Quitters, Knitters, and Cane Toads

Sophia has quit many things over the years. Smoking. Drinking. Eating. Exercising. Eating Meat. Jobs. Men. Talking to Exes. Talking to Siblings. Therapy. Facebook. Writing this blog.

As you can see, she has also Quit Quitting some of these things. She is still a vegetarian, but no longer anorexic. She doesn't smoke, and seldom drinks. She is currently building up enough guilt to resume some punishing exercise regime in the near future, having quit her Martial Arts Experiment a few weeks ago (subject for another post). She no longer talks to any exes--the two main ones are certifiably insane--and she communicates with only one of her four siblings. She has quit Facebook numerous times.

Having quit and now un-quit this blog, she returns today with another scintillating report from the desolate hinterlands of Over Fifty America, a national subculture of serial quitters and recidivists.  Sophia loves the word "recidivism," btw. It has such a nice Penal System ring to it.

Quitting comes in many forms. It can be dramatic: "Your twisted idea of intimacy revolts me! I'm leaving you and taking the cats (dogs, jewelry, TV's) with me!" It can be anti-climactic: "Please forward my mail to this post office box in Perth, Australia. I will no longer be accepting phone calls, text messages, or posting insipid status updates." It can be gradual and almost imperceptible: "My goodness, it's been ten years since I had sex! How depressing." By the time most people are Over Fifty, they have quit and unquit so many things, it's hard to keep count. 

Sophia's husband Thor and son Percival have jumped on the Quitters bandwagon. Thor recently quit a job he hated and began his own business as a web developer. He's been scarily successful at it, although he works so much that Sophia wonders if she's she's going to have to add sex to the list of things she's quit doing. Thor is not averse to conjugal relations, but he works ten-hour days writing code and stuff like that, so he mostly just turns off his computer, walks down the hall, and falls asleep instantly.  Subject for another post, should Sophia decide to keep unquitting writing this blog.

The biggest change in Sophia's life is that she and Thor pulled Percival out of his alternative school in January, so she is now homeschooling him. Now, Sophia has always looked down on the whole crazy homeschooling movement. She has long suspected that not much learning goes on in these home "schools," since the parent/teacher is doubtless some raving ideologue who forces her kids to make dioramas of dinosaurs cavorting with people in biblical garb, while singing hymns and watching the 700 Club on TV.  In the left-wing homeschool, the kids are planting Peace Gardens and eating spelt lunches while they learn the Dangers of Genetically Modified Foods. Sophia has no truck with either of these oddball groups, but she is nonetheless homeschooling her kid.

How did this come about? Well you may ask. Thor's former job was as an administrator for Percival's alternative school. It wasn't his ideal job, but at the time, his other options were less attractive. So he took this job, which came with almost-free tuition for Percival to attend said school. Now Sophia was only keen on this school when Percival was in kindergarten. She loved the soft pastel walls of the classroom, the fuzzy rug for circle time, and the hand-carved wooden toys. Loved the rainbow-colored silk scarves that the kids used to play knights and pirates and princesses in jeopardy. Yep, it was a cool place for a five-year-old who didn't need to worry about learning anything but how to get along with other five-year-olds. Sophia doesn't believe in overly-academic preschools and kindergartens. She was not going to insist that Percival learn the Laws of Thermodynamics or Mandarin grammar before first grade.

That said, things began to get dicey the very next year. At the end of the first week of school, Sophia found Percival's weekly schedule stuffed into his lunch box, in between the browning apple slices and the cheese sandwich with only two bites missing. (Percival is not a big eater.) Anyway, his first grade week consisted of these subjects:

Painting
Knitting
Woodworking
Gardening
Music
German
Weird Folk Dances (okay, the "weird" is Sophia's editorial comment.)

Where, Sophia wondered, is Reading? Arithmetic? Social Studies? And who the hell needs to learn German? Sophia has lived in Germany, and everyone there speaks better English than many Americans. So she worried, but decided that maybe, since she's a tad overeducated herself, she ought to just lighten up on all this.

Which she did, for two years. When Percival came home after completing second grade and still couldn't read, she had had enough. She complained to the teacher about it, and Frau Birkenstock (not her real name) admitted that some kids at this school didn't read until fourth or fifth grade. Because they weren't Developmentally Ready. Sophia, for her part, was Developmentally Ready to kick some Alternative Educator Ass, because only kids in poverty-stricken third world countries remained illiterate at ten.

But Thor worked for this school, and so she couldn't say or do much of anything. She got out Percival's baby books, and some flash cards, and proceeded to teach him to read herself. He learned pretty fast, so clearly he was more than Developmentally Ready. All he lacked was, you know, a teacher.

Having conquered the reading issue, Sophia decided that Percival could probably move forward on his own, even in this school for addle-headed, non-vaccinating lefty flakes. Third grade added Old Testament Studies to his curriculum. Sophia assumed that these lessons did not include the many tales of rape, sodomy, and bloody divine vengeance that she remembered from her own readings of the OT.

Explanatory aside: Percival's (ex-)school is not religious. It's too diffuse and New-Agey to sustain any consistent theological narrative. The ideology, as far as Sophia can discern one, is somewhere between Enlightenment Humanism and Shopping for Sacred Truths. Kant meets Oprah. The program begins with the Old Testament in the third grade, then proceeds to teach the kids about other mythic systems in subsequent years. Fourth grade is Norse mythology, and later there is Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. Norse mythology, you ask? Well, it goes with the Germanic theme. The kids all wear horned helmets and sing Deutschland uber Alles as they knit.

Okay, not really.

Basically, this curriculum ensures that when the ill-educated children in Percival's class grow up and are unable to find work anywhere except at the local food co-op, they will have a multitude of deities to choose from in bewailing their hopeless, impoverished state. Perhaps Odin will intervene, and get them a job at Siemens.

