License To Love

Time is a Two-Way Street

I am a people watcher. Although, from reading another of my posts you may have jumped to the conclusion that having a bowel movement tops my list of favorite things to do, it is simply not true. Although enjoyable, it is  far lower on my list than people watching. 

I watch people in airports, grocery store lines, parties, and at schools. I love to watch them move and  talk. I love to watch them dance.  I watch people interact during business transactions, I watch how their bodies stand when waiting in a bank line.  I prefer to make stories up about what I think their lives might be like than to actually get to know most people, because it is much, much easier.  At times I have been moved to tears of joy, or been deeply saddened from watching an interaction between a sales clerk and a customer at  Ross Dress For Less or Outdoor World. Yes, my imagination is so fertile I can write a novel in my head from watching people shop for underwear and guns.

I especially like watching parents and children interact.The past few years that I have been driving my children to school or, when we were homeschooling, to activities, I have noticed an alarming number of parents driving with their heads bent to their shoulders, talking on their cell phones, engrossed in conversation with someone else while their children sit silently in the back seat.

I've seen moms yanking 45 pound first graders, near tears, down the school sidewalk while yakking on a phone.

I've seen moms holler at their children right before they dump them out of the car at the carpool line, without even a goodbye, while on the cell phone.

This is wrong.

You know that  half hour before school, right after your kids get up all thick-tongued and hurricane-haired and stumble through getting ready, but before you leave them for the day to navigate alone in an often hostile world for six to eight hours?

That time is usually a time to ratchet your kids for all they are not doing and run around the house looking for panty hose and gym socks,  slip on a pool of water the Labrador let leak from his filthy, filthy lips when he was drinking from the toilet, or mutter-cuss at your husband for not taking the garbage out, because the garbage is now overflowing and you don't have time to pick up the yoghurt container a child dropped on top, and now the terrier, who tried to lick the leftover yoghurt out of the bottom of the container, has the cup stuck on the length of his face and is spinning blindly in circles. It is a time to trip over the dog and nag the children for not eating all of their breakfast, or for not taking their vitamins, or for not having all of their stuff by the door, even though you yourself do not have all of your stuff by the door.

You do not like this time of the morning.  You would like to have a cup of coffee, then walk into a clean bathroom that isn't already all steamed up with a sopping bath towel rolled under your feet, and a bobbing, unflushed alien birthed into the toilet bowl and a smear of red Aquafresh left in the sink that makes you think of a crime scene. You would like to get dressed quietly while listening to the news, get your daily stuff together, and leave amidst a chorus of "I love you's."   Guess what?  So would your children.

This morning time is underrated and precious for both of you. It is a time to go over their supplies for the day, which helps them to learn to make a mental checklist of the daily things they need to do when they get older:  Do you have paper and pencils?  I know, just asking.  Lunch?  Good. Gym uniform?  Yes, I can smell it....I know it's in your backpack.  How about that paper I signed for Mrs. Whatserface? No?  Oooh...I think it's still on the counter....go grab it right quick.

Then you can ask the important question:  what are you forgetting that will help you have a successful day?  Give them a chance to think and talk.

Even when they are in high school, they absorb you attitude and your energy. Your attitude sets the tone for their day.  What kind of day do you want them to have? 

Take a little care to have things prepared in the morning --clothes laid out, lunches made, breakfast easily gotten if not planned, and homework done -- and no, you don't have to do it all yourself.  Ask the children to help you.  Being prepared in the morning goes a long way toward setting the tone for the day.  If you are not rushing around, you have time to be sweet, and give them your attention.

Send your children off to school every day with a few humorous tips -- "Champion the Underdog" is one of the phrases I say.  I've also said, "be nice to nerds,"  "be honest," and "be a good friend - don't gossip," and any number of other silly little tips that let them know that, to me, their good character is as important as the grades they bring home. I try to pray over them for a moment before they take off.  It takes just a second or two, and they leave feeling loved and protected.

Above all else -- what you want from them is what you must first give them. Start planning now for teenagehood. If you want your children to one day be socially and emotionally available to you for their teen years, then get off your cell phone now.  When you have them with you, be there with them. Give them  a hug when they go out into the world, not an absentminded wave of the hand because you are engrossed in a cell phone conversation with someone who doesn't even love you.

Time and attention are the real ties that bind.

Nicotine Poisoning Gave Me Good Grammar Skills

I am convinced that if any one of us was dropped via time machine into decent American society in, say, 1901, we would be at such a grammatical loss that would be unable to sit through a dinner without insulting someone,  communicate with people well enough to get directions, or obtain a job in any other field besides shephardry.

Language use has changed so much in a hundred short years that we now, as a matter of course, use words that were considered terribly vulgar not that long ago. If you think about it, we don't need to travel back a hundred years  -- gross vulgarization of our coarsening language is readily noticable  to anyone who is old enough to remember television before the onset of cable. Take the time machine back to the summer of 1975 to my grandmother's gold living room (it wasn't a color scheme, it was a global nicotine staining) and observe me getting paddywhacked for saying the phrase "me and her" at the table.

