Listen ...My Ashes of Dead Lovers Garage Sale

MY ASHES OF DEAD LOVERS GARAGE SALE
by Marilyn Celeste Morris
Available in Print and All Ebook Formats

My Ashes of Dead Lovers Garage Sale And Other Adventures of a Single Woman of a Certain Age Author’s Note: This book is a selection of articles written over a ten year period for Suburban Newspapers, in Fort Worth, TX. The publisher, Boyden Underwood, has graciously given permission to re-publish, and I thank him for his support, and that of his late mother, Janice Underwood, who encouraged me and, paid me, essentially, to have fun.

School, Tonsils, and a New Perm

It’s that time again. Time for the kids to (heh, heh) Go Back To School.

In the Olden Days, when I was a little kid, the beginning of school was heralded by at least three events: The first was: Before I entered the first grade, I was whisked away to the hospital where my tonsils were yanked out.

This was a ritual in my day; every kid on my block, it seems, had his Tonsils Out a few weeks before school started. I can still remember the smell of the ether that permeated the entire hospital and a couple of blocks around it. (Yes, ether. That was before they began using Other Stuff that doesn’t smell so bad, and before you start guessing how old I am, let me remind you that if you, too, remember Ether and Taking Your Tonsils Out, then you are Real Old.)

Next came Getting My Books and Supplies. The List came out from each teacher in each class and parents dutifully trooped down to the local bookstore, stood in line for hours and emerged with stacks of notebooks, workbooks and assorted things like protractors, mechanical drawing sets, things like that. I remember my mother standing in line with the other mothers of the neighborhood, comparing notes on other kids’ supplies, other teachers, hemlines, absent mothers seeming to be Fair Game for Gossip, excuse me, I mean, Exchange of Information—-heck, it was just like an afternoon bridge game, but without the cards. One of the bet things about Mother getting my School Supplies was that I got a New Pencil Box.

Now, I don’t know if kids today even have such a thing as a Pencil Box, but every kid on the block had to have a new pencil box each year, the old one having been virtually demolished through much use during the last school year. Of course, I always wanted and got, a Red Pencil Box. So when the First Day of the new school year came, I could hold my head high, carrying my Brand New Red Pencil Box.

The third event of a new school year was getting a Haircut and/or a Permanent Wave. Boys didn’t have to go through the Ritual of having a Permanent Wave; they merely got their hair cut. Girls, on the other hand, trying to imitate their mothers, or their mothers trying to make little ladies out of their tomboy summer daughters, insisted on trooping into the Beauty Parlor (yes, indeed, that’s what they were called in the Olden Days) and subjecting said female children to the rigors of the Permanent Wave Machine.

Here’s where I may lose some of you who are under forty. (Well, what the heck--even under fifty, are you satisfied?) A Permanent Wave was accomplished by Attaching Wires to one’s hair and having said wires attached to an electrical plug which heated the clamps which in turn heated one’s hair. A lot. I can still remember the smell of burning hair and my fear that maybe the Beauty Operator would forget that I was at the other end of this electrical monster and I would fry my hair off, and then my Brains would be next, and I would be found like the Wicked Witch, dissolved in a heap on the Beauty Parlor floor.

Nothing of the sort happened, of course, and I emerged looking like all the other little girls on my block with Shirley Temple ringlets (and ‘if you have to ask Who’s Shirley Temple? I swear I will cry.) So finally I was pronounced ready to Start School, with my Tonsils Out, Supplies in Hand, and Curly Hair.

All this is being brought to mind right now because not only are children all over the country going back to school, but also I have taken the great leap forward. Or backward, as it were, into my childhood. I am Going Back to School. Night Classes, of course, since I have to work during the day to earn the money to pay the mortgage, feed myself and my cat, keep my creditors happy and, of course, pay for my schooling. I am pretty much following the same ritual of my first school days. I got a permanent, the first I can remember since childhood, and they don’t use the Electrical Machine any more. I didn’t have to Have My Tonsils Out, of course, (or anything else, thank goodness; at my age, it’s pretty well all been taken care of, anyway,) and I didn’t have to line up at the local book¬store for Big Chief Tablets and Workbooks with my mother. No, I have a pretty nonchalant attitude about Going Back to School; after all, I’ll just be going a couple of nights a week.

But I’m still thinking about getting a Red Pencil Box.