10 Things....

...that I'd either tell a daughter if I had one or lessons that I've learned being 40something. 

1.  Actions speak louder than words, so put your middle finger down and be a class act. 

2.  Don't pride yourself on being a bitch.  Of course, you're probably going to be called one at one time or another in your life, but don't label yourself as one.  Be strong.  Independent.  Headstrong.  Stand up for what you believe in.  Look out for your friends, family, and children, but don't make those qualities equate a derogatory term. 

3.  Kids are going to do stupid things.  It's what they do.  They're learning.  They don't know the things you know despite the time invested in trying to teach them to learn from your mistakes.  Try to set a good example.  Even the best parents in the world have kids that occasionally screw up.  It's all part of the process.  Remember how tough it was to be a kid at times?  It's not always a reflection on your parenting skills.  Well, not unless you handed the kid the scissors and told them to run with them.  In that case, then yes, your kid's stupidity is because of you.

4.  It's probably always going to bring you a small amount of pleasure when you see someone who used to be incredibly thin get fat.  As we get older, a whole lot of things impact our bodies beyond just having babies.  Your time just might come, too, so be careful feeling too much amusement over the high school cheerleader seriously needing a Weight Watchers membership. 

5.  Sometimes, people do get what they deserve, but if you're flinging around that word "Karma" and hoping that someone gets their just reward, you might get yours too putting out that kind of vindictiveness into the universe. 

6.  For the sake of humor and entertainment, being a vodka-swilling mother probably isn't as funny as you think it is.  Yeah, we all could use a drink every now and then after a kid has plugged the toilet, stuck a fork in an outlet, or announced in the grocery store check-out that the guy in front of you smells like poop.  But, if you carry a flask in your purse to make it through a day of parenting, well, it's probably more concerning than endearing as far as motherhood goes. Yes, kids will drive you to drink on occasion.  That's a fact. 

7.  Cuss like a drunken sailor on shore leave or string together expletives like a trucker, but when it's appropriate.  Like you're actually on shore leave or sitting at the wheel of a big rig or at a tractor pull. As with everything, there's a time and place.  Some of the funniest, most engaging people I know have a knack of adding a small amount of profanity that brings a little something to conversation.  Otherwise, you appear as though you have no manners, and believe it or not, that matters to some people. 

8.  "Don't say anything you wouldn't want written on the wall beside you for all of eternity for anyone to read."  I heard that a couple decades ago, and it's something I'll always struggle with.  Think before you speak badly of someone else and realize not many people are capable of keeping secrets. 

9.  There's a fine line between being opinionated and being an overbearing ass.  Don't tell people what they should think.  Don't try to change someone's mind even if it's something you're passionate about.  People don't like subjects forced down their throats, and most times, they've made up their minds and you're not going to sway an opinion on more sensitive subjects.  Appreciate diversity and listen to what someone else has to say.  You might learn something. 

10.  Be genuinely happy for the success of others.  If you want your own success, at whatever you're doing, get busy and work for it. 

Let me tell you....

...a little about my books.

Shamrock seeds and other shams

There was something mystical and magical about all the talk of our St Patrick’s Day celebration in second grade.  Not only did the two teachers deck out the classrooms in green and all things shamrocks and leprechauns, it would be a weeklong celebration to build up to the holiday on Friday.   

It wasn’t just St. Patrick’s Day.  It was St. Patrick’s Week.  Wearing green to avoid a pinch played just a small part in the lineup.  On one day, we planted “shamrock seeds” by gluing a seed onto a piece of 8 x 10 construction paper, and drew what we thought would grow out of it.  “Anything you want.  Anything you think might grow from this magic seed,” the teacher instructed.   

