In which I find myself an older man as a high-school boyfriend but he dumps me right before the prom

Perhaps "older man" is not the proper term to use, as Ken was only two years older than I was. But in high school? That two years gave me status. He was a senior, I was a sophomore. A senior! I was dating a senior! Oh how cool was that?

I met him in Sea Scouts, which is I think affiliated with the Boy Scouts and was a group of high-school kids, a few adult sponsors and a 76-foot double masted schooner that we sailed from its moorings in the Panama Canal around the Pacific bay that fed the Canal.

I joined Sea Scouts because my best friend Julie and her brother were in it and there was a party one night by Julie's house for Sea Scout people that I went to with her and the boys in Sea Scouts were cute.

Ken was at the party. I don't know why he talked to me. I surely would not have talked to him first because he was a senior and I was a sophomore and he was tall, muscular and cute. Muscular in that "I do useful things with my body and that builds nice muscles" as opposed to the "I waste a lot of time in the gym" muscular. His tan made his blue eyes sparkle like the ocean on a sunny day. Or like something blue that's pretty. I found him online because I am a superstalker and can find just about anybody and his eyes are still as blue as they were over 30 years ago. Based on the woman he has his still-muscular arm (that is attached to his still-muscular shoulder) around, he also still likes slightly chubby blondes. He has a type.

But talk to me he did. We started talking about records. I had a record at home he wanted to hear. Right. Because my musical taste was so sophisticated. Remember I am the one who, during my senior year of high school, took the $42.51 that I got in cash at the back of Woolworth's every Friday straight to the record department to buy a new Neil Diamond record. But maybe he liked ABBA, which was what I had in stock my sophomore year.

I said I could go home and get the record and he said he could walk with me and I thought wow, what's that all about? but I guess he wanted to spend time with me, which was weird. Because he was cute. A cute boy. Talking to me.

He asked me out. He picked me up in a car and drove me to the movie theater at Albrook AFB. The car was a big deal because you had to be 17 to get a driver's license in Panama. Only the Big Kids had licenses.

Not that not having a license was an impediment to getting around. If our parents didn't want to drive us somewhere, we just took the Panamanian bus, aka the chiva (goat and no I have no idea why it is called a goat bus and I really don't know why "chiva" means "goat" because I thought "cabrito" meant "goat" but heck, there are at least four words in Spanish for "tripe" and I know them all because I never ever want to eat tripe again) bus, which was painted with about a gajillion bright colors, had fringe hanging on the windows and usually had a name like "Marisol" or "Luz de Mi Vida" painted in script across the top of the windshield.

It cost about a dime to ride the bus. Our parents would usually drop us off for swim meets but we would take the bus home. It only took one time of standing with Julie at the bus stop in nothing but our swimsuits, shorts and towels to realize that we should probably bring more clothes next time, as we really did not like hearing the Panamanian men shout, !Ay! Chica americaaaaaaaana! and then make that sucky-kissy noise at our half-dressed bodies.

Ken took me to the movies. We saw Animal House. So romantic. And so influential. Who knew I'd have my own Double Secret Probation blog years later? He must have kissed me then, although I do not remember our first kiss. But kiss we did.

He asked me out again. Took me to a casino, which is not as bizarre as it might sound because casinos in Panama were just one more thing that people did. I don't think there was a minimum age to get in. If there was, the authorities were quite willing to look the other way. Not that I cared about gambling. Even then, I had a strong intuitive sense of probability and statistics and knew that gambling was not a good way to hold onto or increase my hard-earned, one dollar an hour babysitting money.

The Panamanian casino wasn't too bad. I didn't see the truly seedy side of casinos until I was forced to go to Las Vegas to pick up a friend on my way to California. She suggested we walk through a casino or two and I was shocked at how tacky they were: people were not dressed nicely (unlike in Latin America, where when you go out, you go out, and in Miami, a decent Cuban woman does not go to the grocery store or an exercise class without lipstick), they were not pretty and glamorous like they are in the movies, and the cigarette smoke just about choked me.

What I do remember from that evening is what I wore: a blue sweater and a pair of white slacks that I borrowed from my friend Barb. And that I stained. And did not have dry cleaned before I returned to her. Oh the shame. Why couldn't I have returned them to her a few days late, along with the apology that I had gotten them dirty and had taken them to be cleaned? It's amazing that she ever talked to me again.

Ken and I quickly moved from weekend dates to necking at lunch behind the chemistry building. I would eat my fried empanada, slug down my Tahitian Treat or Purple Passion soda, then we would sit on the stoop and kiss and kiss and kiss.

Oh it was fun.

Until one day my mom looked at the rash on my chin and asked, "What is that?"

My hand flew to my chin. "What?" I answered.

"That rash."

"I dunno."

"It looks like whisker burn to me."

I had never heard the term "whisker burn" before. But I knew as soon as I heard it exactly what it was and how I had gotten it.

The next day at school, I told Ken that he had to start shaving every day or I would not kiss him.

We necked at school, we necked at the Gaillard Cut, we necked on the Amador Causeway. We necked on the Chief Aptakisic, the Sea Scout ship. We necked belowdecks while my dad, who was one of the adult sponsors of Sea Scouts, steered the ship. Ken had to return to his sailing responsibilities when my dad told another Sea Scout to go find his first mate, dammit, and tell him to quit necking with his daughter.

I don't think we talked a lot. I don't remember having many conversations with him. We did not have an intellectual connection, although he is not unintelligent. I think his plan was to go to Texas A&M, which is not anyone's safe school. He must be doing OK now because he seems to spend a lot of time sailing on a very nice yacht. Oh yes cyberstalking is one of my pastimes. Fake names, people. Fake names online. Unless you want a high-school girlfriend finding out about your life 30 years later. And I suppose if you aren't doing anything to be ashamed of, then being found wouldn't be so bad.

But he was nice. He was a nice, cute, high-school boy and when he told me two weeks before the prom that he didn't want to go out with me any more - we were sitting on the steps in front of Balboa High school, a beautiful building with a pillared porch and red roof tiles - I was wearing a purple gauze skirt with a purple and green floral pattern blouse with gathered shoulders, both of which I had sewn myself, and yet he wanted to break up with me! maybe if I had been wearing the green crinkle cloth sleeveless jumpsuit with the D-ring fastened belt instead? - he was not taking any pleasure in the conversation. I have had men - grown men - just stop calling, so Ken had more guts than some others.

He broke up with me. I wasn't going to get to go to the prom. He hadn't actually asked me, so I should have been a little suspicious, but I didn't know how these things worked and had just assumed that because we spent our lunch period necking that we would also go to the dance together. We had gone to the Sadie Hawkins dance the month before, but I had asked him. It's possible that he realized that just kissing wasn't enough to carry a relationship and he wanted to go to the prom with someone he could actually talk to and who would be able to talk to his friends. He was a Zone kid, which means he had been born in the Canal Zone and gone to school there his entire life. He had longtime friends. I had been living in the Zone for under two years.

There was this girl in my gym class, Frieda, who had long red hair but was not that cute. I was cuter. Really! She was a senior. She would always ask me, So how is Ken? and I would wonder why she was asking me this stuff because what was it to her and it wasn't like she was my friend or anything.

He took her to the prom.

I took grim satisfaction in the rumor/news later that he had spent the night in jail after being pulled over by the Panamanian cops for something probably really minor. Haha! That's what you get for breaking up with me.

In which I humiliate myself with my exercise class instructor

After I broke up with a perfectly nice boyfriend of several years - it's hard when you love someone but know you can never live together, I was at loose ends. I hadn't paid attention to other men for years. I hadn't had to worry about meeting men and first dates and how do you even get that first date? I was not exactly a man magnet.

Sure, I'd had to push men away when I was traveling by myself through South and Central America, but that was because they were latino men and I was an American woman traveling alone and they all knew what that meant: I was easy. They'd seen the movies. They'd seen American TV shows. American women sleep with anyone!

But I was in The South, where women - except me - knew how to wear makeup and do their hair and dress and flirt. My company had moved its corporate HQ from New York to The South years before and rumor had it that the men who had come down from New York were astonished by the women. Nothing against New York women - they are stylish and steely sharp, but southern women cloak their steel in velvet, lipstick and charm.

I started a new exercise class. It met at 5:30 a.m. and was run by a former Marine drill instructor. My excuse for all that follows is that it was at 5:30 a.m., which is not my best time. My perceptions were not as keen as they should have been. Plus I don't wear my glasses when I exercise, so I couldn't see that well, which meant I couldn't see facial expressions that might have helped me interpret words better.

