The Old Tailor: Made to Measure Magazine

(This article was originally written in the late '80's.)

When I was a child, I used to see him there, sitting in a non-descript corner, hunched over his machine. Acknowledging my father's watchful presence more than my brown-eyed curiosity, he would look up and nod as I would observe him cut the thread between his teeth.

Worn Singers--maybe six of them--and an old Pfaff, were stuffed into that back room like desks in a schoolhouse.  Instead of books, cones of sewing thread, boxes of buttons, rolls of braid, filled the shelves. And, like mollified students, they all sat there, the numbers of Eastern Europe engraved into their faces, their clothing belonging to a different time.

Trousers and vests hung on skinny men like jackets tossed on barbed wire fence posts.  Faded flowered silks (for there were no polyesters in those years) threatened to cover trundling women as though they were skins on bulging sausages.  They were old then--grey, stoop-shouldered, an dreamless--sewn into the linings of their world.   The years eventually took most of them, but the old tailor remained loyal.

I suppose he was only twenty, in those groping times when the world was righting itself from the War.  I think it must have been that I was so young, that he appeared so old. When he died, he was sixty-six; my memories are from many years ago.

His first name had been anglicized and he had a last name infiltrated with Polish phoneticisms--an infinite number of  "z's."  Medium build, medium height, his pride kept his spine as straight as a measuring stick all his life. But from the close work of the stitching, a roundness had grown into his shoulders, softening that very formal European discipline into an almost friendly stoop.

His eyes were quick to note a mistake, observant to follow a line.  I cannot recall their color, for there was no contrast to the shading of his face. Everything was grey.  The hair, straight and combed to one side, covered his baldness.  Occasionally, when he lost himself in his art, a strand or two would slip down over his brows, creating a casualness that might have made him a part of this world.  He had a sharp Aryan nose, and a large brown mole on his cheek that rose up in a rounded dome like a used pencil eraser. He always wore a too-wide tie and a too-tight coat; he always wore a hat--straw in the summer, felt in the winter.

He worked for my father for over forty years.  He did just about everything, because he was trained in the days when "everything" was what one did; when loyalty to the superior mattered; when quality was more than a quick stitch of a union label.  He had apprenticed as a boy, I imagine, in pre-War Poland.  Afterward, he came here, bringing with him a needle and thread, a pair of shears, and his accent. Nothing more.

In the early years, he did the master tailoring.  Hitch it up here; let it out there.  Dart. Pleat. No gusset. Watch the inseam.  This one is a portly--don't confuse him with a stout.  Sleeve lengths to match.  Careful when you cut, now--those lapels are getting narrower.  Single-breasted for him; double-breasted takes too much cloth and he's too broad across the chest.  Not too much padding in the shoulder.  Slimmer leg, please...

Eventually, the tailoring business became more of an eccentricity than a practicality.  As the shop became a factory, and the company grew to a corporation, the old tailor, in order to continue to survive, should have changed, also.  But he never grew or learned any more than his youth had taught him.  His pessimism over a lost world invaded his dulled being.  Now, they used the word "manufacturer" instead of "tailor."  It was longer, maybe. Fancier.  But to him, its real meaning was death.

He tried to leave once, when industrial replaced hand, when one suit became one hundred, when the single name "piecework" replaced the completeness of the whole garment.  He had in mind to buy his own shop--a small corner, downtown.  At last, out from under my father's shadow, he would be his own man.  Butler becoming boss.  His shop would be in the tradition of his world--suiting fabrics, shirt weights.  A small press in back with a good steam iron ought to do it.  Of course, a really good machine or two.  Maybe, if it went well, a helper.  But most of all, he, the old tailor, would celebrate his trade and his skill.  Tape measure around the neck--like a priest before the altar--he would dress the mannequin to approximate size. Clip the threads.  Check the button holes.  Brush the shoulders.  Amen.

He had purchased the shop with his savings.  Received my father's best wishes.  Was ready to own the life for which he had been trained.  But he had a wife--and at the proper moment, her greed coerced her into gambling.

If, for a few months, there actually had been a color to the old tailor's eyes, it was never seen again.  Only grimness and waiting and manufacturing remained.

He needed a job and my father needed a good man to run the shop.  "Shop" didn't mean the whole building, but those rooms confined to the cutting, sewing, and pressing of the garments.  My father never did find that "good man."  But the old tailor was there.  And, he did his best, I suppose.  Mostly pacing between this girl and that, watching how they sewed, wondering what to complain about next.

