Making the Case for Boys

“Mommy, have you ever had a good experience with a boy?” my fourteen year old asked, laughing.

We were telling stories, the ones about my life with the other gender, the males. I have some stories, not many, but some. Interestingly, all of them have elements of disaster, slap-stick and incredulity. They are not the usual tales, I do not think. Most people don’t have boys showing up at their doors flanked by psychiatric nurses, just wanting to say hi, I do not think. 

“That is a movie,” Daphne went on. “I can see it.”

My twelve year old agreed, falling out of her desk chair.

“Did I tell you the one about taking the dog on the train and being kicked off in New Jersey because you are not allowed to take dogs on trains? Flash, did I tell you the one about Flash?”

“Uh, no.”

Well, he was a dog, yes, but really a symbol of my misguided and pathetic devotion to a boy who didn’t, well, reciprocate the feeling, and yes, we waited on the platform somewhere between Philadelphia and Manhattan as train after train blew by, sending our hair/fur into our eyes. Our squinting, visionless eyes. Our what-have-we-done now eyes, because, hey, it was not just me. Flash could have said no.

I have two girls who will soon be interested in boys. Given my history, I could easily suggest to them that they skip the whole experience. In fact, I have, I admit, suggested just that, throwing out the idea that they could sidestep the whole thing by selecting, now, two sons of people I know, dear friends of mine, with solid psyches and brilliant brains. It would make so much sense. They could forget we know them, if they wanted. When they were six, they bought in. Now, it is another story.

“Mommy, you are crazy.”

Okay, then. 

I am left to guide them through the process, when it happens, and I am preparing, mentally. It runs counter to my  current philosophy that boys are like death, you know, with the five steps, but okay, I will commit to the task, as it is a maternal duty. I want my girls to grow up and find the most wonderful mates, yes I do, even if I didn’t. But how, I ask myself, does someone with my clear and disastrous resume impart the right guidance? How does someone who failed the course now teach the class? 

I will have to rely on theory, not personal example. And movies. Movies are good. And motorcycles. When we see one, I point to it and tell them, “If you ever get on one of those things with someone who would drive one of those things, a person like that, with the buckles all over his torso and no graduate degree, you will encounter mayhem in your lives.” 

The whole thing worries me. Don’t make the choices I made, make the choices I would make now, the ones you don’t actually see. Make those. Unless you want to write about it later on. More later. So much more…

Hold Onto That Leash

Just another reason to adopt a mutt from the pound…it seems the incidence of pedigree thefts has continued to rise during the past three years. Today in Dallas, robbers stole assorted hard goods during a home invasion, along with a very soft good, a one-year old miniature Schnauzer. The people in the house are a wreck. 

The thieves will sell the puppy for a lot of money. They will say he was a stray, or part of a litter from their aunt’s dog, who had lots of baby Schnauzers and just can’t take care of them all. And the buyer will believe them, because why not, the dog is so cute and happy and in need of a home.

Mutts can’t fetch the same sums, so they are probably safe, but a little insulted, I bet. Bad humans. Really bad humans.

Snow in Texas

This is a silly thing to discuss today, after all the Afghan craziness yesterday, but it is something I’d like to explore. Do your children wear coats? I mean, when it is cold outside, do they go into their closets and pull out thick garments with sleeves and zippers and hoods, sometimes, and put them on before leaving the house? Are there hats involved? Or gloves, and scarves?

Here, in Texas, kids can survive in short sleeves for nine months of the year. For the other three, they add a sweatshirt. This morning, it was 37 degrees outside, and when I made my second trip to school, at 7:35, it was snowing.

“What is that?” said my 14 year old from the back seat, shivering.

“That is snow,” I answered, in sheepskin, and pajamas.

“Wow! Snow!”

“Wow, a coat, maybe.”

“No coat.”

“The vest, without the sleeves?”

Last year, I bought the vest, thinking it was at least something, if it wasn’t a coat. She loved the vest, I thought.

“It doesn’t do anything,” she said. 

“Then, there is something to do.”

It was early for word games. And we had arrived at school. Instead of dropping her off a half mile away and making her feel the cold, step by blustery step, I pulled up a little closer than usual. I am a bad parent. I am not tough enough. Tomorrow, I am going to be so mean. I am going to make her wear the vest. 

