Starting Monday, I’ll be teaching geometry, pre-algebra, 6th grade math, biology, and middle school life science. If this column starts to look a little ratty, you’ll know why. It will match my house. I can almost recall the original color of my bathtub. I don’t mean to gross you out. I’m not normally this acutely filthy, but if things start growing around my house, I can always claim it for, and blame it on, science. This is the biology teachers’ variant of saving paper towel tubes: collecting furry paper towel tubes.
But that’s not the best part about being a teacher. At long last, I can be on the other side of the school supply list. Ah, sweet revenge.
Have you noticed the feature-creep on school supply lists? I recall when boxes of tissues first snuck in and settled themselves just below the boxes of pencils on the list. Placing them there lent an air of legitimacy. We acquiesced, albeit grudgingly. After all, some children’s noses run as much as other children’s mouths.
Next was the incursion of the hand sanitizer, required to wage microscopic war against classroom germs. Now the school supply list includes sandwich bags. Are the students going to collect germs to bring home? I’m not sure, but if my children are going to be in your classroom, and you said you want sandwich bags, I’ll be sending them in. I’d rather you have a good impression of my kids. Sandwich bags? Check. Just say the word.
So now it’s my turn to make a school supply list. Here are some things my students need to bring to class, weekly:
1 dozen eggs
1 gallon of milk or ½ gallon of Silk (soymilk) or ½ gallon of Rice Dream
1 loaf of bread
3 cans of tuna or 2 cans of salmon
1 box of pasta
How do these supplies relate to their education? They don’t. But it does keep Teacher and her family fed, and having a teacher in the classroom has sometimes been shown to be conducive to learning. Before the school year ends, just to make the parents feel better, I may allow a slice of bread to mold and then view it under the microscope. I might even let the students take a peek too. Granted, this exercise may perturb the geometry students, but at least it will justify the school supply list.
Or, from the hundreds of eggs I will collect during the school year, I might select one egg to put it in vinegar. The students could examine and handle the egg with only its membrane after the calcium dissolves from the shell. Ooh, did I forget to tell you? Each student will also need to bring in one gallon of vinegar. Add that to your list, please.
Monthly, students need to bring:
1 bag of dog food
1 voucher for gasoline
1 canister of coffee
1 tube of lipstick
Teachers who are well caffeinated promote a better classroom environment. Hey, I don’t want any smart comments about the lipstick. Basic needs are basic needs. There is enough ugliness in this fallen world of ours. You don’t really want your children exposed to more in the classroom, do you? I thought not.
Just be glad I didn’t ask for mascara. And thank you, but the dog food is not for my personal consumption, even though I pride myself in not being a picky eater. The dog food is for our ultra-friendly shelter dog, Betty Lou who threatens to lick everyone to death.
Next important point: students need to know some important dates and information. You’re probably thinking about George Washington and 1776 and all that, but there are far more important things these students need to know.
Namely, they should be aware that my birthday is on September 12th. My favorite color is purple, and I am a little too fond of pens that write smoothly. I also have a terrible sweet tooth.
Now, if they really want to get into my good books, there might be extra credit for the students who remember my kids’ birthdays. Fortunately, these all occur during the school year, so that’s six more chances for extra brownie points. (And speaking of brownies, I’m not averse to those, either.)
Six chances aren’t enough? Oh, fine – let’s toss my husband into the mix. Seven is a much more auspicious number, anyway, don’t you think? If you “want” to send in gift cards, here would be some good times to do it. I’ll arrange them chronologically for you, just because I remember what it was like to be on the other side of the supply list, and I want to ease the pain for the parents. Parents may want to commit this list to memory .
Special dates: October 8th, November 22nd, February 28th, March 4th, March 31st, May 5th, and May 30th. I realize you are going to feel embarrassed about sending in that one-dollar mug from Dollar Tree, so here’s what let’s do. Each child could just pick one of those dates and then send , we would in something sturdy just that once a year.
So that’s it for the teacher supply list. For now, at least…
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
The Big Sigh – Summer is Over
From three years ago, when five kids went off to school, leaving me and the youngest (then two years old) alone at home to fend for ourselves...
If I had had any sense, I would have been like normal moms who are relieved that school has started. I would have planned mid-morning solo shopping excursions or a “coffee with the girls” celebration as we all exchanged the Big Sigh that marks our emergence from the long tunnel called Summer.
In that tunnel, your kids camped (or cramped) around you, while you made constant social connections for them in order to temporarily eject a child or two and enjoy a little extra space. (About midway through your child’s first school year, you realize that he or she has a far more active and exciting social calendar than you do.) There’s no sense in getting jealous over their social appointments; if you’re going to get anything, it had better be the car keys.
The Tunnel of Summer is long, so traversing it without gnawing on each other calls for injections of entertainment along the way. If you can afford to be at home with your kids, it usually means that you ARE the entertainment. “You want to go to the pool…again? Why don’t you kids whip up a batch of cookies instead?” This might explain why the stay-at-home contingent in my family puts on pounds in the summer the way a good hiker packs on gear. By summer’s end, our tunnel is so snug that the first evacuee has to pry the others out.
No matter how short or long a tunnel is, it is sure to be peppered with sibling squabbles. In such tunnels, each spat echoes more. Twice, in separate years and for separate pairs of kids, I have had to enforce a no-communication for a day rule to quash the bickering. (“Don’t look at, play with, or talk to each other!”) But that’s another story.
Somewhere along these annual tunnel tours, it has dawned on me that I am not normal. (Or did the kids implant that idea?) “Mom, why can’t you be normal? Why do you have to be such a hawk, watching what we do all the time?” I realize that watching those home/fashion improvement shows on TLC aren’t entirely deleterious to the teen girl’s health, but why can’t they go and simultaneously improve their room’s décor and their wardrobes by picking up the clothes in their bedroom? Or perhaps they could learn to fix their beds properly, so the fitted sheet isn’t hair-triggered to spring off at the slightest provocation, such as breathing or shutting the door?
And then there are the middle boys, with an uncanny and almost clairvoyant ability to detect every movement of SpongeBob SquarePants on the Nickelodean channel. Not that all TV is bad, but again, that is another story. After the first half-hour’s dose of that poriferan’s million-dollar monotonic laugh, my response is to turn off the TV and have them grab a sponge and bob over to the sink to help with the dishes. (Then it’s my turn to laugh.)
I know this is going to sound old-fashioned, but when my kids are home, I tend to extract work from them. How else did I have time to fritter away, writing silly columns? Maybe that is why I dread summer’s end more than any recalcitrant pupil. All these years, my children have been my labor of love. At this stage, I’m hoping they’ve developed a love of labor.
My seventeen-year-old was Chief Laundress, in charge of getting all the laundry done while the nine year-old was her noble aide, bringing down heaps of dirty clothes and occasionally putting away clean towels. Very often, the noble aide would forget to empty just one hamper…usually that of the Chief Laundress. Too bad we couldn’t have harnessed the sparks that flew; they could have dried an entire load of towels. Ah, it was a summer with no laundry to do and someone else to blame if it wasn’t completely done. (In over twenty years of marriage, I have never been able to accomplish this feat.)
