The clothing industry is not catering to my needs.

Is there a self-conscious moment in everybody's life when they're sitting on an examination table, and a doctor looks at old x-rays, then looks at you...and asks, "What happened?" [Horror-struck Laura-face. ] Huh? What's wrong with me? "You should have been about 5'10"," the white coated man with the foot sticking out of his mouth continued. In hindsight, I can see that my young habit with the Mountain Dew wasn't spectacularly brilliant. "Oh, I see now, you had some childhood illnesses." Well he didn't say that specifically, specifically he went into specifics, but you really don't want to read the diaries of a young girl's GI Tract, now do you?

In essence, my growth was stunted, a fact I had not realized until I was 20 years old. For those of you who've met me in person, you might wonder, "How could you not have guessed!?" Well, I don't come from particularly tall stock. My parents' ancestors were skyscrapers, but the generations that have come since have adopted a more diminutive set of genes. Standing at 5-nothing on a good day, I accepted my height.

In middle school, my best friend, holding her hand up to mine, declared, "You have big hands for a little person!" Also, my grandmother never fails to mention the size of my apparently gigantic feet when she sees them. I was used to feeling like a freak of nature by that point, mainly from the aforementioned GI Tract and the constant discomfiture, so the implications didn't really penetrate.



I can tell you with certainty that knowing I was meant to be taller has done nothing to salve the wound. If anything, I have taken to walking around with an indignant attitude and snarling, "Oh yeah! Well I should have been kissing 6'!" whenever a Wal-Mart greeter offers me a sticker, or an Olive Garden hostess asks if I would like crayons. Oh well, in 30 years when I am dancing in my mid-50's and looking about 12 years old, I bet I'll appreciate it then. Grandpa Miles can get the senior discount, and young Laura can sneak in with the children's.

Worst of all, is finding a pair of pants. I buy them in petite, short, Munchkin, and, as Amy likened, Oompa Loompa lengths...and yet, they are too long. Yesterday, I hemmed 3 such pairs of blue jeans. With the residual denim, I fashioned a 3-piece suit for Miles, a pair of stockings for Mom, and a bow for the cat. At least others can benefit, I suppose.

It was early November of 2000. The weather was turning colder, and I had accompanied my grandmother to Wal-Mart in search of mittens. Michelle [cousin] was there, too, and we fell into our standard Wal-Mart protocol as we saved the lives of several children too small for our grandmother to see as she steered her shopping cart with purpose. Did I ever tell you about the time she blindsided a dump truck? My four-foot-something, stooped-over grandmother doesn't realize her own strength.

Michelle took the front-left on the cart, sacrificing the skin on her heels to the wild wheels of the cart. I guarded from the side-right and coaxed Grandma gently around the curves of the aisles, staving off my own charge of disaster.

My eye began to twitch sporadically, and as I turned my head to the right, there was a twinkling from a watch display. Forgetting my role in the excursion, I followed the effervescent light. I was hypnotized by the sparkle, and a small pool of drool collected on my shirtfront as my hand reached out to touch the radiant timepiece of my fascination. So taken was I, that I missed the wails as a young boy's toy car met with the speeding wheels of Grandma's unchecked cart, and as a teenager grabbed her recently run-over foot and hopped around one-legged, sputtering. I missed the 3 racks of autumn-weight coats that cascaded to the floor, and I missed Michelle screaming for Grandma to stop as she tried to pry that frightened, and now disfigured, kindergartner from the grill of the shopping cart.

It was two-toned, poorly made, and the most exquisite bracelet watch that I had ever seen. The band was braided herringbone and the face had a fake diamond at the twelve-spot...it was the only one of its kind. I searched the entire mountain of two-toned, poorly made bracelet watches, and no other boasted a braided herringbone band. I do so dearly love braided herringbone.

Meanwhile, five red-smocked, frantic Wal-Mart employees squeezed between shoppers, searching for the cause of the store's domino-effect collapse of order. Grandmother, hidden within tall heaps of yarn and unaware of causing a stir, meandered in the aisle as Michelle wiped the sweat from her brow, dabbed at the blood from her heels, and cursed the day I was born.

Holding my treasure two-handed above my head, I let its divine glitter paint the fluorescent-lit flooring as I passed, unmindful of the torn clothing or the clumps of pulled hair littering the walkway. It, quite simply, sang to me. Alarms were sounding, crowds were shrieking, and police with heavy artillery were entering. My grandmother made her yarn selection and marched to the cash register across from mine. That's right, I bought the watch. I know you didn't see that coming, but I live for spontaneity.

Michelle limped into line behind me, pulling a brace from her swollen knee, a headache pad from her temple, and a gruesome looking mouthguard from her teeth. She piled them upon the counter and looked at me as if waiting for an explanation. I noted that she looked frazzled. Her eyes always exude a brighter blue when she's frazzled...that's the sure way to tell every time, mark my word. The clerk hesitated with procedure. She picked up the phone and began to order a price check before changing her mind and giving Michelle the lot for free as long as she bagged it herself.

