Don't Panic

My favorite motto

Go ahead.  Ask me about my origins.  Ask me why I'm a certain way, and wait for a deep, psychoanalytical answer.  Or talk to hubby, my personal biographer, who knows all the dirt. The other night, I was reading an intense scene in Caroline Leavitt's wonderful new book, "Pictures of Me." (Read it.) There was rain and lightening and asthma going on, and I was so into it, so on the edge of my tush, that when hubby came through the bedroom door, I actually screamed.  Hubby didn't even flinch.  He's used to this behavior.  He walks into a room too quietly.  I don't hear him.  I startle easily.  I scream.  But it's not my fault.  For a full explanation of why the SJG is so freakin' jumpy, so prone to panic, hubby will hand you a copy of my (as yet) unpublished masterpiece, "I Felt Good About My Butt Back Then."  Basically, it starts with how the SJG entered the galaxy. Way back in the sweet, innocent late '50s, when Mom was in her last trimester with baby me, she got chicken pox, courtesy of Bro' 1 and Bro' 2. Complications ensued.  She became so sick with double pneumonia, that her gynecologist – “that man who almost killed me three times,” as she decribed him – kept her out of the hospital so she shouldn't spread germs.

Drama queen from the git-go, I hand-picked the middle of the night for my Hollywood debut.  Dad loaded Mom into the Oldsmobile and took off down Sunset Boulevard for County General, the only hospital that would admit a pregnant gal with an infectious disease.  He had never been to County General and had only a vague idea that it was somewhere downtown.  (This was before GPS, people.  Try to keep up.)  He deliberately ran every red light on Sunset to try to get arrested.  But there’s never a cop around when you need one.  So he stopped another car, asked for directions, and the driver said, right out a B movie, “Follow me!”

By the time Dad pulled into the parking lot, the SJG, a touch claustrophobic, wanted out.  As in, right now!  Handsome doctors ran out and delivered me in the back seat of the car.  My mom and I were immediately separated, which no doubt made me very, very nervous out the gate.  "Where's the nice lady?" I asked.  "Where'd she go?  Are you bringing her back?"  They put her in quarantine and saved her life with a new medicine called Cortisone. 

Meanwhile, I handed over a list of demands and got upgraded to Cedars Sinai, the ritzy hospital where famous people go to die.  Within a day, I had chicken pox too. They booted my baby butt out of there, and I went home, feeling like a displaced citizen.  Naturally, I took the whole thing personally, as I tend to do. (Talk to my sons.)  My new mommy had to slum it over at County General for two weeks before they let her come home to meet the miracle that is the SJG. And that, my friends, is a window into why I'm so freakin' jumpy, so prone to panic.