She probably also told us to use our imagination.  I wasn’t the only kid who drew a green shamrock growing out of the seed.  The boy who dipped his wand into the tub of paste and then licked it drew one, too.  Mine was better in comparison, but only by a little bit.  Hey, I grew up on a farm, and if you planted a kernel of corn, you got a corn stalk.  A green bean seed yielded a green bean plant.  Logic told me that if you planted a “shamrock seed,” a shamrock would grow from it.  Say what they might, the seeds looked suspiciously like the little round things that floated with the pickles my grandma canned.  If I’d known it was a mustard seed, and what a mustard plant looked like then, I would have drawn that.   

It’s not that I didn’t love a class party.  Even better, was a class party that took a week to prepare for.  While the whole shamrock seed thing mystified me because it seemed so silly, I became more and more apprehensive about what was going to go down in the gym on Friday.   

On another day after noon recess, our two second grade classes converged on the carpet in the back of one of the classrooms to hear a story.  Not just any story, but a story about a leprechaun and his magical pot of gold that could be found at the end of every rainbow.  I don’t recall the name of the story, but the gist of it was that leprechauns might possibly be a little less than trustworthy.  They didn’t like to be tricked because they loved to do the tricking.  They were wiry little characters that darted all over the place, appearing here, disappearing, and reappearing.  The one thing I took away from that storytime on the rug was that leprechauns quite possibly were evil and perhaps something to be feared. 

Next thing I know, a leprechaun was going to be on the loose at the school.  The teacher said he would leave us a treasure map, and by following it, we could find the little green guy’s hidden stash, just like at the end of the rainbow.  A pot of gold, maybe?  We were all going to be rich, and I couldn’t wait to spend my share of the ante.  I soon came back to reality, and the thoughts of great riches were heavily outweighed by the notion that some little green dude was going to be roaming around and possibly ticked off like he was in the story we’d just heard.  The teachers assured us that we’d be safe – paste boy was apprehensive, too.  We were on some strange St. Patrick’s Day wavelength, and I only hoped it didn’t mean that we’d grow up to get married.  I’d be the wife of the boy who licked paste, and even at that age, I had enough problems.  I struggled to tell time and was told if I didn’t learn, I’d have to take second grade over again.  See?  I had enough on my plate without mind melding with a paste eater.   

After being convinced that the leprechaun would drop off the map and leave the premises, I could relax and make plans with what to do with my riches.  Toys and lots of candy probably.  I couldn’t get enough of those candy necklaces or pixie sticks.  Candy cigarettes were good, too, and with that kind of money, I could afford to throw away the ones that didn’t have good cherries on them.   

I would definitely go buy a new bicycle because it was downright embarrassing to be riding around on my yellow and green one, complete with the less than complementing black and white seat.  Our dog Toby had made lunch of my original seat one day when I supposedly left it lying on its side and didn’t use the kickstand.  I say he knocked down the bike and munched on the once flowered seat that matched, but my mom said there was no way he would knock down a bike. 

I said if he would eat a bicycle seat, he had the power to knock down a bike, and it obviously proved he didn’t think clearly, anyway.  So, a new bike was in order.  If I had some money leftover, maybe I’d buy something for my brother and sister.  That was a big maybe.  A leprechaun was visiting MY class, after all.   

Friday arrived, and not before my obsession grew with what I’d do with my gold and what I would do if I spied the leprechaun roaming the halls.  The teacher produced the map, which guided us around the gym, through the cafeteria, and to the playground while we took such and such amount of steps – baby steps – giant steps, until we arrived at our destination.  

One girl ran up and snatched the bag that was our treasure for following the leprechaun’s instructions on the map.  The teacher took it away from her, and announced, “Well, let’s see what the leprechaun left us,” as she slowly opened the bag building up the suspense.  I didn’t know what a piece of gold could buy, but I’d seen the episode of “Brady Bunch” where the old gold miner seemed convinced gold was worth the big bucks.  I didn’t think that show would mislead.  I could hardly contain my excitement even though I still felt oddly distracted by scanning the distance for any little dudes dressed in green with buckles on their hats and shoes.   

Pot of gold, huh?  The teacher produced a piece of green candy for each kid in second grade.  One of those little wrapped Brach’s candies like they sold at the Dime Store.  One piece each for all 35 of us, at the most.  What a rip off.  One measly piece of candy.   

