By susan fishman orlins
Dick Clark and “American Bandstand” played a big role in my early years. After the Ricky Nelson crush, I lost my heart to another teen idol. Living in Philadelphia had the advantage that it was the home of “American Bandstand,” the first reality TV show; adolescents who jitterbugged after school on Bandstand became as famous as movie stars.
My girlfriend Bev and I formed our own two-member fan club for James Vincent Peatross, a Bandstand regular and frequent dance contest winner. On the backs of two index cards, intended to spend eternity in hidden compartments of our wallets, I typed the club motto:
We love you Jimmers Vincers and always will until you hear otherwise from a reliable source.
Bev, whose code name was Vincers, was vice president and I, Jimmers, was president; the two of us were the world’s only reliable sources.
Sometimes after school Bev and I took the elevated train to West Philly, where Bandstand was broadcast. On the way we played a game of fake coughing so the other riders would think we had TB. But the second we stepped out of the railcar onto platform and the lineup of dancers across the street came into view, we transformed from giggling little girls into lovesick teenagers.
One afternoon we mustered up enough courage to ask Jimmy for his autograph before he entered the studio. He withdrew a toothmarked yellow pencil from his jacket pocket. Mesmerized, I studied his long, slender fingers, nails chewed down to the moons, as he wrote in my composition book, “Dear Susan, May I have the next dance? Yours always, Jimmy Peatross.”
That’s when I realized how much power I had to make things happen in my life.
P.S. Jimmy too has died, January 31, 2011.
By susan fishman orlins
 This is what my ideal seatmate looks like Ever since reading about Dutch Airline KLM’s new Meet and Seat program that allows passengers to choose seatmates, using Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, I’ve been contemplating who my ideal seatmate should be. For a worrywart this whole idea is a great thing.
Ideal seatmate number one:
- You do not have a cold or other communicative airborne diseases.
- You have not been in communication with someone who has a cold or other communicative airborne diseases.
- You do not wear perfume.
- You do not want to talk.
- You are narrow in girth.
- You will not hog the whole armrest.
- You are willing to go halvies on two of the meal choices so we can each halve our risk of a 100% bad choice.
- You will let me stuff my excess carryon, such as my food bag, under the seat in front of you for takeoff and landing.
- You will not sneak sideways looks at what I am writing on my laptop.
- You do not snore.
- You do not want to talk.
Ideal seatmate number two:
- You are a New Yorker editor.
- You want to talk about my writing.
- You have been looking for a writer just like me to contribute to the magazine.
- You don’t have a cold.
Ideal seatmate number three:
- You are an unattached heterosexual single man around my age.
- You are really smart and have a good sense of humor.
- You like dogs and don’t mind dog hair.
- You find me attractive and I find you attractive.
- You tolerate individuals who watch “Survivor” and “The Bachelor.”
- It would be nice if you have a beach house, but you don’t need to be very rich.
- You don’t have a cold.
The best seatmate of all:
- I will not find you on LinkedIn or Facebook, because the best seatmate of all is no seatmate at all. I would trade a business class seat and all the airplane food on the planet for lateral space in economy so I could spread out all my stuff.
- Second best, though, might be someone with whom to share the cost of the middle seat, in the event I run into a fortune.
What do you look for in a seatmate?
Some of my recent and related Home Goes Strong articles:
By susan fishman orlins My New Year’s resolution is to learn how to play Angry Birds.
But an essay in the New York Times suggests that daydreaming increases creativity. Daydreaming requires time, time I dump into playing Words With Friends.
Words With Friends, though, is more than just words. It’s confirmation that my sister, my nieces, my colleague, my daughters and the guy whose name I got from the hardware store to hang my daughter’s curtains are out there, connected to me. I also play Words With Friends with a friend.
Playing WWF helps make me patient in checkout lines and waiting rooms. Deep in the night before going to sleep, I go into such hyper-focus that I wouldn’t notice if a squirrel were in the house, especially if I were struggling–as I am now–to find a 7-letter word with the letters R-T-S-A-Blank-S-D-P that does not end in S.
This is not conducive to sleep.
My fellow Life Goes Strong blogger Irene Levine (Don’t you love names that rhyme? I had a history teacher named Mr. Prusan and the boy who sat next to me fantasized I would marry Mr. P and become Susan Prusan) . . . Irene, whom I’ve never met, wrote about her addiction to Words With Friends. So I commented “Irene, I want to play with you. I’m on my way to addiction . . . .”
We started playing and because she wrote about getting up in the night and checking her games. I worried I would do that too; a worrywart worries about catching other people’s worries.
Irene wrote another post, about a couple meeting on Words With Friends and getting married; she mentioned me in that post, pointing out, “You can learn a lot about someone’s character from playing together. You get a glimpse of their intellect, reliability, tenacity, sociability — and sleeping habits. Susan, like me, is a night owl.”
Maybe if I spent less time playing Words With Friends I would have daydreamed my way into enough creativity to say something similarly insightful.
In yet another article, Irene wrote how a stranger playing Words With Friends and chatting with her opponent saved the life of a man halfway around the world.
