Some Pig

All I Wanna Do Is Have Some Fun

It's been a sucky week, what with the aforementioned testing and the subsequent schedule changes, and then just when that finally came to an end we had the Worst-Planned Field Trip Ever bring everything to a screeching halt again which resulted in mass panic and discombobulation on the part of the kids (not to mention the person running the aforementioned WPFTE, and should I mention that this person runs this exact same field trip four times a year???  And has done so for many, many years??  As in, DECADES?  As in, even if you are as slow and deliberate as a three-toed sloth, I would think that you would have had time to get it right by now!  But I digress.). So after six days in a row of screwed-up-ness, it's no surprise that the kids were nuttier than squirrel crap today, especially with the weekend just hours away, which was of course EXACTLY not the day to start a new activity they've never done before, but I can't afford to lose any more time since all the other 8th grade Social Studies teachers are already in the middle of the Revolutionary War and I just started the French and Indian War today, so damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.  Which turned out to be not such a bad thing except for my last period class of the day, which happens to be the one most heavily loaded with students who are not overly gifted in the brains or social maturity departments BUT who FAR exceed the local, state, and national standards for Being Talkative Pains in the Bum.  So after pointing out to one of these cherubs that there is NO WAY IN HELL the French and Indian War could POSSIBLY have led directly to World War II since they were separated by, oh, ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS, and may I point out that this was not the DUMBEST question I answered all day, well, a girl needs a little decompression time.  And you MIGHT then think to yourself, "Hey!  At least it's the weekend!" and you would be right in thinking that the weekend is the perfect opportunity to pause and regroup, refreshed by a hiatus from the cares and woes of the workaday world spent with one's nearest and dearest, BUT...

You knew there would be a BUT, didn't you?

... BUT, the in-laws are coming.  Which means that instead of spending the weekend catching up on all the craziness of the previous week and getting my ducks in a row for the craziness to come, I am going to spend the next 48 hours wishing the whole damned weekend was over and done already.  And then, since I know the ILs love us and come visit because they want to be part of our girls' lives, I will feel guilty and ashamed of myself for being such a heartless, ungracious, bratty little beast.  Then I will resent the fact that I feel that way, which will be followed by resenting the fact that, for reasons that are way too long and complicated to go into here, they are very, very difficult to have around and to keep entertained.  And since Warren and I are both stressed out and resentful, naturally the girls pick up on our tension, which, coupled with the excitement of having Grandparents! Around! All!! Weekend!!!, means that at some point during the weekend, one of the girls will have the kind of Difficult Moment that doesn't show her in the best possible light, which invariably ends with my father-in-law trying to step in and play the role of Stern but Doting Grandparent, by which I mean scolding her while trying to make it sound like he's not scolding her.  Which pisses me off.  And makes me resentful.  And starts the cycle all over again.

If I take to my bed with a bottle of gin, do you think anyone would notice?

"Sex" and Lies and What I Learned

Well, I saw it!  ... and if you have to ask what "it" is, never mind.  Toasty met me halfway, bearing bootleg cocktails in her purse (something called a "French Silk," I think, and I insist that you tell everyone the secret formula in the comments now), and we settled in for a visit with Carrie and the girls.  I have to admit that what the reviewers said is true:  As a movie, it is not a resounding success.  One of the many things I loved about the show, the snappy pacing, clearly owed a lot to the half-hour format of the series, and with the movie clocking in at two hours and forty minutes, there were long stretches of ... well, long stretches.  That led to a domino effect in which the funny moments and sentimental moments and thought-provoking moments that make up the appeal of SATC were spread so  far apart that they lost much of their punch.  As an example [spoiler alert here], was it really necessary for the storyline to follow the girls through most of a Bryant Park fashion show just to put Samantha in a position to have red paint thrown on her fur coat by PETA types?  The moment resonated in the previews, but it took so long to get there in the movie, it almost went unnoticed.  A subplot featuring Jennifer Hudson playing a PA named Louise from St. Louis who longs for her own Louis Vuitton handbag  is so lame, it limps.  A sharp editor with some good computer software could've trimmed this down to under two hours and ended up with a much better movie.

