Answers for Trivia Tuesday!

I have to say that the answers people gave to the Trivia Questions were probably better than the actual answers--definitely more entertaining! Thank you for playing! I am already hard at work coming up with next week's questions.

Here are the answers:

1. When is David Cassidy's birthday?

April 12

2. Name two possible desserts in a Swanson's TV dinner from the sixties and/or seventies.

Brownie, apple crisp, apple cake cobbler, and I think there was one with cherry cobbler--yum!

3. What was the first of the Nancy Drew books?

THE SECRET OF THE OLD CLOCK

4. From where did Kurt Cobain hail?

Aberdeen, Washington (Same as my dad!)

5. (Bonus): What was the first line of ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT'S ME, MARGARET.?

"Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret."

My Secret Talent

It's true. I have a secret talent. It runs in my family, and it's ... a flair for useless trivia.

I can't remember fifty percent of my shopping list, nor do I remember my kids' names on a consistent basis. But I can remember exactly what was in a Swanson's fried chicken TV dinner, circa 1969.

I've had this ever since I could remember. I could be tearing my hair out, trying to remember an algebraic formula, while quite easily pulling David Cassidy's birthday out of the card catalog of my mind.

It's not a particularly useful trait to have ... unless I happen to get a hankering to overthrow Alex Trebek.

So in honor of my useless talent, I am making this Trivia Tuesday. There are no prizes, other than the distinct satisfaction or discovery that you may also have this admirable hidden talent.

Here goes ... oh wait--no using The Google or other such cheater pants methods. Your answers have to be pulled out of the deep twists and turns of your own brain. You can put your answers in the comment section--but no reading the answers of others before you reply!

1. When is David Cassidy's birthday? (You didn't think I was going to leave that one out, did you?)

2. Name two possible desserts in a Swanson's TV dinner from the sixties and/or seventies.

3. What was the first of the Nancy Drew books?

4. From where did Kurt Cobain hail?

5. (Bonus): What was the first line of ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT'S ME, MARGARET.?

And: Get your mouse off the Google button, Cheater McCheatsley. (You know who you are!) I'll post the answers tomorrow.

I Didn't Really See That ... Did I??

I didn't really see that ... did I??

It was around 10:30 this morning, and Daughter #2 and I were on our way to church. We were on the freeway when a car came up next to us in the left lane. He was staying right with us, side by side, and he almost seemed too close--as if he was in my personal space. I don't know why, but that's always a little unnerving to me, like when someone steps up too close to you in the grocery store check-out line.

Then I caught something else out of the corner of my eye--a brown bottle that he kept tipping up to his mouth. Was that a beer that he was drinking for breakfast?

Daughter #2 leaned forward to look around me and nodded her head emphatically. "Yep, it looks like it." She whipped out her ever-present cell phone. "Want me to call 9-1-1?"

I've always taught my first graders and my own kids not to tattle. I don't want to hear about it unless someone's bleeding or in danger, I always say.

I also like to give someone the benefit of the doubt. "Maybe it's just a soda that looks like beer," I said.

Daughter #2 nodded, but skeptically this time. "Like a root beer."

"Uh oh." I hung back and let him get ahead of me. "Is he weaving?"

Daughter #2, ever the voice of reason, followed the car with her eyes as it went slowly side to side, from the shoulder and back to the center line. "Looks like it."

As soon as she tapped in the numbers on her phone, I felt a sense of relief.

"Making that call could have saved someone's life, I told her."

Sure, maybe we got a perfectly innocent Sunday morning root beer drinker pulled over, and at the very most, cost him ten minutes of his day. But I was at peace with my tattling.

Where Was She Going?

New Year's Day was packed at the soup kitchen. Not one table was empty. Every time I looked up from the tray of Sloppy Joes in the steam table, the line seemed to get longer. It was cold outside, and a couple of my friends were giving out winter gloves.

