Mishmash of Me: A Writing Collection

By Jeanne Lee

From working in a toothbrush factory and learning to always sterilize your brush to being a "stand-in" for Ms. Lara Flynn Boyle of Men in Black fame and figuring out very quickly that sitting around for 16 hours is way too boring even with craft services and a few famous people, the lessons we learn in life are somewhat universal. This mishmash collection of writing includes memoir-style stories, poems, songs and short scenes and plays. Jeanne’s first book, “Tell Our Story, I Will” chronicled she and her son’s challenges and triumphs navigating his diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome/high-functioning autism (available on Amazon) while this collection is a hodge-podge of her everyday life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: May 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9781642375428

Jeanne Lee

My sister JF Ridgley and I write as the same person because I never had the chance to. I went to heaven before she was born. So now we get to do something together. With her help, I get to travel, have fun, play with her and the characters who life in today's world. Yep, Jeanne and I enjoy this chance to bond in this world of writing. She loves contemporary romance and I love the ancient world of romance. We are having fun doing this. I hope you enjoy it.

Book preview

Dealio?

Mind the Sneeze-Guard

Well, who doesn’t like a buffet? I suppose picky foodies or anorexic supermodels, but buffets are mostly enjoyed by the majority of the populace. Where else can you have, well, anything? Various pastas, mystery slabs of meat, lovely salad fixings and that weird vat of chocolate pudding—all are available. Delicious chaos.

I feel like that’s how I write, a little all-over-the-place. Occasionally, I have a purposeful writing-for-pay gig, but often I just write. Sometimes I’m lonely and a poem comes out about my deep affection for the man-in-the-moon or I’m angsting about aging and food and a short play pours out bemoaning my love of pizza and my horror of skin tags. Or once, my youngest son wondered about my early life (I don’t know very much about you, Mom) and so, I start writing down some short stories. These are my ruminations (to this point) in the style of a Las Vegas buffet. Mind the sneeze-guard, don’t touch the warming trays and no licking the frozen yogurt machine with the teeny-tiny cones—those are my favorite.

When I was fifteen, I got my first job at a Baskin-Robbins in Aurora, Illinois. Twenty-one flavors and most of them were inedible. The big one in 1978 for the kiddos was BUBBLEGUM ice cream. All the wee ones wanted it, but it was cotton candy pink and tasted weird and it had gum in it. Let’s get real; all those kids just swallowed the gum. I bet potty time was not too fun—with a deposit alarmingly tinged the color of a day old pink carnation boutonniere from the Spring Fling dance.

My boss was quite a character. He was a rather large man, shaped like the letter O, with dark, greasy hair and what can only be described as a tiny Hitler moustache. I was told by a fellow worker never to steal any ice cream because that skeevy dude sits in the parking lot in his car with binoculars to try to catch you in the act. I guess he had some free time. I was a very typical teenager in that it didn’t take much to embarrass me. His favorite thing, in a store full of customers, was to jump up and down from foot to foot doing a demented ice cream dance, if you will, while singing at the top of his lungs, HOO-HOO, HEE-HEE, MY NAME IS JEANNE LEE! My hand would slowly creep to my plastic nametag to cover it as I rolled my eyes and tried to help the next customer.

I hated him as only a teenager could. I tried desperately to enjoy my time at this cold fortress. I truly loved the older patrons, couples usually, who would get all dressed up in special dresses and faded plaid blazers to come and get their pralines and cream on a sugar cone. Old Eagle Eyes would be watching. Don’t give those sweet human beings any more of a scoop than the prescribed tiny amount that we had to practice giving. Yes, we practiced with a scale to make sure that our scoops were uniform and SMALL.

When I turned sixteen, I graduated to Harner’s Bakery as a waitress. Harner’s was a small restaurant and bakery about 10 blocks from my house. Midwestern-ville. I worked there for a few years and even some summers through college. The bakery part of the deal was interesting. People really loved their treats, but after a while, I never wanted to eat a donut, ever, ever, Halleluiah, Amen. This bakery had huge, commercial vats of frosting and it was somebody’s job each morning (me) to scrape the mosquitos and bugs off the top layer that had landed on it overnight, meeting their maker in a sugary graveyard. Ummm, can’t we put some plastic over these at night? I queried. No response.

The whole Harner family worked there, the mom, the dad, two sons and a daughter. Mr. Harner would sit in front of a cake stand that turned around and around as he decorated. He was magic with his tools and tubes and metal instruments, like he was a doctor in surgery, Clamp, uh, I mean flower maker … and instead of serving up stitches and a clean bill of health, he served up frosting loveliness and pre-diabetic comas.

I would often open the restaurant at 5:30 am to a line of older gentlemen. They would sit at my counter, drink coffee and ask me the same question, every day for years. How are you doing, Jeanne? My proper response had to be, Ohhh, pretty good! to which one of them would titter, We know you’re pretty, but are you good? Hardee-har-har. (They were kind of sweet in a grandpa, non-perv-y way.) I never drink coffee, but to this day, I find the smell of percolating brews comforting.

I loved collecting my tips in a big, white Styrofoam cup and walking home, full of hope. I would lay out all my coins and dollars (mostly coins) and roll them up and dream. There was one older couple who I waited on during my time there, my regulars. They were in their eighties and they never left a tip. Well, they never left a monetary tip. They did leave me a Jesus loves you printed message each time and I didn’t care one bit. I figured they didn’t have much money and that was fine. They were my little couple. One day I watched as they slowly went out to their car—which was a brand-new silver Cadillac. Huh. Hey, wait a second! They weren’t broke; they were just super cheap. Son of an apple fritter.

Well, at least Jesus loves me.

I do consider myself a Midwestern gal; I was born in New York, spent a few years in Queens as a baby and as a preschooler in Long-GUY-land, a few unfortunate years in Pennsylvania (in a very, very tiny town that my mother dubbed, Evil Mayberry), and the rest of my formative years in Aurora, Illinois. (Wayne’s World was supposedly set in Aurora, Illinois, but that would be the only thing remotely cool about it.)

While we certainly weren’t poor (both of my parents worked full time), in general clipping coupons, watching for sales, and counting our pennies was the name of the game. I joke that my mother taught me from an early age about the holy trinity of shopping, Marshall’s, Ross, and T.J. Maxx. Amen. Many nights were spent roaming the neighborhoods playing Ghost in the Graveyard and catching lightning bugs. Oh, we also had the bullies down the street who terrorized my brother mercilessly, and one boy a few blocks over who held up a gas station, shot someone, and went to jail. So, while it wasn’t a Norman Rockwell painting, it still plays well in my brain.

We lived on Palace Street in a white, two-story house with an unfinished basement and a scary attic. The attic was scary because the door to it was in my bedroom, in my closet. Before I went to bed, I would check that door to make sure it was locked (with a creepy skeleton key), and if it wasn’t, I would freak out