Tag Archives: what keeps me awake

WTF Wednesday vs. The Silverlining Man

As predicted, the midterm election results painted the map red.

Bloody hell!

Yes, yes, we got bagged. It’s 5:30 am, and I haven’t slept. I have not packed for my trip overseas, nor have I finished getting the house ready for my absence. At a time like this, we need…

The Silverlining Man!

He will deliver a different, better, more comforting perspective so we can move on…

The Silverlining Man: At least none of the Trifecta of Teabagging Crazy was elected last night.

Sharron “I look like an Asian” Angle.

Christine “Masturbation = Adultery” O’Donnell

Carl “LOL Photoshop is awesome” “Imma gonna run on this anti-gay ticket because it seems promising” Paladino

All out. For now.

Do you feel better now? Good.

Thank you, Silverlining Man!

But wait. What is it Speedhag my trusted Invisible Unicorn?

Seriously. WTF? People?

A Long Way Home

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Here is something that amused me for an entire hour the other day:

Go to google map, search for Directions from China to Taiwan.

Take a look at Direction Number 55.

Here, I have taken the liberty to show you a composite screenshot. I am awesome like this.

Before you sneer at how easily I am amused (even though it is true!) please know that you cannot do this for trips between say the U.S. and Europe. google will not allow you to swim in the Atlantic Ocean. Whereas trips to Asia? Google says, “Be my guest!”

This is why, ladies and gents, we do not complain about air travel...

This is why, ladies and gentlemen, we should never complain about air travel.

Looking at this 38-day, 10,000 mile trip in which I have to kayak, jet ski and swim across the Pacific Ocean, I now feel much better about my 2-leg 16-hour-in-middle-seat one-day trip to Taipei.

Perspectives. The cure for whining.

On an unrelated note, I think I may partake in NaBloPoMo again. National Blog Posting Month. I did it last year: I was crying uncle and said NEVER AGAIN! when I emerged from the darkness called “Blogger’s Block aka I ran out of shit to write about on the third day”. Call me compulsive masochistic nuts. At this moment, I thought I’d give it a go simply because they have a category “Psychotic Ranting/Anonymous Foaming”; I simply need to be part of something this awesome.

Yes. NaBloPoMo looks and sounds very similar to NaBloMoFo, and believe me, by the end of this month, I’d be calling it NaBloMoFo. When your spouse complains about your even crazier blogging obsession, erratic schedules and the unfed children, just tell him that next month could be NaBloJoMo if he pipes down, and oh, does the laundry (by laundry, we mean “folding the goddamn clothes too”. Thank you).

Something that really made my blood boil today and I think we all need to read this excellent investigative reporting by NPR. Please take a look at this and be outraged. As a nation, we need to be outraged by this: Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law

… What he was selling was a prison for women and children who were illegal immigrants … That’s because prison companies like this one had a plan — a new business model to lock up illegal immigrants. And the plan became Arizona’s immigration law.

NPR spent the past several months analyzing hundreds of pages of campaign finance reports, lobbying documents and corporate records. What they show is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill 1070 by an industry that stands to benefit from it: the private prison industry.

The law could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before. And it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to private prison companies responsible for housing them.

What Laura Sullivan and NPR uncovered gives an evil spin to the catchphrase “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Here is my silent scream, something I wish someone in a position to do so could actually confront Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce with, invoking the famous retort by Welch against McCarthy:

“Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

“Vote for Pedro”: How do you decide who to vote for?

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On my way to dropping off my 7th grader at the junior high this morning, he asked, out of the blue,

“Where do you get a yard sign for the election?”

He meant the “Vote for XX” signs that some of our neighbors have started decorating their front lawns with since a couple of months ago. Just so you know: So far I have not spotted a single sign for a democratic party candidate in our subdivision.

“Why?”

“Well, I want to vote for this guy ________ or maybe this guy _________, ah, I can’t remember his name, who was running for the senate [He’s not; the person my son was referring to is running for the Governor]. He has been a congressman [Correction: He’s a state senator] for a long time, and now he’s risking it all to run for this, this thing so that he can help the country. He’s risking it all to run for this. And I want to vote for him…”

“Wow. I am impressed. How do you know all about this? Did anybody come to school to talk to you? [They’d better not, of course!]”

“No. I just heard it from all the political ads on TV.”

