in International Relations, he took a job in personal finance. Deciding he wasn’t interested in a desk job, he left that position after a few months and has worked in an Irish pub style restaurant ever since. Later this month he’s taking a test to start apprenticing for an electrician’s union, which I’m hoping works out for him. He’ll probably never become a grave digger/ headstone maker and I’ll probably never be a part-time ballerina/astronaut. But having those dreams and parents who let us believe in them made us who we are today – dreamers still.

I was working in the cafe of a bookstore in New Jersey soon after moving there after college. I was in that stage of my life where I had no idea what I wanted to do and was perfectly content with working for peanuts and talking to people about books and coffee all day. Like any other coffee shop, the cafe had a regular morning crowd, a regular mid-day crowd, and a regular evening crowd. It was kind of comforting to have regularity day in and day out, especially because I was hopelessly homesick. I’ll always think of New Jersey as being the Pit of Dispair, but that job wasn’t half bad. I got to talk a lot, and we all know I love to talk. I talked to college kids, dog groomers, stay at home moms. I talked to a woman whose father was the founder of a cult that she would never tell me the name of. She changed her name, got a Phd, and has recently solved a very important mathematical theorum. But she is not the focus of my story.

The woman I want to write about is named Sarah.* Sarah worked close to the bookstore and came in around mid-morning for a latte nearly every day. She was bubbly and sweet and loved to talk, so we got along swimmingly. Around Halloween she told me she was participating in a ghost hunt. I assumed that she meant one of those guided cemetary tours that pop up around October and lead you around by lantern light to “haunted” areas, kind of like one I went on in college. No, she told me, she was leading the hunt, because she was a psychic. Now, when someone says something like this to you – especially when you’re not expecting it- it kind of leaves you speechless. Not wanting to be rude, but not really having time to think of anything to say I just kind of nodded and said “Wow, really?”

Now, let me take a break in the story to let you know that “Wow, really?” is the quintessential thing that I say when I have no idea what else should come out of my mouth. It’s especially useful when listening to someone with an accent so thick that you have no clue what they just said. Usually people just respond with a “yes” and you move on. And we did just that. Several weeks went by and she never mentioned anything about ghosts or psychics, and I never brought it up. One morning, she came in as she usually did, we made small talk, she paid for her drink, and then turned to leave. Before making it out the door she stopped, turned around, and came back over to the counter.

“Would you be uncomfortable if I told you something that is coming to me from a paranormal source?”

Would I be uncomfortable? The first thing that came to my mind was: please don’t tell me I’m going to die, please don’t tell me I’m going to die.” But what came out of my mouth was “No, not at all.”

“Well, okay. I’ve been wanting to tell you this for quite some time,” she started. Please, please, no death, I thought. “I’m not going to talk about death!” Now she had my attention. Was it the look on my face that gave me away, or was she really picking up on what was running through my head? “First of all, I need to know the connection to the rose.”

The connection to the rose? Where do I begin? Well, for starters, Rose is my middle name, I explained. “Because from the first time I met you, I’ve seen roses all around you and I don’t think it’s just because of the name. It’s connected to the older woman who I sometimes see hanging out near you.” Now I was spooked. Rose is the name of my fabulous great-grandmother who is sadly no longer with us. For most of my life, I’ve felt that Rose was indeed still hanging around me, but more on that later. I explained the connection, and Sarah nodded. “Well, she really wants to let you know that even though things are tough and you miss your family you’re going to be home soon enough.”

At the time, this didn’t seem like a possibility. I was in a relationship, hence the reason that I was in New Jersey in the first place. He had a local job, and he seemed to like it, and while I didn’t really have any direction in life and hated nearly everything about the Garden State, we didn’t have any plans of leaving in the immediate future. to the contrary, the plan was for me to go to graduate school, and I was in the process of being certified as a social worker in the state. When I started to explain all of this, she cut me off. “There is a little bit of bad news…” Again, no death, no death. “Rose wants to let you know that she doesn’t want you to stick around with this guy. He’s going to be up to no good if he isn’t already.

“What kind of no good?”

“The kind of no good that involves some other woman.”

She must have seen the look on my face. Somewhere between shock and disbelief and utter dispair. She reached out and touched my hand. “Still, it’s the best thing that could happen.”

And then the conversation was over. Just like that. I didn’t know what to think for a long time. The Rose connection was eerie, but I wasn’t completely sold. She could have heard me talk about Rose, she could have heard me mention my middle name. Hell, I could have told her my middle name and just not remembered the conversation. Still, it always stuck in my mind because how could it not?

