I’m absolutely giddy with joy over all of these comments. I already realize that should I attempt to keep up with every single one and write down all that comes to me as I read each, I will be writing for at least 20 hours per day. Please know I am reading and loving it all. Oh I am so excited about our little group here. Regarding math—I was really, really good at math as a kid. I loved it. I ENJOYED algebra. I had a crush on geometry (which at least in theory helped me for the years I hung out in bars and sometimes attempted to shoot a game of pool). Math kind of fell by the wayside for me. But when I picked up knitting—yes, I will talk a lot about knitting in my posts—it occurred to me pretty quickly that this craft that looks deceptively simple actually involves tons of math as well as structural engineering. Working in the kitchen, especially since I often double and triple recipes, is another place where I enjoy practicing applied math. I so agree that if subjects were taught with connections kids could grasp, vs. rote learning, there’d be a lot more eager learners.
From the 1980s through the Nineties, one object stood as the center of our family home. Not the TV, thought that would be a reasonable guess. I'm talking about the telephone.
The phone itself changed over the years, updated from a rotary dial to a push button version, and finally to a cordless phone that always managed to get lost, leaving only its empty cradle sitting in the former seat of glory in the center of the house, the dining table.
The table was more of a catch-all on the way from the front door to the bedrooms or from the living room to the kitchen. Pushed up against the wall with the phone commanding, if only energetically, most of its surface, there was hardly enough room for two people to actually use it as intended, to sit and eat or do homework. Since we were a family of five, dinner was usually a scattered affair, with everyone taking their plates to the couch or to their rooms.
The phone's spot on the family dining table was nearly equidistant from the front door (where, after getting off the school bus, I'd often hear the ring coming from inside as I fumbled among the garden rocks to find our hidden key before bursting inside to try to answer before whoever was calling gave up and hung up) to the backdoor (where, from outside at my spot in the hammock, lounging with a stack of books, I'd more often than not ignore it until it stopped ringing).
It was closer to the kitchen than the bathroom, the latter of which was my mom's preferred place to take her longer calls while she soaked in the bathtub, sometimes for hours, the coiled phone cord disappearing under the bathroom door and mom's voice, relaxed and jovial, coming out in a cloud of steam.
It was closer to Mom and Dad's room than to mine, which meant that my mom had a good chance of beating me to it when the phone rang and I was expecting a call. I'd standing in front of her with my hand out and my eyes boring into her as she asked, eyes staring right back at me, who was calling— as if she needed to know.
When the phone rang, everyone hoped it was for them and everyone was disappointed when it wasn't. There were calls from friends, family, offices with appointments, school and neighbors, and sometimes calls from kids asking if so-and-so could come over and play. It was the hub of our social lives.
For my mom, it was also the hub of her business as a self-employed massage therapist who, in order to try to avoid creeps and people with bad vibes, only advertised by word of mouth and made almost all appointments over the phone. This meant that phone rang a lot. And as she was often not home because she was out working, we kids were responsible for answering the phone and taking messages. Taking a message meant writing down the person's name, number, and reason for calling. There was a stack of notebook paper and a pen sitting right next to the phone for the collection of these messages. Mom liked when I answered these calls because I had excellent penmanship and I could make myself sound very professional on the phone.
That phone was always in use, and when the call waiting feature arrived and would let another call come through when the phone was in use, it became clear that we'd very likely missed a lot of calls back when callers would just the busy signal and have to hang up and try again later.
If a call came in for one of the adults while one of the kids was on the phone, the adult call took precedence— even if it wasn't important, as my calls clearly were— and kids would have to unceremoniously end their call and relinquish the phone to an elder.
And if a call for one of the kids came through while Mom or Dad was using the phone, there was the agonizing realization that the call was for you ("She's here, but I'm on the other line") but that your caller was being told you weren't as important as some other people in the house were and you'd have to call them back later when the phone was free, if it ever was again.
Yet as frustrating and minimizing as this experience could be, it couldn't completely dampen the feeling of being pleased that someone thought you were important enough to pick up the phone and dial your number.
This piece was inspired by the phone number I had growing up, which must have been my family's phone number for something like 30 years since my parents maintained long after my siblings and I had moved out. I had a really hard time remembering any other numbers off the top of my head besides mine and my husband's. With a little time and prodding, I was able to come up with my parent's cell phone numbers, but sheesh, was this ever a wake up call to look at people's phone numbers when calling or texting!
The funny thing is that my dad can remember the phone number of almost everyone he's ever known. In fact, in his cell phone, he doesn't even have his contact's names, he just dials the number. He recently thought of a friend he hadn't seen in probably 20 years and thought, "I wonder if her number is still the same?" He dialed it and it was. They had a great visit, lol.
I LOVE the piece you wrote about the phone. None of that happened terribly long ago but it seems like forever. Reading it I time traveled back to my own land line memories. I especially love the image of the phone cord under the bathroom door—how I remember being tethered by the phone cord and the “freedom” that came when longer cords became available. I actually have a push-button phone mounted on the wall in my bedroom. It is connected to nothing beyond the hook that holds it there. I bought it not that long ago—I wanted a reminder of how life was in many ways easier and more fun before we could carry our phones in our pockets. Thanks for the memories and the beautiful writing.
Thank you, Spike! I *does* seem like forever and, yes, it seemed so much more fun and easy back then. I'm still obsessed with landline phones and their whole aestheic. I always wanted the clear one that you could see all the wiring inside. So cool! That phone is actually on the cover of Chuck Klosterman's book, The Nineties, which is a great read and a total trip down memory lane. I love that that phone is the cover for the book— it says so much!!
You're so right! The phone was often the hub around activity in my home growing up too. This brought back memories of yelling to my siblings, "You get it!" Then being irritated when no one did and the phone stopped ringing. I like your use of the phone's location in the home and the hierarchy of whose call took priority. Both show what a family "hub" the phone used to be.
Thanks, Jessica. Funny how central to life the phone was during that era— and in such a different way than phones are central to our lives now. So much more wholesome! 😄
He loved suits and he loved old cars. He would have been a mechanic if he hadn't thought he owed it to those who gave him scholarships to "give back" by becoming a psychiatrist. A few weeks after he passed from ALS, I dreamed he was in a garage bay in a seersucker coverall -- "I'm going to be back in a good suit soon," he said, but he was having fun. The next time I dreamed of him he was in a black off the rack suit, an antiques salesman showing me a sleek funerary urn. "I know it's not my usual taste," he said. I was so weirded out I called his wife at lunch not sure I'd tell her about the dream. She was at the antique store across from my old street, picking out an urn. "Okay, maybe get something modern-looking. Trust me." In this after, now, five years on, he is in bespoke suits, he has places to be, he shows up with my other late friends and reads the paper in a café until they've said what they need to say. Then they all go.
This is really beautiful, almost like a prose poem. I love theme of clothing since that is something we tend to relate to the embodied living, but you've so creatively shown it in death, in dreams, in the afterlife.
I've read this several times today, Tracy, and I like it better each time. I don't care for suits or cars myself, but I still want to know more about this person. It's a fine spell you cast.
I came up with 2 numbers - my parents' house's old landline, and my current mobile number
That's it. I've never had a head for remembering phone numbers or addresses or numbers -- numerals -- unless for counting, feel so arbitrary, disconnected from what they are really about.