Well, anyway. When Sophia went to look at Percival's work during the required third grade parent meeting, she was appalled to see that he could neither draw a good Moses, nor write a coherent English sentence. This school didn't believe in teaching spelling until fourth grade. About the time most of the kids were finally learning to read, presumably. The teacher suggested that Percival might need Occupational Therapy, because his writing was so bad.

The school does not believe in paper with lines, by the way. No, lined paper would inhibit the free-spiritness of the Learning Adventure. So Percival's ill-written, phonetically-spelled sentences slanted off the page, like muddy water running downhill.

Moreover, Percival could barely add and subtract. Multiplication was still a mystery. Sophia's rage at this stupid school was, however, multiplying exponentially. She began to look around for another school. And she found one, a very nice Montessori near her home. Small classes, collaborative learning, and no horned helmets or knitting needles anywhere. So she signed him up, and he went for a visit.

Now Sophia must do a little maternal bragging. Although Percival isn't great at math, and his writing slants downstream, he is incredibly handsome, charming, and just plain sweet. He loves babies. He's polite. And did Sophia mention good-looking? He's tall and athletic, with perfectly symmetrical features and the most gorgeous gray-green eyes. Someday he will be a veritable chick magnet, and Sophia will have to stand between him and the hordes of over-made-up, under-dressed little tarts that will be lining up on the doorstep to Ruin His Life.

But fortunately, that's a few years off. 

Anyway, because he's so wonderful, the school admitted him. Despite the fact that he was from one to two years BEHIND IN EVERY SUBJECT. Now Percival isn't dumb. He can tell you all about the Peloponnesian War, which, as the spell-check indicates, Sophia can't even spell. He was admitted on the condition that he have two hours of tutoring every day after school to catch up. Two hours. Aside from the fact that this was going to make Percival hate his new school, it was going to cost Sophia and Thor about 3 grand a month, on top of the already not-cheap tuition.

And thus, the homeschooling began.  Percival needs to do two years' work in about eight months, so he'll be ready for the new school in September. Sophia is pushing him a bit. She is also learning about all kinds of stuff she either forgot, or never knew. Did you know homing pigeons can see the Earth's magnetic field? That Cane Toads are ruining Australia's ecosystem? Sophia didn't either. Do you remember how boring it was learning the Parts of Speech? Sophia had also forgotten this.  Did you know that sloppy, downstream handwriting improves dramatically with the use of lined paper? Sophia suspected this, but was pleased to find her hunch vindicated.  And so it goes.

This is one job, by the way, that Sophia will not be quitting...until Spetember, when she will gratefully hand Percival's education off to the professionals.

Next: Sophia reaches her Martial Arts apex, gets her Green Belt, and quits instantly.

Anathema Hindenburg, or, Why Sophia Hates Facebook

Many, many blog post ideas have flitted through Sophia's sieve-like Over Fifty brain during the last month, but none of them stayed around long enough to turn into a bonafide post. This one was begun a few weeks ago, and finally finished today.  Clearly this is a harbinger of unfinished projects to come.  Well, onward.

Sophia, unlike most people, does not have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. She unequivocally hates it, and would love to deactivate her account permanently.  She actually did do that last winter, but her husband Thor more or less forced (nagged) her into returning.  You see, Thor and Sophia have a web design/marketing firm. Part of this business is something called Social Media Marketing, the Next Big Thing in advertising.  Thor has hired a Younger Hipper Person to manage this aspect of the business, but Sophia has to stay on Fakebook--oops, she means Facebook--to monitor this YHP's efforts.

There are many reasons for Sophia to hate Facebook. First, she has very few friends (see earlier post). According to various journalistic sources, the average number of FB friends is about 120. Sophia has 40, and has apparently reached critical mass, for she can't think of a single other person to Friend.  Here's how they break down:

husband: 1
first cousins:  9
second cousins: 2
person married to second cousin: 1
person married to first cousin: 1
graduate school acquaintances:  3
aunts: 1
high school ex-friends:  3
ex-boyfriends: 1
local park:  1
former professional colleagues: 2
mom: 1
brothers:  2
brother's girlfriend/partner: 1
people from her town, one of whom actively dislikes her:  5
stranger who friended her after she left a comment on a Golden Retriever Foundation post: 1
fellow mom/friend who lives Back East: 1
fellow blogger:  1
Percival's former English nanny: 1
imaginary person invented to test online re-invention possibilities: 1
cousin's (now deceased) cat: 1

Sophia is pretty sure one's hoard of Fake(book) Friends is inversely proportional to one's age. People in their twenties have thousands. People in their thirties and forties have hundreds. People in their fifties (usually) have around a hundred. People in their sixties and seventies have only a few dozen. In short, Sophia has the Friend List of a much older woman.  Especially if you remove the names of imaginary, non-human, and deceased "friends."

When she first joined FB, it was kind of exciting. Owing to Severe Dysfunction in her father's birth family, she missed out knowing her many first cousins, who live on the West Coast and are mostly female. So this opened up a whole new world of girlfriend possibilities. However, it soon became apparent that, relative to these cool California Girls, Sophia is a weird intellectual nerd--not a fun, Sex-in-the-City type with a lot of stylish shoes and, well, friends. Over time, her posts and pictures garnered fewer and fewer effusive comments, or comments of any kind. As a result, she posted less and less, finally limiting herself to newspaper articles she found interesting, and status updates on celestial happenings, such as meteor showers.

No one else shared her interest in either intra-galactic doings or the Quirky News of the World, however. Not even her cousin's (now dead) cat. So she quit posting those, too, and resigned herself to being a Facebook Wallflower. A complete and utter Social Network Failure.

Do not weep for Sophia. She considers this Facebook Fail to be a mark of honor. Perhaps this is sour grapes, but if so, she remains in denial about it. She doesn't wish she had been Homecoming Queen, or Head Cheerleader, or Class President. And she seriously doubts that having 1,239 "friends," like one of her younger cousins, would make her a happier or more emotionally balanced person.

