Mary R. Shefferman

Who Am I?
    Good question. I didn't start out as a Shefferman. I started out as a Drews. I've been a Shefferman since October 10, 1993, when I married Eric. Eric and I have seven ferrets right now. You can read about them on their very own page. If you'd like, you can take a look at my resume. It doesn't really say very much about who I am, but it does tell you what I've been doing for at least a portion of the time I've been on this planet. What says more about me is my writing. You can read my writing in Modern Ferret magazine. Then there's my poetry. Below is some information and background and memories and the like from me (probably more than you were seeking).

Where Did I Come From?
    The short answer is: "The womb." But that's no way to make nice with the reader.
     I was born in Huntington, New York, and I grew up in East Northport and St. James, New York, on Long Island. I do not have a funny accent. My parents already had two sons, Michael and Mark, and a St. Bernard named Bruno. It was actually Bruno Boy von Dolermont (I'm not sure of the spelling). My mother always said that Bruno was her first baby. He was big, as you might imagine. Mike, Mark, and I learned how to walk by holding onto Bruno's fur. He was a great dog. He lived to be 13 years old. The first time I remember seeing my mother cry was when Bruno died.
    There were other animals, too. I don't really remember it, but I remember my mother talking about a wild rabbit in the backyard that we used to feed. I think we called him Clover. We also had a guinea pig, then gerbils (mine was named Frito Bandito), then another guinea pig (Caesar), and then mice. There was a counter in our playroom (we didn't call it a den) that was forever "where the guinea pig used to be."
    Anyway, one of the quaint things about my mother that I didn't know when I was a child was that she chose names for us so our initials would be M.D. She wanted us all to be doctors. There's Mike (who is, in fact, a doctor), Mark (who is also, in fact, a doctor), and me (who decided long ago that I'm a better writer than I would be a doctor).
   Growing up on an island (no matter how big it is, Long Island is still an island), we spent a lot of time on or at the water. My parents had a series of boats, starting with one that my father built. It was a little 16-footer, but it got us out and back (with many fish) for several years. The boat then ended up with my aunt & uncle (now that's an interesting story) and then came back to us some many years later. I don't know where it is now, but I think it's still seaworthy. Then came The Carpetbagger -- a 24-foot Lures. Several years later, my Dad got a crush on a wooden 38-foot Colonial that was in dry-dock. That boat became The Revenge. I remember my Dad lying on his back under the boat, set up in our driveway, putting screws every couple of inches in the entire hull. Eventually, The Revenge was sold to a guy up in Connecticut. Then came a Cat Boat -- the Sunny Cat. A Cat Boat is not a catamaran. It is/was a New England workboat. Since my Dad had never actually sailed much on his own, it was a great relief that Cat Boats really can't tip over like "real" sailboats. As soothing to the soul as sailboats are supposed to be, the stress of getting the crew to follow his every command ("Coming about! Coming about Goddammit! Duck!") ended up being a bit too much for my Dad. Now he's got an 18-foot speedboat called The Hustler. He pulled out the old "it's bad luck to change the name of a boat" reasoning for keeping that name.
    The point being -- I did a lot of fishing when I was a kid. I caught some really big bluefish. I fought like hell to bring them in. Those fish tasted the best.

My "Original" Family (before I got married)
    I have three brothers (two older, one younger) and one sister. It seems like a lot of kids, but we're actually a "created" family, so we didn't exist like this until I was 16 years old. That's when my Dad married Marilee, who brought two children -- Kristin and Brady -- to the marriage (and also a huge extended family, which, it turns out, is really very nice to have). Being a created family as we are, we quickly realized that asking questions like "Where's my father and your mother?" was cumbersome, to say the least. So we termed the two adults in the household: The Parents. The theory was and is that they're both parents even if they're not both technically my parents or your parents. The name worked well and stuck.

