Jesus Lives in a Gold Can

By Andrea Holland

I was a Catholic school kid in the 1980’s and, always the inquisitive child, I had issues with religion. Weekly masses and daily religion classes were as normal as brushing my teeth but the explanations behind the concept of God were always perplexing.

“God is in all of us and Jesus Christ is the Good News,” the dark-robed priests would explain.  “This is the body of Christ,” they would continue during mass. Routine statements like these made me wonder: God is in Tim, my classmate who picked his nose under the desk lid? How can Jesus be a man and good news? And, why the hell am I eating a man’s body?

But all these questions paled in comparison to the big one: Where in the building was God? I mean, every holy figure I met from Father Conboy to Sister Nancy said he was in the church, but where was he? Was he ever going to come out and say a little something? It was like waiting for Christmas every week.

After consistently nagging the nuns, Sister Dorothy Mary finally procured an answer to shut me up: “God is behind that gold vessel on the altar,” she said one day in church. Sitting in one of the pews, I excitedly peered behind her at the beaming light that pierced out from behind what looked like a gold can sitting atop the almighty altar. I was ecstatic; my thirst for knowledge finally quenched like a cactus soaking up rainwater after a drought. Oh, it felt so good to finally know!

So, I waited. I waited for God to come out. I stared down that golden can with all my might as if my thoughts could force God out of it like Jeannie from the lamp on TV. If God was in there, I was going to make him come out! Invoking the faculties of Wonder Woman, I tried using my mental powers to control the can. Maybe I could nudge it with my thoughts and God would spill out. Or, maybe I could focus on Father Patrick’s feet and make him trip as he bowed in front of it and spilled the magical contents. There had to be a way to get God out.

After many futile attempts at the weekly masses with no halftime show from God, I moved on to other conundrums like: where does holy water come from? It must come from a secret well under the church where God swishes his hands around every now and then, I thought. Of course this lead to the bigger problem of: how did he manage to do that at every church in town and all over the world? There was no way he had time to do all that and sit behind the gold can! Again, there was no answer to this question and many others.

So, I let it go and went about my days wondering about other pressing matters in the life of a pre-teen gal in the 1980’s, like: will they have another pull-out poster of a nearly-naked George Michael in the centerfold of next month’s Bop Magazine? And, if jelly shoes were really made of jelly why didn’t they taste like strawberry or grape?

To this day, though, I still question religion. How is a weekly dose of wafer crackers supposed to offer me eternal salvation? Does anyone really know the Apostle’s Creed by memory or all they all just mumbling nonsense like me? Of course, the answers to these questions really don’t matter all that much nowadays as I rarely go to church except for the occasional wedding or, worse, funeral.

But still, I spent many a childhood day wondering about the damn gold can! I was recently reminded of this mental struggle by an old grade-school friend on Facebook. She too questioned the gold-can predicament and revealed in her online post that when she served as an altar girl once, she peeked behind the gold vessel and learned that God was just a light bulb. A good explanation and, somewhat, analogously true.

Small Town Living

By Allison Roberts

I lived in a very small rural town from 5^th-8^th grade. I had moved there from a large suburb, and I was completely thrown off by the cows, the one street light, more bars than gas stations, and a school that held 2^nd-12^th grade in one building.

This was just not normal, and any person in 7^th grade should not, under any circumstances, have lunch and/or study halls with 12^th graders. It’s like putting a juvenile into adult prison, and then expecting them not to listen to the inmates.

I remember my first day of school—smack in the middle of 5^th grade (December). My teacher, Mrs. Washburn, stood me up in front of the room and said, “Class, this is Allison Roberts. She seems like a good girl so be nice to her.” Then she shoved me toward a chair in the row near the window, and went back to her desk. Mrs. Washburn was like 190 years old.

At recess, the interrogation began. A girl named Lori, sporting a snapped off browning front tooth, and a galaxy of black heads, started the rapid-fire questions: “Can you throw a ball far? Can you climb a tree? Can you run fast? ‘Cause Linda Miller is the fastest girl in fifth grade, except Robin Marlow. Are you a boy or a girl?” She smirked at this last question, but I didn’t care. If given the choice back then, I would have rather been a boy.

“I can run fast. I can climb a tree. And I can throw a ball,” I slurred, stealing a quick glance at the other girls surrounding my desk, then up to the lights; caked with dried bugs.

