It's My TV….It's My Peanut Butter

The CBC Radio 3 Blog community was home to a discussion of superfans recently.  Normally, I would find the rabid superfan a little off-putting.  They tend to be louder, pushier….a lot of things ending in -er, most of them unpleasant.

But at tonight’s rodeo/Reba concert I got to watch a superfan who actually made my own concert experience better.

About 5-6 rows ahead of me tonight, there was a girl, who looked about 11, and her Dad.  The kid was sporting her “All The Women I Am” Reba shirt and a lot of barely contained excitement.  You could tell in one look at the kid that she was stoked about this.  Dad appeared to be patient and mildly amused.  I think I noticed them because it reminded me so much of my first Reba concert when I was 11–Dad took me, and displayed the same amused patience.  Throughout the rodeo, she was watching, paying attention–Dad was pointing things out and clearly explaining things–but radiated a kind of tense anticipation.

When Reba finally took to the stage, the entire Sprint Center stood for the first two songs, but after the rest of us had settled back in our seats, that kid was still on her feet, clapping and singing along.  She stood the entire concert (her seat position and her height prevented this from annoying anyone behind her–and the volume meant that her singing along could in no way offend anyone around her).  At one point I saw her glancing down at her palms, clearly contemplating whether the sting of all that clapping was worth it.  I suppose it must have been, because she shrugged and kept going.  She even sang along with the medley of older stuff.  And when I say older, I’m not talking about “Fancy” or anything from the 90s.  I’m talking “Can’t Even Get the Blues”…from 1982.  Her Dad was probably still in school when that one came out.

I actually found myself wishing I was seated next to her.  As it was, other than my empty seat, and the PDA couple directly in front of me (side note: there was also a Radio 3 Blog discussion of concert PDA), I was surrounded by un-impressively passive people my parents’ ages.  They totally didn’t get into the concert, which was physically painful, because in the stripped down and truncated version of the performance (rodeo concerts tend to be less elaborate), there were maybe 4 slower songs (1 of which was “Because of You” in which Reba turned the mic on the audience for large chunks).

How much nicer would it have been to have been along side the kid, bopping along with her?  To catch a little of that enthusiasm and feel like it’s totally okay to keep clapping and enjoying the hell out of the moment?  Even at a distance, I feel like I  got something out of seeing this girl watch the show, and I guess that’s enough.

I hope she enjoyed the concert as much as I did–though I strongly suspect she may have enjoyed it even more.

I’m currently on vacation with my entire family.  That means five children between the ages of three and twelve.  Anyone who knows me knows I’m not someone who loves hanging out with children.  I never babysat (okay, a couple times I got roped into it when I was a tween, but I hated it).  I don’t want kids of my own.  I love my nieces and nephews, but I have a tolerance level which is quickly reached.

I have, however, found something which seems to entertain and tame small children for enough time to wait in line, wait for a table, or wait for food.  (No one wants to be with antsy children at restaurants.)  Most adults in my family will hand the children their cell phone and allow them to play Angry Birds or some similar game.  I have a smart phone, but I don’t have any of those games.  What I do have is a camera.

I simply hold it up and tell the bored child to make a crazy face.  When you have kids who are constantly being told not to act silly in pictures and (in my nephews’ cases) being punished for making faces in photos, the opportunity to deliberately look like a goofball is a picture is apparently thrilling.  And all it costs me is battery power and I’m saved the aggravation of obnoxious children.  And everyone else around us is spared the aggravation of obnoxious children they aren’t related to.  Victory for all.

This weekend I became the possessor of some super-strong, rare-earth magnets.

And reverted to age 7.

I’d forgotten how entertaining it can be just to use little magnetic disks to pick up random crap around the house (totally fun with a metal Slinky and the refrigerator) or to push each other around on the table (that kept me enthralled for a good 20 minutes).   And making OTHER things magnetic?  Beauty.  There’s a straight pin on a piece of soap in a little dish of water pointing due north right now.

Problem?

Super strong magnets?

MEANS super strong.  I actually pinched my fingers when they got in between two magnets that really wanted to slam together.  And I had to futz for 15 minutes with one of the TV remotes when I got it too close to a stack of the little buggers (it refused to respond).

And I wondered…..when did I get so far away from something so simply fun?

My deepest apologies to those friends of mine with children because I’m pretty sure I’m going to offend at least a few of you.