"Did anyone stay up with you and cousin Alice Theresa?" "No. It was just me and her."  Down went little Suzy's face in her potato salad.

I went to visit my grandparents every summer.  I loved the predictability of my visits. We did the same things every weekend of every summer. I went on Saturday mornings to my grandfather's job. He was a bookkeeper for a huge pants factory and on Saturday, when the factory was closed, he let me run up and down the dusty, light-filtered rows of enormous rolls of fabric, dark, dangling machines, and piles of pants in various stages of cut-out.  After a half day of work, where he actually worked and I did investigative fingerprinting with the typewriter ribbon ink I had eviscerated from the machine, we would go to the sawdust-strewn butcher's for meat, and the butcher would give me a slice of bologna, which I would nibble over the hills of Scranton, while we made various other stops to the distributor's for our weekly case of Yuengling longnecks, the bakery for some good rye bread, and home to my grandmother's lunch.  There, I would sit at her table and get my grammar corrected so rigorously that if it weren't for the formica and particle board kitchenette with vinyl covered vinyl chairs, nubby vinyl place mats, melamine dishes, and enough cigarette smoke to cause anyone who walked into the house to think he had entered a gas chamber, I would have thought I was at a finishing school.

They corrected my speech, guided my thought processes, and made me say things over. And they highest level of formal study either of them attended was the eighth grade. When I got home from their house at the end of the summer, whatever of my possessions didn't ignite and smoke themselves from being so nicotine impregnated had to be burned anyway because they were toxic, but my grammar was reinforced.

If my grandfather came back to life for fifteen minutes and turned on the television to see his favorite program, instead of Hogan's Hero's he would see, perhaps, Punk'd.  Instead of a televised Yankees game, he would see American Gladiators, or perhaps, Most Extreme Elimination Challenge, or even Jackass.  He wasn't an intellectual man but I believe he would be so disgusted at the degradation of our speech and behavior that his stogie would fall out of his unhinged jaw and he would light my grandmother's gold living room on fire and die all over again.

Grammar, in 1975, even among the uneducated working class was better than 75 percent of all people with bachelor's degrees in 2008.  This leaves me with an apparrently sustainable sadness that will only  go away when public schools are privatized and they start teaching Latin in middle school.

Let's get to the tidbits:

Did you know that the word date when used for appointment or engagement was even two generations ago, vulgar? Well-spoken people were to avoid saying," I've got a date for tomorrrow," as it was seen as coarse.  Now everyone has a date.  Play dates, lunch dates, hot dates.

The word destroyed as used back in the day, deserves a closer look.  As we know, destroyed means that which has ceased to exist, been knocked to pieces or put to an end.  The well-spoken were urged to avoid the phrases totally destroyed as tautological.

Forgetting for a moment that about 5% of modern English users know what "tautological" means, try to imagine anyone who who doesn't have to worry about microwaves messing with their pacemaker saying the word "destroyed" without using "totally" in front of it. It just doesn't happen. The city can't be "destroyed in the earthquake," it has to be "totally destroyed,"as if "totally" conveys the emotional difficulty of dealing with the destruction. As if "destroyed" by itself isn't bad enough.  Ask four out of five weather reporters on national television.

I also hope the entire English speaking world will linguistically embrace the difference between definite and definitive.

These words have distinct meanings.  That which is definite has fixed or marked limits in signification, is bounded with precision; hence determinate; certain; precise.   Definitive describes positive, conclusive final.   A definitive decision admits no change; a defininte meaning is one so precisely defined that it could not be misunderstood.  Speaking of a "definite end" is ignorant and You Who Did It should no longer be on television, but you are probably  out drinking  mojitos with your good looking flunky friends and are not likely attracted to a blog on English usage.

And while I am at it, I believe the continued success of English speaking Western Civilization hinges on our ability to to use the word momentarily correctly.  Pilots and telephone message recording ladies everywhere, heed:

Momentarily -- what it's not:

It is not a fancy way to say "in a moment." 

With hope, you are not "landing the plane momentarily," for if you are, no one will be able to get off of it, and let's pray, major corporations everywhere, that someone will not be with your clients "momentarily" for your customer service will be so poor that the entire United States, even the Republicans, will be on the phone to India or China for goods and services.  Oh, wait we already are.

Rather, say "I thought momentarily of bringing him home to meet my parents, but then I realized he was a cad."

Casual speech.  Western Civilization.  You choose.

Hearken: Big News In the World of Humor Writing

I would like to announce an event that is a formidable notch in my belt, jewel in my crown, and feather in my cap, a moment that fills me with pride and humbles me at the same time:

I was just accepted to the venerable, yet hip hotbed of online humor -- Humor-Blogs.com, a website filled with funny blogs, such as The Mattress Police, the Reasonable Ego, and many many more! Go check them out, tell 'them I sent you, and be sure to vote for me by clicking on the button in the left column, right there...... no, go down....there you go, right there!

  I am currently ranked, um... last. Help a gal out!