It made me want to play with a stranger, so I signed up for a random opponent. I got username zyngawf_23083873. We just started our game, but I sent a message to say “Hi zyng. Where r u from?” I’m hoping for a story to emerge from our relationship and if it does I’ll definitely let you know.
Meanwhile, I’m rethinking my New Year’s resolution. I still want to learn Angry Birds but I resolve to play it only after I daydream.
What is your New Year’s Resolution? And what have you learned about people by playing Words With Friends? Saved any lives? Met any spouses?
See my recent Home Goes Strong articles:
By susan fishman orlins For my recent article on Home Goes Strong about Happiness at Home, I interviewed my blog crush Gretchen Rubin, whose book The Happiness Project–the same name as her blog–was a #1 New York Times best seller.
 All that goes on underneath my roots Gretchen keeps a one-sentence journal, which she admits sometimes expands to 4 sentences.
Says Gretchen, “The idea of keeping a proper journal was far too daunting, so I decided instead to keep a ‘one-sentence journal.’”
This is me again. Years ago, I gave up journal writing. Between living alone and blogging about my life, I exist so much inside my own head that I’d decided, enough already!
Today, however, I opened my long-neglected journal document and began to write . . .
Thinking about doing a one (or 4) sentence journal a la Gretchen Rubin. This got me thinking about going back to journal writing and seeing what happens. Look at me, here I am in the second sentence of my journal and already it has given me an idea for a WW post about whether or not to journal.
And therein lies the problem of too many ideas.
Question: Is it good or bad that a journal generates a flow of new ideas? Idea management overwhelms me.
When I kept a journal previously, I was always coming up with new projects, like:
- Have a Habitat for Humanity singles party!
- Go polka dancing!
- Play piano, take a painting class, write a children’s book!
As it is, I have no time. Susan’s Law is the opposite of Parkinson’s Law that says, Work expands to fill the available time.
Susan’s Law says, No matter how much time you have, you will always plan more to do than you have time for.
I’ll never finish all there is to do: sew the hole Casey made on the couch, learn to use my new camera, make squash soup.
I love the way starting out to write about one thing brings on a whole other topic. In that way, I’m a psychiatrist’s dream, so to speak. The underlying story finds its way to the surface.
I shall continue to try Gretchen Rubin’s 1-sentence journal, even though it’s so much harder to write one or four sentences than 10 paragraphs where you can just ramble. How do I decide what snippet to capture on the page?
Yesterday, I sat in traffic and was late for the treasured visit of the month to Emily’s kindergarten class [my daughter Emily teaches at 
a charter school]. Worried I’d miss the whole afternoon, I did childbirth breathing to keep calm.
Finally I arrived with a hard-boiled egg and the gizmo I’d bought for making a peeled egg into a cube. I’m not sure if the kids are wise enough to be as wowed as I am by that. At least they were totally engrossed to see what would happen.
Then I read The Golden Egg Book about a bunny and an egg, from which emerged a duckling. “And no one was every alone again.”
I’m pushing the limits of Gretchen’s one-sentence journal, but it’s okay for Susan’s one-sentence journal to be longer.
This is fun! I can’t wait to see what I decide to write in the journal tomorrow.
Hi, this is non-journal me again. Now I’m getting my hopes up that every day a blog post will emerge from my journal. After all, isn’t that what a blog is, a web log?
MORE [too many?] OF MY ARTICLES ABOUT WRITING [When will I ever learn that less is more?]:
By susan fishman orlins OccupyDC provides photo ops. Here are a few and, at the end, a link to my salade nicoise recipes. There’s a tie-in, sort of.
 Committee Meeting  Home Sweet Home [
 Two Medics: A Muslim and a Jew  Family Time . . . This father said he's already collected 1,000 signatures for his petition to join the coastguard and keep his dreadlocks.  "This land is my land, this land is your land . . . " Notice there's a guy with a bass, several drummers too.  A melting pot of old, young, disabled, abled, Asian, Latino, Black, White, children, pets.  I bike home to my pet, Brad Pitt  And enjoy a salade nicoise. Lucky me! (knock wood) Check out my quick, easy, delicious, low-cal Salade Nicoise Recipe with Countless Variations.
What has struck you about the protests sites, either if you have seen them live or in the media?
By susan fishman orlins When I’m in New York, I like to hang out and write at Jack’s, a coffee place in the West Village with a patina that suggests long afternoons of sipping lattes and tapping on laptops. The overall look is shades of brown, like paper bags and coffee.
Jack’s is so small it has no bathroom. The other day, I had to pee, so I walked up the block and stopped at the first restaurant, a dark Villagey place called Low Country, another brownish space, where I was greeted by–as you can see from his picture–a fit, attractive bald man with smooth, mahogany-colored skin, wearing a dark t-shirt and black blazer.
With a dip of my right eyebrow, a sort of pity look, I asked “Would it be okay if I used the bathroom?” in the way that, when I was in my twenties, got me anything I wanted.
The man responded with a broad white-toothed smile, “Of course.”
In the bathroom, which was papered with pages from a Faulkner paperback, I began thinking about all the kind restaurant hosts who have welcomed me into their bathrooms.