I have made many early-morning exercise mistakes in my life, including snapping at the pregnant woman who climbed into the lane with me at the JCC pool, even though there was an empty lane next to me. "Must you share a lane with me?" I demanded. "There's an empty lane next to us!"

She smiled and changed lanes.

The next day, I saw her in the locker room. I had had time to think about what I had done and was horrified at my rudeness. "I owe you an apology," I said. "There is no excuse for my rudeness yesterday. It won't happen again."

I suppose I should have used the political/public figure apology of, "I'm sorry if you were offended" because why waste an apology on someone who might not have been offended? Maybe she thought my behavior was perfectly acceptable.

And maybe not. She smiled and told me not to worry about it.

The next day, I read a story in the paper about the new rabbi at a nearby temple. A husband and wife rabbi team who were both assigned to that temple. She was expecting their first child. The photo showed the woman I had been so rude to. Oh man.

Back to my exercise class. The instructor, Mark, was divorced. A few years older than me. Confident. Funny. Smart. In amazing shape. Ooo-rah.

He was flirty. Always had a snappy comeback. I can be somewhat mouthy under the right circumstances, so I egged him on.

I mistook his flirtiness for actual interest. In me. Even though he didn't ask me out or make any other indication that he would like to spend time with me outside of class.

One morning, the entire class and Mark went to Perkins for breakfast. I made some smart-aleck comment to Mark and he told me to put on my big-girl panties and deal with it.

This is how much I don't get out: I had never heard that expression before.

That afternoon, I went to Target and bought a flimsy thong. Which I stuffed into a brown envelope. With the note, "Are these the panties you're talking about?"

Oh you're already cringing, as you should be. If only I had cringed before I handed the envelope to him at the end of the next class.

What do you think a man who didn't know me well would think?

How about, Wow! She's hot to trot! I might not want to date her, but if she wants a little fling, well, that's OK with me.

After two days with no comment, I emailed him. "Well?" I asked.

He was hesitant. What am I supposed to tell my 16-year-old son about these if he comes across them? he asked.

I didn't have a good answer for that.

A friend who always had many men asking her on actual dates only she never thought they were dates - What do you mean, just because he picked me up and paid for my supper, he wants to date me? We're just friends! I don't know why he tried to kiss me! - told me that if I were going to do something as stupid as give a man a pair of panties, I should have given him granny panties so I could toss it off as a joke.

But a dainty, lacy thong?

That is a pretty clear message that I am looking to get laid and that is it.

Mark sent me a very nice, thoughtful email.

Gentle Gold-Digger, he wrote, I am most flattered. But I am not looking for a relationship right now. I just broke up with a long-term girlfriend and am taking a rest, focusing on my children.

I was mortified. Because of course what he was really saying was that he was not interested in a relationship with me, which I have to admit was not a bad thing as people are not always a match, but still the rejection stung. It was like that scene in When Harry Met Sally when Sally sees her old boyfriend and he's married to another woman and Sally says, "It wasn't that he didn't want to get married. It's that he didn't want to marry me!" And then she ends up with one of the most annoying men in the world, Billy Crystal, but then it's not like Meg Ryan has covered herself in roses recently either.

And I was also mortified because I really liked his class - after just a month, I could see my abdominal muscles. For the first time ever. I couldn't drop out of the class. I needed to look good so I could find a man who would want a relationship with me.

I just had to endure the humiliation and add another rule to my dating list: the problem is not working with/attending the exercise class of someone you date, it's working with/attending the exercise class of someone you used to date or in front of whom you have humiliated yourself.

In which some people try to set my friend up with a child molester

My friend Liz is lovely. She is smart, pretty, athletic and nice. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Zaire, where she set up a pharmacy inventory system for her region. Speaks French. She has led an interesting life.

She is also a serious Christian of the Protestant sort and is quite involved in her church. Not interested in casual dating with someone who does not share her faith. Which narrows her options but should not mean she should settle.

Some fellow churchmembers approached her after services one day.

We have a man for you, they said.

Really? Liz asked cautiously.

He's really great - we've been friends for years. Nice guy. Never married. He's studying for the ministry right now, they told her.

Well, maybe, Liz said.

There's just one thing...

Oh I KNEW it! Liz thought.

He's a convicted pedophile.

Liz, stunned, said nothing. What would you say?

But he prays about it really, really hard! the friends continued.

No, Liz said. No. No thanks.

She later asked me if she looked so desperate that someone thought she would date a child molester.

No, she did not. Her fellow congregants were trying to upgrade the guy.

And yes, I, too, hope that his conviction will keep him away from any job involving contact with children.

In which two people who should have known better ask what my dad's rank was

Here's the deal about rank in the military: it is soooo much more than a job title. It endows status on the spouse (the general's wife is usually the president of the Officers' Wives Club), it confers privilege (size and location) in housing, it determines pay, it guides weight limits for moving.*

Job titles matter in the civilian world as well, but it's not the same. You don't live with, go to church or synagogue with, shop with and socialize with your co-workers in the civilian world the way you do in the military. They are not your next-door neighbors or your kids' babysitters. Title matters at work and work events, but outside of work, not really.

Some people are hyper-aware of rank, as my friend Michael remembers. He is black and his dad was a colonel. The (black) mother of another kid wouldn't let her son play with Michael because her husband was enlisted and she didn't think it was appropriate for an enlisted man's kid to play with an officer's kid.

Side story: Michael's dad retired when he was 14 and they moved to Memphis, where his dad became a chaplain at the VA. Michael says that's when he experienced racism for the first time in his life. When his dad was in the army, Michael was (if anything), the chaplain's kid or the colonel's kid, but in Memphis, he was the black kid. Except to the black kids, of course, who thought he acted white.

My dad was a bit anti-rank, at least when it came to his kids. We were instructed to call our friends' dads "Mister," not "Major So and so" or "Sergeant So and so."

"I call them that," my dad said. "But you do not. They are 'Mister' to you."

We kids knew who was who, but it didn't matter. We didn't care.

Civilians might ask me what rank my dad was when he was retired, which I always wonder about. Why do they care? Do they know how ranking works? If they do, then they know that they are asking a somewhat rude question. If they don't, then why are they asking at all?

I wouldn't ask someone whose mom or dad had been a college teacher what title they held. To me, all professors are equal, but apparently, there is an entire hierarchy. Big deal. Assistant professor, associate professor, plain professor: they all teach at the college level, right? That's all I need to know. Except the subject. That's important because who doesn't want to know more about the archaeologist dad and the summers spent on the dig in Egypt? Or the food scientist mom developing better ice cream?

But military people - a child or spouse of a serviceman - know what rank is what and what rank means. And they know you don't ask, or at least you don't ask unless it's relevant. It is not relevant in a social setting. Which is why I was so shocked when I attended the wedding breakfast for a friend whose father had also been in the military.

An older lady said to me, after explaining how her husband had retired from the army and how her son was the aide de camp to a NATO general in Turkey, "I hear you and Zoe were friends in high school."

"Yes," I answered.

"What rank was your father?" she asked.

I was stunned. She knew the protocol. She knew what she was asking was the civilian equivalent of, "How much money did your dad make? Even if he made decent money, did he earn it doing something icky like being a drug dealer?** Or was his job high status like surgeon? Did you live in an appropriate neighborhood? Did he belong to the right clubs?"

It was an attempt to place me socially, which is why I hate all "What do you do?" questions anyhow. First, if someone is unemployed, it really stinks to have to answer that, and second, too many people use it as a shortcut to the same thing: how useful can you be to me? I ask people I've just met what movies they've seen or what books they've read lately. I was on the jobless answering end for far too long. Plus I am just a superior human being who knows how to be polite to others.

But I was so shocked that she would ask that I blurted out my answer. She turned away from me without another word. My dad could not help her son be promoted to general.

Wow. I vowed that I would never be caught off guard like that again. Zoe later confirmed to me that the woman was kind of a bitch.

Years later, when I met Primo, Sly and Doris showed no interest in me or my family. Didn't ask me anything about college or my growing up or where my family was now.

Mi gente. I am not a boring person. OK, maybe I'm a bit boring, but I have not lived a boring life. I have lived under two dictators and been around for the aftermath of another. I speak Spanish fluently and can get by in French. I have been all over southern Europe. I was a Peace Corps volunteer and most people want at least to know about the food in my host country. I have lived in three foreign countries and Miami. There are things to talk to me about.

But nope. Not interested.

The one thing Sly asked Primo about me - and he didn't even have the guts to do this to my face because he knew! he knew! he had been in the navy and he knew! - was what rank my dad had held at retirement.