But in the end, I don't think whether or not the film is any good even matters.  I'm willing to wager that most of us who are flocking to the movie, myself included, pretty much don't give a damn if it's good or bad or halfway in between as long as it's Sex And The City.  For those of us who loved the show, the movie is like a long visit with your friends who moved away after you spent years in each other's back pockets.  Everyone's changed a little, but fundamentally the same; the conversation takes some time to get rolling and the immediate shorthand references don't work right away, but after awhile it's like - well, not like you've never gone away, but like the time you spent apart doesn't matter as much as the time you spent together.  The characters stay fairly true to form, I think, although not everyone agrees with me, and some of the same logistical impossibilities remain.  For example, if Miranda is such a driven career woman who's made partner at her firm, how is it that she has three days to spend helping Carrie pack her clothes to move?  Who's watching Charlotte's daughter while she's gallivanting about to dress fittings and taking the dogs for a run?  I presume there's a nanny, but we never get even a whiff of a helpful au pair about the place. 

As I was driving home, I pondered the situation.  Given the stark differences between my life and the SATC  gals, why do I feel such a fierce loyalty to the show?  I came to a realization - aside from the one about popcorn and Nestle Crunch not being a real dinner, I mean.  I realized that I love SATC because it's the one show that doesn't lie.  Oh, sure, it isn't exactly real life.  There's the oft-noted conundrum of [insert query here concerning Carrie's a) wardrobe, b) social life, and c) evident disposable income on a freelance writer's salary].  Even the dorky guys are cute (Steve), and while Carrie bounces from heartbreak to heartbreak, there always seems to be another straight, solvent, good-looking guy right around the corner to rebound with.  (Trust me, that was not my single-in-the-city experience by a long chalk.  I used to joke that I could be airlifted into Alcatraz and I'd still be home reading an improving book of a Saturday night.)  But what SATC gets right is the fact that life - real, grown-up life - is hard, and even when you get what you want, it usually comes with some kind of trade-off or unforeseen complication attached.  Carrie gets her man in the end, but has to sacrifice the fairy-tale wedding and penthouse apartment along the way.  Miranda has to find a balance between her ambition and her marriage.  Even Charlotte, she of the charmed life and Park Ave apartment, wound up changing her entire religious outlook along the way.  And even living in the center of the social universe, they still wind up alone watching old movies or going out to dinner with the girls on New Year's.  In a way, Carrie and the girls represented an idealized version of my own single life: Sometimes confusing, sometimes seemingly directionless, sometimes astonishingly exhilarating.  They were me, only in much more expensive clothes and attending much cooler parties (And having a lot more sex, too, hence the title of the show.  After all, no one wants to see Sex-Deprived in the City, do they?).  I don't know if Darren Star actually meant for me to interpret the show this way, but I loved the show because it portrayed how hard it is to find - and hold onto - true happiness.  Unlike most shows, in which being happy is a foregone conclusion and the perfect ending is right around the corner, the characters in SATC have to work at their happiness.  They find it and lose it; work at regaining their balance and discover they have to negotiate the terms all over again.  That's what feels most honest about the show to me.

May I Have This Spance?

Well, the Class of 2009, for which I am one of the advisors, held a dance on Friday.  As an intended fundraiser, it was a bust.  Around 90 kids showed up at $5 a head, and with the DJ running $275 and the PO-lice running over $100, well, you do the math.  But in a way, the fact that we had such a small turnout made the evening all the more fun.  Of the 90-some-odd kids who showed, 99 and 44/100ths of them were freshmen, since, according to one girl, "all the upperclassmen are out drinking tonight."  And freshmen are always highly entertaining to watch.

The freshmen come to us novices in the ways of the high school dance.  As middle schoolers, they aren't allowed at high school functions, and our middle school actually doesn't host straight dances at all.  They refer to their socials as "spances," which are sports/dances.  This means the girls, the latent gay guys, and the romantically inclined boys dance in the cafeteria and all the other boys and the tomboys shoot hoops in the gym. Hence, "spance."  Our freshman-by-default dance had rather spance-ish overtones.  I could count the number of guys in the crowd on two hands and maybe a pinky toe; the rest of the crowd was all female.  Most of the guys limited themselves to hanging out on the periphery and occasionally being dragged in to dance for a few awkward beats (picture Billy Crystal doing the 'white man overbite' in When Harry Met Sally); one kid entertained himself all evening by stuffing balloons down his tshirt and daring other kids to try to hit it so it would pop out.  When he tired of that, he would take the balloon and jump on it near a group of girls in hopes of setting off a squeal.  Usually it worked.  And when he wasn't doing that, he was lurking around the support posts trying to jump out and scare me.  I figure he got his $5 worth of fun by the time the evening ended.  The major difference between a spance and a dance was pretty obvious, however, when I kicked a bunch of girls off one of the concrete benches and the watching-on-the-periphery guys complained loudly.  Shooting hoops seems to have lost its appeal.

