In defense of The Electric Slide
May 3, 2012
By the time you read this, I will have married my daughter.
Please do not call the Vice Squad! What I should say instead is that I will have been the officiant at her wedding. This will be my first gig, although The Sainted One has been in high demand ever since he married Newcastle Niece last year.
We can be sure of several things: Someone will cry, the bride and/or groom will get tongue-tied while repeating their vows, one of the groomsmen will have too much to drink, small children will prance and spin on the dance floor, and my two sisters and I will do The Electric Slide.
Some people hate The Electric Slide. I have a girlfriend who so detested it that she declared a ban at her reception, but it broke out anyway. (Note to wedding planners: If you don’t want attendees doing The Electric Slide, it might be a good idea to ask your disc jockey to refrain from playing the song “The Electric Slide.”)
There was no line dancing in my Illinois youth, although there was plenty of high-stepping at big oompah-pah family weddings where if you weren’t careful, you might be suffocated by the soft beer bellies of great uncles as they held tight during a polka turn. You could also end up dancing with a broom, but I don’t remember the criteria for being so chosen. I always assumed that this was a German custom, but everything that I’ve read about brooms and dancing at weddings defines it as either African-American or Cajun in tradition, making me wonder once again at the true nature of my heritage, something I’ve pondered before while gazing at childhood pictures of me that appear to have been lifted from a National Geographic article about the lost tribes of the Amazon.
Words escape me
April 5, 2012
I consider myself a wordsmith, and yet when speaking, appropriate words leave me as often as a brainless Twitter post leaves a Kardashian. In my gray matter — and I’ll admit to periodic synapse misfires up there — if an object name does not fit the thing that it refers to, then the word simply does not exist in my world.
This might explain why I’ve called flashlights “fire hammers” for the past 20 years, although I’m not sure why I decided that “fire hammer” made more sense.
It’s possible that this propensity is genetic, because my mother fumbled for words as well. She didn’t create new words like I do; she just used “doomaflidger” for anything that she couldn’t remember, from safety pins to car batteries.
She also called slippers “pusskins,” claiming that it was a word derived in part from our German heritage. As a result, we all use “pusskins” to this day, even though a trip to the Internet underbelly on a definition search has convinced me that it’s a good time to look for a substitute.
It also used to make me crazy when Mother would tell a story and find it necessary to verbally scroll through the name of every acquaintance she’d had since 1947 to get to the right person, i.e., “So then Carol said … I think it was Carol. No. Deborah. Anne. Barb? Sue? Christa?”
Listening to her in my 30s, I would feign drooling and rolling my eyes back in my head while promising myself that I would jump off the nearest cliff if I ever got that bad.
Well, guess what? I am now 61 and should probably avoid any hikes up DeLeo Wall.
These thoughts occur to me because when we had the family over for dinner the other day, something was spilled on the floor and I said that I had to go to the garage and retrieve the “swipinta.” What’s a “swipinta?”
Well, for some reason, the words “dust” and “pan” together have just never worked for me. Rarely is it dust that you’re sweeping up, and the thing never looked like a “pan” to me, so it became the “sweep-into,” and then shortened and morphed into “swipinta.”
And if that’s not bad enough, I often forget the name for the broom (it was, briefly, the “indoor rake”) so the broom periodically becomes the “swipinta with.”
When I started writing this column, I thought these slips were pretty funny. But re-reading it, I’m feeling a little uneasy and wonder if it’s time for me to make an appointment for a trip through a people silver tube radar thing.
You know what I mean … that patient tube scanner X-ray doohickey? The one that takes indoor pictures of your skull?
You know: The doomaflidger.
Reach Pat Detmer — whose husband The Sainted One claims to understand every verbal aberration that she’s ever come up with — at patdetmer@aol.com.
Dining at Chez Fred
March 2, 2012
The Sainted One is our official Family Cook, and when I say “Family Cook,” I don’t mean just for me. I also mean for Newcastle Niece and The Sainted One Jr., my stepkids and grandkids, and both my sisters and their families.