News Guy?

Hey Brian, Brian Williams. Yoohoo, over here. It’s your viewer, Pam. Yes, me, with just another little thought about how my fellow journalists forget they are journalists because they are at a party or telling jokes or doing something that is not journalisty.

So, when the silly network you work for decided to get a man-at-the-scene-in-your-own-words because-you-were-there segment, to be broadcast to so many of us who were left wondering how the lady in the red dress and her husband got into the WH (code acronym for White House) state dinner, you told us all about–let me restate–ALL about how you noticed the lady and the man so many many times. In the car line, getting turned away at the top of the car line, walking in without the car, waltzing into the WH, so many views of something odd. And, you did what all good and enterprising journalists do. YOU TOLD YOUR WIFE!! 

Wow. A+. What instinct. Way to go with a story. 

Not to be snide, well, maybe just a little, this should be really embarrassing, for the anchor of a network newscast and the network newscast who would treat the tale of how their anchor botched intercepting a security breach as a scoop. Quick, get someone who was at the scene. Oy.

He should be relieved nothing bad happened. And he should review the chapter on Recognizing The Story. Okay, I am done.

Timing is Everything

I was in the supermarket yesterday, the Monday before Thanksgiving, shopping for things like milk and lettuce and olives, when I noticed all of the extra displays at the ends of the aisles. Big towers of string beans and yams and chicken broth and onions, those crispy onions in the can. “What is going on?” I said to myself, well, maybe to the person next to me, too, at the yogurt. What do they think it is, Thanksgiving? Thanksgiving was last week.

We’ve been eating leftovers since Tuesday. That would be the Tuesday before, well, Wednesday. Last Wednesday. In our house this year, the thanking took place early. We live far from family, something like 1500 miles, okay 1546 miles, if you drive. If you drive 23 hours and 48 minutes. Far, however you figure it. So, we don’t visit on specified holidays. We visit when we need to, or can. Mostly, Mom does the visiting because she is one person and we are three. 

“I am going to be in the neighborhood the third week of November,” she said from the phone in New York. “I’ll stop off on the way back.” The “neighborhood” was Florida. We are in Texas. It is all relative, especially when you are a relative. 

“Fabulous, we will have Thanksgiving. Better, we will have Thanksgiving on Daphne’s birthday,” I said. “It will be so festive, two celebrations at once.” Growing up, we generally hit the holidays on the actual day, but as college and work and doctors’ call schedules interfered, we began to choose times when everyone was around, regardless of the calendar. We usually got the month right, but sometimes we didn’t. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t about the sun and the moon. It was about us.

So, I went to the supermarket when everybody else was buying milk and lettuce and olives and loaded up the wagon with string beans and yams and pecan pie and a colossal 16 pound turkey. We got homework done quickly and got out the carving knives and set the table with a pilgrim cloth I purchased in August. And we turned 14 and opened presents and told funny stories and tried the cranberries again, but still didn’t like them. Which is just fine. We can taste them again, next June.

Road Trip

I took the wrong turn on my way to Ft. Hood on Sunday. It was a block too soon, just around the corner from the main gate. Wrong turns are where the meaning is, though, you realize later, when you arrive where you intended to go, distracted by where you’ve just been.

Four soldiers stood in a square at the entrance to a residential neighborhood on the base. They were in camouflage fatigues and caps, and tan boots, laced up tight and dusty. A rifle hung straight down from each of their necks, on a strap, like a pendant from a chain. The guns were big, and they swayed as they moved toward my car, the barrels brushing the men’s waists. I am a reporter. I have seen a little more of life than the next person. Even so, it was hard to get past the guns.

“Could you tell me how to get to the main entrance?” I asked, my voice sounding odd in my head.

“You’ll need to go back down this road, make a left, and then a right,” said one, rosey-cheeked, not twenty. “You can pull up past us and turn around.”

I thanked them, a lot, maybe too much. They watched me drive ahead and make a really careful three-point turn. I could have been filmed for a driver’s education videotape. As I passed them, the boys with the guns, I waved out the window and called, “Thank you,” again. In my side view mirror, I saw one of them walk to a tank by the road and open its door. Wow, a tank. Gigantic guns on necks and tanks.

