Some teenagers take to driving like a duck takes to water.  I was not one of those teenagers.  I was more like a chicken taking to water or a cat or any creature that drowns just by looking at water.

The sad truth is that I wore down many driving instructors.  Driving disaster incidents included, but were not limited to:  plowing through shed doors, running over blueberry bushes, sliding up onto a student-filled sidewalk on a busy college campus, and plunging into a twenty-foot snow drift by hitting the gas, gas, gas, instead of the brake, brake, brake!

So, by my mid-twenties, I still had no license and had pretty much alienated even the most forgiving of teachers.  I was down to one woman and her boyfriend who instructed me from the back seat, for safety’s sake, while I risked their lives and limbs behind the steering wheel in the front seat.  Let’s call them Valerie and Butch.

You may wonder how these two managed their fear.  Well, they did not have nerves of steel.  However, I will tell you a little secret: just before each lesson, they partook of inhaled relaxation enhancement.  I do not recommend this.  I am just reporting the facts.

One of the most exciting (read: dangerous) driving habits I had developed over the years was to stare at my rear view mirror while driving down the road.  Somehow, I was fascinated by the Possible Danger that Might Lurk Behind Us.  I didn’t really think much about Actual Danger that Existed In Front of Us.

One day, after I swerved a little too close toward oncoming traffic, Butch covered his eyes and screamed.  Valerie, a valiant woman of action, leaned forward and flipped up the rear view mirror.  “What’s wrong with you? You’ve got to look ahead.  Stop looking back.”

Yes, that was a draconian response to my little driving peccadillo, but it worked.  I began to concentrate on what was in front of me and after much effort, passed my license exam and became the stellar driver I am today.

Why I am I telling this story?  Well, I’ll try not to murder this metaphor, but I’ve learned that in Real Life I can be preoccupied with my rear view mirror, regretting past actions, rehearsing and nursing grudges.  I can spend so much time entangled in those thoughts that not only do I forget to fully experience and deeply enjoy the present, I also neglect to look ahead and prepare for what is coming.  Yes, we can and should learn from the past, but if our eyes are only and always fixed on the rear view mirror, we miss the present and are unable to navigate toward the future.

So, with the new year approaching, perhaps this may be a resolution to consider:  When you’re driving down the road of life, (oh no, not another bad metaphor!), remember to look forward through the window, not back in the mirror.

1. Two minutes after we sit down to dinner,  Ian chokes on a Brussels sprout.  This supports my opinion that Brussels sprouts, for many reasons, are not A Safe Food Choice.
2. Then, Grandpa Jimmy, wearing a droopy-sleeved fisherman’s sweater, reaches across our candlelit table, trying to gain access to the bowl of Brussels sprouts.  This immediately results in him setting his droopy sleeve on fire—thus reinforcing my Brussels sprout/safety theory.  As we douse the flames, Grandpa thinks the whole thing is uproariously funny.
3. Trying to do a good deed, Eric decides he will cool off Grandpa by bringing him some Coke with ice.  No more than five seconds after Eric carefully places it next to Grandpa, we hear a POP and the glass explodes (I’m not lying) sending ice, Coke and blue shards across the table (further increasing the risk factor of eating the Brussels sprouts).

GROUND HOG ON TOP*

My dad is an easy-going fellow, a lover of peace, the first one to wave an olive branch when everyone else is still swinging bloody battle axes.

He’s easy-going except when it comes to his garden—a tiny plot of land planted with tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, pole beans, parsley and basil.  The garden patch always kept fresh vegetables on the table until one summer when a ground hog moved into our yard on Lantern Hill.  Each morning, my father awoke to find the remains of the previous night’s ground hog feast.

“Ground hogs can’t swim.  Flush him out,” advised Louie, my dad’s plumber friend.

So, Dad hooked up an industrial-sized hose.  He slipped it into the mouth of the hole.  Then he turned on the water full blast.  The water gushed for many minutes before my father noticed peculiar happenings at the other end of the yard.

