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  MISHMASH

  OF ME

  MISHMASH

  OF ME

  ( A Writing Collection )

  JEANNE

  LEE

  Mishmash of Me: A Writing Collection

  Published by Gatekeeper Press

  2167 Stringtown Rd, Suite 109

  Columbus, OH 43123-2989

  www.GatekeeperPress.com

  Copyright © 2019 by Jeanne Lee

  All rights reserved. Neither this book, nor any parts within it may be sold or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  ISBN (paperback): 9781642375435

  eISBN: 9781642375428

  Printed in the United States of America

  I would like to dedicate this book to all the

  storytellers in the world, particularly to those

  who have the capacity to be brave and tell the

  truth … and to those who like to laugh.

  You inspire me. Thank you.

  Dedication

  Preface: Mind the Sneeze-Guard

  Bringing Home The Bacon

  When One Door Closes, A Jerk Can Still Try To Come In

  Mr. Opera

  I’m So Tired

  Gynie Bells

  Thanks, Dad!

  Mr. Smith Goes To Sexy-Town

  Look Ma, No Cavities!

  The End Of The World, Nebraska Style

  Senator Woes

  The “List”

  Pimpin’ Visas

  Ding, Dongs

  Mr. Insurance

  Ireland Forever

  The Queen Of Cannon Street

  Pink Parka Joy

  Little Duo

  Oprah-Licious

  The C Word (Church, Church!)

  Sometimes You Feel Like A Nut; Sometimes You Don’t

  Dork Lady

  Mr. Goodbody

  ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas

  Addiction Blues

  Art

  Clans And Cliques And Clubs …Oh, My

  Nutrisystem Blues

  R-E-S-P-E-C-T

  The Theatre

  Stop Putting Food In Your Pie Hole

  Ob/Gyn Thanksgiving

  Step Back, Perfume Lady

  Boom, Boom, Boom

  Something Smells

  Top Ten Reasons To Work At My Ob/Gyn Office

  Poo

  With Great Picking, Comes Great Responsibility

  Buzzy Vs. Arnold

  Toilet Man

  Crow Hair

  Wolf Of Jeanne Street

  Grown Up Anthem

  It

  Thanks, Good Buddy

  Hot Flash Vs. Fred

  Romancing The Curtain

  Peace On Earth/Oh, And Star Wars

  Man-In-The-Moon

  Morph Machine

  X-Mas

  Taking A Deep Breath

  The Donald (03/2016)

  Mr. Popular

  Mrs. Lee

  My Happy File

  I Stopped Breathing (Thank God I Was In A Hospital)

  So What’s The Dealio?

  Mind the Sneeze-Guard

  Well, who doesn’t like a buffet? I suppose picky foodies or anorexic supermodels, but buffets are mostly enjoyed by the majority of the populace. Where else can you have, well, anything? Various pastas, mystery slabs of meat, lovely salad fixings and that weird vat of chocolate pudding—all are available. Delicious chaos.

  I feel like that’s how I write, a little all-over-the-place. Occasionally, I have a purposeful writing-for-pay gig, but often I just write. Sometimes I’m lonely and a poem comes out about my deep affection for the man-in-the-moon or I’m angsting about aging and food and a short play pours out bemoaning my love of pizza and my horror of skin tags. Or once, my youngest son wondered about my early life (“I don’t know very much about you, Mom”) and so, I start writing down some short stories. These are my ruminations (to this point) in the style of a Las Vegas buffet. Mind the sneeze-guard, don’t touch the warming trays and no licking the frozen yogurt machine with the teeny-tiny cones—those are my favorite.

  When I was fifteen, I got my first job at a Baskin-Robbins in Aurora, Illinois. Twenty-one flavors and most of them were inedible. The big one in 1978 for the kiddos was BUBBLEGUM ice cream. All the wee ones wanted it, but it was cotton candy pink and tasted weird and it had gum in it. Let’s get real; all those kids just swallowed the gum. I bet potty time was not too fun—with a deposit alarmingly tinged the color of a day old pink carnation boutonniere from the Spring Fling dance.

