Age

I spent five days in the hospital a few years ago when I had my surgery for . . . well, let's just say it was for feminine things, and let's just say it wasn't cosmetic.

Anyway, those five days were like a trip to my distant future, and the trip was sobering. One day (or evening, or afternoon -- you lose track of time when you're pressing that morphine button), I woke up from a nap and struggled to remember where I was. Robe . . . slippers . . . matted hair . . . . Oh, yeah: I was in the hospital, and I must have fallen asleep reading. My reading glasses were cockeyed; my magazine had fallen against my neck and was covered in drool.

I suddenly imagined how I'd be seen by people glancing into my room as they walked down the hall: Old. Nursing-home old. Worthless old. A Gome from the Home, as my husband and his fellow med students used to say. ("Gome" meaning "elderly," short for GOMER, or Get Out of My Emergency Room.)

Later that day (or the next, or that night), I was dutifully taking my I.V. pole for a walk down the hallway, shuffling, aching, cursing the nurses for making me do this; and ahead of me I saw a genuinely elderly lady pushing a walker. My first reaction, which shocked me, was envy -- man, I'd love one of those things.

I was able to stuff this chilling experience into the back of my memory drawer for a few years, stay in denial about the inevitability of my own aging.

And then my son turned 16.

There is nothing like a scathing stare from a smug teenager to make you feel like a Gome from the Home. You stare back for all you're worth, mentally straightening your dignity and buttoning up your pride. You attempt some imperious corrective lecture about his ". . . attitude, Mister." But even if he looks away first and grunts assent, the damage is done. It's all relative, man; and relatively, you're Old.

My consolation is that I am a baby boomer. Therefore, as I like to say, I am The Demographic. My age group gets the lion's share of advertiser's attention, reminding me how hip I still am (even with leakage protection!) My daughter's iTunes library includes some of MY music -- Crosby, Stills, and Nash; Cream; Pink Floyd; The Beatles. When my kids watched a TV documentary about Woodstock the other night, they were fascinated by the ethos of that time. I made the most of it, singing along with the songs, pathetically pretending that I was at the core of the movement instead what I really was at the time: a clueless 14-year-old in go-go boots.

Consolation, too, comes in reminiscence from the book I'm currently reading: Girls Like Us, by Sheila Weller, a wonderful intermingled biography of Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon. What a vivid, evocative trip back to the 60s and 70s this book is, especially for someone of my gender and age (in other words, someone who can still sing every word to every song Joni Mitchell wrote).

That's what my 50s feel like so far -- a duality, a precarious poise between flower child and Gomer. And so when I watch my son pull the car out of the driveway, I don't feel like his middle-aged mom; I feel 16 again, heady with the freedom of a new driver's license, driving downtown on a summer evening with the windows open and "You're So Vain" blasting on the radio.

FFriends

I used to be very selective about which Facebook friend requests I'd accept. This came from the mistaken idea that Facebook friends were actually friends. I mean, my Facebook friends are friends, of course, but it took me awhile to figure out that Facebook isn't a coffee date, or a party at my house, or a private gathering of BFFs.

It's like a big interactive address book. I can assemble all my acquaintances without having to write down their contact information -- without even having to contact them at all. What used to feel like a disturbingly public place is now, I realize, actually very private. It's Facelessbook.

If, for instance, I regret getting back in touch with Paula Peilmeister from 6th grade, I can filter out her Status Updates, or hit Ignore when she asks for my birthday, or delete her altogether -- and I never have to find out how she felt about it. And because Paula, like most of us, is inured to the facelessness of the Internet, she probably doesn't even care that much.

And so I've updated my definition of friendship: I now have FFriends (pronounced fffriends), Contacts, Speed-Dials, and ICEs. FFriends are everyone on my Facebook friends list. Contacts are good enough friends to be in my cell phone. Speed-Dials are the 20 people I call most, and ICEs are my In Case of Emergency designates (not to be confused with just any old relatives).

