Bucket List - Act in a Play

The Bucket List is a list of things I want to do/feel I should do before I die. I've done some of them already, and I'm telling one of those stories here. To see the whole list, click here.

I think everyone should experience a moment up on stage and, if possible, have it be in a play.  Sure, you can get a sense of the stage experience from singing a song or dancing a dance in a school talent show, but it's not the same as a play.

There's something about the silences, inbetween the lines of dialog, that make it clear that you are 100% on your own up there and, if you forget a line or let a silence linger, it feels like a small death.

The spotlight is brightest in a play.  There are few distractions to fall back on.  In real life a passing truck might hide your fart while you're out on the street.  In a play, if your stomach rumbles, everyone knows.  Everything about it is completely self-conscious and yet must appear completely natural.  And therein lies the gap you must fill, with acting talent.  And it's bloody hard.  But it's bloody exciting, too.

I've done, as I am sure you've figured out by now, various plays.  None of them were professional - that would have taken a gift of consdierably more talent from the Gods than they deigned to bestow upon me.  No, they were through drama club in Middle and High School.

In fact, the first time I was on the stage I was a little kid, probably 5 years old.  One day some teachers came into our classroom and stood around, muttering, looking at all the children.  I could feel it when their eyes lighted on me.  I was called up to leave class and follow them.  I was petrified.

It turned out they were putting on a play for Christmas and wanted to have children representing various countries walk up to the baby Jesus and offer him gifts.  This was all to be on a stage in the middle of school track field, with parents sitting in the bleachers.  Don't forget - I grew up in South Africa.  December is the height of our summer.

Anyway, I had been chosen to fufill the role of an Indian lady, complete with Sari and Bindi on my forehead (the best part of the whole thing).  You may not have seen me mention it before but I am from a mixed race background originating on a tropical island in the Indian ocean.  Growing up in South Africa, officiallly classified as White in the Apartheid years, gained me many sideways compliements about my "lovely tan."  Of course, they were barbed jabs at my mother who, standing at my side, shielded me from the bitchy innuendo and let me think I had gorgeous glowing olive skin.

I was so happy to be part of the pageant/play/whatever, that I didn't think about why I'd been chosen to represent India, and I dutifully waddled out clutching the folds of fabric wrapped around me that I thought were going to flutter away at any moment, and plonked a present at the foot of the manger.  My first spotlight moment.

There were various other school and drama club plays over the years, but the one that stands out for me is playing the villain, Lorin Chillingsworth, in a delightful melodrama.  I got to wear top hat and tails, say evil things and, most of all, flounce off the stage in a fit of pique once my dastardly plan had been thwarted.

As I stalked down the steps of the stage, heading to the exit, the audience laughed at my final joke, applauded and cheered.

I've never felt such a rush in my life.  

Cheering!  For me?

Delicious!

There's nothing like the feedback you get from a live audience when on stage.  As much as the silences can stab you in the heart, positive feedback - laugther, clapping, even booing if you're the villain - are like mainlining a special drug that's part adrenaline, part SSRI, part whiskey.  It's warm and buzzing and energizing and so very, very happy, all at the same time.

It's not the same buzz as winning at sport.  That's your talent, your prowess, your team.  On stage, it's just you.  Naked.  With a few lines to say, trying to say them in an enteratining way.  

When it goes right, and the audience is with you, it's like a mental orgasm. 

So put your daugther on the stage, Mrs Robinson, at least once.

Bucket List - Bake a Cake

 

The Bucket List is a list of things I want to do/feel I should do before I die. I've done some of them already, and I'm telling one of those stories here. To see the whole list, click here.

37. Bake a Cake

This seems to be such a simple thing, but everyone should have the experience, just once, of baking a cake, and I think many people don't get to try this. 

There is something about gathering the ingredients, measuring them (experimentation with quantities doesn't work with cake baking), sieving the flour and sugar and putting some elbow grease into mixing it all. 

There's the aroma which starts to waft through the house as the cake is close to being done, taking this hot, risen thing out of the oven and gingerly separating it from the rim of the cake tin before carefully - care....ful....ly - tipping it out onto the cooling rack.