That was the one fact he considered important enough about me to know? What rank my father, who had been dead for about eight years by the time Sly met me, had held at retirement? Why on earth did it even matter? He was never going to meet my dad. My dad had been retired for years before he died and had three other interesting post-retirement jobs, including working on a shrimping boat for a season, just because he had always wanted to do that, teaching aircraft mechanics to members of the Saudi Arabian air force, and teaching junior high math and science on the US Navy base on Sicily. So much more to my dad than his rank and so many interesting things to know about him. But Sly just wanted to place my dad and to judge me by my dad's rank. Jerk.

* Primo laughs because I travel so lightly through life and refuse to buy books ("We can afford them, you know"), but when I was a kid, we couldn't accumulate books because they were heavy.

** Not that I am trying to compare anyone in the military to drug dealers - I am just trying to show that income is not the only way we label a person.

In which my sister gets in touch with her inner Rapunzel

I told you we lived in Spain from 1969 to 1973. This was the Franco era, only one generation removed from the Spanish Civil War, which was not a pleasant time in Spain's history. Read For Whom the Bell Tolls if you want to know more, but really, do you want to know about starving people and villagers making their neighbors run through a gauntlet of hoes and scythes until they are pushed off a cliff to their death? Nasty.

"Only one generation" diminishes the horrors, as well. Even in the past few years, in our trips to Spain (doesn't that sound fancy? "In our trips to Spain!" Us! Frequent world travelers! Thank you, Primo's hard, long hours and frequent flyer miles), Primo and I have seen the miniature elderly Spanish walking slowly on the sidewalk. The first time we saw a white-haired couple, each barely five feet tall, we didn't think much of it. But after the third and fourth and fifth and sixth, we realized there was something going on.

They had been children during the civil war. And had been starved. Their growth had been stunted. I saw an elderly, short couple in my grocery store here a few weeks ago. I didn't even have to hear them speaking Spanish to know they were from Spain.

When we lived there, Spain had not yet recovered. It was still a dictatorship. Many poor people. Where there are poor people, even soldiers can afford household help. Heck, even Peace Corps volunteers can afford help. I had a maid and a gardener when I was in the Peace Corps. Not because I am lazy, even though I am, but because it was cheaper to pay a maid to sort of clean my entire house than to take my clothes to the laundry. And it was cheaper to have a gardener than to buy a lawnmower.

My best friend Lisa's mom and dad had a gardener who undoubtedly worked for many families, maybe even ours, as there was simply not enough work at one house to keep a full-time gardener. But he stored his tools in Lisa's carport.

Lisa's brother, Stevie, who now goes by the more sophisticated "Steve," and my sister, Jenny, knew that's where the tools were. Undoubtedly, they had been forbidden to touch those tools, but is there any fruit sweeter than forbidden fruit?

Let me tell you about my sister at age four.

She was gorgeous. Drop-dead gorgeous. Rosy, chubby cheeks. Twinkling blue eyes. Infectious smile. And curly, long to her butt, flaxen hair.

My mom would take us into Madrid to go to the big market with the dead rabbits hanging from the ceiling. Spaniards would stop, bend down, pinch Jenny's cheek, and coo, "Ay que rubia! Que cute!" Vendors would give her strawberries. They loved her blonde plumpness.

They never pinched my cheek. At seven, with stick-straight, chin-length hair and slightly buck front teeth with a gap between them, I was not cute. I was definitely not cute when compared to my sister. I'm over it. Mostly.

My mom usually put Jenny's hair in a ponytail. Four year olds and long, curly, fine hair are not the most convenient mix, but my mom did not want to cut it. Can you blame her? She had a golden angel.

Then came the day that I returned from school to find my sister's hair - gone. When I had left for school, her hair was long. When I came home, it was short.

Jenny and Stevie had broken into the gardener's tool box.

They found the big, heavy, wood-handled pruning shears.

Stevie lifted the shears to Jenny's head and snip, snip, snip, the ponytail was gone.

They made the rounds of the neighborhood, leaving chunks of hair at each stop, chunks that my mother later collected as she tirelessly re-traced their route.

Jenny was scolded quite severely. She didn't need more than a few harsh words before she would burst into tears. Even now, she gets defensive any time I ask why she is still dating that loser.

My dad didn't think it was as big a deal as my mom did, which did not make my mom happy.

My mom had to trim the long hair on the edges to match the very short hair at Jenny's crown. Jenny looked like a little Mia Farrow when Mia Farrow still looked good and before she got involved with that quasi-incestuous creep.

Hair grows. Good thing, because even at 47, I have been known to take the scissors to my own hair. Jenny's hair grew back, but it grew back straighter and dark blonde. There is probably a moral in here somewhere, like lock up your gardening tools or don't let your four year old play with scissors. But if it hadn't been gardening shears, it probably would have been chewing gum in the hair or who knows what. Not that I ever took a nap with chewing gum in my mouth, despite my mother's warnings, and woken up to find the gum stuck in my hair.

Jenny's hair is now long and curly again. Except she blow-dries it straight. I guess she never did like those curls.

In which I finally kick the diaper habit

This might shock some of you, who think of me as this perfect being, a model to emulate in every way, but - I was a bedwetter.

Yep. I wet the bed until I was seven.

My poor mother.

I did just fine during the day. I was as toilet learned as the next second grader. But at night? Couldn't or wouldn't wake up. I understand that. Even now, I hate to get out of bed in the middle of the night just to pee. It's cold. The toilet seat is cold, although it's not so bad since Primo got me a wooden toilet seat for Christmas.

Oh yes this is a house full of wine, roses and romance. I wanted the heated toilet seat (you laugh, but only if you live someplace that doesn't get cold), but it costs $189, even at Menards, Primo's favorite place to shop, and you have to plug it in. The entire design aesthetic of our downstairs bathroom would have been ruined by a cord running from the toilet, across the vanity (which I hate and which will be replaced AA - After Alimony), and to the outlet.

Now, it's me who has to change the sheets if I wet the bed. I have a strong motivation not to, not to mention that I am 47 years old and bedwetting is not a big problem among women my age. As far as I know.

Back then, it was my mother's problem.

After taking me to the doctor and ascertaining that this was not a physical problem over which I had no control, my mom decided to put the burden of the consequences (or most of them) on me. She put me back in diapers.

Not the fancy diapers they have now, where a kid doesn't even know she's wet, a development that has been great for getting rid of diaper rash but not so great, I have heard, for encouraging toilet learning. (See? I am au courant with all the child-rearing lexicon.) But the old-fashioned cloth kind that fastened with pins and were covered by plastic pants. The kind that sat in a plastic bin with bleach until there was a full load to be washed. You wonder why moms in the 60s didn't have time to meet their friends at Starbucks for a latte? It's because they were washing diapers.

By the time I was seven, I was putting on and removing the diapers myself. Which is pretty sad. Even sadder than the kids who walk up to their mothers, unbutton mom's shirt, and hey! Lunch!

Go ahead. Flame me. But I maintain if your kid is old enough to help himself to the boobie, he is old enough to be weaned. And I would have said so to the women I worked with in Chile who would go through three-hour meetings with a kid casually latched on but it seemed like bad manners. Note that the director of my agency, who kept an infant attached to her naked breast, told me that I had to stop knitting during meetings because it was "distracting."

Knitting = distracting

Naked breast with baby attached = not distracting

We were in the Southern Hemisphere, where the water swirls down the toilet counterclockwise or clockwise but opposite to how it swirls in the Northern Hemisphere, so perhaps other things were opposite, too.

Every night before bed, I would put on my diaper. Every morning, I would take it off.

Not such a big deal, really. I wasn't the one washing them. I still didn't have to get up in the middle of the night to pee, so it was win/win as far as I was concerned.

Then my mom started bribing me. If I could go seven days without a wet diaper, I could have a prize, probably a piece of candy.

I can be bought.

I easily went the seven days.

But then started peeing again because what was in it for me?

Then we hit the trifecta, only with two things, so it was a bifecta.

I spent the night with my best friend Lisa, who lived in the same building we did. We were in Spain at the time and we lived in an off-base housing area with fourplex houses. We lived in 61-D. Lisa was in 61-C. Her phone number was 452, which I knew to say in Spanish to the operator: cuatro cinco dos. I don't remember our phone number because I didn't call it so much.

The housing area, which was not a restricted area the way a military base is, was a combination of US and Spanish culture. Little League, Brownies and Cub Scouts plus Spanish vendors and craftsmen passing through. The knife sharpener rode his bike, blowing a little whistle to announce his presence, and sharpened knives and scissors with a grinder powered by a chain looped to the back wheel. The candy guy sold not just red lollipops and gummy bears but also plastic strips for making lanyards, which was present #2 that we made for our parents after present #1, the clay ashtray from the school art class. Whether our parents smoked or not.

