58) Blood and Marrow

Losing the Shticks

sHtiCks

I was thinking about “shtick” and what a singular, specific word it is. Surely, I thought, there are words in other languages for shtick. I’m not writing a story or screenplay in another language, I don’t have a character with a line of dialog that needs to say shtick in their native tongue. Just curious, that’s all. (Welcome to my insatiable quest for random info, ie, existential dread distraction.) Curiosity is my shiny object.

There’s no other translation. If one is going to say or think of ‘shtick’ in any other language, apparently you are going to use shtick. It makes one wonder what cultures or countries wouldn’t even recognize shtick conceptually. Surely every culture or society has people who have routine or repeated ways of doing things, particular mannerisms?

Also, there’s barely any etymology on this word, it kind of just came into existence perfectly formed and intact without any evolution. First there was the German word stücke which translates to a piece, or a slice. Think of a comic “bit.” The Yiddish adaptation came in the 1940’s and over time has broadened from usage as a theatrical or comic gimmick or routine to general traits or characteristic identifiers.

So. The reason I was thinking about shtick in the first place is because sometimes I realize I’m meeting or talking with someone new, and if certain topics come up, I have exact certain things I will say. I have shticks. Everyone does this, at least most everyone I’ve known does. If you’re a couple—I’m starting to forget a little what that’s like—it can get tiresome hearing your partner’s shtick. I remember that. Also parent shticks. They all had them and we all heard them our whole lives.

Like comics I guess, we notice when something lands well and might try it again on another person, and when you have a winning little spiel or zinger, it’s off to the races, trotting out that shtick to repeated positive reinforcement. I met someone yesterday, a new friend I hope, and I enjoyed his company so much that I was reflecting on our conversation, kind of re-enjoying it. That’s when I started thinking about my shticks, repeato girl saying those tried and true wisecracks and witticisms when the conversational opportunity comes around.

I’m not sure why, it’s not a cringe factor or anything, but I think as an experiment I’m going to try and dump all of the shticks. Maybe I’m wondering if it would feel more present, more fully alive, to always respond spontaneously to the person I’m interacting with in a given moment without relying on phrases and hot takes that I know work, that I know will get approval.

I’m 65, and my time is finite and maybe another way to grow is to be the most original, new and fresh me I can be for all of it. An amazing contrary opposition to what we think of aging as being; certainly not new and fresh.

I’m into it, and curious how to stop. Like I might have to stop mid-sentence and say wo, that’s a shtick, I’ve said it dozens of times and this time I’m not going to finish.

Writing is cool because it’s gotta be fresh. Imagine if I kept writing that thought or string of sentences that people liked last week, over and over?

kiDs dO tHe dArnDeSt ThiNgs

I remember clearly the twin size bed in the small house I lived in with my single, divorced mom at four and five years old. The house was close to UT campus on Graham Place. When I lived in Austin, I drove down the street trying to shake feelings and memories loose and was surprised again at the power of place as portal. This is where my earliest memories generate from. Some are distinctively framed by feelings, embedded and hard wired into story. Some are visual, I see them as out of body experiences, like watching a super-8 film reel.

All I remember about my bedroom is that twin bed, pushed into the corner. I don’t think there was any decor or sweetness to it—my mom wasn’t that way. I don’t remember being tucked in, or having bedtime stories read to me. That doesn’t mean those things never happened, I just don’t remember. The memories I have are shrouded in darkness; they happened at night.

I like to think everyone has slightly off, strange kid stuff in their past. I mean, we aren’t completely socialized in the post toddler years, and during alone time with no adults disapproving, we could be our natural weird selves. But if I was unusual, I supposed I’d be okay with that too. Most of the weird kid wrinkles get ironed out by social norms soon enough—very few kids want to be ostracized and ridiculed by peers.

