You have been thinking about jelly beans since Easter Sunday. You retrace your childhood steps downstairs to find a chocolate bunny sitting upright in a sea of cellophane grass. You admire the marshmallow peeps, aware that many jelly beans are hiding beneath the glossy, green, waves. It never crosses your mind what those colorful pellets might represent.

Finally, you give in. You pull into the drug store parking lot and score a bag of half-priced jelly beans. And now you are feeling sick on your way to pick up a pizza, a special treat for a difficult week. You try not to heap stress on top of your general unease. You turn on the radio, searching for the perfect song. Stay between the lines. You are probably just thirsty. Sugar does that.

You do not know why you like Longmire so much. Soap operas are not your style. You think of what Bob told you about his grandparents, about how their soap operas took priority over their grandkids, and how you used to think they were using TV to escape reality.

The show is set in a fictional county in Wyoming. Walt Longmire, the local Sherriff, is nothing to write home about. The plot elements are predictable and full of holes. There is always a body, multiple suspects, a splash of sexual tension, a measure of distrust, somebody spends time in the jail cell that sits in the middle of the sheriff’s office, and someone always ends up confessing everything to Walt.

No one warned you that Walt, Vic, Ruby, Ferg, Branch, Cady, Henry Standing Bear, Matthias, Travis, and even Jacob Nighthorse, grow on you. No matter how bad the dialogue, or how deep the plot holes, you want to know what the characters will do next. You had no idea it would be so addictive, as irresistible as the sugar in those jelly beans.

You realize that you are using the show as mental floss. Washing away the cares of the day by immersing yourself in a story that does not even faintly resemble your own reality. It would be counter-productive if you were able to place yourself in their shoes. The more improbable, the better. You are self-medicating with sugar and TV.

Finally, you make it home with the pizza. Bob has pulled down the movie screen and hooked the laptop to the projector. Your heart has calmed down. “What will it be tonight?” Bob asks as you carry your plates to the living room. “Oh, I don’t know. A bear mauling? Maybe a drug overdose? Arrows?” You cannot wait to find out.

It took us half the day to get there. We waited in line for the ferry, trying to ignore the malodorous canine carcass a few feet from our Trooper. The Belize River was high that day, making the process of getting our vehicle aboard the barge even more challenging than usual. When it was our turn, we drove across the partially submerged ramp to the deck. The distributor got wet and we had to push the wagon into its place in line. Panting, we settled in to watch the driver hand-crank the ferry up the cable that stretched across the turbulent water.

Our friends in Banana Bank had invited us to watch Super Bowl 32 and stay the night. We hadn’t listened to a radio or seen a TV since moving to Belize 8 months before, and we were looking forward to a taste of the 20th century.

It was a good game, lots of back and forth, and our team, the Denver Broncos, won. The ads were ingeniously witty as per usual, and the snacks gloriously indulgent. We had brought a big pan of Bob’s famous teriyaki chicken wings. I drank too many beers.

Our hosts were a good ten years older than me and Bob. I don’t know how the conversation got started, but at one point, they snorted and remarked that, after fifty, things don’t work like they used to. Of course we laughed, and shook our heads in appreciation of this sage comment, thinking to ourselves that it wouldn’t happen to us, that our plumbing would never go awry, and none of the things one associates with bad plumbing would ever happen to us.

And yet, here we are, in the same post-fifty boat, sitting on the other side of the river with bad plumbing.

Super Bowl 52 airs this Sunday and we’ve been invited to a party. We’re bringing a big pan of teriyaki tofu and plan on watching the game with a group of people who are mostly younger than us. This is my opportunity to snort and make snide comments about the ravages of time, saying, “You don’t know the half of it,” and “You’ll see.”

More likely, I’ll keep it to myself, because I realize I’m not old compared to my parents who were as old as I am now back when I was watching the Broncos eviscerate the Green Bay Packers. My mother’s plumbing fell apart ages ago, so long ago I was practically in diapers myself. And now it’s her heart and lungs.

Yesterday my mother, who has relied on her doctors for every birth and tooth extraction, infection, ache, and pain, said no to further testing after a visit to a heart specialist. Struggling to breathe, pulse surging well above 100 beats per minute, she told my brother she just wants peace in her old age. I never would have predicted this, despite the absolute predictability of it. She’ll be turning 86 this year and has struggled with health issues all her life. Everyone calls it a day at some point.

A couple of weeks ago, I called my Mom and listened to her pant like a dog for a few seconds before she disconnected. She called back shortly to say she was getting her hair washed and couldn’t talk on the phone. A few nights later, she told me about how she sits in her chair all day watching the people outside her window. They are all walking with their eyes on their cell phones, she said, oblivious to everything else. She noticed there weren’t any cell phones on her wall of Christmas cards, only old timey things like horses and carts. Then she had a coughing fit, and after she recovered, she told me the story again, in the pretty much same words.