Icing a cake is a sensual experience.

Mixing the icing, spreading it on the cake, licking your finger as you mess it up.

It's a sweet, homely thing.

For me, reminiscent of Sunday afternoons getting ready for visitors to come for tea, looking forward, after working and waiting for two hours, to actually have a soft, sweet slice of your labors.

Baking a cake is about being at home.

It's a small sigh of happiness.

My mother's amazing Chocolate Cake Recipe (which I know by heart)  

• Heat oven to 400F/200C


• Mix half a cup of cocoa with one cup boiling water


• Sieve together:
  
  
  
  • 1.5 cups flour
  
  
  • 1.5 cups sugar
  
  
  • 3.5 teaspoons baking powder
  
  


• Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and add:
  
  
  
  • 4 egg yolks
  
  
  • 0.5 cup oil
  
  
  • Chocolate mixture
  
  


• Work the dry ingredients into the liquid, mixing it in slowly so there are no lumps


• Beat the egg whites to a stiff peak


• Grease your cake tin


• To the mixture add:
  
  
  
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
  
  
  • The egg whites
  
  


• Fold (DO NOT JUST STIR) this into the mixture, creating lightness and air in it


• Bake for 25-30 minutes in a deep cake tin

Enjoy!

Follow up...

OK so my participation in the Bake Off (see post comments) didn't go so well.

First, I forgot we don't have a cake tin. My memory gets confused between the kitchen stuff we have here and what we have in the UK. So I rush off to the store to get one and all the have is those shallow tins to make layers. What is this insistence on layering cakes un the US? The extra filling adds calories and your cake should be moist enough to stand alone. Sigh.

So I get two layer cake tins.

Next screw up happens at the very first task. I filled the kettle and switched it on. Unfortunately it wasn't plugged in. So I mix the cocoa with cold instead of boiling water by mistake.

There are, I believe, cake baking days and days when you should just stay the hell outta the kitchen. Yesterday was the latter.

But I soldiered on, mistakenly putting bits if cocoa in the egg whites, flour in the sugar container...

Finally, to bake.

How to adjust the timing for shallow tins?

I checked the cakes at 18 mins and they weren't ready. My little voice told me to do another 5 mins, but I didn't listen. I set the timer for 7 mins.

I don't have to tell you, do I, that the bases were burnt?

Then I forgot to loosen the cakes while they were warm out of the oven so, when we finally tried to prise them out, a quarter of one cake stayed stubbornly stuck to the tin.

Fluffy Bear was scroogey with the icing (frosting) so, by the time we put some in the middle to stick them together, the icing on top looked like a bald man with a bad comb-over.

Last but not least, I forgot to take a photo of the completed abomination for you, so you get a picture that portrays the true sadness of the entire event.

Caveat: this is NOT a reflection on the recipe. It's a reflection on the fact that I was born tonever wear an apron.

   

Update on Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 9:15AM by Ittybittycrazy

I hereby challenge you to a bake off!

Everyone who bakes this cake and sends me a picture and/or some comments on the recipe will have their photo and comments added to this post.

I'll take a pic of mine too!

Let's get baking!

Bucket List - Fight with someone physically

 

The Bucket List is a list of things I want to do/feel I should do before I die.  I've done some of them already, and I'm telling one of those stories here.  To see the whole list, click here.

5. Fight with someone physically

The closest I have ever come to a fight was when a skinny rich bitch once tried to kick me in the head.

To be fair, I had slept with her boyfriend.

He wasn’t worth it.

Why didn’t she try to kick HIM in the head? 

I think that those of us who are cuckolded would somehow prefer to blame the person our partner was unfaithful WITH, than our partner’s themselves.  It’s so much easier to think that the third person somehow used lies, or some kind of evil magic, to tempt our partner away, than to acknowledge that our partner made a choice – and that they chose someone else over us.

I just sat there, numb, wondering why I had been stupid enough not to throw the condom away, instead of leaving it for her to find on my bedside table.   

I tend to blame myself for things rather than other people.  That particular psychological peccadillo goes back a long way, and I won’t bore you with it.  Let’s keep that between me and my therapist.