But okay, it would maybe be fun to find out. Well, never mind. Not gonna happen. 

In any case, she sees no point in posting status updates about what she made for dinner last night, or how much she hates Lady Gaga/Sarah Palin/Glenn Beck/Lindsay Lohan, or how cool her life is. Her life is pretty cool, but since most of the people on her Friend List are childless, she suspects that cute pix of Percival and Zeus (the dog) seem like bourgeois bragging. Likewise pictures of her hunky 10-years-younger hubby. And since she can't afford to take fancy vacations at the moment, all photos tend to have a backyard backdrop, which makes her look like a provincial plebe.

For the record, Sophia has traveled quite enough, thank you. Once she takes Percival to Europe, she's done with passports. Unless there's a military coup or something, she will live out her remaining days in her native land, where all the signs, jokes, and insults are familiar and comprehensible.

Facebook Undead

Anyway, just as Sophia had resigned herself to using this obnoxious site only for business, something happened. Anathema Hindenberg returned to haunt her. Anathema Hindenburg was once Lorraine Hindenburg, a former professional colleague of Sophia's in her now-defunct life as an academic. Lorraine was, in Sophia's field, a rara avis--a hot-looking professor with tenure.  Sophia admired her, not for her leather miniskirts or toned arms--okay, maybe the latter, a bit--but for her brilliance.  For a time, Lorraine was everything Sophia wanted to be--smart, stylish, and a fabulous writer of Arcane Academic Drivel.

Lorraine had been born with absolutely no sense of humor, however. She wanted to be a Belle Dame Sans Merci, which is to say, an unattainable, brilliant beauty admired from afar by men and women alike. Sophia declined to worship at her shrine--although she expressed her admiration in print. This, apparently, was not enough for Lorraine's attention-starved psyche. She would accept nothing less than full-on sycophancy.

Then, Sophia wrote a book. The book made a pretty Big Impression, and Lorraine was pushed out of the limelight. When time came for Sophia's tenure decision, Lorraine wrote a nasty, horrid letter for her tenure file. It was so nasty that even Sophia's professional enemies realized it was over the top, and declined to make much of it. Sophia's career crashed and burned anyway, but she made sure a few gossipy women got copies of Lorraine's poison pen letter. It made Lorraine look like the jealous harpy she was/is.  It was petty of Sophia to publicize this terrible rant, but it was the only revenge she had.

A year or two later, Lorraine changed her first name to a foreign-sounding weird moniker (that's the first time Sophia has ever used the word "moniker") that apparently means "forest dweller" in Sanskrit. For real. Sophia will call her "Anathema" here, because her new name begins with A, and she is anathema to Sophia. She's also completely off her rocker, as so often happens to humorless people when they fall gracelessly into late middle age. Sophia's evidence for this diagnosis is irrefutable: if you look at Anathema Hindenburg's Facebook page, she lists all her degrees and accomplishments. Professor of Medieval Literature, holder of endowed chair at California Party U. And the fact that she's now a certified Psychoanalyst. Yes, that's right. Sometime after trying to wreck Sophia's career, Lorraine/Anathema decided that her true calling was as a Healer of Psychic Wounds.

Oh, and her last name isn't Hindenburg. It does end in "burg," and have three syllables. But when Sophia thinks of her, she can't help but remember the immortal cover of the first Led Zeppelin album--which is also a pretty good metaphor for Sophia's academic career.

Oh, the humanity.

Anathema reappeared on Fakebook via a former colleague of Sophia's, one of her few remaining academic acquaintances. This woman, a professor at a big southern university, apparently friended Anathema, or vice versa--it doesn't matter. The point is, Anathema materialized in Sophia's tiny little Fakebook kingdom without Sophia's permission. Prior to this, Sophia liked to imagine that Anathema was withering away in a madhouse somewhere, psychically riven with guilt. Or perhaps working at a diner outside of Barstow, or Durango, having Taken to Drink around 2002. Or maybe languishing in a rooming house, her beauty long since savaged by age, disappointment, and shame.  Sophia imagined children mocking the ugly, aged Anathema as she hobbled into her 1999 Ford Fiesta, her short hair now iron gray and spiky, like oiled cotton candy.  In some of these fantasies Anathema has gained about sixty pounds, and her once-toned arms now hang like fleshy batwings. Maybe she's got an old tattoo of a rose, or a Celtic interlace design, but now it's all stretched out and faded so that it kind of loops under those fat, rubbery arms...

Can you see Sophia's Sicilian showing?  Do not assume that, had she the power to make any of this real, she would have failed to use it. Oh, no. She is no other-cheek-turner. Were she endowed with some magical ability to visit ill on her enemies from afar, she would revel in it.

Alas, Facebook ruined all these cathartic, healing fantasies. Anathema lives on, and has many more friends than Sophia.  She is still successful, and even if she's barking mad, she's got tenure, so there's nothing anyone can do about it.

Sigh.

Life in the Tropics

Until recently, Sophia was inordinately proud of the fact that she did not suffer from Hot Flashes. Whenever her female acquaintances complained of this uncomfortable, indecorous eruption of the body, she would shake her head in sympathy, secretly certain that her lack of Hormonal Heat Waves was the sign of some deep-seated superiority, or perhaps the triumph of feminism over biology. Sophia did not feel herself to be Bound to her Body, as History had decreed woman must be. She was too educated and hip to patriarchy's tricks to ever succumb to this Postmenopausal Misfortune.

Until this summer. Yes, it's been hot, but Sophia cannot attribute these quasi-tropical heat waves to the weather. Uh-uh. Because this thing starts from the inside, happens really fast, and then recedes like a super-hot Tidal Wave of Sweat.

