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Jane Grows Up
Humorous musings on growing older from a slightly neurotic New Yorker
Native New Yorker, Jane Stroll infuses her comedy with a psychology of human relations based on her years working as a Therapist and Social worker.
Intelligence and a skewed view of reality are the hallmarks of her humor.
Reviewers have called her “offbeat”, “neurotic” and “hilarious”.
She has performed in all the best comedy clubs in New York including Caroline’s and the Improvisation (the “original”), and cabaret rooms including Roses Turn, The Duplex, , Don’t Tell Mama, and the Metropolitan Room. She has appeared on Lifetimes “Girls Night Out” (twice), “Caroline’s Comedy Hour on A&E, “The History of Jewish Comedy” on PBS.
Currently she is developing her own one woman show and has performed it in LA, NYC and Mexico.
Moth Attack
I am grateful award season is over. Finally I can begin to accept myself as I physically am…over 2 pounds, no designer evening gowns hanging in my closet-just wouldn’t work for my job as a Social Worker in the Bronx. Doing my best with what I have to work with and just as I feel I will slip over the edge with these fashion icons from outer space there is always Joan Rivers on the fashion police to bring me back to reality.
So life goes along in it’s petty pace (thank you William Shakespeare) from day to day until the next crisis strikes. My closets are invaded by moths. Of course as soon as I bring this up to the exterminator he doesn’t know what I am talking about and says I need to catch one….I am many things but not a moth catcher. And this variety is small and moves like the wind. When they die they seem to disappear into moth heaven or hell (for what they put me through I vote for hell)….so how am I going to show him the specimen. Month go by until one of these brilliant “I hate my job so I am going to do it as superficially as possible. Besides, this moth woman is not young enough to flirt with there is no point in doing much. However one of these men actually determines I have moths.
True what really matter is how we look at what happens to us, our attitude and what we do about the situation. Frankly after losing half my wardrobe to these cannibals of cloth; paying enough money to my dry cleaner to put her next generation of family through college-or at least a course at the New School; my attitude is not good at all.
And if one more person in a pathetic attempt to make me feel better tell me “at least it’s not bedbugs” I may have to kill them.
Yes I had too many clothes, unfortunately not enough to qualify for a hoarders show, but too many However I bought them, they live here and it is up to me what stays and what goes. That decision is not up to some winged creature with an addiction to wool.
Even in the insect world looks will get you far. If I see a roach and somehow get the nerve to kill it, it will take me half a roll of toilet paper to pick up the body; to throw it in the garbage; and immediately get rid of the garbage. Roaches are ugly. My moths had a golden strip down there little backs, gossamer wings and not five hundred legs. Again when I wasn’t single my husband knew that part of the contract was bugs were in his domain. Man the hunter, gatherer and killer of ugly insects. The roach is ugly to us, the golden moth arrives unseen, finds some clothing to its liking, and settles in for what we are now calling winter has the advantage.
When you go through this kind of experience you can get desperate. So I bought a lot of cedar; moths don’t like cedar (-go know-) but not trusting completely I also bought moth balls. Just a few in each closet, but the odor on the clothes completes the delusion that I am 80 years old and my mother lied on my birth certificate to make herself seem younger.
I am so desperate to avoid another outbreak if I could I would put a silver back gorilla in the closet I would. Although somehow I think the moths would like his fur a little too much.
It is all about coping on my own as a mature woman and how I chose to look at this event from hell.
I have decided I am not a victim; this is an opportunity for change and new clothes. But happy? All things considered I would resemble the village idiot of yore if this event brought me joy.
It all would have been oh so much easier in the doing if I was not living alone. Living alone is very New York City. We are like the big cats in the wild. In Chelsea some a little fancier but none the less …The big cats are loners. The male arrives, has sex with the female, leaves without any child support agreement, she raises the cub; she teaches the cub how to survive and sends him/her out on their own when they are ready. The only different cats are the lions. They live in a pride of females and the young with one male acting as the bouncer and defending his territory. The other grown males form a bachelor pride of their own and eventually take over from the old male whose only sin was growing old.
Not so different from the singles scene of the human being. One basic difference the lions haven’t discovered cyber space and dating sites as yet.
This month is actually woman’s month where we remember Rosie the Riveter who proved during world war 11 that women could do anything.
Every challenge shows me that I am woman “hear me roar” – watch me live alone for the rest of my life from all the roaring….but I will live it with respect for all the Rosie’s doing it by themselves and doing it well.
I don’t need a red carpet to know we all have a place in this world we share; all except for moths in my closet.
