Monthly Archives: March 2006

Apoplectic Now

A few Sundays ago, our ten-year-old TV set finally breathed its last. Of course, this wasn’t just any Sunday: it was Superbowl Sunday, which perhaps explains both my husband’s distress and the corresponding lack of my own. (Although, in my defense, I must say that I doubt any reaction on my part short of an animated re-enactment of Edvard Muench’s The Scream would have been deemed acceptable). Trying my best to be sympathetic, I commiserated briefly, remarking how it was a shame that we didn’t have enough money this month to buy a new one; my husband reacted to this news exactly the same way I would expect him to react to the news that we could no longer afford to pay our oxygen bill: his eyes popped so far out, and his breathing became so strained that I briefly wondered if perhaps this was to be the time when I would finally get to witness “apoplexy”: for all the times I have read about someone’s reaction being “apoplectic” (I read a lot of Jane Austen), I have never actually seen apoplexy occur in real life. Until now.

I did almost see it once, when I was a child; perhaps not uncoincidentally, this brush with apoplexy also occurred after the untimely demise of our TV on a Superbowl Sunday. Apoplexy was neatly avoided that time, however, by the timely intervention of my mother, and her willingness to play along much more believably than I about the relevant depth of tragedy involved in the death of a beloved TV: after my stepfather frantically called her at work and told her to “pick up a TV on the way home”, she, with no snide comments whatsoever, did exactly that. It showed remarkable restraint on her part, I’m sure, but, unfortunately, forestalled my first true witnessing of apoplexy. (As a side note I should add that even though my stepfather did not actually become apoplectic at the loss of his TV on Superbowl Sunday, neither did he fully accept it: the non-functioning TV remained in the living room for several years after the arrival of the new one. In fact, they sat side by side, as if perhaps there was a chance that the new set could somehow teach the old one how not to be dead.)

Unfortunately for my husband, however, I am not my mother, and this time no “after-work-TVs” would be forthcoming. In the first place, I don’t even know where you are supposed to go to buy a TV: the one that so recently expired had been given to us as a wedding present, and any TV I had ever been in contact with before that had always seemed attached to someone else–room-mates and boyfriends being the best sources for TVs that I knew. The second reason I wasn’t going to be “picking up a TV on my way home” was that, to tell you the truth, I was actually glad the TV had died: at the time of its death we really hadn’t been on friendly terms for several years or more.

I’m not quite sure how we drifted apart. It seems like one minute I was in junior high, impatiently waiting for “The Love Boat” and “The A-Team” to come on, and the next I was the mother of a two-year-old slowly being tortured to death by “Barney”, or worse yet the mother of a nine-year-old who wants to watch “Skating with the Stars” and “Ugly Duckling”. Don’t get me wrong: it’s not that I think “Real People” and “That’s Incredible!” were any less schlockingly dreadful than the reality shows that are on today, it just seems to me that at least shows like “Real People” involved a whole lot less crying.

Not that there was any shortage of crying people at my house with the TV gone–my husband alone was doing a pretty good imitation of an “American Idol” results show, and Clementine was all set to channel “America’s Next Top Model” when, as luck would have it, the guy down the street decided it was time to wrap up his yard sale and price all his remaining TVs at $5.

And so, just like that the Superbowl was watched and the advertisers of another round of “Dancing with the C-Listers” could be assured of yet another year of Clementine’s brand loyalty. Everyone, it seems, was a winner, except for me. It was almost enough to make me experience apoplexy.