Anyway…

I didn’t move, or try to retaliate.  I sat there thinking about the mistake I had made, and that the Skinny Rich Bitch was behaving like trash. 

And now I wish I had hit back at her – just so that I could say I’ve been there.  I wish I’d scratched my nails across her face, torn her expensive blouse, pulled her hair and smudged her makeup.

But then, you see, the man in question would have thought that I was fighting for him.

And, as I already said, he wasn’t worth it.

Nowadays, I think I’m too old to fight.  Unless I pick on a younger woman who is drunk enough to negate the physical advantage she would have over me in muscle tone and bone density, I’m not likely to have the chance ever again.

Ah well, you can't have everything, can you?

Bucket List - Go on Safari in Africa

 

Going on safari in Africa is an exotic dream for many people.  For South Africans, even though it's on our doorstep, it's a dream too - because it's fucking expensive.

Oh sure, you can go to one of those parks where you drive through yourself, but you won't see a damn thing.  You might be two feet away from a lion, and you wouldn't know it.

So doing a safari in a private game reserve, with a tracker and a guide, is a real treat.  

A few years ago, Fluffy Bear and I got a great deal on a three day package, and we both had pretty good incomes back then, so we went for it.

We drove and drove and drove before we reached the park.  We went through the gates, and parked our car just inside.  A Jeep with our guide and tracker came down to meet us.

They told us that, because they were a very small park, and hadn't been open long, they only had two lions and - lucky for us - they were mating.  They explained that, when lions mate, they do it for days, again and again, and they stay in pretty much the same area, so the tracker knew where they were.

"Would you like to be taken to your room and settle in," they asked, "or would you like to go and find the lions?"

Well, D'UH!  We chose the lions.

And that's how we found ourselves, 15 minutes after arriving at the park, sitting in an open topped Jeep, ten feet away from two bonking lions.

The next three minutes went something like this:

Lioness: I'm ready

Lion: Again? Already? God...

Lioness:  Aw, come on, Honey...

Lion:  OOH!  Well, if you put it that way...

Lion:  Get ready, Baby.  Here comes the supertanker!

Lioness:  Yeah, right...  Just give me some cubs, Big Man

Lion:  Mmmm... Yeah...  I'm feelin' it!

Lioness:  Mmm hmm.  Yes.  Ooh.  Ah.  Whatever.

Lion:  GRRRRRROWL!

Lioness:  What the--?  Hey!  So soon?

Lion:  Yeah!  I'm the man!  Was that good for you baby?

Lioness:  They say you have to roll on your back and wriggle to make sure the sperm... What?  Oh, yeah, right.  It was great, Baby.  You go rest now.  Mama will be ready again in a few...

 

The way a Safari works is this:

They wake you up at Are-you-fucking-kidding-me 'o clock in the morning, escort you from your room (I say room - it was bigger than our flat in London at the time) to the main building (there are no fences, so you are not allowed to leave your room by yourself), you have a quick cup of coffee and get up on the Jeep to go see the animals as they wake up and go hunting.  Animals are sleeping in the middle of the day, when it's too hot to get anything done.  Yes, they embrace the concept of the Siesta.

After your morning game drive you come back to the main building and eat, and the rest of the day is yours to laze by your private plunge pool, read, lie in a hammock and nap, have a spa treatment... whatever.  

In the afternoon, just before sunset, you go on your next game drive.  This goes on into the dark, when the tracker and guide show you the nocturnal animals with a massive spotlight on the Jeep.

Frankly, the whole thing is fucking amazing.

Here are some of the highlights...

This guy decided he didn't like us being close to him and started flapping his ears, getting ready to charge the Jeep.   Our guide put us into reverse very quickly and we backed up

We watched this young lady fail to catch a buck

This guy wasn't too happy with us getting too close to his family, and came over to explain that we should keep on movin'

A lovely family picture

 These guys get a bird's eye view

Bucket List - Swim in the sea

The Bucket List is a list of things I want to do/feel I should do before I die.  I've done some of them already, and I'm telling one of those stories here.  To see the whole list, click here.

I am lucky because I grew up near the sea.

