Featured Writer of the Month – February 2014

Me_Sept_2013_for_Donna (1)Tell us about Theresa Wiza? Where were you born? Siblings, kids, grandkids, etc.

Me? Aww, thank you for asking. Well, I was born in the same city (Chicago) in the same year and on the same date as Robin Williams. Though some people dispute the year he was born (some sites claim he was born in 1952), because Robin and I share one trait (we’re both a little wacky), I say he had to have been born in the same year I was, 1951. Why wacky? Ask my mother. She has always introduced me as her “weird” daughter, a description that used to upset me until I found a keychain that said: “I’m not weird; I’m gifted.” So, wacky or weird, I choose to believe I’m also gifted.

 

My birth certificate shows that my name is Theresa, but growing up, everyone called me Terry. I found the whole Theresa/Terry thing a little unsettling. I was named after my mother’s best friend, Theresa, so why was everyone calling me Terry? By the time I entered 2nd grade, I attended a Catholic school that had just been built. My mother told me that from now on, I would be known by my REAL name, Theresa. At the age of seven, I empathized with Pinocchio, the difference, of course, being that I was a real girl. So I remained Terry at home and I became Theresa at school. Theresa sounded more regal and more saintly than Terry did, so with my new persona, I could pretend I was somebody else, and oh, how I loved to imagine! The problem was that I had to make sure my nose didn’t grow.

 

The hospital in which I was born no longer exists and the first apartment where I lived, in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, was torn down. With no actual proof of my early life and with my new name, I sometimes wondered if I ever really existed.

 

After I was born, two younger siblings, both girls, joined our family. I had a whole 19 months alone with my parents before I had to learn to share, which was fine with me, because I actually preferred to be alone – so I could think, fantasize, and make up stories about who I really was and where I really belonged. I knew it had to be somewhere other than Earth.

 

My mother used to tell me she thought I must have come from Neptune, which was an appropriate planet choice, considering that – astrologically anyway – Neptune is the planet of illusion, an apt description for the way I lived in my world – replete with fantasies and daydreams. I spent most of my school years staring out of windows, completely lost in thought. For obvious reasons, learning was difficult for me because my focus was always somewhere other than where I was.

 

Afraid that nobody would ever love me, I got married in high school to the first guy who showed me any attention. I gave birth to our little moon child five days before the Moon landing in 1969. Later, during another (now defunct) marriage, three more children arrived in rapid succession: 1981, 1982, and 1984. Since 1981 not more than 3 years have gone by without at least one baby being born into our family. I am now the proud grandma to 12 grandchildren and 5 great grandchildren, all of whom are quite aM– USE-ing and entertaining.

 

How did you start writing?

 

I started writing as soon as I could read words and hold a pencil in my hand, and though I hate to admit what I’m about to admit (I am a writer after all), words confused me at first. I ASSumed that two Cs in the same word, for instance, had to be pronounced the same way, so there I was in the second grade staring at the word CIRCUS. It had to have been pronounced either sirsus or kirkus, but I had no clue what either of those words meant. I was 7 years old and my head was exploding. I was horrified. I had just read an entire book IN SCHOOL that we WOULD BE DISCUSSING and that was filled with PICTURES of trapeze artists, clowns, and cotton candy, and I didn’t know what a kirkus or a sirsus was. (In my defense I had never attended a circus.)

 

Another reason I HAD to write was because of my younger sister. When she was around, my voice would drown, much like flames on a birthday cake flooded with kid spit. My sister could stand in a stadium and whisper with her back to the crowd and people on the opposite side of the stadium would startle at the power of her voice (my mother often reminds her that even as a baby, she had powerful lungs). I could stand at the microphone and scream into it and nobody would hear me.

 

My speaking voice carries no further than about half an inch from my mouth. When my kids were young and I called out of the back door for them to come home, I could see the sound waves tapering off shortly after they left my mouth. I get that affliction from my mother. Her voice doesn’t carry any further than her lips. As my younger sister explains, Mom swallows her words before anybody can hear them. My mom doesn’t speak actually – she has an itsy bitsy tiny voice that squeaks. So heredity played a huge a role in my decision to use writing as my voice.

 

You write in so many genres.  Is there a topic that you like to write about the most?

 

My thinking and my interests are so varied and my mind is so scattered, I can’t come up with just one topic. I love writing about anything spiritual, metaphysical, or paranormal. I love writing about my kids and grandkids – those stories are generally quite humorous. And I enjoy writing about new discoveries I’ve made, whether from online exploration, Discover or Reader’s Digest magazines, jewelry designs, crochet stitches, conversations I overhear (I’m not an eavesdropper, I swear), news reports, dreams – everywhere.

 

Oh, and I also enjoy bashing hypocrites, especially the ones who tout their religions, act contrary to their religious beliefs, don’t even know they’re gossipy conniving twits, and then nod among themselves that people who don’t adhere to their strict tenets (excuse me while I choke) are going to Hell. What amuses me the most about them, though, is when they discuss relatives or friends who do something they consider to be EVIL: “He couldn’t help himself, the poor soul. It wasn’t his fault. The devil possessed him! Yes, yes (sigh), the DEVIL made him do it.” OMG! Really? Whatever happened to free will and taking responsibility for your own actions? Guess what the devil is making me want to do to you. Believe me when I say that I will grab my weapon and I will – I uh – uh – I will write about you! I can be very threatening, you know.

