Nostalgia as Condemnation

Amazing author and extraordinary speaker Laurie Halse Anderson has challenged her readers to write 15 minutes a day for the entirety of August. Not sure if I'll actually accomplish it, but I intend to try, and post the results here.

I recently attended a panel discussion on children and technology, and had the unfortunate luck to sit next to an overbearing grandmother who spent most of the talk rocking violently in her seat, bursting with the need to expound on how SHE certainly didn’t grow up with technology, nor did her children, oh no no no, and they all had a perfectly lovely childhood so why do we need to RUIN childhood for children with all this confounded technology? I spent the panel being very angry with her, though I couldn’t quite pin down why. Why did it matter to me what this woman, whose name I didn’t even know, thought and felt about technology? Why did it affect me at all?

This same feeling has plagued me during any conversation where reminiscing turns into condemning the present. I’m not talking about the “Oh, remember how we used to slide down the stairs in a sleeping bag?” or “I loved that one show, Dungeons and Dragons!” conversations, but rather the “Pfft, you’re too young to remember the good old days” and “Man, cartoons today suck! They were way better when I was a kid!” conversations. (FYI: no, they weren’t better. We loved them because we were 5. Watch them now. They’re weird as hell.)

But why do these conversations make me grumpy? What is it about people talking about the past as a perfect time that drives me crazy and prompts me to defend the present like it’s my homeland or something? This is a question I’ve been grappling with for awhile now, and I think I’ve finally figured it out.  

The attitude of Then vs Now is so troubling because it assumes that everyone’s childhood is not only the same, but also wonderfully idyllic. It implies that by not doing it as people did Back Then, that my generation is Doing It All Wrong (tm Chow.com). It assumes that anything that deviates from their version of childhood isn’t valid. That anything other is also less than. And I find that disturbing for many reasons, but mostly because it narrows down what childhood can mean, and what it can encompass.  

Nostalgia as condemnation does not add to the conversation, and almost immediately negates any valid points the speaker might have. Not all things were better in that rosy past and they certainly weren’t better for everyone. Not all children grew up in a safe upper middle class suburb, and to act as though they did is to dismiss an entire population who might very well have benefited from those reviled changes. As John Green likes to say “The truth resists simplicity.” In fact, I’d argue that a fair amount of people in that past might wish they were living now, happily taking the annoying texting and bad-mannered cell phone use to also get the medical and household advances. Washing machines for everyone!

Where I Read

Amazing author and extraordinary speaker Laurie Halse Anderson has challenged her readers to write 15 minutes a day for the entirety of August. Not sure if I'll actually accomplish it, but I intend to try, and post the results here.

A series of mostly free verse poems about where I read, done for a project at work:

Most books during childhood:

Very late at night

Under covers

Just one more chapter

Hoping I don't get caught.

Wrinkle in Time:

Old plaid chair

In a corner,

In my room.

Sort of smelly,

But all mine. 

Covered in a blanket, 

While my mother vacuums

Outside my door.

Order of the Phoenix:

Reading in a bed-nest

Surrounded by down on all sides

With water and chocolate close at hand

Preferably rainy

Preferably cold

Preferably mid-morning

Half Blood Prince:

On a burning summer day

Wilting with heat

Sneaking Harry Potter

While Dan falls asleep

Deathly Hallows:

A bit out loud,

A bit on the subway,

The rest in an air-conditioned cocoon

With rainbow cookies

   

Now:

I read on the subway.

Wait, was that my stop? 

Oreo the Cat

Amazing author and extraordinary speaker Laurie Halse Anderson has challenged her readers to write 15 minutes a day for the entirety of August. Not sure if I'll actually accomplish it, but I intend to try, and post the results here.

My cat Oreo once licked tears off my face, about 4 years before we had to put her to sleep.

In middle school I had an intense crush on a boy named Sam. He was loud and funny and had a mop of brown hair on his head and a sprinkle of freckles across his nose. He was cute in a pretty conventional way, but it was really the confidence and humor that got me. We knew each other casually, had some classes together, and probably had all of 5 conversations throughout 8th grade. But still, when the year ended and he announced he was moving 250 miles away to Houston, I was crushed. Crushed by a crush.

