​I knew.

Right away, and with absolute clarity, I knew that Jussie Smollett invented the story of his assault.
 
Now, after not speaking out in public for a few weeks, the actor, who is both black and openly gay, is back in the news—and in a heap of trouble. 
 
Once a sympathetic victim, Smollett has been charged with multiple felony counts for making up the horrifying story about two men who attacked him in the dead of night. 
 
Unknown thugs, he said, beat him and poured an unknown chemical on him, and also fastened a rope around his neck,
as if to fashion a noose.  In the midst of this, he added, they shouted racist and homophobic slurs. 
 
I recognized the tale as utterly false because of the job I used to do:  producing true crime stories, mostly for
network television. 
 
Over the course of nearly two decades, I researched dozens of stories.  A good part of the work was interviewing the same number of attorneys and FBI agents; I also spoke with witnesses and family members of victims and small-town newspaper reporters (the latter group often provided the most heartbreaking stories, and could recite them in detail).   From all of them, I learned that hard, physical evidence is the key to proving a case beyond a shadow of a doubt.    
 
Along the way, I also acquired a healthy dose of skepticism.
 
Others who called out the Smollett story early on probably didn’t have my experience.  But they had this: the common sense to put the pieces of the narrative together, and to then see that it smelled, and smelled bigly, in spite of the early, sensitive reporting on the assault.
 
For those who don’t know the story, here’s the rundown. 
 
In late January, Smollett, who is 36 years old, reported to Chicago police that he had been attacked at two in the morning after going out for a sandwich. (Empire, the TV show co-starring Smollett, is filmed in Chicago).  The next
day, his family issued a statement of support; less than a week later, the performer gave a concert in West Hollywood, where many members of the LGBTIA community live and work. 
 
In an emotional speech, Smollett told the audience that he had to play the show because he couldn’t let his
attackers win. 
 
By now, a dozen detectives had been assigned to the case—but there were already holes.   
 
A photo of Smollett hours after the attack showed only a scratch under his right eye.  The actor refused Chicago PD’s request to see all of his phone records, citing privacy concerns.  And, it was puzzling that despite numerous cameras operating in the neighborhood when and where the attack occurred, not one showed any sign of an assault.   
 
The big break came two weeks later. 
 
Two Nigerian brothers were picked up and questioned. Their Chicago apartment was also searched.  One was an extra on Empire, and Smollett’s personal trainer.  Arrested on suspicion of assaulting Smollett, they were held for nearly 48 hours before being released with all charges dropped. 
 
The story they told was a very different one than the actor’s.
 
Faced with multiple hate crime charges—which can bring life in prison or even the death penalty—the siblings gave it all up.  
 
They told investigators that Smollett had paid them $3,500 each, by check, to stage the deed.  Weeks earlier, the actor had also given them money to write and mail an anonymous death threat letter addressed to him.  But when that didn’t garner the publicity or the fatter paycheck that Smollett had hoped it would, he came up with the attack idea.  To that end, Smollett even had the two men rehearse the assault.   The scratch, they added, was self-inflicted.  
 
Yet despite the brothers’ narrative; the physical evidence, and the 16 felony charges, Smollett is sticking to his story.
 
In fact, often breaking down in tears, he did so to a national TV audience, and to the entire cast and crew of Empire (shortly afterwards, Smollett was fired from the show).    
 
One can argue that our justice system presumes that one is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. 
 
Yet.
 
When I put everything together, I can only conclude that Smollett is not only blameworthy, he’s a pretty sick puppy. 
 
That’s because besides lying for his own gain, the performer also diverted resources away from other criminal investigations, and, too, took blatant advantage of the pain of racism tearing so much of this country apart.  One more thing: Smollett is a terrific actor—he can cry on cue—but he’s also not the brightest bulb in the room.  After all, who writes a check to those you have hired to attack you?
 
As of this writing, one of Smollett’s attorneys is saying that the charges are redundant and vindictive.
 
Maybe that’s true.  But if the charges stick, someone who might want to stage a similar hate crime is sure to
think twice.
​ 
By then, I hope that Smollett is in prison, and doing a lot of thinking, too.    
 
What is your opinion of Jussie Smollett? 

Girl Clown Dancing is four years old this month, which means it’s also the time to reflect on posts over the last year.
 
Most often, I don’t have to think much about what my next GCD essay will be.  There’s always something going on, whether it’s a story in the news; from a friend, or about a personal experience. 

But in 2018, I also gave myself some wiggle room, so I didn’t post as often.
 
However, there were reasons.  
 
