Bend, Don't Break

Nah. Take it from someone born with a double dose of doormat--being bendy is overrated. Oh sure, it's one thing to go with the flow, but too much adapting and accommodating and you wind up like this crusty, cranky, bitter old rubberband I found on the floor in my office last week. (I know, I know, it looks like lo mein.)

It all starts when you're young and impressionable or, like me, clueless. Like on the day in 5th grade that Anne Marie Grum challenged me to a fight. We were friends up until a minute before, but now she hated me and wanted to beat me up. I was confused, of course--this was Most Holy Trinity, where I wrote poems about the resurrection and we all went to the see the Pope at Shea Stadium.

Nevertheless, the fight would take place during recess on Thursday.

It was Monday, so I had a few days to think. Or, as it turns out, not think. I had no idea how to fight, but I also had no idea I had a choice in the matter. Someone asked me to do something, so I had to do it--that's pretty much how I thought life worked.

That's really the sad part here--not that three or four other kids came to watch as Anne Marie tried to get all Muhammed Ali on me, making fists and throwing punches. I'm pretty peaceful by nature, but I wasn't about to just stand there, so I started making it up as I went along--scratching, kicking, smacking, slapping. (Do girls inherently know how to fight like girls?)

I will never forget Anne Marie's trembling bully chin, in shock that somehow during the scuffle I scratched her cheek and it started to bleed. Quite a feat, as I'd nervously bitten all my fingernails off earlier that week. Needless to say, the fight ended with bloodshed and we were never friends again. And if anyone challenged me to a fight now, I might take them up on it only if we could turn it into a dance-off.

I heart this next one. You'd really have to stretch to find anyone who could pull this off today. I dare ya...



Bendy strikes again, but with a twist...I knew a guy who had a beautiful guitar, and this goopy Raspberries tune is the only song I ever heard him play on it. He told me people who have blond hair shouldn't wear yellow bell-bottom suits, so I dyed it brown. My hair, that is.