You model? Cheerleader?

Well, I was born a coal miner's daughter,
In a cabin, on a hill in Butcher Holler,
We were poor, but we had love,
That's the one thing my daddy made sure of,
He shoveled coal to make a poor man's dollar.

-Loretta Lynn "Coal Miner's Daughter"

Well, ok. I was born a laundromat owner/pool hall proprietor/appliance repairman's daughter. We didn't live in a cabin, per se. We lived in a brick house, though I was born in a trailer, which is sort of like a cabin, I guess. Oh! There was a little red house on our 2nd acre that housed our well - it was definitely a cabin! Matter of fact, my daddy dug that 40 ft well himself, making him.....yep! Definitely a miner! Still, I've never been to Butcher Holler. I lived in Combine. I've been told to quit hollerin', though. Does that count? Why all the antiquated pioneer euphemisms, you ask? Well, remember the blog series I promised about all the things we thought we would be one day? Yepper, this is part dieu! Too much frost on this bumpkin's pumpkin, you think? Stay with me - it will all make sense soon.

Oh, poor, poor little DD! I wanted to be a princess. I wanted a prince to fall in love with me. I wanted to be beautiful, popular, athletic (even I'm rolling my eyes now)...I just wanted to be the 100% polar opposite of what I was: a short, brunette, country-fied child who lived out in the middle of nowhere. We used clotheslines instead of an electric dryer. We didn't have central air conditioning (or any air conditioning). We bought these huge slabs of pork at a butcher and sliced our own bacon. We caught rain water in a barrel.....and used it to rinse our hair. My mother made all of my clothes - including my jeans. Cool and earthy/hippy chic now. Back then, though, I was mortified. How in the world would I ever, EVER, fulfill my precocious destiny given this "Deliverance" type hand I'd been dealt? Easy....we economically challenged redneck girls are oh so resourceful!

I have a wonderful mother. If necessity really is the mother of invention, my mother invented gumption. If the other girls had expensive dresses from "The Rag Doll" boutique across the street from Smith's Pharmacy, no worries. She learned to sew the exact same thing. When earth shoes were all the rage...we discovered lay-a-way at Myer's Department Store. When EVERYONE but me was wearing blue eye-shadow, we used pool cue chalk. And, when all my friends showed up at school with their hair frosted, I was introduced to the lemon! Finally, the most important contribution to my quest for dominance with the female race...(drumroll)...my mother made sure I started school already able to read.

I read anything I could get my hands on. My first sentence? "Momma, read the book." My first book purchase at the age of 5? The biography of Orville & Wilbur Wright (purchased, of course, from the Salvation Army store). My specialty? The cinema. Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, the romance of Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, Judy Garland, Audrey Hepburn, Vivien Leigh, and my absolute favorite...Elizabeth Taylor. I studied them. I knew how they each were discovered. I memorized the studios they worked within, their real names, every movie they filmed. I poured over still photos of their mannerisms - the way they almost smiled, the tilt of their heads, their doe eyes, the way they held their hands....what they wore. Legendary. Timeless. Other-worldly. This is what I would be. This would be my legacy. I would be.....an actress! An icon. Perfect!

In the third grade we were assigned roles to portray for a class project. We didn't get to choose. While there weren't any cinema legends up for grabs, I just knew I was a shoe in for the Shirley Temple part. Wrong. Ok, so, no big deal. I would surely be the obvious choice for the adventurous Amelia Earhart portrayal. Nope. Cleopatra? Uh-uh. Pocahontas - had to be, right? I even had long braids!!! Nada. Who did I get? Susan B. Anthony, suffragette. Really? How preposterous! How unglamorous. Still, I labored over my role. I planned. I rehearsed. I decided my rendition of Susan would be VERY Shakespearean. She would speak with a British accent - that'll show those neigh-sayers! They were non-plussed over my finished project. No one seemed to get it. No one clapped. It came across as a little odd. Sort of like when Napoleon Dynamite gives his report over Nessie.

Not to worry! Ushering in the 5th grade, I find out there would be......A PLAY! The decades in song!!! Yessss! My name is written all over this one! I see the list of parts and I know beyond knowing that I will be cast as 60's icon CHER! I immediately begin wearing my dark hair down and straight. I practice holding my arms bent at the elbows hands pointed down (in retrospect, it probably looked like I was channeling a T-Rex). I learned all the words to "Half Breed". I could even make a small "O" with my mouth when I licked my lips. Victory? Sadly, no. I'm still shaking my head in disbelief when I tell you the part went to some girl with BLONDE HAIR! I didn't get Shirley Temple. I didn't get disco duck. I didn't get to be a bathing beauty. I was....a flapper. Ok, so the costume was uber glam, but I was one of several. I didn't even get to belt my heart out in song! I was in the chorus line. Sob!

Two years later, I received the prerequisite letter from the Barbizon School of Modeling. Could it be? Could this really happen? Would I finally be discovered? Mentally picturing myself telling the entire universe that nothing would come between me and my Calvin's, I begged with my mother - pleaded with her - to please take me to the casting call. She said no. I went on a hunger strike (it lasted 6 hours). I dramatically explained that I would surely be doomed forever to a life of anonymity at her hands. I swooned. I feigned illnesses, became despondent.....threatened to run away and live on our 3rd acre in a rusted junk car of my father's. Finally, she acquiesced, and we hit the road to the big city of Dallas to visit a modeling agency.

