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His motor skills weren’t in question really; dad could rewire complex circuit boards and operate a bandsaw without issue. But ladders, step stools, ledges, the roof – if it were more than a foot or two off the ground, dad would invariably wind up losing to the principal of gravity.

You’d think being a physicist he’d be more inclined to side with scientific theory; what goes up must come down and all that. But in addition to his distinct lack of balance, dad suffered from something much worse … Good intentions.

They’d usually manifest in various home improvement projects. Painting, hanging pictures and installing light fixtures were typically safe enough, at least in that they only ended with a few days of dad limping and tossing back palmfuls of ibuprofen. It was the change of season that we all came to dread.

Spring meant hauling patio furniture down from the loft in the garage; winter involved an assortment of wreaths and bows to affix to the exterior of the house. Not all these projects included a trip to the ER, but even dad started to lose his rosy, DIY glow around November when the rain gutters would clog.

That was the trouble with living in the Midwest – especially where we did, on the cusp of a forest preserve – the trees would all simultaneously dump their leaves at the first sign of a chill. Add a few days of freakishly warm rain and we’d wind up with a great dismal swamp circling our gutters.

It never seemed to occur to dad that there were people to handle projects like gutter cleaning, people who came with their own tools and extensive medical coverage. Dad just considered it his duty as the homeowner, so every year he’d drag out his gloves and bucket and we’d find him perched atop a ladder, elbow deep in muck.

We learned fast that these were days it was best to avoid dad. Mom usually hustled me into the living room with her to watch television. She could keep an eye on him from there, pausing between commercials to glance out the window, watch his ladder rock precariously, and return to TV with a shake of her head.

One particular soggy Saturday we were watching WKRP in Cincinnati. Dad had been at his work on the gutters for more than an hour. He’d long abandoned his bucket and was instead sweeping pools of coagulated leaves and bird remnants onto the ground. The rhythm of his vile work – scrape, curse, splatter – overtook the living room in a noxious crescendo.

Mom, used to the chaotic bumblings of my dad, turned the volume up. The “Turkeys Away” episode of WKRP was airing at the time, and the idea of live turkeys being kicked out of a plane onto unwitting shoppers had mom and me in a fit.

I can still see the tears in her eyes as Less Nessman called out, “They’re dropping to the ground like bags of wet cement.”

“Poor turkeys,” she snorted, collapsing into her chair.

The commercials began then, and mom, out of habit, turned to the window. Dad had suddenly become eerily silent, and before we could consider that further, we heard it: a wild sort of scrambling, like a raccoon maybe, but bigger. Then – the ladder.

All 26-feet of it came crashing down onto the front lawn in an explosion of aluminum glory. And dad, of course, was close on its heels.

His legs dropped into view first, dangling in that mad way they’re wont to do when you’re searching for footing and coming up only with air. Dad was clearly clinging to the roof and likely wishing he hadn’t relied on writing on classroom blackboards to hone his upper body strength.

As his arms gave out their final grip on the roof, WKRP kicked back in from break. It seemed our eyes made contact for one lone second on his slow plunge to the ground, and though no sound came from dad’s open mouth, I would swear he was thinking, “As god is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”

That was the last season dad cleaned the gutters himself.

We’ve told this story hundreds of times at home; no one does a better impression of dad’s plummet better than my mom. And though I laugh every time, it’s made me wonder about myself. What can I, a new stepmom and aunt, be counted on for?

My experience in being any sort of role model is limited at best. I certainly didn’t take much away from my brief stint babysitting as a teen. It was my mother’s bright idea, and just like her other gems (trying out for cheerleading chief among them) it failed miserably.

I have always been more inclined to avoid children than watch them, let alone find ways to occupy their attention. But I did try. Armed with ideas culled from the Babysitters Club books and my own good intentions, I got a weekly gig sitting for Bryan and Allison, two kids who I’m sure grew up to steal lunch money and knock over liquor stores.

