My nephew is a design student at Columbia College Chicago. Recently, he lost his wallet. In it was the normal wallet stuff, in addition to a special transit pass, U-Pass, only available to college students. The replacement fee for a lost or stolen pass is $50. Also, for clarification, a Blick card is a discount card for Dick Blick Art Materials. After discovering his loss, my nephew posted the following on his Facebook wall.
Hey, every human in the universe, I lost my wallet, so if you find it make sure you take all of the money out and my IDs, etc. and buy a bunch of crack and ride around Chicago with my U-Pass until you get arrested for using a stolen train card and then just be a crackhead in jail with a bunch of my forms of identification and an atm and Blick card.
Every school day morning, my daughter eats breakfast while I put together her lunch. Usually, I make her breakfast, too, but one morning, she decided to have a Gopicnic® “ready-to-eat meal.” Kind of like a Lunchable® but made with food, the meal included a turkey snack stick, fruit leather, chips and some other snacky things.
One of the snack items was a package of “seed and fruit mix.” My daughter read the ingredients, “Mountain Mambo,” she said. “sunflower kernels, pumpkin seeds, raisins, apples, chocolate chips and cranberries. Ewwwwww!”
“Sounds good to me,” I said. “I’ll put it in my oatmeal.”
“Well, you can have it,” she said, tossing me the package.
Later, she asked where the package of seeds and fruit was.
“I ate it in my oatmeal,” I said.
She walked past me, eyebrows up, mouth screwed in disgust and said, under her breath, “Yeah. You’re gonna be throwing up soon.”
They’re lined up all over the country, hunkered down in their folding watch-the-kids-at-T-ball chairs. In my town, they’re bundled up in Bears jackets and hats. Some are even wearing gloves. While they don’t quite qualify to be committed to the local mental health center, everyone passing by them wonders, “Are they crazy?”
I see them, amazed by their dedication and devotion and I think, “Wow, there really ought to be a name for people like that. How about, say, ‘losers’?”
And what are they waiting for? The iPhone 5. Now, I love Apple products. In our house, we have an iMac, two MacBook Pros and two MacBooks. We have an iPod Classic, two iPod Touches and, yes, an iPhone. I love Apple products because they work and they’re backed by great service. Don’t get on my back about PCs. Been down that road and I’m never going back. You can if you want to and I won’t care at all. Besides, this isn’t a post about who makes better computers or phones or MP3 devices.
This is a post about people obsessed with stuff. People so obsessed with stuff that they are willing to sit in line for stuff so they can say they were the first to have the stuff. Frankly, I don’t understand why there is more than one person in any of these lines. If you’re not the first person in line, why bother? You’ll be the second person to get the iPhone 5. Where’s the glory in that? I imagine the water cooler conversation going something like this:
Julie: Hey, Joe! I see you’ve got the new iPhone 5.
Joe: Yeah, Julie. Sat in line for four days for this little beauty.
Julie: Wow! So you were the first person in Naperville to get an iPhone 5?
Joe: Actually, no, I was second. So, kind of the silver medal in iPhones.
Julie (backing away): Yeah, well, good for you, Joe. Bet you can’t wait to show it to the guys in your RPG meetup.
The thing that really puzzles me about the losers people waiting for the iPhone 5 are the diametrically opposed concepts involved in waiting days to buy an iPhone 5. iPhones are expensive, $199 without anything else, such as the talk, text and data package you also need. So, you probably want to be employed for that to work out. Most of the people I know who are employed don’t have days to sit on their ass in a folding chair at the Apple Store. So, in my mind a bunch of unemployed nerds are sitting in front of a store so they can be the first to buy a product they can’t afford.
The iPhone losers buyers are up there, in my mind, with the people who get up at three o’clock in the morning so they can be the first in line when the big box stores open at 5 a.m. on the day after Thanksgiving. Why? So they can get incredible deals on stuff, stuff for Christmas, the Stuffapalooza of Stuff.
People have been shopping for stuff the day after Christmas since the three Kings hopped on their camels and hoofed it back to the Orient. And yet, my local news always reports on people shopping for stuff on the day after Christmas as if it were the Second Coming. My favorite part of the news reports is the interview with the happy, exhausted shopper, who brags about saving $500 on a $1500 flat-screen TV.