At night, the Chief changed gears and dramatically read aloud stories to the youngest two until everyone else, including parents with such urgent matters to justify offloading all domestic duties onto their kids, stopped what we were doing to listen to Roald Dahl come to life.
Or did I dread the end of summer because my fourteen-year-old daughter loves to cook and had taken over lunch and dinner duties? Of course, there was the small matter of that yearbook debt she was working off. (Her high school yearbook was $85. The first used car my father bought in 1972 cost him $75.) At any rate, this girl has expanded our menu beyond the four things I repeatedly make. Everybody was excited at each mealtime. Was I jealous? Please. I was the most excited one.
Also, for some reason, my second daughter is the only one that my stubborn (oops, I mean “strong-willed”) two-year-old boy listens to. She doesn’t threaten or pinch him to extract compliance - at least, I’ve never noticed any marks. (Just kidding, friendly Social Services people.) It’s just this frightening eye/voice thing she can do that I thought my father had a monopoly on. One night this summer, she extracted Cling-Boy from my body and got him in the habit of going to bed on a schedule. Not only does he now actually go (away) to bed, he even sleeps through the night. Why is everybody smarter than I am?
I miss my twelve-year-old son with all the food allergies who unloaded the dishwasher (sometimes three times in a day) and loaded the breadmaker to prepare his own dinner rolls. He even entertained the two youngest with this original “play” dough. And I also miss my nine-year-old boy who put out all the trash and diligently sorted all the recycling. He would put on puppet shows and make all the voices to delight the little ones. And although there was always an uncomfortable element of danger, the boys could keep my five-year-old girl and the two-year-old terror engaged for hours.
I can’t believe I put my tiny five-year-old who has only just hit forty pounds onto that gigantic school bus. The little guy feels his kindergartener sister’s absence the most acutely. Not only do they share a room (and now a bedtime), they also share a little table for snacks and coloring, and giggles and games all day long. Even if they fought, at least they kept each other occupied.
On the first day of school, when five of my kids headed out the door, excited to see old friends or thrilled to greet new adventures, the little guy and I were left at home with each other to get reacquainted with some household chores. It’s the sudden emptiness and the quiet, together with my now friendless and therefore clingy boy, that feel altogether too much to handle. Left behind to survey the disaster zone left in the wake of everyone’s rush to leave, that’s when I feel the jealous pang.
To be honest, there are certain things I don’t miss: chiefly, the inability of any of these gifted and mechanically inclined kids to replace an expended roll of toilet paper. Who am I kidding? What was I thinking? Summer is over.
My Big Sigh is not from relief; it is one that selfishly misses the kids and their charm, their rascally personalities, and their chaos and commotion. Maybe I should have made plans to take the little guy out or to get together with friends, after all. At least in that, I could have appeared to be normal.
If I had had any sense, I would have been like normal moms who are relieved that school has started. I would have planned mid-morning solo shopping excursions or a “coffee with the girls” celebration as we all exchanged the Big Sigh that marks our emergence from the long tunnel called Summer.
In that tunnel, your kids camped (or cramped) around you, while you made constant social connections for them in order to temporarily eject a child or two and enjoy a little extra space. (About midway through your child’s first school year, you realize that he or she has a far more active and exciting social calendar than you do.) There’s no sense in getting jealous over their social appointments; if you’re going to get anything, it had better be the car keys.
The Tunnel of Summer is long, so traversing it without gnawing on each other calls for injections of entertainment along the way. If you can afford to be at home with your kids, it usually means that you ARE the entertainment. “You want to go to the pool…again? Why don’t you kids whip up a batch of cookies instead?” This might explain why the stay-at-home contingent in my family puts on pounds in the summer the way a good hiker packs on gear. By summer’s end, our tunnel is so snug that the first evacuee has to pry the others out.
No matter how short or long a tunnel is, it is sure to be peppered with sibling squabbles. In such tunnels, each spat echoes more. Twice, in separate years and for separate pairs of kids, I have had to enforce a no-communication for a day rule to quash the bickering. (“Don’t look at, play with, or talk to each other!”) But that’s another story.
Somewhere along these annual tunnel tours, it has dawned on me that I am not normal. (Or did the kids implant that idea?) “Mom, why can’t you be normal? Why do you have to be such a hawk, watching what we do all the time?” I realize that watching those home/fashion improvement shows on TLC aren’t entirely deleterious to the teen girl’s health, but why can’t they go and simultaneously improve their room’s décor and their wardrobes by picking up the clothes in their bedroom? Or perhaps they could learn to fix their beds properly, so the fitted sheet isn’t hair-triggered to spring off at the slightest provocation, such as breathing or shutting the door?
And then there are the middle boys, with an uncanny and almost clairvoyant ability to detect every movement of SpongeBob SquarePants on the Nickelodean channel. Not that all TV is bad, but again, that is another story. After the first half-hour’s dose of that poriferan’s million-dollar monotonic laugh, my response is to turn off the TV and have them grab a sponge and bob over to the sink to help with the dishes. (Then it’s my turn to laugh.)
I know this is going to sound old-fashioned, but when my kids are home, I tend to extract work from them. How else did I have time to fritter away, writing silly columns? Maybe that is why I dread summer’s end more than any recalcitrant pupil. All these years, my children have been my labor of love. At this stage, I’m hoping they’ve developed a love of labor.
My seventeen-year-old was Chief Laundress, in charge of getting all the laundry done while the nine year-old was her noble aide, bringing down heaps of dirty clothes and occasionally putting away clean towels. Very often, the noble aide would forget to empty just one hamper…usually that of the Chief Laundress. Too bad we couldn’t have harnessed the sparks that flew; they could have dried an entire load of towels. Ah, it was a summer with no laundry to do and someone else to blame if it wasn’t completely done. (In over twenty years of marriage, I have never been able to accomplish this feat.)
At night, the Chief changed gears and dramatically read aloud stories to the youngest two until everyone else, including parents with such urgent matters to justify offloading all domestic duties onto their kids, stopped what we were doing to listen to Roald Dahl come to life.
Or did I dread the end of summer because my fourteen-year-old daughter loves to cook and had taken over lunch and dinner duties? Of course, there was the small matter of that yearbook debt she was working off. (Her high school yearbook was $85. The first used car my father bought in 1972 cost him $75.) At any rate, this girl has expanded our menu beyond the four things I repeatedly make. Everybody was excited at each mealtime. Was I jealous? Please. I was the most excited one.
Also, for some reason, my second daughter is the only one that my stubborn (oops, I mean “strong-willed”) two-year-old boy listens to. She doesn’t threaten or pinch him to extract compliance - at least, I’ve never noticed any marks. (Just kidding, friendly Social Services people.) It’s just this frightening eye/voice thing she can do that I thought my father had a monopoly on. One night this summer, she extracted Cling-Boy from my body and got him in the habit of going to bed on a schedule. Not only does he now actually go (away) to bed, he even sleeps through the night. Why is everybody smarter than I am?