Ergo, it is a Hot Flash.  When these flashes occur, it is as if Sophia has been harboring a secret tropical world under her skin. A third-world vacation spot, if you will, where hot, muggy breezes are likely to sweep in without warning, knocking over her beach umbrella and sending her fancy cocktail glass tumbling across the sand, followed quickly by her copy of Love's Sizzling Sweatfest, or some other lowbrow Beach Read. When this happens, she must stop whatever she's doing and bow down in humble obeisance to the Goddess of Late Midlife, for She is surely angry about something.

Worst of all, these little impromptu getaways sometimes happen in the middle of the night. Now Sophia has heard tell of women who soak their sheets when this occurs, but so far, there hasn't been anything that drastic. But it's still pretty awful.

Sophia imagines, at these moments, that the repressed underclass in her colonialist vacation spot has had enough, and are now taking up arms against their oppressors. She pictures Havana, circa 1958 or thereabouts. The music is great, the drinks are flowing, but the party is about to end. Castro's insurgents are on the march, bringing the End Times to Cuba on a wave of sweltering heat. Batista and Michael Corleone are retreating back to Florida, and taking all the fun with them. Sophia's body, like Cuba, is now a fun-free zone, where all there is to do is mop one's brow and go to Dreary Communist Party Functions.  No more rum punch or Cuba Libre's.  No rock and roll. No sexy dancing dresses. Nope, just the boring, moralistic, occasionally sweaty regime that is Late Middle Age.

Arrgh!  Surely this isn't all there is!  Surely the last years of Sophia's life will not be just frowning sternly at younger people, preaching to Percival, and waiting for hormonal heat waves to recede. Surely there are a few more parties to be had. A few more wild, madcap moments of colonialist fun, before Old Age gathers its armies and takes over the government.

Sophia, as a former Far-Leftist, is enjoying this counter-revolutionary metaphor.

In fact, she is going to buy herself a Fruit Hat and a ruffly skirt, and say the Hell With It. It's hot, but that's no reason to throw in the towel.  She intends to use that towel to wipe away the sweat, then kick back, light a revolutionary cigar, and enjoy what's left of the show.

Denial at the Cellular Level

Sophia reads between 4-6 newspapers online every day. She is a reading addict. Although some people seem to withdraw from intellectual engagement as they hit middle age, Sophia suspects she may be in the grip of a subliminal panic stemming from the deep fear that she may not be able to read enough stuff before she Checks Out.  She reads newspapers, magazines and novels--of both the high-culture and low varieties. She doesn't read self-help books, however. She finds that the advice offered in these overpriced treatises is often so simple as to be obvious and (therefore) insulting.  Sophia is not interested in Finding Her Bliss, knowing The Secret, or embracing some watered-down and historically-sanitized version of Oriental Wisdom. Moreover, she recognizes that Oprah is a marketing genius, but not the reincarnation of Zarathustra.

She prefers fiction or, occasionally, history. At present, she is reading Karin Slaughter's crime thriller, Broken, which she bought at the grocery store, and Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilyich, which she always meant to read by never got around to. Both of these stories have dead bodies in them, but that's about all they have in common.

So anyway, all this is a preamble for today's discussion of a really interesting series that appeared in The New York Times a month or so ago.  Although it's no longer current by journalistic standards, this series of articles is still trending in Sophia's Cerebral Search Engine. In other words, it's still on her mind.

It's on anosognosia.  You're thinking, what the hell is that? Sophia didn't know either. Apparently, this is a neurological condition whereby a person doesn't realize that something pretty fundamental is Not Right with them. The author gives the example of a really stupid bank robber who thought that if he rubbed lemon juice all over his face, he would not be visible on security cameras. When he was caught immediately after robbing a bank, he was distraught. He had really believed the lemon juice thing.  He was too stupid to realize how stupid he was! This fancy-schmancy Greek word, anosognosia, means something like "not knowing that one doesn't know." The author suggests that, although most people don't believe that lemon juice is some kind of invisibility unguent, they definitely don't realize how ignorant they are about other stuff.

When Sophia read this, she thought immediately of fashion. You know, how some people will wear things that they must think are hot, or elegant, or hip, but just look Wrong and Foolish. These people doubtless look in the mirror and think "my black socks and Birkenstocks are the height of Coolness. I shall be admired wherever I go today," or, "these shredded jeans in a size four look great on my size eight ass. No one would ever guess I'm forty-eight instead of twenty-two."  

Yes, fashion is the Lemon Invisibility Juice of large numbers of anosognosic Americans.

But as just this thought crossed her mind, another followed immediately after, causing Sophia to lose her smug expression. Since a true anosognosic must be completely oblivious to her own stupidity/poor taste/bad manners, Sophia realized that she herself could be a victim of this syndrome and not have a clue. She could very easily be one of these poor black-socks-and-Birkenstock types, thinking she's cool or hip or even still a little bit hot, when in fact she's just pathetic looking to people who are truly cool and hip and hot. Or even pathetic to normal people, including little kids.

Thinking about this made Sophia super-paranoid.

Because when one is Over Fifty, there are so many ways to slip into anosognosia! Just forgetting one's true age for a second can lead to an Anosognosic Moment.  Some danger areas:

Makeup, including but not limited to: sparkly powders and eyeshadows, lip liners (eek! Sophia is terrified of lip liners), dark lipsticks, and (especially) blush.

Miniskirts:  Sophia does not care how great your legs are. If you are Over Fifty, you should not be wearing these unless they are part of some private erotic ritual shared with a husband, partner, or paid companion.

Leather pants, unless you are really an aging biker with a cool nickname you got in your twenties. In that case, Sophia decrees that leather pants are okay.

Bare midriffs, even if enviably toned. Any Over Fifty woman who walks around showing off her navel is clearly in the grip of Severe Anosognosia. This woman expects to be carded in restaurants and thinks the twenty-something waiter is really hitting on her. She has no clue that he's totally hip to her lemon-juiced self-image, and knows that flirting with this mutton-dressed-as-lamb is a sure way to get a bigger tip.

