the pieces of my life

At the supermarket today, I restocked my supply of O’Doul’s, which according to my OB, is as wild as I can get with my drink choices (although, interestingly, if you go to the O’Doul’s site and enter in a birthdate that makes you younger than 21, you get a message that reads, “Sorry, even with 0.5% alcohol you still must be 21 to enter O’Doul’s.com.” Yet, it’s sold in grocery stores that don’t have liquor licenses [which is any liquor store in the dry town of Arlington–I was in Watertown] and I’m pretty sure you can buy it as a minor. What’s up with that?). The clerk was a chatty, pleasant kid, and he asked me, “Is this an alcoholic product?” Excitedly, I said, “No, why? If it was, would you have to card me?” He looked at me and said, “Oh, no. It’s just if it’s alcoholic, I’m not allowed to ring it up. By Massachusetts State Law, you have to be over eighteen to ring up alcohol.” Hopes dashed. I had thought maybe he mistook me for a white-trash teen mom-to-be boozing it up. Sigh.

Has anyone else noticed that there seems to be a steady stream of well-known people dying lately? It seems to have begun with Gregory Peck and David Brinkley and continues daily. Leon Uris. Strom Thurmond. Katharine Hepburn. Today it’s Buddy Hackett and–probably not noted much outside the New England area–Robert McCloskey (of Make Way for Ducklings fame; that book, by the way, was declared the official children’s book of the State of Massachusetts last year. How many of our tax dollars went into making that happen, I wonder?). I find it intriguing how the New York Times (registration required to see the site) allots coverage as if they are trying to measure a person’s worth in terms of column inches. Hepburn and Peck both got front page treatment with pics (I’m referring to the online edition), although Peck only had a link to his obit, whereas Hepburn had a link to her obit, stories about her, and reviews of her film. Leon Uris got below the fold coverage. Buddy Hackett isn’t apparently worthy of front page coverage–not even a text link under Arts. McCloskey gets a front page text link and blurb at the Boston Globe.

But what is even more morbidly compelling is that the New York Times has listed in its obituaries section a “greatest hits” of death. Along the right-hand column are selections from the obit archives, people who have died in the month of July. I wonder how they determine who is truly famous enough to make it there. Does that signify some sort of life-after-death success that ranks beyond just the everyday front-page coverage? I mean how famous do you have to be to make the “best of”? Selections from July include: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Adlai Stevenson, James Steward, and Ernest Hemingway. Maybe that should be a life goal: “I hope to become famous enough that someday I’ll make the ‘most famous deaths’ column in the New York Times online version.” Hey, everyone needs a goal, don’t they?

Adam wakes up anywhere between a half hour and two hours before me, depending on how exhausted I am. This morning he was up and downstairs when a crash came from the upstairs bathroom. I leaped up to look, and it was just a mirror that fell to the floor (the mirror didn’t crack). Later, Adam came up and I mentioned the mirror falling. “I wondered what that noise was,” he said. I was surprised he had heard it: “Why didn’t you come up to investigate?” He replied in complete seriousness: “I peered upstairs and saw you walking into the bathroom, so I assumed the noise was just you lumbering out of bed.” Nice….