PUZZLES FOR ALL AGES

When I was in elementary school and chronically ill from asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia, you name the lung ailment, we were moving several times a year and I seldom saw the same pediatrician twice in a row. I didn't get prescribed an asthma inhaler until I was eight, not sure why -- maybe they weren't developed until then. The first one was called Isuprel, which came in a glass and metal canister, the glass covered with a thick rubbery membrane, and a plastic mouthpiece that had to be attached to the canister each use. This was dispensed to me by Mama with voluminous instructions each time as to how I was to suck it back into my chest -- delivered by her one-handed because she always had a long Salem lit in her other hand.


Living with contradictions
Going against the grain
Making my life work for me... (from Alix Dobkin)

Anyhow, after seeing the doctor we'd have to go to the nearest Rexall to get prescriptions filled, and Mama would take me into the store because she didn't like leaving me in the car. Bill wasn't with us on these trips; I guess he was at home with a neighbor or my older brother. While we waited for the pharmacist to put together my medications, Mama would cruise the magazine rack and I'd scope out what they had in the way of books or periodicals for kids. Usually the books were limited and I'd read them all anyhow -- I read every single Bobbsey Twins, Janet Lennon, Donna Parker, Trixie Belden, Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, and Five Little Tuckers book ever printed. (Not Nancy Drew, though -- hated her.)

I generally had more luck with magazines. I disdained Highlife, and my favorite, Jack and Jill, only came out once a month. But there was a series of puzzle and word game books, magazine size, that were produced during those years (early 1960s) which I adored, and there was often a new one out that I could always persuade Mama to buy. They kept me raptly entertained for a long time.

I learned a lot of world geography from these books, because I was drawn to the map puzzles. Is my memory faulty, or did they really spell Timbuktu as Timbucktoo in those days? I also liked the rebuses and forerunners of the logic puzzles I'd be addicted to in my 20s. But my favorite of their games was deciphering addresses like this:

Jane Smith
Wood
100
Land
Kansas

Which I'd eventually translate as
Jane Smith
100 Underwood
Overland, Kansas (this was before zip codes or state abbreviations, of course)

Years later, I'd draw on this memory in constructing an elaborate practical joke I played on my roommate Lava. She and I lived together for several years in San Francisco, and we were extremely close. Over a decade later, I realized I'd been in love with her -- I think she was in love with me, too -- but while we were both extremely sexually active elsewhere and also physically intimate (platonically) with one another, we shied away from ever becoming lovers or admitting the depth of our feelings. One of those regrets I've not yet released into the void.

(Lava and Maggie at Maggie's Pirate Birthday Party, Lake Merced, San Francisco, August 1984)

When the Bay Guardian started up and was more interested in lesbian readers than it is now, they began running personal ads. This was completely new to us in the dyke political community, and we'd read them in amazement. But of course we'd never use them -- we had meetings where we could troll for girlfriends, we had a thriving community then.

Lava, however, was between involvements and decided she just wanted sex, no strings. So she astonished us all by writing and placing a personal ad stating she wanted women to fuck with, with her basic requirements (no smoking, no drugs, no racists, as I remember it). AIDS had arrived by that time but it didn't pertain to us because in our social circle we stuck to sleeping with women-identified-women who did not use IV drugs and, well, blood and semen are the carriers, you know.

The process involved renting a "box" at the paper where you had to write a letter reply, and Lava had to go there personally to pick up any responses. She was quite worked up about her adventure, and began "checking her mail" almost daily, with no replies for a while. At this point, I'm sure there was some part of me that was jealous, but at the time I believed it was strictly in humor that I decided to write her a fake response.

Lava still has my typed letter. I knew her well enough to zero in on the buttons that would most intrigue her, veering at times into what I thought was a ridiculous zone to make her doubt my sincerity, then coming back to an enticing line. I pretended to be a rich, married woman of society, involved in San Francisco city politics (alluding to Dianne Feinstein) who had to be closeted but my marriage was for display only, I just needed a regular romp-in-bed woman to keep me happy. The only parts of the letter I clearly remember are these: I stated I wanted to eat Baby Ruth bars from her ass (do not ask me where I got this idea from, it shocks me still that I came up with it), and my clever return address.

There's a street on Bernal Hill named Andover, where a friend of mine lived. So I gave my return address as 21 Andover. Get it?

Lava didn't. She came home from "checking her mail" that day waving the letter in wild excitement and burst into the kitchen to read it out loud to me. I managed to keep a straight face until the end, when she mused about the address and wondered if the first block of Andover was at the top of Bernal or the base. That was when I lost it.

She felt cruelly tricked, and disappointed. (Though she had NOT been attracted by the Baby Ruth notion.) I was not able at that time to sort out my feelings about her and understand why I'd felt compelled to mess with her attempt to get needs met. A decade later, we were able to talk it out. By then we lived in different parts of the country and, well, I'd have considered moving to reconnect with her but she wasn't interested.

The unresolved question from this musing is: What was the name of that series of puzzle books? And does anyone else remember them? I'm not even sure how to start a search on E-Bay; I don't remember the covers, just that the inside paper was not glossy and the whole shebang was similar to the size and shape of our school workbooks.


And, while I'm reminiscing -- did anyone else out there ever use Cuisinaire rods in elementary school? Let's talk.

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