ATLANTA, GA-

The snow was piling up outside, a white blanket six inches thick and gleaming in the moonlight, reflected up through Darla’s bedroom window. I had just finished reading a story to the girls from Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad Treasury about sledding down a steep hill. Toad, the pessimist, is leery of such a dangerous undertaking, but the eternally optimistic Frog assures him they will be safe and have lots of fun.

Flying down the hill they hit a bump and Frog falls off. Toad keeps talking as if Frog were still on the sled, but a passing crow tells him he’s talking to himself. Toad looks back at the empty sled, freaks out and quickly crashes into a snow bank. Later, he tells Frog winter is fun, but staying in bed is much better. Safer too.

“I like that one, but it makes me cold,” says Emma, hugging her shoulders. “Can you tell us a Florida story?”

“Yeah, a Florida story!” Darla says, scrunching down under the covers.

So I begin as I always do.
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COLUMBIA, MD -

I’m barely through the door when the miniature ball of energy that Jilly calls a dog meets me with pointed ears and a wiggling nub of a tail. I often wonder, when he greets me this way, if he isn’t confused by who I am, if all the dark hair in this house allows him to greet us all happily and to then distinguish between us by who returns his affections with as much glee as he gives them.

I am not one to return almost anyone’s affections, much less a fourteen pound Rat Terrier with a Napoleon complex…but it’s nice to know he loves me even though I’m his aunt and not his biggest fan. It gives me hope.

Jilly is in the kitchen and when I round the corner, my black bag hanging from my arm and Duke running circles around me with the hope I’ll drop something edible, she turns to face me with the refrigerator door open and two long neck bottles in either hand.

‘Sam Adams Cherry Wheat or Stoudt’s Belgian Ale?’

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LOS ANGELES, CA-

I don’t know if you noticed, but a few years ago Johnnie turned around. He used to be walking left; now he’s going right.

When pressed, the Johnnie Walker company explained that leftward leads to the past, while to the right lies the land of the future. And if there’s anything Johnnie stands for, it’s the future.

I found this fascinating, though I couldn’t say that I liked it. Johnnie looked wrong. Too happy, too forward-thinking. He looked like he was about to leave us all behind.

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MARIN COUNTY, CA-

I’m going to Burning Man this year.

Ten days in the dust and the wind and the heat and the cold and the chaos. Ten days of thumping base and lunacy and love. Ten days of…. I have no idea what.

Many conflicting words and feelings spring to mind- solitude, isolation, adventure, companionship, evolution, degeneration, transcendence, freedom, inhibition, self-consciousness, self-expression… the list goes on.

I’m a Burning man virgin and (due to a recent compulsion to drive myself completely mad) over the last few weeks my excitement levels have waxed, waned, teetered, tottered, disappeared entirely into a pit of anxious fear and then returned, tentatively, dressed up as clowns and hookers.

Perhaps I need to explain…

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PARIS, FRANCE -

This week it’s mini-society.

They sell cookies, loan each other money, provide services.

I hide behind the mayor’s desk and watch them taking orders from my mother so surely in charge. There’s a tall kid who won’t stop talking. He raises his chin to the teacher, challenging her. He frightens me. Who would challenge my mother like this? She walks to him and kneels down at his desk. She looks him in the eye whispering. He lowers his chin. She touches her hand to his head - a benevolent minister - and mini-society begins.

The brownie salesman sells his brownies.

“Get your brownies. Fresh brownies,” he calls out. “Best in the whole entire world.”

And across the city they’re selling lanyards.

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TULSA, OK-

I remember quite clearly, when I was 10 or so, a television commercial for Tylenol. The message went something like this:

“Extra Strength Tylenol has more pain-relieving medicine than Regular Strength Bayer Aspirin.”

I was only 10 years old. I shouldn’t have even been paying attention to the commercials. I should have been playing with my Rubik’s cube while I waited for Magnum, P.I. to come back on. But that commercial pissed me off.

