Junior high was a minefield for athletics.  First there was gymnastics.  We got cycled to different types of sports to try them out, so gymnastics wasn’t something I would have tried out.

We had to try unparallel bars and balance beam, then decide what we wanted to do for the class.  All I could see was how far off the ground both were and the potential for me breaking something.  I would have opted for the balance beam and skipped trying out the bars, but the teacher insisted.  I was terrified of falling off and got stuck on the high one, annoying the teacher.

The balance beam was only slightly better.  It was a regulation height balance beam, and we had to do a routine on it that included a leap.  The thought of my feet leaving that narrow piece of wood — well, needless to say, I didn’t get a very good grade.

Running was the worst though.  There is absolutely nothing I hate more than running.  Everyone else, even if they’re not very good, can do it better than me.  For our running cycle, we did bean laps.  Run a complete circuit around the PE field and get a pinto bean from the teacher.  Once time is called, count all your beans.  I always had the fewest beans.  I suppose the teacher thought the beans would show a sense of accomplishment, but all they showed was how poor of a runner I was.

That trend continued in the Army.  Running is big in the army.  Units run three times a week, and then the battalions run about once a month.  The battalion runs were always the worst.  Soon after the run started, I’d drop back because everyone simply ran too fast for me to keep up.  The more I tried, the sloppier my feet got until I would feel like I was going to fall — and even then, I couldn’t keep up.  But I didn’t stop running like some of the guys did (they would walk for a while, then run to catch up).

After the run, a sergeant would round up all the stragglers and line us up in front of everyone else to lecture us about “not trying hard enough.”  All I wanted to do was cry with frustration because I had tried so hard that I was exhausted and it was never going to be good enough.

When I got out the army, the first thing I did was cease all athletic anything.  I walk, though that’s it.  I’ve since discovered I have really bad feet — everyone in the family has “Adams feet,” but mine seem to have inherited the worst of everything.  The arches drop when I walk, so I’m flat footed.  My feet roll in, and they roll out.  When my feet come down on the ground, they don’t come back up properly.  It’s no wonder running was so difficult and exhausting!  I was probably having to put much more effort than most just to run.

Have you ever had something that everyone else found easy to do while you found it frustratingly hard to do?  What was it?  How did you manage it?

When I was growing up, I hated my hair.  It was too thick and curly, and I thought it made me look like a shaggy dog.  It didn’t help that my mother got me perms, which made it worse!  Why would any sane person put awful smelling chemicals into their hair?  Then there was Peggy Lipton, who was on reruns of The Mod Squad.  Her hair was thin, long, and straight — and cooperative.  I so wanted her hair!

Have you ever suffered from hair envy?  What hair horrors have you been through?

My family would make a regular trip to Morro Bay, which is in Central California.  We would visit all the beaches, including one in Montana De Oro.  It’s a beach framed by rocky hills, and the sea is pretty rough because of all the rocks just offshore.  There was this cave out in the water — Gary Robertshaw has a great photo of what turned out to be three caves.  I could only see the one from the beach.

Every time we went out there, I looked at that cave.  I wanted to explore it.  What would I find?  Bats? Buried Treasure?  Oooh — a mermaid!  Of course, it was too dangerous to get to it because of the sea crashing around it, but it was fun thinking about the possibilities.

What did you want to explore?

Seeing this reminded me of how much color influences us.  I sometimes watch the design shows on HGTV, and there’s always a couple who are afraid of color.  Everything is white or beige, or have trouble going outside earth tones (read: brown).

Then there’s me.  I love color.  I can’t go inside a store without being drawn to certain colors.  When I was in the army, I was walking around the barracks in this really colorful print.  Since everyone always knows who I am, I was quite surprised when one of the officers stopped me and demanded to know who I was.  Guess I was in a color camouflage!

Turquoise is my favorite color.  What’s your favorite color?  Do you have any color stories?

The first time I had to speak in public was in high school.  Public speaking was a required class, and I had to deliver a 5-minute speech.  I talk fast to start with, so the result was that I was so nervous that I raced through the speech at warp speed.  5 minute speech = 1 minute.  I just had to get away from all those people staring at me as fast as possible.

When I was an adult, though, I decided that I needed to get better at speaking, so I joined a Toastmasters club.  In Toastmasters the focus is on the positive and improvement, rather than simply throwing someone on stage as a requirement.