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Flag Stomp

Back when we were still in the middle of the great cartoon controversy of 2006, I saw a great image: it was a picture of a Syrian mother stomping on a Danish flag; I could tell she was a mother because she had her two-year-old in tow. And, I could tell that she was the mother (and not the babysitter, or the aunt, or the preschool teacher) because, when I say she had her toddler “in tow”, I mean that in the most literal sense: she was pulling this kid along the top of the flag like she was trying to pull a ‘56 Chevy out of a ditch. It was a still photo, but I’m guessing, judging by the level of grief and resistance on the boy’s face, and the level of determination and frustration on the mother’s face, that this kid’s feet hadn’t touched the ground since they left the house that morning. In fact, if, by some strange turn of events, this kid ever ends up someday running for President of Denmark (or Prime Minister, or Great Dane–whatever they call it there), I’ll bet he ends up using the Bill Clinton defense to justify his “youthful flag-stomping experimentation”: “Yes, I tried Danish flag-stomping once, but, you know, my feet never actually touched it.”

The photo also didn’t show whether there were any other flags being stomped on at the same venue, but frankly I would be quite surprised to find out that there wasn’t in fact, a virtual hootenanny of flag stomping going on that day. Think about it: what busy mother would take a two-year-old all the way downtown just to stomp on one lousy flag? Like mothers everywhere, this one was probably in the midst of a grand multitask, and that Danish flag was probably the third or fourth in a long line of flags they had traipsed across that morning before they got to the rest of their chores. If you looked at the picture closely enough you could almost see the mother’s lips forming the words, “Ok, stomp on Israeli, American, and Danish flags (check, check, check); now I just have to go by the store–we’re out of falafel and yogurt (must remember to get the one with Blue’s Clues on the box this time), pick up Abdullah from football practice–was it my turn to bring the snacks?–and, oh yeah, see if the dry cleaner was able to get that stain out of my new hijab–I should never have worn it to the protest in the first place, those effigy burnings can get so messy…”

Strangely enough, I find this picture to be very comforting. While it’s true that it reminds me yet again of the vast divide separating those of us who value freedom of speech over religious piety, it also–when I see that all-too-familiar harassed look in that other mother’s eyes–reminds me of all that we have in common. What mother has never dragged her unwilling and ungrateful children to some cultural “event” (whether you define “cultural event” as a flag-burning or viewing the remains of King Tut is up to you), only to have them act like they are being asked to walk over hot coals? And, as a corollary to this, what mother hasn’t thereafter given up on “culture” altogether, only to be chastised for it in later years? I can just hear that little Syrian boy complaining ten years from now:

Boy: “You never take me anywhere.”

Mother: “What are you talking about? What about that time we went to stomp on the Danish flag? Don’t you remember? You started acting all crazy and running around, and the next thing I knew you were over in the corner trying to stomp on the Syrian flag–oh it was so embarrassing”–

Boy: “Why were we stomping on the Danish flag?”

Mother (still thinking about her humiliation): “Hmm? Oh, who knows? We were always stomping on some flag back then; it was the fad…”

And as his mother launches into her verbal stroll down memory lane, the boy will roll his eyes and go back to playing his Game Boy. Just, I am sure, like our kids will do.

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Loaves and Fishes

If all goes as planned, then by the time you are reading this scientists will already know what, exactly, is contained within the capsules of “comet dust” they recently retrieved after a six year journey through the solar system. I can just imagine what they will be saying upon opening this interstellar time capsule: “Does this speck of dust contain the answers to the creation of the universe?”; “Is this an element previously unknown on Earth?”; and, finally, “Who had the croissant?” I can’t help them with the answers to the first two questions, but I’m pretty sure that the answer to the third is: “Uh, sorry: that would be my daughter, Clementine.”

It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to find out that, perhaps after realizing that the house and car no longer presented a big enough challenge, Clementine had, in fact, managed to spread pieces of her last croissant over all of Creation. I say “Creation” because what Clementine can do with a croissant–or, for that matter, what Clementine can do with almost any piece of food–is nothing short of miraculous; in fact, it’s no coincidence that no one has been able to make food spread so far since Jesus did his little bit with the loaves and the fishes. Of course, one minor (but important) distinction between what Jesus did and what Clementine does is that, with Jesus, the end result is that everyone gets something to eat. With Clementine, the end result is that everyone needs to go to the dry cleaners (a miracle worthy of praise only for those in the business–but who knows?–maybe all of the world’s dry cleaners have altars to St. Clementine set up in the backs of their shops).