Seriously? When did they watch so much TV? I am not bragging but we have PBS on in the morning and after school when my 7-year-old watches TV. The TV is seldom on when I am home after work or even on the weekends. How many political ads are run within a two-hour window during prime time?!?

“Well, you know, that’s the danger of watching and believing these ads: what if you’ve only seen the ads from one side and then you would have only heard the opinions from one side.” I gingerly prodded him in the right direction, I hope, as I cringed.

“I don’t like all of those ads attacking people; they picked up one word from somewhere and then they just totally blew it up and made it into a big deal. This guy, what’s his name, did not do that in his ad and I want to vote for him.”

So there you have it: He decided on his candidate by watching the ads on one night when we were drinking too much wine at a fundraising event. Although my son is only 12 years old, I believe the way he received information about the candidates (Promises only with no evidence to back them up. Punchline rules!) and how he decided WHOM to vote for is not that uncommon.

The modern elections are still run, largely, by air time. And this election is going to see the massive impact by the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling this January to allow corporations to spend unlimited funds to elect and defeat candidates.

Before the Supreme Court’s landmark campaign finance ruling in January, nonprofit groups…, able to accept unrestricted contributions from individuals and corporations, had been limited to broadcasting ‘issue ads’ and barred from ‘express advocacy,’ advertisements that directly urge voters to elect or defeat specific candidates.

Now… third-party groups in growing numbers have been flocking to this sharper form of messaging in the closing weeks of the campaign.

“Groups Push Legal Limits in Advertising”, 17 October 2010, New York Times

“Pedro offers you his protection.”

“Vote for me, and all your wildest dreams will come true.”

These campaign slogans still make me chuckle.

In the movie Napoleon Dynamite, the idea of uber-dork-100%-uncool Napoleon wowing the crowd with a surprise performance and thus helping his good friend Pedro win the class president election is rather endearing and satisfies our urge to root for the underdogs.

However, as I bit my lip to refrain from going into a tirade in the car, I questioned how scary it would be if this idea were to apply to real politics:

Let’s see who can put up the best show and have it run over and over again until repetition turns the message into the de facto fact because the alternative has been droned out.

I will stab anyone who says “Boys will always be boys”

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I wasn’t sure that you need to read yet another post on the recent deaths by suicide* of some very young people in this country. I thought it was all over the news and everybody read/heard about it by now. Besides, I will just be preaching to the choir: I have made a conscientious effort to not attract right-wing ultra-religious anti-gay conservatives to my blog. “Wrong place. You are not going to like what you see here and I am not interested in wasting my time on debating with you. Exit is this way. Thank you very much.”

But fuck that. I am going to write about this. Again. And again. More. We need more discussion, nay, we need more outrage, on this. Not less. No more silence. Fuck silence.

Oh my god. As I was finishing up this post, I heard the news of another suicide by a 10-year-old girl in Allston, MA. What will it take to make this stop??!!

Here’s what happened in the months of September and October:

Billy Lucas hung himself. He was 13.

Asher Brown shot himself. He was 13.

Seth Walsh hung himself and died after being on life support for ten days. He was 13.

Raymond Chase hung himself in his dorm room. He was 19.

Tyler Clementi threw himself over the George Washington Bridge. He was 18.

And remember Carl Walker who hung himself last year? He was only 11.

These young men chose to kill themselves over living with the constant bullying (both physical and emotional).

After the brutal assault-murders of Brandon Teena and Matthew Shepard in the 1990s, we thought we have moved ahead, we have made giant stripes. Apparently, not enough has been done.

What kind of world are we living in that our children did not think there was any other alternative than suicde? That there was any hope that the harassment could ever be stopped?

Immediately there has been an emotional public outcry against the ugliness prevalent in America’s schoolyards. Ellen delivered a gut-wrenching message/plea on her show the day after Tyler’s death. A movement “It Gets Better” was started: celebrities and everyday people posted messages and their own life stories to let young kids know that yes, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Yes, it does get better.

Neil Patrick Harris. Tim Gunn (who talked about his own suicide attempt). Chris Colfer (who portrays Kurt on Glee, IMO the most multifaceted gay character empowering the teens the country has yet seen, and for his character alone, I believe Glee should be mandatory viewing for every high school followed by discussions led by trained counselors. But more on that in a future post). And many many more have uploaded videos providing encouragement and hope.

The outpouring of emotional support hopefully is reaching those who need it the most, e.g. those who are isolated in Small (in mind and/or in geography) Town, USA, where, if you are a boy, wearing long hair or a lukewarm attitude towards football is enough to brand you the Town Freak.