That dang leprechaun.  Had he tricked us?  The teachers didn’t seem to be surprised that we didn’t find his pot of gold.  The disappointment felt somehow collective among my classmates.  All that excitement over the week for this?  Some kids popped the candy into their mouths.  I took mine home and fed it to the dog.  I didn’t want anything that evil, cheapskate leprechaun had touched, and if my dog would eat a flowered bicycle seat, he’d eat a piece of deceit-laden candy.

 

 

 

 

The greatest storyteller who ever lived

I am now a grandma.  Pardon me while that human tendency overtakes me, making me think I'm the only one who has ever experienced this.  You know.  Like people get when they first fall in love or have a baby, and all the newness and wonderfulness of it all makes other people want to dry heave.  There's little more annoying to others, I know.  I'll try to curtail it. 

My oldest son got married, and not only did I gain a wonderful daughter-in-law, but I also got a 4 1/2 year old granddaughter who sweetened the deal.  We met her for the first time this past weekend.  While some grandmothers dote on the little ones, almost taking credit for how beautiful, smart, and funny their grandbabies are, I have nothing to do with how beautiful, smart, and funny she is.  But believe me, she's all of those things. 

She warmed right up to us, and upon the second day of knowing her Grandma Kelly and Papa John, she wanted to spend the night with us.  Papa John was relegated to the couch, and the footie pajamaed sweetheart crawled into bed with me.  As we lay there, it occurred to me that I'd spent many a night in that very bedroom with my own grandma.  I practically grew up in the house we live in because it'd once belonged to my grandparents.  My grandpa died when I was in first grade.  My grandma welcomed my company, and my parents were more than willing to drop me off for weekend stays.  There's never been a more perfect definition of a "win-win" situation.  

"Hey," I said to her, trying my best to get my point across to a little girl who'd been inundated by meeting a boatload of new grandmas and grandpas in less than 24 hours.  "When I was a little girl, my grandma lived in this house.  I used to spend the night with her, and we slept in this bedroom.  Now, I'm lucky that I'm your grandma and we're having a sleepover, too."

I think it probably went over her head just how special this was to me, but I told her about spending the night with my grandma, and about all the silly stories she used to tell me and all the fun we used to have. 

If you had asked me when I was a little girl, I would have told you that my grandma was the greatest storyteller alive.  I guess if you asked me now, I’d say that she still was the best.  I loved to hear a good story, but not from a book.  That was somehow cheating in my opinion.  What I liked best was to listen to her tell her stories, whether they were ones she made up to appease me or stories about her childhood.   

“Tell me again about the hobos,” I’d beg.  She knew which story.  She’d start out telling me about the hobos who rode the rails, stopping in Bluffton.  She grew up a few blocks from the train tracks, and her two aunts lived in the house next door.   

“How did they know which houses to go to?”  I’d ask after she noted that her aunts always treated them to a sandwich and a cup of coffee.   

“They talked to each other,” she explained they also often left marks, signs that only the hobos understood telling other where to go.  “They knew where to go to get a free meal.”   

My great-great aunts were Christianly school teachers, and fully believed in helping the less fortunate.  I think they both married at the last minute just before the term spinster might be applied.   One had a child late in life, a menopause baby if you will.  He earned the nickname “Hatchet Jack” and became something of an urban legend in our area.  You might imagine my surprise when I learned that Hatchet Jack, who chased necking teens away from the cemetery when I was in high school, purportedly with a hatchet, was my third cousin.  I’m told he can tell you what the weather was like on any day in the past fifty years.  I'd heard stories of him escaping from the psych ward in the local hospital, walking down main street in a hospital gown when he'd decided he wanted to go back home.     