No, Ma’am you didn’t save $500. You didn’t save any money at all. You spent $1500.
Maybe I’m sensitive to the stuff obsession because one of my favorite activities during a bipolar mania was shopping. I racked up a mountain of debt while I was high. Every one of my personal Black Fridays was followed by depression, made even blacker by the aftermath of my manic episode.
Anyone who says we are no longer a hunter-gatherer society hasn’t taken a good look around. The people featured on “Hoarders” are only the most extreme of us. Evidence of our hunting and gathering is everywhere. A two-car garage isn’t enough anymore. Now we need three—one for each of our cars and a third for stuff. Toy boxes can no longer contain our kids’ stuff; now we need entire rooms. We have so much stuff that we have entire stores devoted to containing our stuff.
Recently, we sold the home I grew up in. While it was emotionally wrenching, I expected that. What I didn’t expect was the overwhelming magnitude of stuff. Faced with getting rid of an entire life’s worth, I realized how truly insidious stuff is. It slinks into our lives one shopping bag or birthday or Christmas at a time. We suck it into our existence, shoving other stuff aside to fit it all in, then go about slowly accumulating more and more stuff.
This time tomorrow, losers people all over the world will call themselves winners in the “Who Got the iPhone First” game. Good for them, I guess. But me? There is nothing in the world that I want so much that I’ll sit on my butt in front of a store for days on end. Now, if you just happened to pick up an extra one . . .
My children like to bond with me by making me watch a god-awful mutually-enjoyable television show with them. With my daughter, it’s frequently Animal Planet because she doesn’t like cooking shows or shows where people speak intelligent dialogue. I don’t like shows where the main character is a pretty but quirky and misunderstood white girl who’s best friend is a fat black girl with a ghetto accent even though her parents are plastic surgeons and live in a mansion.
My daughter has been taking advantage of the fact that her brother would rather IM with his friends than interact with his family. Recently, though, he noticed that his sister has had two consecutive weeks of mother-daughter bonding time. He walked in on us about halfway through “The Great Barrier Reef” and demanded to know when it was his turn. I invited him to join us, noting “It’s a really beatiful show.” He declined just as a shark devoured a sea turtle, crushing it’s shell like it was a potato chip. “Real beautiful,” he said, leaving the room.
Later in the week, Chris Hayes appeared as a panelist on Real Time with Bill Maher. I proudly admit to having a massive nerd-girl crush on Chris Hayes. I’m into that boyish good looks and quick intellect thing. Now, I’m also into Joe Manganiello and am pretty sure Chris Hayes shirtless would cancel out his nerdly hotness.
I invited my son to watch Real Time with me. For a few minutes we watched the debate in silence. Chris was acquitting himself nicely, defending his views with a devastating combination of wit, mastery of the facts and intelligence.
Rapt, my son said, “Did he go to Harvard? Or did he invent Harvard?”
Today, I went to court. Everyone told me I should go to court. That I should plead “Not Guilty” to the charge of rear-ending a Jetta. Actually, I was charged with “improper acceleration,” which is police-speak for rear-ending a Jetta.
The man who owns the Jetta I allegedly improperly accelerated into called me to tell me he had no intention of going to court. He said the police officer told him he had no intention of going to court, either. He told me to go to court and the case would be dismissed.
Having never been the alleged cause of an improper acceleration before, I had no idea what one was supposed to do. So, I did the sensible thing: I asked my therapist. She told me to go to court. I asked what I should plead. She said, “Not Guilty.”
So, I decided I would go to court. We can’t really afford the fine and I had the time. Then, for weeks, my mind twisted in the wind as I struggled with the idea of saying “Not Guilty” to a judge (I mean, really, A JUDGE!!!) when I knew it was me that improperly accelerated into the Jetta.
Today was the court date. Last night I didn’t sleep, worried about how exactly the karmic retribution would manifest itself.
I got to court. I waited my turn, sweating and sickening as I pondered saying, “Not Guilty.” I was called before the judge, who asked me to turn to face the court as a clerk asked for witnesses to my disgusting action. None appeared. I turned back to the judge who said, “They are dismissing the charges; you are free to go. Have a nice day.”
I left. I’m trying to have a nice day while I worry about the karmic retribution I’ll suffer for even pondering perfidy.