I miss my twelve-year-old son with all the food allergies who unloaded the dishwasher (sometimes three times in a day) and loaded the breadmaker to prepare his own dinner rolls. He even entertained the two youngest with this original “play” dough. And I also miss my nine-year-old boy who put out all the trash and diligently sorted all the recycling. He would put on puppet shows and make all the voices to delight the little ones. And although there was always an uncomfortable element of danger, the boys could keep my five-year-old girl and the two-year-old terror engaged for hours.
I can’t believe I put my tiny five-year-old who has only just hit forty pounds onto that gigantic school bus. The little guy feels his kindergartener sister’s absence the most acutely. Not only do they share a room (and now a bedtime), they also share a little table for snacks and coloring, and giggles and games all day long. Even if they fought, at least they kept each other occupied.
On the first day of school, when five of my kids headed out the door, excited to see old friends or thrilled to greet new adventures, the little guy and I were left at home with each other to get reacquainted with some household chores. It’s the sudden emptiness and the quiet, together with my now friendless and therefore clingy boy, that feel altogether too much to handle. Left behind to survey the disaster zone left in the wake of everyone’s rush to leave, that’s when I feel the jealous pang.
To be honest, there are certain things I don’t miss: chiefly, the inability of any of these gifted and mechanically inclined kids to replace an expended roll of toilet paper. Who am I kidding? What was I thinking? Summer is over.
My Big Sigh is not from relief; it is one that selfishly misses the kids and their charm, their rascally personalities, and their chaos and commotion. Maybe I should have made plans to take the little guy out or to get together with friends, after all. At least in that, I could have appeared to be normal.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Close Encounters of the Bad Kind
Do you ever run into someone who wrecks your day? I’ve had a few such encounters while living in Warrenton. I often write about how much I love living in Warrenton and how beautiful Fauquier County is, and how wonderful the people here are. Not only does that keep me in your good graces, considering that I am still a relative newcomer here after five years, but I also get paid an extra nickel.
A couple of summers ago, I was shopping at Safeway with my two youngest children, aged six and three then. I had gotten one of those highly coveted kiddie carts that has the bright red and yellow fire truck appended to the front so that two loosely belted kids can ride ahead of your cart as if they were heralding a regal procession. Never mind that this cab throws the entire vehicle off kilter, and leaves you to negotiate the aisles with the cart fishtailing wildly. You spend as much time hoisting the cart off its rear wheels, and pivoting as you do pushing the cart. So what? The kids absolutely love this experience. The kiddie cart increases your shopping time and fatigue, but what is parenting if it is overflowing with time and energy? My kids have outgrown the kiddie cart (especially the teens!), but I prefer it to letting them use those “Little Shopper” carts. You know the miniaturized shopping carts that can be vehicles of destruction when wielded by the youngest of our citizens, with the “Shopper in Training” flags? They are usually driven recklessly, with kids careening through the aisles, narrowly missing the ankles of other shoppers and the piles of sparkling cider in GLASS containers. Maybe the flags should say “Chopper in Training.”
So I will take the fire truck in which my children are relatively confined over the mini shopper almost any day. My kids can barely squeeze into the cab part nowadays, but since I haven’t seen a weight capacity rating on the thing, I still let them squish into it. It’s nice because I can hand down a snack while we shop, and they can steer as wildly as they like with their pseudo-steering wheels without endangering others. The downside is that they can spot “sales” from their vantage point and are often certain that we absolutely need to replenish our stock of gummy somethings.
As we traveled up and down (and side to side) in the aisles, whenever I saw something we needed, I let the kids alternate in hopping out of the cab to pick it out for me. Hence, they were not buckled up down there. At one point, my son, in his excitement to pick out an item for me, caught his foot while stepping out of the cab, and fell headfirst onto the hard floor. It was one of those awful thuds that promises to produce a goose-egg on the child’s head that is almost as big as your guilty feeling. It was the sort of thud in which the child does not immediately emit sound. He or she is gasping for air to fuel the cry, and the delay before the cry is proportional to the intensity of the scream, and presumably, the intensity of the pain. It was a full two seconds before he let out his fire alarm.
As I swooped my flailing and shrieking child off the ground, a fellow shopper surveyed the scene and loudly told me, “Well, that’s what they make belts for.” I was so flustered, I couldn’t think what to say to her. The Safeway employees were very gracious and brought ice in paper towels for my son. I felt horrible for my son and was annoyed with myself and most especially with the callous shopper.
I wanted to say, “Wow? Why did no one tell me that Mother Teresa was reincarnated and roaming around Warrenton?” but I am not a quick thinker. What, if anything, would you have said to this woman?
A couple of summers ago, I was shopping at Safeway with my two youngest children, aged six and three then. I had gotten one of those highly coveted kiddie carts that has the bright red and yellow fire truck appended to the front so that two loosely belted kids can ride ahead of your cart as if they were heralding a regal procession. Never mind that this cab throws the entire vehicle off kilter, and leaves you to negotiate the aisles with the cart fishtailing wildly. You spend as much time hoisting the cart off its rear wheels, and pivoting as you do pushing the cart. So what? The kids absolutely love this experience. The kiddie cart increases your shopping time and fatigue, but what is parenting if it is overflowing with time and energy? My kids have outgrown the kiddie cart (especially the teens!), but I prefer it to letting them use those “Little Shopper” carts. You know the miniaturized shopping carts that can be vehicles of destruction when wielded by the youngest of our citizens, with the “Shopper in Training” flags? They are usually driven recklessly, with kids careening through the aisles, narrowly missing the ankles of other shoppers and the piles of sparkling cider in GLASS containers. Maybe the flags should say “Chopper in Training.”
So I will take the fire truck in which my children are relatively confined over the mini shopper almost any day. My kids can barely squeeze into the cab part nowadays, but since I haven’t seen a weight capacity rating on the thing, I still let them squish into it. It’s nice because I can hand down a snack while we shop, and they can steer as wildly as they like with their pseudo-steering wheels without endangering others. The downside is that they can spot “sales” from their vantage point and are often certain that we absolutely need to replenish our stock of gummy somethings.
As we traveled up and down (and side to side) in the aisles, whenever I saw something we needed, I let the kids alternate in hopping out of the cab to pick it out for me. Hence, they were not buckled up down there. At one point, my son, in his excitement to pick out an item for me, caught his foot while stepping out of the cab, and fell headfirst onto the hard floor. It was one of those awful thuds that promises to produce a goose-egg on the child’s head that is almost as big as your guilty feeling. It was the sort of thud in which the child does not immediately emit sound. He or she is gasping for air to fuel the cry, and the delay before the cry is proportional to the intensity of the scream, and presumably, the intensity of the pain. It was a full two seconds before he let out his fire alarm.