It Must Be That Time Of The Month

I was listening to Radiolab, one of the three National Public Radio shows that I can stand, and the topic of the show was the science of deception. Just so you know, even though I find NPR to be so politically-left leaning that I would trust it about as much as I would trust the old Pravda, Radiolab is one of the best radio shows on the air. It is brilliant -- part art, part science, and part sound and the creators of this show have a way of blending these elements so you can see how close they really are to each other. 

When the show got to a segment about people who lie to themselves, it suggested that the ability to lie to yourself not only promotes winning in athletic competitions between similarly trained athletes, but  that people who lie to themselves are happier than those who tell the truth to themselves. They tested this by asking terribly embarrassing face-to-face questions, identifying the liars and truth tellers, and then, presumably, questioning them further about their state of contentedness with their lives. 

One of the questions that they asked people on the street was "Have you ever enjoyed a bowel movement?"  Before I heard the chorus of vehement, "No's!" I  announced,"Yah," loudly, as in "Of course, how could you not?" and was met with a new chorus of blank stares and throat clearing from the people around me.  You are home alone reading this, so it's okay to agree with me.  I know you like it. These people who say that they do not ever enjoy, shall we say, growing a tail, are lying out loud.

So, from the scientists’ findings, those who doth protest too much are happier people than those who freely admit that they do, in fact, enjoy taking the Browns to the Super Bowl.  How can this be? Shouldn't honest people be happier?  Shouldn't I, because I face truths that other people either ignore or brush off, be rewarded somehow by being one of the happy ones?

It doesn't work that way. I am truthful. I tell my children that something is going to hurt when it will, and I tell them that I don’t know something, even when I should know it. I admit when I mess up, and I know my place in the world. I'm not, on the whole, a gleeful, joy filled person, even though I try. I've been told, since I was a child, to "look on the bright side of things,"  "relax," "don't dwell on it," and to "just stop and smell the roses." 

"I do stop and smell the roses," I once told a friend, who was concerned about me. "It's just that I think about the Japanese beetles I was once paid a penny a piece to pick off from our neighbor's rose bushes, and drop into vinegar to die.  I think about the kid three blocks away who will get leukemia in five years from snorts of the pesticide that were sprayed on the roses that are now wafting through his bedroom window.  I think about a dead Victorian lady who saved her lover’s rose petals in a little tin, only to grow old, with the rose petals reaching a dusty ending in an attic, then someday thrown away by a great-grand daughter.  I cannot stop myself.

It's not that my cup is half empty or half full, it's that my cup is bittersweet to drink.

My theory is that there is not much I can do about it because I do not think that happy people can be made.  I think they are born.

I am thinking of one of my beautiful daughters. This child is like no one I have met. This child lives deep, I mean deep, in the playground of her own mind. Even when she was very young, she pulled no punches. She cared nothing for girly fashions, television, cutting-edge toys, bathing, or eating a variety of foods. She needed only one friend at a time. If she got a hold of a Barbie she cut its hair off, saved the hair in a sandwich baggie, and threw the Barbie away, or buried it. She can still eat the same meal twice a day for a week, forget to wipe her face, forget to clear her plate, forget to put a shirt, forget to close the door on her way out, but recall details about life before she was two. For a couple of years she had her hair shorn two inches from her scalp every few months, and the deep chocolate baby curls that depending on the humidity level, floated away from or plastered onto her head, just accented her beauty. It was simpler that way, because ponytails and brushes gave her headaches and a short temper.

Her only requirements in life are one hundred percent cotton clothing, access to horses, and thirty minutes of lap time, twice a day, even at her ripe old age.  This child still plays with dirt and twigs, she collects dead bugs and bug parts in a foil-lined shoebox she calls her oven.  She licks rocks to tell what kind they are. She loves to hear stories read aloud, but only ones about animals. She is the child who volunteers to lance boils, and take dogs’ rectal temperatures, and squash blood-stuffed ticks with a tweezer. I once found her crying in her room because she hadn’t been born with fur.

This child remains a lovely enigma wrapped in dirt-flavored skin, and she was born believing her cup is the wrong size. It's not half full -- her cup is simply too small and if it needs to be fixed, she’ll fix it.

Her sister is no cut out, either. She has long thin bones, and wears freckles on her thin skin. She is built like a wooden tape measure. When she sits, her legs fold as painfully away as a filly’s. When she stands, it seems to take minutes to come back out and up.  For some years I was afraid of what her body would one day turn into, and it's turned and I am just as scared. She has fine white hairs that grow in subtle, breathtaking patterns all over her lovely brown skin.  Her eyes are as green as new grass. Her coppery, blond-streaked hair stands away from her head like a badly behaved bush, like the Bride of Frankenstein, like a renegade monument to anti-gravity. Her withering look is an art form.  The subtle wrinkle of her nose skin when she disdains something makes my heart ache. I  consider it possible that I may one day physically injure a young man because of this child and do it without apology or afterthought, but she rarely gives the rest of us an inkling that she knows that we exist.  Her cup isn't half-full or half-empty, either, but hey! Who drank out of it? No fair! She told everyone not to touch it!

Thankfully, these beautiful and good daughters have not modeled themselves after me. For the most part, they are happy, confident people who take life well, battle and defeat their worries, and don’t let their imaginations get the best of them.

