Happy Birthday to Tom Lehrer!

Radio interview with Tom Lehrer -- only available for the next few days.    30 minutes.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01rqb1w

ahahahahaha!

Shatner and "The Gorn" re-enact their fight.      Priceless.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4hnBp7x2QAE

excerpt from a chat with mom :)

me:   [name redacted, a close friend] will visit in a few weeks.
mom: a few weeks?  does her husband know?   ok did you try that long before?
me:  try what?
mom: you might grow together.
mom:  to stay together a few weeks.
me:  we are good friends already.  no, in a few weeks she is coming for a week.
me: ....
me:  are you worried she and i will fall in love and she will leave her husband?
mom: yes hahahaha
me: it won't happen.  she is happy with her marriage.  you are projecting ha ha
me:  you think everyone would be happier without a husband.
mom: hahahahhaa

memory lane meme, seen from dragonfly and killabeez

Killa gave me "15"

I lived in Los Angeles.   We had moved there when I was just turning 13.  I still hadn't adjusted, though my lungs were finally settling down from smog shock. I was pretty stressed from the move away from Delaware, from my friends and our home there, especially the sugar maple out front, and the climbing roses in the backyard.   I took refuge in reading a LOT of science fiction.   I was starting to make new, good friends, though.   2 of them are still friends today. 

I drove a driver's ed simulator. *s*

I was in a relationship with no one, but I pined about my creative writing teacher a lot.   He taught me a lot, but  changed my perspective the most during one, fraught conversation.  I had gone to him in his other role as school counselor to "try to figure out if it was my father or my sister's fault" in a major fight they had had the night before.  His question to me, "why does it have to be someone's fault?"  turned my world on its axis.  I actually felt things... tilt.   At my bewildered stare, he elaborated:  "Sometimes it isn't anybody's fault.  Everyone is doing the best they can, and sometimes it just doesn't work."  I think my whole attitude about how to be a psychologist was born right there, in that conversation.

I feared not being able to heal my family.  I was also terrified of two years coming up:  the year I would be 16, and the year I would be 19.  Those were the ages my mother and father were, respectively, when they were in concentration camps.  Though it wasn't in words until later, I wrestled with believing I had a right to a life so much freer of suffering than what they experienced.

I worked to get good grades, and to make new friends, and to figure out who I was.  It was also the year I got myself into therapy, and started on the journey of believing it actually was okay to have my own, beautiful, happy life.

I wanted to be a doctor, a journalist, a scientist, a telepath.   Poetry and psychologist weren't quite on the horizon yet.

Want to meme? Tell me how old you are, and I'll pick a random age for you to remember.