Nerd Husbandry

(I'm so sorry to have left this blog lying dormant for so long. There's been a lot going on, including getting ready for the Live Wire gig that happened on Saturday. Here's the piece I read. Let me know if you like it! --SB)

If one were to use reality TV as a bellwether, one would have to assume that the dating scene in America right now is bleak. Tune in to an episode of Rock of Love, Dating in the Dark or, my personal favorite, Tool Academy and it seems obvious that any woman with a brain in her head and the boobs she was born with wouldn’t have a chance at finding anything but a prescription for antibiotics were she to wade into the dating pool. But I’m here to tell you that there’s a better way. If you’re looking for someone to share the rest of your life with, someone who’s smart and funny and doesn’t list ‘abs’ as a life goal, you need to forget everything you think you know about men. That’s what I did and I’ve never been happier. My secret? I married a nerd.

And you can, too.

When I was in high school, the absolute worst social classification you could receive was Nerd. Of course, this makes perfect sense, because what is a nerd but a person who is incapable of being anything other than exactly who they are? Nerds are nonconformists and nonconformists are to high school what wood is to a wood chipper. But that’s okay. Because if I’ve learned anything during my 15-plus years of nerd husbandry, it’s that high school is where the good nerds are made. It’s where they learn the important lessons that will shape the men they will become, lessons like “If you’re funny you’re less likely to get the crap kicked out of you.” And “Take Theater because girls will let their guards down if they think you’re gay.” These are the pivotal years in which the nerd develops the key characteristics that will eventually win you over. These aren’t easy years by any means, but they’re important. So whether he bravely carried a Spider Man lunchbox in the eleventh grade or endured a bi-weekly pantsing by someone named Chad, a nerd always leaves high school with his best years still ahead of him.

But the popular boys? Let’s just say that anyone who experienced the best years of his life between the ages of 15 and 18 is not a good long term prospect. That’s something we girls always told ourselves after Chad so coldly passed us over for the prom: Just wait, someday he’ll end up fat and working at a car dealership. And now, thanks to the miracle of Facebook, we can actually confirm that it’s true. So while the former head cheerleader comes home to find that Chad has cleared out their savings to pay for hair plugs and ManSpanx, you can come home to a smart, thoughtful husband who treats you like the goddess you are.

Now, before you rush out to find a nerd of your own, there are a few things you should look for and a few things you should watch out for. We’ll start with the good stuff. First and foremost, nerds are smart. Unencumbered by a social life, a love life or an aptitude for team sports, adolescent nerds spend their free time studying. And then they go on to college, where they continue to not play sports, not join fraternities and not blow all but a dozen brain cells on recreational drugs. As a result, nerds enter the adult world armed with college degrees, functioning brains and even more insight on how not to treat women.

Which brings me to my next point: nerds are successful. Armed with their superior intellect and a burning desire to bitch-slap Chad with a Porsche key at their 20 year reunion, nerds go out and make something of themselves. But be warned, nerd success isn’t always the mainstream kind of corner-office-name-on-your-parking-spot success we’ve all been programmed to want. Nerd success can often be, well, nerdy. When my nerd isn’t working as a successful freelance illustrator, he runs one of the biggest haunted houses on the west coast. In other words, he dresses up like a vampire and scares people. But he does it really, really well. So well, in fact, that he has an army of nerd underlings who look to him as their ruler, which officially classifies him as a Power Nerd. Again, this might not be considered mainstream success, but who cares? He’s smart, he’s successful and most importantly, he’s funny, which just so happens to be the third and final criteria for a potential nerd mate.

There are those who would argue with me, but I firmly believe that all the best nerds are funny. Conversely, all the funniest people are nerds. Think about it. Woody Allen? Nerd. The cast of Monty Python? Nerds. David Letterman? Jon Stewart? Stephen Colbert? Nerd. Nerd. Nerd. Dane Cook? Not a nerd. Not funny. Comedy is pain plus time. And who knows pain better than someone who spent the better part of his freshman year with his underpants around his neck? Magazines might tell you otherwise, but I’m here to tell you that funny matters, especially if you’re in it for the long haul. If you’re looking to spend the rest of your life with a man, you want someone who can make you laugh until you pee. If not, you might end up looking like Laura Bush, who has never laughed or peed in her entire life.