I did not engineer this in any way, but it pleases me. In this, and with them, my cup is so full it needs a lid.

I’d say I’m outtie because I have to go lay some wolf bait, but that would be low.

Be An Eagle, Not A Sheep

Once, when I was a young Pearl Jam-listening, concert-going, Doc Martin-stomping, urban-sniffing, apartment-dwelling, bicycle-commuting artiste, I eloped with a man I had known for only six months or so.  My mother and sister, who were uneasy about it, were at least hopeful because he was charming and had a real job that wasn't in the restaurant business. I waved goodbye to my family and drove off with him to the Big City, happy to be leaving the clutches of the suburbs, which I was sure was killing me.

We married in October, and immediately started trying to get to know each other. We tried hard.  By March I was pregnant and throwing up all over Metropolitan Boston. I threw up in bushes when I got off of trains or buses, at restaurants, concerts, at my husband's office, or when we went to visit friends. One time when we went out to a restaurant, I was too sick to eat by the time the meal came, so I brought my food home. The drive home made me sicker still, and I was about to blow, so I did the only thing I could – threw up in the to-go container holding my twenty-three dollar steak. It was either that or on the floor of the car, which I think my husband may have loved more than me, so I am sure I did the right thing. This morning sickness lasted until the day I gave birth, so if you haven't yet done the baby thing: be forewarned.

Between bouts of anxiety and violent puking, I started to read books and parenting magazines. I had a lot of catching up to do. Before I was pregnant, I basically hated babies and small children. I never baby sat as a child, looked at motherhood as a terminal affliction, and avoided all of it like a vampire avoids light. I would see mothers at playgrounds or on the subway with strollers, and rumpled,  squeaking children, constantly hunching over to stuff something in their grubby little cake holes -- a bottle, a noo-noo, a goldfish cracker, or worse -- sweep something out --a bottle cap, a beetle, a string, some mucus. Traveling with that much stuff isn't cool. Neither is noise.

Once I got pregnant, I didn't feel much different. I wasn't thrilled to be joining the ranks of the lumpy and sleepless, but knew that I had to learn everything I could.  I wanted to have this baby on MY terms.  It would be a very quiet baby, who liked living in a sling on my back while I painted and went to museums. When the kid said "wah," I would whip it around and hold it out at arm's length and let it tinkle on the ground, just like they did in Clan of the Cave Bear. When it said "rah!" I would swing it around and whip out a boob, while continuing to draw and write magnificent pieces the world couldn’t live without.

I had decided, while thumbing through baby magazines, usually between bouts of "morning" sickness, that childbirth and baby raising is a machine of an industry that doesn't really care about the family at all. It was and continues to be all about money, or more precisely, all about Us giving most of our money to Them, to avoid being Bad Parents. Good parents bought their children all of the latest developmental toys and Baby Einstein videos, because if they didn’t, their children might be stupider than other peoples’ children when they got to preschool. Nobody wants a stupid child.

 “Oh, no! I have to buy all this stuff!” I thought as I read the lists. “I need a Diaper Genie, a baby bath tub, special baby soap, an electric baby wipes warmer, a swing, a bouncy seat, a anti-head bobber for the car seat, a new diaper bag, a new crib and a crib bumper and a crib dust ruffle and a quilt and a changing table, and a layette and.....what the heck is a layette?”

I started going to a park in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, where we lived. Each day at around ten a.m. mothers congregated there with their very small children in hot-rod looking strollers, like sheep congregating at a watering hole. They were armed with diaper bags that looked like suitcases, sippy cups, ziplock baggies of crackers and cheese squares, tiny flat containers of baby wipes, more toys than an Indonesian child sees in his whole life, enough extra diapers to get them through a month-long breakdown of commerce, and the latest potty training newsflashes.

“Tempest went poo-poo in the potty this morning!”

“So did Cobalt! He pulled his Pull-Up down all by himself, didn’t you Cobalt?”

I willed myself to sit near them, frightened about what I might become once I gave birth. Over the weeks, as my belly grew bigger, I studied these women,  rearranging and dropping and handing and wiping all the things they brought with them, and their discontented children – reaching and grabbing and fussing and needing. Their stuff consumed them, and I think it taught their children to want more and more. I was afraid of being bogged down by so much stuff that I wouldn’t have time to interact with my child, little what’s its face. 

“Baaaa” they said to each other.

“Baa,” they beckoned to me. “It’s nice over here by the watering hole.” I didn’t want to be a sheep. The baby turned inside of me and kicked my liver. I looked up at the sky and saw a dark shape gliding through the sky. I squinted.

“Look!” the mothers said. “Look up there. It’s an Eagle! A real Eagle!”  The mothers grabbed their children and pointed to the sky. The Eagle was coasting mightily; we could see its head scanning the terrain for something that might be just right. He circled over an area, then rejected it and circled somewhere else, all the while its eyes hunting for just the right thing. He wasn’t after everything and anything – just one thing that was right, one thing that he needed, presumably something he could nosh on.

“That thing looks big enough to snatch a toddler,” I announced to the group. They recoiled from me and continued to talk among themselves.

