What Now? MeMeMeMeMe

Presidio Sentinel San Diego, June 2015

By Laura Walcher

Devoted readers, relax already.  While it’s true that I was born in the Bronx,

many, many years ago,  and sooo many of you are interested in stuff like that,

I can promise that I’ll never subject you to my thousand-page autobiography,

as gripping a tale as it may be.

Yet (brace yourselves), the highly-edited story of my life is, indeed, semi-fascinating.

First of all, the Bronx.  Everyone’s grandparents – and some parents - came from somewhere else.  On our street, there were only Jews and Italians.  Escaping anti-Semitism, and in the wake of World War 1, my mother and family trekked by foot from Harlau, Roumania to Bremerhaven, to catch a boat to America.   My father’s parents – like the family in “Fiddler …,”  drew their wagons across Russia,

eventually landing in New York.  This is not romantic. 

Second of all, my parents:  they met.

Well, anyone who could pay some rent moved up to the Bronx.  Hence, us.

By now, I’ve realized that our New York public school education was good–to- great.

I no longer shrink from revealing my hugely limited college days. Maybe, at most, I finished a semester, yet,  I’ve come to realize that my high-school education  equaled or bettered today’s college.  Don’t get me started.

For our first years of marriage,  we lived in Darmstadt, Germany,  Of course I was

a child; that’s what one did, then.  It’s not like I was mature; on the contrary, I just

missed my boyfriend. He was a Security-service radio operator in the Air Force.  It was decades before I knew what he’d been doing. 

My only skills that even came close to being marketable were in writing, although in my    early teens I was a library aide and a summer camp counselor.

Later, except for product demonstration jobs ‘round Southern California as, “Miss Peter Pan Peanut Butter,”  “Miss Wembly Ties,” or,  “The Polaroid Camera Girl,” all others were writing jobs.  That skill found its way to my long career in Public Relations, which finally paid off for me, my family, my clients. I’m still waiting for one boring day, one boring experience. 

Until I began swimming, I was emaciated and unhealthy.  Although I’d always been an exerciser, in the wake of a serious accident, I couldn’t run stairs as was my routine. I decided that walking (albeit gingerly) through water wouldn’t hurt me.   Unexpectedly, that led to swimming, which transformed my entire physical condition.  Yet, to this day, I’ve failed to persuade one single person – even those who have known me pre-and post-swimming - that this activity, this exercise is a key to  - surely physical - and possibly mental - well-being. This has led to a sad reality check regarding my powers of persuasion. 

That college semester of mine, though, it was mostly “creative writing.” I got all “A’s.”  ###