Some people never get to see it.

The sea around South Africa isn't one of those nice oceans that are still and transparent.  There's a reason that surfing is a big deal over there.  The waves are high, and the currents are strong.  If you don't know what you're doing, you're toast.

It was my brother who taught me how to swim in it.  

He told me about the undertow, the dip in the sand before you get to the shelf and how, if you get out to the shelf (where the water can be deceptively shallow till a wave comes), you have to watch and time the waves so you can body surf them into shore.

He taught me how to keep an eye out to make sure I wasn't floating out too far, and especially to stay between the two red flags that the lifeguards put up to demarcate the safe swimming area.

I preferred swimming out to catch the swells before the wave broke, feeling that upward lift and downward sink in my stomach as the water whooshed under me.

I always felt safe swimming in the sea with my brother.

Now that I live so far away from my family, it's one of my happiest memories of time spent with him.

Wherever I travel, if we go near the beach, I have to dip my toe in the sea, even if we're having dinner and we're all dressed up.  Maybe it's OCD, maybe it's homesickness, maybe there's just something special about the sea... but I do it every time.

Travel/Bucket List - The Grand Canyon

 

This post is in the Travel category, but also tagged for Bucket List.

The Bucket List is a list of things I want to do/feel I should do before I die.  I've done some of them already, and I'm telling one of those stories here.  To see the whole list, click here.

Ah, the Grand Canyon.  One of the most amazing sights in the world and something everyone should see, in person, at least once in their lives.

I'd really like to go back there as an adult, and here's why...

I was 11 and my parents took me along on their grand tour of the US.  40 cities in 30 days - or, at least, that's what it felt like.

We were in Vegas, and we went to some small airport to take a flight over the Grand Canyon.  I had never been to a small airport before and I thought it was a bit weird.  I felt unsettled, and it didn't get any better when we got onto the plane.

It was a small plane.  

I started getting nervous.

They arranged us in the cabin to distribute the weight so, being the only child on the trip, I was alone at the back of the plane.  

The next thing that I remember about is that we were on the plane, flying over the Canyon, and it was raining.  My mother was a few row in front of me, and my father in the front row, so there was no comfort or reassurance. 

Status raised from nervous to scared. 

The plane was going up and down as we flew through air pressure changes.  Then the woman in front of me started to throw up.  It smelled and sounded awful.

Status raised from scared to terrified. 

I remember at one point my father looked back and gestured to me that I should look out of the window at the view.  I tried, but I was really too busy embracing my Catholic upbringing by that point and praying vociferously.  

I did look out of the little porthole window eventually, and I saw clouds, a rock thing sticking up and mist.  Even at 11 years old I knew that I could go home and look up pictures of the Grand Canyon in a book somewhere (the internet wasn't an option in South Africa back then - we actually went to the library) so I chose to just close my eyes and reassure myself with a self-made countdown to the whole thing being over.

"It must only be twenty minutes till we land.  I can handle twenty minutes."

"I'm sure we'll be on the ground in fifteen minutes.  That's a tiny amount of time.  Fifteen minutes..."

And so, although I have officially seen the Grand Canyon, and I've ticked it off on my Bucket List, I need to go again.

Preferably on a nice, sunny day.

Bucket List - Speak at a funeral

 

The Bucket List is a list of things I want to do/feel I should do before I die.  I've done some of them already, and I'm telling one of those stories here.  To see the whole list, click here.

I was a lucky child.  I grew up in the same house from birth till I was over 21 years old.  My early life was incredibly stable, safe and happy.

I lived in a nice, middle class, suburban neighborhood, and we had a little local gang of kinds, kind of like Charlie Brown and his friends in Peanuts.

From very early on, I was friends with Ellen.  We met when I went to crèche/nursery school at 3 years old.  

I stayed the night at her house more times than I can count.  When we were tiny, I would bathe with her and her brother and sister, all of us fitting into the bath at the same time.  

Her parents were like a close uncle and aunt.  My brother and sisters were so much older than me that Ellen's sister and brother felt like my little siblings.  Her house was my surrogate home.