Nearly five years later, it is still the watch against which I judge all other watches. I keep searching for a replacement. Better craftsmanship, precious metals, real diamonds...but it seems not to exist. I have tried nearly all 60,043 search combinations of "braided herringbone" and "watch" only to discover that the internet has not heard of such terms joined together! The gall!

Perhaps I am not meant to find it's alter-ultra-valuable-ego. Perhaps I am meant to remember the Wal-Mart bloodbath, the destruction unto my cousin, and know I would gladly replay the events to taste the sweet nectar of its discovery once more...

My aunt, Brenda, is a creative chick. She has long since assigned songs to her cats—a bit of an identity boost for the felines, you might say. Take, for example, Smokey's song. You all know the song "Louie Louie"? Imagine it to the words, "Smokey Jo-Jo! Uh Huh! Hey-eh-eh-eh! Ah-'Mokey Jo-Jo...."



I know what you're thinking, and I'm totally blown away with her lyric-writing abilities too.

Bandit, the most exceptionally beautiful cat that my eyes have ever beheld, is Smokey's sister. I still remember the first time I saw her in the pet store. I remember the first time I stroked her fuzzy head in the laundry basket in which they brought her home. She has just the sweetest little "meow", the gentlest grace, and the kindest of curiosities. I am quite smitten.

Her song is a toe-tapping, hand-clapping ditty that goes something like this: "Band-IT! Band-IT! You're so cute, I can't Stand-IT!" I sing it a lot, and often in the wee hours when I cannot sleep. Miles knows all of it by heart now.



I perused Maine Coon websites this morning. I have been wanting a Maine Coon for well over a year now, but life keeps clearing its throat and interjecting. Today, looking at the kittens made me putty. I gushed. I uttered baby-talk. I cooed at the response-less digital images. In short, I became the most irritating that I have ever been, which is no small feat.

"Honey!" I cried, the cuteness robbing me of all evidence of maturity. "They're just perfect!"

He replied, in his age-perfected monotone, "That's because Maine Coons look just like Bandit. And you can't stand it."

Dinner has been over for hours, the kids are playing hide-and-go-seek. I am 8 years old and hiding beneath the kitchen table as the adults engage in card-playing. This is how get-togethers are spent.

Euchre is a rite of passage. I can still remember getting my nose out of joint one summer when, on our annual vacation "Up North", the adults taught Thad, a cousin with the better part of ten years on me in age, how to play. "Fine," I thought, and spent the rest of the afternoon coloring.

—With only the blue crayons!

My protest and altogether obvious statement somehow went unnoticed. It would be years before my turn would come.

My parents decided, one stale summer's night, that their children ought to know how to play more than just Go Fish. [Do you know, Crazy Eights is essentially Uno without the Spanish!? Wild.]

Then, there was Euchre.

Miles doesn't play Euchre. He plays Spades, Hearts, and a rousing hand of Old Maid. I found it pert-neer impossible to find a Euchre player in amongst the Southerners. Charity, my mother-in-law's friend, the New Yorker, proudly declared that this was because it was a "Yankee Game". Something to do with the long winters and boredom, she said.

Needless to say, it had been awhile—and when I say "awhile" I mean tens of thousands of hours. Well, yesterday we played. Mom partnered with me, and we went to battle against Charlie and Brenda. We were poised to lose, as is our custom.

The crescendo of Debbie's snore from the bedroom accompanied our first win, and the good-natured belittling began. "B*tches," Brenda muttered, and Mom and I began reaching over the table to give each other high-fives after every point, cheering, "Goooooo—B*tches!" Brenda looked at Charlie. Charlie looked at Brenda. They looked at their beer and thought, "I've either had too much to drink...or much, much too little." And, on went their next round of alcohol.

They won the second game...and Charlie, though he had been using the term against yours truly throughout the entire tournament, proclaimed unto me just then, "Take that you little TROLLOP!"

Mom, high on silliness much like myself, volleyed, in her ditsiest Farah Fawcett voice, "Well, you little bushwhacker!" I bet that really stung. Thank goodness she only releases her venom but rarely.

Meanwhile, I was thinking satisfactorily, "A trollop?" With the palm of my right hand, I patted up at the bottom of my hair and giggled. Aloud, "A trollop! I just feel so free! A trollop! I ought to wear the low-cut black dress when we go out tonight!" Another giggle. Another hair pat. My eyelashes were batting wildly, ostentatiously, flirtatiously, as Brenda got up and presented her partner with another beer.

Mom and I won the third and final game of the set, which surprised us more than anyone else. We, unrehearsed and eerily, launched into a cover of Cher's "Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves" entitled, "Bush—wack'rs, Trollops and Thieves". [It was uncanny how we squeezed 'bushwhackers' into two syllables. You shoulda been there.]

It was sobriety at its best.

Drink it up, people.