Recently in Re(d)rospective Category
As promised last night, here's the story:
It was a mid-winter's night when I was about 14 years old. The Pretoria Show (sort of like the US equivalent of a State Fair combined with a trade show) which ran for a couple of weeks every year, was in full swing.
I got to
hang out there almost every night during that time, because my mom was working
for a sewing machine company and running their stall at the show. The show hours
were brutally long – from early morning until about 10 at night – so I had no choice but
to tag along, help out and sometimes also to explore the enormous show grounds on
my own. There were several massive exhibition halls, tents, fields (where equestrian shows, pop concerts and other outdoorsy type things were held, with pavilions for
spectators) and of course, the large amusement park with the roller coasters, merry-go-rounds and all the other rides.
The sprawling show grounds are located in the western part of the city. Right around
that same time, girls my age had been disappearing in that very area of town;
vanishing without a trace. Sometime after this particular night, the man who had been identified as the kidnapper shot himself and his lover (who happened to be the aunt of one
of the kidnapped girls) while being chased by police. None of the kidnapped girls
were ever seen again, nor were any remains ever found to give their distraught
families closure.
Back to the
Pretoria Show: so on that particular night, I must’ve been wandering around
again on my own for ages. Eventually, I saw a poster advertising some sort of magic show. Intrigued (and probably somewhat chilled too from being outside), I
decided to enter the theatre and see what it was about.
I don’t
remember many details surrounding this particular show, but I do remember that
I found it dead funny. The magician/hypnotist’s routine included the usual shtick of randomly pulling
rabbits from hats, and then eventually, pulling people from the audience and hypnotising them. He made grown men crow like roosters and dignified
ladies act like little girls. The audience (myself included) was screaming with
laughter.
When the
show ended, I followed the rest of the audience out into the now-almost
deserted show grounds. I still remember telling the woman next to me that the
show must’ve run overtime, because all the other stalls and halls seemed to
have already been closed down for the evening. I was a tiny bit alarmed that my
parents would possibly be worried, but was soon distracted from that thought when I heard
the sound of a helicopter and saw a blindingly bright search light.
I looked up. It was a yellow South African Police helicopter and it was flying low across the grounds, sweeping the search
light back and forth. We shielded our faces as the chopper flew over
us, kicking up a gust of wind and a swirl of dust.
Moving
towards the gates, we rounded a corner and suddenly I saw a few hundred police
officers. And police dogs! The dog lover in me squealed with delight: “Oh, look
at all those gorgeous Alsations!” I remember telling the lady who was still
walking next to me.
I wondered
aloud what on earth was going on, what they were all doing there, when suddenly,
from a distance, I glimpsed someone vaguely familiar standing in the middle of
this massive crowd of cops and canines. When we moved closer, the figures
became increasingly clearer and even more familiar. The recognition finally dawned and I told the woman next to me, with some amazement and not a bit of excitement: “That’s my parents! And oh… wait, is my mom CRYING?”
It turns
out that all those cops (almost every single one who was employed by the Pretoria City Police
Department at that time) and that helicopter? They had been searching for ME! As I had
suspected when we left the theatre, the magic show had indeed run
overtime… by about an hour! So knowing that I fit the profile of the kidnapped girls,
my frantic parents immediately called for help when I didn’t appear at closing
time, as I had dutifully done every single night until then.
Even though
I had done nothing wrong and it wasn’t actually my fault, I was in so so SO much
trouble, it wasn’t even funny. Not with the cops, understand – they were just
happy that the case of one “missing girl” had for once just been a
misunderstanding, and that it had a happy outcome. I could’ve handled trouble
with the cops, I think. No, it was far worse: I was in seriously hot water with
my parents.
They were certainly
NOT happy. Especially not my dad. He was FURIOUS. In fact, technically, I
believe I am probably still grounded. That’s what “you'll NEVER EVER EVERRR leave your room EVER AGAIN, young lady, except for school and church” means, after
all, right?
So, that then concludes the true story of how a whole city’s entire police force was once looking for me.
*Bows*
This post is dedicated to cat person LB and his own two feline guardians, Oubaas and Vlooi.
I adore all animals - some from a respectful distance - but when it comes to dogs and cats, I am firmly and unabashedly in the canine camp.
However, more
than a decade ago, there was a moggie that marched its way into my
heart with great chivalry. At the time, I was living in the United States and working as a live-in
Au Pair for a family with three adorable girls. The parents were unhappily
married though, so whenever they were home, the atmosphere in the house became
almost unbearably thick with tension. Even when they were not audibly fighting
with each other, the very air was coiled tight with the unspoken resentment between
them – almost like the heavy humidity that chokes the air before a violent
thunderstorm during summer.