Apparently, the ground hog had created two entries to his abode, the second being near a shed.  By the time my dad noticed this fact, water was flowing into the storage unit, heading toward old end tables, lawn furniture, and stacks of picnic paper goods.

Not one to give up easily, my dad asked his pinochle buddies for advice.  Nick, a retired air conditioning repairman said, “You gotta do it clean and easy.  Gas the little fur ball.”

Intuitively, my dad knew that my mother would not approve of this method.  So, he waited until a Sunday afternoon when she was safely off at the opera.  The only witness to his activities was my ninety-four year old grandmother who sat inside the glassed-in sunroom.  He didn’t worry about her, because he figured she couldn’t see all that well.

My dad drove his tractor to the hole, connected crinkly black tubing to the exhaust pipe, and then snaked the tube as far as he could down into the opening.  Dad turned on the engine and waited hopefully.

Apparently, gas did not spoil the groundhog’s appetite.  The nascent pole beans were gone the next morning.

Stymied and desperate, my father talked with my lunatic uncle about his problem.  Uncle Bruno did something with explosives during one of the wars and had two fingers missing on his right hand to prove it.

Bruno told my father, “Hey Jimmy, you gotta blow him up.  Fried ground hog.  It’ll be fun.”

So on Tuesday morning, when my mother always took Grandma and great aunt Angie shopping, Dad and Bruno poured gasoline down into the ground hog hole.  Then, they soaked a thin cotton rope with gas and dropped one half the length into the opening.  The other (unsoaked) half they stretched across a few feet of lawn.  They placed a metal garbage can lid over the hole.  I never heard the rationale behind the lid.

Bruno tried to light one end of the fuse, but it kept going out.  So, they poured a little gas on the whole length that lay above ground.  Bruno dropped a match on one end and they both ran for cover.  Within a few seconds, flames ripped down the fuse and straight into the hole.  A great explosion sent the flaming lid several feet up into the branches of a cedar tree which immediately caught on fire.

Fortunately, my father hadn’t put away the hose since the water fiasco.  So, after a while (and most importantly for him, before my mother got home), my dad was able to douse the flames.

And the ground hog?  All that stress made him head for comfort food.  That evening, he ate his way through the plum tomatoes, taking a large bite out of each one.

By the end of the summer, the score stood at Ground hog–Four, Dad–Zero.

Well, my dad has returned to his peace-loving ways.  All-out war was never in his nature anyway.

My father has decided that sometimes you need to shift your perspective in order to cope with intractable problems in life.  He tells people, “You know, it’s all a matter of how you look at things.”

Now, when asked about that fat furry brown creature rooting around his garden, my father replies, “Oh that?  He’s my pet ground hog.”

*The names in this story have been changed to protect the guilty.

PERFORMANCE ANXIETY

The phrase performance anxiety has a special meaning for my husband and me.  For us, the term refers to the cold sweat that covers us whenever our middle son takes to the stage or playing field.  We don’t worry whether he’ll shine in the spotlight or excel in a game.  Rather, we just hope for a catastrophe-free performance of whatever it is he’s doing.

For the past twenty-odd years, we’ve watched Eric give piano recitals, sing, dance, and act in theatrical productions and play various sports.  No matter what, Eric exudes confidence and enthusiasm for the enterprise before him.  However, watching him perform is like being blindfolded on an enormous roller coaster ride.  It’s fun.  It’s exciting.  But it’s also terrifying because you never know how the ride will end.

When Eric was nine, he had a piano teacher who ran a tight ship.  She would coach the parents and students ahead of recitals, “No coughing or sneezing, and no flash photography.”

At one memorable recital, Eric had to play two pieces.  Totally at ease, he smiled at the audience, then sat at the piano.  He plunged into the classical song, making it to the end without major mishap.  We exhaled.

