In Defense of Being Judgy

Ever comment on someone doing something absurd and have the person you’re with sniff that they don’t believe in saying anything bad about anybody?

Bah.

As Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of Teddy Roosevelt, said, “If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.”

We are an exquisitely social species. When we coordinated a hunt to bring down some huge animal with sticks and rocks, when, as mothers with helpless infants, we worked out a group babysitting/gathering schedule, we honed our social abilities, including being astute judges of each other. Gossiping may have been the reason why we developed language.

Primatologists devote their lives to mapping the complex web of social interactions our closest relatives weave, but chimpanzees and bonobos can’t hold a candle to what we can do. We can live in huge groups – in cities, in countries – without (usually) killing each other. We develop complex systems of trade and trust.

We can do all this because we watch each other, judge each other, talk about each other.

Gossip has a bad reputation because it can be used maliciously to keep people in line, to punish and compete. Exhibit A: teenaged girls.

That isn’t what I’m talking about.

I have always talked to my kids, from a young age, about the people around them, including adults. (“You’re right; your teacher IS being a jerk.”) First, to pretend otherwise would be really crazy-making for the child. Second, being a good judge of character (i.e., recognizing when someone is being an ass) is a useful skill. Young humans have to learn to deal with such asses and the first, and most important, step in that process is recognizing what you’re dealing with.

Don’t talk about people?

How else are we going to figure them out?

Couch-Potato Kids

Let’s face it: most of us have couch-potato kids.

According to the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition, 2 out of 3 kids are not physically active and spend an average of 7 ½ hours per day with screens.

According to the CDC, over 21% of teenagers are obese.

According to an ESPN article, only 30% of girls and 37% of boys play a sport in high school, and by senior year, only 1 out of 4 are physically active.

My son’s an avid computer gamer. We used to refer to the daily chore of getting him out of his room as “airing him out.”

And like many high-school kids (see the stats, above), he felt intimidated by the idea of “going out for” a sport.

Yet, he found one: swimming.

It’s made a world of difference. He looks better, stands taller, moves better, sleeps and eats better, gets better grades, is happier.

How’d we do it? It was about 95% luck. But we did learn a few things:

1.      It might take many attempts before you find something that clicks. With our kids, we tried gymnastics, soccer, tae kwon do, fencing, football, rugby, hiking, biking and swimming.

2.      The one that clicks could surprise you. I’d have never guessed swimming and rugby (my daughter’s sport).

3.      I thought my husband was being a hard-ass when he kept after the kids to move every day. But if only so they didn’t end up at the gym with Mom or on a bike ride with Dad (the horror), they began seriously considering their options.

4.      The best sports are new (rugby, fencing) and/or underdog ones.

5.      And really, the sport doesn’t matter. It’s the coach. If your kids find a warm, supportive coach, they’ve just won big-time.

Not For a Bazillion Dollars

People say never say never, but I am pretty sure about these.

1.Bungee Jump. Nope. Not ever.

(Link: https://youtu.be/e8np2IaTv_s)

2.  Whatever These People are Doing. They are jumping off cliffs and out of helicopters wearing something called wingsuits.

 (The link: https://youtu.be/DHzZzum63gA)

3. Noodling, or Catching Catfish with Your Bare Hands. You do this by letting the catfish try to eat your hand and end up elbow-deep inside the fish. Oh, hell no.

(Link: https://youtu.be/SQRRvpdop9w)

4. Brazilian waxes. I have no idea how this ever became a thing. Keep yourself clean? Sure. Give yourself a little haircut? Fine. Rip out all the hair by its roots from the most sensitive parts of your body? No. Some argue that an adult woman becoming hairless makes her look like a prepubescent child and that's gross enough. But, A, doesn't this practice just scream self-hatred, that you hate how your body looks naturally and you hate yourself enough to subject yourself to such a painful process? And B, those body parts are sensitive and the hair cushions them. In the name of being "sexy," are you dulling the sensitivity of your sex organs by ripping away their protection?

I think you should be nice to your body. Don't hurl it off cliffs. Don't feed it to catfish. Don't subject it to painful and possibly even harmful, alterations in the name of "beauty."

So, that's (the start of ) my list.

What would you never, ever do?

Familyisms

Doesn’t every family have its own lingo?

Some of ours:

Brockabee: What my nephew called the vegetable when he was little.

Caca Bonk: What my sisters decided to call poop when they were small.

Charo: When I was a kid, my best friends’ mom, from Thailand, had a hard time pronouncing my name. It came out “Charo,” which also happens to be the name of the Spanish comedian/flamenco guitarist. Some people still call me Charo.

Diddy Ya Ya: Dish towel. Because my cousin, now a full-grown man, liked to carry around dish towels and chew on the corners when he was a toddler.

Dupie: All the young children in my family use this, from the Polish “dupa,” for rear-end.

Harry Potter Closet: What we call the closet underneath the stairs.