Bryan bore an uncanny resemblance to Chucky from the Child’s Play movies, and delighted in sneaking up on me with his pumpkin carving knife. Allison, a plucky five year old, enjoyed playing hide and seek. Her favorite hiding spot? Her mother’s giant gas oven. I lasted three afternoons with the thugs before I renounced babysitting for life.

To be fair, my track record with kids has improved somewhat over the years, but I’m still left here today in a position I never quite imagined: actually looking for and working toward acceptance as a parental figure. I’m rather annoyed that Judy Blume hasn’t written a book about this. She essentially handed me a blueprint for my adolescence; is it too much to ask that she address my adulthood, too?

It would suck dramatically to be counted on for comic relief, known in my niece’s future social circle as “the aunt who set the kitchen on fire” or as “crazy spice lady” when my step kids figure out that the quickest way to make my eye twitch is to rearrange my spice drawers. Then, the big family game will become how to poke my crazy and I’ll wind up a viral video on YouTube.

No thanks. Of course, when I realize that my dad was, if not my exact age, then very close to it back when he earned his reputation for falling off rooftops, a cold chill sets in and I realize I’m way too close to becoming a cautionary YouTube video than I care to admit.

What would mean the most to me is to be thought a role model – someone who isn’t so far removed from how wretched it feels to be a kid, and who can just be real when talking about it.

Is it possible for me, with all my quirks and issues and fascinations, to be someone the kids in my life will look up to and enjoy being with?

In the end, all I can do is hope. Hope that maybe this turkey can fly.

I am not one for writing exercises. The absurdity of playing games in order to coax creativity out of angry or otherwise slow-witted veins makes my hair vibrate in annoyance. Hemingway, I’m sure, did not pen a single book from a “writing prompt”, nor did Bukowski ever succumb to a “writers’ group.” They just fucking wrote. And for every word they’ve put to paper I’ve read in admiration and hazy jealousy, but they are dead now, and thankfully unable to see me here on my knees and partaking in the atrocious practice of “no deletion writing.”

I can’t even write the words without wanting to slam a hammer on my fingers, because truly, the only real way to write, for me, anyway, is to experience first. This stream of consciousness babble, where I filter nothing and sincerely wish I had something of a green-tinted absinthe glow to grease the keys, is far too closely linked to nonsense. I may well be Lewis Carroll, or perhaps Hunter Thompson, because the words are more of a sing-song on paper than they are a story.

Not that there is anything wrong with the lyricism of language; I only wish I had more of an end in mind than this odd dance through my mental bookshelves. Christopher Hitchens is to blame, really. His passing drove me to reread many of his essays and consider my own work and wonder if anyone ever really reads much of anything now.

Hitchens was a lyrical writer of controversial topic, one who had no qualms about his opinion and voiced it distinctly, clearly. Strongly. I do not know if he read Hemingway and I do not know if that even matters, but I think, darkly, that in this instantaneous culture of ours, where information flows without trial or confirmation, that experience is lost.

Not just the event itself – though to be sure the actions that grant experience are necessary – but the event of processing information is now lost to a digital medium that I want to embrace and will eventually be forced into, but deep down resent for taking away my paper.

It’s a morbid romanticism, this affection I have for paper and words and linking them into a story meant to be consumed, internalized. Perhaps the books I read will be my undoing, my tether to something that seems to grow more and more distant. Where messages are blasted in character length not character, where is there room for story?

The real writers, the ones who consume life in order to share it, those like Hitchens and more, have a trail of paper that I envy. The fist fight in my head pairs blogging against essays in a fight no one can win. There are stories that need to be told – stories I have to tell and experiences I will have to tell later that need paper.

And though I sit here in my uncomfortable writing experiment, letting words flow without censor, I am glad that I have paper for them. It’s a small page and my writing is beginning to slow, but it’s a start. A start to something that needs to carry on.