This Eagle was very careful, cautious even, before spending his effort. He slowly flew out of sight without finding what he was looking for, contented to wait for what he needed, and I knew then what I had been trying to formulate. I decided to be choosy when faced with baby-related purchasing decisions. There was really nothing that I had to have for the birth of the baby, at least for the first few weeks, besides a car seat, diapers, some nighties and onesies and blankets and my own boobs.  I didn’t even have to have the baby’s room ready because the baby wouldn’t be able to focus past my face for the first two months of its life, and as mean as I sound, I wasn’t planning on letting the kid out of my sight until the demonish window of SIDS had closed.  I didn't need a crib this week, or next. The baby could sleep safely between my husband and me, especially since we weren’t drinkers who tossed and turned. I’d get the baby Stuff as the need presented itself, after careful consideration, without busting our bank and shopping like a sheep.

With a measure of relief, I decided to be an eagle.

To see what you can live without the first year of parenting, go to Be An Eagle -- The First Year

You're So Very Special

There have been a few times in my life when I have labored under the misapprehension that I was "all that." The first time was when I was four and my grandfather built me a little desk and chair for my bedroom.  I immediately became too sexy for my house, and bustled around gathering paper and a pencil and crayons for setting up my desk. People weren't allowed in my room, and I began to require permission for others to speak to me.  I had work to do, and I did it, spending hours at my little desk "writing." Every thing I produced was met with oohs and ahs.

The second time was my entire adolescence, which was an inverse wormhole of time that lasted from about ages twelve to twenty-four years old, instead of the usual six or seven years. I was too special to grow up properly, too special even be kind to others.  I have had reliable sources confirm that it was difficult to even be around me, because I was so special and knew everything. I was so clever, so smart. I was an artist, for Pete's sake.  I had deep and serious illuminations about life that no one else in my family could understand because they lived in the suburbs and shopped at the Piggly Wiggly, which was awful because, face it, even saying the words "Piggly Wiggly" adds two pounds to each underarm slab of fat and makes you want to suck Easy Cheese out of the canister.

This state of specialness lasted for years and I couldn't make it stop. I think my entire family may have hated me. (Of note, I also had a brief attack of "all that" not too long ago when we took in a foster dog.)

None of these episodes bode well for me or people in my life.  I was, in a word, obnoxious. I wasn't a giver. I was terribly unhappy. I thought I knew more than everyone on the planet except for Stephen Hawking. I couldn't even stand myself at times. One of the best lessons I have ever learned in my life is politically incorrect:  I am not special.  I'm just like everyone else.  I'm so glad I learned it.

There are times when your children need to be taught about how special they are, and times when they need to know they are no different from anyone else.  Parents too often think they have to praise, with such enthusiasm, everything their children do, in order to ward off the dreaded Low Self-Esteem. Real self-esteem comes from doing good things well, and not by being praised by someone else or by being told that everything they do is special.

Thankfully, it was early on in my parenting when I came to the conclusion that my children didn't need to hear "Great Job!" or "Wow!" or "Wonderful!" every time they did something that was to be expected of them.  If every piece of "art" they showed me was labeled as "amazing," then they had no improvement to make, nowhere to go but down, and they could easily come to the conclusion that Mama was disingenuous.  This is a bad thing because disingenuous people can't be trusted, and I want my children to trust me. Kids aren't stupid.  They know when people are brushing them off with praise because praise takes less time than a real conversation.

A dialog:

Child:  Look Mama, look at what I made!
Mama:  Oh, Charlie! Wonderful.  This is just beautiful! Wow! Honey, look at what Charlie drew! Charlie, this is so amazing that Mama is going to put it up on the fridge so we can look at it every day.
Child:  Okay.

Where does this leave Charlie?  Is he able to talk about his drawing?  Is he able to describe the process.  Can he ever make another thing that is so amazing in his life?  Of course he can, the very next time he scribbles on a piece of paper and hands it to his mama will be a revelation of modern art theory.  Charlie will be special because people tell him he is special, not by his intellect, actions, sacrifice, or real effort. Empty praise does not help a child feel good about himself.

Another dialog:
Child: Look Mama, look at what I made!
Mama: Hey, Charlie,  pretty sweet.  What is this?
Child:  It's a bug who is learning to fly.
Mama: I can see that. What's this part over here?
Child:  That?  That is the daddy bug who is teaching his baby bug how to fly.
Mama:  What did you use to make this?
Child:  Oh.  I used crayons for here and here and a pencil for the dog because his fur is spiky and he is trying to bite the baby bug from way down here, on the ground.
Mama: Oooh! Is there more to this story?
Child: Oh yes.  First, see, the baby bug got up and decided to learn to fly and then the daddy bug......

In this dialog, Charlie is able to explain his process, his story, and his materials.  His praise and self-worth came from the engaging dialog and interest his mama showed to him. This child will grow up and know that what he does and says is important -- not necessarily wonderful and special, but meaningful.

People who grow up thinking that they are special live with a disability that will harden their hearts to real joy, real relationships, and real learning, since very few "special" people can humble themselves to learn from or really relate to anyone else.