Plus all the numbers I call, er, text regularly now are in my phone's memory, clearing out cubbies in my brain for other info, or questions, like - what am I gonna do with the rest of my life? How do metaphors work? What was the first metaphor? Where should we live? How scared / worried should I be about the 2024 elections? And so on.
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For more than 25 years I worked for an education organization whose core mission is helping students learn math. It started with a MacArthur "genius" grant–winning program that helped more students learn and succeed in calculus at UC Berkeley and a growing number of other universities across the country.
It feels like fate that I came to work there, since I'd crapped out of math around high school geometry, and *never* "got" algebra. Turns out the way I was taught math in "junior high" and high school, or at least the way I recall I was taught it -- mostly fuzzed out by a fog of fear -- is how way too many students were and are taught math.
As being about memorization of seemingly arbitrary formulas that just exist, floating in space, unconnected to history or human thought. As what I absorbed as the Bible Belt version of Christianity, where you're either in or out, blessed or damned, and ain't nothing you can do about it. Or there is something you can do about it, but ONE slipup and you're out.
Turns out instead that math, like writing, is thinking.
It's a way (ways?) of describing capital-R Reality, that Being and Becoming business, that I willingly, arrogantly, even, let myself be cut off from. Supported by my parents, humanities people both, "It's okay honey, we don't get it either." (Though after he retired, my dad -- a master craftsman and tinkering engineer -- read a whole book on how math works. Though my mom was curious about and interested in just about everything.)
But I scraped through the then-required minimum, easiest math courses, earning an A (I think?) in geometry based on being young and pretty and not understanding a damn thing I was doing.
Certainly not based on effort, or "effective effort," as the more enlightened math educators call it now.
As a cripplingly anxious child, kid, teen, young adult (family trauma, not inflicted by parents, but rather on them, and through them, me, us, my remaining living sibling and me) I didn't get that if you don't "get" something right away, you might eventually figure it out.
Heaven or hell, saved or damned, in an instant.
I was saved by books, the library, the stuffed shelves of my parents' house. I was saved by reading.
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I remember thinking, in high school, college, even graduate school (English, yo) that while math was like an on/off switch, 0/1 (which it is, but isn't?), in or out, that LANGUAGE, on the other hand, was infinitely malleable, and that I could and did get away with almost anything academically if I could spew fluent language on something, even if, even *when* I had NO IDEA WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT.
When I graded sophomore lit papers at UT Austin in the late 1980s I realized the reason I got As on pretty much all I wrote as an undergrad was that while I had nothing to say -- how many 17-, 18-, 19-year-olds do, I wonder -- and didn't really know how to *think* (the blaring static of anxiety drowned out most everything) -- the reason was that purely because I'd had the good luck to grow up swimming in books, reading like breathing, I could write a coherent sentence, and then another, that connected one to the next.
This is not a "finished" story. This is an ongoing conversation about learning how to think, how to write, how to grow up. I'm 60.
What WAS the first metaphor? Hahaha. I love all of this. I grant that what I say next is pretty tangential but here goes: I recently watched the Joan Biaz documentary I Am a Noise. Apparently, despite her appearance of outer calm and focus, she experienced crippling anxiety on the regular. That came to mind with your mention of how, thanks to swimming in books, you could write coherently. Along those lines, every now and again I’ll stumble upon some very old piece of my writing. It’s fun when I think, ‘well that wasn’t half-bad.’ Other instances like, say, writing “moving words” for the high school year book come across as my attempts at, what? Getting a job at Hallmark? Either way I do so love words and all the things we can accomplish with them.
>It's a way (ways?) of describing capital-R Reality
Nice. Definitely ways (plural) I'd say. And interestingly (at least to me) there are whole scads of mathematics that were invented, developed, perfected and ONLY THEN were found to have actual, profitable applications toward "capital-R Reality." Kind of eerie.
I'm sorry about your math experiences. I tutored my dear youngest through he AP math/college algebra in her freshman year of HS, and realized early on that her "problem" wasn't with the math or her level of effort, but with a teacher whose main expertise seemed to be in employing anxiety as a "learning tool" with ALL of her students. She made ME anxious, and I'm comfortable with differential equations! (OK, at least a few of them.) There is nothing that anxiety makes better, particularly math performance. So we got through it, but she would physically avoid walking past the wing that classroom was located in for the rest of her years there, and it makes my heart hurt to think about that.
BTW, we have UT Austin late 80s in common. I was a Zoology grad student then, officed in Patterson Hall (21st and Speedway, the one with the greenhouses on the roof.) Nice to meet you here.
It sounds like our brains are asking a lot of the same questions these days— especially: what am I gonna do with the rest of my life? Where are we going to live? (we're currently mid-move and still not sure where we're going to land)... the election... yeah. I feel you, Rachel!!! ❤️
The whole time I was reading this, it felt like I was reading about myself— and not just because we have the same first name. My grandmother was a librarian. I was an avid reader from a young age, and a super intuitive, artistic, and emotionally sensitive kid. Math felt extremely hard, so it didn't take long before I just told myself that I wasn't a math person and never would be. It wasn't until I went back to college as an adult— and had to take those high school math classes over again— that I realized I actually really *did* like doing math and that I *could* do math. I got As in all of those math classes. It turned out I needed to learn how to ask questions and how to commit to doing something that felt hard.
I loved reading this and learning more about you. I'm totally here for the "ongoing conversation about learning how to think, how to write, how to grow up." Good stuff!
My immediate family moved almost yearly during my childhood. My father’s job, start-up engineer for oil refineries, meant he went for short periods where needed, my mother packed up us kids and we followed, then we moved on when the project was complete. The refineries up and running. Between jobs, we bounced back to my parents’ family homes in northern Kentucky. I spent most of my time at my father’s parents home, a home they purchased right after he left home, one where his much younger siblings were raised. Everyone but my immediate family had grown up in or moved out in less than 10 miles of each other. I remembered their number because it was the only number in my childhood through adulthood that never changed. I didn’t even have to remember an aunt or cousin’s number; I‘d just call my grandmother and ask (and she’d usually fill me in on whatever I was calling about anyway).
It was easy to tell that my grandmother was from that area. Every set of her directions was a mini history lesson for the area. “Go down to where the race course used to be. Now it’s a just a muddy field and an eye sore but you can still see the score board if you look to the back. Take a left but watch out for the kids in the road. Those ladies let their kids run around like a pack of dogs. Not their fault though, their father wasn’t no good at all…”. My grandfather, a retired beat cop then Chief of Detectives, issued directions that could have been from anywhere, “Travel straight for about two miles, take a left at Race Course Drive, keeping to the right for about a mile and a half. Watch your speed. Traps are set in that area because of the high number of local drinking establishments.” I’d ask my grandfather for directions if I just needed to get somewhere, my grandmother to get a better idea of the journey and where I was going.
When my grandfather passed, I would call the number just to hear his voice on the recording machine. My aunt, who had moved in to care for my grandmother, would let the phone ring and roll over because she knew I wasn’t the only one calling to hear his voice. I have no doubt that all of my cousins remember their number.