Also unlike Jesus, it is never Clementine’s intent to spread her food around; she’s not sharing, that’s just how she eats. I know this to be true because I have seen how her other much-loved foods–foods she would never willingly share, like chocolate cake, cookies and chicken nuggets–all receive the same Hellraiser treatment–one minute they’re whole and intact in front of her on the table, and the next it’s as if they’ve been ripped apart by a thousand tiny hooks.

Of course, all of this is pure speculation on my part: I’ve never actually seen the destruction myself, only the results. If I really needed to see it then I think I’d need stop action photography to capture what is happening between the placing of the bowl of spaghetti and parmesan cheese in front of her and the final result: a cheese outline of Clementine on the floor behind her, as if Pompeii had been destroyed not by Mt. Vesuvius, but by Mount Chef Boyardee. (Which reminds me: the other questions the comet dust scientists will be asking themselves is: “What smells like feet?”)

If this is allowed to continue the future of our space program may very well be in jeopardy; therefore, in the interest of protecting the scientific community’s research data (and my new living room rugs), I have recently issued a fatwa in my house against the unholy removal of food from the kitchen or dining room; if that doesn’t work then my next step will be to insist that every single box of crackers, carton of milk and banana in the house be attached to the kitchen garbage can via a one foot chain of the sort you used to find in banks (now you just find a notice stating: Why Are You Bothering Us With This When You Could Just Do It Online; Can’t You See We’re Busy?”). This chain would only allow the consumption of food to take place in a 12 inch circle around said garbage can. And if that doesn’t work, then I’ll have no other choice but to go to Plan “C”: only allowing Clementine to eat at the bottom of a large pit dug at the far end of our back yard, one that has to be filled in again immediately upon the completion of her meal Although, given her particularly well-honed food distribution skills, the end result of this would probably just be that future scientists will end up asking themselves: “Who had the mac’n’cheese–and why is it all covered in dirt?”

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Get Out

Back before I had children (B.C.), if I had walked in on a movie that featured several dewy-eyed children being terrorized by a deep, angry voice shouting “GET OUT!”, I would have assumed that I had walked in on an Amityville Horror-style horror movie. Now that I do have children, however, I would know instantly that I had not walked in on a horror film at all, but instead had obviously stumbled upon some sort of a documentary about modern family life, and that what I was witnessing was not, in fact, a case of demonic possession (much), but rather the typical, everyday reaction of a mother faced with her third vacation day in a row.

I have seen vacation days from both sides now: even though I grew up in Phoenix, where, it’s true we didn’t have any snow days, we did have something that, at least as far as parents are concerned, is much worse: we had summer. (If you think it’s hard to throw children out into three feet of snow just wait until you try to throw them out into 112 degrees of heat. At least you can play in snow–all you can do with 112 degrees is creep along from one shady spot to another, like a gigantic, miserable lizard.)

Not that my mother let that stop her. In fact, I can still distinctly recall the sequence of events that led to our annual eviction: usually around the second full week of vacation, which also happened to coincide with the second full week of watching my sister and myself wrestle furiously on the floor in front of the television (this was before remote controls) to determine whether we were going to watch a third rerun of the Bionic Woman (her choice) or a fifteenth rerun of Wild, Wild, West (mine), my mother would lunge for the phone book and start frantically dialing summer day programs. Usually the only ones left would be the awful ones where you had to stand outside all day, like “Archery for the Disinterested” and “Intermediate Hop-Scotch”. (I also seem to remember a course entitled “Painting Mr. Baker’s House”, although my mother swears that this never happened–it was, she says, all a delusion–brought on, I am sure, by heatstroke.)

