The road I should have traveled (a warning for other wayward pilgrims)

This post is my gift of experience to my few readers to show to the young, foolish people in their lives.

I didn't go to college. I regret that. It's been on my mind for some time.

I'd like to justify my poor decision by saying that I could have gone if I wished to do so, that I could have gotten scholarships to pursue my chosen career path, but that means so little since I didn't even try.

The whole regimen of school made me nervous, gave me chronic anxiety on weeknights for years. Tests, especially standard performance tests, flipped me out, and I had to steal mantras from Beatles songs, writing them over and over on scraps of paper, to shore myself up in the face of possible failure. I hated school. Oh, I had friends, and I made consistently very good grades. There was no reason for my hatred other than my own character flaws: my love of the home environment, my lack of drive to pursue the extraordinary, my strong dislike of any regimen that stole me from my family and my own quiet pursuits and interests.

I remember once in my senior year, the guidance counselor wanted to see me, and I avoided his office like the plague until my friend Sarah dragged me down the hall toward it, my shoes leaving scuff marks. I thought he was going to inquire about my grades, college plans and the steps I was taking, and I acted like a child and created a spectacle in my fear at encountering his queries. You see, at that point I had already decided that I was not going to college. I was going to write novels, and novelists didn't need to go to college; they needed to write. But I felt certain he would pressure me about furthering my education in light of my school record. Turns out, he only wished to see me about some petty issue. Perhaps he had given up on me. I wish he had pressured me, told me emphatically that a writer should go to college, if for no other reason than to learn basic marketing, design and computer skills in case she or he ever became a weblogger.

You can call me lazy, but I am intelligent enough and talented enough - just not educated enough.

It is very ironic that I knew what I wanted to do very young. I knew I wanted to be a writer at age nine. Now I write, but I am not really a writer, not a professional writer. I'm a blogger, heaven help me, in a sea of bloggers, and within that sea of bloggers there are many who never dreamed to be writers who have found great success and quickly. The majority of them went to college and worked at other careers, gaining valuable skills. Some of them are far better writers than I am. Ironic.

Many times, tottering on the edge of dejection, I have said to my husband, "I should have gone to college and gotten a journalism degree, and then I would already be doing what I love and getting paid for it."

Should have, would have, could have. Now it seems silly to spend a fortune on my higher education when our four children will be pursuing theirs quite soon. Sure, an investment, a good example - but a really expensive one. At any rate, whatever I decide, my children are not blind to my regrets, I am certain.

What was it that Mark Twain said? If you write for three years and no one is willing to pay you for it, it's time to try something else...?

Here I do what I love, and freely, but it is not looking like I will ever find "success", may never even be paid for it. I do not call myself a failure. My humor pieces have been published elsewhere, but no one has offered me even a piddly check. Still, I write, because if I didn't, the depression and regret would be worse - a basic mental, emotional and spiritual need unfulfilled. And I have an audience. Just to know that several people, mostly my family and close friends, read my words consistently is something, better than writing for nobody at all, stacking lifeless paper in a desk drawer to be recycled on my passing.

But most great writers graduate college. They love academia as they love words. Many are professors. I should have gotten a college degree. I could be writing for one of those old-fashioned circulars called newspapers.

A good friend told me once that I was lucky that I knew what I wanted to do with my life creatively and professionally, because many people never do. How much better would it have been for me if, knowing the road I wished to travel, I had been wise and lucky.

Not the Lady

I'm pretty sure my three-year-old daughter's nickname for me is Naughty Pants. She usually shouts, "Naughty pants!" in an accusatory way when she's angry with someone, but this cannot be true in my case, for just today I said, "Gabriella, come here and comb your hair."

Ella sauntered down the hall, turned the corner and cooed, "Okay - Naughty Pants."

Later when I told her she could only have one more pumpkin cookie, and she replied, "Fine, Naughty Pants," with a matter-of-fact delivery, my son Berto said sternly, "You shouldn't call Mama naughty pants, Ella. That's not nice."

