Random Crap From My Brain

Random Bit #1:
When I was seven we lived on the corner of Butler Ave. and Waterman St. in Providence, Rhode Island. I remember two things about that year.

 It was 1965, the year of the Great Northeast Blackout. On a late November afternoon — already dark outside at 5:00 PM — the power failed. Everywhere. My father came home from class, picked up a flashlight and went across the street to buy candles at the grocery store with its’ aisles lit by candles and flashlights. That night we had dinner by candlelight which I found fabulously romantic and exciting.

This was also the year the Beatles movie Help! came out. I was psyched when my mother took my older sister and I to the theater to see this. Mega excited. And then...totally confused. Why were all these girls, (college girls -- the theater was on the campus of Brown), standing up, even standing on the seats, shrieking and screaming? I couldn’t hear the film at all -- how could they? And they were blocking my view of the screen too!

Wicked annoying.             Grumble, grumble, grumble.

Random Bit #2:
Trains — there should be more trains.

When my father was young he would travel from his parent's upstate New York home of Hoosick Falls to his school in Exeter, New Hampshire, start to finish, by rail. Granted it took half a dozen connections but it could be done. Now there’s not even bus service to Hoosick Falls.

There used to be trolley service from downtown Quincy, Massachusetts to Hough’s Neck, where The Amazing Bob and I live. Now there’s a bus. I hate buses.

And....Hey you kids, get off my lawn!

Random Bit #3:
I’m, generally, a pragmatic sort. There ought to be a superhero for that — The Caped Pragmatist or Pragmatic Woman: able to leap tall buildings in 10 easy steps. Marvel Comics will be knocking on my door with large buckets of dough shortly. I feel quite certain of this. I should have a great superhero costume too. Now that I think of it though, being Pragmatic Woman and all, the costume would have to be comprised of sensible shoes, comfortably roomy slacks and T-shirt all in darker tones so as to hide potential blood stains of vanquished evil doers.  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Random Bit #4:Aunt Mary Ann, my father’s sister, started buying me books from the Anne of Green Gables series when I was 7. I was completely sucked into the world of late 19th century Prince Edward Island. Hell, I wanted to be an orphan living on a farm in Avonlea, PEI (sadly, a fictitious locale).

Random Bit #5: I’m deaf not disabled. Being deaf in a hearing environment is an inconvenience at worst (not being able to hear anything) and a cause for peace (as in peace and quiet) and hilarity at best. Peace and hilarity are always good things. Didn't Elvis Costello have a song about that? I'm fairly certain of this.