Free Head in the Sand ... and other unpopular positions by Linda M Au Page A

means in about five minutes, when I get
distracted by something major like the phone ringing or a piece of
lint in my pants pocket.)
    I dug out the little black notebook today
and now realize that the list of random crap has gotten a little
unwieldy. That can only mean that it’s time to offload it from the
notebook into the real book. (For those of you in public school,
that means this book.) For your reading pleasure, of course. It’s
an important service I provide, and I’m only too happy to help you
out as you struggle to remember this stuff buried in your busy
days.
     
    List #1: General Do’s and Don’ts
    (Mostly Don’ts):
     
    • Don’t say “I’ll
have what she’s having” unless you are absolutely sure you know
what she’s having.
    • Don’t fall in love
with an ax murderer. And, as a helpful hint here: This starts by
ignoring any communications containing the words “prison” and
“penpal.” This is a good place to start. After that, you’re on your
own.
    • Don’t let a
husband with no sense of time start a major remodeling project. You
know, one that involves items such as drywall or insulation. Or
even a hammer. And this “don’t” includes, in no uncertain terms, a
husband with no sense of humor. Or one with no sense of danger. Or
aesthetics. Or even one whose personal motto is, “It was on
clearance.” Trust me. I know what I’m talking
about.
    • Don’t keep using
the hot sauce if your ears start sweating.
    • Don’t irk a friend
when she’s majorly pregnant. She’s busy growing a whole ‘nother
human being, and it apparently takes up a lot of brain space.
She’ll get that brain space back in a few decades, so be
patient.
     

Like Sands Through the Hourglass . . .
     
    When I think back now on
my mom watching Days of Our Lives when I was a child, I wonder why she ever had the
show on. It’s not her style to be that frivolous with her viewing
time (although now she watches Diners,
Drive-Ins and Dives and Meerkat Manor and some
show where dog catchers break into people’s houses with big sticks
and find cockroaches everywhere every
single time —you know, shows for the
high-IQed among us). And she’s never been one for drama in real
life, let alone in her TV-viewing life. So, what was the appeal for
a reasonably sane woman such as my mother?
    When I was in college, I noticed that
everyone watched soap operas—you know, when they should have been
in class or studying or both. (This is the most likely explanation
for my sudden dip from A’s in high school to C’s in my freshman
year at Carnegie-Mellon. Well, this, and the fact that I’m a night
owl and scheduled early morning lectures on the signifance of
ancient history on modern teenagers—lectures where attendance was
never taken. Lesson learned.)
    Again, what was the
appeal? There aren’t many of these dinosaur series left
( Days of Our Lives remains one of the stalwart holdouts, with the occasional
visit by matriarch Alice Horton on the Christmas shows every year),
and yet the popularity of these shows was enormous at the time.
And Days of Our Lives has been around since 1965—a whopping forty-five years as of
this writing.
    But again, why so long?
Why the popularity? I now put forth the premise that the popularity
of these outrageous shows (and their present-day counterparts) is
because they are precisely so far removed from the reality of our everyday
lives. Let’s face it: When a character on one of these shows is
facing a brain-lung-heart transplant and has double-amnesia and a
husband who’s sleeping with her evil twin, it’s bound to make your
own life look a little better by comparison. That flat tire on the
freeway just doesn’t hold the same kind of drama (unless you’re on
Facebook Mobile).
     
    Let’s take a small peek into the days of
their lives, through the medium of ridiculously rhetorical
questions. Remember, there are no right or wrong answers. (That’s
why they’re rhetorical.)
    • Can