I woke up this morning thinking about an old childhood friend, Janel Davis, whom I have not seen in years and years — and remembering how much our adolescent selves worshipped Rod Stewart. We would sit on the grass at lunch at Tenaya Middle School in Fresno, California, in our baby blue saddle back Dittos, our lips glistening with bubble gum Lip Smackers…and sing this song with ALL our hearts…and REALLY, REALLY mean every word, even though, at 13, we had NO IDEA what every word really meant.
And now we are both middle-aged women with children twice the age we were when a best friend, a single song, the right pair of pants, and the endless possibilities of life stretching out in front of you could mean so much.
Muffy Bolding is a mother/writer/actor/knitter/feminist/withered debutante who likes the smell of asparagus pee, and remains obsessed with the bathroom hygiene of her three children -- despite the fact that they are 23, 19, and 16. She is blissfully married to a cute Jewish boy who looks like Willie Wonka, but remains tragically in love with the dead poet, Ted Hughes. She has the mouth of a Teamster, and her patron saint is Rocco (pestilence relief.) Ms. Bolding lives in Southern California, where she enjoys typing words, making movies, and plucking the rings from the fingers of the dead. She was the co-creator and Editor-in-Chief of the award winning satire zine, Fresno Lampoon, and in between writing screenplays, carnival barking, and savagely threatening her trio of darling larvae with a wooden spoon, she currently publishes the zine, "Withered Debutante." More of her work can also be found in the anthology, "Mamaphonic: Balancing Motherhood and Other Creative Acts", the compilation zine, "Mamaphiles III: Coming Home", as well as in The Cortland Review and hipmama.com. She is currently writing and producing for film and television, and working on a book of essays entitled, "Inside A Chinese Dragon." She has slept around, but not nearly as much as she would have liked.
muffy bolding 