This is so beautiful! I’m crying. I love it. Thank you. Oh that is so funny, the way they gave directions. To this day if I am trying to tell someone how to get from point A to point B in Austin I can hardly ever remember street names or addresses but I do like to toss in landmarks. Of course some of those landmarks are gone. “Make a left at the ghost of Sound Exchange.”
I've lived in my current home for almost 30 years, just south of Houston. We used to be surrounded by cows and farm fields. Now the city is one of the fastest growing in Texas. Like Austin, many of the old landmarks are gone. I sound like my grandma sometimes, telling my kids, "Before the dog parks, we let the dogs loose in this pond to play..."
"I’d ask my grandfather for directions if I just needed to get somewhere, my grandmother to get a better idea of the journey and where I was going."
What a great line. I love it when anyone still gives directions like this because it is so much more human than a map app. I love how getting and giving directions used to be an opportunity for human connection and a chance to slow down, despite having somewhere to go. 😊
Growing up in the rural south - ALL of the directions were given with landmarks. Turn left at the Traywick’s pasture then right by the old rock church - the Traywick’s pasture at some point changed hands, but the directions didn’t change and that rock church had long been gone; but we all knew. I always felt directions given this way were a great way to remain linked to the history of the place. If you were giving those same directions to someone you knew wouldn’t understand where the Traywick’s pasture was - you’d explain and then start the directions again. It might have made getting directions a lot more time consuming, but a lot of information was conveyed beyond just mere navigation.
I was heartened to learn that this type of directions aren’t limited to our borders. I took a trip to Ireland in March of 2017 and had the good fortune to stay on the tiny Inisheer Island. There was a yellow water pump that was included in every single set of directions I received while staying there. It was wonderful and made me feel welcomed.
I hope to visit Ireland someday, too. Thanks for bringing us back a yellow water pump. That is a vivid detail, and it makes me happy thinking about a little community unconsciously organized by it. Nice toeet you here.
I sometimes find myself offering directions with way too much history to be effective (as directions) for my home town. There have been so many changes in the 30 years I've lived here; I can't help myself. Lovely detail, the yellow water pump.
My grandmother, a Kentucky native, gave directions like that too. I've migrated an audio file of her voice through several generations of technology. So your response really brought her back to me this afternoon, thanks for that.
Thanks. I smiled writing it because it brought back sweet memories. I wish I had thought to record my grandmother and grandfather talking about their youths and the area my family came from. That's so great that you did!
The phone was orange and hung on the wall of my mom’s kitchen. There was only one in the house, if you were going to make or take a call, the orange phone with a rotary dial was your singular option. Since we lived in a small house and there were six of us, privacy was always at a premium. Phone calls with best friends or romantic interests where you might want to whisper something no one else was intended to hear were always taken with the phone cord stretched across the kitchen door, around the refrigerator, under the door to the back porch and into the corner between the deep freeze and the wall. It was a long cord!
But that cord attached us to a world beyond our farm. We were transported into our friends lives. We talked about everyday things - what we had for dinner, who’s siblings were the most annoying; and we talked about the teenage drama that was going on - which couples were breaking up, who was flirting with us and who we saw making out at the skating ring last Friday night. It was our brief glimpse into a world where every waking moment wasn’t consumed with feeding something, cleaning something, gathering something or fixing something.
When the orange phone would ring, we would all race to grab it. Hoping it was for us; and if it wasn’t, making fun of whomever it was for - ‘oh Mike, it’s your GIRLFRIEND’, or Randy, there’s some guy on the phone for you - he sounds weird’. If by some terribly unfortunate stroke of luck, the call was for someone not at home; the caller would get a full barrage of questions - who are you, what are you calling about, where’d you meet my brother/sister, should they call you back, what’s your phone number.
That orange phone heard all of our secrets, fears, hopes and dreams. And it, singularly, standing alone, kept them all in great faith.
The phone morphed over time. The orange, rotary dial was exchanged for a yellow dial pad. The yellow dial pad was exchanged for a white dial pad with bigger buttons (mom and dad were aging). But it never left the wall. There was always a phone on the kitchen wall.
In the last years of my parent’s lives - that phone was the one that conveyed the worst news to my extended family. With the passing of both parents; we were gathered around the kitchen table, reliving the funny and warm stories. Occasionally one of us would leave to check on Mom or Dad and would return with news of whatever we noted and pick back up in the conversation in progress just as if we never missed anything. That phone was communication central for all of our aunts and uncles calling for updates. And eventually it was the phone on which I had the horrible task of making that phone call that no one wants to ever receive, but is inevitable to share.
To this day, components of that phone number show up often. I rarely go a day without seeing the sequence 624 on a clock. Some portion or combination of that number figure prominently within different passwords. I haven’t yet had the courage to delete the number from my phone - its still there - under my favorites and I still have voice messages left by my Mother. I hope to never lose them.
So beautiful. Thank you. These days I am so averse to the phone that it might classify as a phobia. I’ll spare the reasons why (or the theories as to why). Instead I want to say you took me back to high school where the corded phone, taken into the bathroom, was truly a lifeline for me as I talked for as long as I could to my best friend. Oh the miseries and Springsteen lyrics we exchanged. We’re still friends. Mostly we email now but every once in a while we revisit the phone for communicating. Speaking of making the calls no one wants to make or receive, in my family of origin many of us still answer calls to one another not with, “hello” but, “IS SOMETHING WRONG?!”
I liked this whole essay; this line in particular jumped out at me and will stay with me, probably because I grew up in the city -- "It was our brief glimpse into a world where every waking moment wasn’t consumed with feeding something, cleaning something, gathering something or fixing something."
You said to call back after nine when it's free, where are youuu? ... I know I'm late, per usual. I'm deeply sorry. It won't happen again, now will it?
I just wanted to tell you how deeply and unquestionably loved, worthy, and beautiful you are, because of the same things that you were made to believe were faults. Your words fueled by a passion for justice, and structured upon your sound moral foundation are needed now more than ever. You cannot let them silence you, or they win (and I know what a sore loser you are).
You may be the famed Empress of Darkness, but the lantern you tirelessly carried cornered and outshone countless contradictions. Don't you dare dim your light to accomodate the insecurities and unhealed shadows others cast in your direction... I promise, I won't ever let the winds of change extinguish the torch I picked up and carry on for you here, darlin. I've got your back, and I know you've still got mine, too.
Oookayyy, this is long... I'm hanging up now, but this isn't goodbye! It's T.T.F.N...
OMG - voicemail, yes please. I am a voicemail hoarder. I will purposefully let a call go to voicemail for someone important in my life! I didn’t start out doing this with purpose, but I had saved a few of my mother’s voicemails and now that she’s gone - I cherish them.
Okay, I love the title of this and I love that you chose this point of view to write in. I love how we can say things in a voicemail (RIP answering machines) that we maybe wouldn't say as unabashedly directly to the person. This definitely makes me want to know more about this relationship and whether the person did, indeed, get home safe.
Funny twist, the phone number I wrote about was my own - the first cell phone number I ever had just for me, on an old Nokia phone around 2001. I wrote to myself because I struggled deeply with SUI from about 6th grade on due to horrific levels of bullying (if you've ever seen Never Been Kissed, it was similar).