That element of crazy is the one thing that made my grandma’s stories the best.  She was tight lipped about a lot of things, but told just enough to pique my interest. Her grandfather committed suicide by blowing his head off because his wife was mean to him, or so the suicide note said.  Her sister, my great-aunt who did a tour of the state mental institution along with their own mother for having “nervous breakdowns,” tried to throw herself out of a moving car a few weeks before successfully parking her car in the garage and going to sleep, never to awake.  There was the cousin whose mom gave him three baths a day and wouldn’t let him play in the dirt.  He was quite sickly looking and pale.  Germs didn’t ultimately kill him, but the wreck where alcohol might have been a factor did.  Oh, and one of the most scandalous was Grandma’s cousin who lived in Kentucky who went swimming in the creek when she had her period.    

I ate up our messed up family history.  The hobo story, though, was complete in the telling because no one really went batshit crazy in it.  The other stories left a lot to my imagination. 

“One day,” she’d say, the anticipation almost killing me to get to the best part of the story, “this bum showed up on the porch.  Now, they wouldn’t let them inside.  They’d make them wait while they fixed them a bite to eat.”  

They wouldn’t have dreamed of turning away one of God’s hungry creatures, but they had their limits, I guess – Christian or not, they had standards - no hobos allowed in the house.   

“And the coffee was too hot, right?” 

“Oh goodness, yes,” she’d laugh.  “That guy took a bite of his sandwich, and then a big swig of coffee, and he burned his tongue.” 

I knew what was coming next, and it made me giddy.  “So he got up, mumbling about the coffee, and stumbled off down the sidewalk, muttering to himself that the coffee was too hot.” 

“Hot!  Hot!  The coffee’s too hot!  Hot!  Hot!  The coffee’s too hot,” I chanted.  At my insistence, sometimes she would demonstrate how the hobo staggered if the story was a bedtime one. 

“Why did he walk that way?”  I asked even though I knew that the bum was “tighter than a new boot,” which meant he was drunk.  But since it was one story that I felt like I was getting an entirely accurate account of what happened, and not the “G” version, I loved to see how he swaggered and staggered, tripping over his own feet down the sidewalk because that bum was drunk as a skunk.   

Grandma was an all around good gal besides being a great storyteller.  She tolerated me in a way that most other adults did not when I was a youngin’.  When I got bored with sitting still, she let me dig through her countless pairs of shoes, and rummage through her jewelry boxes.  I was never finished until I tried on the blue pumps with the tiny bow or the last pair of clip-on earrings, and heard all the stories that went with them.  While she didn’t own expensive pieces of jewelry, she had a few pieces that meant something because they were a gift from a family member, or had belonged to someone who’d since passed away.    

When I ran out of things to model for her, we’d flip through her photo albums and scrapbooks while she told me about her friends while growing up.  One of them had gone to Las Vegas to dance in a cage.  I never understood why someone would want to be in a cage, let alone how you could dance in one, but I admired the postcards with Las Vegas in big, block letters.  Anna Louise had dated Johnny, and they double dated with Grandma and Grandpa before they were married. She showed me ticket stubs and told me about the dances they went to on the lake.  I pictured them dancing in the sand in the dark, where men as big as giants played music because they were in a “big band.”   (I now have these albums and scrapbooks in my possession, and I'll thumb through them and drown in nostalgia that's a mix of hers and mine.)

She taught me the words to songs that drove my parents up the walls.  I’d sing “The Thousand Legged Worm” over and over again, never really being sure when the song was supposed to end, so when I got to the chorus of “walk around, walk around, on the other 999, if it can’t be found, I’ll just have to walk around…” I’d take it from the top, never knowing when to stop, but it was usually when someone said enough already.   

I learned about my history – those I came from, and some who went long before me.  I reveled in the stories of the family secrets of suicide and those who were a little off their rockers.  When I asked too many questions she’d change the subject.  “When your daddy was a little boy…”   

I grew up, though, as kids do.  I had bigger fish to fry than spending the night with Grandma and hearing made up stories about Harry the monkey, who got into all sorts of trouble wearing ladies dresses and make-up after escaping from the zoo. 