A year ago, in January and February, I was in Guatemala, attending a memoir writing retreat run by best- selling author Joyce Maynard.  I met, played and worked with about a dozen extraordinary women, all writers.  Some have been published, some not, but each had terrific stories to tell.  My biggest takeaway was learning how to edit GCD posts with the goal of keeping every essay on point.  To that end, I’m now doing my best to write posts 800 words or less. 
 
Some of these tighter blogs include memories of the Bakelite View-Master I had as a child (https://hilaryrobertsgrant.weebly.com/blog/view-master);how social media came to me (https://hilaryrobertsgrant.weebly.com/blog/social-media), and the secret to living a long life (https://hilaryrobertsgrant.weebly.com/blog/the-secret).  I’ve also used GCD to write about my Bill Cosby petition, which now has over 35,000 signatures, but received only a few comments on the Weebly platform  (https://hilaryrobertsgrant.weebly.com/blog/the-monster-named-bill-cosby).
 
A few months after that retreat, I began working with an extraordinary woman, now 75 years old, on her memoir.   
A retired environmental attorney, she has lived a big life, including traveling the globe; marrying three men
(with romances in between), and raising two children, mostly on her own.  She has also saved nearly every scrap of
paper detailing these events, and many more, so there’s a lot to organize, and then, write.  Later in the year,
I was honored to pen four articles for Cornell University. 
     
All along, I continued to conjure up ways to attract new readers.
 
I now post Girl Clown Dancing on Next Door, the social media platform that bills itself as the world’s largest social network for local communities.  While its main purpose has nothing to do with blogging, most have welcomed my essays, seeing them as an opportunity to get to know another person in the area. 

Then, I created a Facebook business site which allows me to post my essays, and advertise my writing services as well.  (The link is here, at: https://www.facebook.com/girlclowndancing/)  A few more Facebook friends have also kindly permitted me to post new blogs directly on their timelines.  
 
Finally, I’ve become a partner on Quora, the global question-and-answer website where questions are asked, answered and edited by its community of users.  When appropriate, I’ve used GCD essays for answers, another way of introducing my writing to yet another pool of readers.. 
 
As for this year, the goal remains the same:  I’ll keep writing.  I hope you keep reading. 

​I’ve become a Gel Girl.
 
For those not familiar with the vernacular of beauty salons, gel is a kind of nail polish that, for all intents and purposes, is a modern-day miracle. 
 
Its positives are many, including the fact that there’s no chipping, cracking or peeling.  And, also unlike traditional polish, gel holds its shine and won’t fade; lasts weeks longer, and is odorless.  Some professional manicurists also swear that clients who get regular gel manicures have stronger nails within a few months.  Gel also comes in plenty of colors, and thanks to a special LED light, dries within seconds of being put on, which eliminates smudging. 
 
For every one of these reasons—especially the fact that I’ll now only need a new pedicure when I notice my toenails growing out—I’m never going back to the Cutex our grandmothers used. 
 
But gel wasn’t an overnight sensation.  Indeed, nail polish has a long, and global, history.
 
The product originated in China as early as 3000 B.C., and contained beeswax, egg whites, gelatin and vegetable dyes. 
In Egypt, the richest of women wore nail extensions made from bone, ivory and gold.  In Greece in the 1800s, women of the same class choose empty pistachio shells to wear over their real nails.  Automobile paint inspired the first modern-day polish, which was colorless, but in the 1930s, premiered in a second, cream color.  A decade later, pin-up goddess
Rita Hayworth made bright red nails famous.       
 
Then came artificial nails.  Shiny and durable, they were gel’s predecessor.    
 
Like many other out-of-the-box ideas, it happened because of an accident.  In 1954, a dentist named Fred Slack broke a nail at work, and created a fake nail using dental acrylic as a replacement.  And while today’s acrylics are way more advanced than Slack’s primitive substitute (although the process is still meant for damaged nails, or ones that can’t grow), I always cringed when I saw someone getting an acrylic manicure. The chemical smell was overpowering; the sound of a drill-like instrument kept me more than an arm’s distance away, and I’m pretty sure smoke was involved.   
 
So, I kept buying drugstore polish, knowing that in a few weeks, my toes were sure to chip.  That, of course, meant it was time for the nasty smelling nail polish remover and a fresh coat of polish to the damaged areas.  Even when gel polish hit my little beach town about 10 years ago, I assumed it was uber expensive.  Consequently, I kept doing what I’d been doing.   It wasn’t great, but it was okay. 
 
Then, late last year, my daughter gifted me with a gel pedicure.

There were a few steps more at this appointment, including a different top coat and the already-mentioned light.  But as it turns out, a gel is just $10 more than a regular pedicure. 

However, there’s one big downside to traveling the gel road: over-the-counter polish remover won’t take it off.

