Oopsie Ow

My daughter has always loved stories; telling them (although her style is as circumloculatory as you'd expect for 3.9 years old...) and hearing them. And, although neither her mother nor I have encouraged her, she has turned out to be quite a Pretty in Pink sort of little girl. She loves all things soft, plush, pastel and princessy. And that includes the "Disney Princess"^TM brand of story. Like most little ones, she can - and prefers - to read and re-read the same story over and over again. So we know the stories of Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and their sisters pretty damn well.Recently, however, she has developed a devilish little strain of anarchic humor which is known generically around the Fire Direction Center as the "Oopsie Ow Version". "Oopsie Ow" means that the Daddy is required to throw figurative stones at the poor princesses. They now have to slip, trip, fall, bump their heads, wrench their backs and suffer embarrasing catastrophic loss-of-coolant bladder accidents. Their reaction has to be an agonized wail of...you guessed it: "Oopsie OW!"

Instead of kisses, their princes receive smacks on the earhole or kicks in the backside. It's all very slapsticky, and elicits great peals of laughter from Small Miss. Even her brother, who usually scorns her princess stories as sissy girl stuff, has been known to creep up next to my lap to join in the enjoyment of Cinderella punting Prince Charming square in the kisser with her bare foot as he tries to glass-slipper her, or Boots the Monkey flinging his poop at Dora and nailing her between the eyes. Oopsie Ow!I'm not sure what fertile soil sprouted the Oopsie Ow; the Girl doesn't seem to translate all of this comic misfortune into a larger sense of malaise with the world or a cynical view of princesses and princessing. Which is good - a cynical four-year-old would be just too Wes Anderson.

But having the notion that not only is real life not like a fairy tale but that even fairy tales aren't always like a fairy tale?I'm surprisingly okay with that.

Wood eye! Wood eye!

I actually hadn't planned to post anything else tonight - it's late, it's been a long week and I'm tired.

But I just had a brief e-conversation with a friend of mine (well, a sort of cyber-pal: I'm never actually met her - I should be so lucky!). I can't link to her - tho she writes well and her blog is fun - because she enjoys her password-protected privacy, but she knows who she is and IMO she's a hell of a great woman. And it was because said e-miga is, aside from a totally kickass person, mom-to-be, desert savant and mamma-jammer (literally) someone I think of as a sorta-kinda minor-celebrity-I-know, like being pals with Bernardo Brito, that I thought of this story.

This is NOT her, BTW. She's the hottie in red at the top. This is Anne Baxter doing 40's cheesecake.I've actually met a couple of other people I think of like this: my aunt and uncle lived for years next to Anne Baxter who was quietly retired in Easton, Connecticut just a couple of years before her death; very good lady and a smart person. And I actually got to shake hands and exchange hi's with Michelle Akers while she toured Portland with the U.S. WNT back in 1999 before the WWC. So I'm usually not a total dope around someone I've seen in the paper or on the screen.

Back in the day I was something of a fan of the thea-tah, and was used to going to New York every year to take in a show or three with my college buddies. To this day I cannot remember the show - probably something pretty rotten - that I was tolerating with my friend Sally when she suddenly started poking and jiggling me and bouncing in her seat like a mad woman.

"Jaysus, wench," I hissed, "can't you cross your legs and wait until intermission? I'm soaking in some utterly forgettable dialogue here..."

"No, no!" she whispered frantically, "I just saw Sandy Duncan sitting three rows back! Sandy Duncan!!

I'm not exactly a stalker but I thought that was pretty cool. But Sally was in an complete and utter swivet. I thought she was gonna hyperventilate and pass out and I was going to be stuck there in the eighth row of "The Fucking Guys in the Truck" or whatever in hell the show was with her dead body between me and the exit doors forever. Finally she made it clear that 1) she wanted to go over and say something to Sandy at the interval,and 2) my job was to be the person that came with her.

"No fucking way!" I snarled, "I'm not going to interrupt poor Sandy Duncan's entertainment like some star-struck trailer trash wannabe."