In the 70's, there was a commercial for the world's first battery powered curling iron. It revolved around a would-be starlet with short, straight, blond hair sitting in an agency waiting room. A man looks out of his office and tells a caller (undoubtedly Vogue magazine) "but we don't have any blonds with curly hair". In roughly 10 seconds, the starlet pops out her curling iron and a star is born. It didn't happen to me that way! I stood in the middle of a room. A woman walked around me in a circle. I was 5'0" and weighed 88 lbs. "A little chunky aren't we," she said. "Your hair is nice, but those nails." Tsk, tsk. Finally, she sighs and tells me: "Sweetie, you're just not tall enough to model. Have you thought of acting?" Oh, the best laid plans of mice and men.

Back to the country. Back to reality (oops, there goes gravity). Back to my books. No Academy Award speeches for this girl. No princess outcome. No fairy-tale endings. No MGM studio contracts. Not even a lousy commercial. Things happen for a reason. I went home that day and began making plans for the summer. This is the point in the story where my kids crack up laughing. That was the summer I read an entire set of encyclopedias. But that, my friends, is a horse of a different color - we shall table until another time. Until then.....

Hakuna Matata

Got your bag on your shoulder,
Never thought once about thinkin' it over.
Feel like you're the only one,
Who's ever been in a bad situation.
Now you need to take yourself a love vacation,
'Cause after all, what's done is done.

Sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Everything around you's growin' old.
The days drag on, the nights last forever,
Every day's tougher just to keep it together.
Forget everything you've ever known,
Except for home.

"Sick and Tired" -Cross Canadian Ragweed

I am Superwoman! Hear me roar! Well, it's more like a whine. Sort of a sigh, in fact. It's probably more akin to a breathy exhale. Still, I'm super, alright. Super tired. Super lost. Super unsure. Super scared.

Oh, I'm fine. I'm just like any other person on any other dismal afternoon. I see my life slipping by day after day after day. It's dizzying, isn't it - this life thing? When you're a kid, life goes by at about a -50 miles per hour. When did THIS happen? Now I'm on the Autobahn and life is outside my window, flying by at a pace that slightly exceeds the speed of light. I feel as though I might blink and miss an entire era! Am I alone in this? It's just this: I was supposed to grow up and be something. True, I'm many things. Wife, mother, step-mother, friend, daughter, employee, boss. I wear many, many hats (no wonder my hair looks so bad today). Still, I didn't ever really get to be anything I wanted to be, just yet. I think I'm running out of time, too. That's where the exhaustion comes to play. Life is tiresome. Just when you figure out what you want to do, you don't have enough energy to fit it in with all the other stuff you have to do. Or, at least, I can't. Can you? What did you want to be? I can answer that for myself. Indulge me, kk?

"I had a farm in Africa"
When I was around 13, I found myself spending the summer in Andrews, TX (parent free)with my oldest brother and his family. I did many things that Summer. I got a perm (it was the year of "Urban Cowboy" after all. Though I look like more of a Pam than a Sissy, I wanted more than anything to emulate Debra Winger). I got a fierce tan. I heard all the words to Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide" for the first time. I ate my first Drumstick ice cream cone. And, I met - really, really met - my so-called-cousin Kelly for the first time. Kelly's great - always was, always has been. He's not really my cousin, by definition, I don't think. Still, we're exactly the same age and he's a part of my sister-in-law's family, so we were paired together almost every Summer visit. This year, for the first time, we were deemed responsible enough to roam the street's of Andrew's, TX alone - footloose and fancy free! A typical day consisted of: sleeping late, walking the streets with a walk-boy cassette player with either the aforesaid Fleetwood Mac OR ACDC's "Back in Black" playing loudly, a trip to the gas station where cousin Joanie would let us have free hot dogs, a root beer and a drumstick if she wasn't at work, and deep discussions about what grandiose plans we would have when we shed our stupid, insipid teenage personas and became the all powerful and omnipotent.....ADULT. We would show everyone! We were both going to be actors. I would act alongside Robby Benson, while Kelly would do documentary work. We would both be published - I was the next S.E Hinton, and Kelly would be a world class photographer who's pictures would decorate influential coffee tables around the world. And, above all, we would take these ginormous financial earnings and do the one thing we longed to do above all.....together, we would buy Africa! I had just read Joy Adamson's "Born Free." I learned all about and cried all about the amazing lioness, Elsa. Kelly had read it, too! We decided that, as amazingly wealthy adults, we could single-handedly eradicate every single poacher and re-educate the entire continent in regard to the majesty and beauty of the Serengeti wildlife! Besides, as I told Kelly, I would look great in a tan safari hat and earthen colored gear.

We wrote each other a few times after this encounter. We still saw each other on holidays and Summers. We talked more about our plans, but never as in depth as that time. We grew up. Adulthood wasn't all we though it would be. Kelly lives in Florida now, and I'm still here in the non-chic suburbs of Dallas. I never went to Africa. I never saw a lion in the wild. I never educated a poacher. I never even wore safari gear. Still, any time I watch "Out of Africa", I think of Kelly. I can actually hear the gnats, smell the wildlife excrement, hear the hoof beats and eery growls and roars. I'm not even a girl any longer. I'm a woman. I've won. I've lost. I've been up. I've been down. Sometimes I can't believe all I've been through. Other times, I feel I've wasted all my chances. And, it makes me sick....and tired.

Let's make this a series, shall we? Join me soon for Part 2 in my - "Things I Just Knew I Was Going to Do - The Sequel"! Until then, let's all get some rest.