Domestically, besides decorating, my mom didn’t cook much. Lots of TV dinners and frozen pot pies. I liked them, so no problem there. She could make an English style meat and potato pie and sometimes she made pork chops. The pork chop is one of my earliest memories: I’d smuggle the L shaped pork chop bone off the plate, take it to bed with me, and suck the marrow out of the bone night after night, hiding it under my pillow and repeating until it was completely dried up and sucked out. I wish my mom was alive so I could ask her if she recalls finding hollowed crackly white pork chop bones under my pillow.

I have no idea why I did this, if it was a nutritional deficiency, or a soothing technique like thumb sucking—something I never did.

I also remember picking my nose and wiping boogies on the wall, and feeling aware this was gross but doing it anyway, in an early preview combo of shame and defiance. I suppose I knew it was gross because one never saw adults picking their nose and wiping the boogs on walls—I doubt it’s an innate moral thing. We only need to watch apes for a matter of seconds to know how natural it is for mammals to pick, at anything and everything.

Interesting Sidebar: there are studies that show that children as early as 3 years old are innately bothered by a violation of a moral norm (causing intentional harm to another,) with physiological changes revealing their disturbance.

I’ve had conversations with friends about weird shit they did as kids. I have a friend who told me she and her brother had a game when they were very young, pre K, called “stink finger” —you can guess what this game involved; making your finger stink and forcing the sibling to smell it. She said she liked the way her own stinkfinger smelled, but not her brother’s. Go figure.

I also remember thinking about death, the mysterious, unknown certainty of it. I’d think about it until I was crying into my pillow; great, grieving sobs. I didn’t get up and go to my mom for comfort, I’d cry myself to sleep. This very young contemplation and obsession of death is a mystery, because I wouldn’t have known anyone at that age who had died.

But, these are the things I remember, my earliest memories from when we lived on Graham Place. When I was a bit older, at 5, there’s tons from this house. The massive tree in the front yard of the next door house I sat under when I ran away from home. My mom kept the note until it disintegrated: I basically listed everyone I knew, saying I hated them all. I signed it “love, Kathy.”

Also speaking of trees; I remember after one Christmas, when everyone had put their Christmas trees out for garbage collection, dragging them all to the front of our house and making them stand up. I actually remember the immense effort it took, I remember going inside and telling my mom I’d made a forest. But more than anything I remember how it made her boyfriend Ronald laugh and it was the first time I thought he might like me.

tHe hEaLtH bENdeR

I’m on a health bender the likes of which I haven’t see in nearly 20 years. Long overdue. This was precipitated by getting results of my first NHS (UK health care) blood draw. I’m a big fan of the local purple haired nurse who got 2 vials from me. I’m what they call a “hard stick” —(a hard stick with lots of schticks?)—countless times I’ve left a competent phlebotomist baffled at how I manage to even exist. I have the tiniest, hidden, contrarian, mocking veins in humanity, making my annual physicals wrought with pokes and bruises and failed blood samples. This woman behind the curtained bay sized me up, her eyes blazing with confidence and determination. She went straight for the arm that no one ever gets blood from, to a vein a few inches from my elbow (!!) and in 3 minutes had her prize and my adoration.

I’ve been kind of knowing this might be on the horizon, and sure enough, like a gang of bounty hunters hot on the trail, high cholesterol caught up with me. Before I go on meds to help keep my cloggy arteries clear, I decided to do a drastic lifestyle change. If you must know, since moving to England a day hasn’t gone by where I wasn’t slathering butter on a croissant made almost entirely of butter, or scarfing down ginger biscuits with my tea or enhancing my day with cakes from Gails or the cathedral cafe.

I stopped, cold turkey. That set in motion other changes; consistent exercise, some other modalities for well-being (Chinese, Ayurvedic) and here I am two weeks in, feeling pretty damn pleased with myself. In 3 months, I’ll find the purple haired nurse and find out if I’ve managed to reduce this gunk. Best case, I buy a few more statin-free years—but worst case, if I need the meds I’ll still have some nifty new habits and become a 66 year old who feels better than the 65 year old me did.