Nebulous Mooch

When I was young, I never really liked Halloween. My mother had a paper sari and usually wrapped me up in it, put a dot on my forehead and called me Indira Gandhi. When I told the other kids what my custume was, they’d look at me like I was speaking a foreign language. When I stood at their doors wrapped in my green paper sari with my crooked pigtails, adults always said, “Look, an Indian princess!”

I’d respond with indignation. “No. I’m Indira Gandhi, the former Prime Minister of India.”

“Very good,” they’d say, as they dropped handfuls of Tootsie Rolls and Dumdums into my pillowcase.

I always seemed to get more Tootsie Rolls than anything else. I didn’t even like Tootsie Rolls. My father made out best during Halloween. He loved Tootsie Rolls.

One Halloween, I saw a news report about bad guys putting razor blades in apples and sewing needles in candy bars. That year, I eyed the people dropping candy into my pillowcase suspiciously. I only ate the hard candy and lollipops, and let my sister and father eat the rest. I watched them eat chocolate bars and taffy and waited for them to gag and spit up blood. Luckily, that didn’t happen, and I was able to return to my normal candy consumption the following year.

Now I rarely dress up for Halloween. I’m one of those people who turns off all the lights and hides out from trick or treaters. I wouldn’t want anyone to accuse me of putting a sewing needle in their Tootsie Roll.

Everyone ages. I’ve noticed how my parents and grandmother have changed over the years. I’ve pointed out the extra skin hanging from my parents’ jowls. They don’t like it when I do that. They have a harder time getting around. My father admits this too easily. My mother won’t admit it at all.

Aging was something I didn’t think about until I turned thirty-three. Now suddenly I have a few wiry gray hairs growing from the top of my head. One day I was at my sister’s house and she pulled a whisker from my neck! Where did that come from? I notice that my muscles are tighter in the mornings than they used to be. I have no idea about popular music these days. When I listen to the radio it’s to listen to the news on NPR. When I watch television, which is not often, I usually watch PBS or some news program. Are these signs of aging?

Some people get plastic surgery to push back the hands of time. I don’t have the money or courage to do something like that. Even though my behind is growing, I don’t want to have any fat sucked out of it. There are just certain things that shouldn’t be vacuumed.

The only other way I can think of to prevent aging is death. I narrowly missed having a very bad accident the other day and I can tell you that I’m not ready to die. So I guess I have to keep getting older and take comfort in the fact that there are still a lot of people who are older than me.

A few months ago, I decided to stop eating meat. It was a spur of the moment decision. I didn’t put very much thought into it. I’d been a vegetarian before in college. I didn’t think it would be difficult for me at all and I was right. It hasn’t been difficult and my taste for meat went away pretty quickly. Now it smells kind of gross. I still cook meat for my family, I just make something else for me.

The thing that surprises me about my new diet is how other people respond. Most people seem baffled by my decision.

“You don’t eat meat?” They wrinkle their foreheads at me and cock their heads. “Why not?”

“I don’t think it’s good for you and I feel better,” is all I can say and that answer doesn’t satisfy anyone.

“What do you eat then?”

This is my favorite question. What are people’s diets like? Do they think meat is the only option? “Vegetables, beans…” I say.

“Oh.” They look at me with pity. “Don’t you miss it?”

Why do they think I’d miss it?

On Sunday I went to my sister’s house. She’s on some version of the Atkin’s Diet right now so she was eating a big pile of beef and eggs for dinner–not a vegetable in sight. “I’d offer you something but all I have is steak,” she said. “Are you sure you don’t want any pro….I mean an egg?”

I knew that she was going to say protein because she has, somewhere along the line, convinced herself that being a vegetarian means that you don’t get enough protein. Never mind, the fact that I explained to her before about beans and legumes and protein. I’ve decided that it’s not really worth explaining again. “No thanks,” I said.

There are times when I need to hold my tongue. After my mother shot me down when I asked if she was concerned about the amount of artery clogging saturated fat in my sister’s new diet, I decided that this was one of those times. So I didn’t mention that a doctor friend of mine once warned me against high protein low carbohydrates diets. She said they caused kidney problems. I also didn’t mention that they cause bone density loss. There’s the obvious risk of heart disease too. If I were really holding my tongue, I guess I wouldn’t be writing about this now. I guess I’m not very good at holding my tongue.

ESPN’s Sports Center was playing in the coin laundry the other day. We’d gone to the bank while the clothes were washing. When we returned Sport’s Center was on and my husband loudly declared, “This is the best laundry ever! The other men in the place agreed.

As we put our clothes in the dryers, my husband kept one eye on the television. I don’t think he heard a single thing I said to him.

I watched one of the men in the laundry try to fold his clothes. His head was turned up to the screen–his eyes fixed. He ended up kind of balling up his clothes into twisted heaps instead of folding them because he couldn’t pay enough attention to what he was doing.

I decided to try to watch some of Sports Center as we waited for the clothes to dry. It was turned up too loud for me to be able to comprehend anything I tried to read in the newspaper. They claim that men don’t talk as much as women–I don’t believe that’s true, my father and my husband both have a tendency to talk and talk–but when it comes to sports men can sure ramble on and on and on. On the show, they’d show a play and then everyone on the show made comments about it. Never mind, that most of them seemed to say pretty much the same thing. They all took their turns to talk and talk and talk. How much can you possible say about a football game? Apparently, one game can be thoroughly discussed for hours on end.

Once the football part of Sports Center was over and they were discussing baseball, the level of excitement waned and the men in the laundry were able to concentrate on folding clothes or talking to their wives.

I don’t understand what’s so great about football. It doesn’t appeal to me. I don’t want to play it or watch others play it. I certainly don’t want to talk about it or watch others talk about it. If you want to spend three hours watching a game and another couple of hours listening to people talk about the game you just watched, that’s your business. Everyone has a vice. Some people smoke. Some drink. Some people watch football. Some people smoke and drink while watching football.