So, we ventured to San Francisco, CA for an extended weekend back in late October. My guy had been there previously; this was my first trip. It’s a stunning, odd sort of city that is funky, modern and somewhat dated all at once. Fisherman’s Wharf was my favorite area – the perfect midpoint between our long walk from the Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate Bridge. We ate sourdough bread bowls of clam chowder and drank lots of hearty beer there while watching the coastline and Alcatraz in the distance. Seals could be heard over the hawking of fresh crabs, and one morning we were chased down a pier by an angry gull.

Haight Ashbury was curious. There was an interesting undercurrent of political movement, though the “Occupy San Francisco” supporters just don’t have the same aura as the hippies from the summer of love. We also really, really didn’t want to buy the goods they were selling under their sandwich signs, and grew tired of their aggressive sales tactics.  Mission District and Chinatown were more my speed.

In November we made our annual trek to Walt Disney World, where we drank many, many mai tais and gained an extra five pounds eating our way through Epcot’s International Food & Wine Festival. Richard Marx was our favorite performer at the Eat to the Beat concert series – there may have been some air keyboarding done during his finale. No matter how many times I visit WDW, there is always something fabulously, magically new to experience. This year it was seeing Cinderella’s Castle adorned in the brilliant holiday dream lights. The lighting ceremony took place just after dusk, and as Mickey and crew announced the big moment and the park went dark, I stood like a goofball with my guy, eyes watering and smiling widely, watching the castle come to life in glittering, sparkling lights. I suppose that’s why people like me keep returning to Disney. It’s always okay to believe in magic there.

And now, a few favorite pics from both trips:

Even Steven Spielberg stuck around long enough to accept my apology for running him over with my bicycle a few years ago. That, too, was not my intention. I should have known better than to attempt to navigate the trail around the Lake Hollywood reservoir – my bike riding skills are no better than my driving skills. Steven just picked the wrong time to go jogging and wound up the unfortunate obstacle in my unsteady path.

He didn’t seem to be hurt, much. His sunglasses were crumpled under my front tire and my head was tethered to the bike thanks to a tangle of headphone cables, hair and chains, but the only blood spilled was mine. And from my vantage point down there on the pavement, I apologized to the film mogul profusely. He nodded, smiled wearily, and tugged his baseball cap visor over his eyes. As he jogged off, I called out the only thing I could think of: “E.T made me cry!”

I can think of 946 better, or at least, more appropriate things to have said, although they likely would not have been as meaningful. It kills me to admit that one of the first movies to get a rise of me was not from my beloved Walt Disney. Bambi had left me dry-eyed and vaguely bored, but E.T. had me sobbing into my popcorn. I loved that silly hunk of waddling alien, almost as much as I did The Muppets, and I really just wanted Steven Spielberg to know that. I like to think he understood.

I shared similar sentiment with John Stamos as a preteen. He and his hair had recently made their debut on Full House, a show so vapid that even as a ‘tween I knew it wasn’t cool to be caught watching it. John’s face was quickly plastered over all my favorite teen magazines, which, being the geek I was, I actually read for the articles.

And in one tell-all interview, John admitted he had been picked on as a kid. He said that because of it he tried to be nice to everyone, and swore he’d never make fun of a person for being different. It was a lovely sentiment that could have just as easily been pulled out of a fortune cookie, but it rang true to my blossoming, misunderstood heart, so much so that I dashed out a letter to John.

All of my ‘tween frustrations gushed onto two pages of notebook paper. It was just so hard being different, I railed. Why couldn’t more people have the same attitude as him? I pledged to watch Full House regularly from then on, thanked him for being such a nice person, and dotted the “i” in my name with a circle, full of wishful thinking.

The letter went in the mail to his official fan club and my life continued, with Full House added to my regular nighttime routine. Within a few months I’d all but forgotten I’d ever written to “Uncle Jessie,” that is, until the day he wrote me back.

