Kennedy

I was born in February 1977, almost 14 years after John Kennedy was assassinated and 9 years after his brother Bobby met the same fate. I doubt my parents are even old enough to remember where they were when JFK was shot. I wonder then, why I still manage to get choked up at the old news footage of the assassinations, the funerals, and all of it. You'd think, by not having my own personal remembrances of those events, and by the shear amount of times I've seen the footage, that it wouldn't affect me. I should be desensitized to it. Besides the general tragedy of it all, it just shouldn't affect me like it does. But it does. Every time. I always get that lump in my throat and make a little squeak, trying to hold back the emotion.

I guess it must have something to do with the mystique and the legend of it all, right? For all of my life, the fascination with the Kennedy family has been there, and it's made them our Royal family, for lack of a better term. We care about them.

When we all mourned the death of JFK Jr. in 1999, I was 22. I remember it vividly. Saturday morning, sitting in the living room on NW 34th St, by myself. I cried. And of course, when you think of JFK Jr., you think of that image of a little child, saluting his father's casket as it passed, so many years ago. And that's what chokes me up, to this day. That old footage, from a time when change might have really mattered. I wonder where we'd be now, if it had all happened differently.

A few months ago, I watched a documentary on the Kennedy family, on OETA. It was so interesting. There's so much about the family that I didn't know. Before watching this 2 hour show, I knew about the tragedy and a little about the family secrets. Rosemary's story, for example, is very sad. The competition between the siblings was so intense when they were growing up. I read a while ago, that some believe Rosemary was actually a normal child, who basically just broke from the pressure of not being at the high level that her siblings were at, intellectually. The theory is that in a "regular/normal" family, she wouldn't have had any mental issues at all. It's an interesting, though disturbing, thought.

That same documentary also shed a lot of light on who JFK really was. You always think of him as The Good Guy. But he was so shrewd. Of course, in his position, he had to be. But it was shocking to hear just how cunning he was. He seemed so underhanded in a lot of ways. It was unsettling to think about. But why was it unsettling? He's long since dead and has no more influence, good or bad. However, hearing something that makes him seem so much less than perfect, is sort of like hearing that your Grandma spent a night in jail when she was 16. You have to remind yourself that she wasn't always the person you knew. And JFK definitely wasn't always the person that you hear about now. The dead are almost always saints, especially when surrounded by so much tragedy.

Now, with the death of Ted Kennedy on Wednesday, it's sort of the end of it all, isn't it? Do we care about the rest of them? Of course, we care because they are human beings, but do we still care, because they are Kennedys? I don't think so, honestly. I think it's all over. That legend is officially dead and will soon be buried.

Will it matter? Will this nation be any different now that our Royal family is gone? Time will tell.

As a side note, I also wonder how Mary Jo Kopechne's family feels today? I'm sure for them, the mystique a lot of us feel, was dead a long time ago.

Perhaps She'll Die

On my way to mail Mary's prize from this month's prize giveaway, I swallowed a fly. Yeah, it was gross.

It was morning, and I hadn't had my caffeine yet, so I fixed a cup of Diet Coke and ice before I headed toward the Post Office. As soon as I got in the car, I realized I had company. A fly had decided to hitch a ride. I rolled the window down and tried to shoo him out several times. He wasn't the brightest fly in the jar, so of course he continued to fly around inside the car. Eventually, I thought he was gone. Then, I took a big gulp of my drink. Let's just say that I had a little extra protein in my diet that day. Yuck!

Anyway, since that day, I've had a song stuck in my head. When I was in 5th grade, I had Miss Dinkle as a music teacher. This is a song she had us sing quite a bit.

There was an old woman who swallowed a fly.
I don't know why she swallowed a fly.
Perhaps she'll die.

There was an old woman who swallowed a spider,
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
I don't know why she swallowed a fly.
Perhaps she'll die.

There was an old woman who swallowed a bird.
How absurd to swallow a bird!
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider,
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
I don't know why she swallowed a fly.
Perhaps she'll die.