As we grew older, we were all at her house every day in the summer, because she had a pool.  We played Marco Polo in earlier years, and slathered ourselves in baby oil to get tanned when we were teenagers.  We rode our bikes, we played hide and seek, we went to the movies, we hung out at the mall.

She didn't always see me as her BFF, but I saw her as mine.  At my 21st birthday, Ellen stood up and shocked me by apologizing to me for sometimes having been cruel to me.  I didn't know what to say.  She was 90% friend and only 10% bitch, but little girls are like that... we can be horrid to each other.  I have no doubt that I was awful to her too at times.  

Then we went to different Universities, I left to travel in the UK and Europe, and we grew apart a little.  I didn't like her boyfriend when I met him, but then again, I was always insanely jealous of anyone who took her attention away from me.  

I came home after a year in England to attend her wedding.  She was moving to another country and going to live on a farm with that same guy I didn't like.  This was the exact opposite of the plans that I had for myself, and I didn't agree with her choices, but I was happy that she was happy.

I know her wedding was lovely even though my recollection of it is hazy.  I wish I remembered it better.

Sadly, it is overshadowed by the memory of her funeral, which took place a few weeks later.  I had come home for a short stay, arriving just before her wedding.  As it turned out, I was going to be there long enough to pay my respects to her in person.

A few days after her honeymoon ended, she died in a car accident.

My mother, who also saw her as a daughter, called me, crying, to tell me the news.  I remember it so clearly.  I was visiting friends in another town, I was sitting in the bath, someone brought me the cordless phone, and I just didn't believe my mother.  

"You're joking!" I kept screeching at her.

I can't imagine how hard it must have been for her to make that phone call.

And so, suddenly, I had a funeral to attend.

Ellen was the first child, and her mother's favorite.  Seeing my second mom at the funeral, this lovely woman, in such pain, was one of the hardest things I have ever seen.  I have a mini-video snapshot in my memory of her walking to the front to put a photo of Ellen on a stand, her husband trying to steer her into a pew, and her brushing his hand away, going up there to put the photo up for all to see the beauty that was taken from us.  From that day on, Ellen's mother - previously the light of every party, tanned, fit, well groomed - aged.

I can't remember if I offered to speak, or if they asked me.  I thought long and hard about what to say.  I thought about reading a poem, I thought about talking about our childhood, I thought about saying all the nice things I could remember about Ellen.

But all that seemed like such clichéd bullshit.

And so I stood up and I told the truth.

I don't remember the whole speech.  But I remember saying:

"I don't know how you feel, but I'm angry!"

I think I went on to say that it wasn't fair, that she had her life in front of her and that she was one of the kindest and sweetest people I knew.

It was true. 

Ellen never smoked or drank too much or misbehaved like I did.  She was a really wholesome girl, pretty, sporty, fun and open-hearted.

I also said that she wasn't perfect.  But I didn't give the examples of her sister getting slapped all the time when we were kids for trying to hang around with us.  Or that she hated staying over at my house and always made me go to hers for the night.  Or even that she was the queen, the leader, the controller of any game we played.

I said that, in spite of not being perfect, she was one of the good ones, and she didn't deserve to die.

Because she didn't, for fuck's sake!

When this happened, Ellen and I were 26 years old.

Bucket List - Try to Surf

 

The Bucket List is a list of things I want to do/feel I should do before I die.  I've done some of them already, and I'm telling one of those stories here.  To see the whole list, click here.

I should actually change this to "Catch a wave on a surfboard," which is something I've never done.  And something I'd LOVE to do.

I lived near the sea in South Africa.  It was sunny.  There were a lot of waves.  Surfing was a big deal.

In university, you could always tell when the surf was up - at least half of the Bachelor of Commerce students were missing.

In High School, the big thing was to get on the bus and take the 30 minute trip down to the beach on Saturdays and hang out with the surfer boys.  

My father, an avid fan of police procedurals on TV, firmly believed that I was going to be abducted by slave traffickers, raped by a pedophile or eaten by a shark and, when he tried to forbid me from going, it was one of the first times in my life that I really stood up to him.

