"And then I woke up in Pittsburgh of all places!"
Discover more from Breathing Space
In this one-day-late edition: a downright hilarious bookclub story * the history of Mr. Yuk * flinged flamingos got flung * Antonio Brown wants to come home * the worst Pittsburgh insult poem ever * and more! Not going to lie. I barely edited or proofread this. You’ll live.
Happy … Thursday! As often happens, yesterday was too busy for me to publish on time, what with meetings, appointments, and grad school. I also had two bookclub visits in the early part of the week, both fantastic.
Now, I need to tell you a story and no, it is not a story about how I never don’t have a cardigan from Marshalls on. Although, that’s a lie; sometimes I have one from Sam’s Club on.
At the bookclub on the right up there, I was seated at the head of the table as Princesses of Darkness should be. During the discussion, the woman at the far left of the picture remained completely silent. Not a single word or murmur from her that I could recall in nearly two hours of chitchat, and she was seated right next to me! Her name tag said Raylene. My thoughts as the discussion went on were:
1. Raylene hated your book, girl. 2. Maybe Raylene is shy. Do not put her on the spot or even make eye contact with her or you’ll make her uncomfortable. 3. Has anyone ever sang Raylene to the tune of Jolene to her? Should I?
As we wrapped up the discussion, she finally cleared her throat to say something and I …
She said, “I did not buy your book, and I’m embarrassed to say this. I’m a Kindle reader —”
Now, thinking she was saying the reason she didn’t have a physical copy of my book in front of her was because she prefers to read on a Kindle, I jumped in to say, “Listen, girl, same. I can’t read real books with these old-ass eyes of mine. Give me font options!”
And she said [paraphrasing], “Well, yes, but also, no. That’s not what I mean. I bought the book Nothing & Everything.”
Reader, my book title is Nothing. Everything. Stylized with two words and two periods. There is another book out there called Nothing & Everything. Two words, one ampersand, no period. Now, at the first book club I ever visited, another woman said she too made that mistake and realized it after 20 or so pages.
I reassured Raylene: “You’re not the first to do so. How much did you read before you realized it was the wrong book?”
And she said, “The. Whole. Thing. I didn’t realize it until you started talking tonight.”
Oh. My. God. The first lines of my book?
Do you know what happens when your marriage of 17 years falls apart? When you have no choice but to walk away from your second kiss who became your first boyfriend who became your first love who became the man you married at twenty-two with the moon in your eyes and a catch in your breath? Everything happens. And nothing happens.
Everything happens. You shout. Cry. You angrily, messily and aggressively throw his belongings into boxes. You shake out an entire jewelry tray of every gift he ever gave you and listen as rings, bracelets, pendants, watches and charms clink and slink their way around miscellaneous tchotchkes to rest on the bottom of a used moving box you Sharpied with “YOUR DUMB SHIT.”
The other book? Here’s where I should tell you that the full title is Nothing & Everything: How to Stop Fearing Nihilism and Embrace the Void.*
Do you ever ask yourself, as you try and fail to fall asleep at night, whether there is any meaning to your life? Do you ever despair that your life is insignificant, an unimportant fragment of a world that doesn’t care? Do you ever suspect that this might all just be a dream or simulation, that this existence is fundamentally unreal in some sense? Do you ever question how it’s possible for us to know anything, suspecting that our hard-won truths are mere illusion? Do you ever doubt the existence of your self? You are right to doubt.**
Whereas my fiction novel is literally meant to give you hope, the book Raylene read was a nonfiction book about hopelessness and void-embracing. She said she texted one of the bookclub ladies, “Um. What is this book? Are you actually liking this??” and her friend told her, “Stick with it. It is going to get so good.”
Internet, it never got good. But she stuck with it until the very last page and then came ready to talk about nihilism and probably thought I would show up in all black, my face dead of emotion, unidentifiable debris in my greasy hair, wearing a shirt that says NOTHING FUCKING MATTERS. And instead there I was, all smiles and rainbows and laughs, saying, “My book is about love and hope and joy and healing and humor! Yayyyy! [throws confetti]”
I hope I didn’t have a two-degrees connection to turning this lovely woman into a hardcore nihilist like Chidi when he lost his existential shit and called his students chilibabies***:
Back away from the void, Raylene, Raylene, Raylene, Rayleeeeeeeene.
