Just going to leave us hanging ...
Oh, I had a verbal fight with a "friend" and walked home from his house in a hyperventilating huff. Unusual, as I was an easygoing kid. (I promise). Maybe I subconsciously "knew" Joan had died and was upset about
Mommie Dearest before Christina even wrote it. (Even though I believe every word of it).
Speaking of
Mommie Dearest, I had another friend who gave her mother a copy of the book some 18 months later -- her mother being a
Scorpio Rising/Moon in Aquarius like Joan Crawford. (But not as bad, although her daughter still hated her). She even had an old portrait of herself that her daughter thought "looks like Joan Crawford" (and it did). Her mother had a weird reaction to the Christmas gift, and she apparently never read it.
When I got away from that friendship, the daughter then re-wrote everything and decided that I had been the cause of all of her problems with all of her family members. Even though I'd had nothing to do with any of it, and she'd had all of those issues long before I was ever around, and she'd talked about it all the time. But women never lie, and their main tactic is never reputation destruction. I later found out she'd told anyone who'd listen that I was a hooker in NYC. Decades later, she contacted me through the highschool website (they always come back) and asked me if I was going to the 30th reunion. I responded nastily (kindness in dudes is viewed as weakness, as I'd learned by then) asking if she was still telling people that I was a hooker. She stammered on her keyboard, laughably tried to change the subject immediately, and tried to take the high ground. But when that didn't work, she gave up. And the conversation ended.
Bitch.
To be fair, in retrospect, I probably did look like a hooker.
My grandmother died the same day as Bette Davis, so I always recall that day for a few reasons.
Oh, no! I was at a friend's apartment whose outer wall looked out onto the pool when I heard about Davis' death. (It was still, technically, October 5 in the States).
Elizabeth Taylor died on Crawford's 108th birthday.
Mary Tyler Moore died on my mother's penultimate birthday -- strange, as my mother had an absurd love-hate relationship with Mary Tyler Moore: when Mary was on DICK VAN DYKE, and early-MARY TYLER MOORE, she thought Mary was just
adorable..... But something changed. Soon, no one could even mention Mary in my mother's presence without her stiffening up... One day,
her mother -- my grandmother (the one who reminded me of a blend between Miss Ellie and Judith Anderson, whom she adored) -- asked me why my mother had such an issue with Mary Tyler Moore. I answered, with pubescent confidence, that when Mary Richards (a woman in her thirties) was revealed to not be a virgin, Mom had an indignant moralistic reaction from what she saw as a personal betrayal. I knew I was right, and I
was right, even though Mom had never explained it... My grandmother, not a lascivious person nor prone to blue humor, didn't respond and only looked down at the table bemused (no doubt at her daughter's prudery, and the fact that her youngest grandson, still a mere whisp of a boy, had figured out my mother's ridiculous reasoning). Twenty years later, when mother learned that Mary was a vegan and an animal rights activist, Mom suddenly
loved Mary Tyler Moore again, as if those two decades of seething contempt never happened.
Mom's tragic problem was that she never had any problems, and thus had to make them up.
Since you all asked.
Love is all around, no need to waste it...
