Author: Mary Lucia

Dear Column,
This is definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write to a column I write. We need to talk.

Lately, it’s seemed like we still love each other, but just aren’t “in love” anymore. First and foremost, let me make it clear that there isn’t another column involved. I couldn’t do that to you. Besides, you know too many of my secrets, which I’ve fed you over the years. You’ve provided the perfect sounding board for a malcontented spaz like myself. Manic depression, cats, death, rock bands, unemployment, hypochondria: There was nothing I couldn’t talk to you about.

Maybe I took you for granted, sometimes not actually picking up a copy for several days to see how you “turned out.” For that I am sorry. I’ll never forget the sometimes several minutes we spent together each month, usually an hour before deadline. Was our time together brief? Yes. But know that you were on my mind every day. I’ll only speak sweetly of you, and if we get lonely and want to trip down memory lane, we’ll always have online archiving.

“If you love someone, set them free.”

You, of all columns, know how hard that was for me to write. As you are well aware, I hate Sting.

Mary sez: Good bye.

Email Mary at popularcreeps@yahoo.com.

I wonder: If I live to be ninety-three years old, will I fundamentally be the same person I am now, only four inches shorter and with twenty-seven additional cats? The people who extol the virtues of “clean living” say it’ll add ten years to your life. Like that’s some big incentive. I love and worship the elderly; I’m just not so sure that being elderly myself is going to be so hot. And then I spoke with Studs Terkel. My conversation with this ninety-three-year-old man changed my life. If I could be half the man he is, I’d do a shot of wheat grass right now. Here’s a dude who survived not only several wars and forty-seven years in radio, but also open-heart surgery at the age of ninety-three! Seven weeks later, he was on a book tour. He and I talked for forty-five minutes about the unequivocal need for music, questioning authority, and relationships with strangers that everyone must maintain throughout one’s life. We spoke very little about the book he’s promoting and more about the little things that mean everything. I know he wasn’t aware of how this conversation was affecting me, but after every anecdote he rasped, I silently slapped my forehead in complete agreement. There is always something amazing about anyone’s survival in this world, let alone for more than ninety years.

Email Mary at popularcreeps at yahoo dot com.

Want to see me squirm and duck for cover? Try one of these conversation starters:
1. “I met someone who knows you.” What possible good can come from a sentence that begins this way? It’s never followed up with, “It was someone whose life you saved a few years ago and then selflessly asked for nothing in return.” It’s usually more like, “He said you two went out once and then you lost touch. He’s on parole now and says you should give him a call. Also, his band has a new disc coming out that he’d love for you to give a listen to.” Then the real challenge begins. How do I explain to this well-meaning messenger that I’d rather have elective gum surgery than get in touch with someone who knows me?
2. “Would you be available … ?” Never is this starter followed up with anything you, me, or your Aunt Marie would ever consider doing at gunpoint. The following words are usually involved, “host,” “judge,” “emcee,” “panel,” or “intro.” This one is particularly sketchy, as I’ve made a semi-career out of doing all of the above. But once you’ve been seen doing something, the assumption is it’s got to be something you love doing. Also, you love doing it for free.
Come to think of it, I could add many more cringe-inducing sentence starters to the list:
“Is it true…?”
“Dont take this the wrong way…”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you used to… ?”
“When you get a chance…”
Leonardo da Vinci said it best when he said you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the facts of life. The facts of life.

Email Mary at popularcreeps at yahoo dot com.

While reflecting on one’s life, certain images and themes seem to dominate: God, Family, Love, etc. However, it’s occurred to me that I may have an unconscious fixation with Chihuahuas (for the record, I can barely spell “Chihuahua”). I’ve never eaten at a Taco Bell. Paris Hilton means very little to me. Yet Chihuahuas seem to have had a profound effect on me.

Growing up, we had a neighbor across the alley from us who was from Greece. He wore a Greek sailor cap, drove a Rambler, and owned a white Chihuahua named Judy. It’s safe to say that Judy may not have appreciated the hand she was dealt in this life, as she seemed to have yearned to be an Irish wolfhound. In the 1970s, dogs were less about ornamentation and more about scaring people off of property, and Judy was quite effective at that duty. On the same block lived a German shepherd with anger management issues, and quite honestly, I was more afraid of Judy’s frenzied wrath.

Coincidentally, my aunt had a Chihuahua named Chico who seemed to dig me. I can almost still hear his little black toenails clicking on the kitchen linoleum. There aren’t a ton of photos of me as a kid, but the one everyone remembers is me at age four sitting on a picnic table with my arm around what appeared to be a sock puppet, but was actually Chico. According to family lore, Chico was killed by an airborne shingle. A careless roofer next door was responsible. I must have told the shingle story for fifteen years before I learned that Chico had in fact survived the shingle missile, but died of cancer years later. I got a chance to ask writer Chuck Klosterman my favorite question: “If you lost both arms in a horrible freak accident, and your choice was to have no arms or have a Chihuahua’s paws surgically attached, which would you prefer?” His answer stunned me. “What would be the advantage?”

