Security Question – Favorite Actor
In my mom’s book club notebook, she had included a small piece of paper with her responses to some online security questions.
Mom tried, as did Dad, to embrace computers, but it was just too much of a leap for them. I remember the first piece of technology to enter our house. It was my dad’s calculator. Large, black and it displayed glowing red numbers that seemed to glow out of the dark depth behind.
We were told in no uncertain terms that we “WERE NOT ALLOWED TO TOUCH DAD’S CALCULATOR.” It was not a toy, it was ridiculously expensive, it was a tool that allowed my Dad to balance our family checkbook and keep everything in balance.
It was a tool, NOT A TOY!!
All I knew about it was that my brother showed me that if you entered the number 8, followed by two 0’s and then another 8 – it spelled the word “B00B.”
This tool was clearly both magical and naughty.
In my parents’ lifetime, they went from getting this incredible calculator tool that made their lives easier to color TV (I remember the day we got our first color TV – we watched The Red Balloon and I knew that another piece of magical technology had entered our lives). My parents got a microwave, washers and dryers became “smarter”. TVs ran with the use of impossible remotes that forever needed to be reset (lost power? Call my brother, he’ll help get the remote working again. Again and again.) Bracelets counted their steps and books could be read on a flat screen that you held in your hands.
My parents adapted but like many of their generation, they didn’t fully “get” the internet.
Each text message from mom began with “Dear Wendy” and ended with “love mom.”
The same went for every voice message.
Every. Single. One.
Mom, you don’t need to say that, I’d tell her, it’s understood.
But it’s the right thing to do, she’d reply. And by the way, she’d add, stop using “Thanks” and go back to using “Thank you”, it’s more respectful.
Mom would get lost in the internet. She understood email and Facebook to some degree but ordering online was beyond what she could do. Stream a movie? Never.
I constantly got texts from her like “how do I save my photos?” and “How do I share them?”
That commercial where the older woman is “sharing” her photos on the wall with her friends (that’s not how it works) speaks the truth to many of our older members.
Still mom tried. She dutifully signed up for different apps and she kept track of the relentless security questions.
Which brings me back to this tiny slip of paper. On it she wrote:
Security Question – Favorite Actor
And under this question she added Paul Newman.
Mom!!!!!!
I had no idea. What I knew about Paul Newman was the following:
- He lived in the next town over – occasionally we’d see him while shopping
- I and just about everyone else in my class had seen Cool Hand Luke (1967) – we learned that women’s breasts were something that drove men crazy and we also learned the line (that I still use today) “what we have here is a failure to communicate.”
- I had to be told that Newman was the dark haired one in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid (1969) (didn’t recognize him from Cool Hand.)
- Recognized that Newman was funny and had great chemistry with Redford.
- Thoroughly enjoyed The Sting (but didn’t like that mustache)
- Newman did other movies, other projects.
- Then he created a company that made food where the proceeds went to charity. We constantly had Newman salad dressing and popcorn in the house.
- He raced cars and drank beer.
- Seemed like a nice enough guy.
But nice enough to be mom’s favorite actor? Remember this was before VHS, if mom saw Newman in a movie then she had to go to the theater or watch it on TV. She had to be ready for Paul to appear, not the other way around.
What was it about this guy that caught mom’s attention?
I found a short “Hourly History” of Paul Newman at a thrift store so I purchased it and settled down to read about this man who had caught my mom’s respect.
Newman was born in 1925 (Mom was born in ‘27) in the middle of a snowstorm. Clearly, this was a being that already came to earth with a story to be told.
He grew up in Ohio in the shadow of his father’s sporting good business. It was understood that Paul would someday take over the business. Newman had other plans.
He went to college, followed his passion which was acting. Enrolled in the Navy and missed out on being a pilot because it turned out he was colorblind.
Got married young, had kids and worked his way through television and movies. Found true love (while still married to someone else) got divorced, remarried, had more kids.
Busy guy.
For the most part, he was as handsome as they come and he was talented – a brilliant combination in Hollywood.
But here’s the kicker that I didn’t know about, but apparently Mom knew. Newman was very involved in politics.
AND HE WAS A DIE-HARD DEMOCRAT.
He believed that people should have dignity at work. Kids should be fed. People (especially children) with illness should have hope and treatment.
And joy.
Mom was a democrat. Dad was not.
When she was in hospice, my mother told me the story of her future brother-in-law asking to speak with her before she married my step-father.
It was bad enough that Mom wasn’t a Catholic, but to be a democrat? Blasphemy. He asked my mother to not marry my future step-father.
Mom pulled a bit of what I now recognize as a Newman move and basically told my now-uncle to “pound sand.” She had other plans which included not only marrying my step-father but absorbing his two kids into the marriage.
This is the same woman who when confronted by the elementary school principal in yet another meeting of “what are we going to do about Wendy?” told them that willful children, especially girls, are the ones that go places and get scholarships. She told them that absolutely nothing needed to be done “about Wendy.” Leave her alone and let her thrive.
I got a full scholarship to the University of Connecticut.
Mom was right.
These are the things you learn about your mother when you are an adult. That your mom really had your back. That she was political in a quiet but determined way. That she respected talent and drive.
And that like we all do, your mom learned from role models – how to fight for what is right, how to persist.
Then she did what all good teachers do, she passed on what she learned, so that the knowledge would not be lost to others.
***
Hi mom.
