Amidst the latest social networking 'much ado about nothing', I realized that I have not one, not two, but three friends named Samantha. While not earth-shattering on any level, it prompted me to remember that I've long held a fascination with that name, and lately an electronic occurrence has kept her in conversation. But I digress.
In the late 60's, my pre-kindergarten self tried in vain to twitch my nose and make my toys jump into their toy box, like Samantha Stevens of television's 'Bewitched'. Standing knee-deep in a jumble of puzzle pieces, Fisher-Price Little People, and my brother's cast-off Tinker Toys & Lincoln Logs, I gave her eyes-closed/finger-snapping routine many valiant efforts. Every time I opened my eyes, I had not pouffed myself onto a cloud or anywhere else. Drat. I also once tried, also in vain, to Dippity-Do my limp cornsilk hair into the flip coiffure of my television idol, much to the chagrin of my mother, who had to put Dippity-do on the chalkboard grocery list for the next trip to the grocery store. Remember, those were the days when mothers and wives slept with bristly curlers in their hair, strands well coated with stinky, Jell-o like 'setting lotion'. ( And people wonder why the divorce rate skyrocketed in the 60's and 70's... ).
A decade after Samantha Stevens' magical fame had faded away, a geneaology project in junior high led to the magnificent discovery that my great- great- great- great- grandmother's name was Samantha! Samantha Fairchild. What an incredibly beautiful name! She must have been as lovely as her name would indicate, my newly -teenaged self imagined. I pictured this woman, garbed in fine colonial gowns, bustle and bodice and all, working a needlepoint sampler. Fair hair drawn up in a mass of curls, she demurely stitched whilst listening to a minuet playing in the parlor. HA! For all I know she had a rigorous life consisting solely of farm chores on the rocky slopes of Vermont. The only hard data I gleaned way back in those pre-Internet days was her birthdate, the Vermont birthplace, and the date she married my great- great- great- great- grandfather, quite patriotically named George Washington Bassett, in the brand-spankin' new United States of America. A few generations later, my grandmother joined the Samantha-Descendants, and another two after that, I did. I'd like to know more about her. Perhaps I should renew my Ancestry.com subscription and climb the branches of the family tree.
My three Samantha-friends each seem to have her hale and hardy-colonist spirit, interestingly enough, and all three beautiful women have a way with words. None of them possess magical powers, dang it all, but between the mission work of one, the acerbic wit of another, and the insights into human nature of the third, they snap! tidbits of fascinating life-views onto my computer screen. Miss Acerbic Wit happens to be daughter # 3 of my homeward-bound-in-a-short-while best friend, which leads me to the thread of contemporary Samantha-isms I mentioned a while ago.
Jonathan and I Skype/Yahoo cyber-chat twice a day...once when he gets up in the morning in Afghanistan, which is usually just before I hit the hay stateside, and then God love him he sees my pre-coffee bleary self after I wake up and he has finished another day. He putters back and forth getting coffee, sometimes answering the door to the 'ninja' maids ( they wear black scarves and hoods, and although I'm sure they are perfectly nice Afghani women making big bucks cleaning up after contractors, they look scary! LOL ), leaving the frame for a few seconds, and sometimes I go fetch coffee and leave my webcam staring at an empty doorway behind my computer chair. Often the feed will freeze up, and when either of us return to our respective chairs, we do not show up on the monitor for a few seconds, and after our network catches up, we POP! back into view.
Just like Samantha Stevens. It's about time my nose-twitching worked. Been working on it since Armstrong ambled across the moon.