There was an old woman who swallowed a cat.
Imagine that to swallow a cat!
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird,
How absurd to swallow a bird!
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider,
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
I don't know why she swallowed a fly.
Perhaps she'll die.

There was an old woman who swallowed a dog.
What a hog to swallow a dog!
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat.
Imagine that to swallow a cat!
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird,
How absurd to swallow a bird!
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider,
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
I don't know why she swallowed a fly.
Perhaps she'll die.

There was an old woman who swallowed a goat.
Just opened her throat to swallow a goat.
She swallowed the goat to catch the dog.
What a hog to swallow a dog!
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat.
Imagine that to swallow a cat!
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird,
How absurd to swallow a bird!
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider,
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
I don't know why she swallowed a fly.
Perhaps she'll die.

There was an old woman who swallowed a cow.
I don't know how she swallowed a cow!
She swallowed the cow to catch the goat.
Just opened her throat to swallow a goat.
She swallowed the goat to catch the dog.
What a hog to swallow a dog!
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat.
Imagine that to swallow a cat!
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird,
How absurd to swallow a bird!
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider,
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
I don't know why she swallowed a fly.
Perhaps she'll die.

There was an old woman who swallowed a horse.
She's dead of course!

So, I've just got a few questions. First of all, who thinks of this stuff? I guess someone with more imagination than me. My second question is, a cow to catch a goat and a goat to catch a dog? What in the world? I'm right there with the song, until the goat, then it loses me. Heh.

I remember a lot of random songs like this from childhood. Very few of them make any sort of sense. A lot of them are just so ingrained in your mind, that you don't even think about the words. Then one day, you're in your 30s and you get an old song stuck in our head and you really hear the words for the first time. Then you say to yourself, "What in the hell?"

It's funny. I wonder what kinds of songs my kids will get stuck in their heads someday?

Doctor Who?

When I was little, Dr. Yates' office was a comforting place. While most kids don't enjoy going to the doctor, I always did, in a way. I think it's because I knew that shortly after I left there, I'd probably be feeling better. And I knew that because... he gave me medicine when I needed it, he did blood work to try to find out what was wrong, his nurse put a band-aid on my butt after I got a shot, or whatever. Basically, he just did his job. He was old-school. He was kind, but he told it like it was. He smoked a pipe in the exam room and it didn't even seem strange back then. Oh lord, imagine if that was to take place in this day and age. The lawsuits! The newspaper articles! It would be pandemonium.

You see, when I was little, there were two things "wrong" with me. First, I developed what Dr. Yates called "nervous stomach" when I started the first grade. I complained of an upset stomach so many mornings, that eventually I had to go see the doctor. He said it was most likely my nerves, and gave me this horrible tasting green medicine. To this day, I still sometimes wonder if the medicine was real, or made up to make me think it was helping a stomach ache. Don't get me wrong, my stomach really did hurt, but I mostly just didn't want to go to school. Man, that stuff was really awful. I can't even describe it. But if I think about it, I can still taste it. Actually, you know what it tasted like? It tasted the way heartburn feels... all the way down.

The other issue I had, was with my ears. I got a lot of ear infections and my eardrums were apparently inferior in some way, because they burst, twice. That's another thing I can remember vividly; that pain is the worst pain I've ever felt. I can remember laying on the living room couch, just wanting it to go away. My dad had stayed up with me that night, which was strange. I begged to go see Dr. Yates, so he would make it better. Unfortunately it was the middle of the night, so there wasn't much that could be done. Sometime later, after another ear infection, I heard Dr. Yates tell whoever was there with me - I'm sure it was either my mom or my Grandma - that if I got another one, I'd have to get tubes in my ears. I had no idea what that meant, but I knew it didn't sound fun. Thankfully, I either grew out of getting ear infections, or talked myself out of another one. It was about 22 years before I had one again. And let me tell you, the ear infection I had as an adult was just as miserable as all the ones from my childhood.

Anyway, the point is, I lived through it all. I was never afraid to get a shot or have my temperature taken, and I think that means something. I wish I could thank Dr. Yates now, for giving me that sense of security when I was young. I have a feeling he'd just tell me he was doing his job.