Many years have passed since I begged to hear about her friend Babe Fox (how cool of a name is that?) or the time my dad tried to get my uncle to go down the laundry chute. I remember the stories, though.  My grandma passed away in December 2005, and if you asked me now, I’d still tell you that she was the best storyteller ever. 

And that's exactly what I told my granddaughter - that my grandma was the best.  As we snuggled up and went to sleep, I hoped that I'll be the kind of grandma that would make my grandma proud. 

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Where You Can Find Me....

I don't seem to find the time to blog much when I'm working on other projects.  I know I should, but I don't.  I'm going to make a concerted effort to do so.

You can follow me on Facebook  Kelly Coleman Potter - Writer

You can find my books in both Kindle and paperback format here  Kelly's Amazon Page

Aye, Yi, Yi...

...we look like...cartoons!

Remember Kidd Video on Saturday morning cartoons? Cousin Oliver, Robbie Rist, from the "Brady Bunch" was on it. You can watch a video clip here.

There's nothing more to do with that. I just happened to think of it while I was aye, yi, yiing.

Sometimes, I like reading things I wrote when my kids were younger.  I miss them.  Sometimes.  They're both in the Navy now, stationed away from their momma.  After 22 years of being a hands-on, round-the-clock stay-at-home-mom, the silence is almost deafening.  Of course, I focus on writing more than I ever did when they were underfoot, but I do miss them.  I'll often sit here in the evening and it almost feels like someone should come barreling through the front door, full of life with an empty stomach, telling me about their day and asking what there is to eat.  Don't get me wrong - I'm proud.  So very, very proud of them.  It's just that the empty nest isn't always what it's cracked up to be.  Some days, it's absolutely heavenly to hear myself think and not pick up dirty drawers and dishes off the living room floor.  Other days, well, I miss their presence. 

This happened about five and a half years ago, and it's the kind of thing I miss.  The unexpected humor and interaction with my kiddos: 

My 15 year old walked in yesterday after football practice and presented me with a folded up piece of paper.

"What did you do now?" I asked, sure that he'd gotten in trouble already for doing something senseless and utterly teenage-boyish. Undoubtedly, it was something that required my signature acknowledging that the school knows that I know what a heathen child I have raised.

"Look what I drew," he sniggered.

Now, it's been years since my baby has come home from school and presented me with artwork. As a matter of fact, he never brought his masterpieces home from art class. He'd throw them in the trash when he got back to the classroom, or stuff them in the bottom of his locker. Whenever the teacher deemed his locker as a health or fire hazard, he'd come home with a grocery sack full of crumpled construction paper.

How sweet, I thought. He's giving me something. A bonding moment, perhaps. I was touched by the sentiment, but I can guarantee it was short-lived.

I unfolded the paper, very unsure of what I might find.

The kids went through a period of time where they loved to draw pictures of each other, typically doing something gross. The both had a penchant for doodling scenes of the other one farting. No, I never really got what was so funny about that either.

Then they drew each other's socks, with vapors emitting and big holes, sometimes a big toe sticking out with a very nasty toenail.

After that, it was funny to draw each other holding hands with a fat woman. They'd mark the woman as so-and-so's girlfriend.

I don't understand boys. Never did, really. And, I guess it's fair to say I don't understand most men, but that's a whole 'nother rant.

So, anyway, no idea what his crafty little self is offering me.

There on the page is an elephant. I must say it was a decent drawing. A whole lot better than what I could do.

I noticed the elephant is drinking something. Looks sort of like a paint can. I held it up and out from my face because well, you know, I'm seriously considering getting myself a pair of those reading glasses because my vision sure isn't what it used to be.

I squinted a bit and read the label of the bucket, "ANTI-FREEZE."

"Umm, why is the elephant drinking anti-freeze, or do I want to know?" I questioned.

He laughed and said he didn't know.

"Okay, then. Great. This will come in handy one day when the psychiatrist asks if there were ever any signs of you being mentally disturbed," I said.