 

What are your writing plans and or goals for the future?

 

My life is filled with so many interruptions and distractions, my plans usually take a back seat to my life. I had planned on being a screenwriter. I had planned on becoming a television writer. I wanted to sit in a writer’s room, like the one Rob, Sally, and Buddy used when they come up with ideas on the Dick Van Dyke show. But I became a mother. Don’t get me wrong. I wanted to be a mom, but I put my wants and needs on the back burner and due to myriad distractions, kept forgetting about them. Unexpected situations occur with great frequency, too, so I often find myself spinning in circles (I hear that’s good for you, by the way, but I think the kind of spinning I do is more mental and emotional than it is aerobic exercise). Anyway, I welcome most of my interruptions and distractions, because I like the fact that I’m never bored and I always have something to look forward to doing (completing what I was doing before the interruption, for example).

 

Also, many times those distractions come in the form of a child or grandchild who needs my attention. But in all seriousness, I am so easily distracted all the time that if I keep reminding myself to pay attention to what’s on that back burner, within seconds, the little voices in my head taunt me – let’s make jewelry! – let’s crochet! – let’s write! – let’s turn off the timer that reminded you a couple of hours ago to turn off the oven! Oops! Trying to rein in my brain is like trying to rein in cattle with a ribbon of thin toilet paper. It can be extremely frustrating and very annoying!

 

My goals are to become more organized, to learn how to focus better (I can hope), and to find more peace. I hate to admit this, but I don’t even know how many blogs and writing sites I contribute to without looking up the number. I constantly forget I have them. If I could show you what my mind looks like, you would see so many ideas bubbling out of my head all the time that my entire body would be covered in suds. Hundreds of ideas sit in a file on my computer just waiting for me to lather them up while more ideas continue to bubble to the surface! I love that I get so many ideas, but I hate that I can’t focus long enough to pay them the attention they require. If only a day lasted a week! sigh

 

What are the primary influences on your writing?

 

America’s Funniest Videos, other television shows, my crazy family, my kids, my grandkids, other writers, news stories, abnormal behavior, movies, absurdity (remember the hypocrites?), and observations I make all influence my writing, especially when I have an emotional reaction to what I see, hear, read, think, feel, taste, or touch. As soon as something sparks an idea, I write it down on whatever is available, and then, when I’m close to my laptop, I open my writing file and place the idea in there. Even today, hundreds of ideas sit on my laptop in various stages of development. When I write, I look down my list, pick something, and write.

 

Has humor always been a big part of your life?

 

Humor comes naturally to me when I watch my grandkids explore their world and when I listen to them speak. As an example, the year I turned 60, one of my grandsons asked me how old I was. He was 7 at the time. When I told him, his eyes popped open, he drew his head back, and he drew in a small gasp. I nodded in sympathy for myself. “I know. I’m really old, aren’t I?” And he responded, “Yeah! I’m surprised you’re not dead yet!”

 

Humor is also how I handle adversity and uncomfortability (yes, I make up words too). When you’ve been raped, robbed, and molested, you can either bury yourself in a grave or laugh your way out of the hole you’ve been dropped into. I sometimes use humor inappropriately, though, like the time I started talking about ghosts when I sat in a funeral home and pointed out to the woman who was sitting next to me that even the arachnids were in spirit form (the spider was white).

 

Another time, when some guys, one of whom was brandishing a knife, broke into my apartment to rob it while I was raising my oldest daughter before the rest of my kids were born, I looked around my apartment, furnished with (no exaggeration) lawn chairs, a card table, card table chairs, trunks, and a couple of cots, and I almost laughed out loud when one of the would-be robbers said to the other after he discovered that I had nothing worth stealing, “What should we do with them?” (my daughter had come out of our bedroom when she heard the commotion), and the other guy said, “Tie them to the table.” I still can’t help but laugh when I remember the look on everyone’s faces when we all eyed my card table.

 

Shock sends my brain waves into a freakishly warped area of my mind and I sometimes frighten myself with what comes out of my mouth. When I went to work later that day, I told everyone (I can’t believe I’m sharing this), “There I was, standing in front of two strange men, completely naked, in my ‘furnished’ apartment, and they didn’t even try to rape me.” I thought that what I was saying was quite funny at the time.

 

Looking back, I’m horrified that I said that out loud. So, yeah, my thought processes are a little odd and often inappropriate – which explains my fascination with the mentally unstable. My coworkers didn’t laugh, by the way. Maybe they didn’t hear me. But they stood like little statues with their mouths agape, probably wondering if the break-in had caused my head to split apart and my brains to fall out.

 

Which probably happened – I find pieces of my brains here and there, falling out of my head like straw from the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. I just keep picking them up and stuffing them back in – on my way to my inner sanctum – the wonderfully warped and weirdly wacky Wiza of Odds. Join me there, won’t you? 🙂

 

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