I live with food heathens. While I will eat, and enjoy, pretty much anything (except liver), they are happy to subsist on chips, cheese and bacon. These are three of my favorite food groups, but I occasionally like to eat as if my heart mattered to me. Unfortunately, many of the things that only I will eat come in a package designed for a family of vegans, or, as my son might say, “A family of losers.” Hence, the following scenario is all too common.
Me (clearing out the fridge, flinging half-eaten containers of healthful foods in the nearby trash): Agh! Why don’t they make these in smaller containers? I’m so sick of throwing away hummus!
My husband: Oh, Bah Hummus!
Me, after several seconds of glaring at him: Oh, my god. You didn’t just say that. Daughter, come shoot your daddy in the head.
Daughter (whining): But then I’d have to go to juvie!
Every Wednesday night, I go to the gym and I sit. Now, I’m not a slug, by any means, but I’m not there to get my weekly workout. I’m there for a different kind of exercise: watching my daughter fling her body around bars, jump in the air over a wooden beam and travel the length of a mat using her arms as if they were legs.
My daughter does gymnastics. My daughter thinks it’s fun, so I ignore the freaked out voice in my head that screams, “She’s going to break her neck” every time she jumps more than one inch on the beam.
I’m not alone, of course. There are all kinds of parents at the gym. There are parents who read while they wait, parents who work while they wait and parents who surf the web while they wait.
And then, there are those parents.
Like “I’m Having A Meeting Here, People!” Mom. Hogging prime real estate in front of the viewing window (parents are not allowed in the gym), she very loudly discusses with her clients how she is going to make right what she has clearly done wrong. I wish she would shut the hell up, but none of the other parents seem to be bothered.
I sort of feel sorry for Binoculars Dad. My daughter is in the recreational program, which is code for these kids are never going to the Olympics. Binoculars Dad has a daughter in “Team” and she’s a Level 10, the highest level you can go in competitive gymnastics. Apparently, Olympic contenders go to eleven.
Binoculars Dad needs binoculars because the team athletes work out on the far side of the gym, “far” as in far away from prying—and distracting—parental eyes. The recreational kids are right up front; no one cares if they get distracted.
I feel sorry for Binoculars Dad because, well, he needs binoculars to see his daughter practice. Team gymnastics costs a butt load of money; the compulsory leotard alone is $140. I feel his pain. Every month, I give a lot of money to Hix Brothers music for my son to have lessons in guitar and drums. This has been going on for years; I have heard my son play guitar three times. He insists he practices in his room, which shall be the subject of another post, but I’m thinking of bugging the place for proof.
My favorite parents, though, and I mean that in the “Oh, man, these people are un-freaking-believable” sense, are The Sports Announcers.
This couple follows their daughter’s progress around the gym, providing commentary on every aspect of her performance, the coaching, the other members of the practice group and what they’ll do with the intel they’ve gathered when they get home alone with their kid.
Let’s say their daughter, Stephanie, is practicing with her group on the floor exercise mats.
“Oh!” says Mom, “he’s having them do back handsprings,” referring to the move the coach is having the girls do. “Stephanie should be able to do that,” says Dad.
“Oh!” says Mom. “Cara did a nice one. Stephanie’s turn!”
“Ok, Stephanie,” says Dad. “Don’t lose focus.”
A minute passes.
“She didn’t do a back handspring,” says Dad. “I wonder why.” Like me, Stephanie’s mom clearly doesn’t care; she’s busy analyzing the team.
“Oh!” says Mom, because she starts every statement with “Oh!”, “there’s a new girl.”
“And a new boy,” says Dad. Both parents are clearly disturbed that Stephanie’s universe has been invaded.
“I wanna know her name,” says Mom. “I wanna know his name,” says Dad. I want you to shut up, I think, but by now I am drawn into the play by play of Stepanie’s practice session. I decide to move closer to the viewing window to watch my daughter. She sticks her landing and we flash each other a thumb up.
The Sports Announcers follow me. Stephanie’s group is now doing front handsprings or back walkovers or front-to-back walkover springs. I have no idea what the names of all these moves are but I’m sure the Sports Announcers will let me know.
Unfortunately, the Sports Announcers have become distracted by Stephanie’s hair, which seems to be coming loose repeatedly.