And one who didn’t. It was a few years ago in D.C., up the block from the White House, a mediocre wannabe kind of place with white linen on the tables, where the maitre d’ rejected me. Admittedly, I was mid-bike ride in shorts and sneakers and with sweaty helmet hair.
I then crossed the street to the Bombay Club, an upscale restaurant with fine Indian food, a favorite of the Clintons and some of Washington’s elite journalists.
The maitre d’ welcomed me warmly and led me to the rest rooms. When I returned to thank him, he walked me into the bar and told the bartender to give me a drink.
I must have look pretty pathetic. When I left, I over-thanked him and mentioned, to show I wasn’t just a bathroom moocher, that I had eaten there and that I would be back. The afterglow of his kindness lasts to this day.
Back to Low Country. On the way upstairs from the Faulkner bathroom, I decided to tell the host how much I appreciated his hospitality.
He again graced me with his sparkly smile and introduced himself. We began talking and I told him I was a writer and that I blog, and he said he had recently started blogging. We exchanged cards.
The following day he emailed me:
| Susan,
It’s your new friend Chad from Low Country. Your blog looks really funny! I can’t wait to read some, especially religion.
It was nice meeting and chatting. Let’s meet for lunch sometime and share life. I love meeting new interesting people.
Cheers and make today an amazing day!
Chad
P.S.
Here’s the link to my first blog post! http://www.africa.com/blog/blog,hip_hop_saves_lives_an_introduction,418.html |
He wasn’t hitting on me; he is somewhere around half my age of 65.
Chad and I are different. He’s writing to help people in Chad and Sudan, and my blog is a platform for my white girl worries, which I mentioned when I gave him my card. As for religion, he’s a believer and I get nightmares about the 23rd Psalm.
But back at Jack’s I was sitting on the bench outside when Chad came along to unlock his bicycle, which was parked right next to mine (technically my ex-husband’s that I borrow when I’m in New York).
I’m a schmoozer and a reacher-outer and I love the way Chad wrote “I love meeting new [ahem] interesting people,” expressing his wish to get together. I am going to use that next time I email a maitre d’ or someone else I’m eager to know better.
How do you reach out?
What are your experiences with using restrooms in restaurants where you are not a patron?
If you or someone you know likes cupcakes, don’t miss my article TLC’s Georgetown Cupcake Sisters Share a Chocolate Cupcake Recipe & Their Recipe for Success!
By susan fishman orlins Beware of asking me to rant. I am liable to start today, five days after autumn began (also National Good
 Happy National Pancake Day Neighbor Day and National Pancake Day), and never stop until Flag Day.
If you really want to hear loud and wild talk, ask me about the leaf blowers whose noise is banging around in my skull as I write.
It reminds me how we have just gone from the noisiest of seasons to the noisiest of seasons.
My sentiments from summer about the batball game vacationers play on the beach get aroused all over again. That shattering of one’s tranquility is really something to make a furious commotion about.
On more than a few occasions I have wished a grizzly demise for the one who invented that head-splitting, rackety seaside diversion for the yuppie class.
There have even been times when–glued to a rectangle of terry cloth by a teaspoon of drool, then yanked into consciousness by the thwack-thwack-thwack of the dreaded toy– I have whispered to God that all paddlers deserve to be stuffed into a giant garbage disposal and ground into a mishmash.
Then sleep would be further delayed by my conscience tweaking me with: What if my brother is one of those gameplayers? (He just might be.) Sometimes I go back and revise the part about the disposal.
 My family playing the dreaded game And recently my kids have taken up the sport, (with four bats and two balls!) so now I have to go back and revise my entire position with higher authorities who may have heard me rant.
At least my kids know to avoid earshot of sleeping moms.
I have tried dragging my towel to another spot when others start batting near my personal zone. But you can’t count on hearing only the tweedle-dee of gulls and the smack of waves upon the shore.
What’s to prevent some muscled peacock, slippery with sweat and oil, from strutting up to a patch of sand, not four feet from my ear, and planting roots, immediately after which he engages in a lengthy confab on his iPhone? (Let me assure you, however, that no matter how hateful this fellow may be, he is never as uncharming as the ones with paddles and balls.)
If I wait it out, performing the deep breathing trick they teach for childbirth that doesn’t work at all for childbirth pain, there comes a time when the sun sinks behind the roof of the bathhouse, and the paddlers, the peacocks, the kids with sand stuck to their snotty noses pack up their ball games, their i-This’s and i-That’s and shuffle home to their pizza deliveries.
Then it’s quiet.
And the flies arrive.
What noises drive you to rant?
UNRELATED ANNOUNCEMENT: Check out my Dinner Menu: Recipes for my Healthful, Delicious 30-Minute Meal.
Also, tis the season for chicken soup. You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Make Great Chicken Soup!
By susan fishman orlins  Mom always looked great without a lot of fuss Grief: keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss; sharp sorrow; painful regret.
At the cemetery, my sister and brother stand teary over our mother’s coffin with their arms around each other’s backs. Dry-eyed, I step up next to them, completing our sibling trio. Yet we are two plus one, a double and a single, a duet and a solo.
After standing there for a moment, unconnected–not part of their mood, not feeling their pain–I step back to allow them their moment.