As it turned out, we exhaled too soon.  Next, he started in on Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer.  Eric tended to play this piece faster and faster until it degenerated into a whirling dervish of frenzied sound.  At home, in order to hold him back, we forced Eric to practice with a metronome.

But on stage, Eric let restraint fly to the wind.  By the middle of the song, his fingers approached the speed of light.  Of course, it is a basic principle of physics that the speed of sound cannot keep up with the speed of light.  For a full three minutes, musical chaos ensued.

At this point, a normal child might have panicked or might have been paralyzed by embarrassment.  Not Eric.  He kept grinning and nodding to the audience, fully enjoying his improvisational journey.

I sneaked a glance around the room.  Usually, when a kid flubs up on stage, parents paste a frozen smile onto their faces.  Not these folks.  Everyone was grinning right back.  We had a regular love fest going on.

Miraculously, Eric discovered the last few measures of Joplin’s original melody line and ended with an enthusiastic flourish.  Then, the child bowed so low, we thought the he’d tip right over.  The audience responded with high-energy applause.

After the recital, we congratulated Eric.  I didn’t mention his melodic wandering.  My goal was for him to have a non-traumatic recital experience, which he did.  Let the teacher handle quality control.

Eric’s response to our congratulations was “Yeah.  That went great.  I got a little lost during The Entertainer.  But nobody knows that song anyway.”

When he was in fifth grade, Eric’s elementary school decided to perform The Pirates of Penzance, quite a theatrical challenge for children.  Assigned the part of the Major-General, ten-year-old Eric spent hours listening to the Linda Ronstadt/Kevin Kline production of the operetta.  In his sleep, he’d sing, “I am the very model of a modern Major-General, I’ve information vegetable, animal and mineral…”

Not having a Gilbert and Sullivan mini-orchestra on hand, the elementary school used canned music to back up their singers.  As he practiced the song, most of Eric’s effort was directed toward singing it fast enough.  He struggled to fit in all those long words in such short musical spaces.

The night of the performance, Eric raced for the finish line.  He belted out all the lyrics of the piece a full four measures before the canned music ended.  Then, with a look of pure victory, he bowed to the audience.

A few years later, Eric’s piano teacher (a different one by now) scheduled a recital in a fancy retirement community.  There were chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, pretty murals on the wall and a thick rose-colored rug covering the floor.  Elderly residents and family members of the young musicians made up the audience.

Eric planned to perform a lengthy and complex sonatina.  He began pounding away, giving those keys a workout.  In fact, he was pure hell on that piano.

About midway into the sonatina, Eric’s fingering seemed weird.  He looked as if he were doing a Chico Marx imitation of piano playing.  You know Chico–he’s the Marx brother who used his thumb and pinkie to pick out fancy riffs on the piano.

By the end of the piece, I noticed a horrified look on his piano teacher’s face.  Playing so hard, Eric had cut his finger on what must have been a chipped key.  Blood dripped all over the keyboard and down onto that nice rose-colored rug.  The accident didn’t faze Eric one bit.  He just gave a slight bow and raised his bloody hand in the air, as if he were a prizefighter.

You may wonder, what kind of child needs a haz-mat crew to clean up body fluids after a piano recital?  The kind of child who visits the emergency room seven times in thirteen months with sports accidents.  That kind of child.

I’ll spare you the details regarding those mishaps.  I’ll just tell you about the very last one when Eric lacerated his scalp playing paintball.  He walked into the house a bloody mess.  We knew we had to take him to the hospital, we couldn’t bear the thought of seeing all those familiar ER faces a seventh time in one year.  So, instead, we drove to a community hospital in another part of town where they used eight staples to repair his scalp.

We thought the paintball accident might deter Eric, but no.  Just after he started attending University of Virginia, he also signed on to a professional paintball team based in San Diego, California.  So, for most of his college years, he spent Tuesdays through Thursdays in class in Charlottesville.  Then, at least twice each month, he traveled (Thursday through Mondays) with his team all over the country and all over the world (Spain, Puerto Rico, Australia). I am a staunch pacifist and my husband is an eye surgeon.  So as you may imagine, it’s taken us a while to adjust to the irony of Eric’s career choice.