As I swooped my flailing and shrieking child off the ground, a fellow shopper surveyed the scene and loudly told me, “Well, that’s what they make belts for.” I was so flustered, I couldn’t think what to say to her. The Safeway employees were very gracious and brought ice in paper towels for my son. I felt horrible for my son and was annoyed with myself and most especially with the callous shopper.
I wanted to say, “Wow? Why did no one tell me that Mother Teresa was reincarnated and roaming around Warrenton?” but I am not a quick thinker. What, if anything, would you have said to this woman?
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Who’s not afraid of beautiful women?
Time magazine once featured phobias. Some are unbelievable (including fear of wax statues, laughter, and peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth) while others seem laughable, such as ablutophobia – the fear of bathing. Someone out there is going to say that I am very insensitive to laugh at those who are afraid to shower or bathe. I wonder who has more to fear: the one who suffers the phobia, or those who must suffer the phobe.
As absurd as many of the 530-some phobias compiled by Fredd Culbertson on the http://www.phobialist.com/ website (which Time referenced) may sound, I think caligynephobia, the fear of beautiful women, is the one to which most of us ordinary women can relate. Disclaimer: I do realize that this phobia refers to men who are afraid of beautiful women, but I just wanted to have a little fun with it.
When you are finally seated somewhere in a nice restaurant, the last thing you want is to be stuck next to some slinky gorgeous woman with hair that belongs in a shampoo commercial, if not on the heads of about three other women, if the world were a just and equitable place. Of course, we have these fears. They are very reasonable.
We are not usually evil-minded, we caligynephobics, but we can’t help but hope that Slinky’s next smile will be flashed with broccoli peppering her perfect teeth (of course she would be eating broccoli!), or that she somehow ends up laughing so hard that a noodle shoots out of her dainty little nostrils. (Flaw in this thinking: noodles = carbs = cannot be touched. Secondly, laughing might produce wrinkles, so it is not to be practiced too liberally by the Gorgeous Elite.)
These evil thoughts aren’t quite the same thing as skating up to Slinky and bashing her in the knee, but actions do get their start in thoughts, so one must be careful. It’s a sinful thought, just the same. And why waste your sinful thoughts on unlikely scenarios? Do you think these women even eat? They just go to restaurants to show off, ordering the most expensive, skimpiest-portioned plates. The real reason they are there is to torture the rest of us who order things according to price and net weight, seeking out that lowest per-unit price combo we are accustomed to finding under the barcodes in the grocery store.
I think restaurants should restrict the number of beautiful women allowed in at any one meal. Well, maybe that wouldn’t be fair. Even beautiful women have to pretend to eat, don’t they?
Or maybe they should separate patrons for maximum comfort – like in the old days of the smoking section. When you walk in, they might ask you, “Beautiful or Non-Beautiful?” Of course, the business-minded restaurateur will be too tactful to make a recommendation. Can you imagine, as you start lumbering into the Beautiful Section, you get a casual redirection of the elbow, “May we suggest you would feel more comfortable in the Non-Beautiful Section?”
Someone once told me that restaurants like to save their window seating to showcase the most attractive of their patrons to other would-be customers who may be ambling along the sidewalk. Somehow, I think the Subway (as much as we love that place!) storefront doesn’t count here. I’m not sure I’ve been to a restaurant fancy enough to have this strategic seating.
Does Faang Thai restaurant count? There’s plenty of window space there, but we are usually put into a long booth in the back, buffeted by an extra table and chairs. I have always consoled myself that it was due to our large family size for those special occasions when we do go out to eat. We love that place too. (Somebody, please, send me some freebie coupons!)
For me, or any other woman who has caligynephobia, this sort of window seating has an adverse effect. For example, you are happily strolling with your significant other (I don’t want to be narrow-minded here), dusting the last of the caramel corn crumbs off yourself from the latest festivity you just enjoyed. Coming across a restaurant, the aroma beckons, even though you aren’t hungry. (Remember all that junk food you just polished off at the last outdoor attraction? By the way, when food is free, I don’t count the calories, but it still does suppress the appetite all the same.) You check your watch, and discover – lo, and behold, it’s lunchtime! Of course, you must eat, because we live in America, and let it not be said that you had to skip a meal.
The aroma has practically embraced you and is enticing you in, when suddenly, to your horror, you discover a gorgeous woman, for all the world to see, laughing, posing with a platter of insubstantial, expensive food, and pretending not to be the focus of everyone’s attention. Your blood runs cold. How many other gorgeous women might be in there?
Then your significant other, checking out the menu prices (which are also in the window) is nervously calculating the damages to his wallet with all the other expenses incurred today. He’s hoping that you will remember those leftovers in the fridge, which can be consumed for free, but of course, he doesn’t dare suggest it. If you say it, that’s another matter.
It’s like when a parent bemoans the state of his or her child – that’s fine and perfectly acceptable. But let someone else add an opinion against the same loathsome child, and the very same suffering parent is guaranteed to give a self-righteous Look of Death. Was it Patrick Henry who said, “Give me Leftovers, but do not give me the Look of Death?” Your companion does not want that look from you.
In the meantime, he may or may not have even noticed this stunning creature, whose dress and shoe size you have already estimated, in addition to whether she uses depilatories, and whether the hair that is allowed to remain has been colored. “You want to eat in here?” he may innocently suggest.
Sure. You are fuming. He’s just checking out the babes. You are highly offended. You give him The Look. You suggest that there are leftovers back home anyway. He’s going to pay for this - boy, is he ever going to pay. Remember that this makes you a martyr, because it was you who bravely decided to forgo eating in a posh restaurant and suggested going home to eat microwaved leftovers of brown rice and yesterday’s stir-fry.
You are now officially entitled to have an Attitude, which means that he will have to make things up, and it’s going to cost a whole lot more than lunch. Hopefully, wherever you plan to go to compensate for this particular episode of martyrdom, there will not be any other gorgeous women to frighten (or enrage) you. And perhaps, by the time you get home, you’ll actually be hungry enough to eat those leftovers.
As absurd as many of the 530-some phobias compiled by Fredd Culbertson on the http://www.phobialist.com/ website (which Time referenced) may sound, I think caligynephobia, the fear of beautiful women, is the one to which most of us ordinary women can relate. Disclaimer: I do realize that this phobia refers to men who are afraid of beautiful women, but I just wanted to have a little fun with it.
When you are finally seated somewhere in a nice restaurant, the last thing you want is to be stuck next to some slinky gorgeous woman with hair that belongs in a shampoo commercial, if not on the heads of about three other women, if the world were a just and equitable place. Of course, we have these fears. They are very reasonable.
We are not usually evil-minded, we caligynephobics, but we can’t help but hope that Slinky’s next smile will be flashed with broccoli peppering her perfect teeth (of course she would be eating broccoli!), or that she somehow ends up laughing so hard that a noodle shoots out of her dainty little nostrils. (Flaw in this thinking: noodles = carbs = cannot be touched. Secondly, laughing might produce wrinkles, so it is not to be practiced too liberally by the Gorgeous Elite.)
