New Questions from Tammy Armstrong and Hannah McCrane

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NEW QUESTIONS FROM HANNAH McCRANE:

 

What is the most embarrassing thing you can think of that you’d be willing to share?  

 

Hmmm. Being the open book that I am (and have been for years) I can’t think of an embarrassing thing that I haven’t already divulged!

 

But one that stays most prominently in my mind is when my first article (“The Real McCoy” about meeting DeForest Kelley) got published  in TV STAR PARADE.

 

The drug store in my town was notified which issue it would appear in (Jan 1969) so they could order extra copies. The owner of the place called my school when the copies came in, so my teacher turned me loose to go get six copies, because he knew how excited I’d be to have them in my hot little hands.

 

It was an icy, slippery winter day but, undaunted, I walked to the store (half a block away), bought my copies, and headed back to school with them clutched to my chest inside a paper bag.

 

I noticed that my entire class was glued to the windows, watching me return with my treasures, which was embarrassing enough (as shy as I was), but then I slipped and almost went down, but managed to slip and slide my way, like a fledgling Ice Capade hippo, to a trembling, mortified standstill.

 

I was NOT looking forward to returning to class after that stunt, since my dress got lifted belly-high during the flailing, but I had to.

 

Oh!  And that reminds me of another embarrassing thing that happened, at the same drug/variety store.

 

I went in and was grazing for stuff to buy. I grabbed a TV Guide , tucked it under my arm, and continued to look around for quite a while longer.  Finding nothing else to buy–and having forgotten all about the TV Guide I had stashed under my arm–I left the store and got about halfway down the sidewalk before I realized I had it.

 

Well, I guess I must have jumped a foot off the sidewalk the second I realized my error, because when I turned around to return to the store to pay for my innocently ill-gotten goods, the store owner was standing in the store window, grinning ear-to-ear.

 

She had seen me go and knew I hadn’t intended to steal, so she had just watched me pad down the sidewalk until I realized my error!

 

I was SO red-faced and apologetic as I returned to the store.

 

But she just laughed and said, “I knew you’d be back. You’re a good kid.

 

 

What are your deepest fears?

 

Dying in some horrible way (fire, flood, crushing, chain saw massacre, stabbing, choking, suffocating, or painfully from some terrible disease).  Dying itself doesn’t scare me at all; it’s HOW I’ll die that concerns me, so I do my best not to think of anything other than dying peacefully in my sleep.

 

Losing my best friends. Friends are the families we choose for ourselves. I simply MUST die before my best friends do. I can’t imagine the thought of out-living them.

 

 

What are some life lessons you had to learn the hard way? Do any of them still affect you today?

 

Don’t rescue friends who aren’t proactive about getting back on their feet as soon as possible (I wrote about that in a past post recently.) (And yes, having done so affects me to this day. I lost two friends I really wanted to keep forever.)

 

“The world doesn’t revolve around you.”  I remember being devastated the first time Mom told me, “Not right now! I’m busy!” (Yes, that still affects me to this day or I wouldn’t even remember it.) I was floored that my needs could take second place to anything she might want or need.  But it was a gift.

 

The down side is that now I always think, “Not right now! I’m busy!” every time I think about reaching out to someone that I want to talk to, figuring they might be too busy to talk to me.

 

So, as a result, I rarely reach out… and that’s dumb because I’m sure some people interpret my absence/scarcity to mean that I don’t care about them, when I most certainly DO!

 

What is your life motto? What experiences led you to live by it?

 

My life motto changes from time to time.

 

“Live and let live.”

 

“Always be kind. Everyone is facing some challenges you know nothing about.”

 

“If you see someone without a smile, give them one of yours.”

 

“What other people think about you is none of your business.”

 

“Do no harm.”

 

DESIDERATA speaks to me profoundly. Every line could be a motto of mine at one time or another.

 

NEW QUESTIONS FROM TAMMY ARMSTRONG:

 

1) If you were to do a documentary on a subject of your choice and go to another country to do it, where would you go and why?

 

I’d love to do a documentary on servals, gorillas, cheetahs, or elephants. I guess that plants me firmly in Africa! I love wild animals and the ones I just mentioned are the ones I’d love to get to know “up close and personal” without infringing on their lives in any way.

 

2) Was there a time where you wanted closure from someone but never had it? If so, to this day does it bother you?

 

Yes, I would like closure with the two friends I wrote about in my earlier blog post. I totally lost touch with one, and tried reaching out several times to the second, but the damage was viewed as insurmountable, I guess, so it never went anywhere. Yes, it still bothers me. I will always consider her one of my dearest friends. I shared so many good times with her. It’s a shame she only dwells on the ending instead of all of the rest of it, as I do. I miss her dearly!

 

 

3) What is one dream that you wish would come true?

 

I wish people would realize and embrace the reality that we’re all here wanting and needing pretty much the same menu of things in life: clean air, clean water, healthy food, a sense of belonging, and the feeling that each of us is celebrated, not just tolerated.  I think if we could get that, the world would quickly grow more inhabitable, hospitable and celebratory of diversity than it is right now.  At base, we’re all just people trying to get by with the least amount of discord and trouble.

 

It isn’t rocket science, but it seems nigh unto impossible for some people to agree to “live and let live.”

 

 

R.I.P  ARISTOTLE

 

Photo by Lisa Twining

 

Photo by Kris M Smith

 

My plecostomos Aristotle — the exact fish I went into hock to accommodate by buying a bigger tank and all the equipment to run it — leaped out of the tank two nights ago and into my wastebasket.

 

I didn’t find him until just this afternoon, even though I looked in there, and all around the room, as soon as I noticed he was missing.

 

When I couldn’t find him, I went online and did a search on “missing pleco” and was becalmed to find that it happens a lot, and that they’re usually just hiding somewhere in the tank. They have been known to hide for days, in fact.  That reassured me… a little.

 

But they sometimes get stuck in ornaments like castles — so I tore everything out and looked inside to be sure he wasn’t stuck in anything.

 

Nope.

 

(Sadly, nope.)

 

I was hoping he’d be my buddy for years to come until I had to re-home him when he eventually outgrew even the 55-gallon tank. That won’t be happening now, and I’m sad. I really enjoyed and especially liked him.

 

I won’t be getting a replacement pleco anytime soon, (and when I do I’ll be getting smaller species of plecos so I never have to face rehoming them) not until I do the next major water change and have to empty the tank, because the new outside filter that I got for the tank won’t fit behind the aquarium right now, which is why I can’t keep the tank top securely shut at the moment.

 

As soon as I can move the aquarium set away from the wall enough to accommodate the filter and replace the tank top, I will get new plecos, but not before.

 

I learned this terrible lesson the hard way.

 

I feel like a lousy pleco owner.

 

 

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