Author: Susan

It’s unbelievable to me that I’m still talking about a crazy shark tale from fifty years ago, but apparently, Jaws made a big impression on me. Not only was the movie the first drive-in I ever drove to, but the book by Peter Benchley was the one that got me hooked on reading.

It’s also unbelievable for me to think that I literally did not read an entire book until I read Jaws at sixteen years old. I have Dear ole Dad to thank for that enlightenment.

My father was one of the thousands of dads who schlepped out from Long Island into New York City for work in the 1970s. And, like most of them, Dad took the Long Island Railroad (LIRR).

There were many rituals to riding the LIRR. Like, don’t touch the big piece of cardboard shoved between the seats and window in car so and so, as the same group of four uses it every morning when they lay it across their laps (two riding backwards, so they face one other), to play cards. And, when you finish a newspaper or paperback, do feel free to leave it on the seat for a fellow commuter.

This is how I got to read Jaws. Dad picked it up on the LIRR; and, when he was done, he left it lying on a table at home, carrying on the railroad’s pseudo library lending system.

I’m sure it was the intriguing photo on the cover that piqued my unmotivated, teenage interest, as I devoured the book, couldn’t wait to see the movie, and forever after was a voracious reader.

Thanks, Dad!

I am not big on rewatching movies, and I really don’t like sequels (unlike Dad who famously said, “The higher the number, the better the movie.”) So, I have not seen Jaws since that warm June night when I drove a bunch of us in my mother’s station wagon to the local drive-In.

Fortunately, I have a cinephile niece who was willing to join me for the re-release of 1975’s summer blockbuster (and, apparently, the movie that created the word “blockbuster”). It was better than I even remembered, and that opening scene – chillingly and skillfully achieved with no blood, and no shark – is still one of the most vivid movie memories for me and still has me talking about it all these years later.

It was some time in the early 90s while working at the Kennedy Space Center that I heard a bunch of commotion coming out of the engineering office. When I went to see what the excitement was, one of them said, “It’s the World Wide Web!”

Needless to say, I didn’t quite understand the magnitude of this statement, but the irony is not lost on me that although I was part of the generation that was on the forefront of this technology, I sometimes still need help getting on Hulu.

A favorite memory of that era has me as one of the first in our group to use a newfangled gadget called the “Mouse.” Up until then, every single command on every computer we were using required keystrokes to do even the simplest task.

I was asked to teach a visiting scientist from Sweden how to use this new gadget. He and I sat shoulder to shoulder in my tiny cubicle staring at the image on my flickering monitor.

“First, you click here,” I said as I dragged the Mouse across the mouse pad, “And then you click there.”

He put his hand on my arm and looked at me quizzically, saying, “What means click?”

Yet, after taking courses in advanced FORTRAN, COBOL and Assembler — the computer languages that ran those computers — I sometimes still have to enlist the help of a family member to stop our Alexa from flashing yellow.

I really don’t mind being part of the old school generation who just may have forgotten more about computers than most folks will ever know about them.

And, I kind of love the fact that at my recent high school reunion hardly anyone had their nose buried in their cell phone. Everyone was simply enjoying connecting with each other, in person, old school style.

I recently had our pool water tested.

“Your acid level is high,” the lady behind the counter said after running the water through the mad scientist looking contraption they use at the pool place.

“I wouldn’t let anyone swim until you get that under control,” she said.

“I swam this morning,” I told her.

She shrugged her shoulders and looked at me with a scrunched up “sucks for you” face.

When I told hubby the story, I said, “So, if I wake up dead tomorrow, you know why.”

No response. He famously doesn’t give much credence to the water testing process of these places.

Later that day, he came out of the bathroom waving a bloody Q-tip.

“Either I have a cut somewhere in my ear, or I’m dying,” he said.

“You can’t be dying,” I said. “I told you I may be waking up dead tomorrow.”

He looked at me with his “I am married to a crazy woman” expression.

“They’ll never know what happened to us,” I said. “It’ll be another Gene Hackman and his wife situation all over again.”

This launched us into a crazy dialog about forensics.

“They’ll figure it out,” he said. “They’ll find the printout from the pool place, and then they’ll see the bloody Q-tip in the trash.”

“Besides,” he said. “Your brother has seen every episode of Forensics Files at least fifty times, this will be a piece of cake.”

“Okay, then,” I said, ironically satisfied.

I’m not gonna lie. It was more like, “Thank God we’ll never pass this way again.”

Just saying.

Recently, a fellow student posted elementary school class pictures of my classmates. These adorable “mini me” photos made me realize that most of the kids in my class had been together almost their entire lives, which made me a little jealous. But if I had been one of them, I probably wouldn’t have bonded with my BFFs and fellow “outsiders” who were also uprooted at fourteen to a new town. Meeting them made the experience – maybe not the thing of wistful 70s songs, but – so much better than it could have been.

Congratulations to my fellow graduates of Newfield’s 1975 class on this momentous anniversary we share with a sobering list of events that put this time lapse into perspective: the movie Jaws; the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (the wreck, not the song); the birth of Saturday Night Live; and the official end of the Vietnam War.

And special thanks to my favorite girls who made this celebratory weekend so memorable and fun, and who always “make me feel like I’m more than a friend.”

