TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 68

[Tobie Shapiro]

November 23, 2000000006



Dear Celebrants,

	I want you all to go out there and eat 
that turkey, eat that duck, eat that tofu-turkey 
or giant stuffed squash, and fress upon all the 
good food that turns up at your table.  Eat until 
there is nothing left to be thankful for.  I've 
already made the cranberry relish (a big tub of 
it) and the humus for before dinner dipping.  I'm 
making the yams in pomegranate syrup and this 
year we're stuffing the turkey with gluten free, 
wheat free bread, because of my brother's and 
nephew's dietary restrictions.  We got ten extra 
turkey tails, because there are those of us who 
will pounce upon them: all fat and skin!  How 
much better can you get?!

	I wish you all a good Thanksgiving, peace 
among your family and friends and much more to be 
thankful for than you'd ever realized.  You don't 
need to count your blessings, just let them wash 
over you like some warm wave coming in at the 
beach.  Blessings to all.


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Sleeping beauty

	In kindergarten, I had Miss Baxter.  She 
was the red headed sadist who hated children and 
proved it every day.  In the first grade, I had 
Miss Keys.  Miss Keys had a square face, snow 
white skin and black hair that she pulled back 
tightly from her face and secured in a bun in the 
back.  Every hair went neatly into that orderly 
little ball.  It was all perfect, one hair at a 
time.  She wore big black rimmed glasses that 
made her eyes look huge.  She was strict.  But 
she was very good.  I liked her.

	I spent a lot of time looking out the 
windows at the green grass and trees of Rock 
Creek Forest which bordered our school.  I day 
dreamed.  Well, a lot of time was spent in class 
teaching reading, and I'd already learned to 
read.  In fact, I'd asked for, "Dick and Jane", 
for my birthday so I could read at home, and had 
polished off the book before we were assigned it 
in school.  It was old material and I lost 
interest in being taught twice.  The first word I 
learned to spell was, "knowledge", from the spine 
of a book in our home library called, "The Big 
Book of Knowledge."  I liked reading book titles: 
"The Agony in the Kindergarten", "The Family of 
Man", "Abnormal Psychology", "Don't Be Afraid of 
Your Child", "A Rhyming Dictionary", "The World 
Book Encyclopedia".  So much could be told about 
the householders from the titles of their books 
all lined up next to each other like the 
paragraphs in a biography.

	So I was bored in class, and my eyes 
wandered outside, to the ceiling, to the floor, 
to the hole on my desk for an ink well that we no 
longer needed due to ball point pens.  One day, I 
day dreamed how nice it would be if I put my head 
down on my desk and fell asleep, and was awakened 
by Miss Keys saying, "What have we here?  A 
sleeping beauty!"  So I put my head down in my 
folded arms and tried to look beautiful.  Instead 
of the script I'd written, what actually happened 
was one of the other kids tattled, "Miss Keys! 
Tobie's asleep on her desk!"  And Miss Keys came 
over to my desk and woke me up, sternly 
reprimanding me that I couldn't fall asleep in 
class.  How could I have criticized her and told 
her that she wasn't getting her lines right?: 
What you're SUPPOSED to say is, "What have we 
here?  A sleeping beauty!"  I was actually 
surprised that it didn't turn out the way I 
imagined it.  My belief system was so strong it 
trumped reality.  That's something that has to be 
adjusted in one way or another before leaving the 
nest.


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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net