How Humor Complicates Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day is hard on comedy writers.

No one likes to hear a joke that could, potentially, be about their mother. It’s a very thin line between “funny” and “enraged mob.”  I have too strong self-preservation gene (thanks, mom) for me to enjoy being on the business end of “enraged mob.”

Understanding that a mob triggered to ferocious anger by misfiring-mother-related humor is akin to wearing brain earrings while exposing my own pretty brain cleavage in front of a hoard of starving zombies, I’ve been losing sleep for weeks trying to figure out what to say on this day.

There was one horrible dream where the ghost of Erma Bombeck, looks at me over the rims of her glasses, shakes her head, and waggles her finger at me like I just tracked mud into her newly cleaned kitchen, and looking over my shoulder, yup, there’s the mud.  Wordlessly, I go to find the mop and bucket, where I end up just making it worse, spreading the prints into a muddy paint all over the white floor.  Things didn’t improve from there.

Another night, I dreamed that I sent out a lovely, sentimental essay, lauding the ideals of motherhood, and saying beautiful things with the best prose I’ve ever written. It was, however, seriously unfunny, and all my readers, in a fit of confusion, hastily unsubscribed, and I was now facing the proposition of continuing without an audience. Not at all cheery.

Clearly, whatever I came up with needed to do mothers proud.

After all, some of my favorite people are moms.  Having an angry, blood-craving mob at my door is worse when some of those in attendance actually know my address. Without Googling.

The rage so easily generated by a well-placed “motherly” insult is the key to understanding the power of the entire line of “Your mamma” jokes. It’s easy to see why they’re so effective as taunts by various sorts of ruffians and no-good-nicks, who prove the depths of their evil by taking pot shots at the one person their enemy loves most. Their mamma.

And, despite popular belief that comedians arrive on this planet in giant fibrous shells carried by space pterodactyls, or grown in cabbage patches sprinkled with rainbow jimmies, most of us actually do have mothers.

I know, it’s disappointing to learn that. I feel a bit bad for revealing it to you, but, as it’s less likely to get me lynched than a joke about you-know-who, well, I’m willing to make that call.

Nope, I think I’m safer avoiding that altogether.  I’m going to steer clear of the clichéd jokes made about mothers and motherhood, and I’m not going to make jokes about anyone’s mamma.

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If you think so, too, pass this along. It’s just like clapping for Tinkerbell…

The Magic that Hides in Plain Sight

If you’re under the mistaken belief that this word is lacking in magic, look no further than your office’s coffee station.  Hidden casually, in plain sight, is all anyone ever needs to prove the existence of magic in this world.

Powdered Non-Dairy Creamer.

All I can hope is that we don’t owe the existence of this magical substance to a dark ritual involving sacrifice of puppies or the burning of 15 million acres of rain forest or wearing polyester.  Please don’t tell me that it is harvested off of the wings of imprisoned fairies or unicorn dandruff, because we’re all better off not knowing.

I’ll grant you that the label says the first ingredient is “corn syrup solids.” That’s Muggle for “something magical we can’t explain, and you’re better off not knowing.” If you ask someone, they’ll probably just tell you it’s just sugar. That is just Death Eater talk, so, you shouldn’t listen to them.

Let’s look into the magical properties of this wondrous substance, shall we?

First, there’s not a bit of dairy in it, but, it makes coffee taste like it’s been given a touch of something that came out of the acceptable part of a female cow.  It’s even mostly white.

Then, there is its peculiar molecular structure, which mutates it into a liquid when exposed to a hot liquid, but gets harder and lumpier in cold liquid.  Even in hot liquid, it still somehow forms a protective barrier over granulated sugar, keeping it from dissolving.  I think that there should be some serious grants awarded to scientists to figure out how to harness these properties. It probably requires someone who knows everything there ever was to know about sedimentology and fluid dynamics. Can we get someone on this? There’s got to be some under-employed master of fluid dynamics in a temp job somewhere that is spending way too much time studying this. Like, what ratios of sugar to creamer result in which absorption rates? Does it matter if the sugar is added first, or if a part of the sugar is exposed to the liquid under the creamer? What happens if you homogenize the two?

You could say I’ve done some experiments. You could also say that no one should spend that much time thinking about coffee creamer.  You might even suggest that I have no idea what use could possibly be derived from a better understanding of non-dairy creamer. You would probably be right. The bad news is that I know next to nothing about fluid dynamics. But I do know that this stuff does some really weird (and that’s a technical term) stuff in liquid.