A few things haven't changed at all since you were last at a high school dance, and some have changed beyond recognition.  You would recognize the group dynamics.  Girls dance with girls, an occasional brave and socially advanced boy dances with girls, and a couple guys will slow dance if forced to do so.  You wouldn't recognize the actual dancing, however.  When I was in high school, unaccompanied girls either walked around with their arms crossed protectively over their midsections or danced in a big circle - and I mean a biiiiiiiiiiig circle, big enough that no one could accuse you of incipient lesbianism for bouncing up and down near your friends.  Of course, our hair was so big we needed a lot of room.  Now, the girls today have no such concerns, uh-uh, nohow.  They dance like they're auditioning for Underage Girls Gone Wild.  No wonder the boys protested when I put the kibosh on the pseudo pole dance.  It is somewhat comforting to notice that slow dancing is just as awkward and unromantic as ever, though.  If you forgot how to do it, grab your partner, but hold them at arms' length.  Make sure you don't make anything resembling eye contact, and fix your gaze at least six feet in the distance.  Wear an expression of grim fortitude on your face, as though you're thinking of a particularly knotty algebra problem, and shuffle slowly in a circle.  When the song ends, drop arms like you've just gotten an electric shock and walk in the opposite direction of your dance partner without speaking.  Voila - slow dancing, freshman style!

Aside from the vertical hoochie coochie, which is all post-millennium, you'd be surprised by one other aspect of dance dynamics.  You definitely wouldn't recognize a lot of the music, unless you have encyclopedic knowledge of the Usher catalog, and of course you'd recognize the song "My Humps" because my God, once that song gets into your head, you hear it over and over and OVER until you either go insane or get a frontal lobotomy.  But you know what songs get all the kids on the floor?  Good ole 80's tunes, thank you very much.  Put on Marilyn singing "You Spin Me Right Round (Like A Record)" and kids who have never even seen an actual record album go ballistic.  What else got them going?  AC/DC.  Lynryd Skynyrd (okay, a little more late 70's than 80's, but still).  "Thriller".  "Superfreak." "Hey, Mickey." "Obsession" (a personal favorite of mine).  It was great.  It was also a little weird.  There I was, at a school dance, and I was neither desperately hoping for attention from a crush totally oblivious to my existence nor totally self-conscious about how my hair, boobs, and clothing weren't measuring up to expectations.  I already knew where my crush was (at home giving the kid a bath), and I am well aware that my hair, boobs, and sense of style are totally inadequate to meet most teenagers' exacting standards.  So I was free to have a good time, shock the shit out of my students by dancing on the speaker (hey, the DJ invited me to do it, what was I going to say?  No?), and go home knowing I wasn't going to wind up crying into my pillow all night.  Adolescence is a whole lot more fun when you experience it as a grownup.

Let Us Now Praise Boring Men

I can remember when I was sixteen, and therefore eminently qualified to pass judgement on everything and everyone, sitting at the familial dinner table and thinking, who are these boring people and why am I related to them?  From my lofty perch of omniscience, it seemed that the power and privileges of adulthood were being wasted on two people who had no interest in exercising them.  How, I wondered, could two intelligent human beings be so interested in such mundane matters?  And how could I be a blood relation of two people whose typical dinner table conversation usually ran something like this:

Dad:  Guess who I saw at the store today?
Mom:  Who?
Dad:  Boring Friend of Ours!
Mom:  Really?  How's he doing?
Dad:  You won't believe this news.
Mom:  What?
Dad:  Totally Yawnworthy Piece of Trivia!
Mom:  No.  What else did he say?
Dad:  Something Else Too Mundane to Remember!
Mom:  That's really something.  You know, he's related to Another Boring Friend of Ours by marriage.
Dad:  Oh, I had forgotten that.
Mom:  Yes, her mother is cousins with his stepbrother, who's Someone Else Not Worth Remembering, and he's one of the West Hiram Not Worth Rememberings, you know.
(continue until conversation finishes or adolescent daughter moans in mock agony and receives withering looks)

Given role models like that, I think it's a miracle I can carry on a conversation with another human being and not have them fall flat on their face, stunned by boredom. 

As I sat and chewed my dinner to these exchanges, I often pondered what I thought my adult life would be like.  In my mind's eye, I saw adulthood as an endless cocktail party with me at the center, swishing about in front of a glittering backdrop of skyscrapers and street lights.  My glamorous friends and I would exchange titillating bits of gossip and engrossing stories of our exotic travels.  I would have an ill-defined but highly paid and preferably not very demanding job, one for which I was not only encouraged but obligated to maintain a stellar social life and a ready supply of glittery frocks.  With my rakishly handsome neurosurgeon/lawyer/UN ambassador husband at my side, I'd put down my champagne flute long enough to wish our clean, well-mannered children goodnight and turn them back over to the nanny before returning to the social whirl.  I most certainly was not going to spend my evenings falling asleep in front of a PBS nature show with my mouth hanging open, the way my father did every Sunday night, while my mother read a magazine in the kitchen or chatted on the phone with her friends on the library committee, all as impenetrable cover for her habit of sneaking a post-dinner cig. 