We took Spanish classes in school, wrote letters to the Three Kings at Christmas time, and took field trips to the wax museum in Madrid. This was Franco's Spain, so it was still very poor, which meant that even servicemen of modest means could afford household help. We had a maid who came once a week. First, we had Rosario and then there was Sole. Then there was the gardener and his tools, which he stored by Lisa's house, but I'll tell you about that adventure in another post. Let's just say that perhaps a gardener should not leave pruning shears out where there are little kids who have long hair.

The house isn't there any more, or not the way I remember it. Primo and I went to Madrid a few years ago and took the metro out to Royal Oaks, which had been several miles away from the outskirts of Madrid. Now the city is built all the way out to Royal Oaks.

About least 25 years ago, the Spanish government didn't renew the lease or whatever on Torrejon Air Force Base, where my dad had been stationed, and the housing area also reverted back to the Spanish government, who apparently sold it to private developers who knocked the houses down and built luxury villas with walls in front of them. My house was gone. My yard was gone. Nothing remained of what I remembered: our house, the pool, the school. There is a Facebook group for people who went to Royal Oaks Elementary. Everyone remembers their house number.

I was at Lisa's house. And I had to put on my diaper.

Well that's a little bit embarrassing. Second grade and wearing a diaper is not a big deal if nobody knows about it. But when your best friend finds out?

That's motivation.

Plus being sissy enough that at 10:00 p.m., I decided I didn't want to spend the night any more because it was scary, so Lisa's mom called my mom, who came and got me and my diaper-clad butt.

Shortly thereafter, my mom offered me a 30-day deal: dry diapers for a month and I could have the doll advertised on the back of the cornflakes box.

That, plus the allure of not having to humiliate myself in front of my friends any more, was real motivation. The bifecta. My mom had finally hit the proper combination of incentives, which is always so tricky in any management situation. How to align the interests of the individual (me) with those of the organization (my mother)?

My mom found it. Humiliation + desired toy = dry diapers. I kept dry for 30 days and after that, wet was not acceptable. I had been exposed: I could control it after all. No more cereal-box goodies for me.

In which my sister tries to frame my brother for the Eating of the Forbidden Fruit

When I was in high school, we lived on Howard Air Force Base in the Panama Canal Zone. Many of you may not know what life is like on an air force base, so I will give you a primer. The military person's family size determines the size of house he (in the late 70s, it was mostly "he") and his family get. His rank determines the location. As in, the higher the rank, the higher on the hill the house.

I had two best friends in high school, Jackie (whom I sent into babysitting hell) and Julie. Jackie's dad was a chief master sergeant, I think, and she had one brother, so they were in a three-bedroom duplex house on the flatland. My dad was a captain with three kids, so we had a full house (four bedrooms) on the rise to the hill, but very low on the rise.

Julie's dad was a colonel and the wing commander (he was the highest-ranking officer on Howard - the general lived on a different base), so they lived on the top of the hill. Even though Julie's sister was already away at college and there were just two kids at home, they got a big house because her dad had to entertain a lot. Julie's mom would pay Julie and me $5 each to clean up after the parties. Julie and I discovered that rum and Tab was an awful combination at one party. Nothing like something that tastes like crap to convince you that maybe drinking is not for you.

All the houses looked alike - white stucco with red-tile roofs, first floor open for a carport, patio, and maid's quarters. I don't know of anyone who had a live-in maid. My mom used our maid's quarters as a darkroom. We did, however, have a cleaning lady once a week, but she was not allowed to clean my room or my brother's or sister's room. My mom maintained that the cleaning lady was for her, not for us.

Four blocks away was the movie theater and the pool. Another few blocks to the base exchange, also known as the BX (PX on an army post), and the parade grounds. The parade grounds also served as the soccer practice field. Soccer practice usually ended around the time when the flag was taken down and Taps played, which meant standing still until the song was over. Traffic stopped for Taps as well. That's how we roll on a military base. The national anthem was also played before the movies. People knew to stand and to take off their darn hats and I'm talking to you, Memphis Redbird fans who don't seem to grasp that you 1. take off your hat and 2. quit talking on your darn cellphone for the anthem.

Now to the story. The point of all this background - well, just to give you a mise en scene. And to lead to this fact: on a military base, you know your neighbors. None of this going ten years without ever meeting the people who live next door. (It did take me two years to meet one of my next-door neighbors here, but not because I wasn't interested - I just never saw her.) Everyone is in the same boat. They all work for the same employer. Have the same mission. Everyone is moving in and moving out, so it's hard for feuds to develop and alliances to build. The downside is everyone knows everyone else's business.

To the story. When I was in high school, my mom opened the pantry one day to discover that her one precious can of mandarin oranges was missing.

Big deal, you shrug. So a can of fruit is gone. So what?

A couple of things.

1. It was very difficult to get certain items in the commissary, as everything had to be shipped from the US to Panama. It wasn't like now, where it's fairly easy to find what you want all over the world. It was a little bit like the old Soviet Union, I think, where scarcity ruled and you pounced on what was in stock. The irony in all this is that the oranges available from Panama's Boquete region were delicious and abundant.

2. My mother had made it clear that this item was off limits. She did not take threats to her authority lightly.

She asked which of us had eaten it.

Not I! said the first kid.

Not I! chimed the second.

And not I! claimed the third.

My mom was not satisfied with that answer. She asked again. She got the same answers again.

Fine, she seethed. Whoever ate them, leave the money on the counter and this will be over.

Nobody left the $1.32 on the counter.

My mom was angry. Must have mentioned it to her friend Sue. My sister, brother and I all babysat for Sue. Jenny was at Sue's when she casually mentioned, as she carefully studied her fingernails, that she had seen Greg with mandarin orange juice on his chin.

She whispered to me that she had seen Greg with a can opener a few days before the oranges were consumed.

I knew I hadn't eaten them. Which left my brother or my sister.

Greg protested that he had not eaten the mandarin oranges. He didn't even like mandarin oranges!

But Jenny was steadfast in her denial. Never wavered.

I don't remember what Greg's punishment was. Maybe he didn't get punished, as he maintained he had not done it. Alas, my brother had been known to bend the truth in the past, so his denial was not plausible. (He has since overcome this tendency.)

It wasn't until years later that my sister admitted that she had eaten the oranges.

She had done the crime. And then spread a vast, elaborate web of lies, all designed to take my brother down. My sister, criminal mastermind.

In which Primo and I go on a romantic ten-day vacation and don't wxyz once

This might be TMI for some of you, so I am putting an R rating on this one. If you are squeamish about women's things, then stop reading now. Otherwise, no complaining.

For my engagement gift, Primo got me a Simple Human fancy kitchen trash can because

1. I have fat little fingers that are not enhanced by a ring,

2. I am as thrifty as they come and of an age to understand that any money he spent on a ring would be money not available for other things we wanted, like food,

3. I was sick and darn tired of bending over his 12" ugly plastic kitchen trash can that had to be opened by pressing the release on the lid, which meant lifting my foot 13" and hitting just the right spot, so I could peel onions directly into the can and even then, not getting the peels into the trash because it was too darn small and yes, I learned to peel them into a bowl on the counter, but still, and

4. I wanted to use any extra $5,000 not for a ring but for a trip to Paris. We do not buy that stupid two months' salary bit dreamed up by the diamond industry.

Last Thanksgiving, we took that trip. Not for $5,000 - that went to re-surface our driveway last summer! oh how I love being a homeowner in a cold climate!

It was the perfect storm:

1. A foolproof reason not to visit Sly and Doris for Thanksgiving, as Primo, perhaps hoping for their early demise, has not yet informed his parents that we will never again spend a holiday with them. Not that our freedom has gone unremarked (how, how, how could he take a ten-day vacation to Paris with that castrating golddigging Catholic ho who won't get a job but not come visit them?), but I would much rather deal with an Airing of the Grievances from afar than in their living room. Let them complain. Let them complain from far away.

2. He had to use vacation or lose it.

3. He had enough frequent flier miles to get us there on business class tickets, which is the only way we travel now because we are fancy and enough hotel points for six nights, leaving only three nights for us to pay.

The idea was that we would have a romantic vacation: sleeping late in our Hilton Arc de Triomphe room with its thick walls and sturdy shower and free coffee in the executive lounge, although paying 4 euros at an exchange rate of $1.30/euro for a latte at Starbucks - what? that should bother me?, walking hand in hand through the City of Light, of laughing lightly - tralalalala! at the charming foibles of the French, feeding croissants to each other, kissing at all the romantic spots, like the top of the Eiffel Tower or on the Pont Neuf, and eating long, leisurely lunches at intimate cafes as we watched the world go by.