Though I cry at these videos and am encouraged by the act of people coming together, I still have this gnawing feeling that something else needs to be done. “It Gets Better” puts the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the oppressed:

Be patient. Grin and bear it. Just wait. High school will be over soon.

But how about NOW?

As Micael puts it rather succintly:

“What I am getting from it all is that yeah, it sucks, but cowboy up. It gets better. Fuck better. What about now?”

NOW looks alarming according to the statistics.

• In the United States, more than 34,000 people die by suicide each year

• Suicide is the third leading cause of death among 15 to 24-year-olds, accounting for over 12% of deaths in this age group; only accidents and homicide occur more frequently

• Suicide is the second leading cause of death on college campuses

• For every completed suicide by a young person, it is estimated that 100 to 200 attempts are made

• Lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth are up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers

• More than 1/3 of LGB youth report having made a suicide attempt

• Nearly half of young transgender people have seriously thought about taking their lives and one quarter report having made a suicide attempt

• Questioning youth who are less certain of their sexual orientation report even higher levels of substance abuse and depressed thoughts than their heterosexual or openly LGBT-identified peers

NOW seems to imply that harassment is just part of expected experience in high school for LGBT students according to the statistics. Just because it is “expected” and “Oh, we all went through it” does not mean we should not try and nip it in the bud. NOW.

• Nine out of 10 LGBT students (86.2%) experienced harassment at school; three-fifths (60.8%) felt unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation; and about one-third (32.7%) skipped a day of school in the past month because of feeling unsafe

• LGBT students are three times as likely as non-LGBT students to say that they do not feel safe at school (22% vs. 7%) and 90% of LGBT students (vs. 62% of non-LGBT teens) have been harassed or assaulted during the past year

• Sexual minority youth, or teens that identify themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual, are bullied two to three times more than heterosexuals

• Almost all transgender students had been verbally harassed (e.g., called names or threatened in the past year at school because of their sexual orientation (89%) and gender expression (89%)

• LGBT youth in rural communities and those with lower adult educational attainment face particularly hostile school climates

(Statics from The Trevor Project where you can find the sources for data quoted)

NOW brings shame to this Land of the Free for not doing enough to protect our children according to the statistics. As Keli Goff, one of my favorite bloggers over at HuffPost argued in her post “Why We Shouldn’t Blame the Bullies for the Recent String of LGBT Suicides” (the title is misleading. It should have been “why we should not blame ONLY the bullies”), those who should have protected these children and who should have ensured a safe environment for them failed miserably:

If a young student was called the N-word every day for weeks or months on end, and after repeated cries for help finally took his own life, how quickly do you think citizens of all races would take to the streets to protest? Or better yet, how quickly would Al Sharpton and Co. demand accountability from the school and elected officials under the threat of casting the kind of media spotlight that people like Don Imus have nightmares about?

… I have a hard time believing that if these kids had been bullied for their race, not for their sexual identities, that the adults tasked to protect them would not have reacted differently, or at the very least would have reacted at all.

Which makes me think that the kids doing the bullying are not really the ones at fault. They are simply taking their cues from adults. And the message they are receiving is that today in 2010 it may not be okay to call someone the N-word on the playground, but it is okay to call someone the F-word. [my emphasis]

I want to believe that the world is changing, that we as a society is coming together over these tragic losses, that ALL now understand how critical it is to confront the rampant and at the same time subtle homophobia prevalent in the U.S. culture, how stupid it is that Americans harbor this rigid view of genders: For example,

Boys + PINK = GAY. Girls + TRUCK = GAY. Boys + ARTS = GAY. Boys + DISLIKE SPORTS = GAY.

Of course I know this is not true. Not yet. I work with some of these people who are convinced that THIS has nothing to do with them, who at most paid cursory attentions to the deaths and the “movement” that’s happening. You see: They are not gay. They don’t have any friends who are gay. They were not bullied at school. They are just “regular” Americans.

I have news for them: Your children may turn out to be gay. Your grandchildren. Your nieces. Nephews. Cousins. And you know what? Bullying does not even have to do with sexual orientation. It does not have to do with anything really. Bullies prey on “differences” and since every individual is different, there is no saying WHICH difference is going to become the target. Your child’s personality or physical traits could become the target for bullying at school for no reason other than your child’s being themselves: your boy may be shy, quiet, reserved, bookish, bad at sports, etc. Your girl may be outgoing, athletic, have an aversion to pretty clothes and pink, etc.