So we'd hang out on the beach, giggling and checking out the tanned, muscular surfer boys (there is nothing quite as sexy as a surfer standing with his surfboard upright, his wet suit half off, dangling at his waist, watching the waves to see how the sets are breaking) and sometimes even talking to them.  Mostly we hung out with boys from our school that we knew.

And, inevitably, we asked some of them to let us try out surfing.

You have to understand that, what an iPhone is to a man is what a surfboard is to a surfer.  Actually, that's not even a good enough analogy, because iPhone users will let you play with their ubercool toys.  A surfboard is more like a Ferrari to its owner.  They're expensive for a kid and, if they have bought a new one, they carefully chose the color and pattern and size of fin and I don't even know what else.

So there's only one reason the boy would let my friend and I have a go at surfing... they wanted to laugh their asses off at us.  And probably see our boobs when our swimsuits were wet.

So, of course, they didn't tell us anything about how to get out beyond the breakers.  You're supposed to push the tip of the board under the wave, dive into it and paddle to come out the other side.

But my friend and I kept trying to paddle over the waves and spent half an hour being tossed back to the shore.

Eventually, we gave up.

It was humiliating.

The boys were guffawing up on the beach.

Little fuckers.

So yes, I've tried to surf, but I never succeeded.

So I'm adding "Catch a wave" to my Bucket List.

Right now.

Travel/Bucket List - Disneyland/world

This post is in the Travel category, but also tagged for Bucket List.

The Bucket List is a list of things I want to do/feel I should do before I die.  I've done some of them already, and I'm telling one of those stories here.  To see the whole list, click here.

When I was 11, my father told me that he wanted to go and see his sister in Australia.  Not appreciating the bonds of family, or perhaps not understanding that I might find a way to hold a Koala Bear in my arms, I said, in that lovely, sweet, polite and completely unspoilt way that upper middle class children have:

"I want to go to Disneyland!"

In retrospect, not my proudest moment.

Being Daddy's little girl, my dear aunt was spared three weeks of dealing with annoying family visitors, and off to the US of A we flew!

We went to a lot of places - my dad got a special ticket where you can fly as much as you want within the US, as long as you didn't go back to the same city.  But my favorite places were Disneyland and Disneyworld.

Because we visited both (I did say I was spoiled, didn't I?), my memories of the two are jumbled up.  It's all merged into one sense of childhood wonder and awe.

This is in stark contrast to going back to Disneyland as an adult.  Just as much fun, but in a different way.

So here's what I remember:

Entering the park

When we went in 1981, I thought parking lot was HUGE.  I remember thinking we were never going to get anywhere near the park, and I was so impatient to get in!  Then we had to get on some boat thing to cross the seven seas to get to the gates.  The guide told us that the lake actually had waters from each of the seven seas in it.  I'd learnt about the water cycle at school, so I was wondering if they kept going to the seven seas to get more water, but I didn't dare ask.  

In 2001, we did our research beforehand and stayed the night in the Disney hotel so that we could get through the gates an hour before they were open to the general public.  We were probably in the first 10 people in the park that day.  As we walked up Main Street, I saw Mickey Mouse standing at the end of it.

When I did my MBA, we studied Disneyland as an example of managing staff.  They train their staff to be "actors", instructing them to be "on stage" as soon as they exit from the rabbit warren of tunnels under the park and come out to interact with the public.  

So I began to wonder... how committed are you to your performance, Mickey?  

Indulge me a moment while I set the scene.  By this stage I had speed-walked to the front of the people coming into the park.   I was also bigger than I am now - perhaps a dress size 20.  

I opened my arms.  I broke into a run.  I barrelled straight at the poor little fake mouse, yelling:

"MICKEY!"

I think, from the massive, prolonged bear hug that I gave poor Mickey, that he was being played by a slim teenage girl that day, who probably thought that she was being kind to a mentally challenged adult - which isn't bad thing, frankly.

I put my arm around her, my embarrassed husband caught up with us, and took a picture.  

The Tiki Room

I have a very vague memory of the Tiki room as a child.  I remember being bemused.

As an adult, many years later, it was a hilarious experience.  

