On Teaching Your 6 Year Old Not To Be A Thug

These are some of the things that the little red headed girl did to my daughter when they were 6  under the stipulation that if orders weren't followed she would no longer be her friend:

• Made daughter take another girl's name off a list of friends that the daughter had made. By Tuesday. Or else.
• Told daughter that she was having a birthday party and she was going to invite everyone else but daughter. 
• Told daughter that if she didn't do as she was told, she would go to her house and hurt daughter's parents. 
• Made daughter eat a leaf.

These all took place during an after school program under the guise of two sweet young innocents playing together peacefully. I am sure there were many other incidents. Most, including the leaf eating and family threat, just came to light last week  now with the daughter almost 14 years old.

I knew about the birthday party and the friendship list, complaining to some people at the school that my daughter was being bullied. The memory is a little cloudy but I think they sort of shrugged it off. After all, my daughter tended to be weepy and the little red headed girl looked so damned sweet.

 I wish I had known about those last two incidents. Leaf eating and megalomania are show stoppers. We didn't contact the little red headed girl's parents because our daughter begged us not to do it. But this would have torn it. 

The little red headed girl is now a tall willowy young lady traveling in a small pack of  popular girls through the hallways of middle school. I hear that she has developed a subtle Southern California accent as a suburban Massachusetts teen is wont to do.  The daughter says she isn't very nice but doesn't really bother the daughter any more, going with the safer pretending she doesn't exist route instead. 

I always wondered what the hell her parents were teaching this kid. You hear about bad seeds that spring from their own psychotic foundation but I ain't buying it this time. This is a kid who got away with shit by using her appearance. A child that wanted power. A person who did not care if she hurt someone else and did it intentionally and often. I can honestly say that there is no way in hell my daughter would be this person.  

My daughter is an emotional creature. Her feelings are hurt easily. She gets angry silently. She has trust issues. Some of this is due to circumstances in her past that have been less then perfect. Some of it is because she is wired to be emotional. And some of it is because some asshole made her eat a leaf. 

But my daughter is a good person who cares about other people. She is grateful when she has a friend and would never abuse them. She is beautiful and willowy too. My daughter  knows that no matter how bad she feels about herself, her friends don't come with stipulations. She is good enough for them the way she is. She wasn't taught that you had to win them at all costs and to not wonder if they really liked her for her. No bribes. No bullying. Just her. And I wonder if the little red headed girl will ever know that too. 

Foolish Behavior But At Least My Feet Match Now

Last June I rolled off of my 6 inch gold stilletos and fell down the last couple of stairs on the mezzanine level of the Oberon theatre while chasing a nerd. I did not drop the microphone but I did punch the floor with my free hand because I couldn't scream. The audience at the back of the bar helped me up. I hopped over to my hosting/writing partner aka the nerd on the other side of the performance space and discussed the  damage. It was really bad but since the sequence of the next thirty minutes was driven by our interactions, we proceeded to transport my busted up nether parts from mark to mark by crawling, hopping and leaning.

At first I was a little tickled that most people didn't know oh how I suffered for my "craft".  I spent the next couple of days martyring myself, showing selfies of my swollen foot and sighing "It's a buck!" I forced myself  out to contend with other work when I should have stayed at home,  put ice on it and not moved.

Well. That was stupid.

The swelling of the foot went down after a couple of weeks but my foot hurt constantly. Then my hip joints. And finally my knees. For a really really long time.  I couldn't exercise. Walking up stairs always hurt. Sitting in the car for a long drive was super uncomfortable. It was dawning on me that this could be a permanent injury.

In 1990, I broke my left foot rolling off of my shoe and down my East 11th Street apartment stairs, running off to a bar because I had just gotten out of the hospital and was free. It literally snapped. Three weeks later, being a young woman living on her own and, in my eyes, a sitting duck to the nefarious types loitering the streets at night when I hopped home from comedy clubs on one foot, I took a wrench and pried  the cast from my leg. The foot still has a crooked point where the bone is askew. Until last June, I would always favor my right leg because of it.

The difference between the two injuries is, well, 23 years. I got away with it when I was 25. Not so much this time.

About two weeks ago, 8 months after I fell, my knees quit hurting. Yesterday I walked 7 miles. It hurt a little but I guess it would have anyway.  Its a freakin' spring miracle. The damage from my sedentary life that began with that injury is nothing like I have ever experienced. I used to bounce back. This time  my body atrophied and gained weight almost immediately.

 You would think I could get away with just letting it all go. I'm almost 50. Isn't this the part when  all of those old lady rules about aging with dignity and having a lot of tea parties and not wearing skirts above your knee start kicking in?  No such luck. Our next show goes back up again on May 23rd. I will be running in (lower) heels, dancing and moving constantly. It is almost a certainty that if I do not take care of myself, I will injure myself before that run is out.

There is a part of me that is wired by my need to perform physical comedy. Thank God for that because it hurts so much now to do it.  I am no longer indestructible. It takes energy I never needed to have before. Yes, I think being healthy is good, but, honestly, not falling off the mezzanine again is a much larger motivator.

So next time I injure myself.....and there will be a next time because there always is.....I put whatever part it is that I busted up on ice and stop till it heals. I don't intend on acting like I am  almost 50 but I can't forget the actuality that I am.