People, stop praising your kids so much!

 

Painting Mohawk With Kool-Aid Produces Genius Child

Not too long ago, one of my daughters, who was happily and healthily bored, was outside coloring the bark of a tree red with Kool-Aid powder.  Kool-Aid is a wonderful, nearly permanent dye that I am sure color-fossilizes the small intestine of anyone who drinks it. It is responsible for more aerial launches of children with ADD than airplane takeoffs. Those missing children on the milk cartons?  They are really kids with undiagnosed ADD who drank Kool-Aid and were discharged into space by red dye chemically altering their methylation process, producing unexpected body rocketry.

If I ever got into tattooing, I would consider using Kool-aid powder to mix my pigments, seeing that my mom has a Kool-Aid stain on her counter top that I put there 25 years ago, which has proven itself immune to bleach. Someone needs to invent white Kool-Aid that stains just as well as other Kool-Aid, so we can all spill it on top of the old Kool-aid stains in our lives and cancel out the pink rings.

So anyway, my daughter mixed some Kool-Aid up with water, and some with oil, and was trying to figure out which one  held a stain better.  She had been doing animal testing on her brother by trying to dye his Mohawk red, and had moved on to the bare sides of his stubbly head, and then beyond, since her brother was breaking one of the cardinal rules of little brotherhood -- he was Speaking Too Much, and she must always Put Him In His Place by ignoring him whenever she accidentally finds herself enjoying a quality moment.

Disgusted with herself, she left her brother dripping Kool-Aid stains so far down his naked torso that he began to stain his own butt crack,  and went out front to see what she could do with the leftover Kool-Aid.  She spied the dog.

"Comere, Rocks," she said.

"No can do," said the dog, and he cowered under the truck as if he were about to get a bath, not knowing that he had escaped much, much worse.

So she started pasting the Kool-Aid and oil into the crevices of the bark of a big tree, and began to race stripes of it down to the bottom. She was naming the stripes in honor of famous racehorses when she spied a friend of hers getting out of her mom's car. "Hey...ya wanna come color this tree bark with me?" asked my daughter. "Uh, I dunno. I have to check my schedule," said the friend.
My daughter's arms dropped to her sides, staining her shorts and thighs forever with red Kool-Aid.

"You have a schedule?" my daughter and I said in unison.

"Sure, "she shrugged. "Don't you?"

It is true. My daughter's friend, even smack dab in the middle of summer, has a schedule of activities that she follows, which includes strength training, speed and agility training, soccer practices, and soccer games, not to mention soccer meetings. She's twelve.

There are so many children like this nowadays that it makes my kids look like neglected slackers, since I purposefully do not book many scheduled activities for them. I let them take apart my old small appliances and electronics that break down, then I let them remake them into little cities on the floor.  I let them paint trees in the yard, cut up cloth to sew clothes for the dog, and take the boat out alone for miles in the canals in our neighborhood.  When they do these things, they are expanding their abilities to take care of themselves, not to mention leaving me alone for two seconds, which is important to my survival and theirs, because I am not a natural lover of children, noise, chaos, questions, or  even bright light most of the time. 

We are the trailer trash of our well-to-do, suburban neighborhood. I cut my family's hair.  We drive clunker cars, we light firecrackers in the backyard just for fun. We do rocketry -- sometimes with real rockets and sometimes with Diet Coke and Skittles. We do our own house repairs. We buy used everything except socks and underwear. We take clippings of other peoples' plants and plant them in our own yard.  If everyone who lives on our block donated one of their luxury car payments to, say, Angola, there would be enough money to feed and deworm every child in that country for a quarter of a year, and as such, I am sure some of our actions are viewed as "low-rent" by our neighbors, but we don't care. Our kids are always dirty, usually happy, occasionally busy, and sometimes bored.

Some of the best learning, thinking and creativity comes from bored kids. Here's how you train bored kids to be people who can amuse themselves while stretching their creativity:

Turn off the television, put away the video games, and ban the internet for a significant part of each day. Let your kids get so bored that they start plucking at their shirts and whining and pacing about the house. Suggest to them a "fun" activity, such as cleaning out the garage, or organizing that little drawer in the kitchen with all the old batteries and cell phone cords.

While you are suggesting truly awful ideas, quietly set out a pile of magazines, some glue and glitter and scissors and paper in the middle of the table. Ignore the little whiners and start washing the windows. See what they do. When they ask you if they can use it, don't say "yes," because then they will think you want them to do it.  Instead say, "I don't care, just don't cut each other up," and go about your business.

Put an empty bowl, a spoon, and a box of brownie mix on the counter and leave it there while you are doing whatever it is you do at home.  Don't speak except when spoken to, because you don't want them to think you care.  Sing loudly to yourself.  If you suggest to them that they could bake brownies, they will say no, because they know that if it is suggested by you as an activity, it must be Educational, and therefore something to avoid.

Get some old telephones, appliances, or speakers from bulk trash or yard sales. Give your kids some tools. Let them take stuff apart, and put it back together again. What better way to learn about technology than to understand the mechanics of some of it?  Then later, let them use a slingshot to see if they can get the prongy pieces of the eviscerated parts to stick in the side of a hunk of wood.