I liked creating the speeches because it’s building stories in a verbal form, or creating a verbal essay.  But despite all the speeches I gave, I still could not overcome how nervous I got.  I often found myself having to add more to a speech because I talked too fast and was still waiting for the green card to go up.

Then the worst thing happened.

I was doing the tech support at a conference.  No speaking.  But the room was set up so that I was in front of all the attendees.  Big Boss comes out to present awards.  Zoom.  I head for the sidelines to wait.

Hit the carpet.  The Adams Feet do their thing.  Ankle turns.

Splat.

In front of 100 people.  Collective gasp. No one laughed.

I bounced back up and went to the furthest chair to sit down.  Big Boss continues with awards.  My boss comes over to see if I’m all right.  A few people checked in with me later on, and the Big Boss was a little concerned that I might fall down again (entirely possible, given the Adams Feet) and spent the day telling me, “Don’t fall.”

But the worst had happened, and I survived it.  Since then, I gave a speech at a writer’s conference that was well received, and I wasn’t nervous.  Still talked too fast, but it wasn’t at warp speed.

What’s your worst public speaking experience?

Denise Robbins: Description in Fiction.  This is a great list of tips, many of them going further than typical ones.  When she says “Be specific, but not too specific. Do not let the details you write limit the reader’s imagination.” the first thing I thought of was a writer I critiqued who tried to control the reader’s picture be being extremely specific.  Particularly check out the last tip: When is description too much?

Robert Sawyer.  The veteran science fiction writer uses the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture as example of how not to do description of a pivotal scene.  Reading the book isn’t necessary; he provides all the context.  Though I don’t agree with him on first Star Trek movie.  Honestly, it was wasted opportunity!

TeacherWriter: Writing Effective Description is Not a Sin:  The first thing I thought when I saw the title was exactly what this blog was about — how everyone tells us: “Description is boring.  Use it sparingly!”  TeacherWriter makes some great points worth reading.

Ms. Garrett Online:  The name reminds me of Mrs. Garrett, the motherly caretaker on the Facts of Life, but this Ms. Garrett works for a library in Oregon, one of the places being hit by the Pacific Coast snowstorms.  The site has an extensive list of descriptive words, including the five senses.  Great for a bit of inspiration in a stuck moment.  Be forewarned though — the site is an eye popping yellow.

Got any favorite links for description?

Music can be a powerful memory.  Hearing the theme from Jonny Quest brings back of exciting adventures to exotic places.  I always watched the credits to try to match them up to episodes I’d seen and make sure I’d hadn’t missed any.  Unfortunately, not all the footage was part of an episode.  Not fair!

It was rerun for a while but eventually went off the air, for quite a few years.  But there were two episodes that were my favorite that I remember:

1.  The spider in the spaceship.  A spaceship lands, and this creepy spider comes out.  The military tries to blow it up with artillery, and nothing works!  Really creepy when the guy gets hit with the suction tentacle.

2.  The invisible monster.  A scientist accidentally creates a monster that feeds on energy.  The only way anyone can see it is by its path of destruction.

Thankfully, it’s available on DVD so I can enjoy all the episodes all over again.  One of the things I was really impressed with was that despite the age of the show, it still holds up well after (pauses to subtract dates) — 48 years!  Holy cow!  Has it really been that long?  But good writing always stands out, and it’s obvious that the writers there were trying to turn out something good.  I was also amazed at the quality of the animations.  No computers, and yet, the animators took the time to draw everything realistically, right down to the  shadows to give the scenes depth.  Even the characters had creases in their clothes from sitting or moving around.

The show’s so popular that it was remade recently.  What did you think of the remake?  Like the other reboots, I thought the producers didn’t really understand what made the show successful.  I mean, while I would have liked to see girls represented, it felt like girls were simply shoehorned into the show.  I could imagine the network telling the producers, “Have a girl character.  We need girls to watch.”  So instead, she felt like the token girl, getting in the way of the adventures.

What are your favorite episodes?  Any favorite monsters or bad guys?

I eventually started hunting through the TV Guide to find other shows he was on so I could watch them.  The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Charlie’s Angels, Wonder Woman.  I just couldn’t get enough of seeing him on the screen.