The envelope was handwritten and postmarked from California with no return address. My mother, never a snoop but definitely a curious woman, insisted I tell her who the letter was from. My teen magazines back then were full of ads for pen pals, many of whom were really prisoners soliciting care packages, and I suspect she feared I’d taken up correspondence with Charles Manson.

This particular letter wasn’t from a serial killer; I had another year or two in me before that became a temptation. Instead, I held a handwritten note that was signed “John Stamos.” It referenced my letter specifically, thanking me for sharing my thoughts and telling me to hang in there – being different would get easier when I got older.

His response was mortifying and thrilling at once; I hadn’t expected my letter to actually be read, much less considered and responded to. I never showed the note to any of my friends, I was too terrified they would ask what I had written to him, but I kept it tucked away in a journal that I still have today, some 25 years later. And sure, it was likely some public relations intern at his office who took pity on a flustered young letter-writing girl, but were I to ever see John Stamos in person, I’d still thank him for writing me back.

So no, I don’t consider myself to be any sort of crazed fan or celebrity stalker, but I do have random associations with odd people that, on occasion, manifest themselves in unexpected ways.

Which is why there was no way I could miss Linda Blair’s appearance at a local theatre for a screening of The Exorcist on Halloween.

I waited in line with 30 or so other people, paid my $20 for a photograph, and smiled with mild excitement when I was able to pose for a picture with the woman whose image has plagued more nightmares than I can ever count.

She turned to me then, and before she could pleasantly ask for my name, or my impressions on the movie or her charity as she had done with the others before me, my mouth got the best of my brain and I blurted out, “You ruined my childhood!”

Linda backed away and mumbled something that I think was akin to, “Sorry about that.” She quickly ran to the shelter of her handlers before I could do worse.

My intended affection wasn’t as obvious as I had hoped, and for this I had a pang of disappointment. Through The Exorcist Linda had made an impression on me that I had hoped to better acknowledge.

However, after some mild obsessing and a few drinks, I’ve realized I may have actually paid a better tribute to Linda than I could have planned. Unintentionally or not, I managed to give Linda Blair back a small taste of the clenching fear she once gave me, and that, in my little world at least, is decidedly satisfying. Bizarre and somewhat wrong, admittedly, but satisfying nonetheless.

A hundred different scents and sounds accompanied the landscape, and with the radio off and windows open I could pick each out as assuredly as I can the flavors in a stew. But above it all was the ringing of a bell. Maybe from a church, perhaps from a town square, but definitely a bell – the Quasimodo kind of bell that clangs with authority in an uneven rhythm. It’s a sound from another time really, but so perfectly suited to the morning.

My guy and I debate over when a city or town is at its most perfect. He prefers the night and all its glowing lights and commotion. And to his credit, there is nothing quite as engaging as the bustle of a cityscape that’s alive with frenetic activity.

But me, I prefer the moments in between.

Dawn is my time, when a place is just waking up and you have the silence of energy spent. There’s a certain wonderment to it, of who is waking up plus a new life, or, perhaps, minus a soul.

When I’m feeling morbidly romantic I like to fantasize about packing up and taking a sabbatical with my guy to the French Quarter of New Orleans. Mornings in the Quarter are amazingly still, the only movement coming from the thick suds they use to wash the streets. It made me laugh the first time I saw the sanitation trucks flushing the pavement – I could just envision the foul remains of Bourbon Street filtering down the sewer.

But with that comes a satisfaction, too. So goes the night, and before the day begins there is only the prospect of what’s to come. And in New Orleans, that could be anything.

We once stayed at the Bourbon Orleans Hotel, and like everything in the Quarter, it has a past. Built in 1817, it served as everything from a ballroom to a convent, school and medical ward. Portions of the hotel are brand new, others destroyed by fire, and still others remain as a reminder of what the hotel was in 1817.

Everybody in the Quarter seems to have a story to tell about the Bourbon Orleans, including the lobby bartender, who refuses to enter the original part of the building – the same part where our room was located.