I probably shouldn’t mention this, as it’s not exactly in keeping with the product’s labeling, and while it’s not a secret, it’s certainly not something we want in front of those who would use the information for evil.  Non-dairy creamer is highly flammable. It can be used as an accelerant for improvised torches and fire-related naughtiness.  This is probably why fairies burst into flames if they get too close to a hot light source. Or maybe that’s just moths. I really hope that it’s not made of the wing scales of moths.  I just couldn’t take it.

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This week, I’m trying something new: footnotes. Some night even say it’s about time. To them I say: “HEY!”

Things That Get Trapped in a Writer’s Brain

I am earwormed by words.

I have my suspicions that this is a common affliction of writers, but, I also admit that I have never asked my writer friends if they carry phrases or entire speeches in their heads. I am reminded that “Hearing voices no one else can hear isn’t a good sign, even in the wizarding world.” I am reminded of that, even though, I will point out that I’m not actually hearing anything, I’m not that far gone.

This form of the disease is worse than just being infected by some annoying song. This means that *in addition* to occasionally having songs stuck in your head for hours on end, I get phrases and words stuck in my head, so when I hear just one bit of that phrase, my brain is forced to complete it.

If someone offers me a cup of tea? My brain hears Giles¹ answering “Tea is soothing. I wish to be tense,” even if I would like a cup of tea.

Poetry, scripted dialog, books; any and all of it gets trapped in my brain where it does its best to make me even crazier than I already am.  I hear the word “hole” and my brain goes straight to “In a hole, in the ground, there lived a Hobbit,” and it will not stop until the dwarves have proven they know more about the inside of Bilbo’s larder than he does himself, and will then offer selections from “Fellowship of the Ring.”

And, this affliction doesn’t stop with English. I have bits of “Wenn nur die Menschen Hiefische Waere²” that surface from time to time, and bits of “Rumpelstilzchen.³”  Latin makes its appearance on occasion, as does  Swahili, which is really odd, as I have never even heard Swahili.

Let’s say that someone utters the phrase “dead as a doornail.”  My brain turns into some weird form of Google, and pulls up everything I’ve ever known about that phrase. It starts by reciting “Marley was dead: to begin with…” and wanders off for paragraphs about how certain Scrooge and all the rest of us ought to be that Jacob Marley was pushing up daises and not pinning for the Fjords⁴.

See? I typed about pushing up daisies and there appear the Fjords.

It also means that I get whole phrases of the current writing project, whatever that might be, stuck in my head. Entire pieces will be inspired by one stray thought or phrase that caught my fancy. I’ll hold that phrase hostage for weeks until I’ve worried it to death with trying it in slightly different arrangements, or putting  other phrases and oddments onto it. By the time I actually sit down to turn it into something presentable, it all sounds like mush.

This one, of course, started simply with the opening sentence, and all of this has been hammered out, bit by bit for weeks until I finally surrendered and wrote it down, and now it can stick in someone else’s brain.

1. Rupert Giles,  Librarian, Watcher and Magic Shop owner from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He’s British, and they’re supposed to always want tea, so, when questioned about his choice of coffee, he replied with the aforementioned phrase. My brain does the whole scene.
2. “If only men were sharks,” It’s a satirical piece by Bertold Brecht.
3. You probably know this as “Rumpelstiltskin,” by the Brother Grimm.
4. That’s right. My brain starts with Dickens and ends in Monty Python.

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None of this has anything to do with today’s column, so, feel free to ignore it. Today, I take you to the past, using nothing but words. It’s one of my super powers. Since I’m driving the time machine, I’m taking you to my childhood. That’s right, it’s all about me.

How a Writer Spends Her Childhood

The first time I tried to adapt a story into a script, I was about 10 years old, and I had read this ghost story that took place during the summer at a beach resort. I remember the names of the living characters, but not the ghost, and not much about the plot. I can, however, remember that I could see the characters as people I knew in my neighborhood, and how I would translate the scenes into a live-action performance, and I knew it *had* to be done.

That’s right.  I was *that* kid.