A bully can decide to pick on any child for any reason. And a bully does not necessarily look like Biff Tannen.

I was emotionally bullied in grade school for three years by my entire class. The originator later confided in me that he started it because he liked me. (It’s a long story which I have written about here) It does not matter: I thought about killing myself because in my mind at that time there was simply no way out other than running away from home. This experience forever changed me and later in life I made a suicide attempt. Isn’t it funny? All because a boy liked me in fourth grade.

It could be called the “luck of the draw” whether your child attracts a bully’s attention or not. And girls can both be perpetrators and victims. Remember Phoebe Prince? She was only 15 and she killed herself when she could no longer take the emotional bullying from the Queenbees at her new school.

The kids also do not need to gang upon a victim to make the victim’s life miserable. All it takes is one persistent individual as is evidenced in the tragic death of Ty Field. Ty was an 11-year-old boy with a bright sunny smile. A bully had been bothering him for years but complaints filed with the school had not been effectively handled, and so the bullying continued. In June this year, Ty went home, pointed a gun to his own head and pulled the trigger.

A month after Ty’s suicide, Kirk and Laura Smalley still haven’t done their son’s last load of laundry.

“We just can’t,” Kirk Smiley said. “His Molina jersey still smells like him.”

This makes me cry every time I read it. Kirk Smalley was interviewed on CNN this month because the media finally gets it: Bullying is big news now. Anti-bullying movement is a great human story that they should all vie to report on. (Pardon my cynicism here. Old habits die hard). Mr. Smalley has been trying to get the attention of anybody who would listen because he wants to make sure that bullying is taken seriously. In the interview, Mr. Smalley mentioned one of the responses from the principal was

“Boys will be boys.”

How many times have you heard this?

Boys will be boys.

Girls will be girls.

Kids will be kids.

I get stabby every time I hear such a throwaway response. Imagine if during the 1950s people had simply shrugged their shoulders and sighed, “You know, white men will always be white men.” What the fucking fuck? We need to call Bullshit when someone simply shakes their head and says, “What are you gonna do? Boys/Girls will always be boys/girls.”

“What boys are you talking about? Whose boys? Which boys? What kind of behaviors do you consider to fall within the realms that boys naturally do that we should turn the blind eye towards? How far does it go on before it is no longer ‘kids will always be kids’ and becomes ‘Lord of the Flies’? What would you say if I scream in your face and say ‘Oh women will be women because we are all hormonal and hysterical’? What are the definitions for ‘boys’ other than the anatomical fact of having a penis? Who defines what ‘normal’ boy behaviors are? And who the fuck are you that you think you get to define that?!”

(Ok. You know if I am confronting someone at my kid’s schools, I will only be asking the last question out loud inside my head but writing it out makes me feel less stabby. So thank you for granting me this poetic license here…)

Let’s talk about this. Let’s all go home and talk to our spouses, our children, our families, our friends about it: If you notice, see, suspect bullying behaviors, report it. And calling people “GAY” maliciously on Facebook counts as 1st-degree bullying in my book.

Let’s all take a stance because we are all in this together.

* According to The Trevor Project, leading national organization focused on crisis and suicide prevention efforts among LGBTQ(uestioning) youth, we should refrain from using the phrase “commit(ed) suicide.” Instead, we should use “died by suicide” or “completed suicide” when describing a fatal suicide attempt.

Remember where you were when you heard the news?

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Remember where you were when you saw it? For the first time?

I am sure all of us (those old enough) do.

I was in Boise, Idaho then. I was working as a management consultant, traveling Monday through Thursday. By then, I have been on the project for almost half a year. I wanted to get ahead, to have a career. I was an over-achiever wannabe and, like everybody else on my team, I was almost ready to head over to the client’s office before 7 am.

I was not giving what’s on the TV news my full attention until all of a sudden, it turned into a special report and the image of a skyscraper with ridiculous amount of smoke coming out of it came on the screen.

What’s that? It must be from a movie. They are doing a preview of some disaster movie.

I turned up the volume and it took me awhile to understand the words that were being said. But they did not make any sense at all.