Instead, I’ll need to go back to the salon.  I could try the removal process at home, but that involves more steps and time than the original application, including buffing the shine off each toe; placing a cotton ball soaked in acetone on every digit, and then wrapping it all in aluminum foil.  This is pretty much what salons do anyway, but at least in the hands of professionals, I know it will be done right.

I’ll keep nail polish remover around, though.

It removes paint splatters from windows and floors, as well as eliminating tea stains from China cups.  One of the weirdest uses is this:  if you happen to see a blood-sucking leech on your skin, pour the acetone directly onto the leech, and it will soon peel off.

Here’s hoping that if I’m ever in that pickle, I’ll have the remover at hand. 

​But I’ll never need it for my toes again.  

I emptied out my office closet. 
 
And, lo and behold, there was a treasure trove of stuff that matters—stuff that I swore had been tossed out, by design or by accident, years before. 
 
I already knew where to find my labels for file folders, business envelopes and blank cards because I use all of them. But I didn’t expect to find childhood drawings more than 50 years old; love letters from years during and right after college, and my first circus contract.   
 
The drawings were in an oversized manila envelope that my mother had saved. 
 
Most of the contents went into the recycle pile, but I couldn’t resist keeping several yellowed, blue-lined sheets that show off my perfect cursive writing. 
 
And, there’s the picture above.  I was six years old when I made this, and no doubt the teacher wrote the poem on
a blackboard for everyone to copy.  But the writing is entirely mine, as are the red crayoned hearts with those
kite tail tendrils.  
 
Another large packet held love letters from three different beaus, all older than me, two of them irascible newspapermen who didn’t much like anyone.  But because they liked me, and really liked me, I couldn’t help but feel special in their arms.
 
Yet, these were also men proficient at mind games—vowing to call and then not doing so, or confirming a time to meet and then not showing.  Reading their missives, I know now that I wasn’t imagining their love.  But today, I can also see that they were incapable of making commitments, although the letters indicate otherwise. 
 
There were also notes from someone else, a boy who was sweeter, and closer to my age.
 
He was ready for the relationship I thought I wanted, and absolutely the most mature.  But I knew how to play games, too, and wounded him so deeply that I will regret the way I treated him for the rest of my life.  This remorse is still so raw that when I came upon his notes, I recycled every one of them.  Perhaps because the friendship happened around the time I attended Clown College, I found my first circus contract in the same packet. The gig paid $175 per week, and now I remember that I thought I was going to be rich.      
 
Then I found two plastic containers with lime green lids, both involving my daughter.
 
The first was from her time in Daisy, the Girl Scouts group for kindergarteners.  There was the uniform, a blue apron neatly folded and replete with eight iron-on flower petals in the center.  Snuggled beside it was a green vest with badges for marching in a parade; visiting a children’s museum, and being a responsible pet owner.  On top of it all was a certificate welcoming her to the next age level of scouting.  But we never made that tier because we moved away.     
 
This box is hers.  She can do whatever she wants with it, but I hope she’ll save the contents for the children she may have, maybe for them to play dress-up games.   
 
The other lime topped case held the happiest discovery of all.
 
There were my girl’s first stuffed animals—a pastel pink and blue plaid bear, and a yellow and red kitten, both sewn
by hand from the softest of fabrics.  Neither have buttons nor plastic, since I had been warned that babies could pick those off, put them in their tiny mouths, and choke.  A tightly tied up plastic bag was underneath, and that’s where
​the clothes were. 
 
It’s not just any outfit.
 
Here was the ensemble my daughter had on when she was first handed to me in a cramped hotel lobby in China.  Included were the tiniest of red fabric shoes with white rubber soles; crotchless yellow leggings, and two tops, one fuzzy and pink, the other a mock turtle neck with frolicking baby pandas.
 
This box belongs to my daughter, too.
 
But along with the childhood sketches, love letters and circus agreement, I’ll be keeping it. 
 

​Charles Phoenix teaches American history. 
 
But not in the usual sense.  
 
With his horn-rimmed glasses, sparkly Jell-O colored suits and Kodachrome slides, the fashion school graduate and former car salesman has created a unique brand—performance artist, humorist and documentarian.  Phoenix’s lesson plans are also purposefully narrow: he focuses on pop culture of the 1950s and ‘60s, spotlighting kitschy decorating, dining and entertainment.  Phoenix makes these “lectures” accessible on all of the usual social media platforms, where he’s also known as The Ambassador of Americana. 
 
Phoenix’s curriculum also gently lampoons the odd food of those decades, when veggie gelatin molds and potato-chip casseroles ruled the day.    
 
To this end, he creates bizarre-but-tasty-dishes.
 