At this point some of you are no doubt thinking, “I’ve met plenty of nerds who aren’t smart, aren’t funny and wouldn’t know success if it walked up to them and smashed their Ultimate LEGOS Millennium Falcon.” Those are not nerds. Those are sub-nerds, also known as dweebs, dorks or losers. Although these sad creatures have similar origin stories to nerds, they differ in that they are far more likely to live with their mothers and have imaginary food allergies. Success eludes these basement-dwellers, as does dental hygiene and the sweet, sweet touch of a woman. How do you know if you’re dealing with a sub-nerd? Look for the three warning signs. 1) Does he play Dungeons & Dragons? Then he’s a dweeb. It’s OK if he has some D&D in his past. All nerds do. But if he’s over 30 and still actively playing? Run. 2) Does he regularly attend Renaissance Faires? Then he’s a dork. Check his closet for velvet tights and elf shoes. If you find them, retreat. 3) How many hours a week does he spend playing World of Warcraft? More than one? That’s a loser. You know what to do.

Of course, nerds aren’t perfect. No man is. But I happen to think they’re better than the average guy. Sure, you’ll have to put up with comic books and action figures. But in my experience, the biggest problem with those things isn’t the endless clutter they create, it’s the unrealistic expectations they tend to foster with regard to female breast-to-waist ratio. Chances are, you’re going to have to divest your nerd of the belief that human women look like that. I recommend a people-watching tour of Wal-Mart followed by a Golden Girls marathon. But once you’ve got them successfully deprogrammed, nerds make excellent husbands. They’re loyal, attentive, appreciative and loving. Even after you’ve been together for more than a decade, they’ll still open your car door, kiss your hand in public and declare you to be their queen to anyone who’ll listen. And sporting a Princess Leia wig once in a while is a pretty small price to pay for all that.

Someone linked to me. Guess I'd better update.

OK, so it's been a while. In my defense, I have the bulletproof "my kid had brain surgery" excuse. So there.

But now I'm back to blogging just in time to pimp the next installment of True Stories! Thursday July 30 at Mississippi Studios. We have Chelsea Cain, Courtenay Hameister, Scott Poole, Greg Robillard and yours truly, plus kickass musical guests Chris Robley and Thao Nguyen of Thao with the Get Down Stay Down.

I'm particularly excited about this show because Scott and I are debuting our new collaboration, Literary Thunder. It's a tag-team poetry/essay smackdown that dares to tackle one of the most important questions of our time: Which is better, ghosts or zombies?

Be there if you can! It's gonna be a hoot.

No Medicine Bum-Bum

Hey guess what? Bob Marley was totally right. Every little thing IS alright. The surgery went very well and The Pickle is doing great. The whole thing happened on April 17th and he came home on the 20th. He is now almost completely back to normal (if you consider singing ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’ 800 times a day normal). But man, did it ever suck for a while.

I’m not going to go into every little detail, but let’s just say that handing over your bright, happy and otherwise healthy 2 year-old and having him returned to you full of tubes and completely unable to comprehend what’s happened is right up there with having a simultaneous root canal/pap smear/colonoscopy while being forced to listen to Kathie Lee Gifford sing the complete Gilbert and Sullivan songbook. Or, as a wise vampire slayer once said, it sucked beyond the telling of it. Because, here’s the thing: 2 year-olds don’t like to have needles and tubes sticking out of them; they don’t like being forced to lie down; they don’t like having their arms restrained; they don’t like having a catheter in their pee-pee; and they most certainly do not like being poked and prodded every two hours by total strangers. (They do, however, like having an unlimited supply of orange Jell-O. Go figure.) And when you try to explain to them what’s happening and why, they don’t get it. They can’t. All they can do is look at you with sad blue eyes and say “Home” over and over again until you have to go take another Valium so you don’t cry in front of them.