"Yeah," I said in a bumbling, mumbling way. "That's really no good. You've got to stop that."

I'm not cowed; I'm confused. What did I do to earn this misnomer? Is it a term of endearment? You know, like the way folks in the South sometimes call their children booger (apologies to my darlin' Mama for the use of this vulgur word)? Or like I sometimes call Matthew, my husband, Pumpkin Head even though his head does not even remotely resemble a pumpkin? Or is it, dare I say, a case of monkey see, monkey do? I fear the latter. You see, a while ago I jokingly started to say to Ella every time she was being a little bratty, "Oh, stop being such a naughty pants..."

And so it comes back to haunt me. Just another incident to reinforce the rule that if the kids pick up an irritating phrase or bad word, it is without doubt my fault. I can't recall a time they repeated one of Matthew's annoying expressions (trying to think if he has any...). Believe me, I'd be on it in a heartbeat with an Aha! followed by a gleeful grin and some diabolical hand-rubbing. That's usually what happens on the rare occasion when he breaks something; I pounce on the chance to say, "Okay, now listen - don't get mad the next time I break a dish, okay?" That's because I break dishes so often, one might suspect I think it's necessary to ward off evil spirits.

So when I tell Ella we're not going to the park until late in the afternoon, and she replies aggresively with, "Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?" I hear the echo of my own stupid utterance. When Berto, just a toddler at the time, said, "That's crazy, Baby!" to another Mom who was trying to tell him something about her son, Matthew knew to blame me as he tried to explain to the woman that his son did not really understand what he was saying. The first time Berto, our oldest, said, "Dammit!" because one of his toys wasn't working, Matthew didn't ask, "Where'd you hear that?" The expression on his face as he looked my way said plainly that he knew. After all, I'm the one who says,  "What the hell?" when one of my children lets out an ear-piercing scream while playing, the one who shouts, "Stupid damn thing!" when a utensil is stuck in the kitchen drawer, and I'm banging it back and forth in illogical spite. It's all backwards. The dad is the one who's supposed to shoot off his mouth in front of the children while the mom pulls nervously at her pearls, cocks her head toward the innocents in the room and dutifully chides, "Now, Honey...the children."

The first time Matthew heard me use my favorite swear word, we had yet to even meet. I was in Idaho; he was in Texas, and we were having one of our late-night, nearly all night, long-distance conversations. He knew that I professed to be a lady. I had certainly told him of my mom's high standards, so I'm pretty sure he was convinced that I ne'er let a foul word or hint of slang pass my innocent lips. So on this night of disillusionment, I was rattling on about heaven knows what. When I paused to hear his response, I realized the line had gone dead. We had been disconnected before, and I was sick of it. After jangling the receiver and calling stridently into the silence, "Matthew? Matthew?" I let one fly into the empty void of the telephone line (yes, it was a landline...don't get distracted now). "Dammit!" I exclaimed with whole-hearted gusto and practised enunciation. A stone-cold silence, and I was just about to hang up the phone when I heard a man's voice query uncertainly, "Hillary? Uh, is that you..."

I bonked my head against the wall and said a bad word in my head.

But is it far, far too late for me even now? If only somehow I could swear off swear words and all coarse slang, no longer would I disappoint my mother, The Lady. Mom is possibly the last true Lady on the planet. Her good example drives the rest of us to drink. Drink sloppily. From a keg. I comfort myself she feels guilty about that.

Well, well - if I can't be a lady, I'd like to not be a naughty pants, if possible. So I'll just start saying to Ella every time she behaves properly, "Oh, Ella, stop being such a lady!" If the formula tests true, she'll be addressing me as "Lady" in no time. Sure that makes me sound like somebody's favorite cocker spaniel, but it's better than the alternative.