And, of course, of lots and lots of wxyz, which we are usually too tired to have because Primo works such long hours and I - well, I have no excuse except he comes to bed late and I get up early and we are no longer poulets de printemps.

The stars were aligned for a romantic Paris trip: Primo was going to take a real vacation during a slow time at work, so probably would not be up until 4 a.m. on his computer in the hotel lobby as he was during the first night of our honeymoon in Madrid, we were going to be in a nice, warm hotel, and I had checked the calendar, counted 28 days from the last "x" and discovered I was clear.

But then I didn't get my period. Late, late, late. Took the pregnancy test, drama, drama, drama. Not pregnant but no period.

We got to Paris. Went to our first hotel on Rue Cler, the one we were paying for ourselves. We arrived at about 1 p.m., but they wouldn't let us into our room. We were exhausted, but went out and walked for a few hours, trying to stay warm in the Paris cold that was 15 degrees below what had been forecast.

When we returned, they let us in. We snuck the bread and cheese we had bought past the clerk - no food allowed in the room!, took off our shoes, sat on the bed, ate, and fell asleep. No wxyz.

The next day, we went to the Sewer Museum and walked and walked and walked and walked. Returned to the hotel exhausted, ate, and fell asleep. No wxyz.

The next day, we drove out to Mont St Michel via the Normandy beaches. The sun set at 5:00, so we were navigating from Normandy to the Mont in the dark. In the driving rain. With a map designed to fool the Germans should they get antsy again. We had a crummy, overpriced meal in a restaurant run by a snippy waiter, then went to bed, exhausted. No wxyz.

The next day, we returned to Paris. Hit town at rush hour. Got in the wrong lane and were forced off the road we needed to be on. Lots of panic and Oh noes! Got back onto the spiderweb of Paris streets and made it to Hertz, but not without a lot of drama.

Some couples bond over this sort of thing. We do not. We fight and get cranky. By the time we got to the Hilton, which is where we were staying for the rest of the trip, we were not happy with each other and we were again, exhausted. Went to sleep. No wxyz.

The next day, we got enough sleep. We were in a good mood. We ate a delicious Paris lunch. SH did not work. We had a lazy, lovely romantic day. Returned to the hotel for some wxyz.

And discovered that guess what?

My period had waited until now to arrive.

Two and a half weeks late.

Which meant no nice romantic vacation wxyz.

In which Doris reaches out to me by sending me her used books and three mail-order catalogues

Doris complains to Primo that I reject her frequent attempts at friendship. Such recent attempts have included The Airing of the Grievances, Parts 1 and 2, at Primo's New Year's visit to them. Sly and Doris would probably be shocked to learn that what they tell Primo does not fall under the seal of the confessional but is in fact shared with me. Every. Single. Word. Some might say that in the interests of marital harmony, Primo should not tell me what his parents say, but I say in the interests of good blogging, he should reveal it all. Wouldn't you agree?

Other recent friendship attempts ("Reaching Out," as Doris terms it. She REACHES OUT to me ALL THE TIME) include sending a Christmas card. I don't send them one, but that's because they are Primo's parents, not mine. He is in charge of their birthdays and Mother's Day and Father's Day and their Christmas; I am in charge of these events for my own mother.

Marriage does not automatically confer responsibility for card and gift giving on the wife. They are still his parents. In Primo's defense, he has never asked me to take care of these things, although I was not pleased that we had to leave 30 minutes early for a play last month so we could go by the post office to drop off Doris' birthday card so it would get to her in time.

"Did you not know your mom's birthday was December 10th this year?" I asked him. "Did they change the date from its usual December 14th?"

Another Reaching Out was the request that I return to Doris her mother's wedding ring, which Doris gave to me when we got married. I actually don't mind sending the ring back so Doris can give it to Primo's niece (who is named in my will as the recipient of the ring), because I don't like wearing rings and it just sits in my jewelry box. I do mind that Doris asked that a gift be returned to her.

I mailed the ring last week. As my own Reaching Out. Doris sent an email to Primo yesterday telling him that she had received the ring and for him to tell me thank you.

Even Primo thought that was lame. "After you go through all that trouble to send it, she couldn't write an email to you?" he asked.

After New Year's, she sent some used placemats back with Primo. Told him we could give them to Goodwill if we didn't want them. As Doris and I do not share the same taste (see how gracious I am being? "we do not share the same taste" is a nice way to say that my house will never be filled with plaster, ceramic, bronze and iron pigs), the placemats will go to Goodwill after they have sat in a drawer for a suitable amount of time. I did not write a thank-you note.

The most recent Reaching Out was when Doris mailed me from her book collection a novel I had already read, a 30-year-old guide to opals, a gardening book, and three mail-order gardening catalogues.

No note.

Just used books. And mail-order catalogues.

I took the books to the library, tossed the catalogues, and debated what to write in my thank-you note because of course I have to write a thank-you note or else I am an ingrate.

First decision: paper or email? I prefer paper with Doris because it doesn't give her a chance to respond. If I email her something, she will answer and if I don't answer her answer, or even if I do answer her answer but my answer isn't long enough, then I am Rejecting Her Reaching Out and then I am stuck in an infinite loop.

But I guess I can exchange a few emails with her if it will make Primo's life easier. I guess.

I write her an email telling her that I had read the book for book club and had really liked it. I toss in the conversation-starting comment that the guy who always find something not to like didn't like the book because he thought the writer was too hard on the Germans.

It was a World War II novel. About the occupied Channel Islands. Written from the English perspective.

The Germans are not the heroes here.

I mention a few other books we have read in book club. Point out the cranky guy's response to those books, one of which was a memoir by a man who escaped from China. (We are being too harsh on Mao and the Cultural Revolution! Who are we to judge? a comment that got Lynn, the second-most liberal person in the group to snap that in this country, people are not shot or starved or tortured for their political beliefs.)

An email to inspire conversation, right?

No answer. None.

So now do I get to complain that I have Reached Out and Doris is Rejecting Me?

In which I am Late and decide to go back on the pill

Don't get all squeamish on me just because I'm going to talk about Female Things. First, this is the blog my mother does not read and even if she came across it accidentally, she would know to stop reading immediately because I had not told her about this blog and if I hadn't told her, there was a reason and even more importantly, she is not a boundary violator the way Sly and Doris are, and second, I wrote about having a miscarriage. Surely, I can write about a far more common occurrence. To quote my friend Heather, "We're not statues, you know." Although she used a modifier for "statues" that I am not comfortable typing, so your imagination will have to suffice. Basically, she was describing something statues can't actually do, so you're not missing anything.

I am 47 years old. Despite Kelly Preston and John Travolta's recent happy event and their claim that she conceived the old-fashioned way (and indeed, she may have), it is not that common for women of my age to find themselves in the family way without a lot of medical intervention.

Nature is smart: unless you are very rich and can afford a nanny to watch your kid, a maid to clean your house, and a cook to prepare your meals, it's not the wisest thing to have an infant at this age. We pre-AARPers need our sleep. I wear earplugs just so I don't hear the cats whining at 8:00 a.m., demanding to be fed.

I believe that sort of thing is frowned upon when it comes to human babies.

Yet it does happen. Change of life babies are not unheard of. I thought it was unlikely for me given the miscarriage so I hadn't bothered to go back on the pill after the miscarriage.

But a few months ago, I found myself with very bad skin all of a sudden. Not just the mild breakout you get on the forehead from wearing the same hat over and over to shovel snow. Who knew a hat could harbor acne bacteria? But the deep, slow, cystic pimples that take about a month to run their course, not including the fading of the scar, which takes months, and that meanwhile, sit on the forehead or the chin or both in raised, red, not coverable by makeup insolence, drawing attention to themselves so that they are the only thing visible. Neon flashing pimples announcing to the world that they are here! HERE!

What the? Why was I breaking out like that? It had been years since that had happened! I started slathering Clearasil on my face like it was sunblock.

Then I didn't get my period.

Shrug. OK. No period. Big deal. I'm a 23-29 dayer. Used to be a strict 28-dayer but that was in my 20s. I'm getting close to the Big M and these things happen. I thought the extra few days were just menopause sneering at me, spitting in my face and saying, Hahahahahaha! You might exercise and wear sunblock and color your hair, but beneath it all, you are still getting old and your ass is mine!

But then - still no period. Thirty six days and nothing?

"Maybe you're pregnant," Primo suggested.

"No," I answered firmly. "No way. I cannot be pregnant. I do not want to be pregnant."

