When you were very young, and you weren’t even sure what it was your daddy or mommy did ‘for a living’, did you know what you wanted to be when you grew up? Did you even know at what age you would be ‘Grown-Up’? When I was 6 I thought 12 was adult. By the time I was 12, I was positive that 16 was as grown up as you could get. By the time I hit 16…. ? I wanted to be 6 again. And I proceeded to act as though I was.

I was pretty sure I wanted to be an artist. Not like Rembrandt or Picasso, not that they were bad, they just weren’t me. I wanted to make pictures that would make people well up with emotion. Even nausea would be a desired reaction. Just so they would wish that they were able to see things the way I did.

By this time I knew what my parents did to pay the bills. My Dad was a writer and an editor for a Tropical Fish magazine. My Mom was a ‘secretary’, (Today they call them Administrative Assistants). She could type so fast that she would have to let the pages cool down. Don’t forget this was before things like spell check or grammar check. You had to spell it right the first time and it must be grammatical! My Dad typed with two fingers but he got there all the same. He didn’t need spell check or grammar check either. When my parents went to school they were taught to spell and use grammar the right way. Today things are a bit different. If your spelling is a little off, no one will notice it. The way they spell is a little off too.

I knew I hated school. I never thought that an artist would have any use for something like ALGEBRA! PUH-LEASE!!! When you have a tendency to doodle in the margins of a test on fractional something or other, you probably won’t pass your sophomore year. But that shouldn’t be important if your paintings would hang in the Louvre. As soon as I hit 16, I quit school. I didn’t need it. I was a free spirit and I was going to be an ARTIST!

My Mom wanted to send me to business school so I could get a job. A WHAT? My Dad just cast his eyes to heaven and inhaled a lot. I noticed a dent in what was my allowance. The explanation was that I had to try to keep my own end up. I either had to get a job or go back to school. As I considered the options, (Neither one of which appealed to me.) I did like fooling with hair. My own and my friend’s hair was like a canvas that needed to be painted. O.K., Beauty school it is, and re-instate my allowance please?

Mom was still holding out for business school but Dad said, “Let her go to whatever school she wants. At least she’ll have to get out of bed before noon.”

I really did like the idea of doing hair. I still had the idea of ‘ARTIST’ in my head and there was a certain amount of color involved. As far as form went, I could back comb with the zeal of a mowing machine. This was artistic after all. I could still paint pictures and until I was discovered and became the toast of Paris, I could make some money so I could buy the more expensive paints that my budget didn’t allow for now.

And then I got a reality slap! When you worked on customers in the school, they didn’t have to pay much because the students didn’t make any money, the school did. The customers expected to look exactly like the stars in the Hollywood pictures. When you have an old lady, (In my mind, anyone over 30 was old.) who had a splat of feathers for hair and they wanted to look like Marilyn Monroe……..Uh-oh! At this point I considered becoming a doctor, a plastic surgeon who could do hair would be making a million in no time. NNYYAAAHHH….. That would take way too long, 3 or 4 years I bet. I said good-bye to beauty school when one of my customers got hysterical when she saw her hair color. I thought the stripes had a very slimming effect on her face. Mondrian wouldn’t have thought it was horrible. Picasso might have liked it too.

This was the beginning of the 60’s and it was a time of change. I was very good at change. I still wasn’t sure what kind of a career I would aim at, not necessarily hit, just aim. My Mom had instilled family values in me. She was of the generation that knew women only had one purpose. Marriage and Motherhood. That’s how she was raised and she raised me the same way. I didn’t really want to do that and I didn’t even have a boyfriend. I talked to my Dad…………..

“Daddy? I really want to go to art school. I don’t want to be a secretary and I can’t be a beautician. I can’t do some old hag’s hair and have her come out looking like any other movie star except Mothra or Daisy Duck. I can’t go back to high school because I’m too old! (all of 18 years)” Well, there’s all kinds of art schools and my parents were not wealthy enough to send me to Paris, so they sent me to Newark School for the Fine and Applied Arts. I was going to do the ‘Applied’ part. Commercial art for advertising, sign painting and other things that make money.

I liked art school. It wasn’t all keeping the letters straight and in the lines. There was stuff like form and how to layout for the best effect. I then developed a love life and art school wasn’t going to be completed. I was going to develop the career that my mother had been trying to train me for since infancy, “WIFE & MOTHER” ! My Dad wasn’t real thrilled and my Mom would have preferred a son-in-law with a job, but I was now going to fulfill my ‘womanly destiny’. Talk about On the Job Training?

When I think back to when I thought about becoming a plastic surgeon who could do hair? I thought it would take too long so I didn’t do it. After doing my post-post doctorate in marriage and child bearing, I looked at twelve long years. And this was most definitely an education!

I went to Nursing school. I was now the sole support of my three kids and the only school I hadn’t attended was the “School of Hard Knocks”. Well, this one I graduated! I went to school for Licensed Practical Nursing. It only took eleven months, straight through with no vacations. I had to take whatever I could get through FAST!! This was a course that had it all. If I wanted to do hair, I could. I learned how to shave various body parts for those who were going for surgery. I learned how to wash hair that hadn’t seen water or soap for a very long time, and to do it while the patient was laying in the bed! Art? Hah! I painted landscapes with Betadine on bellys. I could sculpt a colostomy bag like Rodin’s ‘Thinker’. I even became a teacher. “Mrs. Jones? Watch me draw up this insulin and then I’ll show you how to give it to yourself.” There is an art in being a nurse. I don’t think Rembrandt could give a bedpan while giving an enema and not spill a drop! And I did it for about twenty three years. There came a time when I zigged when I should have zagged and put a little too much stress on my knee. When you can’t genuflect to the head nurse, you find yourself out of work. BACK TO SCHOOL, YET AGAIN!!

Unemployment offers re-training for idiots like me. I took them up on it and went to school for “Automated Office Assistant” I still don’t know what the hell that means, but I graduated. I learned what the names were of the stuff on the computer that I had been using, and I even got to show some of the instructors a few short cuts my daughter and I had invented. I got a job with friends of mine who were just starting a business and needed someone who could answer the phone and swear at the computer. When the economy went down the toilet, so did my job. YYYYEEEEAAAAAA! BACK TO SCHOOL, ONE MORE TIME!

And this is for someone who hated high school and took 16 years to get a G.E.D., I am a firm believer in ‘What goes around, comes around.” I am living proof. This time unemployment offered training in Medical Coding. One of the hardest parts of that is medical terminology and I speak that in my sleep. I had heard of people doing this work from home and not having to hobble in to work. I am still too stubborn to use my cane in public. I, (Who taught hundreds of patients how to use one properly) have a tendency to use it to trip over. I won’t go into what the school was like. I left there knowing less than when I went in. I had decided to do a little research on the market for that type of job. It seems that if you have about five years experience doing it, they might consider you to work in the office. If you want to do it at home? Start your own company because they don’t hire someone who hasn’t worked in the field for at least five years. In less than five years I will be 65. I may be able to get a job modeling. FOR A MORTICIAN!!!

Swampetta has found her niche. She writes, and writes, and writes. Maybe sometime in the near future, someone may pay me to do this. My bet is that someone will pay me to stop……………….Send all contributions to the Senior Writer’s Corner, Swampetta c/o LaraOct7. Send a buck and save a shrub.

If you can’t give peace a fighting chance, Give war a peaceful rest.

Swampetta (SWAMPETTA@aol.com)

© Graphics by Marilyn (LaraOct7@aol.com)



 

~WRITERS' CORNER~

 

 

May 16, 2003