The Autumn of Len

Summer hath endeth.  Well, allegedly.  It still feels like summer to me, with the 300% humidity, and t-storms hanging over our heads every day this week.

But, true Fall will be here soon enough, and it's probably no surprise, being a Nerdy McNerderson and all, I love this time of year.  Even though it's been 17 some odd years since I've been a student, I love September with all of its Back to School goodness.  It makes me want to buy myself a vintage Wonder Woman lunchbox, stuff it with a little carton of chocolate milk, a PB&J, raisins (to throw away), and an apple (to pretend to eat while looking pensive), and sit all daydreamy in a corner with my denim three ring binder, doodling hearts with my purple smelly pen while huffing freshly sharpened pencils.

But alas, today, I'm more likely to be found ordering off Seamless web hunched over my desk, telephone headset on, BlackBerry in one hand while the other hand types on the computer keyboard.

This, they tell me, is called progress.

I was always a good student, but truth be told, with a hefty dose of what I'm sure would now be diagnosed as ADD, I didn't always love sitting in class, and well, I didn't love the being in school part.  I loved learning for learning's sake, but I got bored often -- not through any fault of the teachers, but just had trouble sitting in one place for very long.  As you all know, I hate being trapped places, and knowing that I have to be somewhere for a certain length of time gives me hives.  Where's the exit?

When they were doing Kindergarten testing before I entered school, I failed.  They told my mom I was probably developmentally challenged, which she didn't accept because I was already reading.  In actuality, I had decided that looking at all of the musical instruments hung on the walls in the room they were testing us in was far more fun then their stupid, "Is this a fish or a dog?" questions.  Even then I knew that was an asinine question.

As a student, I was mostly bored.  And so I mastered the art of paying attention without really paying attention, knowing without really absorbing, so, although I learned a fair amount in school, to this day, I am amazed at how my knowledge has real gaps in it, like I don't even remember ever studying certain subjects that I'm sure I knew at the time.  Well, enough to do well on the test.  It's like my brain did a catch and release -- catch the information, ace the test, release, free brain up to hold onto things I really cared about like the lyrics to every song I've ever heard.  It's probably no surprise that the thing I liked to do most in school -- creative writing -- didn't really involve any real learning, but just doing, and putting my own thoughts to paper.

Without really connecting to any subject, I continued to be bored in school, but, since I was a really shy kid, I didn't mouth off, I just did my work as fast as I could and then drifted off into a daydreamy land where I lived alongside the characters from my favorite soap operas.  Sometimes I daydreamed about having an alternate persona -- my name was Jessica, I was 24, lived in a mansion, and by that point, was married, sometimes to Dr. Noah Drake from General Hospital, played, as we know, by Rick Springfield, other times to Lee Stetson, otherwise known as Scarecrow from Scarecrow and Mrs. King played by Bruce Boxleitner.  And much later, Agent Cooper of Twin Peaks, and Fox Mulder of The X Files, but more often, to Randy Randersons I concocted in my brain.  I was a top fashion model AND a veterinarian, which we know is very common.  The role of my father, replacing my actual father who wasn't really in the picture (not that this is reality...), was played by Robert Wagner, then of Hart to Hart, and cutting a very dashing, wealthy international figure.

It was all very glamorous indeed, and a far cry from my reality then, and any reality I know now, especially the reality of my actual age of 24, which, although not too shabby, involved maxed out credit cards and three roommates in a Brooklyn apartment with bars on the windows, instead of a mansion and a rock star doctor husband.  The closest I got to rock stars at 24 was at this local dive bar's karaoke night where one of the regulars, 75 if he was a day, and with a body made up of about 90% alcohol, sang Mack the Knife and then did an eye popping, incredible full-on split, which I wouldn't have believed if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.  Even more incredibly, he was able to get back up again.

At least that's how I think it happened.  I wasn't really paying attention.

Somewhere along the lines, when, perhaps, reality set in, my daydreams became less about being a model or married to an international spy, and more about my actual own life and thinking about how situations will unfold.  I imagine the most outlandish, good or bad (depending on how my mood is that day) situation, and hone in on that.  It's a cross between being delusional and being a control freak.  Like Len on steroids, or as the commercial goes, me, only better.  Bizarro world.  It's definitely entertaining, but the trouble is, I tend to miss what's right in front of me, and can't live in the moment.  And, imagining the most ridiculous situations means that even good situations end up being disappointing, like how when Oprah didn't handpick me out of her studio audience and anoint me her successor.  Didn't she get the memo about how that evening was supposed to happen?

I think that's why I love Back to School time so much.  It seems like a time to start fresh, to begin again, a mini new year's, so to speak.  Time for self-evaluation and reinvention, a time to begin again and challenge the way we've always done things.  Time for new clothes without rips or stains, and a new outlook without any negativity or bias.  A time to undo and redo all the things that I wish I did better.

Therefore, like George Costanza before me, who declared the Summer of George, I am declaring this the Autumn of Len.  I'd declare it the Fall of Len, but that sounds painful; part of the Autumn of Len involves avoiding any trips, slips, drops, or falls.

So, if, at tonight's Madonna concert, she doesn't change the lyrics to Vogue to say, "Lauren, Katherine, Lana too, Lynn Hepburn, we love you," I'll try not to be disappointed.

But I'll still be pretty sure she looked directly at me that one time.