Civilians don’t see this everyday. This, being nothing, really, when it comes to what we could see, but do not. Yet, for me, it was compelling, and halting, and it made my brain leap to where those rifles might go, what they might do, or what they have already done. We do not get to know how these men and women live each day, whether they run nineteen miles each morning, or sit in a class with notebooks or choose the chicken or the fish. We do not know what they do if they have a stomach ache, or a worry or a fear, if they say, or if they think they shouldn’t. We do not get to know what it is like to aim and fire.

These are people who are not like the rest of us. They make a choice that will change them, unalterably. They have committed to the possibility that they may kill another person. If I draped a rifle over my chest for eight seconds, I would be different from that moment on. I would stand up with new strength. I would think with new vision, with gravity. I could not perceive what would happen to me if I ever had to use it, even on a practice target. I am changed for having seen one up close.

I found the main gate and took my place in a line of cars, waiting to be escorted to a noontime press conference. Another soldier logged my identification, opened the doors and trunk and checked inside. What did he make of the New York City Ballet beach towel or stash of soccer balls, I did not know.

The Colonel told us more about what we already knew, not enough about what we don’t. He said his soldiers are ready for this, in combat, not at home. But are they, truly. Are those boys by the road ready, telling me to go left, then right, kids with such weight on their necks, on their minds. How is one ever ready? What does ready really mean?

Later in the day, I found the house of the man who runs a convenience store across the street from the base. The suspect went there the morning of the shooting, bought coffee, used to stop in twice a week at 6:30. The man came out to the driveway to talk, nervous, his hands sweaty. His wife and baby watched from the window. I asked him about the soldiers. Four or five hundred come in each day, always in pairs, he said, in uniform, geared up for morning exercise.

“They come together, and they seem happy,” he said. “They are smiling.”

I would have expected something else, something serious. Purposeful, pre-occupied. But we do not know. We do not see. I hit the highway home and drove past my wrong turn, tempted to veer, wondering what the four boys with the guns were doing now.

                       

 

Go Team

We are enjoying the baseball. I should say that, for the most part, we tune in to sports on television when there is a big contest. Wimbledon. The NBA Finals. The World Series. We were prepared for the Yankees to win last night, mostly because Hideki Matsui hit a home run for my daughter, on her 4th birthday, eight years ago. We were home in New York for the summer and Grandma got tickets. It was hat day, too. Wow. Hats and a home run. We just figured it was all in the bag.

School nights what they are, we watched whatever was on during the dinner hour, carrying our plates to the coffee table, leaning up against the couch. Sweaty from soccer practice and tennis. Some vocab homework left to do, maybe a little math. The kids eat slowly at the coffee table. I sort of let them.

Since the series started, they know average pitch speeds, they know about the different grips on the ball. They think the spitting is disgusting. They do not spit in soccer or tennis. Imagine. They think the runners are slow to get to first. Until they realize how fast the ball is going. Sports are great, for girls, especially. I love when my nearly 14 year old has practice on Friday nights or early Saturday games. And when her sister wants to hit extra, to practice what she’s learned. Basketball try-outs begin next week. Need to shoot around, go to the park over the weekend. Get ready to push a few folks around on the court. In the spring, track. Zip zip. We have nine hundred uniforms in the closet. I have been saving them since kindergarten, in bags. So  many bags. I will sew duvets for college.

Meantime, Matsui’s on the bench. That’s okay. There is Damon, who grins as if he knows something and Swisher, who grins as if he’s done something. And Jeter, who grins like it just isn’t so. 

We wanted them to win last night, to blow away the red guys on their home turf. But, actually, with the loss, we win. We get to watch again. In our sweaty shirts and sneaks.

Life Lemons

I was standing on the sidewalk in front of my house on Saturday when a little girl, maybe nine, ran towards me.

“Did you see three boys with a lemonade jar?” she asked, panting.

“No,” I said. “Why?”

“They stole our jar right off the table,” she said, pointing a half block behind her where two other girls were standing. “We were having a lemonade stand.”

“They stole your lemonade from your lemonade stand,” I said, aghast.

“Yes.”

“Swiped it right off the table?”

“Yes, and then they ran this way.”