When we finally did get to take him home, we thought everything was going to be great. Because we’re idiots. Within six hours, we were packed up and ready to go back. Poor little guy started barfing in the car on the way home and continued to do so every time we put anything in his mouth. Including his pain medication. After many calls to the neurosurgeon, our pediatrician and our friend who’s a pediatrician, we figured out that the vomiting was due to two things. First, the massive fluid shift that was still taking place in his brain was making him dizzy and nauseous. Second, he was detoxing from all the evil but necessary shit that had been in his system for the past four days: anesthesia, morphine and oxycodone. It didn’t help that he hadn’t kept any pain meds down in over 6 hours. And he was constipated. Really, really constipated. Thus we entered a new realm of parenthood, one from which no one emerges quite the same. I’m talking about suppositories, people. Up. The. Butt. Unpleasant but, in this case, absolutely necessary. And effective! The laxative might have set some kind of land speed record for causing large amounts of impacted poop to evacuate my son’s chute. And about half an hour after receiving a Tylenol suppository, The Pickle was literally screaming for mac & cheese. Things started to turn around after that, and even though he was keeping everything down, I continued to give him the Tylenol suppositories because, believe it or not, it was easier. By the time he even knew something was happening down there, I was already done. On the other hand, trying to get him to swallow it still took a combination of bribery, physical restraint and the invoking of Santa Claus. But I finally had to stop after the following exchange took place:

[OPEN on a sunny backyard. A toddler, his parents and his grandmother are soaking up the rare Oregon sun. The toddler, in the middle of gathering rocks for a Super Secret Project, shows signs of embarking on a project of a more personal nature. He stops moving, stares off into space and begins grunting. This will be the first time the boy has pooped on his own since returning from the hospital.]

MOTHER: Are you pooping, buddy?

BOY: Nope.

MOTHER: Are you pooping now?

BOY: (pauses) Yeah.

MOTHER: Should we go change your diaper?

BOY: (long pause) No medicine bum-bum.

And that, as they say, was that. We’ll get MRIs in August and November, which should tell us if the surgery was a total success or if we have to do it all over again. Just for the record, I’m hoping for the former.

Oh, and before I go, I want to give props to my homies at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital. It’s without a doubt the best place you never want to be. The nurses there are simply awesome, especially the ones in the PICU. I have no idea how they do what they do. The few times I actually left the room (usually to get more Jell-O) I had to concentrate on looking at my feet because I couldn’t stand to look in any of the other patient rooms. It was hard enough seeing my own child lying in a hospital crib. I couldn’t stand to look at someone else’s tiny baby and worry about what had happened to him. But those nurses? They do it every day. And they do it so, so well. Lisa, Lori, Kathleen, Katie, Carmen and Wendy: thank you for helping my son and me get through the worst days and nights of our lives.

And at the risk of sounding like a long-winded Oscar speech, I also want to thank everyone who commented and emailed and gave me 20 pounds of cheesy casseroles so I wouldn’t have to cook when my son came home from the hospital after brain surgery. Y’all rock. I couldn’t have done it without you.

Happy Mother’s Day!

--Stacy

A Letter to My Son on His Birthday 2: Blood and Fury

Dear Pickle,

It’s tempting when doing these little retrospectives to focus entirely on the things I did wrong over the course of the year. And then I think, “That’s wrong! I should focus on the good things I did.” And then I realize that thinking that thought was something I did wrong. And then I go make myself a gin and tonic and start all over again. Because sometimes, it really seems like motherhood is just one long, embarrassing slideshow of missteps and questionable judgment calls. Like, should I have started referring to ‘Blues Clues’ as ‘Booze Cruise’? No, I shouldn’t have. I should have had the foresight to know that even though you weren’t talking when I started doing that, one day you WOULD start talking and that little joke would bite me in the ass. In fact, that’s probably how I’d characterize my overall performance in the past year: Lack of Foresight. For example, I considered myself pretty well prepared for your infancy. There’s a lot of books out there about babies and I had plenty of time to read all of them while I was waiting for you. And really, babies are easy, all things considered. Or at least, you were. Once your father and I got over our slack-jawed terror at your very abrupt arrival, we began to realize that your needs were few and very specific: food, sleep, diapers, human contact. All we had to do was figure out what they were and meet them. But just when I thought I had you all figured out, I came face-to-haggard-face with the quintessential lesson of parenthood: just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, everything changes.