These evil thoughts aren’t quite the same thing as skating up to Slinky and bashing her in the knee, but actions do get their start in thoughts, so one must be careful. It’s a sinful thought, just the same. And why waste your sinful thoughts on unlikely scenarios? Do you think these women even eat? They just go to restaurants to show off, ordering the most expensive, skimpiest-portioned plates. The real reason they are there is to torture the rest of us who order things according to price and net weight, seeking out that lowest per-unit price combo we are accustomed to finding under the barcodes in the grocery store.
I think restaurants should restrict the number of beautiful women allowed in at any one meal. Well, maybe that wouldn’t be fair. Even beautiful women have to pretend to eat, don’t they?
Or maybe they should separate patrons for maximum comfort – like in the old days of the smoking section. When you walk in, they might ask you, “Beautiful or Non-Beautiful?” Of course, the business-minded restaurateur will be too tactful to make a recommendation. Can you imagine, as you start lumbering into the Beautiful Section, you get a casual redirection of the elbow, “May we suggest you would feel more comfortable in the Non-Beautiful Section?”
Someone once told me that restaurants like to save their window seating to showcase the most attractive of their patrons to other would-be customers who may be ambling along the sidewalk. Somehow, I think the Subway (as much as we love that place!) storefront doesn’t count here. I’m not sure I’ve been to a restaurant fancy enough to have this strategic seating.
Does Faang Thai restaurant count? There’s plenty of window space there, but we are usually put into a long booth in the back, buffeted by an extra table and chairs. I have always consoled myself that it was due to our large family size for those special occasions when we do go out to eat. We love that place too. (Somebody, please, send me some freebie coupons!)
For me, or any other woman who has caligynephobia, this sort of window seating has an adverse effect. For example, you are happily strolling with your significant other (I don’t want to be narrow-minded here), dusting the last of the caramel corn crumbs off yourself from the latest festivity you just enjoyed. Coming across a restaurant, the aroma beckons, even though you aren’t hungry. (Remember all that junk food you just polished off at the last outdoor attraction? By the way, when food is free, I don’t count the calories, but it still does suppress the appetite all the same.) You check your watch, and discover – lo, and behold, it’s lunchtime! Of course, you must eat, because we live in America, and let it not be said that you had to skip a meal.
The aroma has practically embraced you and is enticing you in, when suddenly, to your horror, you discover a gorgeous woman, for all the world to see, laughing, posing with a platter of insubstantial, expensive food, and pretending not to be the focus of everyone’s attention. Your blood runs cold. How many other gorgeous women might be in there?
Then your significant other, checking out the menu prices (which are also in the window) is nervously calculating the damages to his wallet with all the other expenses incurred today. He’s hoping that you will remember those leftovers in the fridge, which can be consumed for free, but of course, he doesn’t dare suggest it. If you say it, that’s another matter.
It’s like when a parent bemoans the state of his or her child – that’s fine and perfectly acceptable. But let someone else add an opinion against the same loathsome child, and the very same suffering parent is guaranteed to give a self-righteous Look of Death. Was it Patrick Henry who said, “Give me Leftovers, but do not give me the Look of Death?” Your companion does not want that look from you.
In the meantime, he may or may not have even noticed this stunning creature, whose dress and shoe size you have already estimated, in addition to whether she uses depilatories, and whether the hair that is allowed to remain has been colored. “You want to eat in here?” he may innocently suggest.
Sure. You are fuming. He’s just checking out the babes. You are highly offended. You give him The Look. You suggest that there are leftovers back home anyway. He’s going to pay for this - boy, is he ever going to pay. Remember that this makes you a martyr, because it was you who bravely decided to forgo eating in a posh restaurant and suggested going home to eat microwaved leftovers of brown rice and yesterday’s stir-fry.
You are now officially entitled to have an Attitude, which means that he will have to make things up, and it’s going to cost a whole lot more than lunch. Hopefully, wherever you plan to go to compensate for this particular episode of martyrdom, there will not be any other gorgeous women to frighten (or enrage) you. And perhaps, by the time you get home, you’ll actually be hungry enough to eat those leftovers.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Happy 51+ Years, Mom & Dad
June 22nd marked the fifty-first anniversary of the day that my parents got married. One of the wonderful side benefits of having a column is that it makes gift giving so easy. I don't have to shop for people now; I can just write about them. This saves me the hassle of wandering around stores aimlessly. It also saves me money and increases the newspaper's circulation by one for the week. Hey, in this economy, that's saying something!
In the cash-strapped Indian economy of 1959, seventy-five cents would have meant something too. It's weird to think that in January of that year, Fidel Castro swept into power in Cuba, and a few months later, Mattel's Barbie Doll took the toy market by storm in the United States.
Back then, my parents were young and shy and rail-thin and awkward. My parents had the traditional, arranged Indian wedding. My mother would be turning twenty just eight days after the wedding. It seems odd to think that so soon after marriage, the stranger who is your husband will celebrate your birthday with you. But the bonds that are to be formed are with the extended family as well, not just between the individuals who are united. My mom was just nine years old when her mother died of tuberculosis at the age of 36. My grandfather never remarried, even though widowers usually did. Widows of that day, however, maintained a life of celibacy, and simplicity, almost as a form of penitence.
Perhaps one of the reasons arranged marriages have a reasonable record of survival when released into the wild is that people come into them with much fear and little expectation. It's hard to be disappointed when you expect the worst.
Like Tevye and Golde in “Fiddler on the Roof,” my parents met for the first time on their wedding day. Neither my mother nor my father had even seen photographs of each other prior to the marriage. My dad, who is seven years older than my mom, had a mustache, and my mom loathed facial hair. She says it's a good thing she hadn't seen a photo, after all.
My father is a perseverant individual who always takes things to the nth degree. He is, after all, a mathematician. For example, in school his ability to tackle math was ridiculed, so he slogged away at the subject, literally burning the midnight oil using the kerosene lamp. When he got sleepy, he would apply a little mustard oil near his eyes. (In a single generation, you can see the decline of mankind: I keep awake by eating; he kept awake by stinging his eyes.)
My father had not wanted to marry at all, but was finally persuaded because a priest had said the right girl would have a big mark of some sort. My mother had a huge scar on her arm where she had been dragged by a British Army Jeep in an accident as a child. Also, her name and his mom's names were the same: Tara. Again, you can see the decline of the human race in a single generation. When my husband and I wanted to get married, my husband told my parents that he, too, thought arranged marriages were the best, especially if he could do the arranging himself.
I'm not going to say anything here about how and when things happen in an arranged marriage. Coming from an Indian background, you have to remember that talking about sex (at least in the older, and purer generation) is taboo, even though India is home to the Kamasutra and the Khajuroa Temples.