As Family Cook, he is so respected that his Christmas Eve Spicy Turkey Lasagna recipe has been presented to the hotel chef where my stepdaughter is being married so that it can be replicated for the wedding dinner.
As a bystander to this and in my defense, my mother never insisted that cooking was something that we needed to learn, either for attracting men or for our own pleasure.
While recently comparing notes with my sisters, we remember that my mother never seemed to enjoy her time in the kitchen. There was always a grim set to her lips while she cooked, and she bore an attitude of duty versus a sense of fun.
We still harbor visions of her tenderizing meat with the side of a plate, her left hand on her hip, her actions fast and furious, as if she was going for her Black Belt in Round Steak. You could hear her pounding it into submission from anywhere within a three-block area, and we generally watched her do it from a safe distance.
As sister Susie has since said, “Who needs Prozac when you have a piece of cheap meat and plate?”
So we are a perfect team at Chez Fred: I take the dinner reservations, seat people, make the salad, and provide dessert and comic relief.
It’s all in the family
February 3, 2012
Several years ago I exchanged a series of letters with Patrick McManus, a humorist who has been writing very funny stuff for a long, long time. In one of the letters, I asked him why it was that magazines and newspapers were generally leery of publishing humorous essays. His response was that humor frightened most editors because it’s so subjective. (A moment of appreciative silence for fearless Newcastle News Editor Kathleen Merrill.)
It makes me wonder: Where does a sense of humor come from, anyway? Is it genetic? I can’t say that my parents were laugh-out-loud funny, but the legacy that they left indicates a predilection to the comic. My father was often transferred and promoted, so we sometimes moved to a new city before we even had a chance to memorize our latest address and phone number. My sisters and I were forced to create a self-sustaining, insular social model so that when we moved to the next strange place, at least we had each other. Maybe that kind of familiarity breeds either contempt or a sense of humor to combat it.
The first time I realized that I was considered amusing was when I was in the seventh grade. Our assignment was to give a five-minute speech on any subject. I wrote about the space between my teeth (no longer existent) and how it made it easier to spit out watermelon seeds, and I included a poem about my two little sisters being irritating and loveable at the same time.
It was not that big a deal to me, just another homework assignment. When I presented it, the waves of laughter shocked me. More shocking was the fact that the nuns made me do it again and again in front of every class in the school. It was my first tour, and what I loved the most was getting out of seventh grade assignments to allow for it.
All of these musings regarding the origin of humor came to mind when my sister Susie Detmer was chosen for a Seattle version of “Dancing With the Stars.” It’s a benefit to combat homelessness put on by the Plymouth Housing Group. Each amateur dancer’s interview was posted on their website, and I’ll guarantee you that my sister’s answer to this question didn’t look like anyone else’s:
Why are you dancing for Plymouth Housing Group? I should say I am dancing because Plymouth Housing Group is a terrific cause. While that is the case, truth be told I would dance for Bernie Madoff’s defense fund if it meant I could learn to dance with a pro.
You can reach Pat Detmer — who really is Laughing All The Way — at patdetmer@aol.com.
A creature of the sun
January 6, 2012
Twenty years ago, people thought that “El Niño” or “La Niña” were competing brands of bean dip or the companion ships to the Santa Maria, but in this weather-savvy world that we live in today, we know that El Niño (literal translation: “The Boy”) and La Niña (literal translation: “No Sunshine for Five Months”) are weather disruptions.
I am a creature of the sun, so I am mightily affected by the lack of it. I’m not a sun-tanner or worshiper, but I do naturally rise in the morning at the earliest hint of light, and I find the need to climb into bed as the sun fades, which means that in December I’m in bed around 3:55 p.m.
To help me through these dark times, I bought a 10,000 Lux S.A.D light. “S.A.D.” stands for “Seasonal Affective Disorder,” which means that if you don’t get enough brightness in your day, you may do things like snap at your better half even if his nickname is “The Sainted One.” I bought this box years ago, pre-digital age, and it’s the size of a suitcase. I saw a new one recently on a friend’s desk, and it was the size of a ham sandwich and looked like it was designed by Apple™.
Based on the size of my light alone, I should be ecstatic.