“Oh!” says Mom, “her hair is loose again. Look! Coach is telling her to put it up again.”
“Is her hair too thin for a Scrunchi?” asks Dad. This stops me in the middle of thinking Will you shut the hell up? Sports Announcer Dad has used the word “Scrunchi” appropriately. My husband probably thinks a Scrunchi is an Italian appetizer.
Mom ignores the Scrunchi comment; it’s Stephanie’s turn.
“Oh! She’s really focused. Oh! She did a back handspring.”
“It wasn’t very good,” says Dad. “Just like with bars. It took a while so we’ll work on this now. We just have to get her to not put her head on the mat. We’ll talk to her when she comes out.”
I decide I must see this Stephanie child, so pull my eyes away from my daughter’s group. I scan through the practice group next to hers, looking for a seriously focused athlete with scrawny hair. I find her.
“SHE’S FIVE!” my brain screams. It can’t be true, I think. I’ve made a mistake. That taller, ten-year-old must be Stephanie. But it’s not. Stephanie is an adorable five-year-old girl with a sweet smile, a chubby little tummy, really fine hair and parents from hell.
I look away just in time to see a girl do three perfect back handsprings in a row. Her coach runs up to her, grabs her under the arms and swings her around and around as they both laugh. And then, the session is over.
My daughter runs out of the gym and meets me in the viewing area. I see Stephanie greet her parents, bouncing up and down, but I don’t stay to hear what they say. I give my daughter a hug, ask if she had fun and kiss the top of her head. Next week, I think, I’ll bring my headphones.
My son is now at the age where he leaves for hours at a time to meet up with friends and do constructive things like drive from mall to mall visiting their favorite stores. I say visiting because, between them, they have almost enough money to get a fast food meal and put half a gallon of gas in the designated driver’s car.
I know a little bit more about the aspirations of some of my son’s cohorts than is comfortable for a woman known to worry about things like being sucked out of an airplane toilet. I know, for instance, that one of his group really, really wants to try LSD or just about any mind-altering substance.
Recently, Son came home from one of his mall inventorying ventures along with three other young men. I was coming down the stairs just as they opened the front door so nearly collided into Son. He was smiling; he looked happy. This is not a state I am accustomed to in him. Mr. I Want To Drop Acid and See God was with him.
I surveyed the situation and said the first thing that popped into my head.
“Are you high?” I said. He and his friends looked at me like I was insane. Now, the minute it came out of my mouth I knew it was probably not the best way to greet my son and three young men who tower over me, but there you are.
Later, reviewing the incident, I asked my son, “God, what on earth was I thinking!?”
“I don’t know, Mom,” he said. “I was like ‘Hi, Mom!’ and you were like ‘Hi, Drug Addict!’”
Every morning, my ankle hurts. Just a little, in a spot that makes it obvious I’ve got arthritis. I’ve got the same thing going on with my wrist. I get up, though, and get moving. By the time I’ve had my second cup of tea, the pain is gone.
My teeth are a mess, I have hot flashes, my kids are both in double digits and old enough to know when I’m full of shit. In other words, I’m getting old.
With such abundant evidence in my real world, I don’t need it in my virtual world. But every time I get on Facebook, I see another of those dumb ass memes of some antiquated crap I’m supposed to “like” if I remember what the hell it’s for.
I remember what they’re for. The ice cube tray made out of aluminum with the lever you pulled that broke the cubes loose, while also breaking half the cubes? I remember that. It was common before we knew that aluminum consumption contributes to Alzheimer’s. I like my ice maker ‘though I’m pretty sure we’ll discover the plastic parts it’s made of cause erectile dysfunction.
I remember flash cubes, Captain Kangaroo, Mister Ed, and cassette tapes. I know what the relationship is between the cassette tape and a pencil.
I am not going to “like” any of these things.
See, I remember them and some of them even fondly. But my brain still works the way it’s supposed to work. I can still learn new things. I can still challenge myself. I can still be part of the world evolving around me.
My dad can’t. For brevity’s sake, let’s just say his brain is clogged with knots of protein. His cognitive function is so impaired he makes things up. He’s paranoid. He can’t remember my mother is dead, so he confuses other people with my mom and insists she’s ignoring him. I have had to tell him she’s dead three times in the last month.
