Category: Uncategorized

We can’t all be heroes.  Someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.
— Will Rogers

Today’s Writing Group prompt: Support:  Write about a time you’ve been on the sidelines cheering for somebody else, literally or figuratively.

When I was in middle school, there was literally nothing I wanted more than to be a cheerleader.  In my mind, cheerleaders were IT: cute, smart, popular, beloved by everyone.  I tried out every year and never made it.  The spots all went to the girls who’d done gymnastics their whole lives and could tumble.

When it came time to try out for the Junior Varsity squad – for 9th and 10th graders – at the end of my 8th grade year, I signed up, of course.  We had a week of practice at the high school, learning a cheer and refining our jumps.  I was so, so nervous.  You had to be “on” from the time you ran into the gym before the judges until the time you cleared the doors on the way out.  As I was running out of the gym, something in me knew I hadn’t been good enough, and all of a sudden something possessed me and I did a running roundoff, startling my try-out mate.  She was all, “Uh, I did not know you were going to do that.”

I remember very clearly a few days later, sitting in 8th grade Spanish class at the end of the day when the afternoon announcements came on.  They announced who’d been selected for the JV squad, alphabetically.  My last name was at the end of alphabet, and my stomach was in knots, just waiting.  In a turn no one could have seen coming, the principal’s assistant called my name.  My face turned bright red, my classmates laughed, my teacher congratulated me.  I’d done it.  I was one of the chosen ones, and I’d beaten out several rising 10th graders who’d been cheering their whole lives.

It wasn’t until summer practices that I learned that there was a rule: the squad had to be made up of 7 10th graders and 7 9th graders – and only 7 of us had tried out.  I’d won by default, not talent.  Never mind.  They couldn’t take it away from me, even if they thought I didn’t deserve it, so long as I worked hard.  And I did.  I never missed a summer practice, I followed all the rules, and I never earned any demerits.  The first time I got to wear my uniform at school on a JV football game day was, I thought, the most exciting day of my life.  It was also pretty cool that I got to cheer for my brother, the starting center for the JV team.

In late September of that year, I fell off some bleachers (in a noncheering-related incident) and tore all the ligaments in my right ankle.  I had to wear a walking cast for, I think, 6 weeks, which meant no cheering.  I was devastated.  I’d finally gotten the one thing I’d wanted so badly and then couldn’t participate.  They still let me wear my uniform on game days, and I still went to the games, but I had to sit in the bleachers.  I still remember, to this day, when a classmate came up to me in the bleachers, saw my uniform, and said, “Are you like an alternate or something?”  I was crushed.  An alternate?  Bitch, please.  After that, I basically insisted that they let me be down on the field, cast be damned.  I wouldn’t jump, I promised.  (I totally jumped.  Didn’t hurt in the least, but it freaked people the fuck out.  One guy came up to me after a pep rally and told me I was a bad-ass.)

After basketball season, there was no cheering left to do, so I played softball in the spring.  I tried out for cheerleading again for my sophomore year, but they’d changed the rules and the next year’s squad only had two 10th graders, neither of which was me.  So I played tennis, then basketball, then the lead in the spring musical.

Then it was time to try out for the Varsity squad.  I was chosen second alternate.  That meant I had to come to all the practices in the summer, learn all the cheers and dances, and be prepared in case someone dropped out, but I didn’t get a uniform (or pom-poms – and only the Varsity girls got pom-poms, so I totally missed out), and wouldn’t get to dress on game days.  One girl quit pretty quickly  after the squad was announced, which meant I was bumped to first alternate.  I never missed a practice that summer, and lots of other girls did, but before a certain date, you couldn’t get demerits for missing, so those girls got to stay on the squad.  My dad, who never really wanted me to be a cheerleader to begin with, was really pissed on my behalf about that.  Something about demonstrating commitment and all that.  No one else ever quit, and I never got to cheer under the Friday night lights.

At the end of my junior year, sign ups went out for fall sports tryouts, including cheering.  My dad had already planned his sabbatical from his job as a college professor to do research in Spain from August to January, and my mom and I would have to go with him (well, my mom wanted to; I had to).  That meant no cheering tryouts for me.  I remember the coach, my sophomore English teacher, stopped me in the hall during sign-ups to ask why my name wasn’t on the list.  I told her I wouldn’t be there in the fall.  She seemed disappointed, and told me she knew how much cheering meant to me and had always appreciated my dedication and determination.  I guess that’s something.

When it comes up that I used to be a cheerleader, people are always shocked.  Maybe now it’s my because of my weight, but it used to be because, they said, I don’t seem like the cheerleader “type.”  And I guess maybe that’s true – I’m not especially peppy, and my hair has never had that trademark cheerleader ponytail bounce (see Lyla Garrity for reference), and I don’t particularly care to wear the same thing as 13 other girls once a week.  But I loved, wholeheartedly and unreservedly, the season I spent as a cheerleader.