Dr. Yates retired when I was a teenager. I didn't go to a doctor again for probably 5 or so years. Since then, I've been through four or five other doctors. Each time I've swtiched, it was beacuse they moved, or retired, or started only doctoring commercial pilots, or something random like that. I didn't stop seeing them because I didn't like them. Well, except the one in The Village. He was just awful. But overall, I've been basically satisfied.

I like the doctor I go to now. He's a nice enough guy, and he seems to care. But I still long for the comfort I felt when I was young. Nowadays I'm not always convinced that I'll really be feeling better soon after I see him. I don't know if it's the health care system, if it's the fault of insurance agencies, or if it's just the fact that we live in a much more fast paced society, but things just aren't the way they used to be. Getting us in and out, as fast as possible, seems to be the policy these days. And that's if you can even get an appointment in the first place.

I have no idea what might work to improve the medical situation in this country, but I know a lot of people have a lot of different ideas. I also know that I'm one of the lucky ones, because I do have really good insurance that I don't have to pay a lot for. However, I guess I still need to go read the newspaper or something, and try to educate myself on the whole situation. I'm 32 now, and Dr. Yates isn't going to start practicing again anytime soon. I might has well learn to live with that.

Mr. Brownstone

If you had told me 20 years ago, that Slash and Steven Adler would be the two members of Guns N' Roses that would have a special spot in my heart in 2009, I would have called you a filthy liar. Adler just wasn't tough enough for my 12 year old fake bad-ass self, and Slash was just ugly. Yes, I can admit that I was that shallow in 1989. However, after my 32 year old self read Stephen Davis' Watch You Bleed, and watched a gut-wrenching season of Steven Alder on Celebrity Rehab, I think I know why you're not the filthy liar I would have accused you of being.

Steven Adler, now, is just like a sad, lonely stray dog. He was so young when it all started. If ever there was a victim of 80's metal, it's him. Young, dumb, and wanting to fit in - His body and mind have been through so much, that he seems to be the same, still to this day. The first episode of Celebrity Rehab started with him crying, high, on his couch. There was a fist-sized hole in the wall behind him, and he sobbed about wanting to talk to his friend Slash. It was such a sad scene. I hope that in a moment of sobriety, he sees it all, and it helps him. But, I doubt his mind has the capacity for that sort of clarity now. Any semblance of an adult mind is long gone. He's still a child, who just wants his friend; His friend who has long since moved on. His friend who very likely helped to make him this way. His friend who was just luckier in the long run, and could have easily ended up in the same state.

I can remember watching, gleefully, as Slash cursed and sloshed around on stage at the American Music Awards in 1990. I never liked him anyway, and he was making a fool of himself, but I thought it was great. At almost 13, it seemed so cool to me. He was making a stand against all the old fogeys (and Tipper Gore) and I loved it. In Stephen Davis' book, I got to read all the real truths, that I always knew about, but never knew the depths of. The amount of drugs and sex and harmful things these young men put themselves through is truly astounding. Somehow though, Slash seems to be the one who made it out alive. He became whatever likeness of a grown-up a rock star can become. He got his shit together, and made something of himself as a person.

Today, Slash keeps alive just a tiny bit of the feelings I had for that moment in time - My innocence to think that these guys were truly wonderful and that their existence was something great. I think a lot of us felt that Guns N' Roses might be akin to the Beatles, for our time. The Great Band that we'd all look back on with pride. I don't think we'll ever really have anything like that though, ever again. I know my generation doesn't. And, I'm pretty sure The Jonas Brothers aren't going to be remembered all that fondly in 40 years.

I was naive and so young then. Being born at the end of the generation, meant that I had no idea of the reality of what was going on. I couldn't even begin to imagine the amount of torture these people put their minds, bodies, and souls through. It honestly makes me sick to think about now. I may still get goosebumps when the opening cords of "Sweet Child o' Mine" come on the radio, but then I remember reading that Slash hated playing that part of the song. It ruins it for me a little, because it reminds me that they are real people, and not Idols. But then, I remember how it made me feel when I was young, and it just takes me back.