We all adored my mom and felt a closeness to her that any mother (or offspring, for that matter) would envy.
So what’s with me and this numb reaction to her death?
Like my mom, I’m not a crier, except when I get divorced and have to agree to living 9 consecutive days a month without my kids. But that was years ago, and Mom was right when she told me I would eventually come to make the most of those 9 days on my own.
Though I can get weepy if I accidentally turn on the evening news, I strive to avoid sadness and pain. A mother’s death is one of the Big Boppers of loss and maybe I’ve put up a wall to block that. Or is this just a psychobabble idea from spending too much time talking to shrinks?
On a similar note, maybe I am in the denial phase; though after my father died, I also wondered why I never crumbled with grief.
 Mom and Dad aboard the Queen Mary Mom often said she wished she had been able to cry when Daddy died. Nonetheless, her loss was palpable after 66 years of marriage in which each considered the other before themselves.
Though it feels counterintuitive to prance around with my life the same as I did before Mom died, the fact that she and I shared the dry-eyes trait pleases me.
Her life ran its course over 92 years and she had no regrets. I celebrate that, and despite my jolly demeanor, I am aware that Mom’s death leaves me with a permanent empty space, an amputation.
Mom was the only person in the world (except me) who thought I ought to be on Oprah; Oprah, who–by ending her show–also left a hole in my life.
Mom timed her death nicely to coincide with the Oprah loss. Now, I won’t have to watch an Oprah show about, say, octogenarian sex, and then ache to phone and discuss it with Mom.
The truth is I lost my mom 2 months ago, a few days after we moved her up North in a medical van to be in a long-term care facility (she hated the term nursing home) near my brother’s family.
It was the most awesome road trip ever during which my mother said it felt surreal, as though she were traveling to Heaven, even though she didn’t believe in Heaven.
Then reality struck. Her new room–where we hung her favorite paintings and piled up personal things like the book of drawings and tales of her life I made for her 90th birthday and the quilt with family photos my sister had lovingly sewed for her–embodied all the railroad clichés: the final stop, the terminus, the end of the line.
She didn’t want to live after that and I was her cheerleader. She reminded me how I always said I’d help her pull the plug. Of course when it came down to it, I couldn’t do any such thing without the approval of my siblings, the ones who know how to cry.
A few weeks after my mother became downhearted, her body began to shut down. Her meds increased and, though she was still coherent, she became non-reactive, the opposite of the mother I always knew, who thrilled to everything from reports of my high school friend appearing as a frequent guest on MSNBC to the article I wrote about Choosing my Parents.
Another upcoming loss is likely to be my beagle Casey, given that he is 13 years old. Like Mom he has lived a long life with no regrets, except he probably wishes I’d have taught him to fetch. What if he dies and I can’t stop crying?
After all these years, my heart still goes pitty pat when I look at that boy. And even though he doesn’t have much to say about the debt ceiling, he is great company day and night. If I weep for him, not having wept for my mom, what kind of griever am I?
 Last picture of Mom and me together I’m told people grieve differently, and I’ve seen friends react similarly to me when their elderly parents died, so I’ll try to stop worrying that my heart isn’t swollen with grief right now, right after my beloved mom died.
What unexpected reactions have you had to loss?
RELATED ANNOUNCEMENT:
See my article Last Week my Mother Died; This Week I Celebrated Her Life.
SEMI-RELATED ANNOUNCEMENT: For more on death, see my series about Beth, who was diagnosed with breast cancer the same week she had to tell her husband that he had an inoperable tumor and that he would die.
After my Husband Died, Dealing With his Possessions
Caring for my Dying Husband at Home
My Husband’s Final Days and Funeral
UNRELATED ANNOUNCEMENT:
Keep cool, read my article 12 Ways to Refresh With the Miracle of Lemons
By susan fishman orlins 
Unrelated Announcement, my new article: CAN SEPARATE BEDROOMS SAVE A MARRIAGE? Weigh In!
It wasn’t like I had a choice when, at the breakfast table, my then-21-year-old daughter Eliza presented me with documents to sign. The whole family had to swear to confidentiality or the plan was off for her to be a contestant on “Survivor.”
If I refused to sign, the plan was off for her to continue being my daughter. So I signed.
Her father, my ex-husband, reassured me “CBS makes too much money from the show to let anything happen to her.”
But I had seen the episode where a contestant fainted and fell forward while huffing to augment a campfire. Cameras rolled as he lifted his face from burning logs with the skin hanging off his hands.
I tried to be excited for her. After all, I would have applied for the likes of “Survivor” when I was her age. But I kept thinking up things like What will happen to Eliza’s teeth if she goes six weeks without flossing?
The closest I ever got to TV fame occurred when I was 22, during a micro affair with Chuck Barris, creator of “The Dating Game.” He offered me a gig to go to Colorado Springs as a “Dating Game” chaperone. My training consisted of one instruction: Make sure the girl doesn’t get pregnant.
Worry is relative. My daughter’s 26-hour trip on three flights to get to her “Survivor” destination, including one on Air Vanuatu, would have been enough to make me go on a hunger strike. But the idea of her starving on an island, one I’d never heard of, trumped the aviation rumination.