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
— from A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf

Today’s Writing Group prompt: Write about your ideal writing space. Where would it be? How would you furnish it? What would you surround yourself with?

When I think of the “ideal” writing space, in my mind’s eye, I see a cozy cabin in the woods, with a window overlooking a lake.  I see a window seat with comfy pillows and curtains you could pull for privacy.  I see nearly every one of these nooks I’ve pinned on Pinterest.

The truth is, though, that it is uncomfortable for me to write in spaces like that.  I need a desk and a good chair; I don’t buy for a second that Carrie Bradshaw wrote all those columns splayed out on her belly in bed.  Think of the back pain!

My current set up is pretty good, if unfinished.  Our office has a brick fireplace and french doors that look out to the yard,  and there’s no TV in here.  I like my desk well enough, and the bookshelf to my right puts my quote books within arm’s reach.  I’ve got ambient lighting so I don’t have to depend on overhead light, which I hate.  I still need to hang art and pictures on the main walls and quotes for inspiration on the wall between the shelves of my desk, just for me, but it’s coming along.  The only thing I really need to fix is my chair.  It was fine when I bought it – a relatively inexpensive rolling chair from Ikea – and it’s held up well, but I have come to realize that it’s not quite right.  So I’m on the lookout for something more comfortable.

It’s funny to me that I seem to think with exactly the right pieces in place, I’ll be able to write regularly, magically.  As if I couldn’t do that now if it were truly imperative to me to write.

Hmf. I suppose you’ll take up flying next, like that fellow in Metropolis.
— Alfred, in Batman: Year One, by Frank Miller.

Dear Person Who Found My Blog by Searching “I don’t know how to Photoshop Batman,”

Me neither, Robin.

Love,

Mel

‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.
— Juliet, in Hamlet (Act II, Scene II), by William Shakespeare*

Today’s Writing Group prompt: Write about your name. What does it mean to you? What do you think it means to others? If you could change it, would you? To what?

This is kind of funny.  My name, Melanie, means “dark one” or “clad in black.”  When I first learned this, I was probably 10 or 11.  I got so pissed.  “Dark one?”  My brother’s name, Nathaniel, means “gift from God.”  What the actual fuck? I was totally put out about this in a way that only an 11-year-old can be.  Now I don’t care, of course.  Although I like this bit, which I just discovered: “[Melanie] was the name of a Roman saint who gave all her wealth to charity in the 5th century. Her grandmother was also a saint with the same name.” Since my middle name is my Mimi‘s name, Diane, I dig this.  Also, I’m big in Austria.

In high school, I only knew one other Melanie.  She was not that awesome (and I say that not because I am so awesome, but because she ended up marrying a friend of mine long after high school – a friend who did not go to school with us to know better – and seriously fucked him up.  They’re divorced now.).  Even now, I don’t personally know any other Melanies, and I like it that way.  There aren’t even that many famous people named Melanie.  Melanie Griffith, of course.  Both Spice Girls named Mel.  Melanie Lynskey (“You have a baby!  In a bar!”).  Apparently I also missed my calling as an Olympian.

Somewhere I have a piece of paper on which my biological mother (supposedly) doodled various names while she was pregnant with me.  I can’t remember what’s on there, but I think Melissa, for sure.  I know my dad once told me that there was a time he wanted to name me Rhiannon, after the Fleetwood Mac song (“And then she is the darkness”).  I think I might have dodged a bullet, although I love the idea of being named after a song.

Would I ever change my name?  No.  I had enough angst over changing my last name when I got married.  So much so that I actually legally adopted my maiden name as my middle name (I pass it off as a Southern thing, but really, I couldn’t bear to part with my father’s name).  I can’t imagine changing my first name; it’s making me shudder to think about it.  Except for people at work, no one really calls me Melanie, though.  Nearly everyone calls me Mel.  My niece and nephew call me Mel-mel (at least for a little while longer; I don’t think I’m going to be able to handle it when they stop).  Mimi calls me Melly.  My dad often calls me Begonia (I . . . don’t know, but I love it).  David calls me baby.  They all fit, and I wouldn’t change any of them.

* As if there could be any other quote to start this post.

Some people remember the first time
Some can’t forget the last
Some just select what they want to
from the past
— Mary Chapin Carpenter, Come On Come On

Today’s Writing Group prompt: Write about Memory.  Something you have experienced that you wish you remembered in greater or more clear detail?  Something that makes you doubt your own memory of an event as accurate?  Something you’d prefer to forget? Memory.

We got this prompt a couple of days ago and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.  There are lots of things I wish I remembered better; I envy my older brother’s better memory of events that happened when we were young; and there are a few things I wish I could forget.  But what I was thinking about most with respect to memory is music.

