This Little Piggy Went Wee Wee Wee All the Way Home by Jenny Gardiner

Don't worry, I'm not about to write about swine flu. Just had to clear the air on that, what with the pig reference in the title. No, instead I'm going to regale you with far more compelling subject matter: wee wee. Well, not exactly. I've been thinking about wee-wee a bit lately, but really I'm not going to talk about it. At least not in it's truest form.

You see my daughter is in an upcoming musical at her high school. She loves to sing and do all of those theatrical things and my husband and I have enjoyed watching her grow as a performer and we were duly thrilled that she was going to try out for the musical this year. I pictured her belting out songs about the corn being knee-high by the Fourth of July, or being Hopelessly Devoted to whomever was the closest thing to John Travolta that the school could scratch up, or maybe even getting a bit edgier and joining the ensemble cast in a rousing rendition of Seasons of Love from Rent.

But instead, she and her peers will be singing about pee. Yeah, I know, that sounds so terrifically disgusting. But really, it's nothing but funny. They had a new drama teacher this year who wanted to undertake something a little bit different than the usual high school musical productions, to give everyone something to talk about, and she decided that this year they would put on Urinetown. Yep, that's the title. Urinetown.

And then I got asked to help to publicize the play and I have a background in public relations so I was more than happy to do so, but then the reality kicked in once I actually started talking it up. Every time I've mentioned this play to anyone, I'm met with this: "Urinetown? As in urine town? Oh." And then their eyes glaze over. And I can't say that I blame them because, I mean, the title is a little off-putting.

I even thought about pitching it as You're In Town, figuring nobody would know the difference. I came up with the line I'd use for reporters:

"I wanted to let you know that the high school will be putting on a play, and it's been fabulously well-received on Broadway. Tony Award-winning, in fact. Yeah, uh-huh. Uh-huh. It's called You're In Town."

I figured they'd just sort of in their minds mix it with Our Town, an old chestnut that gets dragged out by all kinds of high school drama departments during play season.

Admittedly I'm not quite "in the know" in the world of drama, despite a potentially lurid addiction to People magazine. But that's more to do with pop culture than actual theatrics.

The extent of my acting prowess consisted of a quasi-starring role as Aunt Sally in Mr. Popsack's sixth grade production of Huck Finn. I made quite the memorable entrance when I tripped over a tree stump prop in a night scene during the first few minutes of the play, flipping heels over head and landing on my back. Despite my abject humiliation from that gaff, I received rave reviews, and Charlotte Tragard, the actress in our modest little high school, pulled me aside and told me I had a future in the arts.

Little did I know that future would be in trying to convince people that a play about pee is a must-see production.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Urinetown, don't let the title scare you. It's good, clean fun for the whole family. And perfectly relevant for the times in which we live, complete with corrupt politicians, corporate greed, and ecological devastation thrown in for good measure. What's not to love?

Yes, sometimes I feel as if I'm flacking the live action version of the children's book series, Captain Underpants. More like Captain Dirty Diapers. But I take heart in knowing that it's a fabulous play and has lots of terrific singing and you know, in some ways it brings me back to the day when changing diapers with my own babies and I probably sang about wee-wee, just to keep the kids entertained. So it all comes around.

Plus, my friend had a good point the other day.

"Hey," she said. "At least it's only pee! You could have been asked to publicize a production of The Vagina Monologues."

FROM FOUL MOOD TO FOWL MOOD - Jenny Gardiner

I’d been in a funk for days. A whole lot of life circumstances had conspired to form a perfect storm that ushered in a seriously foul mood in me. To top it off, the weather seemed determined to contribute to the cause, as cold rain had descended to hover over us as gray and dismal as my temperament seemed to.

As much as I wanted to get over it, I couldn't escape the shackles of my unpleasant mood.

Then my kind friend Aggie showed up on my doorstep, surprising me with a dozen eggs. And with little more than that humble gesture, suddenly I felt much better.



Right about now you’re wondering how weird I must be that I would be cheered up by eggs. But these weren’t just any old eggs: these were fresh from her henhouse. Coveted eggs with bright orange yolks as cheerful as a May morning. Eggs that aren’t quite so easy to come by in this day and age. The fact that my friend wanted to share her limited supply of her treasured eggs was such an act of impromptu kindness, it couldn’t not brighten my mood.

And it reminded me that we all ought to try to remain better connected with one another, because ultimately it is those bonds with our friends and family that help to elevate us when we're feeling most down.

Sometimes in this world of disconnect it’s hard to personalize one’s sentiments. We’re so busy zapping out emails and staccato’d text-messages and scurrying to and fro, we never find the time for conversation. As much as I enjoy catching up with friends on the phone, for instance, I rarely have the time to talk when it’s convenient to me. So instead? I communicate electronically, until I can find the time to squeeze in a chat with someone. And I don’t think I’m alone in this--it seems to be the norm. Yet somehow that email or e-card just doesn’t have the same grand delivery as does a simple thoughtful deed. Like Aggie's.