But you deserve it.

You and your damn prams from hell.

Pram.  Stroller.  Baby buggy.  Whatever the hell you want to call it, these monstrosities are pissing me off.  And in some cases causing severe bruising.  There are SUVs smaller than these damned things.  Honestly, I get that you have your kid’s safety in mind, but do you really need a Sherman tank to wheel him around in?  Scores of children have managed to survive to adulthood and procreate additional spawn after having only been pushed around in those flimsy little strollers that look like a hammock chair on wheels with umbrella handles to push with.  Or with no stroller at all.  So I’m pretty sure you could spare the all-wheel drive monstrosity for just one day.

Especially in close spaces.  I was in a museum today, touring a special exhibit.  Now, setting aside the depth of “NOT WISE” involved in toting anyone from the under-2 set through a special exhibit on Princess Diana, let’s talk about the pram issue.  You know there’s going to be a lot of people–that’s why the tickets had time slots for entry–you know there’s going to be all kinds of display cases and things to maneuver around–that’s what exhibits are kinda known for–so why do you insist on crowding an already crowded space with your kid-wheeler?!?!?  Leave it in the car and tote the kid.  And don’t you DARE tell me that it’s too hard to carry the kid because NONE of the 5 strollers that managed to hit me today actually had a kid in it.  In all cases the kid was being carried by one parent/aunt/grandparent while another person was pushing that massive cart around, generally containing a baby-bag.  The bag that person could have carried on his/her shoulder, thus sparing us all from the Pram Problem.

And it’s not just museums.  Crowded restaurants and cafe’s.  WHY wouldn’t you leave it in the car? You’re not going to walk that far, and you’re going to be sitting down to eat anyhow.  There’s no room in the aisle and you know it, yet you park the beast right there by the table to everyone else, server and patron alike is stuck trying to find a way to get around it.

It comes down to this, oh proud mama’s and papa’s of today’s era:  You’ve got a misplaced sense of entitlement.  You have a kid and you believe this means stuff and you need a way to move it and it needs to be convenient from you.  Because it’s all for your kid.  And parenthood is sooooo importnat.

Yes, you have a kid.  Yes, that’s inconvenient for you and it means you have to have all this “stuff” to tote around with said kid.

Tough.

You chose to have them.  I don’t owe you any space in the aisles for that, so quit taking it from me.  I want kids myself, but when that day comes, I’ll go into it with the understanding that I’m gonna have to build up some muscles because the entire public shouldn’t have to give-way so that I can be comfortable and lazy.

I’ve already accepted that your kids are going to scream and cry and raise hell and kinda ruin a lot of other parts of my experiences in museums and restaurants and shops.  The least you could do is leave the damn Pram in the car.  Or at least watch where you’re driving the sonofabitch so I don’t come home with big bruises on my hips and back.

*Please note:  If you are in the extreme minority of today’s parents and actually leave the stroller in the car, or use one of the old-hammock style, or in some other ways attempt to minimize the impact on the rest of us, I applaud you and you are exempt from all beratement herein.

Since my very first teaching gig, every time I go out somewhere there’s this little fear of running into one of my students.   As previously stated on this blog, I don’t really embarrass easily.  But I’ve run into students while I’m dressed in funny costumes and it just kind of makes things… a little awkward.

Well Friday I ran into one of my students outside the classroom.  But I’m not the one for whom things are now awkward.

Context:  My university has this spring tradition which is basically an excuse for kids to get drunk and make bad decisions.  Now I know you’re thinking, “Doesn’t every college have a tradition like that?”  Not on this scale.  At least no other college I’ve attended has.  I’ve been around my share of drunken parties in my life, but I have never seen anything that approximates the large scale public drunkenness of this event.  Think New Orleans at Mardi Gras.  Then imagine the people around you are a little younger and a lot more annoying.  And handle their liquor worse.  In perhaps the most disturbing display of how open the debauchery is one of the waxing salons I drive by was running a special on Brazilians in honor of the event.  Yeah.  Don’t think about it.

Students miss entire weeks of classes for this one.  And act shocked when professors don’t cancel classes.  Or expect assignments due.  I’ve had students use up their “free” absences early in the semester then come to me all concerned because they needed to miss class for this.  Professors tend to respond to this with one extreme or the other:  either they cancel class or they have major tests/projects due.  I didn’t do either, though there was a super easy class that nearly everyone got 100 on.