You’ve always been a fairly advanced child, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that you started your “Terrible Two’s” on the day you turned one. After a relatively docile first year, you began your second by launching into a spectacular anti-diaper tantrum that caught me completely off guard. And so it’s been with your entire second year of life — a year that seemed to be filled with nothing but maddening curveballs and gasp-worthy moments of wonder, none of which I had the foresight to prepare myself for. Because, while you might have been a ridiculously easy baby, you weren’t always the most fascinating one. I remember sitting on the floor with you when you were about six months old, watching you drool on a teething ring for the third straight hour and thinking, “I am going to die. Right now. Of boredom.” In retrospect, I can see what you were doing. You were lulling me into a false sense of security. If I could go back in time, I’d go back to the day you first rolled over on your own and I’d smack myself on the head and say, “Batten down the hatches, woman! Hurricane Pickle is about to hit!” Because once you started rolling/crawling/walking/climbing/torturing the cats, things got really interesting, really fast.

First, there was the blood. There were days when it seemed like you woke up determined to injure yourself and usually, by the time you were ready for bed, you had exceeded your goal despite my exhaustive efforts to stop you. You launched yourself off the couch and raged at the world and its stupid gravitational pull. You fell in the bathtub as if to demonstrate that head wounds really do bleed more than other kinds. You fell down the front steps like Scarlett O’Hara in an Elmo shirt. And every time one of these things happened, I was convinced I was The. Most. Horrible. Mother. Ever. The only thing that could make me feel better was three glasses of wine and a couple of episodes of Supernanny.

Then, there was the fury. Mine, not yours. I’ve worked in advertising for 17 years, and yet I don’t think I ever really understood the true meaning of the word frustration until this year. I had no idea how many times the word NO could come out of my mouth in one day (current record: 8,562), or that I was even capable of sounding like a banshee. But now I know that if a World Banshee Competition were to be held, I wouldn’t just represent. I would dominate. That’s what being the mother of a toddler can do to an otherwise intelligent, accomplished human being: it can reduce her to a shrill, shrieking she-beast with adult acne and two-inch gray roots faster than you can dump a bowl of oatmeal down a heating vent. One day, your dad was asking you about animal noises. “What does a dog say? What does a cow say?” I was in the other room listening to you getting all the answers right when he threw in a trick question: “What does Mommy say?” I closed my eyes and braced for the inevitable: “Mommy says NO! Nononononno!!!” But you didn’t say that. When he asked “What does Mommy say?” you said, “I love you.”

If this year was about nothing more than me losing my shit every time you colored on the walls, then this letter would be the kind of thing you’d submit as evidence at your emancipation hearing. Fortunately, even my battle-axiest moments from this year were far outnumbered by moments like that one, ones in which I was utterly dumbfounded at my good fortune. When I used to think about motherhood in the abstract, I assumed there would be times when I would love my child more than I could possibly comprehend. But what I didn’t know was what that would feel like. I had no idea how breathtaking, how satisfying it would be the first time you said ‘Mama’ (Fun fact: Mama was not your first word. Nor was it Dada. It was Baba Booey. What’s a Baba Booey? Go ask Dada.). And I didn’t — couldn’t possibly — understand what it would feel like to get one of your rare but highly effective bear hugs. Screw time. I’m pretty sure a toddler’s hug heals all wounds. And if that’s the case, we’re going to need our fair share of them in the weeks ahead.

The biggest curveball this year threw at me happened at your 12-month check up. In general, I really like your pediatrician. She’s smart and funny and she spends a lot of time talking with us, even when she doesn’t have time to spend. But on that day I wanted nothing more than for her to shut the hell up, because that was the day the words “It’s probably not a brain tumor” came out of her mouth. She said it as she was looking over your growth chart and noting that the size of your head no longer fit on it. We used to laugh and joke about how big your head was. Right up until the brain tumor comment. That was the beginning of what has been a decidedly un-fun journey involving MRIs, pediatric neurosurgeons and lots of ill-gotten Xanax for Mommy. Over the last twelve months, my carefully constructed wall of denial has been dismantled, brick by brick, as we found out that 1) you have an arachnoid cyst on the frontal lobe of your brain, 2) it’s getting bigger, 3) it’s going to keep getting bigger and 4) it needs to be surgically removed. With brain surgery. The kind they do on your brain. In case you were wondering, this is why Mommy sometimes has to leave the room and when she comes back all her makeup is gone.