Now, Eric lives in New York City and works for a sports company.  On weekends, he plays on a professional paint ball team based out of Baltimore. Is our worrisome, thrilling and fun-filled roller coaster ride over?  Probably not.

I guess parenting never ends.  Lately, I’ve been having visions of my husband and me in our nineties, cheering for seventy-year-old Eric during his golf game, all the while wondering whether he’s going to find a way to injure himself or create a spectacle.  But really, I can’t think of anything else we’d rather be doing.

Photography:  Cheri Bowling Photography

I rarely buy shoes.  If they feel comfortable, I’ll wear a pair as long as I can.

Twenty-eight years ago, on the first day of our honeymoon, my husband and I used wedding money to purchase Sebago loafers at an outlet store in Maine.  Both of us had spent the previous year walking around with holes in the soles of our shoes.  And in New Hampshire that meant cold, soggy socks and blue feet.  Between the two of us, we’d been in school for a million years and were broke, broke, broke. New shoes were a luxury we couldn’t afford.   Back then, I shined my old shoes so often, I wondered if some day I’d completely wear down the thinning leather and wind up polishing my socks.

In any case, our first joint financial expenditure after the wedding was to buy matching brown loafers. (I know, too precious. A very bad fashion statement.)  Regardless, we wear them to this day.  I’m telling you this so that you will believe me when I say that I rarely buy shoes. Now it’s not that I’m broke; it’s more that I’m lazy and hate to shop.

I’ve owned my clogs for eight years, maybe more.  I don’t have a wedding to mark that purchase date, so I’m not exactly sure.  The heels on my clogs have become so worn that I actually tip off of them as I walk.  A couple of weeks ago, when a fifteen percent coupon came in the mail, I took a deep breath and decided to buy new clogs.

The company hand makes the clogs which means you can’t just march into a store and demand, “Rustle me up a size six, please.”  These shoes vary so much within a size, you have to try several before you hit on the most comfortable pair.

The store was empty and the salesman accommodating, a good combination.  However, I felt like Cinderella’s ugly stepsister.  The man patiently took out one pair after another, too loose, too tight, a ripple in the leather.  Stacks of boxes piled up next to me on the bench.

I didn’t expect to have such trouble. I’d been spoiled.  From the moment I slid my feet into my former clogs, they’d felt as comfy as bedroom slippers.

We finally settled on a pair that seemed less painful than the rest, not awful, but not bedroom slippers either.  I figured I’d just have to break them in. “I guess I’ll take these.”

The salesman held another box behind his back, out of my sight.  “Would you consider trying on one more pair?”

“Of course.” I’m not a patient shopper, but why wouldn’t I?  The guy’s question confused me.

These clogs fit beautifully.  My feet sighed in relief.  Maybe not sighed exactly, but I know they would have if they could have. “I’ll take these. What size are they?”

The man gave me a guilty look.  “Well, I didn’t want to prejudice you against these.  They’re wides.   Some women would never consider buying a wide shoe.”

“Even if that’s what fits them?”  I was incredulous.

He shrugged using both his shoulders and his eyebrows, a full body shrug.  It made me think he saw a lot of this behavior: wides wishing they were narrows, wides in denial, wides with corns on their toes and eventually, wides with substantial podiatry bills.

How did I feel about being a wide?  I believe in comfortable shoe ware, no matter what. So being a wide would not dissuade me from wearing a wide.

Yet, I’ll have to admit the image of my dear departed grandmother, Noona, started floating through my mind.  Then again, maybe not floating, maybe trudging.  My Noona stood four-foot-ten and weighed about one hundred and eighty pounds. She had a solid build and wide is also an adjective that would describe it.  She carried her girth proudly and on more than one occasion would warn me, “You too skinny.  You gonna die.”