The guy standing outside was basically getting tired people, who had been walking around the park all day, to come inside by explaining to them that there was air-conditioning and a place to sit. 

The Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Room, the Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki room (you have to know the song), a bunch of rattynimatronic birds and totem poles sing you the silly song.  I think that you have to be high to really appreciate it, but we don't do that stuff so we just had to let our healthy sense of irony keep us laughing our asses off.  There were definitely some people in there who had gone for the "full Tiki experience" - we could smell them.

The Matahorn roller coaster

When I was a kid, I had dragged my poor parents round the park relentlessly, until they were exhausted.  My father and mother sat down and told me they would stay where they were, and that I should go on the rides and come back and find them.

FREEDOM!

I was so happy I could've burst.

I got in line for the Matahorn, and was so proud when I realized I was taller than the minimum height required.

The line people were a bit confused when I got in by myself, with no adult to sit next to me, but I was unfazed.  Till the ride started.  I thought I was going to die.  

No.  Listen.

I am not kidding.

I thought I was going to die.

 I screamed so hard that, when I got off the ride, I had lost my voice.

Lost.  My.  Voice.

Going back there as an adult was as mistake.  The ride seemed smaller, and was more nostalgic than thrilling.

Which isn't to say there aren't good roller coasters at Disneyland.  We were there with a friend of ours - let's call him Martin - who decided to check out Disney's California Adventure, the park next door.  We had arranged to meet him at the Light Parade as dusk fell.

The parade came and went.  No Martin.

Hmmmmm.

And then we saw him.  He was very, very pale.  He had never been on a roller coaster in his life, and he chose, for his first one, a mammoth called California Screaming.  

This steel coaster (built to look wooden) offers up a 0-55 launch in four seconds, a 107-foot drop and a vertical loop around a Mickey Mouse logo. You'll also hear "surf guitar" music through an on-board soundtrack, a la "Space Mountain."

This is the 6th longest coaster in the world, and 2nd longest steel coaster in the U.S. this coaster currently has a maximum of 5 cars running at one time.

Source: www.themeparkinsider.com

Martin was feeling very weak, and quite ill.  

As they do with a lot of these rides, there is an automatic camera that takes a picture at a key moment on the ride.  Martin said that, when he went to the viewing area, other people were pointing at the photo of him and laughing, saying:

"Hey!  Look at that guy!"

I just watched a video of what going on the ride is like, with headphones on and Fluffy Bear grabbed my knee unexpectedly.  Apparently I was screaming.

Yeah, that goes on the "Avoid" list.

Still, Disneyland is a magical place and they are always adding new rides so, as I've just said to Fluffy Bear, we have to go again! 

Bucket List - My fifteen seconds of fame

The Bucket List is a list of things I want to do/feel I should do before I die.  I've done some of them already, and I'm telling one of those stories here.  To see the whole list, click here.

Years ago, I got tickets to be in the audience of a comedy talk show. We sat about half way up the studio audience seats, and I was near the aisle.

There was a warm up lady, whose jokes proved she'd never have her own show, who got us in the mood and gave us instructions on what to do. My favorite bit of her advice was when she told us to laugh at the guests' jokes even if they weren't funny, to make them feel comfortable.

Anyway, we practiced clapping and whooping and laughing, because God forbid anything be remotely genuine on TV.

Then the show started and it actually was very funny. I laughed so hard I misted my glasses up.

I saw a cameraman come towards me, but he had his camera at waist height and I thought he was focusing on the woman in front me, because her chest was like two Labrador puppies in a sack.

The show paused for the host to chill and get a drink and the warm up lady came out to tell us all what a good little audience we were being.

"You are all great!" she screeched. "Except for that woman over there who cleaned her glasses!"

I'm not kidding.

She pointed right at me and everyone turned to look. Fluffy Bear and our friends were paralytic with laughter and my dear husband refused to let me hide behind him.

Never mind, I thought. They'll just cut that bit out and use another generic audience shot.

But no.

We got home that night and there I was, in the middle of the frame, everyone around me laughing and clapping while I dared to do something different - polish my specs like a total dork.

But I've been on TV... that counts for something, right?

Right?