The surgery is in a couple of weeks and there are exactly two good things about it. The first is that once it’s over, we’ll probably never have to worry about that cyst again. The second is that you won’t remember any of it. And hopefully, by this summer you’ll just be a normal, happy kid who drives his mother bonkers. But until then, things might be a little shaky around here. I’ll do my best to hold it together, but I won’t make any promises. I will, however, tell you two things that might help both of us get through this: I don’t like to attach meaning to strange, random occurrences and I don’t like reggae. Why do you need to know this? Because for many years, a strange, random thing has been happening to me: Whenever I’ve been facing a difficult situation and have been low on optimism, I’ll hear the Bob Marley song “Three Little Birds.” It might be in the car, or in a store, or on an elevator. But it always happens, and it’s always right when I most need to hear these words: “Baby don’t worry about a thing, because every little thing is gonna be alright.” What does it mean? Who knows. But it’s happened so many times that I’ve started to expect it. And ever since your neurosurgeon called and said he wanted to operate, I keep waiting to hear it on the radio or somewhere. Anywhere. But it didn’t happen. And I was honestly starting to freak out about it. Then the other night as I was getting you ready for bed, I realized that your bedtime playlist has a lullaby version of “Three Little Birds” on it. So we’ve actually been hearing that song every single night and I didn’t even realize it. So baby, don’t worry about a thing. Because every little thing really is gonna be alright.

Happy birthday, buddy. I love you.

An Open Letter to Dora the Explorer

Dear Dora,

You and I need to have a little talk before this thing gets out of hand. I don’t know who introduced you to my son, or why, but I think we can all agree that the damage has been done. Now it’s just a matter of containing it.

I realize that I’m as much to blame for this situation as anyone. For the first 18 months of his life, he never watched television. And I was as smug and self-righteous about that as any cloth-diapering, New Seasons-shopping, hemp-wearing mommybot. But then he started walking. And climbing. And dismantling expensive home electronics with the eerie precision of an Army Ranger taking apart and reassembling his rifle in the dark. I needed help. Just a few minutes, I told myself. Just a few minutes of peace so I could get something done.

So I turned on the television.

Before I knew it, that few minutes turned into an hour a day, then two. And as much as I try to get him to watch shows that don’t make me want to light my own hair on fire, nothing holds his attention like you, Dora. When he watches you, he falls into an altered state of consciousness. His eyes glaze over and his mouth hangs open, the pacifier dangles from his tongue by a thin thread of saliva. Nothing — not the sound of the phone ringing or the vacuum running or a cocktail shaker shaking — will rouse him from this trance until the end credits roll. I have to admit, at first, it was kind of awesome.

But that’s not the point. The point is that you hold a significant amount of power over millions of toddlers. And you’re using it for evil. I came face to face with the true nature of your evil just last week when my son had a bad case of the croup and could do little else but lay on the couch barking like a seal and watching you, Dora. For hours on end. Hours and hours and hours. And because I am not the worst mother in the world, I sat there with him and watched. For hours and hours and hours. “Surely this has to be against the Geneva Convention?” I wondered, as I fought back the urge to stab my own eyes out with a nearby thermometer. And then I realized the truth. You aren’t a form of torture, Dora. No. You’re much, much worse than that. You are the Devil himself. And the evidence is right there for anyone to see:

First, there’s the yelling. Every word that leaves your mouth comes out at a volume that rivals that guy from the Oxy Clean commercials. And we all know that the Devil doesn’t have an inside voice.

Second, your deformed head. A sweet, innocent bilingual child who just wants to help people solve their problems would not have a head shaped like a giant, hydrocephalic lemon. But as we all know, the Devil takes on many forms.