So what happened on the way to the high life?  Well, first of all, I discovered that I really hate cocktail parties unless I've known everyone there for about forever.  The thought of having to project an aura that says, "I'm interesting!  I'm intriguing!  Get to know me!" while wearing uncomfortable clothes and trying to make social chitchat - urgh.  Warren dragged me to a meet-and-greet once for his work last fall, and I dreaded it for days ahead of time.  (And I was right to do so, as I barely made it out of the party before I had to run throw up in the bushes thanks to a fast-moving viral illness.  But that is neither here nor there.)  I've also managed to choose professions and hobbies and life pursuits (teaching, crew, motherhood) that absolutely demand early riser status, so opportunities for late night socializing are, shall we say, minimal at best.  Hell, I can barely get my butt out of bed the day after parent conferences, and those only last til 8:30!

All of this is merely window-dressing for the bottom-line reality, which is that I have inherited my parents' mantle of Boring Responsible Adult.  And strangely enough, I don't mind.  There's actually a lot to be said for being boring.  For one thing, I will never wind up on a talk show titled "Please Help Me Find My Babydaddy," facing four likely candidates and Maury Povich holding DNA test results.  I never have to worry about maintaining a stash of tryst-worthy underwear, I can just wear the cotton stuff I like.  I have never had a restraining order brought against me, and I have never stood in the driveway screeching profanities at a garishly-made-up woman who claims that SHE'S Warren's woman, beeyotch, you wanna piece a me, huh?  Huh?  I'm gonna call the cops on you, you and your fat ass, don't come around here telling lies cuz everyone knows you lied about that one time when you said that thing about me (et cetera, et cetera).  That, I must say, probably comes as a huge relief to all my friends.

There are other benefits to being boring besides social propriety.  If you admit you're boring, you can watch documentaries on PBS all you want and not feel guilty about it.  As Warren says, "There's nothing like a nice depressing Frontline once in a while."  My only quibble is, why do they put all the good stuff on so late?  Nine o'clock is when a middle-aged mother of very young children hits the hay, not fires up TV.  Dump the Antiques Roadshow for a measly week and start Frontline at 8 pm, when civilized people can watch it!

A [related] digression:  My parents are inveterate documentary watchers, and my mother has the simultaneously endearing and annoying habit of offering a running commentary, a meta-commentary if you will, on the contents of the screen.  Die-hard monarchist that she is, she's currently engrossed in a series on the inner workings of Windsor Castle.  Sample commentary runs something like this:

[Royal limousine pulls up and QEII and Prince Phillip disembark]  Sandra:  "They were very hard on those children.  He was a very demanding father and he never gave them much affection."

[Narrator mentions a portrait dating back to King Henry VIII]  Sandra:  "You know, after Henry died, England was not ready for a female monarch."

[Charles and Camilla proceed down the aisle at Windsor Cathedral] Sandra: "Diana was young and very glamorous, but she wasn't ever really right for Charles."

Now, this is endearing in a way, because it's my mom and it's fun to see her enjoying herself so much.  But it's also annoying, given that a) I teach history for a living, and a big chunk of history is British history; and b) I once wrote an entire paper on the application of Pauline versus Petrine religious theory in Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, so yes, I am fairly aware of Britain's issues with Elizabeth's ascension; and c) my mother's intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the royal family is shared by everyone who reads the cover of People in the grocery store checkout line.  But who am I to deny the woman who gave me breath her fun?  So anyway, yes. To summarize: documentaries - I am in favor of them, as they provide amusement to those naturally inclined to the Boring.

The best argument for being boring, however, is the fact that I now have a Young Life For Which I Am Responsible.  If there's two things kids need, it's stability and predictability, and that we boring folks have in spades.  I will let you in on a secret: Deep down, kids WANT their parents to be boring.  Oh, sure, they'll roll their eyes and piss and moan, but they do that when there's no cornflakes for breakfast, so you can't go by that as your sole measure. Most kids want excitement in their lives, but they want it to be self-generated, not brought upon them by outside forces.  Witness a conversation I overheard in homeroom recently:

Girl 1 (disgusted): My mom's getting a tattoo!

Girl 2:  Your mom's like a kid.