I didn’t really believe it until about a year later, when the guy I was dating, who I thought was the bees knees left me abruptly. For someone else.

The connection to my great-grandma Rose and myself has three and a half other quick stories, each one of them kind of eerie. The first happened when I was very young. We were on vacation during the summer, and I was asleep with the bedroom window open. At some point during the night my Mom came to check on me and discovered that a trail of big, red, fire ants had made their way in through a small tear in the window screen and were all over the headboard of the bed I was sleeping in. As she ran over to grab me, she swears that she heard Rose’s voice saying – clear as day- “Don’t worry gal, I didn’t let any bugs get on our baby.” Sure enough, there wasn’t a single bite on me, even though the ants were all over the pillow and the bedsheets.

The second story happened when our family first moved into the new home my parents built during the 1980s. I was at school and my Mom was putting away laundry. She walked upstairs into my room and as soon as she entered the threshold, she smelled her grandmother. Sometimes there really isn’t an accurate way to describe the way someone smells. It’s a mix of shampoo and perfume and laundry detergent and body chemistry, but after awhile it becomes familiar. She knew what it was, and she got the feeling that Rosie was checking out the new house and making sure everything was okay.

The third incident also involves my Mom and the house. A few months after the second experience, she was walking through the kitchen and noticed a yellowish square of paper on the white linoleum floor. My Mom is kind of nuts about being clean, so she picked it up on the tip of her finger and flicked it into the trashcan. Hours later, there it was again on the counter. She picked it up on her finger once again, flipped it over, and discovered it was a photo. Of Rose. It was just Rose’s face, and it was a photo she had never seen before. The shape of it and the lack of centering made it implausible that it was cut for a locket, but there it was all the same. This time, she put it safely in her jewelry box, where it stayed for several weeks until one day it suddenly wasn’ t there anymore. We still have no idea where it came from. Maybe it was just Rose’s way of letting us know she was still checking up.

The last story is the one I call the half, because I’m really not sure if it was related to Rose or if I just want it to be. In late June of 2004, I got into a really bad car accident on my way to work. My car was hit by an 18-wheeler on a highway and completely totaled. There wasn’t anything left of the back seat of the car, the windows were all smashed in, and yet I walked away without a scratch. If there is someone watching over me, then they brought their A game that day. In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, I talked to the driver, who happened to have grown up three houses down from the little red house on Hutton Street in Jersey City where Rose lived for the better part of her life. Later that night at my parents house in Delaware, while I was looking through a bunch of old files to get my insurance papers in order for the rental car I needed, I found a letter my grandmother Lore had written me talking about her mother, Rose. In it, she wrote “When Grandpa and I got married, we bought our first car. We probably didn’t need it, but it seemed like the thing to do at the time, and we were thankful for it when he got transferred to California. Mama was TERRIFIED of cars. This came from never having driven one herself and never having the need for one in the city. She always told me: I can’t stand the way buses and truckers drive! They’re gonna kill someone, and it won’t be me because I’m taking the train! When we would pick her up to bring her to our place for a visit she would make Grandpa put a medallion of St. John the Baptist on the mirror.”

Saint John the Baptist. The patron Saint of Highways. So there you have it. Like I said, I can’t draw any conclusions for you, but this is my story. Maybe I’m reading in to it too much, but maybe I’m not. Regardless, I hope that one day when I have a daughter (who I will undoubtedly give the middle name of Rose to)I can share it with her as well.

*Name has been changed.

“I’m ready Mom!”

“Ready for what?” she asked.

“Ready to evacuate!”

See, I’ve always been paranoid, even when I was a little kid. A little rain and some thunder and I’m packing up my bright red suitcase full of books and pictures and ready to move into my FEMA trailer. This has never really changed, as anyone who knows me well will tell you that I can get more than a little paranoid from time to time. My latest episode of severe over-reaction occurred last Friday afternoon. See, to get to and from work, I drive to a Park and Ride and take a trolley into the city. The trolley drops me off right near my office and saves me the aggravation of driving downtown and – most importantly – the cost of parking my car in a garage 5 days a week. In the afternoon the same trolley takes me back to my car and I go home. Friday afternoon was really hot and muggy, so as soon as I got into my car I started it up and reached over to turn the AC on full blast. Not even a second later, I heard a really loud POP! that scared the shit out of me. This wasn’t just a little noise, it actually made my ears ring for a few seconds afterward.