  My boss was quite a character. He was a rather large man, shaped like the letter “O,” with dark, greasy hair and what can only be described as a tiny Hitler moustache. I was told by a fellow worker never to steal any ice cream because that “skeevy dude sits in the parking lot in his car with binoculars to try to catch you in the act.” I guess he had some free time. I was a very typical teenager in that it didn’t take much to embarrass me. His favorite thing, in a store full of customers, was to jump up and down from foot to foot doing a demented ice cream dance, if you will, while singing at the top of his lungs, “HOO-HOO, HEE-HEE, MY NAME IS JEANNE LEE!” My hand would slowly creep to my plastic nametag to cover it as I rolled my eyes and tried to help the next customer.

  I hated him as only a teenager could. I tried desperately to enjoy my time at this cold fortress. I truly loved the older patrons, couples usually, who would get all dressed up in special dresses and faded plaid blazers to come and get their pralines and cream on a sugar cone. Old Eagle Eyes would be watching. Don’t give those sweet human beings any more of a scoop than the prescribed tiny amount that we had to practice giving. Yes, we practiced with a scale to make sure that our scoops were uniform and SMALL.

  When I turned sixteen, I graduated to Harner’s Bakery as a waitress. Harner’s was a small restaurant and bakery about 10 blocks from my house. Midwestern-ville. I worked there for a few years and even some summers through college. The bakery part of the deal was interesting. People really loved their treats, but after a while, I never wanted to eat a donut, ever, ever, Halleluiah, Amen. This bakery had huge, commercial vats of frosting and it was somebody’s job each morning (me) to scrape the mosquitos and bugs off the top layer that had landed on it overnight, meeting their maker in a sugary graveyard. “Ummm, can’t we put some plastic over these at night?” I queried. No response.

  The whole Harner family worked there, the mom, the dad, two sons and a daughter. Mr. Harner would sit in front of a cake stand that turned around and around as he decorated. He was magic with his tools and tubes and metal instruments, like he was a doctor in surgery, “Clamp, uh, I mean flower maker …” and instead of serving up stitches and a clean bill of health, he served up frosting loveliness and pre-diabetic comas.

  I would often open the restaurant at 5:30 am to a line of older gentlemen. They would sit at my counter, drink coffee and ask me the same question, every day for years. “How are you doing, Jeanne?” My proper response had to be, “Ohhh, pretty good!” to which one of them would titter, “We know you’re pretty, but are you good?” Hardee-har-har. (They were kind of sweet in a grandpa, non-perv-y way.) I never drink coffee, but to this day, I find the smell of percolating brews comforting.

  I loved collecting my tips in a big, white Styrofoam cup and walking home, full of hope. I would lay out all my coins and dollars (mostly coins) and roll them up and dream. There was one older couple who I waited on during my time there, my regulars. They were in their eighties and they never left a tip. Well, they never left a monetary tip. They did leave me a “Jesus loves you” prin
ted message each time and I didn’t care one bit. I figured they didn’t have much money and that was fine. They were my little couple. One day I watched as they slowly went out to their car—which was a brand-new silver Cadillac. Huh. Hey, wait a second! They weren’t broke; they were just super cheap. Son of an apple fritter.

  Well, at least Jesus loves me.

  I do consider myself a Midwestern gal; I was born in New York, spent a few years in Queens as a baby and as a preschooler in Long-GUY-land, a few unfortunate years in Pennsylvania (in a very, very tiny town that my mother dubbed, “Evil Mayberry”), and the rest of my formative years in Aurora, Illinois. (Wayne’s World was supposedly set in Aurora, Illinois, but that would be the only thing remotely cool about it.)

  While we certainly weren’t poor (both of my parents worked full time), in general clipping coupons, watching for sales, and counting our pennies was the name of the game. I joke that my mother taught me from an early age about the holy trinity of shopping, Marshall’s, Ross, and T.J. Maxx. Amen. Many nights were spent roaming the neighborhoods playing “Ghost in the Graveyard” and catching lightning bugs. Oh, we also had the bullies down the street who terrorized my brother mercilessly, and one boy a few blocks over who held up a gas station, shot someone, and went to jail. So, while it wasn’t a Norman Rockwell painting, it still plays well in my brain.

