Curmudgeon

 It's true. I am becoming a curmudgeon. You know, one of those people who is always finding something to complain about. 

I am in denial of course. And fighting it. I like to think that I just have a heightened awareness of the incongruities of life or that I am just prone to noticing how strange and or peculiar things are and wondering why. I am not really annoyed so much as amazed.

These things don't consume me or anything. I don't keep harping on the same old annoyances over and over.

With one exception: Why is the NY Times Book Review  always folded wrong?

I have tried to overlook it. It's not important that the first half of the pages are wider than the second half or that there is a line showing where the fold should be yet the fold seldom is on that line, or that sometimes it's even more of  a mess with pitiful staples trying to keep the pages even which doesn't work.

And if I do try to fold it correctly it never works. It just wants to revert to the incorrect machine fold.

The section of the Times I love, the section I look forward to all week looks careless and undignified as thought this section doesn't matter as much as the rest of the paper.

The rest of the paper is folded properly including the Magazine and the ad inserts. How can this be? Don't they care?

I keep thinking they will fix it. Now and then they do. Sometimes I receive a pristine perfectly folded Book Review and I tell myself “Ah see? I knew they would fix it. Why did I make such a big deal out of this minor little problem?

I bet no one else notices or cares. After all, I am getting older and more easily annoyed. I've always had a thing for refolding a messy newspaper so that it looks unread. Its just a habit I picked up working in libraries."

!/?%$#, gosh darn it, the next week the Book Review was in even worse shape. The staples weren't even on the gray line. It was a disaster.

So I brought this up to my daughter, a graphic designer who said she had noticed the improper folding but didn't think it was such a big deal.

“Not a big deal,” I spluttered - I seem to  splutter a lot lately - “this is the New York Times.! The rest of the sections are folded properly. This is a sign of disrespect to the printed book.”

She was kind, she didn't laugh.

But yesterday she called to say she had looked at the folding as she would a project of her own and could see that it wasn't a folding problem so much as a printing problem. Maybe the Book Review has a separate printer from the rest of the paper.

Okay. I get it I suppose. But it still doesn't explain why occasional  special sections like Education are folded perfectly. 

You may ask why I don't write a letter of complaint. It's probably because I would prefer not to take action over something  I truly believe will be ignored, which will make me even angrier. Not much of a citizen I admit.

But the biggie is I don’t want to be a recognized curmudgeon.

Maybe I fear that if  I put this aggravation into words I will really become a small time version of Fran Lebowitz. And while I love laughing at her unabashed contrarianism, do I want to be like her: a bona fide grump who  makes a living from being annoyed?

Hmm. 

The Difference

Several times a week she empties the kitchen compost bin and cleans it out with some kitchen cleaner. She waits a few minutes until it dries and inserts a fresh liner.

Every few months he announces that he is going to clean out the kitchen composting bin.

“I will take it into the bathroom and give it a good cleaning. Where's the spray cleaner? I need the one with bleach. Where did you put the paper towels?  Also, I'll need some old towels to keep the bathroom floor from getting wet.  I’ll turn the bin upside down in the tub and let it dry.  That will take a while so you won't be able to throw away any garbage for quite some time.  I will have to hang a new bag on the cabinet door, the one close to where we keep the trash cans. Do you want me to show you where it is?”

This is the difference between men and women.

My Vocation

 

When I was seventeen I decided I had to enter a convent. I hated the thought of it and I cried myself to sleep every night for months. 

But in my benighted teenage mind I was convinced that it was the right thing to do. I thought that if I truly believed what I was learning in religion class, the right and logical thing to do would be to abandon worldly pleasures and follow God. Right into a convent.

I would leave my parents behind and see them only when some Mother Superior allowed me to. This would be my last Thanksgiving at home. My last Christmas. I would have to leave my dog. It was just awful.

For the rest of my life I would be eating awful cafeteria food like the nuns served at my all girls Catholic high school where we had to wear navy blue uniforms with white blouses, no jewelry and sensible oxford shoes. Nice Peter Pan collars, though.

I consoled myself with the hope that the convent might serve those really good Sloppy Joes occasionally served at school and maybe even those terrific peanut butter cookies Sister Constance Marie would turn out. But the rest was pretty bad. I was going to live the rest of my life without my Mama's mashed potatoes and gravy. Or my Daddy's spaghetti and meatballs.

They served something called Italian spaghetti at school and let me tell you there was nothing Italian about it.

No more new clothes. I would never again shop for  cute shoes. It would be all nuns' shoes. But I probably wouldn't have foot problems like my mom. That was one plus.

The habits nuns wore back then were a definite minus but also a kind of mystery. They were  long and black and looked pretty involved with lots of layers and a head piece made with lots of  starch. How did they get them on and off? Also there were huge white bibs to keep clean. But the nuns did sort of glide as they walked and the huge rosaries were kind of cool.

What a wretched future. I would probably end up teaching a bunch of girls like myself who couldn't wait to get out of class.

But if that was what God wanted, I guess I would have to do it. "Offer it up," as the nuns were always saying.

This went on gnawing at me all winter but I couldn't bring myself to mention it to anyone. Fear of being taken seriously? Could've been.

I made it to spring when some classmates began announcing their vocations. Everyone applauded. I just wanted to throw up.

Over Easter vacation I decided to ask my friend Julie DeBrosse how she knew she had a vocation. How did she know she wanted to join up, I mean become a nun. She told me that the life of tranquility of not having to make decisions appealed to her. She knew she would be happy in a convent. 

Tranquility? Happiness? In a convent? I couldn't believe it. Didn't she see herself as a martyr? Sacrificing her life to be miserable for God. She just sort of looked at me oddly. Julie also said that one or two of the Sisters had approached her because they thought she might have a vocation. She was made of the right stuff, just like an astronaut.

So I asked a few of the other girls who had declared their intention to go into the convent and they all said that they had been singled out as good nun material.

Well, no one, not one single nun, had ever suggested that I might make a good nun. I felt off the hook.

But the obsessive part of me was still clinging to the idea that It Was the Right Thing to Do.

Still I didn't tell a soul.

Spring was coming and with it the Prom, Graduation and something called Senior Retreat where we were required to spend a weekend of prayer and meditation at the Sisters of Notre Dame Mother House, located in a former mansion in a spiffy neighborhood that had been donated to the Sisters many years ago.

So I went to the Retreat, no uniforms required, lots of sweaters suggested because that old mansion was just plain cold. Silence and meditation were the by words. I listened to the lectures, kept my mouth shut and wondered if that old mansion had ever been a home. It was pretty dreary. Lots of dark oak paneling and straight back chairs.

The food was memorably terrible, runny scrambled eggs, slightly stale toast and margarine and somehow the tuna salad sandwiches didn't taste like tuna. 

We went to Mass and sang in the chapel and were allowed to walk in the gardens to meditate. Absolutely no talking permitted.

Spring was just beginning and I had been reading Colette. I know most people think she is all about love but I kind of got her other message: "Regardez." Look, really look and then look again. Observe what's around you closely. I sat on a rock and began to look around.

Even though the was pretty bare I could see the beginnings of color everywhere. Pale shoots and tiny buds appeared before my eyes. It started to become beautiful. I took out my notebook and began writing. I found myself making a list of all the things I wanted to see and do. It was a long list and not one of them was inside a convent.

So that is what my vocation would be: I would spend my life looking  for what was beautiful. I would be out in the world, in museums and gardens and in my own home.

I was saved. 

The Retreat worked. I guess those Sisters knew what they were doing, after all.  At least they knew something about me before I did.