These days, if you're legit and not a Facebook Slut (someone who collects FFriends like Pokémon cards), I'll probably accept your friend request. Just don't expect me to read your Status Updates. No offense, but honestly, I'd rather fold laundry.

ADHD in the Big Apple

So imagine one of my favorite foods, eggplant, made into a kind of creamy baba ghanouj and then baked.  Oh, and throw in one of my favorite meats, lamb.  Then imagine another of my favorite foods, halvah (okay, I have a lot of favorite foods), also made creamy and baked.  Those were the entrée and dessert last night when Dan and I went out for Turkish.  Considering how rich that halvah was, it sure went down nice 'n easy.  I was still full this morning.

I have been hanging out at Steps dance studio way too much.  Hey, cut me some slack -- it's right there, across the street, the biggest dance studio in New York!  I loved my ballet class yesterday, but I love the atmosphere at Steps just as much.  You walk through a tiny doorway hidden beside the entrance of Fairway Market, go up a dingy, deserted staircase to the third floor . . . and you enter a world of noise and music and dancers and laughter.  It's in a beautiful old building with lots of wood and French doors, so you can see what's going on in every room as you look around.  There are dancers stretching in the hallway, dancers putting on pointe shoes as they sit against a wall covered with celebrities' inscribed 8 X 10s, dancers practicing alone in empty rooms, dancers in a big classroom doing beautiful jazz, dancers in the next room executing perfect arabesques in unison.  I could hardly tear myself away from watching them to go to my rinky-dink beginner's class, although I was consoled by finding myself at the barre between two gorgeous male dancers -- both clearly professionals picking up an extra workout.  (I had to duck when we started the grand battements.)

And I haven't even talked about the day before, when I went down to the Alvin Ailey studio to take class with the illustrious Finis Jhung.  He was stern and scary, and he zeroed in on me (how did he do that? it was a big class and I tried to blend in with the rookies in the back) and made me get on that standing leg and stay on that standing leg.  By golly, my pirouettes started to stabilize by the end of the class.  Sheesh.  I'm such an addict.  There's got to be a 12-Step program for Heather's passions.

After Alvin Ailey, I bought a 7-day unlimited subway card and rode around on the subway for awhile just to get the hang of it again.  I remembered that New York subways aren't as easy to navigate as the ones in London or Washington, D.C. or even Paris.  And I'm glad I practiced -- during the daytime, in a good part of town -- because I had to do conspicuous things like taking out my subway map and wandering around looking for the exit.  (I didn't want to be doing that later this week when I was in a hurry and going through some funkier stations.)

Dan enhanced the whole subway mystique when he told me last night about what homeless guys used to do.  I guess that when the subways still used tokens, homeless guys would stick pieces of cardboard in the slots so that when people dropped in their tokens, nothing would happen and they'd give up and go through another turnstile.  Then the homeless guys would put their mouths over the coin slots and suck up the tokens.  They were called "coin suckers," and they started showing up in ERs with horrible diseases -- typhoid, tetanus, T.B.   Ick ick ick. Gonna be using my elbows a lot more on doors and turnstiles from now on.

Dan regaled me with this story, by the way, just as I was tucking into my baked halvah.  And it didn't slow my spoon down a bit; the halvah was that good.

New York, Sunday morning.  Back to the clamor of NY noise and smells, the bustle of the Upper West Side, the damp grey air off the river.  I looked out my hotel window this morning and saw that right across the street is Steps on Broadway, the biggest dance studio in New York, classes all day for addicts like me.  Must . . . stay . . . away . . . .

What a different city this is when you have some money.  During my starving student days, I'd come down here from Yale every couple of weeks (research, events, dentist), and it was a splurge even to take a subway.  I couldn't afford street vendors, so I'd bring my little sack lunch with me.  One day, I set my lunch down on the floor of the train from New Haven; when I got to Grand Central, it was filled with roaches.  So I just didn't eat that day.