Still, I was concerned. The formula for pregnant last time was bad skin + late period.

"You could be," Primo reiterated a few days later.

"I better not be," I snapped. I moped around the house, shoveling chocolate into my mouth. I was cranky and brusque.

"Maybe you should take a pregnancy test," he suggested.

"No!" I said.

"But why not?" he asked.

"I don't want to take the stupid test," I told him through gritted teeth. Then I moped some more. And moaned, "I don't want to be pregnant!"

Primo started moping, too.

"What is your problem?" I snapped.

He hesitated. "Is the reason you don't want to be pregnant is that you don't want to have a baby with me?"

"What?! No! No!"

He looked unconvinced.

"I just don't want to never sleep through the night again and I don't want to be putting a kid through college when we're going on Social Security," I told him. "I like our life the way it is. Yeah, it would have been nice to have a baby a few years ago and we would have adjusted, but now? We're just too old."

I also mentioned the bad genetics on his side: his sister was mentally ill and his nephew is retarded. Combine that with old eggs and it's a recipe for a sick baby. A healthy baby would be hard enough, but a sick one would be unthinkable. Who would take care of him once Primo and I were dead?

I convinced Primo that I loved him dearly (easy to do because I do - he is wonderful, lovely, the best thing in my life) but still there was no period.

Day 39, we were getting ready to go out of town. "Don't you want to know one way or another?" he asked.

"No!" I shouted. "I want to be able to hope that I'm not! If I take the test and it's positive, then it's all over. Our lives change completely. I want the possibility that I'm not."

Primo, who is, as you know, an engineer and very logical about almost everything, was baffled by my response. "You know that's crazy, don't you?" he asked.

"Better to cling to that sliver of hope," I told him.

But he prevailed. We went to Walgreen's, my face announcing that we should spend some time in the skin-care aisle, and bought a kit with two tests in it, just in case there was a positive that we wanted to double check. We went home and I drank a diet Dr Pepper, which takes about five minutes to run through me. (Like beer, you don't buy diet soda, you rent it.) I went into the bathroom, closed the door, because we do not pee in front of each other, and did what needed to be done.

Zipped, told Primo to come in. We both watched the stick, fingers crossed.

Negative!

Oh we were so relieved. Yes, we would have overcome our surprise and shock and would have converted the guest room to a nursery and we would have been happy to do it, not the least because a baby would have been the perfect excuse not to travel to visit Sly and Doris for at least the next five years because who exposes her kid to drunks? Or mean people? and of course they couldn't come here because there wouldn't have been room for them to stay, as Primo and I are no longer willing to sleep in the basement just so they can have our bedroom.

Plus who doesn't like babies? It would have been fun to have a baby. We would have adjusted. We would.

But. Negative.

Loved that pink line.

My period finally showed up five days later. I emailed my doctor and asked for a new prescription for the pill. I can't go through that kind of drama again, even if it means I throw away the unused test.

In which I take a customer to lunch and he gets way too personal so I slap him down

Back when I still had a job that paid money, as opposed to the bone-wearying labor I do now of keeping a house clean for two people and two cats and watching soap operas the rest of the time, just waiting for the moment that Primo goes on a business trip so my boyfriend can come over, I interacted with customers. I was the marketing manager for a corrugated box used for high-value produce, which might not sound very glamorous and that's because it wasn't, but I still liked it.

Not everything: there is nothing like going to a produce trade show in Orlando over the weekend because of course nobody would schedule such a show during the week because that would mean that people would miss work and we couldn't have that, could we?

But mostly. It really was fun and it dealt with food, one of my favorite subjects. I didn't travel that much, but when I did, it was to places like California and Florida and Chile to visit customers, who were grape or peach or pear growers and all of whom insisted that I sample their wares frequently. In Chile, even sent me off with a case of tree-ripe peaches (the peaches you get in the grocery store don't even begin to compare) that alas, I could not take back to the US with me, the USDA being the picky nitpickers that they are.

Oh yes I have a bone to pick with the USDA, who confiscated $100 of serrano ham from Primo and me upon our return from Madrid the first time. We declared it on our customs form and when the customs agent asked to see it, we were stupid enough to give him all four packages. We forgot about the sausage in our bag.

The sausage went unmolested because Memphis' sniffer dogs were looking for drugs, not meat. Our serrano ham?

Into the trash. Although we did tell the guy to please at least eat it so it wouldn't go to waste. But we could have given him a little decoy sausage and had the ham all for ourselves, except we were too honest. For dumb.

What made it worse? I called the USDA before our next trip to Spain to ask about the serrano ham rules and the very nice woman I spoke to said it was fine with the USDA if I brought serrano ham into the country. But Customs said no. I couldn't get anyone to come to consensus, so we just stuffed ourselves on serrano ham from El Museo de Jamon while we were there. We eat bacon while we're stateside now. It's easier. (Bacon-wrapped tater tots are on the menu for Superbowl Sunday. Don't you wish you were at our house, sitting in the cold basement with the big TV, eating bacon-wrapped tater tots, watching the Packers win?)

My other customers were the grocery store chains because they were the ones who could put the pressure on the produce growers to buy our very expensive box. The produce manager at the Albertson's a few miles from the office had been really helpful. We had shot some ads in his store. At 5 a.m. Oh that was a good time. He knew a lot about the industry and always answered my questions.

I wanted to talk to him in detail about some of the issues and asked if I could come by the store.

He suggested lunch.

Or maybe I did, thinking that if he was going to share his knowledge with me, I could at least buy him a hamburger. I had a corporate AmEx and wasn't afraid to use it.

I proposed meeting at the restaurant but he said I should come by the store. I said I could drive us, but he wanted to drive. Not unlike Primo, who is a complete control freak and who cannot stand to be a passenger, especially if I am behind the wheel. I am not a bad driver, but he thinks I am too cautious, which is probably true, as I am the one who always gets caught. He drove his car for seven years in Wisconsin without a front license plate as required by law. It wasn't until I was driving to my grandmother's funeral last summer that a cop noticed. I was the one who was stopped. Me. Always me. I am always the one who gets caught.

Back to customer (let's call him "Bert"). Bert wanted to drive?

Bert can drive.

I got into the car, which was one of those low-slung guy cars with only two seats. The kind I snicker at because I assume it is an attempt to compensate for a lack elsewhere, if you know what I mean.

Before I go any further, I should tell you more about Bert. He was a genuinely nice guy. Middle-aged, gray, balding, too thin, too much smoking, too worried. Recently divorced and recently moved to Memphis. Lonely.

Too lonely.

He radiated loneliness.

I had no interest in his loneliness. I wanted him for business purposes and nothing else. His loneliness was not my problem.

But after we got into his car, he put in a Kenny G CD and soft saxophone music wafted out of the speakers.

Then he mentioned his divorce. And his recent move to Memphis. And how he hadn't met many people yet.

I tried to steer the conversation back to plums and tomatoes.

Got him back on track for a little while until we had placed our orders and were waiting for our food.

He leaned over the table, looked at me earnestly, and asked, "How is it that you're not married?"

My eyes popped open in surprise. He was telling me all kinds of personal things - against my will, I might add - but I had not volunteered any such information to him other than my college and that was because his son was getting his PhD at the same place.

I had recently read a Miss Manners column on the etiquette of intrusive questions and thought this would be the perfect opportunity to put her advice into action. Actually, I had been dying to use her phrase.

"I beg your pardon?" I asked frostily.

He started to re-state his question, then my answer hit his brain and he realized I had understood him perfectly. He blushed and his words came to a mumbling end.

He got the point. My frosty haughtiness had put him in his place.

And I felt awful. He shouldn't have asked the question, but I was mean to him. I could have just laughed lightly and said, "Oh Bert we don't want to talk about such a boring thing! Now tell me some more about how you source your treefruit!" I could have re-directed the conversation just fine without shaming him. First, because I still needed his cooperation, but second and more importantly, there is no reason to be mean to someone who is just a bit bumbling. The response Miss Manners recommended was more ideally suited for someone who is obnoxiously pressing. Fight fire with fire. Frosty > obnoxious. But frosty is way overkill for nice bumbling.

We finished our meal. I asked him my questions and made notes in my spiral-bound notebook. We drove back to the store. No Kenny G this time. He understood.

In which Primo wants to talk about his dad's man parts and I get sick to my stomach

Primo: My dad says he regrets letting them circumcise me and my brothers.

Me: Well, I do think it's mutilation. If we'd had a little boy, I would have been against it.