Let’s talk!
* Are you scream-laughing? Because I am scream-laughing.
** Slightly condensed for space
** If I ever become a professor, I am absolutely pulling out the “listen up, my little chilibabies” line idk
1. A “Yuk-ky” legacy worth celebrating
Dr. Richard W. Moriarty died last week. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, maybe this news clipping from 1974 will help:
He is the creator of the legendary Mr. Yuk poison warning stickers which were first distributed for free in 1972 under his leadership of the Poison Center at Children’s Hospital, which he founded. From The Pittsburgh Press in 1972:
Now, let me tell you my Mr. Yuk story. When my son was maybe a year-and-a-half old, I found him squirreled under the dining room table gumming on something, as kids that age do. They find something and they say, “This looks terrible. I must away and eat it.” Then they turn five and say, “This looks delicious. I must refuse to eat it. Don’t let them large people break you.”
When I realized he had somehow gotten a hold of an errant piece of eucalyptus from a wreath I had made, I panicked. Mah bebe! Not even sure if he swallowed anything, I ran to my kitchen sink, grabbed a random bottle of household poison, dialed the Mr. Yuk number on the sticker, and breathlessly explained that MAH BEBE! had eaten eucalyptus and isn’t that poisonous to humans and they should probably send a helicopter you can just land it on my roof it is fine just drop a basket maybe I’ll see you up there in five minutes.
And the calm person who answered asked, “Was it real eucalyptus?”
I said, “No, not real. Fake. Like you buy at the craft store.”
Boy did the air go out of that conversation. Hahah. She was like, “Yeah, you’re fine. He’s fine. It’s all fine. Just keep an eye on him.” Do you think they talked about me at the water cooler?
You can read Dr. Moriarty’s obituary here. He really seemed like a remarkable man who left a legacy that truly saved lives and will continue to do so. And this was my roundabout way of leading you to this week’s Pittsburgh product for sale. The official Mr. Yuk online store from the University of Pittsburgh!
There’s lot of good stuff, including brochures, magnets, school packs, stickers, and even Yuk Pucks. Not an ad!
2. “I don’t think we’re in the Yucatan Peninsula anymore, Dottie.”
One thing about the pandemic is that it turned a lot of us into birdwatchers. Like we had two choices, you guys—bake sourdough bread or watch birds. Pick your pandemic lockdown poison. My sister gave me 100-year-old sourdough starter and just like I do plants, I promptly let it die. Don’t be mad. She had plenty left. I guess you can make starters from other starters and that’s what she gave me, so what I actually did was let starter babies die.
Thus, with my starter dead, I turned to birds.
My father become so addicted to birdwatching that he put like ten bird-feeders in his giant yard. This attracted squirrels, which seemed to attract raccoon families, which somehow brought even more deer and then yellow jackets and chipmunks. When I tell you my dad has been at total war with backyard critters for three years now. Living under his deck. Chewing through his air conditioner wires. Eating his flowers. Pooping on his porch. And I’m like, YOU CREATED THIS ANIMAL UTOPIA, YOU UNWITTING BIRD GOD.
Weirdly, Unwitting Bird God is not my new band name.
My mother, for her part, just shakes her head at him and texts us all, “Your dad is fighting with a squirrel that he swears he heard laugh at him.”
Well, good news, birdwatchers! Flamingos? Those tall-necked pink birds you can only see at the Aviary or the zoo? They got their Barbie asses flung all the way from Mexico to Pennsylvania by a hurricane.
Ohio was the northernmost point for the flamingos as of Wednesday, that is until a pair of flamingos were sighted in Southern Pennsylvania's Franklin County on Thursday morning.
The birds will likely make their way back south, but here’s the question: maybe they’ll think about coming back this far north next summer to escape the summer heat? I can just hear them saying, “Listen, I really enjoyed Deep Creek. I’m going back.” And another would be like, “Lucky you. I got flung to Pittsburgh and let me tell you, some drunk yinzer stole me and tried to plant me in their landscaping like a living nativity.”