Open Seasam for the Honery, Volumptuous Me

I've been thinking the word ornery wrong for thirty-plus years. I've misspelled it in a couple of my blogs recently: "honery" with a silent "h". Since none of my regular readers told me, I'm assuming you didn't know I was mangling that word; you didn't care; or you thought it was useless to interfere with my special way of viewing the universe. That last part, sadly, is true. It's quite useless.

The word did trouble me. I thought it may be missing something, so I looked in my "floor dictionary", a huge dictionary that my husband purchased for my birthday present years ago because he noticed I had an unusual way with language. I keep it by my desk in the bedroom to use as a door prop and occasional spelling tool, and it's starting to lose its pages to the foot traffic and the baby's mouth. Anyway, I could not find honery in that dang dictionary even when I took off the silent "h". So my husband came in.

"I think this word is spelled wrong," I told him. "But I can't find it in the dictionary."

Matthew promptly opened a word document, typed "honery", and hit spellcheck. The poor computer was completely confused, offering me everything from honey to honker. It's really laughable the way these stupid machines can't read a human's mind.

"Take off the h, " I told Matthew, and then it hit target: ornery.

When you say "ornery", it sounds like you're speaking with a southern accent, or imitating John Wayne. Some words are just not pronounced the way they should be, and it's a cruel thing, because I have a chronic problem with pronunciation.

For example, until I was in fifth grade, I pronounced eager with a hard "g" like giraffe -  "eajer". I really liked it that way, so I said it a lot after I acquired it in...oh, third grade or so. My fifth grade teacher heard me use it passionately in some sentence that was probably along the lines of, "I am so eajer to go out to recess!" She laughed, and without further ado advised me to start pronouncing it properly. After all, I was one of her top students; I should speak english.

And, then, would you believe it? In sixth grade there was another incident of word-mangling that garnered me officious attention. I created a spectacle without meaning to, and my teacher about had a fit that drove her to permanent silliness because of it.

It happened like this. I was a great reader. Really. I got called upon often to read aloud in my history teacher's class. Her name was Mrs. Arrington, and I loved her. I believe we were reading something from The Arabian Nights when it happened. I was called on to take up the next paragraph.

I was doing an awesome job with articulation and taking pride in far outshining whoever had gone before. Then I came to that tricky word. Sesame. Okay, so it was one I should have known for simply cultural reasons, but I read it like I thought it should be.

"Open SEA-SAM!" I said in a loud clear voice.

The laughter was immediate, it increased rapidly and within a few seconds my teacher was giggling so hard she could barely breath. My classmates...my friends....apparently they were all some kind of pronunciation geniuses, because not one mouth was silent, not one face was averted to spare me embarrassment. I just glared back haughtily, but especially at my teacher who was leaning on a table at the front of the class, spitting out my name each time her giggles subsided, and then laughing anew when she looked my way.

Finally, with flushed cheeks and streaming face, she finally got out what she had wanted to say since my impromptu inauguration as the new class clown.

"Hillary..." she gasped. "Hillary...it's 'open ses-ah-me' !" Then she laughed again.

History class was pretty much in the can for the rest of the hour.

I thank the sweet goodness that the moment was much more private when years later I was caught saying another more delicate word incorrectly.

I was talking to my folks at home. I was a junior in high school. I was speaking about women's figures.

Here's what I said, "Marilyn Monroe was really very volumptuous. She wasn't a skinny-minny at all."

My dad got an all too familiar twinkle in his eye and sat forward in his chair.

"What'd you say, Hoo-doo?"

"I said that it's..."

"No, did you say vo-lump-tuous?"

"Yeah, what's wrong with that?"

Dad bent forward chuckling and said, "Oh, yeah! She was very lumpy!"

My mom was giggling, too, with that sweet little giggle that makes you feel loved and foolish.

"Well, what is it then?" I demanded indignantly. I mean, crying out loud, I was seventeen. How long had I been getting it wrong?

"It's voluptuous!" roared Dad.