• Joan Critz SuprockNeighbor

  • Bel Air, MD

Here’s my “autobiography” ... I dislike that word because it’s a reminder of all those books on famous people that were required reading in school. Also it’s kind of egotistical to write “all about me” as if I were one of those famous people. And there’s the old, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression” syndrome which is kind of scary. The thought goes through my mind that people may misinterpret what I write. Makes it kind of hard to hit that “send” button ... (You know the person who invents the “recall” button for the web, similar to the “undo” button on Microsoft Word, is really going to make billions and probably save a lot of relationships as well as jobs) With that in mind, I am stating that this autobiography is also an official statement that most all of my subsequent blog posts are “tongue in cheek” and hopefully not “foot in the mouth.” (Besides, isn’t there some kind of vaccine for that disease? ... no that’s foot and mouth disease.) 

I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania but wasn’t there long enough to learn how to spell the city’s name. My early childhood years were spent in a wonderfully homespun Chicago, Illinois suburb called Elmwood Park ... One that was reminiscent of the household on the “Wonder Years” TV show which included an older brother and all the fun and turmoil that those relationships bring. My adolescent years were in Charlotte, NC when cigarettes were king and home of the famous East Carolina barbeque … the best in the world. All my good manners I learned in the South. I attended a small Baptist college, Wingate College (what was a nice Jewish girl doing in a place like that? That’s another story ) and graduated from  the University of Maryland at College Park with a degree in English Education and a peace symbol on my back. I taught eighth grade English for one very long year in a Baltimore County school. It wasn’t long before the kids drove me crazy and forced me to reconsider my choice of careers. I worked for a lawyer for about two minutes and was employed as a substitute teacher with Baltimore County for a short time prior to employment with the State of Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation where I was an employment specialist for many years . I recently retired from my job located at the Bel Air Maryland Workforce Center. (I can now flip channels instead of having to go through them).<strong> I loved the job but just couldn’t let Katie (Couric), Meredith (Vieira), Mary (Hart), and Oprah leave without joining them.</strong> (Somehow, though, I think their pensions are just a little bigger than mine.) I am now trying to figure out what I want to be in my “next thirty years.”

I have lived in Bel Air, Maryland since the late 1970s and have two grown children and a husband who keeps waiting for me to become the house wife he always thought I’d be. (Not that there’s anything wrong with being a housewife. It’s probably one of the hardest jobs in the world. But <strong>when you get married, do you promise to “love and honor and respect the house”? After all, you are pronounced “husband and wife”, not “husband and housewife”. </strong>Who can afford a house anyway when you get first married?)

Neither my husband nor I could have predicted that the Women’s Lib movement coupled with a sagging economy would require two incomes in a household in order to survive .The end result was that my subsequent “temporary” (“I’m just working until we have children”) employment lasted about a zillion years) I have a wonderful mother who is praying that I won’t say something that I will later regret … (Luckily for her she has a different last name ). My children, I’m guessing, are just hoping there won’t be anything on line to embarrass them. (Unfortunately for them, they <b>do </b>have the same last name.)

To summarize, you know the old expression, “You are what you eat”? Well, “I am what I write.” That’s the real me. (Not where I went to school or worked or where I live). So when “common sense” becomes rare, the “cents” in the bank is gone, and the only sense that’s increasing seems to be “nonsense”, I try to remember one of the great truths about life that is written on a fifty cent magnet on our closet door, “<strong>Sometimes the only sense you can make out of life is a sense of humor”. </strong>I hope you remember that too especially if you choose to read my “stuff” (how come there’s never been a better word than that one?). Please read it in the spirit in which in was intended… Usually silly, sometimes irreverent, and only very occasionally seriously. Hope you can tell the difference ... On second thought, maybe it’s best if you can’t.

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