Girl 1:  I know!  Every time I want to do something, she goes out and does it, and then I can't do it!  I hate it!

Now, don't take this as a backhanded condemnation of adults getting tattoos, because that's not the intent.  It's not the tattoo that's the issue, it's the drama.  My little charge wasn't upset because her mom wanted to get inked, she was upset that her mother was usurping her right to be the center of attention, the most important dramatis personae in the family play.  It's Mom's job in this situation to be the boring voice of practicality and authority: "Not until you're eighteen you won't," or, "Now don't go getting some huge ugly thing all over your upper arm that you can't hide for a job interview," and of course, "What is that going to look like when you're eighty years old and all wrinkly?"  You can't be that voice if you're too busy fighting with your kid over who gets their tat first. 

The unfortunate aspect of being boring, from a blogger's point of view, is that it seriously limits your pool of topics.  Having a frigged-up personal life and a dysfunctional family may be agony on the psyche, but it does make for easy posting.  Some days I feel my life is perilously short on material and I am going to have to go out and start a torrid affair or get into a huge legal fracas with the neighbors in order to hold onto my loyal readership.  But then a new Frontline comes out, or the next Netflix shows up, or I finally get hold of that book I wanted to read, and it seems like having an affair would be so much effort, what with the leg shaving and all, and legal fracases (fracae?) seem like they would be expensive, and besides, I need to go to bed early since India doesn't adjust her internal clock just because I stayed up late, and ... well, it's a heck of a lot easier to stay boring.

Never Say Never Again

Recently I was struck by how frequently I violate firmly sworn promises to myself.  As proof, here is a short list of Things I Swore I'd Never Do As a Grownup:

Go to bed before 11:00 pm.  As a mere slip of a girl, I used to wail with dismay whenever forced to go to bed.  "When I grow up," I said to myself, "I'm going to stay up late EVERY night, and no one's going to stop me!"  Yeah, no one except ME, that is.  Here I am, carefully eyeing the little clock in the corner of the computer as it inches ever nearer to 9:30.  9:30!  Practically midnight!  If I don't go to bed now, it's going to be ugly tomorrow morning...

Have anything to do with wood heat.  For some time during my formative years, I secretly believed that my parents had me specifically so they could get their sick jollies by burdening me with unpleasant chores.  Never mind the orthodontia, glasses, dance lessons, etc. - that was all window dressing.  They really bore me so they would have someone to help stack wood.  As my sister and I grudgingly shuffled firewood so slowly that algae grew on our backs, I would imagine my future self, dressed in stylish and decidedly non-wood-stackable clothing, lounging about my elegantly appointed home.  Should a chill cross my bare shoulders, I would simply trip merrily across the floor to the thermostat and raise it to a more comfortable 75 degrees.  Tra la, tra lee, it's oil heat for me! 

My fall into apostasy started innocently enough.  Two years ago we wanted to use the three-season room in the back of the house, and hey, my parents had a small woodstove they weren't using, so why not?  And it just so happens that we had to take a tree down, so we had a cord of wood right there.  What the heck, it's just for every once in a while, right?  Yeah, right.  It costs $125 for a cord of wood, and a donation of a kidney for a tank of oil.  Do the math.

Wear Sensible Shoes.  Who's that idiot high school girl picking her way across a frozen parking lot in February wearing high-heeled shoes?  Oh, it's me, circa 1985!  Who's that woman standing on her feet all day teaching in three-inch heels?  Oh, it's me, circa 1998!  Who's that woman limping to the podiatrist to be fitted for $300 worth of orthotics?  Oh, it's me, circa 2000!

Go to Work in Non-flattering Clothing.  As high school students, my little friends and I would compare notes on our teachers' (lack of) sartorial sense.  "I would never wear something like that," we'd sniff, taking in the cardigan knit sweaters and the loose denim dresses around us.  Well, what can I say?  Cardigans come in mighty handy when one classroom's a boiler and the other's a meat locker!  As for denim dresses, um, I have one, but I don't actually wear it.  So does that count? 

Drive a family truckster.  Current vehicle:  2000 Subaru Legacy wagon.  Nuff said.

Rub my child's face with spit on a Kleenex.  My mom was the WORST violator of this one - she would check if the back of my neck was clean frequently.  In public.  When I was TWELVE!  It was so gross.  But now I do it - I'm a picker of the worst sort.  I pick at her nose.  I pick at ear wax.  I pick at dried-up food bits on her cheek.  "Watch out, India," Warren yells when I get that gleam in my eye, "Mommy's going to pick!"

I'm sure there are myriad others, and I may add to the list later.  But it's 9:45 pm now, which is way  past my bedtime.