The kid who got all the kids in the neighborhood together to do a play, and made props, and gave people parts, and got mad when they didn’t do it the way I’d imagined it should be done.  If I’d known that overly dramatic types referred to their productions as “their vision,” I’d have been all over yelling at those lousy kids who were ruining mine. I knew that there was lots of dialog for this show, so, I broke it all up with commercials I wrote myself, all of which I remember better than the play.

I have to say that the neighbor kids were awful. None of them could be bothered to memorize my scintillating dialog, and always tried to make me re-write things to give them fewer lines. Preferably so that all they had to say was “yes” or “I’m scared” or “I’m bored and you can do this stupid play without me. “

All this tells you exactly how committed they were to their art. Not one of them was remotely concerned with how crappy a ghost story would look if the ghost just decided to leave halfway through and not come back.

I probably should’ve suspected something when NONE of the neighbor kids brought their parents to opening night, which, due to the lack of a ghost, turned out to also be closing night. The reviews were not good, the best ones being highly guarded ones from my own parents who, with three kids in the production could not say more than “it was interesting,” and “we are very proud of you,” and “is it over yet?” Certainly, our parents knew better to use comments much worse than that. After all, we knew where they lived and one of us could easily express our “frustrated, artistic” souls on their sleeping forms.

I was never again able to mount any sort of production in that neighborhood.  The kids didn’t come over much after that, and my siblings fled anytime I started a sentence with the phrase “I read this cool…”

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The Secret Messages of License Plates

There was a time when I thought personalized license plates were pretty awesome things. I liked puzzling out the message, and feeling like I was clever and being inducted into the elite crowd of people who had solved the passing riddle.  I imagined there was a secret handshake and meetings, and we’d all get together and pat ourselves on the back for our amazing skills, and share knowing glances at each other in the super market.

I was disappointed when they turned our secret club initiation into a game show, and then everyone fancied themselves good at figuring out the arcane messages flashed on car rear-ends.

Worse, that show ushered out the golden age of license plate puzzling. What had once been fun was now downright annoying.

Owners of personalize plates failed to make their personal statements clever or entertaining. They started to be nothing more than, well, “vanity” plates.

I feel certain that they owe us the courtesy of making their plates interesting and accessible. Frankly, if you’re going to pay the extra bucks to announce something to the car driving public, you should take some responsibility for that message, and make it worth our time. It should be a message that is first and foremost, comprehensible. Second, it should bring pleasure or inspiration to those that see it. Is this truly asking too much?

I would love to put an end to plates which have absolutely no meaning to anyone but the car owner.  What the heck does H1OK4ME mean? Are they fans of hydrogen? Sure, ok, I can come down on the side of hydrogen. Everyone loves hydrogen. I just want to know who spends good money to give hydrogen a half-hearted recommendation on the back of their car? If they truly loved hydrogen, why not IHEARTH1? Okay, so, maybe that just looks like IH EARTH1, or I HEARTH 1 which, let’s face it, is not any clearer.  The iHearth sounds like some new iProduct.

I suppose the owners of H1OK4ME could be virologists, and H1N1 is their favorite flu critter. Or, maybe they are from Oklahoma, and their town is called H-1. No, I don’t have any idea what town founder would name a town “H-1.”

I have a sneaking suspicion that all of these meanings are far superior to the real thing. Frankly, I don’t really want to know the true meaning because I’ll just be disappointed. I’ll also be grouchy that I thought about it as long as I did.

That smug plate owner is doing nothing more than mocking me with his or her private joke, causing me to burn a few brain cells sucking in car exhaust while trying to force their cryptic car code to make one iota of sense.

There was that one drive, when I was trying to stay awake late, when I could’ve sworn all the plates had hidden meanings.  948-VPO? Clearly, this a coded message to C3PO’s silver cousin, VPO, indicating they should meet at docking bay 94 at 8:00 AM.  Yeah. I’m onto them. I could join the Rebel Alliance, and find my very own scruffy-looking Nerf Herder.

Or maybe it’s just better for everyone if I stop looking at license plates.

If you’d like to get Flying Solo, (and just Flying Solo) on Sundays via e-mail,  you can Subscribe to Flying Solo

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What Really Happens the Night Before the Office Potluck

When you are a single female, office potlucks are met with a mix of anticipation and dread.

The dread part comes first. It’s the moment you realize that you must go to the store, buy a week’s worth of groceries, and make a dish for your closest coworkers, knowing you’ll only get a spoonful.