The flowered dresses were replaced with low-cut blouses and too-tight pants.  The seven machines reproduced themselves into twenty and thirty. The presses became the pressing room.  Electric cutting knives whirred, two and three at a time.  The women had become girls, and the Europeans had been replaced with Spanish, Indian, and Oriental blood.

It wasn't pride anymore.  It was survival and endurance.  Kibbitz with the girls.  Punch in--punch out.  A day's work. Most of all, disdain for modernity. Disgust with the distance between a man and his work; a love affair the old tailor testily missed.  It didn't matter how good the garment was.  To him, it wasn't right--it wasn't done with tenderness, or respect for the beauty of the fit.  The caring, the sighing, the becoming-at-one-with, were not there, any more.

The tailor made a poor foreman.  My father knew it.  The tailor, I imagine, knew it, but didn't care.  I believe for him, it was a simple transfer of professions: From creating, to observing others create.  The world had passed him by.

Almost too late, my father grew tired of the bigness of his work.  He sold the factory, and returned to the smaller shop.  A staff of nothing: Except that he still needed the old tailor.  Only a few days a week. Alterations. Hand stitching. A custom measurement now and then.  It was here that I saw the old gentleman gradually fail, fall apart, and finally die.

The manufacturing of suits had become the making of uniforms--for hotels, restaurants, and specialty groups. He would still take the bus each day to and from his torture, where he would be surrounded by brightly colored cocktail dresses and Mexican waitress skirts, hot-pants, and chambermaid garb.  Once again, rounded over his machine that was lit cautiously with a small refrigerator bulb, he would sit and baste. Snapping the thread between his teeth as he used to do, forty years ago.  He knew the feel of a good wool gab.  He could line up the buttons on a jacket by sight.  He ripped and re-sewed with the steadiness of the years.

I always thought he liked the ripping best, somehow.  When it wasn't his own work, it was a delight to correct.  To remind the others of what real tailoring and genuine workmanship were about.

The months passed. He muttered a lot.  At first to himself.  Then to the cloth.  Finally, to the audience of the presses.

His end was those hot steaming machines.  Mentally, he had grown quite slow, old memories stitching over the cloth of reality.  My father would have retired him, but the tailor's wife still gambled away their money. There was no other means for him to survive, but to work.  All that was available now that his skills were fading, were the presses.

He was as good at them as any other aspect of the trade. He was content to come in, fold his coat carefully on the chair, and place his hat neatly on their top.  He would smoke a cigarette and go to the back, where amidst conversations with himself, he would smooth a pant or two, using all his strength to pull down those big mangles and buck presses.

He worked until his last day.  Dignified, formal, polite.  As gracious to the imagined voices he heard as to the workers behind the cutting tables.  As critical of the twentieth century, as anyone I've known.  Vacant and shyly droll, always the Old World, in a tattered and worn sort of way.  His clothes never changed from those early, ill-fitted years, despite the thousands of hours he spent caressing the seams of others.

I felt sad when he died, not so much for him as for me.  Clearly, he was just too tired.  I wondered if, had I tried, I could have known him better.  I wondered if, had I succeeded, there would have been any greater depth to him than what I had observed.  The old tailor, like a worn suit of clothes, may well have been a disguise for someone very different underneath.

A Rose By Any Other Name: The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) Broadcaster

This article was originally written  for the above paper in June of 1991.  What is interesting is that not much as changed in almost 23 years.  People are still trying to figure out what to call themselves, hoping their labels will forecast how they ought to be judged.  The reality, of course, is that it is the individual who matters; the nomenclature and stereotypes will come and go.  Also, society will judge as it wishes, and all the fancy labels in the world cannot change what the public wants to think, once the public makes up its mind...  

I read, with some interest, Ms. Kailes' February, 1991 article on the use of language.  I don't disagree with the author and her viewpoint, but lately, I find so may people concerned with what to call each other; I wonder if the focus isn't shifting away from how to treat each other.

The American Indian/Redskin is now the docile Native American; the Oriental has morphed to the Asian; the once Colored then Negro then Black has become the African American; the Mexican is now the Hispanic or Latino, depending on specific geography of origin, despite sameness of language.

For awhile, the Deaf were the Hearing Impaired until it was decided that the oral Deaf would remain Hearing Impaired, and the signing Deaf would return to their original name and be just Deaf.  The handicapped want to be the disabled, or the challenged.

I wonder how the cultural anthropologists and sociologists manage to keep up!