Thankfully it was pre-tsunami.
I got through it, perhaps calling on the same resources that help me worry less now that my daughters no longer live at home. Although they go out in cars and subways till all hours among drunks (themselves at times driving sleepy, which is the same as driving drunk), I can at least pretend they are snug in their beds when I turn off my bedside lamp at night.
How do you cope with worrying about your loved ones?
By susan fishman orlins UNRELATED ANNOUNCEMENT: See my article Interfaith Seders & a Heavenly Flourless Chocolate Cake. Join the convo at the site with comments!
Here’s what triggers a mighty sadness for me: Juxtapostition of happy-sad. If on a normal day in March I hear about a young boy’s bike getting stolen, I’m sad but probably won’t need to watch a Seinfeld rerun to cheer myself up.
If, however, it’s Christmas and a brand new bike that the boy has been dreaming of gets stolen, well, it’s so hard to take that I need to distract myself with a bike ride of my own.
So imagine how I felt years ago on a visit to my kids when they were at their dad’s house. My daughter dashed upstairs all excited to show me her new Spice Girls poster. As she ran downstairs with the large paper poster billowing, it tore.
Her face crumpled, my heart shattered and all these years later I feel a rock in my chest when I think about that moment, which I do more often than I eat ice cream.
Needless to say this is completely inconsequential compared to other happy-sads, one obvious example being the plane crash in which John F. Kennedy, Jr. and 2 others died just as his cousin was about to get married.
Vacations offer myriad risks for happy-sad, which is one reason I often choose instead to hang out at home with the dog. (One friend calls family vacations an oxymoron.)
I agree with a friend who said, “You can’t be happier than your least happy child.”
I wish I could have protected my daughter from the torn Spice Girls poster and every other hardship life has to offer. All I can do though is tell myself these experiences build character and hopefully prepare them to deal with real problems.
Any other suggestions for coping with these kinds of white girl worries?
By susan fishman orlins Riddle: Every family has them, what are they?
Answer: Nicknames that are too embarrassing to expose outside the home.
 Casemaster General After coffee with friends, I return home, open my front door and call to my bassety beagle Casey, “Casemaster General, where are you?”
To say he’s non-responsive overstates his activity level.
So again I call, “Caaay! Caseman! Whatcha up to?” Suddenly realizing the open-door opportunity, he brushes by to pee in the front yard. Just then it pops into my mind, Would it be too embarrassing to explore on my blog all the names I use to address my best friend? (Just how far would I go to embarrass myself?)
My father, who called me “Poodlebug” when I was a kid, thought Casey should have a Jewish name and dubbed him “Chaim.” I embellished it and, only when he’s especially good, I call him “Chaim Goodman.” Other times, he gets nicknamed after the food group he’s broken into.
So he responds to “Pretzelman” and “Nutman” as well as the current “Teaman,” after he unloaded an open shelf of teas, scattering all over the place the leaves he didn’t feel like eating. I now have to store the salvaged tea in the dishwasher.
“Caseminster Fuller” is a derivative of Casemaster General. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Yes, I think it follows this progression: Buckminster Fuller>Caseminster Fuller>Casemaster General.
With sagging jowls, sorrowful eyes, shiny as big black marbles, and ample folds in his neck, he looks as much like a Chester or Chesterton as a Buckminster Fuller, but the Chester monikers never stuck.
“Basset Case” is one that has stuck, its origins a Hallmark card my daughter sent that features a basset hound below the words, “Without you . . .,” and inside, “I’m a basset case.”
Speaking of dog names, when I was in my twenties and getting ready to move to Vermont, I told my boyfriend (the one who was moving to NY and didn’t invite me to join him) I wanted to get a hound dog and name him Alan. Sometimes before going to sleep, I would  practice calling, “Alan, get in here for lunch!” and we’d dissolve into giggles.
For years I wanted to name my next dog Audrey Hepburn. But then I had to deep-six the idea after Charlotte on “Sex and the City” named her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Elizabeth Taylor. Otherwise, people would think I copycatted. Hm, that would have embarrassed me.
Most often I call Casey “Caseman” or just “Son.” The other name I call him most often is “Cutie,” conincidentally the nickname my ex chose for me, except he shortened it to “Q,” a nickname for my nickname.
Back to How far would I go to embarrass myself? I was hoping the pup names would embarrass me, but they don’t.
Even though I don’t embarrass easily, I easily embarrass others. Just ask my kids. Or my friend Jackie, who was embarrassed to be seen with me the time we were both in Paris because my only footwear was New Balance running shoes.
I submit it would have been a lot more embarrassing if, trying to look French, I’d worn a beret.
Unrequited handshakes, especially with Orthodox rabbis, awkward but not embarrassing.
The friendliest girl in the ninth grade at Thomas Williams Jr. High in 1960 passes another biker on an isolated path, and squeals “Hi!!” but the biker doesn’t respond. Disappointing, but not embarrassing.
Embarrassment for others, does that count? Like watching a comedian and no one laughs; I get so embarrassed for the performer I could plotz.
At a reception, I once saw a woman who wasn’t even drunk fall onto a buffet table and topple it. Embarrassing, unless you didn’t like the person; then it’s just schadenfreude.