Friday I was driving across campus on my way back from a meeting and I looked beside me to see a small sedan with about eight large frat boy stereotypes crammed inside.  I was only a little surprised to notice that one of the guys in the passenger seat was one of my students.  Suddenly he and the guy on his lap both noticed me looking at them and called out, “Hey, what’s up baby?”  I smiled and looked back at the road because the light had turned green.  And that’s when I heard, “Oh fuck!  That’s my TEACHER!”  Perhaps it’s the way his voice suddenly went falsetto on the word “teacher.”  Perhaps it was picturing the expression on his face Monday morning.  But it is hands down one of my most amusing student interactions ever.

(For the record, he came in slightly late on Monday and avoided eye contact as he signed in)

Survival tip for college drunkenness:  Make sure that chick you’re catcalling is not responsible for determining your grade.

My friend calls me the “texting Nazi” because I’m such a stickler about letting students use cell phones during my classes. If I see you using a cell phone in my class you get a zero for the day no matter what else you did in class that day.  In my opinion in rude, disrespectful and distracting.  My students don’t get it.  Though I’m not willing to adjust my teaching to match, I’ve come to realize that cell phones are such a constant attachment to my students’ hands that they honestly don’t realize why it’s so rude to pull it out at certain moments.  I don’t like it, I do everything possible to discourage it, but I have somewhat accepted it as reality.

But something happened this week that gave me a whole new appreciation (and horror) for these kids’ complete lack of understanding of propriety with cell phones . And perhaps indicates something even darker about one of my students.  It happened on Monday and I’m still kind of shaken by it.

Week before last one of my students emailed me that his grandfather had passed away.  He wanted to work out a way to make up a quiz he would miss and I was happy to help.  I also let him know that I could excuse the absence if he got me documentation.  Now I hate asking for documentation when it’s because of a death in the family, but the fact is that people do take advantage of that excuse and at the end of the day it’s not even my rule.  I told him I’m really lenient about what I’ll accept as documentation and suggested an obituary, bulletin from the funeral, prayer card or even a note from his mom.

On Monday he approached me at the beginning of class with his cell phone and said, “I thought I’d just take a picture.”  I glanced up, not even knowing what he was referencing, and saw a photo of his grandfather’s corpse.  Startled I just stammered, “um… okay.”  It took a few minutes for the horror of the moment to sink in.

What has me so shaken is not that I saw a photo of a dead body.  I’ve seen them before.  There’s a long cultural precedent for it.  Back in the day taking photos of the corpse was standard procedure.  What bothers me is imagining the moment in which this photo was taken.  The knowledge that there was a moment at either the funeral or wake when this kid whipped out his cell phone to take a photo.  Did the rest of the family see it?  What did they think of it?  I can tell you how that would go over with my family.

Part of me is cynical enough to wonder if it even was what he said it was.  Or if he was just mad I asked for documentation and found a photo online.  I haven’t done an image search because I have no desire to look through photos of dead bodies.  I think I just want to believe this rather than the alternative.

And I wonder if it’s just this kid, or if there are a lot of kids his age who think it’s acceptable behavior.  I’m not sure I want to know.

Kids these days…

If you are a child of the 1980s, today is the anniversary of a unifying event for many of us:  Challenger.  By the time Challenger launched, shuttle missions were becoming old hat and–only because of the inclusions of teacher Christa McAuliffe with the Teacher in Space Program–the overwhelming majority of the people watching were schoolkids.

It’s been 25 years now.  We’re along way away from the rug in kindergarten (or the Florida playground) where we were assembled to watch, but we can still picture the shape of the plume of gas from the deflagration perfectly.  We remember the awkwardness of the adults around us trying to figure out how to explain to us what they couldn’t figure out themselves.  We may not think about it constantly, but, on a day like today, when it’s mentioned in the news, we find that it’s all right there.

Kristy:  I grew up about fifteen minutes from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.  We used to watch the launches live–not live on television, live.  I remember once when we were there they did a night launch and my family walked down to the beach to watch; it was one of the most beautiful things I’d seen in my whopping five years of life.  My sister and I would stay up late the night after a launch, hoping to catch a glimpse of the orbiting shuttle in the night sky.  I’m not actually sure now whether what we were seeing was the shuttle or just air planes, but we certainly thought it was the shuttle.