At night, when
I wasn’t required to babysit, I jumped into the nanny car and escaped for a few
blissful hours. The house was one of about six identical McMansions that were grouped
together in a small development in suburban D.C. The family I lived with had no
pets – the mother hated animals. Having grown up with dogs around, I
severely missed an animal presence in my life. Alas, my only “fix” was the black and white
cat I sometimes glimpsed walking around outside the house across the way.
One night, not long after I began working and living there, I returned from one of my nightly excursions. I parked the car in its designated spot next to
the house and, when I opened the door, that same black and white cat was right there,
at the car door. “Oh, hey!” With some surprise, I greeted it and reached out to
touch it, only to have it jump away. “Okay, okay,” I said and let it be. It
didn’t run away though. Instead, it patiently waited for me to lock the car
doors and when I walked around to the front door, it walked alongside me, every
step of the way.
When I got
to the front door, I kind of expected it to try and sneak into the house with
me, but it didn’t. It merely waited for me to unlock the door, let myself in,
and then I watched it through the window as it bounded straight back home.
This became
a nightly occurrence, no matter whether it rained, snowed, sleeted, or was too
hot to move. Every night, as soon as I parked at home, the cat would be there, poised
to fulfill its obligation. On nights when I tallied too long, it jumped onto
the hood of the car and impatiently pawed the windshield until I got out, before
proceeding to walk me to the front door. It never allowed me to touch it; it
never tried getting into the house with me. It simply walked me up to the front
door (up some steps), and waited for me to get safely inside, before turning
around and walking straight back to its own family’s house across the way.
No one
believed me until my mom and my then-boyfriend witnessed it with their own eyes
when they dropped me back home. The fact that I came home with others, in
different cars, didn’t deter the cat. Nor was it thrown for a loop by the fact
that I was sometimes dropped off in different places around the house. As long
as I was in the car, my little feline bodyguard was there, waiting to walk me
to the door… It was flabbergasting.
This went
on for the entire year I stayed there. It became a highlight of my day/night
during a time that I was deeply depressed. I never learned the cat’s name, but
I believe that it sensed how incredibly unhappy I was, which is why it took it
upon itself to become my furry little guardian.
Needless to
say, this self-proclaimed dog person was utterly charmed. I’ll never forget what
that kitty did for me, way back then. With the simple act of walking me to the
front door, it ushered me through a very bleak time in my life.
Happy seventh(!) birthday, blog! This milestone is significant, because it is officially the longest "relationship" I've ever had with anyone or anything other than family, some friends and dogs.
Seven years is a loooong time in blog years. (I think it is the same amount as it would be in dog years.) No wonder I feel so prematurely aged! This means I'm now a 'veteran' blogger.
My three imaginary readers wanted to know what the secret is to becoming a lasting blogger. I told them the truth: I have no idea.
They didn't seem pleased with my brutal honesty and ignorance, so I've come up with the following "Steps On How To Kinda Maintain A Blog For Seven Years".
- Pace yourself. Don't blog every day. Or every other day. Or even every other week. Try and put a post up every other month, if you're able. But don't force yourself! No need to overdo it and risk creative burn-out (a condition rumoured to be very real and very dangerous)! When you do feel the urge to blog (symptoms include but aren't limited to itchy fingers, sweaty palms, etc.) like a day or week after you've written a post, immediately turn off your computer and go have a cup of coffee. If you can't resist, then fine, write a blog post, but instead of pressing publish when you are done, save it in draft and never ever post it. In my case, this has not been difficult, because I have a natural talent for not posting and not writing. Also, there is no need for me to frequently foul up this gorgeous blog design with my clumsy sentences and sentences within sentences.
- Don't let your domain name/hosting expire. You can forget about your blog for most of the year, as long as you remember it again when it becomes time to renew your domain name and to pay your hosting fees. One of my imaginary readers was greatly distressed when it (imaginary readers are genderless) visited this blog on Friday only to be met with a "this site has been suspended due to neglectful owner who did not renew domain name" type of message. My Fairy Blog Mother, the one who originally hosted this Win-A-Blog contest which landed me this here site, swooped to the rescue. Lovely Emily not only paid the renewal fee for TWO YEARS, but she wants no payment in return. Nada. Zilch. How incredibly kind is she?!? I love her, even though I ought to smoulder with jealousy, because unlike me, she is a GORGEOUS, smoking hot redhead. Super brainy too. Life is very very unfair. (No link to her, because sadly she hasn't had a blog in years. That's because she is too busy having A Life.)
- Of course, the previous step about domain renewal and hosting becomes void if you have a freebie blog at blogger, or Wordpress, or My Digital Life (www.mydl.co.za) where all those things are included in the "free".