I switched tenses a couple times since it's a "time machine" and I was speaking to my teenage self. I'm not sure I love that. The perfectionist on me wants to make it match. But idk why, it kinda felt better to be messy with it?
But what a fun exercise! I've loved reading your pieces so far!
Wow, Luna! I love this even more knowing that you are speaking to yourself, and at such a difficult time when you needed to get that message! That's powerful. It's like taking the "what would you say to your younger self if you could talk to them" idea and making it feel so much more specific, and so much more rooted in that time when you *were* younger, which makes it more accessible somehow. I'm going to have to try this myself... and maybe using the "answering [time] machine" could become a sort of affirmation meditation. I love it.
TBH, I didn't even notice the tense switching. I love how the more serious tone in the middle of the message is bookended by those moments of more light-hearted, but still intimate familiarity. It's really impactful!
I would love to read what you write if you feel like sharing it!!
Yea, idk why the format of leaving myself a voice-mail felt more accessible than writing to me. I used to looove leaving silly+encouraging messages on people's machines, like little audio Easter eggs hidden btwn messages about overdue library books and blockbuster rentals lol
I'm honored you like it, too. It was fun/healing to write
I’m gonna write about Amanda, because I am truly surprised that her number popped into my head.
I met Amanda in first grade. She became my first real friend, and later, my first real enemy. She had long blonde hair, and a Brady Bunch lunchbox, both of which I was instantly attracted to. She was an undeniable presence–a 7 yr old “it” girl. Anyone could see it, and everyone did. The energy changed when she entered a room. The spotlight always found her. She was like royalty. Then, for some unimaginable reason, right there on the monkey bars one day at recess she chose to befriend me. ME!! We became tight, and because my good luck was on a roll, it turned out we only lived 4 blocks from each other. That meant it was easy for me to spend every day after school at her house. And, that’s what I did! Other than my own, it was her phone number I knew by memory.
It didn’t take long to learn, however, that the after school Amanda was a much edgier version of the prime time Amanda. When we were alone, she liked to talk spooky. In our pretend world–which she conjured, and I subscribed to–there was nothing but venomous snakes, criminal conspiracies and dangerous men lurking in the woods. We were always in the woods, or in the crawl space under her house, or in dark closets. Hiding. We were forever hiding from some vague threat of harm. Frequently, I left her house to walk home in the early evening of fall terrified to tears, those 4 blocks suddenly seemed like a perilous 4 miles.
(This turned out to be pretty long. If you'd like to continue, try this secret link to my personal stack. Also note, there's mention of a fatal attack on a female. I don't go into detail. Just wanted to warn you.
Wow, Joy, what a story. You made this so intriguing from the beginning with that thread of darkness that made a deceptively simple story about a childhood friend feel complicated and mysterious. Thanks for the link to read on, which I did until that last line!!! Oof! Beautiful.
My kid, my partner, my sister, my dead mother, my dead grandmother. I'm leaning toward my dead mother but my sister would be an interesting pick because if you change her area code to 888 you get a sex talk service that is super raunchy.
Hahahaha. So my phone number spells out something raunchy. I didn’t even have to ask for it—it was just assigned. When my kid was a teenager I would tell his friends what the number spelled out. He would get irritated but I explained to him that if a teenager is drunk at a party and needs a ride from a compassionate adult it will be super easy to remember my XXX rated number.
Jon, this was HILARIOUS!!! Thank you for making me laugh out LOUD several times in a row. I recently heard some advice about writing humor (though now I can't remember where, so take it with a grain of salt) which was basically that rather than writing something that's using jokes to try to be funny, instead, just write about what is actually funny. This is a terrible paraphrase, but I took it to mean something like: There are jokes that try to make something laughable that isn't, on its own, funny, and then there are things in life that, despite being totally normal or maybe even totally devastating, are absolutely, undeniably funny. Write about those.
I thought of this while reading your piece, which was, to me, the latter. Just adolescence in all its boredom and desire to be entertained, even— no, especially— at the lowest levels. So real. So funny. Also, the presence of your mom in this piece was DELIGHTFUL.
First, let me say that I am incredibly unhappy at this late date to be living in a world where anyone named Rachel needs to bother with Nazis. My link should now be "open" (as will all future goog links here from me)
Ohhh, damn JK Rowling and all her TERF trash. I always liked Luna Lovegood, but I was given the name Luna at that old job because I used to write the moon phases on the company calendar lol so I'm ok. I don't feel gross about it, thankfully.
However, my cat chose the name Albus for himself (it was the first name I threw out there that he regularly answered to). So, I like to say that Albus' theme song is Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al." .... Albus doesn't like that, nor does he like the PS song lol
The link says that I need to request access. I clicked on "Request access" so you may get a notice. I love the idea of using Google docs though. I use it often for work.
All good. I just finished reading your essay. What a hoot! I haven't thought of pranks calls in forever though I recall many a sleepover that included them (usually nothing was actually said, the person on the other end likely just heard lots of giggling). I think essays on prank calls could be a thing!
My sister, my daughter, my partner, my no longer practicing GP, and my (deceased) paternal grandparents. A more interesting story might be why I do not have my mother's or my father's phone number memorized but, sticking with the mindful kindness guideline, I will likely write about my grandparents.
Oh it’s totally okay if you want to write about not having your mother and father’s numbers memorized. That mindfulness/kindness guideline is more about when we offer feedback to each other on the writing we share.
I've been holding out in our Oak Hill workshop. I have a Substack, too. I started it in 2021 and did not keep up with it. I have many excuses, but I don't really have a good reason. I'll post my responses to the writing prompts over there. Here's the link: https://substack.com/@cabin77. You can subscribe if you'd like - it's free. The piece I wrote about a phone number I still have memorized is coming soon.
I’m absolutely giddy with joy over all of these comments. I already realize that should I attempt to keep up with every single one and write down all that comes to me as I read each, I will be writing for at least 20 hours per day. Please know I am reading and loving it all. Oh I am so excited about our little group here. Regarding math—I was really, really good at math as a kid. I loved it. I ENJOYED algebra. I had a crush on geometry (which at least in theory helped me for the years I hung out in bars and sometimes attempted to shoot a game of pool). Math kind of fell by the wayside for me. But when I picked up knitting—yes, I will talk a lot about knitting in my posts—it occurred to me pretty quickly that this craft that looks deceptively simple actually involves tons of math as well as structural engineering. Working in the kitchen, especially since I often double and triple recipes, is another place where I enjoy practicing applied math. I so agree that if subjects were taught with connections kids could grasp, vs. rote learning, there’d be a lot more eager learners.
Who's Calling?
From the 1980s through the Nineties, one object stood as the center of our family home. Not the TV, thought that would be a reasonable guess. I'm talking about the telephone.
The phone itself changed over the years, updated from a rotary dial to a push button version, and finally to a cordless phone that always managed to get lost, leaving only its empty cradle sitting in the former seat of glory in the center of the house, the dining table.
The table was more of a catch-all on the way from the front door to the bedrooms or from the living room to the kitchen. Pushed up against the wall with the phone commanding, if only energetically, most of its surface, there was hardly enough room for two people to actually use it as intended, to sit and eat or do homework. Since we were a family of five, dinner was usually a scattered affair, with everyone taking their plates to the couch or to their rooms.