I barely had time to pause, and I had to remind myself to make eye contact. My friend, Phyllis, a Dominican Sister, once told me something that is so important relating to human worth and dignity. Many people out on their own, homeless or transient, haven't heard their own name in a long time. I didn't have time to use names or to even stop the line to chat, but I could definitely exchange greetings and make eye contact.

I had stepped back to let someone refill my Sloppy Joes when I saw them. A mother and a father and a little boy of about two. They were dragging over the high chair and the little boy's smile was as wide as his face. He was thrilled to be there. I ran to fill his sippy cup with some milk, wondering how long it had been since he'd had some. Milk is expensive.

One of the people who helps run the soup kitchen was watching from off to the side of the room. Watching with an accusing eye, to make sure I wasn't giving them something extra. Which made me want to give them all the more. We're not supposed to give out any containers, in case someone wants to take something "to go". But it's not my fault if I happen to drop a sheet of foil as I'm passing a table. I can sort of understand the supervisor's jadedness. He's been burned by the desperate few who are looking to take advantage to get ahead. But today I wasn't playing by his rules. Our church had purchased, prepared and served the food, and if I wanted to give out ten Sloppy Joes per customer, I was going to do it.

There is almost always someone out of the crowd who makes me stop short. This time it was a young woman. It looked as if she had arrived alone, and she stood about a half a step back from the silverware and green plastic trays at the beginning of the line. It wasn't so easy to make eye contact with her, because her eyes were veiled with the hazy cloud of her addiction. My husband asked her how many Sloppy Joes she wanted and she took so long to answer, he had to ask again. Her hair was dirty and her hands were shaking as she took her plate.

I couldn't stop thinking about her. Did she have anyone who cared where she slept, and how had her life gotten to where it was?

I looked for her later, but couldn't spot her in the crowded, noisy room. She was still on my mind as I cleaned up and rounded up my family, driving home in my warm car.

Why Are You So Scared??

Many thanks to Penny, who made me experience waves of heavy guilt for neglecting The Backstory for so long. Actually, Penny, I have a good excuse ... I was writing millions of words for my latest WorkInProgress. I have been doing my own version of NaNoWriMo, I like to call: WriteAsMuchAsYouPossiblyCanAndAttemptToStayOffOfFacebookAndTwitter.

Getting the work done can be daunting for a lot of reasons. But I have decided that the biggest reason has got to be fear. Not the DougCleggDeanKoontzStephenKing-imposed kind of fear. I'm talking about the scaredy-pants kind that is much more terrifying, and comes in a variety of shape-shifting forms.

Writer fears tend to multiply because you have time to sit back on your WriterCouch and let those anxieties swirl about and fester. These can develop into bonafide nightmares.

You have to refuse to let these paralyze your writer selves. I will address some of the most common ones.

One of my favorites is Fear

of Becoming the Crazy Cat Lady. That's a very real fear; I know this from personal experience, because I have been called that by various family members. Writing means you are left alone for hours at a time with no human conversation. But this can actually work in your favor. My cat is awesome. He lets me read my WIP out loud to him and he doesn't check his text messages. Sometimes he even sticks around for the whole chapter.

Another common one is fear of never finishing your manuscript, or worse ... only being able to finish it in TwitterSpeak, which basically amounts to pages of disjointed paragraphs of 140 characters or less. Show up to your WriterCouch. Punch the time clock. It'll get done.

Yet another one that is so unbearable to many writers and would-be writers that it is often uttered no louder than a faint whisper: FearThatSomeoneWillStealMyIdea. Sadly, there are those who find plagiarism to be an acceptable form of behavior/sport. But unless there is some really cool X-Files Mind Feed thing going on, and unless you are actually tweeting your 140 character paragraphs, nobody is going to steal your story. And nobody can ever steal your Voice. It's your writer fingerprint. It's impossible. And as far as I know, Milli Vanilli is long gone, or in some abandoned cave somewhere being forced to listen to a continuous loop of one-hit wonders.

