Probably my older sister is the one who let out the secret ingredient found in vanilla.  If not, I’m sure I’m blamed the missing bottle of flavoring on her like I did most everything.  Learning that vanilla contained a lot of alcohol, my eleven-year-old hoodlum friends and I decided to have a party.  The vanilla coke bonanza came with a drawback.  While baker’s vanilla smells wonderful, an actual full teaspoon taken at once brings on the gag response.  But, no worry.  We were determined to experience intoxication.  We got around the taste by dissolving the teaspoon of vanilla into quart-sized glasses of Coke and ice.  And we all “became” rolling-around-on-the-floor smashed….Right.

“Which is more important?  The world as it exists?  Or the world you THINK exists, the one you are making up and responding to?”

Well, of course, our lives are determined more by the twisted reality we’ve made up than the actual facts.  How else can we account for gamey first marriages or engagements, and the fact that we only wear the front ten percent of the clothes in our closets?

We humans are reality creating machines.  The next several entries will focus on easy-to-see ways our responses are determined by an environment constructed to satisfy our fears and hopes.

When a person who is into voodoo is given a curse, he or she is more likely to fall ill.  But, responding to a distorted world isn’t always bad.  A couple of decades ago, when ADHD was young, the distractibility of children was attributed to either sugar or preservatives in the diet.  Later the connection was disproved.  And yet, the children whose mothers’ monitored what they ate actually improved.  The act of monitoring in some way lent a placebo effect.

Many studies have demonstrated that pain can be somewhat relieved when the patient is given a sugar pill believed to be a narcotic.  The “medicine” is even more effective when you tell the patient, “We have to be careful not to give you too much of this drug.  It’s very powerful.”

Personally?  I’m all-happy an into placebo meds.  Let’s take headache medicine.  I walk right past the Walgreen’s knock-off stuff every time.  I’m an expert and I’m not falling for cheap imitations of the real “super” medication.  I pay four times as much for Excedrin.  And not just any Excedrin either.  I hunt down the best, most effective pills.  There was a day when I settled for the plain white pills.  But, I’m not sticking with an old model when a new, more effective tablet comes out.  No more pansy white pills once the green capsules , the Express Gels, hit the shelf.  Now, who wouldn’t want relief as fast as possible?

And then, just when I’d found the pinnacle of pills, these geniuses of headache relief marketing came out with bright red capsules with the white stripes!  My chronic inflammatory diseased fingers felt better just holding the bottle.  Oh, what’s that you say?  The ingredients are the same?  Pa-shaw.   

Tomorrow.  The Placebo Hotel Room….What Emotional Decisions Passing for “Thoughts” Direct Your Actions?…continues.

Note: When our anxiety gets the best of us, when our emotions are running the show, sentences come out of our mouths….completely short-circuiting the thinking process. Also, our Emotional Guidance System knows everything about how other people should live their lives…

The thinking part of our brain…considers the long-term effect of our words…our thinking brain also but not that chronically insecure demon inside us…ready to tell the world what we “think.”…That cute little big-mouthed demon is particularly adept at noticing ways in which people are living their lives differently from ourseleves…and asking the question, “What’s wrong with those people?”

This is a dangerous and unfortunate practice since whatever monstrous and stupid behavior you dare mock in others…you will be fated to one day to not only accept…but to relish.

When I was in college, if I spotted a car with a small dog hanging his silly head out the window, his ears flapping in the wind…I could be relied on to point out my superior choices in life by asking, “What kind of person wants to tie themselves down with a house dog? What’s WRONG with those people? Do they just not have enough to do that they want to run home a couple of times a day to let out the dog? There are enough things you have to do in life, what could possibly possess a person to voluntarily take on a bunch of extra work?…You know, I knew a person once who let her dog sleep in the bed….actually this wack job had two dogs sleeping in her bed.”

His name is Sammie Davis Jr. after a one-of-a-kind entertainer. Sammie’s mother is mostly shih tze and his father was one of those traveling men with a twinkle in his eye your mother warned you about. He’s getting along pretty well with Crazy Dog. Sammie’s a baby, which means he wakes up in the middle of the night and plays “leap frog” with himself on my back.

To make sense of how a very cool world traveler conducts herself…Read Part One of the 1000 Islands Incident.

Okay…Are we caught up?  There I am, pretty near passing out, my knees shaking, my face red with the heat after hours lost on the streets of Mexico City….When I spotted the National Museum of Art.  Yea!  I’m going to live and even see a few fantastic paintings.  I’d used all the glucose left in my cells just to buy my ticket…and was headed for the first salon (the air-conditioned bench, that is), when the ticket counter lady called me back.

I turned to face her, willing to listen, but also quite willing to make a run for it.  How long could they keep me in prison just for wanting desperately to see art?  I couldn’t afford to backtrack. The bench wasn’t fifty feet away. 