Did you just think I should’ve just bought some prepared potato salad at the deli, slapped a spoon in it, and called it good? Yeah, I heard you. I have my ways. I can only waggle my finger at you, and, in my best stern voice say “Shame! That’s cheating!”

Because, for us single females, despite the cost which blows our monthly budget out of the water, potlucks are *really* about showing off.

Our Betty Crocker genes don’t get out much. With no regular “audience,” we have no one to impress with our culinary acumen. We tend to go home, shove our deli meat into some maybe,  possibly,  good bread and call it dinner.

This is where the anticipation comes in.

See, as much as there is dread and anxiety over the cost, there is the excited planning that goes into high gear.  It’s not enough to bring a dish people will like. It’s time to impress them with exotic ingredients or techniques. They can’t be too exotic or no one will touch them, and no one is impressed with having the only untouched dish at the party.

The ideal potluck dish has got to look excellent, taste fantastic, and be sufficiently complicated or mysterious (how’d she do that??) to become the chief topic of conversation for the meal.

“Gosh, I haven’t used my melon baller in years, maybe I could use it to scoop out servings of salmon mousse, serve it on tiny homemade crackers with a touch of that caviar and serve it with some sparkling wine I made from last year’s grape harvest. I’ll just whip up the crackers from the hand-milled flower right after I put away the deli meat. ”

When you start sounding like a contestant on Iron Chef explaining their sea bass three ways, with truffle oil foam and poached quail eggs, or twice killed pork rendered planks of maple and cedar, it might be time to dial the whole thing back to eleven.

The minute you decide to make a more reasonable dish, you start to panic and imagine that one of the single guys at the office could taste your masterpiece, fall madly in love with it, and want to be married within the month. It’s worth the hours spent hand-milling flour if it catches a man.

I wake to the smell of a burning batch of crackers, and wipe the drool from my face, and the dream has faded. Maybe store-bought crackers aren’t cheating after all.

Kate Barnes – award-winning writer, blogger and thinker of thoughts – lives in Denver. By day she works for the Colorado Community College System, and by dark she sits in the glow of the computer screen creating websites, words, and grand schemes.  She welcomes your comments and can be reached at flyingsolo@k8space.com, you can visit her website at http://www.k8space.com.

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The Discerning Person’s Guide to Food and Drink Pairings

It has always been a mark of culture to be able to correctly pair haute cuisine with the best possible beverage. This is meant to enhance the meal, creating a perfect harmony between plate and glass. Even people who don’t know a Merlot from a Burgundy know that those of good breeding should pair a red meat with a red wine.

And yet, for most of us, we’re eating our meals in the car, where adult beverage consumption is likely to be frowned upon, and possibly illegal. Where is the food pairing advice for the 99%?

For example, what is the best vintage to be ordered when selecting a Big Mac? What is the perfect varietal to serve with a Grande Meal from Taco Bell?

Your prayers have been answered, here is that all-important guide to everyday pairings. I know, I love you, too.

In most cases, if you are dining at McDonald’s, Coke is the beverage of choice. Perhaps a cliché, but, there’s a reason it’s a classic combination. If you are concerned about sugar, well, that’s understandable. Choose Diet Coke, and go ahead and super-size, because the taste of irony is so very delicious.

The only exception to the Coke rule at McDonalds is if you’re having breakfast. Coffee is a fine choice, but, please remember that they tend to serve it hot. Unless it’s the new iced coffee.

At Taco Bell, the perfect companion for most of the menu, is Dr. Pepper. Sadly, this has become a tragic state of affairs, since they stopped carrying Dr. Pepper. The remaining options, especially knowing that fountain Pepsi is very different from bottled Pepsi, are quite unsatisfactory. Despite the fact that they are owned by Pepsi Co, I find the varietal dispensed from Taco Bell particularly unpleasant. I typically solve this problem by not ordering a beverage at all, and taking the food home where I can enjoy it with its perfect compliment. My sister, however, will choose the Pepsi with hints of artificial cherry flavoring, which helps to balance out the tendency of fountain Pepsi to take on significant medicinal overtones.

At Wendy’s the drink choices are a tad more complicated. Salads should be paired with unsweetened ice tea. Wendy’s ice tea is consistently the best in the industry, and it goes very nicely with the chain’s superior salads. Frosties, while not precisely a beverage, do make for an admirable dessert. Some of my acquaintances contend that Frosties are a condiment for French Fries. Please do not molest potatoes in this fashion.