There was the day I biked 26 miles in China and my bell didn’t work. I bellowed “ling ling” all over Beijing, biking on the sidewalk as I do. Maybe I figured “ling ling” sounded more Chinese than “beep beep.” Indeed, the following night at dinner, my Chinese friend told me ‘’ling ling’’ means vagina. Amusing, but not embarrassing.
Oh, I just got one, proving that if you keep writing, ideas come (or if you Google “things that embarrass people” ideas come). In first grade I was too embarrassed to ask Mrs. Salkind if I could use the lavatory and I peed in my pants. Then I put my head down on my desk and cried into my folded arms.
What embarrasses you? What are your funny or embarrassing family nicknames?
Unrelated announcement/Foodie Alert: See my recent post 12 QUICK, EASY RECIPES FOR DELICIOUS, HEALTHFUL VEGETABLE DISHES.
By susan fishman orlins 
In seventh grade my friends and I were not part of the popular crowd of girls who looked sexy in gymsuits and paired off with boys. Instead, we immersed ourselves in a world of make-believe.
We were three couples: me and Ricky Nelson, Phyllis Kirschner and Tab Hunter, Shessie Einbinder and Pat Boone. Each “family” had one child as well as a fat scrap book filled with photos of the husband, and gossipy headlines cut from movie magazines. On the wall next to my bed I taped a picture of Ricky wearing a cowboy suit with pants so tight you  could see a bulge in his crotch.
Star-struck by Ricky, I saw other girls on TV screaming when they watched him perform. Then one sultry afternoon I squeezed in among thousands of sweating, lovesick teenagers at Steel Pier in Atlantic City to see his show. Once the shrieking started, I joined in and couldn’t stop; each time I screamed was louder than the time before until I thought the veins in my neck would pop.
Nearly two decades later when I was living in D.C., Ricky was featured at The Cellar Door, a small nightclub in Georgetown. Only now he was called Rick. I decided to go say hello to prove that childhood dreams could come true. The owner was a friend of mine and helped me time my arrival to be between the 7:30 and 9:30 shows.
Still in a tennis skirt from a game I had played earlier, I ran in breathless and said, “I wanted to meet you in order to prove that childhood dreams can come true.”
“Thanks,” said Rick. “Are you staying for the show?”
God, it never occurred to me to stay for the show; I had moved on. “Gee, I’m sorry I can’t,” I answered and hurried away.
I still can’t believe he’s dead.
By susan fishman orlins It’s been a longie since my last Tip Day. I’m worried you’ll think I’ve run out of tips. To be honest, I’m a little worried myself.
So today, when a positive thought visited me, I wondered how I could put a worry spin on it. Then I remembered long-neglected Tip Day! (There are so many things to remember and unless I have a checklist just for remembering Tip Day, which I would have to remember to look at, I might again have a long delay.)
The tip is to extrapolate from a long-held diet tip of mine: Whether you have 10 ribs or 2 ribs, what you’ll remember is that you had ribs.
Oops, now I’m trying to retrieve the analogy I just had in mind. Oh, here it is . . . Say you’re worried about taking a long enough a vacation. Maybe you’re short on time or money. As weeks, months, years pass, though, you’ll remember you had that visit to Paris (or Atlantic City) rather than how much time you spent there.
Happy Tip Day and enjoy whatever holiday time you may have in the upcoming days as well as any couple of ribs you eat; your memory will take care of the rest.
Speaking of accepting less of something, with the holidays, I hope to be able to keep up my usual pace of posting, but if not, I figure you’ll be busy at home or in Atlantic City or elsewhere and will check in with Confessions of a Worrywart when you can or when you’re back at work where you’ll have more time. I wish you a worry-free new year!
Do you have any worry tips for the New Year? If so, I’d love to hear them.
By susan fishman orlins Unrelated announcement: How I Organized my Home, De-Cluttered my Life & Learned 21 New Tips
Some call the holiday season Chrismukkah, others say HanuKwanzMas. Then there’s Festivus with its unadorned aluminum pole, miracles and airing of grievances.
I say Hanukkah simply on its own can cause confusion, starting with: which of the 16 permutations do you use to spell it: H or Ch, n or nn, k or kk, a or ah?
Moreover, who knew that in their wisdom the rabbis of old gave us candle-lighting choices? According to Wikipedia, the Talmud says:
- The law requires only one light each night per household,
- A better practice is to light one light each night for each member of the household
- The most preferred practice is to vary the number of lights each night.
Waddaya know, turns out I’ve been following a “better practice” all along, each of us lighting our own menorah, creating our own Festival of Lights and puddles of dripped wax on old baking sheets.
Along with so many other December anxieties, comes the worry about wobbly Hanukkah candles in the wax-caked menorahs reducing our home to ashes. My rule is, when leaving the room, blow out the candles. Should I feel guilty about that?
There’s always this chatter about Chanukka being a minor holiday and, regardless, ought not be thought of as the “Jewish Christmas.” I agree. Plus, Hannukkah provides a smorgasbord of it’s own distinct joys.