Within about a week, Lori had adopted me, and requested that I stop hanging out with Dina Patterson, the only Jehovah Witness in the entire world (besides Dina’s family, of course.)

“She’s weird, has huge glasses, and can’t even celebrate her fucking birthday,” Lori explained, dragging me behind her on the playground. “Besides, we’re trying to get Mrs. Washburn to let us have a Christmas party, and since Dina can’t celebrate that either, she’s no help at all.”

As it turned out Mrs. Washburn hated Christmas, so whether I hung around with Dina or not, it didn’t seem to hold much weight. “My husband died on Christmas day, so I don’t care about it at all,” she snarled.  “But if you want to have a Christmas party, by all means, go ahead. Just don’t drag me into the festivities.”

So someone’s mother brought in a small Christmas tree, someone else’s mom somehow finagled some cookies and soda, and though I have no memory of how, we were given some colored construction paper which we were allowed to make ornaments out of to hang on the tree. I might add here, that while all the “celebrating” and “joy” was taking place in the room, Mrs. Washburn sat at her desk and drank something out of what appeared to be a perfume bottle, that she kept in her desk drawer. Later that week, she stumbled into the water fountain and got sent home.

By 7^th grade, I had my “crew,” and we were pretty cool. At that point, older boys started sniffing around and my mother was starting to have heart palpitations. All I remember of that year is a lot of pot smoking, a guy named Pete, who had blue/black hair and alarmingly dark eyes, hanging out at a pizza place called the “Pizza Circus,” (where I became a notorious foosball player,) and a girl named Tracy, who was the size of Andre the Giant.

Tracy was supposed to be in 11^th grade, I think, but she was in 9^th. She had white-blonde hair, the wide facial bone structure similar to that of a horse, and arms the size of logs. Once she picked me up and placed me in the boys’ bathroom. I remember pretty much allowing this to happen, as A: once she had you in her grip, you really could not escape, unless somehow you had super-human strength or a pretty outstanding bribe, and B: because frankly, I knew she liked me; that this joke was just her way of showing me love. If she hadn’t liked me, I would have been tossed like a wadded-up Kleenex into the urinal.

Tracy got kicked out of school many times, as you might imagine, but the one time she was permanently removed was when she beat the holy hell out of the Principal, Mr. Merrins. I was in English class, in a room not far from the main office (that also doubled as the detention room,) so I got to hear the commotion and witness first hand as my English teacher, Mr. Baines, was called down to the main office to help with the fiasco.

Apparently Tracy was unusually mad at Mr. Merrins—theirs was a volatile relationship, built on power struggles, miscommunication, and a lot of swearing.  When the gym teacher and my English teacher finally got to the main office, Tracy had Mr. Merrins on the floor—after she’d kicked him in the nether regions—and was proceeding to hit his head on the floor.

Strangely, I never saw Tracy again…in school. If you wanted to find her however, all you had to do was go to the trailer park on East Lake Road where she lived with her brother, Randy (another Nordic anomaly,) and ask anyone you happen to see where you could buy weed.

About the middle of 8^th grade, my mother announced that she would be moving me back to the suburb from which we’d come. “I gotta get you out of here,” she said, after my brothers had graduated, and I’d been caught hanging out in an apartment at 10 AM, drinking beer, on a school morning.

Now, don’t get all mad if you’re from a small town, and feel the need to defend it. I don’t think everyone who lives in the country is a drinking pothead ass-kicker. I think the idea of living in a small town is great! As a matter of fact, I still visit there often, and have wonderful friends—still snuggled within the town limits—who are successful, fun, loving, kind, and mentally sound. But they are much less fun to write about.

Call it like it is

By Andrea Holland

It aggravates me when people use certain words to describe the taste of their food.  “It has a buttery texture,” many often say.  When was the last time these people ate a stick of butter?  Or, when they dismissively say things like, “Oh, tofu tastes like chicken.” Nope.  Tofu tastes like tofu; chicken tastes like chicken. And besides, tofus don’t have wings or feathers; they’re skinless and drink a lot of water to keep their skins silky.  Everyone knows that.  And I’m sorry, but wines and peas don’t have a “nutty flavor.”  Only nuts taste like nuts.

I should point out that I have a very developed food palate.  I’m down to grub – and typically do – anything from a rare alligator andouille sausage to carrot cake.  It slays me a bit when people drone on and on trying to compare the taste of one thing to something completely unrelated.  It also bores me when people rave about the freshness of food.  They’ll come from the latest restaurant singing the praises of the menu.  “Everything was so fresh and bright,” they scream.  What the hell does that mean?  Was the last salad they paid for not fresh?  Was it obviously old or rancid?  If so, why the hell did they pay for it – much less eat it?