My immediate, paranoid thought was that someone was shooting outside. I mean, it is the city and I am a little bit crazy, what did you expect? I hate to admit this, but I think I may have actually ducked down in my seat for a couple of seconds until I realized that if someone was shooting, people outside in the parking lot would have been running and screaming. Instead, as I peeked over the dash, I saw that everyone was acting completely normal and starting their Friday commute home. Everyone except me that is. I was huddled in my car like an asshole thinking that a rogue shooter had wandered to the Park and Ride. Still unable to think of anything except for the worse case scenario, I drove home feeling anxious and nervous. I pulled into my driveway, and immediately got out to inspect my car for any and all signs of bulletholes, grenade divets, leaking gaskets, or anything else out of the ordinary.

Then I realized what the pop was. It was a pop. I mean, like a soda. I left an unopened can of Diet Pepsi in the back seat all day, and the heat finally made it explode just as I had gotten into the car. Feeling extremely sheepish, but increasingly glad I didn’t completely freak out and call the police from my cellphone while trying to huddle under my dashboard, I walked silently inside.

I am not one of those people.

If I am driving on a highway, I will always get into the slowest lane. Other lanes can be whizzing by at 70 and my little lane will be just moseying right along at 35. When I dare attempt to move into another lane to get out of the slow crawl, that lane suddenly becomes the slow lane. Did the slow car a mile up suddenly exit and let everyone behind them return to normal speed? Did the slow car a mile up suddenly decide to get into my lane at the exact same time I did? IT IS MYSTERY.

Another place I have absolutely no luck in is the market. If I decide to bypass the traditional checkout lanes and rock out the self-check, the machine either: a) breaks; b) runs out of receipt paper; or c) refuses to scan my items no matter how gently I scan the barcodes. In either of those scenarios, it undoubtedly takes approximately 17 hours for a clerk to come over and help me, and when they do they give me a curmudgeonly snarl like I was responsible for the machine’s mechanical meltdown. Now, if I chose the regular checkout line, I will always be directly behind That Old Lady. That Old Lady is at every supermarket in the country, I’m sure you’ve seen her. That Old Lady is somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred years old, and yet she is shopping unassisted. Now,this is not a knock on the elderly. I love old people, I do! And not just my grandparents – most people with wrinkles and sweaters and cookies and lots of stories are alright by me. But, I know that there comes a certain point in everyone’s life where they need some help with some activities. Shopping is one of them. By the time I fight my way down the aisles and search the shelves for the exact item I need and push my ever growing cart from here to oblivion only to stand in line waiting I feel exhausted, and I’m only 25.

That Old Lady lets all her groceries reach the end of the checkout counter without bagging a single one, even though we’re in the self bagging lane. The clerk takes pity and stops ringing in order to bag her items, and load them into her cart. An item scans, and That Old Lady thinks that she was charged the wrong price. She is positive that the item was on sale. So the clerk stops ringing again, and pages someone for assistance. Five minutes later a 15-year-old stockboy arrives, That Old Lady pleads her case, and Stockboy is off to the aisles to see if it’s on sale. He comes back in a few minutes, announces that it is definitely not on sale, and so That Old Lady decides she doesn’t want it, or the five others just like it that have been previously rung up without her noticing. The clerk goes back and voids all the items, which needs a manager’s approval. Of course the manager has to be paged and who knows when we can expect her. In the meantime, I’m trying to plan an escape route, but there just isn’t one. There are already four other people with carts queueing up behind me, and 75% of my cart has already been unloaded onto the conveyor belt. I contemplate crawling into my cart to take a quick nap while we wait for the manager, but there is a big bottle of laundry detergent and a 24 can pack of Diet Pepsi thwarting my plan. Oh well.

When the manager finally arrives, the transaction is voided, and we are now sooooo cloooooose to finishing up with That Old Lady and moving on to me. When everything is rung up and bagged, That Old Lady presents her fistful of coupons which – miraculously – are deducted without incident. Although my ice cream is now starting to melt I am given a renewed sense of vigor and a smattering of hope that I will make it home before my chicken defrosts. When That Old Lady reaches into her handbag, she cannot seem to find her wallet. It has disappeared somewhere in the 45 square feet of pleather she is carrying on her shoulder. Searching in vain, she starts pulling things out of her purse to get a better view. Out comes an eyeglass case, out comes a hairbrush, out comes a Cuban refugee, out comes – A WALLET! We all breathe a sigh of relief. “Oh,” That Old Lady says, “that’s the wrong wallet.”