It was months before my mom and dad actually saw much of each other face to face, but my brother was born on my mom's twenty-first birthday. My sister arrived a couple of years later, my next sister when mom was 25, and I was born two years after that.
My mom tells me that the night I was born, she had eaten too many chappatis (four) and overeaten the eggplant and potato subji at dinner. She thought initially her discomfort was from overeating, but a few hours later, I was born. My mom and dad lived in a rural area after marriage, and all of us children were home births. When I asked my mom if she wasn't nervous close to the due date of her first childbirth, she said, “Due date? Kya (what) due date?” She hadn't a clue about anything.
Ten years into their marriage, in 1969, my father flew to the United States to pursue a graduate degree in mathematics. My mother stayed behind with the four of us kids, and taught and worked on her graduate degree. Their only form of communication for three years were those thin blue aerogrammes that took ten days to cross the ocean.
Again, I reflect on the time when my husband took his current position here while I stayed behind in Ohio for six months so that our youngest could be born, the kids could finish school, our house could get sold, and we could thaw out from winter. I don't know if it was the stress or the hormones, but I wept for days as I packed things for his little “bachelor” apartment. Of course, we emailed and talked daily by cell phone. We liberally used the web cams that he had set up, and still I felt an odd silence in our house. Only then did I think about what my mother and father must have endured.
In March of 1972, my father brought us over by purchasing our airline tickets on installments on his meager graduate student stipend. He paid for those tickets monthly for years and years. My brother and sister, then 11 and 9 years old, took on paper routes in the Kentucky winter that was harsh for our Indian blood. My mother babysat for children and somehow, my parents made ends meet. I really don't know how they did it.
My mother thought she was coming to a land where people rolled in wealth. Then, jetlagged and weary from the 24-hour plane ride, where my brother lifted his feet and threw up in the airsick bag, she walked up the four flights to our new home: my father's one bedroom apartment. She rolled out chappatis with a drinking glass that my father used in lieu of a rolling pin, and found nothing much to prepare but onions.
How they have scrimped and saved and struggled over these fifty years, and stuck it out together through storms of cancer and children who would not remain true to the old ways, and reams of immigration paperwork, I do not know. But I do know that I have benefited immensely from their sacrifices. While I appreciate all they have done, I know that I will never truly understand what all their sacrifices have cost them.
Mom and Dad, Happy 51+ Years. Love, Vineeta.
In the cash-strapped Indian economy of 1959, seventy-five cents would have meant something too. It's weird to think that in January of that year, Fidel Castro swept into power in Cuba, and a few months later, Mattel's Barbie Doll took the toy market by storm in the United States.
Back then, my parents were young and shy and rail-thin and awkward. My parents had the traditional, arranged Indian wedding. My mother would be turning twenty just eight days after the wedding. It seems odd to think that so soon after marriage, the stranger who is your husband will celebrate your birthday with you. But the bonds that are to be formed are with the extended family as well, not just between the individuals who are united. My mom was just nine years old when her mother died of tuberculosis at the age of 36. My grandfather never remarried, even though widowers usually did. Widows of that day, however, maintained a life of celibacy, and simplicity, almost as a form of penitence.
Perhaps one of the reasons arranged marriages have a reasonable record of survival when released into the wild is that people come into them with much fear and little expectation. It's hard to be disappointed when you expect the worst.
Like Tevye and Golde in “Fiddler on the Roof,” my parents met for the first time on their wedding day. Neither my mother nor my father had even seen photographs of each other prior to the marriage. My dad, who is seven years older than my mom, had a mustache, and my mom loathed facial hair. She says it's a good thing she hadn't seen a photo, after all.
My father is a perseverant individual who always takes things to the nth degree. He is, after all, a mathematician. For example, in school his ability to tackle math was ridiculed, so he slogged away at the subject, literally burning the midnight oil using the kerosene lamp. When he got sleepy, he would apply a little mustard oil near his eyes. (In a single generation, you can see the decline of mankind: I keep awake by eating; he kept awake by stinging his eyes.)
My father had not wanted to marry at all, but was finally persuaded because a priest had said the right girl would have a big mark of some sort. My mother had a huge scar on her arm where she had been dragged by a British Army Jeep in an accident as a child. Also, her name and his mom's names were the same: Tara. Again, you can see the decline of the human race in a single generation. When my husband and I wanted to get married, my husband told my parents that he, too, thought arranged marriages were the best, especially if he could do the arranging himself.
I'm not going to say anything here about how and when things happen in an arranged marriage. Coming from an Indian background, you have to remember that talking about sex (at least in the older, and purer generation) is taboo, even though India is home to the Kamasutra and the Khajuroa Temples.
It was months before my mom and dad actually saw much of each other face to face, but my brother was born on my mom's twenty-first birthday. My sister arrived a couple of years later, my next sister when mom was 25, and I was born two years after that.
My mom tells me that the night I was born, she had eaten too many chappatis (four) and overeaten the eggplant and potato subji at dinner. She thought initially her discomfort was from overeating, but a few hours later, I was born. My mom and dad lived in a rural area after marriage, and all of us children were home births. When I asked my mom if she wasn't nervous close to the due date of her first childbirth, she said, “Due date? Kya (what) due date?” She hadn't a clue about anything.
Ten years into their marriage, in 1969, my father flew to the United States to pursue a graduate degree in mathematics. My mother stayed behind with the four of us kids, and taught and worked on her graduate degree. Their only form of communication for three years were those thin blue aerogrammes that took ten days to cross the ocean.
Again, I reflect on the time when my husband took his current position here while I stayed behind in Ohio for six months so that our youngest could be born, the kids could finish school, our house could get sold, and we could thaw out from winter. I don't know if it was the stress or the hormones, but I wept for days as I packed things for his little “bachelor” apartment. Of course, we emailed and talked daily by cell phone. We liberally used the web cams that he had set up, and still I felt an odd silence in our house. Only then did I think about what my mother and father must have endured.
In March of 1972, my father brought us over by purchasing our airline tickets on installments on his meager graduate student stipend. He paid for those tickets monthly for years and years. My brother and sister, then 11 and 9 years old, took on paper routes in the Kentucky winter that was harsh for our Indian blood. My mother babysat for children and somehow, my parents made ends meet. I really don't know how they did it.
My mother thought she was coming to a land where people rolled in wealth. Then, jetlagged and weary from the 24-hour plane ride, where my brother lifted his feet and threw up in the airsick bag, she walked up the four flights to our new home: my father's one bedroom apartment. She rolled out chappatis with a drinking glass that my father used in lieu of a rolling pin, and found nothing much to prepare but onions.
How they have scrimped and saved and struggled over these fifty years, and stuck it out together through storms of cancer and children who would not remain true to the old ways, and reams of immigration paperwork, I do not know. But I do know that I have benefited immensely from their sacrifices. While I appreciate all they have done, I know that I will never truly understand what all their sacrifices have cost them.