I’ve made the fried cereal mix (there’s an entire stick of butter), and thought of trying the Frosty the Cheeseball Man dip (using Velveeta and cream cheese, it’s shaped like a snowman).  But Phoenix is perhaps best known for the Cherpumpel—an eye-popping three-layer cake with a different pie (cherry, pumpkin and apple) stuck between each layer.  He has penned eight coffee table books as well, with titles including Addicted to Americana, Fabulous Las Vegas in the ‘50s and God Bless Americana.    
 
However, Phoenix’s fans like him best in person.  
 
I was lucky enough to be given a ticket to one of Phoenix’s shows earlier this month.  So, alongside hundreds of other devotees (many wrapped in blinking Christmas lights), I arrived at the perfect venue, a vintage art deco movie theatre that opened in 1942. 
 
Here, I saw what Phoenix calls “the bread and butter” of his career—a two-hour, Kodachrome slide show, this one titled Retro Holiday Jubilee.  (Other shows, all with slides in the starring role, have included mid-century homages to Hawaii, Route 66 and Disneyland.)
 
Projecting hundreds of bright images on a huge screen, all snapped from a time when millions of Americans had big cameras and carousel slide projectors, Phoenix riffed about each slide with humor and joy.  The audience saw siblings lined up in homemade Halloween costumes; living rooms adorned with cabbage wallpaper and aluminum Christmas trees, and long-gone roadside amusement parks.   
 
Originally, Phoenix intended that the slides—his collection now numbers in the thousands and comes from every state—be presented in a straightforward and serious way.  But the pictures’ inherent kitsch caused so much laughter from early audiences that he restructured the show to make it comedic, often using the catch phrase “I know!”  
 
Phoenix never imagined that he’d make a living out of his obsession for Americana, which started when he was a teenager buying vintage clothes in the Los Angeles suburb of Ontario.  
 
But in 1992, when Phoenix was 30 years old and selling classic cars, he walked into a Pasadena thrift store. 
 
There, he came across a blue shoebox labeled “Trip Across the United States, 1957.”  Packed with Kodachrome slides of an unidentified family’s vacation photos, Phoenix remembers opening the container, putting the first slide up to the light, and seeing what appeared to be a halo. 
 
“I just knew, right away, that this was a whole new world for me to discover,” says Phoenix.  “I put the slide back in the box, went to the cash register, and haven’t looked back since.”   Soon after, he began scouring other thrift stores, flea markets and estate sales to find more of the same.  “They’re everywhere,” he says. “People couldn’t delete photos back then.” 
 
Phoenix is 55 years old now, but isn’t slowing down. 
 
He no longer has to buy slides; he finds boxes of them at his door.  Phoenix’s new book Holiday Jubilee is set for release next year, and he’s on tour through at least January.  So far, the shows are only in California, but a couple of years ago, Phoenix performed in the United Kingdom and New York City.  
 
One show I’d like to see is next month: it’s called Long Beachland, and will feature slides of Long Beach, the city where I grew up, and a stone’s throw from Ontario.  
 
Because the event (in Long Beach, of course) will be at a smaller location than the movie house I went to, there’s an added plus:  Phoenix will serve one of his signature cakes.  It might be the candy cane swirl with Tiffany blue frosting; then again, it could be his whipped cream Christmas volcano cake, or even the famous Cherpumpel. 
 
Charles Phoenix and wild homemade cake, together. 
 
What a terrific way to start the New Year. 
 
Who are your favorite onstage performers?   

As the days grow shorter and the nights colder, I'm reminded of what makes me happy, no matter what the season.     
 
Here are three of my favorites right now.

 * Whenever I’m feeling cynical, I head for The New York Times Vows column. 
 
While reporting weddings has been around since the paper’s original issue, in 1851, the publication took a radical turn
in the early 1990s. 
 
That’s when traditional wedding stories—those select few that only profiled couples from blue blood lineage and
old world money—were substituted with very different copy.
 
In its place, the column shifted to weddings about firefighters, office workers, teachers and even a homeless couple. When same sex marriage became legal, the Times also became the first major newspaper in the country to publish notices of gay marriage. 
 
But no matter who’s featured, the emphasis is on the back story.  So besides ceremony details, Vows reports on how
a couple met; their courtship, and the predictable stumbling blocks before reaching the altar.  
 
One of my favorites is the story of Colleen Ryan and David Cleary.  Unaware that they had worked in the same building for five years, and against the laws of probability, the two kept seeing each other for months on buses, in restaurants and in bagel shops.  Finally, suddenly alone in an elevator, they introduced themselves.  I also adored reading about Maureen Sherry and Steven Klinsky, who met one rainy night when Klinsky looked out of the window of a Manhattan cab and ordered the driver to stop after seeing Sherry walking down the sidewalk in tears.  And then there’s 98-year-old Gertrude Mokotoff and 94-year-old Alvin Mann, who met at the gym.
 