How can they think people would be that stupid? I wondered. Any human being with half a brain isn’t going to be fooled by a statement so clearly misleading.

It turns out people are not only susceptible to misleading marketing, they seem to be drawn to it. Unsubstantiated superlatives appeal to our inner nature. But what nature is that, exactly?

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LOS ANGELES, CA -

I’ve come to realize that when certain people leave your life they can still occupy a huge part of your heart. Their goodness and grace; the sound of their laughter; how they moved in their skin; how their skin felt touching yours; all those memories and more can get so locked inside your heart that it’s sometimes hard to make room for others.

If I had to rent out the remaining space in my heart it wouldn’t be very large. At best the size of a small studio apartment.

I can see the add now:

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I’ve just moved.

Not just houses, but cities and entire lives. It’s exciting and new, a bit like the theme song from the Love Boat, but with no Gopher, no dancing girls and no stopover in Rio.

Bummer!

For posterity’s sake I kept a bit of a journal of my first week in San Francisco and have decided to share it as a peek into the inner sanctum of my life. I’d call you all voyeurs for reading, but in actuality I’m just a hideous narcissist who wants to show you photos of my closet.

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SAN FRANCISCO-

Hello, my name is Zoë Brock and I am a hopelessly hopeful romantic.

Love and I have a long and sordid relationship. We’re stuck to each other with that cheap, tacky glue that never dries properly and gets hairs and other bits of icky dirt and effluvia stuck in it and ends up looking like a coughed up owl pellet, minus the skeletal bits. It’s horrible, trust me.

Sometimes I feel as if I live my life adhered to the cheap pulpy paper bound between the flowery covers of a Harlequin romance novel.

Sometimes I wonder if some sticky-fingered house-wife isn’t pouring over the sordid details of my love-life, swooning, moaning and gasping at the more elaborately descriptive paragraphs as she takes a break between episodes of ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ and ‘Days of Our Lives’.

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PHOENIX, AZ -

Although a lifelong U.S. Citizen, lately I find myself contemplating adopting Jolly Old England as my home away from home. Not because I’ve ever been to England, or because I know anything about England, or because the English have a reputation for having spectacularly straight and perfect teeth.

Rather, it is because I like the way they spell.

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GULF BREEZE, FL-

This post first appeared, in somewhat different form, in September 2006 here at TNB. I’m rerunning it for Mother’s Day this year. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! (And to all other mothers out there as well.)

My mother hates cut flowers.

Despises them, resents them, with a power I don’t understand nor know the origins of.

I on the other hand love them.

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SAN ANTONIO, TX-

What’s the most unconventional way you’ve met a romantic partner? See how this compares.

2 a.m., local public channel.

SUBTEXT - THE DATING SHOW

The hostess, a clear-skinned brunette of +/- 24, whose wardrobe is ostensibly provided by the Urban Outfitters sale rack, appears to have eschewed formal on-camera training. It may be that she was one of few adventurous souls who responded to what was undoubtedly a Craigslist ad in search of local on-air personalities for a unique new “cross-media dating show” but in any case it will turn out that neither training nor talent are integral to the show’s popularity.

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MALLORCA, SPAIN-

A boy of eight or nine learns to dance with his kite.

He sets it down in the sand, turns, and scampers barefoot and shirtless along the two string lines, dipping low to scoop up the red handle and the blue handle.

He composes himself, steps back, hands at shoulder height, and jerks the handles down, setting flight to the orange trick kite.

Mediterranean blue backs up his Spanish skin.

I watch from a beachside café, my bike locked to a nearby post.

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PHOENIX, AZ -

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LOS ANGELES, CA-

Claire Bidwell Smith. Greg Boose.

You may recognize the names.

Both are longtime contributors to TheNervousBreakdown.com.

They actually met here.

Didn’t know each other until they started writing for TNB

I believe it was Greg who initiated the correspondence.

Greg lives in Chicago.

At the time of first contact, Claire was living in Los Angeles.

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