Mom and Dad, Happy 51+ Years. Love, Vineeta.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Camping is like trekking to England – Part II
Last week’s column (of course, you read it), was about how we needed every gadget under the sun to take our family tent camping in Luray last summer. Our eldest was leaving for college in a couple of weeks, and this trip was supposed to be like the “going abroad experience,” just cheaper and with more family members hanging around.
To understand the trip, you first have to analyze how we end the trip. Most people come home from an activity and unpack or just relax. Not my husband. He is one of those painfully organized people who, all the way home, is dictating the list of things that would really have improved the current experience. Don’t think that by driving separate, stuffed vehicles, you are going to escape this discussion. No. That’s why we have cell phones, or even worse, those handheld walkie-talkies that are the bane of every outing.
We have to do this on the way home, because otherwise he might forget. Never mind that our next camping trip won’t be for another four years. When it finally does happen, at least it will be more efficient.
His comments begin streaming, “We should buy a bigger shower bag. You can get them with double the insulation. We need better bungee cords to strap stuff down to the top of the car.” Or, we need to stock up on extra propane tanks. Also, there is advice on how to pack next time. “Make sure you store those picnic table clamps with the cover next time.” That was silly, how we had to waste eight minutes looking for the clamps with the tablecloth flapping our plates off. Or, he might say, “We should really buy the little shaker that combines the salt and the pepper, because that could cut down on the amount of stuff we are carrying by eliminating one shaker entirely.” There are eight of us, our dog, loads of food, tents, sleeping bags, and every gadget known to man crammed into two cars. We needed to drive both in order to haul all the specialized camping stuff. Now we need the combo shaker?
The only thing worse than getting these lists dictated to you along the way, is, God forbid, if you happen to be driving anywhere within view of a Wal-Mart or a sporting goods store. Then, we will have to stop on the way home and shop for the next, improved trip right there on the way back while the memory of what needs improvement is still raw in our minds.
The last time we had been camping, our family had had just six of us, and no dog. Immediately after that trip, we bought a ten-man tent to better accommodate us. By the time we actually opened the tent, our family had grown by 33%, not including the canine.
The ten-man tent is a bit of false advertising. It might be great for ten men, provided each one is built like a matchstick. Matchstick-Man also needs to be comfortable sleeping in an alternating head-toe pattern with the rest of the Matchstick Gang. Don’t bother mentioning foot odor, because if the Matchstick Gang has had beans and processed meat for dinner, foot odor is going to be by far the more pleasant of odors that might be wafting his way. Other issues will be far more volatile, if you get my drift. (Hopefully, when you go camping, you will not get my drift - or anyone else’s, for that matter.)
For a family of eight people, most of whom have padded proportions, however, the accommodations of the ten-man tent are a little snug. Consider that we, the padded ones, have recently been dining nonstop on hot dogs, marshmallows, and chocolate, and you will understand why the tent gets snugger as the trip goes on. By the end of our camping trip, I was beginning to wonder if our tent was missing the second level.
To my husband’s credit, he had had the sense to do a practice run on the tent in a controlled, low-pressure environment the day before. He is one of those rare individuals: prompt and organized, he thinks details through. It’s wonderful to have people like this organize an activity, unless you also happen to live with them. He had completely set up the tent in our front yard the day before our camping trip. (Fortunately, it fit there.) The younger kids, too young to be impacted by the stress of packing and preparations, squealed with delight and dashed in and out of the big, billowing tent. They reveled in its cavernous space. (Wait till we add people and pillows, Guys.)
When we rolled into the campground the next evening, the older kids spied the gigantic Yogi Bear statue (how could they not?), and looked at me and rolled their eyes. For some odd reason, I suspected they weren’t looking heavenward and thanking their lucky stars for such wonderful, family-fun loving, parents. They were praying they wouldn’t encounter anyone they knew.
As we maneuvered to our tent-site, I was relieved that my husband had taken the precautionary measure of setting up the tent at home, because we positioned our cars into the campsite just as daylight was donning her running shoes and preparing to flee. With dusk encroaching, a light but insistent drizzle began, eventually leaving us chilled-to-the-bone, even for August.
I wondered if this is what England felt like. Didn’t I say camping was almost like going to Europe?
To understand the trip, you first have to analyze how we end the trip. Most people come home from an activity and unpack or just relax. Not my husband. He is one of those painfully organized people who, all the way home, is dictating the list of things that would really have improved the current experience. Don’t think that by driving separate, stuffed vehicles, you are going to escape this discussion. No. That’s why we have cell phones, or even worse, those handheld walkie-talkies that are the bane of every outing.
We have to do this on the way home, because otherwise he might forget. Never mind that our next camping trip won’t be for another four years. When it finally does happen, at least it will be more efficient.
His comments begin streaming, “We should buy a bigger shower bag. You can get them with double the insulation. We need better bungee cords to strap stuff down to the top of the car.” Or, we need to stock up on extra propane tanks. Also, there is advice on how to pack next time. “Make sure you store those picnic table clamps with the cover next time.” That was silly, how we had to waste eight minutes looking for the clamps with the tablecloth flapping our plates off. Or, he might say, “We should really buy the little shaker that combines the salt and the pepper, because that could cut down on the amount of stuff we are carrying by eliminating one shaker entirely.” There are eight of us, our dog, loads of food, tents, sleeping bags, and every gadget known to man crammed into two cars. We needed to drive both in order to haul all the specialized camping stuff. Now we need the combo shaker?
The only thing worse than getting these lists dictated to you along the way, is, God forbid, if you happen to be driving anywhere within view of a Wal-Mart or a sporting goods store. Then, we will have to stop on the way home and shop for the next, improved trip right there on the way back while the memory of what needs improvement is still raw in our minds.
The last time we had been camping, our family had had just six of us, and no dog. Immediately after that trip, we bought a ten-man tent to better accommodate us. By the time we actually opened the tent, our family had grown by 33%, not including the canine.
The ten-man tent is a bit of false advertising. It might be great for ten men, provided each one is built like a matchstick. Matchstick-Man also needs to be comfortable sleeping in an alternating head-toe pattern with the rest of the Matchstick Gang. Don’t bother mentioning foot odor, because if the Matchstick Gang has had beans and processed meat for dinner, foot odor is going to be by far the more pleasant of odors that might be wafting his way. Other issues will be far more volatile, if you get my drift. (Hopefully, when you go camping, you will not get my drift - or anyone else’s, for that matter.)
For a family of eight people, most of whom have padded proportions, however, the accommodations of the ten-man tent are a little snug. Consider that we, the padded ones, have recently been dining nonstop on hot dogs, marshmallows, and chocolate, and you will understand why the tent gets snugger as the trip goes on. By the end of our camping trip, I was beginning to wonder if our tent was missing the second level.