Now of course there's a danger here, too. Because one can become so worried about being anosognosic that one begins to dress like a grandma. Which is sad in another way.

Pondering this, Sophia realized that a certain amount of anosognosia is necessary for survival and happiness, however illusory.  In order to be truly At Peace, she thinks, the Over Fifty woman must at once know, and not know, that her hotness days are over. She must eschew bare midriffs and lip liners, for sure--but she can still make a leap of faith--or hope--and show a bit of leg, the shadow of a still-impressive cleavage, or a nicely-shaped derriere.

It also helps to have a mate who shares one's anosognosia. Sophia's husband Thor, at appropriately intimate times, invariably tells her she's sexy and even beautiful. He does not say "still sexy," which earns him points. (And other stuff, which Sophia shall leave to the imagination.)  At these times, Sophia often wonders if Thor is crazy or deluded.

But now she knows the truth: in a good relationship, anosognosia is contagious. In other, more familiar words, love is blind.

For those of you who are still looking for That Special Someone, here's some advice. Don't try to find a man who loves you as you are. Sophia has had those, and they do not foster spiritual growth. Or domestic bliss, or even long-term stability. These guys encourage one's worst tendencies. Sophia herself developed a serious drinking problem in such a relationship.

No, you should find a man who loves your illusions of yourself. A man who will be your lemon invisibility juice as you attempt to carry out a reckless bank robbery. Or perhaps an ill-advised career change. He will have his own self-delusions, of course. But you won't be bothered by them. You'll encourage his psychotic ideation, as he encourages yours. You'll be like two halves of a broken mirror--both hopelessly estranged from reality, but perfectly in sync together.

Sophia thinks there may be a self-help book in there somewhere. In fact, she suspects that writing self-help books is the ultimate expression of anosognosia. Which proves that self-delusion isn't only comforting...it's also big business.

Just ask Oprah.

Girlfriends

Sophia has no real girlfriends. She has female acquaintances, but that's about it. A lot of Weird Events in Sophia's life contributed to this dearth of female companionship, but now that she's Over Fifty, she would really like to fix this problem. Because this can be a lonely time of life, and men are--well, men. Good for lots of things, but Discussing Life's Transitions is definitely not one of them.

Sophia understands men, and is comfortable with most of them. But women remain a mystery to her.  She has four brothers, and no sisters. Sophia's mom didn't have any sisters either, so she was no help in this Understanding Other Women thing. Sophia moved a lot as a kid--she went to 14 grade schools--so making friends sometimes just didn't seem worth it. Saying goodbye was just one more sad thing to deal with as they loaded up the moving van.

Violins, please....

As a teenager, Sophia never worried about being popular. She was a rugged individualist. Besides, if a girl is popular with guys, other girls will want to hang with her. Sophia has always been popular with men. Not because, as some women have assumed, she was Easy. Sophia was/is by no means a sexual prude, but she has always had Standards.

Okay, almost always. The years 1975-77 shall be stricken from the record.

Sophia was popular with men because she was decent-looking (but not scary beautiful), and, more important, a professional big sister. Adult men, fearful of being Mama's Boys, adore women who fit the big sister mold. Unlike many of her sex, Sophia understands the radical simplicity of men. She knows exactly how far you can push a man to clean up his act, and exactly when this becomes an exercise in futility. She knows when they are too wrecked to be Saved, and doesn't try. She knows what men need, and what they really, really don't want. This accounts for her many marriage proposals (5!) and happy married life.

Um, for the record, Sophia didn't accept all five proposals. That would have been crazy.

But that's not what she wants to talk about here. Today's topic is Why Sophia Can't Make Girlfriends.

When she still had her Big Professional Career, other women wanted to hang with her because she was successful, and, yes, attractive--because being attractive meant men paid attention to her, and her female colleagues were hungry for male attention. Of the professional sort. Sophia worked in a profession with a lower percentage of attractive women than the population as a whole, so having symmetrical features was, in some situations, an asset. In others, of course, it was a Huge Liability. But Sophia is not going to blame her professional implosion on something as superficial as looks. It's not like she was earthshakingly beautiful, or anything. And in any case, the End of Sophia's Career was more complicated and nuanced than that. But that's a subject for another post.

But to the matter at hand: at this stage in Sophia's life, not having women friends has become a cause for lamentation. Sophia is lonely, and men aren't good at talking about much of anything but sports, work, and (occasionally) politics. All this is interesting in its place, but it's not really a bonding experience. Sophia would love to have a girlfriend with whom she can sort out this weird business of being Over Fifty.

In today's post, she will attempt to disentangle this whole problem.

First, there's the Mystery of Woman. Now, Sophia is a feminist. For many years she was a Professional Feminist, which is symptomatic of the problem. Because just as Marxists don't really understand economics, feminists have no real clue about women.

Growing up almost exclusively around men, Sophia internalized much of their stupidity about females. She often finds that women have labyrinthine depths she simply can't fathom. Many women, for example, are good liars. Sophia herself isn't half-bad at it. Men, on the other hand, are rotten liars. Those men who lie well, owing to some accident of genetics or sociopathic parenting, usually end up being criminals, politicians, or some combination of the two. But most men simply aren't theatrical enough to lie convincingly. Their eyes get all shifty, or they make jerky hand movements, or their voices change. Good lying requires a certain amount of multitasking, and women, owing to their historical lot in life, tend to be better at that. Men who lie invariably get caught. Sophia can never understand why so many women are duped by cheating husbands--because if Sophia's husband ever cheated, she'd be onto him in a New York minute.

But some women lie when (Sophia thinks) it would be easier to tell the truth. Yes, I tried to call you but you weren't home (were too). Yes, I sent you a letter, but it must have gotten lost in the mail (does anyone believe this one anymore?). I really like your skirt-dress-handbag-new haircut, although you didn't ask for my opinion and really I think you look cheap-fat-hard-old. Yes, I really care about you, and about All of Humanity. But isn't Sally a bitch, and don't you think Ellen's put on weight?

