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By: Pamela Ross,
on 12/17/2007
Blog: Born to Write (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: confessions, melodye shore, summer love, acting, memories, memes, stephen king, Add a tag
You can run but you can't hide. I've been kissed by an angel and tagged by the honorable poet and author Laura Purdie Salas to divulge my darkest secrets.
How come these online memes never ask us to probe the meaning of oxygen or the importance of being earnest?
I wonder if I know myself enough to know the obscure things about me that would seem interesting to a reading audience. ;>
1: I used to listen in on phone calls at the switchboard when I worked behind the desk at a hotel during the summer a million years ago. My parents stayed at the hotel and the job was given to me out of courtesy to my mom and dad. (It was an old switchboard with plugs and buttons. Straight out a 40s movie set.) That was the summer I was hypnotized by Stephen King's SALEM'S LOT. I read, I plugged, I listened, I made a lot of mistakes. I learned a lot of secrets.
2: My first true kiss and true love was with a 19-year old trumpet player to my 14-year old goofiness. Our first date was an afternoon movie ("Ode to Billie Jo") because my father would not let me go out at night. That was the summer I found Sylvia Plath and romance all at once. I can still remember the moment of that kiss. I can see myself on the couch, wearing oatmeal-hued jeans and a brown tube top. I wrote a lot of love letters that year.
3: My Can't Dos: Sew, Play cards, play PlayStation games or Dance Dance Revolution, cook, make braids, eat fish or eggs, understand math, draw, dress fashionbaly, throw out a book, figure out how to put on the DVD player in the living room, go to sleep like normal people do, change a flat tire, bear the sight or mention of a mouse.
4: Almost Famous: The closet ham in me is not too shy to admit my off off off off off off off Broadway acting roles: (Think camp, school:) Annie Oakley (ANNIE GET YOUR GUN), The Courier (1776, Hi Hope, Best Play Ever)
5: If I see people throwing trash outside their car windows, most notably cigarette butts, I even my car next to the offending driver and stare the person down until my message is loud and clear. When I am in the mood, I roll down my window and shout: "Why did you have to do that?" (Really. Who DO they have to do that? Are there not enough garbage pails in the world?)
This was a ridiculously random spew of airhead factoids. It was a long day. I was in a hospital/nursing home in Brooklyn for much of the day. I can still smell its putrid aroma on my skin. I don't like knowing a family member is there but that's all there is for now. My grandma (father's mother) died in that same building. I walked into the doors and all the ugly memories of the last time I was in that building washed over me. I can still see her thin, pale wrists tied to the bedrails to avoid her hurting herself. She had very little recognition left but I do remember saying my name and watching me with her big blue eyes as I kissed her clammy cheek and left her room. I never saw her alive again.
Hey. Who brought the Sad Sack in here? :{
This is supposed to be a fun project. {}
Ready to make some noise, make some more fun? I choose.....
(Drumrolls and glockenspiel clinking, maestro, please! Oh and did I mention I pretended to know how to play the glockenspiel in our junior high school band class? I don't know how I got away with that one.)
Next battah battah is...![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
newport2newport Melodye Shore... because if anyone can make a random obscurity make sense, it's My California Girl, the one and only Original First-Place Trophy Friend, Melodye. {{{}}}
Take it away, Mel, mon chere.
-Pamela, worried my obscure confessions make for one, massive snore-fest...
In Africa men commonly wear pink - prison uniforms are often pink. On the other hand I never wear pink! Many of the local children have worked their way through my library and, so far, nobody has said it is a library 'for girls' - but I never suggest that it is!
Bravo! This is a message that really needs to be picked up. Back in December of last year I was heartened to hear of the 'Pink Stinks' campaign.
Hurray for you! With you all the way!
Hear, hear!
I have been pink branded, girl branded for far too long, for all my many, many objections.
Boys are restless because they are taught - by society, school, parents - that it is expected of them. My male Bangladeshi relatives are brought up to be quiet, modest, respectful and obedient to their elders, and to cry at the drop of a love song, and that's how they behave. I don't think this is a particularly Good Thing, but it does demonstrate that nurture is more important than nature.
If I show my books (Jacqueline Wilson/ Cathy Cassidy style covers) to a class of mixed boys and girls, the boys switch off the moment they see the cover. The girls, on the other hand, switch on. You can see they know what is expected of them.
I wish the publishing industry would realise that everyone - parents, writers, readers - are sick of the girl/boy cover division.
Absolutely agree with this. The idea that girls getting better marks than boys is a cause for moral panic (something we heard nary a peep of about it was the other way round) is simply misogyny. (Men aren't from Mars and Women aren't from Venus, but pop psychology really is from Uranus, as some wag pointed out.)
The unnecessary gender-marking of books is pernicious. The latest example I came across was on web site for Scholastic's My Story series, which divides its titles into books "for boys" and "for girls", purely on the basis of the sex of the main character. Why on earth would any publisher wish to put off half their potential market in this way?
I am with you 100% on this one, Celia! Well said.
I am with you 100% on this one, Celia! Well said.
Me too! And it needs saying!
Just came across this relevant post: http://robdougherty.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/boys-reading/
As a teacher, I totally agree with your point, and boy do I hate the suggested age range thing too. And pink covers while we're at it!
Dear Celia,
Well said! I was reading my novel, with a girl narrator, to a group of school kids on Friday, and particularly noticed one young lad who was clearly utterly drawn into the story. It fills me with horror to think of my darling little grandson being regarded, not as himself, but as some kind of stereotypical male. On the other hand, I spent years telling my daughters they could do as well as boys, and why should we get so anxious if girls do well? Anne Fine's daughter Cordelia has apparently written a brilliant book on this subject, which I must get hold of. And isn't it infuriating that right from the word go there are these colour-coded clothes for boys and girls - and apparently red is now a girls' colour and boys can't wear it. Duh!!
Terrific post, Celia and you're quite right of course!
The point about the Dragon Tattoo is well made. I always tell boys when I speak to them that it's funny how boys don't like girls on covers of books until suddenly, as if by magic, they like nothing better than a pretty girl gracing the cover of a book they're reading!
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What a timely piece. I agree with everything you've written, Celia. There are plenty of reluctant girl readers out there who are overlooked in both the classroom and the bookshop. Librarians are picking up on this. I was asked to speak at a YLG conference last year about my Girls FC series (about a girls' football team) and to focus on reluctant girl readers.I didn't know why they asked me to focus on that aspect particularly until I realised there was a second thread going on here - that football is seen as a subject for non-readers, regardless of gender. Double whammy.