Yinzers gonna yinz.
One bright side to global warming is that if it is going to increase the severity and frequency of bird-flinging hurricanes, we might finally get some colorful parrots up in these here woods.
Happy flamingo watching, Pittsburgh!
3. Grab thy butts…
…and hold them tight.
Oh dear. Antonio Brown is wanting to return to the Steelers? After everything? The legal troubles? The accusations? The burnt bridges? I think it’s safe to say my grandmother has a better chance of playing wide receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers, and she has been dead for 20 years.
We already know what he would do—he’d take an actual shit on the field because he wasn’t being targeted enough, and then would go home and fling patio furniture over a 14th-floor balcony because his CTE told him to.
We’ve already seen this movie; we know how it ends.
4. Worst poetry slam ever
Continuing my series of published insults about Pittsburgh throughout history, we’re heading back to 1907. In 1907, a newspaper in a tiny town in Iowa published an anti-Pittsburgh piece claiming that the sinful, vile, scandalized, immoral city of Pittsburgh wouldn’t be able to find 50 “righteous” men in the whole city. The paper, like many did at the time, compared Pittsburgh to Sodom and Gomorrah, claiming that Pittsburgh was even worse — just three rivers winding their way through a blanket of vice and sin.
As newspapers across the country picked up the piece, Pittsburgh got ANGRY. I’m going to save the story for what Pittsburgh did in response to the Iowa piece for a time when I have more space to tell it, because it is hilarious. For now, let me share this poem, which didn’t make my final column. It was published in the Richmond Times-Dispatch about Pittsburgh’s attempts to find their righteous 50, and failing.
So good I forgot to snap.
Anyway, now I have beef with Richmond. I’ll find some space and time next week to tell you the story of what happened in Pittsburgh in response to that Iowa editorial. You’ll love it or I’ll throw your patio furniture off your balcony don’t test me.
5. N’at!
The short things you might care about, or not. It’s a free country.
Should I organize this in Pittsburgh for Halloween next year?? Fundraiser maybe? I’ll do all the research and stuff. Hmm. On my radar. H/t to whoever pointed it out to me. I lost the info.
The Kennywood Don’t Stand Up racer sign I told you about last week sold for $2,025 while the bench went for a bargain at $455. Can’t wait to see where they turn up. Hopefully my front lawn. They’ll go great with my new flamingo, which is totally plastic. I swear. Don’t touch it. Especially don’t feed it.
You’ve all seen the port-a-potty girl-brawl from the recent Morgan Wallen concert at Acrisure and I just want to say that the foremost thought in my mind during the whole video was, “Man, I did NOT know cowgirl boots had such great traction.” I thought they were made for boot-scootin’ honky-tonk boogie-ing, not dragging other people around by their hair while looking cute. Lesson learned!
My book talk at Norwin Library in North Huntingdon/Irwin is coming up on September 27 at 6:30. I hope to see some of you there. But if you plan to read the book beforehand (not a requirement), please for the love of god read Nothing [period] Everything [period]. Don’t show up ready to get your nihilism on. Register here!
Mission of Mercy needs all kinds of general and medically trained volunteers for their upcoming clinic at the convention center that provides free dental, vision and hearing services, including free glasses, dental work and hearing aids! It’s truly amazing. Click here to see how you can help. Not an ad!
We recently surpassed 2,500 subscribers to this weekly drivel of mine. Welcome to all you new subscribers. I apologize in advance for … [gestures widely at everything].
6. And that’s it!
It’s slightly shorter this week, due to the aforementioned lack of time. Bear with me as I settle back into my grad schoolwork. It gets pretty intense at time. It’s extremely reading- and research-heavy. I love it so much. Have a fantastic week! Volunteer your time! Stop littering, you trashy jags! Be kind! Step away from the void, Raylene!
And be sure to come out to see my new band Princesses of Darkness. Our dresses might be poofy and pink, but rest assured they are covered in blood.
Rock on and I’ll see yinz next week!