My kind of marathon

I think I might be in trouble.

I said I’d run a marathon this year and the prognosis is not good.  Already.  January 2, 2015 and I’m unsure of the outcome. 

No.  Actually I am sure.  I will not run a marathon this year.  Or next year.  Ever.  I will never run a marathon.

Whew.  That feels better.  Next December I’d like to look myself in the face and say something besides, “What the heck were you thinking with that ridiculous idea?!!”

Oh all right.  I didn’t even say I’d run a marathon.  That would have been stupid. 

I’m optimistic.  I’m game.  I am many things – including old with gravely knees.  And I am well aware that there’s no way I will run a marathon in this incarnation. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I can still do things.  For example, I might walk with a hurried expression.  Urgently.  Step aside!  I’m walkin’ here!

Maybe I’ll even lift my arms and do that exaggerated marching thing like a speed walking drum major.  Yeah.  That’s it.  I’ll cast dignity aside and churn my way through the New Year.

But, remember Ellen DeGeneres talking about her grandma beginning a new fitness regime at age 65?  “She started walking five miles a day.  Now she’s 72 and we don’t know where the hell she is!”

That could be me!  So, no long distance escapades on the horizon.

Unless of course we think in terms of the Twilight Zone.  I could run that marathon.  Thank you Hulu.  Season 1, Episode 1!  Here we go!

Oh yeah, I love this one!  “Where Is Everybody?”  Remember?  The guy who “finds himself in a town devoid of people and with no memory of who he is.”

It’s so creepy:  The diner with the jukebox playing.  Hot coffee on the stove and pies cooling on the counter, but no waitress.  No fry cook! 

A gas station without an attendant.  A mannequin in a delivery van.  A phone ringing but nobody on the line.

Even an empty police station with a lit cigarette burning in the ashtray.  At last, a clue.  Rod Serling has been here.

Curiously, none of these aberrations stop the man from talking right out loud.  He prattles on and on.  He just wants to know who he is and why he’s wearing that jumpsuit.    

This is awesome!  You can power through every episode in order, or you can pick and choose. 

Good.  I’m skipping the one with the misanthrope who buys a player piano that makes everyone tell the truth.  Spoiler alert:  They all hate him. 

And the one where Burgess Meredith is a bookworm and the sole survivor of a nuclear holocaust only to break his glasses and be unable to read.   Sorry!

I want to find the one where William Shatner sees a yeti dancing on the wing of an airplane at 20,000 feet.  Or the one where he and his new wife have car trouble in a small town and he starts to live by the fortunes dispensed from a one-cent slot machine. 

“Will we leave town soon?” asks our future Captain Kirk.  “Only time will tell!” replies the fiendish contraption!  Oh my god!

I love that goofy spiraling cone in the opening sequence.  And the blinking eye!  I love the funky sets and the cheesy technology – Season 1 Episode 3 has the protagonists preparing for a direct nuclear attack by telling them to take their radios with them to the center of the house. 

I love looking for that picture of the Scotty dog that hangs on the wall in multiple episodes.  They must have been working on the cheap!

Serling’s recurring themes – space travel, time travel, regret, annihilation and death.  Love turned upside down.  Purgatory.  Hell.  Rod had it going on!  Misguided notions of heaven and beauty.  Greed.  No wonder this show was so successful. 

Remember the one where Old Man Simpson turned down admission to heaven because St. Peter said his hound dog Rip couldn’t come in?  Makes an Okie appreciate the Pope!

I could go on indefinitely, which is good considering Season 1 has 36 episodes!  And five seasons altogether make a marathon!

I know!  I’ll find the one where Robert Redford plays Mr. Death!  I mean really – what a way to go.

Mars, we have a problem!

OK this is weird.

I went to check out a link in an email I received because I’m in the running to go to Mars.  But that’s not what I meant about weird.

I mean you knew that already, right? 

I have my application in with Mars One, the non-profit organization that’s raising $6 billion to fund a one-way colony-building mission to the Red Planet. 

My application’s not quite finished.  I haven’t submitted the requisite two-minute video explaining my sense of humor and why I want to go to Mars.  It’s due the end of the month.  That and the essay explaining why I’m an ideal candidate to leave earth and never return.

But other than that, I’m good to go. 

So, I’m on their email list.  They’re keeping me posted.  I’m in the loop. 

But, to be honest, I’ve been ignoring their reminders. 

Anyway, today’s message was titled “Packing for Mars,” and I just had to look.  If I’m selected from among the anticipated one million applicants, will I need sunscreen?  Aluminum foil?  Can I take my cats?

There’s no urgency of course, since the blast off isn’t until 2022, but I like to think ahead.
 
To my dismay though, no packing list was included.  But there was the link that I followed to check out two “local Martians” meetings coming up this month.

One is in Darmstadt, Germany, and the other at Cloud Gate in Chicago.  So.  There’s that.  If I want to hang with like-minded Martians-to-be …

I’ll admit the notices for these gatherings raised some concerns.  I’m thinking some folks might just want to make fun.  Flash back to that Star Trek convention sketch on Saturday Night Live when William Shatner broke character and told the Trekkies to “get a life!”  How demoralizing! 

Mars is serious business!

Then, in the margin of the site I noticed a “People You May Know” sidebar.  Hahaha, I thought.  Wouldn’t that be something if oh my GOD!  Other people I know have applied to go to Mars!?!

Here’s a guy from my high school class back in Tulsa.  No way.  We had nothing in common back then.  He made bad grades and wore 27 rabbits’ feet on his belt. 