Then I understood that the counter lady pointed at my purse. (That is the plastic bag with my glasses and loose Excedrin and cashews. I don’t carry a purse. I have my reasons.

Through the pounding in my head, after about four tries on counter lady’s part, I understood that all briefcases and purses, no matter how pitiful, had to be checked.  Okay….Then the counter lady pointed to the coat check sign….Under the coat check sign was…a flight of stairs leading to the check-your-stuff counter below.  STAIRS. I made the journey and made it to the first salon.  And thanks to my cultural time in the museum, I survived to get lost another day.  Which I did.

However, as a result of my hours of over-heated lostness…none of which were my fault but the fault of the Mexico City roads department….I was compelled to purchase a fresh bra, if I was to make it through the trip without washing and without damaging my reputation as a delicate flower of a woman.  A delicate flower with incredible street sense…who doesn’t need the trappings of a mall or a store or a brand name to make a purchase.  I’m cool, my Spanish is kicking…I’ll just buy a bra in one of the hundreds of street kiosks selling everything for cheap.

I shouldn’t have any problem buying such a simple item, right?  And, actually, I didn’t.  Other than falling prey to just the teeniest error in judgment.  

My thinking went like this:  Don’t get too picky here.  For three bucks you can’t go very wrong.  Just go crazy and pick a number you’d never buy under ordinary circumstances.  This bra only has to be solid enough to make it through the flight home….So I selected this little red lace push-up number. Those who know me personally are having a hard time breathing, just picturing me making such a choice.  Jessica LeFave (TOO RICH and TOO THIN, Not an Autobiography, another to follow soon) is not totally autobiographical, but one element is… Jessica’s lack of fashion elegance.  This is because my shopping and dressing skills are so weak, I can’t even write style.)

Okay…I buy the frilly red bra so that my seatmates on my return flights will see me as the sweet specimen I am.  The morning of my return trip, I slip into my daring five-dollar purchase.  I’m a bit startled at how much oophyou can buy with cheap lace and what looks and feels like spoons edging in  on either side.  But, overall the effect is okay…reminds me of what prostitutes in the Old West probably wore, which is a look I can live with.

So, what do the Mexico City roads department and a red push-up bra have to do with my humiliation in DFW?  On the flight from Mexico City to DFW, I hardly thought about my daring crimson underwear…beyond smilingly mysteriously when anyone spoke to me.  It wasn’t until the several hour delay (Surprise, surprise.) that my new sexy profile landed me unexpected new popularity. To kick-off the delay, I first enjoyed a leisurely meal at Cool River. Travel Tip:  If you are stuck in DFW (and if you fly through DFW, you will be stuck), go to Terminal D. Terminal D is the new, Euro-style terminal. (What do I mean by Euro-style?  I mean the signs say, “toilettes” instead of “restrooms.”  Cool, huh? Okay, I’m easily impressed.)  All the good restaurants are in Terminal D.  The best choice is Cool River. 

Then I opted to stroll the terminals. Only later, after I take the Sky Link over to Terminal A, do I begin to notice how much attention my newly defined chest is receiving. Not overly or underly endowed, I’ve never had an issue with men being distracted with my feminine chest ornaments. Until I wore the three dollar magic red lace beauty.  The first male I noticed who couldn’t keep his eyes away from my chest was the counter attendant.  I don’t actually remember why I walked up to the counter allowing the man to leer, but, my guess I had a complaint.  Instead of the miffed expression with which I’m usually greeted, the agent was empathetic.

Just maybe I’ve underrated the importance of undergarments, I’m thinking.  Then, I drifted into thinking that, perhaps, I’d imagined the counter attendant’s interest.  That maybe he recognized my face from some “watch out for” poster in the flight attendant break-room and was afraid to look at me head-on.  But, no.  My new popularity continued.  As I encountered other men, their eyes predictably checked out my new thrusting look. This was heady stuff.

Having plenty of time…given the above mentioned delay…I decided, why not enjoy my brush with sexual irresistability?  It’s not like I intended to spring such madness on the others in my life, or wear the magic bra to see clients.  So I did.  I practically strutted as I studied displays in the shops across from the gate.  I perfected a coy smile.  I pictured Miss Kitty in Gun Smoke, Cleopatra adored on her raft.  With burden of so much male attention, I told myself I now understood why some women choose breast reduction surgery.  We want to be appreciated as women!  Not just as a great set of laced and spooned up boobies.

The first boarding announcement is made and I break from my duty of sharing myself with men in the airport so far from home.  It’s time to return to reality and the fact that I must not be tempted to wear the bra once I’m back in Austin representing the field of psychology and being loyal to married women everywhere.  I head into the restroom (Terminal A is not Euro-cool) for my pre-flight  preventative profolactive  pit stop.

As I wash my hands, I dare a furtive glance in the mirror checking out the bombshell figure drawing so much attention my way.

That’s when I saw the blob of Thousand Island Dressing…the size of a plum…on my left breast.