One winter day in 1967, my dad, mom, big sister, and I drove an hour north from our little Jersey Shore town to New York City to take a guided tour of NBC Studios. I was nine.
I became over-the-top excited about one of the tour's exhibits: a display of the small stop-action figures used in the 1964 TV special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Rudolph was the herald of the magic of Christmas (and still is—this year it celebrates its sixtieth anniversary), and I loved its characters as if they were friends. Like Rudolph with his odd red nose and Hermey, the yellow-haired elf who wanted to be a dentist instead of one of Santa's toymakers, I too, felt like a misfit, especially when emotions would overwhelm me and set off my "nervous stomach," as my mom called it, which would, in turn, trigger my dreaded hurl.
I had recently missed a few months of third grade because of a duodenal ulcer. I was a worrier. And my worrying—about my math mistake made at the chalkboard, about seeing one child taunt another, about kids taunting me—made me feel like a freak because no one else seemed to get as stressed as I did over the everyday emotions of life—sadness, agitation, empathy, and even happiness and excitement. If my dad approved of my science homework, I worried I wouldn't be able to live up to his expectations next time. If girls asked me to play jump rope with them, I'd panic I'd trip them up. My worry would settle into vulnerability in the pit of my stomach.
When I was four or five, my sister and I would play a game in the sandbox under the wild cherry tree in our backyard. We'd each fill a mitten with sand and take turns "walking" them, fingertip-end down, saying "Teacher, I feel sick." Then we'd squeeze the mitten until the sand spewed out, and we'd laugh like there had never been anything funnier.
It made no sense that I laughed. I've always hated thinking about throwing up. I'm shocked I'm writing about it now.
Nausea would sneak up on me but then hit with an abrupt heat. It was vital for me to remain as still and silent as possible, to avoid all stimuli, and to pretend that the world around me didn't exist.
My sister always noticed the subtle signs of my distress—my sudden stillness, my flushed cheeks, and my set, straight mouth, paralleling my pixie-cut bangs and furrowed brow. When everything became all too much, that's when I was in trouble.
Back on that day in 1967, on the NBC Studios tour, my sister was on watch.
In the Rudolph exhibit, beside the figures of Rudolph and Hermey, we saw Clarice (the love-interest doe), the abominable snowman, and the little pink-polka-dot elephant from the Island of Misfit Toys—home to the square-wheeled train, the cowboy riding an ostrich, and all the other defective playthings apparently no child would want—an idea I found preposterous and unfair (I wanted them). Being frail, pale, and anxious, I felt odd, just like they did. I empathized with their longing to be loved by a child. Seeing those sad toys gave me a stomachache.
Our tour guide told us we were invited to go into Studio 8H to be part of the audience for The Match Game. I was thrilled. Now, on top of my grumbling gut, I began to hyperventilate from excitement. I forced a smile anyway.
After we were settled in our seats—we were in the front row!—Johnny Olson, the show's announcer, walked back and forth in front of the audience, microphone in hand, looking up into the tiered theater, joking with the crowd. My sister whispered that he was "warming us up." My stomach was churning. My smile was fading. Johnny Olson announced the stars joining Gene Rayburn on that day's show: Fannie Flagg and—I could hardly believe my ears—Soupy Sales. I got very warm.
For years, I'd had a crush on Soupy Sales, who hosted a children's show I adored. I felt I had a special connection to him. I had also convinced myself that he was a distant relative after I learned his actual last name was the same as my mother's second cousin twice removed from North Carolina, Soupy Sales's home state. I had written him a fan letter explaining that he and I were related and inviting him to my upcoming birthday lunch at the Asbury Park Howard Johnson's.
My sister noticed even before I did. "Are you all right?" she whispered, peering at my face.
"I'm fine," I frowned. I wasn't.
"Are you sure?" she asked.
I didn't answer, trying to keep perfectly still.
Johnny Olson was tossing bags of favors to audience members, making his way toward our side of the aisle, and when he finally stood in front of me with a huge smile and asked if I wanted some candy, that's when I hurled. I don't think Johnny Olson jumped back quickly enough to be spared.
Sadly, I didn't get to see the love of my life, Soupy Sales. My family instantly rushed me out of Studio 8H. In the hallway, I started to feel better; I was no longer overwhelmed by all the exciting things around me.
I think of the experiences I've missed out on when joy itself frazzled and flustered me: the boy I didn't kiss, the sea I didn't swim in, the nights I didn't dance because the butterflies in my belly were flitting too intensely.
As I've grown older, I try to sail better on the waves of my emotions.
Each day I sit with the heartache, the messy excitement, and the pink-polka-dot elephants of vulnerability, and I try to not let it all deluge me as it did that day in Studio 8H.
Maybe the secret lies in that old squeezing-sand-from-a-mitten game my sister and I played as kids—because as much as I hated even the thought of hurling, the mitten game always made me laugh. In a moment of laughter, worry simply vanishes.
And if we stay in the present moment, we can feel happiness and not fret about it disappearing.
Like Rudolph and Hermey, I'm glad I'm a misfit. My love has been a little more unconventional, my friendships a little deeper, my life a little quirkier for it. Maybe a better word for me is "unique." Maybe that's a better word for all of us.
In Rudolph, Santa finally arrived to carry the misfit toys to their new, loving homes, but I no longer need Santa to swoop in and save me; my remote island isn't such a bad place to be. These days I kiss, swim, and dance. Part of me still wants to pretend the world around me doesn't exist, but I'm finally seeing things as they are—butterflies and all—without hurling. It only took sixty years.
