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Coffee, Tea or… We’re All Gonna Die! / Things I’ve Heard on Airplanes I’ll Never ForgetDrunk looking stewardesses, circa 1960s

Coffee, Tea or… We’re All Gonna Die! / Things I’ve Heard on Airplanes I’ll Never Forget

Published by Michele Miles Gardiner on June 27, 2018

1) “This is the WORST turbulence I’ve EVER felt!” said a female flight attendant who fell to her knees near my seat, as we flew through a storm above the East Coast. Yeah, that’s reassuring.

2) “Do you REALLY think you should be drinking that wine?” I was asked by a fifth grade boy I chaperoned, along with 60 other kids, including my own, for a week long American history field trip to Valley Forge in Pennsylvania, which involved screaming kids, bitchy/cliquey mothers, lost children, a kid with a nut allergy I nearly killed by offering him a peanut butter filled pretzel, humid school buses and “the worst turbulence” one flight attendant ever experienced. I answered the child this way: “Oh yeah, I really think I should.”

3) “We’re gonna give that another shot,” said our pilot trying to fly into JFK, after swooping the plane down and then swooping back up, as if we were on some horrific roller-coaster. While a middle-aged male passenger screamed like a baby, a female New Yorker behind me barked out, “One more shot?! Are you friggin’ kiddin’ me?!”

4) “You can stay at my place,” offered a flirtatious male flight attendant during a flight so horrific I wrote a story about it. My response to his lecherous offer? I cried. Actually a better term would be “bawled.” I looked at him and sobbed in his face… not just mere tears, but gasping, heaving, blubbering wails. (I wrote about this horrific plane trip in my up-coming book, Craving Normal.)

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Paris Trip: A Slouching Stripper, Dildos & A French CowboyWorst stripper in Paris, France

Paris Trip: A Slouching Stripper, Dildos & A French Cowboy

Published by Michele Miles Gardiner on June 13, 2018

When people travel to Paris, France, they often come back with romantic stories about the Seine, the light, champagne and brie, oooh la la! Not me. Here are Some things I experienced and learned on a recent trip to Paris: 1) Don’t use French phrases you learned from Patti Labelle’s “Lady Marmalade,” they’ll get you into trouble with a horny French cowboy. 2) When going to strip clubs, you get what you pay for. 3) The Metro stops running sooner than you think. 4) Fighting in front of dildos is funny, even if you’re too mad to realize it.

One night, Ian, my husband, and I take the Metro to the Pigalle district with the idea we’ll check out the dancers at Moulin Rouge. After seeing the show’s price and thinking it might be too touristy anyway, we duck into a strip club a few doors down. Hey, we’ll save money and get to see a sexy Parisian strip show, we think. Well, we’re wrong. Nothing sexy about it! What we get is a discount show from the world’s worst stripper. She has to be the worst. Nobody could put this little effort into her job. Slouching, with a cigarette limply hanging from her lips, the pot-bellied stripper lethargically slides down a pole as though she has just been injected with a sleeping dart and is about to pass out. Then she crawls back up and stands there weaving back and forth. The audience, just as lethargic, doesn’t even have enough energy to boo or leave.

We get up and head out to wash our disgust away at an Irish Pub a few doors down. (I tell the other tales of the cowboy and dildos in a story in my book, “Craving Normal.”)

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Growing up in the 1960s & Beyond, “Craving Normal,” by Michele Miles Gardiner

Published by Michele Miles Gardiner on June 4, 2018

“Craving Normal,” my stories as a child growing up in the 1960s and beyond, will be available soon. Here’s my nearly complete book cover. Think I’ll keep “Enthusiastic quote goes here.”

Growing up in the 1960s
Book cover for “Craving Normal,” written by Michele Miles Gardiner

“Craving Normal,” by Michele Miles Gardiner – back book cover text:
Living in a rock hut on a nude beach, staying in a religious commune,
facing an angry man with a gun, riding camels, hiding her freaky health
food lunches from lucky Twinkie eaters – Michele didn’t experience any
of this when her family lived in the suburbs of San Francisco. Then came
the counterculture revolution. Her entire life changed: Michele’s young
parents sold their home, bought a car and trailer over-seas and took her
and her little sister to explore the world.

We know a lot about the “flower children,” but what does an actual child
growing up in that era have to say? While many tales about that revolutionary time
are on record, few come from the perspective of the children who lived it.
This collection of stories are from one child’s perspective – tales of
becoming a young adult whose brain, and life, transformed from her early
experiences. Rebelling by cheer-leading, eating junk food, attending honor
roll parties, dreaming of being a foxy stewardess/actress? Lame, sure.
But how else does a child of young parents of the wild Sixties generation
rebel? By countering the counterculture.

Michele’s collection of stories – in which she rarely takes herself too
seriously – span from her earliest memories of the suburbs (her idea of
“normal”), through growing up trying to find a place where she fits in, once
again. Does she find it? Is Hollywood a sane place to search for normalcy?

“Craving Normal” trailer here: https://youtu.be/Z0M1BTXK20Q

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Wild Child

Wild Child

Published by Michele Miles Gardiner on August 7, 2017

You can take the child out of the wild, but not the wild out of the child… apparently. This may explain many of my stories. When your brain is formed a certain way – on freedom, travel, adventure – makes it hard to be happy sitting in a cubicle, or locked up in school, following bells, rules and clocks. It’s a huge reason I’m self-employed. And why I’m still wild today.

Photo: Nude beach, Mykonos, Greece. I’m second from left; Little sister, far left, with beach friends.

I write about living in a rock hut on this nude beach in my book, “Craving Normal.” The story’s called, “That’s Not An Eel!”

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Why Is My Book Called “Craving Normal”?

Why Is My Book Called “Craving Normal”?

Published by Michele Miles Gardiner on August 3, 2017

Hey, wanna see some photos I’ll have in my book, “Craving Normal”? Here’s one. Consider this photo (Dad and me) is from the time in my life I refer to as the “normal” period, and you might understand the thesis of my book. This was an ordinary day in my life. But It just got weirder from here. So please feel free to share your own freaky childhood photo or less than typical memory in the comments below. Pleeeeeease. Come on! I can’t be the only one.

Well, now that you’re here, I’ll let you know more about my book, “Craving Normal.” I do have a thesis: Born into a relatively calm period in the mid 1960s, which I considered “normal” – right before the explosion of the counterculture movement – I watched and experienced my world change. Language, music, fashion, lifestyles, ideas and expectations changed faster than we could toss out my slinky and turn on a lava lamp. While this period in history is often spoken about by the young adults of that era, a.k.a “flower children,” I write from MY perspective, that of a child, a REAL child. I like to think that’s one thing which make my stories unique. What were we kids thinking? What were our experiences? My stories then follow my growing up in the shadow of all these changes. While many are quite goofy, they show how I bopped around the world, a world I was still trying to figure out on my own – just as the generation before me tried to figure it out. But I also try to bring humor to all these experiences, whenever I can.

Like this photo I posted, I mean, how can I not look back and laugh? Seriously, this was just a typical day in my young life, one I thought completely ordinary. Why not? What else did I know? And I sure didn’t know things would get even more colorful… real soon.
If you’d like to keep updated about the progress of my up coming book, please leave your email here.

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