If you’re following in Jared’s footsteps and choosing Subway, pick cherry coke if you are eating a sandwich, ‘cause the fruits and veggies are free. If you’re having a salad, lemonade should serve you in good stead, unless you picked tuna salad. In that case, take it home and make some tea.

Learning the basics of proper food and drink pairings will separate you from the crowd, and give you a great conversation starter. And, if your dinner companions question your choice of beverage, just send them to me.

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How to Excavate in the Valley of the Appliances

It’s almost time to plan my next excavation.

Of course, it’s not quite what you might think.  Unless you think it’s time to clean out the fridge, which I call an “excavation” because it sounds more fun.

As with any excavation, you start by putting down a grid, so that you can record where each and every artifact removed from the site was originally located.   For reference sake, I also append a depth chart to accurately record which layer in each grid has yielded the objects in question.

At this point, there can be no more procrastination. Sending in a canary to detect noxious emissions is unwise, they never come back, and let’s face it, we all know this is an expensive way to find out what we already knew, and you’ll now have a dead canary to excavate.  Just put the money toward a gas mask. Two to three pairs of latex gloves worn simultaneously would also be a wise plan. In fact, if you can afford it, a full hazmat suit would not be entirely ridiculous.

Now that you can’t smell the site, the work begins. It’s best to think of this as the remains of an ancient civilization, where every remnant is a vital clue to understanding history.  As you carefully sift the debris, place any decaying organic matter into a black waste matter disposal unit.

Items which cannot be sifted are what I call “artifacts.” These should be taken back to camp for proper cleaning, identification and cataloging. I usually just put them by the kitchen sink.

There was a very confusing moment, when I uncovered elements which were clearly dated to the bronze age, in the middle of a level of stone age debris.  How could I explain the contradictions in my analysis?

A further search and careful digging uncovered the key evidence:  the jar of ketchup, which I remembered falling a few weeks ago. In its collapse, it probably drug some of the upper layer bronze age material with it into the stone age.  Hopefully, the bottle didn’t cause too much damage to the fragile artifacts in the bottom layers.  Fortunately, the jar itself was still intact.

The mysteries reveal themselves bit by bit.  The soft, green coloring near the back wall, looked like it could be part of an exquisite painting of Osiris, and I started to suspect that this could be a tomb for more than canaries!  Or, it might just be that bell pepper I bought six months ago for a batch of lentil soup.  I wondered where it had ended up.

My hopes of finding the lost tomb of Tetisheri disappeared with that realization. Also, I discovered the seal on the gas mask had slipped, and I was probably hallucinating. I closed down the dig for the day.

A few more hours, and the site would be cleared to bedrock. It was another thrilling excavation, and would be months before I’d start planning the next one, and for that, everyone was grateful. Especially, the canaries.

Today’s word:

ataxy

As in:

The poor, confused, linguistically challenged Howard, was desperately trying to understand why the nurses continued to torture his roommate. He could not understand how they could justify giving the poor man false hopes of ever leaving the “Happy Home Asylum for the Extremely Confused.” Everyone knew that if there was ever a patient that would never leave the confines of “Happy Home” it was Mr. Schmertz.

Mr. Schmertz was the most feared resident of “Happy;” all the others knew of his penchant for tripping, punching and kicking the residents. He had an unfortunate habit of standing in front of the restroom to bar entrance to those all-important facilities. His preferred tactic was to stand at the doorway, and begin to engage the needy visitor in an egregiously inane conversation.

As the victim’s need escalated in immediacy, the insufferable Mr. Schmertz would patiently block the entrance, holding the unfortunate soul within tantalizing reach of his/her necessary and urgent destination. If the person showed any signs of boredom or made any motion towards the inviting door, Mr. Schmertz would simply beat them senseless. Those who could manage the ordeal without the smallest sign of boredom or inference to the urgency of their need, would be permitted to enter the facility by the grim warden.

Such a man could never be allowed to leave the home, Howard was sure.

Of course, Howard’s confusion about the nurses’ discussion of Mr. Schmertz’s activities stemmed from his lingual deficiencies, and from overhearing one of the nurses say that Mr. Schmertz’s activities were worthy of a taxi. Poor Howard had unfortunately not known that what the nurses had really said was “Mr. Schmertz’s activities were ataxy.”