So ... put down that People Magazine crossword, open up that laptop, and punch that time card. Write that book. You. Can. Do. It.

What is your biggest writer fear? Put it in the comment section, and I will round up some of my FabulousWriterFriends to help you chase them away.

I Dare You

My mom and dad taught my brothers and me to love and value books. They read to us, even after we could read by ourselves. We talked about books. We quoted great lines from books. We went to the library once a week.

Oh no, you're probably thinking. They probably ate wheat germ and lived twenty miles down a dirt road in the middle of nowhere.

Um ... no. We ate Hamburger Helper and ate Kool-aid popsicles, lived in suburbia, and watched plenty of TV, including some heavy doses of All My Children. We could tell you about the latest Pop Tart flavor, what was happening to Erica Kane, and who Marcia Brady's latest crush was.

But we also read. And the best part of it all, was we were allowed to choose our own books. If my brother, Tom, wanted to delve into a little history and memorize all of the presidents in order (at around age six), my parents didn't judge. If Tim wanted to check out six books on football, my mom helped him carry them to the car. And when I wanted to read a book by an author whose work was being challenged, my mom helped me find the book. Some places weren't allowing Judy Blume on their shelves. But my mom made sure to get her books in my hands.

We learned to hear what others had to say. We learned to listen, before we spoke.

It is Banned Books Week. Many of the books that have been challenged over the years are from people who haven't even taken the time to read the book in its entirety. They often take a word or a phrase out of context and decide that nobody else should read the book.

I can't think of anything more terrifying than if book banners ruled the world. What if we'd never been able to see Alice fall down the rabbit hole? What if we'd never been able to Go Ask Alice? What if Alice Walker had never been able to tell us Celie's story?

Go read a little Judy Blume. Go listen to Allen Ginsberg howl. Go read about Scout and Atticus and Boo Radley. Go get a little Annie on your mind.

I dare you.

Mad Men Me, Please

Why did you let me wear that? I can remember asking my mom that question several years after the purple eyeshadow fiasco of my seventh grade year.

She gave a nonchalant laugh. It was in style.

But not the way I applied it. I didn't wear any other makeup, besides Bonnie Bell Dr. Pepper Lipsmacker, so there was nothing to offset that thick stripe of chalky purple.

The eyeshadow,

itself looked like a large, wind-up purple crayon, and I passed it around to share with my friends in front of my locker. I can vividly remember having made one too many applications of the purple mess, and feeling my eyelid actually stick and catch for a second on the skin under my eyebrow.

I had many sad fashion mishaps, where my kindly mother just looked the other way.

A couple of them ended up in class pictures ... like the one-piece floral romper, paired with unfortunate bangs, and finished off with scuffed up orthopedic-strength saddle shoes. But in my own defense, I hated those saddle shoes with a passion. I got my sting-ray going full speed

down sixteenth street and used the toes for brakes, hoping and praying that my mom would buy me new ones. But she'd just hum a jaunty little tune and apply a couple more coats of beige shoe polish. Those things could withstand a nuclear war.

Two years later, I moved up to the suede version of my saddle shoes, and my fashion

forward mom made me the mini dress which had the potential for awesomeness, but ... the hair ... Marcia Brady gone very wrong. And then I had to go and accentuate the ensemble with the thick orange yarn ribbons and the brown stop sign glasses.

Ten years later, you would have thought I would have learned. Or at least

gleaned some of my mother's fashion sense. But I'm pretty sure some synthetic animal

died for this sweater. And

no matter what anyone tells you ...

a mullet is never the right answer for a new

hairdo.

How could someone who dresses like this:

have a mother who dressed all amazing and Mad Men like this?

Sadly, I'm starting to worry that I take more after the Joad side of the family.

Thanks, Great-Grandma. You could write like there was no tomorrow, but I'm concerned about the accessories.