The day of the Challenger launch my kindergarten class went out to the playground to watch.  I remember it was cold.  Keep in mind that at that point the furthest north I had ever lived was Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, so cold was a relative thing.  We stood their waiting for the shuttle, not nearly as excited as we should have been.  We’d all seen this before and we didn’t really get the whole Christa McAuliffe thing.  The shuttle started to rise in the sky and suddenly something exciting did happen.  It split in two and for a moment there were two shuttles climbing up in to the sky. Several of us, I don’t know if I was one of them or not, in memory this moment has become completely collective, excitedly called out, “There are two of them!”

Then I turned to look at my teacher.  She wasn’t excited.  I couldn’t understand the look on her face back then, but looking back I would describe it as horror.  All she said was, “Something went wrong.”  She said it quietly, but firmly, and they shuffled us all back to the classroom.  I can’t imagine what it must have been like to be an adult with a room full of wide-eyed children, faced with the task of explaining something so imaginable to them.  So my teacher did what I can’t swear I wouldn’t have done and said nothing more on the subject.  “Something went wrong.”  It actually sums the whole thing up fairly well.

It was only after I got home and told my mother something had gone wrong that I found out about the explosion.  I remember my sister, eight years old at the time, insisting that the astronauts weren’t dead.  Her teacher had coped with the tragedy by giving her students hope.  There was an escape pod.  If they’d had enough warning they could have all gotten into it.  They might be in the ocean waiting for rescue or they could have been blasted into orbit.

I remember the beach being closed as debris began washing up on shore.  I remember the horrific news that one of the astronauts gloves had been found, with the hand still inside.  This is one of several places were my memory contradicts history; I have read since then that no pieces of the bodies were ever recovered.  Was this a hoax then?  I have no idea.

Cammy: Several hundred miles away, I was in my own kindergarten class in Texas.  I don’t have the same distinct recall of everything surrounding the moment.  I’m pretty sure that my class went next door to the other kindergarten room to watch with there, but maybe they came to us.  I remember the shape and knowing it didn’t look right. I remember the sound of gasping–I suppose from the teachers.  Then the TV was turned off.  That was it.  Honestly, outside of the image of the cloud of gas splitting off into two–which I can see clear as day–the rest is there, but hazier.

What I remember more was going home and Dad explaining things to me.  Though I didn’t realize it at time, I was in a very unique position by comparison to most of my other kindergarten peers:  my dad was a rocket scientist, for real.  Rather, he was an engineer working on the design of solid rocket motors.  Though his were far smaller than those on the shuttle, the design essentials are the same.  I came home and suggested that the astronauts might still be alive.  After all, they had to have parachutes, right?  Dad left no room for hope, “No, Cammy,” he said, before taking out a trusty mechanical pencil, a pad of graph paper, and his writing board.

With my three year old brother nosing in, Dad and I clustered on the living room floor around the piece of plywood he used as a writing surface when he wanted to flop on the bed or the floor.  He proceeded to give me a lesson on speed, propulsion, the operating principles of rocket propulsion and how a solid fuel rocket motor differed from a liquid fuel.  I remember how he told me that you couldn’t “turn off” a solid fuel motor.  I remember telling him that sounded dumb and maybe the just should have used liquid so they could turn them off.  Much later, after the investigation turned up the whole O-ring issue, the board, the paper and the pencil came back out again as he sketched the pieces for me.   At some point he tried to correct my use of the term explosion (it was actually a deflagration), but that part didn’t stick until many years later.

I thought this was all perfectly normal.  It didn’t occur to me that my experience might differ from anyone else’s–until I was in college and the subject came up.  While I had thought Challenger was the point in time when everyone my age learned the basics of rockets, it was, for others, a time when their parents talked to them about accidents and tragedy and how “bad things sometimes happen and we don’t know why.”  I’ve always meant to ask Dad why he responded like he did.  I don’t know if it was his need to educate and explain and make sure I wasn’t walking around with any misconceptions about physics, or if it was just easier for him to teach his kid something with facts, rules and logic than to try muddling through an explanation of death and God.

So, 80s kids, the comment lines are open, we know you’ve got a variation on this theme….