The problem with "disabled" is the implication of time and brokenness/non-usable-ness; i.e., once one used to be able, but now because of circumstance, he is dis-abled.  The original meaning of the prefix "dis" (not) implies apart-ness, a whole no longer complete or now in two or more pieces.

A cup with the handle broken off is disabled.  A sink whose faucet has been disconnected is disabled.  A man whose leg has been amputated is disabled. There is a sense of time having passed.  There is an implication that that which was once useful and whole is no longer so; function is non-operable.

My daughter as born with multiple medical involvements.  No time passed; nothing happened to her that transformed her from a whole into parts.  I don't think of her as "dis," or "not."  Most of her parts work all right; some of her parts operate on a partial basis.  I don't recall abilities once hers, that are no more.  I do think of her as handicapped, as there are clearly tasks with which she needs special help; she always has and will require significant assistance.

Ms. Kailes refers to the term "handicapped" as being a derogatory one; it calls to her mind the individual on the street corner with cap in hand, begging.

(In truth, the hand in the cap--not the other way around--was an aspect of horse racing, many years ago in Great Britain; the jockeys, vying for the most advantageous place on the track, would draw numbers out of a cap; hence, the derivation of the word.  He who drew the best number, had the inside path; he who drew the worst number was stuck with the outside path and a greater likelihood of losing the race.  The good or ill fortune of the horse's position around the track was a result of the jockey's "hand-i-the-cap.")

In sports today, golfers and bowlers have handicaps; horse racing still awards handicaps; there is a handicap in betting. There is no shame in the word, or in the use.  Rather, the condemnation is in peoples' opinions.

Recently, I met a physician who denied both terms.  He liked the idea of the "exceptional body"  instead of either "disabled" or "handicapped." My, I thought, my little girl is only eight, and already, she's up there with Madonna and Marilyn Monroe.

I keep wondering when Jews are going to change their names.  Anti-Semitism increased by 18% this year; it certainly would be a good time to enhance self-image, and the concept of the altered "handle" is very much in vogue.  I was considering the possibility of "American Moses-ite..."
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If changing the name or label of an individual or a group assists with positive group or self-identity, I'm all for it.  If that same change also heightens the awareness and sensitivity levels of the broader society, I'm in favor of that, too.

I just hope people understand the old adage, "Actions speak louder than words."  Terms don't start out with positive or negative connotations, only objective denotations.  The former is imposed by the response from society. Once "queer" meant to be odd, and "gay" meant to be happy.  Now, both connote homosexuality--one negatively, one positively.

If "disabled" is more palatable than "handicapped," then let it be so.  If the larger community is more comfortable in accepting the disabled rather than the handicapped, I guess I think that's fine.  If individuals would rather be identified as "disabled," instead of "handicapped," I support that, too.  Often, it's not what the word means that counts; rather it's what the word implies.

The choice of this term or that is not what is most important, but rather that we are taking the time to care about our places and our acceptance in this world.  We are demanding to be recognized with a sense of pride and integrity.  As long as accomplishments measure up to the demands for verbal dignity, there should be no problem.

The Webmaster

I am old.  Bordering on ancient and senile, in fact. Depends on how old you are, as to how old I am.  You know how it is...  I live in the twentieth century. Trust me, it was a better place, a better time.  Sure, not as many doo-dads and conveniences; certainly, technology was a stick in the mud compared to what it is, today. However, people talked with one another in complete, un-abbreviated, grammatically correct, and meaningful sentences; what's more, they took the time.   Yep, they took the time to care, to listen, to understand, and maybe to offer a few kind words of advice, admonishment, or praise.

Today, a kid who is five years old, is exhausted at the end of the day. Not enough time.  It used to be that when we were young, the days crawled by, and we could hardly wait for them to pass so that we could grow up.  Now, girls in kindergarten are wearing black velvet with leopard collars and high heels. Time flies by with so much to do, people merely pass one another like strangers, albeit they even may live in the same house. Who has a meal together?  Who shares the day's events?  What happened to family, to quiet time alone, or with friends...?

Into this milieu I have been thrust, through no fault of my own: The twenty-first century.  The reality is that either I have to cope and get on with things, or lag behind and find myself even more lost and ostracized than I already am.  The Hallmark Channel can only take a person so far... Thus, in order to save myself, I found a webmaster.
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My webmaster has been such, since 1997.  He was a senior in college when he started with me.  A wise woman, to whom I am forever indebted, suggested him because she knew his mother.  One of those things. Dumb luck--or God's Will, if you prefer.  It is now 16 years later.  We're still surfing the 'Net. (How awesome do I sound?)