“That is awful,” I said, “and completely criminal. Are your parents home?”

“Yes.”

“Did you tell them?”

“No.”

Wow. Taking the law into her own hands, and feet. She was fast.

“Go tell them, and maybe you could get into the car and look for the boys. And meantime, I will keep my eyes open.” 

She thanked me and sped off. It was quite the prank, I thought. But usually, pranksters know their subjects. And they come back later to laugh about it. These were strange boys, though, which made the act feel malevolent and immoral. They did not know the little girls. They weren’t big brothers. They weren’t going to return with the jar, I didn’t think.

Hard to turn this one into lemonade.

Here Comes the Judge

The nice policeman at the door where you check in slipped my name to the top of the list of offenders after I told him that if I didn’t leave by 7:00, my daughter would be stranded on a corner 12 miles away and we would have a kidnapping on our hands. Never mind an extra inch of weeds in the alley.

The judge asks me how I want to plead. I tell him I haven’t been charged with anything, but if I were, I’d be not guilty. Then, he asked me if I wanted a jury trial or a judge trial for my weed infraction–I am going to call it a “weedony”–and I reminded him that I wasn’t ticketed with anything or made aware in any way that the city, state or country was unhappy with me or my slice of grass. And, I suggested that perhaps, he should listen to the facts of the case first, before asking me how I want to be tried, sentenced and hung out in the public square. Well, I didn’t say the last part.

He agreed to listen. Then, he told me that he would look into the situation. I presume he is going to call all of the people I had already dealt with to confirm my facts, and then make a decision about my  alleged weedony. After he told me he would delve into the matter, he asked me if I wanted a jury trial or a judge trial and how I wanted to plead. Well, okay, I said I didn’t want the side dish, but if you need to bring it out of the kitchen, I will have the carrots. Okay, carrots. 

Not guilty. Judge. December 16. 

Meantime, I will wait for his letter. If I do not get one, I will have to tell the story all over again in December, the fourth use of public time and money, not to mention mine. Is this the way the legal system is supposed to work? I do not think so. 

On the way out, we have to stop by the clerk’s window to sign something that says we will show up on the 16th. My younger daughter came with me, did her Language Arts homework in the courtroom while we waited, and witnessed the process in action.

“My name is spelled incorrectly on this form,” I tell the lady behind the window. “Could you please change it?” She gets up to check in the file drawer. 

“That is how we have it,” she tells me.

“Would you please change it?”

“I cannot change it. It is the way it is on your water bill.”

“But it is not my name.”

“I can’t do anything about it.”

So, I ask her, when I sign my name on the paper that says I have to come on the 16th, “Well, maybe they weren’t my weeds, then. Should I sign my name with the “p” or the “t?” The right way or the wrong way?”

My daughter throws me a look. Mommy, you are being fresh with the lady.

“You can sign it any way you like.”

On the way out, my daughter tells me it wasn’t the lady behind the window I should be mad at. It was the other lady, with the camera. Right, she was, but the window lady represents the system, the annoyance, the harassment of it all, and the fact that we are dragging around at City Hall at 7:00 in the pouring rain when we should be home doing our Language Arts. Then, I told her to stand up for herself, wherever, whenever. Life demands it.

Silver lining.

In Texas News…

Just a little round-up, as we like to say in the news biz:

Not too long ago, a report found that more teenagers have repeat pregnancies in Dallas, Texas than in any other city in the United States. Today, we find out that Texas, as a state, leads the nation in deaths from child abuse and neglect.

Interestingly, we have known all along that Texas, led into such distinction by its governor, Rick Perry, you know, the death-sentence for-innocent-guys guy, is very  close to the bottom of the list in per-capita spending to protect children. Shouldn’t we want the lists flipped? I think we want the lists flipped.

From 2001 to 2007, more than 1,500 kids died due to neglect and abuse, more than any other state. Abominable. 

Now that George W. is being motivational, he can address the issue. 

In other news, two men held since 1997 for a Dallas murder have been exonerated. Someone else was just arrested. That’s good. 

And later, I will be heading to Municipal Court to tackle the weeds-in-the-alley issue. Lots of hyphens today, I know. And rain. Four inches, maybe.

Okay, then.