Read Online Head in the Sand ... and other unpopular positions by Linda M Au - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Linda M Au
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the
house all the time. The kitchen can get swept up to three times a
day on breezier days, even with a good screen door.
We’re going to visit with my folks now. We’ll be
leaving for McCarran Airport in a little while. Did you know that a
jet dumps more suckers . . . I mean, people . . . into this
town every two-and-a-half minutes? The thought of all those
unsuspecting people descending on the Strip day and night, 24/7, is
sobering. We certainly don’t have people rushing into Pittsburgh
like that. (Hey, once we have two new stadiums, though, who
knows?)
We leave the west (and the nice weather and majestic
mountains) behind, and return to the end of autumn’s colors and
roads that actually curve and go uphill and down once in a while.
We will be happy to be home, but a little sad that the week has
gone by so quickly. As the wind whips through our tousled hair . .
.
Oh, wait—that’s from the trashy novel I bought to
read on the plane. Never mind.
Close Encounters with Mark Spitz
It happens to every girl
at some point—some are younger, some older, but all of us succumb
to it eventually. Yes, of course, I’m talking about puberty. That
once-in-a-lifetime event that is exciting and glorious for about
six or seven minutes and then becomes a colossal hassle for the
next forty years.
In my particular case, I
was thirteen when I entered the wonderful world of womanhood (not
to be confused with the Wonderful World of Disney, which I also
entered when I was thirteen, but that was a family vacation to
Florida and not related to this in the slightest). After all the
hubbub created by my nursing-school-trained mother when I was ten
(complete with medical textbooks and graphs and charts and the
ensuing panic at the obvious grotesque lies she was telling me about where
babies come from), the actual event that summer day was
anticlimactic. Some pad company had recently come out with the
newfangled “mini-pad” (which my mother deemed “cute!” when she
first saw them), and we were already stocked up and prepared. And,
once I got her to stop brooding and clucking over me like a mother
hen, everything was fine—and even boring compared to the earlier
hype.
It was, though,
summertime, and at our house that meant daily treks to the local
community swimming pool from about noon till four p.m. Despite the recent
developments, I tagged along that day, not wanting to miss the
socializing, even if I would have to miss the swimming. I hadn’t
realized just how much of a typical pool day was taken up by actual
swimming, though, until we got there and within fifteen minutes I
was bored of hanging out near our towels on our spot on the
grass.
A little while later, I offered to trek up
the hill to the snack bar, and, laden with coinage, I broke out of
my towel-sitting boredom and made the voyage, expecting to return
laden with gifts of fried food and cold soda. The lines at the
snack bar were always long, so I figured this would kill a fair
amount of time. And boy, was I right.
As I inched up the line slowly, the July
heat began to beat down on me, even under the canopy roof over the
snack bar area. To this day, I don’t know if it was the heat, the
humidity, or the bodily events to which I was not yet accustomed,
but when I was finally going to be the next customer waited upon,
everything in my field of vision began to look strangely like a
photo negative. Colors were turned inside out, and if I hadn’t
known myself to be a naive, thirteen-year-old total goody-two-shoes
from suburbia, I’d have thought I was high on something
psychedelic.
Sadly, I would have been mistaken about
that, but it might have had a less embarrassing ending. Instead,
the person working the counter asked me what I wanted, and I do not
remember answering. I remember someone else asking me if I was all
right, while everyone swam in a sea of inverted color and sound
became muffled as if underwater. I vaguely remember falling
backwards and
house all the time. The kitchen can get swept up to three times a
day on breezier days, even with a good screen door.
We’re going to visit with my folks now. We’ll be
leaving for McCarran Airport in a little while. Did you know that a
jet dumps more suckers . . . I mean, people . . . into this
town every two-and-a-half minutes? The thought of all those
unsuspecting people descending on the Strip day and night, 24/7, is
sobering. We certainly don’t have people rushing into Pittsburgh
like that. (Hey, once we have two new stadiums, though, who
knows?)
We leave the west (and the nice weather and majestic
mountains) behind, and return to the end of autumn’s colors and
roads that actually curve and go uphill and down once in a while.
We will be happy to be home, but a little sad that the week has
gone by so quickly. As the wind whips through our tousled hair . .
.
Oh, wait—that’s from the trashy novel I bought to
read on the plane. Never mind.
Close Encounters with Mark Spitz
It happens to every girl
at some point—some are younger, some older, but all of us succumb
to it eventually. Yes, of course, I’m talking about puberty. That
once-in-a-lifetime event that is exciting and glorious for about
six or seven minutes and then becomes a colossal hassle for the
next forty years.
In my particular case, I
was thirteen when I entered the wonderful world of womanhood (not
to be confused with the Wonderful World of Disney, which I also
entered when I was thirteen, but that was a family vacation to
Florida and not related to this in the slightest). After all the
hubbub created by my nursing-school-trained mother when I was ten
(complete with medical textbooks and graphs and charts and the
ensuing panic at the obvious grotesque lies she was telling me about where
babies come from), the actual event that summer day was
anticlimactic. Some pad company had recently come out with the
newfangled “mini-pad” (which my mother deemed “cute!” when she
first saw them), and we were already stocked up and prepared. And,
once I got her to stop brooding and clucking over me like a mother
hen, everything was fine—and even boring compared to the earlier
hype.
It was, though,
summertime, and at our house that meant daily treks to the local
community swimming pool from about noon till four p.m. Despite the recent
developments, I tagged along that day, not wanting to miss the
socializing, even if I would have to miss the swimming. I hadn’t
realized just how much of a typical pool day was taken up by actual
swimming, though, until we got there and within fifteen minutes I
was bored of hanging out near our towels on our spot on the
grass.
A little while later, I offered to trek up
the hill to the snack bar, and, laden with coinage, I broke out of
my towel-sitting boredom and made the voyage, expecting to return
laden with gifts of fried food and cold soda. The lines at the
snack bar were always long, so I figured this would kill a fair
amount of time. And boy, was I right.
As I inched up the line slowly, the July
heat began to beat down on me, even under the canopy roof over the
snack bar area. To this day, I don’t know if it was the heat, the
humidity, or the bodily events to which I was not yet accustomed,
but when I was finally going to be the next customer waited upon,
everything in my field of vision began to look strangely like a
photo negative. Colors were turned inside out, and if I hadn’t
known myself to be a naive, thirteen-year-old total goody-two-shoes
from suburbia, I’d have thought I was high on something
psychedelic.
Sadly, I would have been mistaken about
that, but it might have had a less embarrassing ending. Instead,
the person working the counter asked me what I wanted, and I do not
remember answering. I remember someone else asking me if I was all
right, while everyone swam in a sea of inverted color and sound
became muffled as if underwater. I vaguely remember falling
backwards and
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