At the time I remember being deeply resentful at being pried away from my television coma, but now that I have children of my own I understand completely. After our most recent four-day weekend, and after enduring my children’s twice a minute requests to play another three hours of Game Cube (“Can I play now?” “No.” “Can I play now?” “No.” “Can I play now?” “No.”), I, too, would have signed my kids up for classes with names like “Introduction to Breaking Bottles on the Railroad Tracks” and “History of Things Found in My Pocket”, if only it would have gotten them out of the house.

I’m sure that it has always been this way: someday archaeologists will find a cave drawing somewhere in France that shows a big stick figure using a spear to chase two little stick figures away from their spot in front of the fire, where they had just spent the last twenty minutes noisily and violently contesting over who got to be the next one to throw a log on the fire. (Not shown would be how, in the midst of the tussle, the cave children somehow managed to actually break the fire, or their mother’s exasperated shout of, “You kids could bust a mammoth!” In art, some things are just so obvious that there isn’t any need to show them.)

In the same spirit, I’m also sure that, in the future, we’ll see space stations equipped with special “eject” buttons that mothers can push whenever school is shut down because of solar flares and the like. Not that that would be a shock to anyone who had grown up in Phoenix: being tossed out suit-less into the vacuum of space isn’t that much different than being thrown outside into a Phoenix summer without a car–except for the probability that, compared to Phoenix, space will be a little more hospitable, and almost certainly a lot less dull.

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Get Out

Back before I had children (B.C.), if I had walked in on a movie that featured several dewy-eyed children being terrorized by a deep, angry voice shouting “GET OUT!”, I would have assumed that I had walked in on an Amityville Horror-style horror movie. Now that I do have children, however, I would know instantly that I had not walked in on a horror film at all, but instead had obviously stumbled upon some sort of a documentary about modern family life, and that what I was witnessing was not, in fact, a case of demonic possession (much), but rather the typical, everyday reaction of a mother faced with her third vacation day in a row.

I have seen vacation days from both sides now: even though I grew up in Phoenix, where, it’s true we didn’t have any snow days, we did have something that, at least as far as parents are concerned, is much worse: we had summer. (If you think it’s hard to throw children out into three feet of snow just wait until you try to throw them out into 112E of heat. At least you can play in snow–all you can do with 112E is creep along from one shady spot to another, like a gigantic, miserable lizard.)

Not that my mother let that stop her. In fact, I can still distinctly recall the sequence of events that led to our annual eviction: usually around the second full week of vacation, which also happened to coincide with the second full week of watching my sister and myself wrestle furiously on the floor in front of the television (this was before remote controls) to determine whether we were going to watch a third rerun of the Bionic Woman (her choice) or a fifteenth rerun of Wild, Wild, West (mine), my mother would lunge for the phone book and start frantically dialing summer day programs. Usually the only ones left would be the awful ones where you had to stand outside all day, like “Archery for the Disinterested” and “Intermediate Hop-Scotch”. (I also seem to remember a course entitled “Painting Mr. Baker’s House”, although my mother swears that this never happened–it was, she says, all a delusion–brought on, I am sure, by heatstroke.)

At the time I remember being deeply resentful at being pried away from my television coma, but now that I have children of my own I understand completely. After our most recent four-day weekend, and after enduring my children’s twice a minute requests to play another three hours of Game Cube (“Can I play now?” “No.” “Can I play now?” “No.” “Can I play now?” “No.”), I, too, would have signed my kids up for classes with names like “Introduction to Breaking Bottles on the Railroad Tracks” and “History of Things Found in My Pocket”, if only it would have gotten them out of the house.

I’m sure that it has always been this way: someday archaeologists will find a cave drawing somewhere in France that shows a big stick figure using a spear to chase two little stick figures away from their spot in front of the fire, where they had just spent the last twenty minutes noisily and violently contesting over who got to be the next one to throw a log on the fire. (Not shown would be how, in the midst of the tussle, the cave children somehow managed to actually break the fire, or their mother’s exasperated shout of, “You kids could bust a mammoth!” In art, some things are just so obvious that there isn’t any need to show them.)