[More conversation about the issue, pros and cons]

Primo: Maybe it's not such a bad thing. My dad [who is, I gather, not, which is far more than I want to know about that issue] says that he has problems with -

Me: Stop! I do not want to hear about your dad's [parts]!

Primo: But -

Me: No! I mean it! DO NOT TALK ABOUT YOUR DAD'S [PARTS] WITH ME!

In which my mother slaps me and I deserve it

Remember how I told you my dad was not a violent man? My mother is not a violent woman, but I did once give her cause to slap me across the face. Even now, I know I deserved that slap for being a mouthy, uppity, bitchy kid.

My dad stopped spanking us when I was little. He decided it was not a good idea to hit his own kids. I don't remember when this event came to pass. Perhaps it was after the time when I, a budding four year old Cassatt, drew on my bedroom wall with crayon.

I knew I wasn't allowed to do that. I knew.

When my dad instructed me to wash the crayon off the wall, I respectfully declined. I should add here that it wasn't exactly our house to deface. We lived on base housing. The way base housing works is that the walls are white when you move in and need to be white when you move out. If you want to paint the walls purple, that's fine, but they need to be white when you move out. At move out, the house gets inspected and it needs to pass inspection.

There are some pros to this micromanagement on a military base. Nobody's lawn goes unmowed. There are no rusting, wheel-less cars propped up on cinder blocks in the front yard. People drive the speed limit. There is no litter. Parents don't worry about their kids walking home after dark.

But - the reason it's like this is because your career suffers if your lawn isn't cut. Or if your kids act up. Yeah - if the MPs catch a kid doing something he's not supposed to be doing more than a few times, they don't bother calling the parents. They call the (usually) dad's boss. How would you like it if when your kid was caught speeding, the cops called your boss instead of you?

Houses need to pass inspection.

That doesn't leave a lot of room for personal expression in the decor.

Crayoned walls do not pass inspection.

When my dad told me to wash the wall and I refused, he told me again.

No.

He told me if I didn't, he would spank me.

Oh heck to the no. You are not the boss of me! was my four-year-old mantra.

He spanked. My dad was good on follow through. No empty threats from him.

I refused.

This went on for a while, threatening to spank, spanking, until I finally, furious, with tears running down my cheeks, hiccupping, surrendered and scrubbed that wall.

After that, my dad devised more creative ways to punish us. If I slammed the door, he made me walk through the house ten times, opening and closing each door quietly. Acting up in church - which was a given, seeing as we, at the ages of 5, 7 and 9 were not bribed with food, toys or books but actually expected to sit, kneel and stand still for an entire hour - was met with sitting in the corner. Really, kneeling in the corner. Straight up. No slouching. Hands behind the back. A kid in each corner on most Sundays.

Lots of grounding. Which didn't bother me so much because I didn't want to go anywhere anyhow.

My mom was the master of the slow burn. She was more of the silent treatment, "You've really disappointed me" guilt-trip type, but I don't remember any big dramatic punishments. You should know that I rarely did anything worthy of punishment once I was past my drawing days. I was a boring kid who just didn't challenge authority much. Unlike the rabble-rouser you see before you today.

But one day, I wanted my mom to buy something that I could not afford with my 50 cents a week allowance that was supplemented by my 50 cents an hour babysitting jobs. I could have dug up dandelions for half a penny apiece (full root must be attached) or washed my dad's car for any loose change I could find under the seats, but either I didn't want to work or neither of those jobs would have yielded enough cash.

I was badgering her and whining and she snapped and told me to knock it off.

"Why do you care?" I asked. "It's Dad's money."

Oh silence.

Oh bad silence.

Some background.

My mother was the valedictorian of her high school class. She went to college on a full scholarship but dropped out after her freshman year to marry my dad, whom she met at the bar of the bowling alley of their hometown after she had taken her younger twin brothers to a high-school basketball game. The twins went home with someone else. My dad drove my mom home at 2 a.m. They necked in the car, then he got stuck in the snow. He called his brothers to haul him out rather than wake my grandfather, whose motto about kids coming in late was, "Don't bother to go to bed [because you need to milk the cows in an hour anyhow]."

She had three babies right away, for that was how things worked back then. My dad went to war. She stayed back here with three kids under five. He came home, we moved. And we moved. And we moved. Every time we moved, my mom managed the process.

We lived abroad. For wives of soldiers, there are not many employment options, as the short-term, non-career type jobs that one would normally take in those situations - secretary, cashier, lifeguard - were reserved for people in the civil service or for foreign nationals from the host country.

When I was in high school, the only jobs available for me and my friends were babysitting and lawnmowing. Lifeguarding, working at the movie theater, teaching swimming, bagging groceries - all reserved for Panamanian nationals.

It wasn't as if my mom had the chance to have her own career. The jobs just weren't there and even if there had been opportunities, who wants to hire someone who's moving in a couple of years?

Had my mom not gotten married and had a family when she did - had she finished college and struck out on her own for a while - I have no doubt she would have broken barriers right and left. She is amazingly smart, scarily organized, and ruthlessly tactful. She could have climbed any corporate ladder she wanted to. She had the ability. And she knew it. She loved her family but wasn't always thrilled to have her interests subordinated to my dad's.

My dad couldn't have had a family and had his career at the same time if my mom had not been there in the background. He could have done it as a bachelor, but if they both had been working outside the house, neither of them would have ever slept.

But I was a snotty kid and thought I would be a smartass.

"Why do you care? It's Dad's money."

That was when the hand flew up from my mother's side and made contact with my face.

Oh snap.

My mother had never slapped me before.

But I had never been this bitchy before.

I'd have to say we were even. You can't take back words, even as you see them hanging there before you in all their insulting glory.

You can't take back a slap - an instinctive reaction to a breach of protocol and civility so strong that it leaves one breathless.

Many years ago, my mom apologized for The Slap. She'd felt bad about it for a long time.

Uh uh, I told her. I deserved that slap. It was earned fair and square.

In which I punch a neighbor in the nose and she gives me a black eye

My dad was not a violent man. He was not quick to anger. I never saw him get in a fight or a major argument, although my brother surely tried his temper more than once. There was that time - but my brother ended up in the Corps at A&M and nothing more was said about it.

My dad was quite fond of political debate, though, and argued, via my daily messenger service between the two, with my seventh-grade Texas history teacher, Mr Wilson, he of the short-sleeved doubleknit polyester jumpsuits in many colors, about whether one votes for the party (Mr Wilson) or the man (my dad, a GDI).

Mr Wilson tried to convince us seventh graders that we should affiliate ourselves with a party for that was the path to political power, but the only power I wanted as a junior high student was the power to transform myself into a popular girl, an event as likely to come to pass as the sun falling from the sky. And yet I dreamed.

I needed something to pass the time in class, because it was sooo boring. I realize now that it was Mr Wilson's droning voice that made the battle of San Jacinto and Santa Ana making his escape in an enlisted man's uniform and how Texas retained the right to divide into five states seen dull rather than the actual content, for as anyone who has read a drop of Texas history knows, it is not dull at all. And now that I have read the grown-up versions of things, with the Tennessee ne'er do wells hightailing it to Texas, it is even more intriguing.

Along with Mr Wilson's political views, I also took home to my dad my whining that history was boring, an accusation that diminished Mr Wilson even further in my dad's eyes. My dad, who had been a Russian history major, was appalled that Mr Wilson was making history tedious. Texas history! Boring! Only the worst of the worst of teachers could make Texas history dull.

Yet even with all of that, my dad never found it necessary to hit Mr Wilson.

I, however, had found around then that a judicious punch in the nose is the appropriate solution in some cases. Sometimes, war is the answer and anyone who thinks it is not is perfectly happy to rest on the blood of soldiers without acknowledging the rightness of their cause. Do you really want to be an English colony still? Do you really want the South to be a separate, slave-holding nation?

I have not punched anyone for decades, but the times I did, I do not regret. It wasn't necessary to stop a genocide or to protect my property, but it did feel good. Yes. Punching someone in the nose can feel good. As long as you are not punched back. That's the key. Hit first and then get away.

The first time I punched someone in the nose, I got in my shot and it was over. In retrospect, I didn't need to hit this girl and I probably shouldn't have, but at the time, it seemed like a good idea.

My best friend Lisa and I were maybe ten. Our families had gone out for pizza. Lisa and I were through eating, so we went outside to run up and down the sidewalk. Holding hands. For that is what little girls do with their best friends: they hold hands. There is nothing sexual about it and even if there were, so what? So the heck what? She was my best friend. We held hands. So there.

Some older girls saw us and started name calling. They called us "fags," which was a word that meant nothing to me as the concept of homosexuality had not yet entered my life. I will bet they didn't know what it meant, either.

