- When I was a kid, I lived a couple blocks from The Beach Boys. One time when I trick-or-treated at their house, I saw all their gold records hanging on the wall. Dennis Wilson’s girlfriend was our babysitter. (okay, that’s 3 things, but all BB-related)
- I was mostly raised by my grandmother.
- When I was 8 or 9, my family would stand me up in front of relatives so I could spell out antidisestablishmentarianism, which was the longest word I knew from the dictionary.
- In 1965, I went to the World’s Fair in New York City and saw the “It’s a Small World” exhibit before it ever went to Disneyland. So I’ve had that song stuck in my head much longer than most people.
- In 6th grade, I wrote an epic poem called “The Bell of Happiness” that my school principal read aloud at a PTA meeting.
- I attended Rim of the World Junior/Senior High School from 7th through 10th grade and learned how to walk to school (to the bus stop actually) in the snow, uphill, both ways.
- For my 15th birthday, I went to the Forum in Los Angeles (where the Lakers used to play) and saw Jim Morrison and the Doors perform. It was way cool.
- I was 16 when I graduated high school (Hawthorne High–where the Beach Boys attended!).
- While working on my MS in computer science at UCLA, I took a year’s worth of courses in queuing theory and networks from Leonard Kleinrock who, unlike Al Gore, was one of the actual inventors of the Internet.
- I have three Kevin Bacon-type connections with Steven Spielberg: (1) My Uncle Irwin and his partners financed Spielberg’s first movie (a short film called Amblin’), (2) My mother-in-law has volunteered for Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation and once met him and (3) Back when Dreamworks was first created, they considered my movie script, ICER (which they passed on–alas). ICER gave me the germ of an idea for what became my YA dystopian novel, TANKBORN.
Category: Introduction
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10 Things You Might Not Know About Me
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Living with Critters
I live in a semi-rural area, so close encounters of the wild animal kind are pretty common. There was the skunk hanging out under our back deck who got rousted by the neighbor’s dachshund. El stinko for several days in the yard and in the house. Then the deer in the front yard, looking like live lawn ornaments before they dashed off to safety. I’ve seen possum crossing our road late at night. Then there was the time a red-tailed hawk perched in one of our oak trees plucked its prey and sent a shower of feathers down on me.
The most entertaining (and often annoying) characters sharing my neighborhood are the raccoons. They are bold, greedy and far bigger than you think they ought to be. They swagger across our property as if they own the place.We used to leave our cat door open all night and we’d end up with a ransacked garage–cat food bags and cereal boxes ripped open. One of them discovered the cat door that led from the garage to the house. It scarfed all the cat food in the downstairs bathroom and left muddy raccoon footprints all over the floor. When we switched to a door that was supposed to open only to my cats wearing their magnet collars, the raccoons figured out how to foil the lock. No more cat door.
One of my three cats still spends his days outdoors, so started leaving dry food out for him when I was away. I figured out pretty quick that although it was safe enough during daylight hours, the moment it got dark it was fair game for the raccoons. They’d wipe it out and avail themselves of the water bowl for their toilette. I learned my lesson–no more leaving that fancy, very expensive dry food out. I didn’t need to feed the neighborhood.
Then last night, I noticed Zak (the kitty who appears in my masthead) staring out the sliding glass door into the backyard. He has a skinny little striped tail and it was puffed up as big as a raccoon’s. I looked outside and there was a bandit, complete with mask, peering in at me. I could swear the nervy little bugger was saying to me, “Hey, lady, where’s the buffet?”
The critter ran off when I got closer to the door, but he kept coming back to stare at me. Maybe he was willing me to put another bowl of crunchies outside. I guess hope springs eternal.
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7th Grade Memories
Back when I first entered kindergarten, my mom did mild bit of forgery on my hospital birth certificate to get me into school a year early. So, I was 4 when I started kindergarten, 5 starting 1st grade, 6 at the beginning of 2nd, etc. I was a smarty-pants, so I did pretty well, spending all 7 years of K-6 in the same school.
If you’ve done the math with me, you’ll know I started 7th grade as an 11-year-old. Which wouldn’t be so bad if I’d gone on to the local junior high with my friends. But the summer between 6th and 7th, we moved from Los Angeles County to the San Bernardino Mountains. I would have to start those most agonizing school years, junior high, in a new school where I knew no one. Even worse, the school I would be attending was a diabolical experiment called a “junior-senior” high school (7th through 12th grade). Okay, it wasn’t diabolical. There weren’t enough students for two schools. But still, that was a lot for a nerdette like me to face.
I was positively geekish as an 11-year-old. I wasn’t too great at personal hygiene, knew zilch about makeup, was awkward and a little pudgy. I remember taking a stab at shaving my legs one morning before school, except I only had time to shave one. So I went to school with one hairy and one not.
So, not any kind of popular. Rubbing elbows with a bunch of cruel, haughty 13- and 14-year-old 8th graders was enough of a challenge, let alone those lofty high schoolers.
Luckily, the older ones ignored me as being beyond notice. The teachers adored me, since I was a Good Student. And there were a few students in my age group, the ones who walk with the angels, who were kind to me, even if they weren’t actually friends. A couple of the nicest were cheerleaders, so you can dump that stereotype.
But there were the mean girls, as there always are. They took such delight in embarrassing and belittling me. They were definitely not cheerleaders. There was nothing cheerful about them.
I sometimes wonder what happened to my tormentors. Maybe they married ugly guys and got fat. Maybe they had an epiphany and realized the error of their ways and were nice forevermore. Ah, I can dream.
So, worst high school memory–looking forward for weeks to the field trip to Disneyland, then getting hit with a horrible flu the day we were supposed to go. I went anyway and was miserable the whole time.
Best high school memory–dissecting a mink (long dead and preserved in formaldehyde–and no, today I would never buy/wear an animal fur of any kind). My lab partner and I decided to focus on the skeleton. When it took too long to cut the meat off the bones, I took the leg home to work on it there. Mom got the great idea to boil it on the stove in water. We boiled and boiled without effect until Mom got the idea to add bleach to the water. Extremely dangerous, but boy, did it work. Nothing but bones left after just a minute or so. Don’t try this at home!
Long story short, I was able to reconstruct a beautiful mink leg skeleton model (okay, there were some teeny tiny bones I threw away cuz I didn’t know where they went). My biology teacher was so enamored with the skeletal leg, he confiscated it.