To my husband’s credit, he had had the sense to do a practice run on the tent in a controlled, low-pressure environment the day before. He is one of those rare individuals: prompt and organized, he thinks details through. It’s wonderful to have people like this organize an activity, unless you also happen to live with them. He had completely set up the tent in our front yard the day before our camping trip. (Fortunately, it fit there.) The younger kids, too young to be impacted by the stress of packing and preparations, squealed with delight and dashed in and out of the big, billowing tent. They reveled in its cavernous space. (Wait till we add people and pillows, Guys.)
When we rolled into the campground the next evening, the older kids spied the gigantic Yogi Bear statue (how could they not?), and looked at me and rolled their eyes. For some odd reason, I suspected they weren’t looking heavenward and thanking their lucky stars for such wonderful, family-fun loving, parents. They were praying they wouldn’t encounter anyone they knew.
As we maneuvered to our tent-site, I was relieved that my husband had taken the precautionary measure of setting up the tent at home, because we positioned our cars into the campsite just as daylight was donning her running shoes and preparing to flee. With dusk encroaching, a light but insistent drizzle began, eventually leaving us chilled-to-the-bone, even for August.
I wondered if this is what England felt like. Didn’t I say camping was almost like going to Europe?
Monday, August 2, 2010
Camping in Luray or trekking to England – just add imagination
Most people think camping gets you close to nature and your loved ones, while allowing an escape from the daily rat race. Others see it as an expression of the pioneering American spirit. Whatever the reason, hordes of us are driven to temporarily trade hearth and home for the great, paved wilderness. We are guided by the intrinsic American urge to discover and conquer, as well as by the latest GPS navigational system. We gab away on our cell phones while the kids are surrounded by the glorious sights and sounds of nature, only it can’t penetrate their iPOD-stuffed ear canals or the latest animated “classic” DVD piped out in surround sound in the back.
Don’t be fooled by these superficially sublime reasons. The real reason anyone goes camping is to gorge on ridiculous “foods” that would never, under normal circumstances, pass for a meal. Think you can get away with serving canned pork-n-beans, roasted hot dogs, and toasted marshmallows for dinner at home? I thought not. Remove access to the refrigerator and kitchen, though, and food standards vanish. As chief cook, I love losing the standards.
Last summer, before our eldest left for college, we spent four nights camping. It was supposed to be a final all-of-us-as-a-family blast. It was somewhat like sending the new graduate to England for the summer, except you just needed to add a little imagination.
My husband, who always thinks with convenience, comfort, and security in mind, suggested we rent a cabin with a kitchenette, bathroom, and climate control. If he wanted to suffer, he points out, why did he emigrate from India to the States?
Just like yours, our children are immune to parental wisdom. They can deflect and reject any advice we give. If we were smart parents, we would say the opposite of what we want the kids to do, but we’re not that smart.
“Your father thinks we ought to rent a cabin with a kitchenette at Jellystone Park in Luray,” I told them. That sealed our fate. Immediately the children turned on us, and were convinced that the only way to go camping was in tents. I must admit, that I also defected from the parental camp. (They outnumber us, plus they’ve got the cuteness factor.)
“What good is camping if we’re just going to open up a suitcase inside of a cabin,” they queried. I agreed and added, “And what’s the point of having half of our garage clogged with camping material if we don’t use it?”
I have this weird psychology. I feel we are “losing” money if we don’t use everything we have ever purchased, and this makes de-junking very difficult. Not de-junking makes finding all of our glorious purchases a challenge, too. Tent camping, in which we could employ the maximum number of gadgets that were clogging our garage, seemed to be the morally superior choice.
Want to see gadgets? Walk the camping aisle sometime. You can effectively furnish an entire household off those gadgets alone. We have so much camping stuff that we could camp out of our own garage if we ever needed, provided we could actually find the stuff in there.
We have the camp coffee percolator and the hot shower bag, which is an oversized hot-water bottle, just tougher and blacker. You leave it in a sunny spot and suspend it from a tree before use. (I hope it’s not too much of a stretch that there might be a tree or two where you are camping.) I warn you that “hot” is a relative term. If you are Inuit (notice my ethnic sensitivity precludes the use of the offensive term “Eskimo”) and don’t mind swimming with ice cubes, good. Otherwise, this “hot” means when the water hits any part of your body that you are foolish enough to expose, you will not shriek, shrivel, and die instantly. You will just shriek and shrivel. You will gasp for air. You will be glad you chose a campsite that has hot public showers, and you will stuff the black bladder back into the garage for another day…just in case.
Don’t be fooled by these superficially sublime reasons. The real reason anyone goes camping is to gorge on ridiculous “foods” that would never, under normal circumstances, pass for a meal. Think you can get away with serving canned pork-n-beans, roasted hot dogs, and toasted marshmallows for dinner at home? I thought not. Remove access to the refrigerator and kitchen, though, and food standards vanish. As chief cook, I love losing the standards.
Last summer, before our eldest left for college, we spent four nights camping. It was supposed to be a final all-of-us-as-a-family blast. It was somewhat like sending the new graduate to England for the summer, except you just needed to add a little imagination.
My husband, who always thinks with convenience, comfort, and security in mind, suggested we rent a cabin with a kitchenette, bathroom, and climate control. If he wanted to suffer, he points out, why did he emigrate from India to the States?
Just like yours, our children are immune to parental wisdom. They can deflect and reject any advice we give. If we were smart parents, we would say the opposite of what we want the kids to do, but we’re not that smart.
“Your father thinks we ought to rent a cabin with a kitchenette at Jellystone Park in Luray,” I told them. That sealed our fate. Immediately the children turned on us, and were convinced that the only way to go camping was in tents. I must admit, that I also defected from the parental camp. (They outnumber us, plus they’ve got the cuteness factor.)
“What good is camping if we’re just going to open up a suitcase inside of a cabin,” they queried. I agreed and added, “And what’s the point of having half of our garage clogged with camping material if we don’t use it?”
I have this weird psychology. I feel we are “losing” money if we don’t use everything we have ever purchased, and this makes de-junking very difficult. Not de-junking makes finding all of our glorious purchases a challenge, too. Tent camping, in which we could employ the maximum number of gadgets that were clogging our garage, seemed to be the morally superior choice.
Want to see gadgets? Walk the camping aisle sometime. You can effectively furnish an entire household off those gadgets alone. We have so much camping stuff that we could camp out of our own garage if we ever needed, provided we could actually find the stuff in there.
We have the camp coffee percolator and the hot shower bag, which is an oversized hot-water bottle, just tougher and blacker. You leave it in a sunny spot and suspend it from a tree before use. (I hope it’s not too much of a stretch that there might be a tree or two where you are camping.) I warn you that “hot” is a relative term. If you are Inuit (notice my ethnic sensitivity precludes the use of the offensive term “Eskimo”) and don’t mind swimming with ice cubes, good. Otherwise, this “hot” means when the water hits any part of your body that you are foolish enough to expose, you will not shriek, shrivel, and die instantly. You will just shriek and shrivel. You will gasp for air. You will be glad you chose a campsite that has hot public showers, and you will stuff the black bladder back into the garage for another day…just in case.
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