And that's it. Easy, really. In order to call yourself a blogger for a really really long time, like me; a blogger whose blog is so neglected that it isn't even part of the actual World Wide Web, but of the World Wide Cobweb (that dark and dusty and cob-webby corner of the Internet where all obscure sites cluster together and languish in infinite, virtual obscurity), whose blog has no actual readers and only three imaginary readers, whose blog has never bagged her a lucrative book-and-movie-deal combo? Then you should simply not blog all that often.
Image: Oh, and this is my sister's birthday cake from last year. She actually baked it herself. She DID bake my blog a cake for its sixth birthday a few months later. It did not look like this at all, but it was just as tasty. I was going to take a picture of it for the blog, but then I promptly suppressed the urge, and just ate it instead.
Happy birthday, blog!
But how many can remember the 10th of September 2001? Do you remember where you were or what you were doing on THAT day?
Being an elephant (in built, sadly, not necessarily in memory), I do.
It's not too much of a stretch though, because back then my days were quite monotonous with very little variation in my routine. Depression had already shrunk my world and confined me to the tiny Baltimore row-house I was living in at the time. But my mental state wasn't too awful just then. I had emerged from a horrible few years and was actually on a bit of an upswing.
My mom was still living nearby in suburban D.C., so I saw her every Sunday because it was her only day off. Spent most Saturdays with her as well. But since I was working from home, my weekdays were mostly spent indoors - no matter what the season. But I was working from home, and I was doing a job that I loved. I was starting to get extremely anxious though, because after about three years in the States, my mom was due to return to South Africa for good in less than a month's time (on October 1), and I was absolutely dreading that goodbye.
Despite my mom's pending departure and the separation anxiety, I was still doing okay. I had finally filed for the LIFE Act (a sort of amnesty act Clinton had passed right before he left office, so his idiotic xenophobic cowboy of a successor couldn't actually do anything about it) a few months before, so for the first time since arriving in the States I had genuine hope of at last becoming legal. I was writing a weekly column for a South African website... my first foray into online media. (My blog was not even glimmering on the horizon yet.) And I had an unusual job videotaping and transcribing several local television news broadcasts for a major 'electronic clipping service' in D.C. and then e-mailing them the transcripts. Isn't that great? Only in America will they actually pay you to stay at home and watch TV!
I'll never forget that last Sunday before 9/11 either. My birthday had been less than two weeks before, and an ex boyfriend had phoned me from abroad to say happy birthday. (Don't be too impressed by that. He didn't remember because he was still pining for me. His is on the same day, so until the day he forgets his own, he isn't very likely to forget mine.) My mom and my former sweetheart, the American boy, were at this cosy French café for Sunday brunch. We were sitting inside and I told them what Birthday Buddy had said to me during the birthday phone call. He had asked me if I was sure about following through with my Green Card quest. Then he said that he'd had this horrible and - we didn't yet know, but eerily prophetic - dream. In it, he was on an international flight. Suddenly hijackers got up and asked every passenger with an American passport to stand up. When they did, the hijackers proceeded to execute them.
How strange and chilling is that?
So on that Sunday, I was telling my mom and the Yankee boy about Birthday Buddy's awful dream and how he thought it was indicative of the world's surging hatred for the US and especially the Bush Administration. For a while that day, our conversation was mostly about the odd dream and global politics.
On Monday, the 10th, I slept until about noon, as usual. I only started taping and working on the news at 5pm (sometimes I took on one or two of the noon broadcasts for extra money when they needed someone, but on that day I didn't) and since my editor at the SA website had gotten married that weekend and was off to the Caribbean on honeymoon, I had no column due. The Yank's birthday was going to be the next day (yes, his birthday is on the 11th), so for a while I fantasised about perhaps baking him a cake, but promptly dropped the idea, since the risk was simply too big that such a gesture from me would have caused him to die of utter shock - if not food poisoning.
That Monday was just as comfortably mundane as all my other Mondays; my time measured by whatever was on television. After a summer of reruns, a new season of Oprah had premiered just the week before, so I was watching the new show that day until 5pm, when I started taping my first news broadcast of the day. I always did the back-to-back news from 5 - 6pm and 6 - 7pm. I had a 10pm deadline to have the transcripts in by, so I usually started working on the 5pm show at 6pm, while taping the other show on the other television set.
Yank usually came home from the office at around 6 or 6:30pm. That evening was no different. He took care of dinner while I worked and then we ate together at around 8 while watching television. It was a lovely, normal night. We discussed going out for his birthday. He didn't know if I'd manage to be able to go out what with work, but I assured him that I would simply set the tapes for 11pm. (I had already cancelled my 5pm - 7pm shows as a surprise to him, to be able to go out to dinner.) Summer was still lingering in mild nights and gorgeously warm, dry days, and on television, the weatherman had promised that Tuesday would be an equally spectacular day - perfect for a birthday celebration out.