And finally, the songs. Every episode of your show features the same hackneyed, repetitive songs. Sometimes we have to listen to them multiple times in a single episode. And it’s not like you don’t have the money to hire a decent lyricist. So why not pay someone to write something a little more challenging than “I’m a map, I’m a map, I’m a map, I’m a map, I’m a maaaaaaap!”? At first I thought it might be because you needed that money to pay for cranial reduction surgery. Or maybe Boots the Monkey was embezzling it to fund his obvious crack habit. But no. Those songs are soul-sucking on purpose, aren’t they Dora? Because you’re brainwashing our children to do your bidding, aren’t you? Someday soon you’re going to say the trigger word — let me guess: backpack — and they’re all going to rise up and kill us in our sleep, leaving the world to be run by toddlers. Our infrastructure will collapse like a full diaper. Our currency will be stickers and juice boxes. Pink Barbie Hummers will run wild in the streets. The entire universe will be thrown into a state of pure id which will, of course, pave the way for your triumphant return.

Well played, Dora. Or should I say que bueno? But know this, little girl: you and I aren’t through. I have seen the number of the beast and it is seis, seis, seis. I defy you, Explorer. In my strong right hand I hold the flaming sword of the archangels and in my left, the remote. I’m going to limit my son to one episode a day. I’m going to stand firm in my ban on licensed Dora products in my home. And until the day comes when you take on your true form, I’m going to keep trying to get him to watch something else. Anything else. Look sweetie! There’s Elmo! He’s so cute! What could be wrong with Elmo…

New Essay: So I Thought I Could Dance

[Well, new-ish anyway. This is the piece I read on Live Wire in December. It will probably air on OPB radio at the end of January, but here it is in text form. Hope you like it.]

Perhaps the most important thing any of us can learn in high school is how to endure humiliation. It’s an important life skill and there’s certainly plenty of opportunities to experience it between your freshman and senior years. You’ve got your bullies, your unrequited crushes and, of course, your deadly combination of physical awkwardness and social retardation. But in my experience, the best way to learn how to deal with total humiliation is to go ahead and bring it on yourself. Sign up for it. Ask your friends and family to come watch. And be sure to get lots and lots of pictures.

Take, for example, my three-year tenure on my high school dance team, an experience I consider to be retroactively humiliating. At the time, I was proud to be a part of such an esteemed group of artists. But as the decades passed and the true horror of the experience revealed itself, I’ve worked hard to suppress the memories. However, I’ve recently been forced to reckon with my spandex-clad past thanks to a thoroughly 21st century phenomenon: my old teammates started finding me on Facebook. And as the Ghosts of High School Past began haunting my inbox, one question kept haunting me: Why didn’t I change my name when I got married?

I’m still not entirely sure how I worked up the courage to try out in the first place. There is no performance gene in the Bolt family. Our motto was “Stop that. Someone might see you.” So when I came home from school one evening and announced that I’d made the dance team, the words that actually came out of my father’s mouth were, “What the hell are you thinking?” As I understand it, in other families an announcement like this would have been greeted with pride or maybe even just some enthusiasm. But my parents were visibly horrified, though it wasn’t so much for me as for themselves. My joining a team meant that there would be events they would be expected to attend. Events where they might have to talk to people. Sitting in the bleachers with the other parents, someone might ask “Which one is yours?” And my father would have no choice but to point in my direction and say in a voice choked with shame, “That one. That one is ours.”

Of course, nothing fuels teenage ambition more than parental disapproval, so I threw myself into dance team as if it were the cure for kitten cancer. Every spare moment was spent practicing; every spare dime was spent on legwarmers. I lived for that one weekend a month when we would compete with other schools. These were day-long affairs in which we’d pile into a bus, travel to the host school and spend the anxious hours before performance time doing each other’s hair and makeup according to the Oregon Dance and Drill Team Association guidelines. That meant pulling our hair back into slick, Teutonic buns with a combination of Aqua Net and a product called Dippity-do, a vile substance with the consistency of whale mucous and the holding power of drywall putty. Because the judges always sat at the very top of the bleachers, our makeup had to be applied so it could be seen from a distance. Like, say, the moon. Add in our electric blue spandex unitards and we resembled nothing less than the shiny, prancing love children of Tonya Harding and John Wayne Gacy. If you’ve never worn an electric blue spandex unitard — and really, you should — it’s like a flashing neon sign asking the universe to judge you. It makes no concessions for a few extra pounds, normally functioning human sweat glands or visits from Aunt Flo. An electric blue spandex unitard has the power to make the skinny look heavy, and to make the heavy look like shiny blue maple bars. But it was chosen by our coach — a tiny, angry woman who wanted to win the state championship like Gollum wanted the Ring — so we had no choice but to suck it in and dance.