I now have to pee really, really, bad. I consider pretending to run my foot over my my cart, hoping that my fake injury will let me slip out of line and leave my shit at the checkout. I can come back tomorrow. Just then, That Old Lady finds her wallet. The right one. She pulls out a card and hands it to the cashier. The cashier points to the self swipe box and tells her to run the card through and follow the instructions on the screen. She may as well have been told to build, launch, and fly a space shuttle. After a few exasperating minutes of the clerk and I trying to help her get her card run through, we discover that it is an ATM card. As in ATM. Only. Back to the drawing board. That Old Woman digs through Monster Purse once again, searching for money to pay for her order. She hands her the wrong amount, TWICE, before realizing she doesn’t have enough and uses her credit card instead. The card goes through. That Old lady signs the slip. WE HAVE COMPLETION! Someone behind me claps, loudly. Although I had been contemplating suicide just moments before as my only alternative, I can’t be mad at the old bird. She tried, and that’s all we can do in life.

I was done fairly quickly, and wheeled my cart out of the store in the direction of my car. I stopped, looked both ways twice, and then proceeded into the crosswalk. Who should come speeding around the corner in her rusty blue 1983 Datsun? Why, That Old Lady, naturally! She blew the stop sign, completely ignored the brightly colored Yield To Pedestrians signs, and came within inches of making me roadkill. I was about to yell my standard “Watch where you’re driving, numbnuts!” when I realized who was behind the wheel. I bit my tongue. See, I believe in karma, and I know I’ll be old one day. I’m sure she didn’t intend to nearly impale me with her hood ornament. Accidents happen, and I am willing to give all oldies the benefit of the doubt. Still, next time I see her at the market, she is someone else’s problem. I’ll come back later.

I wasted no time in getting my broadcasting license and spent a couple of months doing an internet only show so that I could get comfortable with the boards and the timing and so on and so forth. Finally, a timeslot opened up on the FM station, Thursdays from 5-7pm, and I jumped at the opportunity. Before I knew it I fancied myself a right and proper DJ. Although I do attempt to avoid cliche at all costs, I still have to say that starting my radio show was a sort of defining moment in my life. Music was no longer just something to listen to, it was part of my lifestyle. If I wasn’t in class or slaving away in the coffee shop where I worked part-time, I was probably at the station or at some station related event. I interviewed bands, I make promo commercials, I read the news. When I look back on my college years, I almost instantly think of the radio station. I think of warm afternoons, leaving my dorm and walking down The Mall , which has since been renamed The Green for some reason unbeknown to me, and heading down to the station for a couple hours. Having a radio show was like being able to make a giant mixtape for hundreds of people every week. I had an almost unlimited amount of music, and open airwaves. Of course, this also meant that I had to deal with the occasional freak show that called in. This only really bothered me in the summer, because while school wasn’t in session the station was virtually deserted. It was a little creepy to be in this huge studio by myself, but I always felt safe in the fact that the station had not one but two doors that were opened only by passcode. Once I got through the first door I was pretty much good to go. I used to get calls from one crazy in particular that were sometimes unsettling when I was alone. He never said anything nasty or offensive, he was just strange, and he had a really peculiar voice. The only way I can describe it is : you know that noise a garden hose gets when it’s all kinked up and can’t spray properly? The noise that sounds like water rushing into the tube only to get all backed up? Well, it was kind of like that.

My first encounter with Weird Caller Guy was during our annual fundraiser. I was working the phones during another DJ’s show, and he called to make a pledge. Two minutes later he called back and cancelled his pledge (which I think was like $10) because he “forgot his electric bill was due.” The second time he called was when I was on the air. It was early summer, and I was working on campus as a research assistant in a cognitive science lab that studies infant language development. My show was almost over, and all I could think about was getting home, packing my bag, and taking a train up to NJ to see my boyfriend. Of course, I was parked all the way across campus at the lab where I had a summer permit, and I wasn’t looking forward to the walk back by myself. The phone rings, and I know instantly that it’s Weird Caller Pledge Canceller Guy. He says to me:

“Uhhh, yes. Hi. Hello. I need a favor. Can you play something nice for me? Can you play something nice and dedicate it to Paul Caruso and his children?”

I was a little caught off guard because I didn’t think that there were a lot of families sitting at home around the radio listening to my show, but I went along with it. I think I played something by Elliott Smith and said it was for the Caruso family. Done, right? Wrong. The phone rings before the song had even ended. Same guy. Heavy breather, squeaky voice.

“Ehhhhhh, hey. Hi there. This is Mark. I called earlier about a song for Paul Caruso?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, there is no Paul Caruso. Eeeehhh, see it was a trick, it wasn’t very nice. Paul Caruso is from a Jimi Hendrix album. Ehhhhh the second album. It was a trick.”

“Okay, I see.”