Oh.  Well.  OK.  I get it.  Here we go to Mars together.  Me and Mr. Lucky.

But that was only the outer edges of the bizarre.  My eyes drifted upward, to the corner of the screen.  And now spine tingling and hair standing – I swear I could hear the Twilight Zone theme song playing ever so faintly in the background – there are pictures of MY Elvis party on the “Aspiring Martians” webpage with the caption, “Where were these pictures taken?”

Mind boggled.  I rubbed my eyes.  But yes.  There’s the picture of the life-sized cardboard cutout of young Elvis in his gold lame` suit with that one sprig of black hair broken free, resting just so on his forehead … in MY entry hall. 

And THERE I AM!  ME!  In my gold lame` suit and ridiculous black wig and my ludicrous attempt to look cool while sneering like Elvis.

For a moment I thought – is Elvis alive ON MARS!?!  Of course!  Dominoes are falling.  It’s all coming together!  The universe makes sense now!  Hallelujah!  Whoop!  Whoop!  Whoop!

But then reality crashed in – the loud clang of a face-slapping gong – Of course:  “Aspiring Martians” is a Facebook page. 

Mortification.  Sadness.  Dismay. 

Mars One isn’t serious business.  I’ve signed up to be a space cadet.  Aspiring Martians must have used Facebook’s new “graphing” technology and found me because I dressed up like Elvis.  Mr. Lucky and I are just the sort they’re recruiting.

But on reflection and more humbling still, I had to admit, that’s not it.  They didn’t find me.  I found them.  I started the process and then they rooted around in my photos and put them on their page! 

All I can say now is that my world has shifted.  My commitment to the mission is in question.  I won’t ride seven months across the cosmos with a hodge-podge of peculiar people who have no place better to go. 


And I won’t leave earth only to be mocked by those who deny the King.

Elvis has not left the building

Like William Shatner, Chris Christie and Hillary Clinton, I too live with a disorder.  I know how it feels to struggle with reality.   

Happily, while our disorder can create an incongruous circumstance on occasion, day-to-day it protects us from unpleasant truths. 

Let’s call it reverse anorexia.  With this condition, in spite of our mirror’s testimony, we persist in thinking we look good. 

That’s what tripped me up for my Elvis party - I thought sure I would be the young, sexy Elvis.  You know, the one in black leather.  Or Jailhouse Rock Elvis in cuffed jeans and a striped T-shirt.  Man! 

That’s how I’d always pictured myself in spite of the obvious dissimilarities:  His black hair, my blonde.  His sneer, my lack of lip control.  His maleness, my femaleness. 

Does this sound weird?   

But I thought, what’s the fun of being Priscilla?  OK the big hair.  That could be fun.  So I bought a Snooky wig from the party store conceding Priscilla might be my fallback position.   

Her Cleopatra eyeliner could be cool.  But past that, what would I wear?  Priscilla’s only known wardrobe is a wedding dress!  I’d have to get a ‘new’ one at Goodwill because despite how my mirror assures me, my 1990 Battenberg lace is a little snug. 

No!  I wanted to be Elvis!  

And why not?!!  I know the lyrics to all his songs.  I practiced his moves - the twitching shoulder, the single knee dip and the tippy-toe walk.  I wind milled my arm all around the house in anticipation of this shindig.  I deserved to be Elvis! 

So you can imagine the disappointment, even disbelief.  What a slap in the face when I first caught sight of myself in my size large gold lame` suit and jet black wig. 

I never dreamed I’d look so pasty.  Or boxy.  Or genderless. 

I so believed I’d look cool.  Thank God I could hide behind those giant gold aviator sunglasses. 

Why didn’t I try everything on together BEFORE the party?   

Why?  Reverse Anorexia!  I was certain my imaginary self was my real self.   

I love my fantasy self even though she’s a deceiver.  Her clothes always fit and flatter.  She doesn’t need make-up what with her natural beauty.  Reverse anorexia may be the best defense mechanism ever clung to by a partygoer or party-thrower like me.   

I guess I can take some solace in the fact that pretty much everyone at the party looked ridiculous.  But they gave the impression it didn’t bother them.  They rather expected it.  Evidently, they’d been living in the real world from the start.  So when they donned their blue suede shoes, it was all good. 

Even my husband, normally reserved and circumspect, joined a cadre of Elvises in white jumpsuits with rhinestones strewn across their shoulders and down their chests - the chests exposed by the jumpsuits’ deep ‘v’ front.  They tucked their thumbs into their be-jeweled WWE-style belts, twirled their red scarves while prancing about in white boots.  Multiple pseudo-Elvises strode around our living room swinging their capes and saying, “Thankyaverimuch.” 

But their wigs didn’t fit either!  How were they OK with that? 

I had searched the internet in vain for an Elvis impersonator within my price range.  Then, when it seemed impossible, I got a referral!  

I approached this professional entertainer shyly, saying I was embarrassed to be asking on such short notice.  But he won me over with his willingness to appear for a pittance, and his response to my inquiry: “No need to be embarrassed, Miss CaroLynn,” he wrote, keeping in character start to finish, “there’ll be enough time for that during my performance.” 

So I was a dubious, but he was amazing!  His unabashed channeling of Mrs. Presley’s only son made our party a smash.  He took the mic in breakaway costumes and layer after layer he went through a sort of backwards evolution - from a chunky hunka burnin’ love, all the way down to King Creole!  

He might not actually be Elvis, but his imaginary self worked it.  No apologies.  No regrets.   

Now that’s my new coping mechanism:  How to deal with reverse anorexia and the clash between my mirror and my dreams?  Shake it, baby!  Shake it!