In the same spirit, I’m also sure that, in the future, we’ll see space stations equipped with special “eject” buttons that mothers can push whenever school is shut down because of solar flares and the like. Not that that would be a shock to anyone who had grown up in Phoenix: being tossed out suit-less into the vacuum of space isn’t that much different than being thrown outside into a Phoenix summer without a car–except for the probability that, compared to Phoenix, space will be a little more hospitable, and almost certainly a lot less dull.

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Color Me Bad

As a board member for the Flagstaff Children’s Museum, it has been my pleasure for the past four years to help promote our annual All Ages Coloring Contest; with every passing year I am amazed anew at the wit and creativity displayed by our community’s adults and children alike in taking a simple line drawing and turning it into a piece of art. My involvement in this endeavor has been both an honor and a joy; inevitably, though, there always comes a point during the promotion of the coloring contest when someone will ask me the question I dread most: how are my children’s entries are coming along? At this point I am always forced to admit that, actually, I don’t allow crayons in my house. This confession is usually greeted with stony silence, soon followed by a quizzical look that clearly says: what kind of a parent doesn’t allow their children to have crayons?

What kind of a parent, indeed? It’s not like I’m one of those parents who has an all-white living room furnished in Swedish Modern (frankly I don’t even remember what color my living room is supposed to be, and the closest my house ever gets to Swedish Modern is when the Ikea catalog finds its way from the bathroom to the coffee table). Generally speaking, in fact, I have no problem with the filth and detritus of childhood–the cookie crumb-encrusted couch cushions; the layer of fast-food containers in the back seat of the car dating back to the Pleistocene era–but there is just something about crayons with which I cannot deal.

They haven’t always been my enemy: when my children were smaller I would buy them all sorts and sizes of crayons: fat ones, thin ones, glitter ones, neon ones; in quantities ranging from the tiny travel packs of the four primary colors all the way up to the jumbo sixty-four box (with its own sharpener). At some point, however, I came to the realization that, in the hands of my children at least, a crayon clearly qualified as a WMD.

It’s like the crayons are possessing them: I remember times back in the days when crayons were not yet verboten when I would walk past Clyde’s room and hear what sounded to me suspiciously like Clyde taking orders from the burnt sienna.

“You want me to draw what with you? Where? Oh no, I couldn’t…”

And then, the next thing I knew my freshly painted dining room would look like a cross between a prehistoric French cave and a high school bathroom. It was always the same: time and time again I would relent and allow more crayons into my house (usually after a trip to some restaurant where I would watch my children coloring beatifically within the lines on their placemats), only to find that, once through our own front door my children’s unplottable switch had somehow been flipped from “good” to “evil”, and I would soon be finding the evidence of Clyde’s “blue period” (or “red, yellow, and a little bit of green period”) on his bedroom walls.

Thankfully, of course, with the Children’s Museum coloring contest, the entries don’t have to be done in crayon at all: in fact, one of Clyde’s most inspired entries was his first, when he decorated it entirely in food stains and bodily fluids (he was five months old). Some of the other entries I have seen over the years have included poster paint, papier mache and even lint, so I suppose there is still hope for my children to get their crayon-less entries in on time. Although, come to think about it, I’m not too happy about finding any of those things on my walls, either.

(The Flagstaff Children’s Museum Fourth Annual All Ages Coloring Contest, with base drawing provided by local artist Tisha Cazel, will be accepting entries in food, plywood, and even crayon from now until March 10. Entry forms can be picked up and dropped off at any of the following: Brandy’s, New Frontiers Marketplace, and Pay-N-Take. All winning entries will be on display at the Coconino Center for the Arts following the public reception and awards ceremony also held at the CCA on Wednesday, March 15, from 5-7 pm.)

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