How could it happen? What do they mean it’s a plane? No, it cannot be a plane. You can’t see anything. Just the smoke. How big is Word Trade Center anyway? Can an entire plane fit into it without us seeing a wing? What is going on? Something wrong with the plane? The engine stopped? The pilot had a heart attack? A hijacker? What exactly has happened?

We still did NOT know at this moment that this was still BEFORE, that a few minutes later most of us would catch one of the most horrifying images live on television. All the news cameras were pointing at the burning building as the reporters on TV and on the phone trying to carry on with a news story with little information coming through. And then we saw it…

This cannot be happening. It did not just happen. Oh my god.

I immediately called and woke up my husband, “Go turn on the TV, now!”. We watched the news together this way until our three-year-old son woke up and came to find husband in front of the television.

“I am not sure I know how to explain to him. But I think I am going to keep him at home with me today.”

Nobody was in the office when I walked in. We all gathered in the cafeteria where there were several television monitors. The entire day was filled with confusion, rumors, information and misinformation, news, more news, news that later was proven to be just rumors, and our efforts to make sense of what’s going on, and more immediately, when it was certain that the US airspace was closed indefinitely, to get ourselves home.

All of us wanted to be home. Everything else just seemed… trivial. Airports all over the country were closed. Unable to just sit and wait, several people , including one person who lived in New York City, rented cars and simply started driving. When all the rental cars were gone the next day, a fellow Chicagoan jumped on a Greyhound bus, similarly unable to just sit and wait, and started (as we found out later) a three-day journey home.

It was a surreal experience getting on a plane again on that Friday. I was of course excited to finally head home and yet, like every other air traveler in those weeks immediately afterwards, I was apprehensive, the images permanently seared in my mind. It felt like such a victory when I stepped into the house. I am finally home! I hugged my then three-year-old boy even tighter when he told me that he had been watching “the movie with a burning building and an airplane flying into another building” with daddy.

Like everybody else, we looked at our lives and looked them again really hard, felt grateful that we were able to hold each other in our arms, and saw and recognized for a brief moment what was truly important.

How old is our oldest now? Three and a half? Didn’t we say we would like another child at some point? What happened? Why did we overlook the fact that our oldest is now almost four?

…. …. …. …. …. ….

I have no idea what I am trying to say. I simply need to type my words out.

Remember where you were when you heard the news?

Sue did. She was right there. Sue was living in New York City then, only a few blocks away from the World Trade Center. Her post on her yearly remembrance of her personal 911 took my breath away.

…. …. …. …. …. ….

Last year I wrote about a couple who lost both of their sons on September 11, and how much the father’s words affected me:

“I don’t have any could’ve, should’ve or would’ves. I wouldn’t have changed anything. It’s not many people that the last words they said to their son or daughter was ‘I love you.'”

One of the most valuable lessons I learned from all the heart-breaks:

Remember to say I love you every time you say good-bye to your kids… (and all your other loved ones of course)

Somehow I have forgot already. I am glad I remembered today.

Sarah Connor I ain’t. Ay, there’s the rub.

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I tell my kids frequently that when the dinosaurs come, RUN. Don’t wait for mommy. Because mommy will be the first one that gets eaten.

They always reply, after they are done rolling their eyes, It will not be dinosaurs in the end of the world scenario, mom. Don’t you watch any movies?

Well, dinosaur or no dinosaur, that’s not the point. The point is: Survival of the fittest, ergo, death to the weakling, y’all.

Me.

I hate reinforcing stereotypes. But I was, by the book, your stereotypical dorky coke-bottle-wearing no-extra-curricular-activity-whatsoever studying-till-dawn excelling-at-test-taking kid. I have no physical, practical skills to speak of. No physical strength. No kinetic memories of any sports. No agility. None. Nada. Nil. Null.

This lack of physical strength had not been an issue until I became a parent. When you became a parent, movies of a certain sorts ceased to be enjoyable: I sill cannot bring myself to watch “The Other End of the Ocean” and “The Changeling”. I was so distraught by the scene at the swimming pool that I failed to comprehend what happened later in the movie “Minority Report”. I freaked out over “Mystic River” because WTF if you cannot trust people who claim to be policemen. More than any other kinds of movies, I can no longer whole-heartedly enjoy disaster movies, the end-of-the-world mega blockbusters. Instead of being caught up by the actions, intrigued by the plot and storylines, and mesmerized by the big-budget special effects, my brain cells are busy calculating the chance of my children surviving the same event happening on the screen. My stomach churns at the thought of my children having to endure endless darkness and starvation, which is the least horrifying scenario of them all.