After Bob’s mother died, on Valentine’s Day of all things, he carried on stoically. But when his father died a few years later he told me, “I’m an orphan, now.” I casually considered how I would feel when my parents orphaned me. Reality was still outside my grasp.
I had my existential moment while I was at work yesterday, a bit of pre-game grief. I had been talking with one of my brothers after his conversation with what may be Mom’s last doctor. He wished my mother’s boiler-plate living will had concrete directives. For the first time, the terms palliative care and hospice entered our sphere of reality.

After speaking with my brother, I watered the kitchen plants, had a conversation with Malcolm, and called Bob to say I was done with my day at The Plant. He said he hadn’t gotten over to the farmer’s market and suggested I stop on my way home. I was reluctant. All of a sudden, I didn’t feel fit to talk to anyone. I wanted to just stop everything, sit down, and stare at the sun sinking behind the trees.

I felt heavier than usual and was reminded of Tami’s terrible grief after her son died. I went over to her house every day for weeks after that unimaginable and unforeseen event, and one day as I came to her door, Tami got up slowly from her sofa and said, “I..feel..so…heavy…”

But, I did keep on moving. I did stop by the farmer’s market and talked with four bright-faced people I’ve spoken with many times before. I did come home and embrace my husband, make dinner, call my brothers, shower and go to bed. Just like normal. And I will go to that Super Bowl party, and laugh and joke and eat with my friends. It remains to be seen whether I mention plumbing, or hospice, or end of life directives.

For one thing, it’s culturally appropriate in the U.S. to live independently. For another, we haven’t had much experience living together. First there were waves of immigrants, then the westward expansion, and finally, we all got cars and went our separate ways. We don’t depend on each other like villagers in developing countries, who need each other and know it. Americans are designed for independence.

As a kid, I idolized the heroes of 50’s and 60’s television, Tarzan, The Lone Ranger, Batman. They were rescuers who seldom, if ever, needed rescuing themselves. I became a movie buff and was entranced by “The Seven Samurai.” A village of farmers hire some samurais to protect them from the bandits who make off with their rice harvest year after year. The samurai risk much to put an end to this injustice. One of the most interesting facets of this movie is the secret longing these samurai have for villages they could call home. Sadly, they know they will forever be outsiders, and at the end of the movie, the seven go their separate ways.

Eventually, I too, longed to belong. When I first hooked up with Bob, he taught me how to be more of a team player. We traveled, and gained a reputation for throwing in with others. In this way we honed our interdependence skills.

Ten years ago, we made the big leap and joined a group of community-minded neighbors in North Carolina. We didn’t discuss our expectations, but we liked the concept. And for some years now we refer to ourselves as an unintentional community. We’re rather proud of that. Its working, this community thing, and we’re not even trying too hard. We get together for potlucks, come to each other’s aid when asked, and do our best to get along.

Until, lately, we decide to put some intention into it. We ask ourselves, “What do we want our community to look like?” Now we were faced with a “blind men and the elephant” situation. Some of us want a deeper spiritual connection, others, more programs and facilities. We all agree we want food grown on the premises, a school for our children, and a burial ground. We take inventory and begin deploying under-used assets. We say no to nothing, all new ideas are worth manifesting. We want it all without losing our peace and quiet, and security. The children swim in the pond, we are a village of fun and parties. My head begins to spin.

I reach into my memory for insight, and find a dog story. It was my first day at dog obedience class. I’d brought a young husky bitch, a sweet dog in need of a program. When the trainer explained that we dog owners could have it any way we liked it, I remember laughing to think it could be this simple. If we wanted our dog to jump up into our arms, that’s what we would teach it to do. If we wanted a dog to pull a cart, we could have that, too. Eat out of our hand, never touch our skin with its lips, pee outside, pee in the toilet; anything was possible. All we had to do was decide.

Back to our community. I give it some thought and can’t come up with anything structural. I don’t know what I want us to look like. I think we look fine as we are. I’m getting everything I need, perhaps a little more. I decide to turn the question around. “What do I expect from my community?” The answer erupts with clarity; acceptance, respect, and support. That’s all I want, and I want it for all of us. No more, no less.

Sounds simple.

Read Part I: The Almighty We – Proximity

Just for fun, I kept track of the commercials during the last 90 minutes of the game to find out what the Network and its Corporate Sponsors were trying to sell us. Predictably, 25% of those 56 Ads were for the Television Network and its programs. Another 16% were for fast food (mostly Subway, one of the games major sponsors.) Because Dodge was another major sponsor, 14% were for passenger cars and trucks.

Surprisingly, there were no drug ads and Beer ads represented a paltry 5%.
11% of the ads were for computer related products and services, 9% for cell phones and 7% for investments.