I think of Christmas as a razzle-dazzle of lights and sparkle. My oldest friend summed up my lifelong enchantment with colored lights on evergreen trees as, “Well, you’re shallow and attracted to tinsel.”
I struggle to understand what offends some Jewish friends about an agnostic member of the tribe like me partaking of Christmas’s rainbow colors, cinnamon-y smells, tinkly carols, peppermint-y tastes and scratchy pine needles . . . in my home.
Sharing my family room with a colorfully lit tree (a custom that’s only a handful of centuries old) by the blazing hearth makes me feel warm, cozy and cheery on cold winter nights. To me it’s nothing more than a splendid tree.
On the other hand, if someone were to ask me to display the most exquisite creche imaginable, even one made of evergreen sprigs and dotted with lights, I’d say no. To me a creche is indeed a religious symbol, though I wouldn’t judge another Jewish person for displaying one. (See my friend Sue’s article “Some Jews Love a Christmas Tree, But a Creche? Oy” on her intriguing blog “On Being Both.”)
On a similar note, should Christians and those of other religions disallow dreidl in their homes? Simply because a lighted tree in my home makes me smile, does it affect the integrity of my or anyone else’s religiosity?
How about carols—are they any different? Where do you draw the line? Is it okay to bring Frosty the Snowman into the home? I like listening to O Holy Night.
Suppose my kids and I hang stockings and exchange trinkets. Would it be more palatable to the naysayers if we were to hang goody-filled pillow cases . . . and did so on, like, March 3rd?
Is it okay to celebrate Chinese New Year in my home? All the times I’ve done that, I never turned into a Chinese person nor felt treasonous (though I acknowledge this to be a weak and not religious example).
If I were not Jewish, no doubt I’d ache with envy of those having 8 dinners outdoors in a sukkah during the autumn harvest and, as the season changed, I’d be drawn to menorahs, lit with twisted candles in a garden of colors. And, oy, those crisp, potato pancakes! I would yearn to dance the hora and exchange gifts every night for 8 nights!
When I was a kid, I begged for a tree. My mom, who–like my daughter–was born Christmas day (an aside: my mom’s parents’ were Joseph and Mary) just told me that the one time she allowed me to have a tree on the third floor, she never told my dad. After that, she always said, “When you get married, you can have a Christmas tree.”
Then, at age 19, I got married and my husband would not allow a tree on the grounds we were Jewish. So I hung tinsel on the clothes tree and colored balls on kitchen cabinet knobs and from my ears. That January, after 6 months together off and on, we separated.
Posting this post-hannukkah seems in keeping with our family tradition of doing things not according to the calendar; rather, we celebrate events when we can all be together. One year we had a Passover seder in July so we could enjoy it with my parents.
I wish I believed in a higher authority who would answer all my prayers, because then I’d no longer need to worry. If I ever attain my quest for greater belief in religion, maybe I’ll want to give up my tree. Till then, Hapry, Merpy Hanumas.
I’d love your thoughts about someone Jewish
With tree lights of red, green and bluish.
By susan fishman orlins
It all began with a tweet from MaMoosie, even though it originally began 50 years ago with a French kiss lesson.
During one of my maladaptive, obsessive, neurotic checkings of Twitter messages, I see this retweet from one of my followers “MaMoosie” who knows I’m a writer: “’Writing is easy. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.’ RED SMITH.”
I like this quote and I check out the one who originally tweeted it. It turns out he tweets these writers’ quotes all day long. I click to follow him so I can read more tweets, like “’The beautiful part of writing is that u don’t have to get it right the first time unlike, say, brain surgery.’ R.Cormier”
Then I look at his Twitter profile (All I know at this point is his Twitter name, AdviceToWriters). He has more than 35,000 followers, including Dick Cavett, witty Sixties talk show host, presently a writer.
Seeing the staggering 35,000+ number of followers shoots an adrenaline spike through a blogger like me who takes pride in her 88 followers. A thought bubble inflates overhead, If only I could get him to tweet about my blog, imagine how many new visitors would drop in on Confessions of a Worrywart, maybe even Dick Cavett . . .
I read his actual name. Oh My Lady Gaga! He’s Jon Winokur, Jonnie Winokur Junior High! I go to Amazon and see he’s written dozens of books from Ennui to Go: The Art of Boredom to The Portable Curmudgeon.
 Jonnie lived two doors away from George, my first boyfriend. George and I were the power couple in ninth grade when Jonnie was in seventh. But it was fun to pal around with Jonnie despite the age difference.
All these years later, I email Jonnie and he writes back. I sign Sue and explain, “I might forget and sometimes sign Susan, the name I’ve used ever since I reinvented myself in college.”
He emails back, addressing me as Sue/Susan and signs off as Jon/Jonnie, and when he next writes, he uses S/S and J/J. This is just the kind of thing that will stump me for minutes when I email him again and try to decide what names to use.
He says he remembers me as happy-go-lucky; I respond that’s true, but I’ve always been wired to worry.
I also tell him I’m thinking of doing a post about my writing life to see if I can merit a tweet to his 35,000+ followers. He says he’d be delighted to retweet something I compose on the subject of writing and encourages me also to write about George.