You know the crazy thing is I don’t particularly even like eggs, although my family sure does. But I do greatly appreciate the sentiment behind fresh eggs, and as a cook and avid supporter of buying locally, I know that fresh, local eggs are vastly better than store-bought. I actually find it extremely gratifying to crack into an egg and see that brilliant yellow-orange yolk: it means something to me. So in Aggie's message was much more than an egg, it was sharing of something relevant, something to be savored.

There is a tradition in the Cajun French culture of lagniappe: something for nothing. For instance, throwing in a thirteenth donut when you get a dozen. A little extra something. It makes imminent sense how that little something can ultimately mean so much.

With Easter time upon us, I could go all deep and exploratory and ponder the symbolism of eggs, the poster child for renewal, being that which lifted me up from my bleak mindset. Or I could just tell you I was one of those children perfectly content to play with the ribbon, rather than the expensive toy beneath the ribbon. Either which way, there is something so very right about that gift: the sweet simplicity of the thought behind it. From one friend to another: "Have some eggs." And to be reminded that someone cares.




Jenny Gardiner is the author of the award-winning novel Sleeping with Ward Cleaver and the upcoming humorous memoir Parrothood: Twenty Years of Caring for a Vengeful Bird Determined to Kill Me.(Simon Spotlight, Spring, 2010)

INFORMATION OVERLOAD

The other night at book club my friends and I were bemoaning what everyone's inevitably lamenting these days: the disastrous economic Armageddon plaguing the world. A few of us admitted that we've given up listening to the media doomsdayers who are bent on bombarding us 24/7 with tales of world demise, and instead have decided to tune it out in favor of more pleasant things. Except that sometimes even that is hard to find, given that we are being deluged with too much stimuli from every angle.

One popular escapist outlet is the myriad of social networking groups on the Internet, from that now-dinosaur/ADD nightmare, MySpace, to Facebook, to Twitter. Add to that blogs, grogs, Library Thing, Red Room, LinkedIn, Yahoo listserves, and niche chat sites that can run the gamut from professional networking to holistic parrot care. All this means absolutely no end to the realm of e-distractions that can drain your brain, and while you're at it, every waking moment of your life as well. I actually found a social network site called VampireFreaks.com. Seriously. That I even bothered to spend the time on the Internet researching that is worrisome to me on some level. Talk about sucking your soul.



I know many sing the praises of this profusion of Internet connectivity. But one could argue whether social networking really is a boon to society, or is merely one more distraction that's holding us back from living our lives more fully. I mean sure, thanks to Facebook (co-opted from the young, who hate us for that), you might now have re-connected with Tommy Stromboli, who sat behind you in sixth grade health class and sketched amazing pictures of Loony Tunes characters (and the occasional body part) while the rest of the class took notes. But honestly, did you need to be back in touch with Tommy? I mean, if you'd really wanted to communicate with him, would you have ever lost contact in the first place?

I have Facebook "friends" from childhood with whom was I not only decidedly not in their circle friends, I wasn't even in their galaxy of acquaintances. Interestingly, though, Facebook seems to be resurrecting that very social strata we all gladly left behind years ago. It's middle school redux: the cool kids still only chat with the cool kids and the others are left out in the cold, this time from the LED screen of your computer in the comfort of your home.

Graduating on from Facebook, we have the latest rage, Twitter, a micro-blogging site. The place to be in the e-ether. If you don't tweet, you're so out of the loop. So everyone's tweeting: a whole lot of blather bloating the e-waves. Twitterers can use no more than 140 concisely-constructed characters to condense their little moment in time for whomever in the world follows them on Twitter. A big New York editor recently endorsed Twitter to encourage writers to tighten their prose. Seems a stretch to me.

Now back when I was in school, I was a doodler. A doodler with absolutely no artistic ability whatsoever. So while I was stuck in classes like symbolic logic with my mind absolutely numb with boredom, I quickly ran out of things to doodle. After so many birds, sunshines, moons with faces, and garden-variety flowers, what was left to draw? But nowadays, instead of doodling with pen and paper, with Twitter you can doodle with your words. And instead of only Tommy Stromboli peering over your shoulder to bear witness to your mindless nothingness, well, hey, you have the entire e-world in which to infuse your verbal helium.
Just think of the people you can touch in the world with that 140-character tweet on Twitter, after all. A quick glimpse of tweets of folks I am following include: I need to shave my legs. Sigh. Or: Finally found a small carton of the elusive pink malted milk balls. Commence sugar shock. Lastly this: Wheat Ritz crackers are just wrong. Who wants a healthy Ritz cracker? There's also a link to a photo of one twitterer eating her foot. She felt compelled to post it after being proven wrong about something she insisted she was right or she'd eat her foot. Okay then.


The thing is, I totally "get" Twitter and have gotten pulled under the riptide of reading and writing tweets myself. Sometimes it's just more of a challenge to come up with something fun or stupid or entirely useless in 140 characters than it is to do something you ought to be doing. But that's the thing of it: it keeps us—i.e. however many hundreds of millions of subscribers to Twitter, Facebook, or you name the site—from doing useful things. Like talking to someone nearby, for instance. Or conducting brain surgery. You laugh, but on the news the other day (that very news we're supposed to be avoiding, due to its glum nature), I heard about doctors tweeting while removing some man's cancerous tumor in his abdominal cavity. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer my doc not tweet while in my gut.