What can you say about a fellow who behaves like Dick Van Dyke, and is built like a dress-zipper with ears?  He is 6'6"+, and maybe weighs 165 pounds.  I come up to his rib cage. Go try to hug him.  He comes with instructions that require a Pogo stick, for any kind of physical familiarity.  I gave up long ago. If I want to give him an endearment, I rest my head just above his belly button, and go from there.

Here's the thing: He's terrific: A mensch.  When he was 21, he was that way; he's the same, now--he's humble and patient, has a sense of humor, is smart as can be, centered, responsible if a little absent-minded or too busy, and he's focused--all prerequisites if you're going to be in my corner.  The only differences are that now, he's got a lovely wife and two kids; he's smarter, wiser, and makes a good living. Otherwise, he's the same familiar old shoe--size 15.

He went through my website with me, back then.  It was like pulling teeth, for all that I needed, and what he had to do while he dragged me along with him: My ideas, his know-how and in-put. He got it done.  His first official website.  Mine, too, come to think of it...  It's still up and running, and attracts its own visitors. It's been through re-decoration and additions; it's just fine, thank you.

Currently, my webmaster has led me through Linked-in, and Facebook (oy...); now, we've pretty much finished this very blog. Can you believe it?  Can you believe I put an entire blog together??? (Well, of course, with the webmaster's huge help).  If I don't do this Stuff constantly, of course, I can't remember half of it. But, we won't go there.  When he and I are done with this project, it's on to Twitter. Oh!  For the record, I can also text--tra-la.

We meet for over an hour, once a month for lunch--usually eggs of some sort; my treat.  He teaches; I scramble--my brains, not the eggs.  Anything in-between our monthly sessions:  I either luck out, learn on my own, or cope.

Sometimes, fairytales do come true.  The webmaster is one of them.

I want to say, that if I had had to do any of this Stuff alone, I think I would have stuck to my Big Chief tablet and #2 Eberhard Faber yellow pencil. Longer to process, yes; but infinitely easier. Really.  I honestly get it, with the technological goodies.  It's incredible.

I also get it that the hours and hours and hours it takes to process all of it; fix it when it crashes or breaks down; call multiple "technical support" people--most of whom can barely speak English or can't think beyond their prepared, scripted instruction manuals; crawl around on the floor while they ask me to re-check what wires and buttons I've already checked; and remember on the side, how to relate to people as human beings rather than as mobs of pixels: All are hazards of the technological age. I don't think it's so hot, just between us.

Still, I want you to know that my webmaster is just the Best--no doubt.  He has even managed to make all this learning sort of interesting and fun.  I feel like I'm about six years old, in terms of know-how and capability; in truth, I'm older than his mother! Understand that I'm not hardwired for anything other than my bra.  So for this guy to hang in with me: I am so lucky.

Twentieth century lifestyle and values, absolutely.  Still, I cruise in the twenty-first, with the webmaster as captain of my technological ship.

Bully for You...Written for the Colorado Cross-Disabilties Coalition

People go into professions that suit their personal psychological needs as well as their physical and mental abilities.  A pediatrician, for example, usually has his own more childlike view of the world and enjoys children; a physician who treats only adults, will be more comfortable with patients and people who are over the age of 18.

Those who relate well with others, do just that in their workplaces--they enjoy the camaraderie of their colleagues, and their customers.  Folks who are more task oriented, preferring to involve themselves with skills rather than customers, orient to occupations that are duty-focused.  Individuals who would rather control or direct, are most often selected for leadership positions, not wanting to be confined to the day-to-day tasks, nor having to "relate" to folks as their primary goal.  These are your three types of workers: "Taskers;" leaders; "relaters."

It generally works this way.  Sadly, workers who are in the wrong jobs for their psychological needs, either don't remain there very long, or aren't very effective in terms of performance--let alone occupationally fulfilled.  Career preferences chosen according to an individual's psychological needs are as important as any training, schooling, or experience that one encounters.
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The world of disabilities is enormous.  Today, people are living longer, managing to survive terrible ordeals, illnesses, and deficits. When an infant or child is too immature to advocate for himself, when a person's physical, mental, or emotional abilities are compromised, when aging takes those properties from people who were at one time, able to function independently but no longer can, there is a dis-ability to participate adequately within the mainstream world.

Providers are called in: Caregivers in all varieties; social workers; healthcare professionals; medical support personnel; educators; job coaches;therapists; advocates; nurses along a wide spectrum of expertise re: special needs; agencies for this function or that.