“Geez, Chuck, I don’t know. How about you’d be known as that writer from Spin with Chihuahua hands?” While taking a walk around the lake, my boyfriend and I passed a woman walking an unusually shaky, irritated-looking Chihuahua. “Poor nervous rat on a string,” I commented as we passed, to which my beloved suggested I use that as the name of my future autobiography. Thanks, honey.

I love you, too.

Email Mary at popularcreeps@yahoo.com.

I know that some people commute many more miles to work than I do and they don’t seem at all put out by it. But to me sometimes it feels like I work in a whole other state or even galaxy. I contemplate the frequent flyer miles I’ve accumulated. I gas up, load the car with supplies and mentally prepare to travel a long, long distance. For I work in downtown St. Paul. For a South Murderapolis gal this is a road trip.
When I first began my daily trek to the land of windbreakers and hockey, I noticed that an unusually large cross section of the driving population travels east on I-94 with an open flatbed truck filled with small, jagged rocks. Naturally, I am always behind this person and their load of missile-like debris. Crossing the river, I start fumbling in my purse for my passport, panicking, “Wait! Are all of my booster shots current? Did I ask someone to bring in my mail and feed my cats?” I do love that this ride provides me with consistent random visuals. One day I found myself traveling behind a rusted-out beater, a huge Lincoln Continental with a mattress precariously tied to its roof. If the driver swerved the tiniest bit within his lane, the Posturpedic shuddered from one side to the other, threatening at any moment to fly off into my windshield. When I made it to the next lane to pass, I saw that the driver was a woman in her early hundreds. I thought about her all day.
It’s natural for the occasional bug to meet his maker by splatting on your car windows, but birds? Is this a St. Paul thing? This has happened to me many times, most memorably the time that I noticed a large, blackish cluster of twigs stuck in one of the wipers. Only when I turned them on to shake it off did I realize it was a hummingbird! I figure I had probably concussed his little head as it dragged back and forth before my very eyes, and now I was so freaked out I just wanted this thing off my windshield. So I turned the wipers on “high,” said a quick bird prayer, and flung that sucker into the St. Paul vortex.
Email Mary at popularcreeps at yahoo.com.

I am the queen of recurring dreams. But lately, I’m often disappointed by the obvious symbols and lack of mystery they seem to hold. It’s been so long since I’ve had one of those “What in the world do you think that means?” dreams. Also sadly lacking are the “Please don’t wake me–I’m loving this so much” dreams. I used to have those more often than not, but lately there’s been no cool flying, no stumbling upon a warehouse filled with free antiques, and no favorite recurring dream–the one in which I find myself back in Boston, where Aerosmith’s Joe Perry cooks breakfast for me shirtless.

I frequently have the “I see a tornado coming at me in the distance” dream, in which I dawdle around wasting precious time, only to find myself looking at it through a huge plate-glass picture window. Then, just as this cyclone of (mental) debris is bearing down on me, I try to outrun it. Which is futile–as everyone knows, when you need a quick getaway in dreams, you can only run as if you were sprinting through quicksand while carrying a sofabed on your back.

I also resent the hell out of the fact that half of my dreams are about working. Like this one: I’m waiting tables and the hostess has seated my entire section at once. I try to ring up orders on the cash register, but my fingers are like canned hams, unable to press one button at a time. I paw at the register like a bear. I usually wake up from work dreams feeling completely ripped off, as mentally I just pulled a seven-hour shift.

And how’s this for ridiculous: Other people are dreaming of my shortcomings and limitations. Last week a friend dreamt that I had an infant daughter who was completely verbal and capable of sarcasm. I suggested that we go get coffee, and left the baby in front of the television set. My friend was horrified, and kept insisting it might not be a good idea to leave her alone. My response was, “Nah, she can take care of herself. Besides, she’ll call me if she needs anything.” Oh, boy. Who wants me to babysit? Anyone?

Email Mary at popularcreeps at yahoo.com

Yeah, yeah. In some ways I have that “old soul” thing going on (though I find that expression to be fundamentally jive). Lately, however, some form of latent immaturity has started to kick in. For instance, I recently walked into a conversation at work among a group of people who were discussing the joy–and excitement of–a pregnant coworker. The conversation came to an abrupt halt when I pointed out how weird it was that she was growing a little penis in her stomach. Well, she is! Maybe it makes sense to be working my way backward. I was kind of an old woman as a little kid. I loved cats and my own company. Getting into my jammies was usually the highlight of my day. However, I was a complete insomniac, which isn’t a disorder one normally associates with childhood. While most little girls were sawing logs wrapped in their Strawberry Shortcake sheets, I was wide awake at 3:00 A.M., fretting that I’d lost my hot-lunch ticket and the lunch lady with the hairdo that looked like a roast was going to yell at me. Everyone says, “What’s the hurry to grow up?” Oh, I don’t know. How about the fact that life is ass when you’re fifteen? Fake IDs saved my life at a time when seeing bands meant more to me than any prom or college application. There was nothing more satisfying than waking up for school with a smudged ink stamp on my hand, which I was careful not to wash off. Listening to girls on the school bus chirping about their latest crushes, all I could think was, “Dude, last night I somehow passed for twenty-one, saw Brad Brains, and had to climb through a basement window when I got home.” I think they missed out. They think I missed out. What do you think?

Email Mary at popularcreeps@yahoo.com