The phone's spot on the family dining table was nearly equidistant from the front door (where, after getting off the school bus, I'd often hear the ring coming from inside as I fumbled among the garden rocks to find our hidden key before bursting inside to try to answer before whoever was calling gave up and hung up) to the backdoor (where, from outside at my spot in the hammock, lounging with a stack of books, I'd more often than not ignore it until it stopped ringing).
It was closer to the kitchen than the bathroom, the latter of which was my mom's preferred place to take her longer calls while she soaked in the bathtub, sometimes for hours, the coiled phone cord disappearing under the bathroom door and mom's voice, relaxed and jovial, coming out in a cloud of steam.
It was closer to Mom and Dad's room than to mine, which meant that my mom had a good chance of beating me to it when the phone rang and I was expecting a call. I'd standing in front of her with my hand out and my eyes boring into her as she asked, eyes staring right back at me, who was calling— as if she needed to know.
When the phone rang, everyone hoped it was for them and everyone was disappointed when it wasn't. There were calls from friends, family, offices with appointments, school and neighbors, and sometimes calls from kids asking if so-and-so could come over and play. It was the hub of our social lives.
For my mom, it was also the hub of her business as a self-employed massage therapist who, in order to try to avoid creeps and people with bad vibes, only advertised by word of mouth and made almost all appointments over the phone. This meant that phone rang a lot. And as she was often not home because she was out working, we kids were responsible for answering the phone and taking messages. Taking a message meant writing down the person's name, number, and reason for calling. There was a stack of notebook paper and a pen sitting right next to the phone for the collection of these messages. Mom liked when I answered these calls because I had excellent penmanship and I could make myself sound very professional on the phone.
That phone was always in use, and when the call waiting feature arrived and would let another call come through when the phone was in use, it became clear that we'd very likely missed a lot of calls back when callers would just the busy signal and have to hang up and try again later.
If a call came in for one of the adults while one of the kids was on the phone, the adult call took precedence— even if it wasn't important, as my calls clearly were— and kids would have to unceremoniously end their call and relinquish the phone to an elder.
And if a call for one of the kids came through while Mom or Dad was using the phone, there was the agonizing realization that the call was for you ("She's here, but I'm on the other line") but that your caller was being told you weren't as important as some other people in the house were and you'd have to call them back later when the phone was free, if it ever was again.
Yet as frustrating and minimizing as this experience could be, it couldn't completely dampen the feeling of being pleased that someone thought you were important enough to pick up the phone and dial your number.
This piece was inspired by the phone number I had growing up, which must have been my family's phone number for something like 30 years since my parents maintained long after my siblings and I had moved out. I had a really hard time remembering any other numbers off the top of my head besides mine and my husband's. With a little time and prodding, I was able to come up with my parent's cell phone numbers, but sheesh, was this ever a wake up call to look at people's phone numbers when calling or texting!
The funny thing is that my dad can remember the phone number of almost everyone he's ever known. In fact, in his cell phone, he doesn't even have his contact's names, he just dials the number. He recently thought of a friend he hadn't seen in probably 20 years and thought, "I wonder if her number is still the same?" He dialed it and it was. They had a great visit, lol.
I LOVE the piece you wrote about the phone. None of that happened terribly long ago but it seems like forever. Reading it I time traveled back to my own land line memories. I especially love the image of the phone cord under the bathroom door—how I remember being tethered by the phone cord and the “freedom” that came when longer cords became available. I actually have a push-button phone mounted on the wall in my bedroom. It is connected to nothing beyond the hook that holds it there. I bought it not that long ago—I wanted a reminder of how life was in many ways easier and more fun before we could carry our phones in our pockets. Thanks for the memories and the beautiful writing.
Thank you, Spike! I *does* seem like forever and, yes, it seemed so much more fun and easy back then. I'm still obsessed with landline phones and their whole aestheic. I always wanted the clear one that you could see all the wiring inside. So cool! That phone is actually on the cover of Chuck Klosterman's book, The Nineties, which is a great read and a total trip down memory lane. I love that that phone is the cover for the book— it says so much!!
"land line memories" ❤️
You're so right! The phone was often the hub around activity in my home growing up too. This brought back memories of yelling to my siblings, "You get it!" Then being irritated when no one did and the phone stopped ringing. I like your use of the phone's location in the home and the hierarchy of whose call took priority. Both show what a family "hub" the phone used to be.
Thanks, Jessica. Funny how central to life the phone was during that era— and in such a different way than phones are central to our lives now. So much more wholesome! 😄
LOL! I had to be because Mom might walk by as I was talking smack - and then I'd likely get one. ;)
He loved suits and he loved old cars. He would have been a mechanic if he hadn't thought he owed it to those who gave him scholarships to "give back" by becoming a psychiatrist. A few weeks after he passed from ALS, I dreamed he was in a garage bay in a seersucker coverall -- "I'm going to be back in a good suit soon," he said, but he was having fun. The next time I dreamed of him he was in a black off the rack suit, an antiques salesman showing me a sleek funerary urn. "I know it's not my usual taste," he said. I was so weirded out I called his wife at lunch not sure I'd tell her about the dream. She was at the antique store across from my old street, picking out an urn. "Okay, maybe get something modern-looking. Trust me." In this after, now, five years on, he is in bespoke suits, he has places to be, he shows up with my other late friends and reads the paper in a café until they've said what they need to say. Then they all go.
This is really beautiful, almost like a prose poem. I love theme of clothing since that is something we tend to relate to the embodied living, but you've so creatively shown it in death, in dreams, in the afterlife.
Thank you!
It *IS* a poem, imo, and a good one.
I've read this several times today, Tracy, and I like it better each time. I don't care for suits or cars myself, but I still want to know more about this person. It's a fine spell you cast.
Thank you!
I love this so much. Thank you.
Numbers
I came up with 2 numbers - my parents' house's old landline, and my current mobile number
That's it. I've never had a head for remembering phone numbers or addresses or numbers -- numerals -- unless for counting, feel so arbitrary, disconnected from what they are really about.
Plus all the numbers I call, er, text regularly now are in my phone's memory, clearing out cubbies in my brain for other info, or questions, like - what am I gonna do with the rest of my life? How do metaphors work? What was the first metaphor? Where should we live? How scared / worried should I be about the 2024 elections? And so on.
+++++++++++++
For more than 25 years I worked for an education organization whose core mission is helping students learn math. It started with a MacArthur "genius" grant–winning program that helped more students learn and succeed in calculus at UC Berkeley and a growing number of other universities across the country.
It feels like fate that I came to work there, since I'd crapped out of math around high school geometry, and *never* "got" algebra. Turns out the way I was taught math in "junior high" and high school, or at least the way I recall I was taught it -- mostly fuzzed out by a fog of fear -- is how way too many students were and are taught math.
As being about memorization of seemingly arbitrary formulas that just exist, floating in space, unconnected to history or human thought. As what I absorbed as the Bible Belt version of Christianity, where you're either in or out, blessed or damned, and ain't nothing you can do about it. Or there is something you can do about it, but ONE slipup and you're out.
Turns out instead that math, like writing, is thinking.