Now, Sophia understands why women are this way. Intellectually understands, that is. Women have been forced to live with so many irreconcilable contradictions for so long, that duplicity became necessary to social survival. Women have to Be Nice, but secretly compete with one another for men and attention and all the rest. Women have to suppress their sexual desires in the interest of Being Nice, and thus resent women who decide that sex is fun, and morally no big deal. Women are constantly criticized, either explicitly or implicitly, and are thus really really insecure about their looks, their intelligence, their parenting skills, their husband's love, and fear/resent women who seem less insecure about any of this stuff. Women are trapped in the hell that is The Private Life, but must have a Public Face. All this leads, inevitably, to mendacity.

But here's what Sophia doesn't understand. Women fib about stuff that doesn't matter. Women flatter one another excessively, although it's apparent to all parties that most of this flattery is insincere. And this is the scariest part. Unlike men, women will look you straight in the eye while feeding you utter unreconstituted horseshit on any number of topics. What is one supposed to say to this? Sophia has tried several tactics, but the one that really doesn't work is honesty. "Well, Cheryl, it seems to me that your assertion isn't quite accurate..." Never say this. Because this will make women hate you.

Men will lie, but seldom to your face.  This doesn't make them better. This makes them moral cowards. But it is easier to tell when they have something to hide. Unless they fall into the sociopathic/criminal/career politician category, as mentioned above.

Now these are generalizations. Sophia does not mean to suggest that all humans are congenitally predisposed to prevarication. No, some are honest. And some very few are honest without being mean. These people, of course, are at a higher evolutionary stage than the rest of us. In centuries past, they were called Saints.

Sophia is, most definitely, not a saint.  She can be judgmental, mean-spirited, self-pitying, arrogant, and just not nice sometimes. To her credit, however, she Tries.  She does not gossip (except with her mom), and is an excellent keeper of secrets. She actively tries to be a good person, and to live an examined life. Without being too self-obsessed, of course.

A difficult balancing act, with many, many chances to fail.

Anyway.  Sophia has tried, on several humiliating occasions, to connect with old friends, relatives, or other extraneous females on the periphery of her life. She has not over-shared, but has been (she thinks) warm and forthcoming. On one occasion, she tried to Facebook-friend an old graduate school friend/acquaintance, and was rebuffed with silence. She did not understand this, since she and this person had several mutual Facebook-friends, and had never had any kind of a falling out.  She tried to further communicate with an old high school chum who contacted her first.  Another rebuff. There are several more examples.

This made her sad and perplexed. Then, a Flash of Insight. Recently, an old (male) grad school acquaintance Facebook-posted some pictures from 1989. There was one of Sophia, smoking a cigarette and staring into the distance with a pensive frown. She looked thin, intense, and totally unapproachable.

She now realizes that this is how most women have always seen her. And that it is likely too late to remedy the situation.  So she will make do with her wonderful guys, Thor and Percival, and her male dog, Zeus. And be grateful that she has a cool mom, a lot of books with friendly women in them, and a little bit of time left to meet that Special Someone who might be her new best girlfriend.

Next:  Why Facebook portends the End of Days

Hypochondriaphobia

Sophia is descended from a long line of people who have lived their lives in the shadow of death. Sophia's paternal grandmother was so certain that a dirt nap was imminent that she retired to her bed in her fifties, finding it useless to keep up the pretense of health any longer. As fate would have it, she did in fact contract a malignant disease and died when Sophia was twelve. The disease that finally felled her was not one of the many she had claimed to have over the years, however.  This proved to Sophia that the Grim Reaper is a tricky bastard, and, moreover, that hypochondria is little more than failed magical thinking. Fearing the worst will not keep it from happening.

This logic was lost on Sophia's father, however. For as long as she can remember, her dad has been certain that his aches and pains were actually the first sneaky signs of a lingering demise. He's now almost eighty-two years old, which would seem to lend support to the magical thinking theory. Maybe spending one's life worrying about sickness and death does keep mortality at bay. Maybe what kills people is the surprise.

Sophia, for her part, has inherited a mutation of the hypochondria gene. She's terrified of being a hypochondriac. So whenever she faces a health crisis, or even a routine test, she goes through not one, but two awful phases. The first is the genuine fear that Something Might Be Wrong, and then, like a tsunami after an earthquake, the even greater fear that She's Turning into Her Dad.  At what point, she wonders, does worry or legitimate concern become a pathological obsession with one's health? How many symptoms does one have to Google before mild anxiety tips over into sick self-absorption?

Sophia can only hope that hypochondriaphobia has its own magical effect. That worrying about being a hypochondriac means one isn't.

Throwing a Mastoid

She considers herself lucky that her dad was not an active hypochondriac in the Age of Google. He was, however, a research immunologist, with just enough medical knowledge to torment his entire family with the specter of rare and horrible diseases.

Chief among these was....Mastoiditis.  Never heard of this? Welcome to Sophia's childhood, where mastoiditis lurked in every childhood earache, headache, or crick in the neck. Mastoiditis is the bacterial inflammation of the mastoid bone, which is behind your ear. Feel it. It's that hard bony place where some people like to be kissed. Not Sophia. Kisses in the Dangerous Mastoid Zone are not erotic, thanks to her dad and his utterly bizarre mastoid obsession.

If Sophia had a few thousand dollars to throw to the winds, she might be able to sort this all out in therapy. Blogging, however, is all she can afford.

Sophia's dad had similar weird ideas about cars, by the way. He knew considerably less about auto mechanics than about the human body, but this did not stop him from predicting vehicular doom. In her dad's world, the car equivalent of mastoiditis was throwing a rod.  Cars were always on the verge of rod-throwing, especially when driven by the teenage Sophia. "Stop, or you're going to throw a rod!" Sophia's dad would shout as she attempted to execute some tricky driving maneuver, like passing or parking.