I got the music in me
December 1, 2011
When I was 5 years old, I took tap-dancing lessons, and at 12 I sang Gregorian chants in the Catholic church choir. At 14, I taught myself how to play guitar, and at 17 I used that guitar with my singing group — The She Bops — when we were on stage in high school or on TV trying to win the Davenport, Iowa, version of Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour.
I once called in sick and went to the Seattle Center, location of a national barbershop quartet conference, just in the hopes that some spontaneous singing might break out. My mother and two sisters and I could produce some pretty decent four-part harmony ourselves, and my step-daughter (brave child) has asked the Detmer sisters and Newcastle niece to sing “Going to the Chapel” at her wedding in April.
Old habits die hard
November 3, 2011
During the first windstorm of fall, the lights flickered, but never went out. Our power providers have taken great strides when it comes to reducing outages in Newcastle. I remember when we used to have long spans without power, dark times that the Sainted One and I took in stride by drinking far too much alcohol and griping about the fact that the south Bellevue hills — which we could see from our cold and gloomy house — always seemed to be lit up like a rolling sea of massive Christmas ships.
Perhaps the most galling thing about power loss is how it shows you, time and time again, just how stupid you can be when it comes to mindless daily action, those little things that you do automatically and unconsciously, like flipping on the light switch upon entering an internal closet. You know that the electricity is out. You know it because you’ve already entered the windowless closet three times since the outage began. But you still flip that switch as if you expect the lights to magically come on in spite of that knowledge.
I believe that’s one of the definitions of insanity.
To make ourselves laugh and feel better about our misfiring brain synapses, The Sainted One and I always call out the number of times that we hit the switch, e.g.: “Number 7!” But since we’ve also named that closet “The Sound-Proof Booth,” most of those admissions go unheard, which might be best for all egos concerned.
Laughing all the way
October 9, 2011
Born to walk
By the time you read this, the Newcastle Days 5K will be over. Winners will have been crowned, and times posted. This year, the Sainted One and I signed up for it.
Let me pre-face this by saying that I am not a natural runner. I believe in “nature” as well as “nurture,” and I think that some people have it in their nature to run, while others — like me — with a low center of gravity, extra weight and a distinct lack of desire, just don’t have it in them to move faster than an occasional trot. On the other hand, I have a little sister that shot out of the womb wearing tennis shoes, and she ran everywhere: to the bathroom, to school, out the door, down the hall.
Laughing all the way: Zombieland: Newcastle
September 2, 2011
I’ve always been missing a few vital brain synapses. My friends and family are well aware of this, most especially The Sainted One, who is forced to bail me out on a regular basis. This would be a whole lot funnier if there weren’t unsubstantiated rumors of Alzheimer’s in my bloodline. But when I do something brainless and ask The Sainted One if he’s worried about me, his response is always the same: “How could I tell if you have a problem? You’ve always been this way.”
For years I’ve pretended that my fogginess is just a sign of a certain kind of genius — something like Einstein not being able to dress himself — but now I’m starting to wonder. Am I, in fact, a zombie in search of a total brain replacement? Witness a recent trip to town:
I was proudly carrying my new organizational over-the-shoulder bag, a bag made specifically for folks like me, or so my girlfriend told me when she gifted me with it: a pouch for your phone, a pocket for your money or credit cards, a special place for your keys. Thus armed, how could I go wrong? Let me count the ways …
Laughing all the way – 10 things I learned about house remodeling (and lived to share)
August 5, 2011
1 If you are not actually changing the footprint of your kitchen, then according to my status-conscious friends, it’s not really a “remodel.” But you know what? No matter what you call it, it’s still a big, giant pain in the butt.
2 If you can’t find your favorite 15-year-old cutting board a month after moving all of your stuff from the kitchen cabinets to the garage and back, then just face it, honey — it’s gone.
3 If the brand new refrigerator has an irritating whine when it runs, your significant other will claim that he can’t hear it at all, which I find very hard to believe.
4 If you’ve had knobs on your drawers for years, consider adding them to your new cabinetry or risk fingernail loss from trying to pry the cabinets open.