I don’t know why, but lately I’ve been seeing more and more commercials for foods that contain X-servings of vegetables that your kids won’t know they’re getting.  I had been under the impression that this tactic had gone out of fashion, that we’d all grown up enough to teach kids to eat veggies as they are, not to pull some fucked up bait-and-switch with their juice boxes and ravioli.

Apparently not.

To be honest, the ads kind of make me sick.  First of all, I highly doubt the nutritional value of a “vegetable” that’s been so processed that it’s hidden in something else.  Second, it’s doing kids totally wrong–not because you’re tricking them, but because you’re perpetuating the myth that vegetables are “yucky” rather than teaching kids that they’re actually good–or at least some of them.  If you think you’re teaching them to eat healthy by allowing them to avoid an entire category of food, you’re a moron.  And if you think that sodium-laden, over-preserved canned pasta thing you’re using to convey those alleged vegetables is all that healthy, you’re an even bigger moron.

Also, what “veggie” are they getting a serving of?  Part of the evil in the whole “vegetables are yucky” myth is the lumping of all vegetables into a single category.  Not all of them have the same nutrients and they sure as hell don’t have the same taste.   So is that “serving” just a starchy potato?  Or are you getting the vitamin A from a carrot?  And somehow I doubt you’re getting enough fiber out of whatever it is.

Parents?  Grow a set and get over your own fear of  vegetables so you can teach your kids how to eat stuff that’s going to do them some good.  And stupid food makers?  Quit enabling the perpetuation of the myth that all vegetables suck.  Because they don’t.

Except bell pepper.

It’s okay if kids hate that.

One of the worst parts of being a teacher is that you can’t often say what you really want to.  Telling students what you really think of them is quick and easy way to get fired.  And I’m a good girl.  I always respond to them politely and sympathetically.  But here are a few samples of replies I’d like to make to them:

To a student who once argued with me for fifteen minutes about her grade on a paper with her only argument being, “But I always get As!”

My internal reply?  “Not this time!”

To the student who asked if I knew any psychics, saying, “But I thought since you were a folklorist, you’d probably know some here in town.”

My internal reply?  “Yes, you’re right.  Once you become a folklorist they automatically give you the numbers to all the freaky people in town.”

To the student who wrote me an email saying he couldn’t come to class or turn in his paper because he had been whitening his teeth and the white strips made his gums sore.

My reply?  This is what we call the wages of vanity.  So sorry.

To the student who called me at 7am to complain about her grade on a plagiarized assignment.

My reply?  Fuck you.  Read the email I sent you before calling.

To the girl who texts nonstop during class and thinks I can’t tell because she has her phone under the table.

My reply?  You better hope I know you’re texting.  Otherwise what do you think it looks like when you have your hands fiddling around in your crotch all through class?

To the student who couldn’t come to class because someone was knocking on the door to the room next to his at 5am.

My reply?  Yeah… that sucks, but the absence still isn’t excused.

It’s midsemester.  Otherwise known as the season where I start having thoughts like, “If I were in jail, no one could make me finish this paper.”  And then I start genuinely pondering what I could do to get me sent to jail, just long enough to avoid the rest of the semester.  And due to a couple other things I won’t go into, I’ve kind of been in a rotten mood.  A mood that was saved by this week’s time vampire.

I don’t have any personal beef with “mommy bloggers.”  I even know a few.  I think they’re swell.  I imagine.  I have to be honest, I’ve only sampled them.  ‘Cause for an outsider… well, their appeal is limited.  I can see where for mothers of small children it’s probably helpful to hear from other mothers of small children and get advice, know they’re not alone, etc.  But you have to wonder sometimes, how do their kids feel about being used for social networking?

Enter Bedtimes are for Suckers which one of my online friends linked last week.  This blog is run by four-year-old Lily, who’s determined to show the other side of the story.  Lily counters her mother’s mommy blog and lets us know what kids are really thinking.  For someone who’s twenty-six years away from preschool years, it’s enlightening.  Now I understand how difficult it is for children to have their parents rifle through their candy on Halloween.  And how munchkins manipulate adults.  And that there are others who lie awake at night wondering what will happen if the world runs out of cake.

Okay, okay, so the real reason I like this time vampire should be obvious by now.  Lily brings the funny.  In quantities so large the belie her small size.  And this week, I’ve really needed a laugh.  So I haven’t had a lot of time for the vampires to suck away, but I gladly let Lily suck a bit of it up.  She deserved it.