Sophia inevitably felt the urge to throw a rod right at her dad's head.

She never did find out what "throwing a rod" meant, exactly, but it sounded dramatic. She always pictured a long metal bar shooting through the hood as the car careened out of control and her dad yelled "you've thrown a rod, dammit!"

Needless to day, these two bizarre, unlikely occurrences became conflated in Sophia's mind. So now, whenever she feels like some strange disease is lurking in her Over Fifty body, she wonders if she's really sick, or just Throwing a Mastoid.

The Dark Continent

That's what Sigmund Freud, famous psychoanalyst and crazy person, called womankind. In case you're ever on Jeopardy, and the answer is "Africa," you can say "What continent did Freud compare women to?"  You won't win the point, but you will make an impression on the TV audience.

For the first time, however, Sophia has some sympathy for this perspective. Because her postmenopausal body is not behaving as all the books and websites say it should.  It seems her rousing Tae Kwon Do classes shook something loose Down There, and she had a little bitty Menstrual Event. Threw a Hormonal Rod, as it were.  So of course, she goes straight to her computer and Googles this problem. And what do you think she finds? It could be Nothing, or it could be

• Cancer (endometrial)
• Cancer (ovarian)
• Cancer (fallopian--a type she didn't even know existed)
• Cancer (from Somewhere Else)

Eeek! She calls her doctor and makes an appointment. The nurse says they will clear the schedule for her, because this is Potentially Very Bad. Okay, the nurse said the first part, and Sophia inferred the second.  So, a few days later--after much repressed anxiety, which included such fantasies as

• wondering if she should get a video camera, so she can give Percival some Lasting Wisdom to Treasure in Her Absence
• getting angry at Thor ahead of time, for he will surely imply that all serious illness is simply a Failure of the Will
• imagining herself withholding news of her imminent demise until the Very Last Moment, thereby
• making the whole thing lots more dramatic, a la Garbo in Camille
• making her selfish brothers who never call or email feel really guilty
• inspiring others with her courage and selflessness, ultimately generating a made-for-TV movie on the Lifetime Network

--she finally went to her appointment.  A preternatural calm settled over Sophia as she Assumed the Position, and she felt herself surrender her fate to the Will of the Universe.

Okay, not really. But that's what the voice-over will say in the TV movie. Anyway, to make a short story not quite so long, the doctor got out a tiny little laptop computer with a predictably-shaped Wand attached to it. Sophia marveled that this little device did the same thing as the giant ultrasound machines that were a window onto Percival's in utero world ten years ago. The doc explained that these cool portable machines were invented so that medics in Iraq and Afghanistan can look at the injured body parts of our troops in the field. Like most great inventions of the modern era, this one was a direct result of the human propensity for violence on a mass scale.

This little bit of information made Sophia feel guilty for Throwing a Mastoid. Soldiers lost legs, arms, and lives on a daily basis over there. She could surely face a little gynecological uncertainty.

But this brief flare of bravery faded instantly as the doctor put a condom on the Wand. Sophia almost giggled with repressed hysteria at this moment, imagining Safe Sex with an Ultrasound Machine. Would the machine call for another date, or just assume Sophia was Easy?

Anyway, a few moments later, the Game Was On.  The pictures were materializing on the screen. Sophia could see them, and they looked just like when she was pregnant, only sans tiny Percival. In other words, she was looking at a blurry gray landscape that resembled nothing so much as a giant dust storm.

The doctor, however, began to show off her training. "Look, there's the lining," she said helpfully. Sophia looked, and saw...nothing but video snow. "Look, there's an old fibroid."  Sophia perked up at this. At last, something to see. An old fibroid. She imagined a tumbleweed rolling across this barren tundra, but saw pretty much nothing.

Finally, ten minutes and several hundred dollars later, it was determined that Everything Looked Normal. Sophia was instructed to go home and call again if she threw another hormonal rod in the future.

So, no video diary of Sophia's Last Months. No Lifetime Movie. No fight with Thor about his insensitivity. No medical marijuana. Sophia had, as it turned out, simply Thrown a Mastoid.

Her fear of death was not justified, but her fear of hypochondria certainly was. She went straight home, endured Thor's "I told you so's" and filed away her genetically-acquired phobias for another day.

In retrospect, she realized one thing. Hypochondria is where imagination goes to live when it has no other outlets. Perhaps she ought to begin writing another novel.

Yes, another. More on this in a later post.

Fists of Fury

Sophia's husband Thor is a macho but enlightened guy. He doesn't need to kill things with firearms, or tell homophobic jokes, or any of that stuff. But he seldom does housework, invariably leaves the toilet seat up, and is extremely competitive in all things. Like most males of his ilk, he lifts weights. Because he's a big guy--about six-five and two hundred twenty or so--he lifts really big weights that Sophia can't even pick up when he leaves them lying around.

His real name, while equally monosyllabic, is not Thor. But Sophia thinks it suits him. Despite his Thorlike physique, he's kind of simple and predictable, which is why Sophia married him. She likes simplicity in fashion, in baked goods, and in men.

Sophia herself is not all that simple, nor is she particularly strong. Nevertheless, she is not helpless. In a verbal sparring match she can whip Thor's muscular ass in about two minutes flat. He doesn't argue with her much, because he's a practical guy, and hates to lose. Taking on Sophia in a war of words can very easily lead to Verbal Armageddon, so he treads carefully around certain subjects.

To satisfy your curiosity, Sophia will list these in a future post.

But because he thinks she's too cerebral--and verbose--Thor is always harping on Sophia to Get Stronger. He is not the kind of guy who likes fragile, helpless women. He would have been very happy married to Wonder Woman, as played by the well-endowed Lynda Carter in the 1970's.

