When I set out to learn about my mother's bridge club, the Jewish octogenarians behind the matching outfits and accessories, I never expected to fall in love with them. This is the story of the ladies, their game, their gen, and the ragged path that led me back to my mother.
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My mother said that when I was three years old, I kept a car full of adults waiting to go somewhere because I insisted on tying my shoes myself. I’m still like that. I hate accepting help. I want to do everything myself. I know it’s completely false and yet I cling to this idea of myself as impervious to help. I still can’t reconcile all these warring parts of myself. And I’m almost sixty-three.
What myths did you grow up with?
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Betsy Lerner 
1. Perfection is attainable.
2. Merit is rewarded
That I could fly. Honestly, who lets a little kid believe something like that? Fortunately, the tallest building in Fond du Lac at that time was Dale Wachholtz’s split-level ranch house.
This is funny. I love stuff that makes me laugh out loud.
“What myths did you grow up with?”
That Jesus loved me and his father would punish me.
That America was always good and well-intentioned and right.
That one’s place in life was to shut up and do what they were told.
There were others, but that’s a start.
boys had to be hard all the time.
I just turned 64, so my myths will represent the era I grew up in, like the idea my face would freeze into the one I was making behind mom’s back. (In line with she had eyes in the back of her head.) That sitting too close to the TV would ruin my eyes. (I needed glasses) The Christmas Story’s myth “you’ll shoot your eye out!” when I wanted a BB gun. A bunch more – the flying one too – which I also laughed out loud at – there’s a character in there, and a story.
Maybe, but I don’t think so. I think that’s the whole story. You told the rest to yourself from the suggestion of characters and implied conflict and resolution. That, and I’m very lazy.
That I could be anything I wanted.
You win. Love it
That it was possible to be perfect. It isn”t.
That I could not be Superman, not because I was NOT able to fly or NOT able to leap tall buildings but because I was NOT a boy. SuperMAN was not a girl. So boys got to save the world, girls got to watch.