The room was what they called a “townhouse suite.” It had two levels, one level being accessible by a hallway off the main elevator to enter the room, the other accessible only by stairs inside the suite and a singular hallway between floors that led to the ballroom.

The story goes, of course, that the Bourbon Orleans ballroom is haunted, just like several other “hot spots” within the hotel. And who knows, maybe it is. My guy and I snuck into the ballroom one night in an amateur Ghostbusters sort of way only to take a few pictures and be chased out by a haunted tour guide on a power kick.

It was a bit of a relief for me – the empty, dark ballroom had all the welcome of a catacomb and even my eyelashes were bristled by the undercurrent of the room. My guy calls my ghostly antennae an absurdity, of course. And being a confirmed atheist, I accept that conceding the existence of the supernatural is a contradiction.

Yet still, it doesn’t seem beyond the realm of science to me that perhaps there is an energy to life that hangs around. Subtle eccentricities of nature don’t have to be divine, despite there being a lack of reason for their reality.

Like the bathroom of our suite. It was located directly opposite of what we called the door to nowhere, which was just our overly fanciful way of describing the way the door led to a winding hallway. I’m still not sure what the purpose of having a hallway between floors was. Logically, it was likely an unobtrusive way for hotel staff at one time to serve rooms. And were it any other city, I probably would accept that explanation as true.

But that wouldn’t account for the man in our bathroom.

There was no spectral cloud, no orb of light darting through the room, only a subtle shift in the air, a hint of movement and the prickling insistence that once upon a time a man stood in the openness behind me at the mirror and was likely still there.

I joke with my friends that he was a polite ghost, and never made his presence known when I was showering or otherwise vulnerable. But without fail, each night as I tended to my hair and daubed makeup on my face, the wallpaper behind me would move.

A similar sort of movement caught my eye in the car today, and as I breathed the colors and the sounds and the delicate peculiarities of the morning, I was for a moment taken back to New Orleans. It made my day.

“Jonathan” was born in direct response to a first kiss – the kind of monumentally awful first kiss that can only occur between two eighth graders who are too consumed by bravado to admit they’re clueless. I certainly was: At that point, the only thing my lips had ever connected with was a Bon Jovi tour program. My appearance suggested otherwise, of course: Nothing screams eighth grade sexpot like a pink mini skirt, denim jacket and ponytail jutting off one side of your head.

It was enough to attract the attention of Tommy, a shaggy-haired basketball player who was generally considered the cutest boy in class. He even had the added distinction of having dated a ninth grader.

“Dating” was a fuzzy concept in my junior high, so whether or not Tommy had actually done more than bump into his ninth grade “girlfriend” at the bus stop a couple times wasn’t entirely clear. Most of my classmates could barely work up the nerve to ask their crushes for a homework assignment let alone a “date.” The few of us who did hook up did so in packs at the mall where we’d awkwardly buy each other an Orange Julius and wander from store to store in slurpy silence.

If Tommy did have experience with a ninth grader, as junior high folklore went, he certainly hadn’t learned any romantic notions from the experience. After our obligatory trip to the mall, we wound up back at his house, where he promptly locked his little brother out of their rec room and cued “Add It Up” by the Violent Femmes on a Radio Shack boom box.

Tommy’s seduction scene could have used a bit of finessing. As we sat side-by-side on a moldy couch in his parents’ basement, pretending to listen to his rotten music selection, the only thing we had to fill our conversation gaps was the stench of his borrowed Drakkar Noir.

If either one of us had any sense, we would have worked up to the kiss with some heated hand holding or the kind of frisky hugging I see all the teens in vampire movies doing these days. Instead, he looked in my general direction, said, “Let’s do it,” and smacked his lips on mine with all the aplomb of a suckermouth catfish. Instantly, his tongue was cartwheeling through my mouth, and before I could fully acclimate myself to his frenetic lickings, I realized I couldn’t breathe.