So, I won’t be “liking” anything from my childhood. It’s not that I don’t smile when I remember them, but when I’m 80, I’d like to have someone post a picture of Katy Perry that I can “like.” Maybe I’ll do it when I come in from a run.
If Lincoln hadn’t gone to the theater, he would have been run over by a carriage. Or he would have had a heart attack. Or he might have fallen down the White House staircase and broken his neck. Or something like that.
My husband, a historian, hates speculative chat about history. What difference does it make what might have happened if Lincoln hadn’t gone to the theater? Lincoln went to the theater; he was assassinated. There are no do-overs. Write it in the book and move on.
But, I want a do-over. Actually, I want more than one do-over; I want a lot of do-overs. As my daughter might say, even, I want a lot, a lot, a lot of do-overs.
I’d use a bunch of them this morning. First, I’d do-over my dental situation. I’ve got dental dominoes going on in my mouth. My front crown fell out recently, bringing down with it a whole range of dental woes, from yellowing to molar rot.
One of the indignities of aging that rarely gets mentioned is teeth. You hear about hot flashes, back pains, creaking joints, heart attacks, weight gain, gray hair, sagging chins, drooping butts. But no one ever told me that I’d be sitting at my computer, flossing while catching up on blog reading, and my tooth would fall out. Just fall out and plink right onto my laptop.
Certain dental work can be delayed, like repairing molars. Heck, I figured, I’ve got more than one and it’s not like I’m eating caramels every day. Filling the 22 cavities in my 9-year-old daughter’s mouth seemed far more pressing a year ago. So, my molars waited. But a crown. . . now that can’t wait.
A crown can be a lovely thing and mine served me well. Beneath the crown, though, is a stump that looks like something cooked up by a British Hillbilly dentist on crack. Money be damned, I could not—would not—go around looking like Austin Powers.
Replacing the crown is going to be far more involved than I suspected. First, the surrounding teeth need to be bleached because I’ve spent years drinking coffee, tea, cola and all the other things that keep me awake for the glory that is my life. Apparently, they don’t make crowns in the yellowish ivory hue my teeth have taken on. So, bleach. Which leads to bleach trays. Which leads to this morning’s appointment.
Preparing for the dentist required blow-drying my hair. My hair, which I affectionately refer to as “frog fur,” is fine. And flat. So, I bend over and dry it from the roots believing that this will magically make my hair fuller. I bent over, began drying and then screamed with pain as my back fell apart, perhaps in sympathy with my tooth. When the pain subsided, I stood up and decided that a half-head of volume was better than no volume at all.
With my half-full head and broken back, I hobbled to the hall closet for my purse. No purse. Everywhere in the house? No purse. So much no purse that I decided my purse must have shrunken and was now so small that my dog ate it. Then I decided my children were no longer content to drive me crazy figuratively and had invented a new game: Gaslighting Mommy, which involves hiding things Mommy frequently needs, like glasses, car keys and her wallet. I called around. No purse at Whole Foods. No purse with husband at his office, as if he suddenly decided he needed a lavender and white man-bag. No purse in my son’s or daughter’s rooms, though I was too afraid to move anything for fear something frightening might be under them.
So, I called the dentist to reschedule my appointment. Then I found the purse. In the garage. I know how it got there; I’m not telling.
Then the dentist called. They were worried about me. I decided it was nicer to have someone worry about me than to point out that they wouldn’t have been worried if they were checking their messages. We rescheduled.
Finally, all the drama seeped out of the morning and I got over wanting a do-over. I decided the newly discovered down time would be well spent at the library.
I wakened the teenager. We drove to the library. On the way, I rear-ended a Jetta.
Have you ever wanted a do-over? What would you use it on?
PS. I attempted to download a photo of a lovely woman with terrible teeth to accompany this post. My computer crashed three times.
My nephew is a design student at Columbia College Chicago. Recently, he lost his wallet. In it was the normal wallet stuff, in addition to a special transit pass, U-Pass, only available to college students. The replacement fee for a lost or stolen pass is $50. Also, for clarification, a Blick card is a discount card for Dick Blick Art Materials. After discovering his loss, my nephew posted the following on his Facebook wall.
Snide Reply 