Despite the fact that we clearly didn’t have a close relationship nor were we destined to be together, I woke up on the first day of summer feeling incredibly melancholy. Oreo, at that time a fully grown cat in full possession of her sight, jumped up on my bed as she did every morning, sniffing around my head. On mornings that I was not awake when she arrived, she saw fit to nip at my forehead, right below my hair line. Not real bites, just tiny alarm clock bites. On this morning, she found me fully awake, laying on my side with my face snuggled into my pillow, crying quietly. While a sad girl might deny her siblings the pleasure of seeing her teary eyes, there is no way to ignore a purring, furry cat sniffing so closely that you can feel her whiskers against your cheek.

Sliding my hand along her spine, I told Oreo my tale of woe: a boy I barely knew was moving away, and for some reason that reduced me to weeping. She didn’t judge, just listened and stared into my eyes as though she fully understood my middle school pain. Then she stood up, leaned in, sniffed some more, and whisked her scratchy velcro-y tongue against my face. One, two, three more times, little licks against the apples of my cheeks, which tickled me just enough to break me out of my sadness but not enough to make me fully laugh.

So when, four years later, I held a blind Oreo in my arms wrapped in my baby blanket, and passed her over to a vet for the last time, it’s no surprise that the tears flowed freely, nor did it escape my attention that she could no longer reach in, sniff my face, and lick them away. The realization, of course, only caused more of them to fall.

WFMAD: Blinded by my desk

Amazing author and extraordinary speaker Laurie Halse Anderson has challenged her readers to write 15 minutes a day for the entirety of August. Not sure if I'll actually accomplish it, but I intend to try, and post the results here.



In a world where having a work space near a window is a sought after thing, a status symbol, I find it slightly ironic that I have to keep the blinds closed most of the time to be able to see my computer screen. I was assigned this seat next to the tall windows as a marker of my status in the department (window worthy, but not large cubicle worth or office worthy). Being able to look outside while I am ruminating on a particular problem or theorizing why it is that Elmo needs to find more songs to sing is certainly a nice perk. 


The downside of working in New York City, however, is that you are often surrounded by buildings made of glass. And if you are lucky enough to be free from glass towers, you are probably surrounded by apartment buildings with a multitude of windows that are just as reflective. Reflecting the sun into those tall, tall windows of which I have the privilege of being near. Reflecting the sun right onto my bright white desk which, while certainly solid, does an amazing job acting as a mirror to direct the sun back into my eyes. And that white desk, while looking clean and sleek when we first arrived in our new offices, but looking much shabbier now that it is covered in coffee rings and streaks of nail polish that has rubbed off my nails as I sort paper, still manages to have enough clean surface to reflect enough sun to effectively blind me.

So, after all the pomp and circumstance of achieving this desk position, this window-adjacent work area, this status-symbol-cubicle, I must stand on top of that nice white desk, grip the bottom of the nice white blinds, and pull them down to cover the entirety of those tall, tall windows. There goes the sun, there goes the view, here comes my ability to see my computer.

If this isn’t a first world problem (a NYC-centric problem) then I don’t know what is.

Boys x Girls x Punk Shows

I recently read Lauren Denitzio's article about sexism in punk (via a link posted in Facebook). Lauren is someone I know tangentially, and I've only ever had one or two conversations with her, but I found the article very interesting. She talks frankly about things that make her uncomfortable at shows, and most seem very obvious: rape jokes, questions about whether she is IN the band or WITH the band. One thing she mentioned is something I have been bothered by for years:

So, for those who might not know what I’m talking about: you know what makes me feel unsafe? When you’re the only guy in the pit who doesn’t get the message to not fly full force into someone half your size or strength.

I spent years being annoyed and feeling put upon because I had to hang out in the back if I wanted to watch a band unmolested. I felt affronted that I couldn't see my brother or boyfriend perform because getting closer meant getting pushed around. Why should I have to deal with that? I thought. So when I read Lauren's article, I felt myself nodding in agreement...and then I started really thinking about gender, privilege, alienation and entitlement. And I remembered 2 things.

The first is Ali Carr's TED talk about how we're losing boys in the classroom. She doesn't pander to gender stereotypes, but does acknowledge that there is a difference in the way majority of girls learn vs majority of boys. There has been a lot out there lately about "getting" boys, both in educational terms but also in marketing/sales terms. How to get boys to watch certain shows, read certain books, attend certain colleges. As a girl, it's hard not to bristle at all that -- are girls not worth the same effort? But that bristling stops when we talk about education, because Ali Carr is right. Boys deserve education that works with them, not against them. Has focusing on girls in education left boys out of the conversation? What implications does that have?