One of the tragedies, yet all-too-frequent realities for the more "helpless victim" and the "rescuing caregiver" or provider, can be a blur between professional and personal needs on the parts of the caregivers and/or the people who are in charge.

The primary role of the caregiver, in any capacity, is not meant to be a personal one, but a professional one. There are boundaries or limits between client and caregiver; there are duties or executive orders that lie between them. While a caregiver must be compassionate and understanding in his job, the role of a provider primarily is not about being a people person, so much as it is about being a task person.  Get the job done, provide comfort and proper care, above all. Duty first.  Or the patient can be injured or die. Nurturing, protection, enabling, have their places; however, the caregiver's focus must be objective, and separate from the client or patient, before all personal involvements.

What can happen, when an individual who is primarily a people person (who wants to be friends, pals, a parent or sibling) is placed in the caregiver's dutiful role, and that professional is truly not suited for properly performing regimented tasks and executing details, lines get crossed.  The caregiver who is more personally people oriented instead of distanced, disciplined, and objective enough to perform and organize in an exemplary manner, ends up re-focusing his or her own "duties" so that they become more about controlling the patient, rather than seeing to those elements that surround the patient, and support his wellbeing.  A kind of guardian effect may occur, where the healthcare professional decides that a personal relationship with the client is more important than the tasks this professional was originally hired to perform: Father knows best? Mother knows best?  Nope.  Support person knows best. And, that's not okay.

Caregivers, providers, support people, or agencies of any type, can easily slip away from the tasks at hand, and become instead, very people oriented or personally involved with the patient.  Thus, the priority of the caregiver is no longer about objective care, but subjectively about the patient needing care that seemingly only the caregiver can provide; that only the caregiver knows how to provide.  It creates a dependency, and it validates the caregiver's psychological need to be personally connected, in order to be of value.  The tasks the caregiver was originally hired to perform for the patient, become secondary to the caregiver's own psychological needs.

What is potentially worse is the same scenario but where the caregiver becomes a leader, or puts himself in charge of the patient; a role of importance and control, not through a personal relationship, but rather through a kind of executive decision made by the caregiver, himself.  This healthcare provider or caregiver, legislates the needs of the particular client or patient to the exclusion of others--including the patient, himself.   Control gradually becomes absolute.  It is no longer about the patient's receiving objectively evaluated care from a competent task person; all else is subordinated to the caregiver's need to control, commanding others to do what was once the caregiver's actual task-oriented job of scheduling, organizing, and executing specific duties.

The inappropriate shift in roles, in order to fill personal psychological needs, warps a caregiver in whatever capacity; the thrust of that individual toward his client, student, or patient, is no longer a clear, distanced evaluative focus, but rather one of superiority.  It's all too easy when tending folks who are challenged in one way or another, to forget about respect, empathy, distancing, boundaries; and to slip into the role of ruler, surrogate parent, or boss.   Providers and caregivers, remember, come in all sorts of ancillary job descriptions, when networking the world of healthcare.

People who are caregivers or providers in agency work or on their own; who have more psychological needs than their particular job placement may provide; on a day-in-day-out, year-by-year kind of schedule (particularly with the same clients for extended periods of time); are most susceptible when it comes to slipping out of their assigned duty-oriented careers; rather, they ease into an orientation of control.

Certainly, there are practical reasons that exist for caregivers to have a certain amount of supervisory influence, when people are disabled or challenged; these professionals are presumably trained accordingly, they have experience, and they are familiar with the patient's history in one way or another.  It is true that patients often need direction from others, in order to guide and assist themselves.

However, direction is one thing; bullying is quite another.

Simply because a person or agency has done a job for years and years and years; has expertise in his field; has taken responsibility in various areas of his vocation; it does not give him a green light when it comes to taking charge of another person's life, to the exclusion of that individual's personal rights or the rights of others. When it comes to contribution, input, or care that is of significant benefit to a patient or client, there must be shared responsibility between all parties; the professionals must stick to the job descriptions they were meant to carry out.

When any caregiver or support person takes over the rights of a particular individual; when that individual becomes manipulated or less independent as a result of increasing control on the part of that caregiver, what is referred to as "for your own good," is more aptly  labeled "ego trip."  It speaks to the psychological needs of a healthcare professional or agency gone awry and who has turned away from the tasks that are his responsibility;  instead, twisting his job to suit himself, either by creating a too dependent relationship with the client, or by legislating what the client needs or ought to do:  Not only so that it ostensibly suits the client, but primarily so that it suits the caregiver's needs to control, as well.