Unlike Lynda, Sophia is not very physically impressive. She has skinny little stick arms and, in recent years, a weak back. Except for her outstanding rack (eat your heart out, Lynda), none of her body parts are anything special. She works out a few times a week at the YMCA, because her Over Fifty metabolism now moves with glacial speed, and must needs be pushed to burn even a few dozen calories.

But she does not Hit Things. Or rather didn't, until last week. That's when Percival enrolled in a Tae Kwon Do class with one of his little friends.  Sophia and Thor went to watch the little martial artists, and were wowed by how cool the class was, and how cute-but-grown-up Percival looked in his TKD gear. As they were watching their adorable child punch and kick other children, Thor happened to notice another class going on at the same time. All women, punching and kicking one another. Thor looked that these strong, ass-kicking women, and at his wife with her stick-like arms. And he had an Idea.

Now Thor isn't much for Ideas, unless they involve ways to make money or fix stuff using only duct tape. When Ideas do occur to him, however, he is pretty much inexorable in his insistence that they be carried out.  And so it was in this case.

"Why don't you take that class?" he said. "You can bring Percival, and learn Tae Kwon Do while he does. It's a perfect set-up."

Yes, perfect, but not for Sophia. Words, not feet and fists, are her weapons of choice. She'd rather kick some philosophical ass than lift her leg above her chest while swinging it backwards.  And anyway, she's pretty sure that move is anatomically impossible for a woman Over Fifty.

But, Thor knows Sophia pretty well. He knows, damn him, that she does not like to back down from a challenge. She grew up with four ass-kicking brothers, and, like Thor, hates to admit defeat. So she agreed to try the class out once. Now what do you think happened?

Sophia loved kicking and punching things! She loved the whole Not Thinking aspect of it! She realized why men like fighting so much. It's unambiguous, and uses very few brain cells. Punch, block, punch. Kick, block, kick. Repeat as necessary until someone falls down and doesn't get up. For millennia, this was all men did during the daylight hours.

For a few weirdly wonderful moments, Sophia knew how it felt to be a guy. The power--and sheer stupidity--of it all was intoxicating. After the class, she began to dream big. Black belts! Trophies! Taking down muggers in a New York subway station! Maybe even beating Thor in a non-rhetorical fight someday (she confesses this image had a little erotic charge to it). Nothing seemed impossible. So she signed up.

Well, it turns out, the teacher of the class was not showing all her cards on that first day. No, once she had Sophia signed up for this Tae Kwon Do boot camp, the gloves were off. Sophia realized what it means to be the only White Belt (read: klutzy beginner) in a class of five youngish women with dark-colored belts who can kick their legs higher than any Rockette.

For one thing, it means coming home with a severe hand tremor from punching a pad repeatedly with her bony little fists. She was certain that she had triggered some devastating neurological disorder, and would have to quit this insanity immediately. But no. Thor, who was on the Boxing Team in college, assured her that this was normal. Even his godlike hands shook like giant oaks in an earthquake after he punched the hell out of someone, he said.

Sophia considered this, and thought it incredibly dumb. Why, she wondered, would someone hit something--or someone--until they developed scary neurological symptoms?

Then she remembered to (Not) Think Like a Guy, and stopped worrying about it. Punch, block, punch. Hit first, ask questions later.

But there are other things about the class that are less easily dismissed. Chief among these is the fashion issue. While skinny little Percival looks cute as hell in his Tae Kwon Do outfit, Sophia does not. She had hoped that, like the other (younger) women in her class, she would look tough and sinewy in the loose black pants, Asian-style jacket and white belt.

This was not the case. Because she is top-heavy (see earlier post) and no longer has a perceptible waistline unless completely naked, she looks like a dumpy black sack tied in the middle. The glaring white sash accentuates her no-longer-Lynda-Carterish waist, and the pants bunch out at the hips. Not a good look for the Over-Fifty, non-athletic body. And of course, the classroom is a veritable funhouse of mirrored walls. The last time Sophia had to do anything in a room like this, she was a sylph-like fifteen-year-old, taking ballet class. She loved looking at herself then. But now that she's Over Fifty, she uses mirrors sparingly, like salt and alcohol.

Moreover, Sophia is pretty convinced these are Fat Mirrors. Any woman over twenty knows that, just as there is matter and anti-matter, there are Fat Mirrors and Thin Mirrors. These are definitely Fat Mirrors. Perhaps the owners of the school thought Fat Mirrors would make female students hesitate to drop the class.

Anyway, because of the Wall of Fat Mirrors, Sophia has to stare at her chubby-looking self in 3D for forty-five minutes, wondering how a once-graceful fifteen-year-old ballerina morphed into this lumpy creature with big hips and skinny stick arms.

She also has to grunt "HUUNNNH" when she shoots her fist out, which makes her feel way stupid.

The teacher of this class, Master Jane (you gotta love any sport that lets a woman ascend to the title of "Master") is an awesome physical specimen who is about the same age as Sophia. Yes, it's true! One would think this would be inspiring, but Sophia is not fooled. While Sophia was pulling the string on her Chatty Cathy doll back in the Eisenhower years, Master Jane was back-kicking little boys in her preschool and elbowing bullies in the sandbox. She and Sophia may be the same sex, but they definitely aren't the same species.

The other women in the class are equally alien. They are shorter than Sophia, with fists and feet that move at lightspeed. Sophia feels as if she's moving underwater when she watches these black, red, and blue-belted warrior princesses spar with one another. They are nice to Sophia, treating her with the kind of noblesse oblige that true aristocrats reserve for their inferiors. Master Jane forces some of them to partner with the newbie, which limits their workout considerably. Sophia feels bad about this, but Thor, who is first and foremost a capitalist, reminds her that she is paying the same amount of money for the class as the warrior princesses, so they just have to suck it up.

Sophia loves this about Thor. He never feels uneasy about his place in the world. So even though she's Over Fifty, and will never punch and kick like Master Jane, she is going to stick with the class for awhile. Because she wants to feel that way, too.

HUUNNNH!