The second thing that came to mind was a show I attended years ago at a random AOH hall in upstate New York. It was swarming with young kids, and I spent most of my time at the adjacent bar, happy to be out of the dancing mess. Wanting to watch a specific band, I slipped into the main hall, staying in the back as always, hoping to avoid the moshing and pushing that passed for dancing to teenage boys. As I stood watching them, though, I stopped feeling so put upon and judgmental and started to think about how amazing it must feel to those kids to be so physically liberated, to dance in a way that was socially acceptable to their peers, to move to a beat without having their sexuality called into question. To be un-ironically into dancing.

Fifteen-year-old boys are still very much figuring themselves out, pushing at boundaries, and the ability to be emotional and find their place in an environment tailor-made to them (a mosh pit full of noise and sweat and boy-ness) is nothing to scoff at. I remember thinking, This is why parents should let their sons come to shows...they get to really let go and bond in a way no other situation allows.

So, then, I come back to Lauren's thoughts on being at a show, and I'm suddenly faced with a question: why does my preference on how I want to watch a band take precedent over someone else's? If someone wants to dance, why should they be held back just because I don't want to dance? If a show is made totally comfortable for me, what happens if that alienates someone else, boy or girl? If boys are uncomfortable at a show that caters to girls then is that just a different side of the exact same coin? Is alienating boys a just revenge, or completely missing the point? And if the goal is to make everyone watching a band feel comfortable, what do you do when one group's "comfortable" is another group's "terrible show experience"?

I mentioned the word entitlement* up at the top because it's a concept that I find very frustrating and I am convinced is intimately involved in the discord in this country right now. My normal reaction to being near a mosh pit or violent dancing is simply to remove myself from the situation (this is my reaction to pretty much any situation I don't like). I'd rather hang out at the back, but I know not everyone feels that way. Is anyone entitled to a certain experience at a show? And, again, what happens when those "entitlements" are in direct conflict?

Who needs a thesis topic? Entitlement and Gender at a Punk Show

*In this sense, entitlement refers to a belief that one is deserving of certain privilege. I am not programs such as Medicare, where the term carries slightly different connotations.

The Rules of Ownership

So John Green, a favorite author of mine due to his great writing skills but also his great speaking skills and his great being-someone-you'd-like-to-have-a-beer-with skills, says a lot of really great stuff. One of his strengths as a writer is coming up with wonderfully short sentences that manage to convey infinite amounts of wisdom. Behold:

“...being the person who God made you does not and CANNOT separate you from God's love.”

See? Brilliant—that’s an entire religion in one sentence.

One thing he said in his video today really struck me, because it’s something that I have felt and I have said in different ways, but not as eloquently and...you know...not in public. About his debut, Printz-winning novel, he said:

“The Looking for Alaska that you read is not quite like the Looking for Alaska that anyone else reads.”

In essence, the reader makes her own meaning, and, in a way, owns a story. This immediately made me think of a memory from my childhood, one that I feel defines me in a very precise way. The memory is about tornadoes, briefcases, bathrooms, and books. It has multiple endings, as most stories in life do, but the first one, chronologically, is the most applicable here.

Tornadoes are a scary reality for anyone living in Nebraska and North Texas. Those residents know the hard-and-fast rule about where to go when those sirens go off: preferably a basement, but at the least an interior room with no windows. In Nebraska, we had a basement full of toys, so when an alarm would sound, we would gather in the room where my most precious possessions (i.e. the Pony Paradise Estate) already lived. In North Texas, however, basements were scarce and the only room in the house that offered protection from a storm was a small bathroom off the kitchen. Two adults and four children could barely fit in it, so the GI Joes and My Little Ponies had to take a backseat. The rule was: each child could choose one thing, and one thing only, to bring into the bathroom.

It was during this period of my life that I stumbled on a book in the library called Kristy’s Great Idea by Ann M Martin. I quickly fell, be-speckled-eyes first, in love with the Baby-Sitters Club series. I saved up allowance dollars and bought the books at book fairs, garage sales, and used bookstores. They topped my birthday and Christmas lists for years—especially the Super Specials, which were larger and more expensive. There was a four-foot horizontal shelf in my closet specifically reserved for the series, which quickly filled the space with its pastel rainbow. The collection was my pride and joy. I strutted around my room, secure in the knowledge that I could quickly name off the titles of the first thirty or so books. I kept them neat and dust free, always in order. I adored each one and never leant them to any one.

