It's widely accepted that one of the more stressful events for people is moving. It's an event that can be fraught with drama, even peril. Some handle it better than others, and as the case with so much in life, the more you do it, it does seem to get easier. But no matter how often you move, and even if it's done through the luxury (I use that term loosely) of a paid corporate relocation, in the back of your mind, you're waiting for someone that's moving to snap.
We've moved several times now and I've always prepared, albeit quietly, for someone in the family to snap. I was never too proud to include myself as one of the potential snapees either. To date, through six moves, I've never had to invoke any of those plans. Until now. And none of my plans included the snap we are enduing now. Why?
Because the snapee is a nearly twelve year old, eleven pound Shih Tzu. Beijing, our family dog, who has been with us since she was an eight-week old puppy has officially, in my book at least, snapped. Apparently this move has proven to be her undoing. A couple of points of evidence:
She refuses to go up or down the stairs. Instead she prefers to bark incessantly from either the bottom or top of the stairs until someone carriers Her Highness up or down. Our Illinois and California houses had stairs. She never did this in either of those houses.
As soon as we sit down at the table to eat, she begins to bark incessantly to the point of dog hysterics. She does not stop until she is let outside, where nine times out of ten, she does absolutely nothing. Nothing, I tell you. She has never done this.
These are new and incredibly annoying behaviors that did not manifest themselves until we moved into our new house. I don't know if she got entirely too used to being coddled when we were hostage to her while living in the Residence Inn for a few months or what, but I'm telling you, this dog has snapped. It's not a good look for her, let me tell you.
I'm a firm believer that the Dog Psychic lady is a peddler of garbage, but I'm getting just desperate enough to give her a call. Maybe she'll know what to do with a dog who's snapped...or can someone hook us up with the Dog Whisperer? Anyone...
In the mid-1980's, it was my honor (seriously, it was an honor) to call south Florida, specifically Miami, home. I never anticipated that I'd live in Florida, which in the immortal words of Jack Donaghy is "America's Australia; it's a criminal population." For two years, Miami, the post-Marielito influx/"Miami Vice"/drug-trade fueled Miami, was my home. Why, you ask? Like so many other 19 year old (well, now you can be 18) young men who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I answered a call from a prophet to serve. I served a two-year mission there and it was amazing.
Miami, besides being completely insane, was and still is, the crossroads of Latin America and in my service there, I was able to get to know the cultures that make up Latin America. Each culture was unique - their dialects, their foods, their experiences - but there were a few things that seemed to unify them: futbol (or soccer) and novelas. No, I don't mean novellas, or short-form novels, nor do I mean novenas, but novelas.
At its simplest, the novela or telenovela is a soap opera. Rather than slogging along for years and years like their American cousins, the Spanish novela ran for just a matter of months from beginning to end. The stories, from what I could tell, were all the same: beautiful poor girl, either orphaned or stricken with some disease or other impediment, is in love with a handsome wealthy boy. There was always a wise priest and a dour nun to guide the girl. She always faced the harsh judgement and overly-arched eyebrows of her potential mother-in-law but in the end, love always conquered. The acting was overwrought to the point of awful, with a lot of women weeping copiously and a lot of steely looks from the men.
As quickly as one novela debuted, it would end and another would begin. And they captivated everyone with whom we came into contact. As a missionary you quickly learned that you would get no work done between 7PM and 8PM Monday through Friday. There was no more sacred hour, let me tell you.
In my first week in the mission field, I'll never forget what happened at 7PM. Since everyone kept their windows open, as it was south Florida and central A/C was mostly a suggestion, you could hear pretty much everything that was going on. At 6:59PM as the screams of "Viejo! Ven aca! Ya comienza ________ (insert novela name here)!" died down, there was the proverbial quiet before the storm and then it happened. The air was filled with the strains of the theme song from the same novela coming from every single house on the block. It was surreal. And for the next hour, that's all you heard, block after block, and we got nothing done. From time to time, we would be invited to dinner at someone's house during the sacred hour and we'd get a peek at the novela du jour. The two I remember most were these two, Cristal and Topacio:
Cristal
Topacio - and she's bllind if you can't tell by the superior acting
These were both Venezuelan productions, which we were told back then, were of the highest quality. By that I mean the sets appeared to be soundly constructed, unlike the Mexican ones that looked like the entire set would collapse every time an actor closed a door and that things were not all done in one take. Ahem.
