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One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times – Chapter 52

#52 – “Keep your money in your shoes. That way you don’t have to carry a purse.”

Me, Dorothy, Gloria, Honey and Mom (seated) around 1984.

Not all of the one hundred things my mom taught me a million times seem nuggets of brilliance until closer examination.  Mom was a very practical gal. She knew that one should always have some cash on hand (or foot as it were) … Wow I just had an epiphany! I don’t remember my mom carrying a purse! How does a woman not carry a purse, and why did I have to reach the age of 42, OK 62, to remember that she didn’t carry a purse!

Actually, that explains a lot. Now I know why mom’s car looked like a terribly untidy house. She had to carry everything she needed in her car because she didn’t carry a purse! She had makeup, perfume, pens, pencils, jewelry, checkbooks and glasses on the front seat, and a stack of household bills and other paperwork sliding around on the passenger floor - everything women usually carry in their purses. This also explains why my sisters and I have an aversion to purses. 

Dorothy: “Did you see my new purse?”

Me: “Yeah I saw it. It’s small. Really small, but not as small as my new purse!”

Dorothy: “Where’d you get that?”

Me: “I got it at the getting place. Eat your heart out.” Click on Read More Below...

Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself – A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace, by David Lipsky

In 2009 Book Goddesses member (and my personal barometer of “cool”), Loralee Martin, picked one of David Foster Wallace’s books Consider the Lobster as our book-of-the-month selection.  She chose this in remembrance of Wallace who had recently committed suicide.  I enthusiastically agreed, all the while thinking, “Who the hell is David Foster Wallace?”  Turns out if you don’t know of Wallace nor have read his book Infinite Jest, you’re probably from the shallow end of the gene pool or at the very least not well-read.  Time magazine chose Infinite Jest as one of the “All-Time 100 Greatest Novels” covering the period 1923–2006; so of course I had to learn as much about him as quickly as possible.  Fate helped out when David Lipsky, author of Absolutely American and contributing editor to Rolling Stone and a ton of other publications, published his strange but interesting verbatim five-day interview with Wallace, Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself.

When I say verbatim, I literally mean verbatim.  Evidently Lipsky took the tape-recorded interviews to a stenographer and said, “transcribe this please;” added a few comments of his own (very few) and voilà the book was born. Don’t get me wrong.  Lipsky is a smart writer and an interesting guy himself, but I couldn’t make out if this book was opportunism (riding on the rubberneckers of Wallace’s suicide – mea culpa) or just a really interesting homage to a brilliant but tortured soul (a description that has become a cliché). Click on Read More Below...