Fast-forward to now, where I'm in this plush hotel on the Upper West Side and it's probably roach-free.  As I plan my week, I'm deciding to walk to most places just because I want to; and I'm not stressed about going places after dark because I can just take a taxi.  Maybe I'll even buy a hot pretzel from a street cart!  

Also across the street from me (ground floor of the Steps building, in fact) is a huge gourmet grocery, Fairway, to which of course I hastened last night before I'd even unpacked. The place has a huge olive-oil department complete with tasting bar (I thought it was the wine section at first).  I also thoroughly sampled the vast array of olives and discovered that dried marinated Moroccan black olives are as addictive as crack-cocaine.

I couldn't believe that all the dairy here is still ultra-pasteurized.  When I used to live out here, I chafed at having to buy the stuff.  My healthnik research said that it's nutritionally vapid, that its fat molecules are rendered somehow more insidious and damaging.  But obviously it's the Way of the East Coast. Even Organic Valley pre-cooks its whipping cream here.  Whores.

I've morphed, Hulk-like, to my old East Coast persona – iron-shelled but amused underneath, like an actor who studies the audience from the wings.  Yesterday at the market, the young clerk grinding my coffee (grind-your-own not allowed) was sniffing inside a can of Sharffenberger cocoa powder, and I barked, "Smells good," and he hooded his eyes and said guardedly, "What's it for?" and I said flatly, "Baking.  Hot chocolate," and he looked right at me now and said, "How?" and I looked right at him now and said, "Heat a cup of milk, add two tablespoons of it and some sugar.  Delicious," and just like that, we were friends.

My First Lil' Movie Review

. . . . in, oh, 20 years.  And because it's a blogged review, I can do it my way!  ("Keep it light and bright," they'd admonish me at the New Haven Register;  I did tend toward gothic reviews in those days.)

Any-hoo, our subject for today:  Role Models.  My son rented it to watch with a friend the other night, which meant that MY plans were to seal myself in my bedroom with a good book.  But I caught the first scene, sat down, and watched the whole thing.  Twice.

David Wain (he of MADtv) has created a movie that's definitely in what I call the Adolescent Fart Film genre, and on that level it is not at all surprising -- lots of T&A (and jokes on same) and a plot built around the wacky shenanigans of a pair of endearing but knuckle-headed guy pals.

It has another level, though, that astonished me: the acting.  It is wonderful across the whole cast, which says as much about the directing (casting, too) as it does about the actors.  

The Amazing Jane Lynch gives her character (an addict whose drug of choice is now her kid's charity) a nuanced creepiness that is complex and hilarious and hard to put your finger on.  Her performance alone makes the movie worth seeing.  Paul Rudd plays Paul Rudd -- and as one of the writers, he clearly meant it for Paul Rudd -- which is perfect in this case.  He actually shows a lot more range and creative muscle in I Love You, Man, but that would have been overkill in Role Models.

Because I usually avoid the AFF genre altogether, I hadn't seen much of Seann William Scott, but he was great, slipping little moments of grown-up into his silly boy-man character that made me honestly wonder what he'd be like in a stage drama.

Bobb'e J. Thompson was forgettable, in fact annoyingly hammy.  But I hope Alexandra Stamler and Christopher Minz-Plasse are forever grateful to Wain for the candid and sensitive portraits he helped them create.  They're new enough (Stamler is completely new to the screen, I think) that they could have really blown it by overdoing their roles as LARP-obsessed teenagers.  

I don't know why Elizabeth Banks (who plays Rudd's girlfriend) annoys me, but it probably isn't her fault, so I won't whine.

There are some good one-liners, but what makes this a strong comedy is that it's built on so many layers of irony about what really defines addiction, drugs, maturity, normalcy, fantasy, eccentricity, even good versus evil.  

Okay, so it isn't Rachel Getting Married (OMG what a film), but I was really surprised at how good it was.