It's a way (ways?) of describing capital-R Reality, that Being and Becoming business, that I willingly, arrogantly, even, let myself be cut off from. Supported by my parents, humanities people both, "It's okay honey, we don't get it either." (Though after he retired, my dad -- a master craftsman and tinkering engineer -- read a whole book on how math works. Though my mom was curious about and interested in just about everything.)
But I scraped through the then-required minimum, easiest math courses, earning an A (I think?) in geometry based on being young and pretty and not understanding a damn thing I was doing.
Certainly not based on effort, or "effective effort," as the more enlightened math educators call it now.
As a cripplingly anxious child, kid, teen, young adult (family trauma, not inflicted by parents, but rather on them, and through them, me, us, my remaining living sibling and me) I didn't get that if you don't "get" something right away, you might eventually figure it out.
Heaven or hell, saved or damned, in an instant.
I was saved by books, the library, the stuffed shelves of my parents' house. I was saved by reading.
+++++
I remember thinking, in high school, college, even graduate school (English, yo) that while math was like an on/off switch, 0/1 (which it is, but isn't?), in or out, that LANGUAGE, on the other hand, was infinitely malleable, and that I could and did get away with almost anything academically if I could spew fluent language on something, even if, even *when* I had NO IDEA WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT.
When I graded sophomore lit papers at UT Austin in the late 1980s I realized the reason I got As on pretty much all I wrote as an undergrad was that while I had nothing to say -- how many 17-, 18-, 19-year-olds do, I wonder -- and didn't really know how to *think* (the blaring static of anxiety drowned out most everything) -- the reason was that purely because I'd had the good luck to grow up swimming in books, reading like breathing, I could write a coherent sentence, and then another, that connected one to the next.
This is not a "finished" story. This is an ongoing conversation about learning how to think, how to write, how to grow up. I'm 60.
What WAS the first metaphor? Hahaha. I love all of this. I grant that what I say next is pretty tangential but here goes: I recently watched the Joan Biaz documentary I Am a Noise. Apparently, despite her appearance of outer calm and focus, she experienced crippling anxiety on the regular. That came to mind with your mention of how, thanks to swimming in books, you could write coherently. Along those lines, every now and again I’ll stumble upon some very old piece of my writing. It’s fun when I think, ‘well that wasn’t half-bad.’ Other instances like, say, writing “moving words” for the high school year book come across as my attempts at, what? Getting a job at Hallmark? Either way I do so love words and all the things we can accomplish with them.
In the beginning was the Word. <= first metaphor?
(P.S. Narnia agnostic here.)
>It's a way (ways?) of describing capital-R Reality
Nice. Definitely ways (plural) I'd say. And interestingly (at least to me) there are whole scads of mathematics that were invented, developed, perfected and ONLY THEN were found to have actual, profitable applications toward "capital-R Reality." Kind of eerie.
I'm sorry about your math experiences. I tutored my dear youngest through he AP math/college algebra in her freshman year of HS, and realized early on that her "problem" wasn't with the math or her level of effort, but with a teacher whose main expertise seemed to be in employing anxiety as a "learning tool" with ALL of her students. She made ME anxious, and I'm comfortable with differential equations! (OK, at least a few of them.) There is nothing that anxiety makes better, particularly math performance. So we got through it, but she would physically avoid walking past the wing that classroom was located in for the rest of her years there, and it makes my heart hurt to think about that.
BTW, we have UT Austin late 80s in common. I was a Zoology grad student then, officed in Patterson Hall (21st and Speedway, the one with the greenhouses on the roof.) Nice to meet you here.
It sounds like our brains are asking a lot of the same questions these days— especially: what am I gonna do with the rest of my life? Where are we going to live? (we're currently mid-move and still not sure where we're going to land)... the election... yeah. I feel you, Rachel!!! ❤️
The whole time I was reading this, it felt like I was reading about myself— and not just because we have the same first name. My grandmother was a librarian. I was an avid reader from a young age, and a super intuitive, artistic, and emotionally sensitive kid. Math felt extremely hard, so it didn't take long before I just told myself that I wasn't a math person and never would be. It wasn't until I went back to college as an adult— and had to take those high school math classes over again— that I realized I actually really *did* like doing math and that I *could* do math. I got As in all of those math classes. It turned out I needed to learn how to ask questions and how to commit to doing something that felt hard.
I loved reading this and learning more about you. I'm totally here for the "ongoing conversation about learning how to think, how to write, how to grow up." Good stuff!
My immediate family moved almost yearly during my childhood. My father’s job, start-up engineer for oil refineries, meant he went for short periods where needed, my mother packed up us kids and we followed, then we moved on when the project was complete. The refineries up and running. Between jobs, we bounced back to my parents’ family homes in northern Kentucky. I spent most of my time at my father’s parents home, a home they purchased right after he left home, one where his much younger siblings were raised. Everyone but my immediate family had grown up in or moved out in less than 10 miles of each other. I remembered their number because it was the only number in my childhood through adulthood that never changed. I didn’t even have to remember an aunt or cousin’s number; I‘d just call my grandmother and ask (and she’d usually fill me in on whatever I was calling about anyway).
It was easy to tell that my grandmother was from that area. Every set of her directions was a mini history lesson for the area. “Go down to where the race course used to be. Now it’s a just a muddy field and an eye sore but you can still see the score board if you look to the back. Take a left but watch out for the kids in the road. Those ladies let their kids run around like a pack of dogs. Not their fault though, their father wasn’t no good at all…”. My grandfather, a retired beat cop then Chief of Detectives, issued directions that could have been from anywhere, “Travel straight for about two miles, take a left at Race Course Drive, keeping to the right for about a mile and a half. Watch your speed. Traps are set in that area because of the high number of local drinking establishments.” I’d ask my grandfather for directions if I just needed to get somewhere, my grandmother to get a better idea of the journey and where I was going.
When my grandfather passed, I would call the number just to hear his voice on the recording machine. My aunt, who had moved in to care for my grandmother, would let the phone ring and roll over because she knew I wasn’t the only one calling to hear his voice. I have no doubt that all of my cousins remember their number.
This is so beautiful! I’m crying. I love it. Thank you. Oh that is so funny, the way they gave directions. To this day if I am trying to tell someone how to get from point A to point B in Austin I can hardly ever remember street names or addresses but I do like to toss in landmarks. Of course some of those landmarks are gone. “Make a left at the ghost of Sound Exchange.”
I've lived in my current home for almost 30 years, just south of Houston. We used to be surrounded by cows and farm fields. Now the city is one of the fastest growing in Texas. Like Austin, many of the old landmarks are gone. I sound like my grandma sometimes, telling my kids, "Before the dog parks, we let the dogs loose in this pond to play..."
My NYC friends say that one isn't really a New Yorker until you can navigate by Manhattan by landmarks long-gone.
If Joe Ely is still recording, I wish he'd cut a "No Longer Live at the Ghost of Liberty Lunch"
"I’d ask my grandfather for directions if I just needed to get somewhere, my grandmother to get a better idea of the journey and where I was going."