Love is love, and Vows keeps my faith in its magic.
 
www.nytimes.com/column/vows
​

 * When I start to think that people don't read books anymore, I remember the Little Free Library movement.
 
It began quietly, a little more than a decade ago, in Wisconsin. 
 
That’s when Todd Bol built a model of a red one-room schoolhouse with a white roof and bell tower, filled it with books and put it on a post in his front yard. A bit larger than a birdhouse, Bol came up with the idea as a tribute to his mother, a schoolteacher who loved to read.  Bol’s neighbors and friends quickly embraced the idea, so he made several more and gave them all away. 
 
It wasn’t very long after that friend Rick Brooks began talking to Bol about ways to expand the idea.
 
Brooks pointed out the positive impact of community gift-sharing networks, especially focusing on the free “take a book, leave a book” collections available at so many coffee houses.  As their conversations continued, Bol and Brooks kept creating and giving away Little Library houses, engraving each with official charter numbers; small grants and informal partnerships helped keep up with the demand.  
 
Then, in 2011, the Little Free Library attracted national media attention.  The growth was astonishing after that: one year later, there were 4,000 Little Free Libraries in neighborhoods across the country.  In 2015, The Little Free Library Book, with chapters detailing the non-profit’s mission, history and instructions for establishing one’s own Little Free Library, was published by Coffee House Press.     
 
Here in my little beach town, there are five Little Free Libraries within a mile of each other; I’m sure there are many more I haven’t found. 
 
Some are simple wooden boxes; others are splashed with rainbows and decorative writing.  Some have mostly children’s books; others are stuffed with adult novels. I’ve borrowed a book or two, especially liking the fact that I can keep one as long as I want (even forever, but I hope no one does).  I’ve also contributed paperbacks that I no longer need; I like the idea of someone in my community having the chance to enjoy them.  
 
Todd Bol passed away last month. 
 
But in his final days, Bol remained dedicated to the mission of the Little Free Library.  
 
“I really believe in a Little Free Library on every block and a book in every hand,” he said.  “I believe people can
fix their neighborhoods, fix their communities, develop a system of sharing, learn from each other, and see that
they have a better place on this planet to live.”
 
https://littlefreelibrary.org/


​* If you were around in the 1970s and loved great television comedy, you stayed home every Saturday night. You had to—because that’s when The Mary Tyler Moore Show came on. 
 
Moore—only a few years from playing Dick Van Dyke’s stay-at-home wife Laura Petrie—starred as Mary Richards,
a 30something, independent woman who moved to Minneapolis and found work as a news producer at fictional WJM-TV.  A central female character who wasn’t married; dependent on a man, and not a virgin was a rarity then, and viewers lapped it up. 
 
But the other characters, realistic and complex as well, made the show shine, too.   
 
For those actors who played them, the roles meant instant fame and for many, their first steady paychecks. 
Edward Asner was Richards’ boss Lou Grant; Valerie Harper played neighbor Rhoda Morgenstern, and Ted Knight
was dim bulb news anchor Ted Baxter. Stars of the future, including Henry Winkler, Bruce Boxleitner and
Peter Strauss, showed up in small, one-time only parts.  And while the show was a comedy, topics included
infertility, divorce and addiction. 
 
I was a sophomore in high school when The Mary Tyler Moore Show premiered, and I never missed an episode. 
Mary Richards’ life, one of dinner parties, interesting men and a satisfying job, was something I wanted to have, too.  But I also loved Richards’ vulnerability—best seen in my favorite episode, Put on A Happy Face, where everything that can go wrong does go wrong in the course of one week.  
 
Watching today, there’s also a certain quaintness about the show.  Richards used a manual typewriter, and the newsroom’s archives are all stored, in alphabetical order, in cream colored file folders.  Of course, there was no Internet, microwaves or voice mail.  Nonetheless, the show still resonates, and more often than not, has me laughing
out loud. 
 
All of the seasons are available on Hulu, but most of the episodes can also be viewed free on YouTube.    
 
www.hulu.com/series/the-mary-tyler-moore-show-00122c74-2b9f-451c-8cfd-8d130fcb10d6
 
 
What makes you happy these days?   

​

I took a fall.    
 
As the photo above shows, it was a gnarly plunge. 
 
Covered by the impressive bandage on my forehead are six stitches, sewn with thread that’s royal blue. The black eyes match nicely, and are hematomas, a collection of blood that pools outside broken blood vessels, and which often appear after this kind of injury.  
 