Makes me want to dial 9-1-1, stat, because I fear we have become victims of information overload, and we're now hemorrhaging all that useless knowledge.

My tweet response to that? Remember when ignorance was bliss? Sigh.

I'm not old enough to have experienced the days when you'd pick up the phone and an operator would connect your call for you—hence adding a layer of actual human interface. But I think I miss that sort of interaction nevertheless.
Come to think of it, even more, I miss the days when social networking meant going to a really fun party.

Open Wide and Say Oink!

Thank goodness real science is back in vogue. Not one week into the Obama administration, and already scientific discoveries as far-reaching in import as Darwin's theory of evolution are making headlines. Yes, indeed, word is out about the best-excuse-for-what-ails-you in a long, long time. And this time, it's something I can really sink my teeth into. Or would that be something that causes me to sink my teeth into things?



Yep, I'm talking about the fatso virus. In case you've been hiding in a cave this week and missed the screaming headlines on Fox news and such, I'll fill you in. There's actually at least one scientist out there who claims to have evidence that a derivation of a very common virus, which spreads just like the common cold, somehow mutates in the systems of an unlucky chunk of the population causing them—er, uh, us—to get fatter, minus the joy of even having gorged our way into the jumbo-wear department! The idea is this: the virus somehow causes fat cells to replicate wildly out of control. It's like cancerous blubber. Or blubberous cancer. And it's all out of our hands (and into our ample derrieres, evidently).

Who'd have thunk? I for one am mercifully relieved to know that a virus—a stinking virus!—is undoubtedly what keeps me from being a lean, mean bikini-donning machine. And while I can't appreciate what the insidious AD-36 adenovirus clearly has wrought upon me, at least I can appreciate that now I've got something on which to blame it when I reach for that dessert tonight. "What the heck? It's not gonna do me any good to not eat it. After all, that virus is making those fat cells multiply regardless!"

Of course fat in America is a relative thing, what with the Super Size servings so rampant in this country. Since when did a helping of pasta actually equate to an entire one-pound box of Barilla spaghetti? Even little old Italian grandmothers whose reputations ride on overfeeding their families won't pile on a plate that high.

But at your average chain restaurant these days, that's what you get: a whole lotta food. Last month we went to a Brazilian churrascurria for my in-laws' 50th anniversary dinner. For them it was a little trip down memory lane, as they spent several years living in Rio de Janeiro. For us, it was the express bus ride on the binge-eaters' superhighway. I would hazard a guess that while residing in Rio—home of that tall and tan and young and lovely girl from Ipanema—the in-laws didn't gorge themselves quite like we all did at that all-you-can-eat mutton palace.

While bands of waiters wielding meat-laden skewers milled about our private dining area, guests helped themselves to a McMansion-sized salad-and-sides bar that could easily have fed a refugee camp for a month. I was sufficiently repulsed by the toddler who grabbed a baseball-sized marinated mozzarella ball from a serving bowl. After squishing it in his germ-infested palm for a minute, he reconsidered and returned it to its rightful place, for the next sucker to place it on his or her plate (and possibly contract the fat virus). That was at least 150 calories that wouldn't go my way. But I made up for it, and soon my plate over-floweth(ed).




As we returned with plates a-groaning to the dining room, a sort of Vincent Price-esque Gothic room with rich, vermillion walls (alas, reminiscent of the carnage that probably occur in the kitchen, what with all the animals they must butcher each night), I suddenly noticed the mirrors. Now I realize from a decorator's standpoint, mirrors are a great idea—they create an expansive feeling even in a small room. But this room was overrun with ceiling-to-floor mirrors, something that doesn’t exactly lend itself to shoveling food into your mouth, when you know every time you look across the table you'll see none other than yours truly stuffing your own pie-hole. But this place had a clever little trick: the mirrors were all slimming, placed at a clever angle so as to easily remove 15 pounds from one's appearance. So even while we were committing gluttony to the point of nausea, we'd catch glimpses of ourselves—our unusually thin selves—and feel practically justified in going for that third helping of black beans and rice. Because hey, we look so darned good in the mirror!

Nature is a fickle mistress, isn't she? First she throws a vengeful little fatso virus at us, so that no matter what we do, we pork out. Then she enables us to foolishly trust that we look fine, because the enormous mirrors suspended at a strategic angle tell us we do, even if a cursory check downward argues differently.

But I have faith that a skinny virus must be just around the corner, and I'll go searching for it—maybe not even wiping the handles of the shopping carts with wet wipes, so as to encourage catching it. Keep watching for me, I'll be the one hanging out near the skinny people, just waiting for them to sneeze in my direction.

(Jenny Gardiner is the author of the novel Sleeping with Ward Cleaver and the upcoming humorous memoir Parrothood: Twenty Years of Caring for a Vengeful Bird Determined to Kill Me)