When the kids were younger, it was a lot more agonizing. I worried about what to feed them should we ever be trapped in the basement for a long period of time. How about if the baby would not stop crying and risk being discovered? What about diapers?

Now that they are older, I sense that I am becoming a liability when the world is being attacked by dinosaurs, brain-sucking Zombies, or aliens. For starters, I seriously cannot run. When I run for the train in the morning, it takes me the entire commute to get back to my normal breathing rhythm. I am such a slow runner that my husband can walk beside me while I attempt to jog. Running and I do not mix.

On top of that, I am as blind as a bat. Without my contact lenses or my coke-bottle-thick glasses, I cannot even locate the chart on the wall of my optometrist’s office. As soon as my glasses fall, as we all know, one of the dinosaurs is going to step on it and crush it like a peanut. That’s it. The end of me.

I just want my children to move on without me so I can buy them more time…

I don’t like watching disaster movies any more. It sucks.

We are on our annual family beach vacation with the in-laws this week. It is probably not a surprise that I cannot swim. In fact, I failed gym class in high school because I could not hold my breath long enough to swim the passing length of 15 feet. In contrast, Mr. Monk, my 7-year-old boy, has come a long way from being dastardly afraid of water, i.e. screaming bloody murder when his hair was being washed, to braving the waves with his boogie board all day long.

I gladly accompany him when Mr. Monk wants to swim in the ocean. I make sure that we do not get too far from the shore and that the water reaches no higher than my waist. I am not worried about the fact that I cannot friggin’ swim since my feet can always touch the bottom.

Well, they could always touch the bottom until the time when I almost drowned.

It happened so fast. One minute we were safely playing in the waves near the shore: Mr. Monk was happily swimming around me and under the waves while I screamed and jumped to keep my head above the water with each wave, the next minute I found myself under the water, my feet not being able to reach the bottom. I panicked. I swallowed water. I struggled to get my head above while sensing the impending arrival of the next wave. I could see the shore and it now seemed so far away.

What happened? How did we end up here?

The second wave submerged me under the water. I had braced for it and waited for it to subside. My head was above the water again. I could see a man no more than 30 feet away from us. And the water was at his waist. I saw Mr. Monk swimming along and he did not seem scared.

I started to peddle. To move myself closer to the shore. Inching my way. By this time I was painfully aware of my uselessness and I had determined that I needed to save myself first.

Remember the instruction the flight attendants give on the airplane for the oxygen masks?

“Make sure to put the oxygen mask on yourself first before attempting to help someone else put on theirs.”

I often wonder about that statement. How could a parent ever think of themselves first? It was an agonizing, yet split-second decision.

At that moment, I deliberately abandoned my own child, left him to his own device. I needed to save myself first so I could secure him. That realization panged me; it still does.

All I wanted was for my feet to be able to reach the bottom so I could regain control, goddamnit! I was furious at myself.

How could you have let this happen?

The third wave was coming. I knew if I let it, the wave would push me closer to the shore, and we could have been saved. So I swallowed some more water and let the pounding wave carry me in further. When the ocean retreated, YES, I felt the bottom with my tiptoes.

I stood up on my tiptoes and turned around to look for Mr. Monk. He was swimming behind me, leisurely.

“Hurry up. Come over here!” I yelled as I inched further forward by bouncing along.

He smiled at me.

“NO! We have to get back to the shore. RIGHT NOW!”

He was not listening. Now I was yelling and pleading at the same time.

“Please. COME HERE NOW!! Mommy cannot reach the bottom and I cannot help you at all!”

The man looked in our direction with a puzzled look, probably because he heard me yelling. He soon turned his gaze in some other direction since there was no clear sign that we were in any imminent danger.

As soon as Mr. Monk was within my reach, I pulled him in. We trudged onto the sandy beach.

“Hey, we need to be more careful. We have lost track of where we were headed while we were jumping in the waves. The waves carried us too far away. We got too deep. IMy feet could not touch the bottom and mommy almost drowned.”

“You almost got me killed!” Mr. Monk commented. “You were pulling me down! You should let go my hand next time. I can swim and you can’t! Mom, you should try not to be responsible for your child’s death.”

God only knows. That is one of my biggest fears ever since I became a parent.

Do not fuck up.

All of a sudden I remembered Linda Hamilton doing chin-ups in Terminator 2. I became envious of her ability to protect her child, deeply disturbed by the lack in me, and simply, straightforwardly, exhausted.