Jon/Jonnie offers to send me a copy of his Encyclopedia Neurotica, perhaps perceiving a bit of neurotica in me.
Meanwhile, I write J/J to ask if I’m only imaging that I taught him to French kiss, “egged on I’m sure by George,” I add.
 J sets the record straight, “I vaguely remember something about a French kissing lesson, but I’m hazy on the
details. (There have been so many.) Wait, it’s coming back to me now: As I recall the lesson consisted of too much theory and too little practice.”
I’m worried I’ve not come up with insights beyond the banal: Wowee digital connectivity! Nonetheless, I am now going to alert Jonnie to this very post and also call his attention to to my first blog post ever, “To Blog or Not to Blog,” which indeed is about writing.
To find out what happens if Jonnie tweets one of my links, check out my Twitter page and look for a number at the top that is higher than 88.
Have you turned up any blasts from the past on Twitter or elsewhere online?
Unrelated announcement: Have you taken my Organizing Challenge? Soon I’ll be writing about my own organizing success on Home Goes Strong.
By susan fishman orlins In case you don’t make it to the end, where I’ll refer to this again,
 see my latest post on NBC’s new Website Home Goes Strong,
“My (91-year-old) Mom’s Do-It-Youself Decorating Tips.”
On another note, this past weekend I visited my brother’s family in Philly, where I picked up some tips from my niece, whom I hereby nominate to the Worrywart Hall of Fame. She comes up with things to stay awake about that have only percolated beneath the surface of my fretful brain. Then she zooms into action.
She asked if I wanted to go for a walk with her and her dog. Shortly thereafter, I picked up her first contribution to Tips Weekend when she hooked two leashes onto her black toy poodle’s harness in case the clasp on one of them were to fail. (TIP #1)
This made me think of the measure I use to protect Casey from assaults beyond the boundaries of my home when I’m traveling. I ask the petsitter to walk him only in the small front yard, jogging laps perhaps, as though competing to win number one beagle-basset in the Westminster dog Show, the way he and I sometimes do, while a crowd (of one: me) cheers, “Yea Casey, number one beagle-bassett in the Westminster Dog Show!” (inferior TIP #1a)
My niece and I returned from walking the dog and we washed our hands. “Did you know,” she informed me, “that the thumb of your dominant hand tends to get overlooked when you wash your hands?” In the future, you may want to pay extra attention to that dominant thumb. (TIP#2) She also advised against using foamy soap, because it makes washing quicker, hence, riskier. (Tip #2a)
As for Spread-the-Word Day, in the spirit of enormous admiration and imitation-is-the-highest-form-of-flattery, I’m borrowing from the playbook of Gretchen Rubin and her blog The Happiness Project where she anoints some days to be Spread-the-Word Days . . . the word being her blog, book, etc. For me, this would be the equivalent of asking you to spread the word to others who might enjoy my blog and my articles on NBC’s new Website Home Goes Strong.
My Spread-the-Word Day campaign in the previous paragraph pales beside Gretchen’s recent spread-the-word request. I’m supplying hers below in case you want to experience the persuasion skills of someone, unlike me, whose blog has thousands, if not tens of thousands, of followers:
My resolution for this month is “Go the extra step.” As part of that, I’m trying to take extra steps to promote my blog – even when that means doing things that make me uncomfortable. (Like attaching this note to a few posts.)
One of the challenges of a blog is just letting people know that it’s there. And so I’m asking you for a big favor.
If you have the time and the inclination, it would be a huge help if you would email anyone you know who might enjoy this blog, to give them the link and tell them a bit about it. Word of mouth is very powerful.
My happiness research predicts that if you do this good deed, you’ll feel great! That’s the Samaritan effect: “do good, feel good.”
Reminder: the above in italics was written by Gretchen, not me. But I welcome (Gretchen would probably say “encourage”) you to “go the extra step” on my behalf, and if you do, I hope you’ll feel great and I’ll be endlessly grateful, but in all honesty I feel compelled to note that I’m not sure the deed will score you a trophy from the Good Samaritan Hall of Fame.
By Susan Fishman Orlins This may sound cockeyed but–without a religious streak strong enough to be sure prayers get answered–I feel doomed to a lifetime of worry. Yet I spring to action each evening when the stars show up.
I realize, of course, that if I tell you my nightly wish on a star, it might not come true. However, I am going to tell you anyway. It demonstrates just how greedy I am as I attempt to cover all my bases, cramming a kitchen sinkful of wishes into a single request. At the sign of that first twinkle, after silently reciting the Star Light Star Bright rhyme, I add I wish for all good things for my family and friends and for my family’s friends and my friends’ families.
For years I had a different star wish, which I also used on birthdays, that all my wishes would come true. But then I read this folktale, “The Three Wishes,” about a poor woodcutter who is granted three wishes. Without thinking, he wishes he had some sausages to go with the special wine he has just opened to celebrate his good fortune, whereupon his wife calls him an idiot for wasting an opportunity to wish for rubies. He retorts, “A curse on you. I wish these sausages were hanging from your nose!” You can imagine what happens next, and he has to use his final wish to get the sausages off her nose. From then on, I decided it was too risky to wish for all my wishes to come true.
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