Im Going to Make it After All

I have adored The Mary Tyler Moore Show for years and years. It was and remains one of the best written and best acted situational comedies in the history of television. My young friend, Bryan, pictured below in another entry, is not at all familiar with it. Pity. I remember it well from my childhood but mostly from countless reruns on Nick-at-Nite and local channels. Now that I am older and I work in an office, the characters are even more real and funny to me as I see them portryated every day in the work-a-day psycho-drama that I think is office life in general. Here in the office we have wise cracking, hard working types (the Murrays), the cranky bosses with hearts of gold - well, here it's more gold plated hearts, but ... (the Lous), the bumbling morons (the Teds), the pure of heart (the Georgettes) the edgey nuerotics (the Phyllises), the office slut (the Sue Anns), etc. You get the picture.

As much as I love the show and as much as I find Mary the ideal human being - let's face it - she lives fabulously, dresses well, a serial dater, smart, funny, humble, etc - there is something about the program that has always gnawed at me. As noted, I find Mary, to use the vernacular of her time, far out and groovy. In many ways, I wish I was more like her. I can even psyche myself into thinking that I am indeed like her, but sadly, my blogging friends, this is not the case. I am, unfortunately, Rhoda Morgenstern. Not that being is Rhoda is all that bad, it's just that it isn't Mary. Rhoda was the plump, shlumpy neighbor - she was funny, hard working, but simply not in the category of Mary. She was almost there, but not quite. Rhoda wnated more out of life than it had given her - Mary couldn't figure out what to do with all th good stuff that was in her life - her loving family, her adoring boss, the men who lusted after her. Rhoda wanted to be an artist - instead she dressed windows in a department store. Rhoda wanted Mary's apartment - she got stuck with two rooms in the attic and a hot plate. Even when Rhoda got her own show, it thrived briefly and then bombed, changing formats and never really figuring out what it was supposed to be.

So, you see, Rhoda is me.

Im not an unhappy lad, not really. I have love, a decent job, a home, a family, etc. But it's a Rhoda's life I have.
Example: I am half Italian and half Croatian. By all accounts and with photos to back it up, my mother and fater were quite the good looking duo in their day. Reasonably, one could have expected lovely children from them. Me, I seemed to to have inherited all of their worst traits, both psychologically and physically (see various photos below). Im not hideous and I don't scare small children, but in no way do I resemble the best of either side of my family. I have an enormous head, I'm bald and when I see myself in a mirror I still see a skinny 17 year old instead of the chunky 37 year old I have become.

You see - not bad, but not quite the best. We're told all our lives to strive for the best and I do when I can. But there is just so much that one can do with the raw materials that one is given. I actually find the idea of plastic surgery for vanity's sake abhorrent. The world is made of Rhodas - the Marys are few and far between. I used to be far vainer than I am now. But time has taught me one thing and that's no matter what you do, someone in the world will think they are better than you are and will probably go out of their way to tell you that. I have this one friend who spends bushels and bushels of money on clothes and accessories that while beautiful, are really just pearls before swine. She's a lovely person and if that's what makes her happy, God love her - she hurts no one and is single handedly preventing a retail recession - but for me, well, I just can't fathom it.

I guess the real truth here is that unlike Rhoda, I don't actually hate myself and, moreover, I don't really care anymore that I am a Rhoda and not a Mary. I have all sorts of great qualities that live in tandem with all of my bad ones and that is the essence of being human. I wear what I like and look the way I want to look. I am most certainly the object of someone's derision and that's just fine. I live in a whirlwind of negativity that I feel and see in all aspects of my life - I just don't know how I have escaped letting it penetrate my soul. I think so much of the negative energy in this world comes from us longing for what we can't really have or what we really don't need. There is a simple beauty to life that I haven't mastered, but I think I get it. My capacity for living is boundless - the only time it's not is when I am too worried abut what you think fo me and when I can't get past my own self doubt, which, of course, is more often than not. Life is not easy, but it really isn't all that hard, actually. Be good to yourself, especially when you look in the mirror. Respect what you see there - like my enormous bald head. It's the only one I'v got so what can I do about it? I am no saint - far from it. I am as catty and as mean as the rest of the world, but I guess I maintain a guilt about it that keeps me from actually dipping too deep into that well.

I am rambling, and that's not nice. So, in short, Rhoda or Mary, it doesn't matter. We are all, hopefully, going to make it after all.