Fighting Burmese Tigers

After an unannounced absence, I’m back from world travels

You met my father in the column about bedtime stories—the gentleman with the absurd sense of humor who recited the witches of Shakespeare and vampire lore to me as a goodnight story. A lot of that rubbed off on me, though not with the same timing and expert voice acting.

Have I been fighting actual Burmese tigers? Perhaps I have! He suggested this be my answer if anyone commented on the large noticeable scars on my right knee. I had the surgery when I was 13. Mini-skirts were “in” and I fretted.

“Oh, just tell them about the Burmese tiger you fought during the expedition! Hell of a fight, and you saved a dozen of your men in the process.” He twinkled and I was utterly charmed.

I never used the excuse, and arthroscopic surgery became more common after that. It became easy to just say “knee surgery” and people would leave it alone.

But I felt the love from a father trying to deal with my sensitive teenage soul.

Another time in a grocery store, when I was 11, the checker quite rudely demanded to know what “that thing” on my neck was. I wore a Milwaukee brace for three years to correct scolosis, and that experience often necessitated snappy comebacks. People can just be so rude. If it’s not the thoughtless comments, it’s the wordless staring.

I responded with a quip that had been suggested by my father: “I didn’t eat my greens. I’m being punished.” Imagine an average blonde-haired, blue-eyed leggy fifth grader—dressed probably in the boy clothes I preferred because I played outside a lot—tossing out zingers like that.

The checker’s mouth fell open, then shut, and he completed the order. My mother and brother were hiding their laughter, to spare the checker further humiliation, or maybe they didn’t want to egg me on.

That story was repeated to my dad when he got home, and it became one for the family storybook. And the phrase “eat your greens” still brings a smile to my brother’s face.

Back to tigers.

I haven’t exactly been fighting them, but I have been wrangling mental tigers since mid-March. I’m slowly crafting a website and blog, working through an online course on public speaking, and drafting the book that I currently call “The Last Bookstore Book.” So named because the Muse found me at Los Angeles’ Last Bookstore in October. I sat on the comfy leather sofa for almost two hours, writing on my phone (or a notebook? I honestly can’t remember. It’s all writing.).

That book is a far cry from the fiction I had been drafting. It will be a writing guide of sorts, filled with stories (naturally), exercises, prompts, research and an extended metaphor along the lines of the Hero’s Journey. Ask me later why it will be different than what’s already out there by the truckload. I will definitely be sharing bits here on Substack.

The public speaking course has been the thing that opened up my eyes to writing a book. It’s called Mic Drop Workshop, and it’s specifically for women to learn and enter the field. There’s a strong demand for women speakers, but not enough who are qualified or eager to get up in front of a crowd. As I contemplated taking the course, I realized that I’m an oddball (stop laughing). I don’t really have a fear of public speaking as many do. And based on my 23 years of teaching college writers, I found that I have a lot to talk about. And of course, plenty of stories to tell.

So yep, I’ve been wrestling tigers and eating my greens.

I’ll leave you with actual tiger content: Visiting the Dallas Zoo one day during the week when it wasn’t crowded, I stood for a long while at the glass window to the tiger enclosure. It’s a lush and large habitat, and the gigantic orange and black striped housecat was lazing in a sunny patch, flipping the tip of his tail. It was all very peaceful, and I was thinking all sorts of marvelous things about this regal apex predator.

As if on cue, the tiger gets up and swaggers over to a tree in full view of the glass. He reaches the trunk, and then turns 90 degrees and walks about six feet away. That’s when he stops and squats slightly, aiming an impressive stream of urine to hit the tree with great accuracy and prolonged duration, I might add.

Ah yes, such magnificent creatures they are!