Click

Click. The computer screen says it’s 10:00 p.m.

Click. I type in my password.

Click. My right hand embraces the mouse.

Click. I open Solitaire.

Click. I start to play.

For three days, I have played Solitaire.

Why haven’t I turned on my cell phone, looked at my emails?

Click. I win the first game.

Click. Play.

Click. Wait! The stupid game wants me to play an ad.

I refuse to pay to get rid of ads, so I’ll just have to put up with them.

Like most bipolar people, I know there are no good reasons not to take my meds; I just don’t get around to doing it some days.

Like the last three days. Like today.

I go through manic phases where I can’t stop playing computer games.

Click. The ad ends.

Click. I win the second game.

Click. Play.

Click. Another ad.

I’ve always wanted to be witty and smart.

Unfortunately, I began life bald and itchy.

I had little or no hair on my head for almost a year. My skin was sensitive to anything scratchy, like weeds and wool. Hot weather made me sweaty. My cheeks were ruddy, and my nose dripped. I sneezed, a lot.

Click. The ad ends.

Click. I start to play.

Click. I win the third game.

Click. Play.

Click. Another ad.

Dad often embarrassed me by telling friends that I was a stripper. He said he had to pick up my discarded clothes on his way home to our second-floor apartment.

Click. The ad ends.

Click. I start to play.

Click. I lose the fourth game.

Click. Play.

Click. Another ad.

Despite weed rash, I found some of my best friends living in the woods behind my grandparents’ garden fence. I would squat down as close to the bare ground as possible and watch ants and worms and beetles make their way among the blades of grass.

“Where are you going?” I would ask. “Why won’t you crawl up my hand and play with me?”

Sometimes, at the sound of my voice, the insects would stop so I could listen to their answers. “I’m tired of getting food for my family so I’m looking for a hole to hide in for a while.”

“Really?” I asked. “I think there is a big hole just behind me. I’ll move over so you can look and see.” And my new best friend would scoot down the hole.

I was quite proud of myself.

Unfortunately, before I had time to explore the woods next to the garden, a large hand would come down and scoop me up and take me away.

“Bye-bye,” I whispered to my friends.

Click. The ad ends.

Click. I start to play.

Click. I lose the fifth game.

Click. Play.

Click. Another ad.

Three wins. Two losses.

When I was about two, clad only in a comfy, soft cotton diaper, I quickly crawled backwards down to our apartment’s first floor and out the screen door, which was conveniently open.

We lived near the top of a hill in a town called Swissvale. My playpen had given me a bird’s-eye view for as long as I could remember.

Finally, I could explore.

I scooted along the sidewalk to the top of the hill. Folks riding by in a streetcar didn’t notice me.

After following the streetcar tracks around the corner to the right and then to the left, I decided to take a well-deserved rest, in the middle of the streetcar tracks.

People suddenly came running toward me from every direction, yelling.

The drugstore owner lifted me up into the air.

“Well, well,” he laughed. “You finally escaped.”

He carried me across the street into his nice, cool drugstore. While he dialed our phone number, his wife took me into their tiny kitchen, found a large pitcher of lemonade, and poured me a little glass, all without putting me down.

Wow! So, this was what was on the other side of my hill.

Click. The ad ends.

Click. I start to play.

Click. I win the sixth game.

Click. Play.

Click. Another ad.

My score is four wins to two losses. Best of the week, so far.

My brother was born shortly after my adventure, and when I was almost four, we moved into a house on top of the highest hill in Swissvale, across and up the street from my grandparents.

There were fifteen houses on our street then, and there still are. It is a time machine that I go back to on Google Maps from time to time.

Doors, windows, cars, and garages were usually open on weekends, with radios blaring. We never missed an inning of a Pirates’ game or a pass by a quarterback for the Steelers.

The children of the street lived on the street. Our fathers drove off to work early in the morning in Edward Scissorhands fashion. After breakfast, our mothers dressed us in play clothes, opened the front doors, and told us to behave. We took off running for hills and trees and woods and the playground behind my grandparents’ house. If we even thought of doing something bad or dangerous, we would see curtains being pulled back from kitchen windows. Then our mothers would come looking for us, hairbrushes at the ready, and smack us for whatever our rotten neighbors told them we were doing-or not doing.

At lunchtime, our mothers came outside and called for us. We ran home, hungry and dirty. Wash your face, wash your hands, here’s lunch, go take a nap.

After naptime, usually around two or three, we were off again until we heard our fathers’ cars return.

“Hi, Dad,” my brother and I hollered, following him inside as Mother handed him a large whiskey sour. They lit up their cigarettes and walked into the kitchen, sipping their drinks, totally ignoring us while we ran around seeking attention.

“No, he didn’t!” my mother said.

“Yes,” my father said, “He went back on everything he promised me and hired his daughter’s new husband. He just graduated from Princeton, so what chance do I have?”

“Well, I never.”

Click. The ad ends.

Click. I start to play.

Click. I lose the seventh game.

Click. Play.

Click. Another ad.

My score is four wins to three losses.

By the time I was ready for first grade, my upwardly mobile parents were so worried I couldn’t read or write, they took me to visit our pediatrician.

Our very large doctor handed five-year-old me, almost sick due to my parents’ anxiety, a slip of plain paper and a crayon, and instructed, kindly, “Sandra, write your name.”

I wrote my name: “ARDNAS”

My parents exclaimed, “See! She can’t write her name!”