She never understood the American obsession with being slender.  For her, it was a sign of poverty or sickness, neither a desirable state.    The only time my grandmother was ever pleased with my appearance was during my pregnancies: by the eighth month I usually resembled a bowling ball (my head) on top of a beach ball (my rotund body).

Maybe if I frequented shoe stores more often, I’d have had a better grasp of the psychological nuances involved in purchasing shoes.  And I will admit, I do harbor some anxiety about Noona’s genetic contribution to me, especially as I age.  However, as I’ve mulled this over, I’ve decided to stand by my principles:  wide or not, if the shoe fits, I’ll wear it.

Have you ever been to a reading where the author creeps apologetically to the podium and then stammers through page after page without once changing expression or making eye contact with the audience?  Plenty of good writers give bad readings.

It’s painful to watch gifted colleagues sabotage their work with self-defeating behavior when they’re reading.  Giving a bad reading may not harm a renowned author, but it could hinder the progress of an aspiring one.  Regardless of how elegantly, a piece is written, poorly presented material can bore or irritate your audience, including that agent, editor or publisher who may be attending.

Whether you are a famous author or an unknown beginner, how can you improve your public reading style and give a compelling reading?

Useful Psychobabble-Do Not Skip

Some writers regard public speaking with the same amount of enthusiasm as putting their heads on the executioner’s block.  If you can identify with that sentiment, your first step in preparing for a reading is to deal with your emotions.  Talk with an insightful friend or a good therapist to find out why you feel this way.

Some people lack the confidence to give a reading because they lack confidence in themselves as a writer.  They are plagued by feelings of being an impostor.  These folks think, “How can I be sure I’m even a real writer?  What make me think I have the right to get up and read?”  Even writers with a solid publishing history may be plagued by these self-deprecating thoughts.

The anxiety is legitimate.  Precisely at what point does an aspiring writer transform into a “real” writer?  Other professions have an easier time determining this.  Doctors go to medical school and are awarded an M.D. upon completion.  Plumbers, electricians and hairdressers earn licensees.  You know a police office when you see one—the badge and uniform are dead giveaways that he or she has finished training.  But how does anyone identify a real writer? Are you a real writer after you have been published once? Twice?  Does your transition from aspiring to real depend on the quality of the publication in which your work appears?

Some writers, especially beginners, torment themselves over this issue.  Ultimately, you have to answer the question.  At some point, you must confidently say, “I am a writer”—and not let a stack of rejection letters or a scathing review dissuade you from that statement.  Just stick to your self-definition and march into a reading with confidence.

Imagine the Worst that Can Happen

When you ask people—those who would rather jump out of an airplane without a parachute than read from their work in front of a crowd—why they are so reluctant, they come up with a million reasons.  What if I trip on the way to the podium?

What if I look down and the tip of my tie is stuck in my zipper?  What if I attempt to say “hit” and it sounds as if I said a terribly rude word instead?

All of that can happen and worse.  However, most of what we worry about never happens.  More often, we are blind-sided by events we lacked the imagination to anticipate.  So why bother to worry?

If you must worry, try to identify your worst fears and think them through to a logical conclusion.  Imagine yourself inadvertently saying “pee” instead of “be.”  The audience giggles.  You move on. That wasn’t so bad, was it?

Making a mistake is not the end of the world. Your friends will have amusing material for the biographies they will write about you later.  And your enemies?  They never liked you anyway.

Think of Your Readings as Performance

Once you have soothed you psyche, your next step is to choose and prepare the material you will read.  This may be more challenging than it sounds.  Clyde Edgerton is a writer who is known for his entertaining readings.  He says you cannot assume that the imagination of a person listening in the audience works the same as that of a person reading silently.

Therefore, he advises writers to think of their reading as performances.  Try to spot the passages that are too dense for a listening audience.  Don’t read long blocks of material.  Instead, Edgerton suggest that you select from your written page exactly which sentences should be read aloud.  If you want to read certain scenes, you don’t have to read aloud the transition material between the scenes.  To keep the pace moving, you can summarize that information verbally for you audience. (This is also helpful as you revise your writing.)