And I know it sounds like child abuse, but send your children outside with a watch and a bottle of sunscreen, and tell them not to come in for at least 45 minutes. If you give them some jars or Tupperware, they can collect bugs, strange leaves, or other interesting tidbits. You can have a show-and-tell when they get back in.

Are these activities really less valuable than a soccer training session or time spent on Webkinz? Some people call this benign neglect, but when done well, it can add a boost of independence and creativity for your kids that  will serve them well for the rest of their lives. If they learn to keep themselves occupied, they will be well on their way to being lifelong learners, and hopefully immune to affluenza and drug abuse, which to me, is far more valuable than $2400 of soccer training.

Don't Be A Sheep

This is the start of a several part series on how to raise happy kids without spending three hundred thousand dollars per child.

I know Hillary isn't in the running for president anymore, but some wee part of my largely satirical thought process thinks that there are people in our government who are working hard to convert our fine republic into something with a little more Chinese flava.

Oh, it is subtle, these conversion tactics. One of the most obvious clues is the public school system -- whereby children all over America are taught only what the government wants them to learn (see The Inquisition, What a Show).  Another way is the sneaky propaganda They releases to keep the pants permanently scared off of us. I submit to you global warming. We're gonna die and it's all our fault.   Hold on, I need to go buy some carbon credits to offset the electricity I'm spending in writing this post, or else my children might not live to grow up.

MSN Money reports that, in 2004, the US Department of Agriculture revealed some daunting figures on the cost of raising children, likely in hopes of quietly starting a national "One Child" Campaign, surely a concept that someone,the ZPG folks perhaps, or whoever thought of universal health care, thinks is for the good of the people.   If needed here, to keep yourself from leaving the blog, please refer to first paragraph, wherein I mentioned my "largely satirical" thought process.

Here's the stat that would frighten young marrieds everywhere into tying their tubes and using their money for things like, food, clothing, and shelter for themselves instead of pouring it into the black hole that is child rearing:

"Families making $70,200 a year or more will spend a whopping $269,520 to raise a child from birth through age 17. Higher-income families in urban areas in the West spend the most, $284,460." And that was four years ago when a gallon of gas cost $1.75.

"Uh-uh," they say. "We're still paying off our students loans, we can't buy a house, and  we may have to save up for our move to Mexico when Barack Obama gets elected.  We'd better not have kids if it costs that much!"

I think they surveyed a lot of stupid sheep who believe they must purchase everything their ad-controlled televisions and mainstream magazines tell them to, but it doesn't have to be this way. Go ahead. Get a baby.  My family is living proof that it does not have to cost everything you've got to raise children, and you don't need to go into debt to create a good life for them.  I'll teach you how to do it. Go to Be An Eagle, Not a Sheep.

Driving Miss Crazy

First, there is the issue of driving an ancient five thousand pound vehicle that gets 32 miles per gallon and runs on straight vegetable oil that I pick up for free from our local Taco Bell. My thoughts on this: "I'm so cool!" I love gunning it at a fresh green light and smelling Gorditos when I hit my zero to sixty in 15.2 seconds, with one arm hanging out of the window.  About the only people I can smoke at a light are the ones driving 12 gear trucks, and I reluctantly sport the Southern "I have no air conditioning in my car"  style by walking around with one tan left arm and one fish-belly white right arm and hair like Don King, but no matter:

I have one up on all of the Hollywooderati who drive their Navigators most of the way to their red carpet events and hop into rented Priuses to achieve the  look of the moment which is so green it looks like they've been having a gnarly affair with Kermit the Frog. I'm really being green! Look at me! Who cares if I can't afford Botox or a hair weave.  With all the money I am saving on gas I have opened up a growing account that I can one day use for removing skin cancer from my left arm.

And I certainly beat the eco-pants off of Al Gore. "Nuff said.
 

Second, there is the issue of my teen daughter, whom I have seen running away and hiding in nearby foliage when I pull up to her school in said ancient vehicle. Her thoughts on this are: "Not cool at all -- I think I must die," since she risks social suicide by either letting people catch her getting into my old hog, which, in my neck of the woods, is usually driven by people who don't speak English, or by being seen by the football team squatting in the bushes.  Did I mention we live in a place where most people we know have seven hundred dollar a month leases on new cars?

But here's the news that has actually brought the child to tears: I will not be selling this car, no matter how much she hates it, and indeed, this car will be the car she drives around next year.

Why? Because when people have accidents in the model car that I drive -- a 1980 Mercedes Benz 300D, they usually walk away. Even without airbags. 5000 pounds of solid steel wrapped around a person who can't take it over 60 mph anyway? Feels safer to me than a 2400 pound used Corolla, which crunches like a tin potato chip at 30 miles per hour. A recent article supports my line of thinking. Teenage drivers ages 16 to 19 are four times as likely to crash as older drivers, based on miles driven, and the risk is particularly high during the first year after getting a license, according to the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety.