  We lived on Palace Street in a white, two-story house with an unfinished basement and a scary attic. The attic was scary because the door to it was in my bedroom, in my closet. Before I went to bed, I would check that door to make sure it was locked (with a creepy skeleton key), and if it wasn’t, I would freak out in my soul. Quick, quick, lock, lock-and into bed I would go. I had this whole scenario in my head that a poor, homeless family lived up there, and as soon as the house was quiet and we were asleep, they’d tiptoe down the creaky stairs and strangle all of us. Really. Because if there was a homeless family living up there, of course they would probably only need to use our shower and get something to eat, but I was living in some sort of teenaged, Friday the 13th world.

  I wonder if my closet, door-locking fears stem from my dad (who, in his defense, grew up in a poor neighborhood in the Bronx). As a young parent, he’d take me around at the end of the night to lock the front, side, and back doors of the house. My job was to put the chain locks on—every night—for years. It was cute and even fun when I was little, and I’m sure as I got older I sluffed off the duty, but I have reoccurring dreams about those damn doors—of people trying to get in, of rushing to lock them before someone entered, about people trying to talk their way inside. (I dream way more about running up and down stairs trying to find the classroom that I have a test in, or flying, but the doors are probably in third place.)

  Actually, the whole “must lock every door” thing didn’t really kick in until college. Some friends and I rented the downstairs of a duplex and we were having fun—music playing, windows open, doors open to the outside and the upstairs—easy, breezy. One day, a flirty young man helped me home with my groceries; he was talkative, helpful-and completely taking an inventory of our home. The next night, around midnight, I returned from my waitress gig to a yard filled with three police cars and a crying roommate wrapped in a blanket. The lothario from the day before had gotten a ladder and had been chipping away at probably the only window in the house that didn’t open. As a result, he ended up scaring my roommate as he uttered, “I’m going to kill you” to her, and then he ran off.

  Well, that blew me away. What a freak that dude ended up being. What a horrible thing to happen. I resisted the urge to jump on a train back to Aurora and hide under my pink gingham blankets. Instead, I found a two-by-four in the yard and slept with it by my bed for the rest of the year. Oh, and, my mom sent pepper spray. Double-oh, my roommates and I locked the windows and doors for the rest of the school year. Sometimes when a window is painted shut, a nasty, young hooligan tries to get in. That’s how the saying goes, right?

  This incident taught me to be wary of charming men … …a lesson that still needs to be repeated, rinsed and repeated.

  In college, I auditioned for the opportunity to have free voice lessons. I loved singing but recognized that I needed some basics, stat. I got it! My theatre department sent me to the music department where I met my new teacher. He sauntered into our tiny music room, took one look at me and spewed out, “I only teach opera students; I’ve never taken on a theatre student.”

  Crap. “Okay, I can go; no problem …”

  He changed his tone a bit; “Well, let’s do some scales.” After what seemed like a barrage to infinity of scales, he begrudgingly said, “Okay, we’ll try this out.”

  How to describe him? I can’t remember his name, but in my head I always called him “Mr. Opera” because the dude would only let me sing opera. Show tunes disgusted him. (Blasphemy!) He was very short, had thick, dark hair slicked back with some sort of product and he continually called my “Mami” which, with his thick Italian accent sounded a lot like “Mommy.” Oh, yeah, he was an Italian stallion and was constantly bragging about his son who sang with the Metropolitan Opera House in New York (which was actually pretty impressive to me).

  When we started our sessions (after scale work), he would stand back and have me start a song. He insisted that all my songs be from operas and they must all not be in English. I begged him to tell me what the songs were about … “Doesn’t matter; sing the vowels.”

  Okay. “But, it would help me to know what’s going on in the song.”

  “No. Doesn’t matter.” Ugg.