"You ARE a trailer trash wannabe," she replied, "just get over it, off your ass and stand next to me and say hi to Sandy Duncan, you goop."After begging and pleading and a few threats the lights came up to breathlessly perfunctory applause and Sally grabbed my arm and bolted up the aisle. She came to rest standing in front of a neat, blonde-headed woman of late middle age, jittering in one place as noisily as an idling Harley Davidson.

"Oh, Miss Duncan," she gushed, "I just wanted to thank you for all your great performances. You're really a great actress."

I have to say that Sandy was really quite gracious, thanking my friend and wishing her a nice time at the show. She looked at me, not pointedly, but a trifle quizzically and I noticed that Sally was too. They both waited a beat, as if to hear me say something, but I just smiled brightly, nodded like an idiot and began dragging Sally away up the aisle.
We got out to the lobby and Sally was as excited as I've ever seen anyone not actually getting paid.

"Wow wow wow wow!!!" she multiwowed, "That was soooooo cool! Sandy is totally cool! I'm SO glad I got to talk to her! Wasn't she cool!?" Suddenly she stopped and looked at me with a skeptical squint.

"What the heck's wrong with you today?" she said, "You're usually little mister chatterbox...I thought for sure you'd have some smart remark to make to Sandy Duncan!"

I stared at her as I had stared at Sandy.

"Yeah, that was the problem."

"What problem?" Sally asked, making those air quotes around "problem" with her fingers.

I looked at her and shook my head. "The problem was...I swear to God, Sal, I'm dead flat serious; I stood there staring at Sandy Duncan's face and the only single fucking thing I could think of to say was "Which one of your eyes is real?"

Pablo!

Sometimes real life is kinda like a movie.

Take yesterday.

I was working up in North Portland, across the interstate from my own St. John's, on a project that involved doing something called an "infiltration test", which in the City of Portland involves sticking a 5-inch diameter pipe in the ground, (note that it HAS to be a 5-inch pipe, not a 4- or 6-inch pipe, bacause what fun would that be to use a pipe that any Home Depot carries instead of one that you have to go and buy from a specialty fucking well supply store...!!!) filling it with water and sitting around in the chilly January sunshine watching the water level drop.

This is how I earn a living. Sometimes. Trust me, I make up for it on other days drilling hand augers through broken concrete in the freezing rain.

So I'm sitting on the tailgate reading, chilly, contemplating getting in the truck and starting the heater when up drives this woman in a BMW. Nice car. Nicer woman - think "Queen Latifah in an ankle-length leather coat". Terrific shoes. Teh hot and doesn't she know it.

In about a tenth of a second she's out of the car like a mad cat with her tail on fire. "What are you doing here?!" she snaps. Luckily I have the job proposal with me, I show her, she's nodding.

"Okay! Okay! You're good. What do you know about these other ve-hicles?" she's pointing to the three older Chevys and Pontiacs parked on the vacant part of the lot I'm working on. We pretty much both know who belongs to the ve-hicles: the construction crew across the street.

So I gotta admit; I get up to watch the Queen sashay across the street, shouting "You! Yes, you! What's you' name?! Pablo? You belong to this car, Pablo?! 'Cause I got the tow company on the phone right this very minute...!!"

You'd think somebody exploded a Latino Bomb inside the jobsite: suddenly about a dozen hispanic guys are flying out of the uncompleted townhouses to bail their rigs off of the lot they will now be too terrified to park near, much less in.

The Queen comes back with a smile and a little extra oomph in her step, pleased with herself and the fear-up she just put on the naughty construction crew. And, unrepentant male that I am, I enjoyed the sight as much as she enjoyed providing it. You could almost see us both thinking:

"Here comes a HELL of a damn fine woman..."

Off the top of my head, I can't think of anything as pleasing as someone who is just as happy as can be at being themselves, right here, right now.

Yes, ma'am: a damn fine woman.