And since I cannot afford to buy her a new -crumple zone, side airbag, five-point harness Volvo, or an "new" anything, the 5000 pound greaser it will be. 

This emotional child now weeps regularly when she has to get into this car. We are both so accustomed to it that she will only put on mascara after she gets where she is going and I have started keeping a box of tissues in the console.  Were I another type of parent,  I would be concerned enough to try to alleviate some of her pain, but as it stands, I just laugh at her, and say, "Do you want a bus pass?  I didn't think so, so knock it off."

It has always been my part of my grander plan to have her stay home most days, and nights, and weekends anyway, as this beats catching AIDS. By the time she is sixteen, I will have built our hand-made loom and she can stay home and watch reruns of Thirtysomething and learn how to weave with her mama instead of going to football games and other social events.

At least it works for me.

Alien Generation

No one is more web-savvy than today's middle schoolers and high schoolers.
They have grown up with cable television and videos for entertainment, video game systems, constant and immediate internet access, social networking, laptops in their classrooms, and cell phones.

A Yahoo study from way back in 2003 said that at that time, 82% of teens have a computer and 78% use the web to help with schoolwork. It also shows teens spend more time on the computer than using any other media, including television, which is frightening since we know how much they watch television.  And that was in 2003.  Now, a mere five years later, it has trickled down to even the youngest generation, as things always do, and it's worse.  There are armies of prepubescent elementary school students with their own cell phones and laptops, blogging and pinging, speaking Gangster, and texting their school administrators.

I compare this with my teen years. We had a television.  It was color. It had three channels that we had to get up to change, and if you happened to be up late, say babysitting, you could forget about a Punk'd marathon -- your only choices after Saturday Night Live was either Night Flight or a photo of the American flag.  We also had one rotary dial telephone in the kitchen, which I think my father finally got rid of after Y2K.  We didn't even have dimmer switches on our lights. But I wasn't bored, neglected, at-risk for future failure.  I always had a paperback at my bedside, in my book bag, and often folded into the back pocket of my cutoffs.

Technology didn't take up much of my time because we didn't have much of it. I remember going over to my best friend's house just to watch her mother cook a chicken in the microwave. I also had plenty of time for drawing, riding my bike to the library, reading hundreds of books per year, listening to music -- often while drawing, playing my own music, playing board games and cards with friends -- yes, even into my teenage years-- and just day dreaming.   I taught myself to cook, learned to sew, and became quite the expert on Big Band-era music.  When we got bored on Friday nights, we'd jump into someone's Trans Am, chip in for gas, and drive around visiting construction sites for new housing developments and listening to fairly wholesome rock music. If we felt like a wild run, we'd stop at the one BK lounge that stayed open until 11pm, and get some french fries and a soda.  It really wasn't bad.

I don't see opportunities for creativity in this new generation of children.  Creativity comes from either necessity, or boredom, and boredom comes from having time on your hands. Today, if a teenager is bored, he flips on the television, or logs on to Facebook, or just surfs Craigslist until it's time to go to sleep. There is never a moment to  do utterly nothing.  If they have five seconds of utterly nothing, they panic and whine and pluck at their parents' sleeves.

I fear for this next generation of kids in the same way that all old people have always feared for the their children and grandchildren. Only I really mean it. I really think their brains could change.  In two hundred years we'll have a species of human that has been bred to adapt to a life on the internet. They will have atrophied vocal cords, and weak digestive systems from eating frozen chemical laden pseudo-food out of frosty boxes.  Their heads will all be big and pale and hairless, bobbing on spindly necks connected to the kind of backs that once only belonged to the school fat kid.  Their bottoms will be flat and shaped like desk chairs, their fingers will be narrow and padded at the tips from generations of typing, and their eyes will be bulging like a hyperthyroid, and deeply set into expressionless faces due to a general muscular atrophy that is so severe that the obicularis muscles will be all but gone.

There will no longer be regional accents because people won't ever speak, and culturally, dining tables and kitchens will be as archaic as butter churns, looms and root cellers.  Instead they will have server rooms, where their computer systems are set up, with monitors placed near windows, so the little sun they get will metabolize the vitamin patches they have to wear because they no longer eat real food.

There will be "server design consultants" who will decorate your server space in the latest interior home fashions, via shared holographic Google Documents.

I think our future generations will eventually eliminate themselves from the gene pool, because their computer-addicted isolation will have taught them to think that sex is only supposed to occur on the internet.  They won't know how to actually meet real people, and perhaps mate themselves, and besides, raising children takes away from one's computer time.

We'll have to repopulate with the Amish and the  yurt-living homeschooling radicals who bought up what little land was left when they saw things going south.

Parents, please make real books available for your children.  Have a library night once a week.
Pick a piece of literature and read it out loud a few nights a week, send them emails of great literature lists (www.amblesideonline.com is one), and ask them which ones they would like to read.  Or, get heavy handed and bring books home for them and make them read thirty minutes a day or else you'll take away everything that they use that is powered by electricity, sign them up for Glee Club and feed them only raw, juiced foods.  With anything, technology included, there has to be a balance.  It's not all about entertainment.  I don't think people know this anymore.