I was trolling around YouTube the other day when I happened upon the theme song from "Topacio" and it brought back a flood of memories and was the genesis of this post. Lest you think we spent every night in front of a TV for two years as a missionary, I can assure we did not. This was just one of those funny things that makes you smile when you think back on those incredible days of service and growth.
So let me close by giving you what I heard every night, five days a week for months in 1985. It's the theme to "Topacio." Que lo disfrute!
History is rife with examples of purging. Most, if not all, of these purges were horribly misguided and the results were, well, bad, to put it mildly.
Examples? Well, let's go old school and head back to Adam and Eve. One could argue that their eviction from Eden was a purging, but at least that got the ball rolling on the creation of humanity. Noah's flood? Yep, that was a purging that didn't end well for those who chose to ignore his warnings. Jump ahead to the Inquisition and we know how that story ended. Again, not well. How about the occupation of Native American lands and the horrific generational impact on the American Indian? Nicely played, Manifest Destiny. And then there's the 20th and 21st century and all the awfulness we've perpetrated on one another in the name of ethnic cleansing/purging. Suffice to say, purging doesn't have a good history.
However, if there is a bright side to purging, it can be found in purging one's self of a bad habit. It can be found in purging one's house of mess and clutter. As I found yesterday, it can also be found in purging oneself of 'friends' on Facebook. As I've noted before here, if you looked at my array of 'friends' on the FB, you'd see a pretty eclectic group, representing a wide array of creeds, colors, beliefs, and opinions of people that have been a part of my life. That variety has made me a better person and made things more interesting. However, someone of those 'friends' had gone beyond opinion, even beyond bloviating, and had crossed the line into spewing vitriolic inanity. Yesterday, tore it. It was the day we celebrated the late Dr. Martin Luther King and the second inauguration of our President. The ensuing vitriol, albeit brief, made it clear that it was time. It was time to purge. I purged.
The number is not important. The lesson for me is what's important. Life's too short to let yourself get caught up in the crazy. My own life is just crazy enough, thank you. So I highly recommend a purge like this. It does a body good (sorry, milk advertisers). And if I've set you off one too many times with some inane remark of mine on the FB and you want to purge me, I get it. Purge away.
P.S. - Using Google to find images of the word 'purge' results in some regrettable imagery. You have been warned.
For as long as I can remember, I have been a voracious reader. Like right now, I have four books on my nightstand, each one in some phase of being read. If you're interested, here are the four books I'm reading right now:
A true tale of life in Delhi. A Jewish member of the Peace Corps in China. An African-American woman used as a medical test subject. A high school football team defying the odds in the dregs of Florida. It's an eclectic list. About the only thing that links them is the insight into the human condition and that they are all non-fiction and each gives me another picture of the world in which we live.
Reading has illuminated that world for me ever since I was a child. I was reminded today of one of the books the first lit up the world for me. A family sat down in front of us and one of the books they used to keep their toddler interested during the service was from beloved children's author, Richard Scarry. As they cracked open the big book and I saw the familiar face of Lowly Worm, I smiled broadly and remembered, with great fondness, this book:
Published in 1968, when I was already a toddler, I'm certain this was not my first book. However, I remember this one to this day. I was completely taken by it. I could not get enough of reading about what people did all day. It was my first look into the world of adults and I was mesmerized. It certainly helped to have Lowly Worm as a guide. With him, the world seemed a little less intimidating. Huckle the Cat was another great companion, helping me to explore the world. Funny, he was only the cat who did not fill me with rage then. It remains the same today - Huckle the Cat = awesome. Any other cat = minion of Satan himself.
I'm grateful for the gift of words. I'm thankful for what reading has brought to my world. Thanks to Richard Scarry, I got an early peek into that age-old question of what do people do all day. I'm eager to share that same glimpse with our grandchild. As long as he has the same antipathy towards cats, then we're all good.