The doctor reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a small mirror. I swear he winked at me as he held the mirror up to my name: “SANDRA”

Ha! So there! I am so smart, I can write my name backwards! Let me see you try!

Click. The ad ends.

Click. I start to play.

Click. I lose the eighth game.

Click. Play.

Click. Another ad.

Uh-oh. The score is tied, four wins to four losses.

I stayed left-handed no matter how hard the teachers and the principal tried to make me right-handed.

Thanks to Ancestry, I finally discovered that I might have inherited the left-handed gene from my (perhaps) royal ancestors. Prince William is left-handed.

But what about READING?!

There is a photograph of, finally, cute (short, curly, blonde hair; chubby cheeks, button nose–Shirley Temple) me sitting in a lounge chair in our backyard, reading a book to the neighborhood children standing behind me. I hadn’t started school yet.

A few years ago, I looked at the photograph again and noticed that the book was upside down!

I realized that I had been making up stories my whole life!

Click. The ad ends.

Click. I start to play.

Click. I win the ninth game.

Click. Play.

Click. Another ad.

Five to four. I need to pay attention if I want to keep on winning

As soon as I could hold safety scissors, I began cutting out paper dolls. My new best friends and I lived in a world between my bed and my front window, where no one could see us. We shopped and went to football games and proms. We dressed in silks and satins and velvets. The young men we dated were always tall, handsome, polite, and invisible.

At the end of seventh grade, my parents decided that I was growing up. Mother took the paper dolls away and installed a skirted dresser with a mirror. It sat on the other side of the bed, near the door, where everyone could watch me.

In the 1980s, I wrote a poem:

“TRAGEDY: When the paper dolls aren’t real anymore.”

Click. The ad ends.

Click. I start to play.

Click. I win the tenth game.

Click. Play.

Click. Another ad.

Six to four. Yeah! I’m winning.

I began attending Winchester Thurston School for Girls in eighth grade. No, it was not a “reform” school. It was a “prep” school. I had become a “young lady.”

I was not, however, cute anymore. For the next five years, I wore bottle-thick glasses to offset my near-sightedness and braces to cure my unfortunate overbite. I had freckles (thanks, Grandpa!), oily skin, and pimples! And I still got hay fever.

My dishwater-blonde hair was pulled straight back so you couldn’t see the kinky curls. Rollers and hairspray wouldn’t arrive until I started college.

I took English Literature (that’s pronounced lit-er-a-toor); English Grammar (sentence diagrams, anyone?); French Literature (en français); French Grammar (en français, aussi); Latin (yes, I learned to read and write Latin by my junior year: “Omnia Gallia in tres partes divisa est.” I also studied Algebra I and II; Geometry; Biology, Chemistry, History, and Art History.

Course grades were written on the left side of our report cards, but scores on the right side were more important. The first line read: “Consideration for others.” A student could get straight As but no checkmark next to “Consideration for others” and find herself sitting in a chair in the headmistress’s office, with her teachers and parents nearby, trying to find out what was wrong.

I always got “Consideration” checked.

Next came “Responsibility.”

I always got that checked, as well, but found myself in the Headmistress’s office in my junior year with my parents sitting on either side of me.

It turned out I was “Too Responsible”!

Click. The ad ends.

Click. I start to play.

Click. I lose the eleventh game.

Click. Play.

Click. Another ad.

Six to five. Time to focus!

Damien Hirst's sculpture “End Game” is divided into three sections. The center section shows male and female skeletons suspended back-to-back, the male skeleton on the left and the female skeleton on the right. In the remaining two sections, one on each end of the sculpture, are row after row of clean, shining medical instruments. After the sudden and unexpected death of Robert Holland Chaney, “End Game” was gifted to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, by his wife and daughter. It is no longer exhibited.

My friend Mildred died suddenly from an aneurysm. She had just entered her eighties. Her life was full, and she was in excellent health. She and her husband were active in their church and community. They square-danced.

Dan Duncan died from a similar cause. He seemed to be in good health, had just been declared Houston’s wealthiest person, and was on Forbes’ list of billionaires.

Recently, a neighbor was found dead of an aneurysm. I happened to be entering our apartment building when she was being taken to the funeral home. She was covered by a fuzzy, bright-red blanket.

A young woman who worked for me a few years ago Facebooked that her father had been killed on his way home by someone who was driving the wrong way on the highway.

Did I mention I am 84?

Click. The ad ends.

Click. I start to play.

Click. I win the twelfth game.

Click. Play.

Click. Another ad.

Six to six. Tied!

For years, I have clipped meaningful snippets written by witty and smart people. In the next room are at least thirty boxes crammed with books, booklets, journals, file folders, and binders full of great thoughts and good intentions.

In the June 14, 1998, issue of Vanity Fair the British psychiatrist Anthony Storr wrote that an individual who “fears love almost as much as he fears hatred” may turn to creative activity not only out of an impulse to experience aesthetic pleasure, but also “to defend himself against anxiety stimulated by conflicting demands for solitude and human contact.”

Click. The ad ends.

Click. I start to play.

Click. I win the thirteenth game!

Did I mention I was born on October 13? Sunday not Friday. I may be a winner, but I feel very vulnerable, very out of control. I can't blame all these dead people for my Solitaire obsession. But I can thank them for inspiring me to write this story.

It’s 11:30 p.m.

Click. End Game.

Click.