In my younger years – high school, college, shortly after – I fancied myself a bit of a poet.  My “early” work stinks, straight up.  But one of the last poems I wrote, in April 1999, goes like this:

Just Music
The thing about a song
is that it’s just music
until —
until it attaches itself to you
and becomes yours.

Which is not to say
that it never becomes anyone else’s,
only that it will never be
anyone else’s
in quite the same way
that it is yours.

And each time you hear it,
you are reminded
of how it became yours —
how a boy you loved
once told you that this song
made him cry.

And how you found that admission
so inexplicably special
that this song,
about the power of first love,
has since been, is,
and forever will be,
for you at least,
connected to that boy
(now a man, whom you still love)
in a way
that’s almost enough
to break your heart
in the first two measures.

I really love that.  I’ve been surrounded by music my whole life (well, my whole life up until almost 11 years ago), and so there are certain songs that I only need to hear the opening notes of before I’m spun back into the past, tumbling down a rabbit hole of remembrance and nostalgia.  Like so:

All For You, by Sister Hazel: This is The Power Hour song, according to my brother, Nate.  When he and Andre were roommates and we’d have get-togethers at their apartment, this song in the CD player meant you got your shot glass and beer ready.  The single opening guitar chord never fails to put me back in that place.

Everything I Own, by ‘NSYNC: My best friend Aimee and I were unabashed ‘NSYNC fans in the late ’90s and early 2000s.  This song, off their debut album, is a remake of a Bread song (which I’ve never heard; the only Bread song I know is “If”) and was never released as a single.  It is amazing, though.  The best part?  Lance Bass – Aimee’s fave, who never, ever got to sing lead – gets a spoken word interlude: “You know, baby, my love for you will always stay true. That’s right, [chuckle], ’cause there is no me without you.”  Aimee and I would listen to the CD driving around Richmond and whenever this song came up, always, without fail, we’d speak Lance’s part together, chuckle and all, and turn and point at each other on “without you.”  And then we’d crack up.  Whenever I hear this song now, I can see us, shiny and happy in our early 20s, tooling around town without a care in the world.

Mr. Jones, by The Counting Crows: This album came out my freshman year in college and this song was everywhere.  When I studied in Spain my junior year, they played it in a club one night.  I remember so clearly standing on the steps up to the DJ’s booth singing my heart out and locking eyes with a Spanish guy 20 feet away also singing his heart out – he smiled the biggest smile and gave me a thumbs up, like “I can’t believe you know this song, too!”

All Along the Watchtower, by Jimi Hendrix: I lost my hearing in April 2002.  When I visited my parents the Christmas before, my dad called me downstairs one night after my mom had gone to bed (I think Nate must not have been there yet).  He put a tape in the stereo and pushed play.  It was a recording of him playing guitar and singing this song.  I’m so lucky that he shared that with me when he did.

Bed of Roses, by Bon Jovi: In college, I had two best friends, both named Jess.  Big Jess (who was 6’1″) was in my a cappella group, which is how we became friends.  Little Jess and Big Jess were best friends from home and roommates at school.  Little Jess always felt a little intimidated when we would go to karaoke because Big Jess and I would get up over and over and sing our hearts out because we knew what we had.  Little Jess always thought she sucked – she never sang in groups or anything, although she loved music – so she’d never sing with us.  Once I went home with them over a break and we were at a bar and this song came on.  Big Jess and I started singing along in harmony, just at our table, and all of a sudden, Little Jess joined in, finding a harmony right in the middle.  And she was perfect.  I’ll never forget that.

The Hard Way, by Mary Chapin Carpenter: When I was sixteen, I was driving with my mom in the car when this song came on the radio.  After it played a bit, she said, “I like this arrangement.”  I laughed and said, “I bet you do.  I’d like a chauffeur, too.”  Turns out she meant the musical arrangement!

These Are Days, by The 10,000 Maniacs: Big Jess and I dueted on this for our a cappella group in college.  Somewhere, there’s a VHS tape of one of our performances.  I’m nearly positive that, if you watched it, you’d see at the end this goofy little dance we always did because we didn’t really know what to do with ourselves after the words were done but the music was still going.  I miss my girl.

As for the song the poem’s about?  Maybe J knows.

You see what’s missing from this list, right?  There’s no song that reminds me of David.  I guess that’s not entirely true.  I mean, we danced our first dance to I Could Not Ask for More, by Edwin McCain, and I have lovely memories of that.  But David and I don’t really share music, since he’s only ever known me since I lost my hearing.  So we picked our wedding song not because it’s something special to us, or because it’s “our song,” – we don’t have one.  We picked it because it’s beautiful and has sweet lyrics (the runner up was When You Say Nothing at All, by Allison Krauss).  As much as I love that song, and as happy as it makes me to hear it when it comes up on my iPod, it’s not really the same as the other kinds of memories that music brings me.  There aren’t moments of our relationship that are defined by music the way so many of my pre-2002 moments are.  We keep our memories in pictures and trinkets, not music.