  Then, (and the first time it happened I was appalled), he would intermittently stick his little fingers in my mouth to adjust my position as I sang. What? Is this normal? I sort of let it go because he stopped doing it if I had the right positions with my mouth, cheeks, and teeth. He once tried to adjust my tongue and I spoke up. “Hey, hands off the tongue!” He looked at me and shook his head. This was in the days before Purell. I guess I let him get away with it because I could hear the difference. I could sort of get what he was doing. But come on, a little warning, fella.

  The songs were beautiful but maddening. I had no idea what I was singing. I tried to look up some of the Italian, German and French, but this was also before Google. I was kind of lost. At the end of our year, he let me do an opera song in English. I believe it was “Summertime” from Porgy and Bess. I’m absolutely certain that I did not do it justice, but I was so grateful and relieved to understand the language that I’m sure I emoted left and right with that sucker.

  After our year together, we parted ways, but I honestly left with a foundation for my singing that I still carry with me. I had learned how to position my sound, breath control, phrasing and singing the damn vowels. He was quite the character and I’m grateful for his teachings.

  (I worked at an OB/GYN clinic for over a decade;

  here are 2 songs I wrote for a Christmas party.)

  (Sung to “Silent Night”)

  Ca-a-all Day,

  Ca-a-all Night,

  Pager Goes Off,

  Jaw Gets Tight

  Who’s Coming Out?

  A Denise or a Dwight?

  Haven’t had lunch

  No, not even a bite

  Oh, my god, I’m so ti-red

  Oh-oh, my god, I’m so ti-red

  When can I Sleep?

  When is Post Call?

  When can I dream

  Of Jake Gyllenhaal?

  Maybe a Beatle?

  A Ringo or Paul

  Wait, no, Ryan Gosling

  Holy crap, what a doll

  Oh, my god, I’m so ti-red

  Oh-oh, my god, I’m so ti-red

  (Sung to “Jingle Bells”)

  G-Y-N, G-Y-N

  O-B-G-Y-N

  Oh, what fun it is to work

  In a place that

  Has no men –

  Ooooh

  G-Y-N, G-Y, N

  O-B-G-Y-N

  Oh, what fun it is t
o work

  In a place that

  Has no men.

  Dashing through floor three

  In the rooms and in the halls

  Everywhere you see

  Vaginas but no balls.

  Ha-ha-ha

  Speculums ready to go

  Mirenas left and right

  Oh, what fun bodily fluids are

  Let’s make that pessary tight.

  Ooooh

  G-Y-N, G-Y-N

  O-B-G-Y-N

  Oh, what fun it is to work

  In an office with no men.

  Oooooh

  G-Y-N, G-Y-N

  O-B-G-Y-N

  Oh, what fun it is to work

  With great gals,

  That’s right

  A—MEN

  My dad is a character; a true New Yorker. He grew up in the Bronx, played handball for over fifty years and can talk ad nauseam about the subway lines, streets and landmarks of the Big Apple. I remember calling home from college and saying, “Hi, Pop!” and he would retort (jokingly), “Who’s this?”

  Actually, I maintain I get a lot of my drier humor and timing from my dad; he was constantly doing the classic throwaway lines. I would say, “I’m gonna go take a bath” to which he would, with a straight-face mumble, “Good luck.”

  And, while he abhorred the fact that his smart, National Honor Society, Illinois State Scholar daughter, who could have gone to school to become a doctor or an engineer or some other high-paying career, instead deemed to enter the world of theatre, it was he who took me to my first professional play when I was about ten years old. It was a production of some old, obscure comedy done at a theatre-in-the-round in Chicago, starring Van Johnson. Van Johnson was a major star who seemed famous and important, but I was only going by the cheesy program and headshots in the lobby. But the play –oh, my God, I LOVED IT!!! I couldn’t believe how magical it seemed.

  During the intermission, my dad leaned over and whispered, “If you went up to the stage on the blackout, you could put yourself in the story …” What!? The lights went to blackout and I froze. Ummm, ummm, I could say, “Well, Mr. Johnson, I must have wandered into the wrong apartment!” Just as these thoughts popped into my head, the lights went up; the moment was gone, and the show was off and running. No bother—I was absolutely enthralled.