Obviously, I’d have to watch a lot more television to get a feel for which products Television spends the most time promoting. If I had to make a conclusion based on this isolated glimpse of TV Advertising, it would be this: It explains why I see so many people eating and/or talking on their cells phones while driving and indicates that they are on their way home to watch TV or play on their computers.

Dear Camille and Bob,

I’ve been watching the news again. They are already promoting the next flu shot for this year. Last year the flu was the big panic. I remember a story about how people in California were standing in line in the hot weather for hours to get a shot and one lady died of a heat stroke before she was able to get her shot.

Now the big panic seems to be Hurricane Rita. Not to make the same mistakes that were made during Katrina, folks are now so intent on evacuating that, according to the news, the highways out of the cities are turning into “parking lots” and people are just sitting in there cars for hours with the engines running and they are running out of gas. The news reports it as if they “need” air conditioning in there cars because of hot weather and that is why they don’t shut their cars off. Then they show a black girl just walking around on the free way instead of sitting in her car like everyone else. They question her as if she is nuts for just walking around on the free way as she tells them she needs to stretch her legs.

The government is planning on sending fuel trucks to the stranded motorists as part of the emergency plan (how they will actually get to the cars I don’t know). This is crazy. I mean this is a matter of survival to get away from the coast and people are getting stranded because they have to have there air conditioning while they just sit on the highway for 5 or 6 hours at a time without moving. I don’t think I’ve ever had an air-conditioned vehicle my whole life and I have survived traffic jams in heat waves by doing what that black chick did. I traveled from Colorado to Pennsylvania in the middle of summer without air conditioning. People don’t seem to realize that your body adjusts to different temperatures if you let it. Just drink a lot of water. But I guess if you’ve never been in the heat for any period of time before without scurrying to the nearest air conditioned venue within minutes, maybe experiencing the real temperature would be a shock to the system. People need to toughen up. I feel that we are becoming like the aliens; totally dependent upon technology until eventually we won’t even have a planet to live in and just be floating around in a mother ship somewhere.

Anyway, hope you guys are having fun up here in the mountains. No threat of storm surge here, ha, ha.

Love, Michael

I almost forgot something I wanted to talk with you about. I remembered it as I was reading your latest blogs. You may not know much about these shows since you don’t watch TV and I don’t know much about them as I don’t watch these shows but what is it about Reality TV Shows?

What does reality have to do with people going to an island and eating bugs, did you have to eat bugs on Little Corn Island? What is reality about some rich peoples kids going to Steamboat and trying to work on a ranch?

Are people really that insane?

I haven’t watched these shows but some of the Moms at preschool were talking about the Steamboat one, only because one of them is from Steamboat and someone called her to tell her about it. Reality TV is a hit but it seems like such a misnomer, where is the reality? Gotta go Logan is up and my day has now started.

Love Sharyl

Dear Sharyl,

This is the funniest thing I’ve read in a long time. To answer your question, the only bugs we ate on Little Corn Island were the ones we failed to wash out of the pasta.

You’re right – I don’t know much about this kind of show, having avoided television for the past 7 or 8 years. But common sense tells me that the name itself, “Reality TV” is an oxymoron because everybody knows there’s nothing real about TV.

So I looked it up in my trusty Wikipedia:
Reality television is a genre of television programming which generally is unscripted, documenting actual events over fiction, and featuring “ordinary” people over professional actors. Although the genre has been featured since the early years of television, the current explosion of popularity dates from circa 2000 (particularly from Survivor).

Critics of the genre have claimed that the term is a misnomer, as many reality TV shows put the participants in exotic locations and/or abnormal situations, thus not promoting a sense of “reality.” According to the Nielsen Media Research, reality shows account for about 56% of all of American TV shows (both in cable and broadcast), and also accounts to about 69% of all of the world TV shows (in cable and in broadcast).

I saw a few Websites dedicated to Reality TV. At Reality TV World I found this partial list of shows:
The Amazing Race American Idol America’s Next Top Model The Apprentice Average Joe The Bachelor The Bachelorette Battle Of The Network Reality Stars Being Bobby Brown Big Brother The Biggest Loser Brat Camp The Cut Dancing With The Stars Extreme Makeover Hell’s Kitchen I Want To Be A Hilton The Law Firm Meet Mister Mom Nanny 911 Project Runway Queer Eye The Real World Rock Star: INXS The Simple Life So You Think You Can Dance Starting Over Supernanny The Surreal Life Survivor Tommy Lee Goes To College Trading Spaces Trading Spouses Wife Swap

Wow! Wife Swap – really! It’s hard to believe (an a little sad) that TV viewers have devolved into TV voyeurs. So, yes Sharyl, apparently people ARE that insane!