I’d like to say the accident happened while diving off the spectacular cliffs of Acapulco.  Or, I’d like to say it
took place while perfecting my curtsy for an upcoming visit with Queen Elizabeth II.  I’d be happy to recite either
of these scenarios.
 
But the fact is, where and how the fall happened was ho-hum.
 
I was walking on an uneven, black gravel road near the house where my daughter lives.  Then I lost my balance. 
That’s all. 
 
But like every accident I’ve had, time slowed down during the descent. 
 
My right foot caught first.  Unable to catch myself, the other foot followed.  Next my knees buckled, and finally, my forehead hit the ground with a loud thwack, taking the brunt of the fall.  Thanks to that impact, I started to bleed, a lot.  (Since there are a number of superficial blood vessels on our heads, even a minor cut can bleed profusely here.)  
 
The wind was knocked out of me.  But after a few minutes, or maybe more, I stood up and ever so slowly, returned to the house where I’d started the walk.  
 
Then I looked into a mirror, which was a mistake.  
 
This is because I saw that a chunk of my forehead had literally detached from my face.  Thankfully, a washcloth placed over the mess calmed me down a bit because then I didn’t have to look at it.
 
Luckily, my daughter was less than five minutes away, and talking incessantly, she drove over and rushed me to the nearest urgent care clinic.  On the way there, I called the Hubster and told him where to meet us.
 
As soon as the front office receptionist saw me, she immediately ushered us into an examination room. 
 
Here, I was told I was going to need stitches.  This did not sit well, because all I could picture was what I had seen in old movies: screaming children being held down by their parents while scowling doctors sewed them up.  But I didn’t tell anyone because I was trying to hold it together for my child’s sake (and my own).  
 
Forty-five minutes later, the physician came in. The Hubster had arrived by then, too, and held my hand while the doctor did what needed to be done.
 
This man was funny and kind, a retired surgical oncologist who was 73 years old and had spent most of his career putting soldiers back together at VA hospitals around the country.  But, he said, he liked to stay in practice, so he drove about five hours a couple of times a week from his home in Northern California to work at this clinic. 
 
What I appreciated most of all from him is that after I asked, he told me exactly what he was doing, step by step, no matter how mundane.   
 
So, I remained quiet while he explained how he was cleaning the wound, and what was in the cluster of numbing shots he was administering below my scalp line.  When the time came, the act of stitching me up felt only like prongs from a tiny fork, barely touching my head.  
 
After a tetanus shot and some basic instructions—change the band aid at least once a day; use Neosporin, and keep the wound clean—I got home.  I was also more than a little shook up when I realized how an ordinary walk could instantly become something way scarier.   
 
And yet, I’m blessed.
 
I didn’t black out.  I didn’t have a concussion.  I didn’t break any bones.  (After the accident, a friend told me about a friend of hers, who broke an arm and hand in 43 places after he fell.) 
 
Also, we knew that we’d need to pay whatever the cost was. 
 
But when the doctor saw I had no health insurance, he charged me the lowest tier the clinic offered—an
astounding $149. 
 
Then, upon hearing that the Hubster had once had to give his oldest daughter emergency stitches, this man gifted my spouse with a little kit—complete with metal clamp and scissors—to remove the stitches.  (“If you put them in, you can take them out,” he said cheerily.  Eight days later, while I sat perfectly still on a tall stool in our green and white kitchen, my husband did so.) 
 
I also decided that I wasn’t going to let a jumbo bandage and black eyes stop me from going on a vacation that had been in the works for months. 
​
So three days later, I hoped two planes to Chicago to meet a colleague.  We had a great time—even though I got more than a few stares.    
 
Since then, I’ve been applying Emu oil on my forehead to lessen the scarring.  It looks pretty good.  Arnica took care of the black eyes; those bruises are now nearly gone.   
 
As John Lennon once said, “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.”  
 
In this case, I accidentally took a small detour.   

I don’t wear jeans anymore.    
 
This realization hit the other day while sorting laundry.    
 
There were sweatshirts and tees that I wear for tops, as well as half a dozen pairs of solid color leggings.  Plus, there was a pile of my new favorite pants—patterned drawstring pajamas just right for yoga. Khakis, one black and the other olive green, already hung in the closet.    
 
But there wasn’t any denim. 
 
Those who didn’t come of age in the 1960s probably can’t know how odd it is to not own a single pair of jeans.
 
I was a teenager in the middle and latter part of that decade, and almost until its end, girls could wear only dresses and skirts at school.  But in ninth grade, the dress code loosened: we were allowed pants on Fridays.  Still, jeans weren’t in the mix—they were considered low brow and not appropriate student apparel.     
 