Sarah Connor, Baddest-Ass Mama

After all the soul searching and self-condemnation, I am grateful that I seem to be the only person traumatized by this event. The very next day Mr. Monk pleaded,

“Can we please please please go swimming again?”

“Ok honey. But this time we will stay where the water does not go above my knees.”

July 7. Day 78. Remember the Gulf.

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You are probably screaming at the monitor right now: We have the largest environmental disaster on our hand which has had and will continue to have significant impact on people’s lives and livelihood for generations to come. And what did you do? You bought t-shirts from Threadless?! Yes ma’am and sir, yes we did.

Wordless. Remember the pelicans.

On July 7, 2010, it is official:

“Tests show tar balls washed up on the Texas coast are from the spill, meaning every U.S. Gulf state — Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and now Texas — has been soiled by the spill [sic].”

Timeline: Gulf of Mexico oil spill [sic]

Remember the Gulf. Remember what is still going on even when the 6 o’clock news has stopped talking about it, or when the newspaper at your breakfast table no longer included the story on the first 10 pages, or when your Twitter stream no longer included any keywords related to the Gulf disaster.

No, I don’t know how remembering the fact that it is still happening and will continue going on, the fact that life will never get back to “The way it used to be” for the Gulf region, and the fact that there are more than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells in the Gulf, right now, is going to make any difference. I don’t know. I do know, deep down in my heart, that it will be an act of betrayal if we forget right now.

Amount of oil found on shore. Click picture to see Interactive Map on NY Times

Last Day of Innocence

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He may not know it but today marked an important milestone in my oldest’s life, and also in our life as parents.

My husband walked the boys to the bus stop this morning and he even took some pictures of them together waiting for the bus ~~albeit with his phone~~*. This will be the last time they do this. My children will no longer attend the same school at the same time. It is kind of strange to realize this.

Today is the last day of grade school for my oldest child. After the summer, he will be a 7th grader, going on to junior high. I am ~~dreading~~ seeing it more and more as the end, or the beginning of the end, of childhood innocence for him. For us.

I am terrified. To me, junior high is alien territory. A murky space between child and teens. Where the physiological development of your child propels them across the threshold of adulthood when they are still babies.

My baby.

I did not grow up here and all my education of the American high school experience and culture came from watching high school movies produced in Hollywood, starting with Porky’s. It suffices to say that Porky’s is not very helpful, nor is it reassuring, in preparing me for junior high because, well, all these movies are about senior high schools. Junior high schools are way under-represented in Hollywood. The only movie about junior high school in my recollection is The diary of a Wimpy Kid. A movie so unsettled me that I repeatedly asked my husband, “Is it really that bad? These kids are only 12?! How can they be so mean?” until he lied and said, “No, it’s just a movie. Now stop being so crazy,” and forced my children to promise me that, yes, they WILL tell me if they are being bullied in school because “I WILL GO KICK SOMEBODY’S ASS!”

Oh, yes. I am on full-patrol bully alert. I am sharpening my shuriken and start my 12-step training as a ninja assassin because God forbid if I make it worse for my children by giving those bullies a chance to retaliate.*

I went to an “Introducing New Parents to What Junior High School is All About” meeting a few months back. The principal gave us a rundown of the curriculum, the classes offered, the extra-curricular activities available, the amount of homework expected – “Two hours minimum, and more if they take a foreign language class”, and the rules especially regarding electronics – “NONE allowed. Don’t even bring them to school.” There was a walk-through of the school property, which I missed because my son did not inform me of the meeting until that afternoon, and from what I was told, an attempt to explain how the kids will be divided into two groups because there are too many of them, the Switch and Swap between classes, and something about the homeroom not being really important since the kids are based off of their lockers.

Lockers? You mean lockers from which things inadvertently fall out and the owner of the said locker will be ridiculed and thus be relegated to the Purgatory of the Uncool? You mean lockers where the smaller kids get shoved into by the bullies all the fucking time and nobody ever stops them or at least alerts the authorities? Is it just me? Nobody else sees these lockers as potential hazards and should be purged from high schools? Or are the movies completely made up?

Good. Now I feel better. I should also stop remembering each and every high school torture scene I have seen.