Either way, it's about personal psychological needs trumping job-description. It's about bullying rather than advocating for the patient's right to be treated as normally as possible, and with as much dignity and respect as possible, given his special situation.

Five Finger Exercise

I would like to say that I come from a long line of Fingernails.  Every woman in our family has had Fingernails since I can remember.  Generations of Fingernails.  Manicured, buffed, polished to the nine's.  Deep reds, wines, and burgundies.

It all started with Cherries In The Snow--Charles Revson's, and Revlon's, very first shade of adapted automobile paint--helping women to buck up during the Depression and War effort.

Always, Fingernails.  It was never an issue among us.  Since I was six years old, I had long nails.   I learned to take care of them myself, albeit I didn't start wearing red polish for years and years:  A family tradition. One wasn't human, let alone a female or feminine, without Fingernails.  I was convinced that they possessed some bit of magical power, in order to make a woman complete.  I had to have them.  Inwardly, I knew this.

When I was ten, I made the fatal mistake of taking piano lessons. Who knew? I was the bane of my teacher's existence.  Why?  The long fingernails.  Did you know that in order to play the piano, one has to have Short fingernails?  Yes.  I took lessons year after year, and it was an ongoing battle about the fingernails. Clickety clack, clickety clack, upon the keys.  My teacher, who was petite, tremulous, dressed in flowered silks without a brassiere, and with eminently blue hair, wanted--nay, demanded--my nails be short; to round the hand, curve the fingers, hit the keys with the soft pads of the quiet fingertips.  Power to the upper knuckles and carpals. A fair request.

I, on the other hand, wanted to look utterly gorgeous from the wrists down, even in the fifth grade.  Why not?  Everyone in my family was gorgeous in the very same way.  Long, luscious nails upon even longer, artistic and beautifully sculpted fingers and hands. Do you have any idea how refreshing it is, when doing arithmetic assignments, or a social studies paper, to absentmindedly take a break, and gaze down at such elegant, slender, appendages?  My hands were so lovely that when I injured them, nothing could give me greater pleasure than to dote on the ethereal beauty of their X-rayed poise.  Think of it.

After all, I only "tickled the ivories" a few hours a week; yet, I reasoned, I had to look at my hands, 24/7.  It was obvious.  Materialistic and empirical piano vs. spiritual, eternally beautiful hands.  What's to discuss?

Ultimately, I quit the lessons, and my fingers were at peace.  I quit for other reasons, too--like ongoing migraine headaches every Monday on the spot, about four hours before lesson-time. The nails were a part of the pain.  I assure you.
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Life came, and life has gone by.
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Now, don't drop your drawers, but I'm taking piano lessons, again.  Same piano.  Same practicing only a lot more, same everything.  Different teacher (the old one died years ago). Same Fingernails.  Only, this time, with the red polish: The true family tradition remember, from generation to generation. (L'dor v' dor.)

Wouldn't you know it?  Here we go again.

This time, the nails are eminently shorter--down to the nub.  The style has changed:  Computers, touch-screens, and smart phones are the name of the game.  Short nails are a prerequisite for survival in the information age. However, I would like to say, they are not short enough for my piano teacher, and this one doesn't even have blue hair!

So help me. I clip, I file.  The nails are Below the fingertips!  But, they click. I have tall cuticles; I have long nail beds.  No matter what I do, I still click rather than tickle, the keys.  My own rhythm section.

I've taken to giving myself a manicure the night before the lessons.  I hope this will do the trick. Maybe she won't notice.  I have painted them a neutral color so that the teacher can see how stubby and minuscule these nails are, relative to their potential.  My nails short, are longer than many women's, long!  It's the way God made me.  I'm stuck.

What can you say about a woman who has three pianos--including a baby grand that substitutes as the dining room table under a chandelier-- in a living room/dining room area that's maybe 10'x15'?  There is a heavy, Victorian jacquarded tapestry of a sofa with antique gold fringe hanging all about, two over-stuffed chairs, a disc-player, and two mammoth felines. Definitely, a room out of necessity, that commands absolute order and control; everything must be in its place. Including the Fingernails. Or Else.

There you are.  I am caught.  I love the music, discipline myself to the practicing, thoroughly enjoy the teacher, delight over the charmingly petite house--fringe and all.  What to do, what to do...

Um, maybe I should tell you that my teacher had her cats de-clawed.  Do you think this is in the back of her mind?  Naaaaah, couldn't be.  Or could it?