“Yeah, and I am trying to gain some notoriety for it, so could you announce on the air that Mark says sorry? Mark is really sorry about the trick.”

Now, I don’t know about you, but I think that when one is trying to “gain notoriety” for being a trickster, he should probably go about it in a way that people actually understand. Making a really obscure musical reference isn’t really that effective. But Mark wasn’t done. Oh no. The phone rings again.

“Ehhhh, this is Mark again. Actually, don’t say anything on the air. Don’t say it was a joke. I changed my mind. I’m 47 years old, and this is what I do. I like to try and mess with the public and ehhhh control people’s minds, because there’s nothing else to do. You know, there’s nothing to do in Delaware.”

Whoa, so now it’s about mind control? It’s one thing to be a complete weirdo and have bad taste in jokes, but mind control is a whole other basket of kittens. So there I was. Alone. Getting ready to leave the studio and walk to the complete other side of campus. Alone. In the back of my paranoid mind all I could think about was Mark/Paul Caruso parked outside the building in something really conspicuous like a 1975 Lincoln Continental. He’d see me walk out, run up to me, and throw a burlap bag over my head. He’d stuff me into the Lincoln’s trunk and drive me to a secret hideout where I would be changed to a record player and forced to broadcast guerrilla-radio style on his private station, Radio Free Mind Control. I would be an unwilling accomplice in the attempted brainwashing of an entire nation. He would make me dedicate songs to all sorts of allegorical musical references and I would only get one break a day to pee and eat a slice of bread. It would be awful. I half considered calling someone to come meet me at the station, but I had that train to catch. I didn’t want to be held up waiting for someone to arrive, so I sucked it up and signed off the air. As usual, the reggae DJ for the show after mine was running late. I flipped on the AP newswire and was about to walk out of the airstudio when the phone rang again. I shouldn’t have picked it up. I really shouldn’t have. But I did. Guess who?

“Ehhh yes, hello. Do I have the right station? Can you hear it in the background? All I hear is some newscaster!”

“Actually, the Reggae guys are running late so we’re running the AP newswire.”

“Let me give you a piece of advice. I’m 47 years old and I own my own business and everything. Never say ‘actually’ people will think you have two separate lives. It’s scary, never say that. It’s in poor taste. Imagine if your children said that to you or something.”

I wanted to scream into the phone I DO NOT SEE ANYTHING WRONG WITH THE WORD ACTUALLY AND ACTUALLY I DON’T HAVE ANY CHILDREN AND ACTUALLY YOU ARE A FREAK SO I AM ACTUALLY HANGING UP ON YOU NOW. Instead I just hung up. And then I ran. I ran all the way up the stairs, out the building, and halfway through campus until I felt like there was enough distance between me and the telephone. I made my train and told my boyfriend the whole story and for a couple of months we’d get a good kick out of mentioning Paul Caruso or saying actually with emphasis. It takes all kinds to make this world go ’round. Allllll kinds.

Rosie wasn’t what you would imagine the typical great-grandma to be. She didn’t knit, she didn’t play bridge, she didn’t get her hair done once a week. Instead, she owned a gigantic brightly colored parrot that she taught to say dirty words. She wore only house-dresses, never with a bra but sometimes with sweaters if it was cold outside, and horn rimmed black glasses with faux diamond studs. She absolutely refused to get false teeth. Nonetheless she would eat things like steak and corn on the cob, completely toothless the whole time, and then usually ask for seconds. She said things like “It’s hot as hell in this shithole!” and “Let’s go down to the corner shop and get a La Beetz.” By La Beetz, she meant a pizza. She had her own vernacular, full of words that I never got the hang of, spotted with curses and full of fantastic words of wisdom.

One idea that Rosie was dead set on was her theory that space travel affected the weather. She had a third grade education, and that education was what rural southern Ireland had to offer in the early 1900s, so her schooling wasn’t much. Still, she was a bright woman. She was very inquisitive and remembered every detail she ever heard. After man landed on the moon in the 1960s, she became convinced that the weather changed as a result. According to her it was hotter outside and rained more. Once, when my grandparents had to cut a trip to Mexico short due to Hurricane Anita Rosie only smiled knowingly and said she figured something like that was coming because the space shuttle Enterprise had been poking around in space.

This morning, a tornado touched down in Brooklyn and the shuttle Endeavour blasted off. I know, I know. I’ve read the articles. The tornado swept through New York twelve hours before the shuttle even took off, but it still made me smile. It made me think of Rosie, somewhere out there, smiling and saying “I told you so! Now someone make me a Pink Squirrel! Heavy on the squirrel this time!”