Helping Lola Be Her Best Self: Taking out the kitchen garbage before we leave the house. Otherwise, Lola the Dog will knock it over and drag the best bits onto the living-room rug.

Man on Horseback Would Never Notice: What we say, because my grandfather did, whenever anyone asks if something, like a stain on a shirt, is noticeable.

Mir: How I pronounced “mirror” when I was small.

Piece of Thit: My same cousin, when our grandmother tried to entice him away from an expensive toy guitar with a cheaper one, declared, with his toddler lisp, “That one’s a piece of thit.”

Pikers: What my daughter used to call popsicles.

Police the Area: Go around the yard, picking up the dog crap.

Take a Wook at It: What we say we’ll do when something’s broken, after my toddler nephew said he would when he learned his grandfather’s car wasn’t working.

Under-The-Pants: This was not from a child but from a friend from the Ukraine.

What does your family say?

What's in a Name?

There is a hole in our culture that has yet to be adequately filled.

How should women handle their last names when they marry?

I kept mine, and while I am happy I did, it is not a totally satisfactory solution. One, you give up that symbol – the same last name – for your family. Two, my last name is not going to keep going since my children have my husband’s last name. In fact, as he points out, of the six names we gave our children (first, middle, last X two kids), I only got one of them, my daughter’s first name. (She’s named after my mother, while my son is named after my husband, who is named after his father, that continuity through the generations is nice – and my daughter’s middle name, well, my husband’s family has a cool one, with a rocking story behind it, that I couldn’t resist using.)

If we gave one child my last name and the other my husband’s, I think my kids would wonder how we decided who got what and what that said about them. Names are powerful, and while I see drawbacks in how they are traditionally handled, I also hesitate to screw around with them on the fly.

Hyphenation is also not a good long-term solution. I once met a young girl who sadly pointed out that her hyphenated name was 26 letters long.

My friend’s sister kept her last name because, she said, whatever she accomplished in life was because of her parents, the people who raised and educated her. Nice.

And whenever I see a situation where the boss (always a man) is Mr. So&So, but the employees (always women) go by just first names, I am reminded of the power in last names.

What did you do?

Walking with Lola the Dog

Did somebody say "walk"?
 

Lola loves walks, grabbing her leash and running to the gate when it’s time.

They are her walks, I figure, so I let her choose where we go. (OK, if I didn’t, we’d have embarrassing arguments at street corners, arguments I often lose.)

In Inside A Dog, Alexandra Horowitz explains, unlike us, dogs’ primary sense is smell, not sight. Sometimes, Lola will smell something in the ground that makes her normally upright tail fall limp; she will even refuse to walk past the spot. Creepy. Are bodies buried there?

Lola keeps up her end of the doggy smell conversation, carefully placing her pee and poop, the latter sadly an exercise in futility since I pick it up. Lola also loves an audience. That’s why, when we walk past restaurants with outdoor dining, I have to pull her along, hissing, “Don’t you dare, Lola!” ‘Cause she totally would.

Lola always wants to walk on a nearby shopping street, not on quiet residential streets. Her favorite spot is a frozen-yogurt shop because she gets lots of attention from little people covered in yogurt who don’t mind getting licked. And, operating under the theory of “If I act like I know what I’m doing, people will think it’s OK,” she will try to duck into other businesses. One store owner actually asked us if we’d come in and hang out, since the charismatic Lola often attracts a crowd.

We have to deal with cats who come out to play mind games on Lola, whom they absolutely know is on a leash.

And yesterday, we had to get close, but not too close, to one of those arm-wavy inflatable things (called an AirDancer, by the way) and watch it for a long time.

Then Lola went home for a nap.

Through Purple-Colored Glasses

Lord help me ... despite my strong belief that less is more when buying eyeglasses … I got myself a

pair of purple ones.

I can only refer to one of my favorite quotations of all time:

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”

My old glasses were literally falling apart. I would place them gingerly (because the rubber nose pads were gone) and crookedly (because they were crooked) on my nose in the morning (about the only time I had been wearing them) and peer out at the world.

And I realized that they were older than my oldest child – who is 19!

So, I high-tailed it to the eyeglass store. I went alone. Perhaps my first mistake. But I didn’t want to agonize over this.

The sales clerk, who looked to me to be about 10 years old, showed me some glasses made out of wood. “They are biodegradable,” he said, “and the company donates all profits to charity.” Nice idea, but “You can put those away,” I said.

I tried on many pairs, quickly (because I couldn’t stand how any of them looked), but I kept coming back to this purple pair.

“Well, I think these might be the ones,” I said.

“Great!” said the clerk, moving to close the sale.

“But they’re purple,” I said. “I soooo don’t want to buy purple glasses.”

The clerk sighed as he sat back down.

Well, I got them. And I like them, I think. Sometimes, because of the shape of their frames, I do think of them as my “Annie Leibovitz glasses.”

But I do like them ... I think.

Which is good, because the plan is to have them for the next 20 years.