When the sirens sounded, then, there was no doubt in my mind what was coming into that bathroom with me. Luckily, my father had recently traded his old briefcase in for a smaller and sleeker model. The old briefcase, with its tattered leather cover and brass combination locks next to the handle, became mine. In the minute and a half we had to scramble everything together, I could stack 60 books very neatly into that briefcase, snap the locks and haul it across the house. The bulk of the series fit into the main compartment, lined with worn down cream velvet, striped with pen marks. The Super Specials were lined up in the lid where partitions meant for organizing papers and files held them in quite snugly. I would pause for a moment before slamming the lid and admire the covers, the way they lined up in each stack to form a perfect grid of smooth, slick paper.

I am sure my mother had actually meant for us to bring one small item in—a picture album, our baby blankets, or perhaps a small toy. I still maintain, as I did then, that the books were all enclosed in a briefcase, which is one item, and therefore was allowed.

Looking back, I wondered why it never occurred to me that those books were just about the most replaceable items I owned. If a tornado did in fact rip through our house, tear our roof off, and destroy the contents of my closet, the cost to replace the entire series would be under $400.00. Today this seems like a rather paltry sum—less than the deductible on my renter’s insurance. At ten, however, that was more money that I had ever seen.

I don’t think the money was really an issue, though. I doubt it even occurred to me that there was a way to replace the books. In my mind, the books that I owned were the only ones I could own. They were mine, no force of nature had any right to take them away from me. I had marked in the margins, dog-eared the pages with my favorite passages, stamped a “This Book Belongs To” note in the inside cover of every single one. By being in my possession, they had become part of me, each book was not only the means by which I experienced the story, but part of the story itself. The way I read the story was imprinted on them—a little bit of me being left on every book I read. A newer, cleaner edition with whiter pages would not have the same familiarity, would not tell the story in the same way. Those books in the bookstore belonged to someone else, would be read by someone else and interpreted by someone else. I wanted my books, my stories. Those, to me, were truly irreplaceable.

I no longer have those BSC books. They were lost to the attic or to yard sales after I grew out of them and moved on to such rich literary classics as Christopher Pike’s Remember Me and Lois Duncan’s Stranger With My Face (don't worry, my taste in books got better in college). That sense of ownership remained, however, and is probably a contributing factor to my very packed bookshelves. Once I love a book, how can I let it go? It’s mine, after all. All mine.

New Year's Scream

2011 is a weird year, there's no getting around it. All the "00" years seemed kind of cool because we were still in that "It's the new millennium!" excitement. You know: "I can't believe it's 2005!" Then 2010 came along, and it's such a nice number, so round and bouncy. Sure, it's kind of square but even so it seemed like a really partial number, an even keeled one. A number that could see all sides of an issue, wouldn't judge you, and would totally be willing to help you move that couch.

And now it's over and it's...2011. You can't make funny New Year's glasses with it. It's a prime number, which either makes it very cool and exclusive, or the sad loser year that no one wants to hang out with. Either way, it's odd. (Ha ha. Sorry.)

Looking down the barrel of this year from January is kind of intimidating. You know that scene in Home Alone (the first one) (great movie) where Kevin has his hands to his face and is screaming? The scream is actually in response to aftershave and therefore ripe for a metaphore about growing up, but that scene became representative of the whole movie, of Kevin's feelings about two burglars trying to break into his house and ruin his already-terrible Christmas. And it's how I feel right now, like I need a moment of unbridled screaming to calm myself before tackling the bear that is 2011.

Like last year, I'm not doing resolutions this year but rather listing things I'm looking forward to/need to focus on.

1) Women in Children's Media
I'm now the V.P. of an amazing organization, which means it's time to quit making excuses, put my big pants on, and get shit done. Those are all things I'm telling myself while I panic about how little I know about how to host media online.

2) The Work Move
Our offices are shifting around inside our building, and it's going to put a strain on pretty much the entire company. This year will require a lot of patience, flexibility, and some really great noise-cancelling headphones.

3) The Wedding
Anyone who had fun planning their wedding must have had a much bigger buget than we do, as I've spent the last 2 months either overwhelmed by guilt for how much we're spending or in a total panic that no one will have any fun because we aren't spending enough. A lot of deep breaths (and about 10 excel spreadsheets) will help. Also, I need to keep in perspective the best part of all this: marrying Dan.

Also, I guess I should blog more. Or just write more. And start getting to work on time. And stop eating so many bagels. And run more. Train for a half marathon. Talk to my friends more. Clean the apartment more often and dust more than once a year. Call my mother weekly and talk to my siblings more and see my new nephew and be more organized and oh my God the closet shelf needs work and AHHHHHHHHHH. Hands on face!