Later, after taping my 11pm shows, I remember watching Leno's Tonight Show monologue with the Yank. We both knew that I wouldn't be up in the morning to wish him happy birthday before he left for work at 7:30am, so like a good sport, he stayed up until just after midnight and went to sleep shortly after, while I started working my graveyard shift to get my transcripts in by my 2am deadline. After that, I was up 'til about 5, reading.
Later that morning, I was sleeping when the mayhem ensued in New York City and in D.C.. I remained in that blissfully unaware state until my mom somehow managed to get through the already-jammed mid-Atlantic networks to phone me awake at about 10am with the words: "Turn on the TV. The world has gone mad."
In a fog of sleepiness, confusion and shock, I did, just in time to see the South Tower of the World Trade Centre collapsing on live television in a plume of smoke, debris and fluttering bits of paper... It was 10:05am EDT on September 11, 2001.
Six years ago today I woke up in a tiny rowhouse in Hampden, a quirky neighbourhood in the city of Baltimore. On that day, instead of simply rolling over and falling asleep again – as was my usual habit – I actually got up, ran to the computer, logged on and squealed with disbelief and delight when I saw this.
When I entered Emily’s Win-A-Blog contest, I never in a million years thought that I even had a remote chance of winning it. For some time, I had been quietly following her blog (which is now, sadly, defunct, because the girl is leading an offline life brimming with fullness, love and success). When she announced the contest, I merely took a shot because it was a way of reaching out to her, this fellow redhead who I had come to admire so much, without seeming like a complete stalker.
I don’t think Emily is aware of this, but at the time of the contest (and for a long time before that), I had been gripped by an ongoing, soul-sapping depression. When I wrote my three entries for the contest, it was the first time I had done any writing or anything remotely productive in ages.
But something about her contest managed to reignite a bit of a spark in me. After a long stretch of barely existing in a fog of monotony and constant malaise, I desperately needed something to look forward to again. That contest became it for me. And when I miraculously won, it also gave me a reason to get out of bed again. I am honestly not exaggerating when I say that this blog has quite possibly saved my life.
Little did I know back then how blogging would not only help to slowly usher me back into the land of the living, but what a huge role it also eventually ended up playing in helping me to actually earn a living as well.
Yesterday, in an e-mail (that was only just a tiny bit less sappy and sentimental than this post) to Emily, I wrote: “By the way, can you believe that redsaid.net will be SIX years old tomorrow!? I can't believe how many career opportunities that blog has brought me. Thanks to it (and you!), I'm now making a living as a freelance writer in online media and I’m also actually being paid to blog! So yes, chicka, I'll be forever grateful to you and that Win-A-Blog contest of yours.”
Despite my horrible neglect of it, I still love this blog as much as that first day I saw it. I’m still crushing on Joelle’s gorgeous design. I am still thrilled whenever I receive a comment. (If it hasn’t abated after six years, I think it’s safe to assume that the novelty will probably never wear off.) I’m also beyond thrilled that some of you, who have been here since that first day, have stuck around and that you still bother to read and even comment on my infrequent ramblings.
I know that real writers always say that
they mostly write for themselves. But I am pretty sure that I would not have
bothered to keep this up (even as sporadically as I have been) without any of you.
So thank you very, very much.
P.S. Oh, and Dee? My blogging career would not be complete without me breaking yet more things in the template which made other somewhat important things disappear from the blog... Oh, and all my hot links seem to have changed from purple to bright blue!? So if you have a moment to spare, I would REALLY appreciate your help again please, oh Web Goddess Who Is Now A Qualified Mistress*! I PROMISE I will never ever try and tinker with your code EVER again! No, really. This time I mean it.
*She's a chick with a hot-off-the-printer Master's Degree, geddit?
“’Ello there. Eet ees
so nice to meet you.”
Her English was
fluent, but the unmistakable French accent elegantly, musically rolled from her
tongue. It filled me with immense joy, not merely at the prospect of having the
opportunity to practice my pathetic, near non-existent French, but also because
it prompted me to immediately – and mistakenly – assume that she, like me, also
hailed from the Mother Continent.
“D'où est-ce que tu viens?” I asked, just to be sure.
Her eyes widened with delighted surprise. “Tu parles français!”
“Non, non! Je ne parle pas français. I’m
South African!”I quickly explained, before she even had the opportunity to
enthusiastically launch into rapid-fire, French-as-a-first-language dialogue.
She seemed highly amused when I told her that I could not speak her language in
her language. “I can only say a few phrases. I’ve always adored the language
though and would love to speak it fluently one day.” Suddenly embarrassed, I
deflected the subject back to her. “So tell me, where are you from?”
The answer she gave me that day now haunts me. Over the past few weeks, thoughts of her and her family have dominated my mind. But on that particular day, more than a decade ago, it was just one of the many thrilling aspects about her.
Or you can
The Wish List (Because yes, she really does need more how-to books. Honestly!)
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