Now there’s even a magazine for these people; it’s called “Clean Eating”.  As opposed to what…dirty eating?  There is something to be said for getting back to the realities of the tastes and origins of our food.  Apples don’t always grow perfectly round and red; baby carrots aren’t really baby carrots (they’re actually shaved and tumbled bits from the reject pile) and yes – cheese is a big pile of delicious mold!  It’s perfectly okay to admit that you like tuna from the can or that you’ll only eat romaine lettuce, not radicchio.

Let’s all start being honest about our food.  Let’s leave the taste sales speeches to the marketing gods at Nabisco and the executive chefs across the world.  Let’s love our food for exactly what it is.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a piping hot bowl of shells and crème de frommage to enjoy.  Bon appétit.

Va-Va Vegetable!

By Norma Holland

Fitness is a journey and on that journey I’m discovering a few things about myself.  Fact:  I like to get freaky with my vegetables.
Now, before you go hootin’ and hollerin’ that I do bad things to my produce, read on.  The truth is plain vegetables are boring. A plate of lettuce holds about as much interest to me as Michael Buble.  It needs a little somethin’ somethin’ to catch my interest.  Throw a little feta on it, toss in some dried cranberries and NOW you have my attention. This is why I think people who walk around munching on carrot sticks and pea pods are fakers.  Produce posers!  There’s no way in hell celery is going to make me salivate.  Now, put some peanut butter on that mess and you’ve got one sexy stalk!  Same goes for squash and zucchini.  Slap a little finishing butter on a plate of those suckers and I will shout out, “Mmmm! Show me what you’re workin’ with!”  Yes, sometimes veggies need to be in pasties and a thong (or for me, a uniform, lawd ha’ mercy!) before fickle eaters will take notice of them.   That’s just the way it is….
–
“Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.”
-Walt Whitman

Aging

By Allison Roberts

So I have arthritis in my neck. My left knee, elbow, and right hip, ache. I can’t see close-up anymore (trying to pluck my eyebrows has become highly perilous, as I have accidentally torn off bits of skin, mistaking it for little hairs.)  Plus, I notice a slight drooping in my cheeks; as if the skin along my jaw line is scooting down to party with my neck. Aging sort of sucks. However, there are some benefits to aging too.

First of all, you start to care much less about what people think, you say what you feel, you do less of what you don’t want to do, and when someone pisses you off, you tell them….very clearly and usually with some semblance of tact. After all, you have years of experience getting mad.

Here’s what else I notice about aging:

1.)   Noise is highly disturbing. I hate noise. It has become unpleasant to go hear a band play out because although I may want to support them, and enjoy their music—truly—their sound person has lost his damn mind and it takes Hercules-like effort for me not to kill him. “IS THERE SOME UNKNOWN REASON WHY THE MUSIC HAS TO BE SO LOUD IN A BAR THAT IS ABOUT THE SIZE OF A BATHROOM?!!!!” I have been known to scream at him. “COULD WE JUST TURN THE BASS DOWN ENOUGH SO THAT THE PREFRONTAL CORTEX OF MY BRAIN STOPS SLAMMING AGAINST THE INSIDE OF MY SKULL?”

2.)   A few random white hairs in my eyebrows. (And other places that will go unmentioned).  Recently, I found a white hair sort of poking its head out from a spot on my chin. WTF? I am not a hairy person by nature so this is completely discouraging. Pretty soon I’ll have old man ears—white hairs sprouting out from my lobes, for God’s sake.

3.)   Though I have never had much tolerance for alcohol, I am now hardly able to finish one glass of wine without falling asleep standing up, peeing non-stop, needing to eat immediately, or getting a headache within minutes of consumption.

4.)   Not being able to work-out as strenuously as I once could. I am not happy about this at all. My knee, elbow, hip and neck (aforementioned above) give me a lot of grief. I am still able to exercise, and am in decent shape, but I am starting to have to restructure my thinking around exercise and it’s making me unreasonably angry.

5.)   Staying up past ten or eleven PM is not very likely to occur, unless there is a DAMN good reason.