What a great line. I love it when anyone still gives directions like this because it is so much more human than a map app. I love how getting and giving directions used to be an opportunity for human connection and a chance to slow down, despite having somewhere to go. 😊
Growing up in the rural south - ALL of the directions were given with landmarks. Turn left at the Traywick’s pasture then right by the old rock church - the Traywick’s pasture at some point changed hands, but the directions didn’t change and that rock church had long been gone; but we all knew. I always felt directions given this way were a great way to remain linked to the history of the place. If you were giving those same directions to someone you knew wouldn’t understand where the Traywick’s pasture was - you’d explain and then start the directions again. It might have made getting directions a lot more time consuming, but a lot of information was conveyed beyond just mere navigation.
I was heartened to learn that this type of directions aren’t limited to our borders. I took a trip to Ireland in March of 2017 and had the good fortune to stay on the tiny Inisheer Island. There was a yellow water pump that was included in every single set of directions I received while staying there. It was wonderful and made me feel welcomed.
I’d love a poem from you (no pressure!) that includes a list of landmarks including that yellow water pump. This is all delicious.
I hope to visit Ireland someday, too. Thanks for bringing us back a yellow water pump. That is a vivid detail, and it makes me happy thinking about a little community unconsciously organized by it. Nice toeet you here.
I sometimes find myself offering directions with way too much history to be effective (as directions) for my home town. There have been so many changes in the 30 years I've lived here; I can't help myself. Lovely detail, the yellow water pump.
My grandmother, a Kentucky native, gave directions like that too. I've migrated an audio file of her voice through several generations of technology. So your response really brought her back to me this afternoon, thanks for that.
Thanks. I smiled writing it because it brought back sweet memories. I wish I had thought to record my grandmother and grandfather talking about their youths and the area my family came from. That's so great that you did!
The phone was orange and hung on the wall of my mom’s kitchen. There was only one in the house, if you were going to make or take a call, the orange phone with a rotary dial was your singular option. Since we lived in a small house and there were six of us, privacy was always at a premium. Phone calls with best friends or romantic interests where you might want to whisper something no one else was intended to hear were always taken with the phone cord stretched across the kitchen door, around the refrigerator, under the door to the back porch and into the corner between the deep freeze and the wall. It was a long cord!
But that cord attached us to a world beyond our farm. We were transported into our friends lives. We talked about everyday things - what we had for dinner, who’s siblings were the most annoying; and we talked about the teenage drama that was going on - which couples were breaking up, who was flirting with us and who we saw making out at the skating ring last Friday night. It was our brief glimpse into a world where every waking moment wasn’t consumed with feeding something, cleaning something, gathering something or fixing something.
When the orange phone would ring, we would all race to grab it. Hoping it was for us; and if it wasn’t, making fun of whomever it was for - ‘oh Mike, it’s your GIRLFRIEND’, or Randy, there’s some guy on the phone for you - he sounds weird’. If by some terribly unfortunate stroke of luck, the call was for someone not at home; the caller would get a full barrage of questions - who are you, what are you calling about, where’d you meet my brother/sister, should they call you back, what’s your phone number.
That orange phone heard all of our secrets, fears, hopes and dreams. And it, singularly, standing alone, kept them all in great faith.
The phone morphed over time. The orange, rotary dial was exchanged for a yellow dial pad. The yellow dial pad was exchanged for a white dial pad with bigger buttons (mom and dad were aging). But it never left the wall. There was always a phone on the kitchen wall.
In the last years of my parent’s lives - that phone was the one that conveyed the worst news to my extended family. With the passing of both parents; we were gathered around the kitchen table, reliving the funny and warm stories. Occasionally one of us would leave to check on Mom or Dad and would return with news of whatever we noted and pick back up in the conversation in progress just as if we never missed anything. That phone was communication central for all of our aunts and uncles calling for updates. And eventually it was the phone on which I had the horrible task of making that phone call that no one wants to ever receive, but is inevitable to share.
To this day, components of that phone number show up often. I rarely go a day without seeing the sequence 624 on a clock. Some portion or combination of that number figure prominently within different passwords. I haven’t yet had the courage to delete the number from my phone - its still there - under my favorites and I still have voice messages left by my Mother. I hope to never lose them.
It’s just a phone number….
So beautiful. Thank you. These days I am so averse to the phone that it might classify as a phobia. I’ll spare the reasons why (or the theories as to why). Instead I want to say you took me back to high school where the corded phone, taken into the bathroom, was truly a lifeline for me as I talked for as long as I could to my best friend. Oh the miseries and Springsteen lyrics we exchanged. We’re still friends. Mostly we email now but every once in a while we revisit the phone for communicating. Speaking of making the calls no one wants to make or receive, in my family of origin many of us still answer calls to one another not with, “hello” but, “IS SOMETHING WRONG?!”
I liked this whole essay; this line in particular jumped out at me and will stay with me, probably because I grew up in the city -- "It was our brief glimpse into a world where every waking moment wasn’t consumed with feeding something, cleaning something, gathering something or fixing something."
Answering [Time]-Machine
by Luna Lynn
You said to call back after nine when it's free, where are youuu? ... I know I'm late, per usual. I'm deeply sorry. It won't happen again, now will it?
I just wanted to tell you how deeply and unquestionably loved, worthy, and beautiful you are, because of the same things that you were made to believe were faults. Your words fueled by a passion for justice, and structured upon your sound moral foundation are needed now more than ever. You cannot let them silence you, or they win (and I know what a sore loser you are).
You may be the famed Empress of Darkness, but the lantern you tirelessly carried cornered and outshone countless contradictions. Don't you dare dim your light to accomodate the insecurities and unhealed shadows others cast in your direction... I promise, I won't ever let the winds of change extinguish the torch I picked up and carry on for you here, darlin. I've got your back, and I know you've still got mine, too.
Oookayyy, this is long... I'm hanging up now, but this isn't goodbye! It's T.T.F.N...
Love you. Let me know when you're home safe.
After nine when it’s free! This is a reference to the old long distance bills? Love it.
It absolutely is lol I used to get in trouble for exorbitant cell phone bills when I first received one.
OMG - voicemail, yes please. I am a voicemail hoarder. I will purposefully let a call go to voicemail for someone important in my life! I didn’t start out doing this with purpose, but I had saved a few of my mother’s voicemails and now that she’s gone - I cherish them.
Okay, I love the title of this and I love that you chose this point of view to write in. I love how we can say things in a voicemail (RIP answering machines) that we maybe wouldn't say as unabashedly directly to the person. This definitely makes me want to know more about this relationship and whether the person did, indeed, get home safe.
Thank you so much!!
Funny twist, the phone number I wrote about was my own - the first cell phone number I ever had just for me, on an old Nokia phone around 2001. I wrote to myself because I struggled deeply with SUI from about 6th grade on due to horrific levels of bullying (if you've ever seen Never Been Kissed, it was similar).
I switched tenses a couple times since it's a "time machine" and I was speaking to my teenage self. I'm not sure I love that. The perfectionist on me wants to make it match. But idk why, it kinda felt better to be messy with it?
But what a fun exercise! I've loved reading your pieces so far!
I'm home safely 💖
Wow, Luna! I love this even more knowing that you are speaking to yourself, and at such a difficult time when you needed to get that message! That's powerful. It's like taking the "what would you say to your younger self if you could talk to them" idea and making it feel so much more specific, and so much more rooted in that time when you *were* younger, which makes it more accessible somehow. I'm going to have to try this myself... and maybe using the "answering [time] machine" could become a sort of affirmation meditation. I love it.