The following year, after some helpful suggestions from school officials fearing an outbreak of eating disorders, the unitards were replaced by something much more flattering, and yet amazingly, even more ridiculous. It was 1983, the year the movie “Staying Alive” came out. This was the sequel to Saturday Night Fever and starred John Travolta as an older and wiser Tony Manero trying to make it on the mean streets of Broadway. The final dance number was a smoke- and sweat-filled extravaganza of writhing, gyrating bodies who were supposedly trapped in the fires of hell. If some of the dancers had been pregnant it would have been exactly like high school.

That must have been what our coach was thinking because she used it as the basis for the routine she choreographed, the one she believed would win us her precious state championship. Named after the Frank Stallone song it was set to, the routine was called “Dance Into The Fire” and was highlighted by a temperamental smoke machine and our brand new costumes, which made most ice skating outfits look tasteful and subdued by comparison. The red spandex leotards had high necks, long sleeves and shoulder pads that would make Melanie Griffith weep. Orange, yellow and red sequined “flames” crawled up our torsos and dangled from our waists. I recently found our team photo from that year. With my short, curly hair, thick-rimmed glasses and transvestite caliber eye shadow, I looked like Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie.” And just in time for prom season.

Finally, after months of practice, our team was ready to claim the State Championship that we felt was rightfully ours. Instead, we got disqualified. Not because our costumes rode up or because someone’s hair pulled a Dippity-Don’t. No. We got disqualified because we used a smoke machine. First of all, whatever. How are we supposed to “dance into the fire” without smoke? And second, shut up. We used that smoke machine in every regional competition that year and never got disqualified. That smoke machine was a stroke of theatrical genius, even if it is the reason I still get bronchitis every winter. But the judges’ decision was final and we were forced to endure the humiliation not just of losing, but of losing while looking like sexually confused Heat Misers. On the bright side, they let us go ahead and perform our routine. Maybe it was because they felt sorry for us, or because they were afraid our coach was going to slash their tires. But we didn’t care. We danced our little hearts out, even while choking on unauthorized smoke.

As we took our bow, I looked up into the stands of cheering spectators and spotted my parents with their coat collars pulled up high. They never understood that being on dance team wasn’t about me wanting to be in the spotlight. The whole point of dance team was to NOT stand out. There was no ‘me.’ There was only ‘we.’ Kind of like the Borg in sequined legwarmers. We were judged on how precisely we performed as a unit, by how much our hair and makeup and costumes matched. If one person stood out from the rest, we were penalized for it. So if it’s possible to wax philosophic about something involving Frank Stallone (and I’d argue that in every other instance, it’s not), dance team was a microcosm of high school itself. It was about fitting in and being one of many, which, for a lot of teenagers, is a really safe place to be. But at the same time, it taught me how to face humiliation head on and learn from it. That doesn’t mean I don’t still do embarrassing things from time to time. In the years since I graduated from high school I have managed to accidentally dye my hair orange on the day of a job interview, slap a total stranger on the ass because I thought it might be someone I knew, and pass out drunk at my own Christmas party at 10:30. But because of the lessons I learned on dance team, I did not do any of those things while wearing an electric blue spandex unitard.

Notes To My Son's Future Therapist

RE: "Dildo" the Caterpillar

Yes. Okay? Yes. I named his toy caterpillar Dildo. Why? Because it looks like a freaking dildo, that's why. And besides, he was a baby. I don’t know if you know this, but babies can be really, really boring. So yes, I started calling his toy caterpillar Dildo. It was funny. It made my husband laugh. It helped alleviate some of the monotony of my day. Did I forsee him becoming attached to Dildo and hanging on to him well into his verbal years? No. Did I want him to melt down in the middle of Target screaming “I want my Dildo!!!” at the top of his lungs? Of course not. But you know what? You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. So let’s just move on, shall we?