Back then, kids didn't have to learn about condoms and venereal disease and alternative lifestyles in fourth grade. We did learn about the biology of it, even in Catholic school, where we had the movie about the fallopian tubes and the vas deferens and menstruation, but there were no how-to diagrams, which left me baffled as to the mechanics of sex for a very long time, as the only live penis I had seen was my younger brother's and it was in a resting state, if you know what I mean, so how anything was supposed to get from Part A to Part B was a mystery. The idea that two Part As or two Part Bs might somehow get together was unimaginable.

Yet I knew just from the way they were saying "fag" that it was not a compliment.

Lisa and I stopped in front of the name callers.

"If you don't stop saying that, I'm going to punch you in the nose," I said. (Advice: if you are ever in a real fight where you are truly threatened, don't tell the person you are going to hit him. Just hit him -in the crotch - no point in playing fair with someone who means you harm - and run.)

The one girl bent over so her face was right in front of mine, then very slowly and deliberately said, "Fag."

So I punched her in the nose. And made her cry.

It felt good. But it was completely unnecessary. Better to walk away from that kind of situation than to hit someone. Still, I'll bet she thought twice before she name called again.

The next time I hit someone, it wasn't necessary, either. But it still felt good. That's the problem with hitting: it's so satisfying when done right.

We lived in a cul-du-sac in Lubbock. Nice neighbors all around us. G-mother and Alan next door, our adoptive grandparents with the candy drawer and the TV. We were not supposed to watch TV over there, despite G-mother's repeated invitations. My parents did not have a television not because we could not afford it. "Are you poor?" would be the horrified response to learning of our TV-less state, as nobody could imagine any possible reason for someone who could afford it not to have a TV.

We didn't have a TV because my parents didn't want us to waste time watching when there were soccer games to be played and books to be read. When we were visiting my grandparents, we got to watch Wild Kingdom and Walt Disney, but as soon as Sonny and Cher came on, the TV was either turned off or we were sent out of the room.

When I was in eighth grade, my parents bought a TV that only rarely was turned on. We were allowed to watch Happy Days, which my parents liked, especially my dad, as he had gone to college in Milwaukee. My mom and dad watched Mary Hartman Mary Hartman after we had gone to bed.

This TV deprivation led me to some bad decisions as a college student and as an adult, when I would watch complete trash, just because of my earlier deprivation. At the same time, I was not getting drunk every weekend (or at all) as a college student because if I ever wanted a taste of my dad's beer, he would let me have some. TV, not alcohol, was the forbidden fruit at my house.

The moral of this story is that you should let your kids have a little bit of everything so that they don't go crazy when they are on their own.

Back to our cul-de-sac. Next to G-mother and Alan was a family with three little girls. Then there was Renee's family. Renee was a teenager who wore halter tops, bell bottoms, and blue eyshadow and was an object of awe to us all. She smoked. She had a boyfriend. Who had a car.

And that's where the conflict was.

Renee's boyfriend liked to drive really fast in our little cul-de-sac. The cul-de-sac with the three little girls who played in their yard. With my sister, who was in third grade - not a big kid - who also played in the yard. And my brother and his friend Lynn, who played in the yard.

My dad asked Renee's boyfriend to slow down. There are kids here, he said. They play. The run into the street without looking. You could hurt someone.

The boyfriend did not slow down.

The next time Boyfriend was spinning his wheels in the cul-de-sac, my dad called the police. Who came, gave Boyfriend a talking to or a ticket or whatever.

Renee was not happy about this.

One day, I was out playing in the yard when Renee was out. She started talking smack about my dad and I said you better shut up or I'm going to punch you in the nose and she didn't so I hit her and she hit me back and gave me a black eye.

See? I broke my own rule. Hit, then run so you don't get hit back.

Although in a situation where the hitters are known to each other and one hits and the other does not get to retaliate, there is an hit undelivered just waiting to happen. If I had hit Renee and then run before she could hit me and restore the natural order of the universe, who knows what horror would have awaited? I would have had to check my bike for a bomb every morning before setting off for school. Maybe it was better that we hit each other and got it over with.

I have not been in a fight since. Not a punching one, that is. I have had simmering resentments with female co-workers that might have been better resolved with a quick slap or two rather than with smiles to the face and daggers to the back for months on end and yes, I am talking to you, SG, who tried to connect with me on LinkedIn last week. Did you think I would have forgotten how you tried to undermine me for so long? Well I didn't.

Renee and I did not fight again. My mother witnessed the whole thing and documented my black eye with her camera.

We're weird like that.

She took the photo after whispering to me fiercely, "I'm glad you hit her."

Which wasn't exactly the endorsement of passive resistance one would expect from a parent, but there you go. The warrior gene in my family came from my mom.

In which I fail to navigate many minefields appropriately

Why I am PNG with Primo's family right now.

1. I used Bad Cabbage, whatever that is, at our wedding. Two years and four months ago. No, that would not be that I cut up spoiled cabbage for the coleslaw but that I peeled off the outer leaves or trimmed the cut edge of an older cabbage to reveal the dewy green remains. The outer leaves/trimmed edges would have gone down the disposal. (Now, they go into the compost as we have seen the composting light.) This complaint was released from the Vault of Reasons Gold Digger is a Bad Person Who is Unworthy of Any Respect or Consideration last week. Who knows what else I did wrong that week that will be revealed in years to come? Last year, we discovered that I had Not Offered Oatmeal. Oh the humanity.

2. I rinse and re-use ziplock bags. You know - the ziplock used for leftover rolls. Or cheese still in its original wrapper that you don't feel like wrapping in Saran Wrap so just toss in a ziplock. Not the ziplock you use for the leftover fatty steakbone. That's too hard to wash. Apparently, this makes me too frugal. Primo pointed out that his parents are very concerned with power plant emissions but not with the trash they generate in their own home, which is considerable and indeed far more, by orders of magnitude, than Primo and I create.

3. I referred to Ted Kennedy as a murderer who had used his political influence to escape justice and made an admittedly tasteless joke about a Kennedy line of window breakers for use in escaping a car that is underwater. However, the wrath that came my way was not because of sympathy for Mary Jo but because the angry person, who called me a "dipshit" and an "asshole," told me he felt sorry for me, said that I had dropped in his estimation and right after Primo had done so much to improve me in his standing, and who asked if I had known Ted Kennedy personally and if I had ever been to that bridge [because that's the only way one can know the truth about an event whose basic facts are not in dispute?] is apparently the president of the Ted Kennedy Fan Club.

A simple, "You know, I really respected a lot of what Kennedy did. He's a hero of mine for the things he accomplished. I'd rather not discuss that aspect of his life" would have been more than adequate. I would have shrugged, said I was sorry, didn't realize it was such a sensitive subject, and moved on. But the vitriol I got for my comments rather disincline me to any further communication with this person.

4. I have not gotten the feedback on this one yet but I am waiting. Primo's mom sent me a package containing a novel I had already read, a gardening book (I have many already plus there is - ta da! - the internet! all the information you would ever want, right at your fingertips) and a book about opals. And three catalogues. I wasn't sure what to say to Doris but decided to Reach Out to her as she claims she has been Reaching Out to me. I sent her an email rather than a handwritten thank you note because an email invites a response. I indicated that I had already read the novel and loved it and chatted about it briefly.

I have not gotten a response. Either my email was grossly inadequate and Primo will be getting an earful about it on Sunday or her fingers are paralyzed.

Oh UPDATE!

The Angry Person in #3 copied his response to me to Primo and his mom and dad because Angry Person is SIX YEARS OLD and that is how we handle a problem: we blind copy everyone so as to share our righteous indignation. Doris wrote to Primo that Angry Person maybe over-reacted a bit, but evidently Doris is siding enough with Angry Person that she is not answering my thank-you email. That is all conjecture. Maybe she really is unable to get to the computer since the BCC.

Primo and I, after taking a deep breath and wondering why Primo is the only nice person in his family, roll our eyes and agree that such lunacy is to be pitied.

Primo did point out how mean my family is to him.

Oh wait.

Even my very conservative uncle who is a bigot but no longer uses certain words in my presence and has been chastised by his own wife for using that word loves Primo. My gun-owning, hunting, religious, small businessman, not college going uncle. Loves Primo, who is about as opposite from Uncle as he can be. Loves Primo and engages in political conversation with him because he really wants to understand why Primo thinks the way he does. Has rational, calm, civilized political discussions as they grill the steaks because he LOVES PRIMO and is intrigued by their differences.

Nobody in my family has ever called Primo an asshole or a dipshit. Yes, my cousin licked him, but we just avoid her now.