I remember thinking in my twenties when a coworker was going to her 50^th high school reunion: Damn, she’s old!

What goes around…

Postscript:
Seeing my fellow high school classmates in their elementary school class photos made me check online to see if I could find any of mine.

Hint: Those are my chubby cheeks in the second row. 

It took a while before we finally received an Amazon box the right size to fit George’s leg.

It had been sitting in the garage since he passed. It was in the house, but it was too sad a reminder of the loss of our friend.

Always the recycler, I found a place online that took used prosthetics for someone in need.

I took the box and the provided label to the UPS counter and asked for assistance. The guy at the counter shook the box a little and could tell there was not enough packing. When he opened the box, he looked at me.

“It’s a leg,” I said. He just nodded and stuffed some brown paper along the sides. It made me think, this guy has seen everything.

“What do I owe you?” I asked.

“I’m supposed to charge for the packaging, but don’t worry about it,” he said.

George would have turned 78 today. I’ve wanted to write about him since his passing in March, but I promised that my blog would be brief, and I don’t think I could ever be brief about George.

The recent (and very good!) Barbara Walters documentary reminded me of a world event that coincided with a personal crisis causing me to miss out on a once in a lifetime opportunity. The upside: It also left me with a very funny memory.

It was March 1979, when I found myself with a mysterious illness that would later be diagnosed as the auto immune disease, Sarcoidosis. I would fully recover with no serious long-term effects, but at the time it was shocking and scary.

I was working for the Secret Service as a seemingly healthy twenty-one-year-old when I was plagued by a weird array of symptoms. After seeing the White House physician, I was sent to Bethesda Naval Hospital.

This just happened to be the same time as the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty between President Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Begin of Israel.

Our Special Agent in Charge knew how interested I was in the historic event and had arranged for a coworker and me to attend the ceremony on the White House lawn. Only now I would miss it.

On the day of the ceremony a corpsman wheeled a television set onto the ward and set it up next to my bed. The nurse asked, “What’s going on?”

“The White House ordered it,” the corpsman said. “So she could watch the signing of the peace treaty.”

The nurse turned to me and said, “Who are you?!”

Little did I know that the White House physician had been calling to check on my status, so there was already a curiosity surrounding the young patient claiming to be a clerk for the U.S. Secret Service.

I recently injured my shoulder. You know the drill….no idea how I did it; it hurts when I do this. (I know…..then don’t do that.)

So, I went to an orthopedist to start the routine of X-ray, cortisone, physical therapy, etc. As the nurse is taking my input…and let me say this nurse resembled a young Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson if someone let a little air out of him — just to give you a visual.

Anyway, while The Rock is typing away at the keyboard, he asks, “Have you taken any Tylenol or ibuprofen, or anything for the pain?” I say, no. So, he says, “Old people really don’t like to take medication.”

I almost said, “I know, right?” But then I realized he’s talking about me!

I thought about giving him a stern talking to, but then I thought, well now, might that not confirm…..  Never mind.

Anyway, I decided to let it go and just blog about it.

I always feel a little jealous when people my age still have their parents. I hope they realize how lucky they are. Although I lost my father and mother at 65 and 72, I know that I am fortunate to have had them that long.

I remember a girlfriend calling me when we were in ninth grade to tell me her father died. I can still see my stunned self standing in our kitchen clutching the phone to my ear. And I still regret that in my state of shock, I literally had no words.

Anderson Cooper, who lost his father when he was ten, has a podcast called All There Is about the people we lose, the people left behind, and how we live on – with loss and with love. Cooper says, “Grief can feel so lonely but talking about it, and listening to others share their grief experiences helps.” In one episode Cooper speaks with Stephen Colbert who also lost his dad at ten years old. To hear them discuss their feelings about this devastating loss in such a vulnerable way was palpable.

The episode taught me that quite often it’s better to talk about the deceased rather than stay silent for fear of reminding the person of what they’ve lost. But the greatest takeaway was the reminder of just how important fathers are.

The Irish have a saying, “We never get over our fathers, and we’re not required to.”

Happy Father’s Day.

Twenty-eight posts, 1,700 views and 575 visits later, SusanScribbles turns one!

My favorite SusanScribbles stat, however, is the variety of countries those visitors came from. Germany and the Netherlands kind of make sense, but Turkey? Sweden? Philippines? I love it. Admittedly, they probably stumbled here by accident, but I find this list interesting, nevertheless.

The other interesting stat is that my most popular post – Brooklyn – has five times the number of views than any other post. I would love to believe that my grandniece is just that popular, but if I’m being honest, it could just be her much-googled name.

When I started writing many moons ago (before the word blog was even a word), I heard that you should always have your mother read your writing because creating something and baring your soul creates a real vulnerability. I experienced this early on when one of my first pieces in writing class was, shall we say, not received as well as expected. I boo-hooed all the way home telling myself you better toughen up, Missy, or give this up right now!

Even though I remain a self-proclaimed mush, I learned to deal with the rejection and soldier on. Hubby has always been my number one editor, but sister Carol always enjoyed reading anything I wrote. Now, when I’m considering what to write, I always consider what Carol would think. I’m sure of one thing, she would love knowing that her new grandbaby’s post is by far the most popular.

Thanks for all the support over the past year. It’s appreciated more than you know.