Tante Rosie
    Half of me is of German descent, a quarter Austrian, and the final fourth Czechoslovakian (Czech, actually). So I grew up around older people with accents who sometimes used words that were not English. I had an aunt named Rosie and another, on the other side, named Rose (so at least two of my relatives were pleased by my parents' choice of my middle name). To differentiate the two, one was called Aunt Rose (she's still with us!) and the other was Tante Rosie. "Tante" is German for "Aunt," so it made very little sense that the Austrian Rose was Aunt and the Czech Rose was Tante. But that's the way it was. The point of all this is that when I was very young I didn't really understand that we were supposed to be saying "Tante." Well, I understood for Tante Margaret; she was very clearly "Tante." But for some reason, I thought we called Tante Rosie "Ton-a-Rosie," not Tante Rosie. Kids do say (and apparently hear) the darnedest things. See, Tante Rosie was very large (or as my Grandma Drews would say "stout" -- Rosie and my grandma were sisters, by the way). Of course, she was a wonderful lady with a great big heart who raised some wonderful children. But she was morbidly obese. God rest her soul.
    Thinking about it, there were several words I misunderstood when I was a child. My Grandma Drews was Czechoslovakian and, though she spoke perfect English, she did have a bit of an accent. I spent many summer weekends at my Grandma and Grandpa Drews' house and in the evening, the light in back of the house would be turned on -- for whatever reason -- and would attract a bunch of moths. Grandma would call them "bucks." Of course, she meant "bugs," but I thought that "buck" was what those particular flying insects were called. It's almost strange that I figured out without trauma or event that they were not "bucks" but moths.
    Then there's my Dad's accent story about his mom. He stopped by to visit her often and on one visit she told him about a wonderful movie she had seen on TV. Apparently it was called "A Freakin' Queen." Hmmm. Upon reflection, my Dad figured out that she meant The African Queen, with Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn. (What a great movie that is! One of my favorites.) "A Freakin' Queen" is still in the Drews vernacular (though Grandma is gone). She also tended to pronounce silent letters. The silent "c" in Connecticut was always heard. English can be a challenge to learn for anyone -- mostly because of all the synonyms we have. I'm very proud of my relatives who came here pretty much cold to the language and learned it perfectly. My Grandma Drews (whose name was Caprata then) came here when she was 15 years old. She explained to me once that she never had spelling when she was a child. She referred to Czech as a "Gypsy" language. I suspect the lack of spelling was more likely a byproduct of economic status.
    Anyway, that's the story of Tante Rosie.

Favorite TV shows of all time!
    I went to college with a guy who wrote a poem about "TV tube" babies. It was a clever idea and it has stuck with me all this time. When I was a kid, my favorite shows were I Dream of Jeannie, Get Smart, Gilligan's Island, and Scooby Doo. As I got older, I loved Ellery Queen, MASH, Soap, and Starsky and Hutch. It wasn't until college (and a severely limited number of channels) that I began to watch Star Trek and some really great "Kung Fu Theater" movies. Now I won't miss a new Jackie Chan movie and have even gone back and rented or bought what I could find of his old movies. I'm totally enthralled by the way he moves. Star Trek ... well, I don't dress up, but I do enjoy the show very much.
    Now I've come to find myself sucked into several different TV shows. Some of my very favorite shows have been cancelled, which, I suppose, means that my tastes don't particularly run in the mainstream, or have simply ended their run: Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Action (this show was brilliant!), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Seinfeld, The Larry Sanders Show, and Forever Knight (I have been fascinated by vampires since I was in high school). Shows I'm currently watching (what a list! this is terribly sad): Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, NYPD Blue, Son of the Beach (Tim Stack is great!), Friends, Frasier, Just Shoot Me (hello! we run a magazine, too!), Will and Grace, ER (OK, so some of this stuff is very mainstream), Earth: Final Conflict, Xena Warrior Princess, Cleopatra 2525, Jack of All Trades (which is being cancelled), The Daily Show (I adore Jon Stewart), South Park, and Politically Incorrect. I don't watch Conan as much as I used to because I've been trying to get more sleep. I'm sure I've left out something. If I come up with more, I'll just add them later.
    Here's something we've started watching: Grosse Pointe (another WB show). It's a somewhat kinder and gentler form of Action. We've also started watching Nikki and the new Kevin Sorbo show, Andromeda.
    We watch entirely too much Television. Someday it will rot our brains right out of our heads. Ahhh...bliss.
    Movies will take much, much longer. But I can say that one of my favorite films is The African Queen (and not because of the way my Grandma Drews used to pronounce it).

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