***************

For some things in life, there are no words.  And yet, there is this one.

ataxy: / a TAXI / n. Disturbance of bodily functions, especially that of motion.

I remember seeing the advertisements proclaiming that there was going to be this new series. I remember thinking this was pretty preposterous.  I had seen the movie, and I’d thought it was much better than I’d ever expected, but, the idea of taking that to a series seemed beyond ridiculous to me.  I figured it’d be cancelled soon, and forgotten, so, I didn’t bother to tune in.

It got a second season, and a few people, whose opinions I actually valued, had told me it was “pretty good,” but I still resisted.  I wasn’t much for any sort of TV watching then, I thought TV was, with only  a few exceptions,  a waste of time, and not really worth watching.

At some point, I caught the end of a second season episode, The Dark Age. Its ending was confusing to me, because the solution to the conflict involves forcing a body-hopping demon to jump into Angel’s body. Angel, having his own demon, defeated the invader.  I didn’t get it. That guy’s somehow a demon? I had no idea Angel was a vampire.

What surprised me about what I’d seen was that it was much darker than I’d expected, and it was not remotely cheesy. I was no longer under the impression that this was a light comedy like the movie.

But, I still didn’t tune in on a regular basis.

And then, the Columbine shooting happened.  My boss at the time had two children who went to school there, and one of them had been dating one of the people who was killed. The entire office was gripped with the unfolding tragedy.  No work was getting done, and people kept asking me why I didn’t appear sad, or shaken about the situation. They all thought me callous and overtly chipper,   in an unseemly fashion.

Well, to them, I probably was. See, I had club level tickets to the Rockies game that evening, going with some good friends who’d never been to a baseball game.  I’d never been on the club level. I was really thinking of that, and not really thinking about this situation happening across town, to people I didn’t know, and about which I could do nothing, so, I was thinking about the game.

And then, as we were almost to the park, we learned they’d cancelled the game.

I was pretty annoyed.  Actually, that’s weak. I was angry. Sure, they would reschedule the game, but, it was going to be at a time I couldn’t go, and neither could my friends, because the owners of the tickets would probably be able to use them. What good did cancelling the game do for anyone?

But, I swallowed my anger, and we did something else, I don’t remember what, but, something.

Later that week, I heard that the planned episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer had been pulled, because it had content that related to a kid with a gun at the school.

Again, I was annoyed that people were allowing this event ot take over so much of life. By this point, the local news in Colorado was filled with nothing but rehashing the event. You couldn’t get away from it. There were mass e-mail forwards with really bad poetry, maudlin and sentimental, which captured that people who had nothing to do with the event, were sad, and shocked and that all the innocent victims, angels all, were taken from us.

I just wanted it all to be off my TV.

And I didn’t dare share that part of me identified more with the shooters than with the victims.  I understood the feeling of being ostracized by the popular kids.

All of this leads to the happy coincidence that the first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I ever saw from beginning to end was the very episode that had been postponed due to the shooting.

I now understood why it had been postponed, and yet, here was something I’d never anticipated. This show with the silly name understood that “Every single person down there is ignoring your pain because they’re too busy with their own. ”  It didn’t glamorize murder, but, it also understood what might push someone to think about it. This TV show was the first thing I had seen that didn’t turn the tragedy into a mawkish spectacle, where only the victim’s deaths were tragic, and the shooters had but one dimension.

If this show could understand that, well, it was worth watching. And from then on, it was appointment TV for me. I even watched Angel a few weeks later when it premiered, and finally understood why the resolution of  The Dark Age worked.

I soon found other fans of the show, mostly through The Bronze, and later the Bronze Beta . Here I found others who understood, and loved the show, and who became friends. These are friendships that grew through the shared love of the show, but, also in the shared sense of community. Real life victories have been shared, as have tragedies. This group has supported its members in genuine ways and I cannot understate how it has made a real difference in my life.

This community, and this show, changed how I saw television. In Buffy fandom, the real superstars are the writers, who would come and talk with us on the board, and became just as much a part of the community as the fans. I now watched shows with an eye toward the writers, and followed them to other quality shows, and found a new love of television.

I am indebted to this show for all that it has brought to my life. I am not ashamed to say that I truly love this show; its story is powerful, witty and full of meaning;  its characters are like family, and so are its fans.

Anyway, Happy Birthday, Buffy. You saved the world – a lot.