TBH, I didn't even notice the tense switching. I love how the more serious tone in the middle of the message is bookended by those moments of more light-hearted, but still intimate familiarity. It's really impactful!
[Glad you made it home safe. 😊]
I would love to read what you write if you feel like sharing it!!
Yea, idk why the format of leaving myself a voice-mail felt more accessible than writing to me. I used to looove leaving silly+encouraging messages on people's machines, like little audio Easter eggs hidden btwn messages about overdue library books and blockbuster rentals lol
I'm honored you like it, too. It was fun/healing to write
"little audio Easter eggs" <= 🪺 ❤️
1 My childhood home phone
2. My children’s pediatrician
3. My husband
4. A former boss, who I happen despise
5. Amanda, my childhood friend
I’m gonna write about Amanda, because I am truly surprised that her number popped into my head.
I met Amanda in first grade. She became my first real friend, and later, my first real enemy. She had long blonde hair, and a Brady Bunch lunchbox, both of which I was instantly attracted to. She was an undeniable presence–a 7 yr old “it” girl. Anyone could see it, and everyone did. The energy changed when she entered a room. The spotlight always found her. She was like royalty. Then, for some unimaginable reason, right there on the monkey bars one day at recess she chose to befriend me. ME!! We became tight, and because my good luck was on a roll, it turned out we only lived 4 blocks from each other. That meant it was easy for me to spend every day after school at her house. And, that’s what I did! Other than my own, it was her phone number I knew by memory.
It didn’t take long to learn, however, that the after school Amanda was a much edgier version of the prime time Amanda. When we were alone, she liked to talk spooky. In our pretend world–which she conjured, and I subscribed to–there was nothing but venomous snakes, criminal conspiracies and dangerous men lurking in the woods. We were always in the woods, or in the crawl space under her house, or in dark closets. Hiding. We were forever hiding from some vague threat of harm. Frequently, I left her house to walk home in the early evening of fall terrified to tears, those 4 blocks suddenly seemed like a perilous 4 miles.
(This turned out to be pretty long. If you'd like to continue, try this secret link to my personal stack. Also note, there's mention of a fatal attack on a female. I don't go into detail. Just wanted to warn you.
https://joybaldwin.substack.com/p/64232a97-c78a-41f4-b0e7-2e5659d1474a)
"Amanda was a much edgier version of the prime time Amanda" <= *very* nice
Wow, Joy, what a story. You made this so intriguing from the beginning with that thread of darkness that made a deceptively simple story about a childhood friend feel complicated and mysterious. Thanks for the link to read on, which I did until that last line!!! Oof! Beautiful.
My kid, my partner, my sister, my dead mother, my dead grandmother. I'm leaning toward my dead mother but my sister would be an interesting pick because if you change her area code to 888 you get a sex talk service that is super raunchy.
LOL...I grew up with one like that.
Hahahaha. So my phone number spells out something raunchy. I didn’t even have to ask for it—it was just assigned. When my kid was a teenager I would tell his friends what the number spelled out. He would get irritated but I explained to him that if a teenager is drunk at a party and needs a ride from a compassionate adult it will be super easy to remember my XXX rated number.
"little audio Easter eggs hidden btwn messages about overdue library books and blockbuster rentals"
...speaking my language here! 💖
I am thrilled beyond measure to be in the writing with Spike circle with you.
How grateful I am to find you on your journey to finding your voice.
Trust me please, when I say, we need to hear you.
This is so incredibly kind, Michelle! Thank you for that validation. It's wonderful to meet you.
Prompt 1...can y'all open & read this? If it's a problem, I'll copy/paste.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tQbXRU_3S4oHik7fdBoA8xzn9lFaQzDt4YG8-x6LmsM/edit?usp=drivesdk
Jon, this was HILARIOUS!!! Thank you for making me laugh out LOUD several times in a row. I recently heard some advice about writing humor (though now I can't remember where, so take it with a grain of salt) which was basically that rather than writing something that's using jokes to try to be funny, instead, just write about what is actually funny. This is a terrible paraphrase, but I took it to mean something like: There are jokes that try to make something laughable that isn't, on its own, funny, and then there are things in life that, despite being totally normal or maybe even totally devastating, are absolutely, undeniably funny. Write about those.
I thought of this while reading your piece, which was, to me, the latter. Just adolescence in all its boredom and desire to be entertained, even— no, especially— at the lowest levels. So real. So funny. Also, the presence of your mom in this piece was DELIGHTFUL.
If you can change access to "anyone with the link" in the share settings, we should be able to view it. Look forward to reading. :)
also requested access -- I go by rao jenkins online because Nazis, but my first name is Rachel -- nice to see ANOTHER Rachael in the group!
Hi Rachel! 🌈#fucknazis
First, let me say that I am incredibly unhappy at this late date to be living in a world where anyone named Rachel needs to bother with Nazis. My link should now be "open" (as will all future goog links here from me)
Interestingly enough, I was named Rachel at birth as well!! I let go of it for a number of reasons. Was dubbed Luna in 2017 and never looked back.
"Luna" is lovely and I suspect that (unless Harry Potter ruint it for you) there are far fewer "Lunas" than "Rachels" these days (oops: no:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=luna%2Crachel&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3 )
Lol, usually I hear people sing "OH, my dog's name is Luna!" after I introduce myself.
Not surprisingly I hear that a lot, too.
Ohhh, damn JK Rowling and all her TERF trash. I always liked Luna Lovegood, but I was given the name Luna at that old job because I used to write the moon phases on the company calendar lol so I'm ok. I don't feel gross about it, thankfully.
However, my cat chose the name Albus for himself (it was the first name I threw out there that he regularly answered to). So, I like to say that Albus' theme song is Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al." .... Albus doesn't like that, nor does he like the PS song lol
The link says that I need to request access. I clicked on "Request access" so you may get a notice. I love the idea of using Google docs though. I use it often for work.
Thanks, Jessica. I've granted access, but this and future links from me will be "open to anyone with the link" Apologies for the hassle.
All good. I just finished reading your essay. What a hoot! I haven't thought of pranks calls in forever though I recall many a sleepover that included them (usually nothing was actually said, the person on the other end likely just heard lots of giggling). I think essays on prank calls could be a thing!
My sister, my daughter, my partner, my no longer practicing GP, and my (deceased) paternal grandparents. A more interesting story might be why I do not have my mother's or my father's phone number memorized but, sticking with the mindful kindness guideline, I will likely write about my grandparents.
Oh it’s totally okay if you want to write about not having your mother and father’s numbers memorized. That mindfulness/kindness guideline is more about when we offer feedback to each other on the writing we share.
My parents, my dermatologist, my husband's cell, my husband's work line, my late psychiatrist/employer/friend
I've been holding out in our Oak Hill workshop. I have a Substack, too. I started it in 2021 and did not keep up with it. I have many excuses, but I don't really have a good reason. I'll post my responses to the writing prompts over there. Here's the link: https://substack.com/@cabin77. You can subscribe if you'd like - it's free. The piece I wrote about a phone number I still have memorized is coming soon.