Practice

Once you have selected and revised your material, read it aloud.  Written words may present thorny challenges when spoken.  Your characters’ names may become tongue twister.  “Nicaragua” is simple enough to writer, but it can be a nightmare to pronounce, especially if you are nervous.  Find troublesome words and phrases in your writing and practice saying them.

If you feel brave, videotape yourself.  Eliminate any nervous tics you find.  They may have endeared you to your mother, but they won’t endear you to audience.  Be expressive without being overly dramatic.  Get a sense of when you should pause or when you should read more rapidly through a section.

Know your material well enough to be able to look up at an audience.  Eye contact is essential to gauge audience reactions.

Be Selective

Make sure that whatever you read can stand alone and is satisfying in itself.  That doesn’t mean you have to read an entire essay or tell a story from beginning to end.  If your goal is to entice people to buy your mystery, you may want to leave them at a suspenseful point in your tale.  However, don’t leave them feeling cheated.  When you stop reading, you want them to be thinking, “That was good. I want to hear more.”

If you are reading several selections from your work, choose the order carefully.  If each of your pieces dramatically differs in the emotions it may evoke, warn your listeners.  Once I heard a poet read two short, humorous poem.  The audience was still laughing when he briskly launched into a third poem, a somber reflection about death.  He gave no introduction.  Most listeners were so confused and shocked by the abrupt emotional shift that they were unable to fully comprehend and appreciate the third poem.

Eliminate Surprises

If possible, check out the site where your reading will be held.  If you are unable to visit, ask questions.  Will there be a microphone?  How many readers will there be?  Will the lighting be bright or dim? How big is the room?  How far away will the readers be from the audience?  Eliminating surprises will lessen your anxiety.

Stack the Deck

Does the thought of an audience full of strangers intimidate you?  Stack the deck.  Invite a few friends, people you can count on to laugh at the funny parts and weep when appropriate.

As you are about to read, be aware of you body language.  If you look tense, you will communicate that to your audience.  Think about the last time you heard a nervous person speak.  Everyone in the room tends to become anxious. No one relaxes until the person sits down.  When you step up to the podium, capitalize on any opportunity to make a spontaneous joke that will loosen up the group.

When the Audience Seems Comatose

As you speak, assess your audience.  Are they wide awake?  Sleepy?  Are you the last person on the program?  Do they need to move around a little before you speak?  Do  you have their attention or do you have to figure out a way to grab it?

Sometimes the audience seems comatose.  You try your hardest, but they sit there like potted plants.  Don’t necessarily take the blame for a dead audience. Once I was asked to read to student attending the summer session of an exclusive prep school.  I delivered my best material with pizzazz.  Thirty students stared at me.  If they were breathing, it was hard to tell.

I drove home in a funk.  Fortunately, it was a long ride home during which I realized that these kids were not in summer school on a voluntary basis.  I had been reading not to a captive audience, but an imprisoned audience.  Later, the school sent me student evaluations of my presentation—all of which were high.  Go figure.

Mind Your Manners

Think about how your words might affect your audience and make adjustments accordingly.   Once at a bookstore reading, Melissa Bank (The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing) noticed some children in the audience.  Before she started reading, she let the parents know that her story would contain an R-rated word.  The parents assured her that the kids had heard worse on the playground, but everyone appreciated her courtesy.

If you hope to be asked a second time, practice good etiquette.  Pay attention to other folks on the program.  Don’t read or rattle papers while they are reading.  Don’t go over your allotted time.

Later, ask for feedback from honest friends and colleagues.  Forgive yourself for mistakes, congratulate yourself for successes.

One final word:  What should you wear to a reading?  As you select your outfit, keep in mind Sinclair Lewis’s observation, “When audiences come to see us authors lecture, it is largely in the hope that we’ll be funnier to look at than to read.”