But I never thought I would have the opportunity to actually meet him …

He was going to be in Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, in a theatre in Massachusetts, starring with Juliet Mills.  Two friends came to join me, one from Canada and one from England, and we drove up the East Coast.  We were attending the last two nights because that’s when the best performances are.  The actors are constantly working on the roles, and it’s an ongoing process of improvement over the course of the play.  We went to two because it’s a live performance, so no two are alike.

Because we’d called ahead and said we were friends of David — he knew we were coming — the theatre gave us good seats. On the first day, we were in the second row, and the stage was right there, so close we could have touched it.

I was really nervous.  I felt like my clothes were breaking out in wrinkles.  As I waited for the play to start, waited for the moment when I would see David Hedison in person, I was so tense.  I was afraid I was going to need to race out of the theatre in the middle of the play to use the bathroom.

Then the play started, and he walked out on stage.

My first thought?  He’s in 3D!  I never realized how flat television makes an actor until I saw David Hedison live.

Then he turned and his gaze fell on us.  He didn’t recognize me obviously, but he did the other two women.  There was a second where he froze, and the women I was with swore he dropped a line.

My nervous continued to jangle throughout the first act, and I was certain everyone must be able to see it.  By the time I’d returned from the first intermission, I’d calmed down a little so I could enjoy the play.  There was a scene that was pure fun to watch.  The other cast members were the focus of the scene, and David’s character had retreated by the fireplace.  He had a cigarette with him — character smoked, actor didn’t.  While the cast conversed, the things he did with that cigarette stole the scene.

After the play, he came out to greet us — even me — like old friends.  Coffee, tea, soda?  He checked with my Brit friend on how his accent was.  Then he brought Juliet Mills over, and she told tall true tales about David to us.  When it was time to close up, David drove us out to my car, since it was dark out.

Wow.

The next day, I was able to relax during the performance and enjoy it.  We were in the front row this time.  With live performance, anything can happen, and during this one, one of the actors had to eat a sandwich on stage.  She swallowed the wrong way and choked.  It became part of the performance.  David came to her side, but she cleared the sandwich and the play went on.  After the performance ended, we got to watch a promotional photo shoot.  David and Juliet posed in costume for numerous pictures.  We were there until almost midnight, and it almost seemed sad to let to fairy tale end when we finally had to leave.

Have you ever run into your favorite celebrity?  What was it like?

Books can sometimes go on adventures themselves.  When I was in Desert Storm, strangers back in the U.S. sent us paperbacks that could be carried anywhere, so the books traveled to foreign locations, and even witnessed war.  One came back with me, and I still have it.

And sometimes there’s something special in the book that makes it stand out on its journey.  Perhaps it’s something the last reader left inside.  I’ve found receipts, theater tickets, checks, notes, and cards.  But my most interesting book took a journey and came back, curiously, to the right person.

My uncle, Ernie Rydberg, was a writer, along with his wife Louisa Hampton Rydberg (my grandmother’s sister).  During the 1940s and 1950s, he wrote short stories and children’s books.  Then, they were called children’s fiction, but would probably range range from middle grade to young adult.  Ernie tried to make a living at it, writing over 400 shorts and reprinting them.  A writer could do that then because so many short story magazines were available.

I always remember seeing copies of the books at my grandparents house, copies from the author.   Lou, as we knew my aunt, was less prolific, primarily focusing on short stories and working with the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.

Lou died first, and Ernie died in 1990.  With the internet, Ernie’s publications became available to me, so I started looked for them.  I bought some short stories in both magazines and anthologies — not sure we would ever have an accurate list of what he wrote — and his books.  Then I ran across a bookseller who had a book I’d never seen and described an inscription from Ernie.  No big deal.  I’d run into autographed books before, and had one to me.

But this one was different.  Ernie had signed to Wade and Maye Hampton.  My great-grandparents.  Wade had died in the mid-60s, and Maye in the early 70s– both in California.  The book ended up on the East Coast, with a sticky glued over the name part of the inscription.  The only thing I can imagine how it got there was that when Maye died, all her belongings were given away, including this book.  It probably looked unimportant and not a family heirloom.  Someone bought it and perhaps moved to the East Coast.  Or perhaps they gave it away and someone else bought it, and maybe it traveled.  And eventually it came right back to a family member because I bought it right away!

Do you have any interesting tails about the travel of your books?