My eighth grade Romeo’s face was suctioned onto mine, his right chipmunk cheek mashed against my nose and blocking any hope I had for gracefully inhaling.

I wondered if kissing was really just an experiment in holding your breath, with the “sexiness” coming from the inevitable head rush. The idea depressed me. I always lost that game at the pool – the one where we’d all hold our breath under water as long as possible. I’d inevitably be the one sputtering and snorting and dripping snot as I gasped for breath while my friends all sat underwater like miniature Buddhas. Sadly, my first kiss ended much the same way.

He might have been able to get past my initial attempts at mouth breathing through the kiss, and could probably have (mis)interpreted my gasps as passion. But when I couldn’t get a deep enough breath, panic set in and I wrenched myself away from him furiously. In the process, I might have taken a chunk of his lip with me. That’s a hard one to ignore.

Popularity is a precarious thing in junior high and since – big shocker – the only gentlemen you’re likely to find are the English Lit teachers, it wasn’t long before word spread and I was unfairly branded the worst kisser in the entire eighth grade class.

Jeers of “Hey Lippy!” followed me from room to room. Girls who had never so much as frenched a bed pillow were suddenly more popular than me and soon my social banishment was so profound that the only seat I could find in the lunchroom was with the special ed kids. And they only agreed to let me sit at their table on the condition that I buy them ice cream.

The exclusion didn’t bother me so much as did the fact that it was based on an entirely incorrect assumption. Who was that little pudgy-faced punk to call ME the bad kisser? I knew it was too late to launch a smear campaign of my own, so I decided instead to create a diversion – a story that would make people forget about my burgeoning skills as a kisser and instead focus on irresistible, fascinating me. That my skills in social manipulation at the time were more developed than my general social skills is only a bit alarming.

I’d just returned from a three-day trip to Madison, Wisconsin with my parents and it had occurred to me while there that the best way to get people talking would be to show up on Monday morning with a new boyfriend, one who was so outlandishly cool it could only serve to boost my own reputation.

And so Jonathan Turner came to life on that rainy Sunday evening: A gorgeous freshman in high school who had the charm of Michael J. Fox, rakish appeal of Johnny Depp, and moves of Patrick Swayze. (What can I say? I had high standards in the 80s.) I decided that we met at the trade show I had attended with my parents. He would have been working in his father’s booth and been so smitten at the sight of me that he dropped what he was doing and walked right up to ask my name.

He’d buy me a soda and nachos and we’d spend the weekend holding hands and wandering around Madison. On my last night in town, he’d drape his coat over my shoulders, kiss me while standing on the steps of the state capitol building and promise we’d talk every night until he could see me in person again.

He was a teenage fantasy come true, really. I went to school on Monday clad in my dad’s discarded leather jacket and promptly told anyone who would listen that the coat belonged to my boyfriend, Jonathan.

I’d yawn during study hall and say that my boyfriend had kept me awake all night on the phone. I’d nod sympathetically when girls would fret over their hair after gym and say that Jonathan liked my hair best when the wind was blowing through it. In just a few days, I managed to rebuild my social status with nothing more than a men’s jacket and some wishful thinking.

Jonathan was my very own George Glass, and I adored my fauxfriend at least as much as a real person. That’s the one nice thing about being in junior high: What you lack in personal experience, you can more than make up for in imagination.

Which was convenient, really, because while I could easily have staged a fake breakup with Jonathan in order to accept another mall date, I decided it would be best to keep him around for a while … At least until a real high school boy – or Johnny Depp – asked me out.

Once again I’m forced to make my guy rebuild my blogsite because your plug-ins blow and enable all sorts of fancy viral attacks. Note the new URL, all. New blog posts will appear here. Older posts may have been lost in the change over. Again, suck it Word Press.

A few updates:

Saw Paul McCartney at Wrigley. He reminded me why I love music. It was truly a life changing show.

The wedding is just DAYS away!!! I’m sure there will be much to write about soon.
Enjoy summer, all. More to come soon!