That changed in just a couple of years.
 
A photo in my high school yearbook for my junior year has a class president striding toward the camera in bell bottom jeans and a denim work shirt.  I got my first grown-up jeans around the same time, basic Levi's that were the darkest of indigo, retrieved from a neat stack at a discount department store.  Wearing them in class, they made me seem way cooler than I was, and somehow, officially part of a new generation determined to bend tradition.     
 
I’m sure I had more than a few pairs of jeans while clowning on the road and in college, first at UCLA and then San Jose State, but mostly I remember the long jeans skirt bought at a flea market in Alameda, across the bay from San Francisco.  It boasted a triangle cutaway in front with a Technicolor cartoon drawing of Dopey, one of the seven dwarfs from the classic Disney movie.  I loved that skirt.       
 
My other friends mostly wore plain jeans; they were cheap and lasted for years.  I’m sure that none of us knew this college uniform was invented neither for fashion nor protest.  Instead, jeans were designed for purely utilitarian purposes:  California gold rush miners in 1850 needed the sturdiest of pants that could withstand hard work, ground-in dirt and very little chance of tearing.  Thus, denim trousers were born.      
 
But by the time I graduated from college, in 1979, jeans were high fashion.   
 
I’d moved to New York City that year to be a magazine writer, and women there wore the wildly popular Jordache brand, made of thinner fabric than my first jeans, and costing an outrageous $50 per pair. 
 
Started by the four Naccache brothers in Manhattan a year earlier, these siblings had taken notice of the European denim market, where jeans were worn not for work, but for fashion. The brothers’ timing was on target: at the height of Jordache’s success, during the 1980s, the company was raking in an annual $300 million in wholesale income.    
 
But what I recall most about my jeans then was the absolute necessity of having perfect straight creases down the middle—two in front and two in back. 
 
My best friend Jeanette taught me how, using large sheets of damp newspaper and a hot iron.  I did this so often that my ironing board was on permanent display in my Brooklyn apartment.
 
The decades passed, which included returning to California and finding a career in Hollywood—writer for a public relations outfit whose biggest client was the Cannes Film Festival; reporting for the West Coast bureau of a British movie trade publication, and becoming a producer for a variety of reality television shows about ghosts, unsolved murders and UFOs.  I worked long hours at all of these jobs, and found myself wearing jeans less and less.
 
Perhaps this was because I was growing more contented in my skin, and to that end, found that comfort was now the main dictate for my clothing choices.  I was especially weary of those jeans that saw me sucking in my stomach and holding my breath to get them on.  Wearing airy drawstring pants and loose skirts was just easier. 
 
Last year, the end finally arrived.
 
I donated the one pair of jeans in my closet—which I hadn’t put on in more than five years—to a thrift store. 
 
These days, the closest I come to wearing denim are jeggings, which hug my body in all the right places, but are also comfy and stretchy.    
 
One should never say never.  But I’m happy to report that the denim train has departed from this Girl Clown station—and most likely, isn’t going to return.   
 
Do you remember your first pair of jeans?  

The secret to living longer is something I’ve done my whole life.

Friends already know that it can’t be a regular exercise routine.  The key also has little to do with refraining from smoking or drinking (although I’ve never done the former and rarely do the latter). It’s also not about eating more vegetables; staying out of debt, or finding a dream job.
 
It’s much simpler.
 
The answer is having a social life. 
 
This road to super longevity was summarized last year in a TED talk by Canadian psychologist Susan Pinker, a lecture that currently boasts more than two million hits. 
 
In her speech, Pinker describes the tiny Italian island of Sardinia.  Here, in a mountainous region that researchers have dubbed “the blue zone,” Pinker learned there are 10 times as many centenarians as those in North America.  It’s also the only place scientists know about where men live as long as women.
 
Why is this? 
 
Her curiosity piqued, Pinker and her daughter traveled to Sardinia for answers. 
 
They spent a lot of time interviewing families in cozy kitchens in Villagrande, a city in the middle of the zone. Dotted with multi-storied apartments built nearly on top of one another, the town’s hilly living quarters are also interconnected by narrow roads and alleyways.  It’s definitely a crowded layout, but because of that blueprint, everyone here knows everyone else.  
 
Pinker also observed that none of elderly residents followed a low fat diet (one centenarian prepared dozens of pasta packets, plump with rich cheese and mint, every weekend).  She also found that a happy-go-lucky personality wasn’t necessary for an extended life either (the grumpiest man in Villagrande was 101 years old). 
 
But what Pinker came away with was this: no one in Villagrande was left to lead a solitary life.
 
That lone fact, she concluded, was the strongest indicator for super longevity.    
 