6.)   Patience. Although I would never win a prize for most patient person on earth, I am both more patient and less so as I age. I’ll explain: I have gained patience for people’s journeys…in other words, who am I to know where they are or what they have to learn….but I am less patient with people’s disconnectedness to one another, lack of effort to work on themselves and their issues (if it takes therapy, cutting out the drinking, a year of meditation, going to a “primal room” and yelling till you throw up, drumming in a rain forest while wearing a loin cloth—whatever—just do it for crying out loud. No one’s gonna fix you but you), people’s strong sense of entitlement (I should have what I want just because I want it), and meanness. I am just not up for mean people. They suck.

7.)   Foot cramps. WTF is this about? Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I will sit bolt upright in bed and scream. I then have to throw the covers off and race around the room in order to get rid of the spasm in my arch, or the bazaar excruciatingly painful wrestling match between my toes, which go into rigid little warriors and lock up with one another in a tangled mess.

8.)   Heartburn.

9.)   The split-personality-worry-psychosis. I have always been a worrier, but as I age, I find that I think too much about what I’m doing with my life and why I have no money. And then because I’m older, I don’t give a shit. So it becomes confusing.

10.)   Weird stuff with my thumb nails. They just don’t look right. They have all these weird ridges, and sort of look “curvy and bent,” like they have nail-scoliosis.

11.)   Insomnia. Women of certain ages just don’t sleep anymore unless we drug ourselves blind, or are knocked unconscious by an hour massage, a hot bath, a glass of wine, a baby sitter, a raise in pay, AND indescribably great sex. And really, how often do all of these incidences occur simultaneously (or at all?). Then when we do sleep, we have really weird dreams about people standing in our bedrooms, looking at us. I have no idea what they want, but it’s getting old.

So as I see it, there are some good aspects to aging, and some bad. In reality, we are all getting older, and there ain’t a damn thing we can do about it. So, from my humble early-osteoporosis-laden opinion, the best we can do is to live our lives boldly, with intention, have fun, laugh a lot, love hard, and be completely 100% who we are (unless of course we’re really messed up, then we should try to fix that.) I have to go pee now.

This will make my life way better…

By Andrea Holland

“This will make my life way better” is usually the final thought I have before buying a bottle of self-tanning lotion that promises “a streak-free, bronzed-goddess finish that will leave your skin soft and sensual.”  $7.99 and a credit card swipe later – I’m usually content with my purchase, convinced that “yes, this bottle of lotion will make my life better!”

It’s happened countless times – these shoes, those juice packets to-go, that vanilla spiced decaf latte will all make my life better.  I suppose it’s fair to say that some of these things have brightened my days.  (Whoever thought up the Tide-to-Go pen is genius.)  But here’s where the danger in this “go-for-it, what do you have to lose?” mentality goes awry:  when we start taking this thought process on the road and applying it to more serious issues like dating or jobs.  This is where mistakes happen.  This is where your life turns into a Jerry Springer sideshow.

I thought dating Brandon would make my life better.  I mean:  he was single, I was single, he had a job, I had a job, he was sexy, so was I.  What’s not to love?  Yeah, well, that’s when a momentary lapse of sanity turned into a trip down drama lane.

Brandon was smooth…his smile, his skin, his story.  When we met on our first date, he sat elegantly in the corner of my favorite coffee house – dressed in crisp black slacks and a Banana Republic sweater.  All signs indicated that this man either knew how to iron or invested quite a bit into dry cleaning.  My, he was charming; talking about his secondary degree plans, his successful career in sales and his passion for old romantic flicks.

And then, I saw it.  A hole in his sweater.  I noticed it on the first date and that should have been the screeching brake moment that sirened out, “STOP!  This man will not make your life better!”  And he didn’t.  Much like that that nagging little thread on his sweater that just kept unraveling every time he wore it (claiming each time that he forgot his sweater had a hole), Brandon’s little stories kept falling apart.  Suddenly he was in between jobs, was looking for a new place to stay, his masters degree application was still pending.  He was divorced.

Oh the stories went on – and so did I, like a pitiful pet hoping that maybe one day I might get a good scrap or two.  It was sad, really.  But, in the end – after Brandon had moved away abruptly in the middle of the night (literally and without a goodbye), something good did happen.  He called.  Three weeks later.  He was in an Atlanta jail and needed bail money. I thought back to the countless times I’d paid for our dates and I thought, “Nope.  I’m all tapped out.  And this is one purchase that will NOT make my life better.”  We haven’t spoken since, I’m glad to say.