Then there was the cafeteria. The pièce de résistance in every high school movie. Although I mocked myself for taking the movies too literally, I soon realized, much to my dismay, that the significance of the cafeteria is not an exaggeration by Hollywood. I spent half an hour listening to moms rehashing and reviewing the cafeteria seating assignment process and policy shared with us new parents.

The kids will have a few weeks to sit wherever they want. The day before the designated day, an announcement will be made. “Tomorrow is the day!” On the designated day, wherever the kids are sitting and whomever they are sitting with, THIS IS IT. They have to remain in that seat for the next 3 months.

The moms seemed to be satisfied that there will be quarterly rotations. So I was too. After I made this mental note…

Note to Self: Child MUST attend school on THOSE FOUR days. Even if he is coughing up blood.

All this pressure to be COOL. To NOT be uncool.

I seriously admire all of you who have grown up this way, who have gone through and survived this unscathed. Just sitting here thinking about it, the pressure is getting to me so much that I want to slit my throat. Because the boundary between COOLNESS and UNCOOLNESS seems so… fickle and arbitrary. One has no control over it. You become the hostage of your peers who are just as confused as you are.

As I watched the children at their 6th grade party having the time of their life, I wondered whether these kids knew that their carefree days were naught: Did they know that this might be the last time all of them would be hanging out as a group and stay in such proximity to each other (for 100% innocent fun), no cliques in sight? That this would be the last time the D.J. did not need Bill Pullman’s speech at the end of Independence Day to rouse everybody to participate equally, more or less?

My heart ached.

For almost all of them this was probably the first “dancing” party they have been to. They were excited. And awkward at the same time, not sure what to do with their long limbs when the music started pounding. While I wearily noted down a few kids that could be easily pegged as “future jocks and queen bees in the making” and I mentally gave them the Robert De Niro “I’m Watching You” hand sign, short and tall, small and big, boys and girls, they all acknowledged each other’s existence. They were all hanging out and being uncool together. Crossing that mile marker. And that made it totally cool.

*I started out wanting to write a sentimental piece about how my baby is all growing up and no longer a child. Apparently, my school of parenting is Unsentimental Parenting. Somehow this turned into an exercise in mental anguish and pre-battle prep and I am psyching myself up like Mr. “I Pity the Fool” T.

*Correction: I forwarded my husband the email version that Feedburner sent me and he would like it to be known that he actually remembered to bring an ACTUAL camera with him that morning to the bus stop. That’s more than I can say, honey. You know how I only take pictures with my iNotPhone now.

* Yes, I email my husband selective blog posts of mine to 1. inform him what’s going on in this household because chances are he has no idea (and this may or may not have something to do with him being a road warrior). 2. prevent him from reading posts that I don’t ~~want~~ need him to read.

Waiting

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Let's go. We can't. Why not? We are waiting for Godot.

I have been thinking about this exchange in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot a lot lately.

ESTRAGON: Let’s go.
VLADIMIR: We can’t.
ESTRAGON: Why not?
VLADIMIR: We are waiting for Godot.

End of Act I. They do not move

This exchange recurs throughout the play. No progress is made. Nothing is changed. Both acts end on the same verbal promise for action that is never carried out:

VLADIMIR: Well? Shall we go?
ESTRAGON: Yes, let’s go.
They do not move.

It depressed the hack out of me when the lights dimmed on the two figures in the center of the stage: the same way they started; the same way they ended Act II. Immobile. Engulfed by the darkness, the unknown, eternity. The image and the thought haunts me.

They do not move.

A lot have been written, theorizing the allegorical meaning of Beckett’s tragicomedy. The meaning of Godot.

To me, I’ve always thought that Beckett made a mistake; he should have turned the label the other way around – a comictragedy. This is a tragedy about Didi and Gogo who are the prisoners of their own misplaced hope. This whole waiting thing causes the inaction. It would have been better if they have come to the conclusion that no one is coming. Things are not going to be better. Nothing is going to change their situations for them. But themselves.

I didn’t even realize I have been waiting. Waiting for something, for what I have no idea yet.

What are you waiting for? If you knew what you are waiting for, perchance an event, a sign, the other shoe, will it make everything more tolerable?

I compartmentalize. By spouting random nonsense here I am able to continue to not think. To forestall the unraveling. To keep it together. To carry on with no resolution in sight. To wait. Not remembering that I have been waiting.

For what I know not yet.

Let’s go.

We can’t.

Why not?

We are waiting for Godot.

WTF Wednesday: There, I fixed it (A Pictogram)