Pinker goes on to say that one doesn’t have to relocate to Sardinia to get the same result.  Other studies, she adds, show that humans need only two close relationships to thrive.  These are the folks who will loan you money in a pinch; sit with you when you’re in the middle of a crisis, and bring you food when you’re sick. 
 
But there’s another predicator—more significant and perhaps more surprising—than having a few close chums.
 
And that’s daily, face-to-face contact with people who aren’t friends. 
 
This might mean handing letters to your mailman; thanking the teenager who’s bagging groceries, or waving to the woman with the beautiful garden down the street.  Talking is great, but eye contact is good, too. 
 
The reason these casual interactions is so important is this: they release all kinds of terrific brain chemicals which encourage longevity. On this list is oxytocin, the naturally produced morphine known to decrease stress levels, and dopamine, which gives off a buzz of happiness.  (Also, this can only happen when contact is in person, and never online.)     
Since I’m an inquisitive extrovert, connecting on this level is easy.   
 
But I also know that this way of navigating the world can be extraordinarily difficult for those who suffer from paralyzing shyness, or others burned one too many times by folks they thought were friends.  Being female is also a plus, since women tend to communicate with each other more, and also reach out for emotional support more than men do.  (Pinker thinks this is also the primary reason females live six to eight years longer than males.)
 
As for me, I’m happy to learn that just being who I am may help me live longer. 
 
It’s also gratifying to know this: every connection, no matter how small, counts. 

​I had a conversation with a stranger the other day, and I’m glad I did.
 
Doing so was safe.  It was a sunny afternoon and I was pumping gas into my compact silver SUV.  A vehicle pulled up behind mine, and the driver got out of his car to fill up, too. 
 
He was wearing camouflage green Army fatigues.  I waited until I caught his eye.  “Thank you for your service,” I said.
 
There was a beat.  “Oh,” he replied.  “Thank you.  I really appreciate you saying that.”
 
As I drove away, I wondered how often soldiers are approached by unknown civilians like me, saying those five words.  I hope it’s a lot—especially when I also recalled how rare it was for Vietnam vets to hear this greeting.  Instead, many came home to angry protestors spitting on them and calling them baby killers. 
 
I hope we never again engage in a war so divisive and unpopular.   Although I’m not a fan of armed conflict (I like the bumper sticker that reads I’m Already Against the Next War), our soldiers deserve to hear that we support them. 
 
That’s because while I may not agree with the cause, these fearless folks are still serving our country in situations that, at best, are intensely boring and monotonous.  At worst, they’re stationed in the sketchiest parts of the world, where they could be killed in an instant.      
 
But mostly, soldiers deserve my respect because they’re brave in other ways that most of us never have to be. 
 
Perhaps, early on, they saw no viable future in the hardscrabble communities—places including the South Side of Chicago; Native American reservations in the Dakotas, and hollers in West Virginia—where they were born and raised. The military offers these populations a way to get out.    
 
And there are other reasons, probably more common than we think.  
 
Rob Scheer is the founder of Comfort Cases, a Maryland-based non-profit that gifts new backpacks, blankets and books to foster kids.  But when he was 18 years old, a high school senior and newly kicked out of the foster system himself, Scheer found himself homeless.
 
He signed up for the Navy.  “I didn’t join the military because I loved my country,” he says.  “I was going in it because I was hungry, I was cold, I was scared, and I had nowhere to go.” 
 
Women might have other motives. 
 
Maybe they’re escaping an abusive boyfriend, father or husband.  Or perhaps not college bound, they see dead end futures as fast food workers and receptionists.  In fact, a 2017 Pew Research Center report states that 15 percent of our active personnel are women, up four points from 1990.   
 
Then, there’s this.
 
Years before same sex marriage was legal, I knew two Air Force veterans, both lesbians (although not a couple).  By the time I’d had met them, they’d already figured out that being supported by a man wasn’t ever going to be in their picture.  So they joined the service and were taught skills that turned into well-paying jobs after leaving the military.  
 
Another demographic, and it’s a growing one, is middle class young men and women who want to attend a university, but don’t want crippling student loan debt. 
 
That’s where the GI Bill comes in: created in 1944, it provides up to three years of education while a soldier is on active duty.  Veterans can also take advantage of the bill, because funding is good for 15 years following military release.  This means that with careful planning, a serviceman can obtain an undergraduate degree with zero debt.  Those who take advantage of the program are obligated to serve for four years in exchange for tuition, but it’s still a good deal. 
 
The back stories of how and why our military personnel came to wear their uniforms are as unique as each soldier. 
 
None of us can ever know every story.   As for me, I’ll just thank a soldier whenever I can. 
 
It’s the least I can do.